Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

by Stanley Elkin

  He wondered if Khardov was still alive. My father, he thought. My kingmaker. What a joke he had played. What a joke!

  He would have liked to write him. It would be a very long letter. It was too bad he had no strength. The founder of kingdoms would have liked it. He could tell him how he had wasted his life, how it had been dissipated…

  How had it? In disappointment? It was strange, but he knew that disappointment was not among the ruins of feelings lying about him like collapsed, dropped pants. Nor was failure. Nor frustration. Nor pity for his cause. Yet he knew a sense of dreadful, terrible waste. Nothing could be reclaimed, nothing, and he gnashed his teeth and ground his fist into his palm. That was it, he thought. It had been thrown away, dissipated in anger, in outrage at imagined affronts, his energy destroyed by a dubious righteousness. It was as though his life had been sliced thin by a daily, steady outrage, as real as pain. He took the medallion in his hands and looked at it. He had often wondered which of the figures was meant to represent himself. The knight, militant astride the horse, pledged to some unknown cause, his fury, like his loyalty, merely a technique? The lion, defiant, all its weight in the vicious arching outrage of its paws? The eagle, its legs and feet in queer, attenuated taper, as nude as spikes, its talons curved about the crown shape in the act of usurpation, fantastically appearing to perch on it in mid-air, like any canary on its toy swing?

  He looked more closely at the figures. The hauberked knight was protected by his armor. He would not feel the blows of enemies. His cause was borrowed anyway, something not his own. The eagle, intimidated, bewildered in his adventitious majesty, had not meant to grasp the crown. The eagle bespoke accident. It was the lion then, rampant, the claws bursting from the furred paws, its rage, like his own, concentrated on no object, irrelevant but steady, just steady, spraying the air like spit. It was the lion, then, at the edge of the shield as at the edge of the jungle—loose, lost, peripheral, partner to nothing.

  But there was something more than outrage. From the very beginning there was the hope, not tarnished even now, on the cot in the shabby room, in the broken house, in the wounded neighborhood, in the strange city, in the alien country, in the unfamiliar hemisphere, in, at last, the unresponsive world—the hope, conviction even, that in a real way he had been a prince. A real one. There had been no sports cars climbing the sides of hills along the Mediterranean, nor racquets stitched crisscross on a jacket, nor education at an American university, nor hilarious incognito revels, nor grandly formal balls where stag lines of princesses waited for him to choose among them for a dance. Although he had known none of the conditions of the prince, he had felt like one. He still did; he could feel it now. Precious. His identity. He would have to tell Khardov that too.

  There was the question, of course, of what he was to do with his life now. He had not anticipated failure—his dream had been too wild. Yet failure had changed everything. It was one thing for the king, biding his time, awaiting his chance, to seek anonymity, to float on the oceans of the world, to hide behind the cargoes piled high on those oceans’ docks; it was quite another thing for himself, the man of no hope, in whose heart no conviction burned steady as a painted flame. But he saw that it made no difference to him. His failure had been of gross proportions. To mitigate it, to settle for less, and so much less—to bargain, as it were, with his fate—would hardly do. He would not settle for less, but for least. He determined that when his fever went down he would return to the docks.

  In three days he was well. It was painful for him to think of what the newspapers must have printed about him. Now there would be strange looks, perhaps words, from the other workers. He could imagine himself as he must seem to them. Quiet, sober, steady, the very man to nurse some wild, impossible dream. The gentle husband who one day slays his wife and small son, who rapes children, whose love nest is discovered. “Those quiet guys,” they would say, “they’re the ones to watch.” “Still waters,” they would say.

  He dressed slowly. As he was tucking the medallion into his shirt he paused. There would be trouble. They would ask to see it. If he wore it exposed they would not say anything. It would shame them and they would avoid him. It was only the appearance of sanity that would drive them to ferret out the gauche detail, the unhealthy fact. Exposed, they would look away from it, or through it, pretending it was not there, as one looks away from a spastic in the street. He left the medallion on the dark denim shirt. It flared there like the sun in a night sky.

