Because You'll Never Meet Me (24 page)

I am pleased you still write to my son. It has come to my attention that he no longer sends replies. He can read without my help now. I felt it would be invading his privacy to read the letters you have written to him. In the years that he has been under my guardianship, I have always tried to respect his privacy. He has not always had any privacy to respect.

Because of this, it was only last week that I became aware that all the letters he has written to you remain stacked on his desk in a neat pile, sealed and stamped but never sent. I was sorry to learn that he has not sent them, because I had hoped you remained his last source of solace. Watching his recent decline was bearable when I thought you were counteracting it. Now that I know that is not the case, I feel I must contact you and tell you about Moritz's behavior.

Something has happened to my son, and it is something he will not speak to me about. We have always been quiet, but this silence is different. I once looked forward to clocking out of the factory to enjoy a few hours' time with him in the evenings. Now when I return from work, our home is awash in a melancholy that is difficult to bear. I have a hard time crossing the doorway; the lights seem to flicker, the furniture looks older even than it is. If I approach Moritz's bedroom at the end of the hallway, the gloom in the air feels so heavy that my eyes water.

Moritz rarely leaves his room. He has stopped going to school. He does not bathe and does not sleep. I can hear him clicking his tongue even in the early hours of the morning.

There is a history of mental illness in his family, but Moritz will allow no medical professional near him, apart from the doctor who monitors his heart. I considered forcing him to see another, but after all he has endured, that seemed too cruel. I cannot commit that act of betrayal.

This began months ago. Moritz went out with friends in the late afternoon, and when I came home after the late shift, the gloom had moved in with us.

His friends—the girl in boots and the mute boy—have not stopped by to check on him, although Maxine Pruwitt, his librarian, has come by. She was adamant about seeing him and pounded on his bedroom door for twenty minutes straight. He did not answer. After such a long time, even she seemed to succumb to the gloom emanating from his room.

He must have heard her. We could hear him clicking. He does not stop, now.

She pushed school transfer documents under his door and left twice as angry as when she arrived.

In the early morning or late in the night, he cracks open his door; sometimes I can feel him passing in the hallway, and it wakes me from sleep as if a nightmare has slipped by.

I recall reading your “dolphin-wave” theory of Moritz's emotional transference.

I try to join him in the kitchen when he goes on these excursions. He eats in silence and mostly only uncooked oatmeal. I make coffee that he does not drink, and I sit across from him at the table and try to find words to say, but we have never communicated much in this way.

He does not wear his goggles. His hair is greasy enough that it looks as though he has been standing in the rain. His breathing is often stilted. I have been careful to check his pacemaker every time he appears, and he does not protest. So at least he is not wishing for death yet. But he will not talk to me.

He clicks.

Sometimes he writes to you at the kitchen table, by hand now. Which would make me proud in other circumstances.

I ask him what's wrong and he shakes his head. He will not face me. Of course, he does not have to, but he once chose to.

I ask him how he is and he shakes his head.

I ask him how you are and he leaves the table.

At first I thought he was angry with you. But then I read his movements more carefully; the way his ears redden, his lips curl down. It is not anger that has silenced him.

It is shame. Or fear.

I do not know what he is afraid of.

Afraid you will reject him? He underestimates you. He will never again be a trusting boy, after all he has experienced. But his past is not mine to tell you.

Forgive me for breaching your privacy and invading your correspondence. But as the closest thing to his father, I cannot remain silent any longer.

This evening I asked him to bathe, and at last he complied. While he was in the bathroom, I broke into his desk drawer and read your letters. I plucked the oldest envelope from his stack, and on my way to work, I will place it in an envelope alongside this note and send it to you.

I will take a deep breath before I enter the apartment this evening. He will notice the letter's absence. I do not doubt the gloom will deepen.

I do not want you waiting and wondering if he has become lost in a wardrobe. His narrative continues.

My son is only as flawed as any human being, but he is unwilling to accept himself. I know you are willing to accept him. When I met him long ago, I saw myself. Before I met him, I was also always alone.

Moritz and I have an understanding. I understand his silence, and he understands mine.

But you are the first person Moritz has truly communicated with. You are the first step into society that he has ever willingly taken, and I am so proud of his progress. I am grateful for your devotion; he is as well, which is perhaps why he finds it so difficult to contact you now.

I beg you, do not dismiss him. Do wait for him to explain
himself. We have not seen all that he has seen. Words are not easy for all of us.

Gerhardt Farber

Oliver, I don't know what I should do. You're telling me your story, and I can do no more than skim the contents of your letters. I cannot begin to process your words except to say:

What happened to Joe was a tragedy. In
no way
was it of your making.

Now I am the one who cannot focus. Forgive me. I don't know what to do.

I am considering going to the hospital. Not for myself. But I am alone in my kitchen again. I am frightened. I do not know whether I should turn myself in to the authorities. Or say nothing.

I don't know what to do.

It is my fault that Lenz Monk is hospitalized. I cannot hide this. It must be written all over my face. All over my soulless eye sockets.

We made a great game of it. Typically during the hours spent after school in the Sickly Poet. We'd order drinks and plot Lenz's unfortunate demise. We had a list of ludicrous schemes that read like Edward Gorey's stories about dead children.

A
is for arsenic in Lenz's soup!

B
is for burning him down to his shoes!

C
is for cutting his heart from his chest!

D
is for drowning him down with the squids!

And so on. We joked about performing it at the microphone. We were only joking.

I did not intend to kill him. Only to frighten him. To discourage him from targeting the tongueless and eyeless again.

But Fieke wanted more. She dragged on her long cigarettes. Swore under her breath that he had it coming. Her heart rate increased; she seemed almost thrilled. Instilled with a fiery drive for violence.

I should have shied away, Ollie. I have seen scientists look like that.

We resolved that the best way to confront him would be to lure him into instigating a fight. If someone witnessed the attack, it would seem he had started the altercation. We waited for him after school today. Under the bridge where he'd fed Owen a fuzz sandwich. First we met at Owen's dingy apartment. Owen and Fieke live alone. Fieke is old enough to be a legal guardian. Before that, they lived in orphanages. They don't speak about the past any more than I do. I do not needle.

Ostzig is unapologetically rough. Their apartment, huddled away in the basement of a brick building, makes the one I share with Father seem glamorous by comparison. They did not invite me inside. They asked me to wait on the sidewalk.

Fieke led the way from the pavement to old, winding cobbles that curled away beneath
Südbrücke
, a pedestrian bridge across the stinking canal. I tried to squeeze Owen's hand once as we approached. My heart beat harder when he withdrew and tucked his hands away beneath his arms.

He was still angry with me for last night. (Do not ask about it now, Oliver.)

Fieke and I hid in an alcove between two concrete support beams. Owen stood alone in the center of the pavement. Far too exposed for my liking. The wind picked up; the sour smell of cold canal water pricked my nostrils. There was another scent as well: pumpernickel.

“He's coming,” I said.

Sure enough, moments later, that signature slip-scrape of Monk's uneven gait led to his appearance before us. He was walking with his head down, looking at the cobbles. Until he nearly trod on Owen.

“What do you want,” he grunted.

Owen blinked.

There was something the matter with all of this. The look on Fieke's face was that unpleasant smile. I could almost hear it. So creaking. So forced.

And Lenz …

He looked angry, yes. But also troubled.

I didn't have time to consider this. Fieke pushed me out into the fray.

Lenz jerked back. Showed his teeth.

“Listen.” I pointed my cane at him. “You've had your fun. Never again.”

“Leave me alone,” said Lenz, scowling.

He tried to push past both of us, leaving me with my mouth agape. Fieke stepped into his path with her arms folded over her chest.

