A Father's Affair (8 page)

Again, that grin.

Later on, in the bar with Dees, I slam my fist down on the table in pure frustration. Causing a glass of beer to fall over. Causing the beer to run off the table. Causing a
gigantic wet spot on my crotch. Causing me to become more furious than I already was.

‘The son of a bitch! That arrogant arsehole! You should have seen him sitting there. When he’s finally finished revealing nothing at all, he lights up a cigar. “How is that son
of yours – God, what’s his name again?” he asked me. The miserable bastard. He just abused the situation, that’s all. Monika was completely unstable back then. Pregnant
women are all like that. What a filthy pig!’

But Dees doesn’t say a thing. Only when I’ve finished ranting, and when new beers are on the table, does he say, ‘At least now you know he isn’t Bo’s father. Reason
enough for a certain relief, I should say. And even if what he says is true, I reckon things like that do happen. Which of us has never done things we’d rather not know about ourselves? Would
you like to confess your most venal sins before a jury of all the women you’ve ever been to bed with?’

‘But I didn’t ask to have Monika’s most venal sins spouted all over me by some frustrated, cigar-smoking, vodka-guzzling fake consultant, did I?’

‘Well, yes, you did.’

‘I did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah, maybe I did.’

‘So how do you two handle things with that child?’ Robbert had asked afterwards.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Well, if I understand you correctly, you two have broken up. Do you raise the kid, or does Monika?’

So he really didn’t know.

‘I do,’ I said.

‘And what about Monika?’ he asked.

I stood up, put on my coat and left.

‘To tell you the truth,’ Dees goes on, ‘I believe fuck-all of that story of his about being walked to the bus stop, or that jerking off. Sounds too much to me
like the ultimate frustrated juvenile fantasy.’

I’m so glad Dees is my friend.

D
eath heralded its arrival the same way new life does: with nausea. On a chilly April morning (the magpies were working on their nest again) I was
engrossed in the roles of alpha- and beta-adrenergic receptors in liver cells when Monika suddenly came into the room. She looked pale, and her lips felt cold when she kissed me.

‘I don’t feel well,’ she said. ‘Queasy. Headache. I’m going to bed right away.’

I made a pot of linden tea, but when I brought it in to her she was already fast asleep. I finished my correction work and Monika slept. I took Bo to the house of a friend he played with twice a
week, and Monika slept. I picked him up again, and Monika slept. Early in the evening she finally woke up. She felt even worse than she had that morning. I made a fresh pot of tea and she drank two
cups. Then she wobbled to the toilet, where she stayed for at least twenty minutes.

‘I need to throw up, but I can’t,’ she said when she reappeared at last. Her face was ashen. She had dark rings under her eyes, and her usually buoyant hair hung in limp
strands.

‘You’ve got the ’flu,’ I said.

‘Yeah, and a whopper at that.’

‘Mama has the ’flu,’ Bo said.

‘Fever?’ I asked.

‘I think so.’

I laid my hand on her neck, and felt her forehead, but she seemed cold rather than hot. A few minutes later the thermometer read 40.2. Monika shivered. I put another blanket over her.

‘Mama has the ’flu,’ Bo said. ‘Mama needs to sleep.’

‘That’s right, Mama needs to sleep.’

I took him to the living room, tucked him up on the sofa with a pillow and the new Bert and Ernie duvet that Monika’s parents had given him when he turned three.

‘Read a book?’

‘Yeah, let’s read a book.’

‘In a remote, narrow mountain valley,’ I read aloud, ‘somewhere far in the north of Scotland, sat Leta, a beautiful golden eagle, on her huge nest of branches and twigs. She
was sitting on two big spotted eggs. They would be hatching soon, and she was pleased about that.’ By the time the chicks had emerged from their eggs and father eagle had gone to nail a
ptarmigan for his children, Bo was asleep. (That was back before his nightmares, back when he still slept with his eyes closed. His eyes slowly fell shut, popped open again in a last-ditch attempt
to ward off sleep. But then sleep overpowered him at last, and he surrendered with a sigh – the loveliest moment of the day.)
Fulgor the Golden Eagle
and
Timur the Tiger
were Bo’s favourite books, while the only thing he liked about
Kra the Baboon
was the cover, because it showed a wild leopard pouncing from a rock onto a baboon. Otherwise he thought
it was a stupid book, although he couldn’t explain why.

