Free Dimiter by William Peter Blatty Page B

common in these antiseptic halls as the moans of the soldiers in the Burn Ward late at night. On Monday a nurse named Samia Maroon had reported to him breathlessly that she had seen some sort of apparition. And then there was that two-year-old boy in the Children’s Ward with rabdomial sarcoma, a rapid-spreading, always fatal cancer. For weeks the boy’s X-rays had turned up a mass in his chest growing steadily and ominously larger. Overnight the mass vanished. Examining the X-ray, “It’s that damned elusive Pimpernel,” the confounded neurologist had murmured. The boy had also suffered from dysautonomia, a mysterious crippling of the nervous system that afflicted only the Ashkenazim, the descendants of Eastern European Jews, and whose victims were unable to cry or feel pain. Like the cancer, the disease and its symptoms had vanished.
Maurice!
Mayo thought,
The crazy goniff doesn’t play by his own damned rules!
As for the nurse’s apparition:
Couldn’t be!
    Staring down into his tea, the neurologist sighed and looked wistful; no poppy-seed bagels to be found at this hour.
They don’t drop from the sky anymore,
he mourned. He lurched ahead, disconsolately slouching through the open double doors beside the barred and shuttered counters of a Bank Leumi branch, thus exiting the medical school to cross the dark stone squares of a courtyard and enter the hospital’s main reception.Two heavyset women were mopping the floor, sloshing water and suds back and forth hypnotically on the beige and black speckle of the tiles. The cavernous and echoing hall that by day was filled with bustle and the chatter of life was now still and deserted except for the two charwomen. And one other person, Mayo saw with dismay. His gaunt face gray with a stubble of beard, a shriveled old Arab in a threadbare dark blue pinstriped suit was seated on one of the cedar benches where the outpatients waited their turn to see a doctor. His spindly frame drawn tightly erect, the old Arab was staring at Mayo intently with an air of hope and expectation.
Meshugge,
thought Mayo,
in the Arabic
velterrein,
completely lost in space.
Softly groaning, Mayo sidled to the bench and sat down.
    “Good morning,” he quietly greeted the man in Arabic.
    “Morning of roses.”
    “Morning of gold. Tell me, why are you here again so early, my brother? We’ve gone through this once before, friend, have we not?” Mayo had recently encountered the Arab while returning from a late-night call on a patient complaining of excruciating “phantom limb” pain. The old fellow had been adamant in his conviction that because he was an Arab he might not be treated unless he was clearly the first in line.
    “Uncle, didn’t you get to see the doctor last week?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “And he treated you?”
    “Yes.”
    “So then why are we here now, uncle?”
    “Why not?”
    Mayo pursed his lips and looked blocked “Why not?” served a function in colloquial Arabic closely akin to the Yiddish “
nu
,” a vague and multifaceted response with innumerableshades and twists of meaning including no meaning whatsoever. But before the neurologist could narrow the question, the Arab touched his fingers to the side of his head, declaring woefully, “Please. This is new. I have headaches.”
    “There’s no need to come so early, though, uncle. Really. Arab or Jew, it makes no difference. Have we still not discovered this, uncle?”
    “Well, the war.”
    Mayo’s gaze flicked down to the patient application form rolled up in the Arab’s left hand. At Mayo’s glance a faint papery crinkling sound could be heard as the apprehensive Arab tightened his grip.
    Mayo looked up at him again without expression.
    “Did you fill out the form?” he asked quietly.
    “Yes.”
    “And did you tell them again that you are Puerto Rican?”
    The Arab’s eyes shimmered with guilt and defiance.
    “Why not?”
    Mayo lowered his head for a moment, then looked up.
    “You’re a farmer,