The Convalescent Page 8

  But Árpád knew the real reason he had not gone after the Fekete-Szem. These were the very same creatures who had somehow created the Danube River out of the great blue nothing. It was along the Danube that the Hungarians had flourished over the past five years, and it was along this very same river that they would campaign against all possible invaders. The river had by now swollen majestically, stretching from Black Sea through Bavaria and well up into the Germanic north, and it was Árpád’s plan to use the river and other untouched marshes and wastelands for protection against the Pechenegs. They would build a Gyepü, a “natural blockade.” They would fell trees, assemble rock piles. They would leave breadcrumb trails, and the trails would lead straight into dark and vacuous holes. And the Gyepü, Árpád explained, would serve other purposes as well: keeping the Pechenegs at bay would allow the brand-spanking-new Hungarians to invade the West. They would imitate the fighting methods of all of the worst barbarian hordes. They would pillage, they would plunder, and when word reached the Pechenegs that the Hungarians were the most vicious of all vicious barbarians, with whom no one, Christian or pagan, should want to reckon, only then, Árpád believed, would his people be able to live a life of leisure, given over to vanities and as goddamned libidinous as they wanted it to be. “It is vital,” he argued, pressing a bulb of cold, stale bread into his mouth, “that we invade the West to secure our position in the Carpathian Basin.”

  The tribal leaders all nodded soberly.

  The Grand Prince was true to his word. The Hungarians really did behave most abominably. Stories quickly spread both east and west, until every nobleman, civilian, and peasant knew and feared the vicious crew. Ape-men, with teeth like tiny daggers and no other interest in their lives other than overrunning small villages and slaughtering the vivre out of innocent, happy townfolk.

  “Cut off one head, and thirty will grow in its place!” they cried. Or, “They slip through one’s fingers like eels!” Or the somewhat less thrilling: “They emerge from the swamp like frogs!” Human heads were set upon spears and poked into the ground in their wake. (My Darling, I’m sad to say that they even did the ugly business with the bunny rabbits.)

  But there were notable differences between the Hungarians and the barbarians: where the Pechenegs fought in a great black mass, bodies tripping over bodies, the Hungarians were organized, and rode on horseback. Their light cavalries attacked from all sides, disseminating across the countryside before anyone could mobilize against them. They would pretend to flee battle, and then, when the other side falsely believed that they had won, the Hungarians would regroup and charge again. They would agree to meet with the leaders of the Western nations and say that they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, gaining a higher rank and further access to their lands, then they would turn, stick out their tongues, and gleefully plunder.

  Rather than err on the side of correctness, of civility, Árpád encouraged the rumor that they were indeed the sons of Attila, truly the new Scourge of Europe, a bunch of foul prevaricators, with no allegiances to anyone.

  Civilized Europe shook its big, indignant head. It was not enough that the Hungarians were known as the Bloodthirsty Man-Eating Monsters from Scythia; they were two-faced as well. A fresh rumor spread that these men were a new, evil race of people with faces on both sides of their heads—

  It was all in the interest of survival. In order for the Hungarians to survive, they had to become something they were not: bloodless, heartless, ruthless, murderer-killers. They were so successful that when they were not off invading already well-established and civilized countries, the Hungarians would invade them in their dreams. Many a Christian feudal lord awoke at midnight with a sweat-soaked dressing gown, screaming about the invading hordes, and his mistress would have to calmly soothe him with talk of conquer, self-righteousness, and sexual favors. A single prayer could be heard in churches echoing across the quaint medieval pastoralia: De sagittis Hungarorum libera nos, Domine: “O Lord, save us from the arrows of the Hungarians!” Or the prayer heard somewhat more often: “Goddammit, we have got to get those sons of bitches”—

  The phone rings. Mrs. Himmel, busy filing her fingernails into ten perfect points, grabs it after a single note. She’s waiting for Daughter Elise’s modeling agent to call about an interview with a famous modeling agency, but it’s not the agent. It’s a mother calling to get information about intentionally exposing her child to chicken pox.

