Man Descending

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  Dieter turned on to his back and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. Mrs. Hax shook her head in exasperation. It was going to be one of those days. What went on in the old bastard’s head, if anything? What made him so peculiar, so difficult at times like these?

  She walked over to the bed and took him firmly by the wrist. “Upsy-daisy!” she cried brightly, planting her feet solidly apart and jerking him upright. She skidded him to the edge of the bed, the rubber sheet whining a muffled complaint, and his hands, in startled protest and ineffectual rebellion, pawing at the front of her dress. Mrs. Hax propped him upright while his head wobbled feebly from side to side and his tongue flickered angrily, darting and questing like a snake’s.

  “There,” she said, patting his hand, “that’s better. Now let’s let bygones be bygones. A fresh start. I’ll say, ‘Good morning, Mr. Bethge!’ and you answer, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Hax!’ ”

  He gave no sign of agreement. Mrs. Hax hopefully cocked her head to one side and, like some huge, querulous bird, chirped, “Good morning, Mr. Bethge!” The old man stubbornly disregarded her, smiling sweetly and vacantly into space.

  “Well,” she said, patting her dress down around her wide hips and heavy haunches, “it’s no skin off my teeth, mister.”

  She stumped to the door, stopped, and looked back. The old man sat perched precariously on the edge of the bed, his white hair ruffled, tufted and crested like some angry heron. A pale shadow fell across the lower half of his face and threw his eyes into relief, so that they shone with the dull, glazed intensity of the most devout of worshippers.

  Mrs. Hax often saw him like this, mute and still, lost in reverie; and she liked to suppose that, somehow, he was moved by a dim apprehension of mortality and loss. Perhaps he was even overcome with memories of his wife, and felt the same vast yearning she felt for her own dead Albert.

  She mustered a smile and offered it. “Five minutes, dear,” she said, and then closed the door softly behind her.

  Bethge made no response. He was thinking – trying to pry those memories out of the soft beds into which they had so comfortably settled, sinking deeper and deeper under the weight of all the years, growing more somnolent and lazy, less easily stirred from sleep. He could no longer make his head crackle with the sudden, decisive leap of quick thought hurtling from synapse to synapse. Instead, memories had now to be pricked and prodded, and sometimes, if he was lucky, they came in revelatory flashes. Yet it was only old, old thoughts and things that came to him. Only they had any real clarity – and the sharpness to wound.

  And now it was something about a bear. What?

  Bethge, with a jerky, tremulous movement, swiped at the spittle on his chin with the back of his hand. In his agitation he crossed and recrossed his thin legs, the marbly, polished legs of a very old man.

  Bear? He rubbed the bridge of his nose; somehow, it was important. He began to rock himself gently, his long, curving nose slicing like a scythe, back and forth, reaping the dim air of his stale little room. And as he swayed, it all began to come to him, and he began to run, swiftly, surely, silently back into time.

  In the dark barn that smells of brittle straw, and sharply of horse dung, the knife is making little greedy, tearing noises. It is not sharp enough. Then he hears the hoarse, dragging whisper of steel on whetstone. Although he is afraid that the bear his father is skinning may suddenly rear to life, he climbs over the wall of the box stall and steps into the manger and crouches down. He is only five, so the manger is a nice, tight, comforting fit.

  What a bear! A killer, a marauder who had left two sows tangled in their guts with single blows from his needle-sharp claws.

  The smell of the bear makes him think of gun metal – oily, smoky. Each hair bristles like polished black wire, and when the sun catches the pelt it shines vividly, electrically blue.

  The curved blade of the knife, now sharpened, slices through the bear’s fat like butter, relentlessly peeling back the coat and exposing long, flat, pink muscles. As his father’s busy, bloody hands work, Dieter feels a growing uneasiness. The strong hands tug and tear, wrestling with the heavy, inert body as if they are frantically searching for something. Like clay under a sculptor’s hand, the bear begins to change. Each stroke of the knife renders him less bear-like and more like something else. Dieter senses this and crouches lower in the manger in anticipation.

