Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“My pretty yellow hair fell out. This is a wig.”

George went with her to a sort of orientation seminar in the clinic’s cafeteria. They sat with other patients in the Eleventh of May Cafeteria. Father Merchant, at a rear table, was picking from a cylinder of popcorn. A tall man in hospital whites leaned against a stack of trays and greeted them.

“ Buen dia. I’m Dr. Jesus Gomeza. So,” he said, “I will answer all your questions about el grande C.

“You know, not so long ago, people like you would hear cancer and think, Oh boy, sure death. Certain curtains. Even now. I know. I know what happens. I interned in your country. These white duds are from a Sears Roebuck in Omaha. So I know what happens.

“The tests come back. The doctor breaks the news to a wife, or to some take-charge guy in from Portland with a good vocabulary. The patient is the last to know. Listen, I’ve been there. It’s this hush-hush, very top secret disease. The family cocks around with each other for weeks. Then this one tells that one, somebody else overhears someone on a telephone, but no one’s ever sure who knows what. Am I right? They’re not even sure if Pop knows what’s what, and he’s the poor bastard losing important pieces of himself on the operating table. They’re getting ready to bury him and the whispering campaign still ain’t over. ‘Did he know what he had? Does he know that he’s dead?’

“But you know, don’t you? You folks know what you have, so we don’t have to worry about that part. You’ve got cancer. Say it. Say ‘Cancer, I’ve got cancer! ’

“I don’t hear you. Good golly, am I wrong? Have I made a mistake? Aren’t these the cancer people? Father Merchant, you rascal, have you played one of your tricks on me? Did you bring one of your tour buses by? Are you folks healthy? You don’t look healthy. Hell no, you look like you’ve got cancer. Why, I can see the tumors from over here. I can hear the brain tumors rolling around in your skulls like marbles. I see extra lumps in the bras. I can almost make out some of the more difficult stuff, the crapola tucked away in your organs like contraband. Hey, Mister, the guy in the green shirt — don’t turn around, you’re the one I’m talking to. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve got a cancer,” a man said shyly.

“Sure you do,” Dr. Gomeza said cheerfully. “And the lady at the long table holding the flower, what have you got?”

“Cancer.”

“I want,” he said, “to see the hands of everyone who believes that the national medical associations have conspired to suppress our so-called unproven treatments, that vested establishment interests are afraid to risk a head-on confrontation with the proponents of Laetrile research. Let’s see those hands.

“So many? Tch-tch. The cancer’s spread that far, has it? It’s bitten that deep? No no, put your hands down. You’re too sick to be waving them about like that. Your disease has metastasized. It’s into your beliefs by now, it’s knocked the stuffing out of incredulity. Your gullibility glands are amok. Tch-tch.

“So that’s why you’ve come. Not to be cured but to stand up and be counted on the deathbed. What, you think this is a protest rally? You hate your doctors? You begrudge your oncologist because he made you nauseous? There’s no conspiracy. They’re good men. My God, folks, nine out of twelve of you came down here with their permission, with their blessing even. I’m going to tell you something. American doctors are the best diagnosticians in the world. Those guys know what’s wrong with you. And I’ll tell you something else. If it were in their power they’d even cure you!

“Say it,” he commanded. “Say ‘ Cancer! I’ve got cancer!’ ”

“ Cancer! ” they called out cheerfully, “ I’ve got cancer! ”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” Dr. Gomeza said.

He told them about Laetrile, how it was found in the pits of peaches, apricots and bitter almonds, and gave them a chemistry lesson, explaining amygdalin and how hydrocyanic acid worked against the betaglucosidase in tumors, and even listed for them the drug’s pleasant side effects. He went over with them just what they must do, describing the regimen to them, a book of hours for their three daily injections, their course of special enzymes, the ritual of their vitamins, their diet.

“Look,” he said, “we’re going to lose some of you. People still die of appendicitis, too. And sometimes even a paper cut has been known to derange the system and the victim dies. So maybe you’re out of luck. It could even be you’re stuck with some fluke cancer which doesn’t respond to fruit. It’s possible. This is the world. Unexpected things happen. Go ask Sloan-Kettering. How many of their guys go down?”

He wished them luck.

And when he finished they applauded. Even Mrs. Glazer. Even George.

Father Merchant finished his popcorn and left.

Now he was her visitor as well as her employee. She sat in one chair by the side of her bed, and he in the other. Since coming back from the clinic she had somehow created the illusion for him, for them both, that when he arranged a pillow behind her head or poured her a drink of the clinic’s bottled water or brought her the El Paso newspaper or turned the channels on the TV set until they found a program acceptable to them both, it was as a guest, some loyal companion who might almost have been female, a bridge partner, say, someone who had served with her on committees.

“What are you having for dinner?” she might ask.

“I thought I’d go to that Mexican place again.”

“Oh, don’t say it. I’m fond of Mexican food, too, but my husband won’t touch it. We almost never go.”

“It’s time for your injection.”

“Could you do it? The nurse the clinic sends bruises me so. I’ve never really been a delicate woman. It’s cancer which softened my skin and made me petite. Just look at these legs and thighs. You’d never suspect that at one time I had the limbs of a six-day bicycle racer.”

At four in the afternoon they would watch a program on Mexican television, “Maria, Maria,” a soap opera set in the nineteenth century, about an illegitimate servant girl lusted after and badly treated by all the men in the benighted town in the obscure province in which she was indentured. It was the most popular program in Mexico, one of those shows that stops a country’s business for an hour or so and encourages people to believe that they are participants in an event of carefully resolved attention, their own lives temporarily forgotten in careless, throwaway sympathy. Mills and Mrs. Glazer had been watching for a week, and though neither understood the Spanish they knew the characters, and by reading the El Paso paper, which followed the plot with a daily summary like the synopsis in an opera program, they were able to understand the story.

“The president is watching this now in the capital,” Mrs. Glazer said. “He is suspicious of Maria’s new friend while the Minister of Internal Affairs plots against him with his most trusted generals.”

“The Minister of Internal Affairs? His generals?”

“Oh, Mills, they are no fans of that poor, troubled girl.”

One day when she was dejected she speculated that she might die before learning the fate of the characters. Mills tried to reassure her. “Then before I’ve lost interest,” she said. “I could die while I’m still curious about that new one. What is his name?”

“Arturo?”

“Arturo. I may not be around while I still have questions about Arturo.”

“Don’t talk like that. You’re feeling better every day.”