You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [36]
“It’s difficult at first,” she says.
The air in the room is so heavy with stench he feels like he’s being pressed to a man’s body and made to breathe through the filter of his skin—a familiar scent raised to a sickening power. It’s a small space with one eaved window, open at the top. In the corner, a boy of ten or twelve lies on a bed. He wears a blue track suit marked with greasy spots. His face and neck are red and crusted with dry skin. Wet sores and patches of rawness cover his wrists and the backs of his hands. He barely moves as they enter, shifting his head only slightly.
“Albert, this is Mr. Lewis. The man I told you about. He’s come for a visit.”
Mrs. McLaggan sets the tray down on the bedside table. The boy looks at Paul, his eyes caught in folds of livid pink and red.
“Have the armchair, there, why don’t you?” the old woman says. She perches on a low stool pulled up next to the bed and pours a cup of tea. She holds it in one hand, a spoon in the other, lowering the liquid to the boy’s swollen mouth.
“It’s chamomile,” she says softly. “You like chamomile.”
The boy strains to raise his head from the pillow; his lips tremble as he sips.
“’Scuse him, Mr. Lewis, if he doesn’t say much. The pain’s been bad lately, hasn’t it, Albert?” She turns to Paul. “I swear Job never suffered like this.”
At the end of the bed, he can see the boy’s feet, where brownish white calluses thick as hide cover his soles.
“Remember, Albert? I told you Mr. Lewis is a history man. I’m sure he knows all about all sorts of things.”
When she has finished with the tea, she puts it aside and unzips the boy’s top. His chest is covered in the same red mix of sores and flaking skin. Taking up a cloth, she dips it in a bucket by the stool and begins to gently lather ointment onto Albert’s stomach. He sighs as the jelly is spread over him.
“Henry the Second is Albert’s favorite. We’ve just started reading about him, haven’t we? Do you know anything about Henry the Second, Mr. Lewis?”
The stench and the sight of the boy is nearly overwhelming Paul and he feels he might faint.
“I . . . I haven’t read about all that . . . not since college,” he manages after a pause. “It was American history I did.”
“But you remember some of the medieval bits, no?” she says, hopefully.
Breathing through his mouth, he manages to calm the swoon in his stomach. The boy stares at him with a longing that seems to Paul neither desperate nor afraid. It is just a longing, a want.
“He was a remarkable king,” Paul says, transfixed by the boy’s gaze. “I remember that much.”
“There, you see. He knows all about him. I’ll wager he’s got stories you’ve not heard yet. Perhaps he’ll tell you one. Would you tell Albert a story?”
Paul nods, having no idea what he will say.
“Has your grandmother told you about Stephen?” he asks, recalling the name from some course taken years before.
Albert manages a small shake of the head.
“Well . . . that’s the king that preceded Henry, and he was the son of . . .” His mind goes blank. Mrs. McLaggan raises the cloth onto the boy’s chest. Paul sees the little white pustules dotting the red skin; the tarnished gold ring on the old woman’s finger; beyond the bed, cartoon figures on the faded wallpaper.
“I don’t remember who he was the son of, but in any case, they made a deal . . . Stephen could rule if his line stopped with him, and Henry would come to the throne . . .”
Again Paul fumbles, recalling the giant lecture hall where a man with a German accent had taught early Europe.
“It wasn’t long before Stephen died. And Henry was king, at eighteen or twenty, I think, monarch of the largest empire in Europe.”
When his voice ceases, it seems quieter in the room than when he began, the boy’s eyes calmer.
“He married,” Paul says. And again a memory he didn’t know he had arrives.
“Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was the daughter of a man who ruled part of France,