Though he had grown accustomed to being on his own and fending2 for himself since his last divorce ten years back, in his bed the night before the surgery he worked at remembering as exactly as he could each of the women who had been there waiting for him to rise out of the anesthetic3 in the recovery room, even remembering that most helpless of mates, the last wife, with whom recovering from quintuple bypass surgery had not been a sublime4 experience. The sublime experience had been the private nurse with the unassuming professional air who'd come home with him from the hospital and who tended him with a high-spirited devotion that promoted a slow, steady recovery and with whom, unknown to his wife, he conducted a sustained affair once he had recovered his sexual prowess. Maureen. Maureen Mrazek. He'd called all over trying to find Maureen. He'd wanted her to come and be his nurse, should he need a nurse, when he got home from the hospital this time. But sixteen years had passed, and the nursing agency at the hospital had lost track of her. She'd be forty-eight now, more than likely married and a mother, a shapely, energetic young woman grown into middle-aged5 stoutness6 while the battle to remain an unassailable man had by then been lost by him, time having transformed his own body into a storehouse for man-made contraptions designed to fend1 off collapse7. Defusing thoughts of his own demise8 had never required more diligence and cunning.
A lifetime later, he remembered the trip to the hospital with his mother for his hernia operation in the fall of 1942, a bus ride lasting9 no more than ten minutes. Usually if he was traveling somewhere with his mother, it was in the family car and his father was driving. But now there were just the two of them alone together on the bus, and they were headed for the hospital where he had been born, and she was what calmed his apprehension10 and allowed him to be brave. As a small child he'd had his tonsils removed at the hospital, but otherwise he'd never been back there. Now he was to stay for four days and four nights. He was a sensible boy of nine with no conspicuous11 problems, but on the bus he felt much younger and found that he required his mother's proximity12 in ways he thought he'd outgrown13.
His brother, a high school freshman14, was in class, and his father had driven the car to work well before he and his mother left for the hospital. A small overnight case rested on his mother's lap. In it were a toothbrush, pajamas15, a bathrobe and slippers16, and the books he'd brought with him to read. He could still remember which books they were. The hospital was around the corner from the local branch library, so his mother could replenish17 his reading material should he read through the books he'd brought for his hospital stay. He was to spend a week convalescing18 at home before returning to school, and he was more anxious about all the school he was missing than he was as yet about the ether mask that he knew they would clamp over his face to anesthetize him. In the early forties hospitals didn't as yet permit parents to stay overnight with their children, and so he'd be sleeping without his mother, his father, or his brother anywhere nearby. He was anxious about that, too.
His mother was well-spoken and mannerly, as, in turn, were the women who registered him at the admissions office and the nurses at the nurses' station when he and his mother made their way by elevator to the children's wing of the surgical20 floor. His mother took his overnight case because, small as it was, he wasn't supposed to carry anything until after his hernia was repaired and he had fully21 recuperated22. He had discovered the swelling23 in his left groin a few months earlier and had told no one but just tried pressing it down with his fingers to make it go away. He did not know exactly what a hernia was or what significance to give to swelling located so close to his genitals.
In those days a doctor could prescribe a stiff corset with metal stays if the family didn't want the child to undergo surgery or if they couldn't afford it. He knew of a boy at school who wore such a corset, and one of the reasons he'd told no one about the swelling was his fear that he too would have to wear a corset and reveal it to the other boys when he changed into his shorts for gym class.
Once he had finally confessed to his parents, his father took him to the doctor's office. Quickly the doctor examined him and made the diagnosis24 and, after conversing25 with his father for a few minutes, arranged for the surgery. Everything was done with astonishing speed, and the doctor — the very one who had delivered him into the world — assured him that he was going to be fine and then went on to joke about the comic strip Li'l Abner, which the two of them enjoyed reading in the evening paper.
The surgeon, Dr. Smith, was said by his parents to be the best in the city. Like the boy's own father, Dr. Smith, born Solly Smulowitz, had grown up in the slums, the son of poor immigrants.
He was in bed in his room within an hour of arriving at the hospital, though the surgery was not scheduled until the following morning — that's how patients were tended to then.