While Bo slept, I read on until I got to Fulgor’s first hunting lessons – Bo’s favourite passage. ‘Fulgor was wild with happiness when he discovered his first
mouse,’ I read. ‘His legs held stiff in front of him, he dropped, and suddenly he felt something soft and furry move in a deathly struggle beneath his right talon. A second later the
little animal was dead, and for a few minutes the young eagle toyed with it the way a cat does, rolling it through the grass and seizing it again, then taking it into the air for a moment and
dropping it again, until he finally decided to eat it, which he did at one hungry gulp.’

Monika always said Bo was much too young for books like that. But Bo didn’t agree, and neither did I.

‘Death is a part of life, Mo,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing unusual or cruel about it. Before long Bo is going to want a hamster, and animals like that die much too fast,
of course. So he might as well get used to the fact that animals die. People, too.’ (How was I to know what was about to happen? Besides, I hadn’t yet read the verse from the Gospel of
Philip that goes: ‘In this world there is good and evil. Its good is not good and its evil not evil. But there is evil after this world which is truly evil – what is called “The
Middle”. It is death.’ I never again read to Bo from
Fulgor the Golden Eagle.
)

The next morning Monika still didn’t feel better. The fever had abated a little, but all the vitality seemed to have been sucked out of her. She stared at me with hollow
eyes, and all she said was ‘Jesus, I feel so rotten.’ She drank her tea, but only after a lot of coaxing. And she didn’t want to eat.

‘If you don’t feel better by this afternoon, I’m going to call the doctor,’ I said.

‘Does Mama still have the ’flu?’ Bo asked, a touch of disapproval in his voice.

‘Yeah, Mama still has the ’flu.’

That afternoon the doctor came, but none too eagerly. (‘Can’t you wait a day and see how it goes?’ ‘No, I can’t wait a day. I’ve never seen
her like this.’ ‘What’s her temperature?’ ‘I don’t know, she’s too sick to take it herself. But last night it was 40.2, and this morning it was
39.9.’ ‘What I would recommend is—’ ‘What I would recommend is that you come round this afternoon.’ He came.)

I’d never met the man before, but I could tell he was shocked when he saw Monika. The testiness with which he’d shaken my hand disappeared immediately. He sat down on the edge of the
bed and tried to talk to her. Her left arm lay white and fragile on the blankets. For the first time, I noticed there were little red spots on it.

‘Monika?’ the doctor said quietly. ‘Monika?’

She didn’t react right away. When it finally sank in that someone was calling her name, she opened her eyes just a crack. Her lips formed a word, but no sound came out.

‘How are you feeling, Monika?’

‘Bad,’ we heard then, very softly.

‘Do you have a headache?’

She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘Nauseous?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Where does it hurt?’ He laid his fingertips carefully on her right temple. ‘Here?’ She shook her head.

‘Here? Or here?’

‘Yeah.’ A little to the left of centre.

‘When did this start?’ he asked me.

‘Yesterday morning. She came home from work about ten thirty. She said she was nauseous. And she had a headache. She slept all afternoon. And almost the whole evening. And last night. And
almost all day today. But it doesn’t seem to make her feel any better.’

‘I need to take her temperature,’ the doctor said. ‘We can do it orally.’

He took a thermometer out of his bag, tapped it against the palm of one hand and slid it into a plastic sleeve. ‘Could I put this in your mouth, Monika?’

She opened her mouth. He inserted the thermometer. Simply closing her mouth again seemed to wear her out. The doctor remained seated, bending over her. He put his hand on her forehead again.
Looked at her face.

‘May I?’ he said, and picked up her arm to study it carefully. As he waited for the mercury to rise, his eyes never left her for a moment. The way he gave her his undivided
professional attention was reassuring and alarming, all at the same time. His ‘tsk-tsk’ when he read the thermometer was just plain alarming.

‘It would be best, Monika,’ he said, ‘for you to go to hospital, just to be on the safe side. You might have a nasty infection. They can see that better in the hospital than we
can here. And, more importantly, it will be easier for them to do something about it there. Do you have a car?’ he asked me.

