Recessional: A Novel (44 page)

Acknowledging his naïveté, Andy smiled: “OK. But please let us look around anyway.” They entered one of the institutions that had grown up in response to the AIDS crisis. It was clean. It had a communal dining room with flowers. It had a reading area, with a corner for card games, and other indications of responsible management, but the young men they saw there were so cadaverous that any visitor did not have to be told that the place was a refuge for those who had been rejected by society, their friends and their families and were waiting to die.

While still on the ground floor, they met Mr. Angelotti in the kitchen preparing lunch, and as they approached he explained: “I was a cook in the navy. It comes natural; my father was a top-flight short-order cook at an all-night restaurant on the bay.” He told them that he conceived the idea of turning his house into a hospice when he read that young men with AIDS were being turned away from hospitals and rooming houses, so, after consulting with a Dr. Leitonen, for whom he seemed to have great regard—“a doctor with a heart”—he and his wife satisfied themselves that they would not contract the dread disease solely by touch, and he quietly let it be known through Dr. Leitonen that he and his wife would accept AIDS patients in their final stages of decline.

“We’ve cared for more than forty,” he said, “and only one has gone away alive. When his parents wouldn’t have nothing to do with him he came here to die, but an uncle heard about it and came here to take him into his home—the uncle’s, I mean. He died there.”

“All your patients died?” Zorn asked, and Mr. Angelotti said: “That’s what it is. The disease where you always die. Everyone you’ll see here is on his way to death, fast express. Sometimes Rosa cries all night, when two or three she’s come to love die all at once.”

“Who pays for this?” Zorn asked.

“What they call a consortium of churches, Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, you name it, they give us funds for food, water and electricity.” So the old woman at the hellhole had misinformed Zorn. But he
could understand why she had assumed that a place like this would be expensive.

Mr. Angelotti continued: “The house we give. But they also pay for two part-time nurses who help us.”

“You get no salary?”

“No. We have savings. Rosa never wasted money.”

“If we decide to leave our young man with you, we’d pay.”

“Some relatives do, when they find out where their boy is. And we’re grateful.”

When they went upstairs they forgot the almost cheerful atmosphere of the reception area below, for now they saw how once-big rooms had been partitioned to make two or even three very small cubicles, each with its metal cot with wire springs, a thin mattress, one wafer-thin blanket and a beat-up pillow that invariably looked as if the occupant of the cot had wrestled with it in his sleeplessness. And on the cots in some of these cubicles, in various stages of exhaustion, men so withered and enfeebled that they seemed already dead. Certainly they did not react to Zorn’s presence, for they knew that death was near and that conversation or other participation in social intercourse was meaningless.

In two of the cubicles the dying men were attended by professional nurses; they were massaging atrophied muscles or bathing hideous bedsores. But even those men who received what little assistance was available in their final days seemed not to be aware that they were being helped. This was a place where death waited outside every door, and little that was done on the frail cots delayed his entrance.

The sight of the cramped cubicles with their doomed occupants affected Zorn so profoundly that he cried: “Is this the best you can do for men who are dying?” Mrs. Angelotti said quietly: “It’s so much better than what we found when we started,” and Zorn apologized: “I’m sorry I said that. Mrs. Angelotti, you really are an angel of mercy. But if we bring Jaqmeel here, could he have a bigger room? We’d pay double.”

“It could probably be arranged. But you understand, while he’s still able to move about he’d spend most of his time with the others downstairs. And when that is no longer possible, one of the cubicles would be big enough.” She touched his arm: “You see, Doctor, men like this never have visitors. No need for extra chairs.”

“We’ll go down and fetch him,” Zorn said, and with the help of Mr. Angelotti they carried Jaqmeel up to the second floor, where the
two nurses took over. After examining him they assured Zorn and Nora quietly: “He’s not in his last stages. Some good food, exercise, meeting with the others will help. And when it’s time he can die with dignity.” As Nora and Zorn departed, Jaqmeel said in a very weak voice: “I know where I am, and I’m glad to be here. It doesn’t smell.”

