It would be a miracle if, in two or three months, the Polish woman changed demonstrably, because people don't often change, and, if they do, it's in small ways, unless they've undergone a trauma, watched an accident when they were old enough to remember but not comprehend; no one will ever entirely comprehend specific events or irrational acts that forever remain outside human comprehension, though human beings committed them, or witnessed their father murder their mother or their sister or brother die, unable to help, in a fall, or saw a house burn infernally to the ground, hearing terrible screams inside. My father told me that men never change, that women should never expect to change men, though they do, and that my mother was angry because she could never change him, or that is what I surmised, because he didn't say that was why my mother was angry; he said, Never expect to change a man, don't be the omnipotent female, your mother always tried to change me, but she couldn't. I wouldn't think that was entirely true, anyway, that was why she was angry, I don't know all the reasons why my mother was angry: her older sister was prettier; she was a middle child, forgotten; her father was in the Austrian army and he kept his treasures in a small box and she never saw them; she didn't ever have a birthday party as a child; and her husband, my father, was a vain, lively, sometimes cold man, whom everyone liked better than her. But she is not angry now. My mother is old, her brain is damaged from a condition whose cause is unknown for which she has had seven operations, or procedures, and though she is remarkably strong, resilient, capable of falling and not breaking a bone, her mind and body slowly deteriorate. She takes a variety of medicines, to which she has never been opposed, though like many people her age and younger, she is distrustful of pills, but unlike many, she favors doctors, especially if they are men with whom she can flirt. She should've been a medical doctor, it might have brought her the contentment that my father couldn't; she diagnoses herself and others freely and well, noticing symptoms early and astutely, calling them by their medical names, never flummoxed by the onset of a physical problem and ever practical about it, interested clinically, and calm, when about most other things she is not.
The disconsolate young woman, often listless and withdrawn, fearful of exposure, hiding more than her anorexia, a flamboyant symptom, is careful and circumspect, but she and the tall balding man have been flirting ever since he arrived. The staff discourages such behavior but it is not forbidden, while the staff may not become romantically engaged or fornicate with residents, though it's happened once or twice I'm told. The tall man, a formidable systems analyst, is a striking if severe figure, and his baldness is only male pattern baldness, often he wears a baseball cap to cover it; but on some days he takes it off and displays his scalp. It is not Alopecia areata, which, in the male, shows itself in the late twenties or early thirties, and is characterized by a rapid, complete loss of hair, first in patches, usually on the scalp, the bearded area, then the eyebrows and eyelashes, and, rarely, the other hairy areas of the body. With some, there is a total loss of scalp hair, which is called Alopecia totalis. When it's lost over the whole body, it's Alopecia universalis. It was first described twenty centuries ago by Celsus, but its cause is still unknown, though emotional stress is most frequently mentioned. But even impacted wisdom teeth might have an effect. My dermatologist explained that it could have been incurred first by trichotillomania, a psychiatric disorder which shows itself mostly in children, when the parent might notice sizable, persistently bald patches on the scalp, or in the female adolescent, when she plucks her hair, strand by strand, and that could incite Alopecia, but generally it's not the case. The appearance of the neurosis, trichotillomania and also trichokypto- mania, in which hairs are broken off instead of torn out, has increased since the advent of TV, he said, about which interpretation I wanted to ask more, but he's a busy man. There is usually a characteristic motherdaughter relationship disturbance, with various borderline psychoses, and many sufferers require psychiatric help. But the tall man's is only male pattern baldness, and few residents have noticed the two, except Contesa and myself, though neither of us expected a serious involvement, which was, in a sense, manifested this morning, but we'd observed that the two watched each other for signs of interest and flirted harmlessly, which is often how brief libidinal investments are characterized. The young woman may believe she can change, even transform, him, so that his poor shoulders straighten and that she might rest her head on them, or that she will lift his spirits in other ways, compel him to shed his carapace and grow a new one. I see them mostly at a distance, though sometimes I have moved nearer, to hear what they say. He fences, a parry and thrust dialogist, while she picks words slowly, as she does food, pushing most aside, hoping to hit upon the best one, to please her sense of truth or her companion's sensibility.
