by Philip Roth
Drenka. Her death. No idea that would be her last night. Every night saw pretty much the same picture. Got used to it. Visiting hours over at eight-thirty. Get there a little after nine. Wave to the night nurse, a good-natured buxom blond named Jinx, and just keep going down the hall to Drenka’s darkened room. It’s not allowed, but it is allowed if the nurse allows it. The first time Drenka asked, and after that nothing more had to be said. “I’m leaving now.” Always mouthed this to the nurse on the way out: meaning, There’s no one with her now. Sometimes when I left, she’d already be asleep from the morphine drip, her dried-out lips open and her eyelids not completely closed. Could see the whites of her eyes. Either leaving or coming I was sure that she was dead when I saw that. But the chest was moving. It was just the drugged-out state. The cancer everywhere. But her heart and her lungs were still okay, and I never dreamed she would go that night. Got used to the oxygen prong in her nose. Got used to the drainage bag pinned to the bed. Her kidneys were failing, yet there was always urine there when I checked the bag. Got used to that. Got used to the IV pole and the morphine drip hooked to the pump. Got used to the upper part of her no longer looking like it belonged to the bottom part. Emaciated from a little above the waist, and from the waist down—boy, oh boy—bloated, edemic. The tumor pressing on the aorta, decreasing the blood flow—Jinx explained it all, and he got used to the explanations. Under the blanket, out of sight, a bag so that the shit could come out somewhere—ovarian cancer hits the colon and bowel fast. If they’d operated she’d have bled to death. Cancer too widespread for surgery. I’d got used to that, too. Widespread. Okay. We can live with widespread. I’d show up, we’d talk, I’d sit and watch her breathing through that open mouth, asleep. Breathing. Yes, oh yes, how I had got used to Drenka breathing! I’d come in, and if she was awake she’d say, “My American boyfriend is here.” Eyes and cheekbones beneath a gray turban appeared to be what was speaking to him. Patches of hair all that was left. “I failed chemotherapy,” she told him one night. But he’d got used to that. “Nobody passes everything,” he told her. She’d just go on sleeping a lot with her mouth open and her eyelids not completely closed, or she’d be waiting, propped up on her pillow, comfortable on the morphine drip—until she suddenly wasn’t and she needed a booster. But he’d got used to the booster. It was always there. “She needs a little morphine booster” and Jinx was always there to say, “I have your morphine, honey,” and so that was taken care of, and we could go on like this forever, couldn’t we? When she had to be turned and moved, Jinx was always there to move her, and he was there to help, cupping the tiny cup of cheekbones and eyes, kissing her forehead, holding her shoulders to help move her; and when Jinx lifted the blankets to turn her, he saw that the sheets and the pads were all yellow and wet, the fluid just seeping out of her. When Jinx turned her, to move her onto her back, onto her side, the indentations of her fingers showed on Drenka’s flesh. He’d even got used to that, to that’s being Drenka’s flesh. “Something happened today.” Drenka always told them a story while they were repositioning her. “I thought I saw a blue teddy bear playing with the flowers.” “Well,” laughed Jinx, “it’s just the morphine, honey.” After the first time, Jinx whispered to Sabbath in the hallway, to calm him down. “Hallucinating. A lot of them do.” The flowers where the blue teddy bears played were from clients of the inn. There were so many bouquets the head nurse wouldn’t allow them all in the room. There were often flowers without cards. From the men. From everybody who had ever fucked her. The flowers never stopped coming. He’d got used to that.
Her last night. Jinx calling the next morning, after Rosie had left for work. “She threw a clot—a pulmonary embolus. She’s dead.” “How? How can that happen!” “Her blood work was all out of kilter, the bed rest—look, it’s a nice way to go. A very merciful killing.” “Thanks, thanks. You’re a good scout. Thanks for calling me. What time did she die?” “After you left. About two hours after.” “Okay. Thanks.” “I didn’t want you to not know and to show up tonight.” “Did she say anything?” “In the end she said something, but it was in that Croatian.” “Okay. Thanks.”
Driving Morty’s things north for safekeeping, wrapped in his flag and wearing his yarmulke, driving in the dark with Morty’s things and Drenka and Drenka’s last night.