In the room downstairs that served as a kind of office, Zorn gave the Angelottis a hundred and fifty dollars for Jaqmeel’s first week and embraced each of them in turn: “You are truly Good Samaritans,” then he cleared his throat and said: “Now, where can I find a doctor who will care for him?”

“Most doctors won’t come near this place,” Mrs. Angelotti said, “but there is the one we mentioned to you, a living saint, who does come here and performs wonders for our men.”

“Where can I find this doctor you mentioned?” Zorn asked, and she wrote out an address: “Not far from here.” When Zorn telephoned the doctor’s office, he found he was not in, but would be later that afternoon. He asked for an appointment, and in this roundabout way Andy Zorn was projected into the heart of the AIDS crisis.

The euphoria that had marked the tertulia’s aviation project vanished when a truck delivered a large package to the Palms addressed to Raúl Jiménez, who had assumed responsibility for ordering the engine for their airplane. It had been sent down from the Lycoming people in Pennsylvania and was professionally packed with sachets of a silica gel to absorb moisture that would rust the delicate parts of the engine. When the package was solemnly opened in the presence of the five who were building the plane and the engine reflected sunlight from its polished surfaces, the men did not, as one might have expected, react joyfully and revel in their new acquisition.

Instead they looked at it soberly, for they realized that its arrival had altered everything. They were no longer playing at little boys’ games. Now, in the real world and within a measurable time, they would be forced to bolt that engine into their homemade contraption, rev it over, apply the gas and fly the bundle into the air, with the channel to the west and the Gulf of Mexico beyond.

“Ideal engine for a small plane like ours,” President Armitage said professionally. “Amazing how light they can make it and still turn out the power.”

Lewandowski was satisfied with the specifications provided in the
handbook: “It can produce twice the power we’ll ever need,” and he visually checked the various components, giving it as his practiced opinion that it was a superior engine.

Senator Raborn said it was durable: “That little monster can take a lot of punishment. Gives you a feeling of confidence. Worth the money, too.”

That night, when the tertulia assembled in their corner, the conversation did not focus on some arcane topic. Ambassador St. Près cut right to the subject that was on all their minds, approaching it in his customary urbane way: “I’ve been wondering if any of us have been having second thoughts about our grand adventure.”

“Heavens, no!” Armitage said quickly, but the more cautious Jiménez asked: “What did you mean, Richard—lack of nerve?”

“No, no! Just that we represent, whether we like it or not, the entire establishment of the Palms, and a failure on our part, a disaster if you will, might have regrettable consequences. I was simply wondering if we were prepared to take that risk, not to ourselves but to our larger community.”

Raborn said bluntly: “Richard, if you’re hesitant about taking the first flight, you should know that I had my license reactivated two weeks ago. Just in case something like this came up. The doctor said I had the heart functions of a man of fifty and the reaction times of a thirty-year-old—and that was without wearing my glasses. So I’m the backup pilot and I say we go.”

So did the others, but without the bravado they had shown at the beginning when actual flight was still far in the future. When Lewandowski came over to join the table he brought with him a touch of even more reality. As a cautious scientist he said: “We should test-run the engine right away. Bolt it down to heavy boards, pile it up, fill her partway with gas, and check how she performs.”

“We won’t be fitting it in the plane for weeks,” Armitage pointed out, but the old research expert said: “More’s the reason to check it now. We can send back for another if things should go wrong.” He made plans with Raborn to run the tests in the morning. The others agreed that it was a prudent move.

As they were finishing the meal the ambassador said, slowly and gravely: “Gentlemen…” He had never used that opening before with his tertulia. “On the eve of any major battle action—and our airplane project is just such a major undertaking—sensible soldiers and sailors have somber thoughts. I remember in World War Two on
the eve of one of the great naval battles in Leyte Gulf, I was serving as junior officer of the bridge with Admiral Olendorf and he had cleverly deduced where a major part of the Japanese fleet was at midnight and where they would be at dawn, and he believed he had a chance to execute one of the supreme maneuvers of naval strategy, to Cross the Enemy’s T.”

“What does that mean?” Jiménez asked.

