Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Well,” Gabe said.

“Your honest opinion,” said the doctor, excited.

“Well, I think it could probably be explained to them—”

“You see, Mordecai,” Fay said, “edu ca tion—”

“Shhh …” he said.

Gabe started again. “I think it could probably be explained to the parents. That is, the doctor could make a distinction for them—”

“Go ahead, go ahead,” Dr. Wallach said, “very interesting this distinction business.”

“That there are rules on the one hand, but that there’s the essence of the religion too. That the rules can be suspended sometimes in the name of what’s most essential. The child’s life, living, is more crucial than the breaking of the commandment, or the law, not to eat blood.”

Dr. Wallach saw Mrs. Silberman clicking her tongue. He did not know whether to interrupt before she said something not quite worthy of herself, or to let the conversation he had worked so to initiate, go its own way. He tried relaxing as she said, “Well, I just can’t see it. I mean they are not eating blood. I can’t agree to that. A transfusion just isn’t eating blood, not to my way of thinking.”

Gabe mumbled something and turned his attention back to his coffee cup.

“Wait a minute, just a minute,” the doctor rushed in. “This isn’t a dispute. Actually I don’t think that’s quite the point Gabe was making, Fay. If I have it right, Gabe, what you’re saying—”

“We just disagree, I suppose,” she said with a tinkly laugh. “Because to me, you see, you can’t even begin to call a blood transfusion eating blood. Our veins are one thing, and our mouths another.”

Gabe simply sighed.

“Please,” said Fay, waving a hand and turning to face him, “I’m not asking you to give in. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.”

“True,” the young man said.

Oh no — was Fay going to carry a grudge? The boy no longer objected to her; he had made that clear on the beach. Couldn’t she let by-gones be by-gones? But then she didn’t know they were … He could not decide whether to give up on the conversation or to try to smooth things over.

“Well,” he said, “I think that threw some light. I think, however, Gabriel, I think I might agree you were side-stepping a little. These, after all, aren’t people who can be reasoned with.”

“Of course they aren’t. They’re ignorant,” Fay said.

She spoke so forcefully that the doctor nearly became frantic. “See, that’s his approach, Fay. That’s just one approach — this is an intellectual exercise, we’re simply working out the kinks in our minds.”

“Still—”

But he raised his palm at her, a policeman halting traffic; he could feel his eyes hardening. And it worked — she shut up. What they should do now, he thought, was get into their swim suits, take the umbrella and chairs, and go down to the beach for the rest of the day. Surely, however, the three of them could conduct an adult conversation; he was not suggesting that they should all learn to live forever in the same house. To ask for a little respect and understanding was not, to his way of thinking, to ask for too much.

Gabe had set down his empty cup on the table; he seemed waiting for permission to leave. Well, he could just stay where he was! The father was still the father, and the son the son! “So what would you do? ” Dr. Wallach asked.

“I—” Gabe rubbed his hands along his trousers. “I’d give the child the transfusion.”

“You realize the law now,” said the doctor, instantly impassioned again. “You realize the law says no minor can be operated on, given a transfusion or whatever, without permission of the parents. You understand that now?”

“I’d give the child the transfusion.” Gabe had spoken in a very soft voice.

“All right , all right. ” Dr. Wallach took his spoon and crossed it over his knife. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his head so that all the loose skin of his throat was drawn upwards. He addressed the fancy chandelier. “I wouldn’t,” he said.

“Mordecai!” Fay said.

He spread two hands on the tablecloth — the hands of a murderer, he thought, feeling a strange excitement — and left them there, palms down. “That’s right. I wouldn’t give the child a drop of blood.”

“That’s not a bit like you,” Fay said.

How did she know? Perhaps Anna had known what he was like … but then having known, she had dealt with him. At least Fay didn’t simply deal with him; she admired him. Worse — she sentimentalized him, she misunderstood and overvalued him. All of which he had encouraged. He had chosen this house for her with a taste he pretended was his own; but he knew he really had no taste. The furnishings were of a kind that his dead wife would have liked for a summer place, and so he had said to Fay, “Take it.” And she had.

He kept two strong hands on the table anyway. “It’s a matter of respect,” he said, “that we’re dealing with. You see? The parent is the father to the child.’ Wordsworth?” he asked, turning to Gabe. Then he realized his mistake. But it was only one of several misquotations and malapropisms that had lately passed his lips. And though inaccuracy — pretension — was one thing when the audience was Fay, it was another when it was his son — or Abe Cole. It was not, he suddenly recalled, Recollections of Things Past , but Remembrance! And Oedipus was not by Socrates — it was by Sophocles! Christ! Under the umbrella yesterday, what an ass he must have seemed. What was he up to, passing himself off as something he wasn’t? Was this his fate at the age of sixty, to be a fool?

Gabe was saying, “I think it’s ‘The child is the father of the man ’—but I know what you mean.”

It did not help the doctor’s condition any to know that his son now felt the need to be kind to him. “I believe in the depth of belief,” Dr. Wallach said, raising his voice. “If the other fellow’s got a belief, I honor that belief. We have to have more respect for the other fellow’s wish; he wants what he believes in. Who am I to tell him differently?”

“You’d let the child die?” Gabe asked.

“Absolutely!” He had not felt so sure before as he did now.

“Well,” Gabe said, “I don’t know …”

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know if you really would do it, faced with the situation.”

“Then you don’t know me.”

Apparently no one could think of what to say next. Dr. Wallach piled some silverware on his plate; then he turned and asked Fay her opinion. “Go ahead,” he said, “this is still a discussion as far as I’m concerned, not a dispute.”

She put out her cigarette in the ash tray. The grainy look around her dark eyes gave her an air of knowingness — until she spoke. “This is certainly a case of morals,” she said, and the doctor heard his own words once again. “Morals certainly enters into it …”

“Exactly,” he said, and quickly he turned to his son. “What do I seem to you here, Gabe, too — too Nietzschean?”

“No, no, I don’t think that.”

“I’m telling you, if the chips were down, if I had been this poor fellow in Texas, that’s what I would have done.”

Gabe seemed at last to have run out of patience. “Why? So you wouldn’t lose your license?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Then it’s still a mystery to me.”

“You believe I’d do it though?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose I do.”

“All right, all right. The why, I’ll grant you, is the crux all right.”

Mrs. Silberman flicked open the initialed gold case that had been her engagement present, and put a new cigarette into her holder. Since she had stopped drinking, she smoked all the time. Did that serve to blur the image of her first husband too? If it was such a difficult image to blur, if it wouldn’t just stay blurred, then why was she even thinking of another man? Was he simply to be a convenience?