by Philip Roth
“This is Mrs. Kuzmyak, for Christ’s sake.”
“I want to speak to the doctor.”
“He’s not in. What is it?”
“Mrs. Kuzmyak, look, today was very hectic for me. I couldn’t get to the bank. I don’t have the money.”
“What do you expect, something for nothing?” She seemed to be trying to talk in some sort of dialect.
“Can’t I pay you tomorrow?”
She found now what it was she had wanted to say. “What do you think, my name is Fink, I do your clothes for nothing?”
“But, Mrs. Kuzmyak, we’re both ready. It’s been one hell of a day. My wife’s taking an enema. I forgot all about the bank. She hasn’t eaten—look, let me talk to the doctor, will you?”
“We’ve got books to keep straight,” she said, sternly. “The doctor’s got expenses to meet.”
“Well,” he said hopelessly, “what’ll we do?”
“Hang on there, Herzie.” She left the phone; then was back. “Doctor says tomorrow’s no good. Make it Thursday. Same time. Bring cash.”
Lunch hour the next day was spent waiting in line at the bank. After the withdrawal—a red stain on the left side of the little friendly green booklet—the balance was eleven dollars and some pennies. To brighten matters, the clerk warned him that he would lose out on his interest for the quarter.
It was not until Paul walked past the toothless, smiling guard at the bank door that he saw his error. He should have taken the money in bits and pieces over a period of time, rather than in five large unforgettable bills. Now the clerk would … But right in his hands was enough evidence to put him in jail for life: the bank book. How could he claim innocence with some histrionic D.A. waving withdrawal slips in the jury’s angry face? His moment of fantasy drew out of him all his strength, and he was left with only a fear, a silly dreamlike overblown fear of little Levy. Had Levy understood? Had Korngold emerged from his sleepless night willing to stick by his new decision? He slapped all his pockets and turned them inside out—this, right in front of the guard!—searching for the slip of paper with Dr. Smith’s name and number. Panic seized him—the paper was nowhere. It was not in the wallet with the five crisp bills. Had Libby—?
Levy!
His watch showed that twenty minutes of lunch hour remained. He signaled a cab, and with a sick stomach—for sometimes nickels eat away one’s insides more than hundreds of dollars—watched every turn of the meter until the taxi deposited him in front of his house. Up the stairs, through the hallway, down to the basement, and along the corridor to Levy’s door. He heard murmurs from inside and boldly knocked. No response; the whispers within were shushed. He hammered on the door till the molding creaked.
“Levy, I heard you talking. I want to speak with you. This is Herz, Levy, open up!”
Something—a shoe?—scraped along the floor. Hot-water pipes sizzled over his head; perspiring and furious, he slammed his shoulder into the door. It gave way and a piece of plaster floated down. Inside the room was no one. He moved down the hall to their own room; under their door he found a letter addressed to Libby. It did not even astonish him to think that something new was about to happen to him. He had never opened another’s mail, but now he felt nothing initiating about the act. The return address affected him as would the stabbing of a knife: surprise—then nothing—then pain. He read:
DEAR MRS. HERZ:
You possess, indeed, a phenomenal and singular sense of obligation. I do not know from whence it springs, your studies, your fancies, your greed, or perhaps from the man with whom you are cohabiting, and from whom you had drawn, I recall, other ideas, opinions, and manners of equal merit. I had thought that along with defiance you might at least have developed fortitude; in fact, however, you prove yourself in possession of more energy than character, which is of course the signature of the devil. Surely to one with an inspiration so inhuman, I can only reiterate that neither aid nor good wishes can be expected, now or in the days to come, from this quarter. Obligations are reciprocal, and when one party has failed another, the cessation of obligatory feelings from the injured can be designated with no word other than Justice; certainly with none of the words you suggest. My obligations, Mrs. Herz, are to sons and daughters, family and Church, Christ and country, and not to Jewish housewives in Detroit. On close examination you shall find this last statement not altogether villainous; the villainy you attribute to it may well arise from an excess in yourself. You have defied your father, your faith, and every law of decency, from the most sacred to the most ordinary. I should imagine that those who defy are subject to interesting feelings when they must beg. It remains to be seen whether you shall ever have the character to defy what all good people have always had to defy—their own sinfulness—and seek an annulment through the offices of the Church. The obligation of the sinner is to rectify his sins; and since that path which leads to rectification and glory is one of humiliation and pain, I shall have no choice but to continue myself with a course of action that shall render the life you have chosen unrelieved of privation. For it is privation that shall lead you to The Shining Light.
