CHAPTER: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL.

Sinclair Lewis Novels

By

SINCLAIR LEWIS
Author of Main Street, Babbitt, etc.


TORONTO
GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED
PUBLISHERS


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

Copyright, 1924, 1925, by
The Designer Publishing Company, Inc.


The first edition of Arrowsmith consists of 500 copies on handmade paper, numbered and signed by the author.
Second printing [first trade edition], January, 1925


PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.

The driver of the wagon swaying through the forests and swamps of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged fourteen-year-old girl. They had buried her mother near the Monongahela—the girl herself had covered the grave with torn sods beside the river with the beautiful name. Her father was lying weak with fever on the floor of the wagon, and around him were her brothers and sisters, dirty kids, tattered kids, laughing kids.

She stopped at the fork in the grassy road, and the sick man trembled, “Emmy, you should head down toward Cincinnati. If we could find your Uncle Ed, I think he’d take us in.”

“Nobody is going to take us in,” she said. “We’re going to keep going as long as we can. Going West! There are a lot of new things I want to see!”

She made dinner, got the kids to bed, and sat by the fire, alone.

That was Martin Arrowsmith's grandma.

Cross-legged in the exam chair in Doc Vickerson’s office, a boy was reading "Gray’s Anatomy." His name was Martin Arrowsmith, from Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac.

There was a suspicion in Elk Mills—now, in 1897, a shabby red-brick village that smelled of apples—that this brown-leather adjustable seat, which Doc Vickerson used for minor procedures, the occasional tooth extraction, and very frequent naps, had originally been a barber’s chair. People also believed that he must have once been called Doctor Vickerson, but for years he had just been known as The Doc, and he was scruffier and way less adjustable than the chair.{2}

Martin was the son of J. J. Arrowsmith, who ran the New York Clothing Bazaar. Through sheer boldness and stubbornness, he became the unofficial, and definitely unpaid, assistant to the Doc at just fourteen. When the Doc was out on a country call, Martin took charge—though it was unclear what he was actually in charge of. He was a slim boy, not very tall; his hair and restless eyes were black, and his skin was unusually pale, creating a striking contrast that gave him an air of intense emotion. The square shape of his head and his reasonably broad shoulders kept him from looking effeminate or overly timid, which artistic guys often referred to as Sensitiveness. When he lifted his head to listen, his right eyebrow, which was slightly higher than the left, would rise and twitch, revealing his characteristic energy, independence, and a suggestion that he could hold his own in a fight—a look of cheeky curiosity that had annoyed both his teachers and the Sunday School superintendent.

Martin was, like most residents of Elk Mills before the Slavo-Italian immigration, a typical pure-bred Anglo-Saxon American. That means he was a mix of German, French, Scottish, Irish, possibly a bit of Spanish, maybe a little of what’s grouped as “Jewish,” and a lot of English, which itself is a combination of ancient Britain, Celtic, Phoenician, Roman, German, Danish, and Swedish.

It’s not clear if Martin’s connection to Doc Vickerson was solely driven by a genuine desire to become a Great Healer. He impressed his friends by bandaging stone bruises, dissecting squirrels, and explaining the amazing and secret things found in the back of the physiology book, but he still had a bit of ambition to achieve the kind of glory that the son of the Episcopalian minister had, who could smoke an entire cigar without getting sick. Still, that afternoon, he read intently about the lymphatic system, mumbling the long and totally confusing words in a hum that made the dusty room feel even more sleepy.

It was the main room of the three used by Doc Vickerson, overlooking Main Street above the New York Clothing Bazaar. On one side was the dirty waiting room, and on the other was the Doc’s bedroom. He was an older widower; he had no interest in what he called “female things,” and the bedroom, with its rickety dresser and its bed covered in messy blankets, was{3} cleaned only by Martin, during infrequent cleaning sprees.

This main room served as a business office, consultation room, operating theater, living room, poker den, and storage space for guns and fishing gear. Against a brown plaster wall stood a cabinet filled with zoological collections and medical oddities, and next to it was the most terrifying and captivating object known to the boy-world of Elk Mills—a skeleton with a single creepy gold tooth. On nights when the Doc was out, Martin would gain respect among the scared Gang by taking them into the pitch-black darkness and striking a sulfur match on the skeleton’s jaw.

On the wall hung a stuffed pickerel on a varnished board. Next to the rusty stove, a sawdust box spittoon sat on a slimy oilcloth that was worn through to the threads. On the old table was a stack of notes about debts that the Doc always claimed he would “collect from those deadbeats right now,” but he would never, under any circumstances, actually collect from any of them. A year or two—a decade or two—a century or two—they all felt the same to the hardworking doctor in the buzzing little town.

The dirtiest corner was taken up by the cast-iron sink, which was used more for cleaning eggy breakfast plates than for sanitizing instruments. On its edge were a broken test tube, a broken fish hook, an unlabeled and forgotten bottle of pills, a heel filled with nails, a frayed cigar butt, and a rusty lancet stuck in a potato.

The untamed messiness of the room embodied Doc Vickerson; it was more thrilling than the dull stack of shoeboxes at the New York Bazaar: it drew Martin Arrowsmith in with a promise of curiosity and adventure.

The boy lifted his head, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. On the staircase was the heavy step of Doc Vickerson. The Doc was sober! Martin wouldn’t need to help him to bed.

But it was a bad sign that the Doc first went down the hall to his bedroom. The boy listened closely. He heard the Doc open the lower part of the washstand, where he kept his bottle of Jamaica rum. After a long gurgle, the invisible{4} Doc put the bottle away and decisively kicked the doors shut. Still good. Only one drink. If he came into the consultation room right away, he would be safe. But he was still standing in the bedroom. Martin sighed as the washstand doors were quickly opened again, hearing another gurgle and a third.

The Doc's stride was much more energetic as he entered the office, a large gray figure with a gray mustache, a shape that was huge, surreal, and vague, like a cloud briefly resembling a human. With the hurried approach of someone trying to avoid facing his guilt, the Doc mumbled as he waddled toward his desk chair:

“What are you doing here, young man? What are you doing here? I knew the cat would bring in something if I left the door unlocked.” He swallowed a bit; he smiled to show he was joking—people had been known to misinterpret the Doc’s sense of humor.

He spoke more seriously, sometimes losing track of what he was saying:

“Reading old Gray? That’s right. A physician’s library has just three books: ‘Gray’s Anatomy,’ the Bible, and Shakespeare. Study hard, and you could become a great doctor. Settle in Zenith and earn five thousand dollars a year—just like a United States Senator! Aim high. Don’t let opportunities pass you by. Get trained. Go to college before you go to medical school. Study chemistry and Latin. Gain knowledge! I’m just a country doc—no wife or kids—nobody—just an old drunk. But you—you could be a leading physician. Make five thousand dollars a year.”

“Murray woman's got endocarditis. There's nothing I can do for her. She wants someone to hold her hand. The road's a complete disgrace. Culvert's broken, past the grove. What a disgrace."

Endocarditis and—

“Training, that’s what you need to get. Basics. Know chemistry. Biology. I never did. Mrs. Reverend Jones thinks she has a gastric ulcer. She wants to go to the city for surgery. Ulcer, please! She and the Reverend both eat too much.”

“Why don’t they fix that culvert— And don’t be a heavy drinker like me, either. And get your basic science. I’ll explain.”

The boy, just a regular village kid who liked throwing stones at cats and playing pom-pom-pullaway, caught a glimpse of the thrill of treasure-hunting as the Doc tried to share his passion for the excitement of learning, the universality of biology, and the precise nature of chemistry. The Doc was a fat, dirty old man with questionable morals; his grammar was shaky, his vocabulary shocking, and his comments about his rival, the good Dr. Needham, were scandalous. Still, he inspired Martin with visions of making chemicals explode with loud bangs and bad smells and of observing tiny creatures that no boy in Elk Mills had ever seen before.

The Doc's voice was getting heavier; he was slumped in his chair, eyes unfocused and mouth slack. Martin urged him to go to bed, but the Doc refused:

“Don’t need a nap. No. Now you listen. You don’t appreciate it, but— I’m an old man now. I’m giving you everything I’ve learned. Let me show you my collection. It’s the only museum in the whole county. A scientific pioneer.”

A hundred times, Martin had dutifully gazed at the specimens in the brown, crackly-varnished bookcase: the beetles and pieces of mica; the embryo of a two-headed calf; the gallstones taken from a respectable lady whom the Doc excitedly named to all visitors. The Doc stood in front of the case, waving a big but unsteady finger.

“Look at that butterfly. Its name is porthesia chrysorrhœa. Doc Needham couldn’t tell you that! He doesn’t know what butterflies are called! He doesn’t care if you get trained. Remember that name now?” He turned to Martin. “Are you paying attention? Are you interested? Huh? Oh, come on! Nobody wants to know about my museum—no one. I’m the only one in the county, but— I’m just an old failure.”

Martin said, “Honestly, it’s slick!”

“Hey! Check this out! See that? In the bottle? It’s an appendix. The first one ever taken out around here. I did it! Old Doc Vickerson performed the first appendectomy in this area, for sure! And first museum. It’s not—so big—but it’s a start. I haven’t saved as much money as Doc Needham, but I kicked off the first collection—I started it!”

He sank into a chair, groaning, “You’re right. I need to sleep. I’m all in.” But as Martin helped him up, he pulled away, rummaged through his desk, and looked back uncertainly. “I want to give you something—to kick off your training. And don’t forget the old man. Will anyone remember the old man?{6}”

He was holding out his cherished magnifying glass, which he had used for years while studying plants. He watched Martin put the lens into his pocket, sighed, struggled to find something else to say, and quietly lumbered into his bedroom.{7}

The state of Winnemac is bordered by Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and like those states, it’s a mix of Eastern and Midwestern influences. You can sense New England in its brick and sycamore villages, its stable industries, and a history that dates back to the Revolutionary War. Zenith, the largest city in the state, was established in 1792. However, Winnemac has a Midwestern vibe with its fields of corn and wheat, its red barns and silos, and even though Zenith is quite old, many counties weren’t settled until 1860.

The University of Winnemac is located in Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith. There are twelve thousand students; compared to this giant, Oxford is just a small theological school and Harvard is a prestigious college for young men. The university has an indoor baseball field; its buildings stretch for miles; it hires hundreds of young PhDs to teach quickly in subjects like Sanskrit, navigation, accounting, eyewear fitting, sanitary engineering, Provençal poetry, tariff schedules, rutabaga farming, car design, the history of Voronezh, the style of Matthew Arnold, diagnosing myohypertrophia kymoparalytica, and department store advertising. Its president is the top fundraiser and the best after-dinner speaker in the United States; and Winnemac was the first school in the world to offer extension courses via radio.

It’s not an elitist college for the wealthy, focused on trivial pursuits. It belongs to the people of the state, and what they desire—or what they’re told they should desire—is a factory for producing men and women who will live ethical lives, play bridge, drive nice cars, be ambitious in their careers, and occasionally mention books, even if they’re not expected to have time to read them. It’s like a Ford Motor Factory, and even if its products have some quirks, they’re well-standardized with perfectly interchangeable parts. Every hour, the University of Winnemac is growing in size and impact, and by 1950 one{8} can expect it to have built an entirely new civilization, a civilization that’s larger, more dynamic, and more refined.

In 1904, when Martin Arrowsmith was a junior in Arts and Science getting ready for medical school, Winnemac had only five thousand students, but it was already lively.

Martin was twenty-one. He still looked pale compared to his smooth black hair, but he was a good runner, a decent basketball player, and an aggressive hockey player. The girls whispered that he "looked so romantic," but since this was before the invention of sex and the time of petting parties, they only talked about him from afar, and he didn’t realize he could have been a heartthrob. Despite his stubbornness, he was shy. He wasn’t completely naive about affection, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it. He hung out with guys who took pride in smoking grimy corncob pipes and wearing dirty sweaters.

The university had become his entire world. For him, Elk Mills was non-existent. Doc Vickerson was gone and forgotten; Martin’s parents had passed away, leaving him just enough money for his arts and medical courses. The purpose of life was chemistry and physics, with the anticipation of biology next year.

His idol was Professor Edward Edwards, the head of the chemistry department, who was widely known as “Encore.” Edwards had an enormous knowledge of the history of chemistry. He could read Arabic, which drove his fellow chemists crazy as he claimed that the Arabs had already anticipated all their research. Professor Edwards himself never conducted any research. He would sit by the fire, petting his collie and chuckling to himself.

This evening, Encore was hosting one of his small and popular At Home parties. He lounged in a brown corduroy Morris chair, sharing subtle jokes for the amusement of Martin and a handful of other enthusiastic young chemists, while teasing Dr. Norman Brumfit, the English instructor. The room was filled with warmth, laughter, and beer, along with Brumfit.

Every university has to have a Wild Man to spice things up and catch people off guard in packed lecture halls. Even in a highly respectable place like Winnemac, there was one Wild Man, and that was Norman Brumfit. He was allowed, {9} without any restrictions, to describe himself as immoral, agnostic, and socialistic, as long as everyone knew he was still pure, Presbyterian, and Republican. Dr. Brumfit was on a roll tonight. He claimed that whenever a man showed genius, it could be proven that he had Jewish ancestry. Like all discussions about Judaism at Winnemac, this brought up Max Gottlieb, the professor of bacteriology in the medical school.

Professor Gottlieb was the enigma of the university. It was known that he was a Jew, born and educated in Germany, and that his research on immunology had earned him respect in the East and Europe. He rarely left his small, unkempt house except to go to his lab, and few students outside of his classes had ever recognized him, but everyone had heard of his tall, lean, dark demeanor. A thousand stories circulated about him. People believed he was the son of a German prince, that he had vast wealth, and that he lived as simply as the other professors only because he was conducting frightening and expensive experiments possibly related to human sacrifice. It was rumored that he could create life in the lab, that he could communicate with the monkeys he vaccinated, that he had been expelled from Germany as either a devil-worshiper or an anarchist, and that he secretly sipped real champagne every evening at dinner.

It was the tradition that faculty members didn’t talk about their colleagues with students, but Max Gottlieb couldn’t be seen as anyone’s colleague. He was as impersonal as the cold northeast wind. Dr. Brumfit rattled:

“I consider myself pretty open-minded when it comes to the claims of science, but with someone like Gottlieb—I can believe he understands all about physical forces, but what surprises me is that a person like him can overlook the vital force that drives everything else. He insists that knowledge is worthless unless it’s backed by data. Well, when one of you scientific experts can measure the genius of someone like Ben Jonson with a ruler, then I’ll agree that we literary folks, with our certainly silly belief in beauty, loyalty, and the world of dreams, are on the wrong path!”

Martin Arrowsmith wasn't really sure what this meant, and he was happily indifferent. He felt a sense of relief when Professor Edwards, amidst his beard and smoke, let out a sound that suspiciously resembled “Oh, hell!” and redirected the conversation away from Brumfit. Normally, Encore would have pointed out, with friendly malice, that Gottlieb was a “crapehanger” wasting time tearing down other people's theories instead of coming up with his own. But tonight, in disgust at literary posers like Brumfit, he praised Gottlieb’s long, lonely struggle to create antitoxin, and his eerie enjoyment in disproving his own arguments just as he would those of Ehrlich or Sir Almroth Wright. He talked about Gottlieb’s important book, “Immunology,” which had been read by seven-ninths of all the men in the world who could possibly understand it—the total being nine.

The party wrapped up with Mrs. Edwards' famous doughnuts. Martin trudged toward his boarding house through a misty spring night. The talk about Gottlieb had fired him up with an inexplicable excitement. He imagined working alone in a lab at night, completely focused, dismissive of academic success and the popular crowd. He thought he had never actually seen the man, but he knew Gottlieb’s lab was in the Main Medical Building. He wandered toward the faraway medical campus. The few people he passed were rushing by with late-night apprehension. He stepped into the shadow of the Anatomy Building, grim like a barracks, silent as the dead bodies up there in the dissecting room. Ahead was the turreted mass of the Main Medical Building, a harsh and blurry silhouette with a single light flickering high in its dark wall. He jumped. The light had gone out suddenly, as if an anxious observer was trying to hide from him.

On the stone steps of the Main Medical, two minutes later, a tall figure appeared under the streetlight, looking lean and reserved, set apart from everything else. His dark cheeks were hollow, and his nose was narrow and prominent. Unlike the latecomers rushing home, he took his time. He seemed unaware of his surroundings. He glanced at Martin as if looking right through him and then moved on, mumbling to himself, his shoulders hunched, his long hands clasped behind his back. He faded into the shadows, becoming just another shadow himself.

He had worn a frayed overcoat like a struggling professor, but Martin remembered him as being draped in a black velvet cape with a silver star proudly on his chest.{11}

On his first day of medical school, Martin Arrowsmith felt a strong sense of superiority. As a medical student, he seemed more impressive than his peers, since medics are known to hold secrets, face horrors, and experience thrilling mischief. While students from other departments retreat to their rooms to study their textbooks, Martin, as a college graduate with a background in the basic sciences, felt above most of his fellow medics, who mostly only had high school diplomas and maybe a year at a small Lutheran college in the countryside.

For all his pride, Martin was anxious. He thought about performing surgery, about making a deadly wrong cut; and with a more immediate, grim fear, he thought of the dissecting room and the cold, clinical Anatomy Building. He had heard older doctors whisper about its horrors: of bodies hanging by hooks, like rows of dreadful fruit, in a terrible tank of brine in the dark basement; of Henry the janitor, who was rumored to pull the cadavers out of the brine, inject red paint into their veins, and scold them as he stuffed them into the dumbwaiter.

There was a fresh autumn breeze in the air, but Martin didn’t notice it. He rushed into the gray hall of the Main Medical building, up the wide stairs to Max Gottlieb’s office. He didn’t pay attention to the students passing by, and when he bumped into a few, he mumbled a confused apology. It was a significant moment. He was about to specialize in bacteriology; he was going to discover fascinating new germs; Professor Gottlieb was going to see him as a genius, make him an assistant, predict a bright future for him— He paused in Gottlieb’s private lab, a small, neat space with racks of corked test tubes on the counter, a place that seemed unremarkable and ordinary except for the constant-temperature bath with its tricky thermometer and electric bulbs. He waited until another student, a stuttering oddball, finished talking to Gottlieb, who was dark, lean, and expressionless at his desk in a tiny office, then he dove in.

If on that misty April night Gottlieb had been as romantic as a cloaked horseman, he was now irritable and middle-aged. Up close, Martin could see the wrinkles next to his sharp eyes. Gottlieb had turned back to his desk, which was piled high with worn notebooks, sheets of calculations, and an incredibly precise chart with red and green curves that dropped down to disappear{12} at zero. The calculations were delicate, detailed, and beautifully clear; and Gottlieb’s thin hands moved gracefully among the papers. He looked up and spoke with a hint of a German accent. His words were not so much mispronounced as colored with a warm unfamiliar tone.

"Well? Yes?"

“Oh, Professor Gottlieb, my name is Arrowsmith. I'm a first-year med student at Winnemac B.A. I would really like to take bacteriology this fall instead of next year. I've had a lot of chemistry—”

“No. It’s not your time yet.”

“Honestly, I know I can do it now.”

“There are two types of students that the gods give me. One type they throw at me like a sack of potatoes. I don’t like potatoes, and the potatoes don’t seem to care much for me either, but I take them and teach them to harm patients. The other type—there are very few of them!—they seem, for reasons I don’t quite understand, to want a little bit to become scientists, to work with insects and make mistakes. Those, ah, those, I grab hold of, I challenge them, I teach them right away the most important lesson of science, which is to wait and question. From the potatoes, I expect nothing; from the clueless ones like you, who think I can teach them something, I expect everything. No. You’re too young. Come back next year.”

"But honestly, with my vibe—"

"Have you taken physical chemistry yet?"

"No, sir, but I did quite well in organic."

“Organic chemistry! Puzzle chemistry! Stink chemistry! Drugstore chemistry! Physical chemistry is power, it’s precision, it’s life. But organic chemistry—that’s a job for pot-washers. No. You’re too young. Come back in a year.”

Gottlieb was firm. His claw-like fingers gestured Martin toward the door, and the boy quickly left, not wanting to argue. He walked away feeling dejected. On campus, he ran into the cheerful chemistry historian, Encore Edwards, and asked, “Hey, Professor, is there any benefit for a doctor in organic chemistry?”

“Value? It aims for the stuff that eases pain! It creates the paint that freshens up your home, it colors your partner's dress—and maybe, in these messed-up times, her cherry{13} lips! Who on earth has been spreading rumors about my organic chemistry?”

“Nobody. I was just curious,” Martin complained, and he wandered to the College Inn where, looking hurt and sad, he devoured a huge banana split and a bar of almond chocolate while he thought:

“I want to study bacteriology. I want to understand this disease stuff. I’ll learn some physical chemistry. I’ll prove old Gottlieb wrong, damn him! One day I’ll discover the cancer germ or something, and then he’ll look ridiculous! Oh, God, I hope I don’t get sick the first time I step into the dissecting room... I want to study bacteriology—right now!”

He remembered Gottlieb’s sarcastic face; he felt and feared his intense hatred. Then he thought about the wrinkles, and he saw Max Gottlieb not as a genius but as a man who had headaches, who became painfully exhausted, who could be loved.

“I wonder if Encore Edwards knows as much as I thought he did? What is Truth?” he wondered.

Martin felt anxious on his first day of dissection. He couldn’t bear to look at the stiff, lifeless faces of the emaciated gray men lying on the wooden tables. But they seemed so impersonal, these forgotten old men, that in just two days he, like the other medics, was referring to them as “Billy,” “Ike,” and “the Parson,” viewing them as he had viewed animals in biology class. The dissecting room itself was cold and uninviting: hard cement floor, walls of rough plaster between wire-glass windows. Martin couldn’t stand the smell of formaldehyde; that, along with another dreadful, lingering scent, seemed to cling to him even outside the dissecting room. But he smoked cigarettes to forget about it, and within a week he was eagerly exploring arteries with youthful and utterly improper delight.

His dissection partner was Reverend Ira Hinkley, known to the class by a similar yet different name.

Ira was going to be a medical missionary. He was twenty-nine, a graduate of Pottsburg Christian College and the Sanctification Bible and Missions School. He had played football; he was as strong and nearly as big as a{14} steer, and no steer ever bellowed more loudly. He was a bright and happy Christian, a cheerful optimist who laughed away sin and doubt, a joyful Puritan who, with intense passion, preached the beliefs of his small group, the Sanctification Brotherhood, claiming that having a beautiful church was almost as sinful as the vices of card-playing.

Martin found himself looking at “Billy,” their dead body—an undersized, blotchy old man with a terrible little red beard on his frozen, veiny face—as if it were a machine, fascinating, complex, beautiful, but just a machine. It weakened his already fragile belief in humanity’s divinity and immortality. He might have kept his doubts to himself, slowly turning them over as he dissected the nerves of the mangled upper arm, but Ira Hinkley wouldn’t leave him alone. Ira thought he could bring even medical students to joy, which, to Ira, meant singing excessively long and unappealing hymns in a chapel of the Sanctification Brotherhood.

“Mart, my son,” he shouted, “do you understand that in this, what some might call a dirty job, we are learning things that will help us heal the bodies and comfort the souls of countless lost, unhappy people?”

“Huh! Souls. I haven’t found one yet in old Billy. Seriously, do you believe that nonsense?”

Ira clenched his fist and scowled, then burst out laughing, slapped Martin awkwardly on the back, and shouted, “Brother, you’ve got to do better than that to get under Ira’s skin! You think you’ve got a lot of these fancy Modern Doubts. You don’t—you’ve just got indigestion. What you need is exercise and faith. Come on over to the Y. M. C. A. and I’ll take you for a swim and pray with you. Why, you poor skinny little agnostic, here you have a chance to see the Almighty’s creation, and all you take away from it is a feeling that you’re really clever. Cheer up, young Arrowsmith. You don’t realize how funny you are to someone who has a calm faith!”

To the delight of Clif Clawson, the class clown who sat at the next table, Ira elbowed Martin in the ribs, patted him hard on the head, and cheerfully went back to work, while Martin fumed with irritation.{15}

In college, Martin had been a "barb"—he didn't belong to a Greek Letter secret society. He had gone through the rushing process, but he felt irritated by the snobbishness of the guys from the bigger cities. Now that most of his Arts classmates had moved on to jobs in insurance offices, law schools, and banks, he felt lonely and was tempted by an invitation from Digamma Pi, the main medical fraternity.

Digamma Pi was a lively boarding house with a pool table and affordable prices. You could hear rough but friendly noises coming from it at night, along with a lot of singing about "When I Die, Don’t Bury Me at All"; yet for three years, the Digams had won the valedictorian title and the Hugh Loizeau Medal in Experimental Surgery. This fall, the Digams elected Ira Hinkley because they had started to gain a reputation for partying—there were rumors of girls being sneaked in late at night—and no group that included the Reverend Mr. Hinkley could possibly be viewed as immoral by the Dean, which was a plus if they wanted to keep living comfortably immoral lives.

Martin had valued the independence of his private room. In a fraternity, all tennis rackets, pants, and opinions are shared. When Ira realized that Martin was unsure, he urged, “Oh, just come in! Digam needs you. You do study hard—I’ll give you that—and think about the opportunity you’ll have to positively influence The Fellows.”

(On all occasions, Ira referred to his classmates as The Fellows, and frequently he used the term in prayers at the Y. M. C. A.)

“I don’t want to sway anyone. I want to learn the medical profession and earn six thousand dollars a year.”

“My boy, if you only knew how silly you sound when you try to act cynical! When you’re as old as I am, you’ll realize that the best part of being a doctor is that you can teach people about noble ideals while also comforting their suffering bodies.”

“Suppose they don’t want my specific brand of high ideals?”

“Mart, do I have to stop and pray with you?”

“No! Stop it! Honestly, Hinkley, out of all the Christians I’ve ever met, you take the worst advantages. You can beat anyone in the class, and when I think about how you’re going to bully those poor souls when you become a missionary,{16} make the kids wear pants, and mess up all the happy couples by marrying them off to the wrong people, it just makes me want to cry!”

The idea of leaving his safe space for the support of Reverend Mr. Hinkley was unbearable. It wasn't until Angus Duer agreed to join Digamma Pi that Martin came in himself.

Duer was one of the few in Martin’s class who had followed him to Winnemac medical school. He had been the valedictorian. A quiet, sharp-faced young man with curly hair, he was fairly handsome and never wasted a moment or good intention. His work in biology and chemistry was so impressive that a surgeon in Chicago had promised him a position in his clinic. Martin compared Angus Duer to a razor blade on a January morning; he couldn't stand him, felt uneasy around him, and envied him. He knew that Duer had been too focused on passing exams to really think about biology as a whole. He recognized that Duer was a skilled chemist, quickly and efficiently completing the required experiments without ever attempting any original ones that might lead him to either success or failure. Martin believed Duer played up his cool efficiency just to impress the professors. Still, he stood out starkly among a sea of students who couldn’t finish their experiments or contemplate anything beyond smoking pipes and watching football practice, so Martin both loved and hated him, and almost submissively followed him into Digamma Pi.

Martin, Ira Hinkley, Angus Duer, Clif Clawson, the big class jokester, and one “Fatty” Pfaff were all initiated into Digamma Pi together. It was a loud and somewhat painful process, which involved smelling asafetida. Martin was uninterested, but Fatty Pfaff was in an intense, loud, gasping panic.

Fatty was the most useful of all the new Freshmen candidates for Digamma Pi. He was practically made to be the target of jokes. He looked like a bloated hot-water bottle; he was spectacularly foolish; he believed everything, knew nothing, and couldn’t remember anything. Yet, he anxiously forgave the guys who filled their free time by playing pranks on him. They convinced him that mustard plasters were great for colds—gathering around him with concern, they stuck a huge plaster to his back and then lovingly removed it afterward. They hid the ear of a corpse in his nice, clean, new handkerchief when he went to Sunday dinner at his girl cousin's house in Zenith.... At dinner, he dramatically produced the handkerchief.

Every night when Fatty went to bed, he had to clear a bunch of random stuff that his considerate housemates had stuffed between the sheets—like soap, alarm clocks, and even fish. He was the perfect person to sell useless items to. Clif Clawson, who mixed brisk selling with humor, sold him a History of Medicine for four dollars, which he had picked up second-hand for two. Even though Fatty never read it and probably couldn’t understand it, having that chunky red book made him feel smart. But Fatty’s biggest contribution to Digamma was his belief in spiritualism. He was always terrified of ghosts. He frequently imagined seeing them come out of the dissecting room windows at night. His classmates made sure he noticed plenty of them moving around the fraternity house.

Digamma Pi was located in a house built in the booming year of 1885. The living room looked like it had just been through a tornado. Tables with knife cuts, broken Morris chairs, and ripped rugs were scattered everywhere, all covered with backless books, hockey shoes, caps, and cigarette butts. Upstairs, four men shared a bedroom, and the beds were stacked iron double-deckers, similar to what you'd find in steerage.

For ashtrays, the Digams used sawed-off skulls, and the bedroom walls were covered with anatomical charts to be looked at while getting dressed. In Martin’s room, there was a complete skeleton. He and his roommates had trustingly purchased it from a salesman who came from a Zenith surgical supply company. He was such a friendly and likable salesman; he gave them cigars, shared stories about G. U., and talked about how successful doctors they were all going to be. They happily bought the skeleton on an installment plan.... Later, the salesman was not as friendly.

Martin shared a room with Clif Clawson, Fatty Pfaff, and a serious second-year medical student named Irving Watters.

Any psychologist looking for a perfectly average person for demonstrations couldn't have found anyone better than Irving Watters. He was consistently and meticulously dull; {18} always smiling, easygoing, and reliably boring. If there was a cliché he didn't use, it was simply because he hadn't heard it yet. He believed in morality—except on Saturday nights; he believed in the Episcopal Church—but not the High Church; he believed in the Constitution, Darwinism, regular workouts at the gym, and the brilliance of the university president.

Among them, Martin liked Clif Clawson the most. Clif was the clown of the fraternity house, always bursting into loud laughter, clogging, and singing silly songs. He even practiced on the cornet, yet he was genuinely a good guy and solid. In his disdain for Ira Hinkley, his fear of Angus Duer, his pity for Fatty Pfaff, and his dislike for the friendly but dull Irving Watters, Martin turned to the boisterous Clif as something lively and adventurous. At least Clif had authenticity; the kind that reminded him of a freshly plowed field or a steaming manure pile. It was Clif who would spar with him; Clif who—despite his love for sitting around for hours, smoking, grunting, and lazily lounging—could be convinced to go for a five-mile walk.

And it was Clif who risked getting in serious trouble by throwing baked beans at Reverend Ira Hinkley during dinner, while Ira was being both clumsy and overly nice in his corrections.

In the lab, Ira was really annoying with his laughter at some of Martin’s ideas that didn’t make it into Pottsburg Christian College, but at the fraternity house, he became a moral nightmare. He wouldn’t stop trying to put an end to their swearing. Even after three years on a rough football team, he still firmly believed he could clean up young men by lecturing them, combining the tone of a Sunday School teacher with the subtlety of a rampaging elephant.

Ira also had stats about Clean Living.

He was full of stats. It didn’t matter to him where he got them; numbers from daily newspapers, the census report, or the Miscellany Column of the Sanctification Herald were all good enough. He announced at the dinner table, “Clif, I just don’t get how a smart guy like you can keep smoking that filthy old pipe. Do you know that 67.9 percent of all women who go under the knife have husbands who smoke tobacco?”

“What the heck would they smoke?” demanded Clif.

“Where did you get those numbers?” from Martin.{19}

“They showed up at a medical conference in Philadelphia in 1902,” Ira said sarcastically. “I guess it won’t matter to a bunch of know-it-alls like you that someday you’ll marry a nice, smart woman and mess up her life with your bad habits. Go ahead, keep it up—what a bold and manly group! A weak preacher like me wouldn’t dream of doing anything so daring as smoking a pipe!”

He left them feeling triumphant, and Martin groaned, “Ira makes me want to quit medicine and become an honest harness-maker.”

“Aw, come on, Mart,” Fatty Pfaff said, “you shouldn’t be cursing Ira out. He’s really sincere.”

“Sincere? Seriously! So is a cockroach!”

Thus they chattered, while Angus Duer observed them in a calm silence that made Martin anxious. In the field of the career he had anticipated his entire life, he encountered frustration and emptiness, as well as peaceful insight; he didn't see one straight path to the Truth but a thousand paths leading to a thousand distant and uncertain truths.{20}

John A. Robertshaw, John Aldington Robertshaw, a physiology professor at the medical school, was pretty hard of hearing, and he was the only teacher at the University of Winnemac who still sported mutton-chop whiskers. He was from Back Bay; he was proud of it and made sure you knew. Along with three other Brahmins, he established a Boston colony in Mohalis that represented durable charm and tastefully muted light. At every opportunity, he would say, “When I was studying with Ludwig in Germany—” He was too focused on his own correctness to pay attention to individual students, and Clif Clawson and the other young guys informally known as “hell-raisers” anticipated his lectures on physiology.

They were in an amphitheater with seats that curved so much that the lecturer couldn’t see both ends at the same time. While Dr. Robertshaw continued to drone on about blood circulation, trying to figure out who was making that ridiculous sound like a car horn to his right, Clif Clawson began to rise on the far left and imitate him, moving his arms like a saw and stroking his imaginary whiskers. At one point, Clif pulled off the ultimate prank by throwing a brick into the sink next to the platform just when Dr. Robertshaw was building up to his annual finale about how brass bands affect the intensity of the knee-jerk reflex.

Martin had been reading Max Gottlieb’s scientific papers—as many as he could, with their jumble of mathematical symbols—and he became convinced that experiments should focus on the basics of life and death, the nature of bacterial infection, and the chemistry of bodily reactions. When Robertshaw talked about trivial little experiments, standard experiments, and maiden-aunt experiments, Martin felt restless. In college, he had thought that prosody and Latin Composition were pointless, and he had looked forward to studying medicine as a way to gain insight. Now, in a gloomy worry about his own irrationality, he found that he was developing the same disdain for Robertshaw’s shortcuts—and for most of the work in anatomy.

The anatomy professor, Dr. Oliver O. Stout, was like a walking anatomy chart—a thinly veiled bundle of nerves, blood vessels, and bones. Stout had an incredible depth of knowledge; in his dry voice, he could rattle off more facts about the left pinky toe than you’d ever think anyone would want to know about it.

No conversation at the Digamma Pi dinner table was more intense than the ongoing debate about how important it was for a doctor—a decent, everyday doctor who earned a good income and didn’t stress about reading papers at medical conferences—to remember anatomical terms. But regardless of their opinions, they all insisted on memorizing the lists of names that allowed someone to pass exams and become an Educated Person, with a value of five dollars an hour. Unknown scholars had created rhymes to help them memorize. At dinner—the thirty rambunctious Digams gathered around a long, messy table, enjoying clam chowder, beans, codfish balls, and banana layer cake—the Freshmen eagerly repeated after a senior:

Thus, through the connection to the first letters, they learned the twelve cranial nerves: olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, and the others. For the Digams, it was the greatest poem in the world, and they remembered it for years after they became practicing doctors and completely forgot the names of the nerves themselves.

In Dr. Stout’s anatomy lectures, there were no disruptions, but his dissecting room was filled with jokes. The tamest of these was when someone put a firecracker inside the cadaver that two innocent and unfortunate co-eds were working on. The main thrill during freshman year was the incident involving Clif Clawson and the pancreas.

Clif had been elected class president for the year because{22} he was so cheerful. He never saw a classmate in the hall of Main Medical without shouting, “How’s your appendix doing this morning?” or “I give you a big hello, old lice.” With loud formality, he led class meetings (heated meetings to reject the proposal to let the “aggies” use the North Side Tennis Courts), but in his personal life, he was less formal.

The awful thing happened while the Board of Regents was being shown around the campus. The Regents were the top authorities of the University; they were bankers, manufacturers, and pastors of large churches; even the president seemed modest beside them. Nothing excited them more than the dissecting room of the medical school. The preachers talked seriously about the impact of alcohol on the poor, while the bankers criticized the disregard for savings accounts often seen in men who chose to become corpses. During the tour, led by Dr. Stout and the umbrella-carrying secretary of the University, the chubbiest and most influential banker paused near Clif Clawson’s dissecting table, holding his derby hat respectfully behind him, and into that hat, Clif dropped a pancreas.

Now, finding a pancreas in your new hat is pretty gross, and when the banker discovered one, he tossed the hat aside and declared that the students of Winnemac had gone off the rails. Dr. Stout and the secretary reassured him; they cleaned the derby and promised that justice would be served on the person who would put a pancreas in a banker’s hat.

Dr. Stout called Clif, the president of the Freshmen. Clif felt distressed. He gathered the class, expressed his sorrow that any Winnemac Man could put a pancreas in a banker’s hat, and insisted that the culprit should be brave enough to step forward and admit it.

Unfortunately, the Reverend Ira Hinkley, who sat between Martin and Angus Duer, had seen Clif drop the pancreas. He growled, “This is outrageous! I’m going to expose Clawson, even if he is one of my frat brothers.”

Martin protested, “Stop it. Don’t you want to get him fired?”

“He should be!”

Angus Duer turned in his seat, looked at Ira, and suggested,{23} “Could you please be quiet?” and, as Ira stopped talking, Angus became more admirable and more hated by Martin than ever.

When he felt down, wondering why he was there listening to Professor Robertshaw, who kept going on about fat-eared Germans, learning the medical trade like Fatty Pfaff or Irving Watters, Martin found solace in what he thought of as indulgences. In reality, they were very minor indulgences; they hardly ever went beyond drinking too much lager in the nearby city of Zenith or enjoying the smiles of a factory girl walking along the grim back streets. But for Martin, who took pride in his physical fitness and valued a clear mind, those moments later felt tragic.

His safest friend was Clif Clawson. No matter how much bad beer he drank, Clif was never much more drunk than usual. Martin adapted to Clif’s carefree attitude, while Clif adjusted to Martin’s wandering thoughts. As they sat in a back room at a table covered in beer glass rings, Clif shook his finger and rambled, “You’re the only one who gets me, Mart. You know with all the partying and all the talk about being commercial that I pull on these high rollers like Ira Stinkley, I’m just sick of commercialism and nonsense just like you are.”

“Sure. You got it,” Martin said affectionately, a hint of alcohol in his voice. “You’re just like me. My God, do you understand—dough-faced like Irving Watters or a ruthless climber like Angus Duer, and then there’s old Gottlieb! The ideal researcher! Never satisfied with what seems true! Alone, not caring at all, as straight-laced as a captain on the bridge, working all night, getting to the bottom of things!”

“That's the stuff. That's my idea, too. Let's have another beer. I'll shake on it!” said Clif Clawson.

Zenith, with its bars, was fifteen miles from Mohalis and the University of Winnemac; it took half an hour by the big, loud steel interurban trolleys, and that's where the medical students headed for their adventures. Saying you had “gone into town last night” was something people winked and teased about. But with Angus Duer, Martin found a different side of Zenith.

At dinner, Duer suddenly said, “Come into town with me to listen to a concert.{24}”

For all his supposed superiority over his peers, Martin was completely clueless about literature, art, and music. It amazed him that the cold and materialistic Angus Duer would waste time listening to musicians. He found out that Duer was passionate about two composers named Bach and Beethoven, who were presumably German, and that he himself still didn't understand everything about the world. On the train, Duer's serious demeanor relaxed, and he exclaimed, “Man, if I hadn’t been meant to cut up guts, I would have been a great musician! Tonight, I’m going to take you straight to Heaven!”

Martin found himself surrounded by a jumble of small chairs and huge golden arches, with polite but disapproving ladies holding programs in their laps, unromantic musicians making unpleasant noises below, and, finally, an incomprehensible beauty that conjured images of hills and deep forests for him, but soon became painfully tedious. He cheered, “I’m going to have it all—the fame of Max Gottlieb—I mean his talent—and the beautiful music and beautiful women—Wow! I’m going to achieve great things. And travel the world... Will this piece ever end?”

It was a week after the concert that he found Madeline Fox again.

