Джон Ирвинг
The Cider House Rules / Правила виноделов

© Загородняя И. Б., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2018

Conventionality is not morality. Selfrighteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.[1]

Charlotte Bronte, 1847

For practical purposes abortion may be defined as the interruption of gestation before viability of the child.[2]

H.J. Boldt, M.D., 1906

1. The Boy Who Belonged to St. Cloud's

In the hospital of the orphanage at St. Cloud's, Maine, two nurses – Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela – gave names to the new babies.

The director of the boys' division was a doctor. His name was Wilbur Larch. One of the nurses thought that Dr Larch was like the hard wood of the tree of that name[3].

Nurse Edna imagined that she was in love with Dr Larch, and she often named babies John Larch, or John Wilbur (her father's name was John).

The boy was named Homer Wells by the other nurse. “Homer” had been the name of one of her family's many cats. “Wells” was associated with Nurse Angela's father's business – drilling wells – hard and honest work. Angela thought that her father had those qualities, which gave the word “wells” a deep aura.

St. Cloud's, Maine – the town – had been a logging camp for most of the nineteenth century. The first building was a saw mill. The first settlers were French Canadians – woodcutters; then the river bargemen came, then the prostitutes, and (at last) there was a church. The first logging camp had been called, simply, Clouds – because the valley was low and the weather was cloudy.

Dr Wilbur Larch – who was not only the doctor for the orphanage and the director of the boys' division (he had also founded the place) – was the historian of the town. According to Dr Larch, the logging camp called Clouds became St. Clouds only because of the Catholic instinct to put a Saint before so many things. But by the time it became St. Cloud's, it looked like a mill town. The forest, for miles around, was cleared.

There was never any spring in that part of Maine. The roads were impassable. The work of the town was shut down. The springtime river was so swollen, and ran so fast, that no one wanted to travel on it. Spring in St. Cloud's meant trouble: trouble of drinking and prostituting. Spring was the suicide season. In spring, the seeds for an orphanage were planted.

When the valley around St. Cloud's was cleared and when there were no more logs to send downriver, the saw mill was closed down.

And what was left behind? The weather, the sawdust, and the buildings: the mill with its broken windows; the whore hotel with its dance hall downstairs; the few private homes, and the church, which was Catholic, for the French Canadians.

And the people who were left behind? There were people: the prostitutes and the children of these prostitutes. Not one of the officers of the Catholic Church of St. Cloud's stayed.

Anyway, in 190— Dr Wilbur Larch started to correct the wrongs of St. Cloud's. He had a lot of work. For almost twenty years, Dr Larch left St. Cloud's only once – for World War I. Dr Larch wanted to do something for the good of someone.

In 192—, when Homer Wells was born and named, Nurse Edna (who was in love) and Nurse Angela (who wasn't) had a special name for St. Cloud's founder, physician, town historian, war hero, and director of the boys' division.

They called him “Saint Larch,” – and why not?

Homer's first foster parents returned him to St. Cloud's; they thought there was something wrong with him – he never cried. They thought this wasn't normal.

His second foster family reacted differently to Homer's silence. They beat the baby regularly and Homer cried a lot. The boy's crying saved him. The stories of Homer's loud cries found their way to the orphanage. So Dr Larch brought the boy back to St. Cloud's.

Homer Wells came back to St. Cloud's so many times, after so many unsuccessful foster homes, that the orphanage made St. Cloud's his home. It was not easy to accept, but Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna – and, finally, Dr Wilbur Larch – had to admit that Homer Wells belonged to St. Cloud's.

“Well, then, Homer,” said St. Larch, “I expect that you will be of use.”

In his journal – A Brief History of St. Cloud's — Dr Larch kept his daily record of the business of the orphanage. “Here in St. Cloud's,” Larch wrote in his journal, “we have only one problem. His name is Homer Wells. He is a true orphan, because his only home will always be at St. Cloud's. God forgive me. I have made an orphan; his name is Homer Wells and he will belong to St. Cloud's forever.”

By the time Homer was twelve years old, he knew the place perfectly. He knew its laundry room, its kitchen, its corners where the cats slept. He knew the bells; in fact, he rang them. He knew who the tutors were. He knew ah the girls. The director of the girls' division was not a doctor, so when the girls were sick, they visited Dr Larch at the hospital or Larch went to the girls' division to visit them. The director of the girls' division was Mrs Grogan, although she never mentioned Mr Grogan.

The three tutors came to St. Cloud's from a nearby small town. There was a woman who taught math; she was a bookkeeper for a textile mill. She preferred addition and subtraction to multiplication and division. (Dr Larch discovered one day that Homer had never learned the multiplication table).

Another woman, a rich plumber's widow, taught grammar and spelling. Her method was chaotic. She gave her pupils long texts with uncapitalized, misspelled, and unpunctuated words, and told the children to put them into sentences, correctly punctuated and correctly spelled. She then corrected the corrections; the final document looked like a treaty between two illiterate countries at war which was revised many times. The text was always strange to Homer Wells, even when it was finally correct. This was because the woman took the texts from a book of hymns for the church, and Homer Wells had never seen a church or heard a hymn.

The third tutor, a retired teacher, was an old, unhappy man who lived with his daughter's family because he couldn't take care of himself. He taught history, but he had no books. He taught the world from memory; he said the dates weren't important. He could talk about Mesopotamia for a full half hour, but when he stopped for a moment to drink some water, he continued to speak about Rome.

So Homer liked doing chores more than education. His favorite chore was selecting the evening reading.

Dr Larch read aloud twenty minutes every evening. Dickens was a personal favorite of Dr Larch. It took him several months to read Great Expectations[4], and more than a year to read David Copperfield[5].

Almost none of the orphans understood the novels because the language was too difficult. But the evening reading helped them to fall asleep and those few who understood the words and the story could leave St. Cloud's in their dreams.

Both Great Expectations and David Copperfield were about orphans. (“What else could you read to an orphan?” Dr Larch wrote in his journal.)

2. The Lord's Work

Wilbur Larch was born in Portland, Maine, in 186—. He was the son of a tidy woman who served a man named Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland and the so-called father of the Maine law that introduced Prohibition[6] to that state. Wilbur Larch's mother loved her employer and saw herself more as his co-worker for the reform than as his servant (which she was).

Interestingly, Wilbur Larch's father was a drunk. To young Wilbur, his father never looked drunk – he never fell or lay in a stupor, he never shouted. But he always looked a little surprised, as if he had suddenly remembered (or had just forgotten) something important.

When Wilbur was a boy, it never occurred to him that his father's missing fingers were the result of too many bottles of beer while operating the lathe – “just accidents,” his father said.

Although he grew up in the mayor's mansion, Wilbur Larch always used the kitchen entrance. He studied hard because he preferred the company of books to his mother's talk with other servants.

Wilbur Larch went to Bowdoin College, and to Harvard Medical School where he was an excellent student.

In the same year, 188—, when Wilbur Larch became a doctor, Neal Dow died. In grief, Wilbur Larch's mother died soon, too. A few days later, Wilbur's father sold everything and went to Montreal, where he drank a lot and eventually died of cirrhosis. His body was returned to Portland on the same train that had carried him away. Wilbur Larch met the train and buried his father.

Larch was an ether addict. He was an open-drop-method man. With one hand he held a mask over his mouth and nose. He made this mask himself: he wrapped many layers of gauze around a cone of stiff paper. With his other hand, he wet the cone with ether dropping from the can.

Wilbur gave much less ether to himself than to patients during an operation. When the hand that held the ether can felt weak, he put the can down; when the hand that held the cone over his mouth and nose dropped to his side, the cone fell off his face. He didn't feel the panic that a patient experiences – before that happened, he always dropped the mask.

When young Dr Larch started to deliver babies in the poor district of Boston, the South End, he thought that ether could relieve childbirth. Although he carried the ether can and the gauze cone with him, he didn't always have time to anesthetize the patient. Of course he used it when he had the time; he didn't agree with his elder colleagues that children should be born in pain.

Larch delivered his first child to a Lithuanian family in a coldwater top-floor apartment in a dirty street. There was no ice in the apartment. (The ice was necessary in case of bleeding). So Larch asked the husband to bring some. There was a pot of water already boiling on the stove, but Larch wished he could sterilize the entire apartment. He listened to the fetus's heartbeat while he watched a cat toying with a dead mouse on the kitchen floor.

When the husband returned with the ice, he stepped on the cat, which cried so loudly that Wilbur Larch thought the child was being born. It was a short and safe delivery, but the patient continued bleeding. Larch knew it was dangerous; fortunately, the ice helped.

After washing the baby Larch left the apartment. Just then he heard a noisy quarrel of the family. The delivery had been only a brief interruption to their life.

He walked out of the house and looked up in time to see the object flying through the window of the Lithuanian apartment. Larch was shocked to see that the object thrown from the window – and now dead on the ground at his feet – was the cat.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote later, “I am constantly grateful for the South End of Boston.” He meant he was grateful for its children and for the feeling they gave him: that the act of helping them to be born was perhaps the safest phase of their life.

One night, when Wilbur was sleeping in the South End Branch of the Boston Lying-in Hospital, he was informed by one of the doctors that a patient was waiting for him.

There were stories about an abortionist in the South End who charged nearly five hundred dollars for an abortion, which very few poor women could afford, so they became his prostitutes. His place was called, simply, “Off Harrison”. One of lying-in hospitals was on Harrison Street, so that “Off Harrison,” in street language, meant not-official, or illegal.

The woman who came to see Dr Larch knew “Off Harrison” methods, which was why she asked Wilbur Larch to do the job.

“You want an abortion,” Wilbur Larch said softly. It was the first time he had spoken the word.

“It isn't moving yet!” said the woman.

Wilbur Larch didn't think anyone had a soul, but until the middle of the nineteenth century, the law's attitude toward abortion was simple and (to Wilbur Larch) sensible: before the first movement of the fetus – abortion was legal. And it was not dangerous to the mother to perform an abortion before the fetus started moving.

Wilbur Larch could hear the nurse-anesthetist sleeping. For an abortion, he needed only a little more ether than he usually gave himself. He had everything he needed. He could operate.

But Wilbur Larch was too young; he hesitated. He didn't know what to say to his colleagues, or to the nurse if she woke up. It was illegal; it was dangerous. So the woman left.

She was brought back to the South Branch a week later. No one knew how she got there; she was beaten, perhaps because she hadn't paid the usual abortion fee. She had a very high fever – her swollen face was as hot and dry to the touch as bread fresh from the oven. They woke Wilbur.

The woman died before Dr Larch could operate on her. “I refused to give her an abortion a week ago,” Wilbur Larch said.

“Good for you!” said the house officer.

But Wilbur Larch thought this was no good for anyone.

In the morning, Dr Larch visited “Off Harrison.” He needed to see for himself what happened there; he wanted to know where women went when doctors refused to help them. “If pride was a sin,” thought Dr Larch, “the greatest sin was moral pride.”

He beat on the door but no one heard him. When he opened the door and stepped inside, no one bothered to look at him. They did not use ether “Off Harrison.” For pain they used music. A group called The German Choir practiced Lieder in the Front rooms “Off Harrison.” They sang passionately.

