The Doctor and the Diva Read Online Free PDF

Peter a special condom, telling him that he should use it with care so that not a drop of his precious seed would be lost. Ravell explained that he would reappear afterward to aim the syringe directly into the opening of the womb. The quick injection might prevent the sperm from tiring on their journey, and from going astray. The syringe might carry the seed more effectively—even faster into a wife’s depths—than nature could.
    Erika and Peter knew such things by now, of course. “Have you any other advice for us?” Peter joked.
    “Enjoy yourselves,” Ravell said. “And let me know when you’ve finished.” He took his black leather medical bag and found his own way through the adjoining room, which happened to be a bathroom. From there he wandered into what appeared to be Peter’s private study and latched the door.
    To distract himself, Ravell picked up a stereoscope. He inserted photographs Peter kept of bazaars in Cairo, and of serpentine streets and arches that might be located, Ravell guessed, in Morocco. Held up to the light, viewed through the stereoscope, the scenes shifted in the brain and became three-dimensional, so that he felt himself step inside dusty North African towns where he had never been.
    When he heard the quickening of her breaths in the other room, he put down the slides and the stereoscope and shut his eyes. The door was closed, but he heard them nonetheless. He could not focus on anything else. Not a sound came from Peter, only from her. Her gasps heated up in a mounting crescendo. Something thudded. (A foot or leg against the bamboo bed?)
    Ravell walked the circuit of Peter’s study, trying to mask the echoes of lovemaking with his own footsteps. He leaned closer to inspect a dozen framed images on the walls—a series of butterflies Peter had painted (Morphos, Caligos, extraordinary specimens)—all exquisite miniatures, absolutely true to nature, the colors applied with a hair-thin brush. Normally such paintings would have ensnared Ravell’s complete attention.
    But not tonight.
    Peter’s instincts had been good. He had predicted that after a performance, his wife’s every pore would open in a kind of radiance. Privately Ravell had to agree: if there was ever a time to impregnate her, tonight was surely it. Was this the same woman who had complained to him—to the point of weeping—about her husband’s obsessive tracking of her periods, his habit of picking up undergarments she’d dropped to the floor and turning them inside out, checking for blood?
    How relaxed she had seemed tonight when he, her doctor, had entered the bedroom. He’d worried that she might resent his presence, but clearly she wasn’t minding the intrusion at all. In the adjacent room, the bamboo wedding bed squeaked like an object vibrating on a factory chassis. Ravell envisioned it shuttling back and forth at a rate faster than the human eye could measure. His chest hurt from the effort of trying not to make a sound, as though something sacred were occurring behind that closed door.
    She began to use her voice, issuing more than pants of pleasure. He heard hints of the music they’d all reveled in earlier, her back probably curved, her mouth open as notes leaped from her.
    He couldn’t recall ever having been in such a position before. In hotels, yes. But not as a physician. No other couple had ever suggested that he embroil himself like this.
    Why had he come? He didn’t really believe he could help Peter impregnate her, did he?
    So why had he come—to torment himself? He rubbed his palm across his face as roughly as if he were washing it. It was unbearable to think, just now, of ruining their hopes. And the elation in Erika that he’d seen tonight—he wanted to keep sparks of that alive. Yet the fact was that Peter’s sterility could not be changed. Ravell shut his eyes at the thought. I will deal with the consequences of that later, he decided.
    In the corner of the study Peter kept a huge