“I need to sit down.”
“Oh my, Doctor. You are pale.” She guides him to a small chair at the end of the ward and sends for water.
“Do you have any aspirin?”
She rummages through the pockets of her smock, produces a small packet.
“For him.” Mohr points to the boy, leans his head back against the wall, and loosens his collar. Ears ring. Darkness closes in from the periphery. A metal cup is placed in his hand. He lifts it to his lips. How wonderfully cool and good it tastes.
“Would you like to lie down?”
Eyes closed, overwhelmed, a feeling of things incomplete.
“Doctor? Are you all right? Would you like to lie down?”
He shakes his head.
She tries to take his pulse, but he pulls away, then swoons trying to stand up too quickly. She helps him back down onto the chair. “I’ll get a doctor to come look at you.”
“No, no. Please. Not necessary.”
“But a doctor…”
“I am a doctor!” He has felt this nausea and shortness of breath once or twice before, but each time it has passed quickly and been forgotten. There’s no reason to think this time will be any different. Already, he feels himself returning to normal. “I’ll just go home and rest.” He stands, without difficulty this time. “Would you mind telling Dr. Timperly?”
She nods.
“I can’t bear to,” he adds wryly.
“Let me help you to your car.” She takes his arm and they make their way through the ward together, ignoring the curious glances of staff as she guides him down the stairs and out the main entrance. With collar unbuttoned and bow tie hanging untied from his neck, he feels like one of those senile old men always getting lost in the corridors. There is something grimly amusing in being escorted out of the building like this. He is pleased by the way she has taken his arm. The way she is holding it. Holding him. Would it be pathetic to make another joke? The aged cavalier?
It’s humid outside, and the smell of car exhaust is thick in the air. The sky is overcast. The rain, when it comes, will be heavy. “Are you sure you are all right, Dr. Mohr?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Thank you.” He can feel his strength returning.
“Where do you have your car?”
He points across the street. The car is parked virtually on top of a small sidewalk fruit stand. Still holding his elbow, she walks with him to the curb. As they wait to cross the busy street, he asks how long she has worked at the hospital. She seems surprised by the question. “Ten years,” she says.
“How is it that you came to work here?”
She looks at him as if the answer should be obvious. “I had no choice.”
Mohr works to interpret the remark, then grins and says, “Me neither.”
When they arrive at the car, Wong begins to argue with the fruit seller over who will have to move. Mohr is in no hurry, and eases himself slowly into the rear seat. She hands him his medical bag, which he hadn’t realized she has been carrying all along. He accepts it with a sheepish smile, puts it on the seat next to him. Wong closes the door. Mohr fumbles slightly as he slips a damp card from his pocket and passes it through the window. “If you would like to visit sometime. To see my clinic.”
She inspects the card, one side printed in English, the other in Chinese. “Thank you. I would very much like to see your clinic, Dr. Mohr.”
“Low shun low shun.” Mohr smiles, deploying his best phrasebook pronunciation.
“Bitte schön, Herr Doktor. I hope you feel better.” She smiles and waves as the big black car merges into the throng of traffic flowing out of the old Chinese part of the city.
Avenue Edouard VII, Avenue Foch, Thibet Road. The crowded streets shimmer in the late-afternoon heat. The tightening in his chest has eased. He is tired and needs to sleep. Should he have let her fetch a doctor, let himself be looked at? Dozing in the back of the car, Mohr recalls a day eight years ago when the Lawrences were visiting. An urgent note came from Frieda: Lorenzo is going to die. Come immediately! Mohr followed Hartl, the little boy whom Frieda had sent to fetch him. It was a crisp autumn morning. They marched along the dirt path that cut across the valley. The sun had just broken over the eastern ridges, casting long shadows in the damp grass. Kaffee Angermaier was directly across the valley from Wolfsgrub. The sunny southern side, a very pleasant spot, fifteen minutes away. Mohr had been so happy when Lawrence said he was coming to visit that autumn. “I’ll tell you when to tune up the accordion,” he wrote.
Hartl skipped ahead, swatting fence posts with a stick. Mohr tried to send him home, but the boy was determined to deliver his charge in person. Frieda was waiting for them. She hurried out the door in a breathless panic. “He is going to die,” she gasped. “I was just in his room.”
They ran up the narrow staircase and paused just outside the bedroom door. Then entered quietly.
The room was filled with morning sunlight, curtains and window wide open. Frieda hurried to the side of the bed and beckoned to Mohr. Lawrence was lying under a thick pile of down. Mohr squatted beside the wooden-frame bed. Suddenly Lawrence’s eyes sprang wide open. He turned his head. “Ha!” he chortled. “I know just what you have all been thinking!”
Ha ha ha. A short while later they were sitting downstairs in the dining room, eating breakfast.
“When are you going back to Berlin?” Lawrence wanted to know.
Mohr shrugged and rubbed the stubble on his face. “I don’t know. I was thinking I’d stay here a little longer.”
“So you are enjoying yourself, then! That’s very good. The man who likes to buzz around.” He fixed a look on Mohr, a look that had come to be a trademark of their friendship—a murky imputation of unhappiness. “Come with us to France. I know a wonderful place near Marseille. We were there last winter. Good, and cheap.” He slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “You don’t have to be in Berlin to buzz, Mohr. You should know that.”
Mohr returned Lawrence’s look. “For your information, I’ve been buzzing all night. If it wasn’t for your emergency, I would be home sleeping right now.”
Lawrence laughed. “I can’t help it if Frieda gets a shock every time she looks in on me. It was she who sent for you. And you who were out carousing.”
“I was not carousing. I was delivering a baby. The woman’s husband was the one carousing. I sent for him four times!”
“He never came?”
Mohr shook his head. “He staggered in drunk just as I was leaving.”
Lawrence broke into a hearty laugh and quickly dissolved into a fit of coughing and gasps of “Marvelous! Marvelous!”
Later that same day, they were sitting outside at Wolfsgrub. Eva bounded around in the grass with the dog. A warm afternoon, basking in the sunshine. Frieda and Käthe were discussing the water in the moss-covered rain barrels in front of the house. Käthe said it tasted better than spring water because it came from the sky. Frieda said it should be used only for washing and the garden. Lawrence reached into his pocket and handed Mohr a piece of paper. “Apropos of the new father this morning,” he said, smiling.
Good husbands make unhappy wives: so do bad husbands, just as often; but the unhappiness