  He returned to the docks. In the locker room the foreman looked at him peculiarly but said nothing. As he started outside the man called after him. “Hey,” he said.

  He turned slowly. “Yes?”

  “Next time you’re going to be out for a few days you’d better call in.”

  “I will,” he said. “I certainly will.”

  “That was some story about you in the papers,” the foreman said. “Well, just do your work and I got no complaint.”

  “I will,” he said.

  He worked quickly. From time to time he noticed some of the men watching him, but no one bothered him. The man he worked with worked as steadily as himself. At midnight it was time to quit. He heard the long, low whistle. “I guess that’s it,” he said to the man who worked beside him.

  “That’s right,” the man said quietly.

  He returned his gear to the locker room and went upstairs, coming out at the foot of an old wooden pier. A merchant vessel, its portholes blazing, was anchored at the pier. He looked up and saw some of the crew leaning against the railing. They were staring in his direction. As he walked along he was conscious of unusual activity on the dock. The shifts have changed, he thought. Women passed, looking at him. He saw small children huddled along the wharf. They looked like orphans. He walked on uneasily, tired.

  Across the street, in front of a sailors’ bar, a group of cripples had convened quietly. Standing there, maimed, their canes and crutches a complex of tangled wood, they looked strangely like a team of athletes before the beginning of a game. Next to them was a group of beggars. They held boxes of pencils and faded paper flowers in their caps. One extended a torn jeweler’s card on which were mounted two red-glass earrings. A night clerk from one of the flophouses stared sullenly from beneath his green eye shade, a gaudy elastic sleeve band on each arm. A cook from the steamy kitchen of some restaurant, his apron stained with orange blood, leaned against a wall, smoking.

  As he watched, the bars seemed to empty, the patrons—old sailors, whores, bums—filing silently into the street. They lined up in front of store fronts all the way down the block. They looked like people preparing to watch a parade. Here and there a tourist stood among them adjusting his camera lens, his empty case swinging at the ends of leather straps.

  He heard a cry, triumphant, strong—clear and urgent in the silent street as a call for help. “There he is,” it shouted. He heard it again and saw an old woman, lame, her neck and face covered with running sores, push herself with her crutch away from the group of cripples, as one in a rowboat shoves away from the shore with an oar. “There he is,” she screamed again. The cry was amazingly strong in the old, wounded throat. It was delirious, transfixed. Others took it up and in their frenzy began to stumble forward, blindly shouldering each other out of the way.

  It was him they meant.

  They crowded toward him, one wave after another coming down toward him from the high curb. He stood in the cobbled street wondering if he dared to run. He looked about him. Others were coming from behind. He stood very still and raised his arms defensively, thinking they would fall upon him. His movement checked them. The ones in front stopped where they were and petitioned silence from the ones behind who had not seen his gesture. He heard their warnings for silence retreating into the deep fringes of the crowd ringed about him.

  He stood now, immobile, directly in their center. He thought they meant to kill him. “What do you want?” he asked finally.

  No one answered. They stared
stupidly. One pointed to the medallion about his throat and the others looked in the direction of the pointing finger. He heard them gasp, shocked, thrilled.

  “What do you want?” he repeated, raising his voice.

  “We believe you,” the old crippled woman in the vanguard of the crowd called out.

  “You’re what you say you are,” another said fiercely.

  “You’re one of us. Tell them. Tell them. Tell them,” cried an old man.

  “Tell them about us,” a whore said ecstatically.

  “It don’t have to be this way. It don’t have to be this way,” a drunk was crying.

  “Please, sir,” a beggar urged.

  “Prince,” a cripple murmured.

  “King,” another whined.

  “Lord!” a young woman, pregnant, drunk, whispered hoarsely.