“The American warships calculate when the Japanese ships will be coming out of the strait. The enemy is the long downward leg of the T, we’re the crossbar at the top. Do you see what happens? As each enemy ship comes out of the leg, he faces our entire line of heavy warships cutting across his path. He can fire his big guns at one of our ships, whichever he elects, but we have nine massive ships that can bring their fire on him. And when he sinks, as he must under that bombardment, the next Japanese ship staggers forward, fires its guns at one of our ships, and again, nine of ours blow him out of the water.

“Now, the possibility of accomplishing this was so exciting that those of us with whom it was going to be attempted could not sleep the five hours before the battle. I was worried sick, wondering what would happen if some supersharp Japanese admiral were to cross
our
T and blow us out of the water, one by one.

“I asked an older officer what that would mean and he said: ‘It will mean our Old Man guessed wrong.’ ”

“What happened?” Armitage asked, and the ambassador said: “It’s in the history books. We crossed their T just as Olendorf had planned, destroyed that part of the Japanese fleet and allowed our small carriers in another part of the gulf to turn back the main arm of the enemy fleet, while Halsey sent his planes forward to sink their big carriers to the north.” He paused, then said: “Naval historians believe our battle to the south was the last time in naval history that battleships will ever fire their big guns at enemy ships. Planes will be sent forward to do the killing. And there will never again be a Crossing of the T.”

Raúl Jiménez’s story had to do with a different kind of war: “When I used my paper to wage war against the Medellín cartel, which was assassinating any judges who opposed their criminal drug activities, the boss criminals occupied another newspaper and threatened me with the headline
EDITOR JIMÉNEZ CONDEMNED TO DEATH
. I brazened it out; they stormed my newspaper and executed my assistant
editor, who looked a lot like me. That’s when my wife and I sought refuge in the United States.”

Senator Raborn had been a marine lieutenant in the battle for New Guinea and had led a patrol-in-strength along the trail from Port Moresby over the mountains to capture the port the Japanese held at Lae: “Before we could think of attacking Lae, we had to subdue enemy strongholds at Aitape and Wau. Very tough battles, so we were exhausted when we finally came down the mountains to face Lae itself. I was given orders to lead the assault from the west, and as we moved into position I thought: What a hell of a note! To fight my way clear across this damned island only to get it in the neck at Lae! So at the big push, when we stormed the Japanese position, I held back, planning to forge ahead like gangbusters in the second wave. A second lieutenant saw what I was doing, threw me a look of scorn and contempt and led the marines in. He got it full in the face and I got a medal for my gallant leadership in the conquest of Lae.” He blew his nose and added what was clearly the truth: “But at other actions in Okinawa I made amends, and the medals I earned are for real. The one from Lae I never wear.”

President Armitage had been an army second lieutenant at the Anzio landing, becoming a captain by field promotions on the march up the boot of Italy to Rome: “I was terrified all the way, at every new battle against the Germans, but when we entered Rome and the girls wanted to kiss us as heroes, I moved to the head of the line.”

These men’s behavior under fire and their brilliant careers in peacetime had earned them the right to pontificate in their years of retirement as members of Raúl’s tertulia, and the Colombian, perhaps, deserved the greatest accolades of all, for he had risked his life many times over to protect the honor of his country, and had left his homeland only when it became hopelessly corrupt.

The waiters appeared with the dessert and midnight approached, but still the veterans talked of battles lost and won. St. Près had the last word: “Then it’s agreed that we finish the plane, install the engine and fly it?” There was no dissent.

In addition to Nurse Nora, there was another woman in Gateways who followed the progress of young Betsy Cawthorn and her romantic attachment to Dr. Zorn with more than casual attention. Reverend Quade had, through her professional career, observed so many
love affairs, including three at the Palms that had ended in weddings, that she had almost been able to chart Betsy’s growing interest in her doctor. The night after Betsy had revealed her emotions by embracing Zorn in public at the end of her first walk, she had said to herself: Poor child, she’s been desperately in love with him since the moment she arrived, and probably before. Thank the Lord he’s not married, or this could prove a sorry mess.