by John Irving
“I understand,” Jack said to her.
“I love your father and every inch of his skin,” she said, smiling.
“Will he ever get better?” Jack asked her.
“He can be much worse than he was with you tonight. He was on his best behavior for you,” she told him. “But he will neither get worse nor get better. William is what he is.”
“He’s very lucky to be with all of you, in Kilchberg,” Jack said to her.
“You have to thank your sister for that, Jack. She has made her share of sacrifices,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told him. “Are you serious about buying a house here?”
“Yes, very serious,” he answered.
“My husband knows something about real estate—he can probably be of some help to you. I’m just in the medication business.”
They were back in the Weinplatz, in front of the Storchen.
“Are you sure—” Jack started to ask her again, about walking her home.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she interrupted him. “I’ll be home in bed while you’re still talking on the phone to Heather. Don’t forget to call her.”
But Dr. Krauer-Poppe stood there, not leaving. Jack could tell there was something more she wanted to say, but perhaps she felt that she didn’t know him well enough to say it.
“You’re not going home, Anna-Elisabeth?” he asked.
She covered her face with her hands again; for such a serious (and such a beautiful) woman, it was a curiously girlish gesture.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“It’s not my business—you have a psychiatrist,” she said.
“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” Jack said to her.
“I’m thinking that you should finish this chronological-order therapy,” she told him, “and when you do finish, you should ask your doctor about a little something she might give you. You just wouldn’t want to take this while you were still trying to put everything in chronological order.”
“You mean a pill?” he asked her.
“Yes, a pill,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “It’s not unlike what we give your father, but it’s newer and a little different from Zoloft or Seropram. It’s Cipralex; it’s like the Seropram we give William, but this one has a new agent in it, escitalopram. You get a more rapid onset of action—a week compared to two or three weeks—and because of the higher potency, a normal dosage would be ten milligrams instead of twenty.”
“It’s an antidepressant?” Jack asked.
“Of course it is,” she said. “I think the brand name is Lexapro in the States, but Dr. García would know. With escitalopram, there were supposed to be fewer side effects. But not all studies have shown that this is true. You might not like the loss of libido, possible impotence, or prolonged ejaculation.” Dr. Krauer-Poppe paused to smile at him. “You definitely wouldn’t like what it might do to your ability to tell the story of your life in chronological order, Jack. So first finish what you’re telling Dr. García. Then try it.”
“Do you think I’m depressed, Anna-Elisabeth?”
“What a question!” she said, laughing. “If you’re putting in chronological order everything that ever made you laugh, or made you cry, or made you feel angry—and if you are truly leaving nothing out—then of course you’re depressed! I’m surprised you’re not in a place like the Sanatorium Kilchberg yourself, Jack. I don’t mean as a visitor.”
“But how will I know when I’m finished? It just goes on and on,” he said to her.
“You’ll know when you’re finished, Jack,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “It ends when you feel like thanking Dr. García for listening to you. It ends when there’s someone else you feel like telling everything to—someone who isn’t a psychiatrist.”
“Oh.”
“Gott!” she said. “Who would have thought the way someone said, ‘Oh,’ could be genetic?”
Dr. Krauer-Poppe shook Jack’s hand; walking away, with her high heels somewhat unsteadily navigating the cobblestones, she called over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you right where you’re standing in the morning, Jack. I’ll take you to the church. William will come with Dr. Horvath.”
“Bis morgen!” he called to her. Then he went into the hotel and called his sister.
On the little pad of paper for messages—on the night table, next to the telephone—Jack recognized his handwriting in the morning.
Cipralex, 10 mg
(Lexapro in the States?)
Ask Dr. García
What had Professor Ritter said? “Your father has suffered losses.” The losses alone were enough to make anyone feel cold; maybe William’s tattoos had nothing to do with it.
The conversation with Heather had gone well; even though Jack woke her up, she was happy that he called.
“Well, I finally met him. It took long enough! I’ve been with him for several hours,” Jack began. “Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe and I took him out to dinner at the Kronenhalle. I met Hugo, of course—and all the others.”
“Just say it!” his sister yelled.
“I love him,” he told her quickly.
“That’s all you have to say, Jack,” she said; she started to cry.
“I love him and every inch of his skin,” Jack told her.
“My God—you didn’t say the word skin, did you?” she asked him.
“In the context of telling him I loved him, I got away with it,” Jack said. “He thought I had balls for saying it.”
“I’ll say you have balls!” Heather cried.
“There were just a few episodes—nothing too terrible,” he explained.
“There will always be episodes, Jack. I don’t need to hear about them.”
“Are you okay about the prostitutes?” he asked her.
“Are you okay about them, Jack?”
Jack told her that he was, all things considered. “He can’t get in trouble if Hugo’s with him,” was how he put it.
They talked about whether or not Jack should tell Miss Wurtz about the prostitutes. Jack was eager to call Caroline and tell her everything. (“Maybe not everything, Jack,” Heather had cautioned him. “Maybe save the prostitutes for a later conversation?”)