— The worst thing is it's not over yet-we're not safe, the disconsolate woman says haltingly.
— Safety's everyone's Maginot Line, the tall balding man teases.
— What's the marginal line? she asks.
The disconsolate woman tenses, reddens.
— Mag-i-not. Maginot Line. In World War I, the French expected the German army couldn't attack across its border. Couldn't penetrate it, but they did. Voila.
— There's no safety then, she says.
— Here?
Here, strangers are thrust together, intimately, eating two meals together, whose intake betrays them, and, as I eavesdrop on their conversations at breakfast, still drowsy and inside a dream, like one about Saint Bartholomew, of whom I knew nothing, preaching inside a Gothic church, until I looked up his name, which turned out to be my father's in Hebrew, I am wary that my day might get off to a bad start and proceed badly, so I try to be careful about what I swallow and absorb. Living with unfamiliar persons who will never be more than relative strangers, whom I awaken at night by going to the bathroom and flushing the toilet, since I usually get up twice in the night, I can have fitful dreams. I have dreamed of tiny mice, who, though adorable, are nuisances and must be destroyed, I have watched them die slowly and in agony on glue traps, which I chose rather than traps that beheaded them, because I thought it more humane, but when I watched the mouse squirm with pain, I realized it wasn't, or, if Contesa has again spoken of Kafka and Felice and showed me their pictures not long before I go to bed, I dream about them, who are strangers to me, as is Contesa, relatively. She believes she knows Kafka, especially through his letters to Felice, though she can't know Felice that way, her letters to Kafka aren't extant, but still it is by her faith in their intellectual and spiritual connection that they invade my unconscious world. Felice's pleasant, homely face was oily and dry in patches, even scaly, and around her nostrils an irritated aureole of pimples the size of pinpricks. She broke out in welts, red hives on her hack and thighs, just as she was about to meet Kafka, who looked like the tall balding man, but was wearing a frayed black business suit. Felice, like the disconsolate woman, but much stouter, stood at the door to the cafe discreetly, rubbing her thigh. Suddenly she was terribly skinny, suddenly, and her digestion was poor, so there was a terrible smell coming from her mouth, like the breath of the demanding man, she wasn't a vegetarian like Kafka, and horrified she ran away and fell down. She tore the skin on her leg, and the ragged wound bled furiously, so in my dream I became dizzy and nauseated. Her skin inadequately protected her, it now flaked like snow on her cheeks, as dry as mine. But skin is the agent of the body that protects its other organs, by covering them, and by being an information station that allows the other organs, my doctor explained patiently, to adjust to changes in the outer environment. My condition, dermatographia or dermatographism, skin writing, is not life-threatening, but because of it my skin tingles, pulses, and itches, and if I were to stroke my arm with a fingernail, white lines would surface and be visible for at least fifteen minutes, as my skin releases histamines, which produce swelling, and this occurs in about ten percent of the population, but the swelling is not a hive, since in dermatographia only raised lines surface, which resemble writing on the skin. My dermatologist says friends could leave messages on my hack, but they'd fade quickly. The skin is a harrier against dehydration; it can lower body temperature by the increased evaporation of sweat; it synthesizes keratin, a flexible, durable, and resistant protein. Keratin is available in some shampoos, but it is likely not helpful, since my dermatologist has often remarked that expensive skin products do little or nothing, that people, women especially but also men, are fooled regularly, though now there is surgery to correct the aging body that produces quick, sometimes disastrous results. If even the skin fails, then much worse can be expected to follow. The skin reveals and encloses, too, its failings are revelatory, failure is more revelatory than success. Contesa believes that Kafka despaired and reveled in writing's failures, its fundamental inadequacy to the experience of life, that he was stern with himself but failure for him was expected, since it was true and exigent. In my dream of a severe Berlin winter, even the skin around Felice's fingernails cracked and bled. I believe Contesa is writing something, but she doesn't talk about it, and here silence and circumspection are honored, when in the outside world, they usually aren't, since people want to find out what may help or harm them.