Lunch with the Generals

by Derek Hansen

  There was a bar, a smokers’ room, and a small cafe which also served meals. There was a TV and a library of magazines. Eduardo edged into the bar and poured himself a large scotch. Another man immediately did likewise, revealing without words the similar state of their minds. Eduardo gave him a brief nod of understanding. He sipped his drink and pondered his impetuosity.

  In taking on the role of God, he had failed to appreciate the stakes he was playing with. If the operation failed, Annemieke would be shattered, and there was no telling how she would react in her distress. He suspected he would be the first casualty, for offering her a chance she never really had. She would withdraw from the world again, far beyond his reach.

  And what of Jan? And Lita? He’d played his cards rashly and risked his whole stake. Would they still want him as a friend, partner, and permanent reminder of the distress he’d caused?

  He poured another scotch. They’d trusted him, and he’d fed on their trust. They thought he could work miracles and he had fostered that notion. He cursed his arrogance and impatience. He cursed whatever it was in him that caused him to destroy the things he loved most. But he couldn’t sustain his anger. He loved Annemieke deeply and, irrespective of the outcome, she was going to need him. At least, in the immediate future. He wouldn’t let her down. He took another long pull from his scotch, and set himself to wait.

  ‘Mr Gallegos?’ He looked up into the nurse’s plastic smile. ‘Would you come with me, please.’

  The operation had run nearly two hours over schedule. Eduardo could not decide if this was good news or bad. At first glance, Dr Tannen offered little encouragement. His face was drawn and lined with fatigue.

  ‘I must apologise for keeping you waiting.’ The doctor raised his big eyes to Eduardo. ‘Sometimes I wonder who has the most difficult role. The patient, the surgeon or those who must wait.’ His eyes crinkled in a tired smile. ‘Today I think it is the surgeon. You better believe.’

  ‘How is she, Doctor?’ Sustained tension had reduced him to an artificial calm.

  ‘She is well. Sleeping, of course. Probably in better shape than either of us.’ Once more he gave Eduardo his tired smile.

  ‘How did it go? The operation.’

  Dr Tannen’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. Eduardo’s spirits died. But a wry and unexpected smile lit the doctor’s sad face.

  ‘It is amazing. I wonder how many other patients I have turned away unnecessarily. To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I accepted your young lady. Luck? Who knows? I can tell you this. We are very pleased with what we have accomplished today.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is too early, of course, but we are very optimistic.’

  ‘Doctor, for heaven’s sake, what are you saying?’

  ‘We were able to rejoin the major nerve. This was an accomplishment we did not expect. Nature is amazing. Sometimes after accidents like your friend had, the nerves reconnect of their own accord. They grow back together. In Annemieke’s case it made a damn good try. But there was too much scar tissue, some of it, I’m afraid, even caused by previous surgery. But it gave us a remote chance. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done.’

  Eduardo was dumbstruck.

  ‘We were also able to join up many secondaries and generally tidy things up. The potential is there for a near full recovery of mobility, but we won’t know for sure for some time. However, the improvement will be considerable. I will write a paper on this one. You better believe.’

  Eduardo reached over the table and grabbed the doctor’s hand to shake it. But it wasn’t enough. He embarrassed the doctor and surprised himself by throwing his arms around him and hugging him.

  ‘Doctor, I don’t know what to say. How can we ever thank you?’

  ‘Perhaps you could put me down?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to apologise. I understand. Now, Annemieke should wake up in four to five hours. We will keep her under sedation, otherwise she will be in considerable pain. However, there is a chair by her bed. Go have a shower and something to eat, then sit with her. When she wakes up, just tell her everything went well. That should do until morning.’

  ‘Thank you again, Doctor.’

  ‘Let me tell you this. She is a very lucky young lady. You are a very lucky man. It was an enormous risk you took.’

  ‘Doctor, you better believe!’