  His father begins to raise the skin off the back, his forearms hidden as the knife molds upward toward the neck. At last he grunts and stands. Reaches for the axe. In two sharp, snapping blows the head is severed from the trunk and the grinning mask flung into a corner. He gathers up the skin and carries it out to salt it and peg it down in the yard. Dieter hears the chickens clamouring to pick it clean.

  He stares down into the pit of the shadowy stall. This is no bear. Stripped of its rich, glossy fur, naked, it is no bear. Two arms, two legs, a raw pink skin. A man. Under all that lank, black hair a man was hiding, lurking in disguise.

  He feels the spiralling terror of an unwilling accomplice to murder. He begins to cry and call for his father, who suddenly appears in the doorway covered in grease and blood, a murderer.

  From far away, he heard someone call him. “Mr. Bethge! Mr. Bethge!” The last syllable of his name was drawn out and held like a note, so that it quivered in the air and urged him on with its stridency.

  He realized he had been crying, that his eyes were filled with those unexpected tears that came so suddenly they constantly surprised and embarrassed him.

  For a bear? But this wasn’t all of it. There had been another bear; he was sure of it. A bear who had lived in shame and impotence.

  He edged himself off the bed and painfully on to his knobbed, arthritic feet. Breakfast.

  At breakfast they quarrel in the dreary, passionless manner of master and charge. He wants what she has, bacon and eggs. He tells her he hates porridge.

  “Look,” Mrs. Hax said, “I can’t give you bacon and eggs. Doctor’s orders.”

  “What doctor?”

  “The doctor we saw last month. You remember.”

  “No.” It was true. He couldn’t remember any doctor.

  “Yes you do. Come on now. We took a ride downtown in a cab. Remember now?”

  “No.”

  “And we stopped by Woolworth’s and bought a big bag of that sticky candy you like so much. Remember?”

  “No.”

  “That’s fine,” she said irritably. “You don’t want to remember, there’s nothing I can do. It doesn’t matter, because you’re not getting bacon and eggs.”

  “I don’t want porridge,” he said tiredly.

  “Eat it.”

  “Give me some corn flakes.”

  “Look at my plate,” she said, pointing with her knife. “I’m getting cold grease scum all over everything. Fight. fight. When do I get a moment’s peace to eat?”

  “I want corn flakes,” he said with a little self-satisfied tuck to the corners of his mouth.

  “You can’t have corn flakes,” she said. “Corn flakes bung you up. That’s why you eat hot cereal – to keep you regular. Just like stewed prunes. Now, which do you want,” she asked slyly, “Sunny Boy or stewed prunes?”

  “I want corn flakes.” He smiled up happily at the ceiling.

  “Like a stuck record.” She folded her hands on the table and leaned conspiratorially toward him. “You don’t even care if you eat or not, do you? You’re just trying to get under my skin, aren’t you?”

  “I want corn flakes,” he said definitely and happily.

  “I could kill that man,” she told her plate. “Just kill him.” Then, abruptly, she asked, “Where’s your glasses? No, not there, in the other pocket. Okay, put them on. Now take a good long look at that porridge.”

  The old man peered down intently into his bowl.

  “That’s fine. Take it easy, it’s not a goddamn wishing-well. You see them little brown specks?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s
what this whole fight’s about? Something as tiny as that? You know what this is. It’s flax. And flax keeps you regular. So eat it.”

  “I’m not eating it. What do I want with flax?” he asked quizzically.

  “Sure you’re crazy,” she said. “Crazy like a fox.”

  “I want some coffee.”

  Mrs. Hax slammed down her fork and knife, snatched up his cup, and marched to the kitchen counter. While she poured the coffee, Bethge’s hand crept across the table and stole several strips of bacon from her plate. He crammed these clumsily into his mouth, leaving a grease shine on his chin.

  Mrs. Hax set his cup down in front of him. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t spill.”

  Bethge giggled. In a glance, Mrs. Hax took in his grease-daubed chin and her plate. “Well, well, look at the cat who swallowed the canary. Grinning from ear-lobe to ear-lobe with a pound of feathers bristling from his trap.”

  “So?” he said defiantly.

