A/N: Little anxious about this one. It was a weird idea that I couldn't really shake, so I had to write it down, or go barmy in the process. I hope it's not too pretentious! Also, much different from my usual stuff.
"Are you positive that you wouldn't like a glass of water, or maybe some orange juice?"
Rowan Chase shifts irritably against his pillows and tries not to start coughing again. Once he starts, it tends to take him a while to stop. "No, thank you, Maureen," he replies, trying to remain polite and courteous; it's not her fault that his body is betraying him and disintegrating slowly.
Maureen is his second wife, twenty years his junior, and in possession of her generation's annoying habit of hedging her sentences. Rowan has learned to accept it over the seven years that they have been married, even manages to ignore it on good days. Partially, this is because he loves her, and partially, this is because he spent much of those seven years away on the lecture circuit. Now that the cancer has overrun both of his lungs and metastasized to several other major organs in the chest cavity, Rowan has become bed-ridden, and Maureen's sweet, well-meaning earnestness is starting to grate on his nerves.
Maureen seems to be at a loss of what to do, and she hesitates awkwardly next to his shriveled form. "Would you like me to fluff your pillow?" she tries again. Her bright blue eyes, Rowan's favorite feature on her lovely face, are open wide, and her fear is written in equal portions with love and pity. Rowan hates to be pitied, almost as much as he hates the thought of his impending death, but Maureen's genuine affection awakens a pang of guilt.
He shifts again and reaches over to touch her arm lightly. It is a small gesture, and when he sees his shrunken, skeletal hand, Rowan almost snatches it away again. Still, as his fingers brush her sleeve, Maureen smiles slightly and takes his hand in hers. Her fingers are warm, his are cold, but he finds this minor intimacy comforting.
After a moment, he squeezes her fingers gently and leans back against the pillows. "Maureen, love," he says, "I am fine. My pillows are fine. I will call you if I need anything, but right now I think that I would like to rest for awhile."
Her eyebrows knit with concern, but she doesn't press him. "Just call if you need anything," she stresses again.
Rowan tries to smile reassuringly. He can't see himself, but he's pretty sure that his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks morph his attempt at comfort into a grimace. "Of course."
She leans over and kisses him gently, patting his hand affectionately. Her lips are dry against his own. "Sleep well, my dear. I'll bring in dinner around seven."
Knowing that she won't actually leave until he at least pretends to sleep, Rowan lets his eyes drift shut. Maureen's starched button-down shirt makes a cool swishing noise as she straightens and moves towards the door. The well-oiled hinges do not squeak, but Rowan hears the soft click of the latch as the door shuts behind her.
He opens his eyes and stares absently at the ceiling; anywhere else in the room serves as a visual reminder of his wasting illness. There is a thin crack in the plaster that reminds Rowan vaguely of the Indian Penninsula. He is sick of that crack. The 300-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, the climate-controlled room with its sedate, dark cherry wood furniture, has become an opulent prison.
Rowan concentrates on regulating his breathing, keeping it shallow; deep breaths bring on fresh coughing fits. He has grown accustomed to the decrease in available oxygen in his lungs over the last three months and has adjusted to it, rather the same way mountain climbers do in the Himalayas. And, like all practical mountain climbers in the Himalayas, Rowan has a handy oxygen tap in case he needs a quick hit.
He has seen the Himalayas – twice actually – which is comforting, because it means that his "10 Things to See Before You Die" list is smaller than most others. His lecture circuit has taken him most places over the years, so he has had numerous opportunities to cross off various locations. Some perverse part of him has always wanted to see Omaha, Nebraska, if only for the novelty of it, but if that is all he is missing out on, he figures that he has it far luckier than most. On one of the bookshelves in the living room, there is a somewhat narcissistic photo album full of snapshots from the rest of the world. Rowan in sunglasses on the steps of the Taj Mahal; Rowan smiling sedately directly in front of the astonishing vista of Machu Pichu, an Indiana-Jones style hat perched at a dashing angle on his forehead; Rowan crouched low so the vendor he pulled off the street could get the whole Great Pyramid into the frame.
