Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (8 page)

‘I’m the man.’

‘So what?’

‘I’m in charge.’

‘In charge of what?’

‘Of this house and all that’s in it, including you.’

The first signs of rebellion were showing themselves: his feeling of weakness in front of me had been translated inside him into a desire to control me.

‘I don’t want you going out every day,’ he said.

‘I don’t go out for fun. I work.’

‘I don’t want you examining men’s bodies and undressing them.’

The weak spot that a man focuses on in his attempt to gain control over a woman: her need to be protected from other men. The male’s jealousy over his female: he claims to be frightened for her when he’s really frightened for himself, claims to be protecting her in order to take possession of her and put four walls around her.

‘We don’t need the income from the practice,’ he insisted.

‘I don’t work for money. I love my work.’

‘You need to be free for your husband and your home.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Close the practice.’

He’d reached the conclusion that it was my work which endowed me with the strength that prevented him controlling me. He thought that the money I earnt each month, however much or little it was, was what made me hold my head up high. He didn’t realize that my strength wasn’t because I had a job, nor was my pride because I had my own income, but both were because I didn’t have the psychological need for him that he did for me. I didn’t have this need for my mother, my father or anyone else because I wasn’t dependent on anyone, whereas he’d been dependent on his mother, then had begun to replace her with me.

And yet he considered himself a man. He had a man’s features: a deep voice and a bushy moustache. Other men were in his employ, women stole glances at his moustache and children he passed in streets and alleys didn’t dare make rude remarks or throw stones at him.

‘Close down the practice,’ he insisted.

‘What about the patients, and all the people I’d be letting down?’

‘There are other doctors besides you.’

‘And my future, and the knowledge I’ve spent half my life acquiring?’

‘I’m your life.’

‘And all those things you said to me?’

‘I didn’t know what it would be like.’

I looked at him with my eyes wide open. His eyes were pale and without depth. His hands were hard and rougher than I’d pictured, his fingers shorter and stupid-looking. Who was this stranger beside me? Who was this lump of flesh I called my husband?

He moved close to me, took my hand, whispered in my ear and put his face against mine. I tried to forget his self-important look and the inconsistency of what he said, tried to deny the evidence of my ears and eyes, but it was impossible. My memory was clear and vigilant, retaining every word. My mind was all too alert, forcing me to face images of the depressing reality of him. I could see right up close to me his teeth and his big flat rabbit’s ears.

I drew away but he put his sweaty arms around me, whispering in my ear in a hoarse, sad voice. I pushed him off me in annoyance and said angrily, ‘Why did you lie to me?’

‘I wanted to have you.’

‘That’s ridiculous. I’m not a piece of land!’

‘I’m the one who gives the orders! I’m your husband!’

The look of weakness and need was gone from his eyes and the thread that had been binding me to him was severed. A hard, overbearing expression rose to the surface of his shallow eyes: not the look of a strong man, but of a weak man when he develops an inferiority complex because he’s used to seeing himself as the strong one out in the streets and senses that he’s the weak one inside his own home.

I sat in my surgery with my head in my hands and admitted to myself that I’d made a mistake. I’d believed a man’s words in the dark without being able to see into the depths of him. I’d been seduced by his weakness and his wanting me. I hadn’t realized that a weak person conceals complexes and mean, contemptible characteristics under the surface which someone stronger would scorn and rise above. Yes, I’d done wrong. I’d disobeyed my heart and mind and done what this man wanted, entered into a marriage contract which looked like a contract for renting a shop or a flat. By doing that hadn’t I put him in authority over me? Hadn’t this contract made him my husband?

My husband! These words I’d never spoken before! What did they mean to me? A hefty body, taking up half the bed. A gaping mouth which never stopped eating. Two flat feet which dirtied socks and sheets. A thick nose which kept me awake all night long with its snorting and whistling.

What should I do now? Accept responsibility for my mistake and put up with living with him for ever? But how could I live with him, talk to him, look into his eyes, give him my lips, degrade my body and soul with him? No, no. The wrong I’d done didn’t deserve all this punishment; it didn’t.

Everybody does wrong. Life is made up of right and wrong. We only come to know what’s right through our mistakes. It’s not weak and stupid to do wrong, but to continue doing wrong.

