The Fatigue Artist

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you. I had no idea. Tony mentioned some surgery but he didn’t say . . . why don’t I call at a better time, in a few weeks, maybe?”

  Shit! That Tony has a lot to learn. How much more therapy would it take before he’d warn me? Some surgery!

  “No, we might as well talk now because we’re leaving for Hawaii tomorrow and I’ll be away three weeks, so . . .”

  “How are you doing? I mean after the mastectomy?”

  “Okay. As well as can be expected. In between the chemo, that is. The chemo is a killer but it’s only one week a month. We had to time our trip. I’ll tell you, this really wreaks havoc with a relationship.”

  Wreaks havoc with. How long since I’ve heard anyone say that? It dates her. To be Sophie’s mother she might be fifty or so, but what if Sophie is the youngest of the demanding brood? It also establishes Hortense as fairly literate, otherwise she’d say “wrecks havoc,” as autodidacts tend to do. An odd word, “havoc,” to apply to a “relationship,” by which I assume Hortense means a marriage, though you can’t be sure of anything these days. “Havoc” evokes a jumble of things thrown up as if by a tornado, while a “relationship” has only two components. She’s referring, of course, to all the physical and emotional facets of a “relationship,” an abstract entity like a corporation. “Wreaks” I’ll have to look up—it’s an incentive to get out of bed. Sounds like Middle English, possibly Anglo-Saxon? I ought to know this stuff. Drum me out of the writers’ union if they could hear me.

  This takes no time at all. With scarcely a beat lost, “I’m sorry to hear it,” I reply. “I hope things are better soon.”

  Hortense, no sympathy hound, moves right on to business. “Yes, well, I had what you have. I was sick for three years and they were the worst years of my life, bar none.”

  Bar none. That’s intriguing, too, but my professional interest in diction has abruptly lapsed. All I want to do now is get off the phone. My heart is pounding like mad. The fear is a heavy sack pressing on my chest.

  “The very worst,” she drones. “I forgot what it was like to feel well. My body was a stranger. I felt I aged twenty years. I moved like an old lady. The slightest thing was a major ordeal. I thought it would never go away, and I didn’t know how I’d get through the rest of my life. I was so depressed, I mean as a result of the illness, not a cause. Don’t let them tell you it’s depression. Believe me, before that I wasn’t any more depressed than the next person. If you’re simply depressed, you don’t lie in bed planning all the things you’ll do as soon as you get up, and then have to lie right down again. If you’re simply depressed you just lie there wanting to die.”

  I move the phone two inches from my ear.

  “It was as if my life had been taken from me.” I hear her fine even at a distance; she has a firm, clear voice from all those years of domestic administration. “I felt hopeless. I think maybe the most frightening symptom was the memory loss and the loss of motor coordination. Do you have that?”

  “No. Not yet. At least I haven’t noticed. Maybe a little.”

  “Things would slip my mind, I mean more than they normally do. And my fingers didn’t work right. I’ve always made all my own clothes, and I began to lose control. I couldn’t fit pieces of fabric together or thread the needle. And then, for example, making phone calls, I’d press the wrong numbers. It was terrifying. But it passed, little by little.”

  She mentions a number of things I might do. Not do, to be precise. No caffeine, sugar, or alcohol. “Alcohol is the worst.”

  Too bad. But all right. There are magic herbs that help, she says, but no, I can’t get them by mail. I should see an herbalist in New York.

  “Drink ginseng tea, but it’s very important not to brew it in a metal pot.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t. And no salad.”

  “What could be bad about salad?”

  “I don’t know, but for some reason it’s not good for you.”

  Toenail of frog. Eye of newt. As soon as decently possible I thank her and wish her a complete and speedy recovery from her mastectomy.

  Is this—tonight’s research—what’s called taking control of your life? I can’t say I find it especially exhilarating. Or empowering, as they say. Quite the contrary. My heart is still racing, the sack of fear growing heavier.

