AFFECTION AND ADDICTION

Journal-junkie doctor peers deeply into a friend's tragedy

THE TENNIS PARTNER: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss By Abraham
Verghese HarperCollins, 345p., $25

IF IT'S become a cliche to praise a non-fiction book by saying it reads
like a novel, it's important to acknowledge what that means: Such a book
does the jobs of both. Like non-fiction, it broadens your experience. Like
fiction, it interprets experience. In the case of ``The Tennis Partner,''
you can learn a great deal about the rigors of becoming a doctor, the
artistry of tennis, and the history of the Southwest border. You will also
spend time on the fine line that separates passion from addiction. In the
end, you will come away understanding how closely related are the
constructive and destructive drives that create us. And how scary that is.

You would not think that Dr. Abraham Verghese possesses the one quality
crucial to producing what my old college English teacher called ``writing
that matters.'' You would not think so precisely because the man is a
doctor -- a specialist in infectious diseases and a professor of medicine
at Texas Tech University in El Paso.

Bear with me before you dismiss that as a flip judgment.

What makes a fine writer? A fluid style is a must -- and Verghese's writing
is so finely wrought, it becomes mesmerizing. ``The Tennis Player'' owns
you when you are reading it; you can't think of anything else. This is a
very personal, intimate book, but never does the reader feel uncomfortable
or start to squirm.

A writer must also be a good observer, and Verghese is a great observer.
Most guys go into a locker room to change, shower and maybe share a few
laughs. Dr. Verghese does those things and simultaneously scans the bare
flesh of fellow athletes for skin diseases, making silent diagnoses on the
spot.

To one degree or another, all writers are compulsive -- think of Stendahl,
writing on his fingernails when he ran out of paper. Verghese is compulsive
- -- man, is he compulsive! On 3-by-5 cards, he meticulously records the
details of exotic diseases so that on that rare day when a patient enters
the Texas Tech Health Services Center with symptoms that baffle everyone
else, Verghese will be there with a diagnosis.

He is also an non-stop journal-keeper. In one journal, he carries on an
incessant conversation with himself. In another, he details the state of
his tennis game. He also has a library of every important book published on
the game, all of them minutely annotated.

These qualities are all essential in a writer, but what makes Verghese
exceptional -- and I'd argue this is the crucial ingredient to producing
writing that endures, going back at least as far as Poe -- is that he is
very much an outsider. It's rare for a doctor to live as an outsider. Most
physicians, when they have survived medical school and a brutal internship,
are eager to accept their role as a pillar of society, and to accept the
benefits that go with that.

An Indian raised in Ethiopia, Verghese escaped a family where tensions at
home were as high as the temperature outside. He rode around on his bicycle
and recorded the comings-and-goings of unsuspecting citizens in a little
notebook. ``I fancied myself a spy,'' he writes. ``I thought of myself as
invisible.''

Verghese's separateness, his essential aloneness, was fundamental to the
success of the 1994 book, ``My Own Country'' -- his tender account of
treating AIDS patients in Johnson City, Tenn., an old-fashioned town far
from the epidemiological hot spots of the disease. And his isolation comes
into play early in ``The Tennis Partner,'' which opens when Verghese and
his family -- his wife, Riajani, and two young sons -- move to El Paso.

Their marriage has become as arid as the American Southwest, and not long
after arriving in that border city, Abraham moves out, into in a nearby
condo. But he doesn't set up housekeeping. He likes the floors empty, the
walls bare. When his sons visit, they eat pizza off a U-Haul box and
happily climb into sleeping bags.

The only adult to penetrate Verghese's condo-island is David Smith, an
intern, one of Verghese's students. Their connection is tennis. An
Australian who apprenticed under the great John Newcombe, Smith was briefly
on the pro tour. He is charming, smart, a great athlete. At the level Smith
plays the game, tennis is an amalgam of power, dance and chess.

And he is doomed. David Smith is a recovering cocaine addict -- a man who,
despite his knowledge of medicine, has ended up under bridges, using dirty
needles. David is a naif, in many ways, an utter fool. He has no idea who
he is, and he lacks the strength to examine the forces that have created
him. When his mother goes into a coma that proves fatal, David turns into a
zombie, feels nothing. Twice divorced, he wrecks relationships with two
terrific women. He has no conception of commitment, no idea that fidelity
is crucial, no sense that to be loved, you must give love.

Verghese keeps posing the questions, Why is David so important to me? Why
does our friendship go way beyond tennis? The answer is apparent to the
reader, if not to the author: David Smith is a mirror image of Abraham
Verghese. Every time Verghese sees him, he gets a glimpse of the road that
he, too, might have traveled.

That Abraham and David are doppelgE4ngers becomes vividly clear one day as
Verghese examines a heroin addict. As Verghese reviews her medical history
with a group of interns, Smith is ashen, stunned -- and not only because
the patient's history is his history. So stunning are Verghese's insights,
Smith begins to think his mentor is also a recovering addict.

And, in a way, Verghese is an addict. He seeks solitude, action, the edge;
he wants to transcend; he is drawn to abnormal behavior. The difference is,
David Smith lived that life, and it killed him. Verghese explores things at
a distance; he has a filter -- his writing.

You might think this book would have a medical analysis of addiction; some
analysis of a biochemical breakthrough that might explain why so many David
Smiths, despite their many strengths, are whipped out by drugs. That
doesn't happen. The closest we get to a medical analysis is a doctor
telling Smith, ``You have a terrible disease. You need lifelong treatment.''

This is not a flaw. It is a strength. Drug addiction -- like life itself,
like the tragedy that is inherent in life -- is vast and complex and is not
going to yield to a biochemical answer. Verghese shows us this complexity,
reveals the tragedy. And in so doing, he increases our compassion.

That is a lot to take away from a book.
...............
Posted at 6:07 p.m. PDT Friday, September 18, 1998

John Hubner is a Mercury News staff writer and the co-author, with Jill
Wolfson, of ``Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the
Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families.''

Checked-by: Pat Dolan