“My American boyfriend.”
“Shalom.”
“My secret American boyfriend.” Her voice wasn’t that weak, but he pulled the chair close to the bed, beside the irrigation bag, and held her hand in his. This was the way they did it now, night after night. “To have a lover of the country . . . I was thinking this all day, to tell you, Mickey. To have a lover of the country which one . . . it gave me the feeling of having the opening of the door. I was trying to remember this all day.”
“The opening of the door.”
“The morphine is bad for my English.”
“We should have put your English on morphine long ago. It’s better than ever.”
“To have the lover, Mickey, to be very close that way, to be accepted by you, the American boyfriend . . . it made me less fearful about not understanding, not going to school here. . . . But having the American boyfriend and seeing the love from your eyes, it’s all all right.”
“It’s all all right.”
“So I don’t get so fearful with an American boyfriend. That’s what I was thinking all day.”
“I never thought of you as fearful at all. I thought of you as bold.”
She laughed at him, though with her eyes alone. “Oh my,” she said. “So fearful.”
“Why, Drenka?”
“Because. Because of everything. Because I don’t have the intuition, the intuitive feeling about it. I’ve been working in this society so long and I had a child who grew up here and in the school system here . . . but in my own country I could have sorted it out with my fingertips. It was all a lot of work for me here, overcoming my inferiority complex at being the outsider. But all the small things I could understand, because of you.”
“What small things?”
“‘I pledge a legion to the flag.’ It had no meaning. And the dancing. Remember? At the motel.”
“Yes. Yes. The Bo-Peep-Lysol.”
“And it isn’t ‘nuts and bulbs,’ Mickey.”
“What isn’t?”
“The expression in English. Jinx said today, ‘nuts and bolts,’ and I thought, ‘Oh God, it isn’t “nuts and bulbs.”’ Matthew was right—it is ‘nuts and bolts.’”
“It is? It can’t be.”
“You are a wicked boy.”
“Call me practical.”
“I was thinking today that I was pregnant again.”
“Yes?”
“I was thinking I was back in Split. I was pregnant. Other people from the past were present.”
“Who? Who was present?”
“In Yugoslavia I had fun, too, you know. In my city I had fun when I was young. A Roman palace is there, you know. An old palace that’s in the central part of the place.”
“In Split, yes, I do know. You told me years ago. Years and years ago, Drenka dear.”
“Yes. The Roman guy. The emperor. Dioklecijan.”
“It’s an old Roman town on the sea,” said Sabbath. “We both grew up by the sea. We both grew up loving the sea. Aqua femina.”
“Next to Split is a smaller place, a sea resort.”
“Makarska,” said Sabbath. “Makarska and Madamaska.”
“Yes,” said Drenka. “What a coincidence. The two places where I had the most fun. It was fun. We swim there. We spend all day on the beach. Dance in the evening. My first fuck was there. We sometimes have dinner. They would be serving this soup in these little bowls, and they would go and they would spill over you because they are not experienced, the waiters. They would come with a whole tray and they would carry it; they would come and they would serve it and they would spill it. America was so far away. I couldn’t even dream of it. Then to be able to
dance with you and hear you sing the music. I suddenly step that close to it. To America. I was dancing with America.”
“Sweetheart, you were dancing with an unemployed adulterer. A guy with time on his hands.”
“You are America. Yes, you are, my wicked boy. When we flew to New York and drove in on the highway, whatever the highway is, and those graveyards that are surrounded by cars and the traffic, and that was very confusing and frightening to me. I said to Matija, ‘I don’t like this.’ I was crying. Motorized America with all the endless cars that never stop, and then, suddenly, the place of rest is between that. And they are thrown a little here and a little there. It’s so very scary to me, so extremely opposite and different that I couldn’t understand it. Through you it is all different now. Do you know? Through you I can think of those stones with understanding now. I only wish now I went places with you. I was wishing today, all day, thinking of the places.”
“Which places?”
“To where you were born. I would have liked to go to the Jersey shore.”
“We should have gone. I should have taken you.”
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. The three blind mice.
“Even to New York City. To show it to me through your eyes. I would have liked that. Wherever we went, we always went to hide. I hate hiding. I wouldn’t mind to go to New Mexico with you. To California with you. But mainly to New Jersey, to see the sea where you grew up.”