  At the window, I stare into the dark until the river grows distinct from the sky and trees. There’s a wind; the water’s rippling. And there’s the squirrel. I’d almost forgotten about him, approaching his death in slow motion. I wouldn’t have thought he could get any sicker without dying, but he’s dying like Zeno’s arrow, moving through an infinity of intermediate positions. His bed is fully restored. He probably feels as enamored of the little nest of twigs, leaves and lint as I do of my bed, and bitterly resents finding it cleared away every few days. Well, I doubt if I’ll be doing that much longer. Soon the arrow will reach its target and then, for the last time: brush, pan, gloves, bag (heavier with his weight), elevator. I tap lightly on the window, not really hoping or expecting to dislodge him, more as an acknowledgment, even a greeting. Of course there’s no response. He seems to be in some kind of coma, breathing evenly, a slow rise and fall of the curved back.

  I ATE NO SALAD FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS, but nothing changed and I missed it sorely. So I went and strolled down the sweet-smelling, bounteous aisles of the outdoor market, our urban farm, and carried home a bag full of earth’s harvest, including watercress. I even went to put some lettuce out for the squirrel, but he wasn’t home and I was afraid to leave it in case the old rat returned to feast. I laid out my riches on the dining room table as a still life, from which I plucked a few tidbits each day. I love especially the bitter greens, perhaps the way the Tai Chi teacher loves the ache in his legs, the ache he calls tasting bitter.

  7

  “Today we’re going to do a little exercise,” says the Tai Chi teacher, in an expansive mood. “We’re going to feel the air like water. In Tai Chi you move through the air feeling its texture the way you walk through water feeling its resistance. You all know how it feels to walk through water. You go to the beach on these hot weekends. You feel the water’s pressure as you move in it. That’s how you should feel the air around you when you do Tai Chi. That’s why we call it swimming in air.”

  The air does feel very much like water this morning; the humidity is in the nineties and even the teacher is wearing shorts, longish ones—a small bit of exposed thigh and rather nice knees. He demonstrates how we must walk through the air-like-water, lifting our knees high and moving our arms in opposition with each step. “Feel the density around you. One drop of water is nothing, no power at all, the softest thing. But massed in a tidal wave, everything gives way before it. The same with air. What’s a little breath of air? Nothing. But massed in a tornado, whole towns crumble in its path.”

  I have to hand it to that interpreter. He can translate into poetic, vivid prose on his feet; never mind the grammar. It’s what I need to do in my book about the seaside town—translate straight from the inner shapes of emotion to the words.

  “That’s the strength you’re walking through. It’s also the kind of strength you’ll develop, if you practice.”

  We walk around in a circle, pressing our way through the air, conjuring up the texture of water. Swimming in air. In the adjacent playground the few children eye us as if we’re a band of escaped lunatics kept in good order by our leader. The teacher walks among us nodding and smiling, the interpreter at his heels. It’s a good chance to look at the others. A couple of new people, graduate students, I’d guess, escaping from the library. Marvin’s getting in a class before he opens the video store. There’s the pale, plump sixtyish woman I often see on Broadway, pushing her ancient mother in a wheelchair—lessons in standing firm must help her. There’s the pizza spinner. The pair of dazzling young lesbians who arrive on bicycles and work in television. Grace has made friends wit
h them, too, though I can’t imagine they share her views about art. A black stand-up comic who’s the soberest in the group, a retired Irish police detective, a former ballet dancer—her obstinate turnout gives her away, no use at all in Tai Chi.

  We walk around maybe five or six times when the teacher says, “You’ll get dizzy this way. Who said you had to walk in a circle? Walk wherever you want. Make a random pattern.”

  I’m walking through a thick sea where each step takes effort. A foretaste of my trip to the Cape with Jilly, rehearsal for the real sea. It’s mesmerizing, yet I can’t help wondering how long he’ll keep us at it. Each time he smiles and nods, I expect he’ll tell us to stop. Now? No. I think of prisoners, chain gangs. Okay, you’ve made your point. Walking through water induces a trancelike, meditative state. So enough. But still we walk. Swim. Until there comes a new stage: I don’t care anymore. I stop longing for release. This must be the real lesson beneath the lesson. Fine, I’ll walk through this water forever if need be, raising my knees high with each step, dimly seeing the others around me making a random pattern. And after a while, just as I’ve come almost to enjoy it, accepting that life will hold nothing more than this walking around in the park with a group of familiar strangers, he says, “Stop. Enough. Very good.”

