Page 63 of The Phoenix Bride
“Not as a Jew. I wish we were permitted such things, but we are not.”
I turn my head away, swiping another tear from my cheek with my palm. I look at the collection of badly whittled figurines on his bedside: a horse, a dolphin, a bird with its beak open.
“I know,” I say. “You needn’t worry. I won’t see her again. She is likely to be married soon. She is a gentile, and even if those things didn’t matter, eventually, it would end. She would tire of me. I would fail to keep her happy.”
“What? Why do you think that?”
“Because I always fail,” I say. “Everything I have ever done has ended in ruin. I abandon people. I give them useless cures. I watch them die, or I leave them to rot, or I do not love them as much as I should; and I call myself a physician still, a man still—”
“David—”
I stand up. I am trembling and dissolving, pulling apart at the seams, and I cannot stand to see him sitting there, perfect and pleasant and whole.
Father says, “You must calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“You are not,” he says. “Listen to me.”
“I—”
“Breathe and listen.”
I breathe in deeply, but it does little; my chest still feels tight, my pulse pounding. Still, my father takes my silence as leave to continue speaking.
“I still believe you ought to marry Sara,” he says. I open my mouth to protest, and he raises his hand. “It is your choice, I know. But either way—I want you to make that choice for the right reasons. If you want that life, seize it. Otherwise…you are not a failure, Davi. You are more than worthy of any woman youmight wish to pursue. I will fear for you, if you choose this gentile—of course, I shall. I will fear it will make you unhappy. But you are not happy now, either.” He shrugs. “I want you to behappy, above all else. You do know this? That this is all I want?”
“I know.” I sit beside him again and take his hands in mine. We have the same gardeners’ calluses, the same short, clean nails. These four hands carry generations of knowledge, centuries of Mendes physicians. Just us two now. Perhaps never another.
“You have not been well,” he says. “For some years. Ana wasthe same: prone to melancholy. I should have pressed you more.Our work can be a burden, as much as a blessing.”
“Will I ever stop feeling responsible? For those I haven’t helped? For those I have lost?”
He says, “Perhaps not. But you must forgive yourself for it, either way.”
“I do not know if I can.”
“Try, Davi.” He pats my hand. “For me. For your love. I think you ought to try.”
I feel tears welling again, and I turn to hide them. I rearrange the figurines on the table and take up the cup so I can wash it in the kitchen.
Father makes a choked noise. When I turn to him, his face ispale. His breaths are short. “I think—” he says, hand coming to his chest, and then, “I feel—”
I lurch forward. “What is it?” I ask him, clutching at his arm. “Your heart?”
He pauses—opens his mouth, then closes it—and shakes his head, wincing. “No. Only my joints,” he says. “Or a cramp, perhaps. My shoulder. A hot cloth would help.”
I breathe a sigh of relief and stand. “I shall fetch you one,” I say. “Wait there.”
“Of course. Soak it well. I am sweating, also.”
“I will.”
“Make certain the water boils.”
“I will,” I repeat, smiling.
As I reach the door, he says—voice tight with pain—“Davi.”
