That was the hardest year. Emmanuel told himself every day that it would have to be the last—another seven hours in the classrooms would kill him. No, not kill him, make him do something, murder, suicide, what did he know? What if he kicked over an apparatus in the laboratory, what if he spat into the dean’s august, bearded face? They’d throw him out then.... Histology, materia medica, physiological chemistry, the rotten, dead stuff ... all the rotten, dead stuff.... And then there would have to be an added year, in a hospital. He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, an interne. He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, taking thermometers out of the mouths of patients, making clinical charts, listening to the smutty confidences of leering nurses....
He tried to go through that year, somehow. The street was still there, but since that evening many months ago when he had turned to defy it, he was no longer afraid of it. He was doing something which, he knew, the street must approve of.
He was doing something! He was writing. Writing was easy. Except when the words would not come. Or the wrong ones came. The dictionary was stupid. Dots and dashes and exclamation marks were stupid. They ruined the melody. Who said writing was easy, anyhow? What about the song? It would go on in your head, in your ears, it would paint pictures: dreamfields of the dawn, grottoes where purple and blue flowers sang. When you tried to put all that to paper there were only words and the song was gone. Words were harsh—you couldn’t write down the melody.... But he wrote.
He said to Etta:
“I’ll be a writer!”
“Gowan! Not a doctor?” She didn’t believe what he said, of course. She thought it a good joke. “That ain’t a good trade.”
A trade!
“Oh, yes, it’s very good when it’s a trade,” he replied. “Mine will be art.” He wanted to take back the words immediately. Art! He! When the melody could not be captured. Uncertainly: “Well, of course, it’s not very profitable.”
“Then you can’t be a writer,” decided Etta, “because you’ll have to earn money. Sure!”
“Oh, money!” Emmanuel looked at his shiny trousers. “Money!”