I imagine myself spending my final days here, looking at the life buzzing outside the French doors, before I finally drift off. I write “to go” in black on the stickums and put them on the couch and coffee table, markers for when the movers come. They will make room for my deathbed.
I pivot to the other side of the office. Lisa calls the fly-tying workbench in the corner my “private altar.” Tacked to the board above the workbench are the rumps and wings of fowl, everything from red grouse to a rare and illegal hide of the King of Saxony bird-of-paradise. There are also little baggies filled with the inexpensive and furry skins of voles and black squirrels; and spools of silk thread, in colors ranging from caviar-black to flamingo-scarlet, used to tie the feathers to the hooks.
I can’t decide what to do with the fly-tying bench, and turn my attention to a filing cabinet on casters pushed under the desk. In the top drawer, I find dried-out pens, clips, calling cards; I upend it all into a garbage bag. In the next drawer, there are letters and printed emails from my sons, wrapped in rubber bands and neatly stacked according to date.
I open one packet and read the first email. It is from Sam. “Dear Dad, Thanks for the $35,000 wire transfer. It arrived yesterday. This morning I gave the landlord the deposit for the two-bedroom rental, which is just a block from campus. I just discovered my new roommate, from Austria, knows the rivers of the Tyrol and tells me he mostly fishes for grayling. When I know him better, will pump him for information on what are the best rivers. Love, Sam.”
I take another. It is a handwritten note from John that I have preserved in its original cream envelope. “Dad, I am getting married to Joanne, the woman I love, whether you like it or not. My brothers are all showing up in Vegas, proud to stand by me on our special day. I hope you and Mom make it. Please come. John.”
John was always the son we worried over most. I return his letter to its rubber-band stack and decide to keep the letters. Let them see what I kept.
But there is something niggling in the back of my mind, a memory buried from another period of my life, and I keep searching the bric-a-brac, until my hands finally clamp down on an old cigar box of Montecristo No. 2, pushed to the far corner of the drawer. I pull the box out and gently lift its lid. It still smells of Havanas.
Amidst the papers inside, the high school grades and magnifying glass, I find a color photo that has yellowed with age. I excitedly take out the picture, so long buried in its cigar-box casket, and hold it in the light of the French doors.
It is a picture of me, in my forties, on a working vacation in Southern India. I am relaxed and happy and standing on a terrace in front of a teak bungalow, surrounded by jungle. Next to me stands a smiling travel companion.
Or so I remember. The photo has been mutilated. Someone has angrily cut out the young man’s head, leaving behind just a headless torso in denim shorts. I sense instantly it was Lisa who found the picture and jaggedly cut out the head. I suddenly start shaking, feel like I might throw up, and I upend the drawer’s entire contents, including the photo, into the garbage bag. I can’t get rid of the picture quick enough.
But the shaking doesn’t stop, and when I start jotting down on a stickum that the fly-tying workbench is a gift to my friend, Walter Iten, I find I can’t write the sentence. My arm is trembling too hard. I look down at the limb, like it is something foreign, not a part of me. I have the coolness of mind to observe the tremors are just on the right side of my body, but they won’t stop, and now I am seeing zigzags of light and am visited by an entirely new kind of searing pain.
I crawl on all fours to the crushed-velvet couch. I lie down and look out the French doors, at the roses, as my body shakes with the tremors and pain. As I lie there, clammy with sweat, waiting for it to pass or turn into something worse, images begin circling, silver shadows slowly coming up from the deep.
One of them morphs into the young man with the long hair slicked down with pomade. He is looking intently at me.
“It’s not my fault,” he says. “I never asked you to keep the secrets.”
NINE
The room slowly reveals itself. There is a large window with a view of the Lake of Zürich. On the sill stands a glass vase filled with tiger lilies and Queen Anne’s lace—and Lisa’s poncho.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Lisa says. “You scared me so, José.”
“Where am I?”
“The Hirschlanden Hospital. They came and took you by helicopter.”
How much is all this costing me? Looks more like a hotel than a hospital.
There is tugging on the left.
A nurse in uniform and short-cropped silver hair is fiddling with the drip taped into my hand, and watching the heart monitor to the side of the bed.
“Can you understand me? What is your name?”
My head is pounding like I have been drinking aguardiente for a week. There is a Vaseline-like film over my eyes.
“José María Álvarez de Oviedo.”
Lisa kisses the right side of my face, again and again. “You are back. Oh, José. You gave Alfredo and me such a scare.”
Dr. Sutter strides into the room. “Aaah. You are alert. I see that already in your eyes, Herr Álvarez. Welcome back. You had a nasty seizure.”
The nurse and Lisa help me sit up, as Dr. Sutter takes a flashlight from his coat pocket and waves it before my eyes. “Nurse, take note. Pupils dilating. Responding appropriately to light stimulus.”
The doctor and nurse speak then in Swiss German as they have me move my fingers and toes. My mind is too slow-moving to follow what they say, but I kept hearing the word Hirn, which I know means brain.
“Yes. Yes. We had here abnormal electrical activity in the temporal lobe, caused by the tumor. It was causing the seizures. We could see the activity on the EEG. But we have given you seizure medicine, similar to what we give epileptics. That seems to have calmed things down.”
