The Road to Wellville (65 page)

“Spitzvogel? Never heard of him. And just what might his speciality be—if, as your physician and head of this institution, I might be so bold as to inquire?”

At first she wouldn’t answer. She seemed to be turning it over in her mind, and the delay infuriated him—would she dare to keep it from him? But then she bit her lips and looked him directly in the eye. “Manipulation Therapy.
Die Handhabung Therapeutik
. He manipulates my, my”—she looked at Bloese, then shot a glance at the Doctor and finally dropped her eyes to the book in her lap—“my womb.”

“Your
womb?
” The Doctor tore the eyeshade from his brow and slammed it down on the desk. He thought he’d heard it all, everything, every weakness, every peccadillo and scheme, every last breath of ignorance and depravity, but he was wrong. Astonishment punctuated his words: “He—manipulates—your—womb?”

There was a moment of silence, a silence so profound the Doctor fancied he could hear the blood rushing through his veins. Bloese was inanimate. No one breathed.

“Yes!” Eleanor suddenly cried, leaping to her feet, her voice raw with passion, with shame, with defiance. Her cheeks were wet, her limbs
rigid. “Yes!” she repeated, the affirmation harsh as a battle cry, “and I’ve never felt better in my life!” And then she turned and ran for the door, flinging it shut behind her with a noise that was like the first premonitory rumble of a gathering storm.

The Doctor stared at the door in bewilderment, exchanged a look with Bloese and slowly began to shake his head. He was tired. God, he was tired.

   
Chapter 7   

W
ill couldn’t stop whistling. He was ebullient, leggy, absolutely on fire with the finger-popping, toe-tapping melodies of the greatest bandmaster of them all, the nonpareil, the king, emperor and god of the march, John Philip Sousa. For the past hour he’d stood in the dappled shade of a Sanitarium elm and watched the Sanitarium Marching Band wheel across the Sanitarium lawn, legs snapping in physiologic precision, elbows rocking rhythmically, instruments seizing the light. They were rehearsing for the Chief’s gala Decoration Day festivities, which would include picnicking on the South Lawn, a blackface minstrel show featuring “Professor” Sammy Siegel and half a dozen conscripted Sanitarium talents, several tableaux vivants starring Vivian DeLorbe and an original drama performed by members of the Sanitarium Deep-Breathing Club. Though he was homesick, though his wife was a stranger and his miseries multiplied like fruit flies on a blackened banana, Will couldn’t resist Sousa. The air whistled through the gap in his front teeth like the shrill of an overheated teapot and a high thin rendition of “The Free Lunch Cadets” echoed through the San’s corridors as he made his martial way up the hall to Dr. Kellogg’s office.

Though he couldn’t fathom the reason for the summons—the Doctor’s stone-faced secretary had stopped by before breakfast to wonder
if eleven
A.M.
would be all right—Will didn’t let it faze him. After six months, he knew the routine—smile till your gums ache, look healthy and stupid, reveal nothing. Above all, ask no questions and expect no answers. If Will had ever wavered, if he’d ever come to hope that the little white-clad dictator’s methods were worth anything at all, the loss of his kink, the estrangement of Eleanor and the unequivocal fate of Miss Muntz, Homer Praetz and the Doctor’s own sweating amanuensis were enough to tip the balance permanently. He remained a patient, his condition static, but he was only biding his time in the desperate aching hope that Eleanor would come to her senses and they could go back home to Parsonage Lane and start their lives over. He labored under no illusions. None at all.

But on this particular day, Dr. Kellogg seemed almost glad to see him—and that was unusual, unusual in the extreme. Their relationship had settled into an unwavering pattern of stern admonishment on the Great Healer’s part and contrition on Will’s. Will had had liquor on the premises, he lusted after his own wife, he resisted the dietary and refused the sinusoidal bath, he was lackadaisical about his calisthenics and unenthusiastic with regard to his laughing exercises. He didn’t chew his food properly or stand up straight. And what was this nonsense about refusing to strip for the swimming pool? The Doctor was disappointed in Will, and he made no bones about it—Will was a backslider, a negative thinker and a bad example to his fellow patients. And so it was something of a surprise when Bloese ushered Will into the office and Dr. Kellogg rose to greet him with a benevolent smile and a firm handshake. “Mr. Lightbody, Will—and how are you?”

Will shrugged. Flashed a smile. “Improving,” he said.

“Yes, hmpf.” The Doctor’s antiseptic eyes roved up and down the length of him, as if searching out the lie. “Well, I’m very happy to hear that,” he said finally, “and you can’t deny that clean scientific living is having its effect, eh?”

Will didn’t deny it.

“The new dietary all right?”

Since the withdrawal of the grapes, Will had been allowed to order from the regular menu, though his intake of things even remotely palatable—blueberry muffins, corn bread, pancakes—was tightly regulated
by the dietary girls. He could have all the fake fish, counterfeit meat and corn pulp he wanted. Which was none. “Fine,” he said. Already he could feel the spirit of Sousa draining from him.

The little Doctor was in motion now, gathering a sheaf of papers from the desk, removing his eyeshade and setting it carefully in the wooden tray reserved for it, his bald spot glistening in the spill of May sunshine that flooded the office till it glowed like a clerestory. “But it’s not you I wanted to discuss,” he said, giving Will a cagey look.

