Sudden Lockdown

by Amos Talshir

  22.

  Clebber was sitting in the seat next to Charlie in an exultant mood thanks to the results of his intensive weight loss, ignoring the stomachaches that had replaced the backaches that had challenged him for the last twenty years of his life. He savored the sight of his gradually disappearing belly, evoking compliments from Veronica. He told Charlie he would give everything in order to be able to weigh himself and know he had beaten that potbelly, which had turned him into a man who despised himself. He yearned to know how many pounds he had lost during the long weeks of the rectangle-and-water diet enforced upon him. Veronica fluttered around him joyfully in response to every additional hole redeemed in his belt, telling him she was as pleased as if she were at a birthday party. Charlie asked her which birthday, and she said it was the day of birth of another hole in the belt. The new holes in the belt were pierced by Simon, using the leatherwork pick included in his pocketknife. The foursome agreed on celebrating the holes’ birthdays, thus providing themselves with another cause to rejoice. Simon told Charlie that Veronica was funny, and for some reason, Charlie felt that it was important to him, this thing that Simon was saying about Veronica.

  Clebber complained about the amount of urine he was producing and about how frequently he had to go, but he was willing to do it all for the sake of losing weight. The hole birthday celebrations took them out of their routine and made Veronica feel appreciated. Clebber gulped down immense amounts of water and Simon told him he had found a way to weigh him. Clebber was greatly touched by the new gang surrounding him, which was so interested in his diet and had a positive attitude toward his girth.

  He had never been so open in regard to his body. During management meetings at the bank, he displayed impressive control and sharpness, garnering appreciative looks from the owners and admiration from his younger subordinates, including the women among them. But from the moment the meeting split up into smaller conversations in the coffee nook and talk of vacation and ski plans, he would try to disappear along with all his fat into his nearby office. He also interpreted the appreciative smiles from the young female bankers over his original ideas at the meeting as an attempt to compensate him for his unusual physical dimensions.

  The intern who came to them from Bank of America ran into him one day in the narrow corridor leading to the conference room, which he was blocking with his body. It grew embarrassing until he managed to extract himself from the contact he had imposed on her and clear the way for her. He felt like an idiot as he apologized for his physical heft, while she actually smiled and said she had felt as if she was hugging her big teddy bear in bed. Clebber found her statement thrilling and ended up lying awake in his bed all night beside his wife. This time, it was not because he was afraid of falling asleep and snoring by her side, only to find her elbowing him in the ribs. He lay on his back in bed, enveloped by the pleasurable sensation of a big teddy bear, imagining himself hugging the slim body of the Bank of America intern. He did not undress her in his imagination, embracing her with his body just as she had been, in the white blouse that slightly squashed her breasts, tucked into the narrow skirt with the jagged slit. He answered her flattering questions about the brilliant financial maneuvers he had initiated in taking over the Europe Soviet Union Bank and heard the intern purr in indulgent appreciation over his heroic tales. After several sleepless nights, he decided that although she was very nice to him, he had to terminate her internship and send her away because he was afraid of being swept up into sexual harassment.

  He had never felt comfortable in other people’s company with his giant body and unusual height. Even talking was an effort for him, and he tended to simply nod or wag his chin, whose pelican wattle bore down upon him at its full impressive weight.

  Simon told him that he had found the Sportive players’ fitness room within the labyrinth of the local team’s rooms. Simon had discovered the stadium’s architectural blueprint when he was surfing online to unravel the mysteries of the bats’ burrows. Clebber rose to his feet, complaining of a dizziness that had attacked him, and tightening his belt, skipping over another hole. Veronica applauded his disappearing potbelly. He was thirsty, and his frequent runs to urinate and drink had tired him out. When they arrived at the dressing room area, Simon located the fitness room in the dark maze using a diagram he had made. Veronica stood on the scale after demanding that Simon and Clebber not peek at her weight, which would forever be her greatest secret. Clebber urged her to hurry up, as he had to run to the restroom. Veronica declared to all of them that the scale was accurate as this was indeed her weight, and she knew it down to the last ounce.

  “I haven’t lost weight since I’ve been scarfing down their rectangles,” she informed them.

  Clebber clambered on to the surface of the scale, letting out a weak cry of amazement. He grabbed on to Simon’s shoulder and a faint elated smile spread across his face.

  “I’m under two twenty. I’m overjoyed. I never believed that would happen to me in my life.”

  Clebber asked Simon to walk him to the restrooms and, on their way, signaled Simon not to let go of him, as his dizziness was getting the better of him. Veronica accompanied them to the entrance to the restroom facility, showering Clebber with cries of encouragement from behind. Simon stood next to Clebber, who urinated while supporting his other hand on Simon’s shoulder. Clebber’s stance was unsteady, but the stream of urine was surging out.

