Wounds, page 28
part #2 of Voice of Blood Series
Daniel tried to laugh but it dried in his throat before he could voice it. “So what is it?” He did finally sit down on the guest’s couch, a softer, wider affair in a dark maroon velvet. Antique, Victorian; older than them both.
“Let’s see. A mild stroke, which isn’t really a problem, but in the hospital I got chilled and my lungs began to fill with fluid. Apparently, I have less than half my lungs working at the moment; maybe it’s worse now, I don’t know. They are simply too damaged to keep working much longer.” He threw up his hands philosophically. “Oh, and cancer, to be certain; that’s been around for years and years, but it’s never given me much trouble until now. It must have been the strain of Thanksgiving dinner. I ate so much turkey I could hardly move! Eh . . . I have nothing to complain about. I brought it upon myself, trading blow jobs for cigarettes.”
That wretched word—Krebsgeschwür—resonated throughout Daniel’s mind, blotted out everything else he’d said. Cancer, eating his friend. He flinched and shook his head, unable to be titillated. “Oh, God, Heinz, this is terrible.”
Gestwirt frowned, his face a Braque configuration of huge, faceted eyes and gnarled skin. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m breathing; I can think; I can work. So. Shall we get to business? And not discuss this morbid nonsense any further?”
“You should be in a hospital.”
“And you should be at home making love. I think your concern is very charming, but you’re repeating the things said by my family that I hate most. I ignored them. I’m ignoring you. Business?”
“Heinz . . . it’s just that . . . I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to imagine the world without you in it.”
Gestwirt relaxed and smiled, and in profile, his face was almost the same one that Daniel had come to love, worn and grooved from concern and laughing. “Yes, Daniel. But this has to happen. Everything that lives must die. And we’re human beings. We do everything on a grand scale, don’t we? We take decades to die, and it costs a great deal of money. I would prefer to continue with the work that I enjoy, seeing the clients who have come to depend on me, instead of taking up bed space that would be better used for people who are so weak that they cannot live on their own, or who want to die that way. That has never been the case for me—I have always preferred excitement to relaxation. I think you are the same, which is why we like each other so much. I wish to die on my feet, and I think you do as well, don’t you? Neither of us wants to die, but if it must happen, it should be on our terms.”
Daniel nodded slowly, looking at the toes of his shoes.
Gestwirt waved his hand. “Anyway, you won’t have to worry about that for a good long time yet. You’re thirty; the best years of your life are still ahead of you. You don’t even have children yet.” Gestwirt sighed. “I sacrificed the pleasures of my youth for children,” he murmured. “I swore that if I made it out of Poland alive, I would have as many children as I could to make up for the ones that I saw die. I gave up . . . boys. I found Sarah, God rest her. We had an understanding. We created children.”
Daniel allowed himself a soft laugh. “I could never give up boys,” he said. “I’ve never even tried.”
“Oh, but it’s easier now, isn’t it? Everything’s changed. The world . . . Ah. Well. Business.”
“Business. I need to sell my flat.”
“Do you? Have you found another place?”
“I’m staying in a hotel for the time being. And then I think I’m going to travel, stay with friends. Be a vagabond for a while.”
“Adventure. Marvelous. Do it while you can. Well, the place should sell as soon as I list it; I shall do it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Furnished.”
“All right . . . perhaps you can provide me with a rough list of the furnishings.”
Business passed between them, gleefully on Gestwirt’s part, painfully on Daniel’s. He listed all the furniture he’d selected with the help of his assistants, and the things he’d found on his own in his first few months of living in Manhattan, all the objects running through his mind with their tags of memory—the individuals who leafed through catalogues with him in bed, skipped around trendy furniture stores, or weren’t there, and the color reminded him of her eyes. Just things. Only when Daniel had finished did he feel the tickle of salt-wetness on his face drying.
Gestwirt had only made quick and quiet sounds of acknowledgment as he wrote the descriptions in shorthand on a yellow legal pad, but now he set down his pen, took off his glasses, and sighed heavily. “I’m afraid that I’ve broken your heart without meaning to,” he said.
