From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [195]
“Well, we’ve gotten awfully possessive, awfully suddenly, haven’t we?” Karen said contemptuously. “What business is that of yours?”
“Oh, I thought maybe I could work up some new ideas, new techniques maybe, if you werent satisfied. G Company prides itself on keeping its customers satisfied.”
“That is a rotten thing to say,” Karen said contortedly. “But if it will ease your mind any, I hated it,” she said. “I loathed it.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“And just who are you? to wonder if I’m lying?”
“Then why did you do it?”
“You want to know why I did it? You really want to know. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. Like hell. You’re getting to sound so like a typical husband, why dont you just sweat it out like a typical husband?”
She laughed spitefully, and then her face suddenly seemed to crumple up. Ugly wrinkles gathered around her mouth and eyes and she was crying angrily.
“You son of a bitch,” she said. “You son of a bitch you son of a bitch. You dont leave a person anything, do you you son of a bitch?”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I dont blame you.”
She stood staring at him and crying and in her eyes was the greatest hatred he had ever seen, and he had seen some pretty fair hatreds, in his time.
“No,” she said. “I think I’ll just tell you now. I think now is the time. You can take it back to the barracks with you. It’ll make fine conversation in the barracks.”
She dropped the clothes that she had had so much trouble gathering, and that she was holding protectively in front of her. She sat down on the bed and pointed at the long scar on her belly, the scar he had noticed every time before but had always been somehow reluctant to mention.
“See that?” she said. “You know what that is? You never noticed that before, did you?
“Well, thats a hysterectomy scar,” she said. “A hysterectomy is a uterectomy. A uterectomy is an operation in which they excise the uterus. But they call it hysterectomy. You know what hysterectomy comes from, of course? From hysteria. Hysteria and womb and women are synonymous in the medical profession, you know. Thats where they get their biggest source of income, you see. You know: stupid women who weep and are very nervous and go to pieces and maybe lose their minds as they approach the change of life, but whose husbands always dutifully sorrowfully protect them and lovingly take care of them at home so that they seldom go to institutions. Look in a medical dictionary some time,—if you can ever get hold of one that is, they’re very hush-hush and try to pretend they are restricted, so you’ll probably have to buy one. I had to buy mine. But look up the prefix hystero- and see the words derived from it. A hysteroscope is an instrument for inspecting the uterus, did you know that? A hysterometer is an instrument for measuring the uterus, did you know that? A hysterograph is an apparatus for measuring the strength of the uterine contractions in labor, did you know that? Two, perhaps three, full pages of small type: hystero-this, hystero-that.
“You go in to them and they look you up and down, appraisingly, then they ask how old you are. You say I’m thirty-five. Oh, they say. They nod. They look knowing. Thirty-five, they say. Change of life coming on, you know. They soothe you. Mustnt be upset. Be calm. Happens to the best of us. They examine you. They’re gynecologists and its all professional of course. Then they wash their hands and nod profoundly. Just as I thought, they say, you need a hysterectomy, thats all, just a little old hysterectomy.
“God knows what the medical profession would do if it didnt have its hysterectomies and their hystero-derivatives. Probably all go broke and vote for socialized medicine after all, I guess. At the hospital I was in they performed as many as nine hysterectomies in a morning. Surprised? Oh, you dont realize. You dont know how many women there are over thirty in this country. And its really very simple any more. Still a major operation, but they’re getting the technique