While I was stupidly urging Angela!
"A little while back. We had him down in the special unit, doin' the maximum possible."
"You couldn't do anything about a hemorrhage, I see, yes."
"You are his uncle. He asked me to say good-by to you."
"I wish I had been able to say it also to him. So it didn't happen in one rush?"
"He knew it was startin'. He was a doctor. He knew it. He asked me to take him from the room."
"He asked you to?"
"It was obvious he wanted to spare his daughter. So I said tests. It's Miss Angela?"
"Yes, Angela."
"He said he preferred downstairs. He knew I'd take him anyway."
"Of course. As a surgeon, Elya knew. He certainly knew the operation was futile, all that torture of putting a screw in his throat." Sammler removed his glasses. His eyes, one a sightless bubble, under the hair of overhanging brows, were level with Dr. Cosbie's. "Of course it was futile."
"The procedure was correct. He knew it was."
"My nephew wished always to agree. Of course he knew. It might have been kinder though not to make him go through it."
"I suppose you want to go in and tell Miss Angela?"
"Please tell Miss Angela yourself. What I want is to see my nephew. How do I get to him? Give me directions."
"You'll have to wait and see him at the chapel, sir. It's not allowed."
"Young man, it is important and you had better allow me. Take my word for it. I am determined. Let us not have a bad scene out here in the corridor. You would not want that, would you?"
"Would you make one?"
"I would."
"I'll send his nurse with you," said the doctor.
They went down in the elevator, the gray woman and Mr. Sammler, and through lower passages paved in speckled material, through tunnels, up and down ramps, past laboratories and supply rooms. Well, this famous truth for which he was so keen, he had it now, or it had him. He felt that he was being destroyed, what was left of him. He wept to himself. He walked at the habitual rapid sweeping pace, waiting at crossways for the escorting nurse. In stirring air flavored with body-things, sickness, drugs. He felt that he was breaking up, that irregular big fragments inside were melting, sparkling with pain, floating off. Well, Elya was gone. He was deprived of one more thing, stripped of one more creature. One more reason to live trickled out. He lost his breath. Then the woman came up. More hundreds of yards in this winding underground smelling of serum, of organic soup, of fungus, of cell-brew. The nurse took Sammler's hat and said, "In there. " The door sign read P. M. That would mean post-mortem. They were ready to do an autopsy as soon as Angela signed the papers. And of course she would sign. Let's find out what went wrong. And then cremation.
"To see Dr. Gruner. Where?" said Sammler.
The attendant pointed to the wheeled stretcher on which Elya lay. Sammler uncovered his face. The nostrils, the creases were very dark, the shut eyes pale and full, the bald head high marked by gradients of wrinkles. In the lips bitterness and an expression of obedience were combined.
Sammler in a mental whisper said, "Well, Elya. Well, well, Elya." And then in the same way he said, "Remember, God, the soul of Elya Gruner, who, as willingly as possible and as well as he was able, and even to an intolerable point, and even in suffocation and even as death was coming was eager, even childishly perhaps (may I be forgiven for this), even with a certain servility, to do what was required of him. At his best this man was much kinder than at my very best I have ever been or could ever be. He was aware that he must meet, and he did meet--through all the confusion and degraded clowning of this life through which we are speeding--he did meet the terms of his contract. The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it--that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know."
The End