Thefourthhand.doc

1、1The Fourth Hand John IrvingRANDOM HOUSE NEW YORKThe Fourth Hand is a work of fiction. Other than those well-known individuals and news events referred to for purposes incidental to the plot, all names, places, characters, and events are the product of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to

2、 actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. To the extent that real persons and reported events are mentioned in the novel, the author has included such references without the knowledge or cooperation of the individuals involved.Copyright 2001 by Garp Enterprises,

3、Ltd.All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.RANDOMHOUSEand colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataIrving, JohnThe fourth hand: a n

4、ovel/John Irving.p. cm. eISBN 1-58836-017-2 v1.01. Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc.Fiction. 2. Donation of organs, tissues, etc.Fiction. 3. Television journalistsFiction. 4. Transplant surgeonsFiction. 5. HandSurgeryFiction. I. Title. PS3559.R8 F68 2001b 813.54dc21 2001018155Random House web

5、site address: 24689753Book design by Barbara M. Bachman For Richard Gladstein and Lasse Hallstrm “. . . a person who is looking for something doesnt travel very fast.”the telephone repairman inE. B. WhitesStuart LittleCONTENTS1. The Lion Guy Page22. The Former Midfielder Page153. Before Meeting Mrs

6、. Clausen Page284. A Japanese Interlude Page325. An Accident on Super Bowl Sunday Page506. The Strings Attached Page597. The Twinge Page688. Rejection and Success Page769. Wallingford Meets a Fellow Traveler Page8510. Trying to Get Fired Page10611. Up North Page12712. Lambeau Field Page1532CHAPTER O

7、NEThe Lion GuyIMAGINE A YOUNG MANon his way to a less-than-thirty-second eventthe loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.As a schoolboy, he was a promising student, a fair-minded and likable kid, without being terribly original. Those classmates who could remember the future hand r

8、ecipient from his elementary-school days would never have described him as daring. Later, in high school, his success with girls notwithstanding, he was rarely a bold boy, certainly not a reckless one. While he was irrefutably good-looking, what his former girlfriends would recall as most appealing

9、about him was that he deferred to them.Throughout college, no one would have predicted that fame was his destiny. “He was so unchallenging,” an ex-girlfriend said.Another young woman, whod known him briefly in graduate school, agreed. “He didnt have the confidence of someone who was going to do anyt

10、hing special” was how she put it.He wore a perpetual but dismaying smilethe look of someone who knows hes met you before but cant recall the exact occasion. He might have been in the act of guessing whether the previous meeting was at a funeral or in a brothel, which would explain why, in his smile,

11、 there was an unsettling combination of grief and embarrassment.Hed had an affair with his thesis adviser; she was either a reflection of or a reason for his lack of direction as a graduate student. Latershe was a divorce with a nearly grown daughtershe would assert: “You could never rely on someone

12、 that good-looking. He was also a classic underachieverhe wasnt as hopeless as you first thought. You wanted to help him. You wanted to change him. Youdefinitely wanted to have sex with him.”In her eyes, there would suddenly be a kind of light that hadnt been there; it arrived and departed like a ch

13、ange of color at the days end, as if there were no distance too great for this light to travel. In noting “his vulnerability to scorn,” she emphasized “how touching that was.”But what about his decision to undergo hand-transplant surgery? Wouldnt only an adventurer or an idealist run the risk necess

14、ary to acquire a new hand?No one who knew him would ever say he was an adventurer or an idealist, but surely hed been idealistic once. When he was a boy, he must have had dreams; even if his goals were private, unexpressed, hed had goals.His thesis adviser, who was comfortable in the role of expert,

15、 attached some significance to the loss of his parents when he was still a college student. But his parents had amply provided for him; in spite of their deaths, he was financially secure. He could have stayed in college until he had tenurehe could have gone to graduate school for the rest of his li

16、fe. Yet, although hed always been a successful student, he never struck any of his teachers as exceptionally motivated. He was not an initiatorhe just took what was offered.He had all the earmarks of someone who would come to terms with the loss of a hand by making the best of his limitations. Every

17、one who knew him had him pegged as a guy who would eventually be content one-handed.Besides, he was a television journalist. For what he did, wasnt one hand enough?3But he believed a new hand was what he wanted, and hed alertly understood everything that could go medically wrong with the transplant.

