The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

  By the time I made it to campus, tote bag straining at the seams, the noon bells were ringing and the sun was high. I would have to air myself out and re-pin my hair before the party, but it was good to be out of doors at this hour. Usually I was shut away at work with my catalogues. I had forgotten what a rich, sensual world existed outside the museum’s walls.

  The main lawn on campus was newly melted. I breathed in the smell of mud and chlorophyll and excrement, decay that would feed the first delicate green shoots. I felt my entire self opening to the sun just like the plant life pushing through the steaming earth. Ahead of me a boy and a girl walked side by side. They were not lovers — I could tell from the way the girl stiffened when the boy’s arm touched hers. He kept brushing her as if by accident when they both knew it was deliberate. The girl laughed while the sun poured down like honey, anointing us all.

  My hands were too full to search for my key; luckily the door to the museum was ajar. I barrelled in, carrying the smell of outdoors with me and tracking mud. The air was so foul I almost walked right out again. Jakob Hertzlich was at the table, blowing smoke rings. I watched as one detached from him and wobbled up over his head like a lopsided halo.

  “Good morning,” I said to let him know I had arrived.

  There was a pause but he did not look up or rise. “Afternoon if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Good afternoon then.” He was always so punctilious! In his work for me I appreciated it, but at the moment it made me want to scream. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, nodding my chin at the smoke.

  “Working,” he said, deliberately misconstruing.

  I dropped my bags. “And the implication is that I am not?”

  “No implication.” He looked up at last, squinting through the haze. “You know what you’re up to. Far be it from me to judge.”

  “Precisely,” I said. I waved my hands, making ripples in the air. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “You weren’t here. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  I groaned and went over to the windows. Opening them was tricky. At one end of the pole was a metal clip one had to fasten to a ring at the top of each window pane. It made me think of a harpoon as it wavered unsteadily in my hands. I was short, that was the problem. If I were a foot taller the task would have been easy. As it was the pole wobbled this way and that, grazing the ring on occasion, but never coming close to real connection.

  Jakob did not offer to help. Not that he was doing anything else of value. He was finishing his cigarette. I laid down the pole and stripped off my coat. Sweat beaded on my lip. I could taste the salt, smell the rankness of my own frustration. I went after that window as if my life depended on it, as if the world would end if I were unable to open it.

  The concentration demanded by the task calmed me. Work tended to affect me this way. It was like a meditation, a path to still waters. The hook caught and I pulled hard, up and back. The experience was much like fishing: the stretches of silence, the excitement as the rod’s tip bobbed and jerked. The pane slammed down, stopped only by two chains nailed into the topmost ledge, bouncing three times before it settled. The air rushed in. The clean green smells of spring. For the first time since my arrival I took a deep breath.

  “I gave the tutorial this morning.”

  That stopped me short. “Oh Lord,” I said. My best student came on Fridays. A Jewish boy like Jakob. His name was Segall. It was believed he’d win the physiology prize that year. “I completely forgot. Was he upset?”

  Jakob gave a snort of laughter. “No. Worried, if you must know. You’re never late.”

  “I had to go to the shops. I’ve bought preserves, cheese, bread and champagne.”

  Jakob stared blankly and it was only then I understood. He had not been present when I’d announced the party for Howlett. He had already left the museum.

  “We’re having a party,” I said quickly.

  “You and I?”

  I had to restrain myself from shaking him. “Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “It’s for Howlett.”

  Jakob returned to his work. His shirt, I couldn’t help noticing, was the same one he’d worn the day before, and the day before that. He hadn’t shaved or combed his hair. “You can leave that, Mr. Hertzlich,” I said, pushing the specimens out of his reach and shoving his notes to the side. “We must clean up.”

  “I’m not a proud man,” he said, swivelling to face me, “but making parties for windbags wasn’t one of the requisites when I signed on.” He retrieved his notes, went to my desk and sat down.

