by Keith Korman
The nurse glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s about noon now. Time for lunch. Shall I fetch hers?”
Nurse Bosch brought the meal while he sat in her room. When he held the steaming dish in his lap he imagined Fräuleins swollen belly, ready to split, intestines distended, too packed to breathe. If only he could pass his hand along her stomach to feel inside. Had either Nurse Bosch or Bolzen noticed the state of her belly when they tried to force an enema on her?
What if there was blockage?
What if the girl had swallowed something and stopped her bowels? Giving her an enema might have revealed that — or even freed the blocking object. In which case, the enema, forced or otherwise, would have been the correct procedure. His halting its implementation might cause a rupture…. She could hemorrhage, the contents of her bowel spilling into her lower body cavity. In a few days she’d be dead of fever or infection.
He tried to recall if he’d ever heard of a case of a person physically retaining bowel movements. Holding on to them … What an insane force of will! But to what end? What purpose did it serve? Pain an end in itself? Eating and eating and holding and holding until she became a carcass packed solid with food and feces … Pah! Ridiculous.
The smell of the steaming plate wafted into his face: knockwurst and sauerkraut. Now the folds in her mummy wrappings were moving. Was she really going to eat?
Ja, the hands beneath her wrappings rippled back and forth. A grunt came from the sightless burnoose, a wet gurgling. He placed her plate on the bed. A claw snatched a handful of kraut and knockwurst and vanished under the covers. The mummy made the sounds of chewing and slavering. God, still hungry … He willed himself to.
Very soon the food disappeared. Why had she let him back into her presence so quickly? He had imagined months of knocking at her door, begging, “May I come in? May I this, may I that?” But in his blunted, fevered state he had completely forgotten to knock when he came to her room — just barged right in! And now of all times — why was she eating in front of him? He prayed she’d move her bowels, right where she hunched, anywhere — just so she wouldn’t rupture, die, and end it all too soon…. Before he got to see her face alive.
“I’ve promised you the first-year university lecture. And so you shall have it.” He cleared his throat, opened Leaman’s Anatomy to the frontispiece and then to the table of contents. “The study of anatomy is the study of the body structure — that is, the body’s structural relationships: skeleton to organs, organs to nervous and pulmonary systems, and those systems to the musculature. None of these systems is independent,- all of them are connected and integrated. In this lecture I shall deal with the precise nature of the human skeleton, the nomenclature of its parts and their functions,- from there, the muscle fibers working from the extremities toward the trunk,- and the contents of the body cavity itself. Then the head, its bones and muscles, the organs of the eyes, throat, and ears, and finally the nervous system. My last lecture will end with the brain.”
He caught his breath. He had not fully thrown off the grippe. His brow was damp. “Even naming all the body’s parts is a considerable task, and those proficient in its naming have been held in high esteem for many thousands of years.”
He went on with his lecture for another half hour, devoting himself to the skeleton and musculature of the foot, starting with the phalanges, the little toes, working through the various cuneiforms, metatarsals, and cuboids. He found he was incredibly rusty and needed constantly to refer to Leaman’s text for the Latin names. At the end of this stint his body felt chilled and slightly loose in the bowels.
The mummy had devoured her plate of knockwurst.
Emma stayed the night with him in his room across the hall, curled up as before, like a lanky cat in a soft armchair. He could not know that for most of the night she lay awake and watchful, simply staring at the dull glare from the hall lights shining through the smoky glass of the viewing slit in their door. The lights from outside made the viewing slit an oblong full moon in the black sky of the darkened room. At last she fell off, long after the sick one muttered himself to sleep.
In the morning he went back to 401 in his bathrobe and slippers. This was the eleventh or twelfth day of her retention, and he lectured her on the skeleton and musculature from the tarsus, the heel, to the patella, the knee joint. When he first entered her room he thought he heard her whimper. In gladness or fear? Did she actually want to void herself now? Or was she afraid?
That evening, the unwashed claw snatched another plate of food. He had to interrupt his second lecture of the day, on the fibula and tibia, to rush off to the hall lavatory and let his guts run out. It seemed he could keep nothing in. Whatever he ate turned to water. In the dead of night he voided himself again, begging the girl silently to go, damn you! go! While Emma stared at him, saying nothing as she lay awake …
On the morning of the thirteenth day of Fräulein Schanderein’s retention, his lecture had at last reached the pelvic area, including the first spinal disks, the sacrum, the coccyx, and the contents of the pelvic cavity. He wondered whether to go directly to the lower bowel or begin with the bladder and urinary tract.
He stood at the window, staring down at the winter garden. Frost covered the gravel pathways, the ground ice glittering in the morning sun like glass dust. Holly leaves clung stubbornly to the shrubs by the path. The other trees were bare and dark, brittle sentinels on a winter day. He decided on the bowels….
“The intestines of the bowels are the tubular portions of the alimentary canal. They extend from the stomach to the anus, leading from and forming an arch about the convolutions of the small intestines.” In the brightness of the morning light he saw his own reflection in the glass, his face a ghastly thing, hollow cheeked, pinched. He saw a flicker of movement in the glass. The mummy had crept toward the edge of the bed, as though about to rise. He tried to go on, to keep his voice on an even keel.
“Food mass is carried along within the intestines by contractions of the muscular walls. The small intestine, a tube of approximately twenty-three feet in length, is where bile, pancreatic juice, and the acidic secretions of the glands within the small intestine’s lining complete the digestion of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. The digested nutrients pass through the tubular lining and into the blood and lymph systems.”
The ghostly reflection of Fräulein Schanderein in the window moved again. The mummy, swathings and all, vanished from the corner of his eye.
He heard the hollow grating ring of the brass chamber pot being pulled across the floor. If someone knocked now, he would kill him, beat his brains to a pulp in a rage. If someone knocked now.
“What remains of the food mass are various undigestible compounds, which finally pass into the large intestine, up the ascending colon, across the arch of the transverse colon and down the descending colon to the rectum — and at last to the anal canal.”
À deep grunt came from the floor. Another deep grunt and a gasp for air. Then a long pause ending in a pleasant sigh of relief…. The girl began to breathe in deep drafts, He forgot the lecture and smiled down into the garden below, A satisfied silence filled the room. It might be cold outside, but inside, the heat whistled up the metal radiator, and his toes were warm and dry in his bedroom slippers.
The patient went back to the bed. And he to his chair, his own dearly beloved room 401 chair. All the time sitting in that chair, all the effort and patience and doubt… No, nothing in vain. He glanced at the chamber pot. Fräuleins stool lay there — a meager five pellets the size of deer droppings. Somehow he had desperately wanted to see more, a pound or two at least. But logically he knew this impossible,- the body could not hold a pound or two for thirteen days. The stool’s compactness revealed that her body had used up the greater portion of her waste product. The clawed meals and half rations went part of the way to account for this, but not all. In order to consume that much of the indigestible bulk, the patient’s metabolism must be operating at a furious rate
. She digested food and burned calories like a hard laborer working in the deathly cold. Yet all she had done was sit in bed. This — obviously — was not rest in the normal sense. He saw the truth in the saying; “Sitting still is harder than jumping about.”
Great hands clamped about his gut. He wiped away some tears that had sprung to his eyes….
“Thank you, Fräulein, for attending my lecture.”
He picked up the chamber pot and went out into the hall. Zeik jumped to his feet, followed closely by Nurse Bosch. They halted at attention a pace away,
“We have now resolved the issue of elimination,” he said.
He presented Orderly Zeik with the chamber pot, and the orderly accepted it as if it held the holy relics of an ancient order.
“Nurse Bosch,” he commanded, “the contents of this chamber pot shall be noted as belonging to the occupant of room 401.”
“Yes, Herr Doktor,”
“Furthermore, the contents of this chamber pot shall be labeled immediately as such.”
“As you wish, Herr Doktor.”
“Moreover, a specimen of the contents of this chamber pot, one sample from each of the five deposits, shall be presented to Senior Physician Nekken for dissection and analysis. It is my personal request that he handle the dissection himself and oversee all the details of its execution. The specimen of the patients stools shall be examined for trace elements and compound residue persisting from the patient’s meals during the last thirteen-day period, I shall help Herr Nekken work up a full report, stating all the findings and any suitable comments thereon, complete with laboratory analysis and forensic results. Copies to myself, Direktor Bleuler, the entire intern staff, the patient herself, and appropriate members of the hospital support personnel …”He paused to catch his breath. “Will you please be so kind as to draw up a memo to this effect for me at once.”
Nurse Bosch preened with hidden delight. “It shall be done as you instruct, Herr Doktor.”
À great wave of relief seemed to have swept over the three of them, a feeling of conspiracy and triumph. As though the doctor, nurse, and orderly were the girl’s secret helpers, having begged her to go all this time, wishing they could go for her. After the days of waiting, no fuss, no dissection, no amount of paperwork was too great regarding the girl’s meager pellets.
“At the very least,” Herr Doktor said slyly, “no one will accuse us of supplying the specimens ourselves.”
Nurse Bosch and Zeik both bowed. “No, Herr Doktor.”
The five small specimens were taken away.
Herr Doktor ordered tea in his room for himself and Emma. But he saw her comfortable chair empty, save for the impression of her body.
She left only a note behind: Glad you’re feeling better. Dinner at six. E.
Not even love and kisses; no, not her way — beautiful, cold Emma. Either the master of her face or spent and sated beneath his body. He tried to remember if he had heard her laugh recently. Yes, not long ago when he spilled egg down his front and almost walked out of the house with it congealed on his shirt.
Now, where the devil had she stuck his clothes? He poked his nose into the small closet, but all he found was his overcoat. Pinned to the lapel another note from Emma, this one reading: Remember, don’t be late!
So! She had taken his clothes and meant him to go home by tram in his bathrobe, slippers, and overcoat. Ja, the price to pay for disrupting their home life, for two nights sitting up in a hospital chair and five months of him talking to himself about a patient no one had ever seen. He must stop at Yenkel the florist (whose wife was her best friend) and buy Emma some flowers. Maybe stop in at the butcher’s dressed in his pajamas, or the greengrocer’s, and pick up a tidbit or two. Just put it on my bill, please….
He plucked the note off his coat lapel and stuffed it in his robe pocket. His finger touched stiff paper.
The letter from Herr Schanderein. Forgotten in his pocket. No: ignored— put aside. Truthfully, the letter frightened him. Perhaps someone else in the hospital, Nekken or even Direktor Bleuler, had written to the parents. About his notable excesses. About his weird attempts at therapy. And this a response, fallen into his hands by mistake. His skin crawled, that he and the girl could be undermined so easily. Everything must be set to rights at once.
He went straight back across the hall without taking his tea. This time he knocked, and the answering silence came. He opened the door. He asked for permission to enter. She gave the wordless permission.
“I forgot something,” he stammered truthfully. He showed her the unopened letter out of his robe pocket. ‘This came from your father two days ago. I’m dreadfully sorry I didn’t give it to you at once, but I was afraid you might not move your bowels. Perhaps I was more frightened that people were talking behind our backs. Maybe writing your parents about us. This was weak of me. Nothing people say should matter. I should have known this in my heart. Forgive me. Shall I read the letter to you, or just leave it?”
He thought he saw a trembling through the length of the mummy’s wrappings, a shifting of the folds — yes, he definitely did.
"I'll leave it,” he said at last, putting the envelope on the edge of the bed. “If you want to share it with me, just leave it out where I’ll find it.”
