Evening of the Good Samaritan (46 page)

“That was his father,” Sylvia said, and only a few seconds later did she realize that here might be actual issue in Lakewood. “Doctor Hogan was Albert Bergner’s protégé his successor, really.”

“I shouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Abington said easily. He brushed his fine white hair back from his forehead as though it were a cobweb. “If he has a successor, I should say it was our friend.”

“Reiss?”

Abington nodded. “A touch of conscience, I shouldn’t wonder. It was old Doctor Albert who put Reiss into Lakewood, you know. I should have thought it would have been the place for … your man if he thought so highly of him.”

Sylvia came very close to saying that Marcus might not have wanted Lakewood, which she supposed could very well have been the truth. The community was not for him surely. But to have said it at that moment would have further compromised Marcus whom she now suspected to have been rather thoroughly done over already. She harked back to a phrase Abington had used: “A touch of conscience, did you say, Hurd?”

Abington shrugged. “Doctor Albert, as I recall hearing it, had some peculiar notions about a superior race of men. I suppose you’re too young to remember the discourses he used to give us at the drop of a hat.”

“I remember them. He used to give mother and me first refusal.”

Abington laughed. “I’d forgotten how fond he was of Alicia.”

“I don’t remember anything anti-Semitic in them,” Sylvia said. “They were just bloody boring.”

“That’s how I felt myself. But some of our more sensitive people took exception to them. There was talk, Sylvia, talk. The University made him confine himself to the surgeon’s manual—which was remarkable in its way, considering their permissiveness in other cases.” This was of course a snide reference to the Jonathan Hogan affair. Abington looked at her almost mournfully. “He was always going to have them published, if you remember. But in the end, he didn’t do it, did he? I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that young Hogan had some influence there, would you?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Sylvia said. “I shall ask him.”

Abington changed his position in the chair. He might have been changing tack. “It’s not a matter of genuine relevance at this point, is it? George seems to feel it was just as well that they weren’t published. The old fellow was getting a bit dotty on it, as the English say. Still, it occurred to some of us that in the end, young Hogan might have out-smarted himself.” He looked at her. “I understand he has a distinguished war record?”

“Does that surprise you, Hurd?”

“Frankly, yes. But I keep forgetting, the Russians were on our side then.”

“Jesus Christ in the morning, Hurd! Marcus Hogan is no more a Communist than you are.”

He leaned across the small Chinese lacquer table between them and patted her hand. “If you say so, Sylvia. If you say so.”

Sylvia was at a loss to know where to turn next in the matter. She did not suppose George Bergner would dare to oppose her openly. After all, she was co-publisher of the
Star
on which his fine new prestige was founded. And he did not need to oppose her: the whole of Lakewood was doing the job for him. She talked with Reiss: he had nothing but praise for Marcus although he admitted disappointment that the Rehabilitation Plan was to be taken away from Lakewood Hospital. He sounded sincere.

“Nathan, the Plan has never been
in
the Lakewood Hospital.”

“Yes, of course. And I agree with you, Sylvia, its director must have entire freedom in determining its requirements. I have come round myself, by the way, to Marcus’s view: I am disappointed, but I agree. It is more practical to take the children to the doctors than to bring the doctors to the children. Much more. After all, there is a limit to what a man can do in his own field even.”

“Have you said this in Lakewood, Nathan—that you agree with Marcus and me?”

Reiss smiled ruefully. “My dear Sylvia, when I say it they do not believe me. It is incredible, but they do not believe me. They simply think I am being excessively loyal to my associate.”

Sylvia knew enough of the nature of people to realize that the more she probed the opposition, the deeper would grow its roots. She did not want to confide the situation to Marcus: it would hurt him personally, and it might even hurt his effectiveness. Distrust can get at a sensitive man in subtle ways. She settled herself, the two Italian children and Maria in at the farm, giving herself up entirely to that chore. She intended to forestall any precipitate action, which she knew very well to be her tendency.

In the end, weighing as much as she knew, Sylvia concluded that George Bergner had at very least contributed to the undermining of Marcus. She doubted that the majority of Lakewood knew his animosity to be underlying their own altruistic fervor on behalf of Lakewood Hospital. She had not thought George capable of going underground.

