Felix Culpa

by Jeremy Gavron

  Writer’s craft to pull from the myriad possibilities of all that could happen those that did and had to happen.

  16

  Day in early March when the weather had already warmed.

  Walked up Chadbourne Street to the Eagle Cafe.

  Meet a doctor from the transcripts.

  Surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles around.

  Don’t believe he still practiced.

  Velveteen coat.

  Locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp.

  Ah so it is thou. Sit down.

  Corner table was always reserved.

  Walk over every day.

  Was thinking about Felix.

  The private and the public grotesque.

  Nothing brightened up a front page so much as a story about human suffering.

  Wanted to put things straight kind of.

  Memory of him had remained dormant, but now it has suddenly come flooding back.

  Circumstances attending his birth.

  Naming responsibility.

  Didn’t deliver the child himself.

  Layin’ on o’ hands is my best holt — for cancer, and paralysis, and sich things.

  Wasn’t even born in the hospital.

  Floor of his mother’s workplace.

  Still attached to her when they arrived on the ward.

  Pearly cord going from her stomach.

  Baby only come by accident, you hear.

  So she claimed.

  Old story, he said, shaking his head. No wedding ring.

  Got a father but you can’t never find him.

  Result of a few nights’ rapport early in the year.

  No point in pressing questions for the woman might not know herself.

  Waters spilled from her she thought it was one of the washers.

  Duty fell to a customer.

  Ease a baby boy from her bloodied loins.

  Take upon himself the office of respiration.

  Blew on it until finally the child moved and began to cry.

  Heard the story went to see.

  Babies is something I never can believe.

  Littlest chap.

  Cowled in his blanket.

  Eyes had not been open long yet already he could see with steady clearness.

  Must have muttered aloud the phrase that came into his mind.

  Mother heard his words.

  Recognised one for a name and gave it to the boy.

  O happy desart.

  Little rag of life two days old come into this world of sins.

  Don’t know why I am telling you all this. I guess when a man has nothing better to do than to spit blood and try to hang on to his life he talks more than is good.

  Hounded by a kind of remorse or shame.

  Should have cared for him better.

  Provide a child with a name you have a duty to him.

  Never met one outlaw, including the kid, who had studied to be one.

  Surgeon mournfully shaking his head.

  Seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery.

  A house broken into, said the doctor.

  The old lady home.

  Such is our story — it comes from darkness, wanders around, and returns to darkness.

  Mors certa, vita incerta.

  17

  Another entry in the transcripts.

  Took pity on him because he had no place to go.

  Address poste restante.

  Wrote a letter and received one in turn.

  Suggested a meeting place.

  Corner of Rue Saint Jacques.

  Thought it was a boy with very short hair.

  Red and black check shirt, dungaree trousers and heavy boots badly worn.

  What’s your interest in the kid?

  Hair he saw refused to go with the voice he heard.

  Girl’s small figure.

  He knew you or sumpin’?

  Gaze was so sharp he couldn’t speak for a moment.

  Not so much that this man and I are friends. Rather there is a thread between us.

  Looked at him with such obvious suspicion.

  How do I know who you are?

  What sort of man you are?

  One who’s been running all over the city.

  Tryin’ to catch him up.

  Body straightened and with her hand she smoothed her dark hair.

  So you’re a writer.

  I’m not anything.

  Only tell you once — she touched her nose slightly — this nose can smell a lie.

  Suddenly all the fountains of the great deep were opened.

  Lost all the languages he had spoken.

  Fluent stream of words awakens suspicion within me.

  Prefer stuttering for in stuttering I hear the friction and the disquiet.

  Theft whose poem I am writing.

  Trying to build something out of old stones.

  Hoped by expressing them in a form that they themselves imposed to construct an order.

  Told her everything.

  And the boy?

  Seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me — and into my thoughts.

  Stood there awhile saying nothing.

  Glad if these pages rescued him from oblivion, though that oblivion is his own doing.

  What you wanna know?

  How did you meet him?

  Knit her eyebrows.

  All this running you probably haven’t eaten a thing.

  Go on a little trip, I’ll explain on the way.

  Motioned to me to follow her.

  Traffic jams at the crossroads and hurrying crowds.

  Shop windows and cafes light up.

  Turned down a narrow street.

  Nothing for us amongst all those cars and stores.

  Ceased believing in the existence of that life.

  Under the railway bridge.

  Believed that in the world was another agenda.

