Madeleine's Ghost (43 page)

And as I press against the headboard, I can see the portrait of the olive-skinned man staring down with his cruel black eyes, and I can feel the smooth roughness of the muslin sheets on my back, and I can smell the rank human smell of the bedding and the strong odor that comes from between her legs as she crawls toward me slowly on hands and knees, the straw mattress creaking on its ropes. She does not cease her pleading, which comes in erotic gasps now, and her eyes are filled with tears, but she is ready for me because she is a whore, and I am as hard as I've ever been.

Soon I feel her mouth on mine, her lips wet with tears wept in the darkness between worlds, and if I see the walls of my room again, and hear the power plant grinding out the window, and the digital thermometer beeping its warning, it is only for a moment. All that is gone when she settles on top of me at last and we connect like the pieces of a puzzle; when I feel the weight of her breasts and the familiar slickness, my hands tangled in her thick black hair as she begins to shift and jerk; when I hear the sad, passionate sound of her voice imploring in my ear, her voice, which becomes a whisper, which becomes an echo, which becomes the wind, fierce at first, then fainter, fainter, which becomes a dead leaf falling through the dead air, which becomes a pale exhalation, which becomes a breath, which becomes a last dead sigh and then becomes nothing. Nothing at all.

I
HEAR A
faint hushing sound and, farther off, the solid muscular thud of waves on a beach. There is also an occasional mechanical beeping, much louder than the digital beep of my thermometer. I am prodded, stuck with sharp points. My wrists are tied to something I cannot see because my eyes are clouded by an inky blue membrane. It is like looking up from the bottom of a fish tank into a dark room. Lying in the red and yellow gravel, I can barely make out squiggles and reflections and bits of fish food floating on the surface. Water fills my lungs. This seems all right to me; I prefer the water to air.

After a while, I can't tell how long, the blue begins to break up with more and more light, and at last I open my eyes to a spotless white wall decorated with an excellent full-size reproduction of Raphael's
Madonna and Child.
It's the famous one in the Vatican, with the bored putti looking up from the bottom foreground. To my left a small aluminum frame window gives out on a gray and empty ocean sky, heavy with low clouds.

A long, clear tube is connected from a vein in my arm to a plastic bag full of clear fluid hanging overhead. The hushing noise comes from an important-looking medical machine which displays a parabolic graph and a fluctuating series of numbers on a screen the size of a small television set. A thick ribbed plastic tube runs from this machine across the bed into my mouth and down my throat, which hurts terribly. My wrists are fixed to the chrome rails of my bed with yellow hospital bracelets. The room is silent except for the sound of the sea and the painful hushing of the machine.

Then I hear a feminine voice to my right. Soft and full of harmonies, it vibrates in the air like a tuning fork.

“Is that bothering you? Here …” The tube is removed from my throat, my hands are unfastened, and the bag of fluid is unhooked. For a second I have forgotten how to breathe, but I take a gulping breath, and my lungs are full of air again.

“That's very good. That's right. Breathe.”

I turn toward the voice. It is a young nun wearing the robes of an order I do not know. They are of celestial blue and snow white. The style is old-fashioned with full skirts and wimple. A gold crucifix hangs around her neck on a heavy chain made of interlocking gold links like the ones worn by the mayors of provincial towns in France. This nun is very beautiful with piercing blue eyes, delicate features, and skin like bone china. Beneath its smooth surface, the faint network of veins. I am silent. There is something about her, a brightness, a stainless quality that is dazzling. She smiles, and I can't help smiling back.

“Hello,” I croak. “Who are you?”

“You've had a hard time of it,” she says. “You've been a long way. We had some trouble getting you back.”

“I'm in the hospital?”

“You are.”

“A Catholic hospital?”

“Yes.”

“How did I get here?”

“Shh. There will be plenty of time for questions later. Now, how do you feel?”

I must think about this for a moment to realize that I feel pretty bad. A general, indescribable prickling fills my body. A painful lassitude. “Actually, not too good,” I say at last.

The nun nods and leans closer. I can't quite meet her blue eyes, which are clear and perfect. Her breath smells like wildflowers. In a moment I feel her cool hands on my chest under my hospital gown, on my neck. “Lie calmly,” she says, “and let your thoughts wander a little.”