They asked themselves if Hugo—having lost part of one ear to a dog in a nightclub—could have conceivably done anything more preposterous than dangle a gold earring from his remaining earlobe. “Do you think Hugo wants to draw attention to the earlobe the dog bit off?” Heather asked Jack.
“He could have put the earring in the top part of the damaged ear, and not worn anything in the good one,” Jack suggested.
Heather wondered if Jack might meet the particular prostitutes their dad was in the habit of visiting—that is, if Hugo would introduce him. “Just to see if they’re nice, and to ask them to be nice to him,” Jack’s sister said.
“He has very little privacy as it is,” Jack said. They agreed that you have to give the people you love a little privacy, even if you’re afraid for their lives.
“Don’t you love them all?” she asked him. “I mean his doctors—even Professor Ritter.”
“Ah, well . . .” Jack started to say. “Of course I do!” he told her.
“Will you call me every day?” his sister asked.
“Of course I will! If I forget, you can call me collect,” he said.
She was crying again. “I think you’ve bought me, Jack. I’ve completely sold myself to you!” she cried.
“I love you, Heather.”
“I love you and every inch of your skin,” she said.
Jack told Heather how their dad had thrown a tantrum over how expensive Zurich was, and that the issue of his children buying a house there had struck him as crazy. (This objection from a man who had no idea how expensive the Sanatorium Kilchberg was—or that the money had run out to pay for his care, which was why Heather had contacted Jack in the first place!)
Jack and his sister also talked about mundane things—those things Jack had imagined he would never talk to anyone about. The
specific details of the house they were going to share in Zurich, for example: the number of rooms they needed; how many bathrooms, for Christ’s sake. (Exactly as William would have said it.)
It seemed too obvious to put into words, but Jack realized that when you’re happy—especially when it’s the first time in your life—you think of things that would never have occurred to you when you were unhappy.
What a morning it was! First the light streaming into his room at the Storchen, then having coffee and a little breakfast in the café on the Limmat. Simple things had never seemed so complex, or was it the other way around? Jack was as powerless to stop what would happen next as he had been that fateful day William Burns impregnated Alice Stronach.
And standing in front of the Hotel zum Storchen—on the same cobblestones where Jack had stood when he’d called, “Bis morgen!” to her, in the Weinplatz—was that supermodel of medication, Dr. Anna-Elisabeth Krauer-Poppe. Once again, she was wearing something smashing; Jack could understand why she wore the lab coat in Kilchberg, just to tone herself down.
They walked uphill on the tiny streets to St. Peter; one day he would know the names of these streets by heart, Jack was thinking. Schlüsselgasse, opposite the Veltliner Keller, and Weggengasse—he would hear them in his head, like music.
“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked him. She was nice about it, when she saw that he couldn’t speak. “St. Peter has the largest clock in Europe—a four-sided clock on its tower,” she told him, making small talk as they walked. “Would you like a tissue?” she asked, reaching into her purse. Jack shook his head.
The sun would dry the tears on his face, he wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come. Jack kept clearing his throat.
By the blue-gray church, there was a small, paved square with lots of trees; there were plants in the window boxes of the surrounding shops and houses. Some construction workers were renovating what looked like an apartment building. The building was across the square from the church, and the workers were standing on the scaffolding—working away. A hammer was banging; two men were doing something complicated with a flexible saw. A fourth man was fitting pipes—to build more scaffolding, probably.
It was the pipefitter who first spotted Dr. Krauer-Poppe and waved to her. The three other workers turned to look at her; two of them applauded, one whistled.
“I guess they know you,” Jack said to Anna-Elisabeth, relieved that he had found his voice. “Or are they just like construction workers everywhere?”
“You’ll see,” she told him. “These workers are a little different.”
It seemed strange that there were people going into the church and it was not yet eight on a weekday morning. Was there some kind of mass? Jack asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. No, the Kirche St. Peter was a Protestant church, she assured him. There was no mass—only a service every Sunday.
“We can’t keep them away,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “St. Peter is open to the public.”
More people were walking up the broad, flat stairs to the church; they looked like locals, not tourists. Jack saw men in business suits, like the banker his dad had surprised in the men’s room at the Kronenhalle; he saw women with young children, and whole families. There were even teenagers.
“They all come to hear him play?” Jack asked Anna-Elisabeth.
“How can we stop them?” she asked. “Isn’t it what sells books and movies? What you call word of mouth, I think.”
The Kirche St. Peter was packed; there was standing room only. “You’re not going to sit down, anyway,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told Jack. “And you’re going to leave, just before your father finishes. William doesn’t want you to see the end of it—not the first time.”
“The end of what?” Jack asked her. “Why would I leave before he finishes?”
“Please trust me,” Anna-Elisabeth said. “Klaus—Dr. Horvath—will take you outside. He knows the right moment.” She covered her face with her hands again. “We all know it,” she said, with her face hidden.
