“Surely they are avoidable,” Professor Ritter said to her.
“The one in the men’s room isn’t!” Dr. Horvath said.
“Who’s going to go with them?” Dr. Berger asked. “I can’t—not this evening.”
“I can go,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “I had a date, but I can break it.”
“That would be best, Anna-Elisabeth—in case William needs some medication,” Professor Ritter said.
“I’m sure that Hugo is also available,” Dr. von Rohr suggested.
“I’d rather not go with Hugo, Ruth,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “The Kronenhalle isn’t exactly Hugo’s sort of place.”
“I can’t go to the Kronenhalle tonight and to St. Peter tomorrow morning!” Dr. Horvath exclaimed.
“Maybe I can go—I’ll check my schedule,” Professor Ritter said. “Or perhaps Dr. Huber can go.”
“It makes sense to go to a restaurant with an internist,” Dr. Berger remarked. “In case anyone gets sick.”
“No one gets sick at the Kronenhalle!” Dr. Horvath cried.
“Dr. Huber has too many emergencies,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “If she gets called away, I’m alone with William and Jack—and the mirrors. Besides, there should be another man—in case William wants to go to the men’s room.”
“But I’ll be there,” Jack reminded her.
“I mean another man who knows your father,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.
“I’ll check my schedule,” Professor Ritter said again.
Dr. von Rohr had a head-of-department look on her face, but she was smiling. The smile was something new to Jack, but the others seemed familiar with it.
“What is it, Ruth?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked her colleague.
“You couldn’t keep me away from a trip to the Kronenhalle with William and Jack Burns—not in a million years!” she said. “You couldn’t keep me out of the men’s room, not if William went there—not if you tried!”
Dr. Krauer-Poppe covered her face with her hands; there was no medication that could keep Dr. von Rohr away from the Kronenhalle, apparently. (Dr. Berger was shaking his head again.)
“Okay, that settles it,” Professor Ritter said uncertainly.
“Anyone but Hugo, I guess,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe, who had recovered herself, said philosophically. “Ruth and I will go with them, then.”
“I can’t tell you how I’m looking forward to it, Anna-Elisabeth,” Dr. von Rohr said.
“I think I’d like to go home and get ready for dinner,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe announced to Professor Ritter.
“Of course!” the professor said. They all watched Dr. Krauer-Poppe leave the room. She was so beautifully dressed; not even her lab coat looked out of place.
“I can’t wait to see what Anna-Elisabeth will wear tonight,” Dr. von Rohr said, after her colleague had gone. “She’s going home to get dressed, and I don’t mean to change her lab coat!”
“She had a date with her husband tonight,” Dr. Berger told everyone. “She’s probably going home to break her date, in a nice way.”
Jack felt sorry that he’d caused Dr. Krauer-Poppe to change her plans. (Dr. von Rohr, on the other hand, seemed pleased to have changed hers.)
“Don’t worry!” Dr. Horvath told Jack, pounding his shoulder. “Whatever else happens tonight, you’re going to the Kronenhalle!”
“I just want to see my father. That’s why I came,” Jack reminded them.
“We just want to prepare you for seeing him,” Dr. Berger stated.
Dr. Horvath had stopped pounding Jack’s shoulder, but he was massaging the back of Jack’s neck with his big, strong hand. “I have a favor to ask you, if you’ll indulge me,” the Austrian said.
“Of course. What is it?” Jack asked him.
“If you could say something—I mean the way Billy Rainbow says it. I know you can do it!” Dr. Horvath urged him.
“No doubt about it,” Jack-as-Billy said. (After the episode in the Edinburgh airport, he was relieved he could still act.)
“Wunderschön!” Dr. Horvath cried. (“Beautiful!”)
“How embarrassing, Klaus,” Dr. von Rohr said. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” she said to Jack, “but Billy Rainbow gives me the creeps.”
“He’s supposed to,” Jack told her.
“I must tell you, Jack,” Professor Ritter said, “William says that line the exact same way you say it!”
“Your father has made quite a study of you,” Dr. Berger told him.
“You should prepare yourself, Jack—William knows more about you than you may think,” Dr. von Rohr said. (Dr. Horvath had stopped massaging Jack’s neck, but Dr. von Rohr had put her arm around Jack’s shoulders in a comradely way.)
“Yes, Heather told me—he’s memorized all my lines,” Jack said.
“I didn’t mean only your movies, Jack,” Dr. von Rohr cautioned him.
“I think that’s enough preparation, Ruth,” Dr. Berger stated.
“Ja, der Musiker!” Dr. Horvath shouted to Jack. (“Yes, the musician!”) “It’s time for you to meet the musician!”
39. The Musician
There was a serenity to the private section of the Sanatorium Kilchberg, which Jack may have underappreciated on his first visit. (He was not in a serene state of mind.) The building itself, which was white stucco with shutters the same gray-blue color as the lake, looked more like a small hotel than a hospital. His father’s third-floor, corner rooms—overlooking the rooftops of Kilchberg—faced the eastern shore of Lake Zurich. The Alps rose in the hazy distance to the south of the lake.
The hospital bed where Jack’s father lay reading was cranked to a semireclined position. The bed and the fact that there were no carpets on the noiseless, rubberized floors were the only indications that this private suite was part of an institution—and that the man reading on the bed was in need of care. While the windows were open, and a warm breeze blew off the lake, William was dressed as if it were a brisk fall day—a thick flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, corduroy trousers, and white athletic socks. (If Jack had been dressed that way, he would have been sweating—although it instantly made him feel cold to look at his father.)
The bedroom, which opened into another room—with a couch, and a card table with a couple of straight-backed chairs—was not cluttered with furniture or mementoes. Jack saw only photographs—massive bulletin boards crammed with overlapping snapshots. There were also movie posters hung on the peach-colored walls of both rooms. They were posters of Jack Burns’s movies; at a glance, Jack thought that his dad had framed and hung all of them. Jack could see that the surrounding bookshelves displayed a more balanced collection of CDs and DVDs and videocassettes and actual books than he’d seen in his sister’s office, or in her bedroom.
The team of doctors, together with Professor Ritter and Jack, had entered his father’s attractive but modest quarters in the utmost silence. Jack first thought that his dad didn’t know they were there. (William had not looked up from his book.) But—as indicated by the door from the corridor, which had been ajar—living in a psychiatric clinic had made Jack’s father familiar with intrusions. William was accustomed to doctors and nurses who didn’t necessarily knock.
Jack’s dad was aware of their presence in his bedroom; he had deliberately not looked up from his book. Jack understood that his father was making a point about privacy. William Burns did indeed love the Sanatorium Kilchberg, as the hearty Dr. Horvath had maintained, but that didn’t mean he loved everything about it.