“Wrong, what do you mean wrong?”
“In the old days in Italy, did you ever have an abortion?”
She was very angry and for several days wouldn’t allow me in her bed. My God, how those days were torture. I had never felt so strong, my seed so ripe, never experienced greater impatience, the sense of time so uselessly destroyed. I realized that I could not risk offending her that way again and I became conciliatory, fatuous in the pains I took with her. Yet the question, which I had not meant to ask, had implications. I had never really minded Margaret’s promiscuity, nor had I any reason to suspect that after we were married she was unfaithful. Before David came I might have forgiven an infidelity with a wave of the hand, but now I had a horror of raising another man’s son. After I had apologized, I immediately re-risked everything by telling Margaret that if I ever discovered she had gone to bed with another man I would kill them both.
I made her go to a gynecologist. She had all the tests. Her womb was not tipped, her tubes not stopped. She produced eggs like a million hens. “Then why aren’t you pregnant?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “The doctor says I can have children,” she said. “He thinks you ought to be examined.”
“Did you explain that I have already proved myself?”
But of course I went. I made an appointment with a Dr. Green, whom the Doctor’s Exchange listed as a specialist in these things.
“Your wife has been examined, I assume,” the doctor said.
“Yes. She’s all right.” I was looking at the certificate on the wall, from a medical school I had never heard of. Why did it have to be a school I never heard of?
“Yes, the husband’s always the last partner to be examined. That’s masculine vanity for you, isn’t it? And I suppose you thought it out of the question that a strapping fellow like yourself could be the sterile one.”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“Well, let’s go down to it then, shall we? We’re not here for recriminations or to fix blame, but out of scientific interest, am I right? Now I don’t know what I’m going to find in your case, but I don’t want you to worry. If we should discover that you’re infertile there may be some things we can do to build you up. If that fails there’s the possibility of adoption, isn’t there? So don’t look so nervous. As it happens, I handle a lot of adoptions and you don’t even have to wait as you would if you worked through an agency. It’s all legal, brother. I don’t want to hear any uninformed talk about a black market. It’s expensive, I won’t crap you, but how are you going to fix a price on human life, do you see? I mean it
ought
to be expensive.”
“I’m not interested in adopting children.”
“Now look here, son, I can see what you’re thinking. I’m way ahead of you in that respect. You’re thinking, ‘Why, he’s a quack.’”
“Something like that.”
“Sure you are. Well, it’s not true. I’ll tell you the truth—there’s a lot of prejudice in this business. Very few men are as honest as you evidently are and will even come in for an examination like this. The adoptions? That’s something I do just to keep my experimental work going. Because you see I
haven’t
put all my cards on the table for you. How’d you get my name?”
“Through the Doctor’s Exchange.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s just what I thought. Well, I’ll take care of you. Nobody could do it better. But do you know what we do here? It’s a fertility clinic. This is a donor station. I’m talking about artificial insemination. I only accept the very highest type of donor: intellectual, slightly left-wing Jewish medical students. How’d you like a son by one of those fellers? A very popular number right now. Well, we get them all. Artists from the Village, writers. All very good-looking as well as smart. It’s the surest way I know of to raise a family. Takes all the risk right out. It’s the genes—the genes are everything. Some of my patients come back two, three, four times. You’d be astonished to learn just how many of Dr. Green’s kids are the leaders of their communities today.”
“Are you a donor?”
“No. Oh God, no. In the early days when it was slow I won’t say I didn’t try to cut expenses by putting something in the bottle now and then, but that’s water under the bridge. Well, images change. Taste changes. This I promise, my young doctors are the highest example of the current image. To get on my list they take vows of celibacy. That keeps the stock up, you see. It’s a kind of quality control.”