“You could hardly help it,” Daniel said, scrubbing his cheeks with his knuckles. “I did ask.”
“I remember getting that flat for you. You were staying at that dreadful hotel, and every day it was ‘I was out shopping—did you find me a place?’ ”
Daniel chuckled. “I needed everything,” he said. “I came to New York with nothing. Nothing except account numbers.”
“And isn’t that all you need?” Gestwirt laughed, but Daniel looked so stricken that he stopped, holding out his quivering, leathery hands. “I’m so sorry! Please, put it out of your mind. And don’t insult me by crying! I’m still alive right now.”
“You’re my oldest friend in this city,” Daniel murmured, wiping his cheeks again. “When I came, I had nothing. You’ve given me so much.”
“I helped you to embellish and control what you already had, that’s all.”
“No,” Daniel said, rising and taking Gestwirt’s hands in his own, “that is not all. You helped me to remember the good things about Germany. You showed me that there is something good and hopeful in the world that survives. You were a friend to me when I didn’t have a single one in the world. You aren’t just someone I hired.”
Gestwirt sighed. “You and I both know that, in the end, that is all that I am, and that’s all the emotion you should have concerning me. And you saw a Germany far better than the one that I ever lived in. I haven’t been back there and I don’t think I’m going to go. Everything that I loved there is gone now.”
“You’re right,” said Daniel heavily. “I can see there’s going to be no comfort in sentiment with you tonight. I’ll go. Please, get some rest and take care of yourself. My old phone number doesn’t work anymore, but let me give you a more current one. I might not answer it immediately, but I want you to let me know right away when you’ve found a buyer for the apartment.”
Daniel felt a panicked desire to tell Gestwirt to forget it, that he wanted to keep the flat after all, that he could just move back in, forget Sybil, and if she dared show her face at his door, run her through with the fireplace poker. Instead, he scribbled down the hotel room’s phone’s number on the same yellow legal pad as his list of furnishings, picked up Gestwirt’s left hand, the one with the yellow-gold wedding band slipping easily up and down an emaciated finger, and brought it to his lips. He focused all his love for Heinz Gestwirt, all five years of conversations, arguments, giggly sherry-fueled late nights, into the kiss. When he looked up at the old man, Gestwirt’s eyes glazed with a helpless, stricken desire.
‘I’m not what you think I am,” Daniel whispered with a flickering, hesitant smile. “Not at all. And I could keep you from dying. I could save you, just as you are, to last forever.”
Gestwirt arched an eyebrow, his expression free of alarm, fear, or surprise. “Even if you were telling the truth, I wouldn’t want it. Why would I want to be like this forever? An old man with a sore back? Now, if you could make me young again, maybe I’d be interested.” The desiccated hand stroked Daniel’s hair. “If I’d met you when I was your age, I might not have gotten married.”
“Bullshit,” Daniel said, standing up, letting go. “Then you wouldn’t have had the grandchildren, and everyone knows that they’re the best part of being alive. You made your choice.”
Gestwirt, as ever, immune to sarcasm, wagged his finger and grinned. “When I was young, I would have gotten into trouble to see someone like you. I was hardly more than a child, but I knew what I wanted.”
Daniel left, substituting a smile for the good-bye that he was afraid to speak aloud.
When Daniel rose the next evening, the message light on the hotel phone was blinking. He put the receiver against his cheekbone without rising from where he lay, facedown, his pillow in shreds underneath him. There were two messages—one from Gestwirt, reporting that the apartment had sold at its listed price within four hours of its posting. “Three point one five million, furnished; not so bad,” Gestwirt half-laughed, half-coughed into the phone. Gestwirt always took his ten percent before he told Daniel anything about the sale. “I took the liberty to shelter the money in Portugal again, which makes five million you have there. And I think that’s all I have to say today. We should talk again before too long, however, so, please”—and here he paused to cough—“call me and schedule an appointment. We should get loose ends tied up. Good night.”
