“Who did the tattoo?” Jack asked his dad. Some scratcher, Jack expected him to say, but Jack should have known.
“There was a time, Jack, when every religious person in Amsterdam was at least tempted to be tattooed by a man named Jacob Bril. Maybe you were too young to remember him.”
“No, I remember Bril,” Jack said, touching the blood-edged gash in his dad’s side—then drawing his father’s shirt over the wound.
It was a great restaurant, the Kronenhalle. Jack had been foolish to order only a salad, but he ate two thirds of his father’s Wiener schnitzel. William Burns was a finicky eater.
“At least Jack brought his appetite to dinner, William,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe scolded him, but both William and Jack were in a fairly upbeat mood.
They had weathered the word flesh, which turned out to be in the stoppable category of triggers—not in the skin category—and while Jack had seen a third man’s sorrow on his father’s face, he knew that they had also escaped the men’s room without confronting the worst of what mirrors could do to his dad. It was different when William was naked in front of one, or so Dr. von Rohr had said. Jack guessed that was das ganze Pulver—all the ammunition, which Dr. Horvath had spoken of. Jack would get to see it one day, and that day would come soon enough. Tonight in the Kronenhalle, Jack was quite content to wait.
They talked briefly about the younger nurses at the Sanatorium Kilchberg. How they virtually stood in line, or took turns, to shave his dad every morning; how William was such a flirt.
“You don’t shave yourself?” Jack asked him.
“You try it, without a mirror,” his father said. “You should try it with the younger nurses, too, Jack.”
“If you don’t behave yourself, William, I’m going to put Waltraut in charge of shaving you,” Dr. von Rohr told him.
“Just so you don’t put Hugo in charge of it, Ruth,” Jack’s dad said.
That was how William managed to steer their conversation back to Hugo, and the sex-with-prostitutes subject. Dr. von Rohr, in her head-of-department way, was smart enough to see it coming, but she couldn’t prevent it.
“It is chiefly Hugo whom these lovely ladies object to, Jack,” his dad began, “not the prostitutes.” (Sighing from Dr. von Rohr, of course; the head-in-her-hands thing from Dr. Krauer-Poppe.)
“You said prostitutes—plural. You see more than one?” Jack asked his father.
“Not at the same time,” William said with that mischievous little smile of his. (Fork-twirling, spoon-spinning, knife-tapping from Dr. von Rohr’s part of the table—and Dr. Krauer-Poppe had something in her eye again.)
“I’m just curious to know, Pop, if you see the same two or three women—I mean one at a time—or a different prostitute each visit.”
“I have my favorites,” his father said. “There are three or four ladies I keep going back to.”
“You’re faithful in your fashion—is that what you mean, William?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked. “Isn’t there a song that goes like that?” (She’d had more red wine than Dr. von Rohr.) “Or have I got the translation all upfucked?”
“All fucked up, Anna-Elisabeth,” Dr. von Rohr corrected her.
“And it’s safe?” Jack asked his father.
“I don’t have sex with them, if that’s what you mean,” William answered, with that now-familiar tone of indignation in his voice.
“I know. I meant is it safe in every way?” Jack asked. “The place, for example. Is it dangerous?”
“I have Hugo with me!” his dad cried. “I don’t mean in the same room with me, of course.”
“Of course,” Jack said.
The silverware, which Dr. von Rohr had set in motion, came crashing down.
“Wait till you meet Hugo,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told Jack. “Your father is safe with Hugo.”
“Then what is it you object to about him?” Jack asked both doctors.
“Wait till you meet him,” was all Dr. von Rohr would say.
“Don’t pity me, Jack,” his dad said. “Don’t think of me as resigning myself to masturbation with a prostitute. It isn’t an act of resignation.”
“I guess I don’t understand what it is,” Jack admitted.
They all saw William’s right hand reaching for his heart again; once more the fingers of his black-gloved hand inched their way toward that tattoo with the semicolon in it. (He had, with Dr. von Rohr’s assistance, removed the gloves to eat. But now that he’d finished his meal, the gloves were back on.)
“I have had women in my life that I wanted to have—if not for as long as I wish I’d had them,” William began sadly. “I couldn’t do that again. I can’t go through losing someone else.”
The doctors and Jack knew everything about the tattoo William Burns had for Karin Ringhof, and where it was. But Jack didn’t know if his father had a tattoo for Barbara, his German wife—or where it was, if he had it. Maybe that one was in the music; Jack would ask Heather about it.
“I get it, Pop. I understand,” Jack told him.
He wondered if William ever touched his rib cage on the other side, where Jacob Bril had pierced him and made him bleed. Jack wanted to know if that tattoo was ever as tender or sensitive to his father’s touch as the tattoo of the commandant’s daughter and her little brother. He hoped not. Of all his dad’s tattoos, Jacob Bril’s rendition of Christ’s blood was the only one with any color.
“It’s time for us to be going along, William,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told him gently. “What are you going to play for us tomorrow—for Jack and me, and Dr. Horvath?”
It was a good trick, and Jack’s father seemed to be unaware of it. His right hand drifted away from the area of his heart and the upper-left side of his rib cage. He spread the fingers of his black-gloved hands on the white tablecloth—his feet shuffling under his chair, as if he were familiarizing himself with the foot pedals. You could see it in his eyes—there was a keyboard in his mind. There was an organ the size of the Oude Kerk in his heart; when Jack’s dad shut his eyes, he could almost hear it.
“You don’t expect me to hum it for you, do you, Anna-Elisabeth?” William asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. She hadn’t fooled him, after all. In fact, she held her breath—as Jack and Dr. von Rohr did—because they all knew that hum was a possible trigger. As Dr. Berger had warned Jack, his father hated humming. (Although maybe it was the humming itself and not the word he hated.)
“Why not wait and surprise them in the morning, William?” Dr. von Rohr suggested. “I’m just asking.”
“Why not?” Jack’s dad said; he was looking tired.
“I have a little something to make you drowsy in the car,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told William.
Jack’s dad was shaking his head; he was already drowsy. “I’m not going to be happy to say good-bye to Jack,” William said testily. “I’ve said good-bye to you before—too many times, dear boy. I’ve said good-bye to you here,” his father said, the gloved hand touching his heart again, “and here,” he said, pointing to his eyes, “and in here!” William was weeping now, holding his index finger to his temple.