Across the hall from his counter there was a small coffee table, two armchairs, a rug, on the walls a reproduction Degas and the Modigliani: the waiting area. Sometimes Fima would help a patient through the difficult period of waiting by engaging her in light conversation about some neutral subject such as the rising cost of living or a TV program that had been shown the previous evening. Most of the visitors, however, preferred to wait in silence, leafing through magazines, in which case Fima would bury his eyes in his papers and minimize his presence so as not to cause embarrassment. What went on behind the closed doors of the treatment rooms? What caused the groans that Fima sometimes heard or thought he heard? What did the various women’s faces express when they arrived and when they left? What was the story that ended in this clinic? And the new story that began here? What was the male shadow behind this or that woman? And the child that would not be born—what sex was it? What would it have grown up to be? These things Fima tried at times to decipher, or to invent, with a struggle between revulsion and the feeling that he ought to participate, at least in his imagination, in every form of suffering. Sometimes womanhood itself struck him as being a crying injustice, almost a cruel illness that afflicted half the human race and exposed it to degradations and humiliations that the other half was spared. But sometimes a vague jealousy stirred inside him, a sense of deprivation or loss, as though he had been cheated of some secret gift that enabled them to relate to the world in a way that was barred to him forever. The more he thought about it, the less he was able to distinguish between his pity and his envy. The womb, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, breast feeding, even menstruation, even miscarriage and abortion—he tried to imagine them all, struggling over and over again to feel what he was not meant to feel. Sometimes, while he was thinking, he absently fingered his own nipples. They seemed a hollow joke, a sad relic. Then he was swept by a wave of profound pity for all men and women, as though the separation of the sexes was nothing but a cruel prank. He felt that the time had come to rise up and with sympathy and reason do something to put an end to it. Or at least minimize the suffering that resulted from it. Without being asked, he would get up, fetch a glass of cold water from the refrigerator, and with a faint smile hand it to a woman waiting her turn, and murmur, It’ll be all right. Or, Have a drink, you’ll feel better. Usually this provoked only mild surprise, but occasionally he generated a grateful smile, to which he replied with a nod, as if to say, It’s the least I can do.