  Annemieke remained in the clinic for another week while her face healed, and the doctors conducted further tests. Every day, the news was more encouraging as her long dormant facial muscles slowly reacted to stimuli. They showed her exercises to regain muscle tone and gave her a mirror so she could see what she was doing. She smiled, she grinned, she frowned, she rolled her jaw, she pursed her lips. She exercised until the sting from her incisions forced her to stop.

  ‘It will take months,’ Dr Tannen said, ‘until the benefit of the surgery is fully apparent. Who knows? Seventy, eighty percent mobility, maybe more.’

  The percentages didn’t matter to Annemieke. The right hand side of her face had awoken from its slumber. She had a new smile which would only grow wider and more beautiful. She gazed at her reflection, as Narcissus had done before her.

  She hugged Eduardo and she hugged Dr Tannen. She hugged every nurse in the clinic until their plastic smiles melted into genuine ones. Her happiness knew no bounds. She rang Jan and Lita, and just the sound of her voice confirmed their hopes. Eduardo had to talk vigorously to stop them boarding a plane and flying over. Jan embarrassed Eduardo with his thanks.

  It was Dr Tannen who tempered the euphoria.

  ‘You will continue to improve for some time,’ he told Annemieke. ‘Maybe for more than one year. Only then will we know the full extent of your recovery. I would like you to send me a video of you doing your facial exercises in three, six, nine and twelve months. If you come back to Los Angeles at any time, I would like to examine you.’

  Annemieke and Eduardo assured him that they would do everything he asked.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ he said finally. ‘You have been very lucky, Annemieke. You will not be lucky twice. You must always be on your guard. Any more damage to that nerve will be inoperable and therefore, I’m afraid, also permanent.’

  Slowly the significance of what Dr Tannen was telling them sank in.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Annemieke and Eduardo were married two months after their return from America, amid a barrage of flash and strobe lights. Society photographers vied with one another for the most beautiful photograph of the most beautiful bride they would ever see. They shot from the front and both sides, and every angle brought a dazzling reward. Young men who had been brought up with Annemieke and attended the same school, bit their bottom lips when they saw what they’d let slip away. Young women looked at her, and saw why they had never been able to catch the elusive Argentinian.

  Guests at the wedding were enchanted by the fairytale element, the gift Eduardo had given his bride to restore her lost beauty. They wept to see a couple so much in love. Who could witness their happiness and not be moved? But there was one who found no joy in the occasion.

  Anders Peterson, in his privileged position as best man, experienced nothing but envy. Eduardo had always played second fiddle to Anders when it came to women. Yet Eduardo had ultimately walked away with first prize, and Anders knew he would never find another woman to compare. He stared at Annemieke throughout the service, though it is doubtful anyone noticed. They only had eyes for the happy couple. On this day, Anders Peterson was thoroughly upstaged.

  Ramon let the sentence hang until his three comrades came to appreciate that the day’s storytelling was over.

  ‘So,’ said Milos. ‘Our friend Eduardo is about to discover what it feels like to be Victor, no?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering why you kept bringing Anders into the story. You said earlier, when Anders and Eduardo first met, that the meeting would somehow be
catastrophic for Eduardo. At least, you implied that.’ Neil paused for a moment. ‘I must admit though, there were times when I thought you kept him in the story just to let Lucio Cassanova here know he wasn’t the only bloke on earth with an irresponsible willy.’

  Ramon and Milos winced. Once Neil had found a scab to pick at he could never leave it alone. But Lucio ignored him.

  ‘I can’t believe that Annemieke would let a man like Anders touch her. She’s a nice girl. He’s rubbish.’ Lucio was disgusted at the idea. ‘He’s not a real man.’

  ‘What do you say to that, Ramon?’ Neil was pushing again. ‘I can’t see the two of them getting at it either.’

  ‘You’ll find out next week.’

  ‘I think I know how the story goes from here,’ said Milos. ‘But I won’t be like Neil. I won’t say anything and spoil your story. Unless, of course, you’re going to cheat and introduce a new character right at the last minute.’

  ‘No. The main players are all in place. I have no tricks up my sleeve.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do, Ramon. I only hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Ramon wondered how much his friend had guessed.

  Milos went straight home from the restaurant. His wife was waiting for him, eager to hear the latest episode of Ramon’s story. Milos told her, but his heart was not in it and his telling lacked lustre.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ his wife asked.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Milos asked in a voice both sad and weary. ‘Don’t you see why he is making us like Eduardo? Can’t you see the dangerous game he’s playing? Ramon’s conceit is putting our Thursday lunches in jeopardy. He has no right to gamble like this.’

  His wife had rarely seen him so upset.

  SIXTH THURSDAY

  Eduardo and Annemieke set up home in Vaucluse, on the west facing slope, just south of Watson’s Bay. They had the Pacific Ocean behind them and, before them, the full sweep of Sydney Harbour. The house, built in the thirties and hardly touched since, was a ‘renovator’s dream’. But few properties bettered it for position. Annemieke looked at all the work ahead of them, and hesitated. Eduardo looked at the view, and acted.

  ‘After Rose Bay, I cannot live without a view of my harbour,’ Eduardo maintained. ‘Now I can forgive myself for selling my apartment to Estelle.’

  Annemieke entered the sort of life she’d only ever read about. She ate at the best restaurants and danced at the most exclusive nightclubs. She moved among the rich and mildly famous and was photographed almost as much. No butterfly ever emerged from its chrysalis into brighter lights. She became two people. The Annemieke Eduardo had married, and the girl finally liberated from the prison of her palsy.

  Largely through their good friend Anders, she began to catch up on the pleasures she’d missed out on as a teenager. They dragged Eduardo to rock concerts and to pubs, to hear her favourite bands play. Afterwards, they often went back to Anders’ apartment at Potts Point, just down from the Cross.

  Anders was a vocal advocate of inner city living, though his income guaranteed his comfort wherever he chose to live. He had the entire top floor of a seven-storey apartment block, built in the thirties from sandstone and an unattractive brown brick. The street was narrow, and crowded with two-storey terrace houses, which leaned heavily against one another for support. The only open space was provided by concrete steps, opposite the apartment block, which led to the street above.

  Annemieke loved the apartment. The architects had left the art deco facade with its tiny bottle glass windows intact. But the rear wall was floor to ceiling glass which opened out onto a rooftop patio, overlooking Rushcutters Bay and Darling Point. The interior was like a display room for modern, prohibitively expensive Italian furniture.

  Annemieke loved to sit out on the patio, while Anders entertained them, and most of the eastern suburbs, with his latest CDs. No private home had a better—or louder— sound system. A recording studio had acquired the components for Anders and installed it for him. He never missed an opportunity to show it off.

  When Eduardo wearied of playing the perennial teenager, or when his business interests took him away, Anders stepped in as Annemieke’s willing escort. They played at flirting, for that amused Annemieke. But always, when Anders overstepped what she saw as the boundaries of their game, she would admonish him. He’d play the spurned lover, and ham it up to the full. She never suspected only part of him was acting.

  But the teenager really only surfaced at night, and then only on the occasions that were appropriate. By day, she attended the Conservatorium and supported her studies with the hours of practice they demanded. She kept an eye on the tradesmen, who knocked down walls and moved the kitchen and dining-room from one end of the house to the other. They replaced small windows with big windows and French doors. They built a patio and surfaced it in Barbetti terracotta tiles. They turned the house around until it focused entirely on the view, and the view infiltrated every part of the house.

  Annemieke chose paint for the walls and architraves, agonising over changes in shades. She chose what she called ‘koala colours’, the soft dusty colours of the bush. She also made their meals, laundered their clothes, and kept their home spotless between the fortnightly visits of her Korean cleaners. She had a gardener to help one day a month, and an ironing lady for one morning a week. With her piano practice, her housework, her supervising, and her shopping, her days were full.