He turned to go, his hand on the doorknob. A soft mumbling came from the bed. À murmured, stuttered sentence, spoken so faintly it might have been a person speaking in the room next door …
“Did you say something?” he whispered.
Again the soft mumbling came, with a few distinct words as though escaping out of a deep well. “I’m the muh-muh-muh. With a quonk quonk end.”
He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t catch everything you said.” The wood of the door felt cool against his cheek. “Is this about the letter from your father?”
A long silence followed, in which he thought he heard the mummy trembling,- then he realized you couldn’t hear a person tremble. But you could. The sound of her swathings rubbed together, and the bedsprings groaned as she squirmed…. The groaning stopped. No sound at all. She had given up, changed her mind. The moment lost.
He put his hand on the door with a sigh —
Then came the caw of a harsh voice:
“Tell him I’m the Queen of Sparta!” said the wrapped head. “Tell him I’m the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end!”
Chapter 2
The Twiddle
“What?” he asked stupidly.
The trees beyond the window in the garden creaked sadly, the midday sun covered by a tuft of cloud. The wrapped head spoke hoarsely again, the voice rising and falling in cracked octaves from her months of silence.
“Tell my father I’m the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end.”
“If I write him saying that, will he understand?”
A pang of instant regret. Stupid question. He was there for her, not the father.
The voice rattled like gravel falling into a pit: “You make him understand. Make him.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Yes. You do. You understand.”
They were having a conversation. Him talking, her talking back. Saying things to each other — who cared if it made any sense or not? And each time her voice fell off, how terrifying she might never speak again.
“I’ll try to make him understand,” he said. “As much as I can. As much as I understand….” For a vivid second he hated her for making him wait so long. What a twisted bit of shit she’d been. Now he had to go home through Zurich’s streets in a bathrobe and slippers. Did she know he spent nights across the hall? Tying himself in knots for her?
She rattled on. “You make him. Make him. That the Queen rules the earth and the sky at night. And the men from the mountains and the woods. Kill each other for her lovely hand. Lie with her in her temple under the light of the moon.”
He looked about for his damn writing pad. What was she saying?
Moon goddess and the men who slew each other,,, Who fought for her bed … How strange — as though he’d suddenly turned down a familiar street at dusk in an unknown part of town. The streetlamps being lit and the lights coming on behind curtained windows. Had he been there before? Only to wake in bed?
He called this lick of déjà vu by a private name. It was Lamplighter’s Street. À dreamer’s street. Existing only in his mind.
The folds in the mummy’s sheets began moving in ways he had never seen before. First her hands appeared, slithering from under the covers, Long and thin — not emaciated, but quite elegant … Her skin coarse and gray, as though shriveled in a dungeon. He saw a bedsore at the back of her elbow, the skin flaking off whitely from the red knot of a boil, Her hands moved hesitantly across her knees as though lost….
He wanted to rush to the door, make sure no one interrupted! All he had to do was tell her, Wait! Let me make sure no one comes. But she was on the verge of unwinding the swathings from around her head. Already her hands fluttered, picking gently at the bumoose, faintly touching the first tucked folds.
She was going to show him her face.
Her self.
She had risen from the bed and turned toward the window. Her thin hands clutched hold of the bumoose: slowly they peeled back the lower layer of sheet. The cloth unwound, a strip from her forehead, another strip. More strips, uncurling like a bandage, falling about her neck. Just a cowl remained, casting a black shadow. Her hands went to the edge of the hood to peel it back.
Someone knocked on the door. He writhed. Fräulein Schanderein froze, her hands to her head. Perhaps the person would leave. Another knock.
“Stay here,” he managed to croak at her. “I’ll send them away.” The intruder knocked for a third time. A little gasping pip escaped from her, and she began to wind the strips of bumoose around again.
He turned on the door’s viewing slit with a gathering weight in his brain, a pressure that would explode his head, splattering the room. The moronic face of Orderly Bolzen peered furtively at him through the glass.