Blowing Bubbles

I am nearing the end of my presentation when the first twitching of my face begins, the warning that I have to escape, to be alone. I have perhaps five minutes more. The Minister and his officials all have their eyes on me, waiting, and I know that I must finish, quickly, and get out before the attack takes full hold.

The future of Jean-Paul Leroux as CEO Bordeaux Enterprises, maybe even the company’s whole Indonesian future, is in my horribly unsteady hands. Five minutes more, that’s all. I try to make a supreme effort to hide what is happening to me, to fight against my brain’s and my body’s rebellion, to finish.

I am only here because Jean-Paul begged me. I’d actually gone to him to hand in my resignation, because my illness was clearly getting worse. I knew that I was no longer fit to work. But in his abrupt way Jean-Paul dismissed my objections. “You’ve done all the work on the East Java project. No one else could present it like you can. We’ve got to get this contract, and ill or not, you’re my best man. Look at you. No one would ever know you were ill.”

“You don’t understand,” I’d protested. “I’m having a good morning. But the good times are getting shorter …”

“Look, you can do this presentation. Then we can talk. You’re my best man, ill or not. And we have to get this contract, you know that. Please, don’t desert us now.”

My own fault, for letting him flatter me, for letting him persuade me … but then when you’re having a good few hours, when you’re feeling normal, full of energy, your limbs working to your command, it’s hard to remember what it’s like when you’re bad.

I must have thought, or at least hoped, that I would succeed when I agreed. But now it seems that I was only crazy.

Jean-Paul knows that I’ve been ill this past year, but he’s never seen me out of control. I’ve juggled things and always managed to hide myself when I’ve been at my worst. In the office I’d just ask to be alone, dismiss people, shut the door. The prerogative of the boss. On field trips I’d primed Mahjeed to rescue me, on a signal, if I needed rescue. Mahjeed, the only person apart from Lisa who really knows me in my illness. Standing, alert, on the sidelines of those village meetings, Mahjeed was my security. He’d catch my signal and he’d come at once and whisper urgently in my ear. I’d make my regretful apologies and my rapid escape. Some exigency would be pleaded. And once, when the very worst happened and I froze before I could escape, faithful Mahjeed helped me up, led me away, explaining to the villagers a sudden illness. But I couldn’t very well have introduced my driver into a ministerial conference room. Here I had to be alone, totally alone.

With a sense of panic I manage my final words and subside onto my seat. Polite applause drifts over me and a hum of murmuring voices begins. I bend my head—let them think in humility—to hide the involuntary grimacing movements of my lips.

“After that excellent presentation,” the Minister is saying, “this is a good moment to break. Fifteen minutes, gentlemen.”

Thank God—thank Allah—thank any power that be! I rush from the conference room and reach the lavatory. Just in time. A wave of relief comes over me as I close the cubicle door, pull down the seat—with gratitude, too, for a Western pedestal rather than an Asian squat lavatory—and sit.

Now, enthroned in splendid isolation, it doesn’t matter that the muscles of my face make their crazy contortions. And they work, as if released suddenly from some invisible restraint. My lips purse and I am blowing bubbles, blowing big involuntary bubbles of saliva. This is the worst, but at least I am alone, unseen. My arms begin to writhe in those strange graceful movements, like the arms of a demented ballet dancer. In this little space, I am in danger of hitting one of the side walls, and I place myself a little aslant on the seat to try to prevent this.

Oh, God, if the Minister—blessings on him and his ancestors and his rice-fields—had not called a pause, this would have been a disaster. I could never have explained. We would have lost any hope of the contract, and maybe all future contracts. The Indonesians would have been unable to understand why a man had been sent who seemed a sick clown. They might even have seen it as an insult. I feel hot at the thought of the shame of it.

Of course, shame and disaster have not yet necessarily been averted. Sometimes these spasms can last an hour or more. The Minister said fifteen minutes.

It used to be more predictable. There used to be some warning. Not now. I had taken what seemed like the optimal dose of my meds before the meeting, and here I am, blowing bubbles.

My times of normality, when I can leave the isolation of illness and join the world, are getting shorter and shorter. No one who sees me “normal”, with enough drug in my brain to release freezing, yet not so much as to produce this travesty of free movement, could imagine the sudden changes. So more and more I have to be alone, either frozen or horribly twitching.

Sometimes when I have a spasm of dystonia, I watch myself, almost fascinated by what is happening. I ask myself how my brain can work my body like this, unwilled by what I can only call “me”? It is not “me” making my body writhe, producing that sudden strange spasm of my right arm at the height of its writhe that I could never reproduce voluntarily if I tried. It is not “me” making those lips pucker, not “me” blowing those mocking bubbles. I almost laugh—If you didn’t laugh, as I say to Lisa …

Lisa. Sometimes I can see the expression of incomprehension on her face when my face is grimacing. I know she is seeing something that in no way expresses my emotions. She sees teeth bared in what looks like anger—but I am not angry, it’s just a face of fury when I try to show pleasure or surprise. However much I try to explain, however much she says she understands, she reacts to the face that she sees and she recoils. How can she help it? Lisa, my wife of twenty years, recoils. Just for an instant, of course, because she does understand, just for that almost imperceptible moment before she can take control of herself.

Sometimes she’ll make a light remark only to be startled by the vehemence of my reply. But it is only the muscles of my face, not “me”, that are vehement. She’ll laugh and say, “I know you didn’t mean it like that,” but in the solitude of my illness I have seen her first reaction. That cannot be wiped out.

Someone comes into the next-door cubicle. There’s the soft sound of trousers dropping, then a discreet fart, perhaps modified by the maker’s awareness of the next cubicle being occupied. I know that my bubble-blowing lips are making small strange sounds, which my neighbour may take for farts, if they are not too gentle to be heard.

The lavatory flushes. Sounds of hand washing outside, water splashing. Sounds of men at the urinal, low voices speaking in Bahasa.

The outside door opens, the voices fade, the door closes and they are gone. I am alone again.

I glance at my watch and realise that it’s time. The Minister and his advisers will be going back, settling themselves down, smelling of smoke and coffee, comfortable, waiting for me.

At least now there is no one else in the lavatory. I leave the cubicle and stand in front of the mirror. I tell myself that this spasm must end, will it to end, but my lips push out more bubbles of saliva, as if to mock me.

Oh God, let this stop! Let it stop! Take some really deep breaths. Be calm. Stress makes everything worse, so they say—from cancer to the common cold. To Parkinson’s disease.

I push Jean-Paul Leroux, and Bordeaux Enterprises, and all that hangs on this contract out of my mind. I try not to think of the Minister, probably sitting down now, looking towards the door, waiting, beginning to feel impatient, thinking, “Foreigners!”

And then, oh, God, relief at last. The spasm begins, just begins, to ease. I splash my face with water, stand up. An almost normal face smiles back at me.

I walk back into the conference room, my gait blessedly normal, my arms controlled, my face relaxed. The Minister has not yet taken his seat. I sense a relaxed, satisfied atmosphere. When the Minister catches my eye, he smiles, nods, takes his seat at the head of the table, and even before he speaks, I sense that we have won.