  I took out my pocket watch. It was almost one and I didn’t have time. If Jakob Hertzlich wouldn’t help, so be it. I would remember his insolence, perhaps even speak to Dean Clarke about it, but the choice was his.

  I transferred the jars in the process of being labelled to nearby shelves. I wasn’t particularly orderly about it. There simply wasn’t time. After the party we would retrieve them and restart the labelling process, but for now I needed them out of the way. I had to wipe the table down. It was stained and reeked of chemicals, highly unappetizing no matter how accustomed Howlett was to such things. Bad enough that he would be surrounded by excised organs as he nibbled and drank.

  From one of my bags I pulled a folded bed sheet that I planned to use as a tablecloth. There was no embroidery or lace trim at the corners, but it was clean and starched and would be an improvement over the stained, nicked wood of the work table. The fit was perfect and the room grew suddenly more formal.

  Jakob watched me sidelong, and at one point as I swept with a broom in the vicinity of his feet he addressed me. “It’s not worth it.”

  I kept on sweeping. I was wearing a lab coat to protect my dress, but it did little to protect my feelings. It was humiliating to be working like a maid, breathing in dust while Jakob sat in my chair, looking on. I was his superior for heaven’s sake. This would not have happened if I’d been a man.

  “You’ll exhaust yourself.”

  I could not believe his gall. I had been working for over an hour and he’d not lifted a finger. “I’d tire myself less if you’d help.”

  Jakob barely flinched. “Why are you going to all this trouble?”

  “Your salary depends on him for one thing,” I reminded him. “Much of mine does too.”

  Jakob snorted again. “So it’s money? Is that what this is all about?”

  I threw down the broom, scattering dirt and debris. “Of course not! He’s a good man, Jakob. He’s been generous to us, can’t you see? He’s backed me with his own money when no one else would offer me a dime. He’s helped me publish. If it weren’t for him I

  wouldn’t have won that prize.”

  “You’re wrong there.”

  I closed my eyes and counted. Jakob was like the male version of the girl in the nursery rhyme with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When he was good, he was very, very good. But when he was bad, he was horrid.

  “He doesn’t deserve the pedestal, Agnes.” He made a face then rooted in his pocket and pulled out the half-smoked stub of another cigarette.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Fortunately he didn’t have a match. He contemplated it, turning it slowly in his fingers before addressing me again. “You’re behaving like a child, Agnes. And it’s not right. You’ll be hurt in the end.” He didn’t look at me but twisted the stub so tightly that the paper tore. “You don’t see it but it will happen. He doesn’t care. Not about you and certainly not about this.” He flung his arm at the room, now vastly improved from an hour’s frantic sweeping and tidying.

  “There’s only one thing Dr. William E. Howlett cares about,” said Jakob, spitting out each syllable of Howlett’s name, “and that’s William E. Howlett.”

  “That’s enough,” I said. All the happiness and energy I’d felt earlier that morning was leaking away. My head felt achy and tight.

  But Jakob Hertzlich wasn’t quite done. “Until yesterday I thought what we were doing her
e was worthwhile. This museum I mean. I didn’t mind putting in the hours because we were serving people who were learning about medicine and disease. They need to see the organs and tissues first-hand so they’ll be able to recognize them in their clinical practices. We’re serving science, ars medica and all that edifying bunk. That’s what I used to think.

  “But now I see things more clearly. We’re not serving science here, are we? We’re serving William E. Howlett and his puffed bladder of an ego. This museum is his monument, isn’t it? No wonder he sends money your way. They’ll name it after him when he dies. There’ll be no mention of Agnes White, you can be sure of that.”

  I stared at the scraps at my feet. My silence seemed to enrage Jakob, who slammed his hand on my desk. “And you’re so ready to play his game. Open your eyes! Can’t you see that everything he helps you with helps him? It’s his career he’s building, not yours, Agnes. Has he got you so mesmerized you’ve gone blind?”

  In a quieter voice he announced that he needed a smoke. “Not here, don’t worry. I won’t disturb your preparations.” He took up his coat and walked out.