  “I’m dying of thirst,” he said.

  “You can have some water in a moment,” Simon soothed him.

  “I can’t wait. For the last few days, I have to drink before I can finish pissing.”

  Simon took Clebber’s hand off his shoulder, placing it on the water pipe. He hurried to the sink, took the thermos out of his backpack and filled it with water, returning to Clebber, who was still producing an undiminished stream. Clebber, tired from standing up for a prolonged period of time, asked Simon to support his body. He reached out and watered himself from the thermos as he continued to urinate, much to the wonderment of the people present at the urinal. Clebber ceaselessly drank the water from the thermos as the urine continued to flow from his body.

  Next to them, an elegant man in a dark suit that had known cleaner, better-pressed days was urinating. The suit was draped over the man’s body as if the hanger was still hidden inside it, pulling it up. Simon recognized him despite his sunken cheeks, resembling those of a starving man, due to his beard, growing wildly and covering his affected mustache; there was also that thing on his back. The stranger gazed at Clebber as he peed out inconceivable amounts and straightened his pink tie. It appeared as if he was preparing to introduce himself, despite the uncouth intrusion while a stranger was urinating. He talked to Clebber in the local language, but Simon explained to him that Clebber did not understand it.

  “May I interrupt you, please?” the man asked in English.

  “Please do,” Clebber replied.

  “You’re very ill,” he told Clebber in English.

  “You’re wrong. Thank you for your attention, but I’ve simply gotten very thin since we’ve been here and lost a lot of weight. That’s all that’s wrong,” Clebber replied.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the man in the pink tie. “I’m a doctor, and you’re very sick.”

  “I hope I’m peeing my weight away,” Clebber answered tiredly.

  “It’s not just the quantity. I’m sorry to tell you that I recognize the smell of your urine. You’ve apparently come down with diabetes, and there’s no way you’ll receive a more accurate diagnosis.”

  The man had assumed an authoritative tone, despite busily stuffing his organ into his previously elegant trousers.

  “Diabetes?” Clebber asked.

  “The tremendous amount you’re producing smells of acetone,” the doctor said, resuming tending to himself opposite the mirror affixed above the sink. He moistened the hair on his head, which had gro
wn longer during the preceding days of the lockdown, carefully examined his face, which had sprouted a salt-and-pepper beard, moved his wet palms over the hair trailing down to his collar, and continued to caress his cheeks with his open palms. It was obvious that he was very displeased with his neglected appearance. He continued to pat down his resistant hair against his scalp, passing his wet fingers along his eyebrows, which were plucked like a woman’s. As he stood in that pose, turning a partial profile toward Simon, who was supporting Clebber, it was suddenly obvious that this was indeed the same man. Simon recognized the minister of health, despite his rapid aging, and although he had managed to shed his tyrannical countenance from the previous meeting. Simon felt a sudden light shiver running down his back. From a certain angle, he could discern the protrusion of the hump on the right side of the doctor’s back, somewhat concealed by his dark suit. It was the same protrusion that Simon’s eagle eyes had perceived during their previous encounter, outside the VIP box. And perhaps it was the doctor’s practice to tilt his stance somewhat so as to favor his left leg, or the man’s confident body language that helped him nearly camouflage the fact that he was a hunchback. Either way, he might have managed to conceal it from the eyes of people impressed by his self-assured appearance, but he had no chance of concealing his disability from Simon’s eyes. Just like people with thinning hair who recognized their similarly afflicted brethren at first glance, or like women who, with a single look, could spot a large rump trying to hide behind tight pants or an untucked shirt casually flowing down to cover the downward slope of the hidden derriere.

  This was how Simon, as a fellow sufferer, could spot the minister of health’s distinctive characteristic. He watched, marveling at all the flamboyant aspects of the man’s appearance: the silvering hair, too long for a man his age, the red handkerchief tucked into the pocket of his suit, the cuffs of his shirt, glinting with a diamond cufflink peeking out from under his sleeve. But mostly, it was his gaze, as piercing as a beak, tearing into anything that crossed his path, even in the men’s restrooms at the stadium. A hunchbacked man, he thought, would usually prefer not to stand out.

  As he stood next to the peeing Clebber, eyeing the hunchbacked doctor, he wondered whether there was a chance that he, Simon, would also have been burdened with a hump if it hadn’t been for his mother and father’s dedicated treatment. He did not even try, and therefore could not manage, to steer his gaze beyond that hump, just as a black man would not stop staring at a fellow black man, a dwarf at another dwarf, and a balding man at a similarly balding man.

