It’s not that Aaron Isaac Levy wasn’t a good man. It’s just that like Adam in the Garden of Eden he had succumbed to temptation – not a low-calorie apple from the tree of knowledge, but generous helpings of strictly kosher food from Greenstein’s delicatessen. To aggravate things, his wife’s cooking, although lovingly done in traditional fashion, was totally poisonous from a dietician’s point of view. The fact that Levy had inherited a high blood uric acid level from his whisky-loving father didn’t help either, but it did guarantee that Levy paid generously with regular attacks of gout especially around Passover.
In Levy’s home in Glenhazel, in the middle of the north-eastern suburbs of Johannesburg, food consumption reached heroic proportions during Passover. Mrs Levy, fiercely determined to show her prowess and generosity as a true Jewish wife, regarded the festival celebrating the escape of Moses and his people from the Pharaoh’s tyranny as a God-given reason for unlimited overindulgence. She prepared huge pots of knaydel – dumpling soup – heaped platters of chicken and turkey, mounds of smoked, picked and braised brisket, and barrels of sweet and sour, pickled and chopped herrings. These were served in overflowing plates to the family, each course receiving its expected annual accolade of oohs and aahs and Mrs Levy’s insistence on second and even third helpings. ‘After all,’ she would say, ‘a person must eat.’
Several days after such Passover feasting Levy was dreaming that he was lying on the sands of the Nile. A red hot spear had been plunged into his side by an irate Egyptian, covered in weeping boils and bent on revenge for the blood, flies, lice, frogs and locusts that had ruined his tent escort business. Levy’s desperate pleas that it wasn’t his fault and that the Egyptian was lucky he didn’t have a first-born son to lose in the imminent final plague had done nothing to lessen gay resentment. In true philistine fashion and with dreadful malice the Egyptian commenced twisting the spear deeper into Levy’s vitals. Levy awoke shrieking. The relief he experienced on seeing the familiar bulk of Mrs Levy snoring next to him in bed was short-lived. The agony persisted and he panicked.
‘Dolly!’ he yelled.
Mrs Levy slowly rolled over and muttered, ‘Not tonight, Aaron. I still have to go to the mikveh tomorrow.’
Levy switched on the bed lamp, kicked off the bedclothes and frantically felt for a wound. His large paunch precluded him from seeing, let alone examining, his side. ‘Dolly, look, look!’ he squealed.
Mrs Levy sat up bewilderedly, instinctively patted at the hairnet protecting her recent dye and set, and stared at the bedding on the floor. Her winter blankets, recently purchased after lively Hindi-Judaic bargaining at the Oriental Plaza in Fordsburg, lay scattered on the carpet at the foot of the bed. On top of them rested a crumpled top-sheet soaking up the lukewarm contents of a leaking hot water bottle.
‘Aaron! What are you doing? I’ve just washed the sheets! What is the matter with you?’
Levy stared at her in a frenzy. ‘It’s my side! It’s killing me! I dreamt I was stabbed by an Egyptian!’
He pulled up his pyjama top and Mrs Levy peered at his belly. She tentatively poked at a large hairy mole below his ribs.
‘Oy gevalt!’ Levy yelled.
‘You see?’ Mrs Levy declared. ‘It’s your mole. I kept telling you to see a doctor about it but would you listen to me? I might as well have spoken to the wall!’
Levy eyed her desperately. ‘Is it bleeding? It must be bleeding! I was stabbed!’
Mrs Levy turned to her bed stand, retrieved her glasses and minutely examined the mole.
‘It’s not bleeding but it looks wrinkled.’
‘Cancer! I’ve got cancer! I’m dying! Call the doctor!’ Levy screamed with renewed terror as another bolt of agony lanced deep into his side.
Mrs Levy looked at a list of the emergency numbers under the glass sheet covering the top of her bed stand. Heading the list were Dr Schwachbaum’s telephone numbers. She lifted the receiver hesitantly and regarded her husband. ‘Are you sure I should call him? I mean it’s four o’clock in the morning and I’m not really sure about the wrinkles.’
Levy began yelling. ‘Call him! Call him! I’m telling you I’m critical!’
