by John Irving
"Whether here, in Kilchberg, or in the outside world, we all eventually must meet a Hugo," Professor Ritter said.
"There's no medication for a Hugo," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
"Leider nicht," Dr. von Rohr remarked. ("Unfortunately not.")
"Well, unless it's a bad time, I think I'd like to meet my father now," Jack told the team.
"It's a good time, actually!" Dr. Horvath cried.
"It's our reading hour. William is a good reader," Dr. Berger said.
"It's our quiet time," Dr. von Rohr said.
"I believe he's reading a biography of Brahms," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
"Brahms isn't a trigger?" Jack asked.
"Reading about him isn't," Dr. Berger said matter-of-factly.
"Your father has two rooms, plus a bath, in the private section," Professor Ritter told Jack.
"Hence expensive," Dr. von Rohr said.
"I made a dinner reservation for tonight," Jack told them. "I don't know who else wants to come along, but I booked a table for four at the Kronenhalle."
"The Kronenhalle!" Dr. Horvath boomed. "You must have the Wiener schnitzel or the bratwurst!"
"There are mirrors at the Kronenhalle," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "One by each entrance, and another one over the sideboard."
"Surely they are avoidable," Professor Ritter said to her.
"The one in the men's room isn't!" Dr. Horvath said.
"Who's going to go with them?" Dr. Berger asked. "I can't--not this evening."
"I can go," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "I had a date, but I can break it."
"That would be best, Anna-Elisabeth--in case William needs some medication," Professor Ritter said.
"I'm sure that Hugo is also available," Dr. von Rohr suggested.
"I'd rather not go with Hugo, Ruth," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "The Kronenhalle isn't exactly Hugo's sort of place."
"I can't go to the Kronenhalle tonight and to St. Peter tomorrow morning!" Dr. Horvath exclaimed.
"Maybe I can go--I'll check my schedule," Professor Ritter said. "Or perhaps Dr. Huber can go."
"It makes sense to go to a restaurant with an internist," Dr. Berger remarked. "In case anyone gets sick."
"No one gets sick at the Kronenhalle!" Dr. Horvath cried.
"Dr. Huber has too many emergencies," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "If she gets called away, I'm alone with William and Jack--and the mirrors. Besides, there should be another man--in case William wants to go to the men's room."
"But I'll be there," Jack reminded her.
"I mean another man who knows your father," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
"I'll check my schedule," Professor Ritter said again.
Dr. von Rohr had a head-of-department look on her face, but she was smiling. The smile was something new to Jack, but the others seemed familiar with it.
"What is it, Ruth?" Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked her colleague.
"You couldn't keep me away from a trip to the Kronenhalle with William and Jack Burns--not in a million years!" she said. "You couldn't keep me out of the men's room, not if William went there--not if you tried!"
Dr. Krauer-Poppe covered her face with her hands; there was no medication that could keep Dr. von Rohr away from the Kronenhalle, apparently. (Dr. Berger was shaking his head again.)
"Okay, that settles it," Professor Ritter said uncertainly.
"Anyone but Hugo, I guess," Dr. Krauer-Poppe, who had recovered herself, said philosophically. "Ruth and I will go with them, then."
"I can't tell you how I'm looking forward to it, Anna-Elisabeth," Dr. von Rohr said.
"I think I'd like to go home and get ready for dinner," Dr. Krauer-Poppe announced to Professor Ritter.
"Of course!" the professor said. They all watched Dr. Krauer-Poppe leave the room. She was so beautifully dressed; not even her lab coat looked out of place.
"I can't wait to see what Anna-Elisabeth will wear tonight," Dr. von Rohr said, after her colleague had gone. "She's going home to get dressed, and I don't mean to change her lab coat!"
"She had a date with her husband tonight," Dr. Berger told everyone. "She's probably going home to break her date, in a nice way."
Jack felt sorry that he'd caused Dr. Krauer-Poppe to change her plans. (Dr. von Rohr, on the other hand, seemed pleased to have changed hers.)
"Don't worry!" Dr. Horvath told Jack, pounding his shoulder. "Whatever else happens tonight, you're going to the Kronenhalle!"
"I just want to see my father. That's why I came," Jack reminded them.