There are three pictures in the album that are not only of him. One is of both him and Maureen on their honeymoon in Istanbul. Saint Sophia's is lit up against the night sky, and Maureen's arms are thrown around him, and he is grinningly inanely at her, his hands gripping her elbows in a playful embrace. The gesture is uncharacteristically affectionate for Rowan: Maureen had to catch him off-guard right as the photo was taken. But he likes this photo, likes the impulsiveness of it, even if it is not at all an accurate illustration of his personality.
The second photo was taken in Nepal, and it shows Rowan with his first wife and his son Robert, who was only six at the time. It was one of the few trips they took together as a family, and even then, the snapshot captures the strain between himself and his wife with a sort-of brutal honesty. They stand on either side of Robert, leaning subtly away from each other. Rowan dislikes this photo, but he can not bring himself to throw it out, mainly because of the look of complete happiness on Robert's young face. Even though he was six-years-old when the photograph was taken, Robert could have passed for younger: his face was still boyishly round, his eyes were too big and too startlingly green for the rest of his smallish features, and an uncontrollable cowlick made one side of his hair stick out at an awkward angle.
Rowan isn't in the third photograph at all; he was, after all, the one who took it. Robert was about twelve – though he could have easily been mistaken for ten – with a twelve-year-old boy's endless fascination with frightening pigeons. Rowan, of course, recognizes St. Nicholas in the background, the statues of the Charles Bridge in the foreground, but the splendors of downtown Prague are hardly the focus of the picture. Robert, winter jacket flapping out to the sides, is running headfirst into a knot of pigeons, a maniacal grin on his face.
Lately, as his breathing has become shallower and shallower, and his coughing fits more and more prolonged, Rowan's mind has returned fairly frequently to that 1990 lecture trip to the new Czechoslovakia. He had been lucky to get the visa. Rowan had never had much attachment to a national identity, but he had brought twelve-year-old Robert along for some inexplicable reason that he couldn't really define even now, nearly fifteen years later. His wife had stayed behind to finish her third novel, so the trip had been just the two of them for the first and last time. It had been the first time that Robert had ridden on a plane, and the little boy could hardly contain his enthusiasm as the wheels pulled off the runway at Sidney International.
Inadvertently, lost in his memories, Rowan takes too deep a breath. His cancer-ridden lungs, which have been rather passive all day, begin to burn terribly, which causes him to reflexively suck in another huge gasp of air. It is a vicious cycle.
His chest convulses and he begins to cough heavily. He can feel his eyes tearing, and while the hacking is physically painful, what really shocks him is the rattling he can hear in his chest. Three weeks ago, his lungs had filled with fluid and Maureen had had to rush him to the emergency room so that they could be drained. He is afraid they are filling again. He grabs at the oxygen tank beside the bed, fumbles with the tap, and slams the plastic mouth piece on to his face. He's sure it will bruise, but he ignores this as his hacking slowly becomes less desperate. The tank oxygen cools his burning lungs. So, it was just a coughing attack, and not another fluid build-up. Rowan supposes that this is a good thing, since the fact that Maureen has yet to come bursting through the door means that she's on the other side of the house and didn't hear him. In which case he'd be dead.
He keeps the oxygen mask on and reaches one skeletal hand up to check his pulse. The papery thinness of his skin makes him cringe, but he leaves his bony finger on the pulse point and counts slowly. It is thready, but as the oxygen nourishes his crippled lungs, he can feel it slow and grow stronger, even though at its strongest recently, it can hardly be considered healthy.
He begins to stare at the ceiling again.