“I understand.” Too late, but I understand. That we don’t perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that—of just that.
“If only,” said Drenka, “we could have gone for a weekend to see the Jersey shore.”
“You wouldn’t need a weekend. From Long Branch to Spring Lake and Sea Girt, it’s about eleven miles. You’re driving in Neptune, down Main Street, and before you know it you’re in Bradley Beach. You drive eight blocks in Bradley and you’re in Avon. It was all pretty small.”
“Tell me. Tell me.” At the Bo-Peep too, she had always begged him to tell her, to tell her, to tell her. But to come up with something he hadn’t told her, he’d have to think pretty hard. And suppose he should repeat himself? Did that matter to a dying person? To a dying person you can repeat yourself forever. They don’t care. Just so they can still hear you talking.
“Well, it was small-town stuff. Drenka, you know that.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“Nothing very exciting ever happened to me. I was never quite in with the right kids, you know. Uncouth little runt, family didn’t even belong to a ‘beach club’—the rich broads from Deal weren’t falling over one another pursuing me. I did manage somehow to get a couple hand-jobs in high school, but that was a fluke, didn’t really count for much. Mostly we sat around and talked about what we would give if we could get laid. Ron, Ron Metzner, who nobody looked at back then because of his skin, used to try to console himself by saying to me, ‘It has to happen sooner or later, doesn’t it?’ We didn’t care who it was or even what it was, we just wanted to get laid. Then I got to be sixteen and all I wanted was to bust out.”
“You went to sea.”
“No, the year before that. The summer I was a lifeguard during the day. Had to be—on the beach were the dramatically endowed Jewish girls from North Jersey. And so I worked nights to supplement my shitty lifeguard pay. Had all kinds of after-school jobs, summer jobs, Saturday jobs. Ron’s uncle had an ice cream franchise business. They’d come along like Good Humor, ding-a-ling. Blanketed the shore. I worked for him once, hawking Dixie cups from a bicycle truck. I had two, three jobs going in a single summer. Ron’s father had a job with a cigar company. Salesman for Dutch Masters cigars. Colorful character to a hick kid. Grew up in South Belmar, the son of the cantor and mohel there, who in those days had a horse, a cow, and an outhouse, and a well in the backyard. Mr. Metzner was the size of a city block. Enormous man. Loved dirty jokes. Salesman for Dutch Masters cigars and he had opera on the radio on Saturday afternoons. Carried off by a heart attack as big as the Ritz when we were in our last year of high school. Why Ron went to sea with me—fleeing selling Popsicles for the rest of his life. Dutch Masters had their place up in Newark then. Mr. Metzner used to go up there twice a week to pick up cigars. During the winter, on Saturdays, when gas was rationed during the war, Ron and I made deliveries all over the county for him on our bikes. One winter I worked in ladies’ shoes at Levin’s Department Store in Asbury. Pretty good-size store. Asbury was a busy town. On Cookman Avenue alone, five or six shoe stores. I. Miller and so on. Tepper’s. Steinbach’s. Yep, Cookman was a great street before the riots carried it away. Ran from the beach right to Main Street. But did I never tell you that I was a ladies’ shoes specialist as young as fourteen? The wonderful world of perversity, discovered it right there at Levin’s in Asbury Park. The old salesguy used to lift the ladies’ legs when he tried the shoes on them so I could see up their dresses. He used to take their shoes, when a customer came in, and put ’em far away where they couldn’t reach ’em. Then the fun began. ‘Now this shoe,’ he’d tell them, ‘is a genuine shmatte,’ and all the time raising their leg up just a little higher. In the stockroom I’d smell the inner soles after they’d tried them on. A friend of my father’s used to peddle socks and work pants to the farmers around Freehold. He’d go into the wholesalers in New York and then come back and I’d go out with him on a Saturday in his truck—when the truck started—and I’d sell and get to keep five dollars for myself at the end of the day. Yeah, a variety of jobs. A lot of the people I worked for would be quite surprised to know that I grew up to be a rocket scientist. That didn’t look to be in the cards back then. The job where I could really pick up bucks was parking cars for Eddie Schneer. At night, down by the amusement area in Asbury, Ron and me, that summer I was a lifeguard. We’d park one car for Eddie and put a buck in his pocket, the other car for us and put a dollar in this pocket. Eddie knew, but my brother used to work for him, and Eddie loved Morty because he was a Jewish athlete and didn’t hang around with the nutty, bummy-type hotshot stars but came right home after practice to help his father. Besides, Eddie was in politics and real estate and a thief bastard himself, and he was making so much money he didn’t even care. But he liked to scare me. His brother-in-law used to sit across the street and spot.”
