JOSEF

During the 1980’s, when I was married and the kids were small, we lived in West Los Angeles. My neighbor was an eminent professor of pain research at UCLA, revered by colleagues and students alike for his dedication to pain relief. Shortly before his death, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his early groundbreaking work, interviews with early proponents of adequate medication for cancer patients and others in severe pain, and his pioneering work paving the way for unrestricted morphine use for the terminally ill. Why worry about morphine addiction if someone was dying? Although commonplace now, it was revolutionary thinking at the time.

He kept a predictable routine, had a ready smile and a saucy sense of humor. He liked Willy Nelson and Nelson Eddy. He was kind and funny and the sort of joke teller that would have us doubled up laughing, practically peeing in our pants. He collected first editions of rare books, didn’t exercise, and couldn’t say no to his spoiled older sons from his first marriage. He was utterly dependable, “Like an old diesel engine,” in the words of his wife, my friend Julia. I would never have guessed how unyielding he could be at times, how frightened, how desperately he clung to his routine and resisted the slightest change.

Eighteen years ago he died of a sudden throat cancer. A persistent sore throat worsened until one night he felt his throat was closing up altogether. They rushed him to the emergency room where the doctors removed what they thought was a small polyp or perhaps a resistant patch of infection, but was in fact the tip of a fast-growing tumor which became inflamed by the surgery and filled his throat within a few days. They removed his vocal chords and the tumor, leaving a permanent tracheotomy. He joined the Lost Chord Society, a self-help group for people without voices, and quickly learned to talk in a comical, lecherous rasp by covering and uncovering the hole in his neck. He developed a great imitation of Darth Vader.

The last time I saw him, he had lost fifty pounds. Ever the realist, he was on his way to UCLA to clear out his office. We hugged goodbye, and as he stepped out the door he turned with a smile and called over his shoulder, “Goodbye, Neighbor! See ya around the block!” and was gone.

In the 1960’s, at the beginning of his career, he had won a graduate research fellowship, gotten married, and moved to Paris with his young wife and infant son. The lab was state-of-the-art: well-lit, well stocked, with a sizeable budget assured for several years. My neighbor was hired to run all the experiments. They had plenty of lab animals, clean cages, the crème de la crème of young assistants and lab techs. J. scored a tiny apartment on the Bohemian left bank. Mondieu! It didn’t get much better than that!

At first the work went well. The scientists felt they were on the cutting edge, ahead of the curve, in understanding pain and how to control it. J. desperately wanted to do something for the world that really mattered. It seemed barbaric to him that in the mid-1960’s people should still be suffering from preventable and/or treatable pain. The experiments were done on West African chimps, likely from Liberia, which bred and supplied them to labs around the world.

J. didn’t handle the animals himself. When he was in the lab, he found it easier not to make eye contact with them. Especially Josef, the baby chimpanzee he worked with primarily. For the most part, life was uneventful and J. was happy. He occasionally had small anxiety attacks, and a persistent sense of unease, but he learned to ignore it, attributing his difficulties to the challenges of adjusting to their new life. As his own young son grew to be a toddler, J. began having a recurring dream that eventually forced him to leave the lab and return to the States.

I am in the lab early in the morning or late at night, when all the others have gone. Josef is strapped into a high chair. His gaze follows me as I move about the lab. He never takes his eyes off me. His eyes are pleading with me and although his mouth doesn’t move I hear him speaking in the voice of a human child. “Help me, please, let me out of here! Save me! Get me out of here!”
A few months later he returned to the States, settled in Los Angeles and worked at UCLA until the time of his death. A second son was born. He divorced his first wife and married my friend, J., with whom he also had a son. Twenty years later, he still kept a framed photograph of Josef in his office.