Waves of nausea now accompanied the pain. He leapt out of bed and rushed to the bathroom as Mrs Levy began dialling. He was kneeling in front of the toilet, clutching the seat in a bilious embrace and retching violently, when Mrs Levy called from the bedroom, ‘Dr Schwachbaum’s on holiday. His answering machine’s on the line. Dr Koek and Tup is doing his locum. Should I phone him?’
Mrs Levy thought it a very strange name. She’d heard of von and van and mac and ben – but ‘and’?
Levy interrupted his eructing to yell, ‘Here I’m dying and Dr Schwachbaum is on holiday! I should have such a life! Call Tup! He sounds Jewish!’
When his telephone rang, Dr Koekentapp happened to be indulging in enthusiastic intercourse with Candy Viljoen, a particularly voluptuous theatre sister who worked at the Park Lane Clinic. He stared in disbelief at the receiver.
‘Make it stop. Don’t answer it,’ gasped Candy. ‘I’m coming, omigod, I’m coming. Don’t stop now. I’ll kill you if you stop now!’ She threw out an arm and banged the telephone off its stand. The ringing stopped.
‘Hello? Hello? Is that Dr Tup?’ came Mrs Levy’s voice from under the bed.
Dr Koekentapp stretched down and fumbled for the receiver on the carpet. Candy grabbed his head and pressed his mouth over a nipple.
‘Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?’ called Mrs Levy.
Dr Koekentapp couldn’t breathe. He freed his mouth from Candy’s nipple and jammed the receiver against his ear.
‘Hello?’ he panted.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you so late, doctor. My name is Mrs Levy. It’s about my husband. He woke up in a lot of pain and now he thinks he’s critical!’
‘What happened to him?’ puffed Dr Koekentapp.
‘Excuse me, doctor. You sound out of breath. Did you have to run to the phone?’
‘Yes,’ lied Dr Koekentapp, glancing at the time on his watch.
Mrs Levy clucked sympathetically. ‘The life you doctors lead. Never a moment to rest.’
Candy began climaxing. ‘Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,’ she shrilled.
‘I can hear you are busy with a patient,’ Mrs Levy went on. ‘She sounds as if she’s in terrible pain so I’ll try to be quick. It’s about my husband Aaron’s mole.’
Dr Koekentapp felt his erection falter.
‘His mole?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You called me at four o’clock in the morning about a mole?’
Candy was shivering deliciously. She reached down and playfully tickled his testicles.
‘Make it hard again,’ she whispered.
Dr Koekentapp fiercely tried to concentrate on his erection.
‘It’s big and hairy and looks very wrinkled,’ said Mrs Levy.
Dr Koekentapp’s erection died.
‘Are wrinkled moles serious?’ Mrs Levy asked.
‘No, Mrs Levy, I’m sure they are not,’ grunted Dr Koekentapp, struggling to regain his composure. ‘Just tell me what happened!’
‘Dolly!’ Levy’s voice boomed from the porcelain. ‘Tell him to come quickly!’
‘He’s got terrible tummy pain and he’s started vomiting. First he thought he was stabbed by an Egyptian but now he thinks he’s got cancer,’ explained Mrs Levy.
‘An Egyptian? Cancer?’
‘Mein Gott!’ Levy howled.
Mrs Levy began to panic. ‘I must go to him now. Please come quickly, doctor. I’ll tell you the whole story when you get here.’
She was about to replace her receiver when she heard Dr Koekentapp’s voice yelling at her from the earpiece. ‘Look, doctor, there is no need to shout at me. He didn’t ask to get sick you know,’ Mrs Levy returned crossly.
‘What’s your address?’ howled Dr Koekentapp.
When Dr Koekentapp arrived, Levy was grunting and groaning and prone in his bed. His face was white and damp with distress as he rolled over. Clipped to his thinning hair was a black yarmulke held in place with a hairpin to ensure that his head would not be uncovered in the sight of God. His cheeks wobbled as he struggled to sit up.
‘Thank you for coming, Dr Tup,’ he whispered.
Dr Koekentapp stared bleakly at him. ‘It’s Koekentapp,’ he replied.
‘At least we didn’t wake you, doctor,’ Mrs Levy said.
Dr Koekentapp shifted his gaze from Levy and wordlessly looked at the hairnet covering her brown-dyed hair and her maturely plump figure in the ‘slightly flawed’ mauve dressing gown that she had obtained as a gratis oriental sales incentive to buy her blankets. Levy removed his pyjama top to expose his belly, a quivering monument to the nutritional potential of Greenstein’s kosher delicatessen.