The other message was from Joachim.
It was very brief and halting; hello, what’s up, you called. “I’m gonna be out of town starting in February,” Joachim added abruptly, as if cutting himself off. “It’d be kinda cool if we got together before then. Call me tonight on my cell and we can set something up.”
Daniel recalled to Joachim, over coffee, the waking up alone on a nest of chopped polyfill. Joachim laughed, poking the bottom of his cup with a spoon. “So why isn’t Sybil with you?” he asked at the end of the laugh.
“Because I wanted to get the fuck away from her,” Daniel said forcefully; they both laughed. “I mean, I know I’m going to go back eventually. But I really, really have to get away from her sometimes. She’s just so . . . overwhelming.”
Joachim shook his head. “I just don’t like the fact that she showed up at the party, and then the place . . .”
“She had nothing to do with that, Joachim. It’s just a . . . bad coincidence.” Daniel’s coffee had gone cold and sour. He put it on the counter and pushed it away with his fingernails.
“Daniel, it’s too bad.”
“Yes, it’s too bad, but nonetheless, it’s a coincidence.” Daniel swiveled a little on his tall, round stool, changing postures as he changed subjects. “So where are you going next month?”
Joachim also shifted on his stool. He had never taken off his coat; that, and the decision to meet with him at this incredibly busy, yuppie coffee bar, combined to tell Daniel that Joachim feared being alone with him. “I’m going to Sydney,” Joachim said.
“Australia?”
“I got a job.”
“In Australia? With who? Doing what?”
He blushed, flattered by Daniel’s consternation. “I’m going to be doing set design for the Radley Theatre Company. I might get to do set design for things inside the Sydney Opera House—that’s gonna be a hell of task. Still, it’s pretty cool. It should be really fun.”
“So you’ll be gone for a while, huh?” said Daniel.
Joachim smiled a little. “A good while,” he said. “As long as I can.”
“Darn it . . . I was gonna leave the country. We can’t both leave the country.” Daniel shifted on his stool again, facing more toward Joachim.
“Sure we can,” said Joachim. “Go ahead. You don’t have to stay anywhere. You’re an international citizen. I mean . . . you have dual citizenship, don’t you?”
Daniel chuckled away that awkward question, and Joachim shook his head, rubbed his temples, and forgot about it. “I think it’s good to get out of New York once in a while,” Joachim went on. “If nothing else, it helps you appreciate what you actually like about it. And it’s good to just . . . you know, get a fresh start.” He stood up and pumped his coffee cup full again. “I mean, that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? I’ve never seen you change as much as you have recently. Selling your place and busting up the studio.”
“I always stay the same for years and years,” Daniel said, “and then something happens and everything changes. It’s always really sudden. Like earthquakes.”
“Or bombs,” said Joachim.
Daniel swiveled on his bar stool, now mostly away from Joachim. He toyed with a napkin dispenser for a minute, trying to remain calm and focused. “So what’s the deal?”
“Oh. My friend Igor is going to spin a set for me at Almighty on February 12. You can come over to my place for dinner first if you want to, I’m having some other folks over, or you can meet us at the club. Igor says the earliest he’d start would be ten, but it’ll probably be closer to midnight.”
More large social settings. “Don’t I get to see you without having to arm-wrestle for your attention with your super cute young friends?”
It was Joachim’s turn to laugh away the awkward answer. “I’m just really busy, Daniel.”
“No, I understand. Kidding. I’d be delighted to. Thanks for inviting me.”
“We are still friends, right?” Joachim raised his coffee cup; Daniel lifted his and obligingly clinked the rims together.
Daniel awoke in the dark again, facedown on an intact pillow, glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table, and found it to be 6:30. Mostly for purposes of illumination, he switched on the television as he got dressed. He kept his back turned to the commercials but favored the blaring fanfare of orchestral brass of the evening news theme song. “Tuesday, January 18, 2000,” spoke a disembodied voice.
Last night had been January 13.