He sat on the bed, then floated, fell, died on the pillow. At first he did not ask himself why or how or when she had written; there was only the fact: she had. The letter rested on his chest, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps now he could rest. But even with the wind knocked out of him, it seemed he could not; breathless, he was up off the mattress suddenly, hunting. He poured out the contents of the trash can, sorting through wads of Kleenex; on the damp floor he crawled halfway under the bed; he looked through his wallet again. But he could not find the paper with Smith’s name. Then, with nothing better to do, he counted out the money—he ruffled and snapped each of the bills like a businessman, but they gave him none of what they gave the businessman. It seemed that he did not so much hate giving away this money as he hated himself for having it to give in the first place. Confusion. Terrible confusion. He returned to the bed and lay there face down, clutching the money in his hand. How easy, how soft and easy, he thought, was the solution: let go, give up, have a baby …
Okay then: consequences …
But for the first time he was not afflicted with visions of dancing dollar signs. His visions were not of loss and chaos. His family, for instance. Would not a baby’s coo soften their hearts? How could they resist a little dark-eyed child? This would be different from Libby’s conversion; this was nature, not design. The conversion, which he had masterminded, he knew now to have been a mistake, the real low point in his life. He was almost glad that his parents had not been fooled by it. Nobody else had, not even (most wretched of all) the convert herself. Yet he had still been dazed enough at the time to figure that something dramatic would knock them all back to their senses. After all, he was Paul, their son … it would forever remain a painful mystery to him that those parents whom he had never needed could shake him so by deserting him and his young wife.
It was easier understanding Libby and her parents. The protected child, the sheltered little girl, the baby sister. He could almost bring himself to forgive her for writing that father of hers. A girl with a past full of Gloriful Heaven and Sweet Jesus could not believe that anything as innocent as their marriage could provoke in others such monstrousness. The values from which their union had grown were the values the world had smiled upon for centuries. Not for a moment was either of them irresponsible; they had not been able to sleep with one another for more than a night without serious and profound feelings. And once they had rushed to confess these feelings to each other, how could they ever part? Oh love—was that the seed from which dragons grew? It was disbelief not greed, wonder not stupidity, that had led Mr. DeWitt’s loyal little girl to write to him.
But why had she to plead with him? Why ask for, of all things, money? How that sanctimonious bastard must have licked his chops! Privation, debts, hunger, fear! And up ahead, ah yes, there she glows, The Shining Light. The miserable sadist! The heart
less Christ-kissing son of a bitch! Why should either of them have to plead with him, or anybody? Why must he suck around a dog like Levy? Suddenly he, Paul Herz, was a partner in the screwing of Korngold! And what, what was the best, the honorable, the manly course? He could put the four fifty back in the bank. He could give in to nature, let life—his, his wife’s, his child’s, roll on …
At work in the afternoon he knew he had changed his mind out of nothing noble. His decision not to go ahead with the abortion had little to do with any discovery of his own manliness. It was simple. How to avoid going to jail? Have the baby. How to get out from under Levy? Have the baby. How to win back his parents’ love? How to make DeWitt eat his words? Simple—have the baby, but deprive that pious louse of any rights to it. If they threw out the daughter, he could give them the heave-ho too! But what machinations—what cowardice! The hand he had lifted against the cruel world was now a fist striking against his own heart.
Libby arrived home that night before he did. He heard her singing inside, and hesitated with his key; he still did not know what to do with the letter from her father. With no plan at all, he opened the door.