  Unfettered by any sort of traditions.

  Ducked through a hole in the fence.

  Back of a supermarket.

  Sour reek of the refuse carts.

  Lifted the lids one by one.

  Dustbins to overflowing with quite eatable food.

  Source of a successful squatter’s wealth.

  Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour.

  Bread and vegetables were pitched away.

  Baker’s bread — what the quality eat — none of your low-down corn pone.

  Strawberries and such truck.

  Baloney and cheese.

  Though she does not take the baloney.

  Eat only vegetarian food.

  Found Felix on the street one night.

  Grab a loaf and run, swallowing it before they catch you.

  Showed him all that could be freely obtained.

  Aren’t just a thief.

  Didn’t hoard food or deal on the black market.

  Food was thrown away from deliberate policy, rather than that it should be given to the tramps.

  Insulting you in huge wasteful piles.

  Took the boy home for a meal cooked from the evening’s forage.

  He should do the same.

  Come back with her and share the spoils.

  Wrong to write about people without living through at least a little of what they are living through.

  18

  Started walking again and I followed along.

  Seemed to find it natural that I should remain at her side.

  Handing out food to beggars along the way.

  Help the weak even if it means sharing our last
crust of bread.

  Societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.

  The poor, the dispossessed.

  Kind of fool to them.

  Foreigners in our own country.

  Everywhere we go we are told to go somewhere else.

  Lookin’ for a new way.

  Without church or government or army, where each man alone would be his private government.

  World which is the reverse of the customary world.

  Twists of street and alley.

  Ravine of tall leprous houses lurching towards one another.

  Dark and shuttered like sunken wrecks.

  Down some stone steps.

  Rough boards which supplied the place of door and window were wrenched from their positions to afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a human body.

  Kind of cellar.

  Up a rickety unlighted staircase.

  Illumination coming dully from shuttered windows two and three storeys up.

  Coconut oil lamp.

  Old couch.

  On it a girl was lying dressed in a frock of red velvet.

  Young man with hair growing low on his head.

  Pale sticky child.

  You thought no one lived in this building. You thought it was abandoned.

  Squatters had taken over.

  Blankets and potato sacks have been spread over the bare floorboards.

  Against the wall is an upended orange box.

  Sit here while she prepares the food.

  Tiled stove in the corner.

  Smell of kerosene and frying oil.

  Child sat carving a potato into the shape of a doll.

  Young man rises and speaks.

  On the theory of anarchy, on the necessity for political and personal freedom, and on his contempt for the moral law.

  Scavengers were proud people and stood for no nonsense from anybody.

  Reseats himself.

  Eat from plates on their laps.

  Excellent dinner from the leavings.

  Afterwards she shows him around the building.

  Ascending the darkened stairs.

  Corner the boy made his own for the days he stayed.

  Slept there curled up like a cat.

  Not read the newspapers.

  Chance she saw his photograph on a page she used to wrap food she was gathering.

  Had to look three times before I was certain that it was indeed he.

  Met him could hardly make out his features.

  Coated with a thick layer of grime.

  Slept in doorways.

  Under culverts, behind hedges, in alleys.

  Running away from something and it figured to be the law.

  Not her custom to ask her guests for their identification papers or a police certificate of good conduct.

  Offended no one and spoke little.

  Never heard him refer to his relations and hardly ever to his own early life.

  Evident that he wanted to cut things short in everything concerning himself.

  One day he simply took off.

  Ain’t held here.

  Essentially I think he is a solitary.

  Something had happened to him that made him want to be by himself.

  In every family there is one who is different and the others believe that they know that person but they do not.

  Sees things that others do not see.

  Flowers that shrank in the dusk and came forth again at the moon’s rising.

  Versions of time past and visions of time to come.

  No names for the things she saw.

  Certain that there are human qualities still to be discovered.

  Natural laws of our own time were also temporary laws that would soon be replaced by new ones.

  Inside me there are no frontiers or customs and I can travel as far as the farthest stars.

  Come now to the top of the house.

  Room was an attic.

  Pipes and electrical wires hung down from the ceiling, but the bed by the window was made, the blankets on it folded carefully.

  Shelf supported by red bricks.

  On top a few colourful stones and a thick red candle.

  Reached out suddenly and touched me.

  Clothes smelled of forage.

  Tiny thin arms.

  You can have a poke, she said. If you want one.

  Wouldn’t charge you.

  Naw, he said. I don’t want nothin’.

