The Anatomy Lesson (32 page)

Zuckerman had no idea how
much more of the day had passed
before Walsh appeared at his bedside again. He had something urgent to say, something to make clear about himself before he (or the writer) went back on duty. If he was going to wind up in a hilarious best-seller, Zuckerman might as well gel it right.

A book machine is what they see when they meet me. And appalling as it is, they
’
re right. A book machine consuming lives—including. Dr. Walsh, my own.

“
Most every emergency-room doctor ! know has something on his back,
”
he said.
“
Alcoholism. Mental disorder. No spika dee English. Okay, with me it was Demerol. Percodan turns me off, morphine turns me off, even alcohol disagrees with me. But Demerol—it
’
s a good thing you didn
’
t find out about Demerol. It
’
s a great favorite with us folks whose pain drags on and on. Gives a lot of elation. Relaxation. No more problems.
”

WHAT PROBLEMS WERE YOURS?

“
Okay,
”
he said, his anger raw now and undisguised.
“
I
’
ll tell you, Zuckerman, since you want to know. I used to have a practice over in Elgin. A wife, a child, and a practice. Couldn
’
t handle it. You
’
ll understand that. You wouldn
’
t be here if you didn
’
t understand that. So
I
got through on Demerol. Ten years ago this is. The big problem for me in dealing with patients is getting someone out of a difficult situation over a period of time. Down here in emergency, we jusi light the fuse and run. We put our Finger in the dike for a while and that
’
s it. But if a guy gets a tough case up on the floors, a case that goes on day after day, you
’
ve got to push the right buttons over the long haul. You
’
ve got to watch them die without falling apart. I can
’
t do that. With my history, and pushing sixty, I
’
m lucky I can do this. I work forty hours a week, they pay me, and I go home. That
’
s about all Gordon Walsh can handle. Now you know.
”

But that sounded to Zuckerman like all a man could want, an end to the search for the release from self. After Walsh had left for the second time, he tried to imagine those forty-hour weeks in order to forget what was happening in his mouth. Car accidents. Motorcycle acciden
ts. Falls. Burns. Strokes. Coro
naries. Overdoses. Knife wounds. Bullet wounds. Dog bites. Human bites. Childbirth. Lunacy. Breakdown. Now, there
’
s
work.
They come in on the rack and you keep them alive till the surgeon can wire them together. You get them off the rack and then you disappear. Self-oblivion. What could be less ambiguous than that? If the dean were to say to him over at the medical school,
“
No, no room, not with your hist
ory, not at your age, not after
the stunt you pulled out here,
”
he
’
d reply that he wanted only to be another emergency-room doctor with a monkey on his back and an exemplary record of doubt. Nothing in the world could make him happier.

It was dark in Chicago when the plastic surgeon arrived. He apologized for being late but he
’
d driven in through the blizzard from Homewood. He sewed
him
up right in the room, stitched him up from inside the flesh so there
’
d be nothing afterwards but a hairline scar.
“
If you want,
”
he said—a joke to lift the patient
’
s spirits—
”
we
’
ll take another tuck right here and nip that dewlap in the bud. Keep you young for the ladies.
”
Whether he was given a local anesthetic Zuckerman had no idea. Maybe everything just hurt too much for him to feel the stitching.

The X-rays showed a fracture of the jaw in two places, so the maxillo-facial surgeon was called down, and at about the dinner hour Zuckerman was wheeled into the operating room. The elderly surgeon explained everything beforehand—in the quietest voice, like the TV announcer at the tennis match, described for Zuckerman what was next. Two fractures, he explained: an oblique fracture at the front, a thin vertical line running from between where the teeth had broken off down to the point of the chin, and a second fracture up by the hinge, Because the fragments weren
’
t in a very good position running down to the chin, he
’
d have to make a small incision just beneath the chin to go in and get them aligned, then take very fine wire, drill some holes, and wire the bone together. Up by the hinge no surgery necessary. They
’
d put metal bars on his upper and lower teeth, crisscross rubber bands to hold the bars fastened together, and that
’
s all it would take to heal the second fracture and give him an even bite. He shouldn
’
t be alarmed when he woke up if he experienced a slight choking sensation—it would only be from the rubber bands clamping his mouth
“
more or less shut.
”
They would be loosening that up as soon as they could. And then, for the twentieth time that day, Zuckerman was assured that after his face was all fixed, he
’
d still be able to wow the girls.

“
Yes, it
’
s a clean fracture, but not quite clean enough to suit me.
”
These words of the surgeon
’
s were the last that he heard. Bobby, there to administer the anesthesia, patted his shoulder.
“
Off to Xanadu, Zuck,
”
and off he went, to the tune of
“
… not quite clean enough…
”

Bobby was there to put him ou
t and was there in the recovery
room to check up on him when Zuckerman came to, but when the Xylocaine wore off sometime during the night, Zuckerman was alone and at long last he found out just what pain could really do. He
’
d had no idea.

