Fat Man and Little Boy (19 page)

They leave as soon as it's polite. John won't stop saying what a brilliant couple of actors they were. “You could tell them apart,” he says, “or anyway I could tell them apart, absolutely, but still, what a couple of actors. Real movie stars.” They get in the car. “Or maybe I couldn't tell them apart. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Imagine it though. Having a brother who looked and acted just like you. Wouldn't that be weird?”

“The bomb was different from what I pictured,” says Matthew. “It looked really different.”

“I think it would be strange,” says John. “Picture another man like me sitting here beside me, saying the things I'm saying, thinking what I'm thinking.”

“Widows ought to get more for what we give up,” says Rosie. “If he'd have lived after he hung from his parachute in that tree—if they'd shot him just enough times that he could still be saved—they would've had to spend probably thousands patching him up, keeping him in the hospital, attaching prosthesis. Then training him in the use of his new hands. They're lucky he died. They only have to pay me my allowance. They're better off if the wounded soldiers die. That's called a perverse incentive.” She punches the steering wheel.

John touches her arm. She knocks his hand away.

THE MEDIUM AND
THE MEDIUM

The thing about the hotel—the thing about the prison—is there aren't many dead people walking the grounds. Some do lay around there, rolling from side to side, clutching their stomachs in hunger. Thin as pens. Sometimes Masumi sees a baby crying in his room, hid beneath the bed.

The thing about seeing the dead is objects don't leave ghosts. He would have thought they would. He didn't know he would have thought that, but he would have—after he could see, their absence struck him as strange. That you cannot find them with the dead might suggest that objects are still and always alive, however they degrade.

Masumi goes into Rosie's library. He finds her in the stacks, reading from the back of a book written in Italian.

He says, “You don't speak Italian.”

“Maybe I should. It's a lot like Spanish.”

“Which is a lot like French.”

“So it should be easy.”

“Some find it works that way,” says Masumi. “Some find it confusing. You get a certain number of cognates commingling in the same cerebellum, it all starts to run together. Large in English is
grande
in Italian. Same thing in Spanish, same pronunciation. In French, it's the same but you say it a little different.
Largo
, though, sounds like large, but in Spanish it means long—it's a false cognate, in other words. In Italian it means wide, or broad, sometimes with connotations of liberalism, as in broad-minded. In French, of course, long is
long
. In Spanish, wide is
ancho
, unless we're talking about a gap, in which case it's
grande
again. In French, broad is
large
. A wide margin is
grand
. Of course, in English, a grand thing is sometimes very large and sometimes not. Sometimes it's a thousand. In German, wide is called
gross
. It's gross to be wide. In English, a gross is one hundred forty-four of the same thing. Not a thousand. Of course, if you're talking about width in terms of roundness, fatness, it's
dick
.”

Rosie's face twitches at the left cheek. The twitch becomes a pained smile. “As in penis?”

“No,
dick
as in fat.”

“Does it bring you peace knowing all that language?”

“I've always got a word for anything I feel, and there are lots of people I can talk to.”

“Do you talk to them?”

“No. It's good to know I could, though.”

“You don't seem at peace,” says Rosie. “What you did to Matthew. You don't need to explain. I wouldn't be impressed. Just don't do it again. Find peace or get out of my hotel.”

Masumi says, “There's something about this place. You know when I heard what you did with the camp I thought it was in quite poor taste. In fact, I still do. But something about that works for me. The crass American willingness to build on a graveyard, to erase history. But the cabins are beautiful. And, if I am honest with myself, it is good to study language once more. That study used to be the center of my life.”

Rosie listens with a stern, warning expression on her face, lips tucked in, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Don't worry,” says Masumi, “I'll be good. I won't be any trouble. If I start to be trouble again, then I'll leave.”

“See that you do,” says Rosie. She can speak a cliché without the slightest indication she knows it as such. It sounds pure and cold and new. “I don't need your money.”

“I don't think that's true.”

They part on these terms. Rosie leaves the Italian book behind, unshelved. He slides it into place for her, running his hand over the spines to even them.

