The Gargoyle (37 page)

Over the hours, her stereo passed through the works of Carl Orff; Berlioz’s
Symphonie Fantastique
; Beethoven’s nine symphonies; Poe (the singer, not the writer); the first album by Milla Jovovich; the entire catalogue of The Doors; the recordings of Robert Johnson;
Cheap Thrills,
by Big Brother and the Holding Company (four times in a row); and a variety of Bessie Smith, Howlin’ Wolf, and Son House. As the hours progressed, the music grew ever louder and her choice of singing voices more guttural. Even with my bad ears, by the end I had to retreat with earplugs to my belfry.

When she finished, she could barely stand. The completed monster was a human head with horns, atop a kneeling dragon’s body, and she kissed its stony lips before crawling up the stairs to collapse into her bed, still covered in dust and sweat.

“Well, obviously manic depression is common among artists,” Gregor said across the table, as he poured a shot of the bourbon that he had brought for us to drink. The sun was going down and we were sitting on the back porch; Marianne Engel was still sleeping off her efforts. After reaffirming that he could not address any specifics of her previous treatments, Gregor said that he’d be happy to answer general questions.

“After reading all those books,” I said, “I decided that her symptoms were more consistent with schizophrenia than with manic depression.”

“Well, maybe. Could be both,” Gregor answered, “or neither. I don’t know. Maybe it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. Did she ever say why she has to do so much carving all at one time?”

“She thinks she’s following instructions from God. She thinks she’s giving out the extra hearts she has in her chest.”

“Well, that’s weird.” Gregor took a sip. “Hey, this stuff is good. It beats me what’s wrong with Marianne.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know about these things?”

Gregor shrugged. “What I don’t know could fill a warehouse. Is she taking her medicine?”

“No. She hates pills even more than she hates doctors. No offense.”

I asked if she could be forced, by some sort of legal order, to take her meds. Gregor explained that only a guardian could take that step. I suggested Jack, who I had recently learned was Marianne Engel’s conservator as well as her manager, but Gregor explained that a conservator only has jurisdiction over a patient’s property, not her personal decisions. No one can force a patient into a hospital except a judge, Gregor said, and then only for a few days. I interjected that I didn’t want Marianne Engel committed; I simply wanted her to take her drugs. Gregor said that all I could do was ask nicely. Then he asked me if we could stop talking about her condition; while he felt he hadn’t gone over any line of doctor-patient confidentiality yet, he was worried he was getting dangerously close.

We left the topic at that. I asked him about Sayuri and he told me that they were seeing more of each other. Had a date that night, actually. Then he chastised me for always wanting to talk about his love life, while never giving up any details of my own. I laughed it off—
What love life
?—but he threw it right back at me. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

There was a pause in the conversation, but it was a good pause. Gregor took another sip of bourbon and we looked out into the sunset together. “Nice night,” he said.

“She touched me,” I blurted.

This caught Gregor off his guard. “What do you mean?”

“The first time she bathed me and saw…my groin”—Gregor knew, through his position at the hospital, about my amputation—“she inspected it. Ran her fingers over the scars.”

“What did she say?”

“That the condition of my body is not relevant to her.”

“Did you believe her?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I swirled the bourbon in my glass. “Of course it matters. It’s gone.”

Gregor frowned. “I’m disappointed.”

Now he had caught me off guard. “By what?”

“Your answer,” he replied. “Because I believe her, and I think you should, too.”

Another pause in the conversation, which this time I broke. “It is a nice night, isn’t it?”

He nodded. I didn’t mention that the brand of bourbon Gregor had bought was the same that had spilled into my lap, costing me the penis in question. Gregor’s intentions in bringing the gift were good, so what profit was there in trying to make him feel bad about it?

I expected that the bourbon would taste like bad memories; instead, it just tasted like good alcohol. And it was nice to have: Marianne Engel quaintly clung to the idea that morphine and booze were a bad mix, but I suspect Gregor was trying to show me his wild side by allowing me a glass or two.

A few days later, after she had recovered, I asked Marianne Engel why she increased the music’s volume throughout her carving. She reminded me that the gargoyles became louder the longer the process went on, and turning up the stereo was a way to drown out their screams. She explained that when she cut through the excess stone to find the grotesque’s form, the only way to know whether she’d reached the monster’s outline was to actually cut into it. If the grotesque screamed in pain, then Marianne Engel knew that she’d cut deep enough.

