The Man With No Borders

by Richard C. Morais

  “Bienvenue, Monsieur Álvarez,” the manager says.

  He is smiling and bobbing his head like a car ornament. John and Rob come around and help lift me from the back of the car. I emerge from the Volvo with trembling effort. But I am here.

  “Merci, Monsieur le Directeur,” I pant. “Vous êtes très gentil.”

  The young man kisses Lisa’s hand—a European affectation that has always made her skin crawl—and then invites us to enter the hotel. Behind us, Sam and Rob are chatting about their families back home, while John, stretching out his long torso and hamstrings, is leaning against the hood of the car.

  The manager makes a discreet gesture and the Seefeld’s bellman—a Tunisian, by the look of him—emerges from the shadows, pushing a wheelchair. He bends forward, helps me get settled in the chair, and then turns me around and wheels me up the ramp laid down for my arrival.

  The family follows and together we move through the sliding glass doors and across the hotel’s lobby, like a close-knit military reconnaissance mission, Alfredo’s toenails clicking on the marble floor. I lead the family; Sam is next; Rob, off to the side, holds the dog’s leash tight. Lisa picks up her pace, so she can walk by my side, while Big Bertha and John bring up the rear, dragging along my drip.

  On the far side of the lobby, the hotel manager flings open the doors of the Alpenrose restaurant, with an excess of theatrics, and we start our walk through the dining room, past the beautifully set tables, the cheese trolley, and the centerpiece vase filled with thorny berry branches. The dining room falls silent. Elderly Swiss couples and two-children families, sitting before roast chickens and veal medallions in a wild-mushroom sauce, lift their heads and stare at us. They look like cud-chewing cows, peering astonished at hikers crossing an Alpine meadow. But we are used to such things, after so many decades in Switzerland, and we sail through the dining room, like only our family exists in this world.

  The open French doors on the far side of the dining room reveal a gray-slate terrace facing the glassy Lake of Ägeri, its water so clean and clear and pure, I have to catch my breath.

  “What a wonderful idea, Sammy,” Lisa says, pulling off her silk scarf. “Thank you. We so needed to get out of the house and get a change of scenery.”

  She gently touches my shoulder. “Isn’t that so, José María?”

  I pat her hand. “Claro, sí. It’s perfect. Very nice.”

  Sam moves on ahead through the French doors, to make sure the terrace table he requested is ready, and I am wheeled out after him. The maître d’ is waiting for us. He pulls out the head chair facing the mountains and lake, and, with a courteous dip of his head, signals for me to take the place of honor.

  A white-jacketed waiter, who has been at the restaurant since the boys were little, warmly greets the family in Swiss German, and pulls out a chair for Lisa. She sits down immediately to my right. Sister Bertha, knowing her place, whispers to Lisa she will eat at the café down the street, but my wife says, “You will dine with the family, Sister Bertha. You have been so good to us, and seen us all at our very worst. Whether you like it or not, that makes you part of the family. Please, I insist you join us.” And so the nun blushes and moves to a spot at the end of the table.

  I stick to sparkling water, while they all drink the wine, including Lisa, who is visibly relieved to have a few carefree hours. They talk about this and that, about the mountain in front of us at the end of the lake, and about the time the boys went skiing on its northern slope, with the American International School of Zürich. Lisa went on the school trip, too, as one of the parental chaperones; she recalls, with humor now, how the boys were caught by the school’s history teacher, trying to sneak out of the hostel’s bathroom window, for a nighttime rendezvous with the girls in the far dorms.

  I half listen. I am mesmerized by the view before us: the gray and jagged peak, its flanks looming mauve and purple over the blue-green lake, the villages dotting the shoreline like decorative trim around a cake. There is a cluster of boats—I recognize Iten’s red-and-white hull—hovering before the Morgarten Strandbad, the public swimming beach, above a hole in the lake known to be a favorite feeding ground for the Felchen.

