“There is.”
I left him there, without even a goodbye. I didn’t care if he was right or wrong, but I knew my only chance was to reject his advice, to believe that fate can, indeed, be changed.
My plan was quite simple: if I could change my own future, I could change Iván’s. Somehow. Because I couldn’t believe that fate was already written.
It was a test. On my shift I did rounds every fifteen minutes to catch anything serious that might happen. We usually didn’t have critical-surgery patients; I was sure that if one of them crashed, there would be enough time to notice.
A few of them indeed had serious conditions, an old woman crashed in the corridor, but I was close by. A month passed, then another, and I became doubtful. What if the danger has already passed? What if the old woman who crashed was the one I had to save? Had I changed the future or not?
Sometimes I thought I could relax, but then came distress again; I didn’t dare break my new habit for fear it would be the hour of the augured death. I began to understand what it was like to be my father: knowing and yet not knowing, waiting for something unclear with the certainty of the threat breathing down his neck.
I knew nothing about Iván’s death, only the approximate time. I imagined him run over by a car, shot by a madman, having a heart attack despite his age, or getting sick from the Indian tap water. Oh my God, he commits suicide because…
Because I left him.
No, I told myself, and again: no, no, no, but the thought had already stabbed its hooks into me.
One evening was especially depressing. The sickly yellowish light of the nurses’ room painted the walls, and the clock ticked. I was alone, and suddenly fear seized me because, in that moment, I was sure Iván would die because of me.
“It’s late,” said my father when he picked up the phone.
“How will he die?”
“Who?”
“You know who! Iván.”
His sigh felt close.
“Judit, don’t torment yourself with this! Won’t you come over and talk? It would be easier to accept—”
“How will he die?”
“I’d rather not say.”
Rage burst out of me.
“Because you are a coward! I don’t believe this! You have your gift and just sweep it under the carpet? I don’t think so! The world doesn’t work like that. It’s your choice not to do anything, but don’t expect the same from me. I am not like you!”
“You make it more difficult than—”
“So what? It’s my life! Even if you behaved like a proper father, my life wouldn’t be yours to decide what I should do with it. Oh, fuck, I don’t believe this! Now you want to protect me?”
Chilly silence. I had to press my hand against my forehead to cool my feverish brow. I could have said more: obscenities, accusations, suppressed hatred burnt my tongue and I bit my lips to hold it all back. I knew what I’d already said was more than enough.
“He will be hit by a branch,” said my father at last, and he put down the phone.
“That’s it?” I shouted, but the line was dead.
I sat with my cell phone in my lap. It tired me to move and when I finally stood, my knees trembled. I went out to check on my wards.
The corridor shone coldly as the night lighting reflected off the tiles. I had got my answer from my father and yet I felt empty. When I looked into the third ward I froze. I saw a patient with a pillow in her hands leaning over another patient, but the sight seemed abstract.
I don’t remember moving.
I tore the pillow from the wizened old hands. She scratched my arm. “She wanted to kill me!” the old woman shrieked. “I saw it in her eyes, I knew it… she wanted to steal my money this afternoon; I had to hide it under my pillow.”
I leant towards the dying woman’s mouth—it was parched and smelt of age—but I was too late. I already knew it. I started CPR for I had to try. Only afterwards did I grab the old woman’s trembling arm. She babbled on.
“She waited for me to fall asleep. As soon as I was asleep, she tried to take my money! I saw her hand! I wanted to make her sleep.” She started to cry then. “I just wanted to make her sleep…”
The other two patients’ eyes glistened in the darkness. Only for their sake did I refrain from hitting the old woman. I wanted to hurt her not because she was demented and had killed her bed neighbour, but because she had fulfilled the prophecy I wanted to thwart.
“You come with me!” I shouted in her face. I pulled her out of the ward as if I were a jailer. I had to report the incident. She was crying, but I didn’t look at her.
My eyes were dry.
I tried to warn him. I called him in New Delhi. He immediately picked up the phone as if he was waiting for the call.
“Judit?” His voice was so eager and happy that it was hard to believe we hadn’t seen each other for five months. How could one e-mail a week be enough? “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I missed your voice.” As soon as I said it, I knew that was the real reason, not the warning. My whole body ached from missing him, and his absence smothered me.
“I missed yours, too.” He paused.
“Listen to me!” I began. “If there is a storm…don’t go for a walk, especially not under trees! And always watch for woodcutters thinning the branches. Take care…”
“What?” He laughed.
“I’m not joking. Take care with those trees!”
He didn’t understand. I sputtered the warning again but I feared he didn’t comprehend my words. He didn’t believe me.
“Promise me!” I demanded.
“I do,” he said, still laughing. “Okay. And what about you? Tell me, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said, not wanting to chat. “Do you promise me?”
“Yes! I will be careful with the trees.”
“Good. Bye!”
I put down the phone. A cigarette was already in my mouth. I couldn’t remember taking it out.
Iván’s voice had told me that he hadn’t understood. He wouldn’t keep his promise. Silliness, he would say, and even if he watched the trees on the first day he would realise it was pointless and forget about the stupid request. He would live like he did, walk under trees and, if he remembered his promise at all, he would only smile. Silly, pet, he would say fondly, and for a moment he would feel my face in his palm. That was all.
I wrote a letter to him, but it was already too late to start explaining my father’s prophecies to him. Would I believe them if I hadn’t been born into the family of an oracle?
My father wanted to ask for my forgiveness, at least that was what I deduced from the text messages that urged me to visit him. When he tried to call me, I didn’t pick up. I deleted his e-mails—so he only wanted to talk, well, I didn’t care. Maybe he was not the one who would kill Iván, but he knew about his death and not only stepped aside but wanted to pull me aside, as well.
“Your father called,” said Mum one day when I visited her. She didn’t look up from the stove. “He wants to talk to you.”
They hadn’t spoken to each other for a long time now. When communication was absolutely unavoidable, they sent messages through me. They didn’t hate each other; I think my father was afraid of my mother who, in turn, looked through him.
“My fault,” I said. “He has been trying to reach me for a month now. Sorry.”
“He didn’t tell me anything else.” Based on her voice I assumed she was smiling sarcastically. “He just asked me to tell you—visit him by all means—then said goodbye. I think he doesn’t really know how to treat me. Will you put the cloth on the table?”