by Herman Koch
“Fit this in?”
“At the Board of Medical Examiners. You are expected there next Tuesday at nine A.M.”
I flashed a grin at the lady writer, who was beginning to show signs of impatience, shifting back and forth in her chair.
“Next Tuesday …” I said. “But the funeral is this Friday. I thought—”
“Dr. Schlosser, I hope we understand each other clearly. I believe the family would hardly appreciate your presence at the funeral. At least, not after we’ve informed them of the results of our investigation.”
“And when will that be? Is there such a big rush? No verdict has been passed, has it? That can’t happen before Tuesday, right? Or maybe not even then? Maybe the board will want to take its time examining things.”
I realized I was asking too many questions at once. Nervous people ask too many questions at once. But I wasn’t nervous, I tried to tell myself. It was just that I had never before been forced to use the term “Board of Medical Examiners” in front of a patient.
Again, that same deep sigh at the other end.
“We always send our conclusions by letter. That, in fact, is the only thing I can do for you. We’re obliged to inform the family, but by doing that in the form of a letter, we comply with the regulations, while the doctor in question gets a day’s reprieve. See it as a helping hand, from one colleague to another, Marc.”
“Herzl here.”
The human voice doesn’t age. Even if he hadn’t stated his name, I could have picked out my former professor of medical biology’s voice in a crowd.
“Professor Herzl,” I said. “How are you?”
“I should probably be asking you that, Marc. Are you alone? Can you speak freely?”
I was indeed alone, at my desk in the office. The waiting room was unusually crowded: There were no fewer than four patients waiting to be called in one by one, but I didn’t feel like dealing with patients, so I just let them sit there.
“I’m alone,” I said.
“Right. Please excuse me if I skip the amenities and get right to the point, Marc. I propose that you listen to me first and only then, once I’m finished, do you ask a question. Just like the old days, during lectures, in fact. Is that a problem for you?”
“No.”
“Right. Listen. Since my expulsion from the university I’ve worked in all kinds of capacities, but I’m not going to bore you with the details. Holland is a totalitarian state. Anyone who falls from grace can go to work cleaning toilets. In my case things didn’t get that far, but for years I worked in places where I shouldn’t have. In any event, the ideas I expressed back then are now widely accepted, but don’t think anyone ever came to me to apologize. For the last five or ten years, though, I have been getting work that is better suited to me, if you can put it that way. For the last couple of years, for example, I’ve been a freelance consultant to the Board of Medical Examiners.”
Here Aaron Herzl let a brief silence fall, but I kept ahold of myself and didn’t ask. I did, however, hold the receiver a little more tightly against my ear.
“Right,” Herzl said. “All I do is offer advice; I have no power of decision. Sometimes I see things other people don’t. A few days ago, your case landed on my desk, Marc. I recognized your name right away. General practitioner. I always felt it was too bad that you didn’t go on—you were certainly capable enough. Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock. The hour of truth. I’ve examined your case in great detail. It’s not every day that one of my former students is summoned to appear before the board. I say ‘great detail,’ but that wasn’t even necessary. In fact, I saw it right away. Listen carefully, Marc. I’m going to ask you a few questions. The best thing would be if you could answer only with yes or no. It’s all off the record. But I can only help you if you’re frank with me. At the same time, it’s in my own interests not to know everything. I hope you understand that.”
“Yes,” I said. At that moment, my assistant stuck her head into the doorway. She raised her eyebrows inquiringly and gestured over her shoulder, toward the waiting room. I didn’t make a sound; I formed the words with my lips: Go away! She got the message right away and slipped out the door.
I thought Herzl was going to say “Right” again, but he didn’t. Or maybe I had missed it.
“Removing tissue for a biopsy is not something the family doctor does, Marc, I don’t have to tell you that. And especially not when one suspects that it might involve a life-threatening illness. Technically, one can’t even speak of a medical error here. More like temporary insanity. A family doctor is allowed to burn away a mole. He’s allowed to remove a lipoma. As soon as he has even the slightest suspicion that it could be something serious, he doesn’t touch the mole or lipoma. That’s not what happened here. To make things even worse, the tissue was removed in so rigorous a fashion that, in the case of a life-threatening illness, it could only serve to accelerate the spread of that illness. Am I right so far, Marc?”
“Yes.”
“Then the tissue never arrived at the hospital. It’s possible, of course, that it got lost somewhere. But it’s also possible that you forgot to send it. Pay attention, Marc. Only yes or no. Did you forget?”
“Yes.”
I heard Professor Herzl breathe a deep sigh. It sounded like a sigh of relief. Then I heard him shuffling through some papers.
“I’m glad you’re being so honest with me, Marc. Now let’s get to your patient. The deceased patient … Ralph Meier. An actor. I had never heard of him, but that doesn’t mean much. I tend to stay at home. I read, or I listen to music. But down to business. Was there something that made you want to get rid of this particular patient? And I don’t mean that you hoped he would start seeing another doctor. No, I mean literally get rid of him. In the sense of wiped off the face of the earth. As is, strictly speaking, the case now: The patient is in his grave. Was something like that running through your mind, Marc?”
