Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  “You have not hit hard enough. I will try.”

  “No. Let me.”

  But he threw his hand across Mutter’s cheek with the sound of a shot. Mutter’s face snapped to the side, red spittle hitting the windows from his loosened jaw. His hand found his chin and his eyes traveled from surprise to confusion to anger in a slow jog. Mutter raised his hand to strike as the trooper placed a hand on the holster of his Belgian HP. I leaped up to his balled fist.

  “No, my dear heart. Not that.”

  The diversion had its intended effect and the young man’s attention fell back to Mutter’s groin.

  “You will pull up your pants and refasten your belt,” he said, standing. He seated himself and restarted the van. “He is not a Jew. Or if he is a Jew, not a very good one.”

  We had not been on the Berlin streets, had not seen all the pulpy bonfires in the civic squares, all the banners and rallies and sloppy beer-hall reprises of the “Horst Wessel Lied.” We had not heard the terms undesirables, useless eaters, or the lyrical living not worthy of living. We did not know that real Germans existed now only on party passports. Did Mutter know that simply by the dint of being Mutter he had broken several of the still-fresh Nuremburg Laws? I had never heard one of Hitler’s speeches. And even if I had, I never would have imagined any of it applying to us. Mutter was not deficient; he was wounded. An iron man of the fatherland made literal from his wounds. Not less so. Why were we being treated this way?

  CHAPTER 44

  We were taken to the ironically named Süssigkeitburg Schloss, or Candy Mountain Castle, rumored to be, in a mere twenty-odd years, the Bavarian model for Walt Disney’s centerpiece of his first amusement park. We were greeted by nurses in starched pinafores and white collars who smelled of liniment and soup, whose clean red knuckles held us carefully as they guided us up the steep front stairs. Our paperwork was handed to a female orderly who sat behind a modern desk in a magnificent frescoed foyer, cherubs fat on mischief and good wishes lounging on baroque clouds and smooth shafts of rendered sunlight. She looked at our pages quickly and stamped them separately and we were moved down a wainscoted hall, under crystal chandeliers that had once lit courtly manners. We were shown chairs. Told to sit and wait for the doctor. Wait for selection. I was nervous at the prospect of an examination. But I no longer cared what happened to me. Mutter, on the other hand, could offer nothing but fascination, a testament to brilliant German field surgery. We heard shouts that bent in the open spaces and so could have been songs. And Mutter, head cocked to the sound, said, “Song?” And I thought I could hear the swallowed words of “Lili Marlene.” The door near us opened and a nurse showed us in.

  It was a bright room with lancet windows that faced the garden. The walls had been reduced to white, but still a bit of their original splendor showed through in a pattern of raised flowers and shadowed vines. There was a file cabinet, a desk, a chair. In the center of the room was a large zinc-covered examination table with a slight curb around its periphery. The whole table slanted imperceptibly to a small drain. A woman with a smile full of long teeth stood as we entered. She was large, wide-hipped with hearty calves beneath her white stockings. Her hair, blond as flax, was braided and secured into two tight loops at either side of her head. She was conspicuously missing her left arm, the white cuff of her lab coat pinned in a neat crease, cuff to shoulder.

  “I am Dr. Hedwig Flosse,” she said in a deep but melodious voice. “You may call me Heddy,” she said, bowing her head slightly to me. “But you,” she said, turning to Mutter, “will call me Dr. Flosse, as I reserve the usage of my first name solely for the children.”

  She smiled and her cold fingers brushed my colder cheek.

  “You will undress,” she said in the general direction of Mutter as she gazed at his papers. “You may leave your shorts on.”

  I ruffled my fingers in a motion of undressing and Mutter unbuttoned his shirt.

  “You have been with him long?” Dr. Flosse asked, taking Mutter’s shirt and folding it carefully.

  “We—” I began.

  “I must tell you,” she said, raising a finger toward me, “I cannot indulge the ruse of your sibling relationship. It is clear to me you share no morphological traits of heredity.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We have been together a long time.”

  “And has he gotten worse?”

  “Worse?”

  “His cognitive faculties. Have they diminished?”

