Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (11 page)

We both laughed and went over to the table and sat facing each other. He looked at the plates of food, then at me and said smiling, ‘I’m not very good at knowing what to do at parties. Can I help you to something?’

What was it in this man’s eyes?

‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I don’t like party manners.’

We started eating in silence and after a while he asked, ‘Do you find time to listen to music?’

‘Not often,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t heard your latest composition but I read how successful it was and how much people liked it.’

His eyes strayed far away from me, then he looked at me again and said, ‘I wasn’t happy with it.’

‘But the public was.’

‘An artist isn’t content unless he himself is satisfied with what he’s done.’

‘Why did you allow something to be broadcast if you weren’t completely happy with it?’

‘That’s what’s so agonizing. The work that I’m pleased with, the public doesn’t understand.’

‘So why don’t you compose pieces that you’re happy with, regardless of how the public reacts?’

‘Who’d listen to them?’

‘A few people. Just one... But that’s better than satisfying the public at any cost.’

‘I do that sometimes.’

He looked down at the floor briefly, as if thinking, then raised his expressive eyes to me and said, ‘We’ve talked about music a lot. Why haven’t you mentioned medicine?’

‘Conversations about medicine aren’t appropriate for parties,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he asked in surprise.

‘It’s all about pain and sickness. The sad side of life,’ I replied.

‘No,’ he argued. ‘Of course the sorrows involved are immense, but the happiness must be even greater. I can imagine how happy you must feel when you save someone’s life. That must be the best part of your work.’

‘What about yours? What’s the part of your work that gives you the most happiness?’

‘When I write a tune that pleases me,’ he answered. ‘Or when I hear some magnificent piece of music.’

Then he looked at me and added, smiling, ‘Or when I make a new friend.’

I tried to avoid his eyes but he wouldn’t let me escape and encompassed me confidently within his gaze. My heart gave a single frightening lurch.

I turned over and over, unable to sleep. The bed seemed to be full of stones and nails. I got up and started walking about the room. It seemed cramped and cell-like and the air throttled me like a hangman’s rope. I went out on to the balcony and stood for a while but then I couldn’t bear it any more so I sat down. That too became intolerable and I went into the dining-room. I tried to eat something but the food tasted rubbery and odd.

Everything had become unbearable: sitting, standing, walking, eating. Food, water and air had lost their savour for me. The things that used to take up my time seemed trivial and meaningless. My new feeling replaced my former preoccupations and consumed my waking hours with its intensity. One series of questions wandered constantly through the regions of my mind and soul: should I try to contact him, talk to him, be the one to initiate the conversation?

I looked at the little instrument: the squarish black lump of plastic I used to carry about from place to place, and to silence with one finger if I felt like it, had become an object of terror, a dangerous bewitching piece of equipment. I looked warily at it from a distance, approached it apprehensively, and when I touched it a powerful electric charge went through me as if I’d touched a naked wire. Do things change to such an extent when our view of them changes?

I sat beside the telephone thinking. I remembered what he’d said when he wrote his number down for me: ‘Call me when you want to.’

He’d shown respect for my ability to decide, so why couldn’t I? I always had done in the past. Wasn’t it my will rather than the will of another which had controlled me? Hadn’t a man tried to possess my life and been unable to because I hadn’t wanted him to? And another had tried to give me his life and I hadn’t taken a thing from him because I hadn’t wanted to. My will had always determined my giving and taking. I wanted to see him now. Yes, I wanted to.

I turned my index finger in the holes on the disc six times and the repeated high-pitched tone sounded in my ears. Suddenly it was broken off and the flow of blood to my heart stopped momentarily. I heard his deep voice saying, ‘Hello.’

I didn’t think about different ways to be flirtatious or take refuge in womanly evasiveness. I didn’t pretend that I was just phoning to ask something. I didn’t veil my face and signal to him from behind my door, or act naive and stupid. I said truthfully, ‘I want to see you.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. The place isn’t important.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘At home.’

‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

I sat back in the chair as if the life had drained out of me and looked about me at the furniture and the walls as if I were seeing them for the first time.

Suddenly I was seized with energy and enthusiasm: this picture ought to be over here; the chair ought to be there; the vase should be full of flowers. I sent the servant to buy a bunch of flowers, then put on an apron and went into the kitchen to make a cake with fresh eggs and milk. While it was in the oven I made a jelly and put it in the fridge. I raced about like a child from the oven to the fridge, the fridge to the vase, the vase to the picture on the wall, and back to the oven.