“But let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, you don’t
like
the current image. Well then, pick any type you do like. If you don’t see what you want, just ask for it. If I haven’t got him now I know where I can get him. This I promise—the biggest depth in the City of New York. What do you want? An actor? A politician? I’ve even got scions of famous families who have to be specially solicited. Now for obvious reasons the donors have to remain anonymous, but if you want I could show you my library. It’s a file, you see, with the biography of the donor. What the father did, the mother, personality traits, IQ’s, medical histories—the works. You’d be surprised at the famous men represented in that library. They’re not all active donors now, of course, but when they were young they might have needed a little extra dough. You could get men just like them today. Every type, any type.
“Now this is all probably very premature. I’m not saying you’re going to need these services. I don’t know what I’ll find until I look through that microscope, but I just want you to keep it in mind if the news turns out to be bad. And this I promise, it’s perfectly painless. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you the truth, many women enjoy it. Just a little injection into your wife and that’s all there is to it. We even mix a little of your own stuff in with it so you can’t ever be completely sure the kid isn’t actually yours—well, he
is
yours, of course, but you know what I mean. Incidentally, that’s a new wrinkle. The profits from some of those adoptions you scorn paid for that. Very tricky scientific problem to work out. To develop the seminal host so that the donor’s and the husband’s sperm can live together without eating each other up. What a contribution to the field
that’s
been, I don’t mind telling you! What solace it’s provided even prouder men than yourself! And no charge until conception. I don’t care how many injections it takes.”
“It’s not what I had in mind.”
“All right. All right. I’m not trying to sell it to you. I’m just telling you what the alternatives are in case the news isn’t what either of us wants to hear. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Dr. Green said. “Let’s see it.”
At first I didn’t understand. Then I showed him.
He looked at it thoughtfully. “May I?” He said.
“Of course.”
He held my penis in his palm for a moment and then flipped it casually to the other hand. “Not bad,” he said at last. “Nothing mechanically wrong anyway but you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ll need a specimen. Now you’ve got a choice here. I can exercise the prostate and I can get enough that way to tell all we need to know, but it’s painful and frequently embarrassing to many men. The other thing is you can go into the lab—the same one the donors use—and bring something back in this bottle.”
“The lab,” I said.
“Through there,” said Dr. Green. He pointed to a doorway hung with a curtain, vaguely like the fitting room in a cheap department store.
“Turn on the light,” Dr. Green called. “There’s a switch on your left.”
“It can be done in the dark,” I said.
“You’re my patient,” Dr. Green said, “your vanity means nothing to me. The cure’s the thing.”
Oh, go away, I thought.
The doctor must have read my thoughts, for in a moment I could hear him padding about the office, opening drawers, tapping his pockets, like one making preparations to go out. “I need some cigarettes,” he announced. “I’ll just go down and get them. I’ll lock you in so you won’t be disturbed. Okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered.
“Okay?”
“Yes, yes. Fine.”
“Take your time. Turn on the light.” I heard him close the office door and lock it.
It was impossible; I felt ridiculous. For a moment I thought of escaping, but then it occurred to me that what was happening to me was a rare thing indeed. Masturbating for science. In a lab, for God’s sake. Sanctioned by society! Juvenile fantasies in a good cause! I thought, Why waste it? Still, I had never been less stirred. I removed my pants and underwear. Despite my sense of freedom I felt foolish and a little cold. For five minutes I stood there, idly manipulating myself, distracted. It occurred to me that the practical difficulties were insurmountable. Then I realized what it was: it was the bottle; I had to put the bottle down. I decided to turn on the lights so that I could find it easily when I needed it.
