Fools die

by Mario Puzo

  Osano had a suite of rooms at the Holiday Inn close by the Duke Medical Center building. Many of the patients stayed there and got together for walks or card games or just sat together trying to start an affair. There was a lot of gossip. A two-hundred-fifty-pound boy had taken his three-hundredfifty-pound girl to New Orleans for a shack-up date for the weekend. Unfortunately the restaurants in New Orleans were so great they spent the two days eating and came back ten pounds heavier. What struck me as funny is that the gaining of the ten pounds was treated as a greater sin than their supposed immorality.

  Then one evening Osano and I, at four o’clock in the morning, were startled by the screams of a man in mortal agony. Stretched on the lawn outside our bedroom windows was one of the male patients who had finally gotten himself down to two hundred pounds. He was obviously dying or sounded like it. People were rushing to him and a clinic doctor was already there. He was taken away in an ambulance. The next day we found out what had happened. The patient had emptied all the chocolate bar machines in the hotel. They counted the wrappers on the lawn, there were a hundred and sixteen. Nobody seemed to think this was peculiar, and the guy recovered and continued on the program.

  “You’re going to have a great time here”, I told Osano. “Plenty of material.”

  “Naw,” Osano said. “You can write a tragedy about skinny people, but you can never write a tragedy about fat people. Remember how popular TB was? You could cry over Camille, but how could you cry over a bag encased in three hundred pounds of fat? It’s tragic, but it wouldn’t look right. There’s only so much that art can do.”

  The next day was the final day of Osano’s tests and I planned to fly back that night. Osano had behaved very well. He had stayed strictly on the rice diet and he was feeling good because I had kept him company. When Osano went over to the Medical Center for the results of his tests, I packed my bags while waiting for him to come back to the hotel.

  Osano didn’t show until four hours later. His face was alive with excitement. His green eyes were dancing and had their old sparkle and color.

  “Everything came out OK?” I said.

  “You bet your ass,” Osano said.

  For just a second I didn’t trust him. He looked too good, too happy.

  “Everything is perfect, couldn’t be better. You can fly home tonight and I have to say you are a real buddy. No one would do what you did, eating that rice day after day, and worse still, watching those three-hundred-pound broads go by shaking their asses. Whatever sins you have committed against me I forgive you.” And for a moment his eyes were kind, very serious. There was a gentle expression on his face. “I forgive you,” he said. “Remember that, you’re such a guilty fuck I want you to know that.”

  And then for one of the few times since we knew each other he gave me a hug. I knew he hated to be touched except by women and I knew he hated being sentimental. I was surprised, but I didn’t wonder about what he meant by forgiving me because Osano was so sharp. He was really so much smarter than anyone else I had ever known that in some way he knew the reason why I had not gotten him the job on the Tri-Culture-Jeff Wagon script. He had forgiven me and that was fine, that was like Osano. He was really a great man. The only trouble was I had not yet forgiven myself.

  I left Duke University that night and flew to New York. A week later I got a call from Charlie Brown. It was the first time I had ever spoken to her over the phone. She had a soft, sweet voice, innocent, childlike, and she said, “Merlyn, you have to help me.”

  And I said, “What’s wrong?”

  And she said, “Osano is dying, he’s in the hospital. Please, please come.”

  Chapter 50

  Charlie had already taken Osano to St. Vincent ’s Hospital, so we agreed to meet there. When I got there, Osano was in a private room and Charlie was with him, sitting on the bed where Osano could put his hand in her lap. Charlie let her hand rest on Osano’s stomach, which was bare of covers or top shirt. In fact, Osano’s hospital nightgown lay in shreds on the floor. That act must have put him in good humor because he was sitting up cheerfully in bed. And to me he really didn’t look that bad. In fact, he seemed to have lost some weight.

  I checked the hospital room quickly with my eyes. There were no intravenous settings, no special nurses on duty, and I had seen walking down the corridor that it was not in any way an intensive care unit. I was surprised at the amount of relief I felt, that Charlie must have made a mistake and that Osano wasn’t dying after all.

