The Listener

by Taylor Caldwell

  He walked reluctantly to the chair, then leaned on its back, facing the curtains. He was very curious again. “I like to talk to some people,” he said. “But I’d prefer not to see you, under the circumstances. By the way, there’s an old dying woman waiting outside. She probably needs to talk to you more than I do. I think I’ll call her in.” He went to the door through which he had entered. It could not be opened except on the farther side. He went to the curtains and read the little brass plate sunk in the marble wall. “Well, I hope they thank you,” he said.

  The room waited. It had a calmness as of absolute eternity, where time did not exist. Felix thought of his everlastingly crowded waiting room; the walls inside were lined, too, and sometimes patients had to wait outside in the hall. The specialists would often pass in the hall and would look expectantly at the faces. A kidney case here, an arthritic patient there; obviously this was a heart case, another as obviously cancer, or this or that. Old Felix would refer this one or that one; it had been an excellent idea to have an old G.P. in this building. He never asked or hinted for a cut, either. Yes, an excellent idea.

  Felix could see his waiting room sharply and clearly, the frightened faces of the patients, the dun clothing, the shoddy shoes, the bandannas of some of the poorer women, the children whose faces were twisted with apprehension. And then, when he appeared, the sudden lightening, the hope, the diffident smiles. Well, that was all very nice! But the thin sheaf of checks at the end of the month wasn’t so heartening, as his secretary pointed out; he was lucky to get a check for every six bills; he was lucky, sometimes, ever to get anything at all. He turned bills over to the collection agency only when he was positive that the patients were trying to cheat him or when they had the ability to pay at least in small installments. He was a fool. He was fifty-two and, outside of the score or so of the Jim Merwins, he’d never been able to attract the ‘right’ kind of paying patient, who could sponsor those who could not pay.

  He found himself sitting in the chair. He faced the curtains. “I suppose you’re a doctor,” he said. “Well, meet a fellow sufferer. I’m a G.P. Are you?”

  He did not hear a sound, a voice, or a rustle, or a movement. Yet all at once he was certain he had heard a murmur of affirmation somewhere. He looked about sharply. He’d been imagining things! Your mind could play tricks on you in such a quiet place, where there was no time, no intrusion, nothing but yourself facing — who?

  “I heard you are here twenty-four hours a day,” he said with his faint, skeptical smile. “Well, I’m like that too. On call twenty-four hours a day. I’m lucky if I’m able to get five hours’ sleep a night, a few nights a week. Don’t you get tired too?”

  Again he thought he heard a murmur, but this was a negative one. He rubbed his ears until they were pink. “You don’t?” he said incredulously. “When do you sleep?” The white walls and ceilings smiled at him. He sat upright. “Don’t you have parents? Brothers? Sisters? Children?”

  The gentle warmth flowed about him, assenting. He forgot to wait for a voice. He did not know how it was, but he was content with the sensation of listening, of assent or dissent. He had not thought of his old grandfather for years, in his skullcap, sitting near the kitchen stove in his mother’s house, warming his hands in the winter and rocking in the comfortable chair she had always kept for him. His grandfather had rarely spoken; he had only listened, and very often he had smiled. It was enough; he understood, and answered, without words.

  “You remind me of my grandfather,” Felix said suddenly. “Are you old? Very old?”

  Was that assent, or dissent, or both? Felix sat back in the chair. He said nothing. He thought of Gay and Jerome and the little worldly evidences of success he possessed and of the Jim Merwins. Time passed; or, rather, it seemed not to be at all. Felix started, came to himself. “I suppose,” he said, “I should tell you my troubles.”

  Then — he must be losing his mind! — he was positive that someone had been listening to his thoughts all this time and that the man behind the curtain knew everything about him. This unnerved Felix a little. A skeptic, he had smiled at extra-sensory perception, though he had admitted that there might be ‘something to it, something that will be explained easily enough sometime’. Was the man who was listening gifted with ESP? All at once Felix was certain of it. He was more than ever unnerved. He cleared his throat. He had had to learn, while still a child at school, to conceal emotions that could become vehement. People disliked vehemence or anything else that threatened their superficial lives or disturbed their determined ‘happiness’. They were particularly offended by people in trouble, or at least by those who revealed in expression, abstraction, or gesture that they were in trouble. Everything must be ‘happiness’.

