“Here,” Dr. Wallach said, “is a man of no little education—” He was laying out his silverware as though each piece were the term in a syllogism. Hopeful as he was, he couldn’t keep his hands still. “A physician, a man of the community, a respected person — no doubt a man of means. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, not rich, but comfortable. He has what he wants, and then a little bit more. All that, and yet he takes his life and jeopardizes it. Now what will this poor fellow’s fate be? What was he up to? Was he right or was he wrong?”
Fay nodded; he supposed she thought he would now proceed to answer his own question. She continued with her smoking.
“Fay?” he said.
“Yes?”
“What do you think about this?”
“Well … it’s a very interesting predicament.”
It did not please him to hear her use a phrase that was a favorite of his own. But agreeably he said, “It certainly is.” He smoothed the edge of the white tablecloth. Then to be dramatic, to shake them up a little, he slapped the table so hard that the silverware jumped. Of late he was getting rather a kick out of thinking of himself as someone who was an unpredictable conversationalist. “What do you think, Professor?” He looked over at his son, who, thank goodness, was smiling. He could not say that the boy was not trying to be amiable. “Place yourself in the fellow’s circumstances. The child is brought to you near death. I won’t go into the medical nomenclature — the child simply needs a transfusion, that’s the gist of it. The parents are Seventh Day Adventists. They tell you they cannot allow the child a transfusion. You tell them the child will die without it. They say they do not believe in eating blood.”
There was a flicker of his son’s eyes toward the window. Bored? Did he want to go already? Or was he just back to his own problems? Well, what kind of problems could they be? Young, in good health, a respected position — what kind of problem was it to be at the very brink of everything?
“But, Mordecai”—Fay was shaking her head—“excuse me, but the child would take the blood in the veins. That’s not the same thing at all.”
“Ah-ha,” said Dr. Wallach. Irritation with his son faded as he felt a fish at the end of his line. Real interest had at last come swimming up out of a sea of silence — as expected. The little news item in the second section of the Times had caught his imagination, and he knew it could not help but do the same with the others. Though he had read it while Gabe was showering and Fay was beating the eggs, he had saved it until breakfast was over, so that they could converse without the distraction of food. Now for a good old-fashioned family discussion … “Ah-ha,” he said, “but we are enlightened, we are students of the eighteenth century.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Silberman said.
“You’re talking about reason, Fay, intelligence. But to them,” the doctor pointed out, “a transfusion is eating blood. Now, once again, what’s the answer?”
He tapped his fork on his plate. “Gabe? Fay?”
Gabe only shrugged and smiled. Something distressing moved across the doctor’s consciousness: was he being patronized?
“Education,” Fay announced. “There’s an area where we could certainly learn something from the Russians.”
Disappointed, the doctor could nevertheless not help but be braced by her good will. She was going to flatter his son. All right. At least her interest had moved beyond the question of his posture.
“Well, perhaps,” Dr. Wallach said. “But I don’t know that you’re quite on the point. You’re not a teacher, you see, you’re a doctor. What do you do? Does he respect what the people want, or does he give them what they don’t want, what he thinks is best for them? Gabe, go ahead. You’re an intellectual person — this is an exercise of the intellect, I’d say. I’m interested in differing opinions on this subject.”
“Yes, I’d like to hear his thinking on this too,” Fay said. “The academic approach.”
“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, “education—”
“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.