The only instrument was a piano; there were not enough chairs for the women; the men stood in two groups, far from the women. The choir conductor stood by the piano. The air was full of cigar smoke and the stink of cheap beer. The choir followed the man's wild arms.

Larch walked behind the piano and through the only open door. He entered into a room with nothing in it – not a piece of furniture, not a window. There was only a closed door. Larch opened it and found himself in the waiting room. There were newspapers and fresh flowers and an open window; four people sat in pairs. No one read the papers or sniffed the flowers or looked out the window; everyone looked down and continued to look down when Wilbur Larch walked in. A man was sitting at a desk and eating something out of a bowl. The man looked young and strong and indifferent; he wore a pair of work overalls and a sleeveless undershirt; around his neck, like a gym instructor's whistle, hung a key – obviously to the cashbox.

Without looking at Wilbur Larch, the man said: “Hey, don't come here. It's only for ladies.”

“I'm a doctor,” Dr Larch said.

The man continued eating, but he looked up at Larch. The singers took a deep breath, and in the silence Larch heard the sound of someone vomiting. One of the women in the waiting room began to cry, but the choir sang again. “Something about Christ's blood,” Larch thought.

“What do you want?” the man asked Larch.

“I'm a doctor, I want to see the doctor here,” Larch said.

“There is no doctor here,” the man said. “Just you.”

“Then I want to give advice,” Larch said. “Medical advice. Free medical advice.”

The man studied Larch's face. “You're not the first one here,” the man said, after a while. “Wait for your turn.”

Larch looked for a seat. He was shocked by everything. He tapped his foot nervously and looked at a couple sitting next to him – a mother and her daughter. The daughter looked too young to be pregnant, but then why, Larch wondered, had the mother brought the girl here?

Wilbur Larch stared at the shut door, behind which he had heard unmistakable vomiting. Suddenly he heard the scream.

It was louder than the choir. The young girl jumped from her seat, sat down, cried out; she put her face in her mother's lap. Larch realized that she needed the abortion – not her mother. The girl didn't look older than ten or twelve years old.

“Excuse me,” Larch said to the mother. I'm a doctor.”

“So you're a doctor,” the mother said, bitterly. “And how can you help?” the mother asked him.

“How many months is she?” Larch asked the mother.

“Maybe three,” the mother said. “But I already paid them here.”

“How old is she?” Larch asked.

The girl looked up from her mother's lap. “I'm fourteen,” she said.

“She'll be fourteen, next year,” the mother said.

Larch stood up and said to the man with the cashbox key, “Pay them back. I'll help the girl.”

“I thought you came for advice,” the man said.

“To give it,” Dr Larch said.

“When you pay, there's a deposit. You can't get a deposit back.”

“How much is the deposit?” Larch asked. The man drummed his fingers on the cashbox.

“Maybe half,” he said.

When the evil door opened, an old couple looked into the waiting room. Behind them, on a bed, a woman lay under a sheet; her eyes were open but unfocused.

“He says that he's a doctor,” the cashbox man said, without looking at the old couple. “He says that he came to give you free medical advice. He tells me to pay these ladies back. He says that he'll take care of the young lady himself.”

Larch realized that the old white-haired woman was the abortionist; the old white-haired man was her assistant.

“Doctor Larch,” Dr Larch said, bowing.

“Well?” the woman asked, aggressively. “What's your advice, Doctor?”

“You don't know what you're doing,” Dr Larch said.

“At least I'm doing something,” the old woman said. “If you know how to do it, why don't you do it?” she asked. “If you know how, why don't you teach me?”

The woman under the sheet looked shaky. She sat up and tried to examine herself; she discovered that, under the sheet, she still wore her own dress. This knowledge relaxed her.

“Please listen to me, “Dr Larch said to her. “If you have a fever, you must come to the hospital. Don't wait.”

“I thought the advice was for me,” the old woman said. “Where's my advice?”

Larch tried to ignore her. He went out to the waiting room and told the mother with her young daughter that they should leave.

“Pay them back!” the old woman told the cashbox man the angrily.

She put her hand on Dr Larch's arm. “Ask her who the father is,” she said.

“That's not my business,” Larch said.

“You're right,” the old woman said. “But ask her, anyway – it's an interesting story.”

She spoke to the mother. “Tell him who the father is,” she said. The daughter began to cry; the old woman looked only at the mother. “Tell him,” she repeated.

“My husband,” the woman said, “her father.”

“Her father is the father,” the old woman said to Dr Larch. “Do you understand? About a third of them get it from their fathers, or their brothers. Rape,” she said. “Incest. Do you understand?”

“Yes, thank you,” Dr Larch said, pulling the girl with him.

After he had helped the poor girl, Larch became very popular with the unhappy women who needed him badly. He had a feeling that they followed him everywhere asking for help. Finally, he decided to return home.

Wilbur Larch applied to the Maine State board of medical examiners for a useful position in obstetrics. While they sought a position for him in some developing community, they liked his Harvard degree and made him a member of their board. Larch waited for his new appointment in his old hometown of Portland, in the old mayor's mansion where he had spent his childhood.

Larch often thought about the orphans of the South End. In 189—, less than half the mothers were married. According to the rules of the lying-in hospital, only married or recently widowed women of good moral character could be admitted. But in truth almost everyone was admitted: there were an astonishing number of women who said that they were widows.

He wondered why there were no orphans, no children or women in need in the tidy town of Portland. Wilbur Larch did not feel of much use there. He looked forward to getting a letter from the Maine State board of medical examiners.

But before the letter arrived, Wilbur Larch had another invitation. He was invited to Boston to have dinner with the family of Channing-Peabodys and friends. Larch knew that Channing and Peabody were old Boston family names, but he was unfamiliar with this strange combination of the two.

He felt uncomfortably dressed for the season – his only suit was a dark and heavy, and he hadn't worn it since the day of his visit “Off Harrison.” When Larch lifted the big brass door knocker of the Channing-Peabody house, he felt the suit was too hot. Mrs Channing-Peabody opened the door to receive him.

“Doctor Larch?” Mrs Channing-Peabody asked.

“Yes, Doctor Larch,” answered Larch and bowed to the woman with a tanned face and silver-gray hair.

“You must meet my daughter,” the woman said. “And all the rest of us!” she added with a loud laugh that chilled the sweat on Wilbur Larch's back.

All the rest of them were named Channing or Peabody or Channing-Peabody, and some of them had first names that resembled last names. Mrs Channing-Peabody's daughter was young and unhealthy-looking. Her name was Missy.

“Missy?” Wilbur Larch repeated. The girl nodded and shrugged.

They were sitting at a long table, next to each other. Across from them there was one of the young men. He looked angry.

The girl looked unwell. She was pale; she picked at her food. The dinner was delicious, but there was no subject for conversation.

The old retired surgeon who was sitting on Wilbur's other side – he was either a Channing or a Peabody – looked disappointed when he learnt that Larch was an obstetrician. The old man was hard of hearing and asked young Larch to speak louder. Their conversation was the dinner table's only conversation; they were talking about operations.

Wilbur Larch saw that Missy Channing-Peabody's skin was changing color from milk to mustard to spring-grass green, and almost back to milk. Her mother and the angry young man took the girl to the fresh air.

Wilbur Larch already knew what Missy needed. She needed an abortion. It was clear because of the visible anger of the young man, the old surgeon's interest in “modern” obstetrical procedure and the absence of other conversation. That was why he'd been invited: Missy Channing-Peabody, suffering from morning sickness, needed an abortion. Rich people needed them, too. Even rich people knew about him. He wanted to leave, but now his fate held him. He felt that he needed to perform the abortion.

Mrs Channing-Peabody took him out into the hall. He let her lead him to the room that had been prepared for him. On the way she said, “We have this little problem.”

Missy Channing-Peabody had certainly been ready. The family had converted a small reading room into an operating theater. There were old pictures of men in uniform and many books. There was a table, and Missy herself was lying in the correct position. She had already been prepared for the operation. Someone had done the necessary homework. Dr Larch saw the alcohol, the soap, the nail brush. There was a set of medical instruments.

Everything was perfect, but Wilbur Larch could not forgive the loathing which the family felt for him. Mrs Channing-Peabody seemed unable to touch him.

“These people need me but they hate me”, Larch was thinking, scrubbing under his nails. He thought that the Channing-Peabodys knew many doctors but they didn't want to ask one of them for help with this “little problem.” They were too pure for it.

“Take her temperature every hour,” Larch told the servant after he had finished operating. “If there's more than a little bleeding, or if she has a fever, I should be called. And treat her like a princess,” Wilbur Larch told the old woman and the young man. “Don't make her feel ashamed.”

When he put his coat on, he felt the envelope in the pocket. He didn't count the money, but he saw that there were several hundred dollars. It was the servant's treatment; it meant that the Channing-Peabody's were not going to ask him back for tennis or croquet.

Larch handed about fifty dollars to the old woman who had prepared Missy for the abortion. He gave about twenty dollars to the young tennis player, who had opened the door to the yard to breathe a little of the garden air. Larch was going to leave. He looked for the old surgeon, but there were only servants in the dining room – still clearing the table. He gave each of them about twenty or thirty dollars.

He found the kitchen and several servants busy in it, and gave away about two hundred dollars there.

He gave the last of the money, another two hundred dollars, to a gardener who was on his knees in a flower bed by the main door. He tried to fold the envelope and pin it to the main door; the envelope kept blowing free in the wind. Then he got angry, made a ball out of the envelope and threw it into the green lawn.

On his way back to Portland, Wilbur Larch was thinking about the last century of medical history – when abortion was legal. By the time he got back to Portland, he had made a decision. He was an obstetrician; he delivered babies into the world. His colleagues called this “the Lord's work.” And he was an abortionist; he delivered mothers, too. His colleagues called this “the Devil's work,” but it was all the Lord's work to Wilbur Larch.

He decided to deliver babies. He decided to deliver mothers, too.

In Portland, a letter from St. Cloud's waited for him. The Maine State board of medical examiners sent him to St. Cloud's.

In the first week spent in St. Cloud's, Wilbur Larch founded an orphanage (because it was needed), delivered three babies (one wanted, two unwanted – one became another orphan), and performed one abortion (his third). Dr Larch educated the population about birth control. Over the years, there was one abortion for every five births.

During World War I, when Wilbur Larch went to France, the replacement doctor at the orphanage did not perform abortions; the number of orphans doubled, but the doctor said to Nurse Edna and to Nurse Angela that he was put on this earth to do the Lord's work, not the Devil's. Dr Wilbur Larch wrote his good nurses from France that he had seen the real Devil's work: the Devil worked with weapon. The Devil's work was gas bacillus infection.

“Tell him,” Larch wrote Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna, “the work at the orphanage is all the Lord's work – everything you do, you do for the orphans!”

And when the war was over, and Wilbur Larch came home to St. Cloud's, Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela were already familiar with the language for the work of St. Cloud's – the Lord's work and the Devil's work, they called it, just to make it clear between themselves which operation was being performed. Wilbur Larch didn't mind – it was useful language – but both nurses agreed with Larch: that it was all the Lord's work.

It was not until 193— that they had their first problem. His name was Homer Wells. He went out into the world and came back to St. Cloud's so many times that it was necessary to put him to work; by the time a boy is a teen-ager, he should be of use.