Madeline was a striking, vibrant, and opinionated girl whom Martin had known in college. She was staying on, supposedly to take a graduate course in English, but really to avoid going back home. She thought of herself as an excellent tennis player; she played with energy and loud movements but had a big lack of direction. She saw herself as a literature expert; the authors she approved of were Hardy, Meredith, Howells, and Thackeray, none of whom she had read in five years. She had often criticized Martin for not appreciating Howells, for wearing flannel shirts, and for not helping her off streetcars like a character from a story. In college, they went to dances together, although Martin was more spirited than skilled, and his partners sometimes struggled to figure out what he was trying to dance. He liked Madeline’s tall beauty and her energy; he felt that her lively personality was somehow “good for him.” During this year, he had barely seen her. He thought about her late at night and planned to call her, but never did. However, as he began to doubt his choice of medicine, he craved her support, and on a Sunday afternoon in spring, he took her for a walk along the Chaloosa River.{25}

From the river bluffs, the prairie unfolds in vibrant rolling hills. In the expansive barley fields, the rugged pastures, the dwarfed oaks, and the vivid birches, there’s a sense of adventure typical of the frontier. Like spirited young pioneers, they roamed the bluffs and declared to each other that they were going to take on the world.

He complained, “These damn medics—”

“Oh, Martin, do you think ‘damn’ is a nice word?” Madeline asked.

He thought it was a really nice word and super useful for a busy worker, but her smile was what he truly wanted.

“Well—these darn students, they’re not trying to learn science; they’re just learning a trade. They only want the knowledge that’ll help them make money. They don’t talk about saving lives but about ‘losing cases’—losing dollars! And they wouldn’t even mind losing cases if it was a sensational operation that’d promote them! They make me sick! How many of them do you find that are interested in the work Ehrlich is doing in Germany—or that Max Gottlieb is doing right here and now! Gottlieb’s just had a tough time with Wright’s opsonin theory.”

"Really, has he?"

“Has he! I would say he did! And do you ever see any of the doctors getting worked up about it? Nope! They say, ‘Oh, sure, science has its place; it helps a doctor treat his patients,’ and then they start debating whether they can make more money if they set up shop in a big city or a small town, and whether it’s better for a young doctor to be friendly and social, or to join a church and look serious. You should hear Irve Watters. He has just one perspective: the guy who gets ahead in medicine, is he the one who knows his pathology? Oh, no; the person who succeeds is the one who gets an office on a northeast corner, near a trolley car stop, with a phone number that patients can easily remember! Honestly! He really said that! I swear, when I graduate, I think I’ll be a ship’s doctor. You get to see the world that way, and at least you’re not racing up and down the boat trying to lure patients away from some rival doctor who has an office on another deck!”

“Yes, I know; it’s awful how people don’t have any ideals about their work. So many of the English grad students just want to make money from teaching, instead of appreciating scholarship the way I do.”

It was unsettling to Martin that she appeared to believe she was as much of a superior person as he was, but he was even more unsettled when she bubbled:

“At the same time, Martin, you have to be practical, don’t you? Think about how much more money—no, I mean how much more social status and influence for doing good a successful doctor has compared to one of those scientists who just tinker around, not really aware of what's happening in the world. Look at a surgeon like Dr. Loizeau, arriving at the hospital in a nice car with a chauffeur in uniform, and all his patients practically worshiping him. And then there's your Max Gottlieb—someone pointed him out to me the other day, and he was wearing a terrible old suit, and I really thought he could use a haircut.”

Martin snapped at her with rage, statistics, harsh words, religious fervor, and mixed-up metaphors. They sat on a bent, old-fashioned rail fence where the first spring insects buzzed over the sun-soaked, vibrant plantains. Caught in his whirlwind of fanaticism, she lost her lightheartedness and squeaked, “Yes, I see now, I see,” without explaining what she meant. “Oh, you really do have a brilliant mind and such—such integrity.”

“Really? Do you think I have?”

“Oh, I really do, and I’m sure you’re going to have an amazing future. And I’m so glad you’re not commercial, like the others. Don’t worry about what they say!”

He realized that Madeline was not just a rare and understanding person but also an incredibly attractive woman—bright complexion, gentle eyes, and a lovely curve from her shoulder to her side. As they walked back, he understood that she was truly the perfect match for him. Under his guidance, she would learn to differentiate between vague “ideals” and the concrete certainty of science. They stopped on the bluff, gazing down at the muddy Chaloosa, a lively Western river in spring, filled with floating branches. He longed for her; he regretted the casual relationships of his college days and decided to be a pure and hardworking young man, to be, in fact, “worthy of her.”

“Oh, Madeline,” he lamented, “you’re so incredibly beautiful!{27}”

She looked at him shyly.

He grabbed her hand; in a moment of desperation, he tried to kiss her. It was really awkward. He ended up only kissing her jaw, while she struggled and pleaded, “Oh, don’t!” They didn’t mention the incident as they walked back into Mohalis, but there was a softness in their voices. Without any impatience, she listened to him criticize Professor Robertshaw as a phonograph, and he listened to her comments on the superficiality and crudeness of Dr. Norman Brumfit, that lively English teacher. At her boarding house, she sighed, “I wish I could invite you in, but it’s almost suppertime and— Will you call me some day?”

“You bet I will!” said Martin, following the rules for romantic conversation at the University of Winnemac.

He hurried home in excitement. As he lay in his small top bunk at midnight, he saw her eyes, sometimes cheeky, sometimes disapproving, and sometimes filled with trust in him. “I love her! I love her! I’ll call her— I wonder if I should call her as early as eight in the morning?”

But at eight, he was too focused on studying the tear duct system to think about girls’ eyes. He only saw Madeline once, and that was in the bustling atmosphere of her boarding-house porch, filled with co-eds, red cushions, and marshmallows, before he got swept up in intense studying for the year’s final exams.

At exam time, the Digamma Pi fraternity proved its worth to those desperately seeking knowledge. Generations of Digams had gathered test papers and saved them in the sacred Quiz Book; detail-oriented members had gone through the book and highlighted the problems that were most frequently asked over the years. The Freshmen huddled in a circle around Ira Hinkley in the Digam living room as he recited the questions they were most likely to encounter. They squirmed, tugged at their hair, scratched their chins, bit their fingers, and tapped their heads in an effort to come up with the right answer before Angus Duer read it to them from the textbook.

In the middle of their struggles, they had to work alongside Fatty Pfaff.

Fatty had failed the mid-year anatomy exam, and he had{28} to pass a special quiz before he could take the finals. There was a certain fondness for him in Digamma Pi; Fatty was soft, Fatty was superstitious, Fatty was clueless, yet they had for him the kind of exasperated affection they might feel for a used car or a muddy dog. They all worked on him; they tried to help him pass the exam as if pushing him through a trap-door. They panted and grunted and moaned with the effort, and Fatty panted and moaned along with them.

The night before his big exam, they kept him up until two o'clock, using wet towels, black coffee, prayer, and swearing. They drilled him with lists—lists—lists; they shook their fists in his sad, red face and screamed, “Damn it, will you remember that the bicuspid valve is the SAME as the mitral valve and NOT a different one?” They ran around the room, waving their hands and lamenting, “Will he ever remember anything about anything?” then returned to fake calmness, saying, “Now, no point in getting worked up, Fatty. Take it easy. Just listen to this, calmly, will you, and please,” encouragingly, “do try to remember one thing, at least!”

They carefully helped him to bed. He was so packed with information that the slightest bump would have caused it to spill out.

When he woke up at seven, with red eyes and shaking lips, he had forgotten everything he had learned.

“There’s no other option,” said the president of Digamma Pi. “He needs to have a crib and just take his chances with getting caught. I figured as much. I made one for him yesterday. It’s a great one. It’ll cover enough of the questions so he’ll make it through.”

Even Reverend Ira Hinkley, after witnessing the horrors of the night before, went about his business ignoring the crime. It was Fatty himself who objected: “Gee, I don’t like cheating. I don’t think someone who can’t pass an exam should be allowed to practice medicine. That’s what my Dad said.”

They poured more coffee into him and (following Clif Clawson's suggestion, who wasn’t entirely sure what would happen but was eager to find out) they gave him a potassium bromide tablet. The president of Digamma, grabbing Fatty with a bit of force, said, “I’m going to stick this crib in your pocket—look, right here in your breast pocket, behind your handkerchief.{29}”

“I won’t use it. I don’t care if I fail,” Fatty said, whining.

“That’s fine, but you keep it there. Maybe you can absorb some information from it through your lungs, for God knows—” The president grabbed his hair. His voice got louder, filled with all the sadness of sleepless nights and dark struggles and desperate retreats. “— God knows you can’t take it in through your head!”

They dusted off Fatty, stood him up straight, and pushed him through the door on his way to the Anatomy Building. They watched him leave: a balloon on legs, a sausage in corduroy pants.

“Could he actually be honest?” Clif Clawson wondered.

“Well, if he is, we better go up and start packing his luggage. And this old fraternity will never have another mascot like Fatty,” lamented the president.

They watched as Fatty stopped, took out his handkerchief, sadly blew his nose—and found a long, thin slip of paper. They saw him scowl at it, tap it against his knuckles, start to read it, shove it back into his pocket, and continue on with a more determined stride.

They danced hand in hand around the fraternity's living room, earnestly reassuring each other, “He’ll use it—it’s fine—he’ll make it or get in trouble!”

He made it.

Digamma Pi was more irritated by Martin’s endless doubts than by Fatty’s nonsense, Clif Clawson’s loudness, Angus Duer’s harshness, or Reverend Ira Hinkley’s constant pestering.

During the stressful time of studying for exams, Martin was particularly annoying about “stocking up on the best medical terms like the best sterilizers—not for practical use but to impress your patients.” One of the Digams suggested, “Hey, if you don’t like how we study medicine, we’d be more than happy to collect some money and send you back to Elk Mills, where you won’t be bothered by us lowbrows and commercial types. Listen! We don’t tell you how you should work. Where do you get the idea that you need to tell us? Oh, just cut it out, will you?”

Angus Duer observed, with a bitter sweetness, “We’ll admit we’re{30} just carpenters, and you’re a great investigator. But there are several things you might consider when you finish your studies. What do you know about architecture? How are your French verbs? How many major novels have you ever read? Who’s the prime minister of Austro-Hungary?”

Martin struggled, “I don’t act like I know anything—except I do know what a guy like Max Gottlieb means. He’s got the right approach, and all these other mediocre professors are just like quacks. You think Gottlieb isn’t religious, Hinkley? Just the fact that he’s in a lab is like a prayer. Don’t you fools get what it means to have someone like him here, creating new ideas about life? Don’t you—”

Clif Clawson, yawning widely, wondered, “Praying in the lab! I bet I’ll get in trouble when I take bacteriology if Pa Gottlieb catches me praying during experiments!”

“Damn it, listen!” Martin shouted. “I’m telling you, you guys are the kind that make medicine nothing but guesswork diagnosis, and here you have a man—”

So they debated for hours after their intense fact-checking.

When everyone else had gone to bed, and the room was a mess of tossed clothes and tired young men snoring in metal bunks, Martin sat at the splintery long pine study table, feeling anxious. Angus Duer walked in, stating, “Listen, man. We’re all tired of your complaining. If you think medicine is pointless, considering how we learn it, and if you're so incredibly honest, why don’t you just leave?”

He left Martin to stress, “He’s right. I need to either stop talking or leave. Do I really mean it? What do I want? What am I going to do?”

Angus Duer’s diligence and his respect for proper manners were equally disturbed by Clif’s crude singing, Clif’s loud conversations, Clif’s habit of dropping things in people’s soup, and Clif’s unfortunate inability to keep his hands clean. Despite his calm demeanor, during exam season Duer was just as anxious as Martin, and one evening at dinner, when Clif was shouting, Duer said sharply, “Could you please keep it down?”{31}

“I’ll make all the noise I want!” Clif declared, and a feud was on.

Clif was so loud afterward that he almost got tired of his own noise. He was loud in the living room, loud in the bath, and with some effort, he lay awake pretending to snore. If Duer was quiet and absorbed in his books, he wasn’t the least bit shy; he faced Clif with the look of a judge and intimidated him. Privately, Clif complained to Martin, “Darn him, he acts like I’m a worm. Either he or I have to leave Digam, that’s for sure, and it won’t be me!”

He was aggressive and loud about it, and he was the one who left. He said that the Digams were a “bunch of bad sports; they don’t even know how to play poker right,” but he was escaping from the intense stare of Angus Duer. And Martin quit the fraternity along with him, planning to share a room with him next fall.

Clif's loud and brash attitude annoyed Martin just like it did Duer. Clif had no filter; when he wasn't sharing sleazy stories, he was demanding, “How much did you pay for those shoes—think you're some rich guy?” or “Did I see you walking with that Madeline Fox girl—what are you trying to do?” But Martin felt disconnected from the polished, hardworking, nice young men of Digamma Pi, in whose faces he could already see signs of a clinical lifestyle, shiny white sterilizers, sleek enclosed motors, and office signs in fancy gold lettering. He preferred a lonely, rugged existence because next year he would be working with Max Gottlieb, and he didn’t want to deal with it.

That summer, he worked with a team installing phones in Montana.

He was a lineman in the wire crew. His job was to climb the poles, digging the spurs of his leg irons into the soft, silvery pine, to carry up the wire, attach it to the glass insulators, then come down and move to another pole.

They covered about five miles a day; at night they pulled into small, run-down wooden towns. Their setup for the night was basic—they took off their shoes and wrapped up in a horse blanket. Martin wore overalls and a flannel shirt. He looked like a farmworker. After climbing all day, he took deep breaths, his mind free of worries, and one day he experienced something miraculous.

He was on top of a pole and suddenly, for no reason at all, his eyes{32} opened and he saw. It was like he had just woken up; he noticed that the prairie was huge, that the sun was shining gently on the rough pasture and ripening wheat, on the old horses—those easygoing, big-hearted, friendly horses—and on his red-faced, funny friends. He saw the meadowlarks singing happily, and blackbirds glinting by little pools, and with the bright sun, all life was vibrant. So what if the Angus Duers and Irving Watterses were tightfisted traders? “I’m here!” he reveled.

The wire crew was as healthy and straightforward as the west wind; they had no airs about them. Even though they worked with electrical equipment, they didn’t, like medics, memorize a bunch of scientific jargon and pretend to the farmers that they were experts. They laughed easily and were happy to just be themselves, and with them, Martin was happy to forget how distinguished he was. He felt a fondness for them that he felt for no one at the University except Max Gottlieb.

He had one book in his bag, Gottlieb’s “Immunology.” He could usually get through half a page before getting stuck on the chemical formulas. Sometimes, on Sundays or rainy days, he would try to read it and missed the laboratory; occasionally, he thought about Madeline Fox and realized how incredibly lonely he was for her. But weeks rolled by, strong and carefree, and when he woke up in a stable, surrounded by the sweet smell of hay, horses, and the open prairie that reached into the heart of these small towns, all he cared about was the day’s work and the hike ahead, heading west toward the sunset.

So they wandered through the Montana wheat fields, vast areas of wheat in one bright field, across the cattle country and the sagebrush desert, and suddenly, while looking at a stubborn cloud, Martin realized he was seeing the mountains.

Then he was on a train; the wire gang was already a distant memory; and he was focused only on Madeline Fox, Clif Clawson, Angus Duer, and Max Gottlieb.{33}

Prof. Max Gottlieb was about to kill a guinea pig with anthrax germs, and the bacteriology class was anxious.

They had studied the different types of bacteria, worked with Petri dishes and platinum loops, and had proudly grown the harmless red cultures of Bacillus prodigiosus on potato slices. Now, they were dealing with pathogenic germs and the inoculation of a living animal with fast-acting disease. These two beady-eyed guinea pigs, chattering in a jar, would be stiff and dead in two days.

Martin felt a mix of excitement and anxiety. He laughed it off, recalling with professional disdain how ridiculous the casual visitors to the lab were, thinking that deadly microbes would jump out at them from the mysterious centrifuge, the tables, or even the air. But he couldn't ignore the fact that in the cotton-plugged test tube between the instrument bath and the bichloride jar on the demonstrator's desk were millions of deadly anthrax germs.

The class looked attentive and kept a respectful distance. With a skilled technique and a confident speed that gave importance to even the smallest movement of his hands, Dr. Gottlieb trimmed the hair on the belly of a guinea pig held by the assistant. He soaped the belly with a quick flick of a hand brush, shaved it, and then applied iodine.

(And all the while Max Gottlieb was recalling the excitement of his first students, when he had just returned from working with Koch and Pasteur, when he was fresh from huge beer mugs and intense debates. Those were passionate, beautiful days! The golden age! His first classes in America, at Queen City College, had been amazed by the groundbreaking discoveries in bacteriology; they had gathered around him with respect; they had been eager to learn. Now the class felt like a wild crowd. He looked at them— Fatty Pfaff in the front row, his expression blank; the female students emotional and frightened; only Martin Arrowsmith and Angus Duer seemed genuinely intelligent. His memory stumbled upon a pale blue twilight in Munich, a bridge and a waiting girl, and the sound of music.)

He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution and shook them—a quick shake, fingers down, like a pianist's fingers above the keys. He took a syringe from the instrument bath and lifted the test tube. His voice flowed lazily, with German vowels and slurred W’s:

“This, gentlemen, is a twenty-four-hour culture of Bacillus anthracis. You’ve probably already noticed that there was cotton at the bottom of the tumbler to prevent the tube from breaking. I strongly advise against breaking tubes of anthrax germs and then handling the culture. You could end up getting anthrax boils—”

The class tensed up.

Gottlieb deftly pulled out the cotton plug with his little finger, so skillfully that the medical students who had grumbled, “Bacteriology is pointless; urinalysis and blood tests are all the lab work we need to know,” now viewed him with the same respect they'd have for someone who could do card tricks or remove an appendix in seven minutes. He stirred the mouth of the tube in the Bunsen burner, droning, “Every time you take the plug from a tube, flame the mouth of the tube. Make that a rule. It’s a necessary part of the technique, and technique, gentlemen, is the foundation of all science. It’s also the least understood aspect of science.”

The class was restless. Why wasn't he getting on with it, moving to the hilariously awful moment of giving the pig its shot?

(And Max Gottlieb, looking at the other guinea pig trapped in its battery jar, thought, “Poor thing! Why should I kill him just to teach Dummköpfe? It would be better to experiment on that chubby young guy.”)

He pushed the syringe into the tube, skillfully pulled back the plunger with his index finger, and explained:

“Take half a cc of the culture. There are two types of M.D.s—those who understand cc as cubic centimeter and those who see it as compound cathartic. The second type tends to be more prosperous.”

(But one can't express its quality: the thin drawl, the sarcastic friendliness, the hissing S's, the D's turned into blunt and defiant T's.)

The assistant held the guinea pig close; Gottlieb pinched the skin on its belly and quickly pierced it with a swift jab of the needle. The pig twitched and squeaked, causing the students to shudder. Gottlieb’s skilled fingers knew when he hit the peritoneal wall. He pushed down on the syringe. He said quietly, “This poor animal will soon be dead.” The class exchanged uneasy glances. “Some of you might think it doesn’t matter; some might, like Bernard Shaw, see me as an executioner, and the more chilling because I’m calm about it; and some of you won't think anything at all. This difference in philosophy is what makes life interesting.”

While the assistant tagged the pig with a metal disk in its ear and returned it to the battery jar, Gottlieb noted its weight in a notebook, along with the time of inoculation and the age of the bacterial culture. He then copied these notes on the blackboard in his precise handwriting, saying, “Gentlemen, the most important part of living is not just living but reflecting on it. And the most essential part of experimentation is not performing the experiment but taking notes—very accurate quantitative notes—in ink. I've heard a lot of smart people think they can keep notes in their heads. I've often happily noticed that such people don't actually have heads that can store their notes. This is quite fortunate because it means the world doesn’t see their results, and science isn’t burdened by them. Now, I will inoculate the second guinea pig, and then class will be dismissed. Before our next lab session, I would appreciate it if you could read Pater’s ‘Marius the Epicurean’ to gain the tranquility that is the key to laboratory skill.”

As they hurried down the hallway, Angus Duer remarked to a fellow colleague, “Gottlieb is just a lab rat; he lacks creativity; he stays here instead of going out into the world and embracing the challenge. But he's definitely skilled. Really solid technique. He could have been a top surgeon and made fifty grand a year. As it stands, I doubt he earns more than four thousand!”

Ira Hinkley walked alone, feeling worried. He was an incredibly kind man, this large and clumsy parson. He accepted everything his medical instructors told him with respect, no matter how contradictory it was to everything else, but this{36} killing of animals—he couldn't stand it. Somehow, he recalled that the Sunday before, in the run-down chapel where he preached during his medical course, he had praised the sacrifice of the martyrs, and they had sung about the blood of the lamb, the fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, but he lost that train of thought and trudged toward Digamma Pi in a haze of sympathetic contemplation.

Clif Clawson, walking with Fatty Pfaff, shouted, “Wow, that old pig really jumped when Pa Gottlieb jabbed that needle in!” and Fatty pleaded, “Don’t! Please!”

But Martin Arrowsmith pictured himself doing the same experiment, and as he recalled Gottlieb’s skilled hands, his own hands mirrored the motion.

The guinea pigs grew sleepier and sleepier. In two days, they flipped over, twitched uncontrollably, and died. Full of dramatic anticipation, the class gathered for the necropsy. On the demonstrator’s table was a wooden tray, marked from the tacks that had pinned down the bodies for years. The guinea pigs were in a glass jar, stiff, their fur ruffled. The class tried to remember how they had been nibbling and lively. The assistant stretched one of them out with thumbtacks. Gottlieb swabbed its belly with a cotton ball soaked in Lysol, cut it open from belly to neck, and burned the heart with a hot spatula—the class shivered at the sound of the sizzling flesh. Like a priest of dark mysteries, he drew out the charred blood with a pipette. Using the inflated lungs, spleen, kidneys, and liver, the assistant made wavy smears on glass slides, which were stained and given to the class for examination. The students who had learned to look through the microscope without closing one eye felt proud and professional, and they all talked about the beauty of identifying the bacillus as they adjusted the brass thumbscrews to the right focus, watching the cells shift from blurry to sharp clarity on the slides before them. But they felt uneasy because Gottlieb stayed with them that day, lurking behind them, saying nothing, always watching, keeping an eye on the disposal of the guinea pigs' remains, and nervous rumors circulated about a former student who had died from anthrax infection in the lab.{37}

There was a sense of satisfying joy for Martin during this time; the thrill of a fast hockey game, the calm of the prairie, the wonder of beautiful music, and a sense of creativity. He woke up early and thought happily about the day ahead; he rushed to his work, focused, and unaware.

The chaos of the bacteriology lab was pure joy for him—the students in rolled-up sleeves, filtering nutrient gelatin, their fingers sticky from the crinkly gelatin sheets; or heating media in an autoclave like a shiny cannon. The roaring Bunsen flames under the hot-air ovens, the steam from the Arnold sterilizers billowing to the rafters and clouding the windows, filled Martin with delight, and to him the most beautiful sights in the world were rows of test tubes filled with clear serum and plugged with cotton burnt to a coffee brown, a fine platinum loop resting in a shiny test glass, a fantastic array of tall glass tubes mysteriously linking jars, or a bottle filled with deep gentian violet stain.

He had started, maybe out of youthful imitation of Gottlieb, to work by himself in the lab at night.... The long room was dark, really dark, except for the gas lamp behind his microscope. The beam of light made the shiny brass tube glisten and highlighted his black hair as he leaned over the eyepiece. He was examining trypanosomes from a rat—an eight-branched rosette stained with colorful methylene blue; a cluster of organisms as delicate as a daffodil, with their purple nuclei, light blue cells, and thin lines of flagella. He felt excited and a bit proud; he had stained the germs perfectly, and it’s not easy to stain a rosette without damaging its petal shape. In the darkness, he heard footsteps, the weary steps of Max Gottlieb, and then a hand on Martin’s shoulder. Quietly, Martin looked up and pushed the microscope toward him. Leaning down, a cigarette stub in his mouth—the smoke would have stung anyone else's eyes—Gottlieb examined the preparation.

He adjusted the gas light a quarter inch and said, “Awesome! You really have skill. There’s definitely an art to science—for a select few. You Americans, so many of you—full of ideas, yet so impatient with the tediousness of long-term work. I’ve noticed it before in the lab—maybe you’ll try working with the trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness. They’re really interesting, but also quite tricky to handle. It’s quite{38} a fascinating disease. In some villages in Africa, fifty percent of the population has it, and it’s always fatal. Yes, I think you could make some progress with the bugs.”

Which, for Martin, meant getting his brigade ready for battle.

“I’ll have,” said Gottlieb, “a little sandwich in my room at midnight. If you happen to be working that late, I’d be very pleased if you could join me for a bite.”

Diffidently, Martin crossed the hall to Gottlieb’s spotless lab at midnight. On the bench were coffee and sandwiches, oddly small and surprisingly good sandwiches, unlike anything Martin was used to in the lunchroom.

Gottlieb talked until Clif was no longer on his mind and Angus Duer seemed like a ridiculous climber. He brought to mind London labs, dinners on chilly evenings in Stockholm, walks on the Pincio with the sunset behind the dome of St. Peter's, the extreme danger and overwhelming disgust from filthy clothes during an outbreak in Marseille. His guard fell away, and he spoke about himself and his family as if Martin were still around.

The cousin who was a colonel in Uruguay and the cousin, a rabbi, who was tortured in a pogrom in Moscow. His sick wife—it might be cancer. The three kids—the youngest girl, Miriam, she was a great musician, but the fourteen-year-old boy was a concern; he was sassy, and he wouldn’t study. He himself had worked for years on the synthesis of antibodies; he was currently stuck in a dead end, and at Mohalis, there was no one interested, no one to motivate him, but he was having a good time debunking the opsonin theory, and that made him happy.

“No, I haven’t done anything except be rude to people who demand too much, but I dream of making real discoveries someday. And— No. I don’t have students who truly grasp craftsmanship and precision and maybe have some big ideas in hypotheses more than five times in five years. I think you might have that. If I can help you— So!

“I don’t think you will make a good doctor. Good doctors are great—often they are artists—but their job isn’t for us lonely ones who work in labs. Once, I took a label as an M.D. Back in Heidelberg—oh my, that was in 1875! I couldn’t get very interested in bandaging legs and examining tongues. I was a disciple of Helmholtz—what a wild, talkative young guy! I tried to research the physics of sound—I was terrible, truly unbelievable, but I learned that in this sea of tears, the only certain thing is the quantitative method. And I was a chemist—a master stink-maker, that’s me. So I dived into biology and created a lot of trouble. It has been good. I’ve discovered one or two things. And if sometimes I feel like an outcast, cold—I had to leave Germany once for refusing to sing *Die Wacht am Rhein* and for trying to attack a cavalry captain—he was a hefty guy—I had to choke him—you see I’m bragging, but I was quite the lively guy thirty years ago! Ah! So!

“There's only one problem for a philosophical bacteriologist. Why should we wipe out these friendly pathogenic germs? Are we too certain when we look at these, oh, so unattractive young students attending Y.M.C.A.s, singing silly songs, and wearing hats with initials burned into them— is it really worth it to protect them from the so elegantly functioning Bacillus typhosus with its beautiful flagella? You know, I once asked Dean Silva if it wouldn't be better to let pathogenic germs run wild in the world and solve all economic problems. But he didn't like my method. Oh well, he's older than I am; I hear he also hosts dinner parties with bishops and judges, all dressed nicely. He probably knows more than a German Jew who admires Father Nietzsche and Father Schopenhauer (but damn him, he was teleological-minded!) and Father Koch and Father Pasteur and Brother Jacques Loeb and Brother Arrhenius. Yeah! I talk nonsense. Let's go look at your slides and goodnight.”

When he left Gottlieb at his silly brown house, his expression as closed off as if the late-night dinner and all the random chatter had never taken place, Martin stumbled home, completely drunk.{40}

Though bacteriology consumed all of Martin’s life now, the university believed he was also studying pathology, hygiene, surgical anatomy, and enough other subjects to overwhelm a genius.

Clif Clawson and he lived in a large room with floral wallpaper, piles of dirty clothes, iron beds, and spittoons. They made their own breakfasts and had hash at the Pilgrim Lunch Wagon or the Dew Drop Inn for lunch. Clif could be annoying; he hated open windows, talked about dirty socks, sang “Some Die of Diabetes” while Martin was studying, and could never say anything directly. He always had to be funny. He would say things like, “Is it your grand idea that we might now feed the old faces?” or “How about eating a few calories?” But Clif had a charm for Martin that couldn't just be explained by his good mood, cleverness, or vague bravery. Clif was more than just the sum of his parts.

In the excitement of his lab work, Martin rarely thought about his former friends at Digamma Pi. He sometimes complained that Reverend Ira Hinkley was just a small-town cop, and Irving Watters was a plumber, that Angus Duer would step over anyone, including his grandmother, to get ahead, and that it was criminal for an idiot like Fatty Pfaff to experiment on defenseless people, but mostly he ignored them and stopped being a nuisance. After achieving his initial successes in bacteriology and realizing how much there was still to learn, he felt surprisingly humble.

If he was less bothersome to his classmates, he was even more so in the classroom. He had picked up the trick from Gottlieb of using the word “control” to refer to the untreated person, animal, or substance during an experiment, as a benchmark for comparison; and there’s no trick more irritating. Whenever a doctor bragged about his success with this drug or that device, Gottlieb would always scoff, “Where{41} was your control? How many cases did you have under the same conditions, and how many of them didn’t receive the treatment?” Now Martin started repeating it—control, control, control, where’s your control? where’s your control?—until most of his classmates and a few of his teachers wanted to strangle him.

He was especially boring when it came to medicine.

The materia medica professor, Dr. Lloyd Davidson, would have made an excellent shopkeeper. He was quite popular. Future doctors could learn from him the most crucial skill: the right medications to give a patient, especially when the issue is unclear. His classes were engaged and memorized the beloved one hundred and fifty go-to prescriptions. (He took pride in the fact that this was fifty more than his predecessor required.)

But Martin was rebellious. He asked openly, “Dr. Davidson, how do they know ichthyol is good for erysipelas? Isn’t it just rotten fossil fish—isn’t it like the mummy dust and puppy ear stuff they used to use back in the day?”

“How do they know? Well, my insightful young friend, it’s because thousands of doctors have been using it for years and have seen their patients improve, and that’s how they know!”

“But honestly, Doctor, don’t you think the patients might have gotten better on their own? Wasn’t it possibly a post hoc, propter hoc? Have they ever run experiments on a large group of patients together, with controls?”

“Probably not—and until someone as brilliant as you, Arrowsmith, can gather a few hundred people with exactly the same cases of erysipelas, it probably won’t ever be tested! In the meantime, I hope you gentlemen, who may not have Mr. Arrowsmith’s extensive scientific knowledge or the ability to use helpful technical terms like ‘control,’ will, just following my humble suggestion, keep using ichthyol!”

But Martin insisted, “Please, Dr. Davidson, what's the point of memorizing all these prescriptions? We’ll forget most of them, and besides, we can always look them up in the book.”

Davidson pressed his lips together, then:

“Arrowsmith, as much as I dislike speaking to you like you’re a three-year-old, it seems I have no choice. So, you will learn about drug properties and how to read prescriptions because I say so! If I didn’t care about wasting everyone else's time in this class, I would try{42} to persuade you that my points are backed not just by my own opinions but by the insights of knowledgeable people—people who are certainly older and wiser than you, my friend—over many generations. But since I’m not here to get all grandiose and flowery with my words, I’ll just say that you will accept this, you will study it, and you will memorize it, because I told you to!”

Martin thought about leaving his medical course to focus on bacteriology. He attempted to share his concerns with Clif, but Clif was growing tired of his worries, so Martin turned back to the lively and slender Madeline Fox.

Madeline was both understanding and practical. Why not finish his medical degree and then figure out what he wanted to do?

They walked, they skated, they skied, and they went to the University Dramatic Society play. Madeline's widowed mother had moved in with her, and they had taken a top-floor apartment in one of the small buildings that were starting to replace the large old wooden houses of Mohalis. The apartment was filled with books and decorations: a bronze Buddha from Chicago, a rubbing of Shakespeare’s epitaph, a translated set of Anatole France, a photograph of Cologne Cathedral, a wicker tea table with a samovar that no one at the university understood how to use, and a souvenir postcard album. Madeline’s mother was a Main Street society lady. She was dignified and white-haired, but she attended the Methodist Church. In Mohalis, she felt overwhelmed by the students' chatter; she missed her hometown, the church social events, and the women’s club meetings—they were studying Education this year, and she hated missing out on all the information about university life.

With a home and a chaperone, Madeline started to “entertain”: eight o’clock parties with coffee, chocolate cake, chicken salad, and word games. She invited Martin, but he was protective of his evenings, those beautiful evenings spent on research. The first event she lured him into was her big New Year’s Party in January. They “did advertisements”—guessed at tableaux that represented advertising images; they danced to the phonograph; and instead of just a simple lap supper, they had little tables lavishly covered with doilies.{43}

Martin was not used to this kind of elegance. Even though he arrived with a bad attitude, he was impressed by the dinner and the dresses of the young women. He realized that he was out of practice at dancing, and he envied the upperclassman who could do the new waltz called the “Boston.” There was no strength, no grace, no knowledge that Martin Arrowsmith didn’t wish he had when he became aware of it, breaking through his preoccupation. While he wasn’t very materialistic, he was eager to master every skill.

His mixed feelings about the others were overshadowed by his admiration for Madeline. He had known her as an outdoor girl in a jacket, but now she was an exquisite indoor version of herself, slender in yellow silk. To him, she was a miracle of charm and grace as she encouraged her guests to appear cheerful. She needed that charm, especially since Dr. Norman Brumfit was there, and it happened to be one of those evenings when he decided to be original and a bit naughty. He pretended to kiss Madeline’s mother, which made the poor lady very uncomfortable; he sang a wildly inappropriate Black song that included the word hell; he insisted to a group of female graduate students that George Sand’s relationships might have been somewhat justified by their impact on talented men; and when they looked shocked, he pranced around a bit, making his glasses sparkle.

Madeline took control of him. She said, “Dr. Brumfit, you’re incredibly knowledgeable and all that, and sometimes in English classes I’m just really scared of you, but other times you act like a mischievous little boy, and I won’t let you make fun of the girls. You can help me bring in the sherbet, that’s what you can do.”

Martin loved her. He couldn’t stand Brumfit for the right to sneak away with her into the cramped kitchen of the apartment. Madeline! She was the only one who really got him! In this place, where everyone was after her and Dr. Brumfit looked at her with almost married affection, she was special, she was something he needed to have.

On the pretense of helping her set the tables, he had a moment with her and whispered, “Wow, you’re so beautiful!”

“I’m glad you think I’m a little nice.” She, the rose and the one adored by everyone, gave him her approval.

“Can I come by and see you tomorrow evening?”

“Well, I— Maybe.{44}”

It can't be said, in this biography of a young man who wasn't really a hero, who saw himself as someone searching for truth but who stumbled and fell back throughout his life, getting stuck in every obvious mess, that Martin's intentions toward Madeline Fox were what you might call "honorable." He wasn't a Don Juan, but he was a broke medical student who would have to wait for years before he could earn a living. For sure, he didn't think about proposing marriage. He wanted—like most struggling and passionate young men in his situation—everything he could get.

As he hurried to her apartment, he was filled with excitement for an adventure. He imagined her melting at the sight of him; he felt her hand brushing down his cheek. He cautioned himself, “Don’t be an idiot! It’s probably nothing to get excited about. Don’t build up your hopes only to be let down. She’ll probably yell at you for something you messed up at the party. She might just be tired and wish you hadn’t shown up. Nothing!” But he didn’t believe that for even a moment.

He rang the doorbell, saw her open the door, and followed her down the narrow hallway, wanting to take her hand. He entered the overly bright living room—and saw her mother, standing strong like a pyramid, looking as permanent as a sunless winter.

But of course, Mom would happily go and leave him to his victory.

Mom didn't.

In Mohalis, the right time for young male visitors to leave is ten o’clock, but from eight until a little after eleven, Martin was at odds with Mrs. Fox; he spoke to her in two ways, a spoken chat and a silent but intense protest, while Madeline—who was there; she sat around and looked attractive. In an equally quiet way, Mrs. Fox responded to him, until the room was filled with their tension, even though it seemed they were talking about the weather, the university, and the trolley service to Zenith.

“Yes, of course, someday I guess they’ll have a car every twenty minutes,” he said seriously.

(“Darn her, why doesn’t she go to bed? Cheers! She’s finishing her knitting. Nope. Damn it! She’s grabbing another ball of yarn.{45}”)

“Oh, yes, I’m sure they’ll need to provide better service,” Mrs. Fox said.

("Young man, I don't know much about you, but I don't think you're the right person for Madeline to be with. Anyway, it's time for you to go home.")

“Oh, yes, definitely, you bet. Much better service.”

(“I know I’m overstaying my welcome, and I know you feel the same, but I don’t care!”)

It seemed unbelievable that Mrs. Fox would put up with his stubborn persistence. He used mental techniques, willpower, and hypnotism, and when he finally left, defeated, she remained there, completely calm. They said goodbye, but it wasn’t very warm. Madeline walked him to the door; for a thrilling half-minute, he had her all to himself.

“I wanted so much—I wanted to talk to you!”

“I know. I’m sorry. Just give me some time!” she muttered.

He kissed her. It was an intense kiss, and very sweet.

Fudge parties, skating parties, sleigh rides, and a literary gathering with a lady journalist who wrote the social page for the Zenith Advocate-Times— Madeline jumped into a whirlwind of cheerful but incredibly exhausting activities, and Martin dutifully followed her. She seemed to struggle to find enough guys, so for the literary night, Martin dragged along the annoyed Clif Clawson. Clif grumbled, “This place is the craziest bunch of birds I’ve ever dealt with,” but he came away with a gem—he heard Madeline call Martin by her favorite nickname “Martykins.” That was super valuable. Clif started calling him Martykins. Clif told others to call him Martykins. Fatty Pfaff and Irving Watters called him Martykins. And when Martin wanted to go to sleep, Clif croaked:

“Yeah, you’ll probably marry her. She’s a sharpshooter. She can hit a smart young doctor from ninety paces away. Oh, you’ll have a great time delving into science after that girl gets you off chasing her.... She’s one of those literary types. She knows all about literature except maybe how to read.... She’s not bad-looking, though. She’ll gain weight like her mom.”

Martin said what needed to be said, and he wrapped up, {46} “She’s the only girl in the graduate school who has any energy. The others just hang out and chat, and she knows how to throw the best parties—”

“Any kiss parties?”

“Now listen up! I'm going to get upset, just so you know! You and I are tough, but Madeline Fox—she’s a lot like Angus Duer in some ways. I get that we’re missing out on a lot: music and literature, sure, and nice clothes, too—there’s nothing wrong with looking good—”

"That’s exactly what I was telling you! She’ll have you all dressed up in a Prince Albert and a stiff collar, diagnosing everything as rich-widowitis. How can you fall for that phony woman—Where’s your self-control?"

Clif’s opposition made him think of Madeline not just with a cunning and greedy interest, but with a passionate certainty that he wanted to marry her.

Few women can resist the urge to change their men for long. To improve means transforming someone from who they are, no matter what that is, into something different. Girls like Madeline Fox, artistic young women who don't put in the effort, can't hold back on trying to improve for more than a day. The moment the eager Martin showed that he was attracted to her charms, she jumped into fixing his clothing—his corduroys, soft collars, and quirky old gray felt hat—his vocabulary, and his taste in books with new and more condescending enthusiasm. Her casual remark, “Well, of course, everyone knows that Emerson was the greatest thinker,” annoyed him even more, especially compared to Gottlieb’s calm demeanor.

“Oh, just leave me alone!” he shouted at her. “You’re the best thing God ever created when you talk about things you actually know, but when you start throwing out your opinions on politics and chemotherapy—Darn it, stop pushing me around! I guess you’re right about slang. I’ll stop all this crap about ‘feeding your face’ and whatever. But I will not wear a stiff collar! No way!”

He probably would never have asked her to marry him if it weren't for that spring evening on the roof.

She turned the flat roof of her apartment building into a garden. She placed a box of geraniums and a cast-iron bench{47} that looked like those found in graveyards; she had hung up two Japanese lanterns—they were tattered and hung crooked. She mocked the other residents of the apartment building, who were “so dull, so ordinary, that they never came up to this lovely hideout.” She likened her escape to the roof of a Moorish palace, a Spanish patio, a Japanese garden, and a “pleasaunce of old Provençal.” But to Martin, it felt more like just a plain roof. He was somewhat ready for a confrontation that April evening when he visited Madeline, and her mother condescendingly told him that she was on the roof.

“Damn Japanese lanterns. I’d rather look at liver slices,” he grumbled, as he trudged up the curving stairs.