‘The pain is here,’ he said, placing a shaking hand over his right side.
‘There by the mole,’ Mrs Levy chimed in, giving it a firm prod.
‘Oy gevalt!’ shrieked Levy.
Dr Koekentapp sat on the edge of the bed and very gently began palpating Levy’s abdomen. Mrs Levy looked on in admiration.
‘You’ve got the touch of an angel, doctor,’ she said, ‘an angel.’
Dr Koekentapp pressed softly over Levy’s right kidney.
Levy winced. ‘That’s it, that’s the spot,’ he said.
‘A healer!’ exclaimed Mrs Levy, waving her arms aloft.
Dr Koekentapp eyed her slantways then returned his attention to his patient. ‘Do you suffer from gout, Mr Levy?’ he asked.
‘Does he suffer from gout!’ replied Mrs Levy
Dr Koekentapp pressed a little harder.
‘O-o-o!’ Levy bellowed, grabbing Dr Koekentapp’s hand with both of his and jerking it from his suffering abdomen.
Dr Koekentapp stood up. Levy fearfully looked up at him.
‘What’s your diagnosis doctor?’ Levy asked, his voice quivering. ‘Am I going to make it?’
Dr Koekentapp thoughtfully rubbed his chin. ‘I think you are passing a kidney stone,’ he replied.
‘Oy vey iz mir,’ Levy moaned.
‘I need a sample of urine,’ said Dr Koekentapp.
‘The toilet’s just through that door, doctor,’ Mrs Levy said, pointing. ‘Please help yourself. I’ll get you a nice clean towel.’
Dr Koekentapp looked strangely at her. ‘Not mine. His.’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ Levy quavered.
Mrs Levy knelt down and retrieved a chipped enamelled pot decorated with vegetables from underneath her side of the bed.
‘If I can you can,’ she commanded, and passed the pot to Levy.
Clutching the sloshing pot, Levy painfully swung his legs over the edge of the bed and staggered to the bathroom to pass his specimen.
‘Empty it out first!’ Mrs Levy yelled at the closing door. She turned to Dr Koekentapp. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea while you wait? I’ve also got some lovely chopped herring.’
Dr Koekentapp gazed at Mrs Levy. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. He looked around the bedroom. Through the parted window curtains he could see the outline of the Balfour Park shopping mall silhouetted against a background of street lights. The strident hooting of minibus taxis, en route between Alexandra township and the city centre, trying to attract the attention of their early morning fares, sounded clearly from Louis Botha Avenue, about half a kilometre away. Hanging on a wall hook were Levy’s black coat and hat. His tzitzit, a fringed vest worn under the shirt as a sign of true faith, lay neatly folded on the dresser. Next to it was a framed photograph of Mr and Mrs Levy smiling at a stunningly beautiful girl who was grinning widely. Dr Koekentapp’s gaze locked on the picture.
‘Who’s the young lady?’ he asked, staring at it for a long moment.
‘Our daughter Sylvia,’ Mrs Levy answered proudly. ‘Isn’t she a living doll?’ She surreptitiously glanced at his bare ring finger as a thought struck her. ‘Excuse me, doctor,’ she said carefully. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, are you married?’
Levy retched violently in the bathroom.
Dr Koekentapp smiled stiffly at her. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said.
‘I see,’ Mrs Levy murmured thoughtfully. Her expression did not change but her eyes now regarded this new young doctor in a very different and inquisitive light. She noted his trim but muscular build and ruggedly handsome face framed by short brown hair, a high forehead and a clean-shaven strong jaw.
Levy lurched from the toilet carrying the pot like an offering in front of him.
‘Did you wash it out first?’ demanded Mrs Levy.
‘What do you think, I’m serving the doctor cocktails?’ Levy responded irately.
Dr Koekentapp spent a few moments testing the sample with a dipstick. The test strip for blood was strongly positive indicating that a sharply spiked uric acid stone was scratching its painful way down to Levy’s bladder from his right kidney.
‘It is a stone, Mr Levy,’ Dr Koekentapp said, ‘and I’ll need an X-ray of your kidneys to see exactly where the stone is. It will involve injecting a special dye into an arm vein.’
