“Thank you,” Johnny said. He felt a sudden wave of affection for this man with the accent and the strange haircut. He wanted to do something for Weizak in return-and with that feeling came the urge, almost the need, to touch him.
He reached out suddenly and took Weizak's hand in both of his own. The doctor's hand was big, deeply lined, warm.
“Yes?” Weizak said kindly. “And what is this?”
And suddenly things changed. It was impossible to say how. Except that suddenly Weizak seemed very clear to him. Weizak seemed to… to stand forth, outlined in a lovely, clear light. Every mark and mole and line on Weizak's face stood in relief. And every line told its own story. He began to understand.
“I want your wallet,” Johnny said.
“My…?” Weizak and Brown exchanged a startled glance.
“There's a picture of your mother in your wallet and I need to have it,” Johnny said. “Please.”
“How did you know that?”
“Please!”
Weizak looked into Johnny's face for a moment, and then slowly dug under his smock and produced an old Lord Buxton, bulgy and out of shape.
“How did you know I carry a picture of my mother? She is dead, she died when the Nazis occupied Warsaw…
Johnny snatched the wallet from Weizak's hand. Both he and Brown looked stunned. Johnny opened it, dismissed the plastic picture-pockets, and dug in the back instead, his fingers hurrying past old business cards, receipted bills, a canceled check, an old ticket to some political function. He came up with a small snapshot that had been laminated in plastic. The picture showed a young woman, her features plain, her hair drawn back under a kerchief. Her smile was radiant and youthful. She held the hand of a young boy. Beside her was a man in the uniform of the Polish army.
Johnny pressed the picture between his hands and closed his eyes and for a moment there was darkness and then rushing out of the darkness came a wagon… no, not a wagon, a hearse. A horse-drawn hearse. The lamps had been muffled in black sacking. Of course it was a hearse because they were
(dying by the hundreds, yes, by the thousands, no match for the panzers, the wehrmacht, nineteenth-century cavalry against the tanks and machine guns. explosions. screaming, dying men. a horse with its guts blown out and its eyes rolling wildly, showing the white, an overturned cannon behind it and still they come. weizak comes, standing in his stirrups, his sword held high in the slanting rain of late summer 1939, his men following him, stumbling through the mud. the turret gun of the nazi tiger tank tracks him, braces him, brackets him, fires, and suddenly he is gone below the waist, the sword flying out of his hand; and down the road is warsaw. the nazi wolf is loose in europe)
“Really, we have to put a stop to this,” Brown said, his voice faraway and worried. “You're overexciting yourself, Johnny.”
The voices came from far away, from a hallway in time.
“He's put himself in some kind of trance,” Weizak said. Hot in here. He was sweating. He was sweating because
(the city's on fire, thousands are fleeing, a truck is roaring from side to side down a cobbled street, and the back of the truck is full of waving German soldiers in coal-scuttle helmets and the young woman is not smiling now, she is fleeing, no reason not to flee. the child has been sent away to safety and now the truck jumps the curb, the mudguard strikes her, shattering her hip and sending her flying through a plate glass window and into a clock shop and everything begins to chime. chime because of the time. the chime time is)
“Six o'clock,” Johnny said thickly. His eyes had rolled up to straining, bulging whites. “September 2, 1939, and all the cuckoo birds are singing.”
“Oh my God, what is it we have?” Weizak whispered. The nurse had backed up against the EEG console, her face pale and scared. Everyone is scared now because death is in the air. It's always in the air in this place, this
(hospital. smell of ether. they're screaming in the place of death. poland is dead, poland has fallen before the lightning warfare wehrmacht blitzkreig. shattered hip. the man in the next bed calling for water, calling, calling, calling. she remembers “THE BOY IS SAFE. “what boy? she doesn't know. what boy? what is her name. she doesn't remember. only that)
“The boy is safe,” Johnny said thickly. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
“We have to put a stop to this,” Brown repeated.
“How do you suggest we do that?” Weizak asked, his voice brittle. “It has gone too far to…
Voices fading. The voices are under the clouds. Everything is under the clouds. Europe is under the clouds of war. Everything is under the clouds but the peaks, the mountain peaks of
(switzerland. switzerland and now her name is BORENTZ. her name is JOHANNA BORENTZ and her husband is an engineer or an architect, whichever it is that builds the bridges. he builds in switzerland and there is goat's milk, goat's cheese. a baby. ooooh the labor! the labor is terrible and she needs drugs, morphine, this JOHANNA BORENTZ, because of the hip. the broken hip. it has mended, it has gone to sleep, but now it awakes and begins to scream as her pelvis spreads to let the baby out, one baby. two. and three. and four. they don't come all at once, no-they are a harvest of years, they are)
“The babies,” Johnny lilted, and now he spoke in a woman's voice, not his own voice at all. It was the voice of a woman. Then gibberish in song came from his mouth.
“What in the name of God… “Brown began.
“Polish, it is Polish!” Weizak cried. His eyes were bulging, his face pale. “It is a cradle song and it is in Polish, my God, my Christ, what is it we have here?”
Weizak leaned forward as if to cross the years with Johnny, as if to leap them, as if to
(bridge, a bridge, it's in turkey. then a bridge somewhere hot in the far east, is it Laos? can't tell, lost a man there, we lost HANS there, then a bridge in virginia, a bridge over the RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER and another bridge in california. we are applying for citizenship now and we go to classes in a hot little room in the back of a post-office where it always smells of glue. it is 1963, november, and when we hear kennedy has been killed in dallas we weep and when the little boy salutes his dead father's coffin she thinks “THE BOY IS SAFE” and it brings back memories of some burning, some great burning and sorrow, what boy? she dreams about the boy, it makes her head hurt. and the man dies, HELMUT BORENTZ dies and she and the children live in carmel california. in a house on. on. on. can't see the street sign, it's in the dead zone, like the rowboat, like the picnic table on the lawn. it's in the dead zone. like warsaw. the children go away, she goes to their graduation ceremonies one by one, and her hip hurts. one dies in vietnam. the rest of them are fine. one of them is building bridges. her name is JOHANNA BORENTZ and late at night alone now she sometimes thinks in the ticking darkness: “THE BOY IS SAFE. “)
Johnny looked up at them. His head felt strange. That peculiar light around Weizak had gone. He felt like himself again, but weak and a little pukey. He looked at the picture in his hands for a moment and then handed it back.
“Johnny?” Brown said. “Are you all right?”
“Tired,” he muttered.
“Can you tell us what happened to you?”
He looked at Weizak. “Your mother is alive,” he said.
“No, Johnny. She died many years ago. In the war.”
“A German trooptruck knocked her through a plate-glass show window and into a dock shop,” Johnny said. “She woke up in a hospital with amnesia. She had no identification, no papers. She took the name Johanna somebody. I didn't get that, but when the war was over she went to Switzerland and married a Swiss… engineer, I think. His specialty was building bridges, and his name was Helmut Borentz. So her married name was-is -Johanna Borentz.”