Fresh Complaint

“All right,” said Gwendolyn. “We’ll move the party down to my hut.”

When they were gone, Mitchell crawled back inside and lay down. Without otherwise moving, he spat out the pill, which he’d kept under his tongue. It clattered against the bamboo, then fell through to the sand underneath. Just like Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest, he thought, smiling to himself, but was too genuinely exhausted to write it down.

With the bathing suit over his eyes, the days were more perfect, more obliterated. He slept in snatches, whenever he felt like it, and stopped paying attention to time. The rhythms of the island reached him: the sleep-thickened voices of people breakfasting on banana pancakes and coffee; later, shouts on the beach; and in the evening, the grill smoking, and the Chinese cook scraping her wok with a long metal spatula. Beer bottles popped open; the cook tent filled with voices; then the various small parties bloomed in neighboring huts. At some point Larry would come back, smelling of beer, smoke, and suntan lotion. Mitchell would pretend to be asleep. Sometimes he was awake all night while Larry slept. Through his back, he could feel the floor, then the island itself, then the circulation of the ocean. The moon became full and, on rising, lit up the hut. Mitchell got up and walked down to the silver edge of the water. He waded out and floated on his back, staring up at the moon and the stars. The bay was a warm bath; the island floated in it, too. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. After a while, he felt all sense of outside and inside disappearing. He wasn’t breathing so much as being breathed. The state would last only a few seconds, then he’d come out, then he’d get it again.

His skin began to taste of salt. The wind carried it through the bamboo, coating him as he lay on his back, or blew over him as he made his way to the outhouse. While he squatted, he sucked the salt from his bare shoulders. It was his only food. Sometimes he had an urge to go into the cook tent and order an entire grilled fish or a stack of pancakes. But stabs of hunger were rare, and in their wake he felt only a deeper, more complete peace. The floods continued to rush out of him, with less violence now but rawly, as though from a wound. He opened the drum and filled the water bucket, washed himself with his left hand. A few times he fell asleep, crouching over the hole, and came awake only when someone knocked on the metal door.

He wrote more letters. Did I ever tell you about the leper mother and son I saw in Bangalore? I was coming down this street and there they were, crouching by the curb. I was pretty used to seeing lepers by this point, but not ones like this. They were almost all the way gone. Their fingers weren’t even stubs anymore. Their hands were just balls at the ends of their arms. And their faces were sliding off, as if they were made of wax and were melting. The mother’s left eye was all filmy and gray and stared up at the sky. But when I gave her 50 paise she looked at me with her good eye and it was full of intelligence. She touched her arm-knobs together, to thank me. Right then my coin hit the cup, and her son, who couldn’t see, said “Atcha.” He smiled, I think, though it was hard to tell because of his disfigurement. But what happened right then was this: I saw that they were people, not beggars or unfortunates—just a mother and her kid. I could see them back before they got leprosy, back when they used to just go out for a walk. And then I had another revelation. I had a hunch that the kid was a nut for mango lassi. And this seemed a very profound revelation to me at the time. It was as big a revelation as I think I ever need or deserve. When my coin hit the cup and the boy said, “Atcha,” I just knew that he was thinking about a nice cold mango lassi. Mitchell put down his pen, remembering. Then he went outside to watch the sunset. He sat on the porch cross-legged. His left knee no longer stuck up. When he closed his eyes, the ringing began at once, louder, more intimate, more ravishing than ever.

So much seemed funny viewed from this distance. His worries about choosing a major. His refusal to leave his dorm room when afflicted with glaring facial pimples. Even the searing despair of the time he’d called Christine Woodhouse’s room and she hadn’t come in all night was sort of funny now. You could waste your life. He had, pretty much, until the day he’d boarded that airplane with Larry, inoculated against typhus and cholera, and had escaped. Only now, with no one watching, could Mitchell find out who he was. It was as though riding in all those buses, over all those bumps, had dislodged his old self bit by bit, so that it just rose up one day and vaporized into the Indian air. He didn’t want to go back to the world of college and clove cigarettes. He was lying on his back, waiting for the moment when the body touched against enlightenment, or when nothing happened at all, which would be the same thing.

Meanwhile, next door, the German woman was on the move again. Mitchell heard her rustling around. She came down her steps, but instead of heading for the outhouse, she climbed the steps to Mitchell’s hut. He removed the bathing suit from his eyes.

“I am going to the clinic. In the boat.”

“I figured you might.”

“I am going to get an injection. Stay one night. Then come back.” She paused a moment. “You want to come with me? Get an injection?”

“No, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m better. I’m feeling a lot better.”

“Come to the clinic. To be safe. We go together.”

“I’m fine.” He stood up, smiling, to indicate this. Out in the bay, the boat blew its horn.

Mitchell came out onto the porch to send her off. “I’ll see you when you get back,” he said. The German woman waded out to the boat and climbed aboard. She stood on deck, not waving, but looking in his direction. Mitchell watched her recede, growing smaller and smaller. When she disappeared at last, he realized that he’d been telling the truth: he was better.