“I feel like I have been on a bender.”
“Ha ha. A joke. Ja. This is good.”
A scrape against my heel, with a steel instrument, and my toes curl involuntarily.
“Tell me what happened, just before you lost consciousness.”
“I had a funny sensation. In my stomach. And then my arm began to tingle and shake. I remember crawling to the couch . . .”
“This is what we call a ‘complex partial.’ Did you have any visions? Hallucinations?”
I look out the window.
“Herr Álvarez?”
“Yes, I’ve had hallucinations. But it’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“The blackouts, they are not actual blackouts. I am reliving memories. They are very vivid, things that I have not thought about in many years and have actively tried to forget. But they are not hallucinations. It’s like watching a film of my younger self.”
“This is actually a good sign. There is frequently a loss of memory in cases like this, sometimes profound. With the tumor growing, it could all go, the memories. Pffffft . . . just like that. So this is reassuring. This deep part of your brain is still functioning, as it should. But we will want to do some more scans.”
Bile rises in my throat. I begin to cough. I look frantically for Lisa and calm down once I realize she has shifted her chair to the back of the room, so the doctor and nurse can move around my bed.
“And the hallucinations?” continues Dr. Sutter.
“They happen when I am conscious and going about the day.”
“Flashes of light? Noises? Or full hallucinations?”
“There are lights, sometimes, yes, but I am mostly visited by a young man. He comes to me, again and again. He seems as real as you are now.”
“For God’s sake, José!” Lisa exclaims. “Why didn’t you tell me? How frightening that must be. Why must you keep everything a secret? Honestly.”
“Is this figure someone you recognize? Someone real. Like with the returning memories.”
“No. He’s a man with l
ong hair, and seems vaguely familiar, like I did know him once. But I really don’t. I do recognize his smell, however.”
“His smell?”
“Suavecito. It’s a pomade the men in my family used to wear, years ago, in Spain.”
Much scratching of the pen before he looks up again.
“We will get you a psychiatrist to talk to. He can perhaps help with this.”
I shrug. “No sé.”
I am filled with an almost unbearable sadness. I anxiously ask Lisa whether she has heard from our sons. Lisa does not respond. She sits a little taller in her chair in the back, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes wide with alarm. She has an uncomprehending look on her face. I glance over at the nurse and the doctor, and they, too, are looking at me with peculiar expressions. Dr. Sutter puts a hand on my wrist. “Herr Álvarez,” he says gently. “We can’t understand you. You are speaking a foreign language. It has an old sound. Could it be Basque?”
I don’t want to be stuck in the hospital—until I die.
So I concentrate hard, try to make it all look easy.
“Was I? Sorry. Slip of the tongue. Lisa, I was asking about the boys. Have they called?”
“Sam called and I told him what is going on. It just poured out of me. I’m sorry, but this isn’t just about you anymore. I had to tell him. I need someone to talk to as well, you know, and since I told Sam, well, I of course had to tell Rob and John. So they all know.” She looks at me, defiantly. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Bueno. I am ready to see them.”
“Well, thank God. Because they’re all on their way here.”
Dr. Sutter orders MRI scans, and then turns back to me a final time. “Staff will be coming to take you shortly to another part of the hospital for the scans. Afterward, we will start the rehab, to get the motor running again.”
I grab Sutter’s wrist and make him look me straight in the face. “I want to go home. If I need round-the-clock private nurses—no me importa. I will hire all the nurses and equipment you want. But I want you to send me home.”
“Yes. Yes. I am aware of your wishes.” He looks down at his wrist and I let go. “We will send you home as soon as we can, Herr Álvarez. But let us just conclude these tests, so we know how best to make you comfortable.”
Again that fucking word.
Qué mierda.
My wife and I are finally alone. We hold hands.
“Lisa. I am sorry. For everything.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“I have to talk sometimes. It helps.”
“All right. What about?”
“The things that haunt me . . .”
“Look, José. We’ve all done things we regret. Sometimes we hurt the people we love most. It’s a fact. I was just talking about this with my friend the other night. The analyst.”
“Oh, God. What did she have to say on the subject?”
“She says, in her experience, the key is not to lie to yourself about the crimes you have committed, but to try and let in what you have done and why you did it at the time. That’s the path to forgiving yourself.”
“That’s pop psychology.”
“Well, if you don’t forgive yourself, you also won’t forgive others, and that means you’re likely to commit the same crimes again and again. Is that what you want? I’m not sure what other options you think there are.”
You don’t understand. I’m not strong enough to face what I have done.
But I cannot say what is in my heart. She sees the pain in my face, however, and instantly softens. “Oh, dear. Let’s change the subject. The last thing you need right now is a stressful conversation.” She snaps open her purse, retrieves a tissue, and speaks cheerfully. “I have to tell you about your departure from the farm. It really was something. The helicopter landed in the field in the back of the house, and all our Swiss neighbors came out for a good look over the fence. Like cows. Herr Müller even came down our lane and asked me what kind of helicopter it was. Imagine that. Here’s a woman whose husband is convulsing and fighting for his life—and this man is asking me what kind of helicopter the emergency service is using. Really. The Swiss are . . .” But she stops herself, looks down at her lap. “That doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
I hold her hand a little tighter. “I’m slipping away, Lisa.”