Matters were further confused by the kiss. “I’ve got control of myself,” she said, brushing the side of his head with her lips. “I want to tell you that. I want you to know. I’m glad we had this extra day. I’ve got control of myself now.”
“Good.”
“I want to go to bed with you.”
“Lib, my wrist—”
“Right now. Let’s take advantage, Paul—” She still held him so that he could only feel her body and hear her voice. “We don’t have to use anything. Nothing—just the two of us—”
“I’m just a little tired …”
“What is it? What’s the matter now?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t you go to the bank again?”
“Everything’s taken care of.”
“What’s the matter? I’ve gotten myself all ready for it. I’ve changed my attitude. I decided to be a woman about this thing. What’s wrong now?”
Taking a deep breath, aware of how impossible he was being, he said, “Let’s go to bed, Lib. Let’s get in bed.”
“Don’t oblige me.”
“I’m not obliging you. Don’t you oblige me.”
“I wasn’t obliging you. I changed my mind.”
“From what? I didn’t know it needed changing. I thought you had agreed—”
“I can’t stand any more of this!” she shouted. “Everything I do is wrong!”
He was shaking the letter at her. “Writing your father was wrong, damn it!”
She snatched it from him, crying, “Do I open your mail!”
“That isn’t the point! The point is that you can’t go crying back to your family!”
“I wasn’t crying to him—as a matter of fact I was bawling him out. I was telling him what I thought of him!”
“How much did you say we needed?”
At the last moment, on the point of breaking down and sobbing an apology, she shouted, “Plenty! I said we needed plenty! What’s wrong with that? Do you know when I wrote that letter?” She was crying, but not with any loss of force. “The day we moved in here. That night, that terrible awful night. I wanted him to know, God damn him—I wanted him to know what his selfish mean stupid Catholic crap had driven us to—”
“He didn’t drive us here, Libby. We chose to come here.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“You agreed, damn it! Don’t start that. In Ann Arbor—”
“But I didn’t choose it! I’m agreeing to this abortion, but I didn’t choose to get pregnant. Oh Paul, I didn’t choose any of this.”
“Are you blaming me for dragging you down in the mud?”
“I’m blaming him! That’s why I wrote the letter!”
“But he has nothing to do with it, Libby.”
She wept. “Then who does?”
There was only one thing that remained to be said. His impulses were all confessional; he almost came to his knees when he admitted, “I do.”
She misunderstood; or perhaps she would not allow herself to hear of his weakness. He heard her say, “Are you telling me you’re sorry you married me again?”
“For Christ sake, stop that! Nobody said anything like that. My blood is like water from all this squabbling. Let’s stop it!” But the moment to which he felt he had every right had been denied him. Caring for Libby, he could not be what perhaps he really was. They were—the word came at him with every ounce of its meaning—married.
And Libby was whining. “I don’t know what to decide any more. Every time I decide to get that thing done to me, you decide I shouldn’t.”
“I didn’t decide anything. I got the money out of the bank, didn’t I? I called the doctor last night, didn’t I?”
“But your heart isn’t in it.”
“Oh Libby, Libby, what a dopey statement …” He flopped onto the bed.
She kneeled on the floor, holding his legs. “I’m not anything you thought I’d be, am I? I turned out to be really dumb, didn’t I?”
“No, Libby.” She would confess and confess, and when would there ever be time for his confessions? Couldn’t he just relax and be a rat?
“I’m not good enough for you,” his wife said. “I know it. I’m just a goddam dope.”
“Shhh,” he told her. “Get off the floor, Lib. Get off your knees, please. Come up here.”
“Paul,” she said, beside him, “do it to me. Just the two of us. Nothing in between. Oh,” she wept, “at least let’s get pleasure out of this. Something—”
Later, curled in the arc between his knees and shoulders, she said, “I looked up osteopathy in the Britannica. I went to the library for lunch.”
For the first time in the whole affair, Paul shed tears.