  “A damn-fool phrase,” said Felix aloud. “ ‘Happiness’. That’s for babies. I wonder when we’ll grow up as a nation and learn there’s no ‘happiness’? You should see my waiting room, or the waiting room of any doctor, or the wards in the hospitals! Yet even the patients, when leaving, will put on a smirk as if to show the displeased world that they are ‘happy’, too, even if death is in their bodies. So they’ll be accepted by the ‘happiness cultists’ and not be rejected as unpleasant reminders that there’s pain in the world, and death and funerals.”

  He shifted, hotly vexed, in his chair. “I spent four years in Europe,” he said. “Yes, there was a war on — another damn-fool phrase. ‘A war on’. As if there isn’t all the time, somewhere. But, discounting the war, the people seemed more adult, in some way. No one expected anyone to be ‘happy, happy, happy’. If you were, then you were to be congratulated. But no one demanded it as a rite you must perform in public, as a social duty. No one thought you were inferior or degraded if you were in misery, as they do in America. What the hell is all this ‘happiness’ bit, anyway?”

  He looked at the curtains. “But that isn’t what I came to tell you. It’s just something that’s been like a flea irritating my mind all the time.”

  He was a nervous man but always concealed his nervousness except in his constant cigarette-smoking. He felt for his cigarette case. Then the desire passed and he withdrew his hand from his pocket. The tension in his neck and shoulder muscles was ebbing away; it was a strange sensation, this ease, one he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  He said abruptly, “I’ve wanted ‘happiness’ for my son, Jerome. I’ve wanted an easier life for him, not like mine. I’ve wanted him to have success, so that he can — ”

  He stared at the curtains. “Why, damn it, so he may be accepted by the Jim Merwins of the world and join their clubs and not be outside the pale! So he can play golf with them, and bet with them, and be invited to their houses, and have as good a car as they have, and a house at least as fine as theirs, and marry some nice girl of good family who has money! A social success! Not to be outside the pale!”

  He felt sick with his embarrassment and shame. But he made his voice challenging. “Do you know what that means — being without the pale? Do you know what it means, being a Jew? I do!”

  The room appeared to enfold him with sadness and comprehension, and yet with hope. “You’re a Jew!” he exclaimed incredulously. “A Jew? A Jewish doctor?”

  He stopped, straining toward the curtains. Then he sighed. “If you are and you have a son, you’ll understand why I wanted more for Jerome than I had for myself. Oh, Gay gets impatient with me. She says, ‘What does that matter? Pale, nothing. Everybody’s outside of some pale. If they only admit one or two Jews to Jim Merwin’s clubs, and they Supreme Court judges or something, they also have a quota on Catholics. A Catholic member has to die before another is admitted, and they have to be top-drawer. Just to associate with the Jim Merwins! The Italians and the Poles are outside some invisible pale, and so are millions of others, through lack of education or money or background or family. Why, some Jews put other Jews outside a pale of their own! It’s a nasty human custom’. ”

  Felix laughed shortly. “I suppose, in a way
, that Gay’s right. But I don’t want Jerome to encounter anymore pales than he has to. I want him to be hap — ” He stopped, and his fair skin became brightly pink. “Oh, damn,” he murmured sheepishly.

  Then he was defiant again. “All right, so I’m stupid. Let’s forget what I said. I’ve been wandering. I don’t, I think, want Jerome to have enough money so he can associate with the Jim Merwins. At least I don’t now. But I do want him to be a specialist so he’ll have an easier life than mine, a more secure life, and not be a grubber like me, with my door and my telephone open twenty-four hours a day. For the sick.”

