The Convalescent (29 page)

Many of us are among them.

By 1945, only a scattered few of us remain as the Soviets occupy Budapest. We wait, patiently, lying on the floorboards of our shacks, as Hungary becomes a Peoples’ Republic. We are part of Rákosi’s new “collective farms”; we are the
kulaks
, the peasants. Our stomachs burn with hunger. We are told to deliver impossible amounts of food, we have none left for ourselves, and it would seem that someone, then, kicking over the empty pots and tin cans of our various farmhouses, would find us, but no one does, and by 1956, only nine or ten of us are there, wringing out our dirty bedsheets as a student protest ignites a revolution, as Prime Minister Nagy declares withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, as the Red Army crushes counter-revolution, as the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary wickedly demand the extreme opposite of what all of Western Europe has been pressing us to believe, that
no one
believe—

And
now
look at us. There is only one of us left. When he is gone, what happens? If the Pfliegmans are not around to suffer the worst the world has to offer, who, may I ask, will take our place?

Holding my writing tablet with one hand and the back of my examining gown with the other, so as not to expose any parts of Rovar Ákos Pfliegman that the world does not need or want to see, I leave Dr. Monica’s office and make my way way down the long corridor behind Mrs. Himmel’s reception desk to the X-ray room. A Good Mother is standing with her Sick or Diseased child in the hallway next to a tall metal scale. The child weighs forty-two pounds, but the mother, sweater tied in a V around her neck, is not looking at the scale; she’s staring at down at my tiny feet, so flat, so thin, they hardly look like human feet at all; then it’s my ankles, like sharp little rocks; then my calves, two sticks of bone and skin and only a scrap of meat between them; my wrists pared into two rusted hinges, barely hanging on; and finally the skin underneath the gown: pink. Shining. Demanding everyone’s complete and total attention.

The Good Mother grips her child by the shoulders. “Stay close to me, Stevie,” she says, as I hobble closer toward them.

Stevie steps off the scale and looks at me.

“Stevie!” his mother whispers, and hustles him down the hallway.

“
Pthbbb
,” I say, behind her.

She gives me a frightened look.

I limp along in quick, uneven movements, passing the doorway to the Waiting Area. The Sick or Diseased children see me and their faces blanch. “Mommy,” they whimper, clinging to their mothers’ kneecaps. “Mommy, what
is
that?”

“
God only knows
,” they whisper back.

I place my stylish woolen cap over my head. I cackle a little, then continue down the hallway.

Mrs. Himmel meets me at the door, holding my folder tightly over her chest. “I don’t want to be doing this,” she says. “I just thought you should know that you’ve inconvenienced a lot of people, Mr. Pfliegman. You’re not going to get away with it.”

I produce my writing tablet.
You’re a fucking star
, I write, and hold it up.

Mrs. Himmel smiles at me. The smile is thin. Threatening. She looks like she’s ready to hit me, but she doesn’t; instead, she lifts one fat arm and grabs a plastic cup from the shelf behind her. “Drink this,” she says.

What is it?

“Barium. You have to drink it so we can see what’s going on.”

I take the cup.

“Go inside now,” she says, and shoves me into the room. “Get up on the table. Lie down on your back.”

The X-ray room is a small, narrow space, with a high ceiling that reaches all the way up to the roof. There’s just enough room for one person to lie on the table and cover himself with the appropriate protective materials. I climb up on the table, clutching my gown. It’s freezing in here. The X-ray machine is an old one, cream-colored with a fat red stripe along one side. An enormous moveable arm hangs over the table, and nailed into it is a small plaque that reads
THE INDUSTRIAL
. Mrs. Himmel watches me shiver. She smirks a little, and then walks over. There’s barely space enough for her to fit.

“Give me your hat and your eyeglasses,” she says.

I shake my head at her. I growl a little.

“This is an X-ray, Mr. Pfliegman,” she says. “You can’t wear your eyeglasses. You just can’t. It’s not allowed.”

She tries to snatch them, but when her arm crosses over my face, I grab it first.

“Jesus H.!” she shouts. “You bit me!” Mrs. Himmel flies out of the room and slams the door. From an outside switch, she turns off the lights,
leaving me in darkness. I listen to her arguing with Dr. Monica out in the hallway:

“I’m going to need the darn rabies shots now!” she shouts.

“Take it easy, Annette.”

“You take it easy! I’m not taking it easy. Not anymore. If you make me do this, Monica, I swear I’m quitting. I mean it! I’m not putting up with this crap!”

