Down to Earth (42 page)

“Don’t I know it?” Reuven said. “The medicine itself isn’t all that different from what I thought it would be. The diagnostic tests work the same way, and the results are pretty clear, even if the lab you use isn’t as good as the one attached to the college.”

“Isn’t it?” Moishe Russie’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Not even close,” Reuven told him. “Of course, the technicians are only human.” He didn’t realize how disparaging that sounded till he’d already said it.

Now his father’s laugh held a wry edge. “You’d better get used to dealing with human beings, son. We mostly do the best we can, you know.”

“Yes, I do,” Reuven said. He glanced around his father’s office, where they were talking. It was a perfectly fine place, with palm trees swaying in the breeze just outside the window; with Moishe Russie’s diplomas, one of them in the language of the Race, in frames on the wall; with shelves full of reference books; with a gleaming microscope perched on a corner of the desk.

And yet, to Reuven’s eyes, it was as if he’d fallen back through time a century, maybe even two. The plaster on the walls was uneven and rough. It was at home, too, but he noticed it more here because he contrasted it to the smooth walls of the Moishe Russie Medical College. The microscope seemed hopelessly primitive next to the instruments he’d used there. And books . . . He enjoyed reading books for entertainment, but electronics were much better for finding information in a hurry. His father had access to some electronics, but didn’t display them where his patients could see them. He didn’t seem to want people to know he used such things.

That was part of the problem Reuven had been having in adjusting: pretending to know less than he did. The other part lay in the patients themselves. He burst out, “What do I do about the little old men who come in every other week when there’s nothing wrong with them? What I want to do is boot them out on the street, but I don’t suppose I can.”

“No, not really,” Moishe Russie agreed. “Oh, you could, but it wouldn’t do you much good. They’d come back anyhow: either that or they’d go bother some other doctor instead.”

“I’ve been looking over the files,” Reuven said. “Looks like we’ve got some patients other doctors have run off.”

“I’m sure we do,” his father said, nodding. “And they have some of ours, too—I try to be patient, but I’m not Job. Sometimes all the little old men and women really want is for someone to tell them, ‘Don’t worry. You’re really all right.’ And”—he grinned at Reuven—“you’re a hero to a lot of them, you know?’

Reuven shrugged in some embarrassment. “Yes, I do know. I don’t think it’s worth making a fuss over.”

“I know you don’t, but you have to remember: you grew up here in Jerusalem, not in Warsaw or Minsk or Berlin,” Moishe Russie said. “Being a Jew is easy here. It wasn’t so easy back in Europe, believe me. And a Jew who walks away from something important so he doesn’t have to go worship the spirits of Emperors past”—he used the language of the Race for the phrase—“deserves to have people notice.”

“If we had advertisements, you could use it in them: ‘genuine Jewish doctor,’ I mean,” Reuven answered. “But it doesn’t make me any smarter. If it does anything, it makes me stupider.”

His father shook his head. “It may make you a little more ignorant, but not stupider. And it makes you honest. That’s important for a doctor.”

Reuven snorted. “If I were honest, I’d tell those people to
geh kak afen yam.”

“Well, you can’t be a hundred percent honest
all
the time.” Moishe Russie chuckled, but then sobered. “And the other thing to remember is, you can’t take anything for granted. Just the other day, I found a lump in Mrs. Berkowitz’s breast. She’s been coming in here three, four times a year for the past ten years, and I never noticed anything worse than varicose veins wrong with her up till then. But you have to be careful.”

“All right,” Reuven said. By the unhappy expression on his father’s face, he suspected that Moishe Russie wished he’d found the lump sooner. Knowing his father, he’d probably been kicking himself ever since he did discover it. Reuven continued, “And it feels strange to have a chaperone of some sort in the room whenever I examine a woman, even if she’s older than the Pyramids.”

“You have to be careful,” his father repeated, this time in a different tone of voice. “I know a couple of men who ruined their careers because they weren’t. Why take chances when you don’t have to.”

“I don’t,” Reuven answered, knowing his father would land on him like an avalanche if he did. “It still seems like something out of the Middle Ages, though.”

“Maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real,” Moishe Russie said. “Our Arab colleagues have a harder time with it than we do. Sometimes they can’t touch their female patients at all. They have to do the best they can by asking questions. If they’re lucky, they get to ask the woman. If they’re not, they have to ask her husband.”

“Yes, I know about that,” Reuven said. “There’s a fellow named Nuqrashi who resigned from the college about the same time I did. He’s back in Baghdad now, I suppose, getting his practice going. I wonder if he’s having those kinds of troubles.”

“Worse troubles than those in Baghdad nowadays,” his father said. “Sometimes they spill over here, too. If I never hear anybody shouting
‘Allahu akbar!’
again, I won’t be sorry.” Moishe Russie’s eyes went far away. “Not long after we first came to Palestine, I tried to help a wounded Arab woman in the streets of Jerusalem, and an Arab man thought I was going to violate her. He did change his mind when he realized what I was doing, I will say that.”

“What happened to her?” Reuven asked.

His father looked bleak. “She bled to death. Torn femoral artery, I think.”

Before Reuven could answer that, the receptionist tapped on the door and said, “Dr. Russie—young Dr. Russie, I mean—Chaim Katz is here for his appointment. He’s complaining about his cough again.”

“Thanks, Yetta.” Reuven got to his feet. As he started for the examination room, he glanced back at his father, who was lighting a cigarette. In disapproving tones, he said, “Katz would do a lot better if he didn’t smoke like a chimney. As a matter of fact, you’d do better, too.”

Moishe Russie looked innocent. “I’d do better if Katz didn’t smoke? I don’t see that.” He inhaled. The end of the cigarette glowed red.

“Funny,” Reuven said, though he thought it was anything but. “You know what the Lizards have found out about what tobacco does to your lungs. They think we’re
meshuggeh
for using the stuff.”

“Among other reasons they think we’re
meshuggeh.”
His father breathed out smoke as he spoke. He looked at the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, then shrugged. “Yes, they’ve found out all sorts of nasty stuff about tobacco. What they haven’t found is how to make somebody quit using the stuff once he’s got started.” He raised an eyebrow. “They haven’t figured out how to make themselves stop using ginger, either.”

That struck Reuven as more rationalization than reasoned defense, but he didn’t have time to argue—not that arguing was likely to make his father stub out that cigarette and never smoke another one. All he said was, “You can’t be having as much fun with tobacco as the Lizards do with ginger.” Moishe Russie laughed.

In the examination room, Chaim Katz was working a cigarette down to a tiny butt and coughing between puffs. He was about sixty, stocky, bald, with a gray mustache and tufts of gray Hair sprouting from his ears. “Hello, Doctor,” he said, and coughed again.

“Hello?” Reuven pointed to an ashtray. “Will you please put that out and take off your shirt? I want to listen to your chest.” He reached for his stethoscope, which hung beside his father’s. Even as he set the ends in his ears, be knew he wouldn’t be hearing everything he might. The Race had electronically amplified models.

He didn’t need anything fancy, though, to dislike what he heard in Chaim Katz’s chest. He marveled that the older man got any air into his lungs at all: wheezes and hisses and little whistling noises filled his ears.
“Nu?”
Katz said when he put the stethoscope away.

“I want you to make an appointment with Dr. Eisenberg for a chest X ray,” Reuven told him. Back at the medical college, he could have sent the man for an X ray then and there, and learned the results in a few minutes. Unfortunately, things weren’t so simple here. “When I see the film, I’ll have a better idea of where we stand.”
I’ll find out whether you’ve got a carcinoma in there, or just a running start on emphysema.

“That’ll be expensive,” Katz complained.

Reuven said, “How expensive is being sick, Mr. Katz? You’ve had this cough for a while now. We need to find out what’s going on in there.” The stocky little man made a sour face, but finally nodded. He put on his shirt, buttoned it, and pulled out the pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket. Reuven pointed to them. “You’ll probably get some relief if you can give those up. They don’t call them coffin nails for nothing.”

Chaim Katz looked at the cigarettes—a harsh Turkish blend—as if just consciously noticing he was holding them. He stuck one in his mouth and lit it before answering, “I like ’em.” He took a drag, then continued, “All right, I’ll talk to Eisenberg. Tell your old man hello for me.” Out he went, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

With a sigh, Reuven ducked into his own office—smaller and a good deal starker than his father’s—and wrote up the results of the examination. He was just finishing when the telephone rang. He looked at it in mild surprise; his father got most of the calls. “Miss Archibald for you,” Yetta said.