After the Lord's work, or after the Devil's, the wastebasket contained the same things. In most cases: blood, cotton, gauze, placenta. Sometimes in the wastebaskets that Homer Wells carried to the cremator there were human fetuses.

And that is how Homer Wells (when he was thirteen) discovered that both the babies and the fetuses were delivered at St. Cloud's. One day, walking back from the cremator, he saw a fetus on the ground: it had fallen from the wastebasket, but when he saw it, he thought it had fallen from the sky. He looked for a nest but there were no trees.

Holding the thing in one hand, Homer ran with it to Dr Larch. Larch was sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; he was writing a letter.

“I found something,” Homer Wells said. Larch took the fetus from him and placed it on a clean white piece of paper on Nurse Angela's desk. It was about three months. “What is it?” Homer Wells asked.

“The Lord's work,” said Wilbur Larch, that saint of St. Cloud's, because at that moment he realized that this was also the Lord's work: teaching Homer Wells, telling him everything, explaining what was good and what was bad. It was a lot of work, the Lord's work.

3. Princes of Maine, Kings of New England

“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote, “we treat orphans like children from royal families.”

In the boys' division, after the bedtime reading Dr Larch shouted his nightly blessing over the beds standing in rows in the darkness.

In 193—, soon after Homer Wells saw his first fetus, he began reading David Copperfield, as a bedtime story, to the boys, just twenty minutes every night, no more, no less.

Then the lights were switched off and Dr Larch opened the door from the hall.

“Good night!” he said in a loud voice. “Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!”

Then the door closed, and the orphans were left in a new blackness. They were dreaming of their future. They imagined royal foster families and princesses who loved them.

For Homer Wells, it was different. The Princes of Maine that Homer saw, the Kings of New England that he imagined were at the court of St. Cloud's, they traveled nowhere. But even to Homer Wells Dr Larch's benediction was full of hope. These Princes of Maine, these Kings of New England, these orphans of St. Cloud's – they were the heroes of their own lives. Homer understood it clearly; Dr Larch, like a father, gave him that idea.

You can behave like a prince or like a king even at St. Cloud's, Dr Larch meant.

Homer Wells dreamed that he was a prince. He lifted up his eyes to his king: he watched St. Larch's every move. Homer couldn't forget the coolness of the fetus.

“Because it was dead, right?” he asked Dr Larch. “That's why it was cool, right?”

“Yes,” said Dr Larch. “I can tell you, Homer, it was never alive.”

“Never alive,” said Homer Wells.

“Sometimes,” Dr Larch said, “a woman just can't force herself to stop a pregnancy, she feels the baby is already a baby – and she has to have it – although she doesn't want it and she can't take care of it – and so she comes to us and has her baby here. She leaves it here, with us. She trusts us to find it a home.”

“She makes an orphan,” said Homer Wells. “Someone has to adopt it.”

“Someone usually adopts it,” Dr Larch said.

“Usually,” said Homer Wells. “Maybe.”

“Eventually,” Dr Larch said.

“And sometimes,” said Homer Wells, “the woman doesn't want to have a baby, right?”

“Sometimes,” said Dr Larch, “the woman knows very early in her pregnancy that this child is unwanted.”

“An orphan, from the start,” said Homer Wells.

“You can say so,” said Wilbur Larch.

“So she kills it,” said Homer Wells.

“You can say so,” said Wilbur Larch. “You can also say that she stops it before it becomes a child – she just stops it. In the first three or four months, the fetus – or the embryo (I don't say, then, “the child”) – it does not have a life of its own. It hasn't developed.”

“It has developed only a little,” said Homer Wells.

“It can't move,” said Dr Larch.

“It doesn't have a proper nose,” said Homer Wells, remembering it. On the thing which he found there was no nose; it had the nostrils of a pig.

“Sometimes,” said Dr Larch, “when a woman is very strong and knows that no one will care for this baby, and she doesn't want to bring a child into the world and try to find it a home – she comes to me and I stop it.”

Tell me again, what's stopping it called?” asked Homer Wells.

“An abortion,” Dr Larch said.

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “An abortion.”

“And what you held in your hand, Homer, was an aborted fetus,” Dr Larch said. “An embryo, about three to four months.”

“An aborted fetus, an embryo, about three to four months,” said Homer Wells, who usually repeated the last words of sentences.

“And that's why,” Dr Larch said patiently, “some of the women who come here don't look pregnant… the embryo, the fetus, is very small.”

“But they all are pregnant,” said Homer Wells. “All the women who come here either going to have an orphan, or they're going to stop it, right?”

“That's right,” Dr Larch said. “I'm just the doctor. I help them have what they want. An orphan or an abortion.”

“An orphan or an abortion,” said Homer Wells.

Nurse Edna teased Dr Larch about Homer Wells. “You have a new shadow, Wilbur,” she said.

“God, forgive me,” wrote Dr Larch. “I have created a disciple, I have a thirteen-year-old disciple.”

By the time Homer was fifteen, his reading of David Copperfield was so successful that some of the older girls in the girls' division asked Dr Larch to tell Homer to read to them.

“Shall I read just to the older girls?” Homer asked Dr Larch.

“Certainly not,” said Dr Larch. “You'll read to all of them.”

“In the girls' division?” Homer asked.

“Well, yes,” Dr Larch said. “All the girls can't come to the boys' division.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “But should I read to the girls first or to the boys first?”

“The girls,” Larch said. “The girls go to bed earlier than the boys.”

“Do they?” Homer asked.

“They do here,” Dr Larch said.

“And should I read them the same book?” Homer asked.

But Dr Larch decided that girl orphans should hear about girl orphans (he also believed that boy orphans should hear about boy orphans), and so he told Homer to read aloud Jane Eyre[7] to the girls.

It struck Homer that the girls were more attentive than the boys. It surprised Homer, because he found Jane Eyre not as interesting as David Copperfield. He was sure that Charles Dickens was a better writer than Charlotte Bronte.

“The girls' division,” Homer thought, “had a different smell from the boys'.” On the one hand, it smelled sweeter; on the other hand, it smelled sicker – it was difficult for Homer to decide.

When children went to bed, the boys and girls dressed alike – undershirts and underpants. Every time when Homer arrived at the girls' division, the girls were already in their beds, with their legs covered, some of them were sitting, some of them were lying. One of the girls was both bigger and older than Homer Wells. Her name was Melony.

Melony always looked at Homer Wells when he was reading. She was bigger than Mrs Grogan; she was too big for the girls' division. She was too big to be adopted. “She's too big to be a girl,” thought Homer Wells. Bigger than Nurse Edna, bigger than Nurse Angela – almost as big as Dr Larch – she was fat, but her fat looked solid. Homer Wells also knew that Melony was strong.

While reading aloud from Jane Eyre, Homer needed to keep his eyes off Melony. He was afraid that she could feel how he liked her heaviness.

After reading to the girls Homer hurried to the boys' division: the boys were waiting for him. Some of the smaller ones had fallen asleep. The others were lying with open eyes and open mouths, like baby birds. Homer felt he was rushing from nest to nest; his voice was feeding them and they always cried for more. His reading, like food, made them sleepy, but it often woke Homer up. He usually lay awake after the nightly benediction. There were different irritating noises.

Little Fuzzy Stone had a constant dry cough. He had wet, red eyes. He slept inside a humidified tent; there was a special waterwheel with a battery and a fan to distribute the vapor. It worked all night. Fuzzy Stone's chest sounded like a tiny, bad motor. The waterwheel, the fan, Fuzzy Stone's dramatic gasps combined in Homer's mind.

Dr Larch told Homer that Fuzzy Stone was allergic to dust. A child with chronic bronchitis was not easily adoptable. Who wants to take home a cough?

When Fuzzy Stone's coughing was too much for Homer Wells, he quietly went to the baby room. Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna was always there, usually awake. Sometimes, when the babies were quiet, even the nurse on duty was sleeping, and Homer Wells tiptoed past them all.

One night he saw one of the mothers standing in the baby room. She was standing in her hospital gown in the middle of the baby room, her eyes were closed. She was absorbing the smells and sounds of the baby room. Homer was afraid that the woman would wake up Nurse Angela, who was sleeping on the duty bed. Slowly, he led the woman back to the mothers' room.

The mothers were often awake when he came to have a look at them. Sometimes he brought someone a glass of water.

The women who came to St. Cloud's for the abortions rarely stayed for the night. They needed less time to recover than the women who had delivered. So Dr Larch discovered that they were very comfortable if they arrived in the morning and left in the early evening, just after dark. In the daytime, the sound of the babies was not so clear because the noise that the older orphans made, and the talk among the mothers and the nurses, confused everything. Dr Larch noticed that the sound of the newborn babies upset the women who had the abortions. At night only the crying babies and the owls made sounds at St. Cloud's.

If one of those women spent the night, it was never in the room with the mothers. Homer Wells saw that the expressions on their faces were troubled when they were sleeping. Homer Wells tried to imagine his own mother among the women. Where did she go after the childbirth? Or was there no place she wanted to go? And what, when she was lying there, was his father thinking – if he even knew he was a father? If she even knew who he was.

These are the things the women usually asked him:

“Are you a medical student?”

“Are you going to be a doctor when you grow up?”

“Are you one of the orphans?”

“How old are you? Hasn't anyone adopted you yet?”

“Do you like it here?”

And he usually answered:

“Maybe I will become a doctor.”

“Of course Doctor Larch is a good teacher.”

“That's right: I am one of the orphans.”

“I am almost sixteen.”

“Adoption wasn't for me. I wanted to come back.”

“Of course I like it here!”

One of the women with a huge belly asked him, “Do you mean if someone wanted to adopt you, you wouldn't go?”

“I wouldn't go,” said Homer Wells. “Right.”

“You wouldn't even think about it?” the woman asked.

“Well, I guess I'd think about it,” Homer Wells said. “But I'd probably decide to stay, as long as I can be of use here.”

The pregnant woman began to cry. “Be of use,” she said. She put her hands on her great belly. “Look at that,” she whispered, “Do you want to be of use?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells, who held his breath.

“No one wanted to put his ear against my belly and listen,” the woman said. “You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel the baby, or listen to it.”

“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.

“Don't you want to touch it or put your ear down to it?” the woman asked him.

“Okay,” said Homer Wells, putting his hand on the woman's hot, hard belly.

“Put your ear down against it, too,” the woman advised him.

“Right,” Homer said. He touched his ear very lightly to her stomach but she strongly pressed his face against her; she was like a drum. She was a warm engine.

“No one should have a baby if there's no one who wants to sleep with his head right there,” the woman whispered, patting the place where she held Homer's face. Right where? Homer wondered, because there was no comfortable place to put his head. He found it hard to imagine that the woman was carrying only one baby.

“Do you want to be of use?” the woman asked him, crying gently now.

“Yes. Be of use,” he said.

“Sleep right here,” the woman told him. He pretended to sleep with his face against the noisy belly, where she held him.

Nurse Angela called Homer Wells “angelic,” and Nurse Edna spoke of the boy's “perfection” and of his “innocence,” but Dr Larch worried about Homer's contact with the damaged women who needed the services of St. Cloud's. What impression did they make on the boy?

