The Road to Wellville

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Secretly, the Doctor was relieved. She was fasting, that was all. No harm done. Start her off in the evening with some yogurt and warm milk and prescribe some starchy sauces for her vegetables, whole-grain bread and Italian spaghetti, and she’d be back to normal in a week. Still, he couldn’t let the relief show in his face, couldn’t allow her to think he would condone any instance of a patient’s attempting to treat him or herself—there was no telling where that would lead. “That’s not the point,” he said.

  Eleanor was paging through the book in her lap. “With all due respect, Dr. Kellogg—and I’m in no way making a comparison between you and Mr. Sinclair, who is after all only following your lead—I still have to say that I’m feeling better. These eleven days have given my system yet another way of cleansing itself—a sort of vacation for my bowels, as it were….”

  “I see.” The Doctor was tight-lipped. He wanted to be generous and understanding, receptive to progressive views and new ideas, but all he felt was irritation. He put on his lecturer’s face as a warrior might have plucked up a shield. “Fasting can be an invaluable tool in the complete physiologic regimen, of course,” he said, “and though you must never forget that Mr. Sinclair is, after all, a layman, his notions do have some validity according to the most advanced medical thinking. You may be aware that I myself have addressed the question of fasting cures in my Good Health column.”

  Eleanor dipped her head in acknowledgment.

  “Yes, well.” He rubbed his hands together vigorously. “And may I see the book in question? I must confess that I’m not familiar with it.”

  “It’s just in typescript, Doctor,” Eleanor murmured, handing him the text. “It’s not yet been published.”

  Settling himself casually on the edge of the desk, the Doctor thumbed through the book, until, in a section called “Some Notes on Fasting,” his eyes came to rest on one particularly disturbing passage: In the course of my search for health I have paid to physicians, druggists and sanatoriums not less than fifteen thousand dollars in the last six or eight years. In the last year, since I have learned about the fast, I have paid nothing at all. Dangerous stuff. The worst kind of cant and pecksniffery. He shut the book with a firm clap of its covers and handed it back to her. “And where did you say you obtained this, Mrs. Lightbody?”

  She colored, fumbled for her words. “I, uh, well, to tell the truth, I’ve been seeing another physician—I mean, one outside the Sanitarium. He gave it to me. Through Lionel, that is.”

  Now this was something new—a real blow and no mistaking it. An outside physician? Lionel? The Doctor gathered his brows. Bloese, bowed over his desk in the corner, winced. “I’m astonished,” the Doctor said finally. “I really am. Mrs. Lightbody. Eleanor. This is one of the very gravest matters that has ever been laid before me in all my years as head of this institution. Don’t you understand how dangerous it is to listen to such a chorus of voices, however well-intentioned? Worse, don’t you realize how many ill-informed, ill-equipped and unscrupulous practitioners there are out there, each of them willing to prey upon the businessman with a bankrupt bowel or the housewife with shattered nerves? As well-meaning as they are, neither Lionel Badger nor Mr. Upton Sinclair is a physician and neither has any right to attempt to direct the medical program of any of my patients. It’s an outrage, that’s what it is—an outrage. How could you, of all people—?” He couldn’t go on. Incomprehension had turned to rage and he was afraid of what he might say next.

  Eleanor Lightbody stared at the floor. Her hair was a mass of curls, piled up high on her head like the plumage of some exotic bird. She was sad and beautiful, and all the more beautiful in her sadness. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “Sorry?” he echoed, and he was pacing again, unable to sit still for a minute. “Sorry? For what? For whom? Don’t be sorry for me, my dear lady—I live right and think right through every minute of every day. Be sorry for yourself—you’re the one at risk here, you’re the one racked by neurasthenia and the aftereffects of autointoxication, you’re the one gambling all your progress and future happiness on a whim, a misapprehension.” He stood over her now, trembling in the rush of his righteous anger, and she couldn’t look him in the eye. “And who, might I ask, would this ‘physician’ be, this great genius to whom you’ve entrusted your health in utter abnegation of everything we seek to accomplish here? Who? Who is it?”

  She spoke a name, but her voice was pitched so low he didn’t catch it.

  “Who?”

  A sidelong and sorrowful gaze. There were tears in her eyes and the flanges of her nostrils were red. She sniffed and touched a handkerchief to her face. “Dr. Spitzvogel,” she choked, and a tremor of emotion went through her.