  But my tranquil reverie is interrupted by sudden gun blasts in the forests up and off to the left of the hotel. Half a minute later we all hear thundering hooves, as a magnificent six-point stag plunges through the garden hedges to the right of the hotel. Alfredo jumps up, barks with deep excitement, and pulls hard at his lead that is, fortunately, secured tightly to the leg of Rob’s chair.

  As it shoots past us, I get a strangely clear and close look at the stag: at the branch bones of furred antlers; at great jets of steam and snot shooting from his flared nostrils; at the adrenaline-filled muscles, rippling under the red hide, moving like waves washing over slabs of slate.

  But then he is past the hotel and thundering down the lawn, sending up clods of turf. He heads straight for the lake, and for a moment, we don’t know what he is going to do, perhaps veer off at the last moment. But the mighty beast never hesitates, and at full gallop, jumps off the hotel’s pier. There is a great splash as the magnificent animal disappears underwater. We all sit a little straighter with anxiety, wondering if he will come back up, and then erupt in cheers when he surfaces, head and antlers held high, eyes wide with terror—heading straight across the lake.

  “Go,” I whisper. “Go.”

  A third of the way across, the deer starts to tire and I begin to think he will not make it. But there is a peninsula jutting into the lake, just past the town of Egg, and, perhaps seeing this spit, outstretched like a helping hand, the deer changes course and heads in its direction. I hold my breath until it finally, wearily, wades into the shallows and stands panting hard on the far shore.

  Steam rises from its hot and wet flanks. It regally turns its head back in our direction, snorts a few times, and, then, his head still held high, he is up into the forest—and gone.

  “My God. That was amazing,” says Rob. “I wish I had my film crew here.”

  I turn and see that everyone at the table is flushed and peering at the wooded peninsula where the stag has just disappeared.

  The old waiter comes out with glass bowls filled with salad and chives, and wicker baskets filled with crusty brown bread. He has seen it all, too. He places a salad bowl before Rob and me.

  “A pity. That was my son, hunting above. Would have been a nice set of antlers to go above the garage door.”

  “After a hunt like that, isn’t the deer’s meat gamey and filled with toxins?” John asks. “I remember once, in upstate New York, trying to cook deer that had been running for its life like that, before it was finally felled by a hunter. We couldn’t eat the meat. Had to throw it away. It was awful. The muscles were so filled with adrenaline you could taste the animal’s fear in the meat. I stewed the venison for hours, with vinegar and mustard, to get rid of the bitter taste, but even that didn’t help.”

  “That’s true,” says the old waiter. “It is not a good taste. But the antlers—a trophy.”

  “Well, thank heavens it got away,” Lisa says. “I would have gone off my food if they had shot it in front of us. Such a magnificent beast.”

  But I have lost the trail of their chatter, for my watery eyes are peering at what is happening at the bottom of the hotel’s field. A park bench and stone birdbath stand next to a stream emptying into the lake, a brook that marks the property’s boundary. My brother, Juan, is sitting on the bench, jiggling his leg and smoking a cigarette. I can see, even from this distance, he is talking with a great deal of passion, his hands flapping, Spanish style, this way and that.

  His discussion partner is quite the opposite in temperament. The Frog Queen sits coolly and regally next to him in the wet grass, gulping, her eyes wide with intelligent curiosity. She is again somehow communicating telepathically, because there are moments when Juan turns his head in her direction, clearly listening to her counsel, before returning to his a
nxious cigarette puffs and the hand gestures and the rat-tat of Northern Spain.

  I know in my bones that I am the subject of their discussion, and that they are quietly joining forces, plotting their next steps on precisely how they will get me to do their bidding.

  “Darling,” Lisa says, putting her hand on mine. “Are you all right? You look pale and far away.”

  “The hunters. They are hunting.”

  “Yes, José. They are. It’s that time of season. Fall.”

  I must have nodded off at the table for a while, and again in the car, because when I wake up, we are back in the chalet’s courtyard. It must be late afternoon. The sun has dropped behind the barn when my sons pull me from the back of the Volvo. Sister Bertha leans forward, wipes some drool off my chin.

  “Not so rough,” I whimper.

  My bloated innards hurt to the touch.

  “Sorry. Here you go, Dad.”

