by Rusalka Reh
He puts his hand to his forehead and realizes that he’s once again sweating with apprehension.
“Mr. Archinola?” says an unfamiliar voice. It sounds distant and muffled.
“Speaking,” he replies. “This is the municipal Stork’s Nest Children’s Home. I’m afraid we have to inform you that Darius wants to end the project with you. He’s back with us. You needn’t wait for him any longer.”
Mr. Archinola needs a few moments to pull himself together. “You mean…the boy…he doesn’t want to stay…oh!”
“You know how it is with these brats. First it’s one thing; then it’s another. And Darius is a particularly bad case.” The caller gives a shrill laugh. “We’re very sorry if he’s caused you any trouble.”
“Well no, he hasn’t caused me any…um…Could I…Maybe I could have a word with him?” asks Mr. Archinola. “I’d like him to tell me himself what’s the matter.”
In the background he can hear what sounds like an argument, but he can’t make out what’s being said. Then finally he recognizes the boy’s voice.
“Darius Dorian,” it says, trembling. “What on earth has happened, boy?” asks the violin-maker incredulously. “We were going to work together on…”
There are more angry noises, as if people are quarrelling at the other end of the line.
“I…I don’t want to do it anymore,” says Darius in a strangled tone. “I find violin-making…totally boring.”
Before Mr. Archinola can reply, the voice of the first caller is back on the line. “Listen, there’s no point in you talking to the boy. We know our customers. Darius is a hopeless case—a complete waste of time. What I call a no-hoper. No offense to you, Mr. Archinola. We’re grateful to you for all your trouble. We’ll fetch Darius’s belongings later. Good-bye.”
There is a click at the other end.
Mr. Archinola stands in the hall with the receiver in his hand and stares into empty space.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Wonder Doctor
Someone is holding a cup to Darius’s lips. His head is throbbing. He takes a few sips and sinks back in his bed—a thin foam mat on a gray linoleum floor.
“No, you mustn’t sleep! No, no! Wake up! It’s surgery time!”
The woman’s shrill voice, which he has heard so often over the last few days, makes his head hurt even more.
Initially, she had just wanted Darius to “understand” why he was here. She’d said it was his duty to heal people and that would work much better through the practice of Dr. Needham, her son, than outside on the streets, where sooner or later someone would steal the violin anyway. But first, she said, he had to build up his strength, and so she’d given him food and drink and then held something under his nose that gave off fumes that made him sleep. He had dozed through the weekend, and when the patients had come flooding in on Monday, she made Darius hide behind the white curtain in the examination room. He must always start plucking the strings of the violin when Dr. Needham gave him the signal. Right from the start, Darius disliked Dr. Needham. At some time or other, this pale-faced smart-ass, with his bespectacled, watery, piggy little eyes, would say the following to his patients: “I’m now going to perform a miracle on you. Please have faith in my unique magic powers. Close your eyes.”
That was the cue for Darius to pluck the strings of Pizzicato behind the curtain. The woman sat right next to him the whole time, watching his hands. And she sat there with the soaked ball of cotton in her hand. If he were to let out just a cry for help or were to risk trying to run away, she had warned him that she would press the pad under his nose. And then they would “quietly dispose of him.” Darius believed her. This was not a woman to mess with. She was at least as bad as her would-be doctor son.
Darius takes a deep breath.
How on earth can I get out of here? he asks himself feverishly, putting Pizzicato on his lap. Worst of all, this Needham wants to start playing Pizzicato himself soon, in which case he won’t need me anymore. Then what are they going to do with…
“…my unique magic powers. Close your eyes.”
The woman gives Darius a poke in the ribs, and he starts to play.
On the other side of the curtain, everything goes quiet. After about two minutes, he hears a groaning and a couple of swearwords. Then the patient—an emergency case who had come in with a broken arm—suddenly falls completely silent. Darius stops plucking and listens to the last notes fading away. There is a rustling sound.
“How…How did you…I don’t understand it! The pain has gone! It’s totally disappeared! You are…!” cries the patient.
Darius can see a figure leaping up behind the white curtain, as in a shadow play. The person is wildly waving an arm around.
“It’s a miracle! You’re a miracle worker, that’s what you are! Incredible! I can move my arm quite normally now, look! Will you allow me to inform the media, Dr. Needham? I’m a journalist. I’ve never seen anything like it! No! Amazing! Absolutely amazing!”
Dr. Needham wriggles with modest embarrassment and waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, it was nothing. Not worth mentioning.”
“Oh, but it is, Dr. Needham. It really is! It’s worth far more of a mention than anything else we’ve had in our paper for years!” He takes a small camera out of his shirt pocket. “Let’s have a smile, please!”
Then there are at least twenty flashes.
Dr. N’s mother’s face is radiant. “There you are. This is just the beginning,” she whispers, patting Darius’s cheek.
He turns his face away in disgust.