  You excuse me.

  19

  Lo the winter is past.

  Mild and dewy morning.

  Follows another lead from the transcripts down to the canal.

  Winding black ribbon bordered with leaning alder trees.

  Barges putt-putt along.

  Smells of clinker, coal dust, gasoline.

  Boats half sunken in the grey water.

  Looking for a man with captain at the front of his name.

  Barge which was painted dirty red.

  White stripe on its funnel.

  Walks the tow path but finds no boat of this description.

  Captain sitting on a crate.

  Though when he asks at other boats both are known.

  Don’t suppose you know where he is?

  Moves around should be here soon now it’s spring.

  Anyone taken notice of a boy?

  Stayed with him.

  Sull young ’n.

  Seventeen, eighteen year old.

  Quiet like, anyways.

  Sit on a hatch for hours without saying a word.

  Watch the current.

  Stare at the waterflies dancing their sun dance over the ripples.

  Leaning over the rails.

  Back arched just like a cat.

  Beasts and birds are especially his friends.

  Bend down to the ground and listen sometimes for hours.

  Amongst the riverside grasses.

  Watch ants for days.

  Know what became of him?

  Ever watched ants?

  Kind that leave the merest blur behind them.

  Spring up out of nothing one fine day and return there.

  Best talk to the captain.

  Thank ’ee.

  Trundled along in a distracted state staring into the canal.

  Murky river flowing sluggishly.

  Animal carcasses, trash, rotting hulks and tree limbs.

  Though as the sun climbs above the trees and its rays penetrate the surface a different water is revealed.

  Clear and green with trailing moss braided over the gravel bars.

  Rippled with the rises of fish.

  Bends for a closer look.

  Bream suddenly swam right up to me.

  Peered at me with its round bird-like eyes and dived deep down into the water.

  Standing again it is as if he sees this place for the first time.

  Bushes, nettles and briars entangled along the silent waterway.

  Tall bearded grass.

  Gazed over the floating houses.

  Linked to terra firma by flower-bedecked gangways.

  Bird fluttered above its perch on a mossy stone.

  Dove that art in the cleft.

  Inspected the grass beneath.

  Twisting progress of a caterpillar.

  Itinerary of a file of ants.

  20

  Walking along in the spring sunshine he looked down at the road under his feet.

  Holes in the asphalt exposed the soil beneath.

  Little green leaves were growing.

  On his way through the stadtpark the pebbl
es caught his attention.

  Grass spurted between the loose cobblestones.

  Among the weeds of the vacant lot concealed in a rusty can.

  Geranium burning red.

  Sending roots down into the piles of detritus.

  So I discovered the sunken door and so I came up for the first time.

  See a crack open and a different city appear.

  Second, secret city.

  Walls full of cracks and festooned with green creeping plants.

  Strange bushes whose names no one knows.

  Wild flowers.

  Growing out of a tiny crevice.

  Buses pouring poison but the flowers surviving, garnet roses, pale lilacs.

  Potted trees outside restaurants.

  Tracks everywhere over the dusty tiles of birds and mice and lizards.

  Rats that come out in the hours before dawn.

  As long as a man’s foot.

  Heard the crows in the morning. Their harsh call.

  Thrushes at dusk.

  The tilt of a guttering and a cat’s progress along it.

  House cats and stray cats.

  Wild sandy ram cat.

  Swishes his tail and looks me in the eye.

  Started looking at places as if through the round eyes of a cat.

  Prowl the outer boulevards.

  Peering over fences.

  Venturing into more and more cattish places, climbed roofs, straddled railings.

  No longer in the law-abiding workaday world.

  No visible boundaries between one state or another — no passport examination or customs house.

  City of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other.

  Between the planks and the barbed wire.

  Beyond a half rusted gate.

  Narrow passages where human life huddles.

  Bulging forms under piled-up cardboard boxes and rags.

  Bolthole among sacks of sawdust.

  Little rank garden with a small abandoned-looking building at the far end.

  Weeds were waist high and you could lie down and hide in them.

  Wander the streets in the early hours of the morning rooting around in the rubbish heaps.

  Browsed the pavement unceasingly.

  Always something to be scavenged.

  Packets of crumbling crackers.

  Crusts of cheese.

  Bottle of milk on the doorstep.

  Eyes now digging into the cellars, the foundations, the wells.

  Peep out of manholes and drainpipes.

  Assume the posture of a cat.