Homer Wells had a good, open face; it was not a face that could hide feelings and thoughts. He had strong hands and kind eyes; Dr Larch was worried about the life stories Homer had to hear. He was worried not about the dirty details, but about the dirty philosophy.

There were no curtains at St. Cloud's. The hospital dispensary was a corner room; it had a south window and an east window. Nurse Edna thought that the east window made Dr Larch such an early riser. The white hospital bed always looked untouched; Dr Larch was the last one who went to bed and the first one who rose, so there was a rumor that he never slept at all. If he slept, he slept in the dispensary. He did his writing at night, at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office. The nurses had long ago forgotten why this room was called Nurse Angela's office; Dr Larch had always used it for his writing. Since the dispensary was where he slept, perhaps Dr Larch felt the need to say that the office belonged to someone else.

The dispensary had two doors (one leading to a toilet and shower). With a window on the south end and on the east wall, and a door on the north and on the west, there was no wall one could put anything against; the bed was under the east window. The closed and locked cupboards with their glass doors formed a strange labyrinth in the middle of the room. The labyrinth of cabinets blocked the bed from view of the hall door, which, like all the doors in the orphanage, had no lock.

The dispensary afforded Larch some privacy for his ether tricks. He was not always conscious of the moment when his fingers lost their grip on the mask and the cone fell from his face. He could usually hear voices outside the dispensary, calling him. He was sure that he always had time to recover.

“Doctor Larch?” Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or Homer Wells, called, which was all Larch needed to return from his ether voyage.

“I'm coming!” Larch answered. “I was just resting.”

It was the dispensary, after all; the dispensaries of surgeons always smell of ether. And for a man who worked so hard and slept so little (if he slept at all), it was natural that sometimes he needed a nap. But Melony suggested to Homer Wells that Dr Larch had a bad habit.

“What's the strange smell he has?” Melony asked.

“It's ether,” said Homer Wells. “He's a doctor. He smells like ether.”

“Are you saying this is normal?” Melony asked him.

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“Wrong,” Melony said. “Your favorite doctor smells like he's got ether inside him – like he's got ether instead of blood.”

One day in the spring Melony said to Homer Wells, “Your favorite doctor knows more about you than you know. And he knows more about me than I know, maybe.”

Homer didn't say anything.

“Do you ever think about your mother?” Melony asked, looking at the sky. “Do you want to know who she was, why she didn't keep you, who your father was?”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“I was told I was left at the door,” Melony said. “Maybe it is so, maybe not.”

“I was born here,” said Homer Wells.

“So you were told,” Melony said.

“Nurse Angela named me,” Homer answered.

“Homer,” Melony said. “Just think about it: if you were born here in Saint Cloud's, they must have a record of it.

Your favorite doctor must know who your mother is. He knows her name. It is written down, on paper. It's a law.”

“A law,” Homer Wells said.

“It's a law that there must be a record of you,” Melony said. “They must have your history.”

“History,” said Homer Wells. He imagined Dr Larch sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; if there were records, they were in the office.

“If you want to know who your mother is,” Melony said, “find your file. And find my file, too. I'm sure they are more interesting than Jane Eyre.”

In fact, Dr Larch's papers included family histories – but only of the families who adopted the orphans. Contrary to Melony's belief, no records were kept of the orphans' actual mothers and fathers. An orphan's history began with its date of birth – its sex, its length in inches, its weight in pounds, its name. Then there was a record of the orphans' sicknesses. That was all. A much thicker file was kept on the orphans' adoptive families – any information about those families was important to Dr Larch.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” he wrote, “my first priority is an orphan's future. It is for his or her future, for example, that I destroy any record of the identity of his or her natural mother. The unfortunate women who give birth here have made a very difficult decision; they should not, later in their lives, make this decision again. And in almost every case the orphans should not look for the biological parents.

“I am thinking only of the orphans! Of course one day they will want to know. But how does it help anyone to look forward to the past? Orphans, especially, must look ahead to their futures. And what if his or her biological parent, in later years, feels sorry for the decision to give birth here? If there were records, it would always be possible for the real parents to trace their children. That is the storytelling business. That is not for the orphans. So that is not for me.”

That is the passage from A Brief History of St. Cloud's that Wilbur Larch showed to Homer Wells, when he caught Homer in Nurse Angela's office studying his papers.

“I was just looking for something, and I couldn't find it,” Homer said to Dr Larch.

“I know what you were looking for, Homer,” Dr Larch told him, “and it can't be found. I don't remember your mother. I don't even remember you when you were born; you didn't become you until later.”

“I thought there was a law,” Homer said. He meant a law of records, or written history – but Wilbur Larch was the only historian and the only law at St. Cloud's. It was an orphanage law: an orphan's life began when Wilbur Larch remembered it. That was Larch's law.

Homer knew that his simple note written to Melony “Cannot Be Found” would never satisfy her, although Homer had believed Dr Larch.

“What does he mean, Cannot Be Found?” Melony screamed at Homer; they were on the porch. “Is he playing God? He gives you your history, or he takes it away! If that's not playing God, what is?”

Homer Wells didn't answer. Homer thought that Dr Larch played God pretty well.

“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote, “I have the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should wait for those moments when it is possible to play God. There won't be many such moments.”

“Goddamn him!” Melony screamed; but Homer Wells didn't react to this remark, either.

“Homer,” Melony said, “We've got nobody. If you tell me we've got each other, I'll kill you.”

Homer kept silent.

“If you tell me we've got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,” she said, “if you tell me that, I'll torture you before I kill you.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“Goddamn you!” she screamed – at Dr Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud's, at the world.

“Why aren't you angry?” she asked Homer. “What's wrong with you? You're never going to find out who did this to you! Don't you care?”

“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.

“Help me, or I'm going to run away,” she told him. “Help me, or I'm going to kill someone.” Homer realized that it was not easy for him, in the case of Melony, “to be of use,” but he tried.

“Don't kill anyone,” he said. “Don't run away.”

“Why should I stay?” she asked. “You're not staying – I mean that someone will adopt you.”

“No, they won't,” Homer said. “Besides, I won't go.”

“You'll go,” Melony said.

“I won't,” Homer said. “Please, don't run away – please don't kill anyone.”

“If I stay, you'll stay – is that what you're saying?” Melony asked him. “Is that what I mean?” thought Homer Wells. But Melony, as usual, gave him no time to think. “Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Homer,” Melony said. She moved closer to him. “Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Homer,” she said.

“Right,” said Homer Wells. “I promise,” Homer said.

“You promised me, Homer!” she screamed at him. “You promised you wouldn't leave me! As long as I stay, you stay!”

“I promise!” he said to her. He turned away and went to see Dr Larch.

Dr Larch was not in Nurse Angela's office, where Homer had expected to find him; Homer went to the dispensary to see if Dr Larch was there.

Wilbur Larch was on his hospital bed in the dispensary with a gauze cone saturated with ether.

“Doctor Larch!”

Wilbur Larch took the deepest possible breath. His hand lost the cone, which rolled off his face and under the bed.

“Doctor Larch?” Homer Wells said again. The smell of ether in the dispensary seemed unusually strong to Homer, who passed through the labyrinth of medicine chests to see if Dr Larch was on his bed.

“I'm sorry,” Dr Larch said when he saw Homer beside his bed. He sat up too fast; he felt very light-headed; the room was swimming. “I'm sorry,” he repeated.

“That's okay,” said Homer Wells. I'm sorry that I woke you up.”

“Sit down, Homer,” said Dr Larch; he was ready for the conversation.

“Listen, Homer,” Dr Larch said, you're old enough to be my assistant!” Homer thought it was a funny thing to say and he began to smile. “You don't understand it, do you?” Larch asked. “I'm going to teach you surgery, the Lord's work and the Devil's, Homer!” Larch said.

“Homer,” Larch said, “You're going to finish medical school before you start high school!” This was especially funny to Homer, but Dr Larch suddenly became serious. “Well?” Larch asked. “It's not in David Copperfield. It's not in Jane Eyre, either – what you need to know,” he added.

“Here,” Larch said, handing Homer the old copy of Gray's Anatomy[8], “look at this. Look at it three or four times a day, and every night.”

“Here in St. Cloud's,” wrote Dr Wilbur Larch, “I have had little use for my Gray's Anatomy; but in France, in World War I, I used it every day.”

Larch also gave Homer his personal handbook of obstetrical procedure, his notebooks from medical school and from his internships; he began with the chemistry lectures and the standard textbook. He prepared a place in the dispensary for a few easy experiments in bacteriology.

Homer was impressed with the first childbirth that he watched – not so much with any special skill of Dr Larch. Homer was impressed by the natural rhythm of the labor and the power of the woman's muscles. He was shocked to see how unfriendly the child's new world was to the child.

In the evenings Homer continued the bedtime reading. One day, when he went back to the boys' division, Nurse Angela told him that John Wilbur was gone – adopted! “It is a nice family,” Nurse Angela told Homer happily.

When someone was adopted, Dr Larch changed the traditional benediction to the boys in the darkness. Before he addressed them as “Princes of Maine,” as “Kings of New England,” he made an announcement.

“Let us be happy for John Wilbur,” Wilbur Larch said. “He has found a family. Good night, John,” Dr Larch said, and the boys said after him:

“Good night, John!”

“Good night, John Wilbur.”

And Dr Larch paused before saying the usual: “Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!”

Homer Wells read Gray's Anatomy before he tried to go to sleep. Something was unusual that night. It took Homer some time to detect what was absent; the silence finally informed him. Fuzzy Stone and his noisy apparatus had been taken to the hospital. Apparently, Fuzzy required more careful monitoring, and Dr Larch had moved him into the private room, next to surgery, where Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela could look after Fuzzy.

Homer Wells thought that Fuzzy Stone looked like an embryo – like a walking, talking fetus. Dr Larch told Homer that Fuzzy had been born prematurely – that Fuzzy's lungs had not developed.

Homer couldn't sleep, he thought about Fuzzy Stone. He went down to the private room, next to surgery, but he couldn't hear the breathing apparatus. He stood quietly and listened, but the silence really frightened him.

“Where is he?” Homer asked Dr Larch. “Where's Fuzzy?”

Dr Larch was at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, where he was almost every night.

“I was thinking how to tell you,” Larch said.

“You said I was your apprentice, right?” Homer asked him. “Then you should tell me everything. Right?”

“That's right, Homer,” Dr Larch agreed. How the boy had changed! Why hadn't Larch noticed that Homer Wells needed a shave? Why hadn't Larch taught him to do that? “I am responsible for everything – if I am going to be responsible at all,” Larch reminded himself.

“Fuzzy's lungs weren't strong enough, Homer,” Dr Larch said. “They never developed properly. He caught every respiratory infection.”

Homer Wells was growing up; he started to feel responsible for things. “What are you going to tell the little ones?” Homer asked Dr Larch.

Wilbur Larch looked at Homer; he loved him so much! He was proud as a father. “What do you think I should say, Homer?” Dr Larch asked.

It was Homer's first decision as an adult. He thought about it very carefully. In 193—, he was almost sixteen. He was learning how to be a doctor at a time when most boys of his age were learning how to drive a car. Homer had not yet learned how to drive a car; Wilbur Larch had never learned how to drive a car.

