by Edward Docx
Awkwardly, gingerly, the doctor removes my father’s shoe and then his sock.
Time stalls. The moment feels like every moment condensed into one. But nobody can object. Nobody can do anything other than what they are doing. Which is thinking about the possibility of everything and nothing; the distillation of time; to be or not to be.
The doctor looks at my father’s swollen ankle and nods. He is a doctor again. Uncomplainingly, my father accepts his touch. He is a patient again. The doctor moves the joint tentatively this way and that – his fingers feeling for living sinew and bone. We listen to the diagnosis.
‘A bad sprain,’ the doctor says. ‘No worse.’
Ralph says a few more words in German and the doctor nods and goes back behind the desk to write a second prescription.
‘Painkillers and one of those surgical socks,’ Ralph says to us, neutrally. ‘We can get them at the chemist down the street.’
Without the certainty of his English mask, the doctor’s voice sounds very different. Now he stands and gives the second prescription to Ralph and then – with unnecessary exactitude in the gesture – he picks up the main folder to hand it across the desk to my father.
When Dad turns to look at me, he has a soft, calm, near-beatific smile.
‘Let’s go back to the hotel, boys,’ he says, sprightly, holding his folder with both hands. ‘I think we should all . . .’ He regards us with mock admonition – as if we’re children who have stayed up too late, which, of course, we are. ‘I think we should all have some of their afternoon tea on the hotel roof. And then lie down and get some rest. They do genuine apple strudels.’
The doctor comes round to take the handles of his wheelchair and turns my father towards the door – deft, comradely, affable. But I am up faster than my brothers because I don’t want that bastard pushing my father anywhere.
We stand a moment in the spruce-grey reception and the world feels woozy to me like we’re back on the ferry and we’re listing. The doctor nods to each of us. There’s no need to make another appointment, I’m thinking, no need for follow-up, no need for him to say come back if it doesn’t clear up in a few weeks.
‘Thank you,’ Dad says.
Then I follow my brothers out of the surgery, pushing my father carefully down the ramp, which I’m thinking they must have put in for all the people who come here in wheelchairs.
For some reason, the old alarm has gone off on the van again – but there’s no noise, just the hazard-warning lights flashing feebly.
Later, not long before dusk, we three brothers leave the hotel without our father. We pause a moment on the pavement outside. The staff on the reception desk say that it was the first Opera House with electric lights. So we look across and think about that – for no reason. Then we turn left towards the lake shore.
There is the smell of cooking – a man selling some kind of caramelized nuts. Couples. Roller skates. Bikes chained to the railings. The air is still warm. The lake is like Lalique glass – so still, amethyst-blue and opalescent. They say you should wear a colourful hat if you’re going to swim from one shore to the other so the passing boats don’t mow you down.
We walk towards the Old Town. They seem to be digging up the roads everywhere. Sparks from the welders working on the tram tracks flash like lightning in their double-dark visors. They say they have found further evidence of the Roman settlement here. Maybe a customs post. Before that, there was a Celtic settlement. There are digs all over town. And it’s all under the city. Layers. Dad would love this, I’m thinking; but he wants some time alone, he says; to sleep.
We went up on the roof and drank tea and then the people from Dignitas came and Dad talked to them. They’ll be back again tomorrow morning for another chat before we go.
So we know now.
As much as it is possible to know.
Because, of course, they offer you every opportunity to change your mind. Encourage you to do so. Right up until the last moment. Even in the little blue house of death.
But we know we’re going there, at least.
That’s the plan.
To the little blue house of death, I mean.
We will need to leave by 10:00 in the morning.
To make our final appointment.
We don’t want to be late.
As we walk, I tell my brothers that it’s about twenty-five minutes on the train from the station right by the hotel – Stadelhofen – out the door and one hundred metres to the right. Probably why Dad chose the Hotel Ambassador in the first place. I explain that the little blue house is in a small village called Pfäffikon. Out in the country. But that, yes, you can go direct from our station. ‘Our’ station, I say. Take a cab at the other end. Five minutes. I measure everything in time not distance.
It’s not really a house like you’d think, I say, more like this boxy-square two-storey blue building that looks as if it’s made out of very expensive corrugated iron. In the middle of an industrial estate. On a semi-rural road called Barzloostrasse. A field of maize growing opposite. And behind . . . really close behind is this massive white warehouse that’s three times as tall and maybe three hundred metres long. Gigantic. Looming. Fuck knows what they make there. But it’s such a huge building – and so close up against the back – like it’s trying to push the little blue house off its tiny square patch of land.
Incongruous doesn’t cover it, I say. Such a weird place. Yes, this blue metal-ish building. Like the temporary on-site head office of a fancy urban regeneration project. But surrounded by concealing bushes. And it’s not exactly blue, either. More of a grey-blue; ash-blue.
We walk together along the big Quaibrücke, the road-bridge at the head of the Zurich lake. Trams to our right and the shoreline to our left. There are still pedalos and people enjoying being out on the water. The dusk is rising though, and the light is thickening. We can just about see the Alps to the south, the snow like a white crown on the jagged peaks. Or more like the palest possible violet.
