But no sooner did he and Phoebe return to Manhattan — where they lived in apartments some thirty blocks apart — than he mysteriously fell ill. He lost his appetite and his energy and found himself nauseated1 throughout the day, and he could not walk a city block without feeling weak and woozy.
The doctor could find nothing wrong with him. He had begun to see a psychoanalyst in the aftermath of his divorce, and the psychoanalyst attributed his condition to envy of a fellow art director who had just been promoted to a vice4 presidency5 in the agency.
"It makes you sick," the analyst3 said.
He maintained that his colleague was twelve years his senior and a generous coworker whom he only wished well, but the analyst continued to harp6 on "deep-seated envy" as the hidden reason for the malaise, and when circumstances proved him wrong, the analyst appeared unperturbed by his mistaken judgment7.
He went to the medical doctor's office several more times in the succeeding weeks, whereas ordinarily he saw him only for a minor8 problem every couple of years. But he'd lost weight and the bouts9 of nausea2 were getting worse. He'd never before felt so rotten, not even after he'd left Cecilia and the two small boys and the court battle ensued over the terms of the separation and he was characterized to the court by Cecilia's attorney as "a well-known philanderer10" because of the affair he was having with Phoebe, who was a new copywriter in the agency (and who was referred to in court by the plaintiff on the witness stand — aggrieved11, overwrought, as though she found herself bringing charges against the Marquis de Sade — as "number thirty-seven in his parade of girlfriends," when in fact she was looking too far into the future and Phoebe was as yet number two). At least back then there'd been a recognizable cause for all the misery12 he felt. But this was his turning overnight from someone who was bursting with health into someone inexplicably13 losing his health.
A month passed. He couldn't concentrate on his work, he gave up his morning swim, and by now he couldn't look at food. On a Friday afternoon he left work early and took a taxi to the doctor's office without having made an appointment or even a phone call. The only one he phoned was Phoebe, to tell her what he was doing.
"Admit me to a hospital," he told the doctor. "I feel like I'm dying."
The doctor made the arrangements, and Phoebe was at the hospital's information desk when he arrived. By five o'clock he was settled into a room, and just before seven a tall, tanned, good-looking middle-aged14 man wearing a dinner jacket came into the room and introduced himself as a surgeon who had been called by his physician to take a look at him. He was on his way to some formal event but wanted to stop by first to do a quick examination. What he did was to press his hand down very hard just above the groin on the right side. Unlike the regular physician, the surgeon kept pressing and the pain was excruciating. He felt on the verge15 of vomiting16. The surgeon said, "Haven't you had any stomach pain before?" "No," he said. "Well, it's your appendix. You need an operation." "When?" "Now."
He saw the surgeon next in the operating room. He'd changed out of the evening clothes into a surgical17 gown. "You've saved me from a very boring banquet," the surgeon said.
He didn't wake up until the next morning. Standing18 at the foot of the bed, along with Phoebe, were his mother and father, looking grim. Phoebe, whom they did not know (other than from Cecilia's denigrating19 descriptions, other than from the telephone tirades20 ending, "I pity this Little Miss Muffet coming after me — I honestly do pity the vile21 little Quaker slut!"), had phoned them and they'd immediately driven over from New Jersey22. As best he could make out, a male nurse seemed to be having trouble feeding some sort of tube up his nose, or maybe the nurse was trying to extract it. He spoke23 his first words — "Don't fuck up!" — before falling back into unconsciousness.
His mother and father were seated in chairs when he came around again. They seemed still to be tormented24 and weighed down by fatigue25 as well.
Phoebe was in a chair beside the bed holding his hand. She was a pale, pretty young woman whose soft appearance belied26 her equanimity27 and steadfastness28. She manifested no fear and allowed none in her voice.
Phoebe knew plenty about physical misery because of the severe headaches that she'd dismissed as nothing back in her twenties but that she realized were migraines when they became regular and frequent in her thirties. She was lucky enough to be able to sleep when she got one, but the moment she opened her eyes, the moment she was conscious, there it was — the incredible ache on one side of her head, the pressure in her face and her jaw29, and back of her eye socket30 a foot on her eyeball crushing it. The migraines started with spirals of light, bright spots moving in a swirl31 in front of her eyes even when she closed them, and then progressed to disorientation, dizziness, pain, nausea, and vomiting. "It's nothing like being in this world," she told him afterward32. "There's nothing in my body but the pressure in my head." All he could do for her was to remove the big cooking pot into which she vomited33, and to clean it out in the bathroom, and then to tiptoe back into the bedroom and place it beside the bed for her to use when she was sick again. For the twenty-four or forty-eight hours that the migraine lasted, she could not stand another presence in the darkened room, any more than she could bear the thinnest sliver34 of light filtering in from beneath the drawn35 shades. And no drugs helped. None of them worked for her. Once the migraine started, there was no stopping it.
