The curtain opened, first a little bit and then all the way. But this was not the Opera, just my hospital room. And there stood Martha in her uniform, broom in hand and a bucket at her feet, a member of the housekeeping team. She was delighted to find me sitting in a chair and able to speak. All the men in the adjacent rooms were still on their beds snoring, having just recently been rolled in from the operating room. “I can practice my English?” she inquired. Sure, I said and welcomed her.As she went around the room sweeping up tissues, bandages, and debris, she saw my Kindle and wanted to know what it was. I told her that it was my library and that I had stored on it over a hundred books. When she heard that she forgot all about speaking English and asked in Spanish what kind of books they were. Books in all languages, I told her, even Spanish books. By some curious coincidence I had a Spanish story on the screen, The Lazarillo de Tormes, a little masterpiece of 16th century Spanish literature. I showed it to her. “Tormes? Tormes?” she said, “Where is that?” Somewhere in Spain, I suggested, because I did not know.
I thought I was facing a very simple God-fearing loveable housewife of the old school. Until she burst out laughing: “You remind me of Don Quijote!” I am over six feet tall and I look gaunt with my bare legs sticking out from under the hospital gown. I could not help it, but I had to laugh out loud at the thought of how I might look. “That’s a lot better than being compared to Sancho Panza,” I replied in mock offense. To most of the people I know this would have been a non-joke. After all, how many of us speak Spanish. But Martha and I laughed tears. In a miraculous instant Miguel de Cervantes whose name, by the way, was never mentioned that morning, had created a bond. I will probably never see her again, never find out what makes her tick, but that is alright. She did not just clean my floor. She helped nourish my damaged heart. How is that for wholistic medicine!
(c) 2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman. Picture credit: Chess.com
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