“Put her through,” Reuven said at once, and then switched from Hebrew to English: “Hullo, Jane! How are you? So you still remember me even though I escaped? Do you remember me well enough to let me take you to supper tomorrow night?”

“Why not?” she said, and laughed. Reuven grinned enormously, though she couldn’t see that. She continued, “After all, you’re a man of money now, with your own practice and such. Since you’ve got it, why shouldn’t you spend it on me?”

Had he thought she meant that in a gold-digging way, he would have hung up on her. Instead, he laughed, too. “Only goes to show you haven’t had a practice of your own yet. How are things back there?” He still longed for news, even after severing himself from the medical college.

“About what you’d expect,” Jane answered. “The Lizards keep muttering about Tosevite superstitions.” She dropped into the language of the Race for the last two words. “I don’t think they expected nearly so many people to resign.”

“Too bad,” Reuven said with more than a little relish. “Even after all these years, they don’t understand just how stubborn we are.”

“Well, I know how stubborn you are,” Jane said. “I’m still willing to go out to supper with you. What time do you think you’ll be by the dormitory?”

“About seven?” Reuven suggested. When Jane didn’t say no, he went on, “See you then,” and hung up. Maybe if he was stubborn enough, she’d be willing to do more than go out to supper with him. Maybe not, too, but he could hardly wait to find out.

Every time Sam Yeager went to Little Rock, the new capital of the United States seemed to have grown. It also seemed as gawky as Jonathan had during the years when he was shooting up like a weed. He thought the president’s residence—the papers called it the Gray House, in memory of the White House that was, these days, slightly radioactive ruins—lacked the classic dignity of its predecessor. People said it was more comfortable to live in, though, and he supposed that counted, too.

Posters on the telephone poles outside the Gray House shouted,
REELECT WARREN & STASSEN!
They were printed in red, white, and blue. The Democrats’ posters were black and gold.
HUMPHREY FOR PRESIDENT!
was their message, along with a picture of the beaky, strong-chinned governor of Minnesota. Yeager had nothing much against Hubert Humphrey or Joe Kennedy, Jr., but didn’t intend to vote for them. President Warren was a known quantity. At Sam’s stage of life, he approved of known quantities.

A receptionist at the front entrance to the residence nodded politely to him as he came up. “May I help you, Lieutenant Colonel?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Yeager gave his name, adding, “I have an eleven o’clock appointment with the president.”

She checked the book in front of her, then looked carefully at the identification card he showed her. When she was satisfied his image matched his face, she nodded again. “Go to the waiting room, sir. He’ll be with you as soon as he finishes with the Russian foreign commissar.”

“Thanks,” Yeager said, and grinned in bemusement as he headed down the hall. The Russian foreign commissar, then him? He’d never expected to be mentioned in the same breath with such luminaries, not back in the days when he was bouncing around the mid- to lower minor leagues. Then his idea of big shots was fellows who’d had a cup of coffee in the majors before dropping down again.

He grinned once more when he got to the waiting room. One of the things set out for people, along with
Look
and
U.S. News and Interspecies Report,
to read was the
Sporting News.
The Los Angeles Browns were two days away from squaring off with the Phillies in the World Series. His heart favored the Browns. If he’d had to put money on the Series, though, he would have bet on the Phils.

I might have made it to the big time as a coach,
he thought.
I might have. If I had, I might have been standing in the first-base box two days from now.
Instead, he was sitting here waiting to talk with the president of the United States. It wasn’t what he’d had in mind as a younger man, but it wasn’t so bad, either.

Out came Andrei Gromyko. He didn’t look happy, but he had the sort of face that wasn’t made for looking happy. “Good day,” he said to Yeager in excellent English. He strode out of the room without waiting for a reply.

In his wake, a flunky in an expensive suit emerged from President Warren’s office. He gave Sam a smile wide enough to make up for the one he hadn’t got from the Russian. It also made him want to check to be sure his wallet was still in his hip pocket. The flunky said, “The president will see you in a few minutes. He wants to finish writing up his notes first.”