Madeline was sitting on the gloomy iron bench, her chin resting in her hands. For once, she didn’t greet him with enthusiastic excitement but with a casual “Hello.” She looked listless. He felt bad for his previous mockery; he suddenly realized the sadness in her act of pretending that this stretch of tar-paper and slatted paths was a vibrant garden. As he sat next to her, he remarked, “Hey, that’s a nice new mat you’ve put down.”

“It is not! It’s disgusting!” She turned to him. She cried, “Oh, Mart, I’m so tired of myself tonight. I always try to make people think I’m someone special. I’m not. I’m a fraud.”

“What's wrong, dear?”

“Oh, it’s a lot. Dr. Brumfit, I can’t stand him—though he was right—he practically told me that if I don’t work harder, I’ll have to leave grad school. He said I’m not doing anything, and if I don’t get my Ph.D., I won’t be able to score a good teaching job in a respectable school. I need to get one, too, because it doesn’t seem to poor Madeline like anyone is going to marry her.”

His arm around her, he shouted, “I know exactly who—”

“No, I’m not fishing. I’m being almost honest tonight. I’m not great, Mart. I tell people how smart I am. And I doubt they really believe it. They probably just go off and laugh at me!”

“They don't! If they did—I'd like to see anyone who tried laughing—”

“It’s really sweet and kind of you, but I’m not worth it. The poetic Madeline! With her refined vocabulary! I’m a— I’m a— Martin, I’m a phony! I’m everything your friend Clif thinks I am. Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I know{48} what he thinks. And— I’ll have to go home with my mom, and I can’t stand it, dear, I can’t stand it! I won’t go back! That town! Nothing ever happens! The old ladies, and the annoying old men, always telling the same old jokes. I won’t!”

Her head rested in the crook of his arm; she was crying intensely; he was gently stroking her hair, not with desire now but with care, and he was whispering:

“Darling! I almost feel like I dared to love you. You’re going to marry me and— It’ll take me a couple more years to finish my medical degree and do a couple of years in the hospital, then we’ll be married and— By gosh, with your support, I’m going to make it to the top! I’ll be a big surgeon! We’re going to have everything!”

“Sweetheart, please be sensible. I don’t want to stop you from your scientific work—”

“Oh. Well. I want to keep up with some research. But honestly, I’m not just a lab rat. It’s a fight in life, pushing your way through. Competing with real men in real battles. If I can’t do that and also do some scientific work, then I’m not worth anything. Of course, while I’m with Gottlieb, I want to make the most of it, but afterward— Oh, Madeline!”

Then all reasoning vanished in a rush of closeness to her.

He was nervous about the interview with Mrs. Fox; he was sure she would ask, “Young man, how do you plan to support my Maddy? And you have a terrible way with words.” But she took his hand and said sadly, “I hope you and my baby will be happy. She’s a wonderful girl, even if she can be a bit scatterbrained sometimes, and I know you’re nice, kind, and hard-working. I will pray that you’ll be happy—oh, I’ll pray so hard! You young people don’t seem to value prayer much, but if you knew how much it helped me— Oh, I’ll be praying for your happiness!”

She was crying; she kissed Martin’s forehead with the dry, soft, gentle kiss of an elderly woman, and he was almost crying with her.

At goodbye, Madeline whispered, “Hey, I couldn’t care less, but Mom would really appreciate it if we went to church with her. Don’t you think you could do it, just this once?”

The amazed world, the shocked and nonchalant Clif Claw{49}son, witnessed Martin in polished, pressed clothes, an uncomfortable linen collar, and a meticulously tied scarf, as he accompanied Mrs. Fox and the modestly chatting Madeline to the Mohalis Methodist Church to hear Reverend Dr. Myron Schwab talk about “The One Way to Righteousness.”

They walked past Reverend Ira Hinkley, and Ira couldn't help but feel a sense of smug satisfaction at Martin's predicament.

For all his dedication to Max Gottlieb's cynical view of human intelligence, Martin had believed in the concept of progress, that events had significance, that people could learn, and that if Madeline had once acknowledged she was just an ordinary young woman who sometimes failed, then she was saved. He was confused when she started to change him with more casualness than ever. She criticized his vulgarity and what she claimed to be his lack of ambition. “You think it’s really clever of you to feel superior. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just laziness. You enjoy daydreaming in the labs. Why should you be exempt from the effort of memorizing your materia medica and other things? Everyone else has to do it. No, I won’t kiss you. I want you to grow up and consider the facts.”

In anger at her pestering, wanting her lips and her forgiving smile, he was swept through to the end of the term.

A week before exams, while he was trying to spend all his time making love to her, studying for the tests, and working in the microbiology lab, he promised Clif that he would spend the summer vacation with him, working as a waiter at a hotel in Canada. He met Madeline in the evening and walked through the cherry orchard on the Agricultural Experiment Station grounds with her.

“You know how I feel about your terrible Clif Clawson,” she said. “I don’t think you want to hear my thoughts on him.”

“I’ve heard what you think, my love.” Martin sounded grown-up, and not very nice.

“Well, I can tell you right now that I haven’t shared my thoughts on you being a waiter! Honestly, I can’t figure out why you don’t get a respectable job for the summer instead{50} of dealing with dirty dishes. Why not work at a newspaper, where you’d have to dress well and meet good people?”

“Sure. I might edit the paper. But since you say that, I won’t do any work this summer at all. It’s a foolish thing to do, anyway. I’ll head to Newport, play golf, and wear a suit every night.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you at all! I really respect honest work. It’s like Burns says. But waiting tables! Oh, Mart, why are you so proud of being a tough guy? Can you just stop being sarcastic for a minute? Listen to the night. And smell the cherry blossoms... Or maybe a great scientist like you, who thinks he’s better than regular people, is too good for cherry blossoms!”

"Well, other than the fact that all the cherry blossoms have been gone for weeks now, you’re absolutely right."

“Oh, they have, have they! They might be faded, but— Can you please tell me what that pale white mass is up there?”

“I will. It seems to me like a worker's shirt.”

“Martin Arrowsmith, if you think for even a second that I'm ever going to marry a brash, rude, selfish, germ-obsessed know-it-all—”

“And if you think I’m going to marry a woman who just keeps nagging and jabbering at me all day long—”

They hurt each other; they took pleasure in it; and they said goodbye for good, twice they said goodbye for good, the second time very harshly, near a fraternity house where students were singing sorrowful summer songs to a banjo.

In ten days, without seeing her again, he was off with Clif to the North Woods, and in his sadness over losing her, his desire for her soft body and for her willingness to listen to him, he felt only a little excitement that he should have led the class in bacteriology and that Max Gottlieb had appointed him undergraduate assistant for the upcoming year.{51}

The waiters at Nokomis Lodge, nestled among the Ontario pines, were all university students. They weren’t meant to show up at the Lodge dances—but they did, and effortlessly swept the prettiest girls away from the older, disapproving suitors in white flannels. They only had to work seven hours a day. The rest of the time, they fished, swam, and hiked the shaded trails, and Martin returned to Mohalis relaxed—and deeply in love with Madeline.

They wrote to each other, politely and regretfully, once every two weeks; then passionately and every day. During the summer, she was dragged back to her hometown near the Ohio border of Winnemac, a town bigger than Martin’s native Elk Mills but drier and less lively with its little factories. She sighed, in a huge, messy script sprawling all over the page:

“My dear, my little girl!” he sighed. “‘Can’t always be the one at fault’! You poor thing, you poor dear thing!”

By midsummer, they were definitely back together, and even though he was a bit bothered by the cashier—a young, giggling school teacher from Wisconsin with cute ankles—he missed Madeline so much that he stayed awake for minutes, dreaming about quitting his job and running away to be with her.

The returning train was painfully slow, and he got off at Mohalis consumed by thoughts of her. Twenty minutes later, they were holding each other tightly in the peace of her living room. It’s true that twenty minutes after that, she was mocking Clif Clawson, fishing, and all teachers, but despite his anger, she broke down in tears.{52}

His junior year was a whirlwind. Attending lectures on physical diagnosis, surgery, neurology, obstetrics, and gynecology in the morning, with hospital demonstrations in the afternoon; supervising the preparation of media and sterilization of glassware for Gottlieb; teaching a new class on how to use a microscope, filter, and autoclave; occasionally reading scientific German or French; seeing Madeline all the time; he pushed himself into a frantic rush to get through it all, and in the midst of it all, he began his first original research—his first lyric, his first climb up unexplored mountains.

He had vaccinated rabbits against typhoid, and he believed that if he combined serum taken from these immune animals with typhoid germs, the germs would die. Unfortunately, he felt the germs thrived instead. He was worried; he was convinced that his technique had been awkward. He repeated his experiment over and over, working until midnight and waking at dawn to think about his notes. (Although in letters to Madeline his writing was a messy scrawl, in his lab notes it was neat.) When he was absolutely sure that Nature was stubbornly doing something she shouldn't, he went to Gottlieb, feeling guilty, and protested, “These darn bugs should die in this immune serum, but they don’t. There’s something off about the theories.”

“Young man, are you really standing up against science?” Gottlieb snapped, waving the papers on his desk. “Do you think you're capable of challenging the principles of immunology?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t change the dogma. Here are my protocols. Honestly, I’ve reviewed the material repeatedly, and I get the same results, as you can see. I only know what I observe.”

Gottlieb smiled brightly. “I grant you, my boy, my bishop's blessings! That’s the way! Notice what you notice, and if it contradicts all the neat, correct views of science—discard them! I’m very pleased, Martin. But now discover the Why, the underlying principle.”

Typically, Gottlieb referred to him as “Arrowsmith,” “You,” or “Uh.” When he was really angry, he called him, or any other student, “Doctor.” It was only during special moments that he called him “Martin,” and the boy would happily run off, trying to discover (but never managing to find) the Why that made everything so.{53}

Gottlieb had sent him to Zenith, to the large Zenith General Hospital, to get a strain of meningococcus from an intriguing patient. The disinterested reception clerk—who only cared about gathering the names, business addresses, and religions of patients, and had no concern for who died or who messed up the beautiful blue and white linoleum or who was collecting meningococci, as long as the addresses were properly recorded—arrogantly directed him to Ward D. As he moved through the long hallways, past countless rooms from which yellow-faced old women stared at him, sitting up in bed in fuzzy nightgowns, Martin wandered, trying to appear important, hoping to be mistaken for a doctor, and only managing to feel extremely embarrassed.

He quickly walked past several nurses, half nodding at them the way he thought a brilliant young surgeon about to perform surgery would. He was so focused on looking the part that he completely lost his way and found himself in a wing with private suites. He was running late. He didn't have time to keep trying to impress anyone. Like most guys, he hated admitting he didn’t know where to go, but reluctantly, he stopped at the door of a bedroom where a trainee nurse was cleaning the floor.

She was a petite and slim trainee, wrapped in a rough blue denim dress, a huge white apron, and a turban secured on her head with an elastic—a uniform as dirty as her bucket of soapy water. She looked up with the quick, cheeky attitude of a squirrel.

“Nurse,” he said, “I want to locate Ward D.”

"Do you?" lazily.

“I do! If I can interrupt your work—”

“Doesn’t matter. The damn superintendent of nurses put me on floor duty, and we’re never supposed to scrub floors because she caught me smoking a cigarette. She’s a real piece of work. If she saw a kid like you wandering around here, she’d pull you out by the ear.”

“My dear young woman, you might find it interesting to know—”

“Oh! ‘My dear young woman, it could—’ Sounds just like our old professor, back home.”

Her lazy amusement, the way she treated him as though they were just a couple of kids sticking their tongues out at each other in a train station, was infuriating to the serious young assistant of Professor Gottlieb.

“I’m Dr. Arrowsmith,” he said with a snort, “and I’ve been told that even trainees know that the first rule for a nurse is to stand when talking to doctors! I need to find Ward D to collect a sample of—you might find this interesting!—a very dangerous microbe, and if you could please direct me—”

“Oh, wow, I’ve been acting up again. I can’t seem to handle this military discipline. Fine. I’ll stand up.” She did. Every movement was quick and graceful like a cat. “You go back, turn right, then left. I’m sorry for being rude. But if you saw some of the old creeps that a nurse has to be submissive to— Honestly, Doctor—if you are a doctor—”

“I don’t think I need to convince you!” he fumed as he walked away. All the way to Ward D, he was upset with her hidden mockery. He was a respected scientist, and it was ridiculous that he had to put up with rudeness from a trainee—a particularly unrefined trainee, a thin and slangy young woman apparently from the West. He repeated his reprimand: “I don’t think I need to convince you.” He felt proud of himself for being so dignified. He imagined telling Madeline about it, finishing with, “I just said to her calmly, ‘My dear young woman, I don’t think you’re the person I need to explain my mission to,’ I said, and she backed down.”

But her image hadn’t faded when he found the intern who was going to help him and took the spinal fluid. She was right in front of him, bold and resilient. He needed to see her again and convince her—“It would take a better man than she is, a better man than I’ve ever met, to get away with being insulting to me!” said the modest young scientist.

He had rushed back to her room and they were looking at each other before it hit him that he hadn’t figured out the heavy things he was going to say. She had stopped scrubbing. She had taken off her headscarf, and her hair was smooth and honey-colored, her eyes were blue, her face youthful. There was nothing slave-like about her. He could picture her running down hills and climbing up a stack of straw.

“Oh,” she said seriously. “I didn’t mean to be rude then.{55} I was just— Cleaning makes me irritable. I thought you were really nice, and I’m sorry I offended you, but you did seem a bit too young to be a doctor.”

“I’m not. I’m a medic. I was just trying to impress.”

"Me too!"

He felt an immediate and deep connection with her, a bond free from the pretense and games of his struggle with Madeline. He realized that this girl was one of his own kind. If she was crude, funny, and straightforward, she was also brave, full of laughter at phonies, and had a loyalty that was so effortless and genuine it didn’t seem heroic. His voice was animated, even though his words were just:

“Pretty tough, this training for nursing, I guess.”

“Not so bad, but it’s just as romantic as being a waitress—that’s what we call them in Dakota.”

"From Dakota?"

“I come from the most enterprising town—three hundred sixty-two residents—in the entire state of North Dakota—Wheatsylvania. Are you in med school?”

To a passing nurse, the two kids would have looked fully involved in hospital work. Martin was standing at the door, while she was by her cleaning bucket. She had put her turban back on; its looseness hid her bright hair.

“Yes, I’m a junior medic in Mohalis. But—I don’t know. I’m not really that great of a medic. I prefer working in the lab. I think I want to be a bacteriologist and challenge some of the silly theories in immunology. Plus, I’m not a fan of bedside manner.”

“I’m glad you don’t. You get it here. You ought to hear some of the doctors who are the sweetest old cats with their patients—the way they yell at the nurses. But labs—they seem kind of real. I don’t think you can fool a bacterium—what is it?—bacterium?”

“No, they’re— What do you go by?”

“Me? Oh, it’s a stupid name— Leora Tozer.”

“What’s wrong with Leora? It’s fine.”

The sound of birds mating, the sound of spring flowers falling in the calm air, the barking of sleepy dogs at midnight; who can capture them and make them anything but cliché? And as natural, as typical, as awkwardly youthful, as eternally beautiful and real as those timeless sounds was the conversation between Martin and Leora in that passionate half-hour{56} when each discovered a part of themselves in the other that they had always vaguely missed, now found with stunning joy. They chatted like heroes and heroines from a cheesy story, like factory workers, like cheerful country folk, like a prince and princess. Their words were silly and trivial when isolated, yet together, they felt as profound and significant as the ocean tides or the whispering wind.

He told her that he admired Max Gottlieb, that he had traveled across her North Dakota on a train, and that he was an amazing hockey player. She told him that she “loved” vaudeville, that her dad, Andrew Jackson Tozer, was born in the East (meaning Illinois), and that she wasn’t really into nursing. She had no specific personal ambition; she came here because she enjoyed adventure. She hinted, with a charming sense of regret, that she wasn’t too popular with the nursing supervisor; she intended to behave, but somehow she always found herself caught up in rebellions involving late-night fudge or elopements. There was nothing heroic about her story, but from her calm way of sharing it, he got the sense of a spirited bravery.

He interrupted urgently, “When can you leave the hospital for dinner? Tonight?”

"Why—"

"Please!"

"Okay."

"When can I reach you?"

“Do you think I should— Well, seven.”

All the way back to Mohalis, he swung between anger and happiness. He told himself he was foolish for making this long trip to Zenith twice in one day; he remembered he was engaged to a girl named Madeline Fox; he stressed over the issue of loyalty; he insisted that Leora Tozer was just a fake nurse who was as uneducated as a dish washer and as rude as a newspaper kid; he resolved, several times he resolved, to call her and end the engagement.

He was at the hospital at 6:45.

He had to wait for twenty minutes in a waiting room that felt like an undertaker's. He was panicking. What was he doing here? She’d probably be painfully dull throughout the whole long dinner. Would he even recognize her, out of uniform? Then he jumped up. She was at the door. Her sulky blue uniform was gone; she looked young and delicate in a princess dress that flowed from her high collar and soft young chest to her feet. It felt natural to tuck her hand under his arm as they left the hospital. She walked beside him with a little dancing step, shyer now than she had been in the seriousness of her job, but looking up at him with confidence.

“Happy I came?” he demanded.

She thought about it. She had a habit of seriously considering obvious questions; and seriously (but with the seriousness of a child, not the heavy seriousness of a politician or an office manager) she admitted, “Yeah, I’m glad. I was worried you’d get upset with me because I was being so forward, and I wanted to apologize and— I really liked how passionate you are about your bacteriology. I think I'm a little passionate, too. The interns here—they’re always hanging around, but they’re kind of—sort of soggy, with their new stethoscopes and their brand-new dignity. Oh—” Most seriously of all: “Oh, wow, yes, I’m glad you came... Am I an idiot for saying that?”

“You’re sweet to admit that.” He felt a bit lightheaded around her. He held her hand with his arm.

“You don’t actually think I let just any medic or doctor pick me up, do you?”

“Leora! And you don’t think I try to hit on every attractive girl I meet? I liked— I felt like we could somehow be friends. Can’t we? Can’t we?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see. Where are we going for dinner?”

“The Grand Hotel.”

“We're not! It's so expensive. Unless you're really rich. You aren't, right?”

“No, I’m not. Just enough money to get through med school. But I want—”

“Let’s go to the Bijou. It’s a nice spot, and it’s not pricey.”

He remembered how often Madeline Fox had suggested that it would be nice to visit the Grand, Zenith’s most luxurious hotel, but that was the last time he thought of Madeline that evening. He was focused on Leora. He found in her an easygoing nature, a lack of judgment, and a directness that was surprising for the daughter of Andrew Jackson Tozer. She was feminine but not demanding; she was never preachy and rarely shocked; she was neither flirtatious nor cold. She was definitely the first girl he had ever spoken to without feeling self-conscious. It’s uncertain if Leora even had a chance to speak, as he shared all his thoughts as a follower of Gottlieb. To Madeline, Gottlieb was a wicked old man who ridiculed the sanctity of marriage and Easter lilies; to Clif, he was dull, but Leora beamed as Martin pounded the table and quoted his idol: “Up to the present, even in the work of Ehrlich, most research has largely been a matter of trial and error, the empirical method, which is the opposite of the scientific method, by which one seeks to establish a general law governing a group of phenomena so that he may predict what will happen.”

He said it with deep respect, looking across the table at her, almost glaring. He insisted, “Do you see how he leaves all these detail-obsessed, machine-like researchers stuck in the muck just like he does with the commercial doctors? Do you understand him? Do you?”

“Yes, I think I do. Anyway, I get why you’re so excited about him. But please don’t pressure me like that!”

“Was I bullying? I didn’t mean to. It’s just that when I think about how most of these damn professors don’t even know what he’s up to—”

Martin was off again, and although Leora didn’t completely grasp how antibody synthesis related to Arrhenius's work, she listened with a warm sense of pleasure in his enthusiasm, without any of Madeline Fox’s softly corrective comments.

She needed to let him know that she had to be at the hospital by ten.

“I’ve talked too much! I really hope I haven’t bored you,” he said unexpectedly.

"I loved it."

“And I was so focused on the details and so loud— Oh, I am such a fool!”

“I like that you trust me. I’m not ‘serious,’ and I don’t have any brains at all, but I really love it when the guys in my life think I’m smart enough to understand what they really feel—and—Good night!”

They had dinner together twice in two weeks, and only twice during that time, even though she called him, did Martin see his sincere fiancée, Madeline.

He learned all about Leora’s background. Her bedridden great-aunt in Zenith was her excuse for traveling so far to get hospital training. The small town of Wheatsyl{59}vania, North Dakota; one street filled with shanties and the red grain elevators at the end. Her father, Andrew Jackson Tozer, sometimes called Jackass Tozer; he owned the bank, the creamery, and an elevator, making him the most important person in town; he was devout at Wednesday evening prayer meetings, always fussing over every penny he gave to Leora or her mom. Bert Tozer, her brother; he had squirrel teeth and a gold eyeglass chain over his ear, serving as cashier and doing everything else in the one-room bank owned by their father. The chicken salad and coffee suppers at the United Brethren Church; German Lutheran farmers singing old Teutonic hymns; the Dutch, the Bohemians, and Poles. And around the village, the golden wheat swayed under the huge clouds. He saw Leora, always an “odd child,” diligently doing the household chores but secretly believing that one day she would find someone with whom, no matter the danger or poverty, she could experience all the colorful wonders of the world.

It was at the end of her unsure attempt to make him understand her childhood that he exclaimed, “Darling, you don’t need to tell me about yourself. I’ve always known you. I’m not going to let you go, no matter what. You’re going to marry me—”

They said it with hands tightly clasped, eyes full of confession, in that obvious restaurant. Her first words were:

“I want to call you ‘Sandy.’ Why do I? I don’t know. You’re not sandy at all, but somehow ‘Sandy’ feels right for you and— Oh, my dear, I really like you!”

Martin went home engaged to two girls at the same time.

He promised to see Madeline the next morning.

By any standard of decent behavior, he should have felt like a lowlife; he reminded himself that he had to feel like a lowlife; but he just couldn’t get there. He thought about Madeline’s heartfelt passions: her “Provençal garden” and the worn leather poetry books she would gently touch; about the tie she had bought for him and her pride in his hair when he brushed it like the glossy heroes in magazine ads. He regretted that he had betrayed loyalty. But his distress collided with the stability of his relationship with Leora. Her presence set his mind free. Even when, as Madeline's supporter, he argued{60} that Leora was a shallow young woman who probably chewed gum in private and was definitely careless about her nails in public, her down-to-earth nature resonated with the commonness within himself, just as valid as ambition or respect, providing a solid foundation for her joy as it did for his anxious scientific curiosity.

He was daydreaming in the lab that fateful day after. Gottlieb had to ask him twice if he had prepared the new batch of medium, and Gottlieb was a tough boss, stricter with his favorites than with the other students. He snapped, “Arrowsmith, you’re such an airhead! My God, am I going to spend my life with Dummköpfe? I can’t always do this alone, Martin! Are you going to let me down? You haven’t shown any enthusiasm for work these past two or three days.”

Martin walked away muttering, “I love that guy!” In his confused state, he listed all of Madeline’s acts, her constant complaining, her selfishness, her basic cluelessness. He got himself worked up to a point where it was clear to him that he had to end things with Madeline completely as a form of punishment. That evening, he approached her ready to lash out at her first complaint, to finally forgive her, but to break off their engagement and simplify his life once more.

She didn't complain.

She ran to him. “Honey, you look so tired—your eyes are so worn out. Have you been working way too hard? I’ve been really sorry you couldn’t come over this week. Sweetheart, you can’t wear yourself out like this. Think about all the years ahead of you to do amazing things. No, don’t talk. I want you to relax. Mom’s gone to the movies. Sit here. Look, I’ll make you super comfy with these pillows. Just lean back—go ahead and sleep if you want—and I’ll read you ‘The Crock of Gold.’ You’re going to love it.”

He was set on not loving it, and since he likely had no sense of humor at all, it's uncertain whether he actually appreciated it, but its uniqueness excited him. Even though Madeline’s voice was sharp and annoying compared to Leora’s relaxed softness, she read with such enthusiasm that he felt terrible for wanting to hurt her. He realized that it was she, with her pretenses, who was the child, while the detached and fearless Leora was the one who was grown-up, in control of a real world. The criticisms he had planned to use against her disappeared.

Suddenly, she was next to him, pleading, “I’ve missed you so much this whole week!{61}”

So he was betraying both women. It was Leora who had stirred him so intensely; it was really Leora he was touching now; but it was Madeline who absorbed his desire, and when she softly said, “I’m so glad you’re happy to be here,” he couldn’t respond. He wanted to discuss Leora, to shout about Leora, to celebrate her, his woman. He managed to give a few sincere but unenthusiastic compliments; he noted that Madeline was a beautiful young woman and a solid English scholar; and while she looked at him in disappointment over his lack of enthusiasm, he made his escape at ten. He had effectively managed to feel like a lowlife.

He rushed to Clif Clawson.

He hadn't mentioned anything about Leora to Clif. He was annoyed by the likely mockery from Clif. He felt proud of the calmness he displayed as he entered their room. Clif was lounging on his back, barefoot with his feet on the study table, engrossed in a Sherlock Holmes story that lay on top of the hefty volume of Osler’s Medicine, which he believed he was studying.

“Clif! Want a drink? I’m tired. Let’s sneak down to Barney’s and see if we can grab one.”

“You speak as if you have many languages and are accelerating the old brainstem that includes the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.”

“Oh, drop the cuteness! I’m in a bad mood.”

“Ah, the guy has been having a fight with his innocent little Madeline! Was she awful to poor Martykins? Fine. I’ll stop. Let’s go. Cheers for the drink.”

He shared three new stories about Professor Robertshaw, all of them scandalous and mostly false, on their way, and he nearly got Martin to lighten up. “Barney’s” was a pool hall, a tobacco shop, and since Mohalis was dry due to local regulations, it was a great speakeasy. Clif and the hairy-handed Barney greeted each other in a grand and respectful way:

“Good evening to you, Barney. I hope your blood flow is smooth, especially in the wrist area where the ulnar artery branches off. In that regard, my friend, Professor Dr. Colonel Egbert Arrowsmith and I would love to enjoy another bottle of that famous strawberry soda.”

“Wow, Clif, you really have a great way with words. If{62} I ever need an arm amputated when you become a doctor, I’ll come by and let you talk me through it. Strawberry soda, guys?”

The front room of Barney's was like an impressionist painting, filled with a chaotic mix of a pool table, piles of cigarettes, chocolate bars, playing cards, and pink sports papers. The back room was simpler, containing cases of sweet, lightly flavored soda, a large icebox, and two small tables with broken chairs. Barney poured two glasses of strong, shockingly raw whisky from a bottle labeled Ginger Ale, and Clif and Martin took them to a table in the corner. The effect was immediate. Martin's confused sadness shifted to optimism. He told Clif he was going to write a book that would expose idealism, but what he really meant was that he was going to do something clever about his two engagements. He had an idea! He would invite Leora and Madeline to lunch together, tell them the truth, and see which one loved him. He cheered and had another whisky; he told Clif he was a great guy and told Barney he was a public benefactor. Wobbling a bit, he headed to the phone, which was privately tucked away in a closet.

At Zenith General Hospital, he encountered the night superintendent, a cold and skeptical man. “This is not the time to be calling a trainee! It’s half past eleven! Who even are you?”

Martin checked the “I’ll damn’ soon tell you who I am!” which was his natural reaction, and explained that he was speaking for Leora’s sick grand-aunt, that the poor old lady was very low, and if the night superintendent wanted to take responsibility for the death of an innocent woman—

When Leora picked up the phone, he spoke quickly and seriously, feeling like he had just stepped away from the threat of a crowd of strangers into the safety of her presence:

“Leora? Sandy. Meet me in the Grand lobby tomorrow at twelve-thirty. It’s a must! Important! Make it happen—your aunt's sick.”

“All right, dear. Good night,” was all she said.

It took him several long minutes to get a response from Madeline's apartment, and then Mrs. Fox's voice came through, sleepily and shakily:

"Yes, what’s up?"

“St. Martin.”

“Who is it? Who is it? What is it? Are you calling the Fox apartment?{63}”

“Yes, yes! Mrs. Fox, it’s Martin Arrowsmith here.”

“Oh, oh, my dear! The phone woke me from a deep sleep, and I couldn’t understand what you were saying. I was so scared. I thought it might be a telegram or something. I was worried that something had happened to Maddy’s brother. What is it, dear? Oh, I really hope nothing's wrong!”

Her trust in him, the love of this lost old woman confused in an unfamiliar place, overwhelmed him; he lost all his boozy feeling that he was a quick-witted guy, and in a sad way, with the weight of life pressing down on him again, he sighed that no, nothing had happened, but he realized he forgot to tell Madeline something—so brief—so sorry to call so late—could he talk to Mad for just a minute—

Then Madeline was excitedly saying, “Why, Marty dear, what’s going on? I hope nothing’s wrong! You just left here—”

“Hey, I forgot to mention. There's a really good friend of mine in Zenith that I want you to meet—”

“Who’s he?”

“You’ll see tomorrow. Listen, I want you to come in and meet—come meet them at lunch. Going,” with heavy joking, “going to treat you all to a great meal at the Grand—”

“Oh, that's great!”

“—so I want you to meet me at the 11:40 interurban at College Square. Can you?”

Vaguely, “Oh, I’d love to but— I have an eleven o’clock appointment, and I don’t want to skip it. I promised May Harmon I’d go shopping with her—she’s looking for some shoes that can go with her pink crêpe de chine but are also comfortable to walk in—and we thought we might grab lunch at Ye Kollege Karavanserai. I also half-planned to catch a movie with her or someone else. Mom says that new Alaska film is really great; she saw it last night, and I thought about watching it before it leaves theaters, although God knows I should just go straight home and study instead of going out at all—”

“Now listen! It’s important. Do you not trust me? Will you come or not?”

“Of course I trust you, dear. Okay, I’ll try to be there. The eleven-forty?”

"Yes.{64}"

“At College Square? Or at Bluthman’s Book Shop?”

“At College Square!”

Her soft “I trust you” and her hesitant “I’ll try to” clashed in his ears as he rushed out of the suffocating cell and made his way back to Clif.

“What’s the problem?” Clif wondered. “Did his wife die? Or did the Giants lose in the ninth? Barney, our wandering boy tonight, looks like a zombie. Give him another strawberry pop, quick. Hey, Doctor, I think you’d better call a doctor.”

“Oh, shut up,” was all Martin could say, and it didn’t even sound convincing. Before he picked up the phone, he had been cheerful and full of little bright moments; he had complimented Clif on his pool skills and called Barney “old Cimex lectularius”; but now, while the caring Clif tried to cheer him up, he just sat there brooding, only breaking his silence to complain (with a hint of self-satisfaction), “If you knew all the troubles I have—all the darn mess a guy can get into—you’d feel down in the dumps!”

Clif was worried. "Listen up, old socks. If you're in debt, I'll find a way to get the money, no matter what. Is it—Have you been going a bit overboard with Madeline?"

“You make me feel sick! You have a filthy mind. I’m not good enough to touch Madeline’s hand. I see her with nothing but respect.”

“The hell you do! But never mind, if you say so. Gosh, I wish there was something I could do for you. Oh! Have another shot! Barney! Come running!”

By having a few drinks, Martin felt a warm, carefree haze, and Clif kindly took him home after he had wanted to fight three big college sophomores. But in the morning, he woke up with a pounding headache and the realization that he was going to see Leora and Madeline at lunch.

His half-hour trip with Madeline into Zenith felt heavy and overwhelming, like a tornado cloud. He wasn’t just passing time minute by minute; the entire grim thirty minutes loomed over him all at once. While he was rehearsing the tactful comment he planned to make in two minutes, he could still hear the awkward thing he had said two minutes earlier. He struggled to keep her{65} attention away from the “great friend of his” they were about to meet. With an idiotic grin, he recounted a night at Barney's; trying to be funny proved completely futile; and when Madeline lectured him on the dangers of alcohol and the problems with hanging out with immoral people, he actually felt a bit relieved. But he couldn't redirect her.

“Who is this guy we're going to see? Why are you being so mysterious about it? Oh, Martykins, is this a joke? Are we not actually meeting anyone? Did you just want to escape from Mama for a bit and have a fun time at the Grand together? Oh, that sounds like so much fun! I’ve always wanted to have lunch at the Grand. I do think it’s a bit too over the top, but still, it is impressive, and— Did I guess it, darling?”

“No, there’s someone— Oh, we’re definitely going to meet someone, for sure!”

“Then why don’t you tell me who he is? Seriously, Mart, you're making me really impatient.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. It isn’t a him; it’s a her.”

“Oh!”

“It’s— You know my job takes me to the hospitals, and some of the nurses at Zenith General have been really helpful.” He was out of breath. His eyes hurt. Since the torture of the upcoming lunch was unavoidable, he wondered why he should keep trying to fight his punishment. “Especially there’s one nurse there who’s amazing. She’s learned so much about taking care of patients, and she gives me a lot of great advice, and she seems like a nice girl—her name is Miss Tozer—I think her first name is Lee or something like that—and she’s so—her dad is one of the big shots in North Dakota—super rich—big banker—I guess she just got into nursing to make her contribution to the world’s work.” He had matched Madeline’s own tone of poetic uplift. “I thought you two might like to meet each other. You remember you were saying how few girls there are in Mohalis that really appreciate—appreciate ideals.”

“Yeah.” Madeline stared at something in the distance, and whatever it was, she didn’t like it. “I’d be really happy to meet her, of course. Any friend of yours— Oh, Mart! I really hope you don’t flirt; I hope you don’t get too close with all these nurses. I don’t know much about it, but I keep hearing that some of these nurses are total manhunters.{66}”

“Well, let me tell you right now, Leora definitely isn’t!”

“No, I’m sure, but— Oh, Martykins, please don’t be foolish and let these nurses just have fun with you? I mean, for your own good. They have such an upper hand. Poor Madeline, she wouldn’t be allowed to just hang around men’s rooms learning—things, and you think you’re so insightful, Mart, but honestly, any smart woman can wrap you around her finger.”

“Well, I guess I can handle myself!”

“Oh, I mean— I don’t mean— But I really hope this Tozer person— I’m sure I’ll like her if you do, but— I am your one and only true love, right? Always!”

She, who was proper, ignored the passengers while holding his hand. She sounded so scared that his anger towards her comments about Leora shifted to sadness. By the way, her thumb was digging painfully into the back of his hand. He tried to appear caring as he protested, “Sure—sure—wow, honestly, Mad, watch out. That old guy across the aisle is staring at us.”

For any betrayals he might have ever committed, he was already punished before they reached the Grand Hotel.

The Grand was, in 1907, the best hotel in Zenith. Traveling salesmen compared it to the Parker House, the Palmer House, and the West Hotel. Since then, it has been overshadowed by the overly proud Hotel Thornleigh; its once pristine tessellated floor is now dirty, the once vibrant gilt is tarnished, and its heavy leather chairs have torn seams filled with stogie ashes and horse dealers. But in its prime, it was the grandest inn between Chicago and Pittsburgh; an oriental palace with a series of brick Moorish arches at the entrance, and a lobby that soared from a black and white marble floor up past gilt iron balconies to a green, pink, pearl, and amber skylight seven stories above.

They found Leora in the lobby, small on a huge couch wrapped around a pillar. She stared at Madeline, silent, waiting. Martin noticed that Leora looked unusually messy—his own word. He didn’t care how carelessly her honey-colored hair was tucked under her black hat, a plain little mushroom of a hat, but he did see and dislike the contrast between her shirtwaist, with the third button missing, her checked skirt, her unfortunate bright brown bolero jacket, and Madeline’s sleek blue serge outfit. His irritation wasn’t aimed at Leora. Looking at them together (not arrogantly, like the superior male, but anxiously), he felt more annoyed than ever by Madeline. The fact that she was better dressed felt like an insult. His affection instinctively moved to protect Leora, to wrap and shield her.

And all the while he was stumbling:

“—thought you two girls should meet— Miss Fox, I want to introduce you to Miss Tozer—little celebration—lucky guy to have two Queens of Sheba—”

And to himself, “Oh, man!”

While they whispered nothing specific to each other, he led them into the famous dining room of the Grand. It was filled with elegant chandeliers, red plush chairs, heavy silverware, and elderly African American servers in gold and green waistcoats. Along the walls were beautiful views of Pompeii, Venice, Lake Como, and Versailles.

“Awesome room!” chirped Leora.

Madeline seemed like she was about to say the same thing using more words, but after looking at the frescoes again, she said, “Well, it’s really big—”

He was placing his order in pain. He had set aside four dollars for the meal, including the tip, and he felt he had to spend all of it. As he pondered what "Purée St. Germain" might be, the waiter uncomfortably stood watching him from behind. Madeline began to speak. She politely recited her order in an unsettling manner:

“Mr. Arrowsmith told me you’re a nurse, Miss— Tozer.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

"Do you find that interesting?"

"Well—yes—yes, I find it interesting."

“I guess it must be amazing to help people in pain. Of course my work—I'm working on my Doctor of Philosophy degree in English—” She made it sound like she was claiming a title—“it's pretty dry and impersonal. I have to understand how the language has evolved and all that. With your hands-on experience, I guess you’d find that pretty pointless.”

“Yes, it must be—no, it has to be really interesting.”

“Are you from Zenith, Miss— Tozer?”

“No, I come from— Just a small town. Well, barely a town ... North Dakota.”

“Oh! North Dakota!{68}”

“Yeah ... Way West.”

“Oh, yes.... Are you staying in the East for a while?” It was exactly what a much-disliked New York cousin had once said to Madeline.

“Well, I don’t— Yeah, I guess I might be here for a while.”

“Do you, um, like it here?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s really nice. These big cities— So much to check out.”

“‘Big’? Well, I guess it all depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it? I always think of New York as big, but— Of course— Do you find the difference compared to North Dakota interesting?”

"Well, obviously it's different."

“Tell me what North Dakota is like. I’ve always been curious about these Western states.” It was Madeline’s second time copying her cousin. “What’s your overall impression of it?”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“I mean, what’s the overall effect? The—impression.”

“Well, it has a lot of wheat and a lot of Swedes.”

“But I mean— I guess you all are incredibly masculine and full of energy, compared to us Easterners.”

“I don’t— Well, yeah, maybe.”

“Have you met a lot of people in Zenith?”

“Not that many.”

“Oh, have you met Dr. Birchall who works at your hospital? He’s such a great guy, and not only is he a skilled surgeon, but he’s also incredibly talented. He sings beautifully, and he comes from a really nice family.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve met him yet,” Leora said.

“Oh, you have to. He plays the smoothest—the most beautiful game of tennis. He always attends all these millionaire parties on Royal Ridge. Super classy.”

Martin interrupted first. “Smart? Him? He doesn’t have any brains at all.”

“My dear child, I didn't mean 'smart' in that way!” He sat there alone and helpless while she turned her attention back to Leora and increasingly asked whether Leora knew this son of a corporate lawyer and that famous debutante, this hat shop and that club. She casually referenced what were known as the Leaders of Zenith Society, the prominent figures who appeared daily in the society columns of the Advocate-Times,{69} the Cowxes and Van Antrims and Dodsworths. Martin was shocked by her familiarity; he remembered that she had once gone to a charity ball in Zenith, but he had no idea she was so close to the elite. Obviously, Leora had horrifyingly never heard of these notable people, nor had she ever attended the concerts, lectures, and recitals where Madeline supposedly spent all her glamorous evenings.

Madeline shrugged a bit, then said, “Well— Of course, with all the interesting doctors and everyone you meet in the hospital, I guess you’d find lectures really boring. Well—” She waved off Leora and looked down at Martin condescendingly. “Are you planning to do more work on that thing with rabbits?”

He looked serious. He could do it now if he got it over with quickly. “Madeline! I brought you two together because— I don’t know if you like each other or not, but I really hope you can, because I’ve— I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I couldn’t help it. I’m engaged to both of you, and I want to know—”

Madeline had jumped up. She had never looked so proud and confident. She stared at them and walked away without saying a word. Then she returned, touched Leora’s shoulder, and quietly kissed her. “Sweetheart, I feel for you. You’ve got a job! You poor thing!” She walked away, her shoulders back.

Hunched and scared, Martin couldn't look at Leora.

