Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

And there on the bed is Rutherford. Or perhaps, Mr. Schmitz thinks, "Rutherford." He is lying flat on his back in a silk, pastel blue bathrobe cinched so tight that the collar seems to chafe against his neck. Almost imperceptibly, at irregular intervals of about ten seconds, his stomach rises and falls, his breath faint enough that the silk of his bathrobe does not even crinkle. Yet it seems to Mr. Schmitz that except for the dandyish robe, which he does not recognize, Rutherford hasn't changed much after all. This observation does not prevent Mr. Schmitz from feeling a sudden, impossible desire to run out of the house and back to the airport.

"Rutherford?"

The body on the bed is still for several moments. Then he stirs, so gradually that Mr. Schmitz must examine the contours of Rutherford's bathrobe to register the movement.

"You look charming," says Mr. Schmitz.

The man on the bed still does not make any significant movements, but shuts and opens his eyes several times. His wrinkles tense and his mustache quivers in a dumb show of consciousness. But now, with a shock, he recognizes Mr. Schmitz.

"Rutherford," says Mr. Schmitz. "It's me."

Rutherford sits up in bed and gasps. His cheeks are plump and unnatural under his wide-open eyes, and he points at Mr. Schmitz with a shaky forefinger. Then, as if a switch has been triggered in his brain, Rutherford falls back against his pillows and passes out again.

Mr. Schmitz's grief is like a foreign language, inchoate and strange in his mouth. He races over to his friend with a mounting sense of alarm. His feet shuffle Post-it notes; many of them stick to his soles.

He now can see, creeping down one side of his friend's face, a purple mark, two inches wide and four inches long. The blemish is rounded at the lower end, so that it resembles a tongue. It runs from Rutherford's temple to his jaw, and a light down grows on it that does not match the salt-and-pepper of his mustache but is a clean, pure white. The purple-black skin is puckered like gooseflesh and tightly stretched. A breeze pricks Mr. Schmitz's perspiring neck. The blinds float up and then fall flat against the window with a loud clack and chatter.

Rutherford again comes to. He regards Mr. Schmitz with bleary, frightened eyes that have withdrawn deep into his head. His dry lips mouth a word.

"Yes, Rutherford?"

Rutherford repeats the word, which Mr. Schmitz makes out to be his own name.

"What's happened to you, Rutherford? Are you sick?"

"Schmitz," says Rutherford, in a distant, garbled voice.

"I decided to visit you. I'm angry at you, you know. You have not been writing. Not decent letters at least."

"Schmitz!" yells Rutherford. And with that he jumps out of bed to hug his friend.

"Oh, Rutherford!"

"Schmitz."

The two men embrace for some time. The blinds shudder against the window frame. Rutherford begins to grow heavy in Mr. Schmitz's arms, and Mr. Schmitz pulls back.

"What is that on your face?" he asks. "Some kind of chloasma, I think. My aunt Frida once got one on her neck."

"Schmitz! Come stai, amico?" says Rutherford. His Italian seems perfect, but as he speaks he constricts his face so that his chin dips unnaturally into his collarbone. Mr. Schmitz is chilled.

"Are you ill? And" — for he can't help himself—"why haven't you written to me? Agnes. . Agnes is dead. Haven't you received my letters?"

Rutherford smiles benignly and gives his friend a little wink.

"Schmitz," he says, trailing off. Panic begins to distort his gaze.

Rutherford is saved from further discussion by the sound of the front door opening. There is a scuffling noise on the floorboards and the crinkle of paper. Rutherford shows no sign of alarm at the intruder. Only relief.

The bedroom door opens on the shirtless, olive-skinned boy. He has long, sweaty brown hair that catches on his neck and shoulders. A round Mediterranean face, with deeply set eyes and a pug nose. He has a gaunt, ribby chest, surprisingly tendinous and hairless arms, and wears jeans cut off at the knees and red sneakers without socks. He stares at Mr. Schmitz with a look of disbelief — tempered, perhaps, by ridicule.

"Chi è?" He addresses Rutherford but keeps his eyes fixed on Mr. Schmitz, a heaving, chubby man of sixty dressed in a ragged suit mottled with filth.

"È un gran'amico di New York," says Rutherford. "È appena arrivato. Sii gentile!"

Mr. Schmitz is surprised to hear such an animated tone from Rutherford; he seems to have regained his former self.

"He stinks della Madonna, come cazzo e pesce e merda," says the boy.

"Why do you speak to him but not me?" Mr. Schmitz asks Rutherford. "We haven't talked for so long."

"Che cosa di'?" asks the boy.

"Non lo so," says Rutherford. And Schmitz finally understands. For the first time since his wife died, he begins to cry.

"Che sfigato," says the boy.

"OK," says Schmitz, raising his hands. "I try. . to speak with you. . in Italian."

"Grazie," says Rutherford.

"What is happening on the face?"

"This tongue here," replies Rutherford, pointing to the mark along his jaw. "It has begun to grow. Down my cheek. It's so good to talk to you again, old boy. Welcome to Italy. Oh, the meals we'llhave!"

"But who is this boy?"

"My name is Daniel," says the boy, defiant.

"It's Daniel," says Rutherford, his voice wobbling. "The shirtless boy I described in my letters."

"Why can't you speak English?"

"I'm very ill, Mr. Schmitz."

"But why?"

"I can't speak English because. . I forgot it. My control of the language faded and faded until I woke up one day and I had completely forgotten it. But," he says, gesturing to the sticky notes all around him, "I'm trying to learn it again."

"I need to take you to a doctor. Now."

"Don't worry about me. Daniel here takes care of me. We have a close relationship, you see. Do you know who he is?"

"You need to see a doctor."

"I'm his son," says Daniel.

"Are you mad?" shouts Mr. Schmitz.

"What did he say?" asks Daniel.

Both Daniel and Mr. Schmitz turn to Rutherford, awaiting his response. The old man grins with half of his mouth, and Mr. Schmitz realizes that the left half of his face — the side with the purple tongue-shaped mark down the jaw — is frozen. His left eye droops, his lips sag into a half-frown, his hairline angles down to the one side, and his cheek droops into a jowl. Meanwhile the right side of his face works furiously, as if to compensate — his eye blinking rapidly, his nostril flaring, his lips grinning, and his ear tweaking this way and that.

"The tongue," chokes Rutherford, out of half of his mouth, "the tongue is taking over."

He coughs, raises one frail arm like a broken wing, and after executing a desultory pirouette, falls face-first onto the floor. A hoarse scream echoes down the hallway and into the courtyard. Sticky notes float and feather in the air above the body as Mr. Schmitz kneels down to check for a pulse.

The ridge at the top of the limestone mountain was a chain of loose rocks that crumbled at the faintest pressure — a human step, the scurry of a dormouse, a lick of breeze. The high air felt light and ill, difficult to breathe. Behind them the Adriatic was a blue crab's outstretched claw, pinching the furry Istrian peninsula. In front of them, on the other side of the ridge, lay a richly verdant valley: a large lush pocket surrounded by a ring of mountains, like a green satin napkin tucked into the mouth of a wineglass. It was the most vibrant landscape Eugene had seen in days, a scratch of life in what up to then had been a craggy, scarred terrain. He laughed with the happiness of an explorer who, stripped and destitute, has finally reached a land that only he believed existed. He was John Wesley Powell on Longs Peak, Zebulon Pike at Royal Gorge.