People opened their mouths wide in astonishment and protest. How could she leave her husband? And why?

How dare they, these people who handed themselves over to me body and soul, whom I saved from ruinous illness and death? What right had they to object to something in my private life, or to tell me their opinions? I was the one who advised them what to eat and drink, explained to them how to breathe, sleep, live, multiply... Had they forgotten, or did they think that when I took off my stethoscope and white coat, I put aside my mind and intelligence and personality? How little they knew!

My mother had ruined my childhood, learning had swallowed up my adolescence and early womanhood and the years left to me of my youth could be counted on the fingers of one hand. I wasn’t going to waste them and no one was going to make me.

The little world that I used to build out of chairs and dolls when I was a child became reality. In my pocket was the magic key. I could come and go whenever I wanted without having to ask anyone’s permission. I slept alone in a bed without a husband, turning over from right to left or from left to right as I fancied. I sat at my desk to read and write or to ponder and think or do nothing at all.

I was free, completely free in this little world of mine. I shut my door and cast off my artificial life with other people along with my shoes and clothes, and I pottered around the house at will. I was completely alone there. I couldn’t hear voices or people breathing and I didn’t have to look at other people’s bodies. For the first time in my life a heavy burden was lifted from my heart, the burden of living in a house shared by others.

In the middle of the night I opened my eyes to the sound of the heartbeats thudding in my chest like the weary marching feet of a defeated army. My breathing grated beneath my ribs with a noise like the squeaking of a worn-out water-wheel. My open eyes saw only blackness, and my ears drummed in the terrible deadly silence. I was frightened that my heart would stop creeping along, my breathing grate to a halt, the darkness quench the light of my eyes and my hearing be lost amid the drumming.

I stared into the darkness, testing out my sight, and strained my ears. I saw the big mass of blackness splitting up into lots of smaller masses with heads and tails and horns, and sounds spread into the dead silence: whispering, rustling, wailing. I buried my head under the covers and the apparitions and noises vanished. The thudding in my chest abated and the squeaking noise died away. The warmth of the bed coursed into my joints and along my limbs and I yawned contentedly, stretching out my arms, feeling for sleep. But sleep wasn’t there, and I took something else in my arms, or someone — someone who had eyes like my father but wasn’t my father, and lips like my cousin but wasn’t my cousin. Who was he? The spectre which had haunted the nights of my youth began to visit me again. The nights grew longer and the bed wider. Solitude no longer seemed so attractive.

Where would I find him? How in this vast crowded world could I hope to come across the insubstantial being so familiar to my inner self, the spectre of a man lodged firmly in my imagination? I knew the look in his eyes, the timbre of his voice, the shape of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the depths of his heart and mind. I knew, I knew. I can’t tell how, but I knew.

Did he exist in real life or was he entirely a figment of my imagination? Would I meet him one day or go on waiting for him for ever? And what about this giant longing to love and be loved which lay dormant inside me? Should I exclude it from my life or try to satisfy it? But how could I satisfy it when it preferred total deprivation to spurious or incomplete satisfaction? I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn’t going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. ‘All or nothing’ was my abiding principle and I’d never accept half measures.

I decided to search for him everywhere: in palaces and caves, in night clubs and monasteries, in the factories of science and the temples of art, in bright lights and in pitch dark, on lofty summits and down deep chasms, in bustling cities and in wild deserted forests.

Why were people staring at me in amazement? Hadn’t I wasted enough of my life to satisfy them? Did they want me to sit at home, chin in hand, waiting for some man to come and buy me like a cow? Wasn’t it my natural right to choose my man? And how was I supposed to do it? By meeting only other women, or looking at pictures in books, or taking the only man who chose me? Obviously I had to look at lots of men to find him. I had to move around, looking at their faces and into their eyes, listening to their voices and the way they breathed, touching their fingers and their moustaches, examining their hearts and minds. How could I possibly recognize my man in the darkness or from behind a window blind or from a kilometre away? Wasn’t it vital for me to see him in the light, try him out and get to know him? Didn’t experience precede knowledge, or did they want me to go wrong like last time? I had no choice but to plunge without scruples into the most risky experience in a woman’s life, choosing a man and looking for love.