“Don’t quit,” says Dr. Monica. “Please. Just relax. There are people waiting outside to take him away, and he won’t be back again. Let’s just take the X-rays, and that’s it. That’s all.”

Mrs. Himmel flubs her lips. “Not until you admit it,” she says.

“Admit what?”

“It was a mistake.”

“Now, Mrs. Himmel, I don’t say things like—”

“Admit that it was a mistake to take him on. Admit that he’s a Lying, Dangerous, Psychopathic Lunatic Midget who was never sick to begin with, and who now has conjured up some kind of weirdo skin disorder. I’ve read his folder! I know what’s going on! Admit that he has the hots for you, and stares at you like a darn fool whenever you come into the Waiting Area! Admit that it was a mistake to allow him to wait all day around children, who are now all practically traumatized! Admit that there are some people who don’t want help, who don’t deserve it! If you admit that, then I’ll stay.”

Dr. Monica is quiet for a moment. “Please, Annette,” she says.

Mrs. Himmel laughs out loud. “Do you admit it?”

“Fine,” says Dr. Monica. “You were right, I was wrong. Now let’s go.”

Mrs. Himmel opens the door to the stairwell and stomps upstairs. Moments later, two lights appear. The first is the square X-ray light from the Industrial, and the second shines from a plastic window about five feet up, where Mrs. Himmel now stands. There’s a panel in front of her, and she fiddles with the knobs as the Industrial groans to life. The metal arm shifts in one controlled movement over my body, spinning on a pivot, locking in place over my abdomen—

My bad leg begins shaking.

Mrs. Himmel reaches over and presses a button. There’s a click and then a scratchy version of her voice emerges into the darkness: “
This is just a test
,” she says, and clicks again. “
Hold still until I tell you to move
.”

She sighs and shakes her head.

I try to hold my leg down with one hand. I hold my breath and close my eyes. The arm wails and groans. It moves sluggishly over my body.

Mrs. Himmel clicks in. “
Turn over
,” she says.

I turn.

“
Other way, Mr. Pfliegman
.”

Lying here on my back, my arms and legs flat on the table, the Industrial hovering over my chest, the barium sinks to a lower part of my stomach. As it moves slowly through me, I think of Oliver in the Waiting Area, expertly moving the toy from robot to wrestler and then back again. I close my eyes and breathe,
Enter, Exit, Enter
— What goes up must come down. “If your pain were a person,” Dr. Monica once said.

I open my eyes. A strange man is standing at my feet, just inches beyond the light of the Industrial. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark galaxy on it, and the swirls of the galaxy are vibrantly green, shaped like a hurricane. I inch up the table, away from him, and try to get Mrs. Himmel’s attention, but she’s working the knobs and doesn’t see him. The man steps right up to the table, into the light, and grins. He’s wearing square black eyeglasses, and is sporting the fluffiest, whitest sideburns I’ve ever seen. It’s Isaac Asimov. Mr. Asimov smiles at me, and the smile is genuine. He clears his throat. “The Gravitational Force,” he says, “by far the weakest of all,” but before he’s even finished speaking, the others all begin to gather. The Captain struts up to the table, into the light. He’s still in his Speedo. The yellow ball is tucked under one bare armpit, and the silver whistle hangs over his chest like a glittering jewel. He has dark circles under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept all night. “Hiya sport,” he says, and grins. He gives me a thumbs-up. The Indian steps up to the table, and there’s some shaking of hands. “We’re all images,” he says. “Illusions.” Then he reaches into his bag, produces a warm bottle, and pops it open. Beer runs down the side of the bottle, and he quickly sucks the foam to avoid spilling any on Dr. Monica’s clean floor. He offers one to the others, but only Asimov accepts.

“Cheers,” the Indian says.

“Cheers!” says Isaac Asimov.

Carly Simon crawls up from underneath the table and immediately spies the Captain and his shiny muscles. She giggles, chomping her gum in his
ear. Her lips are coated in greasy, bright red lipstick that smears onto her big white teeth. Her smile glows, Cheshire-like, in the light of the Industrial. She hangs a thin arm over the Captain. “You’re
foxy
,” she whispers.

Suddenly it’s getting crowded in here. I shift my body a little to make more room and Mrs. Himmel crackles in: “
Lie still
,
Mr. Pfliegman
.”

Pointed, high-heeled shoes tap the floor behind me. Everyone acknowledges Madame Chafouin. She puts her cold French hand on my cheek. “
Démence
,” she says affectionately. “
Madness
.”