  Osano said coolly, “Hi, Merlyn. You must be a real magician. How did you find out I was here? It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  I didn’t want any fooling around or any kind of bullshit, so I said straight out, “Charlie Brown told me.” Maybe she wasn’t supposed to tell me, but I didn’t feel like lying.

  Charlie just smiled at Osano’s frown.

  Osano said to her, “I told you it was just me and you, or just me. However you like it. Nobody else.”

  Charlie said almost absently, “I know you wanted Merlyn.”

  Osano sighed. “OK,” he said. “You’ve been here all day, Charlie. Why don’t you go to the movies or get laid or have a chocolate ice-cream soda or ten Chinese dishes? Anyway, take the night off and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “All right,” Charlie said. She got up from the bed. She stood very close to Osano and he, with a movement not really lecherous, but as if he were reminding himself of what it felt like, put his hand under her dress and caressed her inner thighs and then she leaned her head over the bed to kiss him.

  And on Osano’s face as his hand caressed that warm flesh beneath the dress came a look of peace and contentment as if reassured in some holy belief.

  When Charlie left the room, Osano sighed and said, “Merlyn, believe me. I wrote a lot of bullshit in my books, my articles and my lectures. I’ll tell you the only real truth. Cunt is where it all begins and where it all ends. Cunt is the only thing worth living for. Everything else is a fake, a fraud and just shit.”

  I sat down next to the bed. “What about power?” I said. “You always liked power and money pretty good.”

  “You forgot art,” Osano said.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s put art in there. How about money, power and art?”

  “They’re OK,” Osano said. “I won’t knock them. They’ll do. But they’re not really necessary. They’re just frosting on the cake.”

  And then I was right back to my first meeting with Osano and I thought I knew the truth about him then, when he didn’t know it. And now he’s telling it to me and I wonder if it’s true because Osano had loved them all. And what he was really saying was that art and money and fame and power were not what he regretted leaving.

  “You’re looking better than when I saw you last,” I told Osano. “How come you’re in the hospital? Charlie Brown says it’s really trouble this time. But you don’t look it.”

  “No shit?” Osano said. He was pleased. “That’s great. But you know I got the bad news down the fat farm when they took all those tests. I’ll give it to you short and sweet. I fucked up when I took those dosages of penicillin pills every time I got laid, so I got syphilis and the pills masked it, but the dosage wasn’t strong enough to wipe it out. Or maybe those fucking spirochetes figured out a way to bypass the medicine. It must have happened about fifteen years ago. Meantime, those old spirochetes ate away at my brain, my bones and my heart. Now they tell me I got six months or a year before going cuckoo with paresis, unless my heart goes out first.”

  I was stunned. I really couldn’t believe it. Osano looked so cheerful. His sneaky green eyes were so brilliant. “There’s nothing that can be done?” I asked him.

  “Nothing,” Osano said. “But it’s not so terrible. I’ll rest up here for a couple of weeks and they’ll shoot me up a lot and then I’ll have at least a couple of months on the town and that’s where you come in.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I really didn’t know whether to believe
him. He looked better than I had seen him look in a long time. “OK,” I said.

  “Here’s my idea,” Osano said. “You visit me in the hospital once in a while and help take me home. I don’t want to take the chance of becoming senile, so when I think the time is right, I check out. The day I decide to do that I want you to come down to my apartment and keep me company. You and Charlie Brown. And then you can take care of all the fuss afterward.”

  Osano was staring at me intently. “You don’t have to do it,” Osano said.

  I believed him now. “Sure, I’ll do it,” I said. “I owe you a favor. Will you have the stuff you need?”

  “I’ll get it,” Osano said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  I had some conferences with Osano’s doctors, and they told me he wouldn’t leave the hospital for a long time. Maybe never. I felt a sense of relief.

