by James Thomas
Everyone knew what that meant.
This is a traditional German fairy tale.
The loaf of bread I have conjured for you floats about a foot above your kitchen table. The table is normal, there are no trap doors in it. A blue tea towel floats beneath the bread, and there are no strings attaching the cloth to the bread or the bread to the ceiling or the table to the cloth, you’ve proved it by passing your hand above and below. You didn’t touch the bread though. What stopped you? You don’t want to know whether the bread is real or whether it’s just a hallucination I’ve somehow duped you into seeing. There’s no doubt that you can see the bread, you can even smell it, it smells like yeast, and it looks solid enough, solid as your own arm. But can you trust it? Can you eat it? You don’t want to know, imagine that.
YOGURT
They were fighting more than usual lately, or perhaps fighting had just become usual, he thought, as they walked home from Yogurt Express along the dark side street. There was no moon, and in the darkness the houses loomed huge and unfamiliar.
He was thinking about earlier in the week, at the grocery, when they’d fought over the sugar cereal. He’d tossed it into the cart, and she’d taken it out, reprimanding him.
“I don’t want you buying this crap,” she’d said.
“Jesus,” he’d replied, wheeling off cockeyed down the aisle. “What are you anyway, my mother?”
These petty clashes rankled him more and more, and he held on to them for days, replaying every nuance and detail, running his mind over them like a tongue on a sore tooth.
Now, as they walked along the quiet street, not touching, he thought what it would be like to live alone, all that freedom. The idea of a separation—he with his own space, his own time, his own decisions—increasingly gave him pleasure. There were, of course, the complications of the kids, the house, the two cars, the bank account, the country property, but was that any reason to stay together?
A rapid slap of feet on pavement just behind them brought him up short, and, as he turned, startled, a cup of cold yogurt slashed into his face, blinding him.
“Hey!” he shouted.
A dark shape scurried past, turning the corner. “I hate couples!” it snarled and disappeared.
He felt weak, his breath uneven. “What was that?” he said, wiping yogurt from his eyes and chin.
She was silent a moment, and then, “I’ve seen him before,” she said. “In the daytime. He wears a skullcap, and sort of slinks around. I thought he was harmless.”
“Jesus, it’s such a . . . a . . .
“Violation?” She gave him the word he was looking for.
“Yes, a violation. I wonder if we should report him. Warn the children. Lock our doors.”
They had reached the corner, but no one was there. In the light of the street lamp, she looked serene, and, he thought, well, valuable. He put his arm around her and drew her close. Slowly, she put her arm around him.
A CHRONICLER’S SIN
Once upon a time, during the reign of terror, mass arrests became the order of the day. Most often they took place at night: a group of hooded men would knock at the front door and order the sleepy host to get dressed, and then take him to one of the many small prisons mushrooming all over the town. Sometimes the policemen would arrest whole families, including the children and grandmothers who slept on the hearths.
The population of the town was shrinking, and all night long saber-rattling patrols could be heard leading the people away through the streets, from a great many houses. Many people began to spend their nights fully clothed, dozing with bundles under their heads as if traveling, expecting to be arrested. People were amazed that there was so much room in prisons, but then one house after another was turned into a prison, and one person would languish in another’s house as if in jail: the rich in poor people’s quarters and the other way around, soldiers in schools, priests in barracks, doctors and patients in brothels, debauchees in convents.
There was an increasing shortage of labor, and prisoners did most of the jobs. Since they were dressed like other people and their numbers were kept secret, it was difficult to know who was a prisoner and who was free. The prisoners were even employed to make arrests: they carried sabers although they were prisoners.
The number of arrests was rising—among the next victims were members of the notorious City Authorities. Priests, merchants, chiefs of staff, sentries, clerks, and others were taken away. In the end they were all made prisoners, even the members of the Administration themselves. Everybody spied on each other; everybody was a prisoner and nobody knew who was actually in charge, issuing these orders and arrest warrants. Everybody had the feeling that he was taking part in the running of the town, in the arrests and in the serving of time in prison. And as all of them were dressed alike and enjoyed the same rights—all of them being under arrest—they went on doing their jobs as if nothing had happened. They lived their ordinary lives and, had someone asked them, they would probably have said they were happy.
Several years later they would deny that any arrests had been made at all and claim that it was all a fabrication of an inadequately censored, and undoubtedly malicious, chronicler.
Translated by Miroslav Beker
HERE
Elvis lives three houses away. We don’t have houses exactly, they’re metal sheds, corrugated, very shiny, with nothing inside except us, when we’re there. We wave Hi in the mornings and evenings like any workaday neighbors, but there are no lawns to discuss, or sports, or even weather, so waving’s about it for social life here. The two sheds between us are officially vacant, the sliding doors wide open on bare cement, so if we did talk it might be about who lived there last, or who’s about to live there, but the fact is that even here and now I’m in too much silly awe to attempt small talk with a dead legend. I’d naïvely expected to meet my parents here, or pretty Nancy who developed a brain tumor in my second grade, but we seem to be on our own with a vengeance, the only exceptions being as I say these neighbors we see before and after work. What we are is complete strangers with identical schedules.
I don’t know where anyone else goes or comes back from. Next door on the other side I have a very short woman, possibly a dwarf, who wears boxy little dresses of a 1940s cut and carries a blue aluminum lunch pail. Unlike Elvis she always throws me a genuine smile that warms me with its gallantry and lack of self-pity. Beyond her lives a burly Sikh with a turban who clears his sinuses loudly as we set off on our separate ways. No one goes in the same direction as anyone else. We all walk straight ahead but the horizon seems to widen so that our paths diverge and we soon disappear from each other. I have a fairly pleasant job but it takes me a long time to get there; I never know how far I have to go because the route is always some new combination of all the walks of my life—through the woods behind my first remembered house, up the cast iron stairs to my father’s law office, across my high school playground, down the driveway of my second wife’s condo after she married again. All these places are quite deserted except for me. And eventually, in one of these settings, I see my bench, with the day’s task laid out for me, self-explanatory, some variation of a simple mindless chore I performed in a shop course, like soldering, or a tray of letters to case out from my days in the post office. It’s good to work, I have no complaints on that score. But I must say that the fact of Elvis so near and yet so far distracts and preoccupies me at my labors.