  “Is time to wash,” says Sister Bertha. “Before dinner.”

  I make a face. “I’ll get him washed today,” John says. “Not to worry, Sister. I’ll give him his bath.”

  Sister Bertha looks unsure, isn’t happy with this break in protocol. “He must be properly cleaned and scrubbed. Carefully—also his private parts.”

  This time both John and I make a face, not over the task at hand, but that this nurse has absolutely no sense of decorum or concern about my dignity.

  “Don’t worry,” John says. “We can manage . . . Hey, Rob, Sam. I’ll need your help getting Dad upstairs. We’re going to give him a bath.”

  “What a great idea,” Lisa says. “Isn’t it, José?”

  They get me upstairs, to the bathroom off the master bedroom, where Lisa and I slept for nearly fifty years. I have not been in our room since I moved downstairs into the study, and I feel a pang, when I see Lisa’s lonely nightgown draped across her armchair, her book and glasses on the bedside table. My side of the bed is cold and barren.

  I don’t know what to say and then we are in the wood-paneled bathroom, off the other side of the bedroom, with its familiar leaded window with the crank handle.

  Lisa begins to fuss over me, and starts lecturing the boys about the dangers of this and that and falling in the tub. “OK, Mom,” John says sharply. “Leave now. We’ve got this.” She takes a deep breath, grateful that her sons are home and taking control, and surrenders to John’s authoritative voice.

  She kisses my forehead. “Enjoy your bath, José.”

  She is gone. For a little while, as my sons run the bath, I stand shakily, gripping the back of a stiff-backed chair that John has dragged into the bathroom. As he fiddles with the taps, tests the temperature, Roberto and Samuel help me out of my fleece, the jogging suit, the Velcro sneakers on my feet.

  There is an awkward moment, when I try to pull down my underwear, but can’t. They help me get it below my knees, Sam kneeling at my feet as he tenderly helps me step out of its tangle.

  Rob and Sam each grab one of my elbows and slowly, carefully walk me up to the rim of the bathtub. The water filling the tub is blue-green and steaming. They help me lift one leg, and then the other, over the porcelain rim.

  I am finally standing in the tub. The hot water comes to just below my knees.

  “There you go. Lower yourself now. Easy does it.”

  “Sam, grab some of the bath salts from the shelf over there. Should help soothe some of his aches.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. Try the big green bottle. The one with fir-tree oil.”

  With a son holding on to each of my arms, I slowly drop into the water. The heat is bliss. John stands at the head of the bath, shaking salts into the funnel of hot water pouring from the tap, and the room fills with the delicious smell of pine trees, the air of Spain in the summer.

  I close my eyes, sink lower into the water with a sigh. I slip into an amphibious state, half my body undulating sleepily underwater, the other half sticking into the air.

  “How is it?”

  For the first time, in weeks it seems, I am no longer cold.

  It takes some effort, but I find my voice, and release a heartfelt “Gracias, hijos. Thank you. All of you. It feels wonderful.”

  My sons are all smiling.

  “You sure look blissed out.”

  “Claro. I am very content.”

  “OK, guys. I can take it from here,” John says. He pulls the chair forward, so it is flush against the bathtub, and sits down. The room is filled with steam and I wonder how he can tolerate the heat in his long-sleeve turtleneck.

  John dunks a sponge into the warm water, smiles sweetly, like when he was a boy. “Dad, before you drift off, we’ve got to wash you. Don’t want Big Bertha giving me hell.”

  Sam and Rob leave the bathroom as John slowly soaps my arms, my armpits, around my neck. I surrender happily, close my eyes. He sponges me calmly and soothingly for several minutes, gently washing off the soap, like a mother might wash her baby in a plastic tub.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No, hijo. No pain.”

  The bathtub is milky white, and soap scum is starting to cling to the sides at the watermark.

  “OK. That’s over. Relax now. Dream a while.”

  “A little more hot water, please.”

