“With whom did you leave your patients?” said I. “With themselves and their Father in heaven,” he replied. “Besides, there is no shortage of doctors in Szibucz. More than the patients need doctors, the doctors need patients.” But here Kuba took out his watch, screwed up his eyes regretfully, and said, “The time has come when I must go. So you have promised to come to me tomorrow for lunch. Servus!”
When I told Mrs. Zommer that I was invited to lunch with Dr. Milch, she said, “Oh, so the vegetarian doctor is in town.” Then she sighed, feeling a twinge of conscience for not having taken more pains with my food; and said, “Tomorrow you will have a satisfying meal, sir; the vegetarian doctor is an expert cook.”
Mrs. Zommer did not appreciate the vegetarian doctor, nor did the whole town. A patient who could afford to pay a doctor would call another one; those who could not would call Dr. Milch, who would come and come again even if he was not called. And that was not alclass="underline" he would give a poor Szibucz patient some of what the villagers brought him, for they were devoted to him; they used to come to be cured by him and paid him in kind — with butter and eggs, bread and vegetables and fruit. The misfortune of war and all the troubles that followed had changed many values and concepts, and had led most people to exchange their earlier views, more or less, for new ones, whether good or bad. In this there was no difference between the rest of the world and the people of Szibucz. But in regard to doctors Szibucz behaved in the same way as before the war. Szibucz was accustomed to doctors behaving as men of authority, not keeping company with everyone, but coming only to patients who paid them for their trouble. There was still an element of magic in medicine: the more a doctor kept his distance the more he was respected, and if he demanded a high fee he was described as a specialist. Dr. Milch did none of these things, but met a man and spoke to him as a friend, and if the patient was poor he would bring him the food he needed. For this people looked down on him and mocked at him behind his back. “At first I was angry,” Kuba told me, “but then I said to myself: If they are fools, I will not change my nature.”
Next morning I went to Kuba. There was neither servant nor maid in his house, but his room was clean and his belongings tidy. As soon as I came in, he overwhelmed me with piles of questions — before I had managed to answer one, he asked me another. Kuba wanted to hear all at once what had happened to me in many years, and if I started to tell him he interrupted me in the middle and changed the subject. He was sad, as if all I told him was only an introduction to the main thing. What the main thing was, and what he wanted to hear from me, I do not know.
Time for lunch passed, and hunger began to torment me. I told myself that very soon he would set a full table before me and I would eat my fill; I already felt something like the pleasantness of the end of a fast, when the meal is set and prepared. Kuba was moved and excited. A thousand things he told me all at once, about our friends who had died in the war and the trees he had planted in their memory in the Herzl Forest, about a few of our friends who had been unable to endure and what they had done, about one who had become a convert, and finally had hanged himself in the privy of the church. While he was talking, Kuba jumped up and brought over a thick volume of pictures, showing himself with his friends in the high school and the university, photographed together, and at the end pictures of his teachers and professors, of the hospital where he had served and the nurses who had served with him.
“And who is this?” I asked apprehensively. Kuba bowed his head and whispered, “This is my wife.” A tall, well built woman, blonde, with pleasant, dark blue eyes, looked out at us from the picture. I took the picture in my hand and gazed at it. Her melancholy charm gripped the heart.
Kuba bowed his head again, put the picture back in its place, and looked around him like a child who has lost his way in the forest.
I took out a cigarette and lit it. “Since when have you been smoking?” asked Kuba in surprise. “I don’t remember you smoking. Smoking is unwholesome and bad for the health. In any case, it isn’t worth smoking so close to the meal.”
He got up and brought over two glasses of milk and some dry cakes, set one glass before himself and another before me, and said, “Let us eat and drink.” I drank the milk but left the cakes, so as to start the meal hungry, and waited for the table to be set and the food to be brought. Kuba sat in his place, one eye screwed up and the other glancing at me. Finally he opened the closed eye as well, looked at me for a long time and said, “I have a grudge against you and I must tell you. When I started university I wrote you that I wanted to go up to the Land of Israel and asked what profession I should choose that would be of value in the Land, and you replied, ‘Study medicine.’” “Are you annoyed with me for advising you to study medicine?” said I. “Not for that,” replied Kuba, “but because you added: ‘All this I have written so as not to leave you without an answer. But if you will listen to me, stay where you are and do not try to settle in the Land.’” “I was perfectly right,” said I. “What is right about that?” said Kuba. Said I, “Anyone who wants to come to the Land comes even if he is told not to come. And if you had truly wished to come, you would have come.” Kuba closed one eye thoughtfully, looked at me with the other, and sat in silence.
I took his hand in mine and said, “Yeruham Freeman is annoyed with me because he came to the Land through me, and you are annoyed that you did not come through me. But what is past is past. Now tell me about your other affairs. Didn’t you tell me yesterday that you were going to bring your wife?” “She did not come,” said he. “Why didn’t she come?” “Because she met her husband somewhere else. I see you don’t know what I am talking about.” continued Kuba. “Well, I shall explain.” “Quite right, Kuba,” said I, “I really do not understand what you are saying. One thing or the other: if she is your wife, you are her husband, and if you are not her husband, she is not your wife. From what you say, on the other hand, I gather you and her husband are two different people.”
Kuba sighed and said, “That’s how it is: my wife is not my wife and I am not her husband.” “If so,” said I, “what did you mean by saying you went to bring her?” “Do you think she is a rich woman and can live in a hotel?” said he. “She has to meet her future husband and I invited her to stay with me to save the cost of a hotel.” “That means you separated as friends.” “You say as friends,” replied Kuba, “and I can tell you that word is nothing to the love between us.” “If so,” said I, “why did you divorce her?” ‘Why did I divorce her?” said Kuba. “That is a great question you ask, and I don’t know how to reply. No doubt you are hungry, I shall go and bring lunch.” He went out and came back bringing two glasses of milk. He drank one and gave me the other. “Is this all your meal?” I asked him. “Do you think a man must fill his stomach?” said Kuba. “A glass of milk in the morning and a glass of milk at noon, and a piece of bread, and two or three nuts, or an apple, or a pear, are sufficient for a man’s food. A man does not die of hunger but of too much eating. But if you are in the habit of pampering yourself, I will boil you an egg. Today one of the village women brought me a dozen eggs. You see, I have only been back four days and already my patients are coming back to me. Do you want your egg soft-boiled or scrambled?” “Let us go back to what we were talking about before,” I replied. “Meaning the reason why I divorced my wife?” “Tell me what you are prepared to tell everyone,” said I. “I am not prepared to tell everyone, but I am prepared to tell you,” said he.