“Bis morgen!” he called to her. Then he went into the hotel and called his sister.
On the little pad of paper for messages—on the night table, next to the telephone—Jack recognized his handwriting in the morning.
Cipralex, 10 mg
(Lexapro in the States?)
Ask Dr. García
What had Professor Ritter said? “Your father has suffered losses.” The losses alone were enough to make anyone feel cold; maybe William’s tattoos had nothing to do with it.
The conversation with Heather had gone well; even though Jack woke her up, she was happy that he called.
“Well, I finally met him. It took long enough! I’ve been with him for several hours,” Jack began. “Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe and I took him out to dinner at the Kronenhalle. I met Hugo, of course—and all the others.”
“Just say it!” his sister yelled.
“I love him,” he told her quickly.
“That’s all you have to say, Jack,” she said; she started to cry.
“I love him and every inch of his skin,” Jack told her.
“My God—you didn’t say the word skin, did you?” she asked him.
“In the context of telling him I loved him, I got away with it,” Jack said. “He thought I had balls for saying it.”
“I’ll say you have balls!” Heather cried.
“There were just a few episodes—nothing too terrible,” he explained.
“There will always be episodes, Jack. I don’t need to hear about them.”
“Are you okay about the prostitutes?” he asked her.
“Are you okay about them, Jack?”
Jack told her that he was, all things considered. “He can’t get in trouble if Hugo’s with him,” was how he put it.
They talked about whether or not Jack should tell Miss Wurtz about the prostitutes. Jack was eager to call Caroline and tell her everything. (“Maybe not everything, Jack,” Heather had cautioned him. “Maybe save the prostitutes for a later conversation?”)
They asked themselves if Hugo—having lost part of one ear to a dog in a nightclub—could have conceivably done anything more preposterous than dangle a gold earring from his remaining earlobe. “Do you think Hugo wants to draw attention to the earlobe the dog bit off?” Heather asked Jack.
“He could have put the earring in the top part of the damaged ear, and not worn anything in the good one,” Jack suggested.
Heather wondered if Jack might meet the particular prostitutes their dad was in the habit of visiting—that is, if Hugo would introduce him. “Just to see if they’re nice, and to ask them to be nice to him,” Jack’s sister said.
“He has very little privacy as it is,” Jack said. They agreed that you have to give the people you love a little privacy, even if you’re afraid for their lives.
“Don’t you love them all?” she asked him. “I mean his doctors—even Professor Ritter.”
“Ah, well …” Jack started to say. “Of course I do!” he told her.
“Will you call me every day?” his sister asked.
“Of course I will! If I forget, you can call me collect,” he said.
She was crying again. “I think you’ve bought me, Jack. I’ve completely sold myself to you!” she cried.
“I love you, Heather.”
“I love you and every inch of your skin,” she said.
Jack told Heather how their dad had thrown a tantrum over how expensive Zurich was, and that the issue of his children buying a house there had struck him as crazy. (This objection from a man who had no idea how expensive the Sanatorium Kilchberg was—or that the money had run out to pay for his care, which was why Heather had contacted Jack in the first place!)
Jack and his sister also talked about mundane things—those things Jack had imagined he would never talk to anyone about. The specific details of the house they were going to share in Zurich, for example: the number of rooms they needed; how many bathrooms, for Christ’s sake. (Exactly as William would have said it.)
It seemed too obvious to put into words, but Jack realized that when you’re happy—especially when it’s the first time in your life—you think of things that would never have occurred to you when you were unhappy.
What a morning it was! First the light streaming into his room at the Storchen, then having coffee and a little breakfast in the café on the Limmat. Simple things had never seemed so complex, or was it the other way around? Jack was as powerless to stop what would happen next as he had been that fateful day William Burns impregnated Alice Stronach.
And standing in front of the Hotel zum Storchen—on the same cobblestones where Jack had stood when he’d called, “Bis morgen!” to her, in the Weinplatz—was that supermodel of medication, Dr. Anna-Elisabeth Krauer-Poppe. Once again, she was wearing something smashing; Jack could understand why she wore the lab coat in Kilchberg, just to tone herself down.
They walked uphill on the tiny streets to St. Peter; one day he would know the names of these streets by heart, Jack was thinking. Schlüsselgasse, opposite the Veltliner Keller, and Weggengasse—he would hear them in his head, like music.
“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked him. She was nice about it, when she saw that he couldn’t speak. “St. Peter has the largest clock in Europe—a four-sided clock on its tower,” she told him, making small talk as they walked. “Would you like a tissue?” she asked, reaching into her purse. Jack shook his head.
The sun would dry the tears on his face, he wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come. Jack kept clearing his throat.
By the blue-gray church, there was a small, paved square with lots of trees; there were plants in the window boxes of the surrounding shops and houses. Some construction workers were renovating what looked like an apartment building. The building was across the square from the church, and the workers were standing on the scaffolding—working away. A hammer was banging; two men were doing something complicated with a flexible saw. A fourth man was fitting pipes—to build more scaffolding, probably.
It was the pipefitter who first spotted Dr. Krauer-Poppe and waved to her. The three other workers turned to look at her; two of them applauded, one whistled.
“I guess they know you,” Jack said to Anna-Elisabeth, relieved that he had found his voice. “Or are they just like construction workers everywhere?”
“You’ll see,” she told him. “These workers are a little different.”
It seemed strange that there were people going into the church and it was not yet eight on a weekday morning. Was there some kind of mass? Jack asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. No, the Kirche St. Peter was a Protestant church, she assured him. There was no mass—only a service every Sunday.
“We can’t keep them away,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “St. Peter is open to the public.”
More people were walking up the broad, flat stairs to the church; they looked like locals, not tourists. Jack saw men in business suits, like the banker his dad had surprised in the men’s room at the Kronenhalle; he saw women with young children, and whole families. There were even teenagers.
“They all come to hear him play?” Jack asked Anna-Elisabeth.
“How can we stop them?” she asked. “Isn’t it what sells books and movies? What you call word of mouth, I think.”