Czech history is a history of eights. 1618, the Defenestration of Prague and the beginning of the Thirty Years' War; 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia and the solidification of Hapsburg dominance over Bohemia; 1848, the pitiful attempt to establish a Pan-Slavic congress and the submission of Prague to military dictatorship; 1878 Dovorak publishes the Slavonic dances; 1918, independence and the establishment of Czechoslovakia; 1938, the invasion of Germany; 1948 Communist coup; 1968 the beginning of the Prague Spring….
And so on, and so forth.
Rowan feels like he is forgetting some of them, but history was hardly ever his best subject, and his perception of it is kind of warped by his Socialist grammar school education anyway.
This "eights" motif has always been somewhat striking to Rowan, who finds that his life has been perversely haunted by the number eight more-or-less in the same way, although with fewer large gaps, particularly since he will apparently only have sixty-eight years to squeeze it all in.
He was born in 1938, ironically, exactly three-hundred and twenty years after the Defenestration of Prague. Naturally, he doesn't remember the German invasion, but he does remember the German occupation, mostly with an overwhelming sense of terror. His mother had been highly strung at the best of times, and after the 1942 massacre at Lidice, refused to leave the house at all. She instilled the same overwhelming terror in her youngest son, and Rowan was not permitted to go to grammar school until Prague was liberated by the Allies in 1945.
In 1948, the Communists organized the Coup d'Etat and merged with the ruling Social Democratic Party. Rowan's mother, a nervous woman, had a stroke in May of the same year and died on the 8th of June.
In 1958, Rowan received his medical degree, nearly four years before he should have, had he followed the normal track.
In 1968, during the lowering of restrictions on travel during the Prague Spring, he went to Australia for a three-day medical conference during the month of August. His flight was delayed coming back when the Prague airport was shut-down so the Soviets could airlift in tank support for their Warsaw Pact invasion. He defected, and the Australian government, ever accommodating, let him do so with surprisingly little fuss. In October, he met his future wife at a lecture he was giving. This began a torrid, tumultuous affair that lasted for eight years before they impulsively got married. His wife later made their courtship the semi-autobiographical plot of her first novel.
In 1978, their only son, Robert, was born. He weighed eight pounds, a heavy baby. Rowan's medical training told him that Robert was a big baby, and yet, the blue-wrapped bundle his wife handed to him seemed overwhelmingly tiny. Two months later, Rowan was offered the opportunity to head the prestigious medical faculty at the University of Queensland.
Rowan shifts against his pillows again, tension building in his chest that has nothing to do with the cancer eating away at the lining of his lungs. He can identify it easily: regret. The University of Queensland had been a demanding job and had significantly increased his visibility in the Australian Medical Community. He spent less and less time at home and more time at work, doing research, publishing, and self-promotion. Usually, by the time he returned home, his wife had lain their son down for the night. Sometimes, if he wasn't too tired, Rowan would sneak softly in to Robert's room and watch him sleep. Robert always slept on his stomach, golden curls tousled against the green of his blankets, one tiny fist bunched around the corner of his sheet.
He had been in Tokyo for Robert's first steps, New York for his first words, London for his first football match, and Cairo for his first day of school. At the time, Rowan viewed these sacrifices as somewhat minor. Now, separated from his adult son by a very large ocean, a very large continent, and Robert's bottomless pit of resentment, Rowan is fully capable of admitting that his pursuit of career made him an awful father.
It is in moments like these that he wishes his formulative years hadn't been spent being grilled in Catholicism by his nervous wreck of a pious mother. He knows he is going to hell; it's just a question of which circle at this point. Sometimes, when he is being particularly masochistic, he tries to assign point values to individual sins to see which cluster trumps the others. Pride, obviously, is a fairly big scorer on Rowan's personal list, as is Lust and, if he is perfectly honest with himself – what does he really have to lose at this point, anyway – there's a pretty good chance he'll end up in the City of Dis as a heretic.
Maybe he should donate his fortune to the Church like the plunderers of old and have a convent of nuns spend three hours each morning praying for the salvation of his eternal soul.
