John Irving - Until I Find You

“Dad, don’t hurt yourself.”

“ ‘ Pop, ’ ” his father corrected him.

“Better be careful, Pop.”

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed. Jack was trying to identify the Bach tattoo Sami Salo was alleged to have given William on his backside—and the notes that Trond Halvorsen (the scratcher ) gave him in Oslo, where Halvorsen also gave William an infection—but Jack was making himself dizzy with the effort.

“Do you know what toccata means, Jack?”

“No, Pop.”

“It means touch, basically—almost a hammered kind of touch,” his father explained; he wasn’t even out of breath. Jack saw no evidence that Dr. Horvath had been right about the psychological benefits of the Sanatorium Kilchberg’s jogging program, but the aerobic benefits were obvious.

Stanley’s Trumpet Tune in D, which marked William’s chest in the area of his right lung, seemed to make a visual proclamation. (Didn’t you need good lungs to play the trumpet?) And there was that fabulous Alain quotation, in French and English, on his dad’s bare ass—not that William was standing still enough for Jack to be able to read it.

“Pop, maybe you should get dressed for dinner.”

“If I stop, I’ll get a chill, dear boy. I don’t want to feel cold!” his father shouted.

For Professor Ritter and the doctors—they were listening outside, in the corridor—this must have been a familiar enough utterance to give them a signal. There was a loud, rapid knocking on the door—Dr. Horvath, probably.

“Perhaps we should come in, William!” Professor Ritter called; it wasn’t really a question.

“ Vielleicht! ” Jack’s father shouted. (“Perhaps!”)

William bounded off the bed; he put his hands on the rubberized floor and bent over, facing Jack while he lifted his bare bottom to the opening door. When Professor Ritter and the doctors entered, William was mooning them.

Reason has reached its limit. Only belief keeps rising.

“I must say, William—this is a little disappointing,” Professor Ritter said.

“Only a little ?” Jack’s father asked; he’d straightened up and had turned to face them, naked.

“William, this is not what you should wear to the Kronenhalle!” Dr. Horvath admonished him.

“I won’t have dinner with a naked man—at least not in public,” Dr. von Rohr announced, but Jack could see that she instantly regretted her choice of words. “ Es tut mir leid, ” she added. (“I’m sorry,” she said to Jack’s father.) The other doctors and Professor Ritter all looked at her with dismay. “I said I was sorry!” she told them in her head-of-department way.

“I think I heard the word naked, ” William said to his son, smiling. “Talk about triggers !”

“I said I was sorry, William,” Dr. von Rohr told him.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jack’s father said irritably. But Jack saw the first sign that his dad felt cold again—a single tremor. “It’s just that I’ve told you I’m not naked. You know that’s not how I feel !”

“We know, William,” Dr. Berger said. “You’ve told us.”

“But Jack hasn’t heard this,” Professor Ritter joined in.

Dr. von Rohr sighed; if she’d been holding a pencil in her long fingers, she would have twirled it. “These tattoos are your father’s real clothes, Jack,” Dr. von Rohr said. She put her hands on William’s shoulders—running her hands down the length of his arms, which she then held at the wrists. “He feels cold because so many of his favorite composers have died. Most of them are dead, in fact. Aren’t they, William?”

“Cold as the grave,” Jack’s father said, nodding his head; he was shivering.

“And what is here, and here, and here, and everywhere ?” Dr. von Rohr asked, pointing to William’s tattoos repeatedly. “Nothing but praise for the Lord—hymns of praise—and prayers of lamentation. With you, everything is either adulation or mourning. You thank God, William, but you mourn almost everyone or everything else. How am I doing so far?” she asked him. Jack could tell that she had calmed his father down, but nothing could stop the shivering. (Dr. Horvath was trying, rubbing William’s shoulders while attempting to pull a T-shirt over his shaking head—more or less at the same time.)

“You’re doing a very good job,” Jack’s father told Dr. von Rohr sincerely. He was too cold for sarcasm; his teeth were chattering again.

“Your body is not naked, William. It is gloriously covered with hymns of jubilation, and with the passion of an abiding love of God—but also an abiding loss, ” Dr. von Rohr continued.

Dr. Horvath went on dressing Jack’s father as if William were a child. Jack could see that his dad had completely succumbed, not only to Dr. Horvath dressing him but to Dr. von Rohr’s litany—which William had doubtless delivered to her on more than one occasion.

“You are wearing your grief, William,” Dr. von Rohr went on, “and your broken heart is thankful—it just can’t keep you warm, not anymore. And the music— well, some of it is triumphant. Jubilant, you would say. But so much of it is sad, isn’t it, William? Sad like a dirge, sad like a lamentation, as I’ve heard you say repeatedly.”

“The repeatedly was sarcastic, Ruth,” Jack’s father said. “You were doing fine till then.”

Dr. von Rohr sighed again. “I’m just trying to get us to dinner on time, William. Forgive me if I’m giving Jack the abridged version.”

“I think I get it,” Jack told Dr. von Rohr. (He thought she’d done a good job, under the circumstances.) “I get the idea, Pop—I really do.”

“Pop? Was heisst ‘Pop’?” Dr. Horvath asked. (“What is ‘Pop’?”)

“ Amerikanische Umgangssprache für ‘ Vater, ’ ” Professor Ritter told him. (“American colloquial speech for ‘Father.’ ”)

“He doesn’t need to wear a tie, Klaus,” Dr. von Rohr said to Dr. Horvath, who was struggling to knot a necktie at William’s throat. “Jack’s not wearing a tie, and he looks fine.”

“But it’s the Kronenhalle !” Jack was certain Dr. Horvath was going to yell; however, Dr. Horvath put the tie away and was silent.

“There’s more to life than grieving and singing praise to God, William,” Dr. Berger intoned. “I mean, factually speaking.”

“I won’t use that word I used again, William,” Dr. von Rohr said carefully, “but allow me to say that you can’t go to the Kronenhalle wearing only your tattoos, because—as I know you know, William—they’re not socially acceptable.”

“Not socially acceptable,” Jack’s father repeated, smiling. Jack could see that being socially un acceptable pleased William Burns, and that Dr. von Rohr knew this about him.

“I want to say that I can see what good care you’re taking of my dad,” Jack told them all. “I want you to know that my sister and I appreciate it—and that my father appreciates it.” Everyone seemed embarrassed—except William, who looked irritated.

“You don’t need to make a speech, Jack. You’re not a Canadian anymore,” his dad told him. “We all can be socially acceptable, when we have to. Well, maybe not Hugo, ” his father added, with that mischievous little smile Jack was getting used to. “Have you met Hugo yet, Jack?”

“ Noch nicht, ” Jack said. (“Not yet.”)