"We just want to prepare you for seeing him," Dr. Berger stated.
Dr. Horvath had stopped pounding Jack's shoulder, but he was massaging the back of Jack's neck with his big, strong hand. "I have a favor to ask you, if you'll indulge me," the Austrian said.
"Of course. What is it?" Jack asked him.
"If you could say something--I mean the way Billy Rainbow says it. I know you can do it!" Dr. Horvath urged him.
"No doubt about it," Jack-as-Billy said. (After the episode in the Edinburgh airport, he was relieved he could still act.)
"Wunderschon!" Dr. Horvath cried. ("Beautiful!")
"How embarrassing, Klaus," Dr. von Rohr said. "I hope you'll forgive me," she said to Jack, "but Billy Rainbow gives me the creeps."
"He's supposed to," Jack told her.
"I must tell you, Jack," Professor Ritter said, "William says that line the exact same way you say it!"
"Your father has made quite a study of you," Dr. Berger told him.
"You should prepare yourself, Jack--William knows more about you than you may think," Dr. von Rohr said. (Dr. Horvath had stopped massaging Jack's neck, but Dr. von Rohr had put her arm around Jack's shoulders in a comradely way.)
"Yes, Heather told me--he's memorized all my lines," Jack said.
"I didn't mean only your movies, Jack," Dr. von Rohr cautioned him.
"I think that's enough preparation, Ruth," Dr. Berger stated.
"Ja, der Musiker!" Dr. Horvath shouted to Jack. ("Yes, the musician!") "It's time for you to meet the musician!"
39
The Musician
There was a serenity to the private section of the Sanatorium Kilchberg, which Jack may have underappreciated on his first visit. (He was not in a serene state of mind.) The building itself, which was white stucco with shutters the same gray-blue color as the lake, looked more like a small hotel than a hospital. His father's third-floor, corner rooms--overlooking the rooftops of Kilchberg--faced the eastern shore of Lake Zurich. The Alps rose in the hazy distance to the south of the lake.
The hospital bed where Jack's father lay reading was cranked to a semireclined position. The bed and the fact that there were no carpets on the noiseless, rubberized floors were the only indications that this private suite was part of an institution--and that the man reading on the bed was in need of care. While the windows were open, and a warm breeze blew off the lake, William was dressed as if it were a brisk fall day--a thick flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, corduroy trousers, and white athletic socks. (If Jack had been dressed that way, he would have been sweating--although it instantly made him feel cold to look at his father.)
The bedroom, which opened into another room--with a couch, and a card table with a couple of straight-backed chairs--was not cluttered with furniture or mementoes. Jack saw only photographs--massive bulletin boards crammed with overlapping snapshots. There were also movie posters hung on the peach-colored walls of both rooms. They were posters of Jack Burns's movies; at a glance, Jack thought that his dad had framed and hung all of them. Jack could see that the surrounding bookshelves displayed a more balanced collection of CDs and DVDs and videocassettes and actual books than he'd seen in his sister's office, or in her bedroom.
The team of doctors, together with Professor Ritter and Jack, had entered his father's attractive but modest quarters in the utmost silence. Jack first thought that his dad didn't know they were there. (William had not looked up from his book.) But--as indicated by
the door from the corridor, which had been ajar--living in a psychiatric clinic had made Jack's father familiar with intrusions. William was accustomed to doctors and nurses who didn't necessarily knock.
Jack's dad was aware of their presence in his bedroom; he had deliberately not looked up from his book. Jack understood that his father was making a point about privacy. William Burns did indeed love the Sanatorium Kilchberg, as the hearty Dr. Horvath had maintained, but that didn't mean he loved everything about it.
"Don't tell me--let me guess," Jack's father said, staring stubbornly into his book. "You've had a meeting; remarkably, you've come to a decision. Oh, what joy--you've sent a committee to tell me your most interesting thoughts!" (William was still refusing to look at them--his copper bracelets glowing in the dull late-afternoon light.)
William Burns had spoken with no discernible accent, as if those years in foreign cities and their churches had replaced whatever was once Scottish about him. He certainly didn't sound American, but he didn't sound British, either. It was a European English, spoken in Stockholm and Stuttgart, in Helsinki and Hamburg. It was the unaccented English of hymns, of all voices put to music--from the Citadel Church, the Kastelskirken in Frederikshavn, to the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam.
As for William's sarcasm, Jack realized that his sister, Heather, might not have inherited hers from her German mother, as he'd first thought.
"Don't be childish, William," Dr. von Rohr said.
"You have a special visitor, William," Dr. Berger said.
Jack's father froze; he wasn't reading, but he wouldn't look up from his book.
"Your son, Jack, has come all this way to take you out to dinner!" Professor Ritter cried.
"To the Kronenhalle!" Dr. Horvath thundered.
William closed the book and his eyes; it was as if he could see or imagine his son better with his eyes shut. Jack couldn't look at him that way; he looked instead at the photographs on the nearest bulletin board, waiting for his father to open his eyes or speak.
"We'll leave you two alone," Professor Ritter said reluctantly.
Jack had expected to see photographs of himself--chiefly the ones snipped from movie magazines, all the film premieres, the red-carpet crap, and the Academy Awards. But not the personal snapshots, of which there were many. (There were more of Jack than of Heather!)
There he was in one of Miss Wurtz's many dramatizations at St. Hilda's. Naturally, he recognized himself as a mail-order bride--that pivotal and blood-soaked performance in Mr. Ramsey's histrionic production. Miss Wurtz and Mr. Ramsey must have taken the pictures. (Jack was pretty sure it was Caroline who had sent his dad the photographs.)
But that didn't explain the photos of Jack with Emma--though Lottie must have taken the ones in Mrs. Wicksteed's kitchen, there were more pictures of Jack with Emma in Mrs. Oastler's house--or the ones of Jack with Chenko in the Bathurst Street gym, or the ones of Jack wrestling at Redding! Had Leslie Oastler sent William photographs? Had Jack's mother relented, if only a little?
But Mrs. Oastler and Jack's mom had never been to Redding. Had Coach Clum sent those wrestling pictures to William? There were Exeter wrestling photographs, too; maybe Coach Hudson and Coach Shapiro had also been messengers.
Jack heard the door to the corridor close softly. When he looked at his father on the hospital bed, William's eyes were open and he was smiling. Jack had no idea how long his father had been watching him. Jack had barely glanced at one of the dozen or more bulletin boards; he'd seen only a fraction of the photographs, but enough to know that his dad had surrounded himself with images of Jack's childhood and his school years. (It explained something about Heather's anger toward Jack--namely, that Jack's past was more of a visual presence in their father's confined quarters than hers.)
"I was afraid you'd forgotten me," his dad said. It was one of Billy Rainbow's lines. Jack had always liked that line, and his father delivered it perfectly.
Jack made a feeble gesture to all the photographs. "I was afraid you'd forgotten me!" he blurted out--in his own voice, not Billy Rainbow's.
"My dear boy," his dad said; he patted the bed and Jack sat beside him. "You don't have children of your own; when you do, you'll understand that it's impossible to forget them!"
Jack only now noticed his father's gloves. They must have been women's gloves--close-fitting and of such thin material that William could turn the pages of his book as well as if he were bare-handed. The gloves were a light tan, almost skin-colored.
"My hands are so ugly," Jack's father whispered. "They got old before the rest of me."
"Let me see them," Jack said.
William winced once or twice, pulling the gloves off his fingers, but he wouldn't allow Jack to help him. He put his hands in his son's hands; Jack could feel his father trembling a little, as if he were cold. (The room now felt hot to Jack.) The gnarling of his dad's knuckles was so extreme that Jack doubted his father could slide a ring on or off his fingers--William wore no rings. And the bony bumps, Heberden's nodes, which had formed on the far-knuckle joints, disfigured his father's hands more than Jack had anticipated.
"The rest of me is okay, Jack," his dad said. He held one hand on his heart. "Except here, on occasion." He put the index finger of his other hand to his temple, as if he were pointing a gun at his head. "And in here," he added, giving Jack a mischievous little smile. "How about you?"
"I'm okay," Jack told him.
It was like looking at himself on a hospital bed, in clothes he would never wear--as if Jack had fallen asleep one night when he was thirty-eight, and had woken up the next day when he was sixty-four.
William Burns was thin in the way that many musicians were. With his long hair and the small-boned, feminine prettiness of his face, he looked more like a rock musician than an organist--more like a lead singer (or one of those skinny, androgynous men with an electric guitar) than "a keyboard man," as Heather had called him.
"Are we really going to the Kronenhalle?" Jack's father asked.
"Yes. What's so special about it?" Jack asked him.
"They have real art on the walls--Picasso, and people like that. James Joyce had his own table there. And the food's good," William said. "We're not going with Dr. Horvath, I hope. I like Klaus, but he eats like a farmer!"
"We're going with Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe," Jack told him.
"Oh, what joy," William said, as he had before--sarcastically. "They're two of the best-looking shrinks you'll ever see--I'll give them that--but a little of Ruth goes a long way, and Anna-Elisabeth never takes me anywhere without bringing some medication along."
Jack was struggling against the feeling that his sister had warned him he would have: his father seemed almost normal to him, or not half as eccentric as he'd expected. William certainly wasn't as wound up as Professor Ritter, or as obstreperous as Dr. Horvath--nor was he a third as intense as Dr. Berger, or Dr. von Rohr, or Dr. Krauer-Poppe. In fact, among the team attending to William Burns, only Dr. Huber had struck Jack as normal--and she was an internist, not a psychiatrist. (A pragmatist, Heather had called her.)
"You have so many photographs," Jack said to his dad. "Of me, I mean."
"Well, yes--of course!" William cried. "You should have a look at them. You never knew that some of them were being taken, I'm sure!"
Jack got up from the bed and looked at the bulletin boards, his father following him in his socks--as closely and silently as Jack's shadow.
There were more wrestling photos--too many, Jack thought. Who could have taken them all? There were as many as ten of the same match! This was true of one of his matches at Redding and two at Exeter. Jack wasn't aware that he'd had such a devoted admirer at either school. Of course Jack knew that his father had paid the tuition, both at Exeter and at Redding; perhaps William had felt entitled to ask someone to take pictures of Jack wrestling, but who?
Jack felt his father's arms around his chest, under his own arms; the long, knobby fingers of William's small hands were inte
rlocked on his son's heart. Jack felt his father kiss the back of his head. "My dear boy!" his dad said. "It was so hard to imagine my son as a wrestler! I simply had to see it for myself."
"You saw me wrestle?"
"I promised your mother that I wouldn't make contact with you. I didn't say I'd never see you!" he cried. "Your wrestling matches were public; even if she'd known, and she didn't, she couldn't have kept me away!"
"You took some of these photographs?" Jack asked him.
"Some of them, of course! Coach Clum was a nice man, if not a very gifted photographer, and Coach Hudson and Coach Shapiro--what wonderful people! Your friend Herman Castro is a great kid! You should keep in touch with Herman. I mean, more than you do, Jack. But I took many of the wrestling pictures myself. Yes, I did!" William seemed suddenly irritated that Jack looked so stunned. "Well, I wasn't going to go all that way and not take a few pictures!" his father said, with a measure of indignation in his voice. "What a pain in the ass it is, to go to Maine--and it's not a whole lot easier to get to New Hampshire."
Jack was thinking that Heather had just been born when he was first wrestling at Redding; William might have traveled to Maine when Barbara was pregnant, or when Heather was an infant. And when William had come to New Hampshire, when Jack was wrestling at Exeter, Heather would have been a little girl--too young to remember those times when her father was away. But had those wrestling trips been difficult for Barbara? Jack wondered. First she'd had cancer; then she was killed by a taxi, and there'd been no more trips.
On one of William's bulletin boards, there was a snapshot of Jack at Hama Sushi--the way he was smiling at the camera, only Emma could have taken the photograph. And another of Jack with Emma in his lap; he remembered Emma taking that one. They were in their first apartment, their half of that rat-eaten duplex in Venice. There was also a photo of Jack dressed for his waiter's job at American Pacific; only Emma could have taken that one, too.
"Emma sent you these?" Jack asked his father.
"I know that Emma could be difficult, at times," his dad replied, "but she was a good friend to you, Jack--loyal and true. I never met her in person--we just talked on the telephone from time to time. Look here!" his dad suddenly cried, pulling Jack to another bulletin board. "Your friend Claudia sent me pictures, too!"