Death and Transfiguration

by Gerald Elias

  On Tuesday evening, O’Brien had been found lying in bed in a pool of her own blood in Room 226 at the Berkshire View Motel by Sophie Johnstone, the housekeeper who, presuming that O’Brien had already checked out on schedule, had entered to clean the room. Hysterical, she managed to call 911, babbling almost incoherently that she would have cleaned the room sooner except that no one else had booked it for the night because it was midweek and they don’t get as many guests in midweek and … O’Brien, her pulse barely detectable, was rushed by ambulance to the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield. Johnstone herself was taken to the emergency room, in a state of shock from the unanticipated carnage, and was later given the rest of the week off, with pay, by her employer.

  “She lost a lot of blood, Jake,” Miller said. He took a sip of the Folger’s spiked with Jack Daniel’s that Jacobus had provided. “It was bad. Wrists. The doctors aren’t sure she’s going to make it.”

  Jacobus did not respond, except to shake his head and slide his mug back and forth aimlessly on the table.

  “Why do you suppose someone would do that to herself?” Miller asked. “Someone with that kind of talent. I don’t get it. Never have.”

  “What the hell kind of question is that? Why the fuck are you asking me?” spat Jacobus. “What do you think? That because I’m blind, I’m some damn guru with some kind of paranormal insight?”

  “Sorry, Jake. I was just sort of talking out loud to myself. I didn’t mean any offense. It’s just hard to figure what goes on in someone’s mind that would lead them to do that kind of thing.

  “Whew. This is too heavy. Like me. Annie says I need to lighten up. In more ways than one, I guess. What have you been up to the last few days? How’s Nathaniel?”

  “How the hell do I know? He’s in Europe with the literati, paparazzi, and hoity-toity at some stinking music festival.”

  “Jealous, huh? Have any other visitors lately?”

  “Take one guess.”

  “Did you have a chance to talk to her at all? Sherry O’Brien, I mean, in the last day or so?”

  “No. Why? And what’s with the third degree?”

  “Just want to figure out why she’d slit her wrists.”

  “When she played for me the other day she said she didn’t know what she’d do if she lost her audition. I assume she was distraught.”

  “That sounds right. On the other hand, if she didn’t…” Miller let the sentence trail away.

  Jacobus’s antennae went up. Was it not clear-cut? He regretted that choice of words, even unspoken. “If she didn’t what? You said it was self-inflicted.”

  “That’s what the Pittsfield police say, and every indication says it was.”

  “But?”

  “Well, she was still semiconscious but kind of delirious when they took her in, and the only intelligible thing they could decipher her saying was, ‘Jacobus.’ She whispered your name over and over.”

  Jacobus put his thumbs on his temples and fingers on his forehead and pressed hard, trying to stop his head from its involuntary shaking.

  “That’s all she said?” he asked.

  “She’s been unconscious since then.”

  “So if she were to die, that makes me a murder suspect?”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all.”

  “Then just what are you saying, Roy?”

  “Only that we want to understand what was going on in her mind. Maybe she was calling for you. Maybe she needed your help. That’s all I’m saying.”

  * * *

  He found Room 421L, a semiprivate room in the intensive care unit at the Berkshire Medical Center, only after walking around in circles for an hour and going up the wrong elevator. At the desk, they had pinned a visitor’s tag on his shirt, so no one bothered him. On the other hand, no one helped him, either. When he found the room, the nurse told him to keep the visit brief, that O’Brien had not yet regained consciousness. Was she dying? She’s resting.

  The other patient in the room was snoring, but it sounded ugly. Jacobus found a chair on wheels and rolled it to the bedside where he could listen to O’Brien breathing. He wanted to tell her he was sorry he hadn’t taken her seriously, that he had shunned her plea for help, and that he was offended by the way she had been abused by Herza. But he was incapable of saying out loud the words that were in his head, even though she was unconscious and the other patient unaware. So he sat there, not knowing what to say, wrestling against introspection, trying to work out the scenario.

  If she were awake, she would ask, “Why are you here?”