What I saw when I had switched on the light took away my breath. What Dr. Green had called a lab was really a kind of closet. Around the three walls were unevenly spaced shelves, on each of which had been placed some object obviously meant by Dr. Green to inspire lust. There were those tiny models of women one sees in those drug stores where they sell trusses. The women, otherwise naked, were intricately and suggestively taped, their bandages oddly emphasizing their nakedness. There were rubbery, life-sized breasts removed from some medical school lecture room, the nipples spread and torn by cancer. There were posture charts ripped from old textbooks, the girls in profile, anonymous, one square- shouldered, straight-assed, the next round-shouldered, the pelvis somehow fallen, the behind dragging sluggishly. There was a 1944 wall calendar from a garage in Pittsburgh. There was a model of a plastic, transparent woman, the organs like tainted meat inside her, vaguely suggesting one of those heavy globes portraying some cozy winter scene. I had the impression that if I turned it upside down and shook it, her insides would glow with impossibly slow-falling snow. Everywhere there were plaster of Paris breasts, torsos, behinds, vaginas like halved fruit. In one corner of the closet was a bald life-size department store manikin, completely nude. She had movable arms and legs and these had been arranged in an obscene pose by Dr. Green or one of the donors. The profits from some of those adoptions I scorn paid for this, I thought.
I thought, Oh God, I’m getting out of here, but I made no effort to move. I told myself that it was my fascination with the act of fatherhood that kept me there, but against my will, or rather without it, I began slowly to respond. Quickly my fantasies began to multiply, proliferating wildly so that it was impossible to concentrate on any one of them. One after another, insane images leaped into my head. It was like being on a magic-carpet ride or on one of those subterranean tours of the world. Suddenly my hands were everywhere, touching, fondling, torturing. I put my palms over the rubber breasts and squeezed, the hard doll cancer-ridden nipples pressing unpleasantly into my flesh. I nuzzled my head between the manikin’s breasts; I arranged her hands caressingly and rubbed against them. Just before the orgasm I leaned back heavily against a shelf. The uneven wooden edge put a splinter into my back, but I nearly swooned. I forgot the bottle and only at the last moment managed clumsily to catch the dregs. Sperm was everywhere. Weakened, I knelt to scoop it into the bottle with my cupped palm.
Suddenly Dr. Green pulled back the curtains.
“Forget it, dear boy,” he said. “The woman cleans it up.”
“I thought you were out getting cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes cause cancer. I’m a medical man. I don’t smoke.” He smiled. “That’s mine, I think,” he said, taking the bottle from my hand. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I have to make the test while the stuff’s fresh. You’d be surprised how quickly it dies in the open air.” He took the bottle to a microscope and poured a little onto a slide. The outside of the bottle was smeared with sperm and a little got on Dr. Green’s fingers. I stared at them. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m used to it. Go get dressed. This won’t take long.” I had forgotten that I was still naked.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. You’re a very vigorous man.”
In the closet I pulled the curtain and put on my clothes quickly, averting my eyes from Dr. Green’s collection. When I came out the doctor was sitting behind his desk. For the first time since I had seen him he inspired a kind of confidence. That he achieved this at the expense of my own barely occurred to me.
“Well,” he said expansively, “the count’s a little low—what I call ’the lower limits of normal.’ But you’re not sterile.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“Well, your sperm count is only seven million per square inch, plus there’s too high a proportion of long- tails and short-tails.”
“Seven million sounds like a lot to me.”
“You laymen give me a laugh,” he said. “Of course it only takes one to make a life. It only takes one.”
“Then it’s all right.”
“Well, it’s a tricky problem,” he said. “We don’t understand it. Somehow the more a man has going for him the better his chances are. You hear seven million and you think you could be the father of your country, but that’s not the way it works. The average man has about sixty million per square inch, did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“The goddamn sperm are incompetent. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’ll swim backwards, get lost, drown, anything to keep from getting the job done.” He frowned. “Oh, it’s a tragic thing when a couple wants children and can’t have them.”
“But you said I wasn’t sterile.”
“Well, technically you’re not. You’re not. But it’s going to be harder for you. Listen. There’s a terrific emotional thing here too that goes on. Don’t leave that out. Your count is low to begin with and you get anxious about conception and that doesn’t help anything. When you make love you got to put all that out of your mind. It’s like what they say about rape. You’ve just got to lie back and enjoy it.”
“Crap,” I said.
“Look, you want some advice? Listen to me. The thing for you is to adopt a kid. Once you do that the edge’ll be off. You’d be surprised how often one of my couples conceives after they’ve adopted. People who’ve been childless twenty years.”