“Okay, I guess.”
Josie takes his pulse and asks, “Did Mr. Gregory stop in to say hello last night?”
“Yes,” Stephen says. “He’s teaching me how to play gin rummy. What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s very sick.”
“I can see that; has he got cancer?”
“I don’t know,” says Josie as she tidies up his night table.
“You’re lying again,” Stephen says, but she ignores him. After a time, he says, “His girlfriend was in to see me last night, I bet his wife will be in today.”
“Shut your mouth about that,” Josie says. “Let’s get you out of that bed, so I can change the sheets.”
Stephen sits in the chair all morning. He is getting well but is still very weak. Just before lunchtime, the orderly wheels his cart into the room and asks Stephen if he would like to replace the print hanging on the wall.
“I’ve seen them all,” Stephen says. “I’ll keep the one I have.” Stephen does not grow tired of the Van Gogh painting; sometimes, the crows seem to have changed position.
“Maybe you’ll like this one,” the orderly says as he pulls out a cardboard print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It is a study of a village nestled in the hills, dressed in shadows. But everything seems to be boiling and writhing as in a fever dream. A cypress tree in the foreground looks like a black flame, and the vertiginous sky is filled with great, blurry stars. It is a drunkard’s dream. The orderly smiles.
“So you did have it,” Stephen says.
“No, I traded some other pictures for it. They had a copy in the West Wing.”
Stephen watches him hang it, thanks him, and waits for him to leave. Then he gets up and examines the painting carefully. He touches the raised facsimile brushstrokes, and turns toward Josie, feeling an odd sensation in his groin. He looks at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She has an overly full mouth, which curves downward at the corners when she smiles. She is not a pretty woman—too fat, he thinks.
“Dance with me,” he says, as he waves his arms and takes a step forward, conscious of the pain in his stomach.
“You’re too sick to be dancing just yet,” but she laughs at him and bends her knees in a mock plié.
She has small breasts for such a large woman, Stephen thinks. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he takes a step toward the bed. He feels himself slip to the floor, feels Josie’s hair brushing against his face, dreams that he’s all wet from her tongue, feels her arms around him, squeezing, then feels the weight of her body pressing down on him, crushing him….
He wakes up in bed, catheterized. He has an intravenous needle in his left wrist, and it is difficult to swallow, for he has a tube down his throat.
He groans, tries to move.
“Quiet, Stephen,” Josie says, stroking his hand.
“What happened?” he mumbles. He can only remember being dizzy.
“You’ve had a slight setback, so just rest. The doctor had to collapse your lung; you must lie very still.”
“Josie, I love you,” he whispers, but he is too far away to be heard. He wonders how many hours or days have passed. He looks toward the window. It is dark, and there is no one in the room.
He presses the buzzer attached to his pillow and remembers a dream….
“You must fight,” Viktor said.
It was dark, all the other men were asleep, and the barrack was filled with snoring and snorting. Stephen wished they could all die, choke on their own breath. It would be an act of mercy.
“Why fight?” Stephen asked, and he pointed toward the greasy window, beyond which were the ovens that smoked day and night. He made a fluttering gesture with his hand—smoke rising.
“You must fight, you must live; living is everything. It is the only thing that makes sense here.”
“We’re all going to die, anyway,” Stephen whispered. “Just like your sister… and my wife.”
“No, Sholom, we’re going to live. The others may die, but we’re going to live. You must believe that.”
Stephen understood that Viktor was desperately trying to convince himself to live. He felt sorry for Viktor; there could be no sensible rationale for living in a place like this. Everything must die here.
Stephen grinned, tasted blood from the corner of his mouth, and said, “So we’ll live through the night, maybe.”
And maybe tomorrow, he thought. He would play the game of survival a little longer.
He wondered if Viktor would be alive tomorrow. He smiled and thought, If Viktor dies, then I will have to take his place and convince others to live. For an instant, he hoped Viktor would die so that he could take his place.
The alarm sounded. It was three o’clock in the morning, time to begin the day.
This morning, Stephen was on his feet before the guards could unlock the door.
“Wake up,” Josie says, gently tapping his arm. “Come on now, wake up.”
Stephen hears her voice as an echo. He imagines that he has been flung into a long tunnel; he hears air whistling in his ears but cannot see anything.
“Whassimatter?” he asks. His mouth feels as if it is stuffed with cotton; his lips are dry and cracked. He is suddenly angry at Josie and the plastic tubes that hold him in his bed as if he were a latter-day Gulliver. He wants to pull out the tubes, smash the bags filled with saline, tear away his bandages.
“You were speaking German,” Josie says. “Did you know that?”
“Can I have some ice?”
“No,” Josie says impatiently. “You spilled again, you’re all wet.”
“…for my mouth, dry….”
“Do you remember speaking German, honey, I have to know.”
“Don’t remember, bring ice, I’ll try to think about it.”
As Josie leaves to get him some ice, he tries to remember his dream.
“Here now, just suck on the ice.” She gives him a little hill of crushed ice on the end of a spoon.
“Why did you wake me up, Josie?” The layers of dream are beginning to slough off. As the Demerol works out of his system, he has to concentrate on fighting the burning ache in his stomach.
“You were speaking German. Where did you learn to speak like that?”
Stephen tries to remember what he said. He cannot speak any German, only a bit of classroom French. He looks down at his legs (he has thrown off the sheet) and notices, for the first time, that his legs are as thin as his arms. “My God, Josie, how could I have lost so much weight?”
“You lost about forty pounds, but don’t worry, you’ll gain it all back. You’re on the road to recovery now. Please, try to remember your dream.”
“I can’t, Josie! I just can’t seem to get ahold of it.”
“Try.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“You weren’t speaking college German, darling, you were speaking slang. You spoke in a patois that I haven’t heard since the forties.”
Stephen feels a chill slowly creep up his spine. “What did I say?”
Josie waits a beat, then says, “You talked about dying.”
“Josie?”
“Yes,” she says, pulling at her fingernail.
“When is the pain going to stop?”
“It will be over soon.” She gives him another spoonful of ice. “You kept repeating the name Viktor in your sleep. Can you remember anything about him?”
Viktor, Viktor, deep-set blue eyes, balding head and broken nose, called himself a Galitzianer. Saved my life. “I remember,” Stephen says. “His name is Viktor Shmone. He is in all my dreams now.”
Josie exhales sharply.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Stephen asks anxiously.