  And what would he say? “Why did you do it? After all…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  He knew how she felt. He should have known from the outset. He, too, had been there once. So close, crossing the last hurdle, the last bridge, and nothing to stop you. Clear sailing and once you get to the other side, all your troubles will be over. And maybe they would have been, but there’s always a Herza to push you over the side of the bridge.

  “Still, you should never have done that,” Jacobus was now telling her, out loud. “No one should.”

  But who decides “should”? Him? Least of all, him. He hadn’t helped when he could have. No one had helped. Herza won. What was left to do?

  There are other orchestras. Other jobs, thought Jacobus. But what was it she had said to him? “I guess you don’t understand humiliation.”

  Jacobus fought against nausea and the urge to flee.

  Why had she whispered his name? Was it a plea for help, as Roy Miller had intimated? Or was it an indictment? Was she consigning him to hell for having stood idly by, by uttering that one word, “Jacobus”?

  “Excuse me,” said a voice from behind him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m Dr. Brexton.”

  Jacobus didn’t respond.

  “Are you family?” Dr. Brexton continued.

  “If only family members are allowed to visit, then I am.”

  “No, that’s not why I ask. It’s because she needs blood. Badly.”

  “I’ve got about a pint and a half left in me. She can have it.”

  “That’s kind of you, but we need to get it from a family member, if possible, a parent. She’s got a rare blood type.”

  “Mine’s red. Hers a different color?”

  “A complete blood type,” Dr. Brexton explained patiently, “describes a full set of thirty substances on the surface of RBCs—”

  “What the hell are RBCs?”

  “Sorry, red blood cells. An individual’s blood type is one of the many possible combinations of blood-group antigens. Across the thirty blood groups, over six hundred different blood-group antigens have been found, but many of these are very rare.”

  “Cut to the chase, Doc.”

  “I’ll try to put it in plain English. If a unit of incompatible blood is transfused between a donor and recipient, a severe acute hemolytic reaction with hemolysis, renal failure, and shock is probable, and death is a possibility. Antibodies can be highly active and can attack RBCs and bind components of the complement system to cause massive hemolysis of the transfused blood.”

  “In other words, she’s in trouble.”

  “Unless we can find a compatible donor, yes.”

  “What about the wrists? Will she ever be able to play again? Can you put that in plain English, too?”

  “Certainly. Flexion and grip are controlled by the flexor tendons. Extension is controlled by the extensor tendons. The insult at the wrist flexion crease, caused by the razor incisions, where the carpal tunnel starts, also severed the nerve that runs from her neck down through her arms, disrupting her ability to move fingers in either hand to the point of paralysis, and will require extensive surgery for her to regain manual dexterity. How much surgery is still too early to determine.”

  “She plays the violin.”

  “She played the violin. But manipulative function is not my main concern.”

  “There’s more?”

>   “Acute blood loss/critical hemorrhage usually results in death if one is not resuscitated rapidly. Loss of consciousness from the hemorrhage insult would be a result of hypoperfusion—from hypovolemia—and hypo-oxygenation from severe anemia of the brain. One would have to have prolonged hypoperfusion of the brain—hypotension and/or hypoxemia—followed by successful physiologic resuscitation, not necessarily back to a functional state, to be rendered unconscious for days. Different than the unconsciousness that occurs with major head trauma or stroke, systemic hypoperfusion would really rule the day.”

  “Doctor, are you trying to tell me she could be a vegetable?”

  “I’m concerned that she lost so much blood that even if we’re able to locate a blood donor, it may well be too late for cognitive recovery.”

  Jacobus turned his head this way and that, hoping that if he found the proper angle a productive thought would enter it. None did.

  “Sorry for the bad news,” said Dr. Brexton. “But she’s a fighter. She’s lucky to be alive.”

  “How lucky can you get?”

  The doctor left. Jacobus sat for a while, then left too, troubled not only by the prognosis but by something—though he couldn’t put his finger on it—the doctor had said.