In the bed next to his was a boy who'd had stomach surgery and wasn't allowed to get up and walk yet. The boy's mother sat beside the bed holding her son's hand. When the father came to visit after work, the parents spoke19 in Yiddish, which made him think that they were too worried to speak understandable English in their son's presence. The only place where he heard Yiddish spoken was at the jewelry26 store when the war refugees came in search of Schaffhausen watches, a hard-to-find brand that his father would call around to try to locate for them — "Schaffhausen — I want a Schaffhausen," that would be the extent of their English. Of course Yiddish was spoken all but exclusively when the Hasidic Jews from New York traveled to Elizabeth once or twice a month to replenish the store's diamond inventory27 — for his father to have maintained a large inventory in his own safe would have been too expensive. There were far fewer Hasidic diamond merchants in America before the war than after, but his father, from the very beginning, preferred to deal with them rather than with the big diamond houses. The diamond merchant who came most frequently — and whose migration28 route had carried him and his family in only a few years from Warsaw to Antwerp to New York — was an older man dressed in a large black hat and a long black coat of a kind that you never saw on anyone else in Elizabeth's streets, not even other Jews. He wore a beard and sidelocks and kept the waist pouch29 that held his diamonds secreted30 beneath fringed undergarments whose religious significance eluded31 the nascent32 secularist33 — that, in fact, seemed ludicrous to him — even after his father explained why the Hasidim still wore what their ancestors had worn in the old country two hundred years before and lived much as they did then, though, as he pointed34 out to his father again and again, they were now in America, free to dress and to shave and to behave as they wished. When one of the seven sons of the diamond merchant got married, the merchant invited their entire family to the wedding in Brooklyn. All the men there had beards and all the women wore wigs35 and the sexes sat on different sides of the synagogue, separated by a wall — afterward36 the men and the women did not even dance together — and everything about that wedding he and Howie hated. When the diamond merchant arrived at the store he would remove his coat but leave on his hat, and the two men would sit behind the showcase chatting amiably37 together in Yiddish, the language that his father's parents, his own grandparents, had continued to speak in their immigrant households with their American-born children for as long as they lived. But when it was time to look at the diamonds, the two went into the backroom, where there was a safe and a workbench and a brown linoleum38 floor and, jammed together behind a door that never shut completely even when you had successfully struggled to hook it from within, a toilet and a tiny sink. His father always paid on the spot with a check.
After closing the store with Howie's help — pulling the lattice gate with the padlocks across the shop's display window, switching on the burglar alarm, and throwing all the locks on the front door — his father showed up in his younger son's hospital room and gave him a hug.
He was there when Dr. Smith came around to introduce himself. The surgeon was wearing a business suit rather than a white coat, and his father jumped to his feet as soon as he saw him enter the room. "It's Dr. Smith!" his father cried.
"So this is my patient," Dr. Smith said. "Well," he told him, coming to the side of the bed to take him firmly by the shoulder, "we're going to fix that hernia tomorrow and you'll be as good as new. What position do you like to play?" he asked.
"End."
"Well, you're going to be back playing end before you know it. You're going to play anything you want. You get a good night's sleep and I'll see you in the morning."
Daring to joke with the eminent39 surgeon, his father said, "And you get a good night's sleep too." When his dinner came, his mother and father sat and talked to him as though they were all at home. They spoke quietly so as not to disturb the sick boy or his parents, who were silent now, the mother still seated beside him and the father incessantly40 pacing at the foot of the bed and then out into the corridor and back. The boy hadn't so much as stirred while they were there.
At five to eight a nurse stuck her head in to announce that visiting hours were over. The parents of the other boy again spoke together in Yiddish and, after the mother repeatedly kissed the boy's forehead, they left the room. The father had tears running down his face.
Then his own parents left to go home to his brother and eat a late dinner together in the kitchen without him. His mother kissed him and held him tightly to her. "You can do it, son," his father said, leaning over to kiss him as well. "It's like when I give you an errand to run on the bus or a job to do at the store. Whatever it is, you never let me down. Reliable — my two reliable boys! I pop my buttons when I think about my boys. Always, you do the work like the thorough, careful, hard-working boys you were brought up to be. Carrying precious jewels to Newark and back, quarter-carat, half-carat diamonds in your pocket, and at your age that doesn't faze you. You look to all the world like it's some junk you found in your Cracker41 Jacks42. Well, if you can do that job, you can do this job. It's just another job of work as far as you're concerned. Do the work, finish the job, and by tomorrow the whole thing will be over. You hear the bell, you come out fighting. Right?"
"Right," the boy said.
"By the time I see you tomorrow, Dr. Smith will have fixed43 that thing, and that'll be the end of that."
"Right."
"My two terrific boys!"
Then they were gone and he was alone with the boy in the next bed. He reached over to his bedside table, where his mother had piled his books, and began to read The Swiss Family Robinson. Then he tried Treasure Island. Then Kim. Then he put his hand under the covers to look for the hernia. The swelling was gone. He knew from past experience that there were days when the swelling would temporarily subside44, but this time he was sure that it had subsided45 for good and that he no longer needed an operation. When a nurse came by to take his temperature, he didn't know how to tell her that the hernia had disappeared and that his parents should be called to come take him home. She looked approvingly at the titles of the books he'd brought and told him that he was free to get out of bed to use the bathroom but that otherwise he should make himself comfortable reading until she returned to put out the lights. She said nothing about the other boy, who he was sure was going to die.