“The American Osteopathic Association,” she said, “was organized in 1897. Did you ever hear of Still? He founded osteopathy. Discovered it.”
“Never.”
“They believe the body heals itself so long as it’s mechanically adjusted. There are lesions, and they correct them by manipulation. It’s not at all like chiropractors. It’s sort of Eastern, in a certain way—Oriental. They study everything, just like MDs. Obstetrics—everything. The American Osteopathic Association was organized—”
“In 1897.”
“It sticks in my mind …”
He thought she had fallen asleep, but a few minutes later she spoke again. “I looked up abortion.”
“Libby—”
“Abortions contributed to sixteen percent of maternal deaths in America in 1943. Or ’44.”
“Look, Lib—”
“That’s nothing, sweetie. When you sit down and figure it out it’s a misleading fact. How many maternal deaths are there? Say it’s as much as three percent. Well, sixteen percent of that. That makes it probably one in a hundred thousand. It’s safer,” she said, reaching back to touch him, “than crossing the street.”
“Are you laughing?” he asked, burying his head in her hair.
“I’m smiling, baby. I’m trying to—”
“Shhh—” Paul said. He moved quickly to the edge of the bed, tiptoed to the door and put his ear to it; after a minute he threw it open. All that fell into the bedroom was the dim light from the corridor.
So that each minute would not be an hour, he had brought a book with him to read. He carried it in his hand while he paced, just like the expectant fathers in the movies. He sat down and opened an osteopathic magazine. Again he came upon the picture of Dr. Selwyn Sales of Des Moines. His hobbies were reading and his family. His wife was a Canadian. He had taught at Kirksville, Missouri. Missouri! Paul began to search, with no success, for the editorial in which he had seen Dr. Tom Smith’s name. He flipped through magazine after magazine until he was nearly frantic. Finally he forced himself to put down the magazines, and started pacing again. The elevator door opened in the hallway. It slammed s
hut. A figure moved in the pebbled glass of Dr. Smith’s outer doorway. Thank God—it moved on. He heard Mrs. Kuzmyak say something. He heard metallic clinking. Had Kuzmyak administered the pentothal? With those oversized brutish pumpkin hands, had she pushed too deep, too hard? He did not even know how many minutes the whole thing should take. Shouldn’t it be over soon? When she hemorrhaged, what would they do? If there is a body to dispose of—
The door opened and Kuzmyak appeared. “Over,” she said, yanking off her gloves. She hadn’t even worn a mask! She had breathed her fat greasy germs right into Libby! Over? What’s over?
“What?”
Kuzmyak did not like his tone or volume. “Just let Doctor Tom cover her up,” she said abruptly.
“For Christ sake!” Paul rushed through the door just as the doctor’s hands were pulling Libby’s skirt down around her knees. She had worn the old skirt with the oversized girlish safety pin in front, to make it easier; twice before they had left the apartment she had put on fresh underwear. Her eyes were closed now, but she was breathing.
“It takes a few minutes,” Dr. Tom said. But he would not look at Paul. Was he worried? What was going on? “Mrs. Kuzmyak will make some coffee.”
Paul took his wife’s hand—her blouse was unbuttoned. What had her blouse to do with anything? Asleep, anesthetized, what exactly had happened to her? All those women dropping at Smith’s feet—
“Honey? Libby?”
“It takes a while,” said Dr. Tom, washing his hands.
“She’s all right?”
“Like new.”
“Look—is she all right?” He only wanted the doctor to turn and talk to him. “Did you get it all out? Is she bleeding—”
“Control yourself.”
“Just yes or no!”
“Just you don’t be too snippy!” Kuzmyak was standing in the doorway with a kettle. “Poor Doctor Tom,” she said, shaking her head.
“Libby?” Paul rubbed her hand. “C’mon, Lib.”
“That one like Nescafé?” asked Kuzmyak.
“Anything.” He was rubbing and rubbing her hand, to no avail. “Come on, honey, you’re fine, just fine—”