  “Spitzvogel? Never heard of him. And just what might his speciality be—if, as your physician and head of this institution, I might be so bold as to inquire?”

  At first she wouldn’t answer. She seemed to be turning it over in her mind, and the delay infuriated him—would she dare to keep it from him? But then she bit her lips and looked him directly in the eye. “Manipulation Therapy. Die Handhabung Therapeutik. He manipulates my, my”—she looked at Bloese, then shot a glance at the Doctor and finally dropped her eyes to the book in her lap—“my womb.”

  “Your womb?” The Doctor tore the eyeshade from his brow and slammed it down on the desk. He thought he’d heard it all, everything, every weakness, every peccadillo and scheme, every last breath of ignorance and depravity, but he was wrong. Astonishment punctuated his words: “He—manipulates—your—womb?”

  There was a moment of silence, a silence so profound the Doctor fancied he could hear the blood rushing through his veins. Bloese was inanimate. No one breathed.

  “Yes!” Eleanor suddenly cried, leaping to her feet, her voice raw with passion, with shame, with defiance. Her cheeks were wet, her limbs rigid. “Yes!” she repeated, the affirmation harsh as a battle cry, “and I’ve never felt better in my life!” And then she turned and ran for the door, flinging it shut behind her with a noise that was like the first premonitory rumble of a gathering storm.

  The Doctor stared at the door in bewilderment, exchanged a look with Bloese and slowly began to shake his head. He was tired. God, he was tired.

  Chapter 7

  Goguac Lake

  Will couldn’t stop whistling. He was ebullient, leggy, absolutely on fire with the finger-popping, toe-tapping melodies of the greatest bandmaster of them all, the nonpareil, the king, emperor and god of the march, John Philip Sousa. For the past hour he’d stood in the dappled shade of a Sanitarium elm and watched the Sanitarium Marching Band wheel across the Sanitarium lawn, legs snapping in physiologic precision, elbows rocking rhythmically, instruments seizing the light. They were rehearsing for the Chief’s gala Decoration Day festivities, which would include picnicking on the South Lawn, a blackface minstrel show featuring “Professor” Sammy Siegel and half a dozen conscripted Sanitarium talents, several tableaux vivants starring Vivian DeLorbe and an original drama performed by members of the Sanitarium Deep-Breathing Club. Though he was homesick, though his wife was a stranger and his miseries multiplied like fruit flies on a blackened banana, Will couldn’t resist Sousa. The air whistled through the gap in his front teeth like the shrill of an overheated teapot and a high thin rendition of “The Free Lunch Cadets” echoed through the San’s corridors as he made his martial way up the hall to Dr. Kellogg’s office.

  Though he couldn’t fathom the reason for the summons—the Doctor’s stone-faced secretary had stopped by before breakfast to wonder if eleven A.M. would be all right—Will didn’t let it faze him. After six months, he knew the routine—smile till your gums ache, look healthy and stupid, reveal nothing. Above all, ask no questions and expect no answers. If Will had ever wavered, if he’d ever come to hope that the little white-clad dictator’s methods were worth anything at all, the loss of his kink, the estrangement of Eleanor and the unequivocal fate of Miss Muntz, Homer Praetz and the Doctor
’s own sweating amanuensis were enough to tip the balance permanently. He remained a patient, his condition static, but he was only biding his time in the desperate aching hope that Eleanor would come to her senses and they could go back home to Parsonage Lane and start their lives over. He labored under no illusions. None at all.

  But on this particular day, Dr. Kellogg seemed almost glad to see him—and that was unusual, unusual in the extreme. Their relationship had settled into an unwavering pattern of stern admonishment on the Great Healer’s part and contrition on Will’s. Will had had liquor on the premises, he lusted after his own wife, he resisted the dietary and refused the sinusoidal bath, he was lackadaisical about his calisthenics and unenthusiastic with regard to his laughing exercises. He didn’t chew his food properly or stand up straight. And what was this nonsense about refusing to strip for the swimming pool? The Doctor was disappointed in Will, and he made no bones about it—Will was a backslider, a negative thinker and a bad example to his fellow patients. And so it was something of a surprise when Bloese ushered Will into the office and Dr. Kellogg rose to greet him with a benevolent smile and a firm handshake. “Mr. Lightbody, Will—and how are you?”

