The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [167]
A yellow stone room, with a slab at one end, on which they set the old man down, the bathroom was lit by misty light filtering through a single stone lattice window. Brass spigots protruded from the walls, and a big, abattoir-like drain was sunk in the middle of the floor.
Neither Mitchell nor the beekeeper acknowledged what a lousy job they’d done carrying the old man. He was lying on his back now, his limbs still shaking violently and his eyes wide open, as if screening an endless horror. Slowly they pulled his hospital gown over his head. Underneath, a soggy bandage covered the old man’s groin.
Mitchell wasn’t frightened anymore. He was ready for whatever he had to do. This was it. This was what he’d come for.
With safety scissors the beekeeper snipped the adhesive tape. The pus-stained swaddling came apart in two pieces, revealing the source of the old man’s agony.
A tumor the size of a grapefruit had invaded his scrotum. At first, the sheer size of the growth made it difficult to identify as a tumor; it looked more like a pink balloon. The tumor was so big that it had stretched the normally wrinkled skin of the scrotum as taut as a drum. At the top of the bulge, like the tied-off neck of the balloon, the man’s shriveled penis hung to one side.
As the bandage fell away, the old man moved his palsied hands to cover himself. It was the first sign that he knew they were there.
The beekeeper turned on the spigot, testing the water’s temperature. He filled a bucket. Holding it aloft, he began pouring it slowly, ceremonially, over the old man.
“This is the body of Christ,” the beekeeper said.
He filled another bucket and repeated the process, intoning:
“This is the body of Christ.”
“This is the body of Christ.”
“This is the body of Christ.”
Mitchell filled a bucket himself and began pouring it over the old man. He wondered if the falling water increased the old man’s pain. There was no way to tell.
They lathered the old man with antiseptic soap, using their bare hands. They washed his feet, his legs, his backside, his chest, his arms, his neck. Not for a moment did Mitchell believe that the cancerous body on the slab was the body of Christ. He bathed the man as gently as possible, scrubbing around the base of the tumor, which was venemously reddened and seeping blood. He was trying to make the man feel less ashamed, to let him know, in his last days, that he wasn’t alone, not entirely, and that the two strange figures bathing him, however clumsy and inexpert, were nevertheless trying to do their best for him.
Once they’d rinsed the man and dried him off, the beekeeper fashioned a new bandage. They dressed him in clean bedclothes and carried him back to the men’s ward. When they deposited him in his bed, the old man was still staring up blindly, shuddering with pain, as though they’d never been there at all.
“O.K., thanks a lot,” the beekeeper said. “Hey, take these towels to the laundry, will you?”
Mitchell took the towels, worrying only a little about what was on them. All in all, he felt proud about what had just happened. As he bent over the laundry basket, his cross swung away from his chest, casting a shadow on the wall.
He was on his way to check on the little boy again when he saw the agronomist. The small, intense man was sitting up in bed, his complexion considerably more jaundiced than on the previous Friday, the yellow leaking even into the whites of his eyes, which were a disturbing orange color.
“Hello,” Mitchell said.
The agronomist looked at him sharply but said nothing.
Since he had no good news to impart about the prospect of dialysis, Mitchell sat on the bed and, without asking, began massaging the agronomist’s back. He rubbed his shoulders, his neck, and his head. After fifteen minutes, when he was finished, Mitchell asked, “Is there anything I can