Death of the Great Man by Peter D. Kramer

Author:Peter D. Kramer [Kramer, Peter D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637587973
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2023-01-19T09:33:00+00:00

Outside the boudoir suite entrance, the ripped guard greeted me.

Seems you’ll be close by.

Just beyond, inside the anteroom, someone had placed a shabby Barcalounger, faux-leather, foraged, I was guessing, from the old hotel’s storage closet. The chair looked peculiarly uncomfortable. Strapped to one arm was a coaster-shaped restaurant waitlist buzzer, doubtless with a similar provenance.

I got the picture. I was to rest within hailing distance of the Great Man’s bedside and appear when alerted.

On the drive to the fortress, Bub had made what I thought were passing remarks about insomnia. Did I know how noblemen dealt with it in the eighteenth century? They would hire a chess master or violinist to sit outside the bedroom door—at the ready, should the lord of manor need help passing the time.

Bub lingered on a story about the origin of the Goldberg Variations. One Count von Kaiserling had employed a young harpsichord prodigy, Johann Goldberg, as a sleep attendant and apprenticed the boy to Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed the Variations to serve as nighttime entertainment, to help the boy lighten the burden of insomnia for the Count.

Bub said, You’re about to join a noble, or, more properly, a servile tradition.

I guessed that the Great Man had complained to Bub about my having left to pee. In response, Bub had shared the Goldberg story. I make that assumption because later, when the Great Man buzzed me to the bedside, he called me Goldberg.

In employing a sleep minder, the Great Man would be acting like royalty, commanding talent to provide quick distraction. If the Great Man could not make me squat like a crapaudine victim or hold my urine until my bladder burst—not without sabotaging the project he had hired me for—still he could make our relationship, master and servant, explicit and cause me discomfort in the process.

Resting in the lumpy reclining chair, I thought of an intellectually disabled woman who consulted me shortly after I established my private practice. Roberta would phone me at home in the middle of the night, waking me from sleep. Ostensibly, she needed to discuss worries, some delusional, about the health of her aging father, in whose house she lived. I made out a pattern. The calls peaked in the weeks after sessions that had been difficult for Roberta. Nights, she replayed them in her mind and built up resentments. She woke me because she found the phone contact soothing, but also (so she finally said) so that I might suffer as she did.

Incidentally, after that confession, Roberta stopped phoning—and I worried about her all the more. I increased the frequency of our meetings and gave her the first morning slot. On waking, I wanted Roberta to be able to look forward to sharing her fears.

Thinking of Roberta made me consider the fixity of the Great Man’s impairments. I had hopes of inducing slow change, but some of his character traits might prove to be as set as Roberta’s intellectual limitations. And his needs had as much acuity as hers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.