He felt her hand on his. He looked up. She was smiling, relaxed, a little teasing. “Sandy, I’m telling you now that I’m never going to give you up. I guess you’re as bad as she says; I guess I’m being foolish—I’m reckless. But you’re mine! Just so you know, it wouldn’t do any good for you to get engaged to someone else again. I’d go after her! Now, don’t think too highly of yourself! I bet you’re pretty selfish. But I don’t care. You’re mine!”

He said many beautiful things in their simplicity, his voice filled with emotion.

She thought, “I really feel like we’re closer than you are with Her. Maybe you like me more because you can push me around—because I follow you and She never would. And I know your work matters more to you than I do, maybe even more than you do. But I’m just ordinary and She isn’t. I just admire you a lot (Heaven knows{70} why, but I do), while She is smart enough to make you admire Her and follow Her.”

“No! I promise it’s not because I can push you around, Leora—I promise it isn’t—I don’t think it is. Sweetheart, please don’t think she’s smarter than you. She talks a good game but—Oh, let’s stop discussing this! I’ve found you! My life has started!{71}”

The difference between Martin’s relationship with Madeline and with Leora was like the difference between an intense battle and a peaceful friendship. From their first evening together, Leora and he relied on each other’s loyalty and affection, and certain aspects of his life were set for good. However, his fascination with her wasn’t stagnant. He was always making new discoveries about the insights of life that she was quietly nurturing in her little mind while she created smoke rings with her cigarettes and smiled silently. He yearned for the girl Leora; she excited him, and with cheerful honesty, she responded to him; but to a more platonic Leora, he spoke more openly than he did to Gottlieb or even to his own troubled self, while with her playful nod or an occasional word, she encouraged him to have confidence in his growing ambitions and dismissals.

Digamma Pi fraternity was throwing a dance. It was understood among the nervously whispering med students that the University of Winnemac was becoming so cosmopolitan that they needed to wear what were considered symbols of respectability known as “dress-suits.” The only time Martin had worn formal evening clothes was when he rented them from the Varsity Pantorium, but now he had to own them since he was planning to introduce Leora to society as his pride and joy. Like two little old people lost in each other and cautiously navigating the unfamiliar, uninviting streets of the city where their estranged children lived, Martin and Leora stepped into the lavish elegance of Benson, Hanley and Koch’s, the most upscale department store in Zenith. She felt overwhelmed by the bright displays of mahogany and glass, the fancy opera hats, shiny scarves, and cream-colored riding breeches. When he tried on a dinner suit and came out for her approval, his long brown tie and soft-collared shirt{72} looked somewhat rustic next to the sleek evening waistcoat, and when the clerk went to get collars, she cried out:

“Darn it, Sandy, you’re too fancy for me. I just can’t be bothered with my clothes, and here you’re about to look so sharp that I won’t stand a chance with you.”

He nearly kissed her.

The clerk, coming back, sang out, “I think, ma'am, you’ll see that your husband will look very nice in these wing collars.”

Then, while the clerk looked for ties, he kissed her, and she sighed:

“Oh, wow, you’re one of those people who make it big. I never thought I’d have to measure up to a guy in a suit and a fancy collar. Oh, well, I’ll catch up!”

For the Digamma Ball, the University Armory was heavily decorated. The brick walls were filled with bunting, dotted with paper chrysanthemums, plaster skulls, and wooden scalpels that were ten feet long.

In six years at Mohalis, Martin had attended fewer than 20 dances, even though the thrill of communal dancing was the main enjoyment of the co-ed university. When he arrived at the Armory, with Leora nervously brave in a blue crêpe de chine dress that didn’t match any known style, he didn’t care if he knew how to dance a single two-step. He just desperately wanted the guys to crowd around and ask Leora to dance, to admire her, and to make her feel welcome. But he was too proud to introduce her to his friends, afraid it would look like he was begging them to dance with her. They stood alone, under the balcony, sadly watching the vast dance floor, while beyond them swirled a stream of dancers—beautiful, imposing, and desirable. Leora and he had convinced each other that for a student function, a dinner jacket and black waistcoat would be appropriate, as outlined in the Benson, Hanley and Koch Chart of Correct Gents’ Attire, but he felt miserable seeing all the flashy white waistcoats. When that up-and-coming famous surgeon, Angus Duer, walked by, looking as haughty as a greyhound and putting on his white gloves (the whitest, most pretentiously white things on earth), Martin felt like a complete awkward mess.{73}

“Come on, let's dance,” he said, as if it were a challenge to all Angus Duers.

He really wanted to go home.

He didn’t enjoy the dance, even though she waltzed effortlessly and he didn’t do too badly himself. He didn’t even like having her in his arms. He couldn’t believe she was really there. As they twirled around, he saw Duer join a group of beautiful girls and distinguished women around the famous Dr. Silva, the dean of the medical school. Angus looked incredibly at ease, and he danced off with the prettiest girl, gliding and swinging smoothly. Martin tried to dislike him as a fool, but he remembered that just yesterday Angus was elected to the honorary society of Sigma Xi.

Leora and he quietly returned to the same spot under the balcony where they had stood earlier, to their hideout, their one safe haven. While he attempted to act casual and show off his new clothes, he was secretly cursing the guys he saw walking by, laughing with girls and ignoring Leora.

“Not many people are here yet,” he said anxiously. “Pretty soon they’ll all show up, and then you’ll have plenty of dances.”

“Oh, I’m cool with that.”

(“God, can someone please go and ask the poor kid?”)

He worried about not being popular among the guys at the medical school. He wished Clif Clawson was there—Clif enjoyed any kind of gathering, but he couldn't afford formal clothes. Then, feeling a surge of joy like seeing an old friend, he spotted Irving Watters, the perfect example of professionalism, walking toward them, but Watters just nodded and kept going. Three times Martin felt hopeful and then disappointed, and now he had lost all his pride. If only Leora could be happy—

“I wouldn’t care at all if she ended up with the most talkative loser in the whole place and ignored me all night. Anything to let her enjoy herself! If I could get Duer to come over— No, that’s one thing I couldn’t handle: sucking up to that stuck-up jerk— I will!”

Up walked Fatty Pfaff, just arrived. Martin jumped on him affectionately. “Hey there, old Fat! You here to show off tonight? Meet my friend Miss Tozer.”

Fatty’s round eyes expressed approval of Leora’s cheeks and golden hair. He puffed, “Nice to meet you—dance is starting—may I have the honor?” in such a charming way that Martin almost wanted to kiss him.{74}

That he was standing alone during the dance didn’t cross his mind. He leaned against a pillar and reveled in his thoughts. He felt wonderfully generous... The fact that several girl wallflowers were sitting nearby, hoping to be asked, didn’t register with him either.

He saw Fatty introduce Leora to a flashy pair of Digams, one of whom asked her to dance next. After that, she had more invitations than she could handle. Martin’s excitement faded. It seemed to him that she was clinging too closely to her dance partners, that she was following their steps too eagerly. After the fifth dance, he was on edge. “Of course! She’s having a great time! She doesn’t have time to notice that I’m just standing here—yes, really, holding her scarf! Sure! Good for her. It’s a fact that I might want to dance a little myself— And the way she smiles and ogles that idiot Brindle Morgan, the—the—the absolute worst— Oh, we are going to have a talk, young lady! And those guys trying to steal her away from me—the one thing I’ve ever loved! Just because they dance better than I can, and talk a bunch of nonsense— And that damn orchestra playing that damn’ upbeat music— And she’s falling for all their cheap compliments and— You and I are going to have a serious chat!”

When she came back to him, surrounded by three playful medics, he muttered to her, “Oh, it doesn’t matter about me!”

“Would you like this one? Of course you can have it!” She faced him completely; she didn’t have Madeline’s awareness of needing to perform for others. During a long, tense moment of waiting, while he scowled, she talked about the floor, the room’s size, and her “great partners.” When the music started, he opened his arms.

“No,” she said. “I need to talk to you.” She pulled him into a corner and shot at him, “Sandy, this is the last time I’m going to put up with your jealousy. Oh, I know! Just listen! If we’re going to stay together—and we are!— I’m going to dance with as many guys as I want to, and I’ll be as silly with them as I feel like. Dinners and all that—I guess I’ll always be quiet about it. Nothing to share. But I love dancing, and I’m going to do exactly what I want, and if you had any sense at all, you’d know I don’t care about anyone but you. You’re the one! Absolutely. No matter what ridiculous things you do—and there will probably be plenty. So when you get jealous again, just sneak off and deal with it. Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“I wasn’t jealous— Yes, I was. Oh, I can’t help it! I love you so much. I’d be a great partner, right? If I never got jealous!”

“All right. But you need to keep it a secret. Now let’s finish the dance.”

He was her servant.

It was considered immoral at the University of Winnemac to dance after midnight, and at that hour, the guests filled the Imperial Cafeteria. Normally, it closed at eight, but tonight it stayed open until one, creating an atmosphere of almost risqué fun. Fatty Pfaff did a little dance, another funny student, with a napkin over his arm, pretended to be a waiter, and a girl (who was not well-liked for it) smoked a cigarette.

At the door, Clif Clawson was waiting for Martin and Leora. He was in his usual shiny gray suit, paired with a blue flannel shirt.

Clif assumed he was the one all of Martin’s friends had to come to for judgment. He hadn’t met Leora. Martin had admitted to his double engagement; he said Leora was definitely the most charming young woman on the planet. But since he had already used up all his compliments and Clif’s patience talking about Madeline, Clif didn’t pay attention and got ready to dislike Leora as just another temptress masking herself as morally upright.

He looked at her now with condescending dislike. He muttered to Martin, behind her back, “She’s a good-looking girl, I’ll give her that—what’s wrong with her?” After they had grabbed their own sandwiches, coffee, and mosaic cake from the long counter, Clif rasped:

“Well, it’s really nice of a couple of fancy guys like you to hang out with me in the middle of all this fashion and society. Wow, it’s a shame I had to skip the exclusive fun of an evening with Anxious Duer and his wealthy friends, and just play a low-stakes game of poker—in which Dad skillfully took away six bucks and ten cents from the gathered losers and regular guys. Well, Leory, I guess you and Martykins here have figured out all this stuff about polo and, uh, Monte Carlo and so on.”

She had a huge ability to accept people for who they were. While Clif waited, smirking, she calmly looked inside a chicken sandwich and replied, “Uh-huh.”

“Good boy! I thought you were going to pull that ‘If you’re a tough guy, I don’t get why you feel the need to brag about it’ stuff that Mart throws at me!”

Clif became a cheerful and, for him, unusually quiet companion. A former farmhand, book agent, and mechanic, he had very little money but an intense desire to appear impressive, so he found solace in taking pride in his poverty and being a bit confrontational. Now, when Leora seemed to see past his bragging, he liked her just as quickly as Martin had, and they were filled with joy. Martin felt a warmth of kindness toward everyone, including Angus Duer, who was across the room at a table with Dean Silva and his glamorous women. Without thinking, Martin jumped up and rushed across the room. Holding out his hand, he shouted:

“Angus, my friend, I want to congratulate you on getting Sigma Xi. That’s great.”

Duer looked at the outstretched hand like it was a tool he recognized but couldn't quite recall how to use. He picked it up and shook it hesitantly. He didn't turn away; he was more than just rude—he looked patient.

“Well, good luck,” said Martin, feeling cold and shaky.

“That's very kind of you. Thanks.”

Martin went back to Leora and Clif to share the event as a cosmic tragedy. They all agreed that Angus Duer needed to be shot. In the middle of this, Duer walked by, following Dean Silva’s group, and nodded at Martin, who shot him a glare, feeling noble and grown-up.

At parting, Clif held Leora’s hand and said, “Honey, I care a lot about Mart, and there was a time I was worried he was going to get involved with people that would turn him into a superficial guy. I’m like that myself. I know less about medicine than Prof Robertshaw. But this guy has some integrity, and I’m really glad he’s spending time with someone who’s genuine and— Oh, listen to me{77} tripping over my words! But I just mean I hope you don’t mind Uncle Clif saying that he truly likes you a lot!”

It was almost four when Martin got back from dropping Leora off and flopped onto his bed. He couldn’t sleep. Angus Duer's aloofness felt like a personal insult, an insult to Leora too, but his youthful anger had faded into a deeper worry. Didn’t Duer, despite his snobbishness and shallowness, have something he lacked? Didn’t Clif, with his goofy humor, his talk like a vaudeville farmer, and his suspicion of good manners as being fake, take life too lightly? Didn’t Duer know how to control and focus his sharp little mind? Wasn’t there a technique to manners just like there was to experimentation.... Gottlieb’s smooth bench technique compared to the clumsy and awkward hands of Ira Hinkley.... Or was all this questioning a betrayal, a concession to Duer’s own pretentious standards?

He was so exhausted that behind his closed eyelids were flashes of fire. His racing mind replayed every sentence he had said or heard that night, until there was fevered shouting around his twisting body.

As he trudged across the medical campus the next day, he unexpectedly ran into Angus, and he felt a wave of guilt and embarrassment that comes when someone has borrowed money and probably won't pay it back. He instinctively started to say “Hello,” but it came out as a croak. He scowled and kept walking.

“Oh, Mart,” Angus called out. His tone was surprisingly calm. “Remember our conversation last night? It hit me when I was leaving that you seemed upset. I was wondering if you thought I’d been rude. I’m sorry if you felt that way. The truth is, I had a terrible headache. Look, I’ve got four tickets for 'As It Listeth' in Zenith next Friday night—the original New York cast! Want to see it? And I noticed you were with a gorgeous girl at the dance. Do you think she might want to join us, along with one of her friends?”

“Wow—I'll call her—so nice of you to ask us—”

It wasn't until the gloomy dusk, when Leora had agreed{78} and promised to bring along a probationer-nurse named Nelly Byers, that Martin started to reflect:

“Wonder if he actually had a headache last night?

“Wonder if someone gave him the tickets?”

“Why didn’t he ask Dad Silva’s daughter to come with us? Does he think Leora is some fling I’ve picked up?”

“Sure, he never really argues with anyone—he wants to keep us all friendly, so we’ll send him surgical patients one day when we’re just small-town G.P.s and he’s a big deal.”

“Why did I crawl down so submissively?

“I don’t care! If Leora enjoys it— Personally, I couldn’t care less about all this running around— Though, of course, it’s not so bad to see beautiful women in nice clothes and to be dressed just as well as anyone else— Oh, I don’t know!”

In the slightly Midwestern city of Zenith, the arrival of a play “with the original New York cast” was a big deal. (The specific play didn't really matter.) The Dodsworth Theatre was filled with the elite from the big homes on Royal Ridge. Leora and Nelly Byers admired the wealthy graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton—lawyers, bankers, auto manufacturers, and real estate heirs, as well as golf pros and New York socialites—who, along with their flashy and glamorous women, occupied the front rows. Miss Byers pointed out the Dodsworths, who were frequently mentioned in Town Topics.

Leora and Miss Byers jumped with admiration for the hero when he turned down the governorship; Martin felt anxious because the heroine was more attractive than Leora; and Angus Duer (who acted like he knew everything about plays even though he had only seen a handful in his life) conceded that the set for “Jack Vanduzen’s Camp in the Adirondacks: Sunset, the Next Day” was actually really nice.

Martin was feeling determinedly hospitable. He was going to feed them dinner, and that was final. Miss Byers mentioned that they had to be at the hospital by a quarter after eleven, but Leora replied lazily, “Oh, I don’t care. I’ll sneak in through a window. If you're there in the morning, the Old Cat can’t prove you came in late.” Shaking her head at this mischievous lie, Miss Byers hurried off to catch a trolley car, while{79} Leora, Angus, and Martin walked to Epstein’s Alt Nuremberg Café for beer and Swiss cheese sandwiches, surrounded by German drinking slogans and papier-mâché armor.

Angus was watching Leora, shifting his gaze between her and Martin, observing their affectionate looks. The idea that a sharp young guy like Martin would befriend a girl who couldn't help his social status seemed totally unfathomable to him. He figured Leora was just a convenient weakling. He shot Martin a smirky glance and set out to win her over for his own purposes.

“I hope you enjoyed the play,” he said patronizingly to her.

“Oh, definitely—”

“Wow, I’m really jealous of you two. I totally get why girls are into Martin, with his charming eyes, but for someone like me who just works hard, I’m left without anyone to show me some compassion. Oh well, I guess I deserve it for being so shy around women.”

With unexpected defiance, Leora replied, “When someone says that, it means they’re not shy and they look down on women.”

“Despise them? Honestly, child, I really want to be a Don Juan. But I have no idea how. Can you give me a lesson?” Angus’s dryly correct voice had turned soothing; he focused on Leora as if he were about to dissect a guinea pig. She smiled at Martin now and then to say, “Don’t be jealous, you idiot. I’m perfectly uninterested in this arrogant hypnotist.” But she felt flustered by Angus’s smooth confidence, by his admiration for her eyes, humor, and shyness.

Martin flinched with jealousy. He said they had to go—Leora really needed to get back— the trolleys ran rarely after midnight, and they walked to the hospital through empty, echoing streets. Angus and Leora kept up a nervous chatter, while Martin trudged beside them, silent, sulky, feeling proud of being sulky. Darting through a garage alley, they emerged at the front of Zenith General Hospital, a block long, five stories of grim windows with occasional dim patches of light. No one was around. The first floor was only five feet off the ground, and they lifted Leora up to the limestone ledge of a half-open corridor window. She slid in, whispering, “Goodnight! Thanks!”

Martin felt empty and dissatisfied. The night was filled with a chilly sadness. Suddenly, a light started flickering in a win{80}dow above them, and he heard a woman's scream fading into moans. He felt the tragedy of separation—that in the brevity of life, he would lose even a moment of her living presence.

“I’m going in after her; make sure she gets there safely,” he said.

The cold edge of the stone sill stung his hands, but he jumped up, lifted his knee, and quickly crawled through the window. Ahead of him, in the hallway with a cork floor lit only by a small electric bulb, Leora was tiptoeing toward a set of stairs. He ran after her, on his toes. She squeaked when he grabbed her arm.

“We need to say good night better than that!” he grumbled. “With that damn Duer—”

“Ssssssh! They’d totally kill me if they found you here. Do you want to get me fired?”

“Would you care if it was because of me?”

“Yes—no—well— But they’d probably kick you out of med school, dude. If—” His gentle hands could feel her trembling with worry. She glanced down the hallway, and his vivid imagination conjured up shadowy figures with eyes watching from the doorways. She sighed, then firmly said, “We can’t talk here. Let’s sneak up to my room—my roommate’s gone for the week. Just stand there in the shadows. If there’s no one around upstairs, I’ll come back.”

He followed her to the upper floor, to a white door, then stepped inside, breathless. As he closed the door, he felt a sense of comfort in this small refuge, with its camp beds, photos from home, and softly wrinkled linens. He embraced her, but with her hand against his chest, she stopped him, as she mourned:

“You're jealous again! How can you not trust me like this? With that idiot! Women don’t like him? They wouldn’t stand a chance! He’s way too into himself. And then you get jealous!”

“I wasn’t— Yes, I was, but I don’t care! Having to sit there and smile like a hyena, with him between us, when I wanted to talk to you, to kiss you! Fine! I’ll probably always be jealous. You’re the one who needs to trust me. I’m not easy-going; never will be. Oh, trust me—”

Their deep and uncontested kiss was even more reckless, recalling that empty moment with Angus. They forgot that the head nurse could come barging in at any moment; they forgot that Angus was waiting. “Oh, forget Angus—let him go home!” was Martin’s only thought as his eyes shut and his long solitude faded away.{81}

“Good night, my dear—my love always,” he said joyfully.

In the quiet eeriness of the hall, he chuckled at the thought of how angrily Angus must have walked away. But from the window, he noticed Angus curled up on the stone steps, sleeping. As he touched the ground, he whistled but suddenly stopped. He saw a large man in a somewhat porter-like uniform rushing out from the shadows, yelling:

“I’ve caught you! Back to the hospital with you, and we’ll see what you’ve been up to!”

They closed in. Martin was lean, but in the watchman’s grip, he felt smothered. There was a stench of dirty work clothes and unwashed skin. Martin kicked his shins, punched his solid red cheek, and tried to twist his arm. He broke free, started to run, and then stopped. The fight, so different from the sweet ache of Leora, had made him furious. He faced the watchman, filled with rage.

From the awakened Angus, suddenly appearing beside him, there was a thin sound of disgust. “Oh, come on! Let’s get out of this. Why do you dirty your hands on someone like him?”

The guard shouted, “Oh, I’m trash, am I? Just watch me!”

He grabbed Angus and slapped him.

Under the dim streetlight, Martin saw a man lose his mind. It wasn't the emotionless Angus Duer looking at the watchman; it was a murderer, and his eyes were those of a killer, conveying a message of death to even the most naive. He could only gasp, “He dared to touch me!” A penknife was somehow in his hands, he lunged at the watchman, and he was desperately trying to cut his throat.

As Martin tried to hold them back, he heard the frantic banging of a policeman’s nightstick on the pavement. Martin was slim, but he had pitched hay and strung telephone wire. He hit the watchman, carefully, beside the left ear, grabbed Angus’s wrist, and pulled him away. They ran up an alley and across a courtyard. They reached a main street just as an owl trolley came glowing and rattling around the corner; they ran alongside it, hopped up on the steps, and were safe.

Angus stood on the back platform, crying. “Oh my God, I wish I’d killed him! He touched me inappropriately! Martin! Keep me here on the car. I thought I had moved past that. When I was a kid, I tried to kill someone— God, I wish I’d slit that disgusting pig’s throat!{82}”

As the trolley rolled into the heart of the city, Martin urged, “There’s a 24-hour diner on Oberlin Avenue where we can grab some white mule. Come on. It’ll make you feel better.”

Angus was shaky and stumbling— Angus the meticulous. Martin guided him into the lunchroom where, between ketchup bottles, they took shots of whiskey from sturdy coffee cups. Angus rested his head on his arm and cried, unconcerned about the stares, until he drank himself into a haze, and Martin helped him get home. Then, back in Martin's furnished room while Clif snored, the evening felt unreal, especially Angus Duer. “Well, he’s going to be a good friend of mine from now on, for sure. Awesome!”

Next morning, in the hall of the Anatomy Building, he saw Angus and rushed toward him. Angus snapped, “You were really drunk last night, Arrowsmith. If you can’t handle your alcohol better than that, you should just stop drinking altogether.”

He walked on, clear-eyed and calm.{83}

And Martin’s work continued—helping Max Gottlieb, teaching bacteriology students, attending lectures and hospital demonstrations—sixteen grueling hours a day. He occasionally took evenings for original research or to dive into the exciting realms of French and German bacteriology publications; he proudly visited Gottlieb’s cottage now and then, where Blake drawings and a signed portrait of Koch hung against rain-spattered brown wallpaper. But the rest was nerve-wracking.

Neurology, O.B., internal medicine, physical diagnosis; always a few pages more than he could push through before he dozed off at his shaky study table.

Memorizing gynecology and ophthalmology until his mind was completely fried.

Droning afternoons of hospital demonstrations, surrounded by stumbling students criticized by exhausted clinical professors.

The demanding nature of surgery on dogs, where Angus Duer ruled with an eager sense of perfection.

Martin looked up to the internal medicine professor, T. J. H. Silva, affectionately called “Dad” Silva, who was also the dean of the medical faculty. He was a short, round man with a small crescent-shaped mustache. Silva idolized Sir William Osler, believed in the art of compassionate healing, and valued precise physical diagnosis as a mark of patriotism. He was like Doc Vickerson of Elk Mills, but more experienced and grounded. However, Martin's admiration for Dean Silva was balanced out by his contempt for Dr. Roscoe Geake, the otolaryngology professor.

Roscoe Geake was a peddler. He would have done well with oil stocks. As an ear, nose, and throat doctor, he believed that tonsils had been put in the human body to give specialists an excuse to perform surgeries. A doctor who didn’t remove a patient’s tonsils was, in his opinion, carelessly neglecting their future health and comfort—the doctor’s own future health and comfort. He sincerely thought that it never harmed anyone to have part of their nasal septum taken out. Even if the most thorough exam found nothing wrong with a patient’s nose and throat other than that they were smoking too much, the recovery time after surgery was still beneficial for them. Geake criticized this nonsense about Letting Nature Alone. After all, the average affluent man valued medical attention! He didn’t think much of his specialists unless they were performing some minor surgeries—just a little, and not too painfully. Geake had a classic annual lecture in which, soaring far beyond ear, nose, and throat medicine, he assessed all of medicine, explaining to thankful healers like Irving Watters how to charge appropriate fees:

“Knowledge is the most valuable thing in medicine, but it doesn't mean much unless you can market it. To do this, you need to make a strong impression on the people with the money. Whether your patient is a new client or a long-time friend, you should always apply salesmanship. Explain to them, and their worried family, the effort and care you're putting into their case, so they feel that the value you're providing is far greater than the fee you plan to charge. That way, when they receive your bill, they won’t be confused or upset.”

There was still no sense in Martin of a calm and spacious mind. He was undoubtedly a busy young man, and somewhat high-strung. He didn’t have any moments of elevation where he considered his place in the larger world—if he even realized there was a lot more to the world than just himself. His friend Clif was rude, his beloved Leora was down-to-earth, no matter how noble she might seem, and he himself wasted energy in frantic activity and in being astonished by dullness. But while he hadn’t matured yet, he was grounded; he despised pretentiousness, he worked with his hands, and he pursued real experiences with an insatiable curiosity.

And occasionally he saw the humor in life; he took a break for a beautiful hour from the pressure that was exhausting for his fans. This was the hour before Christmas vacation when Roscoe Geake rose to fame.

It was reported in the Winnemac Daily News that Dr. Geake had been promoted from his position as head of otolaryngology to the{85} vice-presidency of the influential New Idea Medical Instrument and Furniture Company in Jersey City. To celebrate, he delivered a final speech to the whole medical school on “The Art and Science of Furnishing the Doctor’s Office.”

He was a well-groomed person, Geake, wearing glasses, energetic, and fond of people. He smiled radiantly at his affectionate students and exclaimed:

“Gentlemen, the problem with many doctors, even those amazing old pioneers who trek through mud and storms, braving winter's chill and August's sweltering heat to bring comfort and relief to the world's most humble, is that even these seasoned veterans can easily fall into a routine and never break free. Now that I'm leaving this field where I've worked so long and happily, I want to urge every one of you to read, before you start practicing medicine, not just your Rosenau, Howell, and Gray, but also, to prepare to be practical individuals, a valuable little book on modern psychology, ‘How to Put Pep in Salesmanship,’ by Grosvenor A. Bibby. Because don’t forget, gentlemen, and this is my final message to you, the person of worth is not just someone who takes things with a smile but also someone trained in philosophy, practical philosophy, so that instead of daydreaming and spending all his time discussing ‘ethics,’ admirable as they are, and ‘charity,’ a wonderful virtue, he never loses sight of the fact that, unfortunately, the world judges a person by how much good hard cash he can save up. The graduates of the University of Hard Knocks evaluate a doctor just like they assess a businessman, not merely by his supposed ‘high ideals’ but by the effort he puts into achieving them—and making them pay! And from a scientific perspective, don’t overlook that the impression of well-compensated competence you create on a patient is just as crucial, in these times of new psychology, as the treatments you provide or the surgeries he agrees to undergo. The moment he realizes that others value and reward your skill, that’s the moment he will start to feel your effectiveness and begin to heal.”

“Nothing is more important in inspiring him than having an office that, as soon as he walks in, starts selling him the idea of getting properly treated. I don’t care{86} if a doctor has studied in Germany, Munich, Baltimore, or Rochester. I don’t care if he has all the knowledge at his fingertips, whether he can accurately diagnose even the rarest conditions, or if he has the surgical skills of a Mayo, a Crile, a Blake, an Ochsner, or a Cushing. If his office is dirty and filled with old, worn-out chairs and a bunch of outdated magazines, the patient isn’t going to trust him; he’ll resist the treatment—and the doctor will struggle to provide effective care and charge a fair fee.”

“To dive deep into the core philosophy and aesthetics of office furniture for doctors, there are currently two conflicting schools of thought, the Tapestry School and the Aseptic School, if I may call them that for clarity. Both have their advantages. The Tapestry School argues that luxurious chairs for waiting patients, beautiful hand-painted artwork, a bookshelf filled with the world's best literature in expensive editions, along with cut-glass vases and potted palms, create an impression of the wealth that comes only from true skill and knowledge. The Aseptic School, on the other hand, believes that what patients want is a look of strict hygiene, which can only be achieved by furnishing the waiting area and the inner offices with white-painted chairs and tables, accented by a single Japanese print on a gray wall.”

“But, gentlemen, it seems obvious to me—so obvious that I wonder why it hasn't been mentioned before—that the perfect reception room is a combination of these two styles! Have your potted palms and beautiful artwork; to a practical physician, they are just as essential as a sterilizer or a Baumanometer. But as much as possible, keep everything looking sanitary and white—and think of the color schemes you could create, or your good wife could help with if she has artistic tastes! Rich golden or red cushions in a bright white Morris chair! A floor covering of white enamel, with just a delicate rose border! Recent and pristine copies of high-end magazines with artistic covers, resting on a white table! Gentlemen, this is the concept of imaginative salesmanship that I want to share with you; this is the message I hope to spread in{87} my new venture, the New Ideal Instrument Company of Jersey City, where I will always be happy to see and shake hands with any and all of you.”

Through the chaos of his Christmas exams, Martin felt a stronger need for Leora. She had been called home to Dakota, possibly for months, because her mom was sick, and he thought he had to see her every day. He must have been sleeping less than four hours a night. Studying for exams on the interurban train, he rushed to see her, frowning when he thought about the lively interns and male patients she interacted with at the hospital, feeling primitive and worrying again. To see her, he had to wait for hours in the lobby or walk back and forth in the snow outside until she could sneak to a window and peek out. When they were together, they were entirely absorbed in each other. She had a talent for raw emotion; she teased him, pushed his buttons, but she was also gentle and unafraid.

He felt sick and lonely when he saw her off at Union Station.

His exam papers were decent, but apart from bacteriology and internal medicine, they were lacking in detail. He aimlessly sought time in the lab during his break.

He had shown more emotion than results in his small original research projects. Gottlieb was patient. “It's a great system, this education. Everything we cram into the students, not even Koch and two assistants could learn. Don’t stress about the research. We’ll get it done.” But he expected Martin to pull off a miracle or two during the entire two weeks of holidays, and Martin was too overwhelmed

Gottlieb immediately became serious. “What’s going on then? Do you call these notes? Every time I compliment someone, do they have to stop working? Do you think you’re a Theobald Smith or a Novy that you can just sit and think? You have the talent of Pfaff!”

For once, Martin felt no remorse. He muttered to himself as Gottlieb strutted out like a Grand Duke, “Man, I’ve{88} got some time to myself coming up. Seriously, most guys, they head to fancy places for vacation, and have parties and family and everything. If Leora were here, we’d be going to a show tonight.”

He grabbed his cap (a soggy and questionable item) and looked for Clif Clawson, who was spending his vacation by sleeping between poker games at Barney’s. He proposed a plan to head into town and get drunk. They pulled it off so well that during vacation, it became a regular thing whenever he thought about the upcoming torture of boring work, or whenever he realized it was only Gottlieb and Leora who kept him there. After vacation, in late January, he found that whisky helped him escape the chaos of work and the fear of loneliness—only to betray him later, leaving him even more exhausted and isolated. He suddenly felt old; he was twenty-four now, he reminded himself, still a schoolboy, with his real work not even started. Clif was his escape; Clif admired Leora and would listen to him ramble about her.

But Clif and Martin got caught up in the misfortune of Founder’s Day.

January thirtieth, the birthday of the late Dr. Warburton Stonedge, founder of the medical department of Winnemac, was celebrated every year with a banquet filled with camaraderie and speeches, but surprisingly little wine. All the faculty saved their best insights for the occasion, and all the students were expected to attend.

This year, it took place in the large hall of the University Y. M. C. A., a stylish space with red wallpaper, portraits of alumni with mustaches who had become missionaries, and long, narrow pine boxes meant to look like exposed oak beams. Surrounding the notable guests—Dr. Rouncefield, the Chicago surgeon, a diabetes expert from Omaha, and a Pittsburgh internist—were the faculty members. They tried to appear festive, but they looked worn out and anxious after four months of classes. They had wrinkles and tired eyes. They were all in business suits, mostly wrinkled. They spoke in scientific terms and seemed genuinely interested; they tossed around words like phlebarteriectasia and hepatocholangio-enterostomy, and they asked the guests, “So, you just came from Rochester? What’s, uh, what are Charley and Will doing in orthopedics?” But they were filled with hunger and sadness. It was half-past seven, and those who didn't usually eat at seven had dined at six-thirty.

Upon this shabby excitement entered a figure of grandeur, a huge person with a black beard, impressively dressed in a glistening shirt, with a broad forehead and wild eyes that hinted at genius or madness. In a wonderfully booming voice, tinged with a German accent, he asked for Dr. Silva and strode into the dean’s group like a battleship among small fishing boats.

“Who the heck is that?” wondered Martin.

“Let’s squeeze in and see what’s going on,” said Clif, and they held on tight to the rapidly growing group around Dean Silva and the mystery, who was introduced as Dr. Benoni Carr, the pharmacologist.

They heard Dr. Carr, to the pale admiration of the professors who were bound to the school, speak enthusiastically about working with Schmiedeberg in Germany on isolating dihydroxypentamethylendiamine, the possibilities of chemotherapy, the immediate cure for sleeping sickness, and the era of scientific healing. “Even though I was born in America, I’ve had the advantage of speaking German since I was a child, so I might understand the work of my dear friend Ehrlich better. I watched him receive a medal from His Imperial Highness the Kaiser. Good old Ehrlich, he had such a childlike spirit!”

At this time (but it oddly changed in 1914 and 1915), there was a strong Germanophile group among the faculty. They were overwhelmed by this whirlwind of knowledge. Angus Duer lost sight of who he was; and Martin listened with eager excitement. Benoni Carr had all of Gottlieb’s personality, all his disdain for robotic teachers, all his vibe of a grand world that made Mohalis seem small, without any of Gottlieb’s anxious sensitivity. Martin wished Gottlieb were there; he wondered if the two giants would argue.

Dr. Carr was seated at the speakers’ table, close to the dean. Martin was shocked to watch the renowned pharmacologist, after a dismayed look at the overcooked chicken and poorly prepared salad that made up most of the dinner, pour something from a large silver flask into his water glass—and do it often. He got lively. He leaned over two guys to pat the annoyed dean on the shoulder; he argued with those around him; he sang a verse of “I’m Bound Away for the Wild Missourai.”

Few things at the dinner were watched as closely by the students as the behavior of Dr. Benoni Carr.{90}

After an hour of forced celebration, when Dean Silva stood up to introduce the speakers, Carr got up and shouted, “Let’s skip the speeches. Only idiots give speeches. Smart people sing songs. Whoopee! Oh, tireolee, oh, tireolee, oh, tireolee a lady! You professors are a joke!”

Dean Silva was seen pleading with him, then guiding him out of the room with the help of two professors and a football tackle, and in the quiet of a joyful shock, Clif grunted to Martin:

“Here’s where I get mine! And the stupid fool promised to stay sober!”

"Wait, what?"

“I could have guessed he’d show up drunk and spill the secrets. Oh, maybe the dean won’t really give me a hard time!”

He explained. Dr. Benoni Carr was born Benno Karkowski. He graduated from a medical school that offered degrees in two years. He had read a lot, but he had never been to Europe. He had worked as a performer in medicine shows, a chiropodist, a spiritual medium, an esoteric teacher, and the head of sanitariums for neurotic women. Clif had met him in Zenith when they were both drunk. It was Clif who had told Dean Silva that the famous pharmacologist, just back from Europe, was in Zenith for a few days and might accept an invitation—

The dean had thanked Clif sincerely.

The banquet wrapped up early, and there wasn't enough focus on Dr. Rouncefield’s important talk about the Sterilization of Catgut.

Clif sat up, worried and acknowledging the truth in Martin's comments. The next day—he had a charm with women when he bothered to use it—he chatted up the dean's secretary and found out his fate. There had been a meeting of a faculty committee; the blame for the Benoni Carr incident had been placed on Clif; and the dean had said everything Clif had imagined, plus things he hadn’t even thought of. But the dean wasn’t going to call him in right away; he was going to make him wait in agony, then deal with him publicly.

“Goodbye, old M.D. degree! Ugh, I never really cared for the whole doctor thing. I guess I’ll become a bond salesman,” Clif said to Martin. He walked away, went to the dean, and commented:{91}

“Oh, Dean Silva, I just stopped by to let you know I’ve decided to leave the med school. I got a great job offer in, uh, Chicago, and honestly, I’m not a fan of how you run the school. Too much memorization and not enough real scientific spirit. Good luck, Doc. See you later.”

“Gggggg—” said Dean Silva.

Clif moved into Zenith, leaving Martin alone. He traded the double room at the front of his boarding house for a small room at the back, and in that cramped space, he sat and mourned in a deep loneliness. He looked out at an empty lot where a worn advertisement for pork and beans flapped on a crooked billboard. He saw Leora’s eyes and heard Clif’s mocking laugh, and the silence became something he couldn’t stand.{92}

The constant honking of a car horn pulled Martin to the window of the lab on a late afternoon in February. He looked down at a striking roadster, sleek and cream-colored, with huge headlights. He gradually recognized the driver, a young guy in a brown, loose-fitting motor coat, a bold checked cap, and a flashy necktie—it was Clif Clawson, and Clif was waving him over.

He rushed down, and Clif shouted:

“Oh, wow! How do you like the boat? What do you think of this suit? It’s Scotch heather—no kidding! Uncle Clif landed a $25-a-week job plus commissions, selling cars. I was totally out of my element at your old medical school. I can sell anything to anyone. In a year, I’ll be making $80 a week. Come on, buddy. I’m taking you to the Grand and treating you to the best meal you’ve ever had.”

The thirty-eight miles an hour that Clif drove into Zenith was, in 1908, an alarming speed. Martin noticed a different Clif. He was as loud as before, but more confident, brimming with ideas for quickly making a lot of money. His hair, once bushy and greasy in the front and sticking out awkwardly in the back, was now sleek, and his face had the rosy glow of a facial. He pulled up at the impressive Grand Hotel with a screech of brakes; before getting out of the car, he swapped his bright yellow driving gloves for a pair of gray ones with black stitching, which he immediately took off as he strutted through the lobby. He called the coat-check girl “Sweetie,” and at the dining room entrance, he spoke to the head waiter:

“Hey, Gus, how’s the kid doing tonight? How’s the famous butler doing? Gus, I want you to meet Dr. Arrowsmith. Whenever the doc comes by, I want you to get moving and give him that well-known service, my boy, and give him whatever he needs, and if he’s short on cash, just put it on my tab. Now, Gus, I want a nice{93} little table for two, with a garage and hot and cold water, and I’d really like your advice, Gustavus, on the oysters and hors d'oeuvres and all the lovely things for a patron's feast.”

“Yes, sir, right this way, Mr. Clawson,” said the head waiter.

Clif whispered to Martin, “I’ve got him like that in two weeks! Just watch me!”

While Clif was placing his order, a man stopped next to their table. He looked like a serious traveler who enjoyed returning to his suburban home every Saturday night. He was starting to go a little bald and had a bit of a belly. His rimless glasses, set against a round, smooth face, gave him an innocent appearance. He looked around as if he wanted someone to share a meal with. Clif jumped up, patted the man's elbow, and shouted:

“Hey there, Babski, my man. Having a meal with anyone? Come be a part of the Sporting Gents’ Association.”

“All right, happy to help. My wife’s out of town,” said the man.

“Shake hands with Dr. Arrowsmith. Mart, meet George F. Babbitt, the highly celebrated Zenith real estate mogul. Mr. Babbitt just celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday by buying his first car from me and hopes to stay as he always has.”

It was, at least for Clif and Mr. Babbitt, a fun occasion, and when Martin joined them for cocktails, St. Louis beer, and highballs, he realized that Clif was the kindest person alive, and Mr. George F. Babbitt was an engaging companion.

Clif explained how sure he was—apparently, his impressive medical training played a role in it—to be president of a motor factory, and Mr. Babbitt confided:

“You guys are a lot younger than I am, eight to ten years, and you haven’t figured out yet, like I have, that the real joy comes from Ideals, Service, and a Public Career. Just between us, my passion isn’t real estate but oratory. In fact, I once thought about studying law and jumping into politics. Just between us, and I don’t want this to spread, I’ve been making some great connections lately—meeting some of the up-and-coming young Republican politicians. Of course, a guy has to start off small, but I can say, sotto voce, that I plan to run for alderman next fall. It’s practically just a{94} step from that to mayor and then to governor of the state, and if I find that the career fits me, there’s no reason why in ten or twelve years, say in 1918 or 1920, I shouldn’t have the honor of representing the great state of Winnemac in Washington, D.C.!”