  Mutter was on the table by now, his massive feet dangling over the clean checkered floor.

  “Hard to say,” I answered. “Is fear the same as diminishment?”

  She felt the glands under his neck, raised his arms, struck two fingers on the drum of his chest.

  “Have you noticed decayed linguistics?”

  “Please?”

  “Speaking in sentences shorter than usual?”

  “Perhaps. But he has never been consistent.”

  “Do you want to know why?”

  I nodded.

  “There is lead in that plate on his head. It has been leaching into his brain for several years, I suspect. Slowly destroying brain tissue. Open.” The doctor opened her mouth, and Mutter mirrored her action. “It destroyed the Romans, you know. Lead pipes.”

  “I thought it was from eating hummingbirds and buggering boys.”

  She moved to a small cabinet with several glass jars of various liquids and powders. I saw one clearly marked cocaine. Another marked methylene blue. She opened a drawer, rummaged around, and removed a pair of chromed pliers and a small silver hammer.

  “I want you to watch his feet while I do this. Tell me if he curls his toes.” And she set the jaws of the pliers on one of the bolts at his forehead.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Removing his plate. It needs to be replaced with a nonreactive alloy.”

  “Shouldn’t he be asleep?”

  “He’s a big, brave boy,” she said, patting the wide belly of his shoulder. “Watch his feet, please.”

  It took over an hour to remove that plate. I stood helpless while her one bulbous forearm swelled under the pressure of her grip. When the bolts stuck, she tapped them with her hammer to loosen the calcified bone. Mutter grimaced but never cried out, and the bolts made the only sound as they hit a metal dish. When the bolts were all removed, a series of dark holes glared back. A crown of black night. The doctor rummaged in her cupboard, coming back with a silver chisel. I noticed the nurse who had shown us in furiously scribbling notes.

  “They are going to fix you, Mutter,” I cooed. “Fit you with a shiny new plate. Isn’t that nice?”

  Mutter’s smile stalled beneath his wide eyes.

  “I want to hold his hand,” I said.

  “It won’t affect the procedure.”

  Mutter’s palms were wet. I could feel his racing pulse in the thick tips of his fingers. His chest was a stoking bellows, pulverizing the air, working up a white heat. His hand closed over mine, and deep in his throat a scream was forming, soft as a train whistle, gaining force, losing distance. Then my own eyes clenched tightly as my head was racked with his screams. His grip loosened finally and he fell to the table in an oak-heavy faint.

  “That’s enough!” I shouted. Dr. Flosse nodded to her nurse. The nurse grabbed me with one hand and viciously backhanded me with the other. I fell to the floor, then scuttled to the corner of the room.

  “I am sorry for that, my dear,” Dr. Flosse said calmly. “But nothing must interfere with the procedure. It is very delicate, you understand. Would you like a sweet?” I shook my head. The doctor smiled and turned away, whispering words with too many syllables to her nurse. They prodded with fingers, the nurse’s pencil, at the gelatinous red cabbage so vulnerable now in the eggcup of Mutter’s face.

  “You have killed him,” I said.

  “He has fainted. There are no nerve endings in the brain. I’ll revive him in a moment. Please sit.”

  I did as I was told.
There was nothing else to do. Mutter’s eyelids fluttered. His chest rose and fell. The nurse tied a sterile cloth over his open skull. The doctor examined the plate she had just removed. When her interest waned, she went to her cupboard and removed a glass ampule, which she broke under Mutter’s nose. He started, roused, sat up, and then immediately slumped forward.

  “You will help me with him,” she said.

  “Where are you taking him?”

  “To get cleaned up. I have the measurements for his new plate. It won’t take long to fabricate.”

  I helped her lift him to his feet. His tongue seemed to be working at odds with the confines of his mouth, saliva leaving silvery traces down the sides of his chin.

  “He will need time to recover. But his verbal skills will return,” the doctor said. “In fact, I believe he will improve.”