And there’s a builders’ cafe, I tell them, right there, next to the little blue house, which is where all the guys who work in the warehouses go and eat crap for lunch. Also corrugated. And you know what? If you go to the cafe toilet out back – then you can see right into the shitty garden of the Dignitas house and in through the windows. Where the people are having a chat about dying – yes or no. I say ‘garden’ but really it is just a plant-pot area and a concrete path with what they call a summerhouse at the end except that it doesn’t have a view because . . . well, why would they have a view? Why would they want you to see the mountains and the lakes and the sky? Instead, people go out into the pathetic garden and cross this miniature stream. I don’t know why. Like it’s supposed to be symbolic. Beneath the shadow of the massive warehouse.
How do I know all this, my brothers ask.
Dad and I have met people. I’ve seen their pictures. I’ve talked to them. We watched a video on a phone, I admit. What do you think we’ve been doing all this time?
We turn off by the side of what looks like a little canal but which is prettier and more kempt. We are heading for an open-air bar called Rimini beside one of the bathing areas in one of the rivers that flow out of the lake through the back of the old town – a place called Männerbad Schanzengraben. We’re following Google Maps on Jack’s phone. This is a special place, they say, with wooden steps down into the water. People swim there. The water is drinking clean, they say; it’s like a secret garden or an oasis in the middle of the city. Right near the botanical gardens. Enchanted. Magical.
The twilight slips by us somewhere as we go – a brief sepia shadow – and when eventually we find the place, it is already indigo dark and the reflected colour of the bar lights in the water seems especially beautiful. The yellowy-orange halo lamps are smeared and smudged across the surface while a redder light reaches downward like it’s way deeper than you can think – or maybe there’s a fire in the depths somehow; and then there is some kind of shimmering
pale-blue light under the wooden pontoon that reaches out across the water. Where there is no colour, there’s just the viscid glistening blackness.
Opposite, in the botanical gardens, the foreign trees with their fat foliage and tall thin tropical trunks form a soaring wall of shadow and light as if there is nothing beyond. Everything smells fresh and without the taint of city or mammal – as if the purer air of the mountains has been borne here by the river. And I can hear the sound of the water running when I stoop to listen.
The bar itself is like some old Grimms’ fairy-tale tavern. There are upright rustic wooden beams along the bank, a pointed wooden roof and rough tables around the wooden pillars. So we order burgers and sit turtle-backed on our stools peeling the labels from our bottles of beer with our fingernails.
That’s when I tell them I’m not going.
That’s when Jack says – what?
That’s when Ralph says – wait.
That’s when Jack says he doesn’t want to go either, but he’s going. Of course he’s going.
That’s when Ralph says he wants me to come.
That’s when I say again I’m not going.
That’s when Jack says that you can be for it or against it, Lou, but you have to be there.
That’s when Ralph asks – am I against it?
That’s when I say you can be for it or against it and not be there.
That’s when Ralph says – what about Dad?
That’s when Jack says all for one. We were always that. All for one.
And I love my brothers because they are the kind of men you do not meet every day.
But that’s when I say – no – I’m not going.
I take out the spare key card and the lock clicks and I quietly push open the door. There is some classical music playing and the room is very softly lit by the desk lamp. I can see my father has been writing with his old ink pen. He’s lying on the bed, turned away. I can tell that he’s awake.
‘Lou?’
‘Yeah.’
He half turns onto his back so he can see me. ‘OK?’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘Lou.’ He raises himself with an effort.
‘I’m not coming tomorrow,’ I say.
My eyes grow accustomed to the half-light. The pattern of the dim lamp scatters petal-shadows on the wall.
He props himself up. ‘I fell asleep,’ he says.
‘Have you been writing?’
‘To you. To your brothers.’
‘I’m not coming with you, Dad.’
‘Lou, come in. Come on – sit on the bed.’
He’s not quite drawn the heavy curtains. The night outside the window is just a narrow strip of darkness. The milky-cataract moon has probably fallen in the lake – blinder and blinder with age.
He indicates beside him. I walk three steps and his old face is looking at me and there’s water in his eyes but they’re not leaking. His white hair. His beard. The music is so beautiful. He reaches out his hand to me.
There’s something between us which I can feel now – something numinous – something that has always been there – only we had no sense of it before, could not feel it quite so tangibly. But now we could both lean into its presence. Something of me and something of him; something more than us both. Something going back a long way.
‘Take your shoes off,’ he says. ‘And sit down.’
I slip off my boots and sit on the bed beside him.
He winces as he moves his leg as though he’s got to make room for me even though there’s enough space for an entire family.
‘Can you get stories on your phone, Lou?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Audiobooks?’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
‘You know what I think we should do?’
‘What?’
‘Listen to a story. Talk in the morning.’
I meet his eyes for less than an instant. All his dignity is back; the best of him; his endurance and his stoicism.
‘How about . . .’ He pauses. ‘How about Steinbeck? He’s the guy we need. The most human writer in the world after you know who.’
‘Which book?’
‘Cannery Row. See if you can find someone good reading it on your phone.’