  Annoyed that a mother is taking up the phone line, Mrs. Himmel grabs a handful of fun-size candy bars from the shelf behind her and unwraps all of them at once. She lines them up on her desk in a parade of chocolate turds. “Oh, just bring him in,” she says. “If he spends ten minutes in the Waiting Area, I guarantee he’ll catch it.” Then she hangs up the phone, and shoots me a glance—

  I catch it.

  We are like two dogs, waiting for the other to flinch.

  Mrs. Himmel quickly picks up the phone again, pushes the extension to Dr. Monica’s office, and begins whispering, fiercely: “I can smell him from all the way over here.” She slams down the phone.

  Seconds later, Adrian fills the doorjamb. She strides over to Mrs. Himmel’s window with her mountain-climbing legs and quietly speaks to her about being respectful to Dr. Monica and to the people in the Waiting Area. That means everyone.

  Mrs. Himmel looks at her like she’s made of seaweed.

  “He’s harmless, Mrs. Himmel,” Adrian whispers. “Dr. Monica would never let him in here otherwise. But if it makes you feel better, I can watch the desk until three o’clock.”

  “It’s not right,” Himmel says. “A thirty-four-year-old person seeing a pediatrician is just not right.” She shakes her head. “A normal person would have better things to do that spend an entire day in the waiting area of a pediatrician’s office. He’s useless. A member of society should do something. Contribute. What does a person like that possibly contribute?”

  Adrian glances at me. “He has a job,” she says. “Dr. Monica said he’s a butcher. He sells meat out of his bus.”

  Mrs. Himmel perks up. “Meat out of a bus? What does he butcher?”

  “I don’t know. He probably butchers what other people butcher. Pigs, chickens. Cows, I guess. Livestock.”

  Mrs. Himmel’s lips curl into a sneer. The tight perm on her head somehow looks even tighter.

  “My uncle was a butcher,” she says evenly, “and I’ll have you know that butchering takes a huge amount of time and money and manpower. Just look at him, Adrian. I want you to tell me how that little thing over there can hang up and drain a whole cow. How does he even cut off the heads?”

  First you slit open the hide, I think, cutting from the horn to the nostril. Skin out the front of the face, flip over one side and then the opposite side. Grasp the jaw in your hand, bend back the head, and remove it by severing the neck and atlas joint.

  Mrs. Himmel grabs a stack of folders and begins shuffling. “I don’t believe it,” she whispers. “Not for one second do I believe that.” She assembles all of the folders into one firm, thick square. “There are children in here, for heaven’s sake.”

  Adrian rolls an unsavory thought around her brain for a moment. But then she shakes her head. “He’s only here once a week,” she says. “Dr. Monica says to not worry about it, so I’m not going to worry. And neither should you.”

  Mrs. Himmel waves her off. “I’m not worried. Yet. But heaven help him if I get worried. If I get worried, I’ll chuck him out of the Waiting Area so fast he won’t know what hit him,” she says, and then she looks right at me.

  She shoots me a real mean one and mouths, “Don’t you think I won’t.”

  —Anyway, as Árpád was busy conjuring military strategies, the rest of the Hungarians were trying to figure out how to deal with the fetid little people who had followed them from the Black Sea like lost children; the one who had lost their own tent in the flooding and built a new one right next to Bona Fide Civilization; the ones who stole their lives
tock from them, left and right, with no sense of place or courtesy; the ones who spent all day lying around the outskirts of camp, bitching and moaning about every small thing, hollering insults at passersby. The ones who just couldn’t seem to get it together.

  “They’re totally useless!” one of the Hungarians cried.

  It had gotten to the point where many actually feared the Fekete-Szem. You always had to keep one eye open walking by that tent, they said. You’d walk by and would get hissed at. Pieces of bone would be hucked at you. And then there was what had happened to poor Lehel.

  “Get rid of them now!” cried another. “Before we all get eaten!”

  Árpád was summoned to deal with the situation. He weaved in and around the Hungarian camps while riding his magnificent, tall white horse which he called, only, M.