At first he didn't fall asleep because of his waiting for the boy to die, and then he didn't because he couldn't stop thinking of the drowned body that had washed up on the beach that past summer. It was the body of a seaman46 whose tanker47 had been torpedoed48 by a German U-boat. The Coast Guard beach patrol had found the body amid the oil scum and shattered cargo49 cases at the edge of the beach that was only a block away from the house where his family of four rented a room for a month each summer. Most days the water was clear and he didn't worry that a drowned man would collide with his bare legs as he stepped out into the low surf. But when oil from torpedoed tankers50 clotted51 the sand and caked the bottom of his feet as he crossed the beach, he was terrified of stumbling upon a corpse52. Or stumbling upon a saboteur, coming ashore53 to work for Hitler. Armed with rifles or submachine guns and often accompanied by trained dogs, the Coast Guardsmen patrolled day and night to prevent saboteurs from landing on the miles of deserted54 beaches. Yet some sneaked55 through without detection and, along with native-born Nazi56 sympathizers, were known to be in ship-to-shore communication with the U-boats that prowled the East Coast shipping57 lanes and had been sinking ships off New Jersey58 since the war began. The war was closer than most people imagined, and so was the horror. His father had read that the waters of New Jersey were "the worst ship graveyard59" along the entire U.S. coastline, and now, in the hospital, he couldn't get the word "graveyard" to stop tormenting60 him, nor could he erase61 from his mind that bloated dead body the Coast Guard had removed from the few inches of surf in which it lay, while he and his brother looked on from the boardwalk.
Sometime after he'd fallen asleep he heard noises in the room and awakened62 to see that the curtain between the two beds had been pulled to screen off the other bed and that there were doctors and nurses at work on the other side — he could see their forms moving and could hear them whispering. When one of the nurses emerged from behind the curtain, she realized that he was awake and came over to his bed and told him softly, "Go back to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow." "What's the matter?" he asked. "Nothing," she said, "we're changing his bandages. Close your eyes and go to sleep."
He was awakened early the next morning for the operation, and there was his mother, already at the hospital and smiling at him from the foot of the bed.
"Good morning, darling. How's my brave boy?"
Looking across at the other bed, he saw that it was stripped of its bedding. Nothing could have made clearer to him what had happened than the sight of the bare mattress63 ticking and the uncovered pillows piled in the middle of the empty bed.
"That boy died," he said. Memorable64 enough that he was in the hospital that young, but even more memorable that he had registered a death. The first was the bloated body, the second was this boy. During the night, when he had awakened to see the forms moving behind the curtain, he couldn't help but think, The doctors are killing65 him.
"I believe he was moved, sweetheart. He had to be moved to another floor."
Just then two orderlies appeared to take him to the operating room. When he was told by one of them to use the bathroom, the first thing he did when the door was closed was to check if the hernia was gone. But the swelling had come back. There was no way out of the operation now.
His mother was allowed to walk alongside the gurney only as far as the elevator that was to take him to the operating room. There the orderlies pushed him into the elevator, and it descended66 until it opened onto a shockingly ugly corridor that led to an operating room where Dr. Smith was wearing a surgical gown and a white mask that changed everything about him — he might not even have been Dr. Smith. He could have been someone else entirely67, someone who had not grown up the son of poor immigrants named Smulowitz, someone his father knew nothing about, someone nobody knew, someone who had just wandered into the operating room and picked up a knife. In that moment of terror when they lowered the ether mask over his face as though to smother68 him, he could have sworn that the surgeon, whoever he was, had whispered, "Now I'm going to turn you into a girl."
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fend
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| v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开 | |
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fending
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| v.独立生活，照料自己( fend的现在分词 )；挡开，避开 | |
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anesthetic
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| n.麻醉剂，麻药；adj.麻醉的，失去知觉的 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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stoutness
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| 坚固，刚毅 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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demise
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| n.死亡；v.让渡，遗赠，转让 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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freshman
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| n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女) | |
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pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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convalescing
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| v.康复( convalesce的现在分词 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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recuperated
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| v.恢复（健康、体力等），复原( recuperate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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secreted
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| v.（尤指动物或植物器官）分泌( secrete的过去式和过去分词 )；隐匿，隐藏 | |
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eluded
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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secularist
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| n.现世主义者，世俗主义者；宗教与教育分离论者 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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amiably
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| adv.和蔼可亲地，亲切地 | |
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linoleum
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| n.油布，油毯 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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cracker
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| n.（无甜味的）薄脆饼干 | |
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jacks
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| n.抓子游戏；千斤顶( jack的名词复数 )；（电）插孔；[电子学]插座；放弃 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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subside
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| vi.平静，平息；下沉，塌陷，沉降 | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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tanker
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| n.油轮 | |
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48
torpedoed
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| 用鱼雷袭击（torpedo的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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tankers
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| 运送大量液体或气体的轮船[卡车]( tanker的名词复数 )； 油轮； 罐车； 油槽车 | |
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51
clotted
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| adj.凝结的v.凝固( clot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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54
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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55
sneaked
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| v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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56
Nazi
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| n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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tormenting
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| 使痛苦的，使苦恼的 | |
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61
erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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62
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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64
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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66
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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67
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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