  We’re dazed and giddy. We gaze around at each other as if we’ve traversed an ocean together and emerged onto a fresh new continent. We giggle and rub our aching legs. Tasting bitter. No complaints whatsoever.

  “Next time, don’t forget the breath while you walk. Thin, long, quiet and slow. How you breathe is important. The breath is spirit.”

  Oh, come on, give me a break.

  “Do you know about Marcel Duchamp, what he said about breathing?” asks Grace, made bold by the flood of endorphins.

  The interpreter translates and the teacher shakes his head.

  “A great surrealist artist. But after a while he gave up making art and just lived his life as a surrealist. Meaning that the way he did whatever he did, even if it was nothing in particular, was his art. He once said he liked breathing better than working, so he could consider every breath a work of art. Not art for an audience, but for himself, and just for an instant. You can see how that would be the logical result of his attitude.”

  “Marcel Duchamp,” says the teacher. “I must look him up.” He repeats the name to himself and nods pensively. He seems to prefer Marcel Duchamp to Diogenes.

  When we do push hands he says something I never thought I’d hear him say. “There’s such a thing, Laura, as too relaxed. Yielding doesn’t mean limp. It means pliable. A palm tree sways and bends but doesn’t fall or droop. Or think of a cat. Alert, vital, ready. No, now you’re tensing up. How do you feel today?”

  “Terrible, can’t you tell?”

  After class he comes over with the interpreter. He asks exactly what’s wrong and listens carefully as I report the doctor’s diagnosis. “I want to give this some thought,” he says. “Write down your address and phone number so I can get in touch with you before you leave.”

  What could he have in mind? I tried the watercress. It was very nice, but hardly the solution.

  EACH MORNING I check the burden of fear weighing on my chest, making my heart pound. It’s getting lighter. I’m leaving the fear behind a little bit at a time, emptying my sack in sleep, the grains scattered into oblivion with no trace to follow me by. Each day that I manage to continue brings a small accumulation of faith.

  And one day brings a small white envelope addressed in an unknown hand, neat letters straight up and down, nondescript but self-assured. No return address. I open it and glance first at the signature. He’s as good as his word.

  “Dear Laura,” the Tai Chi teacher has written. “I hope this reaches you before you leave for the seashore. Perhaps you know what the Tao te Ching says about the sea. All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.’ I know a woman who might be able to help you with your ailment and restore your chi. No doubt you’re unfamiliar with Chinese medicine and it may seem strange at first, but I urge you to try. It certainly can’t hurt, as they say about chicken soup. I’ll look forward to seeing you in class when you get back.” Below are the woman’s name and phone number.

  Anyone else would have called. But he couldn’t very well, without the interpreter. In this faultless, even graceful English, I sense the interpreter’s hand and voice—correspondence, too? What a useful fellow!—and can only hope they’re a faithful translation of the teacher’s own. Did the teacher dictate in Chinese to be translated directly, or leave it to the interpreter to paraphrase his intentions? (Who’s whose muse? The one with the words or the one with the thoughts?) Perhaps like an executive with a seasoned secretary, the teacher merely instructed, Write and give Laura the name of the Chinese-medicine woman, and while you’re at it, mention her stay at the seashore. In that case, the curlicues and adornments, the Tao te Ching and the chicken soup, were courtesy of the interpreter. Did it make any difference?

  THE WOMAN IS A NATIVE SPEAKER, with a voice that lilts over the wires in a young, bell-like tone. “Oh, yes, Frank told me you might be calling. What’s the trouble?”

  As I name my symptoms, the vibrations coursing back to me feel different from those I recall with doctors. Some pressure is absent. She is not in haste. She welcomes my answering her questions in complete sentences, even paragraphs. She listens as though my perceptions might be relevant and trustworthy.

  “The worst of it, really, is that I can’t think clearly. My mind doesn’t feel like my own, if that makes any sense. It’s as if I’m possessed. I’m angry at everyone and everything.”