18、 What he failed to realize explained why he had never before been much of an experimenter; he lacked the imagination to entertain the disquieting idea that the new hand would not be entirely his. After all, it had been someone elses hand to begin with.How fitting that he was a television journalist.

19、 Most television journalists are pretty smartin the sense of being mentally quick, of having an instinct to cut to the chase. Theres no procrastination on TV. A guy who decides to have hand-transplant surgery doesnt dither around, does he?Anyway, his name was Patrick Wallingford and he would, withou

20、t hesitation, have traded his fame for a new left hand. At the time of the accident, Patrick was moving up in the world of television journalism. Hed worked for two of the three major networks, where he repeatedly complained about the evil influence of ratings on the news. How many times had it happ

21、ened that some CEO more familiar with the mens room than the control room made a “marketing decision” that compromised a story? (In Wallingfords opinion, the news executives had completely caved in to the marketing mavens.)To put it plainly, Patrick believed that the networks financial expectations

22、of their news divisions were killing the news. Why should news shows be expected to make as much money as what the networks called entertainment? Why should there be any pressure on a news division even to make a profit? News wasnt what happened in Hollywood; news wasnt the World Series or the Super

23、 Bowl. News (by which Wallingford meantreal newsthat is, in-depth coverage) shouldnt have to compete for ratings with comedies or so-called dramas.Patrick Wallingford was still working for one of the major networks when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. Patrick was thrilled to be in Germany on

24、such a historic occasion, but the pieces he filed from Berlin were continually edited downsometimes to half the length he felt they deserved. A CEO in the New York newsroom said to Wallingford: “Any news in the foreign-policy category is worth shit.”When this same networks overseas bureaus began clo

25、sing, Patrick made the move that other TV journalists have made. He went to work for an all-news network; it was not a very good network, but at least it was a twenty-four-hour international news channel.Was Wallingford nave enough to think that an all-news network wouldnt keep an eye onits ratings?

26、 In fact, the international channel was overfond of minute-by-minute ratings that could pinpoint when the attention of the television audience waxed or waned.Yet there was cautious consensus among Wallingfords colleagues in the media that he seemed destined to be an anchor. He was inarguably handsom

27、ethe sharp features of his face were perfect for televisionand hed paid his dues as a field reporter. Funnily enough, the enmity of Wallingfords wife was chief among his costs.She was his ex-wife now. He blamed the travel, but his then-wifes assertion was that other women were the problem. In truth,

28、 Patrickwas drawn to first-time sexual encounters, and he would remain drawn to them, whether he traveled or not.Just prior to Patricks accident, thered been a paternity suit against him. Although the 4case was dismisseda DNA test was negativethe mere allegation of his paternity raised the rancor of

29、 Wallingfords wife. Beyond her then-husbands flagrant infidelity, she had an additional reason to be upset. Although shed long wanted to have children, Patrick had steadfastly refused. (Again he blamed the travel.)Now Wallingfords ex-wifeher name was Marilynwas wont to say that she wished her ex-hus

30、band had lost more than his left hand. Shed quickly remarried, had got pregnant, had had a child; then shed divorced again. Marilyn would also say that the pain of childbirthnotwithstanding how long shed looked forward to having a childwas greater than the pain Patrick had experienced in losing his

31、left hand.Patrick Wallingford was not an angry man; a usually even-tempered disposition was as much his trademark as his drop-dead good looks. Yet the pain of losing his left hand was Wallingfords most fiercely guarded possession. It infuriated him that his ex-wife trivialized his pain by declaring

32、it less than hers in “merely,” as he was wont to say, giving birth.Nor was Wallingford always even-tempered in response to his ex-wifes proclamation that he was an addicted womanizer. In Patricks opinion, he had never womanized. This meant that Wallingford didnt seduce women; he simply allowed himse

33、lf to be seduced. He never called themthey called him. He was the boy equivalent of the girl who couldnt say noemphasis, his ex-wife would say, onboy. (Patrick had been in his late twenties, going on thirty, when his then-wife divorced him, but, according to Marilyn, he was permanently a boy.)The an

