Before lighting out, before this hop to the moon and outward bound, we had better look into some of this. As for the Crosstown and at this time of night, it was a perfectly safe bus to take.
IV
Dr. Gruner had private nurses around the clock. Sammler entered and found the uniformed woman sitting by the bed. The patient was sleeping. Sammler in a careful whisper introduced himself. "His uncle-oh, yes, he said you'd probably come," said the nurse. She didn't make it sound like a pleasant prediction. Under her starched cap the dyed dry hair was puffed out. The face itself, middle-aged, was fleshy, healthy, bossy. The eyes had an expression of sovereignty. Patients would be brought along the way that they must go: recovery or death.
"Is he asleep for the night, or is he taking a nap?" said Sammler.
"He may be waking up soon, but that's a guess. Miss Gruner is in the visitors' room."
"I'll stand a bit," said Sammler, not invited to sit. There were many flowers, baskets of fruit, candy boxes, best sellers. The television set was running, soundlessly. The nurse listened with an earpiece. Reflected light flickered on the wall behind the bed. Elya's hands were turned downward at his sides, as though he had arranged himself symmetrically before dropping off. The hairy hands were clean, strong, venous, with polished nails. The nails had the same shine as the shot glass from which Gruner had sipped his mineral oil. The Nujol bottle was there, too, and beside it the Wall Street Journal. Bald dignity. The cord of the electric razor was plugged in above. He always was clean-shaven. The priests of Apis the Bull, as described by Herodotus, with shaven heads and bodies. And with the sleeping mouth bulged out on one side as if Elya, who liked to say that he had grown up in Greenpoint among hoodlums, might have been dreaming about racketeers and gunfire. Under his chin the bandage was like a military collar. Sammler thought of him as a man who badly, even desperately, needed confirmation, support, and touch. Gruner was a toucher. His habit, even in passing through a room, was to touch, to take people's arms, even perhaps getting medical information about their muscles, glands, weight, or the growth of their hair. He also implanted his opinions, his hopes in their breasts, and then if he said, "Well, isn't it so?", it was indeed so. Like a modern General of the Army, an Eisenhower, he made his logistical preparations. This shrewdness was very childish. But easy to pardon. Especially at such a time. At such a time, how could he sleep?
Sammler backed through the door softly and went to the visitors' room. There Angela sat smoking but not in her usual sensual and elegant style. She had been crying, and her face was white and hot. Her figure was heavy, breasts a burden, knees bulging pale against the taut silk of the stockings. Was it only because of her father that she was weeping? Sammler sensed a combined cause for those tears. He sat opposite her and laid the Augustus John hat, mole-gray, on his lap.
"Sleeping still?"
"Yes," said Sammler.
Angela's large lips, as though to cool herself, were open; she breathed through her mouth. Hot, the slope face with close-textured skin seemed very tight. The heat rose also into the whites of the eyes. "Does he really understand the situation?"
"I wonder. But he is a doctor, and I think he does."
Angela cried again, and Sammmler was even more convinced of a second cause for her tears. "And there's nothing else wrong with him," said Angela. "He's perfectly well except for that thing-that one tiny damned thing. And you think he knows, Uncle?"
"Yes, probably."
"But acting so normal. Talking about the family. He was so glad to see you and hoped you'd come back tonight. And he still keeps worrying about Wallace."
"One can see why."
"Wallace has been such a headache. At six, seven, he was such a beautiful gifted little boy. He put together mathematical things. We thought we had another Einstein. Daddy sent him to MIT. But next thing we knew he was a bartender in Cambridge, and he beat some drunk almost to death."
"I've heard."
"And now he's bugging Daddy to get him a plane. At such a time! A flying saucer would be more like it. Of course I share some of the blame for Wallace." Sammler knew that the conversation would take a tiresome psychiatric-pediatric turn, and that he would have to endure a certain amount of explanation.
"Of course I was resentful when they brought the kid home from the hospital. I asked Mother to put his crib in the garage. I'm sure he felt rejection, from the first. I never liked him. He was too gloomy. He just wasn't like a child. He had terrible fits of rage."
"Well, everybody has a history," said Sammler.
"I think I decided in adolescence that my brother was going to be a queer. I thought it was my fault, that I was so slutty that he became frightened of girls."
"Is that so? Well, I remember your confirmation," said Sammler. "You were quite studious. I was impressed that you were studying Hebrew."
"Just a front, Uncle. I was a dirty little bitch, really."
"I wonder. In retrospect, people exaggerate so."
"Neither Father nor I ever liked Wallace. We pushed him off on Mother, and that was like condemning him for life. Then it was one thing after another, his obese stage, his alcoholic stage. Well, now have you heard? He thinks there's money hidden in the house."
"Do you think so, too?"
"I'm not sure. There have been hints from Daddy about it. Mother too before she died. She seemed to believe that now and then Daddy would-he'd step out of line, as she used to say."
"To help out famous families from Dutchess County, as Wallace tells me?"