1904

Moscow! You should have seen the city then.
Even in winter, the slate-blue river locked
in ice below the Kremlin walls, the glaring
plain of small boats frozen against the banks,
the crowds in lush fur capes or threadbare shawls
flowed through the shadowed streets as one dark current,
the city blazing like a photograph.

Cities like Moscow can be too much with you;
they are too great, as other cities are
too small. We found ourselves in Badenweiler
that July, my brother nervous and exhausted—
nothing, the doctors claimed, but his exams.
We had fled south, south, to the smoky hills
of the Black Forest, smudged as a fairy tale.
The season then was running near the flood,
the preening crowds in frills of summer dress
making slow progress down the promenades
that pierced the town, to see and to be seen,
like those who in Persuasion swanned the walks.
The curtained dining room of our hotel
let us stand witness to the sweeping entrée
of a great actress we had known in Moscow.
Turned from the door of one august establishment,
Frau C. and her husband had been forced to take
an airless chamber that overlooked the street;
yet, to their sharp relief, that stifling day,
with the most gracious show of courtesy,
the hotel manager sent in his card
to ask if they would view a quiet room
that chance had just then made available.
Her fox-faced husband had been ill all spring;
and, when the wracking demons came upon him,
from his pocket he removed—très élégant,
sealed tight, wholly discreet—a blue spitoon
(for that sole reason had their first hotel
abruptly withdrawn its hospitality).
Though tanned, even robust, the invalid
already bore a haunted, feral look
but fancied a lazy tour of the Crimea
and had me order him two flannel suits,
cream with a blue stripe and a blue with cream.
Those afternoons, I read him Russian papers,
the pages black with bulletins from Japan.

One humid night, I woke to a frantic knock.
Shivering upon my threshold stood Frau C.,
clad in a dressing gown, wringing her hands,
face pale like a ghost’s. My hair in disarray,
I blundered through uncertain balmy streets,
stumbling at last on her doctor’s unlit gate.
I rang the small brass bell. A sleepy growl
rose from the silence, to silence then descended,
cursing my name. I was dispatched at once
to fetch a cylinder of oxygen
(the chemist, a peasant type, stuck in his night cap).
In the sickroom, the gas lamps turned down low,
Herr C. lay propped on mounts of feather pillows,
gasping for air, hoarse as the newly damned,
his cough having nearly carried him away.
Terrible wheezes clawed his weakened body
until all breath had vanished from the room.
The young physician, whose gallant manner mocked
the duelling scar cut deep into one cheek,
bent down to listen to the poor man’s lungs.
He snapped his fingers at the sleepy porter,
demanding a chilled bottle of champagne.
Filling the crystal flutes near to the brim,
the doctor gaily offered one to C.
Though weak, he plucked the crystal up and rasped,
“How long since last I had a taste of this?,”
then drained the contents in a fearsome gulp.
No sooner was it done, the glass just placed
on the near table, forming a tableau
like a cheap oil by Cézanne, when a slight hiss,
a comic gassy gurgle—such as a tap
makes when some air is trapped—burst from his mouth.
Sleepy at last, he turned upon his side,
supported by his wife, her swan-like neck
glowing in gas light as the room grew still.
The sick man dozed. The crisis past, I thought
we all could sleep. The doctor held his hand,
long fingers playing lightly on Herr C.’s
skeletal wrist, as if to check the pulse.
Soon, shrugging his shoulders, the good doctor stood,
saying, “It’s over now. Our friend is gone.”
Frau C. wept in great shudders in my arms.
Her husband’s remains at once were carted off,
borne half-reclining in a linen-basket
in order not to disturb the other guests.
Everyone knew his plays, of course, the stories,
though I myself have never troubled to read them.

Years later, I was told, when hope is lost
in such a case, physicians have a sign,
a mortal code they use between themselves.
Champagne is always what the doctor orders.