The Anatomy Lesson (22 page)

“
About a year ago, when my wife started talking divorce, before I agreed to analysis, she took on a lover, the first in her life, and I felt myself destroyed. Couldn
’
t handle it. I got crazed. Very insecure. I fuck hundreds of women and she fucked one guy, and I was wigged out. And he was nothing. She picked a guy who was older than me, who was impotent—I mean she didn
’
t pick a twenty-five-year-old stud, and still I was wigged out. The guy was a checkers champion. Mortimer Horowitz. Always sitting there looking at his board.
‘
King me.
’
That
’
s what she wanted. We had a reconciliation and I told her,
‘
Sweetheart, at least pick a guy next time who
’
s a threat to me, pick a Cal
ifornia surfer.
’
But she picks a Jewish nebish—the checkers champion of Washington Square Park. But that
’
s the pressure I
’
m under, Ricky: to play games, to sit still, to talk soft, to be nice. But
I
have never softened my stand so as to be nice and get the rewards that the nice boys get, like staying out of jail and owning legal guns and not having to wear a bulletproof vest every time I go out for a meal. I have never softened my stand to protect my money. There
’
s a part of me that says. Fuck all that money. I like that part of me. When Nixon came in, I could have softened the magazine and avoided a lot. After they closed down Milton
’
s Millennia,
I
could have got the message and quit. But I came back with Millennia Two, bigger and better and swankier than the old place, with its own fifty-foot swimming pool and a transvestite stripper for entertainment, a beautiful girl with a big dong, and let Nixon go fuck himself. I see the way blacks are treated in this country. I see the inequities and it makes me sick. But do they fight the inequities? No. They fight kike-
pornographer
. Well, kike-pornographer is gonna fight back. Because I believe deep down in what I
’
m doing, Ricky. My staff laughs: it
’
s become a polemic in my life that Milton Appel believes what he
’
s doing. It
’
s like Marilyn Monroe saying,
‘
I
’
m an actress I
’
m an actress.
”
She was also tits. I can tell people a thousand times that I
’
m a serious person, but it
’
s hard for them to take at face value when the prosecution holds up
Lickety Split
and on the cover is a white girl sucking a big black cock and simultaneously fucking a broom. It
’
s an unforgiving world we live in, Ricky. Those who transgress are truly hated as scum. Well, that
’
s fine with me. But don
’
t tell me scum has no right to exist along with everybody who
’
s nice. Nobody should tell me that
ever.
Because scum is human too.
That
’
s
what
’
s paramount to me: not the money but the anti-humanity that calls itself nice. Nice. I don
’
t care what my kid grows up to be,
I
don
’
t care if he grows up wearing pantyhose as long as he doesn
’
t turn out
nice.
You know what terrifies me more than jail? That he
’
ll rebel against a father like me, and that
’
s what I
’
ll get. Decent society
’
s fucking revenge: a kid who
’
s very very very nice—another frightened soul, tamed by inhibition, suppressing madness, and wanting only to live with the rulers in harmonious peace.
”

“
I want a second life. It
’
s as ordinary as that.
”

“
But what are you assuming?
”
Bobby asked.
“
That you
’
re
somehow going to be a completely erased tablet too? I don
’
t believe in that, Zuck. If you
’
re really going to do it, why pick a profession that
’
s the most difficult and tedious to prepare for? At least choose an easier one so you don
’
t lose so much.
”

“
What
’
s easier doesn
’
t answer the need for something difficult.
”

“
Go climb Mount Everest.
”

“
That
’
s like writing. You
’
re alone with the mountain and an ax. You
’
re all by yourself and it
’
s practically undoab
l
e. It
is
writing.
”

“
You
’
re by yourself when you
’
re a doctor too. When you
’
re leaning over a patient in a bed, you
’
ve entered into a highly complicated, specialized relationship that you develop over the years through training and experience, but you
’
re still back there somewhere by yourself, you know.
”

“
That
’
s not what
‘
by yourself means to me. Any skilled worker
’
s by himself like that. When I
’
m by myself what I
’
m examining isn
’
t the patient in the bed. I
’
m leaning over a bed, all right, but I
’
m in it. There are writers who start from the other direction, but the thing that I grow grows on me. I listen,
I
listen carefully, but all I
’
ve got to go on, really, is my inner life—and I can
’
t take any more of my inner life. Not even that little that
’
s left. Subjectivity
’
s the subject, and I
’
ve had it.
”

That
’
s all you
’
re running out on?
”

Do I tell him? Can Bobby cure me? I didn
’
t come here to be treated but to learn to give the treatment, not to be reabsorbed in the pain but to make a new world to absorb myself in, not passively to receive somebody
’
s care and attention but to master the profession that provides it. He
’
ll put me in the hospital if I tell him, and I came out for the school.