Sylvia rode horseback with characteristic abandon in the days of dilemma that followed, but both she and the horses were older. Nor was her mind made any more supple for the cruel stiffness in her body. Yet she rode again and again, and rode out the soreness. She also succeeded in bringing a horse that had not been properly exercised into condition, and the morning she realized what had happened to her and her mount, she decided to take somewhat the same course in the matter of the Children’s Rehabilitation Plan. She made up her mind to go full tilt ahead as though there were no opposition and thus to force it into the open.

She arranged a meeting for the following afternoon among George Bergner, Marcus and herself. It was Marcus’s suggestion that they meet in his office. It seemed to Sylvia as good a place as any: she wanted Marcus to have what advantage might come of being on home grounds as it were. The day was a Friday and Fridays, ordinarily, Reiss spent at Lakewood. In a way Sylvia would have liked to have had him present so that if matters did come to a showdown, he would have to make his own position clear. She had every intention of quoting him to George in his agreement with Marcus. As it turned out, the question of his being present was all but taken out of her hands. Reiss was in his office when she arrived, and George remarked with perhaps studied casualness: “I’ve asked Nathan to sit in on the meeting. I assume it’s all right with you?”

Both she and Marcus agreed without so much as an exchange of glances.

George added: “I’ve had the benefit of his advice on the Foundation affairs since Alex has been away.” Bergner was Winthrop’s proxy on the Foundation Board. “I’m only one vote out of twelve, but at that it’s probably a better informed vote than most of them.”

Sylvia could think of nothing to say that would not smack of sarcasm, but she knew now that Bergner was going to force the issue of the Foundation: it was among its trustees that he had done his mischief, and thoroughly enough to give him self-confidence. So be it. She looked about the office and commented on its
décor.
Very modern. This was her first visit since the move to the top floor.

“Nothing modern about the service,” George complained. “I had to wait ten minutes for an elevator.”

Reiss brought a bottle of Scotch, a siphon bottle and some ice.

Outside the wind blew forlornly at the windows. It was a sound Sylvia supposed one grew used to. They were sitting in the waiting room, their chairs drawn in a circle, but it occurred to her that such a mournful sound as the wind made here must be distressing to a patient waiting consultation with a surgeon. One could see only sky through the windows. She watched the thunderheads gathering over the lake. Nearer My God to Thee: that’s what they needed up here, an organ playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” She laughed at herself.

Marcus said: “So?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said.

Miss Kohler came to the door. “I’ll stay late if you’d like me to take notes of the meeting,” she said.

Reiss looked to Sylvia. “I don’t think it’s necessary, thank you.”

“Then good night, all.”

“Better put the phone on service so we won’t be disturbed,” Marcus said.

“I’ve already done that, doctor,” Miss Kohler said a little reproachfully.

When she was gone, Sylvia said: “She must be appallingly efficient.”

“Like a second lieutenant,” Marcus said.

Sylvia took a cigaret from her purse and tapped it. Marcus lighted it for her and then lit one of his own. Reiss passed the drinks.

George lifted his glass: “Well, to what we’re here for,” he said by way of a toast and sipped the whisky. Then he said: “I wonder if we shouldn’t have asked the Director of the Foundation to come this afternoon? I’d meant to mention it, but I’ve been so busy it slipped my mind.”

“It will be time enough,” Sylvia said, “when we have our plan ready to put before them.”

“They like to be in on the beginning of things. Sometimes it makes it easier later on.”

Sylvia looked at him as directly as it was possible. As soon as their eyes met, his slipped away. “I don’t expect to have trouble with the Foundation, George. I have put almost a million dollars into it myself in the last two years.”

George looked pained. The discussion of money always offended him, like the mention of an infirmity. He said: “You should the more readily agree then in the Foundation’s first principle: resistance to undue influence on the part of its benefactors.”

Sylvia was speechless.

“Let’s talk for a moment about the children, may we?” Marcus said, seeking to divert what he supposed was merely a wrangle over titles of authority: he knew how much they meant to Bergner, and for his own part, he did not mind catering to the man in that regard if it facilitated getting the Plan under way. If Winthrop wanted George to administer its finances, he should be given a title and told to go to work. He thought Sylvia was being unduly stiff-necked.