34、chor chair, for which hed seemed destined, still eluded him. And after the accident, Wallingfords prospects dimmed. Some CEO cited “the squeamish factor.” Who wants to watch their morning or their evening news telecast by some loser-victim type whos had his hand chomped off by a hungry lion? It may

35、have been a less-than-thirty-second eventthe entire story ran only three minutesbut no one with a television set had missed it. For a couple of weeks, it was on the tube repeatedly, worldwide.Wallingford was in India. His all-news network, which, because of its penchant for the catastrophic, was oft

36、en referred to by the snobs in the media elite as “Disaster International,” or the “calamity channel,” had sent him to the site of an Indian circus in Gujarat. (No sensible news network would have sent a field reporter from New York to a circus in India.)The Great Ganesh Circus was performing in Jun

37、agadh, and one of their trapeze artists, a young woman, had fallen. She was renowned for “flying”as the work of such aerialists is calledwithout a safety net, and while she was not killed in the fall, which was from a height of eighty feet, her husband/trainer had been killed when he attempted to ca

38、tch her. Although her plummeting body killed him, he managed to break her fall.The Indian government instantly declared no more flying without a net, and the Great Ganesh, among other small circuses in India, protested the ruling. For years, a certain government ministeran overzealous animal-rights

39、activisthad been trying to ban the use of animals in Indian circuses, and for this reason the circuses were sensitive to government interference of any kind. Besidesas the excitable ringmaster of the Great Ganesh Circus told Patrick Wallingford, on-camerathe audiences packed the tent every afternoon

40、 and nightbecause the trapeze artists didnt use a net.5What Wallingford had noticed was that the nets themselves were in shocking disrepair. From where Patrick stood on the dry, hard-packed earthon the “floor” of the tent, looking uphe saw that the pattern of holes was ragged and torn. The damaged n

41、et resembled a colossal spiderweb that had been wrecked by a panicked bird. It was doubtful that the net could support the weight of a falling child, much less that of an adult.Many of the performerswere children, and these mostly girls. Their parents had sold them to the circus so they could have a

42、 better (meaning a safer) life. Yet the element of risk in the Great Ganesh was huge. The excitable ringmaster had told the truth: the audiences packed the tent every afternoon and night to see accidents happen. And often the victims of these accidents were children. As performers, they were talente

43、d amateursgood little athletesbut they were spottily trained.Whymost of the children were girls was a subject any good journalist would have been interested in, and Wallingfordwhether or not one believed his ex-wifes assessment of his characterwas a good journalist. His intelligence lay chiefly in h

44、is powers of observation, and television had taught him the importance of quickly jumping ahead to what might go wrong.The jumping-ahead part was both what was brilliant about and what was wrong with television. TV was driven by crises, not causes. What chiefly disappointed Patrick about his field a

45、ssignments for the all-news network was how common it was to miss or ignore a more important story. For example, the majority of the child performers in an Indian circus were girls because their parents had not wanted them to become prostitutes; at worst, the boys not sold to a circus would become b

46、eggars. (Or they would starve.)But that wasnt the story Patrick Wallingford had been sent to India to report. A trapeze artist, a grown woman hurtling downward from eighty feet, had landed in her husbands arms and killed him. The Indian government had intervenedthe result being that every circus in

47、India was protesting the ruling that their aerialists now had to use a net. Even the recently widowed trapeze artist, the woman whod fallen, joined in the protest.Wallingford had interviewed her in the hospital, where she was recovering from a broken hip and some nonspecific damage to her spleen; sh

48、e told him that flying without a safety net was what made the flying special. Certainly she would mourn her late husband, but her husband had been an aerialist, toohed also fallen and had survived his fall. Yet possibly, his widow implied, hed notreally escaped that first mistake; her falling on him

49、 had conceivably signified the true conclusion of the earlier, unfinished episode.Nowthat was interesting, Wallingford thought, but his news editor, who was cordially despised by everyone, was disappointed in the interview. And all the people in the newsroom in New York thought that the widowed trapeze artist had seemed “too calm”; they preferred their disaster victims to be hysterical.Furthermore, the recovering aer