  John empties the tub a little, fills it again with hot water and some more bath salts. I am again awash in that summer smell of Spain. John leans back in the chair, crosses his long limbs, and pulls out his iPhone. Beads of sweat pop up on my forehead. For a while we both sit there, calmly, each happily adrift in our own world. John absentmindedly lifts a hand to the back of his head. I drift off to another place.

  I open my eyes.

  John is no longer sitting in the chair next to me. But Juan is, a little older and grayer than the last time I saw him, and looking very sad. His hands are folded in a steeple. He leans forward in the chair.

  “José María,” he says softly. “Hermano. It’s time. You have to come home.”

  “What are you talking about? I am home.”

  He is filled with sadness. He looks down at the floor and shakes his head.

  “Stop being so ridiculous,” I snap. “I have lived here with my family for nearly fifty years. This is the home I made. The home I chose. Why do you keep telling me I have to come home?”

  He looks around the room, like he is seeing it for the first time. “This isn’t your home. It never will be.”

  “Get out of here! I am trying to have a relaxing bath!”

  Juan’s sigh is so heartbreaking it fills the entire bathroom, pressing so hard against the walls I hear them crack under the strain. He gives his head a final shake and then swivels his torso to look back at the corner of the bathroom.

  “I have tried,” he says, wearily. “He won’t listen to me. It’s your turn.”

  I crane my neck and for the first time see the Frog Queen, sitting bloated in the corner, crouched in the shadows of the hamper. She doesn’t move, just blinks, and on occasion opens and closes her rubbery lips.

  This is nonsense, expecting a frog to understand the spoken word.

  But I am promptly visited by a powerful sense the Frog Queen has understood my every thought, including my contempt, and it must be so, because with one massive thump of her meaty back legs, she is flying at me, from across the room.

  “Ohh,” I cry.

  She lands with a splash in the bathtub and the room fills with a clap of thunder and lightning, as happened when I saw her for the first time. I am not as frightened this time, more surprised, and I am once again overtaken by this warm and not unpleasant feeling of being half in the water, half out, suspended in some strange in-between state.

  I look down at the bath. There is no sign of the Frog Queen. She has disappeared. But my legs, stretched down the length of the bath, are green and speckled and end in webbed feet, my flippers gently undulating in the water and pointing in opposite directions. My arms, lightly resting on the rim of the bath
tub, are also green, dark and stringy. My white stomach is half in and half out of the bath, large and rumbling and loaded.

  I smack my lips and with a sigh, tip back my head.

  Something opens between my legs, and I begin to release tens of thousands upon thousands of eggs. Out they slide, speckled sacks of genesis, popping up to the surface of the water. But they won’t stop, keep shooting out of me, and soon the entire tub is dense with the egg sacks, an abundance of clumps and clusters, gelatinous life bobbing against the tub’s rim.

  There is pain. On my arm.

  John is gripping my forearm hard. His mouth is open, but no sounds are coming out. Not at first. But then I seem to come back to this world, find the right frequency, and I can suddenly hear his cries of anguish.

  “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

  John jumps up and runs to the bathroom door, throws it open and yells at the top of his voice, “Mom! Sam! Come quick. Something’s happened!”

  There is something in the air. The lovely pine smell is gone and the bathroom now has a barnyard odor. I look down. My arms along the rim of the bath are mine again, which is a relief, but the bathwater is in an alarming state, dark brown and lumpy. It takes me a moment to understand that I am not sitting in frogs’ eggs, but my own shit. And there is blood, too.

  This is perhaps what Juan and the Frog Queen have wanted all along, and I finally let the reality in. I am sitting in my own mierda. It helps me find the voice I have for too long been avoiding.

  God forgive me. Forgive me my sins.

  Lisa and the boys and Sister Bertha come rescue me, like angels from heaven. They come running up the stairs, summoned by John’s cries of anguish, and I don’t exactly know what happens next, but I am standing, hauled up by multiple hands, all clutching tight my flesh and bones.

  Sam rolls up his sleeve, turns his face to the ceiling, and sticks his hand into the bath, trying not to gag. He pulls the plug. The room fills with the sound of water and shit getting sucked down the drain.

  “Get a bucket.”

  “José. Can you understand what I am saying?”