  I didn’t tell Valerie about anything that had happened or even that Osano was dying. Two days later I went to visit Osano at the hospital. He’d ask me if I would bring him in a Chinese dinner the next time I came. So I had brown paper bags full of food when I went down the corridor and heard yelling and screaming coming from Osano’s room. I wasn’t surprised. I put the cartons down on the floor outside another patient’s private bedroom and ran down the corridor.

  In the room was a doctor, two nurses and a nursing supervisor. They were all screaming at Osano. Charlie stood watching in a corner of the room. Her beautiful face freckles startling against the pallor of her skin, tears in her eyes. Osano was sitting on the side of the bed, completely naked and yelling back at the doctor, “Get me my clothes! I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

  And the doctor was almost yelling at him, “I won’t be responsible if you leave this hospital. I will not be responsible.”

  Osano said to him, laughing, “You dumb shit, you were never responsible. Just get me my clothes.”

  The nursing supervisor, a formidable-looking woman, said angrily, “I don’t give a damn how famous you are, you don’t use our hospital as a whorehouse!”

  Osano stared at her, “Fuck you,” he said. “Get the fuck out of this room.” And stark naked, he got up off the bed, and then I could see how really sick he was. He took a lurching step and his body fell sideways. The nurse immediately went to help him, quiet now, moved to pity, but Osano struggled erect. Finally he saw me standing at the doorway and he said very quietly, “Merlyn, get me out of here.” I was struck by their indignation. Surely they had caught patients fucking before. Then I studied Charlie Brown. She had on a short tight skirt with obviously nothing underneath. She looked like a child harlot. And Osano’s gross rotting body. Their outrage unconsciously was aesthetic, not moral.

  The others now noticed me too. And I said to the doctor, “I’ll check him out and I’ll take the responsibility.”

  The doctor started to protest, almost pleading, then turned to the supervisor and said, “Get him his clothes.” He gave Osano a needle and said, “That will make you more comfortable for the trip.”

  And it was that simple. I paid the bill and checked Osano out. I called up a limousine service and we got Osano home. Charlie and I put him to bed and he slept for a while and then he called me into the bedroom and told me what had happened in the hospital. That he had made Charlie undress and get into bed with him because he felt so bad that he thought he was dying.

  Osano turned his head away a bit. “You know,” he said, “the most terrible thing in modern life is that we all die alone in bed. In the hospital with all our family around us, nobody offers to get in bed with somebody dying. If you’re at home, your wife won’t offer to get in bed when you’re dying.”

  Osano turned his head back to me and gave me that sweet smile he sometimes had. “So that’s my dream. I want Charlie in bed with me when I die, at the very moment, and then I’ll feel that I’ve gotten an edge, that it wasn’t a bad life and certainly not a bad end. And symbolic as hell, right? Proper for a novelist and his critics.”

  “When can you know that final moment?” I said.

  “I think it’s about time,” Osano said. “I really don’t think I should wait anymore.”

  Now I was really shocked and horrified. “Why don’t you wait a day?” I said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. You still have some more time. Six months is not bad.”

  Osano said, “Do you have any qualms about what I’m going to do? The usual moral prejudices?’

  I shook my head. “Just what’s the rush?”

  Osano looked at me thoughtfully. “No,” he said. “that fall when I tried to get out of bed gave me the message. Listen, I’ve named you as my literary executor, your decisions are final. There’s no money left, just copyrights and those go to my ex-wives, I guess, and my kids. My books still sell pretty well, so I don’t have to worry about them. I tried to do something for Charlie Brown, but she won’t let me and I think maybe she’s right.”

  I said something I would not ordinarily say. “The whore with the heart of gold,” I said. “Just like in the literature,” I said.

  Osano closed his eyes. “You know, one of the things I liked best about you, Merlyn, is that you never said the word ‘whore’ and maybe I’ve said it, but I never thought it.”

  “OK,” I said. “Do you want to make some phone calls or do you want to see some people? Or do you want to have a drink?”

