The Cider House Rules / Правила виноделов. Джон Ирвинг
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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