Unknown - The Genius

The bedroom door is locked but inside they are murmuring. Louis pounds.

“Hello! Hello, what’s happening!”

The murmuring ceases.

From within, the doctor says, “Mr. Muller?”

“What’s happening with my wife.”

The doctor says something Louis cannot make out.

“Bertha?” Louis has had enough. He rattles the knob and the door swings out abruptly, a nurse barreling into him, ushering him away from the threshold. He tries to see past her but a second nurse has already shut the door.

“I demand to know what’s happening in there.”

“Please come this way, sir.”

“Did you hear me? Tell me—”

The nurse takes him by the arm and pulls him from the room.

“What are you doing.”

“Sir, it’s best for the mother and child if you came with me.”

“I—I will not—” He wrests away. “What was all that screaming about? Answer me or I’ll put you out into the street.”

“The birth was normal, sir.”

“Then what was all that screaming?”

“That’s normal, sir.”

“Then why did it stop like that? Where’s Bertha?”

“She’s resting, sir. She had a spell.”

“What do you mean a spell?”

“Labor can be trying, sir.” She has no expression but Louis feels distinctly mocked.

“I want to see her,” he says.

“Please, sir, why don’t you return downstairs, and when the doctor feels it safe—”

“Nonsense. She’s my wife, it’s my house, and I intend to go where I please.” He starts to move forward but the nurse blocks his path.

“It’s better if you let her rest, sir.”

“You’ve made your position clear. Now move.”

“I can ask the doctor to come speak with you, if you’d like.”

“Right away.”

She bows her head and turns to go, leaving Louis in the middle of the hall.

Five minutes later, the doctor emerges. He has done his best to tidy up, but Louis is still aghast to see flecks of blood on his collar.

“Congratulations are in order, Mr. Muller. You have a new daughter.”

A daughter? Unacceptable. He needs a son. He wants to tell the doctor to try again. “Where’s Bertha.”

“She’s resting.”

“I need to speak with her.”

“Your wife has undergone a terrific ordeal,” says the doctor. His hands are trembling. “It’s best if we let her rest.”

“Has something happened to her?”

“Not at all, sir. As I said, she’s tired, but otherwise perfectly healthy.”

Louis is no fool. He knows something is wrong. He repeats his question, and the doctor again assures him. But those shaking hands … A new thought occurs to him.

“Is something wrong with the baby?”

The doctor opens his mouth but Louis interrupts him.

“I want to see her. Now. Take me to her.”

Again the doctor hesitates. “Come with me.”

As they pass through the sitting room, Louis thinks about what will happen if the baby dies. They must try again—but wouldn’t they have to do that, regardless? A girl will not do. If the baby dies, he will be sad most of all for Bertha, for whom the entire process—conception to delivery— has been a project undertaken virtually singlehandedly. Having invested so much hope and desire in one moment, she will be inconsolable until she has a real, live child at her breast. He owes her that much. He promises himself that if the baby dies, he will put up a brave face and get her pregnant again as soon as possible.

The doctor is talking but Louis has not paid attention: “… such things happen.”

What is he talking about, such things. Stillbirths aren’t rare. Louis knows that. His mother had one before him. Out with it, he wants to tell the doctor. Be a man.

A second bedroom branches from the sitting room. The maid—for the life of him, Louis cannot recall which one—has a bundle on her lap, and her rocking chair creaks soothingly. A flash of red flesh; a brief cry; it’s alive.

He did not expect to feel joy. He has not prepared himself. Without having seen the child’s face he knows that he will love her, and that this love will be different from any of his previous loves—all of which have revolved around his own gratification. What he feels now is a crushing need to protect.

The doctor takes the bundle from the maid. Louis almost leaps to snatch the baby away. His child. He doesn’t want her held by those shaky hands.

The doctor shows Louis how to support the head, resting the bundle in the crook of Louis’s arm. Her face is still mostly obscured by a fold of cloth.

“I can’t see her,” he says.

Looking queasy, the doctor peels back the cloth. “You must understand,” he says. “We have no means of predicting.”

Louis looks at his daughter and is confused. They appear to have given him a Chinese baby. Bertha has been unfaithful? He does not understand. His daughter has a small mouth, and her tongue protrudes in a sloppy way … and her eyes. They are narrow and slanted, the irises spotted with white. The doctor speaks of mental defects and therapies of various sorts, words Louis hears but does not understand.

“As I said, we cannot be sure why such things occur, as they are impossible for science to predict, yet, and unfortunately I cannot offer you a definitive course of treatment. Very little success has resulted thus far, although much research remains to …”

Louis does not understand any of this babble, does not understand talk of “mongoloidism,” does not understand why the maid has begun to weep quietly. He understands only that he has a new cause for shame, and that some things cannot be hidden, not even in America.

8

s soon as I saw the letter, I called McGrath. He said, “You remember how to get here?”

This time I did some advance planning and hired a car and driver for the following day. It took me the better part of an afternoon to unmount and pack up the journals, which I took along with photocopies of the Cherubs and the newspaper portraits that I’d dug up. I couldn’t think of anything else that would help except the letter itself, and that I had in a large Ziploc bag, imagining that McGrath would whip out a fingerprint kit and plug the information into a database yielding Cracke’s location and life history.

Instead he just chuckled. He put the bag with the letter on the table and stared at its tight command: STOP. After a few moments he said, “I don’t know why I’m still reading this. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to happen next.”

“What do I do?”

“Do?”

“With that.”

“Well, you could take it to the police.”

“You are the police.”

“Ex,” he said. “Sure. You can take it to the police if you want. I’ll call ahead for you, if you’d like. Let me save you some time: they’ll won’t be

able to do a thing. You don’t know who he is, you don’t really know that he wrote it, and even if you had those two nailed, he hasn’t broken the law.” He smiled like a death’s-head. “Anybody can send a letter like this, it’s in the Constitution.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You tell me.”

“You implied that you had something to offer me,” I said. “I did?”

“You asked if I remembered how to get here.”

“So I did,” he said.

I waited. “And?”

“And, well. Now that you’re here, I’m just as confused as you are.”

We both looked at the page.

STOP STOP STOP

The same tendency toward repetition that had previously fascinated me now seemed repellent; where before I saw passion I now read malice. Art or threat? Victor Cracke’s letter could very well go up on my gallery wall. Were I so inclined, I could probably turn it around to Kevin Hollister for a nice profit.