  Will shrugged. Flashed a smile. “Improving,” he said.

  “Yes, hmpf.” The Doctor’s antiseptic eyes roved up and down the length of him, as if searching out the lie. “Well, I’m very happy to hear that,” he said finally, “and you can’t deny that clean scientific living is having its effect, eh?”

  Will didn’t deny it.

  “The new dietary all right?”

  Since the withdrawal of the grapes, Will had been allowed to order from the regular menu, though his intake of things even remotely palatable—blueberry muffins, corn bread, pancakes—was tightly regulated by the dietary girls. He could have all the fake fish, counterfeit meat and corn pulp he wanted. Which was none. “Fine,” he said. Already he could feel the spirit of Sousa draining from him.

  The little Doctor was in motion now, gathering a sheaf of papers from the desk, removing his eyeshade and setting it carefully in the wooden tray reserved for it, his bald spot glistening in the spill of May sunshine that flooded the office till it glowed like a clerestory. “But it’s not you I wanted to discuss,” he said, giving Will a cagey look.

  Confused, Will shuffled his feet awkwardly on the cold tile floor. “It’s not?”

  “But let’s walk, shall we?” the Doctor cried, and he dodged round the desk and made for the door without waiting for a response, Bloese simultaneously herding Will forward with an exaggerated shooing motion. “I just can’t see sitting behind a desk on such a glorious day, can you?”

  Before he knew what was happening, Will was back out in the hallway, quickstepping to keep up with the brisk little man of healing, while Bloese, always in sympathy with his Chief, moved along effortlessly at his boss’s side. They strode up the familiar hallway, the Doctor nodding to this patient or that, calling out a greeting or an expression of concern, the white tails of his jacket fluttering in his wake. He made for the exit at the north end of the building and for once he didn’t seem to have anything to say—by the time they reached the door Will had begun to wonder if the Doctor had forgotten all about him. He was puzzled—It’s not you I wanted to discuss—and not a little irritated, but Dr. Kellogg led and he followed.

  Bloese held the door and in the next moment they were gripped by the bright fragrance of the day, flowers in bloom, the world on its track, the distant invigoration of Sousa still ringing on the air. “Well,” the Doctor barked, swinging round on him after waving to a couple taking the air by the rhododendrons, “you’ve probably guessed what this is all about?”

  Will didn’t have a clue. But in a sudden flash of cognition that started just under his breastbone, shot like a Ping-Pong ball to his brain and ricocheted back to his tongue, he stammered, “El-Eleanor?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” the Doctor clucked, nodding his head gravely. The light caught his hair, infusing it with a sad medicinal dignity, and he stood firm in the grass, never shirking. Will went cold with fear. “But come, let’s talk peripatetically,” the Doctor said, brightening his voice a cautious degree, “—stimulate the circulatory system, stretch the legs, hey?” And then they were off, moving at an uneasy clip, the Doctor’s hand clamped to Will’s elbow as if he were guiding him through the motions of some ritualistic dance. They circumvented flower beds, passed patients on crutches and in wheelchairs, watched a pretty young nurse with pinned-up skirts sail by on a bicycle. “She’s in serious trouble, I’m afraid,” the Doctor said finally, turning his face to Will’s.

  Will couldn’t help himself. He pulled back, jammed his heels into the turf. “What do you mean?” he croaked. “Are you saying that … that she’s getting worse?”

  The Doctor had halted now, too, though he kept pumping his legs and shifting his shoulders, marching in place. Bloese, steel-rimmed and silent, stood just behind them. “Good God, man,” the Doctor suddenly cried, “are you blind? This is your own wife we’re talking about here, sir—don’t tell me you haven’t noticed anything?”

  “She’s—well, she’s lost weight, I know that, but I thought it was part of the program, her regimen—”

  “Bah!” the Doctor spat, still pumping his legs and puffing and deflating his diaphragm with a great gulp and rush of crisp pure salubrious air. “No regimen of mine. Do you think I willfully starve my patients, sir?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s on the fasting cure. All on her own. As if she were her own physician all of a sudden, as if she were the one who’d interned at Bellevue and put countless thousands on the path to health and well-being, as if all this”—he waved a hand to take in the buildings and grounds, the great incorporated healing plant that stretched as far as the eye could see in any direction—”as if all of this were a game, an illusion. And what do you say to that, sir—your own wife?”

