Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (9 page)

All I could see of him was his eyes. The rest of his face was always hidden behind a white protective mask and his fingers in sterile gloves. His body was concealed by the voluminous surgical gown and his feet by the surgical boots. His breath was lost in the pervasive smell of ether from the anaesthetizing equipment.

I saw him looking at me surreptitiously. We were alone in the room except for the unconscious man on the operating table whose eyes were closed and whose guts protruded from a large opening in his stomach. I wondered why he bothered to try and hide what he was doing: was he scared of the unconscious man or me or himself, or was it just his normal way of proceeding?

I heard him ask, ‘Why are you so distracted? Who are you thinking about?’

‘The man.’

‘Which man?’

‘The one whose stomach we’ve just opened up.’

He laughed, and I could hear it well enough, short and scornful, although I couldn’t see his lips or his teeth. I was silent and he began fiddling around inside the man’s stomach, feeling for his large intestine. After a bit he held it up in a pair of forceps and said, ‘There’s no point in removing it. The cancer’s eaten into it and spread into the peritoneum.’

I looked at the sleeping man’s face and felt as if a knife had been thrust into my chest. I looked down at the floor, silently swallowing back my tears.

I heard him laughing again and saying, ‘Aren’t you used to these things yet?’

‘I’ll never get used to them.’

He looked at me in silence and we stitched up the patient’s stomach without another word until he said suddenly, ‘Do you know who I’m thinking about?’

‘No.’

‘I’m thinking about you.’

He stressed every word, fixing his eyes on mine and instead of looking at the floor I looked carefully and deliberately back at him.

He stared at me as if trying to convey all the notions of desire that it was possible for a man to have. ‘Once a woman’s been married, she’s much more liberated than a young virgin.’

I looked at him angrily and said, ‘My emancipation doesn’t stem from a physical change within my body. And any restrictions on my body aren’t because I fear for an insignificant hymen which can be torn by a random blow and restored by a surgeon’s needle. I impose my own restrictions on myself voluntarily, and exercise my freedom, as I understand the word, in the same way.’

He glanced spitefully at me and said, ‘Why are you scared then?’

‘Scared of what?’

‘Of me.’

‘You!’

What did he want from me or what did I want from him? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to know something about men or about myself which was still unclear.

I marched determinedly up to his front door and rang the bell with an air of confidence. He smiled broadly, not concealing his satisfaction at his victory, and said, ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

‘Why not?’

‘I thought you didn’t trust me yet.’

‘I don’t.’

I sat down and he came and sat next to me, his leg nearly touching mine. So I stood up and went to sit opposite. With a sly smile he asked, ‘Why don’t you want to sit beside me?’

Looking straight at him, I said, ‘I prefer to sit facing you so that I can see your eyes.’

He didn’t reply and I tried to force him to look at me but his eyes kept darting away. He thought for a moment then rose and went into another room and returned with a tall bottle. He filled a glass from it.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Your mind’s as sharp as a sword.’ He looked greedily at my legs. ‘I want to escape from it.’

My mind was like a sword! He wanted to escape from my mind! Was this a battle? What did this man want? He had a strange smile, and as I studied his expression, I had the feeling that he was preparing himself for a battle he was determined to win. The battle between a man and a woman: that odd, artificial contest in which the woman faces the man alone, but the man stands barricaded by tradition, laws and creeds, backed up by generations and aeons of history, and row upon row of men, women and children, all with sharp tongues extended like the blades of a sword, eyes aimed like gun-barrels and mouths blazing away like machine-guns.

The man has the world supporting him and holds the sceptre of life in his hand. He owns the past, the present and the future. Honour, respect and morality are all his — decorations earned in the battle against women. He owns the spiritual and the material world. He even owns the drop of sperm planted in the woman at the end of the struggle. He chooses whether or not to acknowledge it, to grant it his name and an honourable place in life, to let it live or have it destroyed.