  As soon as he was gone I collapsed into the chair he’d just vacated — my chair, which happened still to be warm from him. His very particular smell — a mixture of cigarettes and the yeasty smell of his skin — lingered in the air. I couldn’t think of what he’d said, couldn’t bring myself to contemplate it.

  Howlett did care, I told myself. He was looking out for me. Jakob Hertzlich was jealous, that was all. He was a bitter man with blighted prospects and I would have to be more circumspect with him in the future. I would discuss the matter with Dean Clarke. I hadn’t feared Jakob during the confrontation but I’d been taken aback by the force of his anger.

  Jakob knew nothing of the link between me and Howlett. All he saw was my adulation, which probably seemed pathetic, just as Rivers’s did to me, watching from the outside. But Jakob had no idea that my father stood like a shadow behind Howlett whenever he and I met. I couldn’t blame Jakob for this ignorance but the anger he’d shown was entirely unnecessary.

  I was slicing cucumbers for sandwiches when Mrs. Greaves materialized in the doorway. Mrs. Greaves was the dean’s secretary, a formidable woman whose blue-tinted hair was drawn back tightly from her forehead. The blue head rotated slowly, taking in the swept floor, the white cloth, the food laid out in an attempt to turn the museum into a banquet hall. When finally her eyes came to rest on me she gave a grim smile. “A call just came through for you, Miss White,” she said.

  Howlett had telephoned. The portrait sitting was taking longer than foreseen. High tea would have to be postponed until November at Oxford. He hoped there was no inconvenience. All of this was delivered in Mrs. Greaves’s toneless voice. When she finished her lips flattened into a straight line. “Looks like there has been inconvenience,” she said, tilting her head at the table. “What a lovely spread.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Do you want some help putting things away?” Mrs. Greaves offered, seeing how upset I was.

  I shook my head and moved to my desk where I unbuttoned my lab coat. I did not look up again and at some point she took the hint and left. Half an hour later I was still sitting at my desk, chin propped on one palm. There were papers in front of me — Jakob Hertzlich’s papers — so anyone who glanced in the door might think I was working. But my mind wouldn’t focus. I was simply staring at the white sheets and the contrast they made with my green felt desk pad. My body felt almost numb.

  Dugald Rivers stuck his head in the doorway. “I bumped into Greaves,” he said quietly. “It’s a shame about the party.” His eyes made a tour of the room and returned to me. “Look at the trouble you went to, dear Agnes!”

  To my intense annoyance my chin began to quiver.

  “There, there,” said Dugald, standing awkwardly beside me, his eyes big with sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, drying my eyes on my new dress. “It’s not important, really.”

  He gave me an awkward pat on the back. His face was flushed and shiny. “It is,” he said, his voice mounting even higher than normal with the difficulty of this intimacy. “Believe me, Agnes, I understand.”

  I nodded and pointed at the platter of sandwiches. “You want them?”

  Dugald sniffed appreciatively. “Cucumber?”

  I nodded again with more assurance. “Take them, Dugald. Please.”

  My reward was a peck on the cheek. “Stiff upper lip, White. You’ll survive.” He made off down the hall, the platter on his flattened, upturned palms.

  After he had gone I began to sort through Jakob’s notes. He’d done a considerable amount of work while I’d been navigating the fruit stands and I decided to pick up from where he had left off, copying Howlett’s notes onto cards, which Jakob would eventually type for the catalogue. It was painstaking work, not creative in any way, but utterly consuming — exactly the antidote I needed. I barely noticed when the bell in the hall rang at three o’clock, then at four and again at five, the hour Jakob Hertzlich chose to return.

  “I heard,” he said simply, taking a sheaf of foolscap from my desk so that he too might help transpose. His tone was no longer hostile. “Too bad.”

  I said nothing. The work was carrying me and I didn’t dare stop. I could not face further comments from Jakob. I kept scribbling and sorting, creating order out of the mess in front of me. It kept me from thinking and, most importantly, from feeling. Every so often I let out a sigh.

