The Gargoyle

XVI.

Given an afternoon of solitude while Marianne Engel was shopping for groceries, I decided to spend it with the Gnaden-vita. I was in the kitchen reading when I heard someone enter through the fortress’ front door, with footsteps that approximated those of a mother rhinoceros looking for its young.

“Marianne?” A woman’s voice fired off the syllables like a gun emptying three shells. When she appeared in the frame of the kitchen door, she pulled back noticeably at my appearance. “You’re him? Sweet Jesus! This is worse than I thought.”

Short, but Napoleon short; the kind of short that’s always pulling itself up by its bootstraps in an attempt to look taller. Fat, but water balloon fat; with flesh not flabby, but round like it’s looking for a place to explode. Age, fifties? Hard to tell, but probably. She didn’t have wrinkles; her face was too spherical. Cropped hair, too much rouge on her cheeks; a dark business suit with a white, broad-lapelled shirt poking out; well-polished shoes; hands on her hips. Her eyes were confrontational, as if she were daring me to pop her one on the chin. She said, “You’re a helluva mess.”

“Who are you?”

“Jack,” she answered. I was finally in the presence of the man I’d feared, only to find that she was a woman. But barely: Jack Meredith was more like the cartoon of a woman who wished that she were a man.

“Marianne’s agent, right?”

“You’re never gonna see one red cent of her money.” She one-handedly helped herself to a cup of coffee, while the other hand never stopped jabbing a finger at me. “She say you could live here?” Apparently Jack knew the answer, because she didn’t give me time to answer. “How’s she going to look after you? Tell me that, huh?”

“I don’t need her to look after me,” I said, “and I don’t care about her money.”

“What is it then? Sex?” She spat out the word with enough disdain to suggest that she thought sex was nothing more than an ugly argument between two opposing bodies.

“I have no penis.”

“Well, thank God for that.” She burned her lip with her first sip of coffee. “Lord love a duck!”

She grabbed a handful of tissues to wipe away the spill on her chin, as she eyed me with a combination of contempt and curiosity. “What happened to you, anyway?”

“I was burned.”

“Well, I can see that, you think I’m stupid?” She wadded up the tissues and lobbed them towards the garbage can. She missed and, angry with herself for missing, took the few necessary steps to pick the tissue ball up and drop it in. “Burned, huh? That’s a damn shame.”

“Do you always just walk into this house?”

“I’ve been walking into this house since you were sneaking drinks at the high school dance,” Jack barked, “and I don’t much like you being here. You got a cigarette?”

“Don’t smoke.”

She headed towards a pack that Marianne Engel had left on the counter. “Probably a good idea in your condition.”

“So you’re Marianne’s agent?” I never got an answer the first time.

“That and more, buddy boy, so watch your step.” Jack inhaled deeply and now jabbed the cigarette towards me in a most accusatory manner. “This whatchamacallit, your living here, it’s a horrible fucking idea. I’m going to talk her out of it, you little monster.”

Perhaps you can guess that I liked Jack Meredith plenty. For one thing, she was the only person who spoke loudly enough that I never had to ask her to repeat herself. But more than that, I was taken with the general outsizeness of her personality: she was like an anthropomorphized butterball turkey, cast as the lead character in a Raymond Chandler novel. However, what I appreciated most was that she entirely dispensed with burn patient sympathy. We spent a few moments staring at each other over the table. She rolled her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger and squinted her eyes, real tough-like, before saying: “Whaddaya think you’re looking at, Crispy Critter?”

A few days later, Marianne Engel and I were sitting on the back porch waiting for a delivery of new slabs of stone, and she told me that she’d instructed Jack to set up a credit card for me. When I said I couldn’t imagine Jack being very happy about that, Marianne Engel said, “She’ll do as she’s told. Jack’s all bark, no bite.”

I KNOW WHAT WE CAN DO WITH A CREDIT CARD.

Our conversation wandered around a bit, before I asked a question that I had from the last part of our story: I wanted to know what a pluviale was. Marianne Engel explained that it was a type of raincoat that priests used to wear, decorated with scenes from the New Testament. I asked whether Father Sunder’s pluviale had an image on it. She confirmed that it did. “And I’ll tell you what it was,” she said with a playful pause, “later in our story.”