The woman stands before the man, deprived by the world of her freedom, her honour, her name, her self-respect, her true nature and her will. All control over her spiritual and material life has been taken from her, even her control over the little fruit which she creates inside her with her own blood and cells and the atoms of her mind and heart.

I saw him smiling again. Why are you smiling like that, Man? Would you be able to name this battle?

He moved up close to me, his hot breath stinging my face, and I backed away. He came after me on his hands and knees and I stood up and moved away from him.

What was going on? Why did a man crumble in the face of his desire? Why did his willpower vanish the minute he was shut in with a woman so that he turned into a wild animal on four legs? Where was his power? Where was his strength? Where were his authority and qualities of leadership? How weak men were! Why had my mother made gods of them?

I looked at him, at his eyes, his fingers and his toes. I turned the searchlight of my gaze on him and looked closely into the depths of his heart and mind only to find hollow, empty wastes, a shallow mind and a false heart. Then I knew why he wanted to free himself of my mind: he was like a thief wanting to steal something from me when I wasn’t paying attention. I looked at him with pity and contempt. I felt sorry for him so I withdrew from the confrontation, despising myself for having considered a fight with someone so much weaker than me.

I felt stronger than him in spite of the barriers he dragged along with him, the barriers he surrounded himself with, the armoury supporting him. I didn’t need any of this: my strength was inside me, in my being. I wouldn’t let a man so much as touch my hand if I didn’t want him to, even if I was shut up within four high walls with him; but if I wanted to, I would give him myself before the eyes of the world without secrecy or stealth. It was my will which guided my behaviour, not the place or the time or other people.

I saw him coming up to me again. He put his hand on mine and I felt an icy coldness steal over my soul. Nothing will work, Man, so take your hand off me. It feels quite out of place. My mind is convinced by my heart, and my body by my mind, and there is no way to persuade one of them independently of the others.

I reached for my bag and stood up.

‘Are you going?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ His surprise grew.

What could I say to him? Why didn’t he understand? Would he be able to believe me? Was it possible for a man to believe that there was a woman who could get inside him and see what he was hiding from her, or a woman who could make her body submit to the dictates of her heart and mind? A woman who could return his stare unblinking, remain unmoved when he touched her hand, be shut in a room with him and not give him a thing, and then leave him and go away saying, ‘No. You’re not the man I want.’

Could a man comprehend that a woman could take a good look at him and then reject him? He couldn’t, because he was accustomed to being the only one with the right to experiment and choose, while the woman just had to accept whoever chose her: one special man, who spends his whole life convincing himself that he is this one special man. Isn’t a woman just like a man, doctor? Have you forgotten your science? Or has your mind become separated from your body? Arrogance turns a man into a stupid, feeble-minded creature.

Society impaled me with looks as sharp as daggers and lashed my face with stinging tongues like horse-whips.

How can a woman live alone without a man? Why is she going out? Why is she coming in? Why is she smiling? Why is she breathing? Why is she taking gulps of fresh air? Why is she looking at the moon? Why does she hold her head up and open her eyes wide? Why does she tread with confidence and pride? Isn’t she embarrassed? Doesn’t she want a man to protect her?

My family and relations attacked me. Even my closest friends vied with one another to discard me. I stood in the eye of the storm, thinking.

Since childhood I’d been immersed in a series of endless battles and here I was up against a new one with society at large: millions of people, with millions more in front and behind. Why didn’t things go as they ought to in life? Why wasn’t there a greater understanding of truth and justice? Why didn’t mothers recognize that daughters were like sons, or men acknowledge women as equals and partners? Why didn’t society recognize a woman’s right to lead a normal life using her mind as well as her body?

Why did they make me waste my life in these confrontations?

I rested my chin in my hands and sat thinking. Should I do battle with society or submit to it and be carried along by it, bowing my head to it, shutting myself up in my house and seeking protection from a man like all the rest?

No! Such thoughts were absurd. I would fight, looking to myself for protection, looking to my strength, my knowledge, my success in my work.