  Jakob shut the window and turned on more lights. I realized I’d been working in near darkness. Outside I could see the wavering reflection of a gas jet. The building was silent. Not a single step echoed in the hallway. After a considerable time a bell rang, making me start. I pulled out my pocket watch and saw to my astonishment that it was eight o’clock.

  Jakob had sat down at the table again and taken up his pen. His eyes were on his pages but I had a feeling he wasn’t reading. His skin looked yellow in the glare from the overhead light and there were dark smudges under both his eyes. His shirt was so big I couldn’t make out the contours of the body inside it. He probably hadn’t eaten today but had smoked those damned cigarettes.

  “What do you say to some food?”

  He watched neutrally as I unwrapped the cheese and crackers. There were no plates but we used the starched linen napkins inherited from my grandmother. Jakob spread his out to its full size on the table and began stacking.

  We did not speak. I hadn’t eaten that day, not even breakfast as I’d left the flat so early. The inside of the brie flowed out the moment Jakob pierced the rind with his knife. We scooped spoonfuls onto crackers and ate them down. After his fourth or fifth cracker Jakob paused, scanned the room and went over to the sink. He didn’t even ask, just pulled the bottle from the pail of mostly melted ice and unscrewed its wire top. Seconds later the cork sailed over our heads, smacking the wall above the door, rustling the streamers of decorative crepe I’d tacked there as it dropped to the floor. There was a spout of froth and I ran to him with teacups.

  “Cheers,” he said, spilling some of the champagne. “It’s a little more lively than tea.”

  I raised my cup and we clinked. Jakob Hertzlich had never drunk champagne before. He told me this later, after we’d eaten our fill of cheese and preserves and imported crackers. Jakob Hertzlich had never drunk anything alcoholic, he confessed. Jews didn’t as a rule, except for the wine they served on the Sabbath. That sickly sweet stuff could turn a person off spirits for life. “But this,” he said, raising his teacup dramatically, “is the stuff of life.”

  I had drunk it only once before myself, and then barely a sip, when Dean Clarke had invited me to his home on New Year’s Eve for a party. All I remembered were bubbles going up my nose and making me itch. I jiggled my cup, creating a golden maelstrom. The taste was so light it didn’t seem of this world. I poured us a second round.

  Jakob told his story, which stretched back to include tales o
f his father Otto Hertzlich and his mother Craina. “We lived in Berlin,” Jakob explained, “where the Hertzlichs had been in the tobacco trade for several generations. My father manufactured fine cigars and sold them throughout the Continent. He was a big success, but then something happened.”

  Jakob was not entirely clear on the details but somehow Otto Hertzlich had lost a great deal of money and creditors began hounding him. “I was only three at the time,” said Jakob. “I remember leaving our house in the middle of the night, sneaking away down to the docks like thieves so that we could board a ship. On the way down there someone recognized us. My first real memory is of a man running toward our cab in a dark Berlin street, his face blazing with anger, shouting insults.”

  I was engrossed by the tale. Many immigrants had stories like this tucked away in their trunks in the attic — stories of leaving the old country, usually in haste and physical danger. It informed the people who lived here, made them perhaps a little hardier than elsewhere and certainly more appreciative.

  From the very start Otto Hertzlich had loved his new home. The land on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River was ideal for tobacco farming, and with Montreal’s port and a burgeoning population he knew he had stumbled onto a very good thing.

  “My father is a clever man, Agnes. He learned English quickly, even if he never completely got the accent down. He’s charming. He uses old-world expressions and kisses women’s hands. He was never entirely accepted by the Montreal elite, but he certainly was noticed. My mother too. She was beautiful, dark and petite. My parents,” Jakob concluded, pausing for a sip of champagne, “had everything in their new life that a young couple could wish for.” He put his cup on the table and looked at me. “Everything, that is, except a suitable son.”