  “You think I enjoy the idea of you pawing through my food?” Mrs. Hax carried her plate to the garbage and scraped it with a flourish. “Given all your dirty little habits, who’s to know where your hands have been?” she asked, smiling wickedly. “But go ahead and laugh. Because he who laughs last, laughs best. Chew this around for a bit and see how she tastes. You’re not getting one single, solitary cigarette today, my friend.”

  Startled, he demanded his cigarettes.

  “We’re singing a different tune now, aren’t we?” She paused, “N-O spells no. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  “You give them. They’re mine.”

  “Not since you set the chesterfield on fire. Not since then. Your son told me I was to give them out one at a time so’s I could watch you and avoid ‘regrettable accidents.’ Thank God, there’s some sense in the family. How he came by it I’m sure I don’t know.”

  The old man hoisted himself out of his chair. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, I want my cigarettes – and I want them now.”

  Mrs. Hax crossed her arms and set her jaw. “No.”

  “You’re fired!” he shouted, “Get out!” He flapped his arms awkwardly in an attempt to startle her into motion.

  “Oho!” she said, rubbing her large red hands together in delight, “fired am I? On whose say-so? Them that hires is them that fires. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And you don’t do neither. Not a bit. Your son hired me, and your son pays me. I don’t budge a step unless I get the word straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Get out!”

  “Save your breath.”

  He is beaten and he knows it. This large, stubborn woman cannot, will not, be moved.

  “I want to talk to my son.”

  “If you got information you feel your son should have, write him a letter.”

  He knows this would never do. He would forget, she would steal the letter, conveniently forget to mail it. Justice demands immediate action. The iron is hot and fit for striking. He feels the ground beneath his feet is treacherous; he cannot become confused, or be led astray. One thing at a time. He must talk to his son.

  “Get him on the telephone.”

  “Your son, if you remember,” Mrs. Hax says, “got a little upset about all those long-distance phone calls – collect. And his words to me were, ‘Mrs. Hax, I think it best if my father phone only on important matters, at your discretion.’ At my discretion, mind you. And my discretion informs me that this isn’t one of those times. I’ve got a responsibility to my employer.”

  “I’ll phone him myself.”

  “That I’ve got to see.”

  “I will.”

  “Yes, like the last time. Half the time you can’t remember the city John lives in, let alone his street. The last time you tried to phone him you got the operator so balled up you would have been talking to a Chinaman in Shanghai if I hadn’t stepped in and saved your bacon.”

  “I’ll phone. I can do it.”

  “Sure you will. Where does John live?”

  “I know.”

  “Uh-huh, then tell me. Where does he live?”

  “I know.”

  “Jesus, he could be living in the basement and you wouldn’t realize it.”

  This makes him cry. He realizes she is right. But minutes ago he had known where his son lived. How could he have forgotten? In the sudden twistings and turnings of the conversation he has lost his way, and now he hears himself making a wretched, disgusting noise; but he cannot stop.

  Mrs. Hax feels she has gone too far. She goes over to him and puts an arm around his shoulders. “Now see what’s happened. You went and got yourself all upset over a silly old bowl of porridge. Doctor says you have to watch that with your blood pressure. It’s no laughing matter.” She boosts him out of his chair. “I think you better lie down on the chesterfield for a bit.”

  Mrs. Hax led him into the living-room and made him comfortable on the chesterfield. She wondered how an old bugger like him could make so much water: if he wasn’t peeing, he was crying.

  “You want a Kleenex?” she asked.

  He shook his head and, ashamed, covered his face with his forearm.

  “No harm in crying,” she said bleakly. “We all do some time.”

  “Leave me be.”

  “I suppose it’s best,” she sighed. “I’ll be in the kitchen clearing up if you need me.”

  Dieter lay on the chesterfield trying to stifle his tears. It was not an easy job because even the sound of Mrs. Hax unconcernedly clacking the breakfast dishes reminded him of her monstrous carelessness with everything. His plates, his feelings. He filled with anger at the notion that he would never be nimble enough to evade her commands, or even her wishes. That he cannot outwit her or even flee her.