“Yes.”
“Something happened that meant, in your eyes, that Ralph Meier no longer deserved to live. That’s possible. We all think things like that about other people at times. We are, after all, only human. I assume you had your reasons. What I’m going to ask you now, in fact, has nothing to do with this case or with the way the board will deal with it tomorrow. This is purely my own, personal interest. You have every right not to answer, of course. I haven’t gone rooting around in your private life. I got no further than the fact that you have a wife and two young daughters. My question is very simple. Does the death of Ralph Meier have something to do with your family, Marc?”
I hesitated. “Yes,” I said then, but Aaron Herzl must have heard my hesitation.
“Once again: If you don’t want to answer, just don’t,” he said. “I won’t hold it against you. So it has something to do with your family. With your wife?”
I hesitated again. One side of me wanted to end the conversation right there, the other no longer wanted to give only yes-and-no answers. That side of me wanted to tell my former professor of medical biology the whole story.
“No,” I said. “That is to say, at first … No, not really.”
“I don’t want to sound overly acute, Marc, but that didn’t seem very likely to me, either. My guess was more that it had something to do with your daughters. How old are they now? Fourteen and twelve, if I remember correctly. Is that right?”
“Yes.” I had felt like telling Aaron Herzl everything, but that wasn’t even necessary. He already knew.
“Marc,” he said. “I realize that you may be tempted now to say more than might be good for you. Good for either of us. But we really need to limit ourselves to the facts right now. That’s why I’m going to ask you again, emphatically, to answer only with yes or no. On one occasion I was handed a file that, strictly speaking, had only marginally to do with the Board of Medical Examiners. The case of a grown man who had interfered with a twelve-year-old girl. And who actually claimed that she had ‘liked’ it. That’s what they al
l say. We medical people know better. It’s a defect. A defective batch is removed from circulation. At least that’s what we should do. But I’m digressing. Was it something like that, Marc? Only yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Then you did what you should have done,” he said. “You did what any father ought to do.”
“Yes,” I said again, even though Herzl hadn’t actually asked a question.
“The point is that you can’t present this to the board in that way,” he went on. “They don’t give a damn about fathers with healthy instincts. I could always try to steer it in the direction of negligence. But it’s all much too much out in the open. This is not going to be a few months’ suspension, Marc. This is more like having your license revoked. If it even ends there. I’m talking about prosecution. You don’t want to do that to your family. You certainly don’t want to do that to your daughter.”
“Then what?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do, then?”
Professor Aaron Herzl sighed deeply.
“First of all, don’t show up tomorrow morning,” he said. “That would only make things worse. Personally, I would advise you to disappear completely. Literally. Go abroad. I would decide about that today if I were you, Marc. Talk to your family about it. Go away. Start anew somewhere else. If you need references somewhere, contact me. I can help you. But at this point, that is really the only thing I can do for you.”
After hanging up I sat at my desk for a while, trying to resolve things in my mind. I could always ask my assistant to send the patients home. I needed time to think. On the other hand, I could mull things over just as easily while listening to their interminable blather. Even more easily, sometimes.
I pushed the button on the intercom.
“Liesbeth, send the first patient in,” I said. “I’m finished.”
Keep acting normal, I told myself. Everything needs to seem as normal as possible. I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten past ten. I had all the time in the world.
But then, while my first patient of the day was just getting settled, there was suddenly a huge ruckus at the front door. “Doctor!” I heard my assistant call out. “Doctor!” There was a sound like a chair being knocked over, and after that I heard a second voice.
“Where are you, you piece of shit?” Judith Meier shrieked. “Are you scared to show your face?”
I leafed through the file. I acted as though I was looking for something. It wasn’t Ralph Meier’s file. It was some other patient’s, one I had taken off the shelf at random: not too thick, not too thin. I didn’t even have a file for Ralph Meier.
“Here we are,” I said. “Ralph came to me in October of last year. He didn’t want you to know anything at that point. He was afraid you would become upset for no good reason.”
I glanced up at her. Judith averted her eyes right away. She snorted and drummed her fingers on the armrest.
“At first I didn’t think it was anything, either,” I went on. “In most cases it isn’t. Okay, he said he was tired. But there can be other reasons for that. He worked hard. He always worked hard.”
“Marc, spare me your little asides and excuses. We’re way past that point now. Dr. Maasland has briefed me in detail. You should never have performed that little biopsy. Under no circumstances. And what the Board of Medical Examiners doesn’t know yet is that you prescribed that junk that suppressed his symptoms. At first I had no idea he was taking those pills. I found them by accident, in a compartment of his suitcase. He told me everything then. Including where he got them from.”
“Judith, he was tired. Overtired. He had a two-month shoot. I told him he shouldn’t place unreasonable demands on his body. That it was only for those two months.”
I felt extremely composed. Calm. By that point I “had myself well in hand,” as they say. The mere fact that I had come up with an expression like “unreasonable demands on his body”—an expression I would never use otherwise—showed that I was back on top. I looked at the clock on the wall. We had been here for fifteen minutes already. I’d heard some vague sounds coming from the waiting room, then I’d heard the front door slam. Now it was quiet. Everyone was gone.
