Authors: Thomas Berger
It took Wagner a moment to understand. Had he not taken her virginity he might never have been aware of how much resentment Mary Alice felt towards their former colleagues. But whatever the milieu, at any given time someone must always be the most newly arrived.
“I’M FREDERICK WAGNER.”
Miss Brink consulted her appointment book. “I just don’t see your—”
“
You
called
me.
”
“I’m sure I did if you say so.” She gave him a look of disapproval through the tops of her eyeglasses, chin remaining down.
“If you don’t remember, then there’s hardly the emergency you implied on the telephone,” said Wagner. “I’ve got to do some important errands. I’ll drop back later.”
“My, oh my,” blurted Miss Brink. “Now I recall. Doctor must see you immediately.”
Waiting in a physician’s office is not an occasion for joy in the best of times, but one could always take comfort in the assumption that if it was anything really bad, you would hardly be sitting there, leafing through outdated magazines: you’d already be in Intensive Care if not the grave. Only now did it occur to him that there could be a banal beginning to a fatal disease. Indeed, no doubt that was more characteristic than one for which the houselights were dimmed, the curtain opened, and the orchestra struck up. Now that he forced himself to remember, his own mother had eventually died from what had started as mild indigestion.
But in his current case he was not aware of manifesting any symptoms of disorder. His being underweight was due simply to missing so many dinners since Babe’s departure. Under the right conditions, e.g., at A Guy from Calabria before the appearance of Babe and Siv Zirko or in Sandra’s bathtub, it was proved he could eat a proper meal with relish. And his organs of generation had certainly been proved to be in superb condition. One thing to be said for Dr. Leprak’s summons was that it served to get him away from Mary Alice for the moment. Wagner wondered whether he would have the nerve to return and quote the doctor as having urged him to have no traffic with women until the condition cleared up.
He had no time for further deliberation. Leprak came in from outside. Wagner had never before seen him in street clothing: it seemed he actually dressed like a physician in a play, i.e., in homburg and velvet-collared chesterfield. Seeing him on a sidewalk, Wagner would have thought: he looks too much like the legend to be living it.
Miss Brink told the doctor to call his wife. He vanished into his inner office, from which he soon buzzed for Wagner.
“Hi, Fred,” said he belatedly, no doubt because he had had to consult Wagner’s folder to get the name. “I don’t want to call my wife, because I’m sure it would be only to hear that my boy has caused some kind of trouble at school. He’s a scallywag.”
The quaint term was noted by Wagner, who had previously heard it only in movies, but uneasy as he was it did not elevate his spirits.
“I’ve run out of ideas,” said the doctor. “He’s not quite old enough to send to sea in a square-rigger.” He lowered his head to study the papers before him. “We have a mystery here, Fred.” He rose and walked to the long panel of backlighted milk glass on which were hung several X rays. “According to these you have no internal organs. Look for yourself.”
But the best of X rays would have been untranslatable to Wagner. He confessed as much to Dr. Leprak after only a glance at the murky pictures.
“Take my word for it then,” the doctor said. “And I’ve checked the machine, which works perfectly in every other case. Take off your clothing above the waist. Let’s look through the fluoroscope.”
Wagner was soon enclosed in this device, Leprak squinting at the screen in front of his thorax.
“By George, there you have it,” said the doctor.
“My entrails?”
“A figure of speech,” said Leprak. “In fact your internal organs are still missing and now your rib cage has joined them. Lean over and look down and you’ll see what I mean.”
Wagner did as directed. The screen was blank above his belt buckle.
Leprak stuck his own left hand between Wagner’s thorax and the screen, and switched on the brief flash of power. The fingers were seen in skeleton form.
Wagner had never given thought to how he might eventually reveal his unusual ability to become invisible. He had assumed that such a revelation might bring more trouble than it would be worth. There were people extant for whom another’s ability to become invisible would simply be a pretext for resentment.