  He was spinning around in the revolving exit of the hospital, the point of his cane against the glass enclosure, waiting for the moment when it would find no resistance, indicating it was time to jump off the carousel, when he realized he hadn’t made arrangements for getting home. So he completed the three-sixty, reentered the hospital, and asked anyone he heard passing or he bumped into where there might be a public phone he could use. One orderly testily asked, “Don’t you have a cell phone?” to which he responded, “If had a cell-o-phone, would I be wasting my time talking to you?” Finally, a helpful nurse told him to make a right, walk through two doorways, and then another right, and “you can’t miss it, it will be right there on your left.”

  When he finally found the phone, he was struck by another idea. He dialed information for Fort Wayne, Indiana, and, as luck would have it, there was indeed a Michael O’Brien listed. The bad luck was that there were four.

  He dialed the first and got an answering machine, but the voice sounded too young to be the father of Sherry O’Brien, so he didn’t leave a message. The second number was busy. The third was answered after the second ring.

  “Hello?” said a woman, her speech slightly slurred.

  “Maybe I have the wrong number. Is this Mrs. O’Brien?”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “It’s just that I thought Mrs. O’Brien died in childbirth.”

  “She did. This is Mrs. O’Brien the fourth.” She giggled.

  To Jacobus, it sounded like she was wed to the fifth.

  “May I speak to Mr. O’Brien, please?”

  “Hold on.

  “Mikey!” she hollered. “Mikey! Someone to talk to you!… How the hell do I know?… Some guy!… Wait a minute,” she said to Jacobus. “He’s just zipping up.” She giggled again and dropped the receiver on a highly reverberant table. Jacobus waited, holding the phone farther from his ear.

  “Yeah,” said a coarse, guttural voice. Jacobus recognized the cause—a chain smoker—because he had the same symptom.

  “My name is Daniel Jacobus. I’m a violin teacher. I’m calling from Massachusetts about your daughter.”

  “What she get herself into this time?”

  “She’s had an accident. She’s lost a lot of blood, and apparently it’s difficult to find a donor.”

  Jacobus waited for a reply, but there being none, continued. “Since her mother is deceased, I thought you might want to talk to the doctors. Maybe your blood would match what she needs.”

  “Massachusetts?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who’s going to pay for me to fly out to Massachusetts? The government?”

  “I’m sure that can be worked out.”

  “Look, Mr. Jacobs, why don’t you just stick to violin teaching and leave well enough alone.”

  “I just thought that if you love your daughter—”

  “I never fucking touched her! You hear that? No one proved nothing. I never touched her!” O’Brien said, and slammed down the receiver.

  * * *

  So Jacobus stared and stared at The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, but no matter how hard he concentrated, no glimmer of light or shade or color penetrated his darkness. Yet he continued to stare, and to try, though he had no hope.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Alone with his abandoned chess game, Jacobus replayed the moves in his head, hoping it would take his mind off his misery. He mulled yet again over his failure to predict the latent danger of Nathaniel’s pawn. He picked it up and again felt its form. Nothing had changed. It felt like every other pawn, milled in the same conventional way—same shape, same size, same weight, same ridges. He rotated it in his fingers as he had every day since his defeat. This time, though, he found himself holding it against his cheek. Tears welled up in his sightless eyes and streamed down his unshaven, furrowed cheeks, over his quivering lips, and into his mouth, where he tasted their salt.

  He placed the pawn in his mouth between his molars and, with churning jaws, clamped down on it as hard as he could. He bit again, and again, but could not break it, could not destroy it, could not even dent it. He spat it out, saliva covered, into his hand and hurled it against the wall. In a sudden rage, with his forearm he swept all the chess pieces off the board and kicked over the coffee table on which it sat. He grabbed his cane, and in a rampage bulled his way into the kitchen, cracking his head on the doorframe, leaving a bloody mark. He swung the cane wildly, intent on breaking everything within its destructive arc. Glass shattered and he shouted in desperate triumph. He swung again and missed everything and almost fell over, and careened into the refrigerator, bruising his shoulder. Ranting, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” he tried to topple the refrigerator, but his strength was insufficient, so he kicked at it until his foot was bruised and swollen, until his leg was too tired to kick anymore.

  Jacobus gasped for air, suffocating in his prison, his prison of blackness. Out! He needed to get out! He shouldered the screen door, which exploded open and slapped repeatedly against the side of the house. Air! Where was the air?

