The Metropolis Case

by Matthew Gallaway

  She waited several seconds before responding. “It was a beautiful performance,” she acknowledged, “and I think it would be naïve to suppose that there would be no costs.”

  “But death?”

  “If you mean Eduard—absolutely not,” she emphasized. “As we’ve discussed before, you can’t hold yourself responsible for that tragedy, although I understand the impulse.” She slowly arched one of her painted eyebrows. “But I don’t think death is necessarily the wrong word to apply here, if we might remove ourselves from its more literal meaning.”

  Lucien saw himself as an adolescent, nervously sipping his tea and hanging on her every word, and as he watched this vision dissipate, any sadness he felt at what had been lost was—perhaps for the first time—tempered by a relief that he was no longer filled with such improbable hopes and ideals. “My youth?” he suggested.

  She tilted her head in a way that seemed to acknowledge his response along with her intention not to reply in a direct manner, which—in keeping with his revelation—he understood was not her place. “As much as we like to think we grieve for others,” she said, “it bears keeping in mind that we are also grieving for ourselves and, above all, what has inevitably passed us by.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Guillaume—who had spent the day at the university—returned and joined Lucien in the garden. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, “about the vaccine.”

  They had not discussed Guillaume’s work in great detail for some time, and Lucien was operating under the assumption that his father had done little more over the past several years than test the formula on mice, most of which still died. “What’s wrong?” he asked and then corrected himself. “Or is it good news?”

  “That depends,” his father offered cryptically before explaining how a month or so earlier—desperate to get some insight—he had made the mistake of confiding in a colleague at the university about the exact nature of the experiments; had even gone so far as to show him the surviving mice. While the professor in question had been suitably impressed, he had betrayed Guillaume’s confidence, and word had since leaked out to the faculty and beyond.

  “How far beyond?” Lucien asked.

  “As far beyond as you can go,” Guillaume sighed. “All the way up to the emperor.”

  “To the emperor?” Lucien repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes—I was summoned to see him.”

  “You were? When?”

  “This morning.”

  As Lucien digested this news, the surrounding leaves seemed to turn to glass ornaments, clinking against one another in the breeze. “What—what did he want?”

  “Well, it wasn’t to present me with another award,” Guillaume said quietly. “He wanted to confirm rumors about the vaccine, and whether it will work on a human being.”

  “And you told him …”

  Guillaume’s expression darkened. “I told him the truth, which is that I have made progress with mice—some of which seem quite happy and virile—but as for humans, there remain many questions.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He wants answers—and sooner rather than later.”

  “He can’t expect—”

  “He’s the emperor, so he can,” Guillaume interrupted. “He was surprisingly frank with me. He didn’t pretend that things have been going perfectly from where he sits—between the food riots and the Prussians, he’s obviously preoccupied—and even offered that under different circumstances he would be happy to give me more time. But—you know how it is—given the political ramifications of such a discovery, he wants to know if a vaccine is viable.” Guillaume shook his head. “In a way I felt bad for him. He seemed very distraught—I could understand his position.”

  “Meaning what?” Lucien quietly ventured, trying not to jump to conclusions.

  “He wants me to test it on someone.”

  “Couldn’t that be murder? Did you tell him it kills more than half the mice you give it to?”

  “He wasn’t interested in statistics.”

  “Then why don’t you test it on him?”

  Guillaume frowned. “That occurred to me, but I thought better than to mention it.”

  “Then who?”

  Guillaume took a deep breath. “Me. I’m going to take it, Lucien. I know you already understand this—I could never force it on anyone.”

  “He can’t do this to you!” Lucien cried.

  “No? What would you suggest?”

  Lucien’s mind raced as he searched his father’s face for some kind of clue. “You could drink some harmless concoction—or we could escape; we could leave this afternoon for Vienna—”

  “I don’t want to leave,” Guillaume responded, in a steely voice that conveyed to Lucien he had already dismissed such options. “My guess is that the emperor would have been more than willing to let me administer the vaccine to someone else—after all, he doesn’t want me to die, since I know more about it than anyone—but I didn’t even explore the option, and had he suggested it, I would have insisted on my own plan.” He put his hand on Lucien’s knee before he continued. “I’m going to take it first, before anyone else. I had to sooner or later, and it’s time—before I’m old and frail. Look at me—I have no intention of dying—I’m much stronger than your average mouse.” His smile broadened as he gripped his bicep. “And think of what happens if it works—the possibilities! It would change everything.”

  “What if it doesn’t—what if …” Lucien could not complete the sentence.

  “What if I die?” Guillaume responded tersely. “Nothing meaningful is ever unveiled without great risk—isn’t that what you learned singing your opera?”