Dr. Leprak took Wagner from the machine and placed him on a treatment table, where he kneaded his midsection. “Yet they seem to be there,” said he. “Anyhow, you’d hardly be going about your business without those vital parts.” He slapped Wagner’s stomach. “Well, old fellow,” he cried, though Wagner was obviously much younger than he, “I’m going to book you into General for a more thorough examination than I am equipped to do here.”
“Why?” Wagner asked. “I feel all right, and I gather you haven’t found anything out of order in those other tests you made.”
The doctor frowned into his face. “Come now, Fred. You are a man of reason. It simply doesn’t make sense that your viscera are invisible to the X rays. You know we can’t let that go and escape the charge of obscurantism.” He chuckled in apparent self-approval. “By George, we’ll find the cause and pin it to the cork. We’re scientists!”
“All right then,” said Wagner. “I saw no need of mentioning this earlier, because it might be confusing to hear, but lately I have been able to turn altogether invisible as an exercise of the will. Undoubtedly that state of affairs has something to do with this situation, wouldn’t you say?”
Leprak was studying his own knuckles. “It wouldn’t really
explain
it though, would it, Fred? Wouldn’t it simply expand the existing mystery?”
Wagner had certainly not anticipated this kind of response. He had assumed he would be confronted with disbelief, no doubt derisive.
“I’m no scientist, I grant you,” said he. “I’m just telling you what happens.”
“Forgive me if I say you aren’t doing a good job of it,” Dr. Leprak said. “Come here and sit down and start over.” He led Wagner to the chair before the desk, and went himself to the one behind it.
“I don’t know what else to say,” said Wagner, “than to repeat that I can turn invisible at will.”
“Are you invisible now?” asked Leprak, the fingers of his left hand gathered into a kind of claw with which he picked at his chin.
“Well, certainly not!” Wagner was annoyed. “As you can plainly see.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” said the doctor, with a rolling motion of his head as if to relieve a stiff neck. “Let’s move step by step from what we can establish as veritable fact and try to avoid epistemological tricks by which
je pense
can pretend to be proof that
je suis.
”
“Wouldn’t you say that if you can see me it means I’m visible?” Wagner asked in exasperation.
“Now we’re quibbling about terms,” Dr. Leprak said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m no match for you there, I’m afraid. Don’t you write lexicographical definitions or the like?”
“Yes, the like,” said Wagner. He became invisible. “Is this sufficient evidence?”
“Now, that’s not fair,” the doctor complained, looking around the room. “Come out. I wish you’d stop treating this as a game. You remind me of my son. That’s his trouble, you know. He’s not a bad boy, but he tries to make everything a competition: that rubs people the wrong way.”
“I’m still here where I was,” Wagner said. “Only invisible.” He felt silly having to explain something that was self-evident.
Leprak said, “I assure you I am not going to make an ass of myself and come over there and poke into empty space while you jeer at me from hiding. As your doctor, Fred, I’m asking you to submit yourself to further examination. Now is that unreasonable? If it turns out you are suffering from some disorder, I don’t want you to say I was derelict in my professional duty.”
“It sounds to me as though you are refusing to admit that I am invisible,” Wagner said. “You are ducking the real issue. That’s hardly science.”
“On the contrary,” said the doctor, “that’s precisely what science does: reserves judgment till a preponderance of incontrovertible evidence has been provided. And all I contracted to do was to pursue the matter of the missing internal organs—remember that.”
“You will grant that at least
they
are invisible.”
“Not at all!” cried Leprak. “I will ‘grant,’ to use your term though it’s hardly apropos, only that I was not able to see them just now with the fluoroscope.”
Wagner got up and went to a little white-enamel table on which stood a jar full of cotton swabs. He lifted the jar and shook it at the physician.
“Look here!”
But as soon as it lost contact with the table, the jar vanished. Having nothing to see, Leprak continued to stare expressionlessly into the middle distance.
Wagner refused to be so vulgar, and so destructive, as to hurl the jar at the wall in the fashion of the protagonist in trick-photography invisible-man movies.
“I’m waiting,” the doctor said after another moment. “But my time is not my own to squander, you know.”