‘Not any more.’

‘Hmm. She’s really too sick to take a taxi. Her temperature is almost up to 42. Could I use your phone?’

‘Of course.’

I showed him the phone. He called the hospital, briefly explained the situation, and asked for an ambulance.

‘No reason to be too concerned,’ he said after he’d hung up. ‘It was good that you had me come. But I need to rule out a few things. It seems to me that she’s come
down with an infection. That could be anything. The important thing is to find out where the infection’s located. I need to be certain about that. If you like, you can go with her in the
ambulance. I’ll take the boy with me. I’ll follow you there.’

He smiled, but without much conviction.

‘Would you like that, Bo?’ I asked.

Bo clutched my trouser leg and said nothing.

‘We’ll see,’ the doctor said.

I went back into the bedroom and began putting some of Monika’s things in a bag.

‘Where’s Mama going?’ Bo asked.

‘Mama’s going to sleep over at the hospital.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s sick. And because they can make her better faster there than they can here.’

‘Oh,’ Bo said. ‘Are you going to the hospital, too?’

‘Yes, but only to take Mama there. After that you and I are coming home.’

‘Can I go with you?’

‘Yes, but then you’ll have to ride with the doctor. There isn’t enough room in the ambulance for all of us.’

‘I don’t want to go with that man.’

‘And what if I go with that man, too?’

Yes, then it was okay.

‘Could we do that?’ I asked the doctor.

‘Sure.’

I told Monika what was going to happen. The trace of a smile appeared on her lips and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. When they lifted her into the ambulance, a choking fear seized me by the
throat.

The doctor’s car stank of cigarette smoke.

Last night I lay in bed thinking about that doctor – for hours. How well did he know Monika? I thought about how he’d put the thermometer in her mouth, how
he’d laid his fingers on her forehead, how he’d spoken to her. Could it be? Is that why he came up with the suggestion that Bo ride with him, and I go in the ambulance? Had he wanted to
be alone with his son, his illegitimate child, for a while? I waved those thoughts aside as ridiculous paranoia, dozens of times. There wasn’t much chance that Bo’s father (whoever that
was) knew he was the father, though he may have suspected. But then again, how often did you read in the papers about doctors and their illicit relationships with patients?

By the time the first blackbird started singing, I was convinced I’d found the culprit, and that there was nothing for it but to locate him and confront him with my findings. For some
reason I thought you could say things like that straight to a doctor’s face, so there was no reason for the meeting to be as difficult and painful as the one with Robbert. (What’s more,
I didn’t have to worry about being handed a pack of lies, invented for no reason other than revenge.) And, even if he turned out not to be the father, maybe he knew who was. Maybe Monika had
confided in him; after all, his professional oath meant he had to keep it a secret. But that oath didn’t apply any more, did it? I could always point out to him that the interests of a living
boy took precedence over those of his dead mother, so Bo had a right to know who his father was – should he have any information along those lines.

This morning I leafed through the phone book. His office is still at the same address. I can see him Tuesday of next week. He sounded neither surprised nor suspicious. But I refuse to think
about whether that means anything.

‘Bacterial meningitis,’ the doctor at the hospital had said.

‘Is that serious?’

‘It can be very serious. We’ll just have to hope we’re in time.’

‘And if we’re not?’

‘If we’re not, it can be fatal.’

They weren’t in time. Monika lay in the hospital for three days. And every day she got worse. On the afternoon of the second day, she regained consciousness for a moment. I was beside her
bed. She said, ‘Armin, I’m going to die, aren’t I?’

I said, ‘No, Monika, you’re not going to die. Of course you’re not.’

‘I’m going to die. I’m sorry.’

That was the last thing she said to me: ‘I’m going to die. I’m sorry.’

Those three days were a nightmare. So was the week after that. The next two months I spent working like an idiot.

‘Where’s Mama?’ Bo asked every now and again.

‘Mama is dead,’ I would tell him.

‘Oh yeah. Mama’s dead.’

Two years ago my mother died of intestinal cancer. She was seventy-two. My father phoned, at five thirty in the morning. ‘Mama is dead,’ he said. And I thought about Bo, and about
Monika, and when the tears came I didn’t know who I was crying for.

‘She died peacefully,’ my father said.