"What happened?" he asked her.
"A burst appendix. You had it for some time."
"How sick am I?" he asked weakly.
"There's a lot of peritonitis. There are drains in the wound. They're draining it. You're getting big doses of antibiotics36. You're going to pull through. We're going to swim across the bay again."
That was hard to believe. Back in 1943 his father had come close to dying from undiagnosed appendicitis37 and severe peritonitis. He was forty-two with two young children, and he had been in the hospital — and away from his business — thirty-six days. When he got home, he was so weak he could barely make it up the one little flight to their flat, and after he'd been helped by his wife from the entry-way into the bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed, where, for the first time in the presence of his children, he broke down and cried. Eleven years earlier, his youngest brother, Sammy, the adored favorite of eight children, had died of acute appendicitis in his third year at engineering school. He was nineteen years old, having entered college at sixteen, and his ambition was to be an aeronautical38 engineer. Only three of the eight children had got as far as high school, and Sammy was the first and only one to go to college. His friends were the smartest boys in the neighborhood, all of them the children of Jewish immigrants who met regularly at one another's houses to play chess and to talk heatedly about politics and philosophy. He was their leader, a runner on the track team and a mathematics whiz with a sparkling personality. It was Sammy's name that his father intoned as he sobbed39 in the bedroom, astonished to find himself back among the family whose provider he was.
Uncle Sammy, his father, now him — the third of them to have been felled by a burst appendix and peritonitis. While he drifted in and out of consciousness for the next two days, it was not certain whether he would meet Sammy's fate or his father's.
His brother flew in from California on the second day, and when he opened his eyes and saw him at the side of the bed, a big and gentle presence, unperturbed, confident, jolly, he thought, I cannot die while Howie is here. Howie bent40 over to kiss his forehead, and then no sooner did he sit down in the bedside chair and take the patient's hand than time stopped, the present disappeared, and he was returned to childhood, a small boy again, preserved from worry and fear by the generous brother who slept in the bed beside his.
Howie stayed for four days. In four days he sometimes flew to Manila and Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and back. He had started at Goldman Sachs as a runner and quickly went from relaying messages to top dog on the currency-trading desk and began investing for himself in stocks. He had ended up in currency arbitrage41 for multinational42 and large foreign corporations — winemakers in France and camera makers43 in West Germany and automakers in Japan, for whom he turned francs and deutsche marks and yen44 into dollars. He traveled frequently to meet with his clients and continued investing in companies he liked, and by thirty-two he had his first million.
Sending their parents home to rest, Howie joined with Phoebe to see him through the worst of it and prepared to fly out only after receiving the doctor's assurances that the crisis was over. On the last morning, Howie quietly said to him, "You've got a good girl this time. Don't screw it up. Don't let her go."
He thought, in his joy at having survived, Was there ever a man whose appetite for life was as contagious45 as Howie's? Was there ever a brother as lucky as me?
He was in the hospital for thirty days. The nurses were mostly agreeable, conscientious46 young women with Irish accents who seemed always to have time to chat a little when they looked in on him. Phoebe came directly from work to have dinner in his room every night; he couldn't imagine what being needy47 and infirm like this and facing the uncanny nature of illness would have been like without her. His brother needn't have warned him not to let her go; he was never more determined48 to keep anyone. Beyond his window he could see the leaves of the trees turning as the October weeks went by, and when the surgeon came around he said to him, "When am I going to get out of here? I'm missing the fall of 1967." The surgeon listened soberly, and then, with a smile, he said, "Don't you get it yet? You almost missed everything."
收听单词发音 |
1
nauseated
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| adj.作呕的，厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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analyst
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| n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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bouts
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| n.拳击（或摔跤）比赛( bout的名词复数 )；一段（工作）；（尤指坏事的）一通；（疾病的）发作 | |
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philanderer
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| n.爱和女人调情的男人，玩弄女性的男人 | |
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aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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inexplicably
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| adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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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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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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denigrating
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| v.诋毁，诽谤( denigrate的现在分词 ) | |
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tirades
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| 激烈的长篇指责或演说( tirade的名词复数 ) | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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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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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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belied
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| v.掩饰( belie的过去式和过去分词 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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steadfastness
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| n.坚定，稳当 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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vomited
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sliver
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| n.裂片，细片，梳毛；v.纵切，切成长片，剖开 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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antibiotics
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| n.（用作复数）抗生素；（用作单数）抗生物质的研究；抗生素，抗菌素( antibiotic的名词复数 ) | |
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appendicitis
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| n.阑尾炎，盲肠炎 | |
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38
aeronautical
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| adj.航空（学）的 | |
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39
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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arbitrage
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| n.套利，套汇 | |
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multinational
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| adj.多国的，多种国籍的；n.多国籍公司，跨国公司 | |
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makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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yen
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| n. 日元；热望 | |
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contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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46
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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