“
My life as cud, that
’
s what I
’
m running out on. Swallow as experience, then up from the gut for a second go as art. Chewing on everything, seeking connections—too much inward-dwelling, Bob. too much burrowing back. Too much doubt if it
’
s even worth the effort. Am I wrong to assume that in anesthesiology doubt isn
’
t half of your life? I look at you and I see a big, confident, bearded fellow without the slightest doubt that what he
’
s doing is worthwhile and that he does it well. That yours is a valuable service is undebatable fact. The surgeon hacks open his patient to remove something rotten and the patient doesn
’
t feel a thing—because of you. It
’
s clear, it
’
s straightforward, it
’
s unarguably useful and right to the point. I envy that.
”

“
Yes? You want to be an anesthesiologist? Since when?
’

“
Since I laid eyes on you. You look like a million bucks. It must be great. You go up to them the night before the operation, you say, I
’
m Bobby Freytag and I
’
m going to put you to sleep tomorrow with a little sodium pentothal. I
’
m going to stay with you throughout the operation to be sure all your systems are okay, and when you come out of it, I
’
ll be right there to hold your hand and see that you
’
re comfortable. Here, swallow one of these and you
’
ll sleep like a baby. I
’
m Bobby Freytag and I
’
ve been studying and training and working all my life just to be sure you
’
re all right.
’
Yes, absolutely—I want to be an anesthesiologist like you.
”

“
Come on, what
’
s this all about, Zuck? You look like hell. You stink of gin.
”

“
Vodka. On the plane. Fear of flying.
”

“
You look worse than that. Your eyes. Your color. What the hell is going on?
”

No. He would not let this pain poison another connection. Hadn
’
t even
worn
the collar, fearing they wouldn
’
t begin to consider him for medical school if they were to discover that he was not only forty and a scientific ignoramus but sick besides. Repetitious pain
’
s clamorous needs were back on the playmat with his prism glasses. No more looking from the floor at everybody gigantically up on their feet. Percodan if required, Kotler
’
s pillow for that chance in a million, but otherwise, to all he met in Chicago—to Bobby and the admissions committee certainly—another indestructible mortal, happy and healthy as the day he was
born
. Must suppress every temptation to describe it (from the meaningless first twinge through the disabling affliction} to your enviable old roommate, dedicated pain-killer though he may be. No more to be done for my pain, no more to be said. Either the medicines are still too primitive or the doctors aren
’
t yet up lo it or I
’
m incurable. When he felt pain, he
’
d pretend instead that it was pleasure. Every time the fire flares up, just say to yourself,
“
Ah, that
’
s good—makes me glad to be alive.
”
Think of it not as unreasonable punishment but as gratuitous reward. Think of it as chronic rapture, irksome only inasmuch as one can have too much even of a good thing. Think of it as the ticket to a second life. Imagine you owe it everything. Imagine anything you like. Forget those fictionalized book-bound Zuckermans and invent a real one now for the world. That
’
s how the others do it. Your next work of art—
you.

“
Tell me about anesthesiology. I
’
ll bet it
’
s beautifully clear. You give them something to sleep, they sleep. You want to raise their blood pressure—you give them a drug, you raise their blood pressure. You want to raise it this much, you get this much
—
you want that much, you get that much. Isn
’
t that true? You wouldn
’
t look like you look if it wasn
’
t. A leads to B and B leads to C. You know when you
’
re right and you know when you
’
re wrong. Am I idealizing it? You don
’
t even have to answer. I see it on you, in you, all over you.
”

It was the Percodan he
’
d swallowed on the hospital steps, his third of the day (at least he was hoping it was his third and not his fourth), that had him talking away like this. Percodan could do that: first that lovely opening wallop and then for two hours you didn
’
t shut up. In addition there was the excitement of seeing earnest, shy, amiable Bobby as a large full-grown physician: a pitch-black chin beard to cover his acne scars, a comer office in Billings overlooking the Midway lawn where once they
’
d played their Sunday softball, and rows of shelves bearing hundreds of books not one of which the novelist could recognize. It was thrilling just seeing Bobby weigh two hundred pounds. Bobby had been even skinnier than Nathan, a studious bean-pole with asthma, bad skin, and the kindest disposition in the history of adolescence. He was the only grateful seventeen-year-old that Nathan had ever met. Zuckerman was suddenly so proud of him he felt like his father, like Bobby
’
s father, like the owner of the ladies
’
handbag store on Seventy-first Street where Bobby used to go to help on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons. A strong weepy feeling started to heat up his eyes, but no, he
’
d never get Bobby
’
s backing by lowering his head to the desk and sobbing his heart out. This wasn
’
t the place or the moment, even if both were urging everything so long held back to come forth in one big purgative gush. Look, it would be nice to shoot somebody too. Whoever had disabled him like this. Only no one wa
s responsible—and unlike the porn
ographer he didn
’
t own a gun.