  When he arrived at our tent along the outskirts of camp, we Pfliegmans weren’t up yet; we were lazing about on our backs, smelling our skins, chewing our toenails for breakfast. Peeling fleas from our long strands of hair.

  “Come forth, cretins!” one of the Hungarians bellowed.

  We Pfliegmans squealed and scurried about like veritable insects set loose from our veritable tin cans.

  Árpád dismounted M, took one look at us, exposed and shivering, all eyes and elbows, and sighed impatiently. “They’re not going to eat anyone,” he said. “They’re bored. What they need is something to do. Something to make them feel like they’re part of the community.”

  “We don’t want them to be part of the community!” shouted an angry woman with an exceedingly wide hind end.

  Árpád gave her an impatient look.

  “But what can they do?” a man protested. “They can’t do anything.”

  “Sure they can,” said Árpád.

  “Like what?”

  Árpád stroked his gorgeous mustache for a minute, rolling the ends into points between his fingertips. Then he thought of Lehel, and his eyes brightened. “They can cut meat,” he said.

  One of the Hungarians had an old cow, and complained of the cow’s inability to give milk. A suspicious green color had blotched the udder, so it was universally decided that the cow would serve perfectly as the Practice Cow for the Fekete-Szem, to see whether we had any useful knowledge of meat and bone. We were given the cutting instruments. Wide-eyed, we curled our fingers around them like prized fighting swords, then one of the Hungarians stepped forward with a blunter.

  “Who is the most able among you?” he asked.

  Kinga pushed Aranka’s child, Szeretlek, forward. The boy was only five years old, but was already the size of your average medieval Hungarian adult. He was neither handsome nor bright, not even by lowly Pfliegman standards. His face was dull and lifeless. A face like a loaf of bread. The large child was deeply distrustful of his own brain, and clung to Kinga for direction. She put him to good use. At five years old, he could dig pits and haul logs for the Gyepü. Trees fell with one swing of his axe. So when the time came to choose among us Pfliegmans, there was no doubt that Szeretlek was strongest and most able. The blunter was quickly passed to him.

  The boy stared at the long piece of heavy wood.

  “Make yourself useful,” Kinga whispered. “A useful man is never lonely.”

  Szeretlek looked at everyone for permission. “If I can be of use,” he said. He lifted his massive arm and clocked the cow over the head.

  “Wunh,” the cow said, and then fell over.

  We Pfliegmans threw ourselves upon it. Like vampires, like piranhas, in a few flimsy seconds we held up heavy, dripping cuts of meat. Round, Loin, Flank, Rib, Plate, Chuck, Shank. All of it. The heart of the cow still pulsed in one of our hands.

  “You can see the white bone,” the Hungarians breathed.

  It appeared there was a use for us after all.

  Szeretlek, however, had not participated in the cutting. His big fingers were too thick, too clumsy. But as he watched his family carve and eviscerate the animal to the approval of the good and decent Hungarians, the boy felt, from a deep place in his large body, that things were about to change for the Fekete-Szem.

  XI

  KABÁT TOLVAJOK

  An unpleasant odor is filling the air of the Waiting Area. It smells infested. Gluttonous. There’s a dead rodent somewhere, I think. Oily hair, rotting flesh. A pungent, omnivorous mold—I look up.

  Mrs. Himmel is eating a cheeseburger.

  The Sick or Diseased children hold their stomachs in agony. I admit, even my own stomach is turning unhappily. For someone who knows everything there is to know about the meat business, for someone who sells meat of a bus in a field for a meager but adequate living—for all of this, I don’t go near the stuff. Not long after Ján and Janka Pfliegman died, I took a bite of a ham sandwich and the meat tasted wrong. Heavy. For a while I only ate tomatoes and crackers, but then the crackers also started getting heavy. I couldn’t work them down my throat.

  In fact, for the last month, all I’ve been able to swallow with any modicum of appeal are Evermores. Mister Bis sells them by the box at the G&P, but Dr. Monica wants me to be working more with the rest of the food groups. “Listen to your body,” she says, and so I listen, but I swear that Evermores are the only thing my body wants.