When the truck arrived, she clapped her hands like a child at the carnival and sprinted to her basement doors to insert a heavy key into the great lock. She laid down iron rollers that allowed the blocks of stone to slide into the house. Seeing the stones disappear into the opening made me think of a hungry parishioner receiving communion. She stood off to the side, imploring the deliverymen to be gentle with her friends. The deliverymen looked at her as if she was crazy but continued their work. As soon as they were gone, she took off all her clothes and lit candles. After putting on a recording of Gregorian chants, she stretched herself out over one of the new slabs and fell into a deep slumber that lasted until the next morning.

She came into my bedroom with a huge smile and proclaimed that she had received wonderful directions, but that she would wait until after my bath to begin her work. As she scrubbed me, I could tell she didn’t want to be doing it-her fingers wanted stone, not flesh-but that she felt it was her duty. The moment she was finished with me, she raced to the basement. I sat in the living room on the middle floor of the house, trying to read, but was too distracted by the rhythm of her chisels. I moved up to the belfry to occupy myself with other things-videos, reading, teasing Bougatsa with a towel on a string-but after a few hours, my curiosity grew too great. I cracked the door to the basement and crept a few steps down the stairway to spy on Marianne Engel.

I needn’t have worried that she’d find my presence intrusive, for she was working so intently that she didn’t seem to notice me at all. To my surprise, she was carving in the nude; it was somewhat unsettling to see her working so swiftly with sharp metal tools. The instruments flew around furiously but her hands looked sure, and I sat hypnotized by the dance of metal, stone, and flesh.

To say that Marianne Engel “carved” is not enough: it was so much more than that. She caressed the stone until the stone could no longer stand it and gave up the grotesque inside. She coaxed the gargoyles out of their stony caverns. She loved them out of the stone.

Over the many hours that she didn’t notice me, I became amazed by her stamina. She was still working when I went to sleep, and continued through the night. She went all the next day as well, and into the night again. In total, she labored for over seventy hours, drinking gallons of coffee, smoking hundreds of cigarettes. This was just how she had claimed to work-carving nonstop for days at a time-but I’d never quite believed her. I assumed it was a boastful exaggeration of her artistic discipline. But it wasn’t. Skeptics might think that she waited for me to go to sleep before she herself took a nap, but her hammering kept waking me up. On the first morning, she did haul herself away from her work long enough to clean me, but I could see-could feel-that it was done grudgingly. There was an anxiousness in her eyes, a barely contained frenzy, as she raced the sponge over my skin.

Around the sixty-hour mark, she asked me to order two large vegetarian pizzas. Normally, she had no objection to eating meat, but I soon learned that when she was in her carving like this, she manically refused to do so. “No meat! No animals!” When I brought down the pizzas, she went to three corners of the room to ask her Three Masters for permission-“Jube, Domine benedicere”-and did not eat until they gave their consent. She sat haltingly unstill in the middle of the stone fragments and ate like a beast, barely seeming to notice that I was there. A cheese strand dangled from her mouth to the edge of her left nipple, and I wanted to rappel it like a mozzarella commando to storm her lovely breasts. The candlelight captured the chalky sheen of her body, and lines of sweat created tributaries through the stone dust that coated her angel wings. The combination of her tattoos and her ecstatic bearing made her seem part Hildegard von Bingen, part yakuza.

Over the hours, her stereo passed through the works of Carl Orff; Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique; Beethoven’s nine symphonies; Poe (the singer, not the writer); the first album by Milla Jovovich; the entire catalogue of The Doors; the recordings of Robert Johnson; Cheap Thrills, by Big Brother and the Holding Company (four times in a row); and a variety of Bessie Smith, Howlin’ Wolf, and Son House. As the hours progressed, the music grew ever louder and her choice of singing voices more guttural. Even with my bad ears, by the end I had to retreat with earplugs to my belfry.

When she finished, she could barely stand. The completed monster was a human head with horns, atop a kneeling dragon’s body, and she kissed its stony lips before crawling up the stairs to collapse into her bed, still covered in dust and sweat.

“Well, obviously manic depression is common among artists,” Gregor said across the table, as he poured a shot of the bourbon that he had brought for us to drink. The sun was going down and we were sitting on the back porch; Marianne Engel was still sleeping off her efforts. After reaffirming that he could not address any specifics of her previous treatments, Gregor said that he’d be happy to answer general questions.