I sag into the pillow, and some of the prickling goes away. In a
moment she's got my gown up and her hands are on my stomach. My face is turned to the side, my eyes on the Raphael Madonna. Mary looks sweet and a little bewildered in this picture, as would any virgin who has just given birth to a child.

“Ah, here it is.” The nun's hands stop at a place halfway up my right side. “This is where the pain comes from, am I right?” And when she presses down, I gasp.

“Yes,” I manage. “It's pretty tender there.”

“Your liver,” the nun says. “You've been abusing this organ these last fifteen years. Spirituous liquors. Lagers and bocks.”

“And stouts,” I say, thinking of a full glass of Guinness. “Don't forget them. You know, in Ireland they supposedly feed pints of the stuff to pregnant women in the hospital.”

“That's not funny,” the nun says, and presses down again, and I stiffen in pain. “Riotous living, lethargy, and excess. These things are mortal sins. I don't need to tell you which ones. And they endanger your immortal soul.”

“My immortal soul?” I fix for a moment on those blue eyes, which are like the flame at the heart of the fire. “You do believe in an immortal soul?”

I am silent.

“It exists,” she says quietly. “I have seen yours pass through the darkness, a poor rag and very faint. Almost as sick as your body.”

“Wait a minute—”

“Shh. Listen. One thing has saved you.”

“What?”

“Guess.”

I think for a minute. Her hands press cool on my stomach and form a triangle of flesh between thumb and forefingers. It feels as if she's got my liver there, drowned for so many years in grease and alcohol and despair, pickled in regret, and she's wringing it out, kneading away the poisons of life.

“Well, it's probably the vitamins,” I say. “I always make sure to take them religiously, every day. Two Es, two Cs, and a multivitamin.”

Her laughter, when it comes, is like a silver bell. “I am not talking about your body now. I am talking about your soul. Do you know what has saved it?”

“No.”

“Love.”

Suddenly I see a picture of Antoinette in my head, so vivid she could be in this room. And I know that she is sick and sad like me and that she will not make it alone.

“Antoinette,” I barely whisper.

“But be careful,” the nun says, a sharp warning in her voice. “Do not confuse the Maker's intent. Order is a divine gift. There are rules. It is only the devil and his legions who live in anarchy. Love must be sanctified by the sacrament of marriage. Love must be of the spirit first and the body second. Remember, the body will fade and grow weary of the earth, while the spirit, properly nourished on love, will rise up free and shining to God.”

At this she raises her hands as if to show me the way, and for a moment they are two white doves in the air. Then she lets them down and bends to kiss me on the forehead. The touch of her lips feels like the petals of a rose. From the place where her hands were pressed, I can feel a curious warmth spreading through my body.

“Now close your eyes,” the nun says.

I close my eyes.

“And sleep.”

I sleep.

W
HEN I
wake up again, the day is sunny and bright beyond the aluminum window, and the sound of the ocean is strong. For some reason, they have taken down the excellent reproduction of Raphael's Madonna and put up
a cheap Sears-style still life of flowers and fruit in a frame that's bolted to the wall.

A doctor and nurse are standing over my bed, an expression of surprise—no, shock—on their faces. The nurse, a large-boned woman with dyed blond hair, wears a white hospital smock and white pants of a cotton-poly blend. On her feet the thick, squeaky-soled white shoes favored by nurses everywhere. The doctor wears his hospital smock over a raucously flowered sports shirt and khakis held up with an expensive-looking woven leather belt. He's a handsome man with chiseled features like a doctor in a soap opera and resembles the popular magician David Copperfield. A small black tag on his chest reads “Morris Abrahamson, M.D.”

“Hey, Doc,” I say. “Where's the Raphael?”

The doctor looks too stunned to reply.

“You took down the Raphael Madonna,” I say, “and put up that sofa-sized thing there.” I gesture toward the Sears painting on the wall. “Excuse me?” Dr. Abrahamson says at last.

“There was a Raphael on the wall, just a while ago …” but I see from his face that I should not go on. This man has other matters on his mind.

“Mr. Conti,” he says, “who took you off life support?”