In the presence of a Napoleon-like Clif and a Gladstone-like George F. Babbitt, Martin felt his own lack of power and business skills, and when he got back to Mohalis, he was uneasy. He had hardly thought about his poverty before, but now, compared to Clif’s wealthy comfort, his worn-out clothes and cramped room felt embarrassing.

A long letter from Leora, suggesting that she might not come back to Zenith, made him feel even lonelier. Nothing seemed worth the effort. In that aimless mood, he was wandering around the lab during the elementary bacteriology demo hour when Gottlieb sent him to the basement to get six male rabbits for inoculation. Gottlieb was working eighteen hours a day on new experiments; he was on edge and irritable; he gave orders like they were insults. When Martin came back absentmindedly with six females instead of males, Gottlieb yelled at him, “You’re the biggest idiot ever to be in this lab!”

The groundlings, second-year guys who remembered Martin’s own lectures, giggled like little animals and pushed him into a fit of rage. “Well, I couldn’t hear what you said. And it's the first time I ever fell down. I won’t let you talk to me like that!”

“You’re going to put up with whatever I say! Clumsy! You can grab your hat and leave!”

“You mean I'm fired as your assistant?”

“I’m glad you have enough sense to get that, no matter how awful I sound!”

Martin walked away angrily. Gottlieb suddenly seemed confused and took a step towards Martin’s fading figure. But the class, those little giggling kids, stood thrilled, anticipating more, and Gottlieb shrugged, glared at them until they were scared, sent the least clumsy of them to get the rabbits, and continued on, strangely silent.

And Martin, at Barney’s dive, was fiercely drinking his first whiskey, which had him wandering alone all night.{95} With each drink, he acknowledged that he stood a great chance of becoming an alcoholic, yet with every sip, he bragged that he didn’t care. If Leora had been any closer than Wheatsylvania, twelve hundred miles away, he would have run to her for help. He was still feeling rough the next morning, and he had already poured himself a drink just to make it through the morning when he got a note from Dean Silva telling him to report to the office immediately.

The dean spoke:

“Arrowsmith, the faculty council has been talking a lot about you lately. Except for one or two courses—in my own, I have no complaints—you’ve been quite inattentive. Your grades are okay, but you could definitely do better. Recently, you've also been drinking. You've been seen in some pretty questionable places, and you've been close with a guy who dared to insult me, the Founder, our guests, and the University. Several faculty members have mentioned your condescending attitude—making fun of our courses right in class! However, Dr. Gottlieb has always defended you passionately. He insisted that you have a real talent for investigative science. Last night, though, he admitted that you've been disrespectful to him lately. Now, unless you turn things around immediately, young man, I will have to suspend you for the rest of the year, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to ask for your resignation. I think it might do you some good for your humility—you seem to have the pride of the devil, young man!—it could be wise for you to see Dr. Gottlieb and start your change by apologizing—”

It was the whisky talking, not Martin:

“I refuse to do it! He can deal with the consequences! I’ve dedicated my life to him, and then he turns on me—”

“That’s totally unfair to Dr. Gottlieb. He just—”

“Sure. He just let me down. I’ll see him in hell before I apologize, after everything I’ve done for him. And as for Clif Clawson that you were talking about—him ‘taking it upon himself to insult anyone’? He just played a joke, and you went after him. I’m glad he did it!”

Then Martin waited for the words that would end his career in science.

The little man, the cheerful, chubby, kind little man, stared and hummed and spoke softly:{96}

“Arrowsmith, I could fire you right now, but I believe you have potential. I’m not going to let you go. Of course, you’re suspended at least until you come to your senses and apologize to me and Gottlieb.” He had a fatherly tone; he almost made Martin feel regret; but he concluded, “And as for Clawson, his ‘joke’ about this Benoni Carr person—and honestly, why I never looked the guy up is beyond me, I guess I was too busy—his ‘joke,’ as you call it, was either the action of an idiot or a scoundrel, and until you’re able to see that, I don’t think you’ll be ready to return to us.”

“All right,” said Martin, and left the room.

He felt really sorry for himself. The real tragedy, he thought, was that even though Gottlieb had betrayed him and ruined his career, killing any chance of him mastering science and marrying Leora, he still looked up to the guy.

He said goodbye to no one in Mohalis except his landlady. He packed, and it was a straightforward packing. He stuffed his books, his notes, a worn-out suit, his insufficient linen, and his one pride, the dinner clothes, into his awkward imitation-leather bag. He remembered with tearful nostalgia the moment he bought the dinner jacket.

Martin’s money, from his father’s small estate, came in bi-monthly checks from the bank in Elk Mills. He now had only six dollars.

In Zenith, he left his bag at the interurban trolley station and searched for Clif, whom he found practicing his speech by a lovely pearl-gray motor hearse, which a cheerful undertaker, who enjoyed beer, was happily examining. He waited, sitting slouched and twisted on the steel running board of a limousine. He felt annoyed, but he was too indifferent to be very bothered by the stares of the other salesmen and the female stenographers.

Clif rushed in, stumbling, “Hey, how’s it going, kid? Come out and grab a drink.”

"I could use one."

Martin knew Clif was watching him. As they walked into the bar of the Grand Hotel, with its paintings of beautiful but distracted women, its mirrors, and its thick marble railing along a mahogany bar, he blurted:

"Well, I got fired too. Dad Silva let me go for being clueless. I'm going to hang out for a bit and then find some kind of job. Man, I'm exhausted and anxious! Hey, can you lend me some money?{97}"

“You bet. It’s all I have. How much do you want?”

“Looks like I’ll need a hundred bucks. I might hang around for a while.”

“Wow, I don’t have that much, but I can probably gather it at the office. Here, sit down at this table and wait for me.”

How Clif got the hundred dollars has never been explained, but he was back with it in fifteen minutes. They went out for dinner, and Martin drank way too much whisky. Clif took him to his own boarding house—which definitely didn’t look as promising as Clif’s clothes—gave him a cold bath to sober him up, and put him to bed. The next morning, he offered to help Martin find a job, but Martin turned him down and left Zenith on the northbound train at noon.

Always, in America, there’s a lingering presence from pioneer days: a group of scruffy young men who roam aimlessly from state to state, from crew to crew, driven by a strong desire to travel. They wear black sateen shirts and carry their belongings in bundles. They're not permanent drifters. They have hometowns to which they go back, working quietly in factories or on construction crews for a year or just a week, before disappearing again. They crowd the smoking cars at night; they sit silently on benches in dirty stations; they know the country well but understand none of it, because in a hundred cities, all they see are employment agencies, all-night diners, illegal bars, and rundown lodgings. In this world of travelers, Martin faded away. He drank continuously, only half-aware of where he was headed or what he wanted to do, haunted by memories of Leora, Clif, and Gottlieb’s quick hands. He drifted from Zenith to Sparta, over to Ohio, up into Michigan, and west to Illinois. His mind was a mess. He could never fully recall where he had been afterward. At one point, it's clear he worked as a soda-fountain clerk in a large drug store in Minnesota. At another time, he must have spent a week washing dishes in the foul-smelling back of a cheap restaurant. He traveled by freight trains, on hidden baggage cars, and on foot. To his fellow wanderers, he was known as “Slim,” the worst-tempered and most restless of their group.

After a while, a sense of direction started to emerge from his wild wandering. He was instinctively moving westward, and to the west, toward the long prairie twilight, Leora was waiting. For a day or two, he stopped drinking. He woke up feeling not like the sickly drifter called “Slim,” but like Martin Arrowsmith, and he thought, with a clear head, “Why shouldn’t I go back? Maybe this hasn’t been so bad for me. I was working too hard. I was pretty high-strung. I blew up. Like to, uh— I wonder what happened to my rabbits?... Will they ever let me do research again?”

But going back to the University before seeing Leora was impossible. His need for her was an obsession, making everything else feel pointless and worthless. He had, with some cleverness, saved most of the hundred dollars he took from Clif; he had lived—very poorly, on greasy stews and bread that smelled like soda—by what he earned along the way. Suddenly, on an unremarkable day, in an ordinary town in Wisconsin, he walked to the station, bought a ticket to Wheatsylvania, North Dakota, and sent a telegram to Leora that said, “Coming 2:43 tomorrow Wednesday Sandy.”

He crossed the wide Mississippi into Minnesota. He changed trains in St. Paul; he rolled into vast expanses of snow, marked by thin lines of fence wire. He felt free, escaping the small fields of Winnemac and Ohio, relaxing from the jittery nerves of late-night studying and drinking. He remembered his days stringing wire in Montana and regained that carefree peace. The sunset was a burst of crimson, and by night, when he stepped off the cramped train and walked along the platform at Sauk Center, he inhaled the cold air and looked up at the vast and lonely winter stars. The Northern Lights lit up the sky in a way that was both terrifying and beautiful. He returned to the train energized by that brave land. He dozed off on and off, sprawled across the seat, chatted with friendly fellow travelers, sipped bitter coffee, and gorged on buckwheat cakes at a station diner; and so, changing at various small towns, he finally arrived at the squat buildings, the two grain elevators, the cattle pen, the oil tank, and the small red station with its slushy platform, which made up the outskirts of Wheatsylvania. By the station, absurdly dressed in a big coonskin coat, stood Leora. He must have looked a bit crazy as he stared at her from the train door, shivering from the wind. She raised her two open hands, childlike in red mittens. He dashed down, dropped his awkward bag on the platform, and, oblivious to the surprised farmers, they were lost in a kiss.

Years later, on a tropical afternoon, he remembered the softness of her wind-cooled cheeks.

The train was gone, speeding out of the small station. It had loomed like a dark wall next to the platform, shielding them, but now the bright light from the snowy fields flooded in on them, making them feel exposed and awkward.

“What’s happened?” she said, panicking. “No letters. I was so scared.”

“Out goofing around. The dean suspended me for being too casual with the professors. Do you care?”

“Of course not, if that’s what you wanted—”

"I'm here to marry you."

“I don’t see how we can, my dear, but— Okay. There’s going to be a big scene with Dad.” She laughed. “He’s always so shocked and hurt when something happens that he didn’t plan for. It’ll be great to have you by my side in this mess, since you’re not supposed to know that he thinks he should plan everything for everyone and— Oh, Sandy, I’ve missed you so much! Mom isn’t really sick at all, not one bit, but they keep me here. I guess someone probably suggested to Dad that people were talking about how he must be struggling if his precious daughter had to go off and learn nursing, and he hasn’t figured it all out yet—it takes Andrew Jackson Tozer about a year to work anything out. Oh, Sandy! You’re here!”

After the noise and chaos of the train, the village felt completely empty. He could have walked around the outskirts of Wheatsylvania in ten minutes. To Leora, each building was likely different—she seemed able to tell the general store of Norblom apart from Frazier & Lamb—but to Martin, the two-story wooden shacks scattered along the wide Main Street all looked the same and unremarkable. Then Leora said, “There’s our house, at the end of the next block,” as they turned the corner by the feed and implement store, and in a rush of embarrassment, Martin felt like stopping. He sensed trouble ahead: Mr. Tozer accusing him of being a failure who wanted to ruin Leora, and Mrs. Tozer crying.

“Hey—hey—hey—have you told them about me?” he stammered.{100}

“Yes. Kind of. I said you were amazing in medical school, and maybe we’d get married after you finished your internship. Then when your wire came, they wanted to know why you were coming, why you sent it from Wisconsin, and what color necktie you were wearing when you sent the wire, and I couldn’t make them understand that I didn’t know. They talked about it. A lot. They really do talk things over. All through dinner. Seriously. Oh, Sandy, please do curse and swear a little during meals.”

He was feeling down. Her parents, once funny characters in a story, now felt overwhelmingly real in front of the big, brown, porchy house. A large plate-glass window with a colorful border had recently been installed in the wall, showing off their success, and the garage was new and commanding.

He followed Leora closely, bracing for the confrontation. Mrs. Tozer opened the door and looked at him with a sad expression—a thin, worn-out woman with no sense of humor. She bowed, as if he was not entirely unwelcome but rather mysterious and questionable.

“Are you going to show Mr. Arrowsmith to his room, Ory, or should I?” she asked.

It was the kind of house that had a big record player but no books, and if there were any pictures, which seemed unlikely, Martin never remembered seeing them. The bed in his room was uncomfortable but covered with a modest patterned spread, and the flowery pitcher and bowl sat on a cover stitched in red with lambs, frogs, water lilies, and a religious saying.

He took as much time as he could unpacking things that didn’t really need unpacking and hesitated on the stairs. No one was in the living room, which smelled of furnace heat and balsam pillows; then, out of nowhere, Mrs. Tozer appeared, concerned about him and trying to think of something polite to say.

“Did you have a nice trip on the train?”

“Oh, yeah, it was— Well, it was pretty packed.”

“Oh, was it busy?”

“Yes, there were plenty of people traveling.”

“Were there? I guess— Yeah. Sometimes I wonder where all the people are headed when you see them going places all the time. Did you—was it really cold in the Cities—in Minneapolis and St. Paul?”

“Yes, it was really cold.{101}”

“Oh, was it chilly?”

Mrs. Tozer was so quiet, so nervously polite. He felt like a burglar mistaken for a guest, and he wondered intensely where Leora could be. She entered calmly, carrying coffee and an enormous Swedish coffee ring, rich with raisins and shining brown sugar. She got them talking, almost comfortably, about the chill of winter and the worth of Fords when, right in the middle of this cheerful atmosphere, Mr. Andrew Jackson Tozer appeared, and they fell back into politeness.

Mr. Tozer was just as thin, plain, and weathered as his wife, and like her, he stared, stayed quiet, and worried. He was amazed by everything in the world that didn’t relate to his grain elevator, his creamery, his small bank, the United Brethren Church, and the careful management of an Overland car. It wasn’t surprising that he had become almost wealthy, as he accepted nothing that wasn’t natural and convenient for Andrew Jackson Tozer.

He hinted at wanting to know if Martin “drank,” how well he was doing, and how he could have traveled all the way from the sophistication of Winnemac. (The Tozers were born in Illinois, but they had been in Dakota since childhood, and they saw Wisconsin as the farthest, most dangerous edge of the Eastern horizon.) They were so expressionless, so uncomfortably polite, that Martin managed to steer clear of awkward topics like being suspended. He maintained the impression that he was a serious young doctor who would soon be earning good money to support their Leora, but just as he started to relax in his chair, he was interrupted by the arrival of Leora’s brother.

Bert Tozer, Albert R. Tozer, cashier and vice-president of the Wheatsylvania State Bank, auditor and vice-president of the Tozer Grain and Storage Company, treasurer and vice-president of the Star Creamery, wasn’t at all bothered by his parents' doubtful attitudes. Bertie was a very articulate and modern businessman. He had buck teeth, and his glasses had a gold chain leading to a small hook behind his left ear. He believed in promoting the town, organizing motor tours, supporting Boy Scouts, baseball, and getting rid of I.W.W. members; his biggest regret was that Wheatsylvania was still too small to have a Y.M.C.A. or a Commercial Club. Right next to him was his fiancée, Miss Ada Quist, daughter of the local feed and implement store. Her nose was sharp, but not as sharp as her voice or the suspicion with which she regarded Martin.

“This Arrowsmith?” Bert asked. “Huh! Well, I guess you’re happy to be out here in God’s country!”

“Yes, it’s okay—”

“Trouble with the Eastern states is, they haven’t got the energy, or the space to grow. You should see a real Dakota harvest! By the way, why are you away from school this time of year?”

“Why—”

“I know all about school terms. I went to business college in Grand Forks. How come you can skip out now?”

“I took a short break.”

“Leora says you two are thinking about getting married.”

"We’re—"

“Do you have any cash apart from your school money?”

"I haven't!"

“Thought so! How do you expect to support a wife?”

“I guess I’ll be practicing medicine someday.”

“Someday! So what's the point of discussing being engaged until you can support a wife?”

“That,” interrupted Bert’s girlfriend, Miss Ada Quist, “that’s exactly what I said, Ory!” She seemed to express herself as much with her pointed nose as with her small mouth. “If Bert and I can wait, I guess other people can too!”

Mrs. Tozer whimpered, “Don’t be too tough on Mr. Arrowsmith, Bertie. I’m sure he wants to do the right thing.”

“I’m not being hard on anyone! I’m being sensible. If Dad and you would handle things instead of just standing around worrying, I wouldn’t have to step in. I don’t believe in interfering with other people’s business, nor do I want anyone interfering with mine. Live and let live and mind your own business is my motto, and that’s what I told Alec Ingleblad the other day when I was in there getting a shave and he was trying to act funny about us having so many mortgages, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to let a guy I don’t know anything about come snooping around My Sister until I find out something about his situation!”

Leora sang softly, “Bertie, sweetheart, your tie is riding up your collar again.”

“Yes and you, Ory,” yelled Bert, “if it weren’t for me, you would have married Sam Petchek two years ago!{103}”

Bert added, with examples and illustrations, that she was carefree, and as for nursing—Nursing!

She said that Bert was who he was, and tried to explain to Martin about Sam Petchek. (It has never really been fully explained.)

Ada Quist said that Leora didn’t care if she broke her parents' hearts and messed up Bert’s career.

Martin said, “Listen, I—” and never got any further.

Mr. and Mrs. Tozer said they all needed to stay calm, and of course Bert didn’t actually mean— But honestly, it was true; they had to be reasonable, and how Mr. Arrowsmith could expect to support a wife—

The conference went until nine-thirty, which, as Mr. Tozer pointed out, was everyone’s bedtime. Aside from a five-minute discussion about whether Miss Ada Quist should stay for dinner and a debate over the saltiness of the last bit of corned beef, they stuck to the topic of whether Martin and Leora were engaged. Everyone involved, which apparently didn't include Martin and Leora, decided that they weren't. Bert led Martin upstairs, making sure the couple didn't get a chance for a goodnight kiss. Until Mr. Tozer called down the hall at seven minutes after ten, “Are you going to stay up and chat the whole night, Bert?” he kept himself entertained by sitting on Martin’s bed, looking dismissively at his worn-out luggage, and asking about his parents, religion, politics, and feelings about the evils of card-playing and dancing.

At breakfast, they all hoped that Martin would stay one more night at their house—there was plenty of room.

Bert said that Martin would come downtown at ten and would be shown the bank, creamery, and wheat elevator.

But at ten, Martin and Leora were on the eastbound train. They got off at the county seat, Leopolis, a large city with a population of four thousand, featuring a three-story building. At one that afternoon, they were married by the German Lutheran pastor. His office was stark, with a large, rusty wood stove at the center, and the witnesses, the pastor’s wife and an old German man who had been shoveling snow, sat on the wood box looking sleepy. It wasn't until they caught the afternoon train to Wheatsylvania that Martin and Leora were able to escape the unsettling feeling that had been following them all day. On the cramped, musty train, huddled close together with their hands locked and blissfully unaware of the distance that weddings can sometimes create between lovers, they sighed, “Now what are we going to do—what are we going to do?”

At the Wheatsylvania station, the entire family was there, excited and full of energy.

Bert suspected they had run away together. He called several towns using long-distance and finally reached the county clerk right after the license was issued. It didn’t help Bert’s mood when the clerk said that if Martin and Leora were of age, there was nothing he could do, and added, “I don’t care who’s talking—I’m in charge of this office!”

Bert had arrived at the station ready to make Martin perfect, just like Bert Tozer was, and to do it immediately.

It was a terrible evening in the Tozer mansion.

Mr. Tozer said at length that Martin had taken on responsibilities.

Mrs. Tozer cried and said that she hoped Ory didn't have to get married for certain reasons—

Bert said that if that was the case, he’d kill Martin—

Ada Quist said that Ory could now see the consequences of pride and bragging about returning to her old Zenith—

Mr. Tozer said that there was one good thing about it, anyway: Ory could see for herself that they couldn’t let her go back to nursing school and get into more problems—

Martin occasionally made comments suggesting that he was a good young man, a great bacteriologist, and capable of taking care of his wife; but only Leora paid attention.

Bert went on to say (while his father protested, “Now don’t be too hard on the boy,”) that if Martin really thought for even one second that he was going to get a single red cent from the Tozers just because he’d barged in where he wasn’t invited, then Bert wanted to know about it, that was all; he definitely wanted to know about it!

And Leora watched them, turning her little head from one to another. At one point, she came over to take Martin’s hand. During the height of the storm, when Martin was starting to glare, she pulled out a pack of really bad cigarettes from a mysterious pocket and lit one. None of the Tozers knew that she smoked. Whatever they thought about her morals, her infidelity to United Brethrenism, and her overall instability, they never suspected she could engage in such an {105}obscenity as smoking. They accused her, and Martin gasped fiercely.

During these rants, Mr. Tozer had somehow made up his mind. He could sometimes take charge from Bert, whom he saw as helpful but a bit reckless, and not fully understanding the "true worth of a dollar." (Mr. Tozer valued it at one dollar and ninety cents, while the forward-thinking Bert considered it to be barely more than one-fifty.) Mr. Tozer calmly gave orders:

They were to stop "scrapping." They had no evidence that Martin was necessarily a bad match for Ory. They would see. Martin would return to medical school right away, be a good student, graduate as quickly as possible, and start making money. Ory would stay at home and behave herself—and she definitely wouldn’t act like a Bad Woman again or smoke cigarettes. In the meantime, Martin and she would have no, um, relations. (Mrs. Tozer looked embarrassed, and the eagerly attentive Ada Quist tried to blush.) They could write to each other once a week, but that was it. They would not, um, behave as though they were married until he gave permission.

"Well?" he asked.

Doubtless, Martin should have defied them and, with his bride in his arms, gone out into the night. But it felt like just a moment until graduation, until he started his practice. He had Leora now, forever. For her, he had to be sensible. He would go back to work and be practical. Gottlieb’s ideals of science? Laboratories? Research? Nonsense!

"Okay," he said.

It didn’t cross his mind that their decision to avoid love started tonight; it didn’t hit him until, reaching out his hands to Leora, smiling proudly for having chosen to be sensible, he heard Mr. Tozer laughing, “Ory, you go on up to bed now—in your own room!”

That was his wedding night; tossing in his bed, ten yards away from her.

Once he heard a door open and got excited about her arrival. He waited, tense. She didn’t show up. He peeked out, determined to find her room. His strong feelings about his brother-in-law suddenly grew. Bert was pacing the hall, on high alert. If Bert had been more intimidating, Martin might have confronted him, but he couldn’t deal with that buck-toothed, self-righteous attitude. He lay there and decided to curse them all in the morning and run off with Leora, but as the three o’clock slump hit, he realized that with him she would probably end up starving, that he was disgraceful, and that it was uncertain whether he wouldn’t turn into a drunk.

“Poor kid, I’m not going to ruin her life. God, I really love her! I’m going back, and I’m going to work hard— Can I handle this?”

That was his wedding night and the empty dawn.

Three days later, he walked into the office of Dr. Silva, the dean of the Winnemac Medical School.{107}

Dean Silva's secretary looked up happily, eager for what was to come. But Martin said softly, “Excuse me, could I see the dean?” and quietly he waited in the row of wooden chairs under the Dawson Hunziker pharmaceutical calendar.

When he had walked seriously through the frosted glass door to the dean's office, he found Dr. Silva frowning. Sitting down, the short man appeared big, with his rounded head and full mustache.

“Well, sir!”

Martin pleaded, “I want to come back, if you’ll allow me. I really do apologize to you, and I’ll go to Dr. Gottlieb and apologize—though honestly, I can’t back down on Clif Clawson—”

Dr. Silva jumped out of his chair, agitated. Martin prepared himself. Wasn't he welcome? Did he have no home, anywhere? He couldn't fight. He had no more courage. He was so exhausted after the dull journey, after holding back from snapping at the Tozers. He was so tired! He looked at the dean with longing.

The little man laughed, “It’s okay, kid. We’re just happy you’re back. Forget the apologies! I just wanted you to do whatever would lift your spirits. It’s great to have you back! I believed in you, and then I thought maybe we’d lost you. Silly old man!”

Martin was crying, too weak to hold back, feeling lonely and vulnerable. Dr. Silva comforted him, saying, “Let’s go over everything and figure out where the issue is. How can I help? Understand, Martin, my greatest desire in life is to help train as many good doctors and great healers as I can. What triggered your anxiety? Where have you been?”

When Martin told Leora about their marriage, Silva said, “I’m so happy for you! She sounds like a wonderful girl. We need to make sure you get an internship at Zenith General a year from now, so you can support her properly.{108}”

Martin remembered how often and how harshly Gottlieb had mocked “these merry wedding or jail bells.” He left as Silva’s disciple; he left to study intensely; and the brilliant madness of Max Gottlieb’s genius faded from his belief.

Leora wrote that she had been kicked out of nursing school for missing too many classes and for being married. She suspected her father had told the hospital authorities. It seemed she had secretly ordered a shorthand book and, under the pretense of helping Bert, she was using the typewriter at the bank, hoping that by next autumn she could join Martin and earn her own living as a stenographer.

Once he offered to quit medicine, take whatever job he could find, and send for her. She turned him down.

Though in his dedication to Leora and the new god, Dean Silva, he had become serious, denying himself whisky and intensely studying medicine page after page, he was always caught in a whirlpool of longing for her, and every time he ran the last block to his boarding house, he hoped for a letter from her. Suddenly, he came up with a plan. He had experienced shame—this one last embarrassment wouldn’t matter. He would escape to her during Easter break; he would persuade Tozer to support her while she studied stenography in Zenith; he would keep her close for the last year. He paid Clif back the borrowed hundred when the bimonthly check arrived from Elk Mills and calculated his budget to the last cent. By not buying the suit he desperately needed, he could make it work. For over a month, he had just two meals a day, and out of those meals, one was bread, butter, and coffee. He washed his own clothes in the bathtub and, except for occasional delightful indulgences, he didn’t smoke.

His return to Wheatsylvania was like his first flight, except that he talked less with other drifters, and the whole way, during restless naps in the red-plush seats of the trains, he studied the thick books on gynecology and internal medicine. He had sent specific instructions to Leora. He met her at the outskirts of Wheatsylvania, and they shared a brief conversation and a determined kiss.

News spreads quickly in Wheatsylvania. People are definitely interested in each other's business, and the eyes of residents Martin didn’t even know were on him since he arrived. By the time the culprits reached the bone-littered castle of the Tozer ogres, Leora’s father and brother were already there, fuming. Old Andrew Jackson shouted at them. He said that while it might not have been completely crazy for Martin to have “run away from school once, sneaking back a second time was definitely just plain crazy.” Throughout his rant, Martin and Leora smiled with confidence.

From Bert, “Honestly, sir, this is too much!” Bert had been reading fiction. “I don’t like profanity, but when you come and bother My Sister again, all I can say is, honestly, sir, this is just too much!”

Martin looked thoughtfully out the window. He saw three people walking down the muddy street. They all looked at the Tozer house with hopeful curiosity. Then he spoke calmly:

“Mr. Tozer, I've been working hard. Everything has been going well. But I've decided I don’t want to live without my wife. I'm here to take her back. Legally, you can't stop me. I’ll admit, without any argument, that I can’t support her yet if I stay at the University. She’s going to study stenography. She’ll be able to support herself in a few months, and in the meantime, I expect you to be decent enough to send her money.”

“This is too much,” said Tozer, and Bert continued: “Not only does this guy practically ruin a girl, but he also has the nerve to ask us to support her for him!”

“All right. Just as you want. In the long run, it’ll be better for her, for me, and for you if I finish medical school and start my career, but if you won’t take care of her, I’ll drop out and go to work. Oh, I’ll support her, no problem! Just know you’ll never see her again. If you keep being idiots, she and I will leave on the night train to the Coast, and that’ll be it.” For the first time in his long arguments with the Tozers, he was being dramatic. He shook his fist in Bert’s face. “And if you try to stop us, God help you! And just think about how this town will laugh at you!... So what do you say, Leora? Are you ready to leave with me—forever?”

“Yes,” she replied.

They talked about it a lot. Tozer and Bert took defensive stances. They insisted they couldn’t be pushed around by anyone. Plus, Martin was an Adventurer, and how did Leora know he{110} wasn’t thinking of living off the money they sent her? In the end, they backed down. They concluded that this new, grown-up Martin and this tough Leora were ready to give up everything for each other.

Mr. Tozer complained a lot and promised to send her seventy dollars a month until she was ready for office work.

At the Wheatsylvania station, looking out the train window, Martin realized that this anxious-eyed, lip-puckering Andrew Jackson Tozer really did love his daughter and mourn her leaving.

He found Leora a room on the worn northern edge of Zenith, much closer to Mohalis and the University than her hospital had been; a square room painted white and blue, with worn-out but comfy chairs. It overlooked a breezy, scruffy expanse leading to distant shimmering railroad tracks. The landlady was a plump German woman who had an eye for romance. It's uncertain whether she ever believed they were married. She was a kind woman.

Leora’s trunk had arrived. Her shorthand books were neatly laid out on her small table, and her pink felt slippers were placed under the white iron bed. Martin stood with her at the window, overwhelmed with pride. Suddenly, he felt so weak and exhausted that the invisible bond that holds everything together seemed to vanish, and he sensed that he was about to break down. But with his knees locked and straight, his head tilted back, and his lips pressed tight against his teeth, he steadied himself and exclaimed, “Our first home!”

That he should be with her, quiet, with no one disturbing them, was intoxicating.

The everyday room gleamed with a strange light; the lively weeds and coarse grass of the wasteland sparkled under the April sun, and sparrows were chirping.

“Yes,” said Leora, with her voice, then with eager lips.

Leora went to Zenith University of Business Administration and Finance, which was a big{111} and not-so-great school for stenographers, bookkeepers, and the children of Zenith brewers and politicians who couldn’t even get into state universities. Every day, she headed to the car line, looking neat and childlike with her notebooks and sharpened pencils, blending in with the crowd of students. It took her six months to learn enough stenography to get a job at an insurance office.

Until Martin graduated, they kept that room, their home, even more cherished. No one was as domestic as these transient souls. At least two evenings a week, Martin rushed in from Mohalis and studied there. She had a knack for staying out of his way, not needing to be acknowledged, so that while he dove into his books like he never had in Clif's noisy, grunting, and spitting company, he always felt her warm, half-aware presence. Sometimes, at midnight, just as he started to realize he was hungry, he would find that a plate of sandwiches had magically appeared at his side. He was no less affectionate for not mentioning it. She made him feel secure. She blocked out the world that had pressured him.

On their walks, at dinner, during the indulgent and wonderfully wasteful fifteen minutes they spent sitting on the edge of the bed wrapped in comforters, smoking a guilty cigarette before breakfast, he explained his work to her. When she finished her own studying, she tried to read whichever of his books wasn't currently being used. Knowing very little and never learning much about the actual details of medicine, she still understood—perhaps even better than Angus Duer—his philosophy and the foundation of his work. Even though he had moved past his idolization of Gottlieb and his desire for the lab as if it were a sanctuary, some part of Gottlieb's spirit still lingered. He wanted to look beyond the details and impressive-sounding jargon to understand the causes of things, seeking general principles that could bring order to the chaos of different and often conflicting symptoms, much like the orderliness of chemistry.

On Saturday evening, they went to the movies—showing one- and two-reel films featuring Cowboy Billy Anderson and a girl who would later become famous as Mary Pickford. They seriously discussed the nonexistent plots as they walked home, unaware of the other people on the streets. But when they ventured into the countryside on a Sunday (with four sandwiches and a bottle of{112} ginger ale in his worn pockets), he playfully chased her up hills and through valleys, and they lost their seriousness in joyful childishness. He planned to take the owl car to Mohalis in the evening to be close to his work when he woke up in the morning. He was always determined about it, and she admired his efficiency, but he never managed to catch the car. The morning interurban crew at six o’clock got used to seeing a pale, quick-moving young man sitting hunched in the back seat, engrossed in large red books while absently nibbling on a rather terrible doughnut. Yet, this young man didn’t carry the weight of workers dragged out of bed at dawn for another dreary and pointless day of labor. He seemed strangely resolute and oddly at peace.

It was all so much easier now that he was partially freed from the strict honesty of Gottliebism, from the relentless search for causes which, as it dug deeper and deeper, seemed to drift further away from the fundamental truths, from the unbearable pressure of realizing each day how much he didn’t know. It felt good to escape from Gottlieb’s cold world into Dean Silva’s friendly environment.

Now and then he spotted Gottlieb on campus. They awkwardly nodded to each other and hurried past.

There didn't seem to be any difference between his Junior and Senior years. Because of the time he had lost, he had to stay in Mohalis all summer. The year and a half from his marriage to his graduation was just one crazy confusion, without any sense of seasons or dates.

When he finally, as they said, “got rid of his nonsense and got serious about work,” he earned the respect of Dr. Silva and all the good students, especially Angus Duer and Reverend Ira Hinkley. Martin had always claimed he didn’t care about their approval or the praise of average hard workers, but now that he had it, he valued it. No matter how much he pretended to dismiss it, he felt pleased when Angus treated him as an equal. Angus spent the summer as an extern at Zenith General Hospital and already carried the impressive aura of a successful young surgeon.

Through that hot summer, Martin and Leora worked hard, panting, and when they sat in her room over their books and a {113} sturdy pot of beer, neither their outfits nor their language reflected the decorum one would expect from a romantic couple dedicated to science and high aspirations. They weren’t very modest. Leora began to casually use words, those old Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, that would have shocked Angus or Bert Tozer. On their days off, they went on a budget to a fake Coney Island next to a grimy and smelly lake, and with great enjoyment, they ate hot dogs and carefully rode the scenic railway.

Their main appetizer was Clif Clawson. Clif was never willingly alone or quiet except when he was sleeping. It's likely that his success in car sales came entirely from his love for the huge amounts of lively conversation that seem necessary in that job. It's hard to tell how much of his attention to Martin and Leora was genuine friendliness and how much was because he was afraid of being alone, but he definitely entertained them and helped them come out of their shells, and he never seemed bothered by the grumpy way Martin sometimes greeted him.

He would drive up to the house in a car, the muffler always removed. He would shout at their window, “Come on, you guys! Get out here! Hurry up! Let’s take a drive and cool down, and then I’ll treat you to some food.”

That Martin had to work, Clif never understood. There was little reason for Martin's occasional harshness when he showed his annoyance, but now that he was happy with Leora and completely self-absorbed about the needs of others, now that he was stuck in a routine of work and satisfied companionship, Clif's constant stream of heavy jokes bored him. It was Leora who was polite. She had heard the same seven jokes, which in different forms made up all of Clif's humor and philosophy, way too many times, but she could sit for hours looking friendly while Clif bragged about how good he was at selling, and she firmly reminded Martin that they would never find a friend more loyal or generous.

But Clif went to New York, to a new motor agency, and Martin and Leora were more fully and happily dependent on each other than ever before.

Their last agitation was eased by the satisfaction of{114} Mr. Tozer. He was friendly in all his letters now, even though he annoyed them with the parental advice he attached to every payment he sent.

None of the hectic activities of senior year—neurology and pediatrics, practical work in obstetrics, taking case histories in the hospitals, attending operations, dressing wounds, and learning not to look embarrassed when charity patients called one “Doctor”—were as important as the discussion of “What are we going to do after graduation?”

Is it really required to intern for over a year? Are we going to be general practitioners forever, or should we aim to become specialists? Which specialties pay the most? Should we live in the countryside or the city? What if we move West? What about joining the army medical corps; with the salutes, riding boots, attractive women, and the chance to travel?

This conversation was buzzing in the hallways of Main Medical, at the hospital, and in the lunchrooms; and when Martin got home to Leora, he went over it all again, very knowledgeably, very clearly. Almost every evening he “made a decision” that was back to being undecided by morning.

Once, when Dr. Loizeau, a professor of surgery, performed in front of a clinic filled with several well-known visiting doctors—the small white figure of the surgeon beneath them, cutting between life and death, as dramatic as a great actor taking a bow—Martin walked away confident that surgery was his calling. He agreed with Angus Duer, who had just won the Hugh Loizeau Medal in Experimental Surgery, that the surgeon was the lion, the eagle, the soldier among doctors. Angus was one of the few who knew exactly what he wanted to do without hesitation: after his internship, he planned to join the famous Chicago clinic led by Dr. Rouncefield, the distinguished abdominal surgeon. He briefly stated that he would be earning twenty thousand a year as a surgeon within five years.

Martin explained everything to Leora. Surgery. Drama. Nerves of steel. Devoted assistants. Save lives. Science in coming up with new techniques. Make money—not to be commercial, but to provide Leora with comforts. To Europe—they would go together—gray London. Viennese cafés. Leora was grateful to him during his speech. She casually agreed; and the next evening, when he tried to argue that surgery was nonsense and most surgeons were just good carpenters, she agreed even more pleasantly.

Next to Angus and the future medical missionary, Ira Hinkley, Fatty Pfaff was the first to figure out what his future held. He was going to be an obstetrician—or, as the med students technically referred to it, a “baby-snatcher.” Fatty had the heart of a midwife; he genuinely felt for women in their desperate agony, empathizing almost to the point of tears, and he was fantastic at just sitting still, drinking tea, and waiting. During his first obstetrics case, while the student with him was just nervous, fidgeting by the bed in the stark emptiness of the hospital room, Fatty was terrified, longing more than he ever had in his soft yet hopeful life to comfort this pale, straining, unfamiliar woman, to take her pains upon himself.

While the others floated into their different classes, often by chance or through family connections, Martin felt uncertain. He respected Dean Silva’s emphasis on a doctor’s duty to help others, but he couldn’t shake off the solitary, disciplined hours spent in the lab. As Senior year came to a close, he needed to make a decision, and he was inspired by a speech where Dean Silva criticized excessive specialization and painted a picture of the wise old country doctor—both a guide and father figure to the community, grounded under the open sky and at peace with himself. On top of that, he received urgent letters from Mr. Tozer, urging Martin to settle in Wheatsylvania.

Tozer clearly loved his daughter and somewhat liked Martin, wanting them both close by. He called Wheatsylvania a “great location,” filled with dependable Scandinavian, Dutch, German, and Bohemian farmers who always paid their bills. The closest doctor was Hesselink, located in Groningen, nine and a half miles away, and he already had plenty on his plate. If they moved there, he would help Martin get the equipment he needed and even send him a check now and then during his two-year hospital internship. Martin was almost out of money. He and Angus Duer had been accepted to Zenith General Hospital, which offered incredible training, but Zenith General only provided interns with room and board during their first year, making him worry that he couldn't accept the appointment. Tozer’s offer thrilled him. All night, Leora{116} and he stayed up, getting excited about the freedom of the West, the kind-heartedness and helpfulness of the pioneers, and the bravery and importance of country doctors. This time, they made a decision that truly stuck.

They would settle in Wheatland.

If he felt a bit of longing for research and Gottlieb’s amazing curiosity—well, he would be a country doctor like Robert Koch! He wouldn't turn into a bored bridge player or a duck hunter. He would have his own small lab. So, he reached the end of the year and graduated, looking somewhat flustered in his cap and gown. Angus was first in the class, and Martin was seventh. He said goodbye with some regrets and quite a bit of beer; he found a room for Leora closer to the hospital; and he emerged as Martin L. Arrowsmith, M.D., house physician at Zenith General Hospital.{117}

The Boardman Box Factory was on fire. All of South Zenith was stirred up by the light reflecting off the low-hanging clouds, the smell of burnt wood, and the relentless ringing of fire engines. Miles of small wooden houses to the west of the factory were in danger, and women in shawls and disheveled men wearing trousers over their nightshirts rushed out of bed, their footsteps creating a heavy thud on the cold streets.

With a steady professionalism, firefighters in helmets were tending to the steaming engines. Police officers moved through the crowd, swinging their batons and shouting, “Back up, you!” The fire line was off-limits. Only the factory owner and reporters were allowed in. A wild-eyed factory worker was halted by a police sergeant.

“My tools are in there!” he yelled.

“That doesn’t matter,” yelled the cocky sergeant. “No one can get through here!”

But one made it through. They heard the blang-blang-blang of a speeding ambulance, nonstop, furious, defiant. Without any orders, the crowd parted, and through them, almost brushing against them, glided the big gray car. At the back, proudly in white uniform, relaxed on a narrow seat, was The Doctor— Martin Arrowsmith.

The crowd admired him, and the police officers rushed to greet him.