  He stared at them unbelievingly. Their broken faces, beatific, rapturous, were soft and stained with grief and love. They fixed their looks of patient ecstasy upon him, their weak sad freight of disease and despair and hope and love. He could feel their senseless love mounting steadily, building, bursting in upon him like waters that have split their banks. Feeling it, he knew that he would never be the same. It poisoned him, staining him like dirty, broken furniture in a room from which flood waters have retreated.

  Suddenly an old man stepped tentatively forward. There was something familiar about his patient shuffle. It was the man he had stood next to outside the palace gates, the one who had wanted his face on the postage stamps. “Sir….” he began.

  The rage, unfeigned, pure as poison, rattled in him. Instantly the chain of the medallion was in his hand and he was beating the man across his face, cutting him with the sharp shield shape. The man fell fragilely, sprawling at his feet in some final, terrible parody of petition. Helplessly he dropped the medallion, hearing the links and shield collapse goldenly in the silent street.

  The mob seemed to undulate, to sway transfixed. Now they would kill him—now. Someone pressed forward. He heard the serene, leathery creak of wooden crutches. Now they would kill him. He waited, thinking irrelevantly of the fine wool woven from the precious shards in Khardov’s box, of his heavy leather shoes, untenanted, gathering dust in the closet in his shabby room, of the places he had seen, of tips left on glass tables under beach umbrellas on golden shores, of dusty carrels in quiet libraries, big, heavy books open on the ancient desks, the faded colored pictures of escutcheons across the huge pages like panels in a comic strip.

  “Please, sir. Please, sir.” He looked down. The old woman, bent beneath him on her ruined legs, extended the medallion toward him.

  He felt his rage, final, immense, filling him like fragments from a dropped glass spreading widely across a bare floor.

  “Bastards. Bastards. You bastards,” he roared.

  On the medallion the lion; on the cobbled street himself: rampant, inflamed, enraged, furious with their golden hate.

  A POETICS FOR BULLIES

  I’m Push the bully, and what I hate are new kids and sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off, patrol boys and wise guys and kids who pass pencils and water the plants—and cripples, especially cripples. I love nobody loved.

  One time I was pushing this red-haired kid (I’m a pusher, no hitter, no belter; an aggressor of marginal violence, I hate real force) and his mother stuck her head out the window and shouted something I’ve never forgotten. “Push,” she yelled. “You, Push. You pick on him because you wish you had his red hair!” It’s true; I did wish I had his red hair. I wish I were tall, or fat, or thin. I wish I had different eyes, different hands, a mother in the supermarket. I wish I were a man, a small boy, a girl in the choir. I’m a coveter, a Boston Blackie of the heart, casing the world. Endlessly I covet and case. (Do you know what makes me cry? The Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal.” That’s beautiful.)

  If you’re a bully like me, you use your head. Toughness isn’t enough. You beat them up, they report you. Then where are you? I’m not even particularly strong. (I used to be strong. I used to do exercise, work out, but strength implicates you, and often isn’t an advantage anyway—read the judo ads. Besides, your big bullies aren’t bullies at all—they’re athletes. With them, beating guys up is a sport.) But what I lose in size and strength I make up in courage. I’m very brave. That’s a lie about bullies being cowards underneath. If you’re a coward, get out of the business.

  I’m best at torment.

  A kid has a toy bow, toy arrows. “Let Push look,” I tell him.

  He’s suspicious, he knows me. “Go way, Push,” he says, this mama-warned Push doubter.

  “Come on,” I say, “come on.”

  “No, Push. I can’t. My mother said I can’t.”

  I raise my arms, I spread them. I’m a bird—slow, powerful, easy, free. I move my head offering profile like something beaked. I’m the Thunderbird. “In the school where I go I have a teacher who teaches me magic,” I say. “Arnold Salamancy, give Push your arrows. Give him one, he gives back two. Push is the God of the Neighborhood.”

  “Go way, Push,” the kid says, uncertain.