“Not madness,” the Indian says. “Company.”

“Whatever,” says Madame Chafouin. She reaches for a cigarette.

“You can’t smoke in here,” says the Captain.

Madame Chafouin gives him an icy stare.

“What’s
happening
?” whines Carly Simon. “Why is this taking so long?”

“Quiet! All of you!” shouts Mr. Asimov.

Around the table, everyone quiets down as the last figure steps into the light. He is older than the rest, with a low, probing brow. It’s a kind face, with a particular beard. He possesses small hands with thick fingers, a sunburned nose, and he’s wearing a baseball cap with a beagle on it. “Sorry I’m late,” he says.

Mr. Asimov sees him and claps his hands with delight.

The bearded man fidgets, standing here among the others, but when he realizes that the hairy little Hungarian is staring at him, that we’re all staring, he knows he has to say something. He steps forward. Everyone listens as he speaks. His voice is soft and high. Unexpected. A voice that betrays a gentle spirit, too gentle for a man who spent his life squatting on alien beaches, digging in primordial pits and holes; a man with a spirit too gentle for his own aggressive species.

“
At some period of its life
,” Charles Darwin says, “
during some season of the year, every organic being has to struggle for life and suffer great destruction
.”

“What does that mean?” the Captain says.

Darwin shrugs. “Sometimes waters rise.”

What he’s saying is that under the laws of heavy rain, of wind, of the groaning earth, last night, the Queeconococheecook, for all her effort and restraint, could not contain herself. He’s saying that the broken school bus was picked up and carried on the current, gliding along underwater until it creaked and groaned, collapsing into several disparate pieces, exactly in
the manner of a certain flimsy butcher shop twenty-two years ago. He’s saying that neither I nor the Subdivisionists own the field that I live in, that ultimately life cannot own life, and when the waters finally subside, along the soaked banks the Virginians will find a busted tape-radio, a drowned lightbulb, old wet cuts of meat from the Big M supermarket, remains of a splintered bookcase, and an empty tin can of Mrs. Kipner’s Hungarian Goulash. They’ll find a waterlogged copy of a pamphlet on raising hamsters, a book about outer space, one about Hungary, one about water polo, a heavy French dictionary, and the remains of a paperback copy of
The Origin of Species
, so cheap that at the first kiss of water the pages curled, broke away from their spine, floated for a mile or so downriver, and then disintegrated into the mouth of the Queeconococheecook.

Suddenly the door opens and Dr. Monica enters the room. She walks right up to the X-ray table and everyone fidgets, stepping on each other’s toes to duck out of the light. They quietly groan, pressing up against each other to make room. They hold their collective breath.

Dr. Monica comes right up to the table and places a hand on my forehead. “How are you feeling, Mr. Pfliegman? It looks like you kicked that fever. We’re going to get started now. Oh, but you can’t wear these, though,” she says, and removes my eyeglasses.

Which is fine. I no longer need them. I open my eyes, and, for the first time, look right at her. She sees my eyes and gasps. Instinctively, perhaps protectively, she covers her mouth and slowly backs away from the table.

Darwin tries to explain. “Insects cannot easily escape by flight from the larger animals that prey on them,” he says. “Therefore, speaking metaphorically, they are reduced, like most weak creatures, to trickery and dissimulation.”

But Dr. Monica’s already fled the room.

Mrs. Himmel clicks in. “
We’re starting
,” she says, and flicks a switch. The Industrial hums to life. My limbs ache like an adolescent’s, the bad leg pounding at the knee. My lungs feel like they’re caked with mud. I breathe in.

And then it begins.

It’s the day of the earthquake, the nebula, the agoraphobe. On this day in history, on June 15, 1985, Ján and Janka Pfliegman are speeding down Back Lick Road in their shitty, dilapidated Rambler. The car flies past farmhouses filled with Virginian families behaving themselves, following the rules, up and down; it flies past the grassy fields that line the road; past the muddy embankment of the Queeconococheecook; past interminable clouds that linger over this county like jobless men in front of convenience stores. It flies past schools, churches, public buildings. It flies past a hundred telephone poles. But a few miles ahead, there is one telephone pole that is not standing upright like the others. It leans forward, as though looking for the speeding car that’s about to come roaring around the bend and drive headlong into its spine. The pressure from the accident will not, the experts marvel, break the pole, or even splinter it; instead, the car will set the pole upright. The likelihood that the car would hit this particular pole in this particular way and the pole would not break or splinter or uproot completely is a billion to one.