  Eduardo loved to watch Annemieke play piano. Her face mirrored both the mood and the complexity of the music. She would become so engrossed that she would be oblivious of Eduardo’s attention until, when she finished, he’d applaud and she’d smile with sheepish embarrassment.

  Once he even videotaped her playing and dubbed the result onto the tape she sent to Dr Tannen. He had replied with a brief note of appreciation. Eduardo and Annemieke revelled in each other’s company, and they loved their new home. But, increasingly, Eduardo’s business commitments kept them apart.

  With Jan’s assistance, Eduardo had managed to set up his type studio and printing shop in Jakarta. They were pressing agencies for business and making representations to Garuda Indonesia and Indonesia’s department of tourism. But in this first critical year, Eduardo knew that the business would succeed or fail on the basis of his personality, and the degree of his involvement.

  In Australia, the recession had begun to bite and they needed their Jakarta enterprises to help carry them through it. Clients had cut their spending and advertising agencies had their budgets slashed, all of which flowed through to the Hot Ink Press. Rather than lay people off in Sydney, they offered to transfer them to Jakarta to help train the local staff. Most were grateful for the opportunity.

  At first, when Eduardo was away, he would ring Annemieke every day. But as the months passed and the shortcomings of the Indonesian telephone system took their toll, he’d skip a day and sometimes two. It didn’t seem to matter. While Eduardo was away Annemieke put special effort into her music, determined to sit and pass examination by a visiting Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

  ‘Why?’ Eduardo asked, when she told him of the hours of work she was putting in.

  ‘Because I intend to teach piano,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t the talent to perform, but I can teach. And I want the qualifications to teach at the highest levels.’

  ‘Then you had better put an advertisement in the local paper,’ Eduardo said, with a sigh of resignation. ‘What use is a teacher with no pupils?’

  Her evenings when Eduardo was away were her time for recreation. When she wasn’t out with Anders she often met up with her old girlfriends, the ones who had stuck by her during the dark years. Their non-stop talk of boyfriends and sexual encounters excited and discomforted her at the same time, and she was made very aware of what she’d missed out on, how easy it would be to make up for lost time.

  Men were irresistibly attracted to her and, much to the disgust of her friends who had not yet married, they homed in on her and m
ade her the centre of attention.

  ‘I’m married,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t waste your time. Talk to the others.’

  But few men regarded her wedding ring as an impediment, and some became surly when she rejected their advances. It often put a damper on their enjoyment, and they’d have to move on. Annemieke loved Eduardo, wholeheartedly and unambiguously. Nevertheless, she envied her friends their freedom. She was only twenty-two, after all.

  She mentioned this one night to Anders, while they were still high on music and buoyant with champagne. Anders, who had almost resigned himself to the role of trusted friend, drew renewed heart. Their flirting had become ritualised, a meaningless but entertaining game they were even happy to play in Eduardo’s presence. Nevertheless, it provided him with the perfect vehicle with which to play upon her regrets, and chip away at her resolve.

  ‘Monogamy has its strong points,’ he’d say. ‘But variety certainly isn’t one of them.’

  He took to referring to her as ‘the nun’, and would shake his head sorrowfully whenever she admired a good looking man or a well-muscled body.

  ‘Do you know why nuns are nuns?’ he’d say. ‘Because they can’t have none.’

  ‘Have you ever been kissed?’ he’d ask. ‘Properly, roundly and hugely kissed by anyone other than Eduardo? No? That’s not a shame, that’s a monumental disaster!’

  One night he told her all the different ways of being kissed, until she flushed from the vicarious pleasure and ordered him to stop. Anders preyed on her innocence and lack of experience. He preyed on her trust. He undermined her femininity and made her feel inadequate. And at last, one night, he persuaded her to let him give her ‘a proper goodnight kiss’, as he called it.

  He kissed her with all the passion and expertise he had, and she was thrilled. Against her own will she found herself pressing tightly against him. She pulled away as she felt his arousal, and it went no further than that. But it was a start. It was the start Anders had patiently played for. He knew then that he would never give up. One day he would have her.