Confused, Will shuffled his feet awkwardly on the cold tile floor. “It’s not?”

“But let’s walk, shall we?” the Doctor cried, and he dodged round the desk and made for the door without waiting for a response, Bloese simultaneously herding Will forward with an exaggerated shooing motion. “I just can’t see sitting behind a desk on such a glorious day, can you?”

Before he knew what was happening, Will was back out in the hallway, quickstepping to keep up with the brisk little man of healing, while Bloese, always in sympathy with his Chief, moved along effortlessly at his boss’s side. They strode up the familiar hallway, the Doctor nodding to this patient or that, calling out a greeting or an expression of concern, the white tails of his jacket fluttering in his wake. He made for the exit at the north end of the building and for once he didn’t seem to have anything to say—by the time they reached the door Will had begun to wonder if the Doctor had forgotten all about him. He was puzzled—
It’s not you I wanted to discuss
—and not a little irritated, but Dr. Kellogg led and he followed.

Bloese held the door and in the next moment they were gripped by the bright fragrance of the day, flowers in bloom, the world on its track, the distant invigoration of Sousa still ringing on the air. “Well,” the Doctor barked, swinging round on him after waving to a couple taking the air by the rhododendrons, “you’ve probably guessed what this is all about?”

Will didn’t have a clue. But in a sudden flash of cognition that started just under his breastbone, shot like a Ping-Pong ball to his brain and ricocheted back to his tongue, he stammered, “El-Eleanor?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” the Doctor clucked, nodding his head gravely.
The light caught his hair, infusing it with a sad medicinal dignity, and he stood firm in the grass, never shirking. Will went cold with fear. “But come, let’s talk peripatetically,” the Doctor said, brightening his voice a cautious degree, “—stimulate the circulatory system, stretch the legs, hey?” And then they were off, moving at an uneasy clip, the Doctor’s hand clamped to Will’s elbow as if he were guiding him through the motions of some ritualistic dance. They circumvented flower beds, passed patients on crutches and in wheelchairs, watched a pretty young nurse with pinned-up skirts sail by on a bicycle. “She’s in serious trouble, I’m afraid,” the Doctor said finally, turning his face to Will’s.

Will couldn’t help himself. He pulled back, jammed his heels into the turf. “What do you mean?” he croaked. “Are you saying that … that she’s getting worse?”

The Doctor had halted now, too, though he kept pumping his legs and shifting his shoulders, marching in place. Bloese, steel-rimmed and silent, stood just behind them. “Good God, man,” the Doctor suddenly cried, “are you blind? This is your own wife we’re talking about here, sir—don’t tell me you haven’t noticed anything?”

“She’s—well, she’s lost weight, I know that, but I thought it was part of the program, her regimen—”

“Bah!” the Doctor spat, still pumping his legs and puffing and deflating his diaphragm with a great gulp and rush of crisp pure salubrious air. “No regimen of mine. Do you think I willfully starve my patients, sir?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s on the fasting cure. All on her own. As if she were her own physician all of a sudden, as if she were the one who’d interned at Bellevue and put countless thousands on the path to health and well-being, as if all this”—he waved a hand to take in the buildings and grounds, the great incorporated healing plant that stretched as far as the eye could see in any direction—”as if all of this were a game, an illusion. And what do you say to that, sir—your own wife?”

Will didn’t know what to say. Certainly Eleanor had come to Battle Creek to gain weight, not to lose it, but, then, given the general run of the food the Doctor offered, who could blame her for going on a hunger strike? “Is—is it serious?”

“Serious!” The little man seemed to implode, gasping in shock as if
he’d somehow managed to suck in his own beard, and he spun round twice on the balls of his feet like a bantamweight dodging his opponent. “That’s the least of it. It’s far worse than you can imagine—at least the fasting cure has its merits, if prescribed and strictly supervised by a qualified physician, that is … but no, your wife seems to have gone off the deep end altogether.” He paused, squinted, drew up the corners of his mouth. “She’s consulting someone outside this institution.”

All at once Will saw the stately Tudor, the man at the door, the mustaches and monocle. “Yes, I know,” he murmured.

The admission seemed to freeze the Doctor. His mouth began to work, but nothing came out. Will watched as a sheen of sweat sprang up to wrap the physiologic brow in its grip.
“You know?”
the Doctor repeated.

High overhead a cloud melted into the sun. Will nodded.

“The man’s a charlatan,” Dr. Kellogg shouted. “A fraud. A menace. Calls himself a doctor—what’s the man’s name, Bloese?”

“Spitzvogel, Chief.”

“Spitzvogel.” The Doctor chewed over the name as if it had gone rotten in his mouth. Veins stood out on the eudaemonic temple, the all-seeing eyes blazed. “Do you know what he’s doing to her, do you have any idea? Do you even give two hoots about what’s going on with your own wife?”

Will was alarmed. It had to be something unsanitary, something sensual, a release of the primitive appetites—nothing short of that could get the Great Healer so worked up. “Yes, I do give two hoots,” he said weakly. And then: “What is it? What’s this man”—he could barely get the words out, gulping down the rest of sentence like a glass of water on a scorching day—”what’s he doing to her?”