  I reach into the pocket of my trousers and remove one. The Sick or Diseased child sitting next to me watches as I unwrap it. He thinks it’s candy. He looks at me. “Is that a lemon?” he asks.

  I nod.

  The boy slides off his chair. He walks over to the pile of coloring books on the sidetable, books colored over so many times the pages have torn, and picks up a blue crayon. With one eye, he watches as I bite into the Evermore and swallow the honey. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says BANG THE DRUM! on it, and there’s a picture of a snare drum with two drumsticks hovering in the air above. It looks like the drum’s being played by an invisible man. He pretends to be importantly occupied coloring over a dumptruck that’s already been colored.

  I pick up my writing tablet. I draw him a quick sketch of a bumblebee and hold it up.

  He ignores me.

  His mother turns the pages of her women’s magazine. She’s reading a recipe for a banana-nut loaf with Tips for Decorative Icing:

  1. Squeeze the tube from behind.

  2. Use different nozzles for a varied effect.

  3. Have fun.

  She takes out a notepad from her purse and pointedly jots it all down. She is a Good Mother. I can tell the difference between the Good Mothers and the Bad Mothers. The Good Mothers make their children wash their hands in the bathroom before they see Dr. Monica. They wear clean slacks or skirts with pleats in the front, and raincoats on rainy days. They carry tissues and mints in their pockets. They are the ones with the water jugs. The Bad Mothers come into the office wearing T-shirts, with the straps of their brassieres showing. They smell like onions and cigarettes and tell their children to shut up and go play with the toys. They slouch in the chairs and don’t even bother with magazines. They disconsolately watch the television in the corner.

  I like the Bad Mothers. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because of the snooty way the Good Mothers are always clearing their throats and shooting them glances, or maybe it’s because the Bad Mothers sometimes talk to each other and try to make each other feel better about their Sick or Diseased child, and the Good Mothers never talk to anyone. Or maybe it’s because of the familiar way the Bad Mothers troll around the Waiting Area like it’s their own living room. When prompted, they laugh a startling, bellicose laughter.

  Or maybe it’s just because I have a slightly different perspective on the issue of Good and Bad. I imagine Janka sitting here in Dr. Monica’s office. She’d sit next to the Good Mothers. She’d scratch her hairy legs and then reach into her bag and bring out a pack of cigarettes and, ignoring the sign hanging right above her head, light one. When a Good Mother would politely ask her to extinguish it, she would sneer and call her a tight bitch. Then she’d borrow one of the Good Mothers�
�� tissues and blow her nose and then clean the bottom of her clogs with it. She would complain about the hard chairs on her goddamn coccyx. She would start ribbing one of the Good Mothers for showing off such a fancy fucken purse, and she would get a few snickers from the Bad Mothers. She would feel fed by them. Most of all, she would completely ignore her own Sick or Diseased child, passed out on the floor underneath the withering ficus.

  Adrian reappears in the doorway with her clipboard. She motions for the BANG THE DRUM! boy to follow her. His mother gets up quickly, dropping her women’s magazine on the side table. They linger, for a moment, in the Waiting Area, as Adrian explains what’s going on.

  “Dr. Monica would like to do an X-ray,” she says, quietly.

  The boy hears the word X-ray and bursts into tears. Whimpering, he takes his mother’s hand. As he walks by me, I hold up my writing tablet and show the boy what I’ve drawn. Instead of a crappy bumblebee, it’s a cowboy whirling a lasso above his head surrounded by a dying sunset and prickly cacti. From the cowboy’s mouth is a speaking bubble that says “Giddyup!”

  He smiles as his mother pulls him out of the Waiting Area. I’m pleased that I’ve made the boy smile. I even laugh a little. My laugh is dry and quiet, but unfortunately it’s enough to command Mrs. Himmel’s attention. She puts down the cheeseburger and glares at the man in the filthy pink sweatshirt cackling in the corner of her Waiting Area. Her eyes go narrow, thin as dimes—

  Slowly, I stick out my tongue.

  “That’s it!” she shouts. She bounds from her chair and moves right in front of me. She leans down, so close I can smell her wet, acrimonious pores: