The Dead Zone(44)

'Polish, it is Polish!' Weizak cried. His eyes were bulging, his face pale. 'It is a cradle song and it is in Polish, my God, my Christ, what is it we have here?'

Weizak leaned forward as if to cross the years with Johnny, as if to leap them, as if to

(bridge, a bridge, it's in turkey. then a bridge somewhere hot in the far east, is it Laos? can't tell, lost a man there, we lost HANS there, then a bridge in virginia, a bridge over the RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER and another bridge in california. we are applying for citizenship now and we go to classes in a hot little room in the back of a post-office where it always smells of glue. it is 1963, november, and when we hear kennedy has been killed in dallas we weep and when the little boy salutes his dead father's coffin she thinks 'THE BOY IS SAFE' and it brings back memories of some burning, some great burning and sorrow, what boy? she dreams about the boy, it makes her head hurt. and the man dies, HELMUT BORENTZ dies and she and the children live in carmel california. in a house on. on. on. can't see the street sign, it's in the dead zone, like the rowboat, like the picnic table on the lawn. it's in the dead zone. like warsaw. the children go away, she goes to their graduation ceremonies one by one, and her hip hurts. one dies in vietnam. the rest of them are fine. one of them is building bridges. her name is JOHANNA BORENTZ and late at night alone now she sometimes thinks in the ticking darkness: 'THE BOY IS SAFE.')

Johnny looked up at them. His head felt strange. That peculiar light around Weizak had gone. He felt like himself again, but weak and a little pukey. He looked at the picture in his hands for a moment and then handed it back.

'Johnny?' Brown said. 'Are you all right?'

'Tired,' he muttered.

'Can you tell us what happened to you?'

He looked at Weizak. 'Your mother is alive,' he said.

'No, Johnny. She died many years ago. In the war.'

'A German trooptruck knocked her through a plate-glass show window and into a dock shop,' Johnny said. 'She woke up in a hospital with amnesia. She had no identification, no papers. She took the name Johanna somebody. I didn't get that, but when the war was over she went to Switzerland and married a Swiss... engineer, I think. His specialty was building bridges, and his name was Helmut Borentz. So her married name was - is -Johanna Borentz.'

The nurse's eyes were getting bigger and bigger. Dr. Brown's face was tight, either because he had decided Johnny was having them all on or perhaps just because he didn't like to see his neat schedule of 'tests disrupted.

But Weizak's face was still and thoughtful.

'She and Helmut Borentz had four children,' Johnny said in that same, calm, washed-out voice. 'His job took him all over the world. He was in Turkey for a while. Somewhere in the Far East, Laos, I think, maybe Cambodia. Then he came here. Virginia first, then some other places I didn't get, finally California. He and Johanna became U.S. citizens. Helmut Borentz is dead. One of the children they had is also dead. The others are alive and fine. But she dreams about you sometimes. And in the dreams she thinks, 'the boy is safe'. But she doesn't remember your name. Maybe she thinks it's too late.'

'California?' Weizak said thoughtfully. 'Sam,' Dr. Brown said. 'Really, you mustn't encourage this.'

'Where in California, John?'

'Carmel. By the sea. But I couldn't tell which street. It was there, but I couldn't tell. It was in the dead zone. Like the picnic table and the rowboat. But she's in Car-mel, California. Johanna Borentz. She's not old.'

'No, of course she would not be old,' Sam Weizak said in that same thoughtful, distant tone. 'She was only twenty-four when the Germans invaded Poland.'

'Dr. Weizak, I have to insist,' Brown said harshly. Weizak seemed to come out of a deep study. He looked around as if noticing his younger colleague for the first time. 'Of course,' he said. 'Of course you must. And John has had his question-and-answer period ... although I believe he has told us more than we have told him.'

'That's nonsense,' Brown said curtly, and Johnny thought: He's scared. Scared spitless.

Weizak smiled at Brown, and then at the nurse. She was eyeing Johnny as if he were a tiger in a poorly built cage. 'Don't talk about this, Nurse. Not to your supervisor, your mother, your brother, your lover, or your priest. Understood?'

'Yes, Doctor,' the nurse said. But she'll talk, Johnny thought, and then glanced at Weizak. And he knows it.

He slept most of the afternoon. Around four P.M. he was rolled down the corridor to the elevator, taken down to neurology, and there were more tests. Johnny cried. He seemed to have very little control over the functions adults are supposed to be able to control. On his way back up, he urinated on himself and had to be changed like a baby. The first (but far from the last) wave of deep depression washed over him, carried him limply away, and he wished himself dead. Self-pity accompanied the depression and he thought how unfair this was. He had done a Rip van Winkle. He couldn't walk. His girl had married another man and his mother was in the grip of a religious mania, He couldn't see anything ahead that looked worth living for.

Back in his room, the nurse asked him if he would like anything. If Marie had been on duty, Johnny would have asked for ice water. But she had gone off at three.

'No,' he said, and rolled over to face the wall. After a little while, he slept.