I look over at the impressive machine with the TV screen, which is silent now, blank.

“And who unplugged you from the glucose and took the breathing apparatus out of your mouth? And who unloosened your restraints?” He points to my wrists, which I flex appreciatively.

“The nun,” I say.

Dr. Abrahamson and the nurse exchange a frightened look.

“What nun?” Dr. Abrahamson says.

“The nun who was in here earlier,” I say patiently. “She works here, right?”

Again the doctor and nurse exchange looks. The nurse steps forward, tentative. “We have no nuns that work here, sir,” she says.

“Is this a Catholic hospital?”

“Well, yes, nominally,” she says. “But really it's like any other hospital. We have doctors and trained nurses. Nuns are a thing of the past.”

“Not this one,” I say, crossing my arms.

“We have no nuns, sir,” she says, a little angry now. “I should know. I'm in charge of the nursing staff. If a nun has somehow infiltrated the hospital and has gone about treating patients, we need to know about it!”

At this Dr. Abrahamson turns to the nurse. “That's O.K., Ms. Kelley. I'll take it from here.”

The nurse flushes, hesitates, then pivots on her squeaky soles and leaves the room. When she is gone, the doctor scratches his chin in the way he's seen doctors do in the movies and walks over to the window, hands clasped behind his back. He's there for a minute, thinking things out and staring down at the beach I have not yet seen. On an impulse I get out of bed and stand behind, looking over his shoulder. The linoleum floor is cold on my bare feet. I'm a little dizzy from lying in bed, but other than that, I feel fine and quite jolly.

Just below, there is a wide and dirty boardwalk littered with scraps of paper and the usual Jersey-type lowlife beach scum. Hooligans on stolen mountain bikes, tattooed rednecks toughing around shirtless, bimbos in bikinis with high-heeled flip-flops and big hair, alongside the usual bewildered octogenarians who can't believe the beach has changed for the worse since the heady days of their youth in the 1920s. Beyond the boardwalk, sand covered with a gray layer of car exhaust dwindles into the sea. A trawler rides the horizon. Closer in, the low-hulled profile of a garbage scow. From somewhere comes the faint rancid smell of frying meat.

“This looks like Far Rockaway,” I say.

Dr. Abrahamson jumps a full three feet to the left and twists around to see me there, grinning. His head bangs against the frame of the flower painting. “Shit! Get back in bed!” he almost yells.

I shrug and get back in bed, where I feel like a mischievous child. I fidget, tap my fingers on the chrome railing to the cadence of “Dixie.”

“You know I'm pretty hungry,” I say. “How about a bacon cheeseburger?”

Dr. Abrahamson has some difficulty regaining his doctorly composure.
At last he comes to sit somberly on the edge of the bed. “If anything, clear liquids,” he says. “Then we'll see. But I think you should continue the glucose for a while until we can determine exactly how you are doing. The nurse is getting another bag.”

“Come on, Doctor,” I say. “A gourmet pizza, with artichoke hearts, basil, and prawns. An omelet with shitake mushrooms and goat cheese. Sushi—Ama-ebi, that buttery raw shrimp, then the deep-fried heads in a bowl. Soft-shell crabs done Thai style with mint and ginger. A T-bone steak. Biscuit tortoni. Bouillabaisse.”

The doctor smiles tightly, but there's a look in his eye that reads “Shut up.”

“Mr. Conti,” he says in a professional tone, “you were brought into this hospital three days ago with a fever of one hundred and six, your skin as yellow as the sunflower in that painting. We checked and found your liver expanded to the size of an eggplant. At that temperature your body was literally burning up from the inside out. We did a blood test and determined that your liver count—that is, the presence of bilirubin in your blood—was sixty-seven hundred. The bilirubin count in a normal human is somewhere around fifty. Accordingly, given those symptoms, I diagnosed you with one of the worst cases of hepatitis that I had ever seen.”

“Hepatitis?”

“Yes. Whether A or B or C or some other strain, we don't know yet. The tests are still out. But that was immaterial at the time, since your body was beginning to shut down. You were frying in your own juices, Mr. Conti. No human being can survive for long with a temperature of one hundred six. Do you understand what I'm saying here?”