A line has formed outside Ulrich Needham’s practice. The day is warm and windy, and there are clouds of dust and cherry blossoms blowing across the sidewalk. A man lets out a barking cough, a mother is holding her screaming baby in her arms, and a woman in a wheelchair is leaning over a copy of the Morning Post. Also in the line are two slipped discs, one conjunctivitis, several hay fevers, four broken arms and/or legs, three influenzas, and one acute chicken pox. Cars are standing bumper to bumper, beeping impatiently, and the drivers are cursing one another because there’s nowhere to park. From a distance more and more people are approaching, because they’ve all heard about Dr. Needham, the “wonder doctor.” Since early morning, no one in the town has talked of anything else.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Archinola is sitting at a table in The Golden Crust. His beard is unkempt, and generally he doesn’t look very happy at all. Lost in his thoughts, he has been stirring his coffee for at least three minutes.
“Have you seen the headlines in the Morning Post, Archie?” asks the owner of the bakery and puts the latest edition down in front of him, pointing to an article. “One more celebrity for The Golden Crust!”
Mr. Archinola reads:
Wonder Doctor Discovered
Dr. Ulrich Needham, young, fair-haired, and popular, has been in general practice in the St. Matthew’s Church area for just three weeks, and in this short time, he has already displayed the most remarkable talents. All those who leave his office go home completely cured, no matter how serious or complicated their ailment may have been.
“I don’t need to prescribe any medication,” says Dr. Needham modestly. “The cure takes place as soon as the patient sits opposite me.”
Broken bones mend and gashes close up in the healing presence of the wonder doctor. In his office, there is a unique atmosphere, which is enhanced by soft music.
“Yes, I love music,” says the doctor. “Especially violin music.”
His dedicated mother helps him in the practice in whatever way she can. “Even as a child he was different,” Mrs. Needham recalls. “If he found a sick bird, he would touch it, and a moment later it would fly up into the sky completely cured,” she says, still astonished by the child prodigy to whom she gave birth.
“Not worth mentioning,” says the modest doctor, dismissively waving his hand. But the world around him will soon see things quite differently!
Mr. Archinola pu
ts the paper on one side and at last slurps his lukewarm coffee. I’d never have expected it from that pale-faced fellow, he thinks to himself and for a moment is distracted from his melancholy. So he’s a wonder doctor! I must tell Alice about him. She should bring her mother to see him with her weak heart. Then she wouldn’t have to keep going off to Italy. Because I miss her. He lets out a loud cough, as if someone might have heard his thoughts and be ready to make fun of him. And the boy—I miss him too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Indescribably Proud
Mrs. Needham is standing at the desk leafing nervously through the records of her son’s patients. “Try not to tear the index cards again, like you did the other day,” says her son sarcastically. And when his mother fails to look up, he has another dig. “You still can’t forget your old job, can you, Mother?”
“Oh, nonsense!” she barks. “Old job, old job! Our problems are totally different. And we’ve got them now! Today we had one hundred and forty-four patients, including two Frenchmen, four Spaniards, and three Poles.”
She carries on leafing. “For next Monday we’ve got two Norwegians, one Italian, four Japanese, and an Icelander. Not to mention the massive lines outside the front door!” she shrills. There’s no mistaking the fact that she’s frightened. “News of your healing powers has spread like wild-fire—even abroad now! The whole business has gone out of control. And there’s not much I can do to help. I have to keep a permanent eye on the boy.”
Ulrich is busy cutting out the newspaper article about the “wonder doctor,” which he lovingly puts it in a glass-fronted frame. In the last few days, all the national newspapers have run stories about him. “Wonder Doctor Needham! The Hope of the Nation!” for example.
Or: “Inexplicable, but True: The Doctor Who Cures Every Illness.” There is even one headline that reads: “Can This Man Walk on Water and Turn Stones into Bread?” Under each one is a large photo of him, looking serious and—in his eyes—extremely attractive.
With a blissful sigh, he now stands in front of a picture frame that looks smaller and older than the others, and on the glass of which is a thin layer of dust. A blurred photo bears an ornate caption that says, “Chamber of Horrors.” Beneath it stand he and his mother, arm in arm and smiling into the camera.
“It’s high time we got rid of the boy,” he says, turning away from the photo and knocking another nail into the wall. Then he hangs the newly framed newspaper article on it. He leans his head to the side and looks admiringly at his work. “From next Monday, I shall start playing that thing myself. What that little runt does hardly needs an IQ of one-fifty! Or have you noticed any special complications in what he plays?”
“Actually, no,” replies his mother after a moment’s thought.
“Okay then. From Monday onwards, we’ll simply deal with two patients at a time. You can take one, and I’ll take the other. That’ll double our speed. It’s a good solution for the time being,” he says, impressed with his own cleverness, and he takes off his glasses to clean them. “As soon as I’m world famous, we’ll be able to afford just to treat two or three select patients a day.” He grins and puts his glasses back on. “Or better still, just one a day. We shall earn such fabulous sums that we’ll able to live a life of absolute luxury! The first thing we’ll do is get ourselves a maid and…um…then a house. And at long last you can have a little night jacket made of chinchilla, eh, Mother? What do you say to that?”
Mrs. Needham smiles. “I am indescribably proud of you!”