I asked whether she wasn’t afraid that she was drowning out important instructions from God. She laughed and assured me that in the entire world, there was not music loud enough to drown out the sounds of His commands.

A major complaint of burn survivors is that only one pressure suit is covered by insurance, despite the fact that these garments cost thousands of dollars and must be worn up to twenty-three hours every single day. During the other hour, the patient is being cleaned, and if the caregiver is already busy washing the patient, how can she or he also be cleaning the pressure suit at the same time? This is why it’s essential to have at least two. “But the cost!” cry the insurance companies as they deny the claim. Furthermore, even with proper care pressure garments last only about three months.

Insurance companies were not a problem for me, as my costs were being covered in full by Marianne Engel. But I had to wonder, briefcase of cash under the skeleton bed or not, how could she afford this? She kept reassuring me that her prominence as a carver had left her amply rewarded and that there was nothing she’d rather spend her money on. I was unsure but even if I tried to argue, what would be my case? That my scars should go untreated?

My pressure suits and mask were finally ready in mid-March. When Sayuri handed them over, I could immediately appreciate all the work that had gone into them. The mask had been sanded down so that it would sit comfortably along the contours of my face. Sayuri even pointed out how the students had paid special attention to where my scars were raised above the skin’s surface, and had prepared the plastic accordingly.

“You’ll need to use this as well.” Sayuri held out a spring-loaded contraption. The way my face had been burned left me particularly susceptible to oral commissures—scar tissue around the corners of my mouth—which, if not treated, would make it difficult for me to eat or speak in the future. After I had properly wedged the retractor into my mouth, I raised the mask to my face. It was to remain in place all the time, except during cleaning and skin care, even while I was sleeping. I asked Marianne Engel how I looked (in the process discovering that the retractor made my already garbled voice sound even worse) and she answered that I looked like a man who was going to live for a long time.

I looked into the mirror. As if the scarred topography of my face were not enough, it was now smashed flat by the clear plastic. The areas that were normally red had turned white under the pressure and the retractor had peeled my mouth outwards in a grotesque grimace. Every imperfection was amplified, and I looked like the bastard child of Hannibal Lecter and the Phantomess of the Opera.

Sayuri assured me that a poor first reaction was normal, because all burn patients—including me, despite being specifically told otherwise—assume that the mask will hide their faces. But it did not. It would not shield me and help me cope; it was a Petri dish that would place my face under the microscope of the world.

Sayuri explained the proper order in which to put on the pressure garments and showed Marianne Engel how to fasten the straps in back. While they fussed with the technicalities, I was left to experience the sensation, which was like slipping into the tight fist of an angry god.
It’s only fabric,
I told myself.
It’s not who I am.
It sent shivers down my spine anyway.

IT FEELS GOOD, DOES IT NOT? LIKE YOU ARE BEING BURIED ALIVE.
The snake loved to laugh at me.
I AM COMING.

I found Marianne Engel waiting for me in the dining room, wearing a kimono of jade silk. It bore an embroidered scene, impeccably stitched, of two lovers under a cherry blossom tree near a carp-filled stream. In the garment’s starry sky, a full moon looked down on the lovers as if it were not only the source of their light, but also the protector of their love.

She asked whether I was ready to eat. I answered that I was. I went out on a limb to guess that Japanese was on the menu.

“So desu ne.
How perceptive you are,” she said with a slight bow. The stream on her kimono disappeared into the blue sash across her waist, drawn with an obi bow in back. “I’ve been reading
Makura no Sōshi
.”

“Yeah, I saw that on your bookshelf. Pillow-something, right?”

“The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon
. A very famous Japanese text, tenth century, and the first novel ever written. Or so they say, but who knows for sure? I’ve been thinking that I should do something with it. You’d be surprised how many great Japanese books don’t have decent Latin translations.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Marianne Engel retreated to the kitchen with short, sharp steps, as she’d even gone so far as to put on geta, traditional wooden slippers. She returned with multihued trays of sushi: slices of white (and orange and silver) fish lay on beds of compressed rice; beady red fish eggs lolled on seaweed beds; and shrimps curled into each other, as if hugging tightly during their final moments on earth. There were inarizushi, cubes of rice wrapped in thin sheets of sweet golden tofu. Gyoza, dumplings made of beef or pork, bathed in zesty black sauce. Yakitori, barbecued strips of chicken and beef, on wooden skewers. There were onigiri, triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed; each, she explained, contained something different, something delicious: plums, fish eggs, chicken, tuna, or shrimp.