  When the doctor believed he had enhanced his appearance, he turned once again toward Clebber, who remained standing in a stooped, limp pose, his arms leaning against the urinal’s water pipe.

  “Is there something that can be done for him?” Simon asked the doctor in the local language, wondering if the man would recognize him from the heights of his patronizing superiority during their previous encounter.

  “No more than can be done for any one of us,” the minister-doctor told Simon. “It’s not a lot, and it’s only a matter of time. We’re all going to die, one way or another. The revolution has only managed to hasten our end and make our death more pathetic. Each one of us needs to choose how to end his life. I chose to get off my high horse as my death grows near. Luckily for your friend, he’ll die sooner and less humiliated,” the doctor told Simon in the local tongue.

  “Sir,” Simon said, “I don’t agree with you about our helplessness. When it comes to the diabetes, anything you say goes. But that doesn’t apply to our ability to fight what seems to be predetermined.”

  “It’s surprising to discover a philosopher in all this chaos,” the doctor chuckled.

  “It’s surprising to discover a cabinet minister in the commoners’ toilet.”

  “I hope you’re not opposed to my presence,” the doctor said.

  “In my personal experience, doctors are very useful,” Simon confessed.

  “Please tell me about your personal experience. I believe in personal experience much more than in any theory.”

  “Although you’re a doctor by education and a cabinet member in status?”

  “It’s actually because I’ve studied a lot, including quite a few theories, that I believe in life experience. And more than that, in trying anything.”

  “Anything?” Simon asked.

  “To the point of absurdity. You’d be surprised to know to what extent, and you might even be surprised in the future to realize how extreme I can be in trying things out for myself,” the doctor said, sipping water from the faucet and flicking the annoying trickle off his beard with a curved finger. “Tell me about your life experience, kid.”

  “I was born with a flaw in my Scottie dog vertebra. I’m sure you’re familiar with the risks and the potential outcome of such a flaw when it’s especially severe. People can give up and end up in the worst condition. My parents didn’t give up. Ever since I was a baby, they put me to sleep in a seated position in order to accelerate the vertebra’s development. The problem began when I got older and wanted to sleep lying down, like all the kids at nursery school. My mother wouldn’t relent. It was hard stopping a child from lying down and forcing him to sleep while sitting up. It would have been very easy to give in to a child crying at night and to slip off the brace so that he would finally lie down and go to sleep. They didn’t give in during the nights, and during the days, my dad forced me to swim in the sea for hundreds of feet, which became dozens of miles, every night. At first it was a nightmare, and then it became my biggest pleasure in life. As I’m sure you can notice, my back is perfectly fine.”

  “I’d give a lot for a back like yours.”

  “And I even enjoy sleeping in my seat here.”

  “At the moment, I suggest we focus on the difficult condition of your friend, who has come down with severe diabetes due to the extreme diet imposed on him. How do you intend to change his fate?”

  “Sir, I can improve your situation a lot, too,” Simon promised.

  “How are you going to do that, young man?” A fresh smile appeared at the corner of the dandy doctor’s handsome lips.

  “I can make a big improvement in what seems to me to be really troubling you.”

  “And what’s troubling me, other than the question of my continued existence?”

  “Your appearance.” Simon blushed.

  The doctor examined Simon with the curiosity of one who was truly meticulous about his appearance and yet was unfamiliar with such explicit directness. He passed a tentative hand across his mane of hair, which had known better-groomed days. For a moment, he rebelled against the boy’s determined initiative, feeling as if he was losing control. Simon directed his radiant smile at him, thinking he identified something else in this man. The lack of accordance between the natty man and the shabby condition in which he found himself due to the lockdown did not do away with his majestic presence. In any case, there was something enigmatic about him. Not only did the sad state of his filthy clothes, his unshaven face and his wildly overgrown hair fail to diminish his elevated status, but in fact, they served to enhance it. He exhibited a satisfaction of sorts in regard to the odd situation in which he found himself, as if it actually proved his unique standing, his immunity to humiliation. He thus gussied himself up in front of the mirror in a public restroom, diagnosed a diabetic, and was willing to discuss his hunchback with a strange boy who was challenging him in a direct, revealing manner.

  Simon was aware of the fact that swimming immense distances, just like running marathons, had mainly turned him into a challenger of boundaries, but always in regard and in relation to his own boundaries. Now, for the first time in his life, he was challenging someone else. He was aware of the considerable amount of courage he needed in order to talk to a hunchbacked man about his hump in a public urinal. And what was it about this hunchback that made him willing to engage in this
conversation?