“Manny! Oh, my good God, honest? Honest, Manny? My Manny, my good son, what’s going to be a doctor, what’s going to be so good to his family!”
She kissed him. She pawed over his face, his hair. He suffered that. Writing? Well.... Where was the street? Well.... He’d be a doctor.... Etta, his father, his mother, Reba....
“Sure, Ma.”
IV
Emmanuel watched the patient go out of his office. He hadn’t been able to do anything for the girl. He hadn’t dared to do anything for her. In fact, he had shaken his head even before hearing her request. Her eyes had told him. Sorry for the girl? Yes. Of course he was sorry for her. But it wasn’t ethical.... He had to laugh at the word. Ethics—smug euphemism. Simply afraid, that was the truth. Couldn’t risk it. He, the well-known physician, member of medical associations, “a respected member of the community.”
Seven years ago, perhaps, when money had been needed. When impatient eyes were watching him. Four pairs of eyes—no, six, because there had been Etta’s family, too. Now there was enough money. Now there was his office. The mahogany desk with its impressive medical volumes, the white enamel instrument cabinet. An X-ray apparatus. The elaborate washstand with its gleaming appointments. The blue-lettered sign on the window: E. Manfred Woll, M.D.
“That’s not I, of course,” he told himself.
E. Manfred Woll.... Etta’s doing.
“You can’t have a kike name in a swell neighbourhood like this,” she had told him.
All right, the physician, medicinæ doctor, that was E. Manfred Woll. But then where was Emmanuel Wolkowitz? He didn’t know.