I recall during the flight I began again to talk about the young friend of Grielescu who was murdered in a stall of the men's room.
"You've already told me about him."
"When was that?"
"Not very long ago."
"I don't seem to be able to rid my mind of him. I won't mention him again. But I think I've connected him to Ravelstein, somehow. You see, I didn't like Grielescu but I did find him a funny man, and to Ravelstein this was a cop-out, and it was also characteristic of me. To say he was amusing was to give him a pass. But he was suspect-thought to be in league with killers. I can't seem to get a tight grip on the meat-hook people."
Rosamund tried hard to be attentive. She encouraged me to talk. She was worried sick.
"He died in the middle of the act-easing himself. They shot him at close range. Ravelstein believed that it was one of my typical errors…."
"Was he saying that Grielescu was tied in with murderers?"
"Exactly. He said that I should have known better."
"But this murder took place after Ravelstein died."
"He had made the right call, nevertheless. This famous bookish scholar Grielescu, he was saying, was after all a Nazi." Trying to get me off the Grielescu merry-go-round, Rosamund said, "What common ground did you share?"
"He used to quote me to myself." He had dug up a statement I had made about modern disenchantment. Under the debris of modern ideas the world was still there to be rediscovered. And his way of putting it was that the gray net of abstraction covering the world in order to simplify and explain it in a way that served our _cultural__ ends has become the world in our eyes. We needed to have alternate visions, a diversity of views-and he meant views not bossed by ideas. He saw it as a question of words: "values,"
"life styles,"
"relativism." I agreed, up to a point. We need to know-our deep human need, however, can't be satisfied by these terms. We can't climb out of the pit of "culture" and the "ideas" that supposedly express it. The right words would be a great help. But even more, a gift for reading reality-the impulse to put your loving face to it and press your hands against it.
"But then, from left field, or do I mean right field, Ravelstein urges everyone to read Celine. Well, by all means. Celine was wildly gifted, but he was also a wild lunatic, and before the war he published his Bagatelles pour un massacre. In this pamphlet Celine cried out against and denounced the Jews who had occupied and raped France. To many in France, it was Jewry that was the enemy, not Germany. Hitler-this was in 1937-would liberate France from the Jewish occupation. The English, who were allied with Jewry, plotted with it to destroy _la France__. It had already become a Jewish house of prostitution. _Un lupanar Juif-Bordel de Dieu__. The Dreyfus Case was brought back again. The authorities received millions of poison-pen letters from anti-Dreyfusard Jew-haters. I agreed with Ravelstein that Celine wouldn't pretend that he took no part in Hitler's Final Solution. Nor would I trade the short-stop Grielescu for the right-fielder Celine. When you put it in baseball lingo you can see how insane it was."
Rosamund was humoring me. I had never been quite so sick as this. And it never occurred to me that I was sick. Unwell, yes; it was obvious that I was out of order. But I had lived long enough to be able to say that I was not dying but ailing. A reactionary secret society might determine that the time had come for you to die-a camarilla of your countrymen voted that you must be assassinated. And so a study was made of your program. This would be described as political but in fact it was the will to viciousness. An erratic playboy scholar who had regular habits sat down to attend to a natural necessity-the daily thing-and was shot by an assassin in the next cubicle and died in an instant.
Rosamund was all for going from the airport direct to the hospital.
But I insisted on heading for home. Once in bed I'd be okay. Of course, I couldn't see myself. I was past knowing how high my fever was-bent on showing how perfectly well I was. Rosamund gave in and stacked our bags and boxes into the trunk of the cab. At the other end of the ride it was obviously out of the question to haul the luggage upstairs after the fare was paid, and the driver, seeing trouble, took his money and rushed away. Our trouble was obvious to him, but not to me. I crept upstairs and got into bed.
"Glad to leave that vile isle," I said to Rosamund. "Can it still be the same day? Is it about twelve? We took off at dawn. 'The hand of time is on the prick of noon,' as Mercutio said-one of Ravelstein's favorite lines from Shakespeare."
Under my blankets feeling safe and well, I told Rosamund that a good sleep was all I needed. But it was early afternoon-not bed time. Rosamund couldn't agree that sleep was the answer. By some faculty invisible to me she recognized that I was in desperate trouble. "You would have died in your sleep," she later said, and she went on trying to reach the doctors. "Thanksgiving is a family day-it's playtime, golf-time."
Rosamund kept herself in good shape. She meditated, she at tended yoga classes. She could touch her temple with her toe. But she had overstrained herself with the luggage from Saint Martin. She managed somehow to drag it up the stairs to the apartment on the third floor. You'd never have thought that she had the muscle for it.
It was easier to do this, she said, than to get help from the hospital. None of her calls were answered. On holidays, when the doctors are off, the residents are supposed to cover for them. "Well, it isn't as urgent as you think," I said. "You can talk to the doctors tomorrow." But it was clear to Rosamund that I didn't know what I was saying. If I had stayed on in Saint Martin I should have died before morning. If I had missed the connecting flight from Puerto Rico I would have died in San Juan. And if I had had my way about a good night's sleep in my own bed I'd have been a goner. Rosamund said that without oxygen I couldn't have survived the night.
As the sun went down, the crows were sounding their klaxons. Here they have become city birds. Some French poet had called them _les corbeaux delicieux__-but who? I doubt that even Ravelstein would have known. My mind could no longer follow itself. But I was certain that my pillows and quilt would save me.
But Rosamund had reached her father in upstate New York by phone. "Think who is the most influential person you can reach," he told her. "Ask for his help."
In my address book Rosamund luckily found the home number of Dr. Starling, the man who had brought us to Boston. When she told him what was happening, he said, "Within ten minutes you will hear from Andras, the hospital director. Keep your line clear." Very soon Dr. Andras, a very old man, was questioning Rosamund about my symptoms; then he said he was sending an ambulance to bring me in. Rosamund told him that in the Caribbean I had re fused to get into the ambulance. The old director asked if he could talk to me about this? Well, yes, I told him I was comfortable where I was, in my own bed, but to please my wife I would agree to be examined by the doctors. But I wouldn't be carried out on a stretcher. Foolishly negotiating, I agreed to be a passenger.
"Done!" said Dr. Andras. "We need you here right away."
So sitting next to the driver I was taken by the ambulance with lights twirling and throaty siren sobs to the emergency room. There I was wheeled on a gurney into a corner where I was examined by several doctors. I have no coherent knowledge of what followed. I mainly remember that I was immediately put on oxygen. This was followed by an extended delay. Some said I should go immediately to cardiac intensive care. Others thought that breathing was the problem. The nurse put an oxygen mask over my face, which I kept pushing away. Rosamund was there to look after me. She said, "You've got to have the oxygen, Chick, and I don't want them to tie your hands."