Daniel rang the front desk in terror.
“What day is it?” he demanded.
“It’s January 18,” replied the desk clerk, used to such things.
“This is room 1403. I’m checking out.”
“Very good, sir.”
Daniel turned on all the lights in the room and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked essentially the same as he had the morning he’d gone to sleep, if a little paler and more jagged around the edges; no beard growth had happened, his eyebrows were still separate and distinct. He hadn’t gotten old. It was still the same year. He wondered how long it would be possible to remain in state on that unforgiving mattress with the DO NOT MAKE UP THIS ROOM sign facing out on the doorknob. Perhaps they would have let him sleep for weeks.
The boxes of Chinese food were moldy. No phone messages. He had been forgotten.
He returned to the warehouse in a taxi, curled up in his seat with his arms around his knees. The driver said nothing to him, only scowling when Daniel didn’t tip. Daniel knocked carefully on the door; when no response came, he tried the knob and found it turned and admitted him.
Sybil stretched out on one table, supine, arms hanging slack over the sides, near-naked, covered with fine cuts and small round cigarette burns. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t move except for infrequent shallow breaths, unresponsive to the sound of his footsteps or his voice saying her name. On the end of the table, a few inches from her head, a dead brown rat lay on its side in a glass aquarium topped with a stretched, unmarked canvas and a haphazardly arranged stack of bricks. The floor around the table held a devastation of torn magazines, empty plastic sandwich bags, unconscious butts of cigarettes, broken crayons, broken brushes, broken glass.
Daniel carried Sybil’s limp, heavy body upstairs and settled her gently on the bed. He licked her tiny wounds and wrapped her in the blankets, rubbing and breathing on her palms to warm them. She shivered minutely, the delicate hairs covering her body standing up in response to the change in temperature. Her dilated eyes focused on him briefly, then closed, and she frowned and grumbled.
“What happened?” Daniel whispered.
Her slack fingers attempted to draw the blankets closer around her but couldn’t. Daniel did it for her. “Mmmm . . . desperate measures,” she replied, her voice like smudged text on crumpled newsprint. “I was trying to force a vision through blood, burning, delusion . . . I caught the rat, offered his freedom for a sacrifice. Ate a shitload of mescaline. And then there she was. Sitting right next to me. Wanted to know where the money went. She touched me. Have you ever felt that? I didn’t mean to have a vision of her, I didn’t mean to evoke her. I wanted her gone . . . I wanted you here. But you were gone. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t hear you.”
“I was asleep,” he said.
“Please don’t leave me again,” she mumbled, slipping back into unconsciousness. “Even if you have to kill me, please don’t leave me again . . .”
But he had to leave her, sleeping and safe in bed, to feed his blood-starved body. He compromised by staying in the neighborhood; he found an elderly couple huddled in sleeping bags in the warmth spreading from the back of a bakery. After draining both of their sleeping bodies, he wrapped their limp arms around each other and covered them up again.
Scene Twenty-five: The Center of Silence
The dreams that occur just as the brain begins to return to consciousness are the most vivid and strange, as they are not properly dreams but the jagged twitches of the conscious mind struggling to be reborn, and are closer cousins to the opium phantasies of Coleridge than the opaque self-conversations of deep sleep. Daniel’s waking mind conjured a vision of the subway tunnels, filthy light fixtures and an ichorous drip from a broken sewer; he pressed against the walls, glancing nervously down the tracks for approaching trains. At his feet he found a thick tail of indigo silk so infinite and dense that it drenched his fingers. He wrapped the length around himself as he went so that it wouldn’t dirty. It terminated in a loose toga around the body of a dark-haired woman, a beautiful movie star; Lucia Bose, Italian temptress of the sixties. She took the tail end of the silk from Daniel’s shoulder slowly, smiling seductively, reeling him in. Instant tangle of soft lip and tongue flesh and the texture of her nipples, so maddeningly detailed he could feel every cell. She reeled him tighter against her, throwing back her head, offering her sleek porcelain neck.