Levy’s eyes widened. ‘Oy a klog. They nearly killed me last time with their blood test for gout. They missed the vein and my arm was sore for weeks! Can’t you just give me something for the pain?’
Dr Koekentapp nodded. ‘I’ll give you an injection to break the spasm and then I’ll arrange your admission to the Park Lane Clinic later this morning.’ He wrapped a cuff around Levy’s upper arm. Levy’s superficial veins, deeply covered in fat, were invisible. Dr Koekentapp realised why the pathologist had struggled to get blood.
‘Okay, Mr Levy,’ he said, removing the cuff, ‘I’ll inject you in the buttock. It’ll take a little longer to act but at least I won’t torture your arm.’
‘Gott,’ said Levy, rolling onto his belly. His eyes widened in distress as he watched Dr Koekentapp draw five millilitres of antispasmodic into a syringe. He licked his lips as Dr Koekentapp approached.
‘Gevalt, such a big needle!’ Levy quavered.
‘It hurts less,’ said Dr Koekentapp. ‘It has a sharpened edge that actually cuts the skin, instead of me having to force the point of the needle in.’
Levy’s interest in the physical dynamics of needle points and edges was nil. ‘Schlecht,’ he muttered, and pulled his underpants down. He was quivering with anxiety, his yarmulke bobbing against the retaining hairclip on his head. Dr Koekentapp swabbed Levy’s skin and the needle slid into his buttock muscle.
‘Oy a yoy!’
As Dr Koekentapp injected the amber fluid, Levy’s body jerked rigid and his yarmulke fell off. He arched his back and clawed at Dr Koekentapp’s hand.
‘Jesus Christ!’ screamed Aaron Isaac Levy.
To appease Mrs Levy’s unrelenting insistence, Dr Koekentapp was carrying a carton of chopped herring and a tub of potato salad when he left to go home. Levy’s pain had abated and despite his fears about his X-ray he had fallen into a restless sleep. Mrs Levy’s mind was abuzz with the idea of introducing her daughter Sylvia to Dr Koekentapp. Sitting on the bed she looked at her slumbering spouse.
‘Aaron?’ she whispered hopefully.
Levy snored loudly. He was dreaming that he was now straddling the Egyptian, who was spitting out desert sand and pleading with him to return a kidney that Levy had boldly removed using a giant syringe with a cutting needle.
Mrs Levy leant back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. ‘Dr Jeremiah Koekentapp?’ she mused. ‘Sylvia Koekentapp,’ she said slowly. It had a ring to it. She reached for a pen and a piece of paper and wrote Sylvia Ida Leah Koekentapp. She stared at the initials. ‘SILK,’ she read.
Mrs Levy decided that the marriage was destined. She could already see her daughter radiant in a white silk wedding dress. ‘I need more information,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I’ll get my good friend Mrs Chaimowitz to visit his rooms first thing this morning. I must make a list.’ Switching off the light she snuggled happily against her pillow. ‘I’ll wear pink,’ she murmured as she drifted off to sleep.
The sky was grey with pre-dawn light when Dr Koekentapp finally got home. Candy was already dressed in her nurse’s uniform and sitting in front of the bedroom mirror while combing her long blonde hair. She grinned at his reflection as he stood behind her and cupped her breasts in his hands.
‘Talk about bad timing,’ Candy said. ‘Was it serious?’
‘A kidney stone. What time do you have to be at work?’
‘In twenty minutes. I’ve got to finish some reports before my shift.’
Dr Koekentapp began rubbing Candy’s breasts. He bent down and nuzzled her neck. ‘I think Levy’s wife had designs on me,’ he teased.
Candy looked up unpleasantly and slapped his hands away. ‘How old is she?’ she demanded.
‘About fifty.’
‘Why, the dirty old bag. And with her husband passing a stone!’
‘Not for herself, for her daughter. I saw her photograph. She’s really very pretty.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Sylvia.’ For a moment Dr Koekentapp was surprised at himself. He did not usually remember names.
Candy closely regarded him then smiled sweetly. ‘Sylvia’s not for you, love,’ she said. She turned on the stool and gently rapped his penis through his trousers. ‘Not with that bloody great foreskin. Mrs Levy would have a fit.’