Sophie's Choice - William Styron [95]
Chapter Seven
“SO MAYBE YOU can see, Stingo,” Sophie told me that first day in the park, “how Nathan saved my life. It was fantastic! Here I was, very ill, fainting, falling down, and along comes—how do you call him?—Prince Charming, and he save my life. And it was so easy, you see, like magic, as if he had a magic wand and he wave it over me, and very soon I am all well.”
“How long did it take?” I said. “Between the time...”
“You mean after that day when he found me? Oh, hardly any time at all, really. Two weeks, three weeks, something like that. Allez! Go away!” She skipped a small stone at the largest and most aggressive swan invading our picnic ground on the lake. “Go away! I hate that one, don’t you? Un vrai gonif. Come here, Tadeusz.” She made little clucking sounds at her disheveled favorite, enticing him with the remnants of a bagel. Hesitantly, the outcast waddled forward with blowzy feathers and a forlorn lopsided glance, pecking at the crumbs as she spoke. I listened intently even though I had other concerns in the offing. Perhaps because my coming assignation with the divine Lapidus had caused me to oscillate between rapture and apprehension, I tried to quell both emotions by drinking several cans of beer—thus violating my self-imposed rule about alcohol during daylight or working hours. But I needed something to stifle my monumental anticipation and to slow my galloping pulse.
I consulted my wristwatch, to discover with sickening suspense that only six hours must pass before I would be tapping at Leslie’s door. Clouds like creamy blobs, iridescent Disneyesque confections, moved serenely toward the ocean, sending dappled patterns of light and shade across our grassy little promontory where Sophie talked about Nathan, and I listened, and the turmoil of traffic on the distant Brooklyn avenues drummed with an intermittent booming sound, very faint, like some harmless, ceremonial cannonade. “Nathan’s brother’s name is Larry,” she continued. “He’s a wonderful person and Nathan adores him. Nathan took me to see Larry the next day, at his office in Forest Hills. He gave me a long examination and all during the examination I remember he kept saying, ‘I think Nathan must be right about you—it’s just remarkable, this natural instinct he has about medicine.’ But Larry wasn’t sure. He thought Nathan must be right about this deficiency I had. I was so terribly pale then. He thought it couldn’t be anything else after I told him all my symptoms. But naturally, he must be sure. So he got me an appointment with a friend of his, a spécialiste at the Columbia hospital, the Presbyterian hospital. This is a doctor of deficiency—no—”
“A doctor specializing in dietary deficiencies,” I said, hazarding a reasonable guess.
“Yes, exactly. This is a doctor named Warren Hatfield, who study medicine with Larry before the war. Anyway, that same day we ride together, Nathan and I, to New York to see Dr. Hatfield. Nathan borrowed Larry’s car and crossed me over the bridge to the Columbia hospital. Oh, Stingo, I remember that so well, that ride with Nathan to the hospital. Larry’s car is a décapotable—you know, a convertible—and all my life ever since I was growing up in Poland, I wanted to ride in a convertible, like the ones I had seen in pictures and in the movies. Such a silly ambition, yes, to ride in an open car, but here I was on this beautiful summer day riding with Nathan and the sun coming down and the wind blowing through my hair. It was so strange. I was still sick, you see, but I feel good! I mean I knew somehow I was going to be made well. And all because of Nathan.
“It was early in the afternoon, I remember. I had never been to Manhattan except by the subway train at night, and now from the car for the first time I see the river by daytime and the incredible skyscrapers of the city and the airplanes in the clear sky. It was so majestic and so beautiful and exciting, I was near to crying. And I would look at Nathan from the corner of my eye while he talked very fast about Larry and all of these marvelous things he done as a doctor. And then he would talk about medicine, and about how he would now wager anything on earth that he was right about my condition, and how it could be cured, and et cetera. And I don