Still, he knows full good and well that his greatest sin isn't actually one of the great deadly ones that Rodin made such pretty sculptures of. Unless the sin of Indifference has been added to the Catechism since Rowan last attended a full Church service.
He feels lightheaded and realizes that he never removed the oxygen mask. He reaches out and turns off the tap. Recently, they have made the taps easier to use, mainly for senior citizens, but turning the dial requires effort on Rowan's part, as his atrophied arms seem to need more leverage than he currently has given his prostrate position.
Eventually, the faint hissing fades and then disappears entirely. Rowan lets his head fall back onto the pillows.
Regardless of whether or not it's a mortal sin, Rowan's indifference over the years has been the motivating factor in any number of tragic incidents. Rowan feels some measure of guilt over all of these things, including his first wife's death, although she had had alcoholic tendencies long before Rowan actually left her; it was part of what made her writing so good. He had always been perversely amused by that scene in "The Philadelphia Story": "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."
Oh, the irony.
After her second novel was published, one reviewer wrote, "One is torn between profound pleasure in the novel's execution and wonder at the pain that inspired it." The pain was partially Rowan's fault: he was, after all, an absentee husband. Still, she was, by her very nature, passionate and precocious, and he suspected upon reflection, had a touch of post-pregnancy depression that never quite faded. Certainly, that's when her drinking lost its purely social dimension; not that Rowan really noticed this at the time.
Yes, he feels guilty that he didn't catch on sooner, and he feels guilty that he ran away instead of forcing her into some clinical program that would shove psychobabble down her throat in exchange for her sobriety. But really, she's been dead now for ten years, the damage is done; has been done, rather.
No, the guilt stems from the very real truth that Robert was the one at home dealing with his wife's ever-lengthening binges. Having Maureen here to take care of him as he's declined during the last several months, has really made Rowan recognize that if it wasn't for Robert caring for his mother, she would have died long before she actually did.
The first time Robert came across his mother passed out on the sofa, barely breathing, he had been ten. The only reason Rowan knows about this whole experience is because after calling the paramedics, Robert had panicked and telephoned first Rowan's secretary, and then, after receiving his hotel information in Kyoto, Rowan himself.
Rowan didn't really think much of this conversation at the time. He told his panicked son that he had done the right thing by calling the paramedics first, and to make sure that she was safely turned onto her side, and then hung-up because his lecture was starting in ten minutes.
Sometimes Rowan himself is shocked at his professional coldness.
He is tired again. He can feel the exhaustion creeping up behind his eyelids, and he wishes that it were strong enough to temporarily halt the flood of memories that is threatening to completely overwhelm him. There's something perverse about the activity of the mind in a terminally ill patients. Rowan has never been good at empathizing with his patients, preferring instead to adopt the elitist, "scientific" approach. As far as Rowan is concerned, the humanity in medicine was always more of a hindrance than an asset. His medical education has always made him approach decay clinically and analytically. Now, though, he's beginning to understand why patients cling obsessively to compassion; Death is actually terrifying.
Robert's face swims back to the surface of Rowan's consciousness. He has done well for himself; not nearly as well Rowan himself did by Robert's age, but acceptable. Besides, given Robert's childhood role models, Rowan can at least see why his son changed continents and resigned himself to comfortable mediocrity. There is something admirable in mediocrity. Certainly, most of the famous people Rowan knows aren't particularly happy. He and his wife certainly weren't.
He likes to think that he can see bits of himself in Robert; at least, the admirable bits of himself. Robert is smart. Brilliant actually, even if he himself neither sees it, nor acts as though he is. Rowan had his son's IQ tested when he graduated secondary school two years early; Robert scored well over 160. Robert's dedication, his commitment, his enthusiasm for life are Rowan's influence, he thinks. He hopes.