He finds a French history of flight and sits to read. It begins with the French contributions to the field, focusing on these at the expense of the Germans, Italians, Americans, and Japanese. One of the small pleasures of the languages of others is witnessing their petty nationalisms. He finds himself laughing at a paragraph lauding the craftsmanship, care, and elegance found in French plane designs as a way of downplaying the innovations of foreign engineers. He runs his hand over an illustration of a particu­lar­ly tasteful aircraft, all soft curves and stylish bulges, tracing its wings and fuselage, imagining how each segment might look disembodied, exploded. The beauty of a machine's destruction is a ratio of its beauty intact.

The young, new wife sits down beside him. She says, her voice thick with sleep deprivation, “My father designed those, and helped to build them.”

“Where's your handsome husband?” says Masumi.

“He's ill in the cabin. I've been caring for him but I needed a break. You should hear him going on about his stomach.” Her own stomach burbles. The medium notices a pale, waxy quality to her skin. A zit crowns her nose, obviously much-molested, red and furious against her pallor. He watches the girl raise her thumb and rub it over the pus nub, which whitens and then crimsons again as she applies and releases the pressure, the way a thumbnail does when pressed.

“Are you sure that you aren't ill as well?”

“I mustn't be, the way he whines,” she says, offering a lazy wink. “If I'm sick then he's dying, so I've decided I'm not sick.”

“Very prudent.”

She takes a handkerchief from the elastic waistband of her skirt and blows her nose, folds the fabric to cover her crime. She looks longingly at a portrait of an engineer—thick glasses fallen to the tip of his nose, wild lick of hair an island on an otherwise bare, long forehead, gentle eyes. With the ginger half-aggression of a young bride, she touches the page, bringing her soft elbow into soft contact with Masumi's gut, and in intimate proximity to the butt of his fancy little gun.

“Do you miss him?” says Masumi.

“I loved my mother more while he was alive. Now he's gone and we eat and sleep on his fortune, luxuriating in this quaint little hideaway, waiting for the letter demanding that we come home and stop wasting the money to which my mother feels she is entitled. But the truth is the rent here is very reasonable. We should have chosen, perhaps, a more frivolous hotel.”

“So you do miss him, and you need to burn a little money.”

She nods, taking the book from his hands.

“My wife can help you with that.”

“You're married?” says the newlywed. “What does she look like? Is she very beautiful?”

“She's a Japanese woman,” says Masumi, as if that is an answer. “She looks a bit like me, I'm told.”

“How come I've never seen her here before?”

“She doesn't like to come out in the daytime. It would darken her skin, which is very fair, and concerning which she is also very vain. Also, she is uncomfortable in groups. She would be comfortable with you though. I can tell.”

The newlyweds don't come to dinner. Matthew is sent to their cabin with a large platter of easily-digested foods: breads, jellies, fruit, steamed vegetables.

John raves, not for the first time, about the film they saw the week before. His enthusiasm fades to background noise, but certain themes and phrases assert themselves repeatedly—repetitions, no less, from other meals and conversations, wherein the fat man also touched his neighbors freely on their arms and wrists to emphasize his points and better capture their attention. “They're really brilliant kids,” he says. “Handsome, of course, but both so talented and—and this is the really special part—both exactly
equal
in their talents. You understand? Neither one has anything over the other, or if he does, I couldn't spot it.”

“Yes,” says Rosie. “They were pretty good.”

“Their genius lies in being identical, or alternately, in
appearing
to be identical,” says John. “Now, it's possible this is only an illusion. Perhaps they've divided the emotional spectrum between them. Able, for example, might be responsible for sadness, disappointment, misery, loneliness, and the sort of joy that makes one weep. Baker would then be charged with savagery, anger, joy, laughter, humor, exuberance, and orgasm.”

“You don't film orgasm,” says Rosie. “People don't want to see that.”

Masumi toys with his salmon. Lemon butter sauce drizzled over the pink meat, seasoned with crumbled herbs, fork tender. He sips the wine he brought to the table, the wine he is sharing; the widow takes a sip as well, as does Mrs. Dryden. Matthew comes back from the newlyweds' cabin empty-handed, rubbing his stomach, ready to
chow
. He sits down across the table from the fat man, serves himself fish from the pile at the table's center, dripping citrus-laced dairy fat on the tablecloth in a trail of yellowed dots. There is still a little steam rising from his meal. Rosie covers the fish again and piles vegetables onto his plate as if she were his mother, neither making eye contact.