“What’s ‘spot’?”
“Bernie, the brother-in-law, would spot a hundred cars in your area and you were supposed to have a hundred bucks in your pocket. Eddie had a big Packard and he would drive down to the area where I was working. He’d pull up, and out the car window he’d say to me, ‘Bernie’s been spotting you. He doesn’t think you’ve been giving me my fair share. He thinks you’re screwing me too much.’ ‘No, no, Mr. Schneer. None of us is screwing you too much.’ ‘How much do you take, Sabbath?’ ‘Me? I’m down to only half.’”
He’d done it—a laugh came from back in her throat, and her eyes were Drenka’s! Drenka a-laughing. “You are the easiest shiksa to make laugh that ever was. Mr. Mark Twain said that. Yep, the summer before my brother got killed. Everybody was worried that because of Morty’s being away I was getting in with the wrong crowd. Then he got killed in December, and the next year I went to sea. And that’s when I got in with the wrong crowd.”
“My American boyfriend.” Now she was in tears.
“Why do you cry?”
“Because I couldn’t be on that beach when you were a lifeguard. In the beginning here, before I met you, I was always crying about Split and Bra and Makarska. I was crying about my city with the narrow streets, the medieval streets, and all the old women all in black. I was crying for the islands and the inlets of the coastline. I was crying for the hotel on Bra, when I was a bookkeeper still with the railway and Matija was the handsome waiter dreaming of his inn. But then we began to make all the money. Then Matthew came. Then we began to make all the money. . . .” She was lost and took refuge behind her closed eyes.
“Is it pain? Are you
in pain?”
Her eyes fluttered open. “I’m all right.” It had been not pain but terror. But he had got used to that, too. If only she could. “They said about Americans that they are naive and not good lovers.” Bravely Drenka went on. “This nonsense. Americans are more puritanistic. They don’t like to show themselves naked. American men, they weren’t able to talk about fucking. All this European cliché. I certainly learned that ‘ain’t’ the case.”
“Ain’t. Very good. Excellent.”
“See, American boyfriend? Eventually I am not so stupid a Croatian Catholic shiksa woman. I even learn to say ‘ain’t.’”
She’d also learned to say “morphine,” a word it had never occurred to him to teach her. But without the morphine she felt as though she were being torn apart alive, as though a flock of black birds, huge birds, she said, were walking all over her bed and her body, tugging violently with their beaks inside her belly. And the sensation, she used to tell him . . . yes, she, too, loved the telling . . . the sensation of your coming inside me. I don’t really feel the squirting, I can’t, but the pulsation of the cock, and my contractions at the same time, and the whole thing so totally wet, I never know if it is my juice or your juice, and I am dripping from the cunt and I am dripping from the ass and I feel the drops coming down my legs, oh Mickey, so much juice, Mickey, all over, all so juicy, such an enormous wet sauce. . . . But lost now was the wet sauce, the pulsation, the contractions; lost to her now were the trips we never took, lost to her was all of it, her excesses, her willfulness, her wiliness, her recklessness, her amorousness, her impulsiveness, her self-division, her self-abandon—the sardonic and satiric cancer turning to carrion the female body that for Sabbath had been the most intoxicating of them all. The yearning to go endlessly on being Drenka, to go on and on and on being hot and healthy and herself, everything trivial and everything stupendous consumed now, organ by organ, cell by cell, devoured by the hungry black birds. Just the shard of the story now and the shards of her English, just bits of the core of the apple that was Drenka—only that was left. The juice flowing out of her was yellow now, oozing out of her yellow onto the pads, and yellow-yellow, concentrated yellow, into the irrigation bag.