“Why now, all of a sudden, Judith?” I said. “Why do you come here, calling me a murderer in front of my patients and my assistant? Last Friday, at the funeral, I figured you were confused by all that horseshit Maasland has been trying to feed you. But it seems like you really bought it. And besides, you haven’t actually seemed too mournful about Ralph for the last few months, to put it mildly. At least I never heard you complain, all those times I came by for a cup of coffee.”
Then Judith began crying. I sighed. I had no time for this. I wanted to go upstairs. I had to talk to Caroline about what we were going to do. The fall break was starting in a couple of days and all four of us were going to fly to Los Angeles. I needed to confer with Caroline, to see whether maybe we should leave a few days earlier—without mentioning my conversation with Aaron Herzl, of course.
“You said you couldn’t have me around, Marc!” Judith wailed. “That we shouldn’t see each other anymore. Those were your exact words. ‘Too much has happened. I just can’t have you around.’ I couldn’t believe my ears! How could you be so cold? Ralph had been dead for less than half an hour!”
I stared at her. Was I hearing things? I had always prided myself on being able to figure out what was wrong with someone within sixty seconds, but I wouldn’t have believed this was possible, not in a million years. I looked at her face. Besides being covered in tears, it was above all marked by dissatisfaction. Deep-lying dissatisfaction, the kind a person is born with. Nothing helps to drive out that dissatisfaction. Expensive espresso machines, attention, a new wing on the house—for a fleeting moment the dissatisfaction disappears into the background, but it’s like a leak coming through the wallpaper: You can cover it with new wallpaper, but after a while the brown spots soak through, anyway.
There’s not much you can do about it. You can muffle it for a bit with medication, with what they call “mother’s little helpers,” but in the end it only comes back with renewed strength.
Only an injection, I knew, would help to wipe the dissatisfaction off Judith’s face. Once and for all.
I thought about her reaction on the beach when Ralph had blown that soup pan into the air. Her whining about loud bangs in general. Her bellyaching about the security deposit she might not get back from the rental agency. And then I thought about what Caroline had told me. About Stanley and Judith beside the pool. He licked her down completely, Caroline had said. And I mean completely.
I knew what I had to do. I got up out of my chair and came around from behind my desk. I laid my hands on Judith’s shoulders. Then I leaned down, until my face touched hers.
I had expected heat. A wet but hot face—but her tears were cold.
“My sweet, lovely Judith,” I said.
We were sitting by the pool. Just Julia and me. Caroline and Lisa had gone into Santa Barbara to do some shopping. Stanley had a meeting somewhere in Hollywood about a new project. Emmanuelle was upstairs taking her afternoon nap.
Julia was lying on her stomach on an air mattress, in the shadow of a palm tree. I was sitting in a deck chair, leafing through some magazines I’d brought out from the house. The latest Vogue and Vanity Fair and Ocean Drive. In the distance you could indeed hear the ocean, just as Stanley had said. And the occasional train whistle. Between Stanley’s house and the beach was an unguarded, single-track crossing. The train whistles sounded different from a year ago, in the hotel in Williams—but it was also very possible that I was listening to them differently.
I looked at Julia. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe not. Her iPod lay beside the pillow section of the air mattress, but she didn’t have the earbuds in. In Holland this was autumn. Here you had to sit in the shade, because it was too hot in the sun. I had expected a call from the Board of Medical Examiners, asking why I hadn’t shown up that Tuesday. But no call came. Durin
g the next few days there was no news, either. On Friday I called at last and spoke to a secretary who told me that all current cases had been “put off until after the fall vacation.” She asked me to repeat my name. “Dr. Schlosser,” I said. “Oh yes, here it is. Your name is marked with a red arrow on my computer. That means your case will be given priority treatment. But the ruling will only come during the week after the fall break. You’ll be informed by the end of that week, at the latest.”
The fall break started the next day and the four of us flew to Los Angeles. Stanley had offered to pick us up at the airport, but I’d told him that it wouldn’t be necessary. The drive in our rental car along Highway 1 to Santa Barbara took less than two hours.
The first few days we did pretty much nothing at all. We hung around the pool and sauntered down shopping streets. We ate crab on the pier again.
“I have a theory,” Stanley said on the third day. “I’ve thought about it for a long time. But then again … not really even that long.”
We were at a fish restaurant on the beach. The sun had just gone down. Caroline, Emmanuelle, Julia, and Lisa had gone for a walk along the surf. Stanley took the bottle of white wine from the cooler and refilled our glasses.
“The midsummer night party,” he went on. “Last year. We were on the beach with those girls. Ralph tried to kick that Norwegian girl. Then we lost sight of each other for a few hours. In the meantime, your daughter was … well, what happened happened. You do the addition, you figure one plus one is two. Not long after the summer vacation Ralph becomes ill. Deathly ill. One year later he’s dead. I’m no doctor. I don’t know, technically speaking, how it works, but maybe you could explain that to me.”