“After reading all those books,” I said, “I decided that her symptoms were more consistent with schizophrenia than with manic depression.”

“Well, maybe. Could be both,” Gregor answered, “or neither. I don’t know. Maybe it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. Did she ever say why she has to do so much carving all at one time?”

“She thinks she’s following instructions from God. She thinks she’s giving out the extra hearts she has in her chest.”

“Well, that’s weird.” Gregor took a sip. “Hey, this stuff is good. It beats me what’s wrong with Marianne.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know about these things?”

Gregor shrugged. “What I don’t know could fill a warehouse. Is she taking her medicine?”

“No. She hates pills even more than she hates doctors. No offense.”

I asked if she could be forced, by some sort of legal order, to take her meds. Gregor explained that only a guardian could take that step. I suggested Jack, who I had recently learned was Marianne Engel’s conservator as well as her manager, but Gregor explained that a conservator only has jurisdiction over a patient’s property, not her personal decisions. No one can force a patient into a hospital except a judge, Gregor said, and then only for a few days. I interjected that I didn’t want Marianne Engel committed; I simply wanted her to take her drugs. Gregor said that all I could do was ask nicely. Then he asked me if we could stop talking about her condition; while he felt he hadn’t gone over any line of doctor-patient confidentiality yet, he was worried he was getting dangerously close.

We left the topic at that. I asked him about Sayuri and he told me that they were seeing more of each other. Had a date that night, actually. Then he chastised me for always wanting to talk about his love life, while never giving up any details of my own. I laughed it off-What love life?-but he threw it right back at me. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

There was a pause in the conversation, but it was a good pause. Gregor took another sip of bourbon and we looked out into the sunset together. “Nice night,” he said.

“She touched me,” I blurted.

This caught Gregor off his guard. “What do you mean?”

“The first time she bathed me and saw…my groin”-Gregor knew, through his position at the hospital, about my amputation-“she inspected it. Ran her fingers over the scars.”

“What did she say?”

“That the condition of my body is not relevant to her.”

“Did you believe her?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I swirled the bourbon in my glass. “Of course it matters. It’s gone.”

Gregor frowned. “I’m disappointed.”

Now he had caught me off guard. “By what?”

“Your answer,” he replied. “Because I believe her, and I think you should, too.”

Another pause in the conversation, which this time I broke. “It is a nice night, isn’t it?”

He nodded. I didn’t mention that the brand of bourbon Gregor had bought was the same that had spilled into my lap, costing me the penis in question. Gregor’s intentions in bringing the gift were good, so what profit was there in trying to make him feel bad about it?

I expected that the bourbon would taste like bad memories; instead, it just tasted like good alcohol. And it was nice to have: Marianne Engel quaintly clung to the idea that morphine and booze were a bad mix, but I suspect Gregor was trying to show me his wild side by allowing me a glass or two.

A few days later, after she had recovered, I asked Marianne Engel why she increased the music’s volume throughout her carving. She reminded me that the gargoyles became louder the longer the process went on, and turning up the stereo was a way to drown out their screams. She explained that when she cut through the excess stone to find the grotesque’s form, the only way to know whether she’d reached the monster’s outline was to actually cut into it. If the grotesque screamed in pain, then Marianne Engel knew that she’d cut deep enough.

I asked whether she wasn’t afraid that she was drowning out important instructions from God. She laughed and assured me that in the entire world, there was not music loud enough to drown out the sounds of His commands.

A major complaint of burn survivors is that only one pressure suit is covered by insurance, despite the fact that these garments cost thousands of dollars and must be worn up to twenty-three hours every single day. During the other hour, the patient is being cleaned, and if the caregiver is already busy washing the patient, how can she or he also be cleaning the pressure suit at the same time? This is why it’s essential to have at least two. “But the cost!” cry the insurance companies as they deny the claim. Furthermore, even with proper care pressure garments last only about three months.

Insurance companies were not a problem for me, as my costs were being covered in full by Marianne Engel. But I had to wonder, briefcase of cash under the skeleton bed or not, how could she afford this? She kept reassuring me that her prominence as a carver had left her amply rewarded and that there was nothing she’d rather spend her money on. I was unsure but even if I tried to argue, what would be my case? That my scars should go untreated?