  Will didn’t know what to say. Certainly Eleanor had come to Battle Creek to gain weight, not to lose it, but, then, given the general run of the food the Doctor offered, who could blame her for going on a hunger strike? “Is—is it serious?”

  “Serious!” The little man seemed to implode, gasping in shock as if he’d somehow managed to suck in his own beard, and he spun round twice on the balls of his feet like a bantamweight dodging his opponent. “That’s the least of it. It’s far worse than you can imagine—at least the fasting cure has its merits, if prescribed and strictly supervised by a qualified physician, that is … but no, your wife seems to have gone off the deep end altogether.” He paused, squinted, drew up the corners of his mouth. “She’s consulting someone outside this institution.”

  All at once Will saw the stately Tudor, the man at the door, the mustaches and monocle. “Yes, I know,” he murmured.

  The admission seemed to freeze the Doctor. His mouth began to work, but nothing came out. Will watched as a sheen of sweat sprang up to wrap the physiologic brow in its grip. “You know?” the Doctor repeated.

  High overhead a cloud melted into the sun. Will nodded.

  “The man’s a charlatan,” Dr. Kellogg shouted. “A fraud. A menace. Calls himself a doctor—what’s the man’s name, Bloese?”

  “Spitzvogel, Chief.”

  “Spitzvogel.” The Doctor chewed over the name as if it had gone rotten in his mouth. Veins stood out on the eudaemonic temple, the all-seeing eyes blazed. “Do you know what he’s doing to her, do you have any idea? Do you even give two hoots about what’s going on with your own wife?”

  Will was alarmed. It had to be something unsanitary, something sensual, a release of the primitive appetites—nothing short of that could get the Great Healer so worked up. “Yes, I do give two hoots,” he said weakly. And then: “What is it? What’s this man”—he could barely get the words out, gulping down the rest of sentence like a glass of water on a scorching day—”what’s he doing to her?”

  “Movement Therapy,” the Doctor spat contemptuously, “Die Handhabung The
rapeutik,” and he made it sound filthy, utterly depraved. “He manipulates her womb.”

  It took a moment for this to sink in—manipulates her womb? What in Christ’s name did that mean? But then he began to think about that, Eleanor’s womb, and its point of ingress, that private place that it was a husband’s privilege, and only a husband’s privilege, to … but no, it couldn’t be. Will was appalled. He felt his face coloring.

  “Your own wife,” the Doctor repeated. “But that’s what happens when patients play doctor, when they think they know better than the keenest medical minds of the age, when they presume to treat themselves, sir.” There was something else in his face now, a shade of malice. He snapped his fingers: “Bloese!” Will was barely conscious as the secretary moved forward with the cloth satchel which Will only now and dimly realized he’d been carrying all along—he was underwater, deep down at the very bottom of the deepest pit in the deepest ocean, the weight crushing him, his lungs crying out for air, as Bloese reached into the satchel and produced a familiar apparatus, an electric belt, slightly used but still in excellent condition, and the genital suspensory that went with it.

  The two men, Doctor and factotum, ramrods of righteousness, folded their arms and leveled a withering gaze on him. A moment went by, thin and niggardly, and the least paring of another. “Nurse Bloethal found this under your bed, sir,” the Doctor said at last. “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Will hung his head. All he could think of was Eleanor, Eleanor and Badger, Eleanor and this quack doctor, Eleanor and her womb.

  Brandishing the Heidelberg Belt, the Doctor stepped closer and pinched his words for emphasis: “This is the curse of my profession,” he hissed, “the very sort of thing that is even now putting your wife at risk. Self-doctoring. Lending an ear to every huckster and mountebank that comes along. Pandering to the sickest and weakest of the sensual appetites. Don’t you know that this thing can kill you? Don’t you realize how ill you are? Why, a man in your condition—” he broke off in astonishment. “Even a single discharge of seminal fluids could be fatal. But what really astounds me is that here you are secretly practicing to build up your reproductive organs and all the while your wife is in the very gravest danger because of them. I say develop your resolve, sir, not your genitals.”