  “Yes, well, that’s not unusual,” she says cheerily. “A common feature of this virus is brain fog.”

  “Brain fog?”

  “The virus affects hormones and enzymes that go to the brain, so it’s no wonder your thinking is clouded. I may be able to help you. I can’t promise, but why don’t you come in and I’ll take your pulses and we’ll see.”

  No waiting: an appointment the day after tomorrow. Can this be legitimate?

  THE MEDICINE WOMAN’S DEN is in a stately brownstone several blocks from the river, on a tree-lined side street, cool and hushed on this steamy day. In the distance, over in Central Park, rise the unstirring tops of trees. The halls inside are dim, their walls stripped down to brick. Trudging toward the third landing, I meet a young couple, robust and breezy in jogging clothes, the woman carrying a small black terrier.

  “Good-bye, Seth. Good-bye, Pat. And good-bye to you, too, Beaver,” a light female voice rings out from above. If the voice had shape and texture it would be a big rainbow-tinted bubble. Seth and Pat smile as we edge past each other on the narrow stairs. At the fourth floor landing a door is open and the unmistakable sweetish odor of marijuana wafts toward me. A little party, I suppose.

  “Hi, Laura,” the voice calls from an inner room. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right with you.”

  I sit in a canvas director’s chair. The room is large and airy, with hanging plants at the sunstruck windows and posters on the walls: a many-handed Indian goddess advertising a bio-ecology conference on saving the earth. A huge photograph of a famous rock formation in Australia, the rock, carved by millennia of wind, shaped uncannily like an ocean wave. A few of the usual Impressionists—sunflowers, water lilies.

  A Chinese anatomical chart shows the fourteen meridians of the body running vertically and horizontally in dotted lines, an unfamiliar map of familiar terrain. It’s as if the well-known perimeter of North America enclosed brand-new mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, and internal borders. Another wall chart is pentagonal: each point represents one of the five vital organs in living color, along with their corresponding elements, seasons, emotions, and colors, all linked by a network of arrows.

  Opposite me are floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves, the top ones holding tall mason jars filled with herbs and labeled in Latin and Chinese, and below,
thick tattered books bound in black leather with gold trim. It feels like a sorcerer’s chamber or alchemist’s study, except that on the desk across the room sits a state-of-the-art telephone and answering machine, and in between two jars of herbs, a radio is tuned to the yuppie classical music station (a station I shun because the DJs, dreading an instant’s silence, break in before the last note of music has fully dissolved).

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  She appears from within, a goddess-like creature herself, tall, large-boned, with dangling earrings and waves of abundant black hair tumbling down her back. Young, I think. She’s not Chinese, but like the Tai Chi teacher, her age is hard to fix. Thirty-one or two? An olive complexion, piercing blue eyes, full lips. Glowing with West Coast vigor and outfitted not as a goddess but suitably for a New York summer, in a short skirt and V-necked T-shirt. Strong, suntanned legs, Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

  Another wall chart is pentagonal: each point represents one of the five vital organs in living color, along with their corresponding elements, seasons, emotions, and colors, all linked by a network of arrows.

  The inner room where she leads me is smaller and its walls are bare white. On the floor is a mat covered by a striped Indian bedspread. She gestures to me to sit and kneels opposite me, flicking the hair off her neck. “So, tell me again how you feel.” She rests back on her heels listening, nods, jots down a note now and then.

  “Okay, I’m going to take your pulses.” Not pulse, but pulses, up and down the inside of the lower forearms.

  “Hmm, yes. Chinese medicine,” she says, the searching blue eyes taking my measure, “is based on the movement of energy, or chi, through the body. It flows in patterns along the meridians. From the pulses I can tell if any of the organs are in an unbalanced condition, too active or not active enough. That blocks the energy. With the treatment I try to unblock it and get it flowing again. For instance, your spleen or pancreas energy is very low. Those organs help digest, so probably you’re not getting all the benefit of what you eat. It’s like the pilot light of a furnace is very low and doesn’t always catch, so the fuel doesn’t get burned. Also, the spleen corresponds to the will.”