“I think,” said Homer Wells, “that you should tell the little ones what you usually tell them. You should tell them that Fuzzy has been adopted.”

Larch knew that Homer was right. The next night, Wilbur Larch followed the advice of his young apprentice. Perhaps because he was telling lies, he forgot the proper routine. Instead of the announcement about Fuzzy Stone, he gave the usual benediction.

“Good night, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England!” Dr Larch addressed them in the darkness. Then he remembered what he was going to say. “Oh!” he said aloud. He frightened the little orphans.

“What's wrong?” cried a boy called Snowy.

“Nothing's wrong!” Dr Larch said, but the whole room of boys was anxious. Larch tried to say the usual thing. “Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone,” Dr Larch said in silence. “Fuzzy Stone has found a family,” Dr Larch said. “Good night, Fuzzy.”

“Good night, Fuzzy!” someone said. But Homer Wells heard a pause in the air; not everyone was absolutely convinced.

“Good night, Fuzzy!” Homer Wells said with confidence, and a few voices followed him.

“Good night, Fuzzy!”

“Good night, Fuzzy Stone!”

After Dr Larch had left them, little Snowy started speaking.

“Homer?” Snowy said.

“I'm here,” said Homer Wells in the darkness.

“How could anyone adopt Fuzzy Stone, Homer?” Snowy asked.

“Who could do it?” said another little boy.

“Someone with a better machine,” said Homer Wells. “It was someone who had a better breathing machine than the one Doctor Larch built for Fuzzy. It's a family that knows all about breathing machines. It's the family business,” he added, “breathing machines.”

“Lucky Fuzzy!” someone said.

Homer knew he had convinced them when Snowy said, “Good night, Fuzzy.”

Homer Wells, who was not yet sixteen, an apprentice surgeon, walked down to the river. The loudness of the river was a comfort to Homer, more comforting than the silence in the sleeping room that night. He stood on the riverbank. The boy was saying good-bye to his own childhood.

“Good night, Fuzzy,” Homer said over the river. The Maine woods let the remark without an answer. “Good night, Fuzzy!” Homer cried as loud as he could. And then he cried louder, “Good night, Fuzzy!” He, the grown-up boy, cried it again and again.

“Good night, Fuzzy Stone!”

4. Young Dr Wells

“In other parts of the world,” wrote Wilbur Larch, “there is society. Here in St. Cloud's we have no society – and there are no options. That's why an orphan is eager to become a member of any society.”

Wilbur Larch was thinking of Homer Wells when he wrote about “options.” Homer had no choice concerning his apprenticeship. What else could he learn if he didn't learn obstetrical procedure?

By 194—, Homer Wells (who was not yet twenty years old) had delivered many children himself, with Dr Larch always present, but Larch had not allowed Homer to perform an abortion. It was understood by both Larch and Homer that Homer was able to perform one, but Larch believed that Homer should complete medical school – a real medical school – and serve an internship in another hospital before he performed the abortion. The operation was not complicated, but Larch believed that it should be Homer's choice. Larch thought that Homer should know something of society before he made the decision, by himself, whether to perform abortions or not.

Wilbur Larch loved Homer Wells – he had never loved anyone as he loved that boy, and he could not imagine his own life at St. Cloud's without Homer. But the doctor knew that Homer Wells had to encounter with society if the boy was going to choose his life. Larch dreamed that Homer would go out in the world and then choose to come back to St. Cloud's. But who would choose such a thing? Maine had many towns, but there wasn't a place as charmless as St. Cloud's.

East of Cape Kenneth, the tourist trap, there was a pretty harbor town – the town of Heart's Haven; to the west of Heart's Haven there was another small town – the town of Heart's Rock.

The people of Heart's Haven didn't like Heart's Rock, nearby Drinkwater Lake, and the summer cottages on its muddy shores. The lake was the only place where people from Heart's Rock could spend the summer. The summer camps and cottages on the lakeshore were also used during the hunting-season weekends in the fall. The lake was dirty. People didn't drink the water of Drinkwater Lake, and there were many jokes on that subject in Heart's Haven.

Not all of Heart's Rock was so ugly. It was a town on quite open, neatly farmed land; it was fruit-tree country. There were beautiful orchards. In 194—, Ocean View Orchards, a big apple farm, on Drinkwater Road, which connected Heart's Rock to Heart's Haven, was pretty and plentiful. The farmhouse had patios, there were rose bushes; the lawns spreading from the main house to the swimming pool were beautiful.

The owner of Ocean View Orchards, Wallace Worthington, was from New York. He was not good at farming, but he knew almost everything about money and had hired the right people to run Ocean View (they were the men who really knew apples).

Worthington was a constant board member at the Haven Club; he was the only Heart's Rock resident who was a Haven Club member. Wallace Worthington employed half of the local people of Heart's Rock to work in his orchard, so he was loved in both towns. Wallace would remind Wilbur Larch of someone who he met at the Channing-Peabodys', where Dr Larch went to perform his second abortion – the rich people's abortion, as Larch thought of it. To Homer Wells, Wallace Worthington would look like a real King of New England.

Wallace Worthington's wife, Olive, looked like a queen but she had come from a miserable part of town.

Olive Worthington grew up selling clams out of the back of a pickup truck. Her mother smoked a lot and died of lung cancer when Olive was still in high school.

Cheerful Wallace Worthington was generous and kind. He adored Olive and everything about her – her gray eyes and her ash-blonde hair, and her New British accent which she had learnt at college. (Her brother, who was very successful as a well-digger, had paid for Olive's education, and that was the reason why she tolerated his visits at Ocean View Orchards, when he walked around the house in his muddy boots.)

Wallace Worthington was a real gentleman; he was very kind to his workers (he provided them with health insurance policies at his expense). But there was one problem – he seemed drunk all the time, so everyone in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock agreed that it was not easy to live with him.

Yet no one doubted that Wallace Worthington was faithful to Olive. They had a son, who was twenty in 194—. The young man was as big and handsome and charming as his father, with his mother's gray eyes; he even had a bit of her New British accent. Wallace Worthington, Junior, was called Wally. From the day of Wally's birth, Wallace Worthington was called Senior by everyone.

If Dr Larch spent some time around Senior Worthington, Larch might understand that the man was unfairly judged; of course he drank too much. But Senior was not a drunk. He had the classic, clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, which were failure of memory, restlessness, hyperactivity and defective judgment. But the townspeople didn't know the difference between drunkenness and Alzheimer's disease.

They misjudged Olive Worthington, too. She knew how to work. She saw, instantly, that Wallace Worthington was good about money but wasn't an expert in apples, and so she decided to help him. She found out who the knowledgeable foremen were and she paid them more money; she fired the others, and hired a younger, more reliable crew. She baked apple pies for the families of the workers who pleased her, and she taught their wives the recipe, too. She went to the university and learned how to plant a new-tree orchard; she learned more about the new chemicals than the foremen knew, and then she taught them. She took the farm out of Senior's careless hands, and she ran it very intelligently for him.

There are things that the societies of towns know about you, and things that they don't see. Senior Worthington was puzzled by his own state; he also thought that it was the result of the evils of drink. When he drank less – and still couldn't remember in the morning what he'd said or done the evening before; still hopped from one activity to the next, leaving a jacket in one place, a hat in another, his car keys in the lost jacket – when he drank less and still behaved like a fool, this confused him so much that he began to drink more. He was a victim of both Alzheimer's disease and alcoholism.

In this one respect Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock were like St. Cloud's: nothing could save Senior Worthington from what was wrong with him, and nothing could save Fuzzy Stone.

In 193—, Homer Wells began Gray's Anatomy — at the beginning. He began with the skeleton. He began with bones. In 194—, he was making his third journey through Gray's Anatomy.

“Heart is a hollow muscular organ of conical form, enclosed in the cavity of the PERICARDIUM”, Homer Wells could recite from Gray's Anatomy. By 194— Homer had looked at each of the hearts in the three dead bodies, or cadavers, that Dr Larch had gotten for him.

The cadavers were female, which was necessary in the process of educating Homer Wells in obstetrical procedure. There was always a problem getting a body. Homer remembered the three cadavers very well. By the time he got the third body he had developed enough of a sense of humor to give the body a name. He called her Clara after David Copperfield's mother – that poor, weak woman who was tyrannized by the terrible Mr Murdstone.

Body number two gave Homer the essential practice that prepared him for his first Caesarean section.

When Dr Larch was at the railroad station arguing with the stationmaster about the documents for the unfortunate Clara, Homer Wells was at St. Cloud's studying body number two. He was going to consult his Gray's, but just then Nurse Edna rushed into the room with a scream.

“Oh, Homer!” she cried, but she couldn't speak; finally, she pointed Homer in the direction of the dispensary. He ran there as quickly as he could, and found a woman lying on the dispensary floor. Her eyes were staring wildly. Then the woman began to move; her face, which had been flushed, turned a shiny blueblack; her heels struck the floor with such force that both her shoes flew off. Her mouth and chin were wet with froth.

“Eclampsia,” Homer Wells said to Nurse Edna.

“Doctor Larch is at the railroad station,” Homer told Nurse Edna calmly. “Someone has to call him. You and Nurse Angela should stay to help me.”

When Nurse Edna returned to the delivery room with Nurse Angela, Homer instructed the nurses to give morphine to the patient. Homer himself injected some magnesium sulphate into a vein, to lower blood pressure at least temporarily. In the interval between her last and her next convulsion, he told Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela to take the necessary tests. He asked the woman how many convulsions she had already suffered but she couldn't remember the number of convulsions. She only remembered their beginnings and their aftereffects. She also said she was expecting her baby in a month. The woman's state was very dangerous.

At the start of her next convulsion, Homer gave the woman a little ether, hoping to help her. But it didn't work though the woman's motion was slower. In the next interval, while the woman was still relaxed under the ether sedation, Homer examined the woman; labor hadn't begun. He was afraid to make the decision to start the operation; he wondered why Dr Larch didn't come.

An orphan had been told to find Larch at the railroad station; the boy returned and announced that Dr Larch had boarded the train to Three Mile Falls – in order to follow the dead body that the stationmaster had forwarded to the next stop. The stationmaster had simply refused to accept the cadaver. Larch, in a rage, had taken the next train after it.

“Oh-oh,” Nurse Edna said.

Homer gave his patient her first dose of digitalis which helped prevent the development of fluid in the lungs. While he waited with the woman for her next fit, he asked her if this was a baby that she wanted very much, or one that she didn't want.

“Do you mean it's going to die?” the woman asked.

“Of course not!” Homer said and smiled like Dr Larch; but he thought that the baby would die if he didn't deliver it soon, and the woman would die if he rushed the delivery.

The woman said that she didn't want to keep the baby – but that she wanted the baby to live.

“Right,” Homer said.

“You look very young,” the woman said. “I'm not going to die, am I?” she asked.

“No, you're not,” said Homer Wells, using Dr Larch's smile again.

But in twelve hours, when the woman was suffering her seventh fit on the operating table, Homer Wells did not smile.

He looked at Nurse Angela, who was trying to help him hold the woman, and he said, “I'm going to start her labor.“

“I'm sure you know what's best, Homer,” Nurse Angela said.

