to.
But drugged I couldn’t really go down.
The tests were run again. I walked and walked one morning in the hall until the nurse said, “You must go back to bed.”
“And why? What is wrong with me?”
“Not a damned thing,” she said, “if they’d stop shooting you full of tranquilizers. They have to taper them off.”
Rosalind put a small black disk player by my bed. She put the earphones on my head, and softly came the Mozart voices—the angels singing their foolishness from
Così Fan Tutte.
Sweet sopranos in unison.
I saw a movie in my mind’s eye.
Amadeus.
A vivid marvelous film. I saw this movie in which the evil composer Salieri, admirably played by F. Murray Abraham, had driven to death a laughing, childlike Mozart. There had been a moment when, in a gilded, velvet-lined theater box, Salieri looked down upon Mozart’s singers and the little cherubic and hysterical conductor himself, and the voice of F. Murray Abraham had said: “I heard the voice of the angels.”
Ah, yes, by God. Yes.
Mrs. Wolfstan didn’t want to leave. But all was done, the ashes in the Metairie Mausoleum, and every test on me had been negative for HIV, for anything really. I was the picture of health and had lost only five pounds. My sisters were with me.
“Yes, do go on, Mrs. Wolfstan, and you know I loved him. I loved him with all my heart, and it never had anything to do with what he gave me or anyone.”
Kisses, the smell of her perfume.
Yes, said Glenn. Now, stop going over it. Karl’s book was in the hands of the scholars Karl had designated in his will. Thank God, no need to call Lev, I thought. Let Lev be with the living.
Everything else was in Grady’s hands, and Althea, my beloved Althea, had gone right to work on the house, and so had Lacomb, polishing silver for “Miss Triana.” Altheahad my old bed on the first floor in the big northerly room all full of nice pillows the way I liked it.
No, the Prince of Wales marriage bed upstairs had not been burnt! No, indeed. Only the bedding. Mrs. Wolfstan had had the charming young man from Hurwitz Mintz come out with new pillows of watered silk and comforters of velvet and create a new band of scalloped moiré from the wooden canopy.
I’d go home to my old room. My old rice bed, with the four-posters carved with rice, the symbol of fertility. The first-floor bedroom was the only real bedroom the cottage had.
Whenever I was ready.
One morning I woke up. Rosalind slept nearby. She dozed in one of those big sloping, dipping wooden-handled chairs they give in hospital rooms for the vigilant family.
I knew four days had passed, and that last night I’d eaten a full meal and the needles felt like insects in my arm. I pulled back the tape, removed the needles, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, found my clothes in the locker and dressed completely before I woke Rosalind.
Rosalind woke dazed, and dusted the cigarette ashes off her black blouse.
“You’re HIV negative,” she said at once, as if she’d been just dying to tell me and couldn’t remember that everyone already had, staring wide eyed through her glasses. Dazed. She sat up. “Katrinka made them do everything but remove one of your fingers.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We hurried down the hall. It was empty. A nurse passed who didn’t know who we were or didn’t care.
“I’m hungry,” Rosalind said. “You hungry, for real food I mean?”
“I just wanna go home,” I said.
“Well, you’ll be very pleased.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“Oh, you know the Wolfstan tribe; they bought you a stretch limousine and hired you a new man, Oscar, and this one can read and write, no offense to Lacomb—”
“Lacomb can write,” I said. This is something I’d said a thousand times because my man Lacomb can write, but when he talks it’s a deep black jazz musician’s dialect that almost no one can understand a word of.
“—and Althea’s back, and
But drugged I couldn’t really go down.
The tests were run again. I walked and walked one morning in the hall until the nurse said, “You must go back to bed.”
“And why? What is wrong with me?”
“Not a damned thing,” she said, “if they’d stop shooting you full of tranquilizers. They have to taper them off.”
Rosalind put a small black disk player by my bed. She put the earphones on my head, and softly came the Mozart voices—the angels singing their foolishness from
Così Fan Tutte.
Sweet sopranos in unison.
I saw a movie in my mind’s eye.
Amadeus.
A vivid marvelous film. I saw this movie in which the evil composer Salieri, admirably played by F. Murray Abraham, had driven to death a laughing, childlike Mozart. There had been a moment when, in a gilded, velvet-lined theater box, Salieri looked down upon Mozart’s singers and the little cherubic and hysterical conductor himself, and the voice of F. Murray Abraham had said: “I heard the voice of the angels.”
Ah, yes, by God. Yes.
Mrs. Wolfstan didn’t want to leave. But all was done, the ashes in the Metairie Mausoleum, and every test on me had been negative for HIV, for anything really. I was the picture of health and had lost only five pounds. My sisters were with me.
“Yes, do go on, Mrs. Wolfstan, and you know I loved him. I loved him with all my heart, and it never had anything to do with what he gave me or anyone.”
Kisses, the smell of her perfume.
Yes, said Glenn. Now, stop going over it. Karl’s book was in the hands of the scholars Karl had designated in his will. Thank God, no need to call Lev, I thought. Let Lev be with the living.
Everything else was in Grady’s hands, and Althea, my beloved Althea, had gone right to work on the house, and so had Lacomb, polishing silver for “Miss Triana.” Altheahad my old bed on the first floor in the big northerly room all full of nice pillows the way I liked it.
No, the Prince of Wales marriage bed upstairs had not been burnt! No, indeed. Only the bedding. Mrs. Wolfstan had had the charming young man from Hurwitz Mintz come out with new pillows of watered silk and comforters of velvet and create a new band of scalloped moiré from the wooden canopy.
I’d go home to my old room. My old rice bed, with the four-posters carved with rice, the symbol of fertility. The first-floor bedroom was the only real bedroom the cottage had.
Whenever I was ready.
One morning I woke up. Rosalind slept nearby. She dozed in one of those big sloping, dipping wooden-handled chairs they give in hospital rooms for the vigilant family.
I knew four days had passed, and that last night I’d eaten a full meal and the needles felt like insects in my arm. I pulled back the tape, removed the needles, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, found my clothes in the locker and dressed completely before I woke Rosalind.
Rosalind woke dazed, and dusted the cigarette ashes off her black blouse.
“You’re HIV negative,” she said at once, as if she’d been just dying to tell me and couldn’t remember that everyone already had, staring wide eyed through her glasses. Dazed. She sat up. “Katrinka made them do everything but remove one of your fingers.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We hurried down the hall. It was empty. A nurse passed who didn’t know who we were or didn’t care.
“I’m hungry,” Rosalind said. “You hungry, for real food I mean?”
“I just wanna go home,” I said.
“Well, you’ll be very pleased.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“Oh, you know the Wolfstan tribe; they bought you a stretch limousine and hired you a new man, Oscar, and this one can read and write, no offense to Lacomb—”
“Lacomb can write,” I said. This is something I’d said a thousand times because my man Lacomb can write, but when he talks it’s a deep black jazz musician’s dialect that almost no one can understand a word of.
“—and Althea’s back, and
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