One of the maneuvers he adopted to get from one minute to the next was to try calling himself Mr. Zuckerman. as though from the bench. Chasing that old man around those tombstones, Mr. Zuckerman, is the dumbest thing you have ever done. You have opened the wrong windows, closed the wrong doors, you have granted jurisdiction over your conscience to the wrong court; you have been in hiding half your life and a son far too long—you, Mr. Zuckerman, have been the most improbable slave to embarrassment and shame, yet for sheer pointless inexcusable stupidity, nothing comes close to chasing across a cemetery, through a snowstorm, a retired handbag salesman understandably horrified to discover grafted upon his own family tree the goy who spoils everything. To fix all that pain and repression and exhaustion on this Katzenjammer Karamazov, this bush-league Pontifex, to smash him, like some false divinity, into smithereens … but of course there were Gregory
’
s inalienable rights to defend, the liberties of a repellent mindless little shit whom you, Mr. Zuckerman, would loathe on sight. It appears, Mr. Zuckerman, that you may have lost your way since Thomas Mann last looked down from the altar and charged you to become a great man. I hereby sentence you to a mouth clamped shut.

When the lighthearted approach proved ineffective—and then the distraction of reciting to himself what he could remember from high school of the
Canterbury Tales
—he held his own hand, pretending that it was somebody else. His brother, his mother, his father, his wives—each took a turn sitting beside the bed and holding his hand in theirs. The pain was amazing. If he could have opened his mouth, he would have screamed. After five hours, if he could have got himself to the window, he would have jumped, and after ten hours the pain began to subside.

For the next few days he was nothing but a broken mouth. He sucked through a straw and he slept. That was it. Sucking would seem to be the easiest thing in the world to do, something nobody had to be taught, but because his lips were so bruised and sore and the overall swelling so bad, and because the straw only fit sideways into his mouth, he couldn
’
t even suck right, and had to sort of draw in from
down in the stomach to get the
stuff to begin to trickle through him. In this way he sucked in carrot sou
p and mushed-up fruit, and a mil
ky drink, banana-flavored and extolled as highly nutritious, that was so sweet it made him gag. When he wasn
’
t sucking liquid pulp or sleeping, he went exploring his mouth with his tongue. Nothing existed but the inside of his mouth. He made all sorts of discoveries in there. Your mouth is who you are. You can
’
t get very much closer to what you think of as yourself. The next stop up is the brain. No wonder fellatio has achieved such renown. Your tongue lives in your mouth and your tongue is you. He sent his tongue everywhere to see what was doing beyond the metal arch bars and the elastic bands. Across the raw vaulted dome of the palate, down to the tender cavernous sockets of the missing teeth, and then the plunge below the gum line. That was where they
’
d opened him up and wired him together. For the tongue it was like the journey up the river in
“
Heart of Darkness.
”
The mysterious stillness, the miles of s
ilence, the tongue creeping Con
radianly on toward Kurtz. I am the Marlow of my mouth.

Below the gum line there had been bits of jawbone and teeth smashed up, and the doctor had spent some time, before setting the fracture, picking around in there to take out all the tiny fragments. Giving him new front teeth was still to come. He couldn
’
t imagine ever again biting into anything. The idea of anyone touching his face was horrible. He slept at one point for eighteen hours and afterwards had no recollection of having his blood pressure taken or his [V changed.

A young night nurse came by to cheer him up with the
Chicago Tribune.
“
Well,
”
she said, flushed a little with excitement,
“
you really are somebody, aren
’
t you?
”
He motioned for her to leave the paper beside his sleeping pill. In the middle of the night—some night or other—he finally picked up the copy she
’
d left him and looked a
t
it under the bed light. The paper was folded back to an item in one of the columns.

Latest from our celebrity chauffeur: How lime jets! Sixties rebel. novelist Nathan (
“
Carnovsky
”
) Zuckerman recouping at Billings from cosmetic surgery. Just a nip and a tuck for the for
t
yish Romeo, then back to
“
Elaine
’
s
”
and the NY scene. Nathan slipped into town incognito to party a
t
the Pump Room on
t
he eve of the lift.
..

A card arrived from Mr. Freytag. On the envelope
’
s return-address sticker, where it read
“
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Freytag,
”
Mr. Freytag had put a line through
“
and Mrs.
”
Drawing that line would have taken some doing. The card read
“
Hurry and Get Well!
”
On the back he had
handwritten a personal message: