by John Irving
The commandant’s daughter; her little brother
“It’s not the tattoos, my dear boy,” Jack’s father said, standing naked before him—the shocking white of William’s hands and face and neck and penis being the only parts of him that weren’t an almost uniform blue-black, some of which had faded to gray. “It’s everything I truly heard and felt—it’s everything I ever loved! It’s not the tattoos that marked me.” For a small man, he had overlong arms—like a gibbon.
“Perhaps you should put your clothes on, Pop—so we can go out to dinner.”
Jack saw that messy music, a wrinkled scrap of a page on his dad’s left hip, where Jack’s mom was once convinced that Beachcomber Bill had marked him—the tattoo that had failed in the planning phase, according to Tattoo Ole. Jack got only a glimpse of those notes that curled around the underarm side of his father’s right biceps; most of that tattoo was lost from view, either the Chinaman’s mistake or the Beachcomber’s. And that fragment of a hymn on his left calf—the “Breathe on me, breath of God,” both the words and the music—was every bit as good as Tattoo Ole had said. (It had to be Charlie Snow’s work, or Sailor Jerry’s.)
As for his dad’s favorite Easter hymn, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” it was upside down to Jack—but when his father sat on the toilet, William could read the music. Since this tattoo was strictly notes, without the words, Jack knew it was “Christ the Lord” only because of where it was, and it was upside down—and of course Jack remembered that Aberdeen Bill had given it to William. As Heather had told Jack, this long-ago tattoo had been overlapped by a newer one, Walther’s “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”—the top two staffs beginning where the alleluia chorus to “Christ the Lord” should have been.
His father was leaping up and down like a monkey on the bed; with a remote, which William held in one hand, he had lowered the hospital bed to a flat position. It was hard to get a definitive look at all his tattoos—for example, to ascertain exactly which lengthy and complicated phrase by Handel was in the area of William’s kidneys. Jack knew only that Tattoo Ole had done that one. (“More Christmas music,” Ole had said dismissively.) But Jack got a good enough look to guess that this was the soprano aria (“For Unto Us a Child Is Born”) from Handel’s Messiah—and, in that case, Widor’s Toccata was right next to it.
All but lost in an ocean of music, Herbert Hoffmann’s disappearing ship was even more difficult to see because of William’s monkey business on the bed. And there, on his father’s right shoulder, Jack recognized another Tattoo Ole—it lay unfurled like a piece ripped from a flag. It was more Bach, but not the Christmas music Jack’s mother had thought it was—neither Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium nor his Kanonische Veränderungen über das Weihnachtslied. It was tough to see his dad’s shoulder clearly, with all the bouncing up and down, but Jack’s Exeter German was getting better by the minute—“Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich.”
Jack also caught Pachelbel’s name, if not the particular piece of music, and—in a crescent shape on his father’s coccyx—Theo Rademaker’s cramped fragment, “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott.” (The composer was Samuel Scheidt.)
Bach’s “Jesu, meine Freude” (“Jesus, My Joy”), which Tattoo Peter had given Jack’s dad in Amsterdam, was indeed missing part of the word Largo—as his sister had said. The Balbastre tattoo (“Joseph est bien marié”), which was newer and only slightly overlapped the Bach, was not by a tattoo artist Jack could identify.
Jack’s French, which was nonexistent, gave him fits with Dupré’s Trois préludes et fugues pour orgue—not to mention Messiaen’s “Dieu parmi nous,” which followed the Roman numeral IX.
Did that mean “God is among us”? Jack was wondering.
“I have a son!” his father was shouting, as he bounced up and down on the bed. “Thank you, God—I have a son!”
“Dad, don’t hurt yourself.”
“ ‘Pop,’ ” his father corrected him.
“Better be careful, Pop.”
You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed. Jack was trying to identify the Bach tattoo Sami Salo was alleged to have given William on his backside—and the notes that Trond Halvorsen (the scratcher) gave him in Oslo, where Halvorsen also gave William an infection—but Jack was making himself dizzy with the effort.
“Do you know what toccata means, Jack?”
“No, Pop.”
“It means touch, basically—almost a hammered kind of touch,” his father explained; he wasn’t even out of breath. Jack saw no evidence that Dr. Horvath had been right about the psychological benefits of the Sanatorium Kilchberg’s jogging program, but the aerobic benefits were obvious.
Stanley’s Trumpet Tune in D, which marked William’s chest in the area of his right lung, seemed to make a visual proclamation. (Didn’t you need good lungs to play the trumpet?) And there was that fabulous Alain quotation, in French and English, on his dad’s bare ass—not that William was standing still enough for Jack to be able to read it.
“Pop, maybe you should get dressed for dinner.”
“If I stop, I’ll get a chill, dear boy. I don’t want to feel cold!” his father shouted.
For Professor Ritter and the doctors—they were listening outside, in the corridor—this must have been a familiar enough utterance to give them a signal. There was a loud, rapid knocking on the door—Dr. Horvath, probably.
“Perhaps we should come in, William!” Professor Ritter called; it wasn’t really a question.
“Vielleicht!” Jack’s father shouted. (“Perhaps!”)
William bounded off the bed; he put his hands on the rubberized floor and bent over, facing Jack while he lifted his bare bottom to the opening door. When Professor Ritter and the doctors entered, William was mooning them.
Reason has reached its limit. Only belief keeps rising.
“I must say, William—this is a little disappointing,” Professor Ritter said.
“Only a little?” Jack’s father asked; he’d straightened up and had turned to face them, naked.
“William, this is not what you should wear to the Kronenhalle!” Dr. Horvath admonished him.
“I won’t have dinner with a naked man—at least not in public,” Dr. von Rohr announced, but Jack could see that she instantly regretted her choice of words. “Es tut mir leid,” she added. (“I’m sorry,” she said to Jack’s father.) The other doctors and Professor Ritter all looked at her with dismay. “I said I was sorry!” she told them in her head-of-department way.
“I think I heard the word naked,” William said to his son, smiling. “Talk about triggers!”
“I said I was sorry, William,” Dr. von Rohr told him.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jack’s father said irritably. But Jack saw the first sign that his dad felt cold again—a single tremor. “It’s just that I’ve told you I’m not naked. You know that’s not how I feel!”
“We know, William,” Dr. Berger said. “You’ve told us.”
“But Jack hasn’t heard this,” Professor Ritter joined in.
Dr. von Rohr sighed; if she’d been holding a pencil in her long fingers, she would have twirled it. “These tattoos are your father’s real clothes, Jack,” Dr. von Rohr said. She put her hands on William’s shoulders—running her hands down the length of his arms, which she then held at the wrists. “He feels cold because so many of his favorite composers have died. Most of them are dead, in fact. Aren’t they, William?”
“Cold as the grave,” Jack’s father said, nodding his head; he was shivering.
“And what is here, and here, and here, and everywhere?” Dr. von Rohr asked, pointing to William’s tattoos repeatedly. “Nothing but praise for the Lord—hymns of praise—and prayers of lamentation. With you, everything is either adulation or mourning. You thank God, William, but you mourn almost everyone or everything else. How am I doing so far?” she asked him. Jack could tell that she had calmed his father down, bu
t nothing could stop the shivering. (Dr. Horvath was trying, rubbing William’s shoulders while attempting to pull a T-shirt over his shaking head—more or less at the same time.)
“You’re doing a very good job,” Jack’s father told Dr. von Rohr sincerely. He was too cold for sarcasm; his teeth were chattering again.
“Your body is not naked, William. It is gloriously covered with hymns of jubilation, and with the passion of an abiding love of God—but also an abiding loss,” Dr. von Rohr continued.
Dr. Horvath went on dressing Jack’s father as if William were a child. Jack could see that his dad had completely succumbed, not only to Dr. Horvath dressing him but to Dr. von Rohr’s litany—which William had doubtless delivered to her on more than one occasion.
“You are wearing your grief, William,” Dr. von Rohr went on, “and your broken heart is thankful—it just can’t keep you warm, not anymore. And the music—well, some of it is triumphant. Jubilant, you would say. But so much of it is sad, isn’t it, William? Sad like a dirge, sad like a lamentation, as I’ve heard you say repeatedly.”
“The repeatedly was sarcastic, Ruth,” Jack’s father said. “You were doing fine till then.”
Dr. von Rohr sighed again. “I’m just trying to get us to dinner on time, William. Forgive me if I’m giving Jack the abridged version.”
“I think I get it,” Jack told Dr. von Rohr. (He thought she’d done a good job, under the circumstances.) “I get the idea, Pop—I really do.”
“Pop? Was heisst ‘Pop’?” Dr. Horvath asked. (“What is ‘Pop’?”)
“Amerikanische Umgangssprache für ‘Vater,’ ” Professor Ritter told him. (“American colloquial speech for ‘Father.’ ”)
“He doesn’t need to wear a tie, Klaus,” Dr. von Rohr said to Dr. Horvath, who was struggling to knot a necktie at William’s throat. “Jack’s not wearing a tie, and he looks fine.”
“But it’s the Kronenhalle!” Jack was certain Dr. Horvath was going to yell; however, Dr. Horvath put the tie away and was silent.
“There’s more to life than grieving and singing praise to God, William,” Dr. Berger intoned. “I mean, factually speaking.”
“I won’t use that word I used again, William,” Dr. von Rohr said carefully, “but allow me to say that you can’t go to the Kronenhalle wearing only your tattoos, because—as I know you know, William—they’re not socially acceptable.”
“Not socially acceptable,” Jack’s father repeated, smiling. Jack could see that being socially unacceptable pleased William Burns, and that Dr. von Rohr knew this about him.
“I want to say that I can see what good care you’re taking of my dad,” Jack told them all. “I want you to know that my sister and I appreciate it—and that my father appreciates it.” Everyone seemed embarrassed—except William, who looked irritated.
“You don’t need to make a speech, Jack. You’re not a Canadian anymore,” his dad told him. “We all can be socially acceptable, when we have to. Well, maybe not Hugo,” his father added, with that mischievous little smile Jack was getting used to. “Have you met Hugo yet, Jack?”
“Noch nicht,” Jack said. (“Not yet.”)
“But I suppose they’ve told you about the nature of the little excursions I take with Hugo, on occasion,” his father said, the mischief and the smile disappearing from his face, as if one word—not necessarily Hugo, but the wrong word—could instantly make him another person. “They’ve told you, haven’t they?” He wasn’t kidding.
“I know a little about it,” Jack answered him evasively. But his father had already turned to Professor Ritter and the others.
“Don’t you think a father and his son should have those awkward but necessary conversations about sex together?” William asked his doctors.
“Bitte, William—” Professor Ritter started to say.
“Isn’t that what any responsible father would do?” Jack’s dad went on. “Isn’t that my job? To talk about sex with my son—isn’t that my job? Why is that your job?”
“We thought that Jack should be informed about the Hugo business, William,” Dr. Berger said. “We didn’t know you would bring the matter up with him.”
“Factually speaking,” William said, calming down a little.
“We can talk about it later, Pop.”
“Perhaps over dinner,” his father said, smiling at Dr. von Rohr, who sighed.
“Speaking of which, you should be leaving!” Dr. Horvath cried. But when they started for the corridor—his father bowing to Dr. von Rohr, who preceded him—Dr. Horvath grabbed Jack by both shoulders, holding him back.
“Which of the triggers was it?” the doctor whispered in Jack’s ear; even Dr. Horvath’s whisper was loud. “Das Wort,” he whispered. (“The word.”) “What was it?”
“Skin,” Jack whispered. “It was the word skin.”
“Gott!” Dr. Horvath shouted. “That’s one of the worst ones—that one is unstoppable!”
“I’m glad some of the triggers are stoppable,” Jack told him. “Naked, for example. Dr. von Rohr seemed to stop that one.”
“Ja, naked’s not so bad,” Dr. Horvath said dismissively. “But you better not bring up the word skin at the Kronenhalle. And the mirrors!” he remembered, with a gasp. “Keep William away from the mirrors.”
“Is a mirror one of the unstoppable triggers?” Jack asked.
“A mirror is more than a trigger,” Dr. Horvath said gravely. “A mirror is das ganze Pulver!”
“What?” Jack asked him; he didn’t know the phrase.
“Das ganze Pulver!” Dr. Horvath cried. “All the ammunition!”
Their evening at the Kronenhalle began with William complimenting Dr. von Rohr on the silver streak in her tawny hair—how it had always impressed him that she must have been struck by lightning one morning on her way to work. By the time she met with her first patient, he imagined, she was acutely aware of that part of her head where the lightning bolt had hit her—mainly because the lightning had done such extensive damage to her roots that her hair had already died and turned gray.
“Is this actually a compliment, William?” Dr. von Rohr asked.
They had not yet been seated at their table, which was in a room with a frosted-glass wall. They’d entered the Kronenhalle from Rämistrasse. Dr. von Rohr, who was much taller than Jack’s father, purposely blocked any view he might have had of the mirror by the bar. They passed both the women’s and the men’s washrooms, which harbored more mirrors, but these mirrors were not within sight of the corridor they followed to their glassed-in room. (The mirror over the sideboard was in another part of the restaurant.)
William was looking all around, but he couldn’t see past Dr. von Rohr—he came up to her breasts—and Dr. Krauer-Poppe held his other arm. Jack followed them. His father was constantly turning his head and smiling at him. Jack could tell that his dad thought it was great fun to be escorted into a fancy restaurant like the Kronenhalle by two very good-looking women.
“If you weren’t so tall, Ruth,” William was saying to Dr. von Rohr, “I could get a look at the top of your head and see if that silver streak is dyed all the way down to your roots.”
“There’s just no end to your compliments, William,” she said, smiling down at him.
Jack’s dad patted the little purse Dr. Krauer-Poppe carried on her arm. “Got the sedatives, Anna-Elisabeth?” he asked.
“Behave yourself, William,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
William turned and winked at Jack. Dr. Horvath had dressed Jack’s father in a long-sleeved black silk shirt; because William’s arms were long, but his body was small, every shirt looked too big on him. His silver shoulder-length hair, which was the same glinting shade of gray as Dr. von Rohr’s electric streak, added to the feminine aspect of his handsomeness—as did the copper bracelets and his gloves. His “evening” gloves, as William called them, were a thin black calfskin. The way his father bounced on the balls of his feet reminded Jack of Mr. Ramsey. As Heather had put
it, William Burns was a youthful-looking sixty-four.
“Ruth, alas, is no fan of Billy Rainbow, Jack,” William said, as they were being seated.
“Alas, she told me,” Jack said, smiling at Dr. von Rohr, who smiled back at him.
“Even so,” Jack’s father said, clearing his throat, “I gotta say we’re with the two best-looking broads in the place.” (He really did have Billy Rainbow down pat.)
“You’re such a flatterer, William,” Dr. von Rohr told him.
“Have you had a look at Ruth’s purse?” Jack’s dad asked him, indicating Dr. von Rohr’s rather large handbag; it was too big to fit under her chair. “More like a suitcase, if you ask me—more like an overnight bag,” William said, winking at Jack. His father was outrageously suggesting that Dr. von Rohr had prepared herself for the possibility of spending the night at the Hotel zum Storchen with Jack!
“It’s not every day you meet a man who compliments a woman’s accessories,” Dr. von Rohr told Jack, smiling.
Dr. Krauer-Poppe didn’t look so sure, nor was she smiling; despite her supermodel attire, Dr. Krauer-Poppe’s dominant personality trait radiated medication.
Jack also knew that Dr. Krauer-Poppe was married, and she had young children, which was why his father had focused his embarrassing zeal for matchmaking on Jack and Dr. von Rohr. (She was no longer married but had been, Heather had said; she was a divorced woman with no children.)
“Jack’s been seeing a psychiatrist—for longer than I’ve known you two ladies,” William announced. “How’s that been going, Jack?”
“I don’t know if there’s a professional name for the kind of therapy I’ve been receiving,” Jack told them. “A psychiatric term, I mean.”
“It doesn’t need to have a psychiatric term,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “Just describe it.”
“Well, Dr. García—she’s this truly wonderful woman in her early sixties, with all these children and grandchildren. She lost her husband some years ago—”
“Aren’t most of her patients women, Jack?” his dad interrupted. “I had that impression from one of those articles I read about the Lucy business—you remember that episode, the girl in the backseat of Jack’s car?” William asked his doctors. “Both she and her mother were seeing the same psychiatrist Jack was seeing! From the sound of it, you’d think there was a shortage of psychiatrists in southern California!”