The Golden Willow by Harry Bernstein Read Free Book Online Page B

time in our married life that we would be separatedfor an extended time. The early morning light was thin and gray. I had not wanted her to turn on the light. I did not want her to see my face. She ate a little with me, then it was time to go.
    I went into the kids' rooms. Both were asleep. I bent down and kissed them, and Ruby came to the door with me. I took her in my arms, perhaps for the last time, and felt her warmth against me, and when I kissed her I felt the wetness in her eyes. I turned back once as I walked from the house, heading for the bus. She was still standing there in the doorway. In the thin light her figure was shadowy, but I saw her wave to me and blow a kiss. I blew one back at her.
    T HE ENTIRE HUGE WAITING ROOM at Grand Central Station had been taken over by the military for the physical examinations, and it was packed with men when I arrived. Some were already standing in the line that had to pass through a battery of doctors, and they were all naked. I was directed to a room where I could take my clothes off, and then I came out and joined the line at the end, though it was not the end for long. In my hand I carried a form that listed all the various parts of the body to be examined and that would be checked off as good or bad by the examining doctors, who sat at desks in a long assembly line.
    The line moved slowly, and the hours dragged on. I finally reached the first doctor. He tested my heart, my lungs, and my pulse, and he checked these off with one of the two pens he had in readiness. One had red ink, the other blue ink. If it was checked in blue, it was favorable; the red was unfavorable. For the next hour as I moved slowly from one doctor to another my chart showed all blue checks. And then came the eye doctor.
    He couldn't have been much older than I was, and he didn'tseem to be in an agreeable mood. He barked, “Look at the chart and read it off to me.” I had been troubled lately with watery eyes, and they were watering then, so I was having a bit of trouble reading the chart. I told this to the doctor, but he brushed it aside irritably and said, “Go on reading.”
    I did, stumbling my way through it, and managed to complete everything except the last line, which was in very tiny letters.
    “Keep trying,” he insisted.
    I did, and guessed my way through haltingly. He stopped me and asked abruptly, “What kind of work do you do?”
    “I'm a reader,” I said.
    “A what?”
    I'd had trouble with this before. Who knows what a reader is? I explained to him what I did, reading books mostly for a moving picture company to determine their cinematic possibilities.
    “How many books do you read in a week?” he asked.
    “An average of five,” I said.
    He stared at me. “Five books a week?” he said with a touch of incredulity. “You've been reading five books a week? For how long?”
    “I've been doing it for about seven years,” I said.
    His stare grew wider. He shook his head several times, then bent over my chart with a pen in his hand. The pen that he wrote with was the one with red ink.
    I came finally to the end of the line. It had taken all morning and well into the afternoon to get through all the examining doctors. Now I had reached the desk where the last doctor sat. He was the judge. He read the chart, and we held our breath as he did so. There were two rubber stamps in front of him, one of which would say ACCEPTED , the other REJECTED . Which one would he use? My fate was in this man's hand.
    I watched him as he studied my chart. He seemed to be at it for a long time, as if he could not make up his mind. I saw his eyes fasten on the note in red ink that the eye doctor had scribbled. And then with my heart thumping I saw his hand reach toward the two stamps. It touched one and then it touched the other. He could still not decide. Finally, his hand clasped over the one on the left. He crashed it down on the chart. In big letters it said REJECTED .
    I tried not to show any