Free The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson Page B

the pain would have subsided or he would be dead. He wound a scarf around his throat, pulled his trilby down over his eyes, and scurried down the lane. Twenty years before he had been a patient of Dr Gerald Lattimore's father, Charles Lattimore, who had keeled over in his surgery just minutes after seeing Treslove. And more than twenty years before that Dr Gerald Lattimore's grandfather, Dr James Lattimore, had been killed in a car crash while returning from delivering Treslove. Whenever Treslove visited Dr Gerald Lattimore he remembered Dr Charles Lattimore's and Dr James Lattimore's deaths and imagined that Gerald Lattimore must remember them, too.
    Does he blame me? Treslove wondered. Or worse, does he dread my visits in case the same thing happens to him? Doctors read the genes the way fortune-tellers read the tea leaves; they believe in rational coincidence.
    Whatever Dr Gerald Lattimore dreaded or remembered, he always handled Treslove more roughly than Treslove believed was necessary,
    'How painful is that?' he asked pinching Treslove's nose.
    'Bloody painful.'
    'I still think nothing's broken. Take some paracetamol. What did you do?'
    'Walked into a tree.'
    'You'd be surprised how many of my patients walk into trees.'
    'I'm not in the slightest bit surprised. Hampstead's full of trees.'
    'This isn't Hampstead.'
    'And we're all preoccupied these days. We don't have the mental space to notice where we're going.'
    'What's preoccupying you?'
    'Everything. Life. Loss. Happiness.'
    'Do you want to see someone about it?'
    'I'm seeing you.'
    'Happiness isn't my field. You depressed?'
    'Strangely not.' Treslove looked up at Lattimore's ceiling fan, a rickety contraption with thin blades which rattled and wheezed as it slowly turned. One day that's going to come off and hit a patient, Treslove thought. Or a doctor. 'God is good to me,' he said, as though that was who he'd been looking at in the fan, 'all things considered.'
    'Take your scarf off a minute,' Lattimore said suddenly. 'Let me see your neck.'
    For a doctor, Lattimore was, much like his fan, insubtantially put together. Treslove remembered his father and imagined his grandfather as men of bulk and authority. The third Dr Lattimore looked too young to have completed his studies. His wrists were as narrow as a girl's. And the skin between his fingers pink, as though the air had not got to him yet. But Treslove still did as he was told.
    'And did the tree also make those marks on your neck?' the doctor asked him.
    'OK, a woman scratched me.'
    'Those don't look like scratches.'
    'OK, a woman manhandled me.'
    'A woman manhandled you! What did you do to her?'
    'You mean did I manhandle her back? Of course not.'
    'No, what did you do to make her manhandle you?'
    Culpability.
    From before Treslove could remember, first the first Dr Lattimore, by implication, and second the second Dr Lattimore, by looks and stern words, had punished him with culpability. It didn't matter what ailment he turned up with - tonsillitis, shortness of breath, low blood pressure, high cholesterol - it was always somehow Treslove's fault; simply being born, Treslove's fault. And now a suspected fractured nose. Also his fault.
    'I am innocent of any responsibility for this,' he said, sitting down again and hanging his head, as though to suggest a beaten dog. 'I was mugged. Unusual, I know, for a grown man to be beaten up and then to have his pockets emptied by a woman. But I was. I'd say it's my age.' He thought twice about what he said next but he said it anyway. 'You might not know that your grandfather delivered me. I have been in the hands of Lattimores from the beginning. It might be time now for a third-generation Lattimore to recommend me sheltered accommodation.'
    'I don't want to disabuse you but if you think you'll be safe in sheltered accommodation you're mistaken. There are women there who'd rob you as soon as look at you.'
    'What about an old folks' home?'
    'The same, I'm afraid.'
    'Do I