It's painful for Rowan to look at his adult son, sometimes. Rowan has few memories of his son's maturity. One moment, Robert was the vulnerable, loving, wide-eyed boy, too small for his age; the next, he was fully grown, resentful, and determined to avoid the ambitious future that Rowan had set aside for him. That awkward, gangly teenage period does not exist in Rowan's memories of his son. He supposes it must have happened, but he doesn't remember or, more likely, he wasn't there to see it. Robert's green eyes, clear and accusing, are identical to his first wife's and difficult for Rowan to look directly into. He manages, of course, the few times he has seen his son in the last seven years. He never could excuse himself from that.
Mediocrity is the thing that Rowan has tried so hard to avoid throughout his life, and it appears to be the thing Robert is rushing in to with the same gusto as that flock of pigeons fifteen years ago. It's not apathy leading to his son's mediocrity; Robert actively pursues it. This used to drive Rowan insane. Now, on his death bed, he can't help but feel something akin to pride and admiration for his son's one real act of defiance, underhanded as it may be.
Rowan feels the temptation to cough again, and he tries to suppress it. His whole body aches. He doesn't remember ever being in pain like this; for that, he is grateful. That thought, however, doesn't really make the pain easier to bear now.
He hasn't told Robert about his impending death. He's not really sure why, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. Part of him realizes that this is the type of news is best delivered in person, not over the phone. He blew that chance when he didn't tell Robert before he got in that taxi two months ago. There was a moment to do so – Rowan felt it then, and he feels it even more pointedly now – right after Robert pulled away and shoved his hands in the pockets of that ridiculous leather jacket. Still, Rowan can't help but feel as if telling him then would have put too much of a burden on Robert. As the taxi was driving away, Rowan looked out the back window and saw his only child staring vacantly after it, and he almost told the driver to turn around. He didn't.
Maureen says that telling him now is better than not telling him at all, but Rowan doesn't really agree. Despite the fact that he spent most of Robert's life not being there, Rowan at least knows enough about his son to realize that Robert would feel far more guilty about their fractured relationship than he should. This perpetual feeling of guilt he most definitely did not inherit from either of his parents, and Rowan can only assume that it was successfully instilled in him by the Catholic school education he had bullied his wife in to accepting.
Rowan had Maureen take the phone out of his room. He doesn't want to be tempted by it. He gives in to temptation far too easily. It's a character flaw that he hopes Robert hasn't inherited. But he doesn't know for certain, and he won't ever know now. It's too late to get to know his son; in the end, trying will only prove to be more painful for Robert. Knowing that Robert will take this badly regardless, Rowan wishes he could explain his reasoning to his son in a letter or something, but truthfully, he barely understands it himself.
Czech history is a history of eights; Rowan's own life has followed this pattern up until now. His death, in 2005, will break the pattern. He's tired, but he wishes that he could have followed the pattern until the end. Perhaps three more years would have given him a last ditch chance to get to know his son
He can hear the low hum of the central heater kicks in. It's a comforting, lulling sound, and Rowan forces his tired mind to focus on it. He stares up at the crack in the ceiling above his head: it still looks like the Indian Peninsula and it still irritates him. But the hum of the heater is soothing, and Rowan lets his eyes drift shut, shutting out the oxygen tank, the tastefully sedate furniture and, most importantly, the crack in the ceiling.
But he can still see Robert clearly in his mind. Ironically, the image that he conjures up is not the adult Robert as he last saw him, but rather the too-small, precocious twelve-year-old boy gleefully running headlong into a great flock of pigeons.
A/N part deux: So, if you've gotten to the end, you're a more devoted reader than me. Several explanatory notes because I didn't want to give anything away up top. First of all, the book review is actually a real review made by Ian McEwan for Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; I just liked it and thought it would fit. Secondly, I have my theories about what happened to Rowan's money, none of which include Rowan cutting him out of his will. Maybe I'll make another story about them who knows. Thirdly, the picture of Robert is actually a description of a real one I came across in The Real World and liked so much I included it here. Okay, that's it. Sorry to blab so much.
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