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 of a wife with a good husband is much more devastating than the unhappiness of a wife with a bad husband.
Just as Mohr had finished reading, Eva came racing toward them, leaped into Lawrence’s lap, nearly sending him over backward.
“Eva!” Käthe reprimanded in a stern voice.
Eva held up a fistful of wildflowers, gentians. Lawrence accepted them with a smile, then stood up. “You must show me where you found these,” he said, and they toddled off into the meadow together.
“Do you think it’s all right?” Frieda asked when they were out of earshot.
“Is what all right?”
“Should I tell him to keep his distance? He’s infectious.”
Käthe looked to Mohr. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “No harm can come from Lorenzo,” he said and went inside, knowing it was not true and wanting, suddenly, to be alone.
BEING ILL DOESN’T suit Mohr. On the other hand, it suits him just fine. Strange how the same verb applies to infirmity and desire: a passing illness, a passing fancy. When transitory states become permanent, do they also become malignant? Is being in love different from being sick? Or being in exile? Cliché questions.
He should ask Käthe.
No, he shouldn’t.
Is something wrong with his heart?
Mohr manages to remain in bed reading until just after nine o’clock, when Wong announces the first patient. After Mohr sees the man—a Russian with advanced cirrhosis—the Clinic Closed sign is put out and he returns to bed. By midday he is restless and uneasy. He feels wide awake, just fine. There’s nothing wrong, no need for prolonged idleness, so he reports for his regular shift at Lester Hospital—only to discover it is Nurse Simson’s day off.
The rounds go smoothly enough. Nevertheless, he can’t help feeling a mild disappointment. He tries his best to ignore it, but it’s not easy, and by the end of the afternoon Nurse Simson is still very near the center of his thoughts. No, she is not a thought,