“Away, Fieke.” He pushed right past her, much like he'd tried to push me in the gym. But she didn't dodge it. She bared her teeth and took his palm against her sternum. She made no effort to catch herself.

When she fell, Owen pounced.

I had thought he was meek as a lamb. But he leapt right onto Lenz's back and threw his arms around his throat. Nails out like a lion.

“Moritz, you idiot! Get him!”

“But—”

Lenz Monk grabbed Owen by the head. Pulled him over his shoulder to throw him against the cobbles. Owen landed on his back and cried out. A squawking cry that cut me to the core.

Because the moment Owen cried out in pain and coughed air from his lungs, my heart rate increased and my pacemaker strained, and I saw every scratch that had ever been made in the stones underfoot, every strand of hair in between them, the insects colonizing underneath the rock, the fungi growing on the underside of the bridge, and the minuscule portions of phlegm expelled with Owen's exhaled lungful of breath, and the tiny particles of flour in Lenz's hair and the way his eyes were crinkled with rage and hurt. Because I heard all this, I moved before the second was out. Before I knew it, I had done it.

I had done it.

MBV allowed me to aim the butt end of my cane directly into the softest pressure point in his throat and stab with as much effort as I could muster. With all the precision of a surgeon installing a pacemaker. With all the talent of an artist with a brush or a seamstress with a needle.

It took precisely one sharp thrust and then two hands shoved against his diaphragm to undo him.

Lenz didn't even raise a hand to me. He gasped for air, clutching at his throat. Tripped backward over Owen's supine form. When he fell, he smacked his head against the pavement.

Crack!
And in the echoes, his head was swelling, and in his wheezes, I saw he was not rising again.

What monster am I, Ollie?

I took three steps backward. I could not escape this.

“Got him!” Fieke's eyes shone with inhuman rage. Similar to my own fury moments before. She climbed to her feet. Dusted off her knees. Relit her cigarette before helping Owen up. He was wheezing but smiling. That frightened squawking, that cry that called me to action—was it a performance?

Did I transfer my rage to them? Was this what I did to normal people? Or was this rage all their own? I did not know. I could not spare the time to care.

I could hear Lenz's pulse. But he had hit his head hard. He burbled. In his burbles I heard again how monstrous I am. I heard my nothingness.

Lenz was sprawled across the cobbles and bleeding between us. But both Owen, wheezing, and Fieke, scowling, stared at me. They were not the ones who'd wrecked him.

“Why are you looking like that? He had this coming. See if he fluffs with us again. Wait and see.”

“Call an ambulance.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. Owen shook his head. He was still coughing. I did not feel sorry for him.

“Your phone. Give it to me. He hit his head.”

“Hell no.” Perhaps she was in shock. Perhaps I should
have commiserated. Should have realized she could not be as cruel as she seemed.

I stepped forward, cold and clicking. Fieke took half a step back. I grabbed her. I could see precisely how she was going to move. Suddenly she looked alien to me—a terrified little girl who thought I might hit her—but I only took the phone from her pocket and turned away.

She replaced her mask of rage. But I had seen that little girl and she was well aware, so she spat out with more bile than before: “Coward! Just duck your head again, all right? Just leave!”

I did not reply. I called emergency services.

I hope he is not dead. I hope he has been hospitalized. Not placed under a coroner's care.

I left the scene of the crime.

What have I become? My mother's monstrous experiment and I can't pretend to be anything else. I can't hide behind goggles or masks.

Oliver … should I go see him?

You would. Certainly you would.

You ran directly at that power line.

I stepped outside the apartment door and into the mildew-ridden hallway. I dropped my keys onto the concrete and clutched my chest and edged back inside once more. I edged all the way backward down the hall and into my bedroom and shut myself away inside.

I cannot do it.

If Lenz were the only one, perhaps I could go. But there are others. Others all over the world who have suffered for my sake.

I can't tell whether it is my heart disease or something else that makes my ribs ache now.