  Had the room become slightly cooler, more withdrawn, more thoughtful? He could sense it. He stroked his eyebrows in agitation. “Perhaps,” he said, “I don’t mean it quite that way. After all, I’m a physician, and the sick are my charges. Yes, my charges. It’s funny, but I don’t know if I’ve consciously thought of them like that before.”

  Then after a little he brightened. “Well, yes, I have. Underneath, I mean. I’ve been mixed up, I think. That’s what comes of being a father. At one time all physicians were priests, thousands of years ago, and they didn’t marry and they didn’t have children. They dedicated their lives to healing the sick and comforting them and giving them courage to face death. Can you understand an attitude like that? I think I can. Now.”

  He was silent for a long time, thinking. His thoughts flowed quickly, bringing thousands of pictures before him. The strain left his face. He began to smile.

  “I’ve just thought of something. When Gay inherited that ten thousand dollars from old Harry Stern, she said to me, ‘Now you can go back for a few years’ more study. If you want to. To become a specialist. If you want to’. And she looked at me with her pretty eyes and waited.”

  Felix sat up straight, excited. “Do you know what I said? ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter’. I thought I was thinking that we’d better use the money to pay off the mortgage or something. But I wasn’t! Away back in my mind was the thought that I just wanted to be a G.P., with my door and telephone open twenty-four hours a day for people who knew that specialists had certain hours, and appointments rigidly scheduled, and a telephone-answering service which they didn’t bother to check if they had a dinner appointment or a golf date, or a weekend coming up at someone’s country home.

  “As if,” said Felix with contempt, “people can schedule when to be sick or dying or injured, or when to have a baby! I know one obstetrician who actually does schedule the babies! If he wants a winter holiday, he takes his patients to the hospital and induces birth. Sometimes it’s all right. And sometimes it isn’t! But even the women who lose their babies swear by him. He has charm. I don’t.”

  He brooded on that. Then he said, “But I have something else. My patients trust me. When they call their priest or minister or rabbi, they call me too. Even when they know I can’t help them any longer. Now that’s something, isn’t it?” His tired face was bright and excited. He forgot to control his emotions. He jumped up and walked rapidly up and down the room, gesticulating, murmuring to himself.

  “People are people. They can pretend to be civilized and brave and sophisticated, but when it comes to death they are all the same. When they take off their clothes and put on the white shirts I have for them, before examination, they’re all the same. The same human faces, the same emotions, the same fears, the same hopes, the same loves and hates. They are only men. Even,” he said, “the Jim Merwins.”

  He stopped. All his hatred for Jim Merwin was gone. Why, the poor, fat, suffering, cowardly bastard, he thought fondly. He’s scared to death of an operation. He thinks he might die. Then what about his money and his clubs and nice smooth Lucy? He knows she’ll marry again before he’s cold. And those kids of his! He doesn’t know, nor Lucy, either, that the shine in his eyes, his pampered eighteen-year-old daughter, is coming to me to be cured of syphilis. His innocent little ewe lamb. It would kill them both to know, and so I haven’t told them. I’ve just given the sneaking little bitch a few hard lectures which her parents should have given her years ago, and put the fear of God in her. That’s what a doctor is for. That’s what a G.P. is for. If I’d been a specialist — Why, a specialist would have sent her bills her allowance couldn’t cover, and so Jim would know. I charge her five dollars a shot, which is one fourth her weekly allowance. She’ll be cured soon, and she’s a different girl now. Thanks to me.

  He looked at the curtains, and again he had the thought that he had been heard.

  “I’m thinking,” he said, “of all the people who might die because they can’t afford specialists. I don’t mean the poverty-stricken, who get the same treatment free from specialists that the rich get. I mean the lower middle class, the people I have. They can pay so much, and they know it. So without the G.P. they’d get no treatment at all, and they’d go on suffering the rest of their lives. Or they’d die.”

  He smiled at the curtains. “Do you know the most wonderful thing my son ever said to me — that anyone ever said to me? ‘I want to be a man like you’. Now what greater satisfaction can a man have than that? A man like me. I’m going to write Jerome a letter tonight! I’m going to tell him I’m proud of him because he wants to heal the sick, whether he gets paid or not, whether or not he’ll ever get rich. He won’t. But that doesn’t matter, does it?”

