'He's in his Nazi period,' Ralph announced, and I lay there as if lobotomized, waiting for them to say intimate things to each other or exchange touches. But they never did; in fact, they didn't appear to be getting along well at all, and I wondered if they'd seen through my pretense and were playing it cool.
When they finally left, I heard Tulpen ask the floor nurse when Vigneron would be coming around, and whether they planned to release me that night. But I didn't hear the nurse's answer; my roommate chose that moment to leak or ingest something loudly, and when he'd ceased his awful, liquid tremors, they had gone.
I had to get up and pee, but when I moved I caught one of my wiry stitches on the top sheet and let out such a piercing shriek that a covey of nurses burst into the room and the old gentleman gurgled in his dreams and hoses.
Two nurses walked me to the bathroom, and I held my hospital gown out in front like a jib so that it wouldn't brush against my wounded piece.
I made the foolish error of looking at myself before trying to pee. I could not see a hole; it was scabbed shut and a black tangle of stitches made me resemble the tied-off end of a blood sausage. I stalled by asking a nurse to bring me my mail.
There was a letter from my old thesis chairman, Dr Wolfram Holster. He had enclosed an article from The North Germanic Languages Bulletin, written by that old comparative literature wizard from Princeton, Dr Hagen von Troneg, which bemoaned the lack of studies in the ancestor tongues of the North Germanic chain. From von
Troneg's point of view '... any in-depth understanding of the religious pessimism in works from the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese is impossible unless the task is undertaken to update the few translations we already have, and we undertake further to translate previously untranslated works from the Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Low Norse.' Dr Wolfram Holster's comment was that the time was certainly 'ripe' for Akthelt and Gunnel.
In a PS, Holster added his sympathies for what he'd learned of my 'situation'. He elaborated: 'A thesis chairman rarely has the time to involve himself in the emotional problems of the doctoral candidate; however, in the light of such a timely and needed project, I feel a chairman must, to a more personal degree, be as constructively forgiving as he must be constructively critical.' His conclusion: 'Do let me know, Fred, how Akthelt and Gunnel is coming.'
Which, in the toilet cubicle of the hospital, reduced me to laughter, then to tears. I put Holster's letter in the toilet, and this gave me the courage to piss on it.
In my wandering stupor in Europe, I had written to Holster twice. One was a long, lying letter wherein I described my research on the tragic Icelandic queen Brunnhilde and her possible relationship to the Queen of the Dark Sea in Akthelt and Gunnel. Of course there is no Queen of the Dark Sea in Akthelt and Gunnel.
My other communication with Holster was a postcard. It was a tiny detail from Breughel's great painting, 'The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents'. Children and babies are being ripped out of their mothers' arms; their fathers' arms, trying to grip them fast, are being hacked off. 'Hi!' I'd written on the back of the postcard. 'Wish you were here!'
After a while, one of the nurses came to the bathroom door to ask if I was all right. She walked me back to my bed, where I had to wait for Vigneron to come release me.
I looked at the rest of my mail. There was a large envelope from Couth full of documents about the divorce; I was supposed to sign them. A note from Couth advised me not to actually read them; they were worded in a 'tasteless fashion', he warned me, so that the divorce would be taken seriously. I didn't know who had to take it this seriously, so I went against his advice and read a little. There was something about my 'gross and depraved adulterous activity'. Also mentioned was my 'cruel and inhuman departure from all responsibility', and my 'heartless abandonment, which bordered on the degenerate'.
It seemed pretty cut and dried, so I signed everything. There's not much to signing things.
The rest of my mail wasn't mail at all. That is, it was wrapped up, but it was from Ralph and there wasn't any postage. A get-well gift? A joke? A vicious symbol?
It was a kind of diploma.
ORDER OF THE GOLDEN PRICK
Greetings! Be It Known By These Present
That
FRED BOGUS TRUMPER
Having Demonstrated Exceptional Bravery, Valor, Gallantry And Phallic Phortitude, Through Having Dauntlessly Endured The Surgical Correction Of His Membrum Virile, And Having Successfully Survived A Fearsome Urethrectomy With Not Less Than Five [5] Sutures, Is Hereby Recognized As A Full Knight
In the Brotherhood Of The Order Of The
Golden Prick
And Is Entitled To All Privileges And Braggartry
Pertaining
Thereto.
It was actually signed, too, by Jean Claude Vigneron, Attending Surgeon, and by Ralph Packer, Chief Scribe & Prick. But where, I wondered, was the signature of Tulpen, Chief Mistress of Interest?
Trumper was still batty and paranoid when Vigneron came to release him.
'Well, it went very well,' Vigneron said. 'And you don't have too much pain urinating?'
'I'm just fine,' said Trumper.