The stone floor of the church was polished gray marble. There were blond wooden chairs instead of pews, but the chairs stood in lines as straight as pews. The congregation faced front, with their backs to the organ—as if there were going to be an actual service, with a sermon and everything. Jack wondered why the audience didn’t turn their chairs around, so they could at least see the organist they had come to hear—so faithfully, as he now understood it.
The organ was on the second floor, to the rear of the church—above the congregation. The organ bench—what little Jack could see of it—appeared to face away from the altar. The organist looked only at the silver organ pipes, framed in wood, which towered above him.
How austere, Jack was thinking. The organist turns his back to the congregation, and vice versa!
A black urn of flowers stood beneath the elevated wooden pulpit. Above the altar was an inscription.
Matth. IV. 10.
Du solt anbätten
Den Herren deinen Gott
Und Ihm allein
dienen.
It was a kind of old-fashioned German. Jack had to ask Dr. Krauer-Poppe for a translation. “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve,’ ” she told him.
“I guess my dad is what you’d call a true believer,” Jack said.
“William never proselytizes,” Anna-Elisabeth said. “He can believe what he wants. He never tells me or anyone else what to believe.”
“Except for the forgiveness part,” Jack pointed out to her. “He’s pretty clear on the subject of my forgiving my mother.”
“That’s not necessarily religious, Jack,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “That’s just common sense, isn’t it?”
She led Jack outside the church again, and they went in a door and up some stairs to the second floor—where the organ was. It was a smaller organ than Jack was used to seeing—very pretty, with light-colored wood. It had fifty-three stops and was built by a firm called Muhleisen in Strasbourg.
Jack looked down at the congregation and saw that even the people who were standing were facing the altar, not the organ. “Nobody wants to see, I guess,” he said to Anna-Elisabeth.
“Just leave with Dr. Horvath when he tells you,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told him. “After William plays, he will need some ice water, and then the hot wax, and then more ice water. If you come out to Kilchberg in the late morning, maybe you can go jogging with him—and with Dr. Horvath. Later this afternoon, you can hear him play blindfolded—for the yoga class. Or you can watch one of your own movies with him!” she said excitedly. “Just leave when it’s time—okay? I’m not kidding.”
“Okay,” Jack said to her.
When Dr. Horvath and Jack’s father came up the stairs to the second floor, many people in the congregation turned their heads to look at William Burns. William was all business; he acknowledged no one, not even Jack. His dad just nodded at the organ. Jack felt Dr. Krauer-Poppe brush against his arm. Anna-Elisabeth wanted Jack to know that this was how William was before he played. (How had she put it the night before? “William is what he is.”)
There was no applause from the congregation to acknowledge him; there wasn’t a murmur, but Jack had never heard such a respectful silence.
Dr. Horvath was carrying the music. (There was what looked like a lot of music.) “Normally he plays for one hour,” Dr. Horvath whispered loudly in Jack’s ear. “But today, because you’re here, he’s playing a half hour longer!”
Naturally, Dr. Krauer-Poppe overheard him; perhaps everyone in the congregation could hear Dr. Horvath whisper. “Do you think that’s a good idea, Klaus?” Anna-Elisabeth asked Dr. Horvath.
“Is there a pill to make me stop?” Jack’s father asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe, but Jack could tell that his dad was just teasing her; his mischievous smile was intact. When William sat down on the organ bench, he looked into Jack’s eyes—as if Jack had told him, at that very moment, how much he loved him and every inch of
his skin. “Did you remember to call your sister, Jack?” his dad asked him.
“Of course I called her. We talked and talked.”
“Dear boy,” was all William said. His eyes had drifted to the keyboard; Jack could hear his father’s feet softly brushing the pedals.
Anna-Elisabeth had taken the music from Dr. Horvath and was looking through it. “I see finger-cramping possibilities, William—lots of them,” she told him.
“I see music,” William said, winking at her. “Lots of it.”
Jack was nervous and counted the chandeliers. (They were glass and silver; he counted twenty-eight of them.)
“Later we’ll go jogging!” Dr. Horvath told Jack. “I’m going to dinner with you and William tonight. We’ll give the girls the night off!”
“Great—I’m looking forward to it,” Jack told him.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the Kronenhalle,” Dr. Horvath said. “But it’s a special little place. The owner knows me, and he loves your father. They always cover the mirrors when they know William’s coming!” Dr. Horvath whispered—for everyone to hear. “How brilliant is that?”
“Bitte, Klaus!” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
Jack could see that she was going to turn the music for his dad, who appeared ready to play. No one in the congregation was looking in their direction now. The congregation faced that stern command from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve.”
William held his hands at shoulder level, above the keyboard. Jack heard him take a deep breath. By the way the congregation straightened their backs, Jack could tell that they’d heard his father, too—it was a signal.
“Here comes!” said Dr. Horvath; he bowed his head and closed his eyes.
William’s hands appeared to be floating on a body of warm, rising air—like a hawk, suspended on a thermal. Then he let his hands fall. It was a piece by Bach, a choral prelude—“Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier.” (“Blessed Jesus, We Are Here.”)