Wagner was exasperated. He wished he could reappear partially; that would certainly prove his point... but as it happened he possessed no technique for fine-tuning his state. He became visible all at once and in toto.
The doctor had blinked at the appropriate instant, or had been distracted, and therefore put no great value on Wagner’s reappearance—unless it was for him some matter of face not to admit that he had been confronted with a phenomenon he could not begin to explain: in ex officio situations doctors outrank even the emperors and dictators of the laity and cannot afford to admit a loss. Wagner decided that delicacy was called for.
“I’ll try to go through it more slowly,” he said with a smile.
Leprak rose. “I’m sorry, Fred, we just don’t have time for any more shenanigans. Mind you, I’m not worried, but I do want you to go over to General on leaving here. Now, it’s not going to hurt, for golly sake.” He had arrived at Wagner’s side, and he patted him in the small of the back while grasping with his right hand at Wagner’s fist. “They’ll give you a milkshake and take some pictures.” His mustached chuckle was designed to dismiss all menace from this projection.
“That’s a GI series, isn’t it?” Wagner asked, remembering the earliest phases of his mother’s last illness. “I’ll have to be there overnight?”
The doctor leered into his face. “If you’ll reflect, Fred, isn’t that what hospitals are for, and aren’t we lucky that surgery is no longer done in barbershops?”
Wagner left the treatment room and spitefully became invisible during the short trip to Miss Brink’s desk and slipped out of the office without paying. Of course the bill would be mailed to him, but he was anyway evading compliance with Leprak’s pay-as-you-go policy, announced in prominent black type on a white card that stood atop the little counter provided as a surface for check-writing.
Once he reached the street he found that his exasperation with the doctor was replaced by worry. Until now he had avoided looking at his situation in that way, but of course it could not be denied that his ability to become invisible had to have a cause; perhaps it was a pathological condition, as was said to be the case with the husky voice of certain popular singers. And it might not be good news that he now was able to disappear instantaneously, whereas only a day or so ago it had taken him a few seconds to complete the process. What had at first seemed such a useful change might instead be seen as an advanced stage of disease. His internal organs had disappeared permanently from detection by X ray. Obviously they remained in place and were functioning, else he would be dead, but it was clearly not an acceptable state of affairs even if it went no further, but the worry was that, like many human progressions, it would be degenerative.
And if the innards went, could the carapace be far behind? To be permanently invisible would have little to recommend it—Wagner was by now sufficiently experienced to know that.
He decided to go to the hospital. From a street telephone he called both Mary Alice and Sandra to tell them as much. Neither answered. It was likely that the former had gone back to sleep, so he hung up after not too many rings, but he persisted in Sandra’s case, determined to force her to hear what he was saying for once and inclined even to attempt to bring their affair, though not necessarily their friendship, to a halt by confessing that another woman had moved in with him. At this point Mary Alice was the greater problem. But he succeeded in speaking with nobody.
It was now too late to pick up his check and get it to the bank before closing time. As it happened, he had counted on collecting some cash by that means, and had left the remainder of his ready spending money at home with Mary Alice, should she want to send out for food before he returned. In the cab, within a block of the hospital, he discovered that he carried too little cash to meet the fare recorded on the meter. He became invisible and as unobtrusively as he could left the vehicle while it was stopped at a light, yet the driver did not miss the sound made by the closing door and jumped cursing into the street to look for him in vain. A day or so earlier Wagner would at least have pretended to himself that he would memorize the number of the cab and the name of the firm which owned it, with a purpose of sending the fare along by mail, but now he had become too desperate and therefore too spiritually coarse even to consider such an exercise in conventional morality.
He materialized to be admitted as a patient in the hospital. Despite the astronomical price he signed up for a private room, for conversing with a stranger in another bed would have been unacceptable at this time.
As soon as he reached his room he again tried to telephone Mary Alice & Sandra, of whom he was beginning to think as a team; it might soon get to the point that having reached one, he would ask her to take a message for the other. As it was, he still could not rouse either.