John Irving - Until I Find You

“Well, Dr. García makes me tell her everything in chronological order,” Jack explained. Both doctors were nodding their heads, but William suddenly looked anxious.

“ What things?” Jack’s father asked.

“Everything that ever made me laugh, or made me cry, or made me feel angry—just those things,” Jack told him.

Dr. Krauer-Poppe and Dr. von Rohr weren’t nodding their heads anymore; they were both observing William closely. The idea of what might have made his son laugh, or cry, or feel angry seemed to be affecting him.

His dad had moved his right hand to his heart, but his hand hadn’t come to rest there. He appeared to be inching his fingers over the upper-left side of his rib cage—as if feeling for something under his shirt, or under his skin. He knew exactly where to find it, without looking. As for what might have made William Burns laugh or cry, her name was Karin Ringhof—the commandant’s daughter. As for what might have made him cry and made him feel angry, that would have been what happened to her little brother.

“It sounds as if this therapy could be quite a lengthy endeavor,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said to Jack, but she’d not taken her eyes from William’s gloved hand—black-on-black against his shirt, touching the tattoo she knew as well as Jack did.

The commandant’s daughter; her little brother

From the pained expression on his father’s face, Jack could tell that William had his index finger perfectly in place on the semicolon—the first (and probably the last) semicolon Doc Forest had tattooed on anyone.

“Your therapy sounds positively book-length, ” Dr. von Rohr said to Jack, but her eyes—like those of her colleague—had never strayed from his father.

“You’re putting in chronological order everything that ever made you laugh, or made you cry, or made you feel angry,” his dad said, grimacing in pain—as if every word he spoke were a tattoo on his rib cage, or in the area of his kidneys, or on the tops of his feet, where Jack had seen his own name and his sister’s. All those places where Jack knew it hurt like Hell to be tattooed, yet William Burns had been tattooed there—he’d been marked for life everywhere it hurt, except for his penis.

“And has this therapy helped?” Dr. von Rohr asked Jack doubtfully.

“Yes, I think it has—at least I feel better than when I first went to see Dr. García,” he told them.

“And you think it’s the chronological-order part that has helped?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked. (In her view, Jack could tell, putting the highs and lows of your life in chronological order was not as reliable as taking medication.)

“Yes, I think so …” Jack started to say, but his father interrupted him.

“It’s barbaric !” William shouted. “It sounds like torture to me! The very idea of imposing chronological order on everything that ever made you laugh or cry or feel angry—why, that’s the most masochistic thing I’ve ever heard of! You must be crazy !”

“I think it’s working, Pop. The chronological-order part keeps me calm.”

“My son is obviously deluded,” William said to his doctors.

“Jack’s not the one in an institution, William,” Dr. von Rohr reminded him.

Dr. Krauer-Poppe covered her pretty face with her hands; for a moment, Jack was afraid that the word institution might have been a trigger. The Doc Forest tattoo on the upper-left side of his father’s rib cage was clearly a trigger, but a stoppable one—or so it appeared. Jack’s dad had returned both his hands to the table.

Just then their waiter materialized—a short man bouncing on the balls of his feet, as vigorously as William or Mr. Ramsey ever had, although the waiter was fat. He had a small mouth and an overlarge mustache, which seemed to tickle his nose when he spoke. “ Was darf ich Ihnen zu Trinken bringen? ” he inquired. (It sounded as if “What may I bring you to drink?” were all one word.)

“Fortuitous,” Jack’s father said, meaning the timely appearance of the waiter, but the waiter thought that William had ordered something.

“ Bitte? ” the waiter asked.

“ Ein Bier, ” Jack said—pointing to himself, to avoid further confusion. (“A beer.”)

“I didn’t know you drank !” his dad said with sudden concern.

“I don’t. You can watch me. I won’t finish one beer,” Jack told him.

“ Noch ein Bier! ” his father told the waiter, pointing to himself. (“Another beer!”)

“William, you don’t drink—not even half a beer,” Dr. von Rohr reminded him.

“I can have what Jack has,” William said, acting like a child.

“Not with the antidepressants. You shouldn’t,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.

“I can un order the beer,” Jack suggested. “Das macht nichts.”

“Jack’s German will improve over time,” William said to his doctors.

“Jack’s German is fine, William,” Dr. von Rohr told him.

“You see? She likes you, Jack,” his father said. “I told you that was an overnight bag!”

The doctors, choosing to ignore him, ordered a bottle of red wine. William ordered a mineral water. Jack told the waiter that he’d changed his mind. Would the waiter bring them a large bottle of mineral water, please—and no beer?

“No, no! Have the beer!” William said, taking Jack’s hand in his gloved fingers.

“ Kein Bier, ” Jack said to the waiter, “ nur Mineralwasser. ” (“No beer, only mineral water.”)

Jack’s dad sat sulking at the table, making an unsteady tower of his knife and spoon and fork. “Fucking Americans, ” William said. He looked up to see if that would get a rise out of his son. It didn’t. Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe gave each other a look, but they said nothing. “Don’t have the Wiener schnitzel, Jack,” his father continued, as if the menu, which he’d just that second picked up, had been all that was on his mind from the beginning.

“Why not, Pop?”

“They butcher a whole calf and put half of it on your plate,” William said. “And don’t have the Bauernschmaus, ” he added. (A Bauernschmaus was a farmer’s platter of meats and sausages; it was very popular with Austrians and sounded like something Dr. Horvath would have ordered, but Jack could see that it wasn’t even on the Kronenhalle’s menu.) “And, above all, don’t have the bratwurst. It’s a veal sausage the size of a horse’s penis.”

“I’ll stay away from it, then,” Jack told him.

Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe were talking rapid-fire Swiss German. It was not the High German Jack had studied in school —Schriftdeutsch, the Swiss call it, meaning “written German.”

“ Schwyzerdütsch, ” Jack’s father said contemptuously. “They speak in Swiss German when they don’t want me to understand them.”

“If you didn’t talk about horses’ penises, maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about you, Pop.”

“I think you should find a new psychiatrist, Jack. Someone you can talk to about things as they come up—not necessarily in chronological order, for Christ’s sake.”

Jack was surprised by the for Christ’s sake, and not because it was exactly the way Jack always said it—he only occasionally said it—but because Jack had never said it in any of his films. (As Dr. Berger had told him, William had made quite a study of his son; as Dr. von Rohr had warned Jack, she didn’t mean only his movies. )

“Interesting what he knows, isn’t it?” Dr. von Rohr asked Jack.