“Where did the fireman get hurt?” he snapped.

“Over in that shed,” shouted the police sergeant, running alongside the ambulance.

“Drive over closer. Don’t worry about the smoke!” Martin shouted at the driver.

A firefighter led him to a pile of sawdust where an unconscious young boy was curled up, his face pale and cold.

“He inhaled a bad amount of smoke from the green lumber and collapsed. Good kid. Is he done for?” the lieutenant pleaded.

Martin knelt by the man, felt his pulse, listened to his{118} breathing. Quickly opening a black bag, he gave him a syringe of strychnine and held a vial of ammonia to his nose. “He’ll wake up soon. You two, get him into the ambulance—hurry!”

The police sergeant and the newest rookie cop jumped up at the same time and said together, “All right, Doc.”

To Martin came the chief reporter of the Advocate-Times. He was only twenty-nine but was the oldest and probably the most cynical man in the world. He had interviewed senators, uncovered corruption in charity organizations, and even in prizefights. Fine wrinkles framed his eyes, he constantly rolled Bull Durham cigarettes, and he had a very low opinion of man’s honor and woman’s virtue. Yet to Martin, or at least to The Doctor, he was polite.

“Will he make it, Doc?” he asked.

“Sure, I think so. Suffocation. Heart's still beating.”

Martin shouted the last words from the back step of the ambulance as it bumped and rocked through the factory yard, through the acrid smoke, heading toward the shrinking crowd. He and the driver owned the city. They ignored traffic rules, dismissing the people returning from theaters and movies who lined the streets in front of the speeding gray hood. Let them get out of the way! The traffic officer at Chickasaw and Twentieth heard them coming, speeding like the Midnight Express—urrrrrr—blang-blang-blang-blang—and cleared the noisy intersection. People were packed against the curb, threatened by rearing horses and reversing cars, and past them flew the ambulance, blang-blang-blang-blang, with The Doctor holding onto a strap and swinging easily in his precarious seat.

At the hospital, the hallway attendant shouted, “Shooting incident in the Arbor, Doc.”

“Okay. Just wait until I sneak in a drink,” said Martin calmly.

On his way to his room, he walked past the open door of the hospital lab, with its messy workbench and its empty rows of flasks and test tubes.

“Huh! That stuff! Messing around in labs! This is real life,” he cheered, ignoring the image of Max Gottlieb waiting there, so thin, so exhausted, so patient.{119}

The six interns at Zenith General, including Martin and Angus Duer, lived in a long, dark room with six camp beds and six dressers overflowing with photos, ties, and worn-out socks. They spent hours sitting on their beds, debating surgery versus internal medicine, planning the dinners they hoped to enjoy on their nights off, and explaining to Martin, the only married guy, the merits of the different nurses they all fell in love with, one by one.

Martin found the hospital routine a bit boring. Although he mastered the Intern’s Walk, that quick stride down the hallway with the stethoscope visible in his pocket, he just couldn’t develop the bedside manner. He felt sorry for the bruised, yellowing, suffering patients, who were always different as individuals but never changed as a sea of dull pain. After dressing a wound three times, he had had enough; he wanted to move on to new experiences. However, the ambulance work outside the hospital was endlessly exciting for his pride.

The Doctor, and The Doctor only, was safe at night in the slum known as “the Arbor.” His black bag was like a VIP pass. Policemen respected him, prostitutes acknowledged him without mockery, bar owners greeted him with “Evening, Doc,” and criminals stepped aside in doorways to let him go by. Martin had power, the first real power he had ever experienced. And he was drawn into nonstop adventure.

He helped a bank president out of a rough situation; he assisted the family in hiding the embarrassment; he irritably turned down their bribe; and later, when he thought about how he could have dined with Leora, he regretted refusing it. He broke into hotel rooms filled with gas and revived people trying to commit suicide. He drank Trinidad rum with a Congressman who supported prohibition. He was present when a policeman was attacked by strikers and when a striker was attacked by police. He helped with an emergency abdominal surgery at three in the morning. The operating room—with white tile walls, a white tile floor, and a shiny frosted-glass skylight—looked like it was lined with fire-lit ice, and the bright lights shone harshly on the glass instrument cases and the sharp little knives. The surgeon, dressed in a long white gown, white turban, and pale orange rubber gloves, made a quick incision in the square of yellowish flesh between towels, cutting deep into layers of fat, and Martin watched without flinching as the first blood ominously followed the cut. And a month later, during the Chaloosa River flood, he worked for seventy-six hours, grabbing half hours of sleep in the ambulance or on a police station table.

He arrived by boat at what used to be the second floor of an apartment building and helped deliver a baby on the top floor; he wrapped up injuries for a group of men; but what earned him admiration was the incredibly risky act of swimming through the flood to rescue five scared children stranded on a floating church pew. The newspapers had huge headlines about him, and after he got back to kiss Leora and sleep for twelve hours, he lay there thinking about research with a mix of salty self-protective disdain.

“Gottlieb, that poor old clueless guy! I’d like to see him try to swim against that current!” Dr. Arrowsmith mocked Martin.

But during his night shift, alone, he had to confront the part of himself he had been too afraid to reveal, and he felt a deep longing for the lab, for the excitement of unexplored discoveries, the pursuit beneath the surface and beyond the moment, the search for fundamental truths that scientists (no matter how casually or irreverently they describe it) value above temporary fixes, just as the religious person values the nature and awe-inspiring power of God over everyday virtues. Along with this sadness came a feeling of envy that he was being left behind, that others were advancing ahead of him, becoming more confident in their techniques, more knowledgeable about the phenomena of biological chemistry, and more daring in explaining principles that earlier pioneers had only stumbled upon and hinted at.

In his second year of internship, when the excitement of fires, floods, and murders became as predictable as bookkeeping, when he had seen the surprisingly few ways people can hurt themselves and kill each other, when it was just exhausting to maintain the facade of being The Doctor, Martin tried to appease and maybe even suppress his guilty scientific curiosity by voluntarily messing around in the hospital lab, correlating blood counts in pernicious anemia. His dabbling in research was risky. Amid the chaos of surgeries, he began to envision the serene quiet of the lab. “I better stop this,” he told Leora, “if I’m going to settle down in Wheatsylvania and run a business and make a living—and I really am!”

Dean Silva often visited the hospital for consultations. He{121} walked through the lobby one evening when Leora, who had just come back from her job as a stenographer, was about to have dinner with Martin. Martin introduced them, and the small man took her hand, purred at her, and said, “Would you two let me have the pleasure of taking you to dinner? My wife has abandoned me. I’m a lonely and misanthropic man.”

He walked happily between them, full of energy. Martin and he weren't just student and teacher, but two doctors working together, because Dean Silva was one educator who could still take an interest in a man who no longer learned from him. He took the two hungry guys to a restaurant and in a cozy booth, he cleverly filled them up with roast goose and pints of ale.

He focused on Leora, but his conversation was about Martin:

“Your husband should be an Artist Healer, not someone who fusses over trivial matters like those lab guys.”

“But Gottlieb doesn’t sweat the small stuff,” insisted Martin.

“No-o. But with him— It’s a difference in beliefs. Gottlieb’s beliefs are the cynics, the destroyers—pessimists, as the crude would call them: Diderot and Voltaire and Elser; great men, miracle workers, yet men who found more enjoyment tearing down other people’s theories than coming up with their own. But my beliefs now, they’re the people who took the discoveries of Gottlieb’s beliefs and applied them for the benefit of humanity—made them come alive!

“All credit goes to the people who invented paint and canvas, but there’s even more credit, right? to the Raphaels and Holbeins who made those discoveries matter! Laënnec and Osler, those are the real deal! This whole idea of pure research is great: searching for the truth, free from commercialism or chasing after fame. Digging deep. Overlooking the consequences and practical applications. But do you realize that if you take that thinking far enough, someone could justify doing nothing but counting the cobblestones on Warehouse Avenue—yes, and even justify torturing people just to see how they screamed—and then look down on someone who’s making millions of people healthy and happy!

“No, no! Mrs. Arrowsmith, this guy Martin is a passionate person, not a laborer. He needs to be passionate for the sake of humanity. He’s picked the greatest calling in the world, but he’s a careless, experimental guy. You have to keep him going, my dear, and make sure the world doesn’t miss out on the advantages of his passion.”

After this serious event, Dad Silva took them to a musical comedy and sat between them, giving Martin’s shoulder a pat and Leora’s arm a gentle squeeze, almost choking with laughter when the comedian stepped into the bucket of whitewash. In the excitement of the moment, Martin and Leora expressed their love for him and viewed their Wheatsylvania project as a path to glory and salvation.

But a few days before the end of Martin's internship and their move to North Dakota, they ran into Max Gottlieb on the street.

Martin hadn't seen him in over a year; Leora had never seen him at all. He looked anxious and unwell. While Martin was debating whether to greet him with a bow, Gottlieb came to a halt.

“How's everything, Martin?” he said warmly. But his eyes asked, “Why have you never come back to me?”

The boy stammered a few words, nothing of substance, and when Gottlieb walked past, hunched over as if in pain, he felt a strong urge to run after him.

Leora asked, “Is that the Professor Gottlieb you’re always talking about?”

“Yes. Hey! What do you think of him?”

“I don’t— Sandy, he’s the best man I’ve ever seen! I can’t explain how I know, but it’s true! Dr. Silva is wonderful, but that was a great man! I wish— I wish we were going to see him again. He’s the first guy I’ve ever seen that I would leave you for, if he wanted me. He’s so—oh, he’s like a sword—no, he’s like a brilliant mind walking. Oh, Sandy, he looked so miserable. I wanted to cry. I’d shine his shoes!”

"Same here!"

But in the hustle of leaving Zenith, the thrill of the trip to Wheatsylvania, the rush of his state exams, and the pride of being a Practising Physician, he forgot Gottlieb. On that Dakota prairie, bright in early June, with meadowlarks on every fence post, he started his work.{123}

At the moment when Martin met him on the street, Gottlieb was finished.

Max Gottlieb was a German Jew, born in Saxony in 1850. Although he earned his medical degree from Heidelberg, he was never interested in practicing medicine. He was influenced by Helmholtz, and his early research in the physics of sound convinced him of the importance of the quantitative method in the medical sciences. Later, Koch’s discoveries pulled him into biology. Always a meticulous worker, making long lists of figures, he was constantly aware of uncontrollable variables. He was a fierce critic of what he saw as laziness, dishonesty, or pretentiousness, and he wasn't very forgiving of well-meaning ignorance. He worked in the labs of Koch and Pasteur, followed the early work of Pearson in biometrics, drank beer, wrote scathing letters, traveled to Italy, England, and Scandinavia, and casually, in between two days, married (as if he were buying a coat or hiring a housekeeper) the patient and silent daughter of a Gentile merchant.

Then began a series of experiments that were really important, not very exciting, very lengthy, and extremely underappreciated. Back in 1881, he confirmed Pasteur’s findings on chicken cholera immunity and, for fun and distraction, tried to isolate an enzyme from yeast. A few years later, living on the small inheritance from his father, a minor banker, and carelessly and happily spending it all, he critically analyzed the ptomain theory of disease and looked into how microorganisms lose their virulence. He gained a small amount of fame from this. Maybe he was too cautious; more than the devil or starvation, he disliked people who rushed to publish their work without being prepared.

Though he didn't get involved much in politics, seeing them as the most repetitive and least scientific of human activities, he was patriotic enough as a German to dislike the Junkers. As{124} a young man, he had a few altercations with arrogant junior officers; once, he even spent a week in jail; and he often felt enraged by discrimination against Jews. By the age of forty, he left for America, a place he believed could never become militaristic or anti-Semitic—first to the Hoagland Laboratory in Brooklyn, and then to Queen City University as a professor of bacteriology.

Here, he conducted his first research on toxin-antitoxin reactions. He claimed that antibodies, except for antitoxin, were unrelated to an animal's immune state. Meanwhile, as he was being fiercely criticized in the small but intense world of scientists, he calmly and decisively challenged Yersin’s and Marmorek’s serum theories.

His greatest dream, now and for years of intense research, was to artificially produce antitoxin—its production in vitro. He was once ready to publish, but after discovering an error, he decided to hide his notes. Throughout this time, he felt lonely. There seemed to be no one in Queen City who saw him as anything other than a quirky Jew catching germs by their little tails and staring at them—there was no opportunity for a tall man when heroes were busy building bridges, experimenting with horseless carriages, creating the first impactful ads, and selling miles of calico and cigars.

In 1899, he was appointed to the University of Winnemac as a professor of bacteriology in the medical school, where he toiled for twelve years. Not once did he discuss results deemed "practical"; not once did he stop battling the post hoc propter hoc conclusions that still make up most of medical knowledge; not once did he fail to be disliked by his colleagues, who were respectful to his face but uneasy feeling his ironic power, and secretly pleased to label him Mephisto, Diabolist, Killjoy, Pessimist, Destructive Critic, Flippant Cynic, Scientific Bounder Lacking in Dignity and Seriousness, Intellectual Snob, Pacifist, Anarchist, Atheist, Jew. They said, with good reason, that he was so committed to Pure Science, to art for art’s sake, that he would rather see people die from the right therapy than be cured by the wrong one. Having built a sanctuary for humanity, he wanted to exclude all mere human beings from it.

The total number of his papers, in a fast-paced scientific world where truly smart people published five times a year, was no more than twenty-five in thirty years. They were all meticulously crafted, all easily replicated and verified by the most skeptical critics.{125}

At Mohalis, he was happy with the big facilities for work, great assistants, endless glassware, lots of guinea pigs, and enough monkeys; but he was bored with the routine of teaching and felt down again due to a lack of understanding friends. He always looked for someone he could talk to without suspicion or hesitation. He was human enough, when he thought about the self-importance of doctors who were bold because of their ignorance and inventors who were just glorified tinkers, to feel frustrated by his lack of recognition in America, even in Mohalis, and to complain in not the most noble way.

He had never had dinner with a duchess, never won an award, never been interviewed, never created anything the public could grasp, nor experienced anything since his schoolboy crushes that nice people would consider romantic. He was, in fact, a real scientist.

He was one of the great benefactors of humanity. There will never be an effort to eliminate major epidemics or minor infections in any era that hasn't been shaped by Max Gottlieb’s research. He wasn't just someone who labeled and organized bacteria and protozoa. He investigated their chemistry, the principles of their existence and destruction—fundamental laws that were mostly unknown even after a generation of active biologists. Yet it was accurate to call him a "pessimist," for this man, who has contributed as much as anyone to nearly wiping out infectious diseases, often questioned the value of reducing them at all.

He thought (it was a global discussion where he was supported by a few and condemned by many) that after several generations mostly free from epidemics, people would have such low natural immunity that if a massive plague suddenly erupted, engulfing the world, it could potentially wipe everyone out. The strategies he devised to save lives might ultimately lead to the end of all human existence.

He thought that if science and public health managed to eliminate tuberculosis and other major diseases, the world would inevitably become so overpopulated, turned into a chaotic overcrowded mess, that all beauty, ease, and wisdom would vanish in a frantic struggle for survival. Yet, these thoughts never slowed him down. If the future became overcrowded, it would have to find a solution through birth control or other means. Perhaps it would, he considered. But even{126} this slight sense of optimism was absent in his deepest doubts. He doubted all progress in intellect and emotion, and most of all, he questioned the superiority of humanity over cheerful dogs, perfectly graceful cats, the carefree and untroubled horses, and the daring sea gulls.

While medical charlatans, makers of patent medicines, gum salespeople, and advertising moguls lived in big houses, waited on by staff, and traveled in luxury cars, Max Gottlieb lived in a small, rundown cottage with peeling paint and rode his old, squeaky bicycle to his lab. Gottlieb rarely complained. He wasn't usually unreasonable enough to expect both freedom and the benefits of popular oppression. “Why,” he once asked Martin, “should the world pay me to do what I want and what they don’t want?”

If there was only one comfortable chair in his house, his desk was filled with long, personal, and respectful letters from the notable figures of France, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, as well as from scientists that Great Britain valued so much that she gave them titles almost as prestigious as those awarded to distillers, cigarette makers, and the owners of explicit newspapers.

But poverty prevented him from enjoying his summer desire to sit beneath the poplars by the Rhine or the calm Seine, at a table with a checkered cloth laid out with bread, cheese, wine, and dark cherries, those timeless and sacred simplicities found everywhere.

Max Gottlieb’s wife was large and slow-moving and silent; at sixty, she still hadn’t mastered speaking simple English, and her German was from the small-town middle class, who pay their bills, overeat, and grow rosy-cheeked. If he didn’t share his thoughts with her, and if he sometimes forgot her during long moments of contemplation at the table, he was neither unkind nor impatient, and he relied on her to keep the house running and to warm up his old-fashioned nightgown. Lately, she hadn’t been well. She experienced nausea and indigestion, but she continued her work. You could always hear her old slippers shuffling around the house.{127}

They had three kids, all born after Gottlieb turned thirty-eight: Miriam, the youngest, was an enthusiastic child with a knack for the piano, a natural feel for Beethoven, and a strong dislike for the "ragtime" music that was popular in America; an older sister who was just average; and their son, Robert—Robert Koch Gottlieb. He was a handful and a source of stress. They sent him, worried about the expenses, to a fancy school near Zenith, where he mingled with the sons of manufacturers and developed a passion for fast cars and quirky clothes, with zero interest in studying. At home, he complained that his dad was a "tightwad." When Gottlieb tried to explain that he was poor, the boy retorted that despite their financial struggles, he was always secretly spending money on his research—he shouldn’t have to do that and embarrass his son—let the darn University give him the materials!

There were few of Gottlieb’s students who viewed him and his knowledge as anything other than obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. One of the exceptions was Martin Arrowsmith.

However harshly he may have pointed out Martin’s mistakes, however much he may have seemed to overlook Martin's dedication, Gottlieb was just as aware of Martin as Martin was of him. He had grand plans. If Martin truly wanted his assistance (Gottlieb could be as humble personally as he was arrogant and brash in competitive science), he would make the boy's career his own. During Martin's small original research, Gottlieb appreciated his willingness to discard conventional—and convenient—theories of immunology and admired the meticulousness with which he checked his results. When Martin, for reasons unknown, became careless, when it was clear he was drinking too much and caught up in some ridiculous personal issue, it was a tragic longing for friendship and a deep respect for great work that drove Gottlieb to snarl at him. He had no idea about the apologies Silva demanded. He would have raged—

He waited for Martin to come back. He criticized himself: “What a fool! There was a good vibe. You should have known you don't use a platinum loop for shoveling coal.” As long as he could (while Martin was washing dishes and wandering on unlikely{128} trains between impossible towns), he delayed hiring a new assistant. Then all his longing turned into anger. He saw Martin as a traitor and pushed him out of his mind.

It’s possible that Max Gottlieb was a genius. He was definitely as crazy as any genius. During Martin’s internship at Zenith General, he did something more ridiculous than any of the superstitions he mocked.

He tried to become an executive and a reformer! He, the cynic, the anarchist, tried to establish an institution, and he approached it like an unmarried woman organizing a group to stop young boys from learning inappropriate words.

He imagined that there could be a medical school in this world that was entirely scientific, governed by precise quantitative biology and chemistry, while mostly ignoring spectacle-fitting and most surgeries, and he further envisioned that such an institution could be established at the University of Winnemac! He tried to be realistic about it; oh, he was very practical and convincing!

“I admit we shouldn’t be able to produce doctors just to treat minor village ailments. Regular doctors are impressive and definitely needed—maybe. But there are already too many of them. And on the ‘practical’ side, give me twenty years of a school that is accurate and careful, and we’ll be able to treat diabetes, maybe tuberculosis and cancer, and all those arthritis issues that carpenters just shake their heads at and call ‘rheumatism.’ So!”

He didn’t want the responsibility of running such a school, nor did he want any recognition. He was too busy. But at a meeting of the American Academy of Sciences, he met Dr. Entwisle, a relatively young physiologist from Harvard, who would make a fantastic dean. Entwisle admired him and gauged his interest in being called to Harvard. When Gottlieb shared his vision for a new type of medical school, Entwisle was enthusiastic. “There’s nothing I’d want more than the chance to be part of something like that,” he exclaimed, and Gottlieb returned to Mohalis feeling successful. He felt even more confident because (even though he sarcastically turned it down) he had just been offered the medical deanship of the University of West Chippewa.

So simple, or so crazy, was he that he wrote to Dean Silva{129} politely asking him to step down and hand over his school—his work, his life—to an unknown teacher at Harvard! Dad Silva was a courteous old gentleman, a fitting disciple of Osler, but this unbelievable letter tested his patience. He replied that while he could see the value of basic research, the medical school belonged to the people of the state, and its role was to provide them with immediate and practical care. He hinted that if he ever believed the school would benefit from his resignation, he would leave immediately, but he needed a much more substantial reason than a letter from one of his own subordinates!

Gottlieb shot back with energy and a lack of tact. He criticized the People of the State of Winnemac. Were they, in their current state of foolishness, even deserving of attention? He unreasonably bypassed Silva and brought his demand directly to the great speaker and patriot, Dr. Horace Greeley Truscott, president of the University.

President Truscott said, “Honestly, I’m too absorbed to think about impractical ideas, no matter how clever they might be.”

“You're too caught up in making money to think about anything other than selling honorary degrees to rich people for gyms,” Gottlieb said.

Next day, he was called to a special meeting of the University Council. As the head of the medical department of bacteriology, Gottlieb was a member of this influential group. When he walked into the long Council Chamber, with its gold ceiling, dark maroon curtains, and serious paintings of pioneers, he made his way to his usual seat, unaware of the group of whispering members, lost in their own distant thoughts.

“Oh, um, Professor Gottlieb, could you please take a seat at the far end of the table?” called President Truscott.

Then Gottlieb sensed the tensions. He noticed that out of the seven members of the Board of Regents, the four who lived in or near Zenith were there. He saw that sitting next to Truscott was not the head of the academic department but Dean Silva. He realized that even though they talked easily, they were watching him through the haze of their conversation.

President Truscott announced, “Gentlemen, this joint meeting of the Council and the regents is to discuss the charges against Professor Max Gottlieb made by his dean and me.”

Gottlieb suddenly looked elderly.

“These charges are: Disloyalty to his dean, his president,{130} his regents, and to the State of Winnemac. Disloyalty to established medical and academic ethics. Extreme egotism. Atheism. Ongoing failure to work with his colleagues, and a lack of understanding of practical matters that makes it risky to allow him to manage the important labs and classes we've trusted him with. Gentlemen, I will now prove each of these points, using Professor Gottlieb’s own letters to Dean Silva.”

He proved them wrong.

The chairman of the Board of Regents suggested, “Gottlieb, I think it would make things easier if you simply gave us your resignation and allowed us to part on good terms, instead of having the awkward—”

“I refuse to resign!” Gottlieb stood up, radiating anger. “Because you all have childish thoughts, obsessed with golf, you’re misinterpreting my words—words that accurately express a solid revolutionary idea that personally would offer me no benefit—into a desire to grab promotions. That fools should decide what honor is—!” His long finger pointed like a hook, trying to reach into President Truscott’s very being. “No! I will not resign! You can throw me out!”

“I’m sorry, but we need to ask you to leave the room while we vote.” The president was very smooth, especially for such a large, strong, and hearty man.

Gottlieb rode his unsteady bicycle to the lab. He found out through a brief phone message from a no-nonsense girl clerk in the president’s office that “his resignation had been accepted.”

He was in turmoil, thinking, “Discharge me? They can’t! I’m the main attraction, the only highlight, of this shopkeepers’ school!” When he realized that they had clearly discharged him, he felt embarrassed for allowing them to kick him out. But the most distressing part was that in trying to be a politician, he had disrupted the important work that was going on.

He needed peace and a workspace, both at the same time.

They’d realize how foolish they were when they heard that Harvard had called him!

He was looking forward to the more laid-back life in Cambridge and Boston. Why had he stayed in rough Mohalis for so long? He wrote to Dr. Entwisle, suggesting that he was open to an{131} offer. He anticipated a telegram. After waiting a week, he received a lengthy letter from Entwisle, confessing that he had acted too soon in speaking for the Harvard faculty. Entwisle conveyed the faculty’s regards and expressed their hope that they might have the privilege of his presence someday, but as things stood now—

Gottlieb wrote to the University of West Chippewa that, after all, he was open to considering their medical deanship ... and received an answer stating that the position was filled, they hadn’t liked the tone of his previous letter, and they didn’t “want to discuss the matter further.”

At sixty-one, Gottlieb had saved only a few hundred dollars—literally a few hundred. Like any laid-off bricklayer, he needed a job or he would go hungry. He was no longer a genius frustrated by interruptions to his creation but a worn-out schoolteacher in disgrace.

He wandered around his small brown house, flipping through papers, staring at his wife, looking at old photos, and gazing into space. He still had a month left of teaching—they had postdated his resignation letter—but he was too down to go to the lab. He felt unwanted, almost unsafe. His former confidence had turned into self-pity. He waited eagerly for the mail to arrive, hoping for help from someone who understood who he was and what he stood for. He received many friendly letters about research, but the type of people he corresponded with didn’t pay attention to gossip among faculty or know about his situation.

He couldn’t, after the Harvard incident and the West Chippewa criticism, reach out to universities or research institutions, and he was too proud to send desperate letters to those who respected him. No, he would be professional! He applied to a teachers’ agency in Chicago and got a formal response saying they would look into options and asking if he would be interested in a position teaching physics and chemistry at a suburban high school.

Before he had calmed down enough to respond, his family was hit hard by his wife’s sudden pain.

She had been sick for months. He wanted her to see a doctor, but she refused, all while being quietly terrified that she had stomach cancer. Now, when she started vomiting blood, she called for his help. The Gottlieb, who mocked medical practices, referring to “carpenters” and “pill pushers,” had forgotten everything he knew about diagnosis. When he or his family was ill, he called for the doctor as desperately as any rural layperson who saw illness as a dark evil from unknown forces.

In unbelievable simplicity, he figured that since his issue with Silva wasn’t personal, he could still call him in, and this time he had a good reason. Silva arrived, radiating excessive friendliness, chuckling to himself, “When he’s got a problem, he doesn’t turn to Arrhenius or Jacques Loeb, but to me!” Into the small cottage, the little man brought energy, and Gottlieb looked down at him with trust.

Mrs. Gottlieb was in pain. Silva gave her morphine. He felt a sense of satisfaction realizing that Gottlieb didn't even know the dosage. He examined her—his chubby hands were sensitive, if not as precise as Gottlieb’s bony fingers. He looked around the stuffy bedroom: the dark green curtains, the crucifix on the short dresser, the color print of a modestly seductive young woman. He was struck by the feeling that he had been in this room before. Then it hit him. It was identical to the gloomy room of a German grocer he had visited during a consultation a month ago.

He spoke to Gottlieb not as a colleague or an enemy, but as someone who needed encouragement.

“Don’t think there’s any tumor. As you know, Doctor, you can learn a lot from the differences in the shape of the lower edge of the ribs and by the surface of the abdomen during deep breathing.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I don’t think you need to worry at all. We should get her to the University Hospital quickly, and we’ll give her a test meal, get her X-rayed, and check for Boas-Oppler bugs.”

She was taken away, heavy and lifeless, carried down the cottage steps. Gottlieb was with her. Whether or not he loved her, or if he was capable of normal domestic affection, was unclear. The need to consult Dean Silva had undermined his confidence in his own judgment. It was the ultimate insult, more subtle and draining than the suggestion to teach chemistry to kids. As he sat by her bedside, his dark face was expressionless, and the wrinkles that deepened on that facade might have been sorrow or fear.... It’s also uncertain how, over the secure and untroubled years, he{133} had viewed his wife’s crucifix, which Silva had spotted on their bureau—a flashy plaster crucifix on a box decorated with gilded shells.

Silva diagnosed it as a likely gastric ulcer and put her on a treatment plan with light, frequent meals. She got better, but she stayed in the hospital for four weeks, and Gottlieb wondered: Are these doctors lying to us? Is it actually cancer, which they are hiding from me, someone who knows nothing?

Deprived of her calm, reassuring presence that he relied on night after night, he worried about his daughters, feeling despair over their loud piano practice and their struggles with the untidy maid. Once they had gone to bed, he sat alone in the dim lamplight, frozen in place, not reading. He felt lost. His once proud self resembled a ruthless lord captured by rebellious subjects, weighed down by a filthy burden, his once proud eyes now watery and filled with despair, his sword hand severed, with disgusting flies crawling over the chewed-up wrist.

It was during this time that he ran into Martin and Leora on the street in Zenith.

He didn't look back when they walked past him, but all afternoon he couldn't stop thinking about them. “That girl, maybe she was the one who took Martin away from me—from science! No! He was right. You can see what happens to fools like me!”

On the day after Martin and Leora set off for Wheatsylvania, singing, Gottlieb went to Chicago to visit the teachers’ agency.

The company was run by a go-getter who had formerly been a county school superintendent. He wasn't really engaged. Gottlieb lost his cool: “Do you actually try to help teachers find jobs, or do you just send out flyers for fun? Have you checked my background? Do you even know who I am?”

The agent shouted, “Oh, we know about you, for sure! I didn’t at first when I wrote to you, but— You seem to have a decent track record as a lab technician, although I don’t see that you’ve created anything even slightly useful in medicine. We had hoped to offer you an opportunity that you and no one else has ever had. John Edtooth, the Oklahoma oil tycoon, wants to start a university that will surpass anything ever done in education—biggest gymnasium in the world, with{134} an ex-New York Giant as the baseball coach! We thought maybe we could fit you in for bacteriology or physiology— I believe you could handle teaching that too if you studied up on it. But we’ve made some inquiries. From some good friends of ours down in Winnemac. And we found out that you can’t be trusted with a serious position. They fired you for general incompetence! But now that you’ve learned your lesson— Do you think you’d be capable of teaching Practical Hygiene at Edtooth University?”

Gottlieb was so furious that he forgot to speak English, and since all his swearing came out in awkward German, in a dry, creaky voice, the whole situation was really funny to the laughing bookkeeper and the female stenographers. As he left that place, Max Gottlieb walked slowly, aimlessly, and there were tear-stains of age in his eyes.{135}

No one in the medical field had ever criticized the commercialism of certain large pharmaceutical companies more passionately than Gottlieb, especially Dawson T. Hunziker & Co., Inc., from Pittsburgh. The Hunziker Company was a well-established and ethical business that worked almost exclusively with reputable doctors. They provided excellent antitoxins for diphtheria and tetanus, along with the highest quality official preparations, all in plain, professional-looking labels on their modest brown bottles. Gottlieb had claimed that they produced questionable vaccines, yet he returned from Chicago to inform Dawson Hunziker that he was no longer interested in teaching and would be willing to work for them part-time if he could use their laboratories for possibly significant research for the rest of the day.

When the letter was sent, he sat there mumbling. He was definitely not entirely sane. “Education! The biggest gym in the world! Can't handle responsibility. I can’t teach anymore. But Hunziker will laugh at me. I’ve told the truth about him and now I’ll have to— Dear God, what should I do?”

Into this still frenzy, while his scared daughters looked at him from doorways, hope appeared.

The phone rang. He didn’t pick it up. On the third annoying buzz, he grabbed the receiver and grumbled, “Yeah, yeah, what is it?”

A casual voice with a twang: “Is this M. C. Gottlieb?”

“This is Dr. Gottlieb!”

“Well, I guess you’re the life of the party. Hello, this is a long-distance call for you.”

Then, “Professor Gottlieb? This is Dawson Hunziker calling. From Pittsburgh. My good man, we would be thrilled to have you on our team.”

“I— But—”

“I know you’ve criticized the pharmaceutical companies—oh, we read the newspaper articles very well!—but we{136} believe that when you come to us and get to know the Spirit of the Old Firm better, you’ll be excited. By the way, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Thus, over several hundred miles, from the gold and blue drawing room of his Sewickley home, Hunziker spoke to Max Gottlieb sitting in his worn-out easy chair, and Gottlieb replied, making a sad attempt at dignity:

“No, it's all good.”

“Well—we’re happy to offer you five thousand dollars a year to start, and we won’t stress about the part-time arrangement. We’ll provide you with all the space, technicians, and materials you need, so you can just focus on your work and do what you think is important. Our only request is that if you discover any serums that are genuinely valuable to the world, we’d like the chance to manufacture them. If we end up losing money on them, that’s fine. We prefer to make money if we can do it honestly, but our main goal is to help humanity. Of course, if the serums turn out to be profitable, we’d be more than happy to give you a generous commission. Now, let’s talk about practical details—”

Gottlieb, the calmly fierce critic of religious practices, had a custom that appeared religious.

Often he knelt by his bed and let his mind wander. It was very much like prayer, though there was no formal invocation, no awareness of a Supreme Being—other than Max Gottlieb. That night, as he knelt, with the lines softening in his weary face, he thought, “I was foolish to ever criticize the commercialists! This salesman guy has his feet on the ground. How much more genuine the worst store clerk than scared professors! Fine diners! Freedom! No teaching of fools! Du Heiliger!”

But he didn't have a contract with Dawson Hunziker.

In the medical journals, the Dawson Hunziker Company ran full-page ads, very formal and polished in style, announcing that Professor Max Gottlieb, probably the{137} most renowned immunologist in the world, had joined their team.

In his Chicago clinic, Dr. Rouncefield laughed, “That’s what happens to these know-it-alls. Sorry if I seem to smirk.”

In the labs of Ehrlich and Roux, Bordet and Sir David Bruce, grieving men lamented, “How could old Max have switched to that damn pill-peddler? Why didn’t he come to us? Oh well, if he didn’t want to—Voila! He’s dead.”

In the village of Wheatsylvania, in North Dakota, a young doctor complained to his wife, “Of all the people in the world! I can’t believe it! Max Gottlieb is falling for those con artists!”

“I don’t care!” said his wife. “If he’s gone into business, he had a good reason for it. I told you, I’d leave you for—”

“Oh, well,” she sighed, “give and forgive. I learned a lot from Gottlieb, and I’m grateful for— God, Leora, I wish he hadn’t messed up!”

And Max Gottlieb, along with his three small kids and his pale, slow-moving wife, was arriving at the station in Pittsburgh, pulling a worn wicker bag, an immigrant's bundle, and a stylish suitcase from Bond Street. From the train, he had looked up at the impressive cliffs, down at the smoky beauty of the river, and he felt young at heart. This place was full of energetic opportunity, unlike the flat land and dull thinking of Winnemac. At the entrance of the station, every rundown taxi felt like a shining victory to him, and he stepped out like a conqueror.

In the Dawson Hunziker building, Gottlieb discovered laboratories he had never anticipated, and instead of student assistants, he had a specialist who had taught bacteriology himself, along with three fast technicians, one of whom was trained in Germany. He was warmly welcomed in Hunziker's private office, which resembled a small cathedral. Hunziker was bald and serious-looking, but with tortoise-shell glasses and a sentimental gaze. He rose from his Jacobean desk, handed Gottlieb a Havana cigar, and said they had been eagerly waiting for him.{138}

In the huge staff dining room, Gottlieb found a lot of skilled young chemists and biologists who showed him great respect. He liked them. Even though they talked a lot about money—like how much this new tincture of cinchona should sell for and when their salaries would go up—they weren’t stuck up like college professors. As a kid, the young Max had been a cheerful guy, and now, in heated debates, his laughter resurfaced.

His wife seemed to be doing better; his daughter Miriam found a great piano teacher; the boy Robert started college that fall; they had a large but rundown house; the break from the monotony and the annual cycle of the classroom was refreshing; and Gottlieb had never worked so well in his life. He was unaware of anything outside his lab and a few theaters and concert halls.

Six months went by before he realized that the young tech experts were annoyed by what he thought were light-hearted jabs at their commercial mindset. They were fed up with his passion for math, and some regarded him as an old bore, even muttering about him being a Jew. He felt hurt because he enjoyed being cheerful with his coworkers. He started asking questions and exploring the Hunziker building. He had only seen his lab, a couple of hallways, the dining room, and Hunziker's office.

However abstract and impractical, Gottlieb would have made a great Sherlock Holmes—if anyone who would have been a great Sherlock Holmes had been willing to be a detective. His mind saw through appearances to the truth. He realized now that the Dawson Hunziker Company was exactly what he had claimed in earlier days. They did produce excellent antitoxins and ethical products, but they were also making a new “cancer remedy” made from orchids, highly recommended and completely worthless. They sold millions of bottles of a complexion cream to various billboard-advertising beauty companies, promising to make a Canadian Indian guide as fair as the angels. This gem cost six cents a bottle to produce and sold for a dollar at retail, and the name of Dawson Hunziker was never associated with it.

It was during this time that Gottlieb achieved his masterpiece after twenty years of searching. He created antitoxin in the lab, which meant it would be possible to immunize against certain diseases without the lengthy process of creating sera by inoculating animals. It was a game-changer, the game-changer, in immunology... if he was correct.

He revealed it at a dinner where Hunziker had gathered a general, a college president, and a pioneering aviator. It was a lavish dinner, featuring excellent hock, the first good German wine Gottlieb had enjoyed in years. He affectionately twirled the slender green glass; he emerged from his daydreams and felt excited, cheerful, and demanding. They applauded him, and for an hour he was a Great Scientist. Among them all, Hunziker was the most generous with his praise. Gottlieb wondered if someone had tricked this good bald man into getting involved with the beautifiers.

Hunziker called him to the office the next day. Hunziker knew how to make summonses very well (unless it was just a secretary). He sent a sharply dressed male secretary, who conveyed Mr. Hunziker’s compliments to the much less fashionable Dr. Gottlieb and subtly suggested, with the finesse of a budding lilac, that if it was entirely possible and wouldn't disrupt Dr. Gottlieb’s experiments, Mr. Hunziker would be pleased to have him in the office at a quarter past three.

When Gottlieb walked in, Hunziker signaled for the secretary to leave and pulled up a tall Spanish chair.

“I lay awake half the night thinking about your discovery, Dr. Gottlieb. I’ve been talking to the technical director and sales manager, and we feel it’s time to move forward. We’ll patent your method for synthesizing antibodies and immediately put them on the market in large quantities, along with a major advertising campaign—you know—not anything over-the-top, of course—strictly high-class, ethical advertising. We’ll start with anti-diphtheria serum. By the way, when you receive your next check, you’ll see we’ve raised your honorarium to seven thousand a year.” Hunziker was now a large, content cat, while Gottlieb was completely still. “Need I say, my dear fellow, that if there’s the demand I anticipate, you will have very large commissions coming your way!”

Hunziker leaned back with an attitude of “How’s that for glory, my friend?”

Gottlieb spoke nervously: “I don’t agree with patenting serological processes. They should be available to all labs. And I’m really against rushing into production or even making an {140} announcement. I believe I’m right, but I need to check my technique, maybe improve it—be sure. Then, I think there shouldn’t be any problem with marketing production, but only in very small amounts and in fair competition with others, not under patents, like this is just a silly toy for the Christmas sales!”

“My dear friend, I completely understand. Honestly, I would love nothing more than to spend my entire life focused on making just one priceless scientific discovery, without worrying about profit. But we have a responsibility to the shareholders of the Dawson Hunziker Company to generate money for them. Do you realize that they have—many of them are poor widows and orphans—invested their entire savings in our stock, and we must honor that trust? I feel powerless; I am just their humble servant. And on the other hand: I believe we’ve treated you quite well, Dr. Gottlieb, and we’ve given you full freedom. We plan to keep treating you well! Why, you’ll be wealthy; you’ll be one of us! I don’t want to impose, but I must insist on this, and I will expect you to start manufacturing at the earliest opportunity—”

Gottlieb was sixty-two. The defeat at Winnemac had impacted his courage... And he had no contract with Hunziker.

He protested shakily, but as he crawled back to his lab, it seemed impossible for him to leave this safe haven and face the violent world outside, and just as impossible to accept a cheap, ineffective imitation of his antitoxin. He started, that hour, a desperate strategy that his former proud self would have found unimaginable; he began to stall, to delay the announcement and production until he could "clear up a few points," while week after week, Hunziker grew more threatening. In the meantime, he prepared for disaster. He moved his family to a smaller house and gave up every luxury, even smoking.

Among his cutbacks was the reduction of his son’s allowance.