Twelve more hours passed; the contractions started. Homer Wells could never remember the exact number of convulsions the woman had in that time. He was beginning to worry more about Dr Larch than about the woman, and he had to fight with his fear in order to concentrate on his job.

Ten hours later a boy was born, in good condition. The mother felt better very soon. There were no more fits, and her blood pressure returned to normal.

In the evening Wilbur Larch – together with the rescued cadaver, soon called Clara – returned tired and triumphant to St. Cloud's. He had followed the body to Three Mile Falls, but the stationmaster there had been so frightened that the body was not unloaded from the train; it had traveled further, and Larch had traveled after it, arriving at the next, and at the next station. No one wanted Clara.

And so Clara went from Three Mile Falls to Misery Gore, to Moxie Gore, to East Moxie and so on. Larch had a terrible row with the stationmaster in Harmony, Maine, where Clara had scared everyone before she had been sent further.

“That was my body!” Larch screamed. “It is for a student of medicine who is training with me in my hospital in Saint Cloud's. It's mine!” Larch yelled. “Why are you sending it in the wrong direction? Why are you sending it away from me?”

“It came here, didn't it?” the stationmaster said. “It wasn't taken at Saint Cloud's.”

“The stationmaster in Saint Cloud's is crazy!” Larch shouted.

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn't,” said the stationmaster in Harmony. “All I know is, the body came here and I sent it on.”

“Idiots!” Larch shouted, and took the train. In Cornville (where the train didn't stop), Wilbur Larch screamed out the window at a couple of potato farmers who were waving at the train, “Maine is full of morons!”

In Skowhegan, he asked the stationmaster where the body was going. “Bath, I suppose,” the Skowhegan stationmaster said. “It came from Bath, and if nobody wants it at the other end, it's going back to Bath.”

“I want it!” screamed Wilbur Larch.

The body had been sent to the hospital in St. Cloud's from the hospital in Bath; a woman had died there, and the pathologist at Bath Memorial Hospital knew that Wilbur Larch was looking for a fresh female.

Dr Larch caught Clara in Augusta, where the stationmaster simply saw that the body was going the wrong way. “Of course it's going the wrong way!” Wilbur Larch cried.

The stationmaster was surprised. “Don't they speak English there?”

“They don't hear English!” Larch yelled.

On the long ride back to St. Cloud's with Clara, Dr Larch didn't calm down. In each of the towns that offended him he offered his opinions to the stationmasters while the train paused at the stations. “Moronville,” he told the stationmaster in Harmony. “Tell me one thing which is harmonious here – one thing!”

“Moronville!” Larch shouted out the window as the train pulled away. “Idiotsburg!”

To his great disappointment, when the train arrived in St. Cloud's, the stationmaster was not there. “He's having lunch,” someone told Dr Larch, but it was early evening.

“Do you mean supper?” Dr Larch asked. “Perhaps the stationmaster doesn't know the difference,” he said unkindly. He hired two men to bring Clara to the boys' division.

He was surprised by the disorder in which Homer Wells had left body number two. Larch went shouting through the orphanage, looking for Homer.

“Here I am, running after a new body for you – and you leave a mess like that! Homer! ” Dr Larch yelled. “Goddamn it,” he muttered to himself, “a teen-ager can't become an adult soon, a teen-ager can't accept adult responsibilities, he can't do an adult's job.” He went muttering all over the boys' division, looking for Homer Wells, but Homer had been on Larch's bed in the dispensary and had fallen into the deepest sleep. He had been awake for nearly forty hours with the patient – delivering her and her child.

Nurse Angela stopped Dr Larch before he could find Homer Wells and wake him up.

“What's happening around here?” Larch wanted to know. “Is no one interested in where I've been? And why has that boy left the body looking like a war casualty?”

And Nurse Angela told him everything.

“Homer did this?” Larch asked Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna; he was reading the report; he had examined the mother, who was fine, and the baby boy, who was normal and healthy.

“He was almost as calm as you, Wilbur,” Nurse Edna said. “You can be proud of him.”

“He is an angel, in my opinion,” Nurse Angela said.

“He did everything just right,” Nurse Edna added.

“He was as sure as snow,” Nurse Angela said.

He did almost everything right, Wilbur Larch was thinking; it was amazing. Larch thought that it was a small error that Homer hadn't recorded the exact number of convulsions during the childbirth. It was minor criticism. But Wilbur Larch was a good teacher; Homer Wells had performed all the hard parts correctly; his procedure had been perfect.

“He's not even twenty, is he?” Larch asked. But Nurse Edna had gone to bed, she was exhausted. Nurse Angela was still awake, in her office, and when Dr Larch asked her why the baby had not been named, she told Larch that it was Nurse Edna's turn and Nurse Edna had been too tired.

“Well, it doesn't matter,” said Wilbur Larch. “You name it, then.”

But Nurse Angela had a better idea. It was Homer's baby – he had saved it, and the mother. Homer Wells should name this one, Nurse Angela said.

“Yes, you're right, he should,” Dr Larch replied, filling with pride in his wonderful creation.

He had slept almost through the night. He woke only once on the dispensary bed; Larch was in the room probably looking at him, but Homer kept his eyes closed. He felt that Larch was there because of the sweet scent of ether, and because of Larch's breathing. Then he felt Larch's hand, passing very lightly over his forehead. Homer Wells, not yet twenty years old and as knowledgeable as almost any doctor lay very still, pretending to sleep.

Dr Larch bent over him and kissed him, very lightly, on his lips. Homer heard Larch whisper, “Good work, Homer.” He felt a second, even lighter kiss. “Good work, my boy,” the doctor said, and then left him.

Homer Wells felt his tears coming silently; he cried more than the last time when Fuzzy Stone had died and Homer had lied about Fuzzy to Snowy and the others. He cried and cried, but he didn't make a sound. He cried because he had received his first fatherly kisses.

Of course Melony had kissed him; Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had kissed him, but they kissed everyone. Dr Larch had never kissed him before, and now he had kissed him twice.

Homer Wells cried because he'd never known how nice a father's kisses could be.

Dr Larch went to look at the eclampsia patient and at her tiny child. Then Larch went to the familiar typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, but he couldn't write anything. “Oh God,” thought Wilbur Larch, “what will happen to me when Homer has to go?”

The next day Homer Wells gave names to body number three and his first orphan. He named the new body Clara, and the baby boy David Copperfield. It was an easy decision.

* * *

Young Wally Worthington thought that he'd been in love twice before he was twenty years old, and once when he was twenty-one; now, in 194— (he was just three years older than Homer Wells), Wally fell deeply in love for the fourth time. He didn't know that this time would be for life.

The girl, whom Wally loved, was a lobsterman's daughter. Her father, Raymond Kendall, wasn't an ordinary lobsterman, he was the best lobsterman. Other lobstermen watched him through binoculars. When he changed his mooring lines, they changed theirs; when he didn't go to sea but stayed at home, other lobstermen stayed home, too. But they couldn't match him.

He was not just an artist with lobster; he also was an expert at fixing things – at keeping everything that anyone else would throw away. Raymond Kendall didn't like to introduce himself as a lobsterman; he was prouder of his qualities as a mechanic.

There was a rumor that Kendall had more money than Senior Worthington; there was almost no evidence of his spending any – except on his daughter. Like the children of the Haven Club members, she went to a private boarding school; and Raymond Kendall paid a lot for a Haven Club membership – not for himself (he went to the club only on request: to fix things) but for his daughter, who'd learned to swim in the heated pool there, and who'd taken her tennis lessons on the same courts visited by young Wally Worthington. Kendall's daughter had her own car, too – it looked out of place in the Haven Club parking lot. It was a mishmash of the parts from other cars; it had a Ford symbol on its hood and a Chrysler emblem on the trunk, and the passenger-side door was sealed completely shut. However, its battery never went dead in the Haven Club lot.

Some of Raymond Kendall's fabulous money was paid him as salary by Olive Worthington; in addition to his lobstering, Ray Kendall looked after the vehicles and machinery of the Ocean View Orchards. Olive Worthington paid him a full foreman's salary because he knew almost as much about apples as he knew about lobsters (and he was the best farm's mechanic), but Ray refused to work more than two hours a day. Despite the fact that Ray Kendall worked two hours every day at Ocean View, he was never seen to eat an apple.

His beautiful daughter – Candice, or Candy – was named after her mother, who had died in childbirth. She was a great and natural beauty; she was at once friendly and practical; she was well-mannered and energetic. Everyone liked her.

Even Olive Worthington liked her, and Olive was suspicious of the girls who went out with Wally; she questioned what they wanted from him. She was afraid of girls who were more interested in the Ocean View life than they were interested in Wally. Olive knew that Candy wasn't looking for money. In truth, Olive Worthington thought that Candy Kendall might be too good for her son.

In her own bedroom, Candy kept the picture of her mother when her mother had been Candy's age. She looked just like Candy. The picture was taken the summer she met Ray (an older boy, strong and determined to fix everything).

Candy had her mother's blondness; it was darker than Wally's blondness. She had her father's dark skin and dark brown eyes, and her father's height. Ray Kendall was a tall man.

Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington fell in love with each other in the summer of 194—. Everyone in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock thought that they were perfect for each other. Even grumpy Raymond Kendall approved. Ray thought that Wally wasn't lazy, and he could see that the boy was good-hearted. Ray also approved of Wally's mother.

And Candy thought that Olive Worthington would be a perfect mother-in-law.

It was understood that Wally would finish college first, and that Candy would finish college before they got married. However, there were possible causes for a change of plans. After all, it was 194—; there was a war in Europe; there were many people who thought that America would be involved soon. But Olive had a mother's wish to keep war out of her mind.

Wilbur Larch had the war in Europe very much in his mind. He had been in the last war, and he foresaw that if there was another war, Homer Well could go to the army. But the good doctor had already taken some steps to save Homer Wells from going to a war.

Larch was, after all, the historian of St. Cloud's; he wrote the only records that were kept there; he wrote fiction, too. In the case of Fuzzy Stone and in the other, very few cases of orphans who had died Wilbur Larch hadn't liked the actual endings of those small lives. Wasn't it fair if Larch invented happy endings? In the case of the few who had died, Wilbur Larch made up a longer life for them. For example, the history of F. Stone was like the history that Wilbur Larch wished for Homer Wells. After Fuzzy's most successful adoption (every member of the adoptive family was scrupulously described) and successful treatment and cure of Fuzzy's respiratory disease, the young man got an education at Bowdoin College (Wilbur Larch's own alma mater) and then studied medicine at Harvard Medical School, following Larch's footsteps to internships at the Boston Lying-in. Larch intended to make a devoted and skilled obstetrician out of Fuzzy Stone; the orphan's fictional history was as carefully done as everything Wilbur Larch did.

He had also made a slight modification in the history of Homer Wells. He was very pleased with himself for this slight fiction that he had so skillfully blended with the actual history of Homer Wells. Wilbur Larch had written about Homer Wells that the boy had a heart defect, a heart that was damaged and weakened from birth. Larch was thinking of war, the so called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn't stay there. (“I'm sorry, Homer,” Larch imagined telling the boy. “I don't want to worry you, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn't stand up to a war.”) In fact, the doctor's own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells's going to war.

In an earlier entry in the file on Homer Wells – an entry that Dr Larch removed – he had written: “I love nothing or no one as much as I love Homer Wells.”)