His stomach was quiet. He put a hand over his belly, as though to register what was inside. His stomach felt hollowed out. And he wasn’t dizzy anymore. He had to find a whole new aerogram, and in the light from the sunset he wrote, On this day in I think November, I would like to announce that the gastrointestinal system of Mitchell B. Grammaticus has hereby been cured by purely spiritual means. I want especially to thank my greatest supporter, who stuck with me through it all, Mary Baker Eddy. The next solid shit I take is really for her. He was still writing when Larry came in.

“Wow. You’re awake.”

“I’m better.”

“You are?”

“And guess what else?”

“What?”

Mitchell put down his pen and gave Larry a big smile. “I’m really hungry.”

Everyone on the island had heard about Mitchell’s Gandhian fast by this point. His arrival in the cook tent brought applause and cheers. Also gasps from some of the women, who couldn’t bear to see how skinny he was. They got all maternal and made him sit down and felt his forehead for lingering fever. The tent was full of picnic tables, the counters stacked with pineapples and watermelons, beans, onions, potatoes, and lettuce. Long blue fish lay on chopping blocks. Coffee thermoses lined one wall, full of hot water or tea, and in the back was another room containing a crib and the Chinese cook’s baby. Mitchell looked around at all the new faces. The dirt under the picnic table felt surprisingly cool against his bare feet.

The medical advice started up right away. Most people had fasted for a day or two during their Asian travels, after which they’d gone back to eating full meals. But Mitchell’s fast had been so prolonged that one American traveler, a former medical student, said it was dangerous for Mitchell to eat too much too quickly. He advised having only liquids at first. The Chinese cook scoffed at this idea. After taking one look at Mitchell, she sent out a sea bass, a plate of fried rice, and an onion omelet. Most everyone else advocated pure gluttony, too. Mitchell struck a compromise. First he drank a glass of papaya juice. He waited a few minutes and then began, slowly, to eat the fried rice. After that, still feeling fine, he moved cautiously to the sea bass. After every few bites, the former medical student said, “OK, that’s enough,” but this was greeted by a chorus of other people saying, “Look at him. He’s a skeleton. Go on, eat. Eat!”

It was nice to be around people again. Mitchell hadn’t become quite as ascetic as he’d thought. He missed socializing. All the girls were wearing sarongs. They had truly accomplished suntans and fetching accents. They kept touching Mitchell, patting his ribs or encircling his wrists with their fingers. “I’d die for cheekbones like yours,” one girl said. Then she made him eat some fried bananas.

Night fell. Somebody announced a party in hut number six. Before Mitchell knew what was happening, two Dutch girls were escorting him down the beach. They waited tables in Amsterdam five months of the year and spent the rest traveling. Apparently, Mitchell looked exactly like a Van Honthorst Christ in the Rijksmuseum. The Dutch girls found the resemblance both awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mitchell wondered if he’d made a mistake by staying in the hut so much. A kind of tribal life had sprouted up here on the island. No wonder Larry had been having such a good time. Everyone was so friendly. It wasn’t even sexual so much as just warm and intimate. One of the Dutch girls had a nasty rash on her back. She turned around to show him.

The moon was rising over the bay, casting a long swath of light to shore. It lit up the trunks of palm trees and gave the sand a lunar phosphorescence. Everything had a bluish tint except for the orange, glowing huts. Mitchell felt the air rinsing his face and flowing through his legs as he walked behind Larry. There was a lightness inside him, a helium balloon around his heart. There was nothing a person needed beyond this beach.

He called out, “Hey, Larry.”

“What?”

“We’ve gone everywhere, man.”

“Not everywhere. Next stop Bali.”

“Then home. After Bali, home. Before my parents have a nervous breakdown.”

He stopped walking and held the Dutch girls back. He thought he heard the ringing—louder than ever—but then realized that it was just the music coming from hut number six. Right out front, people were sitting in a circle in the sand. They made room for Mitchell and the new arrivals.

“What do you say, doctor? Can we give him a beer?”

“Very funny,” the medical student said. “I suggest one. No more.”

In due course, the beer was passed along the fire brigade and into Mitchell’s hands. Then the person to Mitchell’s right put her hand on his knee. It was Gwendolyn. He hadn’t recognized her in the darkness. She took a long drag on her cigarette. She turned her face away, to exhale primarily, but also with the suggestion of hurt feelings, and said, “You haven’t thanked me.”

“For what?”

“For the pills.”

“Oh, right. That was really thoughtful of you.”

She smiled for a few seconds and then started coughing. It was a smoker’s cough, deep-seated and guttural. She tried to suppress it by leaning forward and covering her mouth, but the coughing only grew more violent, as if ripping holes in her lungs. When it finally subsided, Gwendolyn wiped her eyes. “Oh, I’m dying.” She looked around the circle of people. Everyone was talking and laughing. “Nobody cares.”

All this time Mitchell had been examining Gwendolyn closely. It seemed clear to him that if she didn’t have cancer already, she was going to get it soon.

“Do you want to know how I knew you were separated?” he said.

“Well, I think I might.”

“It’s because of this glow you have. Women who get divorced or separated always have this glow. I’ve noticed it before. It’s like they get younger.”

“Really?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mitchell.

Gwendolyn smiled. “I am feeling rather restored.”

Mitchell held out his beer and they clinked bottles.

“Cheers,” she said.