Robert was a rough, dark-haired, stormy boy who had an inflated ego for no apparent reason. He was desired by delicate, pale girls, yet always looked down on them. While his father fluctuated between being proud and sarcastically accepting of his Jewish heritage, Robert gave his classmates the impression that he came from a line of pure, likely noble, German ancestry. He was sort of accepted into a wealthy group that enjoyed cars, poker, and country clubs, but he always needed more money. Gottlieb noticed that twenty dollars had gone missing from his desk. He, who mocked conventional honor, had the pride and sense of honor of a harsh old lord. A new anguish deepened his constant bitterness at having to deceive Hunziker. He confronted Robert with, “My boy, did you take the money from my desk?”

Few young people could have faced the sharp angle of his hawk-like nose and the furious, bloodshot look in his sunken eyes. Robert sputtered, then yelled:

“Yes, I did! And I need more! I’ve got to get some clothes and stuff. It’s your fault. You raised me around guys who have all the money in the world, and then you expect me to look like a hobo!”

"Stealing—"

“Ugh! What’s stealing? You're always making fun of those preachers who go on about sin, truth, honesty, and all those words that have been used so much they don’t mean anything anymore— and I don’t care! Daws Hunziker, the old man’s son, told me his dad said you could be a millionaire, and yet you keep us in this awful situation, with Mom sick— Let me tell you, back in Mohalis, Mom used to give me a couple of dollars almost every week and— I’m fed up! If you’re going to keep me in rags, I’m dropping out of college!”

Gottlieb fumed, but there was no real energy behind it. For the next two weeks, he had no idea what his son was going to do or what he himself was going to do.

Then, so quietly that they didn’t realize she had passed away until they returned from the cemetery, his wife died, and the following week, his oldest daughter ran off with a good-for-nothing laughing guy who lived by gambling.

Gottlieb sat alone. Again and again, he read the Book of Job. “Truly, the Lord has struck me and my family,” he whispered. When Robert came in, mumbling that he would behave, the old man turned his blind face toward him, not hearing. But as he recited the stories of his ancestors, it didn’t cross his mind to believe them, or to cower in fear before their God of Wrath—or to find comfort by allowing Hunziker to corrupt his discovery.

He got up on time and quietly made his way to his lab. His experiments were just as meticulous as always, and his assistants noticed no{142} difference except that he didn't eat lunch in the cafeteria. He walked several blocks to a terrible diner where he could save thirty cents a day.

Out of the darkness that surrounded the people around him, Miriam appeared.

She was eighteen, the youngest of his kids, short, and not really attractive except for her soft lips. She had always been proud of her dad, getting the strange and irrational pulls of his work, but she had been impressed until now, when he walked heavily and hardly spoke. She gave up her piano lessons, let go of the maid, studied the cookbook, and made him the rich, crispy dishes he loved. Her only regret was that she had never learned German, since he would occasionally slip into the language from his childhood.

He looked at her for a while and finally said, “So! You’re with me. Could you handle the poverty if I left to teach chemistry in a high school?”

“Yes. Of course. Maybe I could play the piano in a movie theater.”

He might not have accomplished it without her loyalty, but when Dawson Hunziker next walked into the lab, insisting, “Listen up. We’ve dragged this out long enough. We need to get your work on the market,” Gottlieb replied, “No. If you wait until I’ve done everything I can—maybe one year, probably three—you’ll have it. But not until I’m sure. No.”

Hunziker stormed off in a huff, and Gottlieb got ready for the sentence.

Then the card of Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs, Director of the McGurk Institute of Biology in New York, was handed to him.

Gottlieb knew about Tubbs. He had never been to McGurk, but he thought it was, after Rockefeller and McCormick, the best and most independent organization for pure scientific research in the country. If he had imagined a perfect lab where good scientists could spend eternity happily and completely dedicated to impractical research, he would have pictured it like McGurk. He felt a little pleased that its director had decided to reach out to him.

Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs had an impressive beard covering every visible area except for his nose, temples, and the palms of his{143} hands. His beard was short but carried a passionate style, reminiscent of a Scotch terrier. However, it wasn't a silly beard; it conveyed dignity. His eyes were serious, his walk had an earnest trot, and his voice had a solemn, piping quality.

“Dr. Gottlieb, it’s a great pleasure to meet you. I’ve listened to your papers at the Academy of Sciences, but unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to be introduced to you until now.”

Gottlieb tried to avoid sounding embarrassed.

Tubbs glanced at the assistants, like a schemer in a political drama, and suggested, “Can we have a chat—”

Gottlieb took him to his office, which had a view of the busy network of sidetracks, winding rails, and brown freight cars, and Tubbs insisted:

“It’s been brought to our attention, quite surprisingly, that you're about to make your biggest discovery yet. We all questioned your choice to leave academia for the business world. We wish you had bothered to talk to us.”

“You would have taken me in? I really didn’t have to come here at all?”

“Of course! From what we've heard, it seems you're not focusing on the business side of things, which makes us wonder if you’d consider joining us at McGurk. So, I jumped on a train and rushed down here. We’d be thrilled to have you become a member of the institute and head of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology. Mr. McGurk and I are focused solely on advancing science. You’d have complete freedom to choose the research you think is best, and I believe we can offer as much support and resources as you'd find anywhere else in the world. Regarding salary—let me be straightforward since my train leaves in an hour—I doubt we could match the probably substantial salary that the Hunziker people can offer, but we can go up to ten thousand dollars a year—”

“Oh my God, don’t mention the money! I’ll be with you in New York one week from today. You see,” said Gottlieb, “I don’t have a contract here!{144}”

All afternoon they rode in the bouncing buggy over the rolling hills of the prairie. There was nothing to limit their exploration—no lake, no mountain, no factory-filled city—and the breeze around them felt like warm sunshine.

Martin shouted to Leora, “It feels like all the Zenith dust and hospital lint have been cleared from my lungs. Dakota. A real man's land. The frontier. Opportunity. America!”

From the dense grass, the young prairie chickens took flight. As he saw them soar over the wheat, his sun-drenched soul became one with the vast land, and he felt almost relieved of the impatience that had driven him away from Wheatsylvania.

“If you’re going for a drive, don’t forget that dinner is at six o’clock, on the dot,” Mrs. Tozer had said, smiling to soften the reminder.

On Main Street, Mr. Tozer waved to them and shouted, “Be back by six. Dinner is at six o’clock sharp.”

Bert Tozer ran out from the bank, like a country schoolteacher hurrying out of a one-room schoolhouse, and laughed, “Hey, you all better remember to be back by six o’clock for dinner or the Old Man will freak out. He’ll expect you for dinner at six o’clock on the dot, and when he says six o’clock on the dot, he means six o’clock on the dot, not five minutes after six!”

“Now that,” Leora noted, “is funny, because in my twenty-two years in Wheatsylvania, I can remember three different times when dinner was as late as seven minutes after six. Let’s get out of this, Sandy.... I wonder if it was a good idea to live with the family and save money?”

Before they had escaped from the not very extensive limits of Wheatsylvania, they passed Ada Quist, the future Mrs. Bert Tozer, and through the lazy air they heard her voice cutting through: “Better be home by six.”

Martin was determined to be the hero. “We’ll be back when we’re good and ready!” he told Leora. However, they both felt the growing anxiety from the nagging voices around them. Beyond every carefree thought loomed the command, “Be back at six sharp.” They hurried back to arrive at eleven minutes to six, just as Mr. Tozer was{145} returning from the creamery, a full thirty seconds later than usual.

“Glad to see you with us,” he said. “Quickly now and get that horse in the stable. Dinner’s at six—on the dot!”

Martin got through it well enough to sound normal when he announced at the dinner table:

“We had a rough trip. I’m going to enjoy it here. Well, I’ve relaxed for a day and a half, and now I need to get to work. First thing is, I need to find a spot for my office. What’s available, Father Tozer?”

Mrs. Tozer said cheerfully, “Oh, I have such a great idea, Martin. Why don't we set up an office for you in the barn? It’d be so convenient to the house, so you could make it to meals on time, and you could keep an eye on the house if the girl was out and Ory and I went visiting or to the Embroidery Circle.”

"In the barn!"

“Yeah, in the old harness room. It’s partially finished, and we could put in some nice tar paper or even some plywood.”

“Mother Tozer, what on earth do you think I’m planning to do? I’m not just a hired hand at a stable, or a kid searching for a place to put his bird eggs! I was thinking about starting my own practice as a doctor!”

Bert made it all easy: “Yeah, but you’re not really a doctor yet. You’re just starting out.”

“I’m an amazing doctor! Sorry for the swearing, Mother Tozer, but— Why, during nights in the hospital, I’ve held hundreds of lives in my hands! I plan to—”

“Listen up, Mart,” Bertie said. “Since we’re putting up the money— I don’t want to sound cheap, but a dollar is still a dollar—if we’re providing the cash, we need to figure out the best way to use it.”

Mr. Tozer looked thoughtful and said helplessly, “That’s true. There’s no point in taking a risk when the farmers are demanding all the money they can get for their wheat and cream, and then they intentionally go to work and don’t pay the interest on their loans. Honestly, it hardly makes sense to invest in mortgages anymore. There's no point in putting on airs. It makes sense that you can examine a guy’s sore throat or prescribe treatment for an earache just as well in a simple little office as in some fancy place decked out like a Moorhead saloon. Mom will make sure you have a comfortable spot in the barn{146}—”

Leora interrupted, “Listen, Dad. I want you to loan us one thousand dollars, straight up, so we can use it however we want.” The reaction was huge. “We’ll give you six percent—no, scratch that; we’ll give you five; that’s good enough.”

“And mortgages bringing six, seven, and eight!” Bert said nervously.

“Five is enough. And we want full control over how we use it—to set up an office or anything else.”

Mr. Tozer began, "That’s a silly way to—"

Bert took it away from him: “Ory, you’re out of your mind! I guess we’ll have to lend you some money, but you better come to us for it from time to time, and you better take our advice—”

Leora stood up. “You either do exactly what I say, or Mart and I will catch the first train back to Zenith, and I'm serious! There are plenty of job opportunities for him there with a good salary, so we won’t have to rely on anyone!”

There was a lot of chatting, most of it blending together like all the other talk. Once Leora headed for the stairs to go upstairs and pack; once Martin and she were standing there waving their napkins while shaking their fists, the overall scene looking a lot like the Laocoön.

Leora won.

They settled down to the most comforting fussing.

“Did you bring your suitcase up from the train station?” asked Mr. Tozer.

“No point in leaving it there—paying two bucks a day for storage!” Bert complained.

“I got it up this morning,” Martin said.

“Oh, yes, Martin had it brought up this morning,” Mrs. Tozer agreed.

“You had it brought? Didn’t you bring it up yourself?” Mr. Tozer said, distressed.

“No. I had the guy who runs the lumberyard bring it up for me,” said Martin.

“Well, gosh, you could have just put it in a wheelbarrow and brought it up yourself and saved a quarter!” said Bert.

“But a doctor has to maintain his dignity,” Leora said.

“Dignity, please! It looks way more respectable to be seen pushing a wheelbarrow than to be smoking those filthy cigarettes all the time!{147}”

“Well, anyway— Where did you put it?” asked Mr. Tozer.

“It’s in our room,” said Martin.

“Where do you think we should put it once it’s unpacked? The attic is really full,” Mr. Tozer suggested to Mrs. Tozer.

“Oh, I think Martin could get it in there.”

“Why couldn’t he put it in the barn?”

“Oh, not a nice new suitcase like that!”

“What’s wrong with the barn?” said Bert. “It's nice and dry. It seems like a shame to waste all that good space in the barn now that you've decided he can't have his little office there!”

“Bertie,” from Leora, “I know what we’re going to do. You keep thinking about the barn. You can move your old bank there, and Martin will take the bank building for his office.”

"That's totally different—"

“Now there’s no point in you two showing off and trying to be clever,” protested Mr. Tozer. “Do you ever hear your mother and me arguing like that? When do you think you’ll have your trunk unpacked, Mart?” Mr. Tozer could think about barns and he could think about trunks, but he didn’t have the kind of mind to handle two complicated issues at once.

"I can unpack it tonight if that matters—"

“Well, I don’t think it really makes any special difference, but when you start to do something—”

“Oh, what difference does it make whether he—”

“If he’s going to find an office, instead of moving straight into the barn, he can’t take forever getting unpacked and—”

“Oh, good Lord, I’ll get it done tonight—”

“And I think we can fit it in the attic—”

“I’m telling you, it’s already packed full—”

“We’ll go check it out after dinner—”

“Well, I’ll tell you, when I tried to get that duck boat in—”

Martin probably didn't scream, but he could hear himself screaming. The open and strong land was miles away and had been forgotten for years.

Finding an office took two weeks of negotiation and discussions that brightened up three meals a day, every day. (Office hunting wasn't the only topic the Tozers brought up. They{148} covered every aspect of Martin’s day; they talked about his digestion, his mail, his walks, his shoes that needed fixing, whether he had taken them to the farmer-trapper-cobbler yet, how much the repairs should cost, and the likely beliefs, political views, and personal life of the cobbler.)

Mr. Tozer had always known the perfect office. The Norbloms lived above their general store, and Mr. Tozer was aware that the Norbloms were considering moving. In fact, there wasn't anything happening or likely to happen in Wheatsylvania that Mr. Tozer didn't know and explain. Mrs. Norblom was tired of managing the house, and she wanted to move to Mrs. Beeson’s boarding house (the front room on the right as you walked down the upstairs hall, the room with the plaster walls and the nice little stove that Mrs. Beeson bought from Otto Krag for seven dollars and thirty-five cents—actually, it was seven and a quarter).

They reached out to the Norbloms, and Mr. Tozer suggested that “it could be good for the Doctor to set up his practice above the store, if the Norbloms were considering any changes—”

The Norbloms looked at each other with long, cautious, Scandinavian stares and grumbled that they “didn’t know—of course it was the best spot in town—” Mr. Norblom admitted that if, against all odds, they ever thought about moving, they would probably charge twenty-five dollars a month for the flat, unfurnished.

Mr. Tozer emerged from the international conference just as cleverly happy as any Mr. Secretary Tozer or Lord Tozer in Washington or London:

“Alright! Alright! We got him to commit! He says twenty-five. That means, when the moment's right, we'll offer him eighteen and settle for twenty-one seventy-five. If we just manage him carefully and give him time to talk to Mrs. Beeson about boarding with her, we'll have him exactly where we want him!”

“Oh, if the Norbloms can’t decide, then let’s try something else,” said Martin. “There are a couple of empty rooms behind the Eagle office.”

“What? Go running around after we’ve made the Norbloms think we’re serious and turn them into lifelong enemies? That would be a great way to start building a practice, wouldn’t it! And I have to say, I wouldn’t blame the Norbloms{149} at all for getting upset if you let them down like that. This isn’t Zenith, where you can just shout around and expect to get things done in two minutes!”

Through two weeks, while the Norbloms struggled to make the decision they had already made a long time ago, Martin waited, unable to start working. Until he opened a legitimate and recognizable office, most of the village didn't see him as a qualified doctor but simply as “that son-in-law of Andy Tozer’s.” During those two weeks, he was called only once: for Miss Agnes Ingleblad’s sick headache, who was the aunt and housekeeper of Alec Ingleblad the barber. He was thrilled, until Bert Tozer explained:

“Oh, so she called you in, huh? She’s always playing doctor. There’s nothing wrong with her, but she’s always trying the latest craze. Last time it was a guy who came through here selling pills and ointments out of a Ford, and before that, it was a faith healer, some crazy person up here at Dutchman’s Forge. Then for a while, she was seeing an osteopath in Leopolis—though I’ll tell you, there’s something to this osteopathy—they help a lot of people that you regular doctors can’t seem to figure out, don’t you think?”

Martin said that he didn't think so.

“Oh, you doctors!” Bert exclaimed in his most cheerful way, because Bert could be quite funny and upbeat. “You’re all the same, especially when you’ve just graduated and think you know everything. You can’t recognize any value in chiropractic care or electric belts or bone setters or anything else, because they take so much money out of your pockets.”

Then check out Dr. Martin Arrowsmith, who had once angered Angus Duer and Irving Watters with his sarcasm about medical standards, showing a lewdly grinning Bert Tozer the kindness and scientific knowledge of all doctors; insisting that no medicine had ever (at least by any Winnemac graduate) been prescribed in vain or any operation done unnecessarily.

He spent a lot of time with Bert now. He hung around the bank, hoping to be assigned to a case, his hands itching for bandages. Ada Quist came in regularly, and Bert put his calculations aside to flirt with her:

“You have to be careful about what you think when the doctor is around, Ade. He’s been telling me how much he knows about neurology and all that mind-reading stuff. How about it, Mart? I’m getting so scared that I’ve changed the combination on the safe.”

“Heh!” said Ada. “He might trick some people, but he can’t fool me. Anyone can pick up things from books, but when it comes to actually doing them— Let me tell you, Mart, if you ever have even a fraction of the smarts that old Dr. Winter of Leopolis has, you’ll live longer than I hope!”

Together they pointed out that for someone who thought his Zenith training had made him so “gosh-awful” smart that he looked down on us poor dirt farmers, Martin's scarf was tied pretty badly.

All of his own jokes and some of Ada’s, Bert repeated at the dinner table.

“You shouldn't ride the boy so hard. Still, that was pretty cute about the necktie— I guess Mart does think he’s something special,” chuckled Mr. Tozer.

Leora pulled Martin aside after dinner. “Babe, can you handle it? We’ll have our own place as soon as we can. Or should we get out of here?”

“I’m seriously going to handle this!”

“Um. Maybe. Honey, when you hit Bertie, please be careful—they’ll hang you.”

He strolled to the front porch. He decided to check out the rooms behind the Eagle office. Without a place to hide from Bert, he couldn’t stand another week. He couldn’t wait for the Norbloms to make a decision, even though they had become terrifying and seemingly permanent figures to him, whose hostility would crush him; massive gods looming over this Wheatsylvania, which was the only world he could see.

He noticed, in the dim, somber light, that a man was pacing the boardwalk in front of the house, hesitating and looking at him. The man was named Wise, a Russian Jew known in the village as “Wise the Polack.” In his small place by the railroad, he sold silver stocks and motor factory stocks, bought and sold farmland, horses, and muskrat hides. He called out, “Is that you, Doc?”

“Yeah!”

Martin was pumped. A patient!

“Hey, I wish you’d walk with me for a bit. There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss with you. Or, come over to my place and try some new cigars I’ve got.” He stressed{151} the word “cigars.” North Dakota was, like Mohalis, technically dry.

Martin was happy. He had been clean and hardworking for such a long time now!

Wise’s shack was a single-story building, fairly well-constructed, located half a block from Main Street, with just the railroad track separating it from the wide-open wheat fields. It had pine wood that smelled nice, even with the lingering odor of old pipe smoke. Wise winked—he was a secretive, unreliable little guy—and said, “Do you think you could handle a little hit of top-notch Kentucky bourbon?”

“Well, I wouldn’t get aggressive about it.”

Wise pulled down the dingy window shades and from a warped drawer of his desk pulled out a bottle that they both drank from, wiping the mouth of the bottle with their hands. Then Wise, suddenly:

“Listen, Doc. You’re not like these local guys; you get that sometimes a person gets caught up in shady dealings he didn't plan on. To cut to the chase, I think I’ve sold too much mining stock, and they’ll be after me. I need to get out of here—damn it—I hoped I could settle down for a couple of years this time. Anyway, I heard you’re looking for an office. This place would be perfect. Perfect! Two rooms in the back besides this one. I’ll rent it to you, furniture included, for fifteen dollars a month, if you’ll pay me a year upfront. Oh, this isn’t a scam. Your brother-in-law knows all about my ownership.”

Martin tried to be very professional. Wasn't he a young doctor who would soon be investing money, one of the most significant citizens in Wheatsylvania? He came home, and under the parlor lamp, with its green daisies on pink glass, the Tozers listened intently, Bert leaning forward with his mouth agape.

“You’d be fine renting it for a year, but that’s not the point,” said Bert.

“It definitely isn’t! Why would you provoke the Norbloms now that they’re about ready to let you have their place? Are you trying to make me look like a fool after all the effort I’ve put in?” groaned Mr. Tozer.

They went over it again and again until nearly ten o’clock, but Martin was determined, and the next day he rented Wise’s shack.{152}

For the first time in his life, he had a space that was completely his, shared with Leora.

In his pride of ownership, this was the most magnificent building in existence, and every stone, weed, and doorknob was unique and beautiful. At sunset, he sat on the back steps (a very interesting and not too broken soapbox), and from the vibrant horizon, the open country spread out across the narrow strip of railroad before him. Suddenly, Leora was beside him, her arm around his neck, and he sang all the glory of their future:

“Guess what I found in the kitchen? An awesome old auger, barely rusty at all, and I can grab a box and make my own test-tube rack!”

With none of the crude comments about “medical peddlers” that had bothered Digamma Pi, Martin looked over the catalog from the New Idea Instrument and Furniture Company, based in Jersey City. It was quite an attractive piece. On the shiny green cover, in red and black, were portraits of the president, a chubby, witty man who had a fondness for all young doctors; the general manager, a pale, scholarly figure who definitely dedicated every late night and day to advancing science; and the vice-president, Martin’s former mentor, Dr. Roscoe Geake, who had a lively, glasses-wearing, forward-thinking vibe all his own. The cover also featured, in a surprisingly small space, a variety of poetic prose, along with an inspiring promise:

Above, surrounded by laurel wreaths and Ionic columns, was the challenge:

The back cover, although not as flashy with its green and red, was just as captivating. It showcased images of the Bindledorf Tonsillectomy Outfit and an electric cabinet, along with the request:

This passionate poetry Martin ignored, because he felt about poetry the same way he felt about electric cabinets, but he eagerly ordered a steel stand, a sterilizer, flasks, test-tubes, and a white-enameled machine with captivating levers and gears that turned it from an examining chair into an operating table. He longed for the image of a centrifuge while Leora was admiring the “stunning seven-piece Reception Room fumed oak set, upholstered in genuine Barcelona Longware Leatherette, that will give your office the class and distinction of any high-grade New York specialist.”

“Aw, let them sit on regular chairs,” Martin grunted.

In the attic, Mrs. Tozer found enough worn-out chairs for the reception area, along with an old bookcase that, once Leora covered it with pink fringed paper, transformed into an impressive instrument cabinet. Until the examining chair arrived, Martin would use Wise’s lumpy couch, and Leora quickly covered it with white oilcloth. Behind the front room of the small office building were two cubicles that used to be a bedroom and kitchen. Martin converted them into a consultation room and a lab. Whistling, he cut out racks for the glassware and turned the oven from an old kerosene stove into a hot-air oven for sterilizing glassware.{155}

“But listen, Lee, I’m not going to mess around with any scientific research. I’m done with all that.”

Leora smiled sweetly. While he worked, she sat outside in the tall, unkempt grass, inhaling the prairie breeze, her hands resting on her ankles, but every fifteen minutes she had to come inside and appreciate his efforts.

Mr. Tozer came home with a package at dinnertime. The family eagerly opened it, chatting excitedly. After dinner, Martin and Leora rushed with the new treasure to the office and secured it in place. It was a plate-glass sign; in gold letters, it read, “M. Arrowsmith, M.D.” They looked up, arms around each other, whispering joyfully, and in awe, he exclaimed, “There—by—jiminy!”

They sat on the back step, celebrating their freedom from Tozers. A freight train rolled by on the tracks, making a happy clattering sound. The fireman waved to them from the engine, and a brakeman nodded from the platform of the red caboose. After the train passed, there was silence except for the crickets and a distant frog.

“I’ve never been this happy,” he whispered.

He had brought his own Ochsner surgical case from Zenith. As he arranged the instruments, he admired the thin, sharp, shiny bistoury, the sturdy tenotome, and the delicate curved needles. Along with them was a dental forceps. Dad Silva had warned his classes, “Don’t forget the country doctor often has to be not just a physician but also a dentist, yes, and a priest, divorce lawyer, blacksmith, chauffeur, and road engineer. If you can’t handle those jobs, don’t stray too far from a trolley line and a beauty salon.” And the first patient Martin had in the new office, the second patient in Wheatsylvania, was Nils Krag, the carpenter, groaning with an ulcerated tooth. This was a week before the glass sign was up, and Martin excitedly told Leora, “It’s already started! You’ll see them flocking in now.”

They didn’t see them coming in. For ten days, Martin fiddled with his hot-air oven or sat at his desk, reading and pretending to be busy. His initial excitement faded into frustration, and he could have yelled at the silence, the lack of activity.

Late one afternoon, while he was in a somewhat downcast mood getting ready to head home, a grizzled Swedish{156} farmer burst into the office and complained, “Doc, I got a fish hook stuck in my thumb and it’s all swollen.” For Arrowsmith, an intern at Zenith General Hospital with its outpatient clinic treating hundreds daily, taking care of a hand wound had felt less significant than finding a match, but for Dr. Arrowsmith from Wheatsylvania, it was a frantic task, and the farmer was quite remarkable and very endearing. Martin shook his left hand vigorously and said, “Now if you need anything, just call me—you just call me.”

There had been, he felt, a wave of grateful patients enough to justify the one thing that Leora and he really wanted to do, the thing they talked about in hushed tones at night: buying a car for his country visits.

They had spotted the car at Frazier’s store.

It was a five-year-old Ford with ripped seats, a sticky engine, and springs made by a blacksmith who wasn’t experienced. Besides the sound of the gas engine at the creamery, the most recognizable noise in Wheatsylvania was Frazier closing the door of his Ford. He would slam it hard outside the store, and usually had to shut it three more times before getting home.

But to Martin and Leora, when they nervously bought the car along with three new tires and a horn, it was the most amazing vehicle in the world. It was theirs; they could go whenever and wherever they wanted.

During his summer at a Canadian hotel, Martin had learned to drive the Ford station wagon, but it was Leora’s first time. Bert had given her so many instructions that she had refused to drive the family Overland. When she first sat behind the steering wheel, adjusting the hand-throttle with her little finger and feeling all that power in her hands, the magic of being able to go as fast as she wanted (within certain limits) made her feel like she could soar like a wild goose—and then, on a stretch of sand, she stalled the engine.

Martin became the wild driver of the village. Riding with him felt like holding on to your hat, eyes shut, just waiting for disaster. Apparently, he sped up for turns to make things more exciting. The sight of anything on the road ahead, from another car to a little yellow dog, sent him into a frenzy that could only be calmed by speeding past it. The village loved to say, “The Young Doc is quite the driver, for sure.{157}” They waited with casual interest to hear news of his demise. It's likely that half of the first dozen patients who came into his office did so out of awe for his driving... the rest because they had minor issues and he was closer than Dr. Hesselink in Groningen.

With his first fans, he also made his first enemies.

When he ran into the Norbloms on the street (and in Wheatsylvania, it's hard not to see everyone on the street every day), they glared at him. Then he got on Pete Yeska's bad side.

Pete ran what he called a “drug store,” focused on selling candy, soda, over-the-counter medicines, fly paper, magazines, washing machines, and Ford accessories. However, he would have struggled to make ends meet if he hadn’t also been the postmaster. He claimed to be a licensed pharmacist, but he messed up prescriptions so badly that Martin stormed into the store and confronted him with a pious tone.

“Young doctors like you make me sick,” Pete said. “I was writing prescriptions when you were still in the crib. The old doctor who used to be here sent everything my way. My method works for me, and I don’t plan on changing it for you or any other inexperienced young whippersnapper.”

Thereafter, Martin had to buy drugs from St. Paul, cram his tiny lab, and make his own pills and ointments, staring longingly at the rarely used test tubes and the dust building up on the bell jar of his microscope, while Pete Yeska teamed up with the Norbloms to whisper, “This new doctor isn’t any good. You’d better stick with Hesselink.”

So empty, so uneventful, had been the week that when he heard the phone at the Tozers' at three in the morning, he rushed to answer it as if he were expecting a romantic message.

A rough and shaky voice: “I want to talk to the doctor.”

"Yeah—yeah—it's the doctor speaking."

“This is Henry Novak, four miles northeast on the Leopolis road. My little girl, Mary, has a really bad sore throat. I{158} think it might be croup, and she looks awful—Could you come right away?”

“Sure thing. I'll be there.”

Four miles—he could do it in eight minutes.

He got dressed quickly, pulling his worn brown tie together, while Leora smiled over the first night call. He aggressively started the Ford, rattling past the station and into the wheat fields. After driving six miles according to the speedometer, slowing down at each rural mailbox to check for the owner’s name, he realized he was lost. He pulled into a farm driveway and stopped under the willows, his headlights shining on a pile of dented milk cans, broken harvester wheels, firewood, and bamboo fishing poles. From the barn rushed a scruffy, unusual dog, barking fiercely and jumping up at the car.

A messy head stuck out of a ground-floor window. “What do you want?” shouted a Scandinavian voice.

“This is The Doctor. Where does Henry Novak live?”

“Oh! The Doctor! Dr. Hesselink?”

“No way! Dr. Arrowsmith.”

“Oh. Dr. Arrowsmith. From Wheatsylvania? Um. Well, you went right near his place. You just need to turn back one mile and take a right by the brick schoolhouse, and it’s about forty rods up the road—the house with a cement silo. Is someone sick by Henry’s?”

“Yeah—yeah—girl's got croup—thanks—”

“Just keep to the right. You can’t miss it.”

Probably no one who has heard the urgent “you can’t miss it” has ever actually managed to not miss it.

Martin turned the Ford around, barely missing a chopped-up block; he sped down the road, took the corner by the schoolhouse instead of the other way, drove half a mile along a muddy path between fields, and stopped at a farmhouse. In the sudden quiet, he could hear cows munching, and a white horse, startled by the dark, raised its head to stare at him. He had to wake the house with loud honks of his horn, and an angry farmer who shouted, “Who’s there? I’ve got a shotgun!” sent him back to the country road.

It was forty minutes after the phone call when he rushed into a bumpy driveway and saw a hunched man on the doorstep, lit by the lamplight, who called out, “The Doctor? This is Novak.{159}”

He found the child in a newly finished bedroom with white plastered walls and light varnished pine. The only things that broke the glaring brightness of the room, a recent extension of the farmhouse, were an iron bed, a straight chair, a print of St. Anne, and a shadeless lamp on a shaky stand. A heavy-shouldered woman was kneeling by the bed. As she raised her tear-streaked red face, Novak urged:

“Don’t cry now; he’s here!” And to Martin: “The little one is really sick, but we did everything we could for her. Last night and tonight we steamed her throat, and we put her here in our own bedroom!”

Mary was a seven or eight-year-old child. Martin noticed that her lips and fingertips were blue, but her face showed no color. As she struggled to breathe, she contorted into scary positions and then coughed up saliva with grayish spots. Martin was concerned as he pulled out his clinical thermometer and gave it a professional shake.

It was, he concluded, laryngeal croup or diphtheria. Most likely diphtheria. There wasn't any time left for bacterial tests, cultures, or careful analysis. Silva the healer filled the room, overshadowing Gottlieb the rigid perfectionist. Martin leaned anxiously over the child on the messy bed, absent-mindedly checking her pulse over and over. He felt powerless without the resources of Zenith General, its nurses, and Angus Duer’s reliable guidance. He suddenly gained a new respect for the solitary country doctor.

He had to make a decision, one that was final and possibly dangerous. He would use diphtheria antitoxin. But there was no way he could get it from Pete Yeska’s in Wheatsylvania.

Lviv?

“Hurry up and get me Blassner, the pharmacist in Leopolis, on the phone,” he said to Novak, as calmly as he could manage. He imagined Blassner driving through the night, respectfully bringing the antitoxin to The Doctor. While Novak shouted into the farm-line telephone in the dining room, Martin waited—waited—staring at the child; Mrs. Novak looked to him for miracles; the child's restless tossing and hoarse gasping became terrifying; and the bright walls, the glaring lines of pale yellow woodwork, lulled him into drowsiness. It was too late for anything short of antitoxin or a tracheotomy. Should he operate; cut into the windpipe to help her breathe? He stood there, anxious; he was drowning in drowsiness and shook himself awake. He had to do something, with the mother kneeling there, staring at him, starting to look unsure.

“Get some hot cloths—towels, napkins—and keep them around her neck. I wish to God he’d get that phone call!” he fretted.

As Mrs. Novak, walking quietly in her thick slippers, brought in the hot cloths, Novak showed up with a blank expression, saying, “Nobody’s at the drug store, and Blassner’s house line is down.”

“Then listen. I’m worried this might be serious. I need antitoxin. I’m going to drive to Leopolis and get it. Keep up these hot applications and— I wish we had an atomizer. The room should be more humid. Got an alcohol stove? Keep some water boiling in here. No point in using medicine right now. I’ll be right back.”

He drove the twenty-four miles to Leopolis in thirty-seven minutes. Not once did he slow down for a crossroad. He dominated the curves, the roots sticking out into the road, even though one dark thought in his mind worried about a blowout and losing control. The speed, the complete abandonment of caution, filled him with a thrilling sense of joy, and it felt great to be in the cool air and alone, after the pressure of Mrs. Novak’s watchful gaze. In his mind the whole time was the page in Osler about diphtheria, the exact wording: “In severe cases the first dose should be from 8,000—” No. Oh, yes: “—from 10,000 to 15,000 units.”

He regained his confidence. He thanked the god of science for the antitoxin and for the gas engine. It was, he decided, a race against death.

“I’m going to do it—going to pull it off and save that poor kid!” he exclaimed with joy.

He approached a railroad crossing and sped toward it, disregarding any trains. He heard a loud whistle, saw a light sliding on the tracks, and slammed on the brakes. Just past him, ten feet from his front wheels, the Seattle Express shot by like a flying volcano. The fireman was shoveling coal, and even in the dim light of dawn, the glow from the firebox was terrifying underneath the rolling smoke. In an instant, the sight was gone, and Martin sat there shaking, his hands trembling on the tiny steering wheel, his foot jittering on the brake like it had St. Vitus's dance. “That was really close!” he muttered, thinking about a widowed Leora, left to Tozers. But the image of the Novak child, gasping for each agonizing breath, took over all his thoughts. “Damn! I’ve stalled the engine!” he groaned. He jumped out of the car, cranked it back up, and took off toward Leopolis.

To Crynssen County, Leopolis with its four thousand residents was a big city, but in the quiet stillness of dawn, it felt like a small graveyard: Main Street was a sandy stretch, the low shops empty like deserted huts. He found one spot alive; in the dreary office of the Dakota Hotel, the night clerk was playing poker with the bus driver and the town cop.

They were surprised by his over-the-top entrance.

“Dr. Arrowsmith, from Wheatsylvania. Kid is dying from diphtheria. Where does Blassner live? Get in my car and show me.”

The constable was a tall, skinny old man, his vest flapping open over a collarless shirt, his pants wrinkled, his eyes determined. He led Martin to the druggist’s house, kicked the door, and then, standing there with his thin, bristly face pointed up into the cold morning light, shouted, “Ed! Hey, you, Ed! Come out!”

Ed Blassner complained from the upstairs window. To him, death and angry doctors weren't anything new. As he put on his pants and coat, he could be heard talking to his sleepy wife about the troubles of pharmacists and the benefits of moving to Los Angeles to get into real estate. But he did have diphtheria antitoxin in his shop, and sixteen minutes after Martin narrowly escaped being hit by a train, he was hurrying to Henry Novak’s.

The child was still alive when he abruptly entered the house.

All the way back he had seen her lifeless and stiff. He grunted, “Thank God!” and angrily called for hot water. He was no longer the embarrassed junior doctor but the wise and heroic physician who had defeated Death, and in the peasant eyes of Mrs. Novak, in Henry’s anxious obedience, he recognized his power.

Quickly and smoothly, he administered the intravenous antitoxin injection and waited expectantly.

The child’s breathing didn’t change at first as she struggled to expel her breath. There was a gurgle, a{162} struggle that turned her face dark, and then she went still. Martin looked on in disbelief. Gradually, the Novaks began to glare, their hands trembling over their mouths. Slowly, they realized the child was gone.

In the hospital, death had become indifferent and natural to Martin. He had told Angus, and he had heard nurses casually say to each other, “Well, fifty-seven has just passed out.” Now he was filled with a desperate urge to do the impossible. She couldn’t be dead. He’d do something— All the while he was groaning, “I should’ve operated— I should have.” The thought was so overwhelming that for a moment he didn’t even notice Mrs. Novak shouting, “She is dead? Dead?”

He nodded, scared to look at the woman.

“You killed her with that needle thing! And you didn't even tell us, so we could call the priest!”

He crawled past her crying and the man's sadness, and drove home, heart empty.

“I will never practice medicine again,” he thought.

“I’m done,” he said to Leora. “I’m no good. I should have gone through with the operation. I can’t handle being around people when they know about it. I’m done. I’ll go get a lab job—Dawson Hunziker or somewhere.”

The sharpness of her response was surprising as she exclaimed, “You’re the most arrogant guy ever! Do you really think you’re the only doctor who’s lost a patient? I know you did everything you could.” But the next day, he was still beating himself up over it, and it hurt even more when Mr. Tozer complained at dinner, “Henry Novak and his wife were in town today. They say you should have saved their daughter. Why didn’t you focus on it and figure out a way to cure her? You should have tried. It’s kind of a shame, because the Novaks have a lot of sway with all these Polish and Hungarian farmers.”

After a night when he was too exhausted to sleep, Martin suddenly drove to Leopolis.

From the Tozers, he had heard almost reverent praise of Dr. Adam Winter from Leopolis, a nearly seventy-year-old pioneer physician of Crynssen County, and to this wise figure, he was escaping. As he drove, he mockingly reflected on his dramatic Race with Death and wearily entered the dust-filled Main Street. Dr. Winter’s office was located above a grocery in a long row of bright red brick stores featuring a tin Egyptian cornice. The{163} darkness of the wide hallway felt calming after the prairie heat and brightness. Martin had to wait until three respectful patients had been seen by Dr. Winter, an elderly man with a compassionate bass voice, before he was allowed into the consultation room.

The examining chair was questionable in its superiority compared to the one used by Doc Vickerson of Elk Mills, and sterilization seemed to be done in a wash bowl, but in one corner was an electric therapy cabinet with more electrodes and pads than Martin had ever seen.

He shared the story of the Novaks, and Winter said, “Doctor, you did everything you could and then some. But next time, in a crucial situation, you should really bring in an older doctor for a consult—not because you need their advice, but it impresses the family, shares the responsibility, and keeps them from criticizing. I often get the privilege of being called by some of my younger colleagues. Just wait. I’ll call the editor of the Gazette and give him some info about the case.”

When he called, Dr. Winter shook hands enthusiastically. He pointed to his electric cabinet. “Do you have one of those things yet? You should, my friend. Honestly, I don’t use it very often, except for the oddballs who aren’t actually sick but say they are. But you’d be surprised at how much it impresses people. Anyway, Doctor, welcome to Crynssen County. Are you married? You and your wife should come have dinner with us one Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Winter would be really happy to meet you. And if I can ever assist you with a consultation— I only charge a little more than my regular fee, and it looks good to discuss the case with someone more experienced.”

Driving home, Martin started bragging in a vain and wicked way:

"You bet I will stick to it! At worst, I’ll never be as bad as that sniffling old fee-splitter!"

Two weeks later, the Wheatsylvania Eagle, a messy four-page paper, reported:

Two hours after this was published, Miss Agnes Ingleblad came in for another talk about her imaginary ailments, and two days later, Henry Novak showed up, saying proudly:

“Well, Doc, we all did what we could for the poor little girl, but I guess I waited too long to call you. The woman is really upset. She and I were reading that article in the Eagle about it. We showed it to the priest. Hey, Doc, I wish you’d take a look at my foot. I have a bit of a rheumatic pain in my ankle.{165}”

When he had practiced medicine in Wheatsylvania for a year, Martin was an unassuming but not discouraged country doctor. In the summer, he and Leora drove to the Pony River for picnic dinners and swimming, which was loud, splashy, and carefree; in the fall, he went duck-hunting with Bert Tozer, who became somewhat tolerable when he stood at sunset on a ridge between two marshes; and with winter isolating the village in a sun-covered desert of snow, they enjoyed sleigh rides, card games, and social gatherings at the churches.

When Martin’s flock turned to him for help, their need and their patient obedience made them beautiful. He lost his temper a couple of times with the cheerful villagers who confidently told him that he was younger than he might have seemed; he drank too much whisky at poker games in the back room of the Coöperative Store a few times; but he was known to be reliable, skilled, and honest—and overall he was somewhat less notable than Alec Ingleblad the barber, less prosperous than Nils Krag, the carpenter, and less interesting to his neighbors than the Finnish garage owner.

Then one accident and one mistake made him famous for a full twelve miles around.