“Before settling on the director’s salary?” George said.

Marcus smiled and put out his cigaret. “Good Lord, yes. The last person people think of paying is the doctor, especially those who can afford to. I’ve had a talk with Zacharis—the plastic man, you know? He’s easily the best in this part of the country, wouldn’t you say, Nathan?”

“Very fine.”

“He’s seen Angelina twice now—ran a series of pictures. It will take a year at least, but he’s confident her face can be brought completely into balance.”

George, studying the ice cubes within his glass, said nothing. He might not even have heard him. Sylvia and Reiss both commented.

Marcus went on, trying the while to fathom George’s indifference. “He’s an interesting man, Zacharis. He’s about to take off for a week in Japan. He wants to see some of the Hiroshima victims. There’s divergent opinion on whether surgery will help—whether it will work in cases of radium burns. But he wants to see for himself.”

George lifted his eyes from the glass. “A friend of Mueller’s?”

Marcus was a moment making the association. Sylvia made it at once: Mueller’s crusade against further development of the atomic bomb.

“I never thought to ask him,” Marcus said, an intended irony.

“It may prove to have been a relevant question,” George said.

It was Sylvia who digressed this time. She would have liked to take issue but not just then. “Marcus, I’ve decided we must have a national board of advisers for The Plan, a few men like Zacharis, and Jerome Feinberg, perhaps.” She named the latter, president of the Medical Association, because it was the name coming into her mind at the moment, her subconscious counter-balance to Bergner’s reaction to Zacharis. She knew nothing herself about Zacharis; nor had she intention of presuming to evaluate men in medicine. But having said what she had, she exposed her position to both Marcus and Bergner.

A little smile was playing at the corners of George’s mouth.

Marcus said: “I see.” He lit another cigaret. His opinion of Feinberg, Sylvia knew, was not high. “Sylvia, to whom are we being made acceptable, may I ask?”

Sylvia got up and crushed out the cigaret which had burned down to her fingers. “No one, Marcus. As of right now: no one. My mind is made up. If the Fields Foundation will not support the Children’s Rehabilitation Plan as we—you, Marcus Hogan, and I,—conceive its functioning, we shall go it alone.”

Marcus sat blinking his eyes rapidly, trying to fathom the opposition.

George said: “Don’t you think Alex ought to be consulted?”

Sylvia ignored him. “And if we have to do it, I shall go into the courts and seek to break the trust fund by which the Foundation was set up.”

George smiled. “Sylvia, you are a barnburner. You are, you know.”

Sylvia’s fury was beyond the curb of logic. “God damn you, George, don’t patronize me. Let’s dig the rat out of the barn and have a look at it.”

“All right,” George said. “Let’s do that.” He carefully pushed aside a stack of magazines and put his glass down on the table. “Your mother set up the Fields Foundation in the interests of medical research…”

Sylvia interrupted him: “The Fields Foundation is not really at issue here, and do not presume to tell me its function.”

Marcus said: “Sylvia, what is at issue? Me?”

Reiss said with deliberate calm: “Perhaps because I am not concerned I may presume to explain? May I try, Sylvia?” She said nothing and he went on: “You see, Marcus, a great number of people in Lakewood do want the Children’s Plan as Sylvia herself originally proposed it, an actual hospital, you know? I have put myself on record as favoring your plan so I am above or perhaps below the battle. I do not matter. That is all I am trying to say …”

“Forgive me, Nathan,” Sylvia said, “but you, too, are talking about what has come to the top, not what’s at the bottom of it.”

Reiss shrugged, and George spread his hands. He said: “I must say I’m at a loss myself to see what you’re getting at, Sylvia.”

“Are you telling me, George, that you are unaware of what I can only call a smear campaign in Lakewood against Marcus?” It had to come, she thought. Marcus himself would have forced it if she had not.

George said: “That’s a good old Communist phrase, smear campaign, isn’t it?”

“If it’s a Communist phrase, which I doubt, it is also a Fascist technique.”