  Lucien stared at his father and for a second despised him for making the comparison; he wanted to ask his father if he thought killing himself would bring his mother back to life. Then he remembered his earlier conversation with Codruta and knew that he was no longer capable—or even desirous—of following through on such an angry impulse. He was struck by the idea that while his father’s research may have been rooted in science and logic, his obsession was a means of coping with the pain of losing his wife, his greatest loss. Like a page being lifted from the score of his own life, the insight gave Lucien new empathy, and he knew his father was right, at least to a degree; there was always an irrational, emotional component to the opera, or at least any worth hearing or performing, and one of the reasons Lucien couldn’t—or wouldn’t—sing was his continuing fear since Eduard’s death of being overcome by the dissonant chaos he had once sought to embrace. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt more experienced—albeit more destroyed—than his father and knew that his own reservations would mean nothing to Guillaume and—given that he had no power over him—that it would only be hurtful to argue.

  “So when?” he quietly asked.

  Guillaume exhaled. “I want to remake the vaccine with several alterations,” he said more calmly, “to make it more palatable to the human body. Three weeks should be enough.”

  “Three weeks,” Lucien repeated as he began to consider his own options. He could take the train back to Vienna, but such a choice would damn him even more than Eduard’s death to a penance of guilt. He could remain as a bystander, offering his help, but this option felt equally weak and reprehensible, particularly as he thought of his earlier conversation with his father, and what his father had done for him when he was a child. He next considered taking the vaccine and knew that doing so was the only honorable choice; the thought of his own death barely made him pause, and the even smaller likelihood that the vaccine might work—if he survived—felt too remote to be a serious consideration. He would lend his hand to his flailing father, even at the risk of being pulled into the churning waters in which he struggled to stay afloat.

  The air felt cool on his face—wet from tears—and he could detect a distant, echoing crescendo, a mounting tension that for the first time in years almost made him want to sing. “I’m here
, Papa,” he whispered and then turned and kneeled, gripping his father’s shoulders as if to prop them both up. “I will take the vaccine with you.”

  Guillaume slowly stood and kissed each of his cheeks, and in his eyes Lucien could see his own. “Great truth requires great sacrifice”—he nodded—“and today you’ve proven your capacity for both.”

  OVER THE NEXT two weeks, Guillaume assembled several new furnaces, which along with test tubes, pans, and bains-marie all had to be tested and calibrated. Lucien was charged with water distillation, a time-consuming procedure in which barrels of water had to be boiled and strained through charcoal and slow-sand filters. He helped organize and measure vials of cinnabar and sulfur, silver and lead, and any number of vegetative extracts, including one from a Mongolian orchid that Guillaume insisted was the most poisonous substance on the earth. Once the procedures began, with a flame burning under every piece of equipment—and a wave of summer heat outside, as though a higher power had placed a magnifying glass over the proceedings—the lab became unbearable; it was a noxious jungle, dank and steaming, and Lucien could not enter without retching. Yet even in this most wretched condition, he was astonished by the speed and agility with which his father—who seemed impervious to the heat and the smell—moved from one task to the next, all the while making precise measurements and notations and recording them in his notebooks. As a spectator, Lucien understood what decades of training had brought to the fore, and while he watched, there were moments when he could not help but be infected by his father’s optimism. Death seemed far away, as if it would be impossible for such an ordered, efficient rehearsal process to lead to anything but a successful performance. It was easy to imagine countless others around the world—whether scientists or architects or engineers or artists—undertaking the “unperformable,” making people stronger, transforming cities into taller, more formidable places, so that those who had walked the same streets even a generation earlier would not recognize the marvels they now beheld.

  ONE MORNING IN early September, Guillaume extracted the new vaccine from a congealed mass of what to Lucien looked like a handful of dripping seaweed. He placed the liquid in a small covered flask, where it was scheduled to remain until sunset, which he had determined to be the best time for a living organism to ingest it. While his father spent the rest of the day cleaning and organizing the laboratory, Lucien stayed in the garden, trying to contain a mix of nerves and adrenaline not unlike what he used to feel before performing. What was perhaps most remarkable to him—except for the vaccine itself—was the extent to which his grief had melted away over the past three weeks; as his thoughts turned to Eduard, a part of him still longed to tell him about everything that had happened, but it was with more enthusiasm and appreciation than loss. He felt Eduard beside him, listening, observing—possibly laughing—and several times Lucien found himself caressing nearby rose petals as if they were Eduard’s lips, which made the prospect of his own death more comforting.

  As the afternoon began to wane, Guillaume and Lucien went upstairs to the music salon and situated themselves in the slanting rays of amber light.

  Guillaume nodded at the piano. “Do you remember the first time you saw it?”

  “Yes,” Lucien answered. “I never imagined that anything could be so beautiful.”

  “And do you remember what you played?”

  “Of course,” said Lucien, trying to sound confident as he thought of the old French song. “I’ll never forget—and I’ll always be grateful.”

  They sat across from each other and placed their cups on a low table in front of them. They had agreed that Guillaume would go first, so that Lucien could gauge the reaction and if necessary assist in the event of a problem—for example, Guillaume had discovered that applying gentle pressure on the chest of a mouse could resuscitate it—after which Lucien would take his dose.

  “Don’t cry, Lucien,” Guillaume reprimanded Lucien as he took hold of his son’s hand, his expression both triumphant and doleful. “This is good.”

  “I can’t help it.” Lucien tried to smile through his tears.

  “I know,” Guillaume said and released his hand. As the sun passed through the line of the horizon and heaved a final sigh, emitting a few last rays of light, Guillaume raised the cup to his lips. “To life,” he offered. “To truth.”

  “Deo concedente,” Lucien managed to whisper back as Guillaume, his eyes shining, eagerly swallowed the murky liquid.

  It shocked Lucien how fast it happened, how quickly Guillaume—even before setting down his cup—fell onto the chair and rolled to the floor, where he began to convulse. Without a thought, Lucien held him down and ripped open his shirt to massage his chest as Guillaume continued to thrash for perhaps a minute or more—Lucien could not watch; it was too terrible to see his father’s expression—until the convulsions subsided and there was no more than a periodic twitch. Lucien let go and raised his eyes to his father’s face, hoping for the best but knowing as soon as he saw Guillaume’s eyes, glassy and hard, staring past him, that something was wrong; he shook his father by the shoulders and placed a finger on his neck—searching for a pulse—and then an ear to his mouth, but felt nothing, no trace of breath. He collapsed onto his father’s chest, tears blurring his vision, listening for some echo of a heartbeat, some sign that his father—who only minutes before had spoken to him, had reassured him that everything was going to be fine—was still alive, but in the stillness of a dark, empty house, he found only more proof that Guillaume was dead.

  Lucien looked at Guillaume and saw no trace of torment; his expression resonated with peace and even determination, as if his ideals hovered like angels in the moonlight, guiding him forward. To see his father like this filled Lucien with rapture as he considered the irrefutable end of his own grief. Without another thought, he stood up with his chin raised—as if to sing his final aria—and spun around to face the pale twilight streaming through the windows. He offered a short bow to his imaginary audience, put the cup to his lips, and drank, swallowing many times before it was emptied.

  He heard glass shatter but he could no longer see; he tried to move and could not. The liquid seemed to turn his stomach to ice, an effect that quickly spread into the rest of his body, so that each thump of his freezing heart sounded like the strike of a kettledrum in a vast hall. He had entered a world unlike anything he had ever imagined, and as a blue tint encroached on the edges of his vision, he feared that he would soon behold Lucifer perched on his throne to dictate punishments for the new arrivals. He remained paralyzed for what seemed like an eternity, or even two, and only after he detected the crash of continents and the resulting eruption of mountains did his heart begin to beat; slowly at first and then faster, until the icy torment he had already endured became a forgotten past and like Pyrrhus and Attila he was delivered into the boiling Phlegethon, doomed to flail in a river of lava. His bones and arteries disintegrated into a glutinous mass and he begged for relief from whatever caused this agony, until in his futility he was merged with the sun and then cast out like a beam of light into the remote beyond, and only when this crossed his mind—this nothingness, néant—did the pain begin to ebb, as if someone had turned off a spigot. He felt snow falling, melting away one flake at a time in his slowly pulsing blood.

  35

  We Have to Wake Up from the Existence of Our Parents: In This Awakening, We Must Give an Account of the Nearness of That Existence

  NEW YORK CITY, 2002. It was just after five o’clock, and the January sun—shifting north after the winter solstice—was about to set. Martin contemplated the ember tones reflecting off the ice patches on the Hudson and allowed his eye to drift up to the arched towers of the George Washington Bridge, grandly backlit in the manner of a Parisian monument. Now into his fourth month of retirement, he did not cultivate a routine, although he didn’t resist one, either. Besides taking care of the cats, he let himself be occupied by small tasks, e.g., alphabetizing his records, reading his favori
te Schopenhauer passages, trolling eBay for missing pieces in his silverware pattern (Gorham Hanover), or perusing alpine plant catalogs. Some days he went for walks in Fort Tryon Park or—if the weather was bad—took naps in the afternoon, a luxury that still seemed pleasantly unimaginable after so many years in an office. He spoke to his sister on the phone and several times met Jay Wellings for lunch or dinner downtown. He almost never thought about his old job, and his chronic health problems had improved if not disappeared entirely.

  With a thought to follow through on his exploration of a longer-term relationship, he had imposed a moratorium on the shorter kind. Having taken no other steps to make a longer relationship happen, he knew something was holding him back, though whether habit or history—or more likely, some combination—he could not yet say. In the first few months after 9/11, it had seemed “too soon” to date, but he was starting to acknowledge that the expiration had passed on that particular excuse.

  “You just hate not being good at something,” Suzie said to him when he admitted his failure to answer even a single “LTR” personal ad, as he had resolved to do. “I call it big-brother syndrome.”

  “I’m not very good at gardening, either,” Martin replied, “and I don’t have a problem admitting that.”

  “That’s true,” she said, “but the difference is that because of other things you’ve done—hockey, law, whatever; things that don’t require so much emotional investment—you can easily see how to get better. You take a class, you practice, you research, you start small and then you improve. It’s more logic than emotion.”

  “So what’s different about dating?”

  “Actually, nothing!” she insisted before continuing more earnestly. “It’s just that you—like many of our gay brethren—missed out on the usual starting-small phase that others take for granted, the kinds of institutionalized opportunities that allow for healthier and more stable romantic relationships.”