He had gone fishing in the spring. As he walked past a farmhouse, a woman ran out yelling that her baby had swallowed a thimble and was choking. Martin had a large jackknife for a surgical kit. He sharpened it on the farmer’s oilstone, sterilized it in the tea kettle, operated on the baby’s throat, and saved its life.

Every newspaper in the Pony River Valley had a section, and before this sensation ended, he helped Miss Agnes Ingleblad overcome her desire to be cured.

She had cold hands and poor circulation, and he got called at midnight. He was groggy and sleepy after two long drives on muddy country roads, and in his daze, he accidentally gave her too much strychnine, which shocked and energized her{166} so much that she decided she wanted to get better. It was such a drastic change that it made her more captivating than being sick—people had recently found her symptoms less interesting. She started going around praising Martin, and everyone said, “I hear this Doc Arrowsmith is the only one Agnes ever saw that’s done her any good.”

He gathered a small practice that was decent but not particularly noteworthy. Leora and he moved from the Tozers' place to their own cottage, which had a parlor-dining room featuring a shiny stove on bright, new, pleasantly scented linoleum, and a golden oak sideboard with a souvenir match holder from Lake Minnetonka. He purchased a small X-ray setup and was appointed as a director of the Tozer bank. He got so busy that he no longer missed his imagined days of scientific research that never actually happened, and Leora sighed:

“It’s intense, being married. I thought I’d have to follow you on the road and be a drifter, but I never thought I’d become a Pillar of the Community. Honestly, I’m too lazy to find a new husband. Just a heads up: when you become the Sunday School superintendent, don’t expect me to play the organ and laugh at the cute jokes you make about Willy not learning his Golden Text.”

So Martin accidentally found his way into respectability.

In the fall of 1912, when Mr. Debs, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Taft were running for president, and Martin Arrowsmith had been living in Wheatsylvania for a year and a half, Bert Tozer became a Prominent Booster. He came back from the state convention of the Modern Woodmen of America with new ideas. Several towns had sent cheering delegations to the convention, and the village of Groningen had organized a motor parade of five cars, each displaying a huge banner that read, “Groningen for White Men and Black Dirt.”

Bert returned shouting that every car in town should fly a Wheatsylvania pennant. He had purchased thirty of them, and they were being sold at the bank for seventy-five cents each. This, Bert told everyone who walked into the bank, was the exact cost price, which was just eleven cents off from the truth. He rushed over to Martin, insisting that he be the first to show off a pennant.{167}

“I don’t want one of those ridiculous things hanging off my bus,” Martin protested. “What’s the point, anyway?”

“What’s the idea? It's to promote your own town, of course!”

“What’s there to promote? Do you really think you’re going to convince strangers that Wheatsylvania is a big city like New York or Jimtown just by hanging a dirty cloth behind a beat-up old car?”

“You never had any patriotism! Let me tell you, Mart, if you don’t put up a banner, I’ll make sure everyone in town sees it!”

While the other rundown cars in the village proudly proclaimed to everyone, or at least to several square miles, that Wheatsylvania was the “Wonder Town of Central N. D.,” Martin’s noisy Ford remained unbranded; and when his rival Norblom said, “I like to see someone show some pride and appreciate the place that brings in their income,” the townspeople nodded and spat, starting to doubt Martin’s reputation as a miracle worker.

He had close friends—the barber, the editor of the Eagle, the mechanic—with whom he comfortably talked about hunting and the crops, and played poker. Maybe he was too close with them. The general opinion in Crynssen County was that it was totally fine for a young professional guy to have a drink now and then as long as he kept it under wraps and balanced it by admiring the local clergy. But with the clergy, Martin was short and to the point, and he never hid his drinking or poker games.

If he was bored by the United Brethren minister’s talk about doctrine, the evils of movies, and the outrageous salaries of pastors, it wasn’t because he was a distant and overly sensitive young man, but because he enjoyed the garageman’s witty comments about the art of remembering to bet in poker much more.

Throughout the state, there were celebrated poker players—rugged-looking guys with expressionless faces, men sitting in their shirt sleeves, chewing tobacco; men whose longest comment was “By me,” and who loved to take advantage of the flashy and patronizing traveling salesmen. When there was word of a “big game on,” the local gamblers would quietly show up and get to work{168}—the sewing machine salesman from Leopolis, the funeral home director from Vanderheide’s Grove, the bootlegger from St. Luke, and the chubby guy from Melody who had no known job.

Once (and still, people talk about it with gratitude, throughout the Valley), they played for seventy-two nonstop hours in the office of the Wheatsylvania garage. It had been a livery stable; it was scattered with robes and long whips, and the smell of horses mixed with the stench of gasoline.

The players came and went, and sometimes they crashed on the floor for an hour or two, but there were always at least four in the game. The smell of cheap, weak cigarettes and strong, low-quality cigars lingered around the table like a bad omen; the floor was littered with stubs, matches, old cards, and whiskey bottles. Among the players were Martin, Alec Ingleblad the barber, and a highway engineer, all of them in just their flannel undershirts, not moving for hours at a time, shuffling their cards, eyes squinted and blank.

When Bert Tozer heard about the affair, he worried about the reputation of Wheatsylvania, and he spread rumors about Martin’s bad behavior and his own tolerance. Because of this, while Martin was at the peak of his success and reputation as a doctor, whispers circulated in the Pony River Valley that he was a gambler, that he was a "drinker," and that he never attended church; and everyone righteous lamented, “It’s a shame to see a good young man like that going downhill.”

Martin was as impatient as he was stubborn. He resented the well-meaning greetings: “You should save some booze for the rest of us, Doc,” or “I guess you’re too busy playing poker to come out to the house and check on the woman.” He showed a ridiculous and childish lack of sensitivity when he heard Norblom say to the postmaster, “A guy who calls himself a doctor just because he got lucky with that fool Agnes Ingleblad shouldn’t be getting drunk and embarrassing—”

Martin stopped. “Norblom! Are you talking about me?”

The storekeeper turned slowly. “I have more important things to do than talk about you,” he laughed.

As Martin continued, he heard laughter.

He reminded himself that these villagers were kind; that their curiosity was partly from a caring interest, and was bound to happen in a village where the biggest event of the{169} year was the United Brethren Sunday School picnic on the Fourth of July. But he couldn't shake off the jittery discomfort from their never-ending and annoyingly detailed comments about everything. It felt like even the smallest thing he said in his consultation room would be broadcast from ear to ear all down the country roads.

He was pretty satisfied chatting about fishing with the barber, and he wasn't dismissive of weather obsessiveness, but aside from Leora, he didn't have anyone to discuss his work with. Angus Duer had been distant, but Angus was on top of every new surgical technique and was a sharp debater. Martin realized that if he didn't fight against it, he would not only become stuck in cautious morality due to the village's pressure but also get trapped in a routine of writing prescriptions and wrapping bandages.

He might find a source of motivation in Dr. Hesselink from Groningen.

He had only seen Hesselink once, but everywhere he heard about him as the most honest practitioner in the Valley. On a whim, Martin drove down to pay him a visit.

Dr. Hesselink was a forty-year-old man, with a ruddy complexion, tall stature, and broad shoulders. You could tell right away that he was meticulous and fearless, even if he didn’t have much imagination. He welcomed Martin without much enthusiasm, and his gaze conveyed, “So, what do you need? I have a lot on my plate.”

“Doctor,” Martin asked, “do you find it difficult to keep up with medical advancements?”

“No. Check the medical journals.”

“Well, don’t you—man, I don’t want to get all sentimental about this, but don’t you think that without connecting with the big shots you get mentally lazy—kind of lacking in inspiration?”

“I don’t! There’s plenty of inspiration for me in trying to help the sick.”

To himself, Martin was thinking, “Fine, if you don’t want to be nice, then go to hell!” But he tried again:

“I get it. But for the sake of the game, for the joy of expanding medical knowledge, how can you stay current if you're only doing routine practice with a bunch of farmers?”

“Arrowsmith, I might be judging you unfairly, but a lot of you young professionals think you're better than the farmers who are doing their jobs better than you. You believe that if you were just in the city with libraries, medical{170} meetings, and everything else, you’d improve. Well, I don’t see anything stopping you from studying at home! You consider yourself much more educated than these country people, but I notice you use words like ‘gosh’ and ‘Big Guns’ and things like that. How much do you actually read? Personally, I’m very satisfied. My clients pay me a great living wage, they appreciate my work, and they respect me by electing me to the school board. I find that many of these farmers think much more clearly and straightforwardly than the elites I meet in the city. Well! I don’t see any reason to feel superior or lonely either!”

“Hell, I don’t!” Martin muttered. As he drove back, he fumed at Hesselink’s arrogance about not feeling superior, but he stumbled into an uncomfortable reflection. It was true; he was only partially educated. He was supposed to be a college graduate, but he knew nothing about economics, history, music, or art. Besides rushing through exams, he had read no poetry except for Robert Service, and the only prose he paid attention to these days was the baseball and murder news in the Minneapolis papers and Wild West stories in the magazines.

He thought back on the “smart conversation” he believed he had during his time in the Wheatsylvania desert at Mohalis. He remembered that for Clif Clawson, it seemed pretentious to use any phrase that wasn’t as casual and crude as a truck driver’s talk, and that his own way of speaking was mostly different from Clif’s because it was less outlandish and less unique. The only things he could recall were the philosophy of Max Gottlieb, the occasional lectures from Angus Duer, one out of ten things from Madeline Fox’s tangents, and the discussions from Dad Silva, which were a notch above the conversations at Alec Ingleblad’s barbershop.

He came home resenting Hesselink but definitely not loving himself; he turned to Leora and, with her calm agreement, declared that they were “going to get educated, even if it kills us.” He attacked it just like he had tackled bacteriology.

He read European history out loud to Leora, who seemed interested or at least polite; he focused on sentences in a copy of “The Golden Bowl” that an unfortunate teacher had left at the Tozers’; he borrowed a book by Conrad from the village editor and later, while driving the prairie roads, he imagined marching into jungle villages—wearing sun helmets, surrounded by orchids, discovering lost temples of strange and grotesque deities, navigating secret and sun-scarred rivers. He was aware of his own limited vocabulary. It can't be said that he suddenly became noticeably articulate, but it’s possible that during those long, intense evenings of reading with Leora, he took a step or two closer to the tragic enchantments of Max Gottlieb’s world—sometimes enchanting and always tragic.

But by becoming a schoolboy again, he wasn’t as satisfied as Dr. Hesselink.

Gustaf Sondelius was back in the U.S.

In medical school, Martin had read about Sondelius, the soldier of science. He had respectable and advanced degrees, but he was wealthy and eccentric, and he didn’t spend time in labs or have a nice office or a devoted wife. He traveled the world combating epidemics, founding institutions, delivering uncomfortable speeches, and trying out new drinks. He was Swedish by birth, German by education, and a mix of various languages in his speech, with clubs in London, Paris, Washington, and New York. People had heard of him from Batoum and Fuchau, from Milan and Bechuanaland, from Antofagasta and Cape Romanzoff. Manson on Tropical Diseases notes Sondelius’s impressive method for killing rats with hydrocyanic acid gas, and The Sketch once mentioned his terrible system in baccarat.

Gustaf Sondelius shouted, everywhere he could, that most diseases could and must be eliminated; that tuberculosis, cancer, typhoid, the plague, and influenza were like an invading army that the world needed to fight against—literally; that public health authorities should take precedence over generals and oil tycoons. He was giving lectures across America, and his passionate claims were published in newspapers nationwide.

Martin usually ignored most newspaper articles about science or health, but Sondelius's violence grabbed his attention, and suddenly he was convinced, and that conversion was significant for him.

He reminded himself that no matter how much he helped the sick, he was fundamentally a businessman, competing with Dr. Winter from Leopolis and Dr. Hesselink from Groningen. Even if they were honest, their main focus was more on making money than on honesty and healing. He thought that eliminating avoidable diseases and creating a healthy population would be the worst outcome for them, and that they all needed to be replaced by public health officials.

Like all passionate agnostics, Martin was a religious person. Since the death of his Gottlieb cult, he had unconsciously looked for a new passion, and he found it now in Gustaf Sondelius's fight against disease. Right away, he became just as annoying to his patients as he had once been to Digamma Pi.

He told the farmers in Delft that they had no right to have so much tuberculosis.

This was incredibly frustrating because none of their rights as American citizens were more clearly defined or frequently used than the right to be sick. They complained, “Who does he think he is? We called him here to treat us, not to boss us around. Can you believe that idiot suggested we should burn down our houses—said we were committing a crime if we just had the flu! I won’t tolerate anyone talking to me like that!”

Everything became clear to Martin—way too clear. The nation needed to make the best doctors into autocratic officials right now, and that was all there was to it. As for how those officials were supposed to become perfect leaders, and how to convince people to follow them, he had no ideas—only a strong belief. At breakfast, he complained, “Another pointless day writing prescriptions for stomachaches that shouldn’t even exist! If I could just get into the Big Fight with guys like Sondelius! It’s exhausting!”

Leora whispered, “Yes, sweetheart. I promise to behave. I won’t have any stomachaches or TB or anything, so please don’t lecture me!”

Even when he was irritable, he was gentle, because Leora was pregnant.

Their baby was coming in five months. Martin promised to give it everything he had missed.

“He's going to get a real education!” he bragged, as they sat on the porch in the spring twilight. “He'll learn all this literature and stuff. We haven't done much ourselves—here we are, stuck in this tiny crossroads for the rest of our lives—but maybe we've gone a little further than our dads, and he'll go way beyond us.{173}”

He was concerned, despite his showy personality. Leora was dealing with severe morning sickness. Until noon, she wandered around the house, looking pale, disheveled, and exhausted. He found a kind of maid and came home to lend a hand, doing the dishes and sweeping the front walkway. All evening, he read to her—not history or Henry James this time, but “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” which they both appreciated as a really good story. He sat on the floor next to the worn second-hand couch where she lay weakly; he held her hand and cheered her up:

“Wow, we— No, not ‘wow’. Well, what can you say except ‘wow’? Anyway: Someday we’ll save up enough money for a couple of months in Italy and all those places. All those old narrow streets and castles! There must be tons of them that are a couple hundred years old or older! And we’ll take the kid.... Even if he turns out to be a girl, drat him!... And he’ll learn to speak Italian and French and everything like a real local, and his dad and mom will be so proud! Oh, we’ll be a wild pair of old souls! We never did have any more morals than a rabbit, either of us, and probably when we’re seventy we’ll sit out on the doorstep and smoke pipes and laugh at all the respectable people walking by, and tell each other scandalous stories about them until they want to take a shot at us, and our kid—he’ll wear a top hat and have a chauffeur—he won’t dare to acknowledge us!”

Trained now to the fake cheerfulness of the doctor, he shouted, when she was suffering and looking awful from morning sickness, “There, that’s great, old girl! You wouldn’t be making a healthy baby if you weren’t feeling sick. Everyone is.” He was lying, and he was anxious. Whenever he thought of her dying, he felt like he was dying with her. Without her companionship, there would be nothing he wanted to do, nowhere to go. What would be the point of having the whole world if he couldn't share it with her, if she wasn't there—

He criticized Nature for tricking people with her enchanting moonlight, beautiful bodies, and enticing solitude, pushing them into having children, only to make the process of birth as harsh, awkward, and wasteful as possible. He was short and restless with patients who summoned him to the countryside. He felt a deep sympathy for their pain like never before, as his eyes had been opened to the unsettling beauty of suffering, but he knew he couldn’t stray too far from Leora's needs.

Her morning sickness escalated into severe vomiting. Sud{174}denly, while she writhed in intense pain, he called for Dr. Hesselink, and on that dreadful afternoon when the spring prairie was vibrant outside the windows of the foul-smelling room, they took the baby from her, lifeless.

Had it been possible, he might have understood Hesselink’s success then, have noticed the gravity and charm, the pity and confidence that made people trust him with their lives. Hesselink wasn’t cold and accusatory anymore, but rather like an older, wiser brother, full of compassion. Martin saw none of this. He wasn’t a doctor. He was just a scared kid, less helpful to Hesselink than the most clueless nurse.

When he was sure that Leora would get better, Martin sat by her bed, saying, “We need to accept that we can never have a baby now, and so I want— Oh, I’m terrible! And I have a horrible temper. But for you, I want to be everything!”

She whispered, hardly audible:

“He would have been such a sweet baby. Oh, I know! I saw him so often. Because I knew he was going to be like you when you were a baby.” She tried to laugh. “Maybe I wanted him because I could be in charge. I’ve never had anyone who would let me be in charge. So if I can’t have a real baby, I’ll have to raise you. Make you a great man that everyone will admire, like your Sondelius.... Darling, I worried so much about your worries—”

He kissed her, and for hours they sat together in silence, completely understanding each other, in the twilight of the prairie.{175}

Dr. Coughlin of Leopolis had a red mustache, a big personality, and a Maxwell that, even though it was three years old this May and looked bad in terms of its paint, he believed was the fastest and most beautiful car in Dakota.

He came home feeling really cheerful, carried the youngest of his three kids on his back, and said to his wife:

“Tessie, I have a great idea.”

“Yes, and you have a great breath, too. I wish you’d stop checking that old Spirits Frumentus bottle at the drug store!”

“Hey girl! But seriously, listen!”

“I won't!” She kissed him energetically. “There’s no way we’re driving to Los Angeles this summer. It’s too far, especially with all the kids screaming.”

“Sure. Okay. But I’m saying: Let’s pack up, hit the road, and spend a week exploring the state. Maybe tomorrow or the day after. I’ve got nothing holding me back now except that delivery case, and we can pass that on to Winter.”

“All right. Let’s try out the new thermos bottles!”

Dr. Coughlin, his wife, and the kids set out at four in the morning. At first, the car was so organized that it was almost boring, but after three days, as he came toward you on the straight road that stretched for miles through the lush young wheat, you saw the doctor in his khaki suit, his horn-rimmed glasses, and white linen boating hat; his wife in a green flannel top and a lace boudoir cap. The rest of the car was a bit chaotic. As you drove past, you noticed a canvas Egyptian water bottle, mud on the wheels and fenders, a spade, two older kids leaning dangerously out and making faces at you, the baby’s diapers hanging on a line across the back seat, a torn copy of Snappy Stories, seven lollipop sticks, a jack, a fishing rod, and a rolled-up tent.

Your last impression was of two big banners saying “Leopolis, N. D.,” and “Excuse Our Dust.”

The Coughlins had enjoyable adventures. One time they were{176} stuck in a mudhole. To the excited delight of the family, the doctor helped them out by building a bridge from fence rails. Another time, when the engine died and they were waiting for a mechanic they called, they checked out a dairy farm that had an electric milking machine. Throughout their travels, they expanded their horizons and experienced the wonders of the world: the movie theater in Roundup, which had not only a live piano but also a violin for music; the black fox farm in Melody; and the Severance water tower, rumored to be the tallest in Central North Dakota.

Dr. Coughlin stopped by to chat, as he put it, with all the doctors. At St. Luke, he was close friends with Dr. Tromp—at least they'd met twice at the annual meetings of the Pony River Valley Medical Association. When he mentioned to Tromp how terrible the hotels were, Tromp looked worried and responsible and sighed, "If my wife could make it work somehow, I’d love to invite you all to stay with us tonight."

“Oh, I don’t want to put you out. Are you sure it won’t be any trouble?” said Coughlin.

After Mrs. Tromp got over her urge to pull her husband aside and make some strong comments that no one would hear, and after the oldest Tromp boy figured out that "it wasn't nice for a little gentleman to kick his tiny guests who came from so far away," everyone felt really happy. Mrs. Coughlin and Mrs. Tromp complained about how expensive laundry soap and butter were, and they swapped recipes for pickled peaches, while the men sat on the edge of the porch, crossing their knees, passionately waving their cigars, diving into the joy of shop talk:

“Hey, Doctor, what do you think of collections?”

(It was Coughlin speaking—or it could have been Tromp.)

"Well, they’re pretty good. These Germans pay really well. I never send them a bill, but when they’ve harvested, they come in and say, ‘How much do I owe you, Doctor?’”

“Yeah, the Germans pay pretty well.”

“Yep, they definitely are. Not many slackers among the Germans.”

“Yes, that's a fact. So, tell me, Doctor, what do you do with your jaundice patients?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Doctor: if it’s a recurring case, I typically prescribe ammonium chloride.”

“Do you? I’ve been using ammonium chloride, but the other day I saw a note in the Journal of the A.M.A. where someone was saying it wasn’t effective.”

“Is that really true! Wow! I didn’t notice that. Hmm. Anyway, Doctor, do you find that you can do a lot for asthma?”

“Well now, Doctor, just between us, I’m going to share something with you that might sound funny, but I really think that fox lungs are good for asthma and tuberculosis too. I told that to a lung specialist in Sioux City once and he laughed at me—said it wasn't scientific—and I said to him, ‘Come on!’ I said, ‘Scientific!’ I said, ‘I don’t know if it’s the latest trend in science or not,’ I said, ‘but I get results, and that’s what I’m after—results!’ I said. I tell you, a basic family doctor might not have a lot of letters after his name, but he deals with a ton of strange cases that he can’t explain, and I genuinely believe most of these so-called scientists could learn a lot from the regular country doctors, let me tell you!’

“Yeah, that’s true. Personally, I’d rather stay right here in the countryside and do a little hunting and relax than be the top expert in the cities. At one point, I thought about becoming an X-ray specialist—there’s a place in New York where you can complete the whole course in eight weeks—and maybe settling down in Butte or Sioux Falls. But I realized that even if I managed to make eight to ten thousand dollars a year, it wouldn’t really mean more than three thousand does here, and—well, a guy has to think about his responsibility to his old patients.”

“That's so... Hey, Doctor, what kind of guy is McMinturn down in your area?”

“Well, I don’t like to put down any fellow professional, and I guess he means well, but just between you and me, he relies way too much on guesswork. Now, you and I apply science to a case instead of gambling and just depending on experience and jumping to conclusions. But McMinturn, he doesn’t know enough. And by the way, his wife—what a piece of work—she has the worst mouth in four counties, and the way she goes around drumming up business for Mac—Well, I guess that’s just their way of doing things.”

“Is old Winter still going?”

“Oh, definitely, in a way. You know how he is. He’s around twenty years out of touch, but he’s great at comforting—letting some clueless woman stay in bed for six extra weeks when he doesn’t have to, and stopping by twice a day to chat with her—totally unnecessary.{178}”

“I guess your biggest competition comes from Silzer, Doctor?”

“Don’t believe it, Doctor! He’s not actually starting to practice like he claims. The problem with Silzer is that he’s too cocky—talks too much—just loves to hear himself speak. Oh, by the way, have you met this new guy—he’s been around for about two years now—at Wheatsylvania—Arrowsmith?”

“No, but they say he’s a really good, bright young guy.”

“Yes, they say he’s a smart guy—really knowledgeable—and I hear his wife is a nice, smart woman too.”

“I hear Arrowsmith drinks a bit too much though—really enjoys his booze.”

“Yes, that’s what they say. It’s a shame for such a hardworking young guy. I enjoy a drink myself every now and then, but a heavy drinker—! What if he’s drunk and gets called out on a case? And someone from down there was telling me Arrowsmith is really into books and studying, but he doesn’t believe in organized religion—never goes to church.”

“Is that a fact! Hm. It's a big mistake for any doctor not to align himself with a solid religious denomination, whether he truly believes in it or not. I tell you, a priest or a preacher can bring in a lot of business.”

“You bet he can! Well, this guy said Arrowsmith was always arguing with the preachers—he told some Reverend that everyone should read this immunologist Max Gottlieb, and this Jacques Loeb—you know—the guy that, well I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he claimed he could create living fish from chemicals.”

“Sure! There you have it! That’s the kind of delusions these lab guys get unless they have some hands-on experience to keep them grounded. Well, if Arrowsmith falls for that kind of person, it’s no surprise people don’t trust him.”

"That’s true. Hmm. Well, it’s a shame Arrowsmith spends his time drinking and messing around while ignoring his family and his patients. I can see how this will end for him. What a shame. Well— I wonder what time it is getting to be?”

Bert Tozer shouted, “Mart, what have you been doing to Dr. Coughlin of Leopolis? Someone told me he’s been saying you’re a heavy drinker and all that.”{179}

“Did he? People kind of watch out for each other around here, don’t they?”

“You bet your life they do, and that’s why I’m telling you that you should stop the poker and the drinking. You don’t see me needing any alcohol, do you?”

Martin felt more desperate than ever, sensing the entire county watching him. He wasn’t someone who craved praise; he didn’t take pride in feeling out of place. But no matter how hard he tried, he saw himself outside the scene of Wheatsylvania, trudging through years of country practice.

Suddenly, without any planning and caught up in his admiration for Sondelius and the health war, he lost sight of his pride in the laboratory and found himself facing a research problem.

There was blackleg in the cattle of Crynssen County. The state veterinarian had been called, and Dawson Hunziker vaccine had been administered, but the disease continued to spread. Martin heard the farmers crying out in distress. He noticed that the vaccinated cattle showed no signs of inflammation or fever. A suspicion formed in his mind that the Hunziker vaccine lacked enough living organisms, and he set off to investigate his theory.

He got a supply of the vaccine through deception and tested it in his cramped laboratory. He had to figure out his own method for growing anaerobic cultures, but he had been trained by Gottlieb, who said, “Any man who can’t build a filter out of toothpicks, if he has to, might as well buy his results along with his fancy equipment.” Using a large fruit jar and a soldered pipe, Martin built his setup.

When he was completely confident that the vaccine didn't have any living blackleg organisms, he was much more pleased than if he had discovered that good Mr. Dawson Hunziker was making reliable vaccine.

With no excuses and less support, he isolated blackleg germs from sick cattle and created his own weakened vaccine. It took a lot of time. He didn't ignore his patients, but he definitely didn't show up at the stores or the poker games. Leora and he had a sandwich for dinner every night and rushed to the lab to heat the cultures in the makeshift water bath, an old, leaky oatmeal cooker with an alcohol lamp. The Martin, who had been impatient with Hesselink, was now endlessly patient as he watched his results. He whistled and hummed, and the hours from seven to midnight felt like no time at all. Leora, frowning calmly with the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth, monitored the temperature like a good little watchdog.

After three attempts with two ridiculous failures, he finally had a vaccine that satisfied him, and he injected a sick herd. The blackleg stopped, which for Martin was the culmination and reward, and he handed over his notes and vaccine supply to the state veterinarian. For others, it wasn't the end. The county veterinarians criticized him for overstepping their authority to save or cull cattle; the doctors suggested, “That kind of nonsense ruins the dignity of our profession. I’m telling you Arrowsmith’s a medical nihilist and a self-promoter, that’s what he is. Just wait, instead of sticking to proper practice, you’ll hear about him opening a quack sanitarium one of these days!”

He said to Leora:

“Dignity, please! If it were up to me, I’d be doing research—oh, not this cold, impersonal stuff from Gottlieb but actually useful work—and then I’d have someone like Sondelius take my results and shove them down people’s throats, and I’d make them, their livestock, and their cats healthy whether they wanted to be or not, that’s what I’d do!”

In this mood, he read in his Minneapolis newspaper, between a half column on the marriage of the light middleweight champion and three lines about the lynching of an I.W.W. agitator, the announcement:

He burst into the house, bragging, “Lee! Sondelius is giving a lecture in Minneapolis. I’m going! Let’s go! We’ll listen to him and grab a bite to eat and everything!”

“No, you go down by yourself. It’ll be good for you to get away from the town and the family and me for a bit. I’ll come down with you in the fall. Honestly. If I’m not in the way, maybe you can have a nice long chat with Dr. Sondelius.{181}”

“Yeah, right! The top city doctors and state health officials will be crowding around him. But I’m going.”

The prairie was scorching, the wheat rustled in a tired breeze, and the day coach was filled with dust and cinders. Martin felt cramped after hours of slow travel. He dozed off, smoked, and reflected. “I’m going to forget about medicine and everything else,” he promised himself. “I’ll go up and chat with someone in the smoker and tell him I’m a shoe salesman.”

He did. Unfortunately, his confidant turned out to be a real shoe salesman, who was really curious about what company Martin worked for, and he went back to the regular coach feeling even more hurt. When he arrived in Minneapolis in the afternoon, he rushed to the University and asked for a ticket to the Sondelius lecture before he even found a hotel, though not before he got the long glass of beer he had been imagining for a hundred miles.

He had a casual but pleasant idea of spending his first evening of freedom partying. He imagined finding a group of interesting people who would entertain him with laughter, conversation, and a few drinks—not too many drinks, of course—and then speeding off to Lake Minnetonka for a moonlight swim. He started his quest for company with a cocktail at a hotel bar and dinner at a Hennepin Avenue restaurant. No one paid him any attention, and no one seemed interested in making a connection. He felt lonely for Leora, and all his excitement, all his sincere and straightforward desire to party, faded into tiredness.

As he tossed and turned in his hotel bed, he sighed, “And the Sondelius lecture is probably going to be terrible. He’s probably just another Roscoe Geake.”

On the hot night, scattered students wandered up to the lecture hall door, looked at the simple Sondelius poster, and then drifted away. Martin was tempted to leave with them, but he reluctantly went inside. The hall was a third full of summer students and teachers, along with some men who could have been doctors or school principals. He sat at the back, fanning himself with his straw hat, disliking the guy with sideburns sitting next to him, disapproving of Gustaf Sondelius, and not having any good thoughts about himself at all.

Then the room was filled with energy. Down the central aisle, clumsily fussed over by a tiny, meticulous person, strode a man with a smile, a broad forehead, and a messy tuft of curly blond hair—a real powerhouse of a man. Martin sat up straight. He felt ready to handle even the downer of a guy with sideburns as Sondelius began to speak, his voice musical with a Swedish accent and a singsong quality:

“The medical field has only one goal: to eliminate itself. As for the general public, they can be sure of just one thing: ninety percent of what they think they know about health is incorrect, and with the remaining ten percent, they take no action. As Butler points out in ‘Erewhon’—maybe those pigs stole that concept from me, about thirty years before I even thought of it—the only reason we should execute someone is for having tuberculosis.”

“Umph!” grunted the attentive audience, unsure whether it was appropriate to feel amused, offended, bored, or enlightened.

Sondelius was a loudmouth and a womanizer, but he knew spells. With him, Martin watched the pioneers of yellow fever, Reed, Agramonte, Carroll, and Lazear; with him, he arrived at a Mexican port quieted by the plague and scorched under the relentless sun; with him, he rode up the mountain paths to a town decaying from typhus; with him, in the sweltering August, when babies were dried-up skeletons, he battled an ice monopoly under the shiny yet dull sword of the law.

“That's what I want to do! Not just mess around with a bunch of worn-out bodies but create a new world!” Martin craved. “Wow, I’d follow him through fire! And the way he calls out the critics who bash public health results! If I could only meet him and talk to him for a couple of minutes—”

He hung around after the lecture. A dozen people crowded around Sondelius on the stage; some shook hands, while others asked questions. A doctor fretted, “But what about the risk of free clinics and all that leading to socialism?” Martin stood back until Sondelius was left alone. A janitor was closing the windows quite firmly and pointedly. Sondelius glanced around, and Martin would have bet that the Great Man felt lonely. He shook hands with him and felt nervous:{183}

“Sir, if you’re not headed anywhere, I was wondering if you’d like to go out and have a—a—”

Sondelius towered over him in bright sunlight and said, “Want a drink? I think I might. How did the joke about the dog and his fleas go tonight? Do you think they enjoyed it?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

The warrior who had been bragging about feeding five thousand Tatars, getting a degree from a Chinese university, and turning down an award from a decent Balkan king, looked fondly at his sole disciple and asked, “Was it okay—was it? Did they enjoy it? It’s so hot tonight, and I’ve been giving lectures nine times a week—Des Moines, Fort Dodge, LaCrosse, Elgin, Joliet (but he pronounced it Zho-lee-ay) and— I forget. Was it okay? Did they enjoy it?”

“Absolutely amazing! They just loved it! Honestly, I’ve never enjoyed anything this much in my life!”

The prophet exclaimed, “Come! I’ll buy you a drink. As a hygienist, I’m against alcohol. In large amounts, it’s nearly as bad as coffee or even ice cream soda. But as someone who loves to talk, I find a nice long whiskey and soda is a great way to deal with human foolishness. Is there a cool spot with some Pilsner here in Detroit—wait; where am I tonight?—Minneapolis?”

“I hear there's a great beer garden, and we can catch the trolley just around the corner.”

Sondelius stared at him. “Oh, I have a cab waiting.”

Martin felt embarrassed by this luxury. In the taxi, he tried to think of the right things to say to a celebrity.

“Tell me, Doctor, do they have public health boards in Europe?”

Sondelius brushed him off. “Did you see that girl who just walked by? Those ankles! Those shoulders! Is the beer any good at the beer garden? Do they have decent cognac? Have you tried Courvoisier 1865 cognac? Ugh! The lecturing! I swear I’m done with it. And wearing formal clothes on a night like this! You know, I mean all the wild stuff I say in my lectures, but let's forget about being serious for now, let’s drink, let’s sing ‘Der Graf von Luxemburg,’ let’s charm beautiful girls away from their dates, let’s talk about the joys of ‘Die Meistersinger,’ which only I truly appreciate!”

In the beer garden, the impressive Sondelius talked about the Cosmos Club, Halle’s research on child morality, the{184} mix of benedictine and apple jack, Biarritz, Lord Haldane, the Doane-Buckley method for testing milk, George Gissing, and lobster thermidor. Martin searched for a connection between Sondelius and himself, like one does with famous people or those met abroad. He could have said, “I think I met someone who knows you,” or “I’ve enjoyed reading all your articles,” but he started with, “Did you ever meet the two big guys in my med school—Winnemac—Dean Silva and Max Gottlieb?”

“Silva? I don’t remember. But Gottlieb—you know him? Oh!” Sondelius waved his big arms. “The greatest! The spirit of science! I had the pleasure of talking to him at McGurk. He wouldn’t sit here complaining like me! He makes me look like a circus clown! He takes all my statements about epidemiology and shows me I’m a fool! Ha, ha, ha!” He smiled and started going off on a rant about high tariffs.

Each topic had its own fitting drink. Sondelius was an incredible drinker, and he could handle it well. He mixed Pilsener, whisky, black coffee, and a drink that the waiter claimed was absinthe. “I should head to bed by midnight,” he complained, “but it feels wrong to cut off a good conversation. Come on, tempt me a little! I'm easy to tempt! But I really need five hours of sleep. No exceptions! I have a lecture in—it's somewhere in Iowa—tomorrow evening. Now that I'm over fifty, I can't function on just three hours like I used to, and I’ve discovered so many new things I want to discuss.”

He was more articulate than ever; then he got frustrated. A grumpy-looking guy at the next table listened in, stared, and laughed at them. Sondelius switched from discussing Haffkine’s cholera serum to angrily saying:

“If that guy stares at me any longer, I’m going to go over and take him out! I’m a peaceful man now that I’m older, but I can’t stand people who stare. I’ll go and talk it out with him. I’ll just give him a little hit!”

While the waiters hurried over, Sondelius confronted the man, threatened him with his huge fists, then paused, shook his hand multiple times, and brought him back to Martin.

“This is a fellow countryman of mine from Gottenborg. He’s a carpenter. Sit down, Nilsson, sit down and have a drink. Hmm! VAI-ter!”

The carpenter was a socialist, a Swedish Seventh Day Adventist, a fierce debater, and loved drinking aquavit. He criticized Sondelius as an aristocrat, called out Martin for his lack of economic knowledge, and challenged the waiter about the brandy; Sondelius, Martin, and the waiter responded passionately, and the conversation became lively. Soon, they were kicked out of the beer garden and all squeezed into the waiting taxi, which shook with their debate. Martin could never figure out where they went. He might have imagined the whole thing. At one point, they seemed to be in a roadhouse on a long street that must have been University Avenue; at another, in a bar on Washington Avenue South, where three homeless men were sleeping at the end of the bar; and once in the carpenter’s house, where a stranger made coffee for them.

Wherever they were, they were at the same time in Moscow, Curaçao, and Murwillumbah. The carpenter built communist states, while Sondelius claimed he didn't care whether he worked under socialism or an emperor, as long as he could push people around and eliminate tuberculosis, and by dawn had cancer on the run.

They said goodbye at four, tearfully promising to meet again, whether in Minnesota or Stockholm, in Rio or in the southern seas, and Martin headed for Wheatsylvania to put an end to all this nonsense of letting people be sick.

And the great god Sondelius had killed Dean Silva, just as Silva had killed Gottlieb, Gottlieb had killed “Encore” Edwards the playful chemist, Edwards had killed Doc Vickerson, and Vickerson had killed the minister’s son who had a real trapeze in his barn.{186}

Dr. Woestijne from Vanderheide’s Grove worked part-time as the Health Superintendent for Crynssen County, but the job didn't pay well and didn't really excite him. When Martin came in and offered to take on all the work for half the salary, Woestijne gladly agreed, assuring him that it would significantly benefit his private practice.

It did. It nearly wrecked his private practice.

There was never an official appointment. Martin signed Woestijne’s name (spelling it in different interesting ways, depending on his mood) on documents, and the Board of County Commissioners acknowledged Martin’s limited authority, but the whole thing was likely illegal.

There was little science and even less heroism in his initial outbursts as a health officer, but a significant amount of irritation for his fellow townspeople. He snooped around yards, he criticized Mrs. Beeson for her stinking ash bins, Mr. Norblom for stacking manure on the street, and the school board for the school's poor ventilation and lack of instruction on tooth brushing. The citizens had previously been upset by his irreligion, his moral laxity, and his lack of local pride, but when they were pushed out of their comfortable and probably beneficial filth, they erupted.

Martin was truthful and painfully serious, but while he had the innocence of a dove, he lacked the cunning of a serpent. He didn’t help them understand his mission; he barely even tried. His authority, as Woestijne’s alter ego, looked impressive on paper but was weak in practice, and it was useless against the stubbornness he provoked.

He moved from stalking garbage to a drama of infection.

The community in Delft experienced a typhoid outbreak that started and stopped repeatedly. The villagers thought it originated from a group of squatters six miles up the creek,{187} and they considered lynching the offenders as a way to protest and add some excitement to their wheat-farming routine. When Martin argued that the creek would filter out any waste over six miles and that the squatters likely weren't the source, he was heavily criticized.

“He's quite the character, going around saying we need more health precautions! We take him to show where there are some dangerous animals that need to be dealt with, and they're just a bunch of troublemakers anyway, and all he does is talk nonsense about germ-killing effects or whatever ridiculous thing it is,” Kaes, the wheat buyer at the Delft elevator, remarked.

Flashing through the county, not ignoring but definitely not expanding his own practice, Martin tracked every recent case of typhoid within five miles of Delft. He examined milk routes and grocery deliveries. He found that most of the cases showed up after the visits of a traveling seamstress, a single woman who was virtuous and almost obsessively clean. She had had typhoid four years earlier.

"She's constantly carrying the germs. She needs to get checked out," he announced.

He found her sewing at the home of an elderly farmer-preacher.

With slight anger, she rejected the examination, and as he walked away, she could be heard crying over the insult, while the preacher cursed him from the doorstep. He came back with the local police officer and had the seamstress arrested and locked up in the isolation ward of the county poor farm. In her tests, he found billions of typhoid bacteria.

The fragile and decent body was not at ease in the stark white ward. She felt ashamed and scared. She had always been well-loved, a kind, scruffy, bright-eyed single woman who brought gifts to the babies, helped the overworked farmwives prepare dinner, and sang to the children in her thin, bird-like voice. Martin was hated for harassing her. “He wouldn’t dare pick on her if she wasn’t so poor,” they said, and they discussed a jail break.

Martin was worried. He visited the seamstress at the poor farm, trying to make her see that there was no other option for her. He brought her magazines and sweets. But he was firm. She couldn’t go free. He believed that she was responsible for at least one hundred cases of typhoid and nine deaths.{188}

The county mocked him. Cause typhoid now, when she had been healthy for four years? The County Commissioners and the County Board of Health brought in Dr. Hesselink from the next county. He sided with Martin and his maps. Every meeting of the Commissioners turned into a fight now, and it was unclear whether Martin would be destroyed or exalted.

Leora saved him and the seamstress. “Why not start a collection to send her to a big hospital where she can be treated, or where they can take care of her if she can’t be cured?” she suggested.

The seamstress checked into a sanitarium—and everyone pretty much forgot about her for the rest of her life—and his recent foes remarked about Martin, “He’s really sharp and totally on top of things.” Hesselink stopped by to tell him, “You did a good job this time, Arrowsmith. Happy to see you’re getting serious about work.”