This Old Man Read Free Page B

cable car slowed down. It didn’t cost us a cent, I thought with satisfaction. I pictured the mother piling all her packages around her while she rummaged in her purse for some change. It served her right, raising a brat like that.
    The steps of the Chinese Hospital were carved out of the grade of the Jackson Street hill: flat on one end and steep at the other end of the first two steps. A pagoda roof hung over the entrance, sloped and curved, in gold, green, red, and rust.
    Wing pointed to a window on the third floor of the new section: Old Man’s room. He shouldn’t have been in the modern section, didn’t they understand that? He didn’t speak a word of English. He should have had a room just beneath the pagoda roof.
    In the lobby, Wing told me, “You can wait here.” So, I wasn’t even to be allowed up in the elevator. I picked up a copy of a Chinese newspaper, printed on thin, crinkly plastic. The squiggly characters made tidy columns, up and down. I studied this for at least ten minutes and finally had to conclude that I couldn’t make out a single word. There was a copy of Newsweek on the magazine rack. I had a little more success with that. I turned right to the section about what’s new on the medical front:
    A VACCINE TO SAVE LIVERS AND LIVES—Heptavax-B is being distributed as a vaccine against Hepatitis B, the most ominous form of viral liver disease, afflicting up to 200,000 Americans every year …
    All the time I read, I wondered what was going on upstairs. Did Old Man’s dinner please him tonight? Was he asking Wing about school, about the family, about the foreign doctor’s report? Later I learned that Old Man asked no questions. He issued proclamations. But that day, the first, I thought he was much like other old men.
    And so I began to visit him every day but Tuesday, which was Mr. Saxe day. When I say “visit him,” I mean visit the lobby, the magazine rack. I learned a lot about medical breakthroughs in Newsweek:
    THE MASTER TRANSPLANTER—Dr. Thomas Starzl of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is so shy about his personal life that he won’t tell the interviewers how many children he has … Starzl, in truth, is a superstar in surgery: one of the very few men capable of transplanting the liver .
    Newsweek had a love affair with livers.
    I also visited the first-floor rest room and the information booth and the water fountains up and down the hall. I was never allowed upstairs. True, there was no one guarding the elevator, and there was a big sign flashing STAIRS that drew me toward it often. But I stayed on the first floor, because there was Old Man’s privacy to be considered.
    As the days passed, I began to wonder how his privacy could possibly be violated if I were just on the third floor. If I were down the hall from Room 311. If I were outside his door. “Wing,” I asked once, “why do you tell me I have to stay in the lobby?”
    â€œIt’s only for a few minutes,” he answered. He had a habit of picking at his thumb, where there were always little frayed bits of skin. “How long do I stay up there? Fifteen minutes?”
    â€œI thought I’d just see what color the walls were on the third floor.”
    â€œYellow,” he snapped.
    â€œYou’re not being fair. What harm could I do in the hall?”
    â€œOld Man is very sick. He deserves his privacy,” Wing replied. He was immovable on this subject, and we didn’t discuss any others.
    And then I knew. Wing wasn’t preserving Old Man’s dignity. He was keeping his grandfather, his family treasure, all to himself. He wasn’t about to share him with me, even if we were the best of friends (which we weren’t yet). I decided to give Wing a week more of this self-indulgence before I quietly moved upstairs.
    The first trip up, the next Monday, seemed very symbolic. I had a little debate with myself: