The cab was waiting by the side entrance of the Pathology Institute with its meter running, which is why I am able to estimate the time.

Moreover I was firmly resolved not to perform any operations during the next few days. I had, of course, washed my hands, my body, with the greatest possible fastidiousness following this visit to the laboratory, had even had my hair cut. Out of pure self-interest alone, I had done everything I could in order not to be infectious. As ill luck would have it, I must now repeat those ominous words, my wife welcomed me home with the news that there had been a call about a friend of my brother and sister, a woman. There was severe pelvic bleeding. My name came to mind for many reasons.

This was the second calamity. This time I could not be said to have done anything unwittingly. I would have liked to say no. But my wife pressed me; my siblings, who otherwise lived their own lives just as they let me live mine, besieged me with entreaties, particularly my sister. I wanted to have my assistant do the operation. Objections all around. He had so little experience, he was heavy-handed, etc., and most of all: no one wanted an outsider to know too much about the operation. I gave in and performed it. Again a minor, ten-minute procedure, assisted only by the clinical nurse, as, in view of its nature, we wished to prevent the assistant from finding out about it. For the law is not for such things. I knew the patient, a pretty, Rubenesque, golden blonde individual. She was a widow, prominent in society–she wished to avoid a scandal, had to avoid one. I did not understand it entirely, but I complied with her fervent request. Misplaced compassion! The man involved did not show himself.

This time I was not as calm as I had been after the appendectomy. I went out again to the clinic late in the evening or at night.

My wife was waiting down at the gate in her car. She had on her lap a small, long-haired, wheat-colored dog, a kind of Pekingese, the pet of her daughter, who was traveling. As I stood beside the bed of my patient, still asleep after the anesthesia, I looked down at the street. My wife seemed to be getting along well with the little dog. Her long, beautiful fingers played in the silkily gleaming, slightly wavy coat of the large-eyed little creature, sprightly unlike most of its breed. Suddenly it barked and snapped at my wife’s gloved fingers, which she had held out to it. It was summer, the car was open, the trees in front of the clinic swayed in the breeze. A fine day, very fine. Meanwhile the nurse had taken the patient’s temperature. It was 37.1. This is actually a fairly normal temperature, but I could not shake an uneasy feeling. And at the same time a sensation, an intuition (how shall I put it?) that only an experimenter will recognize.