A Covenant with Death by Stephen Becker Page B

concerned with truth here, and we discuss matters that don’t get discussed outside. Just use your own words, and don’t worry about technical phrases. You can use your daughter’s exact words if you can remember them.”
    â€œAll right. I’ll try,” she said. “She told me that her husband had been with another woman—”
    â€œWell, now, that’s hearsay too,” Parmelee objected. “What Bryan Talbot told his wife is for Bryan to bring out.”
    Hochstadter opened his mouth but Bryan spoke. “Oh, let it go,” Talbot said impatiently. “It’s true.”
    Even Hochstadter was shocked. In the audience eyes widened; I believe they all held their breath. Parmlee sat down and Hochstadter never even ruled. Mrs. Hoyers glared wildly at Talbot.
    â€œPlease go on,” Dietrich said gently. Parmalee was staring at his client in some anger.
    â€œShe said he’d been with another woman and caught a disease and brought it home and given it to her.” Mrs. Hoyers bowed her head.
    â€œAnd what was the disease?”
    â€œIt has a long name. I forget. Clement called it the clap.” I find it difficult now, several wars and modern novels later, to convey the horrific echoes of that word in the sudden, ugly silence. The word reverberated; swelled; glided and swooped and eddied in the hot, dusty air. Hochstadter adjusted his string tie. The jury stared into the middle distance.
    â€œGonorrhea,” Dietrich said softly, and a hundred solid citizens experienced immediate relief. Thus, the proprieties; the comforts of a dead language. A rose by any other name often smells sweeter.
    â€œThat’s right,” she said. “That was it.”
    â€œI see. And what else was said that evening?”
    â€œWell, we didn’t say so much after that. It was like we couldn’t believe it. I spoke against her husband some.”
    â€œAnd what did she say to that?”
    â€œShe said things like ‘How could he?’”
    â€œAnd that was all that was discussed that evening?”
    â€œNo. Oh, no. Before we went to bed I told her we’d see the doctor the next day, and I gave her a separate tooth glass.”
    â€œYour family doctor?”
    â€œNot exactly. A surgeon. The one who did my appendicitis.’”
    â€œAnd his name?”
    â€œSelma. Doctor Hanford Selma.”
    I remember Parmelee fidgeting through all that, and reading the record I can see why. He knew the story; was willing to stipulate the entire setting and background, once Hochstadter had denied his objection to it; and resented not only Dietrich’s tedious melodrama but also his own helplessness, the impossibility of counterattack; none of this was at issue.
    Eventually, and with the help of an affidavit submitted to evidence, Dietrich brought before the jury approximately what the Colonel had so avidly learned and industriously reported. My classic little joke is now obsolete; a clap may be cured in two or three days, but a bad cold lingers for a week. In 1919 pharmacology was primitive; as Dr. Selma’s affidavit explained, the possibility of extensive infection made imperative major surgery, a hysterectomy, removal of the uterus, in order to avoid serious and possibly fatal complications, one of which was called gonococcic salpingitis. There was no question of Selma’s probity or of the need for surgery. Louise Talbot recuperated at her parents’ home, and the infection disappeared; within a month her blood was normal, and toward the end of October she left for Soledad City, exercising, as Mrs. Hoyers specified, her father’s privileges and paying only half fare.
    She returned to Dallas in March for a two-week visit, and notified her parents that she had decided not to ask for a divorce. Talbot had promised to reform; he had been drunk and out of town, and it would never happen again. She did not trust his promise but was, apparently,