  She led him down the hall, his feet shuffling beneath him. His head lulled to my side and his eyes opened wide, but there was no recognition in them. Just pure, mute animal. He seemed to be able to stand on his own, and the doctor loosened her grip on him, but I refused to loosen mine. When we reached the end of the hall, I noticed more patients accumulated there, a few with single nurses or in small groups led by a nurse. They smelled of crumbs and sleep, their hunched or twisted bodies barely covered under the white cloth of their thin robes. They had faces too small for their melon-like heads or the faces of old people on bodies as young as mine. One man, with only half a mustache, had fins instead of arms. A very tall and slender woman sang to the back of her hand, her lips dry and crusted from never being still.

  “You will have clean uniforms and hot meals after you are clean,” Dr. Flosse began. “We have all been through this before. Please make liberal use of the soap. Especially those sensitive places we’ve talked about.”

  There was general laughter at this. A few made scrubbing motions with their hands.

  “That’s right, my darlings. You remember. Scrub good and hard. You must all be clean if you wish to be healthy. You can come with me,” she said, taking my hand.

  I pulled it away.

  “I want to stay with him.”

  “I assure you that is not necessary, my dear,” she said kindly. “It’s just a very light cleansing mist.”

  “Mutter?” I said. The giant rolled his eyes to me and smacked his lips.

  “Maddy,” he said dully.

  “You see? He will be fine. Stand by the door if you wish. But no peeking.” And the doctor winked at me. I loosened my grip.

  “What about his head?”

  “The showers are not very high. Please.” She gently pushed me aside.

  “Slowly, slowly, my pets,” she said as the throng shuffled in. “There’s plenty of hot water for everyone.”

  The patients squirmed and rocked out of their robes as Mutter fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and trousers. He was nearly a foot taller than everyone else and there seemed to be a kind of game as to who should enter the showers first. Shortest to tallest seemed to be the rule. And every time Mutter tried to cut into line, he was lightly slapped or hissed at until he was buffeted to the very back of the line.

  “Careful, dears,” the doctor chimed soothingly.

  Then I noticed it. A heavy rubber seal around the door of the showers. Its handle was of the industrial-freezer variety, a heavy clasp with a locking pin.

  “Mutter,” I said. “Mutter, wait.” But his turn had come. A nurse handed him a white bar of soap. He nodded to her, then shuffled into the room, the door closing with a soft compression behind him. I rushed to the door before a nurse could drop the pin in the handle.

  “Wait! I want to go with him!”

  “Child, get away from there!” the doctor screamed. Then I heard the distant sound of a van’s ignition shudder through the walls. A nurse gripped me hard around the waist, but I threw a elbow with my full force at her stomach. She collapsed long enough for me to pull the handle and open the door. The patients turned toward me with a start as I rushed inside.

  “Mutter, don’t!” I screamed. The door hissed closed behind me. I heard the tick of the pin as it locked into place. The huge sunflowers of the shower heads began to sigh as I pushed my small frame among the milling bodies, trying to get to Mutter. Several closed their eyes and smiled in a memory of warm water but quickly opened them as the room filled with a clear shimmering vapor. I could see Mutter’s confused face laced among the moaning heads. I pushed on the door, but it would not budge. I beat on the shower door until I felt the small bones in my hands shudder.

  “Mutter!” I screamed. “The door! Smash the door!”

  The coughing began. As the chamber filled with the exhaust, the patients formed the last herd, moving instinctively away from the center, like a cloud of birds eluding a hawk. But the confines of the room, the hard angles, were nothing like the sky. We were stirred, flightless. Poor backs hid heads. Knees began to fail. A few ventured toward the center, still making weak scrubbing motions. They were the first to fall. When their lungs reached past the capacity to expel the exhaust, the real panic began. Upward went the herd, screaming, crying, scrambling over the mounting heap of the fallen. I clawed my way to Mutter and held fast to his hand. His raving child-eyes were wide in horror. Use me; hold me. I’m here. You are not alone. My mind was a smear of panic. The words. What were my mother’s words?

  “Tooth!”

  “Nail!”

  “Hair!” I shouted over the deafening hiss.