  Heedless of direction, Jacobus fled the house, tripping over the front steps and into the yard, and spilled over the rusted iron lawn rocking chair, sprawling on the ground as the chair continued to rock. He lay panting, disinclined by pain and fatigue and despair to move.

  This is what I deserve, he thought. Alone, facedown in the dirt.

  His mind was blank and he struggled to keep it that way forever, devoid of thoughts, devoid of memories. He felt no impulse to respond when an indifferent spider navigated across his brow and down his neck. Slowly, against his will, a tide of thought flooded inexorably onto the foggy shore of his consciousness. He fought to push it back, push it down, but still it came. The same thoughts that had haunted him since childhood, that he had sought to exorcise in his frenzy, were swarming back relentlessly now, a plague of locusts. There was no escape from them. Jacobus reached out for the arm of the chair and dragged himself up out of the dirt, first to his knees and then into the chair, where he breathed as deeply as his smoke-charred lungs would allow. Time passed. He then began to speak aloud into the darkness, though it was not yet dusk, with words that no other human would ever hear.

  My name is Daniel Jacobus. I was born December 11, 1920, in Regensburg, Germany. On my seventh birthday, my parents, Isidore and Alicia, gave me a three-quarter-sized violin. It was much too big for me. My first teacher was Max Frenkel. My parents didn’t play an instrument, but music was always part of our family. My older brother, Eli, played the piano, much better than I ever played the violin. For Frenkel it was always musicianship over technique—“what do you want to be, an automobile mechanic?”—even when I was a beginner. He got that p
hilosophy from his own teacher, the great Joseph Joachim. I made good progress.

  In 1931, they sent me to New York to participate in the Grimsley Violin Competition on Frenkel’s recommendation. By rule, all the contestants were under the age of thirteen. Children. He had high hopes for me. I know he was sincere, but I think he also hoped that if I won, it would enhance his reputation. My parents had mixed feelings about letting me go, and their concerns were borne out, but not in the way they thought.

  The winner of the competition would get a Carnegie Hall recital, a solo performance with a specially hired orchestra, and some money. A lot of money, I suppose, for that time. But mainly, the winner would get to play on the so-called Piccolino Stradivarius, the magnificent three-quarter-sized instrument that Stradivari had made for the legendary star-crossed midget violinist, Matteo Cherubino, nicknamed “Il Piccolino.” I grew to hate that violin.

  It was my first time away from Regensburg, let alone my first time overseas. My parents couldn’t go with me; they worked and they had Eli to take care of, and they already felt the trouble brewing in Germany, but the organizers of the competition assured them I’d be well taken care of. We—all the contestants—stayed in what was called a hotel, though looking back, it was no more than a dingy boardinghouse. We had our own rooms, not because the sponsors wanted us to be comfortable, only so we each had a space to practice and to isolate us from one another. There were chaperones who enforced the rules. We met for meals in a dining hall, where we were not allowed to speak. At least we had the meals. The people outside, the people still out of work, had nothing; the soup kitchens if they were lucky. It was the Depression. The days of the dance marathons. That’s what our violin competition was like. The last one standing. We had one hour in the evening during which we could speak to each other. Other than that, we practiced.

  I got sick. I was a skinny kid, and I wasn’t used to the food—it wasn’t anything like my mother’s—or being away from home. I threw up a lot, yet somehow I made it through the first round. I played better in the second round. There were three judges. The head judge was Feodor Malinkovsky, who at that time was the most famous violin teacher in the world. All I can remember about what he looked like was that he looked like a pig. He was round. His bald head was round, his hands were round—you couldn’t see any knuckles—his body was round, he had no hair on his head or his face or his arms, and all of him was coated with a thin layer of grease. His eyes squinted and his smile looked like he had to practice it in front of a mirror. His nose and ears were too big for his face and hair came out of them. Instead of a chin, there was a flap of fatty skin that connected his head to his chest. He might have had a tail, but I can’t prove it. After the second round, one of the chaperones told me Malinkovsky wanted to see me. He escorted me to Malinkovsky’s office, where he knocked on the door and left me. I’ll never forgive him.