Ulrich Needham’s pale cheeks turn red. It’s the first time that his mother has ever looked at him with admiration and has not called him “Bunny.” He lets out a nasty snicker.
“Luckily there’ll be no one expecting the boy next week. The violin-maker thinks he’s in the children’s home, and the children’s home people think he’s with the violin-maker. It’s brilliant!” He roars with laughter.
“I just hope,” says his mother, “that things won’t go wrong without him.”
Ulrich’s expression darkens. “And what, may I ask, can go wrong?” he says, as if offended.
“I can’t tell,” his mother says softly. “But one never knows.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fasten Your Belt and Back We Go
Mey-Mey is trotting along on her way to school. She has spent half a week and the whole weekend doing math exercises, learning French vocab, and cleaning the house. Catastrophic! She has not played a single note! If she works it all out, the fact is that she hasn’t played the violin now for twelve days. Her hands feel empty, and her head is in permanent darkness. She has a terrible longing to feel the violin on her shoulder and to lay the bow across the strings. But her parents insist that after school she goes straight home to study her math and French, because she’s so awful at these subjects. Or she must scrub the hall, or do something magnificently “useful” like that, instead of wasting her time “fiddling, which won’t get you anywhere.”
Mey-Mey looks up at the clear sky and the cherry trees, which with every gust of wind throw down their blossoms that sail like snowflakes onto the streets and into her hair. But these blossoms, which normally she loves so much, don’t bring even a spark of light to Mey-Mey’s heart today. Furiously she kicks a stone. Why can’t I do what I want to do? she thinks. And what she wants to do is play the violin.
A sheet of newspaper flutters toward her feet, and another gust rustles it around her shins, as if the paper was trying to climb up her leg. Mey-Mey takes it off, straightens it out, and reads:
Wonder Doctor More
Famous by the Day!
“I heal the world!”
Beneath is a photo of a bespectacled man with little piggy eyes. She sits on a bench and goes on reading.
Wow! she thinks after a few moments. This might be the answer! The wonder doctor could make my finger flexible again! Not for my sake—I really couldn’t care less—but because of all those silly people who keep looking at me as if I consisted of a stiff finger and nothing else. Oh look, here comes Mey-Mey, the stiff finger! How’s the poor creature ever going to play the violin properly with that? Oh, what a shame!
Mey-Mey pulls a face and starts thinking about the wonder doctor again. Then maybe I’d finally get the chance to show what I can do! Yes, maybe…
She suddenly hears the church clock striking. “Oh shoot, now I’m going to be late, and it’s math too!” she says aloud and then rolls up the newspaper and throws it in the trash can.
After the fourth lesson, Mey-Mey can’t stand it anymore. She skips the double period of French, hops unseen over the playground wall, and, with a determined look on her face, hurries off in a totally different direction from usual.
Although she’s gained time by playing truant, she still needs to hurry, because her parents will be furious with her if she doesn’t get home punctually after she’s seen the doctor. Mey-Mey runs. Only when she sees the crowd of people outside the dazzling white villa on Angel Street does she slow down and then finally stop some distance away.
A van bearing the logo of a well-known TV company is parked outside the villa, and there’s a cameraman with a TV camera perched on his shoulder. The people in the line are being interviewed. One after another they’re subjected to having a thick red microphone shoved in front of their mouths.
Mey-Mey doesn’t have time to stand in this endless line of people! Slowly she approaches them. The air is full of white birch pollen that floats around them like tiny angels. When she walks past the line, getting ever closer to the entrance to the villa, on which stands the brand new brass sign that says in black letters, Dr. Needham, General Practitioner, she can already hear the first outraged cries.
“Hey, go to the back!”
“What d’you think you’re doing? Let me out!”
“I’ve been waiting five hours, girl, so you can wait your turn!”
On the steps leading to the front door, Mey-Mey suddenly rolls her eyes and then collapses to the ground like
a rag doll.
“The next two patients, please.” Ulrich releases the button on his intercom and grins at his mother. “It should all go like clockwork today, don’t you think?”
“We make a marvelous team,” gushes his mother and gives a little cough as the door opens.
“Do sit down,” Ulrich tells the young man with large bandages all over his chin and cheek. “And just put the money in there.” He points to a bucket with a slit in the lid, on which is written: Fee for Miracles.
“And would you please come over here to me?” warbles his mother, beckoning to an elderly lady to come and sit opposite her at the desk. The woman drags one leg, leans her crutch against the side of the desk, and sits down. She painstakingly fishes a large bundle of cash out of her purse, leans over, and with eyes full of hope sticks the money in the bucket.
“It’s because of my polio,” she begins, but Mrs. Needham puts her finger to her lips, like a mother telling a noisy child to be quiet in church.
“There’s no need to explain,” she says quietly. “Just close your eyes.”
“And you too,” says Ulrich, bestowing an artificial smile on the young man, who is squirming uncomfortably on his chair.
Tensely, the two patients close their eyes and wait. There is a deathly silence in the room.
“Fasten your belts, and back we go!” shouts Ulrich suddenly.
The two of them open their eyes wide. His mother gives him a horrified look. He himself is shocked and claps a hand to his mouth.