I search.
‘Got it,’ I say.
‘That was quick.’ My father smiles. ‘New world, Lou. Brand-new world.’
And I don’t know why but it’s in my mind, in the room, in my heart. So I just ask: ‘How did your dad die?’
He looks across and says the word quietly. ‘Dementia.’
The music is so ethereal – it’s like they’re playing as close as they can get to not playing at all.
‘But you know that, Lou—’
‘Were you there?’
I feel the bed move because he’s nodding with his whole body. His weight. His presence. He speaks softly: ‘It was slow. I was up and down to Leeds for a year. Slow and terrible. Worse every time I went back. I nursed him for two weeks straight towards the end. It was the pneumonia that finished him off . . . He had no idea who I was when he died. We were strangers.’
‘Were you ever close to him?’
‘No . . . Yes . . . No.’ He looks at me – a frown of regret, something long gone. His eyes seem deeper set behind the crag of his white-grey brow like they’re retreating further inside. ‘We were close in a way . . . in the way that there was an entire history between us. All of those shared days – they create a shared world – unique – inside a family.’
‘But you didn’t talk to him much – when you grew up?’
‘No. Not about the outside world. Not really.’
‘Not like us.’
‘Not like us.’
He looks at me and I look at him.
‘Not like us, Lou,’ he says again.
The music is ending. We sit side by side.
‘Put the story on,’ he says.
I press play on the screen and put the phone on the bedside table. Then I lie down beside my dad. The reader says the title – two words – in a friendly voice but a voice that is also full of wonder and promise – like everything that comes next is going to make you so sad and so happy and all you are going to want to do is laugh and cry.
‘Paintings on the wall,’ Dad says.
Then he puts his hand across so that it’s in my hair like when I was little and I close my eyes.
‘Speak tomorrow, Lou,’ he says.
‘Every day, Dad.’
I leave the hotel at nine in the morning wearing just my flip-flops, some shorts and a shirt that I don’t want. Nobody knows where – but they know I’ve gone. It’s sunny outside and I have to squint because I don’t have my sunglasses.
They won’t find me. I turn left and walk quickly as if I’m being followed. I have to wait at the lights to cross the traffic. I can feel the sun prickling on my bare arms. I cross and walk down to the lakeside – on to the thin strip of park and the promenade. The water is glinting. There are hundreds of boats, some tied up with their blue tarpaulins thrown over them, others putting out. It is going to be a beautiful day. People are walking past me, young and old, children running, someone roller-skating. I go past the cafes. I walk beneath the trees and beside the benches.
He did not know it, but the thing that my father taught me – with his life, with his life – the thing that my father taught me is that sometimes you just have to leave people behind in order to go on living yourself. The shrinks say that the emotional logic you don’t want to pass on to your children is precisely the emotional logic that you do. So maybe it was cruel to bring us, maybe he’s a great man of courage, maybe he’s a small man of cowardice. But my father left a woman to be with my mother. And that’s where I come from – that decision. And sometimes you have to stand up to people – the ones you love just as much as the ones you don’t. And sometimes that means you have to walk out on them. Leave them for dead. My brothers – they’re still all tangled u
p; they have to go with him – all the way to the bitter end because they can’t get clear, they can’t get far enough away; no matter where they go, they can’t break the chains, they’re bound to him all the way to that little blue house. It was never a question of right or wrong, but the road to Zurich is a tortuous one; with fresh torment at every turn. And my brothers . . . My brothers are still trapped in all of that because of who and what they are, because of how and by whom they were made. But I am running free. Yes, I’m free. I can do it. I can cut the rope.
And I’m lucky because it’s such a beautiful day on which to be alive.
And I am biting the inside of my cheek so that it hurts like hell. But I keep on going.
And now – just up ahead is where I am headed: Bad Utoquai. It’s some kind of belle époque bathing house on the lake. And I’m thinking – there’s something really pretty about the place. This lovely old white-painted wood and this elegant ironwork. A single storey, gleaming in the sun. Graceful balconies up above. Parasols. Wooden decks. Tasteful colonnades. The way it reaches out into the water reminds me of one of those paddle steamers on the Mississippi that you see in Tom Sawyer films.
I pay the money and I walk in. Right is women-only, left is men. In the middle, mixed. There are families, couples, singles. I walk out on the wood-stripped decking where people are already sunbathing and reading and sipping drinks from the restaurant. Out on the lake, there are pontoons. The water is slate-blue and seems to move hardly at all – only faintly side to side – like it’s been hypnotized by staring too long at the sun.
I take off my shirt and my flip-flops. I stash them under a chair. I walk along the decking, stepping past people where they lie. I walk down the side beneath the colonnades. One of the vast passenger ferries is putting out from the end of the lake. There are many smaller boats.
I reach the ladder. I think about going off the diving board. But it seems too much and instead I climb down the rungs and I feel the cold of the water but I don’t want to break the rhythm of my going or show any pain or shock or anything. So I just ease in like it’s no problem and then I let go and the lake envelopes me and – in a moment – the water seems warmer and I move away from the ladder on my back and look up at the sky.