John Irving - Until I Find You

“Wait till you meet Hugo,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told Jack. “Your father is safe with Hugo.”

“Then what is it you object to about him?” Jack asked both doctors.

“Wait till you meet him,” was all Dr. von Rohr would say.

“Don’t pity me, Jack,” his dad said. “Don’t think of me as resigning myself to masturbation with a prostitute. It isn’t an act of resignation.”

“I guess I don’t understand what it is,” Jack admitted.

They all saw William’s right hand reaching for his heart again; once more the fingers of his black-gloved hand inched their way toward that tattoo with the semicolon in it. (He had, with Dr. von Rohr’s assistance, removed the gloves to eat. But now that he’d finished his meal, the gloves were back on.)

“I have had women in my life that I wanted to have—if not for as long as I wish I’d had them,” William began sadly. “I couldn’t do that again. I can’t go through losing someone else.”

The doctors and Jack knew everything about the tattoo William Burns had for Karin Ringhof, and where it was. But Jack didn’t know if his father had a tattoo for Barbara, his German wife—or where it was, if he had it. Maybe that one was in the music; Jack would ask Heather about it.

“I get it, Pop. I understand,” Jack told him.

He wondered if William ever touched his rib cage on the other side, where Jacob Bril had pierced him and made him bleed. Jack wanted to know if that tattoo was ever as tender or sensitive to his father’s touch as the tattoo of the commandant’s daughter and her little brother. He hoped not. Of all his dad’s tattoos, Jacob Bril’s rendition of Christ’s blood was the only one with any color.

“It’s time for us to be going along, William,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told him gently. “What are you going to play for us tomorrow—for Jack and me, and Dr. Horvath?”

It was a good trick, and Jack’s father seemed to be unaware of it. His right hand drifted away from the area of his heart and the upper-left side of his rib cage. He spread the fingers of his black-gloved hands on the white tablecloth—his feet shuffling under his chair, as if he were familiarizing himself with the foot pedals. You could see it in his eyes—there was a keyboard in his mind. There was an organ the size of the Oude Kerk in his heart; when Jack’s dad shut his eyes, he could almost hear it.

“You don’t expect me to hum it for you, do you, Anna-Elisabeth?” William asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. She hadn’t fooled him, after all. In fact, she held her breath—as Jack and Dr. von Rohr did—because they all knew that hum was a possible trigger. As Dr. Berger had warned Jack, his father hated humming. (Although maybe it was the humming itself and not the word he hated.)

“Why not wait and surprise them in the morning, William?” Dr. von Rohr suggested. “I’m just asking.”

“Why not?” Jack’s dad said; he was looking tired.

“I have a little something to make you drowsy in the car,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told William.

Jack’s dad was shaking his head; he was already drowsy. “I’m not going to be happy to say good-bye to Jack,” William said testily. “I’ve said good-bye to you before—too many times, dear boy. I’ve said good-bye to you here, ” his father said, the gloved hand touching his heart again, “and here, ” he said, pointing to his eyes, “and in here !” William was weeping now, holding his index finger to his temple.

“You’re going to see me in the morning, Pop.” Jack held his father’s face in his hands. “You’re going to see me again and again,” Jack promised him. “I intend to keep coming here. Heather and I are buying a house in Zurich.”

William instantly stopped crying and said: “You must be crazy ! It’s one of the most expensive cities in the world! Ask Ruth, ask Anna-Elisabeth! Tell him!” he shouted at the women. “I don’t want my children to bankrupt themselves,” he moaned, wrapping both arms around his chest and hugging himself as if he were cold.

“ Sehr bald wird ihm kalt werden, ” Dr. von Rohr said to her colleague. (“Very soon he’ll feel cold.”)

“ Mir ist nicht immer kalt, ” Jack’s father argued. (“I don’t always feel cold.”)

Dr. Krauer-Poppe had stood up and put her hand on William’s shoulder; he sat shaking in his chair. “Open up, William,” she said. “If you take this, you won’t feel cold—you’ll just feel sleepy.”

Jack’s father turned his head and stuck his tongue out at her. (Jack realized that he might have misunderstood when his dad had done this before.) Dr. Krauer-Poppe put a pill on the tip of William’s tongue; she raised the water glass to his lips and he swallowed.

“I’ll just see if Hugo has the car here. He was supposed to,” Dr. von Rohr said, leaving the table.

“Professor Ritter has a home in one of those overpriced monstrosities across the lake from the sanatorium,” Jack’s father started up again, as soon as he’d swallowed the pill Dr. Krauer-Poppe had given him. “It’s in Zollikon or Küsnacht—one of those precious places.”

“It’s in Küsnacht, William—it’s very beautiful,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe assured Jack. “That side of the lake gets more sun.”

“My taxi driver told me,” Jack said.

“But do you know what it costs ?” Jack’s father asked him. “Four million Swiss francs, and for what ? A house of three hundred or four hundred square meters, and you pay more than three million dollars? That’s crazy !”

“The house has a view of the lake; it has a garden, too,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe explained. “The garden must be a thousand square meters, William.”

“It’s still crazy,” Jack’s dad said stubbornly; at least he wasn’t shivering. Dr. Krauer-Poppe stood behind William’s chair, massaging his shoulders. She was just waiting for the pill to kick in.

“William, Jack could buy a small house in town—something not that expensive,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “I’m sure he doesn’t care if he can see the lake.”

“ Everything in Zurich is expensive!” Jack’s father declared.

“William, you go shopping for clothes and prostitutes. What else do you go shopping for in Zurich?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked him.

“You see what I’m up against, Jack? It’s like being married !” his dad told him. William saw that Dr. von Rohr was back. “To both of them!”

“Believe it or not, Hugo’s here with the car,” Dr. von Rohr announced. “He actually remembered.”

“You’re too hard on poor Hugo,” William said to Dr. von Rohr. “Wait till you meet him, Jack. He’s a Herman Castro kind of fellow.”

A heavyweight, in other words—Jack could tell at first glance, when he saw Hugo hulking over the black Mercedes. Hugo was shining the hood ornament with the sleeve of his white dress shirt. He was attired more in the manner of a waiter than of either a limo driver or a male nurse, which he was. But—even in a long-sleeved white dress shirt—Jack could see that Hugo had the sculpted bulk of a bodybuilder.

Whereas his older sister, Waltraut—the other Nurse Bleibel—was short and stout, Hugo was unambiguously huge. He had made himself huge. He’d developed those powerful shoulders, and his bulging upper arms; he’d worked to make his neck nearly as big around as William’s waist. And Hugo had shaved his head, unfortunately—though it was not unthinkable that this might have been an improvement. His face had the flat, blunt purposefulness of a shovel. The one gold earring, signifying nothing, drew your attention to the fact that the other ear was missing a lobe. (An encounter with a dog in a nightclub, Jack’s dad had told him on their trip into Zurich from Kilchberg.)