  “Right,” Push says, himself again. “Right. I’ll disappear. First the fingers.” My fingers ball to fists. “My forearms next.” They jackknife into my upper arms. “The arms.” Quick as bird-blink they snap behind my back, fit between the shoulder blades like a small knapsack. (I am double-jointed, protean.) “My head,” I say.

  “No, Push,” the kid says, terrified. I shudder and everything comes back, falls into place from the stem of self like a shaken puppet.

  “The arrow, the arrow. Two where was one.” He hands me an arrow.

  “Trouble, trouble, double rubble!” I snap it and give back the pieces.

  Well, sure. There is no magic. If there were I would learn it. I would find out the words, the slow turns and strange passes, drain the bloods and get the herbs, do the fires like a vestal. I would look for the main chants. Then I’d change things. Push would!

  But there’s only casuistical trick. Sleight-of-mouth, the bully’s poetics.

  You know the formulas:

  “Did you ever see a match burn twice?” you ask. Strike. Extinguish. Jab his flesh with the hot stub.

  “Play ‘Gestapo’?”

  “How do you play?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Morton.”

  I slap him. “You’re lying.”

  “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Hard went down to the lake for a swim. Adam and Eve fell in. Who was left?”

  “Pinch Me Hard.”

  I do.

  Physical puns, conundrums. Push the punisher, the conundrummer!

  But there has to be more than tricks in a bag of tricks.

  I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think I’m the only new kid. In a room, the school, the playground, the neighborhood, I get the feeling I’ve just moved in, no one knows me. You know what I like? To stand in crowds. To wait with them at the airport to meet a plane. Someone asks what time it is. I’m the first to answer. Or at the ball park when the vendor comes. He passes the hot dog down the long row. I want my hands on it, too. On the dollar going up, the change coming down.

  I am ingenious, I am patient.

  A kid is going downtown on the elevated train. He’s got his little suit on, his shoes are shined, he wears a cap. This is a kid going to the travel bureaus, the foreign tourist offices to get brochures, maps, pictures of the mountains for a unit at his school—a kid looking for extra credit. I follow him. He comes out of the Italian Tourist Information Center. His arms are full. I move from my place at the window. I follow for two blocks and bump into him as he steps from a curb. It’s a collision—The pamphlets fall from his arms. Pretending confusion, I walk on his paper Florence. I grind my heel in his Riviera. I climb Vesuvius and sack his Rome and dance on the Isle of Capri.

  The Industrial Museum is a good place to find childre
n. I cut somebody’s five- or six-year-old kid brother out of the herd of eleven-and twelve-year-olds he’s come with. “Quick,” I say. I pull him along the corridors, up the stairs, through the halls, down to a mezzanine landing. Breathless, I pause for a minute. “I’ve got some gum. Do you want a stick?” He nods; I stick him. I rush him into an auditorium and abandon him. He’ll be lost for hours.

  I sidle up to a kid at the movies. “You smacked my brother,” I tell him. “After the show—I’ll be outside.”

  I break up games. I hold the ball above my head. “You want it? Take it.”

  I go into barber shops. There’s a kid waiting. “I’m next,” I tell him, “understand?”

  One day Eugene Kraft rang my bell. Eugene is afraid of me, so he helps me. He’s fifteen and there’s something wrong with his saliva glands and he drools. His chin is always chapped. I tell him he has to drink a lot because he loses so much water.

  “Push? Push,” he says. He’s wiping his chin with his tissues. “Push, there’s this kid—”

  “Better get a glass of water, Eugene.”

  “No, Push, no fooling, there’s this new kid—he just moved in. You’ve got to see this kid.”

  “Eugene, get some water, please. You’re drying up. I’ve never seen you so bad. There are deserts in you, Eugene.”

  “All right, Push, but then you’ve got to see—”

  “Swallow, Eugene. You better swallow.”

  He gulps hard.

  “Push, this is a kid and a half. Wait, you’ll see.”