added longingly, “Aaah, if only there was such thing, a look implant!”
“A look implant?” said Yagoda and a flash of mockery appeared in his sad eyes peeping over the green mask, “What for? To see a better world?”
“No, Professor. So that the look won’t expose the age. All the plastic surgery on the face, and in my opinion on the body too, are useless as long as nobody’s invented a look implant. The look betrays the age. People don’t realize this. You can see everything in a person’s look.”
“Interesting, interesting,” Yagoda tried to make nice, “and will it be possible to choose a different look for every day?”
“For every hour,” giggled the nurse.
“That will come too, wait and see,” he said, just to put an end to the conversation.
Yagoda was a Harvard graduate, and among other things he had learned there how to maintain pleasant relations with the operating team, and how to hum the consonant M in order to give rise to the illusion of interest and attention. On the other hand, he had also learned how to defend himself from total immersion in idle chatter, which was liable to distract him from the ongoing operation. From time to time he had to throw out an indisputable statement of fact, after which there was nothing to say. This defined him as the boss of the given operation, and set him above the rest of those present.
This time he said: “The average person is capable of saying two hundred words a minute, and the average person is capable of listening to one hundred and sixty words a minute. Which means that there will always be those who talk to the air, owing to the limitations of the average person’s ability to listen. There will always be words that are wasted on thin air.”
Silence fell. He didn’t want to seem superior, even though if he hadn’t been superior to a lot of people, he would not have become a plastic surgeon with an international reputation, as well as the assistant director of the plastic surgery department of the biggest hospital in Dresden.
WHEN HE WAS STARTING out over there, and curious and nosy people asked him what had brought him to Germany, he had replied: “Love.” And this reply shut them up. There never was and never would be a more crushing reply, Yagoda knew, when addressing the question of his emigration to Germany.
Monica, whom he had met in Harvard, loved him, and for as long as the love lasted the couple had lived in the city of Hamburg, which he actually detested. He persuaded Monica to move to Cologne, and she agreed, also in the name of love. The young Yagoda felt that he had the moral right to ask her to move from town to town in that country, after he himself had completely given up on Israel, for her sake.
Today Yagoda thought that moving to Cologne had been a mistake. They should have moved to Munich. Cologne had shortened the life of their love, owing to circumstances and coincidences that would never have happened if they had stayed in Hamburg, or moved to Munich.
When the love between him and Monica was over, other loves came, all in this complicated country, loves which also produced children. Yagoda had four children, dispersed in different cities in Germany, corresponding to his loves.
He arrived in Dresden divorced for the third time, shortly after the fall of the wall. They offered him a job in a local hospital, and he made very good progress, even though he had no love there. In fact he was already worn out by relationships and the efforts demanded of him in order to go forward and not get bored in the relationship. He put his heart and soul into fresh approaches and holidays, but there was always friction.
Yagoda preferred Dresden to all the other cities in Germany.
In the Second World War the allied forces had bombed this city very thoroughly, and most of it was new, in relation to other big cities.
The absence of history was convenient for him.
And nevertheless he reminded himself from time to time that he
“A look implant?” said Yagoda and a flash of mockery appeared in his sad eyes peeping over the green mask, “What for? To see a better world?”
“No, Professor. So that the look won’t expose the age. All the plastic surgery on the face, and in my opinion on the body too, are useless as long as nobody’s invented a look implant. The look betrays the age. People don’t realize this. You can see everything in a person’s look.”
“Interesting, interesting,” Yagoda tried to make nice, “and will it be possible to choose a different look for every day?”
“For every hour,” giggled the nurse.
“That will come too, wait and see,” he said, just to put an end to the conversation.
Yagoda was a Harvard graduate, and among other things he had learned there how to maintain pleasant relations with the operating team, and how to hum the consonant M in order to give rise to the illusion of interest and attention. On the other hand, he had also learned how to defend himself from total immersion in idle chatter, which was liable to distract him from the ongoing operation. From time to time he had to throw out an indisputable statement of fact, after which there was nothing to say. This defined him as the boss of the given operation, and set him above the rest of those present.
This time he said: “The average person is capable of saying two hundred words a minute, and the average person is capable of listening to one hundred and sixty words a minute. Which means that there will always be those who talk to the air, owing to the limitations of the average person’s ability to listen. There will always be words that are wasted on thin air.”
Silence fell. He didn’t want to seem superior, even though if he hadn’t been superior to a lot of people, he would not have become a plastic surgeon with an international reputation, as well as the assistant director of the plastic surgery department of the biggest hospital in Dresden.
WHEN HE WAS STARTING out over there, and curious and nosy people asked him what had brought him to Germany, he had replied: “Love.” And this reply shut them up. There never was and never would be a more crushing reply, Yagoda knew, when addressing the question of his emigration to Germany.
Monica, whom he had met in Harvard, loved him, and for as long as the love lasted the couple had lived in the city of Hamburg, which he actually detested. He persuaded Monica to move to Cologne, and she agreed, also in the name of love. The young Yagoda felt that he had the moral right to ask her to move from town to town in that country, after he himself had completely given up on Israel, for her sake.
Today Yagoda thought that moving to Cologne had been a mistake. They should have moved to Munich. Cologne had shortened the life of their love, owing to circumstances and coincidences that would never have happened if they had stayed in Hamburg, or moved to Munich.
When the love between him and Monica was over, other loves came, all in this complicated country, loves which also produced children. Yagoda had four children, dispersed in different cities in Germany, corresponding to his loves.
He arrived in Dresden divorced for the third time, shortly after the fall of the wall. They offered him a job in a local hospital, and he made very good progress, even though he had no love there. In fact he was already worn out by relationships and the efforts demanded of him in order to go forward and not get bored in the relationship. He put his heart and soul into fresh approaches and holidays, but there was always friction.
Yagoda preferred Dresden to all the other cities in Germany.
In the Second World War the allied forces had bombed this city very thoroughly, and most of it was new, in relation to other big cities.
The absence of history was convenient for him.
And nevertheless he reminded himself from time to time that he
Similar Books