  The living-room gradually darkens as the low, scudding rain clouds blot out the sun. He wishes it were a fine sunny day. The kind of day which tricks you into believing you are young and carefree as you once were. Like in Rumania before his family emigrated. Market days almost always felt that way. People bathed in sun and noise, their wits honed to a fine edge for trading and bartering. Every kind of people. The Jews with their curling side-locks, the timid Italian tenant farmers, the Rumanians, and people like himself, German colonists. Even a gypsy or two. Then you had a sense of life, of living. Every good thing the earth offers or man’s hand fashions could be found there. Gaily painted wagons, piles of potatoes with the wet clay still clinging to them; chickens, ducks and geese; tethered pigs tugging their back legs and squealing; horses with hooves as black and shining as basalt, and eyes as large and liquid-purple as plums.

  Nothing but a sheet of sky above and good smells below: pickled herring and leather, paprika and the faint scent of little, hard, sweet apples.

  Innocence. Innocence. But then again, on the other hand – yes, well, sometimes cruelty too. Right in the market.

  A stranger arrived with a dancing bear once. Yes, the other bear, the one he had forgotten. He led him by a ring through the nose. When a crowd gathered, the man unsnapped the chain from the bear’s nose and began to play a violin. It was a sad, languorous tune. For a moment, the bear tossed his head from side to side and snuffled in the dirt. This, for him, was a kind of freedom.

  But the man spoke to him sharply. The bear lifted his head and then mournfully raised himself up on to his hind legs. His arms opened in a wide, charitable manner, as if he were offering an embrace. His mouth grinned, exposing black-speckled gums and sharp teeth. He danced, slowly, ponderously, tiredly.

  The music changed tempo. It became gay and lively. The bear began to prance unsteadily; the hot sun beat down on him. A long, glittering thread of saliva fell from his panting mouth on to the cinnamon-coloured fur of his chest.

  Dieter, fascinated, tugged and pushed himself through the crowd. The bear hopped heavily from leg to leg. It was pathetic and comic. The pink tip of his penis jiggled up and down in the long hair of his loins. There was a wave of confused sniggering.

  The train
er played faster and faster. The bear pirouetted wildly. He whirled and whirled, raising a small cloud of dust. The crowd began to clap. The bear spun and spun, his head lolling from side to side, his body tense with the effort of maintaining his human posture. And then he lost his balance and fell, blindly, with a bone-wrenching thump, onto his back.

  The scraping of the violin bow stopped. The bear turned lazily on to his feet and bit savagely at his fleas.

  “Up, Bruno!”

  The bear whined and sat down. People began to laugh; some hooted and insulted the bear’s master. He flourished the bear’s nose lead and shouted, but the bear refused to budge. In the end, however, he could do nothing except attempt to save face; he bowed deeply, signifying an end to the performance. A few coins, a very few, bounced and bounded at his feet. He scooped them up quickly, as if he were afraid they might be reclaimed.

  The audience began to disperse. Some hurried away to protect their wares. But Dieter had nothing to protect and nowhere to go, and so he stayed.

  The sight of so many fleeing backs seemed to pique the bear. He got to his feet and began, once again, to dance. He mocked them. Or so it seemed. Of course, there was no music, but the bear danced much more daintily and elegantly than before, to a tune only he could perceive. And he grinned hugely, sardonically.

  But the trainer reached up, caught his nose ring and yanked him down on all fours. He swore and cursed, and the bear breathed high, squeaking protests, feigning innocence.

  This was unacceptable. This was rebellion. This was treason to the man who fed him, cared for him, taught him.

  “Hairy bastard. Play the fool, will you,” the stranger muttered, wrenching and twisting the nose ring while the bear squealed with pain. The man punched his head, kicked him in the belly, shook him by the ears. “Traitor. Ingrate.”

  Dieter held his breath. His mind’s eye had seen the bear suddenly strike, revenge himself. Yet nothing happened. Nothing; except the bear was beaten and battered, humiliated, even spat upon.

  What shame he felt witnessing such an indignity, such complete indifference to the rightful pride of the bear. Such flaunting of the respect owed him for his size and his power. Couldn’t the man realize what he did? Dieter wanted to shout out the secret. To warn him that appearances deceive. That a bear is a man in masquerade. Perhaps even a judge, but at the very least a brother.