Sweat poured down my face and ran into my mouth but it somehow had a delicious new taste. My chest rose and fell in staccato, panting breaths like a racehorse, but I’d forgotten about my lungs. I put my hand in the oven and didn’t feel the heat, as if my brain cells had forgotten the pain of burning. My back was twisted from bending down under tables and hunching over work-surfaces as if my backbone didn’t exist. Then the doorbell gave one long ring which echoed strangely and alarmingly in my heart as if I were hearing it for the first time in my life.

He sat in the sitting-room; his deep eyes, still smiling, strayed over the pictures on the walls and his composed, serious features registered curiosity and interest as he looked about him. I sat a little way from him trying to conceal the strange feeling stirring in my insides, suppressing the unfamiliar joy in my heart and trying to ignore the violent trembling of my soul. But how could I, when my eyes, lips and voice all betrayed me? He smiled gently and said, ‘Your house is beautiful — the house of an artist.’

‘I love art,’ I said, ‘but medicine takes up all my time.’

‘Medicine’s an art in itself,’ he said, and looked at me.

What was it in this man’s eyes? A deep, bottomless sea?

‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked him and he nodded slightly, smiling. I left him and went to make the tea. The servant stared at me in doubtful surprise — I was doing something in the kitchen for the first time since I’d come to live there. I took the cake out of the oven and put it on the plate next to the tea and went back in to him. He looked at the newly baked cake — which was obviously still underdone — and smiled. But I couldn’t help laughing and he began to laugh with me, and we laughed as if we’d never stop. This natural unrestrained laughter tore the fine veil of inhibition still separating us, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’ve never met a woman like you before.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Women always hide their feelings and wear masks on their faces so you don’t know what they’re really like. But you don’t hide anything. You don’t even wear make-up.’

‘I like myself as I am, and I rely on myself being as I am so I can’t pretend I’m different.’

‘I like a woman who’s honest and open.’

‘A lot of men think that openness in a woman spoils her femininity. They like her to wear disguises, to be evasive, to join with them in the game of chasing and being chased.’

‘Then they see women solely as a source of sexual pleasure.’

‘There aren’t many men who understand the femininity of an intelligent woman with a strong personality.’

‘I think’, he said, ‘that however beautiful a woman’s body is, she isn’t truly feminine if she’s stupid or weak or affected or insincere.’

‘What about masculinity?’ I asked.

‘Most women think that masculinity just means whether a man’s good at sex.’

‘In my opinion,’ I said, ‘however good he may be at sex, a man isn’t masculine if he’s stupid or weak or affected or insincere.’

‘Where’ve you been all these years?’ he asked.

‘Busy searching.’

‘What for?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Didn’t you find what you were looking for?’

‘Never.’

‘We can’t have everything in life.’

‘I’ve lived in a state of permanent deprivation.’

‘Deprivation tightens the nerve strings so you can play on them. If you’re satisfied they grow slack and you can’t produce a tune.’

He was talking to me, looking into my eyes all the time. I never once saw him stare at my thighs or glance stealthily at my breasts. We were alone. The four walls closed around us. But I didn’t feel that he was seeing the walls or feeling them. He was on another plane and I was beside him in flesh and blood. Yet I never felt he was addressing my body. He was directing himself to my heart and mind.

I closed my eyes, feeling calm and secure.

I sat beside him and watched his long clever fingers holding the plectrum and moving over the zither with confident expertise. He played notes that soared in the air and notes that sank down low... sad notes and happy notes... notes that shouted and whispered, laughed and cried... And my heart was with them beat for beat, rising and sinking, dancing and weeping, groaning and laughing.

His fingers stopped and he asked, ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s wonderful.’

‘I’ve just written it.’

‘It’s got tears in it, and it’s got joy.’

‘That’s life!’

‘How beautiful art is. If only I’d studied music so I could write tunes like that!’

‘If only I’d studied medicine so that I could heal people!’

‘Medicine only heals. Art heals and creates.’

‘You could be creative in medicine. There are illnesses which no one’s found a cure for yet.’

I looked at him: ‘Where have you been all these years?’

‘Looking for you.’

‘Have you tried with others?’

‘Of course. And you?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s the only way to find out.’

I heard his deep voice calling to me. ‘What is it about your eyes?’ he asked. We stood opposite each other with only a single pace separating us and I heard him saying in his warm voice, ‘I love you.’

Everything in me rushed downwards to some deep distant spot, then soared to the highest peak of my being. He smiled and covered the distance between us and slowly took me in his arms. I rested my head on his chest.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.

‘I love you.’

He held me close and embraced me until all my being melted into his and his whole existence was lost in mine.

The loud ringing of the telephone brought me down from heaven to earth. I jumped up and went over to it: ‘Hello.’

An anxious voice came over the line: ‘Save him, doctor. He’s dying.’