John drones on. “It might be that they've taken a more disorganized approach, with Baker doing all the scenes requiring tears, anger, giddiness, and jealousy, while Able claims hunger, fear, intimacy, and sadism, to name some possibilities. Or it might be that Able is responsible for the full range of emotion apart from those that require expelling fluids: weeping, spitting, ejaculation, bleeding, drooling, urination, and so on.”

“People don't want to see those things,” says Rosie, “or hear about them.”

“They're artists ahead of their time. Someday people will film all of those things and more.”

“Why should they want to do that, John?” says Masumi.

“People are curious about their bodies.” He looks down at his plate: empty, eaten, in spite of all his rambling. “They want to know what it's like for other people.”

“About the same, I imagine,” says Rosie. She dabs at her cheek with a napkin.

“Imagine two men,” says John, pushing through to his central point, “brothers, dividing the human experience between them, to make it manageable. Each masters his share of human feeling and leaves the rest to his twin. Together, their efforts make one man, perfect and round as an unbroken circle.”

 

The young bride knocks at Masumi's door. He knows it is her because of how she knocks—her knuckles striking twice, firmly, and then nothing. The shifting of skirts outside as she sways, considering, imagining. These are the ways that she would do these things.

The medium welcomes her in.

“You
are
beautiful,” says the bride, perhaps a little too surprised, touching the kimono, pinching the silk. “I love your robe.”

“Thank you,” says Masumi.

He's let his hair down. He wears a touch of makeup. He's left the peacock feather needles in their bundle, apart from the one that extends from his third eye. The rest seemed a bit much for close quarters.

“Where's your husband?” asks the bride.

The medium explains Masumi's gone out walking. This way they have their privacy. They discuss payment. The young bride passes the medium a fair chunk of her dead father's money—the high price of a personal consultation. They sit together at the medium's table, her simple wooden box between them, but closer to the medium's chair so it is clear the bride should not touch.

“I'm told you'd like to speak with your father.”

“You can do that?”

“I can be a vessel. If you want me to.”

“I would like that,” says the girl, putting her fingers on his fingers.

“You might.” He looks down at her hand touching his. “Please don't touch me.”

The girl withdraws her hand. The medium gathers his brother's box to his breast, feeling the smooth, cool grain. He leans close enough to breathe its dusty, wooden scent. Like loaded dice rolling into place, his mind finds focus. It seeks a voice, a dead man's. The dead man is coming to him. They will meet in the middle. He will blank his mind and let it take a new shape, a new fire, burning through the fibers, and this will change the features of his face, drawing tight weak, neglected muscles, and slacking others favored by the medium, making the face feel as a pudding, shot through with stubborn strands or grains, entangled in a numbed mesh, a speaking slab joined to the skull.

The ghost enters the medium.

The ghost favors the eyebrows, the forehead, the muscle ridges of the cheeks. He lunges the head forward, close as he can to his daughter. “Adèle?”

“Daddy?”

“What have you done with my money?”

“It's still there, Daddy. We've only spent a little.”

“It has to last you your whole life.”

“I can work,” says the young bride. “Gilbert will go into business.”

“You married Gilbert?”

“He's a good boy. He takes care of me.”

“I worry about you.” The medium's face falls. His eyes water.

“Do you feel this?” She touches the medium's hand.

“No. I don't.”

Masumi does.

“Do they still use my planes?” says the medium's face.

“Yes. Of course they do.”

They talk about family things. She tells him of the aunt who died. The medium's mouth grows tired and dry. He needs a taste. How to tell the ghost? There is nothing to do for it but wait.

Later, when the ghost leaves Masumi, he feels his body tremor. The strange, other shape fades from his brain, his face. He is himself.

“Thank you,” says the young bride. “It was strange. That was really him, wasn't it?”

“Next time I could be your grandmother.” He pops the cork on a wine bottle and drinks from it, pulling the feather needle from his forehead. A drop of blood lands on the table, wet and heavy and still.

“I might be afraid to come again,” she says.

“There's one other thing,” says the medium. “You're pregnant.”

“How can you know that? You see the dead.”

“Sometimes the living are dead come back.”