“Anything happen in the psychiatry class? I cut it, you know.” Had to make conversation! Oh, anything.... The street....
“No. Nothing much. Old man Hedley gassed some more about maniac-depressives. Usual stuff.”
Hedley ... that was the professor ... maniac-depressives ... oh, yes, maniac-depressives.... (Was that somebody laughing up in that window, behind those flowers? A girl) ... maniac....
“He ... he didn’t.... (A girl! Her body can’t be seen, but she must have white shoulders, smiling through the transparent crimson shawl!) ... let me see ... oh, yes ... he didn’t say when those paranoia reports are due?”
“No.”
“He didn’t! That’s funny!” Emmanuel began to laugh softly. He could feel, without actually seeing it, that the other threw him a questioning troubled glance from the corner of his eye. That made him laugh more. The fool! He didn’t know that the laughter belonged to the girl behind the flowers, to the girl who must have silken eyes and a soft throat. “Well, I guess I’ll cut to-morrow again.”
“Yes?” Without interest.
“Yes!” A warmth came over Emmanuel. He felt himself getting angry, at what he didn’t know. “Yes! I’ll cut it as many times as I damn feel like it. See?” He realized that this required an explanation. “I’m no good at the stuff. I don’t want to be good at it. I’ll never be a doctor. I hate the thought of ever being a doctor.”
“Then why did you come to the school?” In spite of himself the man was compelled to ask. He was amazed at the fury in Emmanuel’s words. “Why did you take up medicine?”
“Why? What the hell do you ask me that for? Don’t you know?” Emmanuel wasn’t listening to himself. The questions had come out of his mouth almost automatically. This was not his only conversation of the kind. Just now he was paying attention to the piano that was being played in a house up the street. “No, I guess you can’t know,” his mouth continued. “You’re not a Jew.”