At two o’clock Dr. Voltolini arrived. The clinical assistant who had examined Karen at Ruth’s request had no time to make regular visits, so Ruth had suggested that Voltolini, whom she knew, be permitted to continue the treatment.
Karen refused to answer nearly all his questions. Her hatred of physicians dated from her experiences on the streets.
“I hardly know what attitude to take,” Dr. Voltolini said to Christian, who accompanied him to the stairs. “There’s an incomprehensible stubbornness in her. If I didn’t want to accommodate you, I would have given up the case long ago.” He had been deeply charmed by Christian, and often observed him tensely. Christian did not notice this.
He reproached Karen for her behaviour.
“Never mind,” she said curtly. “These doctors are swindlers and thieves. They speculate on people’s foolishness. I don’t want him to lay his hand on me. I don’t want him to listen to my heart so I can smell his bald head, or tap me all over and look like an executioner. I don’t need him if I’m going to live, and less if I’ve got to die.”
Christian did not answer.
Karen crouched in her bed. She suffered from pain to-day. A saw seemed to be drawn up and down between her ribs. She went on: “I’d like to know why you bother to study medicine. Tell me that. I’ve never asked you anything, but I’d like to know. What attracts you about being a saw-bones? What good will you get out of it?”
Christian was surprised at her insistent tone and at the glitter in her eyes. He tried to tell her, arguing clumsily. He talked to her as to an equal, with respect and courtesy. She did not wholly understand the sense of his words, but she thrust her head far forward, and listened breathlessly.
Christian said that it was not the study itself that had attracted him, but the constant contact with human beings into which it brought you. Then, too, there was the natural temptation to choose a study the length of which could be shortened by bits of knowledge that he already had. When he first determined to take it up, he had also thought of its practical usefulness to him. That thought he had now abandoned. He had believed that he might earn his livelihood by practising medicine; but he had been forced to the conclusion that he was morally incapable of earning money by any means. He had reached this conclusion not long since. He had gone to visit the student Jacoby and found him out. Just then a child of the landlady had fallen from a ladder and become unconscious. He had carried the child into the room, rubbed it with alcohol, listened to its heart, and stayed with it a while. When the child had quite recovered and he himself had been ready to go, the mother had pressed a two-mark piece into his hand. He had had the impulse to laugh into the woman’s face. He hadn’t been able to realize the cause of his shame, but the sense of it had been so strong as to make him dizzy. And that incident had taught him the impossibility of his taking money for services.