  There wasn’t time. There wasn’t nearly enough time. I rode the tremors of his hand with only the pressure of my own. His grip finally relaxed. His bulk began to falter. He fell to the floor, his eyes still open, still confused. In some final desperate gambit, I placed my mouth over his, to offer perhaps a last few cubic centimeters of uninfected air, but no exchange filtered through his slack lips. He was still. They all were still. But my eyes stayed clear and steady. My ears still echoing with the cries that had faded.

  I heard the door unlatch, smelled the freshness of the hallway. Male orderlies lifted the bodies out in pairs. I burrowed beneath Mutter’s body away from the light that grew stronger as the lifeless obstacles were systematically removed. I felt Mutter lifted off me with a grunt of “Jesus Christ” from the struggling orderly. I stood up with a hiss, my hands like claws. The orderly went white. Then he screamed.

  “She’s still alive! One of them is still alive!”

  I scrambled for the exit. I felt myself pushed back into the room. The door slammed. Panicked, muffled voices began a tumble of orders. Calmer voices joined and then I heard the van’s ignition again. The exhaust filled the room. The engines were revved, the engine exhaust descending loud as woodland rain, but I sat cross-legged on the floor and wept. It was a tearless cry, more of a sustained convulsive spasm than recognizable grief. I vowed to tear out the throat of the first human through that door. I counted the minutes, and when several had passed, the hissing from the shower heads stopped and the door was cautiously opened. I crouched. When I saw a body materialize, I leaped screaming, tearing. I was slammed to the floor with an effortless blow and felt myself lifted by my throat. Dr. Flosse held me firmly in her one good hand.

  “You’re a liar!” I screamed through the forced narrowness of my larynx.

  “No more than you, child,” she said, dropping me to the ground. “Pretending to be just a common brat. When all along you were this glorious gift!”

  CHAPTER 45

  I was coveted. Like a child covets a novel breed of titmouse and keeps it smothered in the confines of a candy box until it eventually becomes numb from too many kisses. Initially convinced that the key to my condition lay in the logic of my cells, Dr. Flosse began a series of exhaustive tests and intrusions. I was measured and probed, weighed and topically examined. And when my morphology fell into the predictable median, when she was forced to report me as nothing more than infuriatingly average, she went past the skin, to the birthplace of puzzles. I was baked, poached, frozen, and s
autéed. Placed in silver stainless-steel vats of corrosive enzymes and caustic alkaloids. Agitated and analyzed. My skin was smeared with photoreactive nitrate, photographed by photostatic radium cathodes. My bowels were bloated with barium enemas, photographed again, exposed to gasses of chlorine sulfate, injected with enough potassium chloride to stop a buffalo. My eyes were doused with lice killer, my tongue drenched in lye. I was kneaded, compressed, stretched, and tangled, left out in the rain like a neglected tricycle. And all the while I silently relished her subterranean frustration as each new horror met with unerringly similar results. Then one morning, with a particularly icy resolve, she strapped me to her table. Holding her scalpel as lightly as a realist his blending brush, she opened me up with two deft pulls of her one good wrist. With the care of a midwife, she removed each organ. Placed each in clear jars filled with a hydrating solution of potassium sulfate. Then she placed the specimens around me. Heart, lungs, liver, spleen. Cut flowers tempting a rifled garden plot. She stood back, her one arm crossed over her chest, admiring, yet still flummoxed by her work.

  “You are confounding,” she began slowly, “because to observe you is to lose faith in observation altogether. You are a miraculous pebble in the shoe of science, my dear. Somewhere inside that flat little chest of yours is the key to an inoculation against death.”

  She delivered this speech while putting me back together, packing my organs into my hollow abdominal cavity as gently as company china after a holiday meal. She was unused to soliciting compliance from a subject, uncomfortable at treating her patients as people, so she overdid it, giving my liver what she must have conceived to be an affectionate pat while tenderly fitting it with my gall bladder, referring to my colon as shotzi and the shriveled drape of my omentum as dass liebes Ding.

  “Tell me, please,” she asked, looking down at me. “Is it witchcraft? Some special incantation that has made you what you are? I heard you shout while your friend expired. What did you say? Tooth. Nail. Hair. Is that correct?”