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “For why was a man born, anyway, except to help his fellow man, to heal him, to comfort him?”

  He went closer to the curtains. He looked at the button. He hesitated. Then he pushed the button quickly. The curtains rolled apart.

  He saw the light and who stood in it.

  His face worked strongly. He said, “Yes. You healed the sick, didn’t you? And you were outside the pale, weren’t you? I — Gay and I — we belong to a book club. We’ve just read a book about you and what you did.

  “You never wanted to be accepted or be a social success. If I remember right, the poor and the sick came to you in droves, and you never turned them away because they had no money. You never had a fine house, or servants, or good clothing. That didn’t matter. You were a doctor. I suppose you still are.

  “That awful thing on your head — Do you know something? Every real doctor wears it around his heart.”

  SOUL THIRTEEN

  The Unhonored

  Peace be unto you.

  John 20:21, 26

  Mrs. Ami Logan watched Felix Arnstein go into the room beyond. She, too, had a practiced eye. Some kind of businessman, she thought, or maybe a lawyer or a doctor. Don’t make too much money; you can see that. Good clothes, but I’ve seen better. That suit wasn’t so new, either. But he had nice ways. Not the kind of ‘nice’ ways some folks had, being pretty sweet about ‘the poor working people’ and all the time they didn’t give a darn about ‘the poor working people’. It just sounded nice to them and their friends coming in for cocktail parties. She’d heard more talk about the ‘rights’ of the working people for the past twenty years than she’d ever heard before, and it didn’t mean a thing. Not a thing. Funny. The ladies who employed her would talk for hours — just hours — to their cocktail friends about progress and Labor. You could hear their high voices, talking, talking, getting excited; you could listen from the kitchen, where you’d be setting out the plates of ham and cheese and all kinds of fancy meats that wouldn’t set well on your stomach, and awful salads with things in them, though you knew they cost a lot of money. And all kinds of little foreign cakes, and ices. Not that you’d get even a snitch of it; the ladies of the house were sharp about that. Watching every mouthful.

  And then when your feet wouldn’t be feeling nothing anymore they’d come into the kitchen with shiny eyes after all their talk, and then their eyes wouldn’t be shiny no more. They’d say, real sharp, “Let me see. What time did you come, Ami? Does that really make nine hours? Oh no! It’s just eight hours and forty minutes! Ami! Now, let me see; where’s that pad and pencil? I’ll figure it out, and the carfar
e.”

  They did, too. To the last cent. If they could break a cent in half with their teeth, they’d do it. They looked like they wanted to do it. And they’d never think of driving you to your bus stop, a mile away, sometimes at night.

  But that man who just went in. He hadn’t looked at her like she was Labor. He’d looked at her like she was a human being; he’d looked at her feet. Well, that had made her mad, a little. After all, when you’re on your feet sometimes twelve hours a day your feet’d get like cushions and ache like sin. Besides, he was young; he didn’t know what it was to be seventy-one — and no place to lie your head, soon. Still, he’d been real nice, getting her a chair and wanting her to go in first. She didn’t want his pity, though! She didn’t want no darn person’s pity. She’d worked all her life, and she could go on working. If she still could have a place to lie her head. And be independent.

  She’d been independent all her life. Why, she’d been out working after school since she was nine years old, washing dishes in the neighborhood when some woman was sick in bed or just had a baby, and cleaning windows and shoveling snow and churning ice cream and taking care of little kids, and sweeping porches and cellars, and putting out the ashes. Hundreds of things. Ami tossed her head. It hadn’t hurt her none, no sir. It was being lazy that hurt people, and having things easy and never getting their hands dirty. Why, give her a good broom any time and not one of those electric brooms like they called them! They just didn’t seem to get the rugs as clean. And the vacuum cleaners. Sure, they was easy; nobody took up their wall-to-walls anymore; nobody ever beat carpets and hung them out in the air.