  “No,” Osano said. “I’ve had enough of all that bullshit. I’ve got seven wives, nine kids, I got two thousand friends and millions of admirers. None of them can help and I don’t want to see a fucking one of them.” He grinned at me. “And mind you, I’ve led a happy life.” He shook his head. “The people you love most do you in.”

  I sat down beside the bed and we talked for hours about different books that we had read. He told me about all the women he had made love to, and for a few minutes Osano tried to remember fifteen years ago, the girl who infected him. But he couldn’t track it down. “One thing.” he said, “they were all beauties. They were all worth it. Au, hell, what difference does it make? It’s all an accident.”

  Osano held out a hand and I shook it and pressed it and Osano said, “Tell Charlie to come in here and you wait outside.” Before I left, he called after me, “Hey, listen. An artist’s life is not a fulfilling life. Put that on my fucking tombstone.”

  I waited a long time in the living room. Sometimes I could hear noises and once I thought I heard weeping and then I didn’t hear anything. I went into the kitchen and made some coffee and set two cups on the kitchen table. Then I went into the living room and waited some more. Then not a scream, not a call for help, not even grief-stricken I heard Charlie’s voice, very sweet and clear, call my name.

  I went into the bedroom. On the night table was the gold Tiffany box he used to keep his penicillin pills in. It was open and empty. The lights were on, and Osano was lying on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling. Even in death his green eyes seemed to glitter. Nestled beneath his arm, pressed against his chest, was Charlie’s golden head. She had drawn the covers up to cover their nakedness.

  “You’ll have to get dressed,” I said to her.

  She rose up on one elbow and leaned over to kiss Osano on his mouth. And then she stood staring down at him for a long time.

  “You’ll have to get dressed and leave,” I said. “There’s going to be a lot of fuss and I think it’s one thing Osano wanted me to do. To keep you out of any fuss.”

  And then I went to the living room. I waited. I could hear the shower going, and then, fifteen minutes later, she came into the room.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” I said. “I’ll take care of everything.” She came over to me and put herself into my arms. It was the first time I had ever felt her body and I could partly understand why Osano had loved her for so long. She smelled beautifully fresh and clean.

  “You were the only one he wanted to see,” Charlie said. “You and me. Will you call me after the funeral?”

  I said yes, I would, and
then she went out and left me alone with Osano.

  I waited until morning, and then I called the police and told them that I had found Osano dead. And that he had obviously committed suicide. I had considered for a minute hiding the suicide, hiding the pillbox. But Osano wouldn’t care even if I could get the press and authorities to cooperate. I told them how important a man Osano was so that an ambulance would get there right away. Then I called Osano’s lawyers and gave them the responsibility of informing all the wives and all the children. I called Osano’s publishers because I knew they would want to give out a press release and publish an ad in the New York Times, in memoriam. For some reason I wanted Osano to have that kind of respect.

  The police and district attorney had a lot of questions to ask as if I were a murder suspect. But that blew over right away. It seemed that Osano had sent a suicide note to his publisher telling him that he would not be able to deliver his novel owing to the fact that he was planning on killing himself.

  There was a great funeral out in the Hamptons. Osano was buried in the presence of his seven wives, nine children, literary critics from the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Commentary, Harper’s magazine and the New Yorker. A bus load of people came direct from Elaine’s in New York. Friends of Osano and knowing that he would approve, they had a keg of beer and a portable bar on the bus. They arrived drunk for the funeral. Osano would have been delighted.

  In the following weeks hundreds of thousands of words were written about Osano as the first great Italian literary figure in our cultural history. That would have given Osano a pain in the ass. He never thought of himself as Italian/American. But one thing would have pleased him. All the critics said that if he had lived to publish his novel in progress, he would have surely won the Nobel Prize.

  ***

  A week after Osano’s funeral I got a telephone call from his publisher with a request that I come to lunch the following week. And I agreed.