The History of History Read Online Free Page B

only with those moist feminine organs which remain mystical and disgusting to you.” The doctor’s head and eyes were strangely fixed.
    The old woman started coughing very violently then, and when she finally stopped, a new light had entered her face. Margaret tried to speak, but the doctor raised her hand and silenced her. She sat down on a little stool between Margaret’s spread legs. She rattled the speculum clamped inside Margaret’s underbody as if she were about to go on with the exam, but her hand stopped and dropped. She breathed deeply in and out, more and more slowly, until, with her rasping breath, she sounded almost as if she were asleep.
    Margaret waited. The doctor finally lifted her head. An expression of unbelievable discomfort began to twist the woman’s face, as if she were choking. With difficulty, she asked:
    “How is your little boy?”
    “What?” Margaret craned her neck up, peering over the hillocks of her body.
    “Oh,” the doctor let out. “Oh, dear me,” she said woodenly, and it was as though she were reciting a line in a play. Margaret had a sensation—she had opened a drawer not in her own house, and stumbled onto a treasure not her own, a treasure whose revelation was as awkward for her as it was for its owner. The doctor lifted her head toward the left corner of the room. “Perhaps I was mistaken,” she said. “You don’t have a child?”
    “No—” Margaret began.
    She should not have come here. A feeling crept up. She was surrounded by barking dogs. She closed her eyes and held still. She had blundered into other people’s lives, and this was a musty place, smelled of bodies not her own. She said: “I am not Margaret Täubner.”
    The doctor snapped her hand away from Margaret’s thigh as if she had touched a snake. “You’re not Margaret Täubner?”
    “No.”
    “Who are you then?”
    “I’m Margaret Taub.”
    But at this, the doctor surprised Margaret. She gave an exaggerated snort. She stood up, and there was a twitch around her eyes. “Comrade!” she said. “As for names—you can use Arabscheilis when you speak to me. As address I will accept both ‘doctor’ and ‘comrade.’ This question I leave up to you to decide. But don’t expect me to call you
Taub
.” The doctor spoke fluidly, but Margaret could see by her twitching cheeks that she was upset and unsure how to proceed.
    The woman turned around as if to return to the counter, but she was not fated to reach it. She walked head-on into the screen that Margaret had propped up to indulge her alleged gymnophobia. The screen fell with a clatter, and the doctor stumbled heavily, groaned, and bounced into the side of an armchair. From there, she ricocheted into Margaret’s shoulder. At the impact, Margaret felt as if she had been deliberately attacked. The cold clamp of the speculum in her nether regions prevented her from alighting to fight or flee, nor did she know how to remove it. She was certain only that if she would hold still, nothing would hurt her, while any movement would mean certain internal crunching—of what, she knew not.
    “Is there a problem, Doctor?” Margaret asked from her spot on the table, losing control of her voice.
    “I’ll admit: I’m legally blind,” the doctor said, and Margaret made a sound like a mishandled guinea pig, “and in no position to act as a gynecologist any longer, not to you, and not to anyone else either. But you, my dear—it doesn’t need to matter to you that I am blind. I recognize your voice. Perhaps it was irresponsible of me to try to give you an exam today in light of my eyesight or lack thereof, but let’s be honest, shall we? You have problems of your own.”
    “That’s true,” Margaret said involuntarily, “but—”
    “I should never have let you out of my sight.” The doctor cried out, almost wailing. “I knew you were distraught.” And the doctor was in fact wringing her knuckly hands, her gigantic head swinging back and