And the second phase of my illness began. The swelling joints, the
atrophy of muscles, the inflammation of nerves, the--why go into it?
They sent to the largest institute for the best specialist in whatever
this sequel might be.
And there was G.T. Death again.
The specialist seemed seven feet tall--a skinny man--who wore such
a mustache as only the Poles can grow. He sat on my bed after the
torturesome examination and told me about it, in French.
"I am afraid, my American friend, that I have bad news for you. You
are a man. You will want the truth. It is a progressive malady. Your
foot--your arm--already crippled. When it reaches the heart--"
He went away.
My nurse wept.
Ted was the one we counted on to be the great man. The strong, the
good-humored, the precocious, the gifted, the good, the young Paul
Bunyan of the family. Dead.
And now I had a turn at it.
I, the elder brother.
I, who had taken Ted on his first trip abroad.
I, who had led him to miserable accident, to foul execution, or to
horrible impulse--bred, perhaps, in the vile durances of the vast
nation we had traversed.
Abrupt hate of life.
I lay in that hotel bedroom--they had told me that a Warsaw hospital
was to be avoided--and rehearsed the placid, polite syllables of the
specialist.
He had been interested, as one foreigner inspecting another, to observe
reactions.