Thus Wilbur Larch was more prepared for how a war could change important plans than Olive Worthington was prepared for it. The other and more probable cause for a change in the wedding plans of her son and Candy Kendall – had been foreseen by Olive. It was an unwanted pregnancy. But it was not foreseen by either Candy or Wally.

Thus, when Candy got pregnant, she and Wally were much upset, but they were also surprised. They simply couldn't believe it. They were not ashamed or unable to tell their parents; they were simply shocked by the prospect of destroying their perfect plans.

“We're not ready, are we?” Candy said to Wally. “Do you feel ready?”

“I love you,” Wally said. He was a brave boy, and true, and Candy loved him, too.

“But it's just not the right time for us, is it, Wally?” Candy asked him.

“I want to marry you, anytime,” he said truthfully, but he added something that she hadn't thought of. He had thought of the war in Europe. He said, “What if there's a war?”

“What if what?” said Candy, truly shocked.

“I mean, if we were at war, I'd go,” Wally said. “Only, if there was a child, I couldn't go to a war.”

“When would it be right to go to a war, Wally?” Candy asked him.

“Well, I mean, I'd just have to go, that's all – if we had a war,” he said. “I mean, it's our country and besides, for the experience – I couldn't miss it.”

She slapped his face and started to cry – in a rage. “For the experience! You'd want to go to war for the experience!”

“Well, not if we had a child,” Wally said.

“What about me?” Candy asked, “With or without a child, what would it be like for me if you went to a war?”

“Well, it's all What if, isn't it?” Wally asked. “It's just something to think about,” he added.

“I think we should try not to have the baby,” Candy told him.

“But we need a real doctor,” Wally said.

“Of course,” she agreed. “But are there any real doctors who do it?”

“I haven't heard of them,” Wally admitted.

But Wally Worthington hoped to get advice about an abortionist. He knew that the orchardmen at Ocean View liked him and that they could be trusted to keep Wally's secret.

He went first to the only bachelor on the orchard crew, supposing that bachelors might have more use for abortionists than married men. Wally approached a member of the apple crew named Herb Fowler, a man only a few years older than Wally.

Herb Fowler's present girlfriend was younger than Herb, just a local girl, about Candy's age – her name was Louise Tobey, and the men called her Squeeze Louise, which was okay with Herb. It was said that he had other girlfriends, and he always carried lots of condoms – at all times of the day and night – and when anyone said anything about sex, Herb Fowler reached into his pocket for a rubber and threw it at the speaker. He usually said, “Do you see these? They keep a man free.”

Wally had already had several rubbers thrown at him, and he was tired of the joke, but he thought that Herb Fowler was the right sort of man to ask.

“Hey, Herb,” Wally said to him.

“Yes, that's my name,” Herb said.

“Herb,” Wally said. “If a girl is pregnant, what should one do about it?”

Herb Fowler disappointed Wally. All he knew was something suspicious about a butcher, and five hundred dollars.

“Maybe Meany Hyde knows about it,” Herb added. “Why don't you ask Meany?” Herb Fowler smiled at Wally.

Meany Hyde was a nice man. He'd grown up with a lot of older brothers who beat him. His brothers called him Meany – probably just to confuse him. Meany was friendly; he had a friendly wife, Florence; there had been so many children that Wally couldn't remember all their names, or tell one from the other, and so he didn't think that Meany Hyde even knew what an abortion was.

“Meany listens to everything,” Herb Fowler told Wally.

So Wally went to find Meany Hyde. Meany was waxing the press boards for the cider press. Wally watched Meany Hyde waxing.

“Say, Meany,” Wally said, after a while.

“I thought that you forgot my name,” Meany said cheerfully. “Meany, what do you know about abortion?” Wally asked. “I know it's a sin,” Meany Hyde said, “and I know that Grace Lynch has had an abortion – and in her case, I sympathize with her – if you know what I mean.” Grace Lynch was Vernon Lynch's wife; Wally – and everyone else – knew that Vernon beat her. They had no children.

“Who needs an abortion, Wally?” Meany Hyde asked.

“A friend of a friend,” Wally said.

“That's a shame, Wally,” Meany said. “I think you should speak to Grace about it – just don't speak to her when Vernon's around. And don't tell Grace I told you to ask her.”

So Wally went looking for Grace Lynch.

Grace was cleaning one of the shelves of the pie oven when Wally found her; he startled her, and Grace made a little cry and banged one of her elbows against the oven.

“I am sorry that I scared you, Grace,” Wally said. “I've got a problem.”

She stared at him as if this news frightened her more than anything anyone had ever told her. She looked quickly away and said, “I'm cleaning the oven.” Wally suddenly realized that all his secrets were entirely safe with Grace Lynch.

“Candy is pregnant,” Wally said. She looked at Wally again with her eyes as round as a rabbit's.

“I need advice. Please just tell me what you know, Grace,” Wally said.

“Saint Cloud's,” she whispered. Wally thought that it was someone's name – the name of a saint? Or was it a nickname for an evil abortionist – St. Cloud's?

“I don't know the doctor's name,” Grace said, not looking at Wally. “The place is called Saint Cloud's, and the doctor's good,” she whispered. “But don't let her go alone – okay, Wally?” Grace said.

“No, I won't let her go alone, of course,” Wally promised her.

“You will ask for the orphanage when you get off the train,” Grace said. She climbed back in the oven before he could thank her.

Grace Lynch had gone to St. Cloud's alone. Vernon hadn't even known she was going. Grace had arrived in the early evening, just after dark; she'd been so nervous that Dr Larch's sedation had not affected her very much and she'd been awake during the night. There had been no complications. (There had never been any serious complications following any abortion Dr Larch had ever performed.) But still Grace Lynch hated to think of St. Cloud's. It was because of the atmosphere of the place in the long night she'd stayed awake. The disturbed river smelled like death; the cries of the babies were frightening; there was a sound of a machine (the typewriter).

That night Wally sat on Ray Kendall's dock with Candy and told her what he knew about St. Clouds.

“I knew it was an orphanage,” Candy said. “That's all I knew.”

It was clear to them both that they couldn't explain their absence during the night, so Wally arranged to borrow Senior's Cadillac, so that they could leave very early in the morning and return in the evening of the same day. Wally told Senior it was the best time of year to explore the coast.

“I know it's a workday,” Wally told Olive. “But it's only one day off, Mom. It's just to have a little journey with Candy.”

Ray Kendall knew that Candy would be happy to take a drive with Wally. Wally was a good driver, and the Cadillac was a safe car.

The night before their trip, Candy and Wally went to bed early, but each of them was awake through the night. Wally worried that an abortion would make Candy unhappy, or even uncomfortable with sex. Candy wondered if Wally would love her after all this was over.

That same night Wilbur Larch and Homer Wells weren't sleeping either. Larch sat at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; through the window, he saw Homer Wells walking around outside, with an oil lamp in the darkness. What is the matter now? Larch wondered, and went to see what Homer was doing.

“I couldn't sleep,” Homer told Larch.

“What is it this time?” Dr Larch asked Homer.

“Maybe it's just an owl,” said Homer Wells. The wind was strong, which was unusual for St. Cloud's. When the wind blew out the lamp, the doctor and his assistant saw the light shining from the window of Nurse Angela's office. It was the only light for miles around, and it made their shadows gigantic. Larch's shadow reached the black woods. Homer Wells's shadow touched the dark sky. Only then both men noticed: Homer had grown taller than Dr Larch.

Larch spread his arms so that his shadow looked like a magician. Larch flapped his arms like a big bat. “Look!” he said to Homer. I'm a wizard!”

Homer Wells, the wizard's apprentice, flapped his arms, too.

The wind was very strong and fresh. The stars shone bright and cold.

“Feel that wind,” said Homer Wells; maybe the wind didn't let them sleep.

“It's a wind coming from the coast,” Wilbur Larch said. It was a rare sea breeze, Larch was sure.

“Wherever it's from, it's nice,” Homer Wells decided.

Both men stood sniffing the wind. Each man thought: “What is going to happen to me?”

5. Homer Breaks a Promise

Before this morning, Homer Wells had not had an occasion to think about the soul. A study of the soul had not been a part of his training.

Dr Larch had asked Homer to prepare a fetus for an autopsy.

A woman had been stabbed, or she had stabbed herself; the pregnancy of the woman was nearly full-term. Dr Larch had attempted to rescue the child but the child – or, rather, the embryo, nearly nine months – had also been stabbed. Like its mother, the baby (the boy) had died. Dr Larch had asked Homer to help him determine the cause of death.

Homer cut the little body. He had never looked inside a fetus before. What was the life of the embryo but a history of development? Homer turned to the section in Gray's devoted to the embryo. It was a shock for him to remember that the book did not begin with the embryo; it ended with it. The embryo was the last thing which was considered.

In Gray's Homer saw the profile view of the head of a human embryo at twenty-seven days old. It didn't look like human: it had a face of a fish. But in eight weeks the fetus has a nose and a mouth. “It has an expression,” thought Homer Wells. And with this discovery – that a fetus has an expression — Homer Wells felt the presence of a soul.

He put the little dead body in a white enamel examining tray. The tiny fingers of its hands were slightly open.

The color of the dead baby was gray. Homer turned to the sink and vomited in it. When he turned on water to clean the sink, the old pipes vibrated and howled; he thought that the room was trembling because of the pipes. He wasn't thinking about the wind from the coast – how strong it was!

Homer wasn't blaming Dr Larch. If Wilbur Larch was a saint to Nurse Angela and to Nurse Edna, he was both a saint and a father to Homer Wells. Larch knew what he was doing – and for whom. However Homer had his own opinion. “You can call it a fetus, or an embryo,” thought Homer Wells, “but it's alive. And if you perform an abortion, you kill it.” He looked at the little dead body. “If it's a fetus to Dr Larch, that's fine. But it's a baby to me,” thought Homer Wells. “If Larch has a choice, I have a choice, too.”

He picked up the tray and carried it into the hall, like a proud waiter carrying a special dish to a favorite guest.

Soon Homer was at the door of Nurse Angela's office, which was open. He could see Dr Larch at the typewriter; the doctor wasn't writing; there wasn't even any paper in the machine. Dr Larch was just looking out the window. The state of a dream was so clear on Wilbur Larch's face that Homer Wells paused in the doorway; he almost turned around and took the baby away with him. Homer hesitated; then he stepped forward and put the metal tray on top of the typewriter.

“Doctor Larch?” Homer Wells said. Larch looked away from his dream; he stared over the baby at Homer. “The source of the bleeding was the pulmonary artery, which was slashed, as you see,” Homer said, as Larch looked down at the baby.

“Goddamn!” said Wilbur Larch, staring at the artery.

“I have to tell you that I won't perform an abortion, not ever,” Homer Wells said. This followed, logically, from the severed artery; in Homer's mind, it followed, but Dr Larch looked confused.

“You won't?” Larch said. “You what?”

Homer Wells and Dr Larch just stared at each other; the baby was between them.

“Not ever,” Homer Wells said.

“Do you disapprove?” Dr Larch asked Homer.

“I don't disapprove of you,” Homer Wells said. “I disapprove of it — it's not for me.”

“Well, I've never forced you,” Dr Larch said. “And I never will. It's all your choice.”

“Right,” said Homer Wells.

“And if it's all the same to you,” Homer Wells said to him, “I'd like permission to not be there, when you do what you have to do. I want to be of use in any other way, and I'm not disapproving of you,” Homer said. “If it's okay, I just don't want to watch it.”

“I'll have to think about that, Homer,” Dr Larch said.

* * *

For the last three hours Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington had maintained an awkward silence. It had still been dark when they'd left the coast at Heart's Haven and went inland – away from the wind, although the wind was still surprisingly strong. Candy's honey-blond hair was all around her face.

Wally glanced at the unread book in Candy's lap. The book was Little Dorrit[9] by Charles Dickens. It was required summer reading for all the girls in Candy's class; Candy had begun it four or five times, but she had no idea what the book was about.

Wally, who was no reader, didn't notice the name of the book; he just watched the same page and thought about Candy. He was also thinking about St. Cloud's. He was already (in his mind) through the abortion; Candy was recovering nicely; the doctor was telling jokes; all the nurses were laughing. There were enough nurses to win a war, in Wally's imagination. All of them were young and pretty. And the orphans were amusing children.

In the trunk of Senior Worthington's Cadillac, Wally had three apple boxes full of sweets for the orphans. In the spring there weren't any fresh apples, and there wasn't any cider, but Wally had loaded the Cadillac with jars of jelly and honey.

Candy closed her book and returned it to her lap again, and Wally felt he had to say something.

“How's the book?” he said.

“I don't know,” Candy said, and laughed.

Soon they were in St. Cloud's. Little Dorrit dropped from Candy's lap.

“Please,” Wally whispered to her, “you don't have to do this. You can have the baby. I want the baby – I want your baby. It would be fine. We can just turn around,” he begged her.

But she said, “No, Wally. It's not the time for us to have a baby.” She put her face down.

The car stood still. “Are you sure?” Wally whispered to her. “You don't have to.” But Candy Kendall was more practical than Wally Worthington, and she had her father's stubbornness.

Mrs Grogan, across the road in the girls' division entrance, observed the Cadillac. There was a small crowd around the Cadillac. The trunk was open and the handsome young man was giving presents to the orphans.

“Sorry it's not the season for apples, kids,” Wally was saying. “Or cider. You could all use a little cider!” he said cheerfully, handing out the jars of honey and jelly. A boy named Smoky Fields had opened his jar of apple-cider jelly and was eating it out of the jar with his hand. “It's really good on toast, in the morning,” Wally said cautiously, but Smoky Fields stared at Wally in surprise. Smoky Fields intended to finish the jar of jelly on the spot. A girl called Mary Agnes dropped a jar of the apple jelly at Candy's feet.

“Oops,” Candy said, bending to pick up the jelly for her. When she stood up and handed the girl her jar of jelly, Candy felt a little dizzy. Some adults were coming out of the hospital entrance, and their presence helped Candy compose herself. “I've not come here to play with children,” she thought.

“I'm Doctor Larch,” the old man was saying to Wally, who looked shocked by the determination with which Smoky Fields was eating the jelly.

“Wally Worthington,” Wally said, shaking Dr Larch's hand, handing him a jar of honey. “It's fresh from Ocean View Orchards. That's in Heart's Rock, but we're very near the coast – we're in Heart's Haven, almost.”

“Hello,” Candy said to Homer because he was the tallest person; he was as tall as Wally. I'm Candy Kendall,” she said to him. “And do you work here? Or are you one of…” Was it polite to say them, she wondered.

“Not exactly,” Homer mumbled, thinking: “I work here, inexactly, and I am inexactly one of them.”

“His name's Homer Wells,” a boy told Candy. “He's too old to adopt.”

“I can see that!” Candy said, feeling shy. “I should talk to the doctor,” she thought.

“I'm in the apple business,” Wally was saying to Dr Larch. “It's my father's business. Actually,” he added, “my mother's business.”

“What does this fool want?” thought Wilbur Larch.

“Oh, I love apples!” Nurse Edna said.

“You should have your own apples,” Wally said. “Look at that hill,” he said. “You ought to plant it. I could even get you the trees. In six or seven years, you'd have your own apples; you'd have apples for more than a hundred years.”

“What do I want with a hundred years of apples?” thought Wilbur Larch.

“Wouldn't that be pretty, Wilbur?” Nurse Edna asked.

“And you could get your own cider press,” Wally suggested. “Give the kids fresh apples and fresh cider – they'd have lots to do.”

“They don't need things to do,” thought Dr Larch, “they need places to go!”

“They're from some charity,” thought Nurse Angela cautiously.

“They're too young to give their money away,” thought Wilbur Larch.

“Bees!” Wally was saying. “You should keep bees, too. It's fascinating for the kids, and a lot safer than most people think. Have your own honey, and give the kids an education – bees are a model society, a lesson in teamwork!”

“Oh shut up, Wally,” Candy was thinking.

Dr Larch looked around at the children stuffing themselves with honey and jelly. “Have they come here to play with the orphans for a day and to make everyone sick?” – he wondered.

Candy felt helpless; no one understood why she was standing there. Then Homer Wells looked at her; their eyes met. Candy thought that he had seen her many times before, that he'd watched how she grew up, had seen her naked. It was shocking to Homer (he had already fallen in love with Candy) to see in her eyes an unwanted pregnancy.

“I think you'd be more comfortable inside,” he murmured to her.

“Yes, thank you,” Candy said, not able to look in his eyes now.

Larch saw the girl walking toward the hospital entrance and thought suddenly, “Oh, it's just another abortion, that's all.” He turned to follow the girl and Homer, just as Smoky Fields finished the jar of jelly and began to eat a jar of honey.

Homer led the way to Nurse Angela's office; at the threshold he saw the dead baby's hands reaching above the edge of the white tray, which was still on Nurse Angela's typewriter. Homer's reflexes were quick enough; he pushed Candy back into the hall. “This is Doctor Larch,” Homer said to Candy, introducing them on the way to the dispensary. Wilbur Larch did not remember that there was a dead baby on top of the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office.

“I'll deliver the woman from Damariscotta,” Homer said in a low voice to Dr Larch.

“Well, don't hurry,” Larch answered.

“I mean I won't help this one,” Homer whispered, looking at Candy. “I won't even look at her, do you understand?”

Dr Larch looked at the young woman. He thought he understood, a little. She was a very pretty young woman, even Dr Larch could see that, and he'd not seen Homer so excited before. “Homer thinks he's in love,” thought Dr Larch. “Or he thinks that he'd like to be. Have I been very insensitive?” Larch wondered.

Wally introduced himself to Homer Wells. “If I could have just a moment's peace with Miss Kendall,” said Wilbur Larch, “we can all meet each other another time. Edna will assist me with Miss Kendall, please, and Angela – would you help Homer with the Damariscotta woman? Homer,” Dr Larch explained to Wally and to Candy, “is an excellent midwife.”

“You are?” Wally said to Homer enthusiastically. “Wow.” Homer Wells maintained silence. Nurse Angela touched Homer's arm very gently and said to him, “I'll help you.”

“Please do it, then,” Dr Larch said. “If I could just have a moment alone with Miss Kendall,” he repeated, but he saw that Homer was unaware that he was staring at Candy. “If I could just explain a little of the process to Miss Kendall,” Wilbur Larch said to Wally (it was hopeless to address Homer). I'd like her to know about the bleeding, later – for example,” Larch added.

“Is someone going to cut her?” he asked Homer pathetically. Homer caught Wally's arm and pulled him abruptly away. He got him outdoors so quickly that Wally didn't throw up until the two of them were behind the boys' division.

The two young men walked up and down and across the hill. Homer, politely, explained the procedure that Candy would undergo, but Wally wanted to talk about apple trees.

“This hill is perfect for your garden,” Wally said.

“If she's in the first three months,” Homer noted, “there is no need to cut.”

“I'd recommend different sorts of apple trees,” Wally said.

“There will be some bleeding – we call it spotting, actually, because it's usually not very heavy bleeding,” Homer told Wally, “Doctor Larch knows how to use ether, so don't worry – she won't feel a thing. Of course, she'll feel something afterward,” admitted Homer. “Doctor Larch calls that psychological discomfort.”

“You could come back to the coast with us,” Wally told Homer. “We could load a truck full of baby trees, and in a day or two we could come back here and plant the orchard together. It wouldn't take too long.”

“It's a deal,” said Homer Wells. The coast, he thought. I want to see the coast. And the girl. I want to ride in that car with that girl.

“A midwife,” Wally said. “Are you going to be a doctor?” “I don't think so,” said Homer Wells. “I don't know yet.” “Well, apples are my family's business,” Wally said. “I'm going to college, but I really don't know why I bother.”

“College,” thought Homer Wells.

“Candy's father is a lobsterman,” Wally explained, “but she's going to go to college, too.”

“Lobster!” thought Homer Wells. “The bottom of the sea!”

From the bottom of the hill, Nurse Angela was waving to them.

“The woman is ready!” she called to Homer Wells.

“I have to deliver someone's baby,” Homer told Wally.

Wally didn't want to leave the hill. “I think I'll stay up here. I don't think I want to hear anything,” he added; he gave Homer a smile.

“Oh, there's not much noise,” Homer said; he wasn't thinking of the Damariscotta woman; he was thinking of Candy.

He left Wally on the hill and went toward Nurse Angela; he looked back at Wally once and waved. Wally was his age and his size! They were the same height, although Wally was more muscular – from sports, Dr Larch had guessed. “He has the body of a hero,” Dr Larch thought, remembering the heroes he had tried to help in France, in World War I. “Lean but well muscled: that was a hero's body – and full of holes,” thought Wilbur Larch. He didn't know why Wally's body reminded him of this.

Wilbur Larch was thinking about Wally's face. It was handsome in a finer way than Homer's face, which was also handsome. Although Wally's body was stronger, his bones were more delicate. There wasn't a trace of anger in Wally's eyes; they were the eyes of good intentions. “He had the body of a hero, and the face…the face of a benefactor!” concluded Wilbur Larch, performing an abortion on Candy. The beauty in her face, Larch thought, was like she was free of guilt. It surprised Larch.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «Литрес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на Литрес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Примечания

1

Светские условности еще не нравственность. Ханжество еще не религия. Обличать ханжество еще не значит нападать на религию.

Back

2

В сущности, аборт можно определить как прерывание беременности на стадии нежизнеспособности плода.

Back

3

Larch – лиственница. Древесина этого хвойного дерева отличается твердостью, прочностью и чрезвычайной стойкостью к гниению.

Back

4

«Большие надежды» – роман Ч. Диккенса.

Back

5

«Давид Копперфильд» – роман Ч. Диккенса.

Back

6

Prohibition – «сухой закон» – запрет на производство, транспортировку и продажу алкогольных напитков в США в период с 1919 по 1933 годы.

Back

7

«Джейн Эйр» – роман Шарлотты Бронте.

Back

8

«Анатомия Грея» – популярный англоязычный учебник анатомии, признанный классическим. Впервые издан в 1858 году под названием «Анатомия Грея: описательная и хирургическая теория».

Back

9

«Крошка Доррит» – роман Ч. Диккенса.

Back