My pressure suits and mask were finally ready in mid-March. When Sayuri handed them over, I could immediately appreciate all the work that had gone into them. The mask had been sanded down so that it would sit comfortably along the contours of my face. Sayuri even pointed out how the students had paid special attention to where my scars were raised above the skin’s surface, and had prepared the plastic accordingly.

“You’ll need to use this as well.” Sayuri held out a spring-loaded contraption. The way my face had been burned left me particularly susceptible to oral commissures-scar tissue around the corners of my mouth-which, if not treated, would make it difficult for me to eat or speak in the future. After I had properly wedged the retractor into my mouth, I raised the mask to my face. It was to remain in place all the time, except during cleaning and skin care, even while I was sleeping. I asked Marianne Engel how I looked (in the process discovering that the retractor made my already garbled voice sound even worse) and she answered that I looked like a man who was going to live for a long time.

I looked into the mirror. As if the scarred topography of my face were not enough, it was now smashed flat by the clear plastic. The areas that were normally red had turned white under the pressure and the retractor had peeled my mouth outwards in a grotesque grimace. Every imperfection was amplified, and I looked like the bastard child of Hannibal Lecter and the Phantomess of the Opera.

Sayuri assured me that a poor first reaction was normal, because all burn patients-including me, despite being specifically told otherwise-assume that the mask will hide their faces. But it did not. It would not shield me and help me cope; it was a Petri dish that would place my face under the microscope of the world.

Sayuri explained the proper order in which to put on the pressure garments and showed Marianne Engel how to fasten the straps in back. While they fussed with the technicalities, I was left to experience the sensation, which was like slipping into the tight fist of an angry god. It’s only fabric, I told myself. It’s not who I am. It sent shivers down my spine anyway.

IT FEELS GOOD, DOES IT NOT? LIKE YOU ARE BEING BURIED ALIVE. The snake loved to laugh at me. I AM COMING.

I found Marianne Engel waiting for me in the dining room, wearing a kimono of jade silk. It bore an embroidered scene, impeccably stitched, of two lovers under a cherry blossom tree near a carp-filled stream. In the garment’s starry sky, a full moon looked down on the lovers as if it were not only the source of their light, but also the protector of their love.

She asked whether I was ready to eat. I answered that I was. I went out on a limb to guess that Japanese was on the menu.

“So desu ne. How perceptive you are,” she said with a slight bow. The stream on her kimono disappeared into the blue sash across her waist, drawn with an obi bow in back. “I’ve been reading Makura no Sshi.”

“Yeah, I saw that on your bookshelf. Pillow-something, right?”

“The Pillow Book of Sei Shnagon. A very famous Japanese text, tenth century, and the first novel ever written. Or so they say, but who knows for sure? I’ve been thinking that I should do something with it. You’d be surprised how many great Japanese books don’t have decent Latin translations.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Marianne Engel retreated to the kitchen with short, sharp steps, as she’d even gone so far as to put on geta, traditional wooden slippers. She returned with multihued trays of sushi: slices of white (and orange and silver) fish lay on beds of compressed rice; beady red fish eggs lolled on seaweed beds; and shrimps curled into each other, as if hugging tightly during their final moments on earth. There were inarizushi, cubes of rice wrapped in thin sheets of sweet golden tofu. Gyoza, dumplings made of beef or pork, bathed in zesty black sauce. Yakitori, barbecued strips of chicken and beef, on wooden skewers. There were onigiri, triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed; each, she explained, contained something different, something delicious: plums, fish eggs, chicken, tuna, or shrimp.

We cleaned our hands with o-shibori, steaming napkins, and then she placed her palms together. She said, “Itadakimas!” (a Japanese blessing before eating), before adding her more familiar Latin invocation.

She showed me the proper way to stir my miso soup with chopsticks and demonstrated that ramen noodles must be slurped loudly, because this not only cools them but makes them taste better. While she drank sake, she insisted that I stick with oolong tea; she just wouldn’t give up that silly idea that alcohol and morphine don’t mix. Every time my cup was less than half-full, she refilled it with a slight but respectful bow. When I inserted my chopsticks into my bowl of rice so that they stood straight up like two trees growing out of a snowy hill, she immediately pulled them out. “It’s disrespectful to the dead.”

When the meal finally ended, she rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Tonight I’ll tell you a story about another woman named Sei, although this one wasn’t even born until hundreds of years after the writing of the Pillow Book.”