“Yes, I can feel it.”
“The borders of my mind are falling apart.”
“I’m so sorry. I would do anything to help. It’s difficult to watch.”
Lisa rests her head on my stomach, her face turned so she can stare up at me, over the lumpy cover. She brings my liver-spotted hand up to her lips, to kiss it. I stroke her head. We sit like that for some time. There is a pattering sound on the windowsill. It is starting to gust and drizzle outside.
“I think it’s time I speak with Hans-Peter. Before it’s too late. I need to finalize my affairs. While I still can.”
Lisa sits bolt upright. She has been waiting for this.
“Yes, of course. I’ll call him right now.”
“Hoppla, Herr Álvarez.”
I was sleeping. Emphasis on was. A nurse’s aide, whom I haven’t seen before, is standing in front of me. She is just thirty, I guess, and has purple-dyed hair, a ring through her nose, and a tattoo of a lotus on her neck. She is smiling in that forced way that infects health-care workers. She is trying to get me to sit up.
“Hoppla? Is this something I am meant to do?”
“Ja. Ja. Time for Physiotherapie.”
With one yank she has the covers off and is swinging my legs onto the steps that help me off the high bed.
“You. Stop pushing. Joder.”
She keeps on pushing, as if I haven’t spoken.
“You! Goddammit. Stop it with the pushing!”
The nurse and I stare at each other.
She grabs my hand and makes me clasp the drip pole.
“My name is Ursula. Stop saying ‘you.’ It is rude. Call me by my name, Ursula.”
We begin walking from the room, very slowly, out into the corridor. “Lock that cabinet,” I say. “People are coming in and stealing my clothes.”
“No one is stealing your clothes, Herr Álvarez.”
But she locks the cabinet anyway.
We walk down the long hospital hall. It takes forever.
“What happened to your hair?”
“It is the fashion.”
“Oh Dios mío. Do you have tattoos on other body parts?”
“Yes.”
“That ring through your nose. It makes you look like a bull.”
“Herr Álvarez. I respect you. Please return me the favor.”
After what seems like an interminable long walk in silence through the busy hospital, we enter a studio, set up with blue floor mats, parallel bars, and leg pulleys attached to Pilates contraptions. There are three patients at work with physiotherapists, two white-haired and bent and looking worse than I feel; the other, a teenage girl, has braces on her legs and a helmet on her head.
“Sit in this chair. I want to see how you get up.”
Oh, God. She’s not a nurse’s aide but my physiotherapist.
Cabrón! Why did you have to say that thing about the nose ring?
You’re such an idiot!
It is utterly brutal. Worse than I expected. I am at Ursula’s mercy for the next ninety minutes, and by the end, I am panting and sweating from the ball passing, the balance exercises, the painful stretches.
But—coño!—I make it through the ordeal.
“I thought you were going to be difficult, Herr Álvarez. But you did your exercises well. You worked hard.”
“It’s the quickest way out of the hospital, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Bueno. I am motivated.”
She walks me back to the hospital’s west wing, through a glass-walled corridor decorated with contemporary art, splotchy and cheerful w
ith color. The hallway opens up into a large waiting room, where seats are taken up by Middle Eastern families, the women buried under the hijab; elderly Italians, their skin leathery from too many years in the Amalfi sun; and a couple of African men in shiny suits. There is one family that touches me: the Swiss couple that sits patiently with their two children bent and twisted with cerebral palsy.
We are all waiting. Waiting.
I stop.
“Herr Álvarez. What is it?”
Suavecito.
“Are you in pain? You are white.”
I follow the smell of lavender. There, in the corner of the waiting room, his head down, the man with the long hair. His foot is crossed and jiggling furiously, like a combustible engine ready to explode. He is reading a book.
“Ursula. Please. Take me to that corner.”
The physiotherapist looks uncertain, but she can see the need in my face, and so she gently touches my elbow and we begin walking to the far corner of the waiting room.
“Is this where you want to be? Near this plant?”
I stand before the young man. His head is still down. He is reading Biggles.
That’s why he seemed so familiar.
My brother, as he might have been had he lived into his thirties, slowly shuts Biggles’ Second Case and looks up at me. But still he won’t speak.
“Juanito. What do you want? For the love of God, tell me what you want.”
“Herr Álvarez, are you having an episode? Talk to me. I am about to call for assistance. You must address me. There is no one here. You are not making sense.”
It is definitely Juan. He is there, in the young man’s eyes.
Say something, Juan, please. I beg you.
He finally speaks.
“Come home, José María. It’s time for you to come home.”
There is frost on the window when Hans-Peter Grieder comes by. He brings me Schocki-Stengeli, the kirsch-filled chocolate sticks from Lindt & Sprüngli. It’s a singularly odd gift, considering the amount of drugs I am on, but I don’t say a word.
The Man With No Borders Page 13