I have no idea if I am unique. It may be that everyone here has Elvis living three doors away and has to confront that situation in his or her own fashion. It may be only those like me who played his records to annoy their fathers and had those records confiscated or broken in two, or those like me again who used his mystique on girls of thirteen or fourteen with bad intentions, who now have to face him first and last thing every day, and decide what to say to him. Or it may be that I alone, out of how many billions, by sheer chance am the nearest neighbor of this illustrious figure. The question in any cas
e remains how do I make the most of it?
And every day, bending my sheet of tin or aligning my crisp envelopes, I am rehearsing my first approach. I will not pry or invade his privacy. I will brighten his day, as the dwarf lady does mine. Sometimes I ponder an apropos line from one of his hits. “Takin’ a walk down Lonely Street!” I might call out. I try this aloud at my bench; it gives me shudders. Should I tell him he’s looking good? He must know he isn’t. Most mornings he has trouble getting his door open and has to pause for breath before he closes it behind him. When he takes off his shades to check the sky his eyes are puffed almost shut. But his self-assurance is something to behold. If he were a rotted corpse, if he were a skeleton, he’d still be Elvis. Wherever he goes is the right place for him. I’d like to tell him that in simple casual words that don’t crown him with the thorns of his fame all over again. But the fact is I probably won’t.
Every day both ways the commute seems to get longer, for all of us. We’re starting earlier and getting home later with, for me at least, less and less actual work time. This may be a reward or a punishment. But it doesn’t leave much margin for conversation. It’s getting so we’re mere shadows to each other at the crack of dawn and the tag end of dusk. This evening out of desperation I waved with two hands as if I had a message for him and he paused, just a big bulky shape in a fringed jacket with his hand on his door, and waited to hear me. “Home,” I said. “Home at last.” I could barely make him out but I believe he aimed his forefinger at me and lowered his thumb, like a cowboy. That was sweet. That was him all over. He knows me.
HERE’S ANOTHER ENDING
This time my story has a foregone conclusion.
It is true also.
After I tell the story, I say, “You could start a religion based on a story like that—couldn’t you?”
The story begins with my idea of a huge dog—a Doberman—which is to me an emblem—cruel, not lovable.
The dog is a household pet in a neighborhood such as mine, with houses with backyards which abut.
The huge dog is out and about when it should not be. It should never be.
When the dog returns to its owners, it is carrying in its mouth a dirty dead rabbit.
The dog’s owners exclaim—one of them does—“The neighbor’s rabbit! He’s killed it!” The dog’s owners conclude, “We must save our dog’s reputation at all costs.” They think, Our dog is in jeopardy.
The dog’s owners shampoo the dead rabbit and dry it with a hair dryer. At night, they sneak the rabbit back into their neighbor’s yard, into its cage.
The morning of the following day, the dog’s owners hear a shriek from the rabbit owners’ yard. They think, Oh! The dead rabbit has been discovered! They rush to see what’s what.
One of the rabbit’s owners—the father in the family—is holding the limp, white rabbit up in the air. He says to the dog’s owners, “We buried her two days ago!”
The dog’s owners explain nothing. They won’t, but not because they are ashamed of themselves.
There is another, more obvious reason.
108 JOHN STREET
The house was yellow. The days were long. The kitchen was crowded sometimes. Bill knew a way to tie up the paper bags of trash with string but Mark could never master it. This was an amusing issue on Wednesday nights. The refrigerator hummed softly. Mark went upstairs and found Jessica in their gray-carpeted room listening to Carole King. Her hair was wet and very dark. She said, “Did you eat the pie, Monkey?” Bill took a shower while Judy waited for him in the larger bedroom. Judy thought Bill took an unnaturally long time in the shower. Through the bathroom door she would shout ‘William,’ Jessica told Mark that Judy was jealous of hot running water. Mark typed a very flimsy poem in green ink. The poem implied that certain persons, like him, were able to see angels in the air, while others couldn’t. He moved some books from one pile to another. He doubted that he would ever read The Death of Artemio Cruz and wondered if he should feel depressed about this. When Lena Chen came over and cooked food in the wok, Mark always chopped the onions. “Monkey cries whenever Chen the Wren visits us,” said Jessica. She drew a cartoon of pigs wearing overalls eating ice cream sodas. In the basement room, Lawrence the gay lawyer spoke on the phone about Mozart as if no one else had ever heard of Mozart. In the kitchen Lawrence liked to use the phrase “quality cookware.” The night he announced that he was gay, everybody had to act serious. They were learning to live together. Bill pointed out to Mark that he often neglected to wash the bottoms of dishes and pans. Bill read a murder mystery soberly, missing no clues. The living room was surprisingly pleasant with a sand-colored sofa and Lawrence’s quality lamps. All of this, all of this, Jessica with her brown eyes so awake, all of this was significant, all of it vibrated just below consciousness with a strong significance. Or was it only life? Only life? Mark ate celery with cheese and then joined Jessica upstairs. She was joking on the phone, something about Simone de Beauvoir telling Jean-Paul to straighten up and fly right. Mark meant to read something about Vietnam but he was sleepy. Jessica mocked him for singing “Please Please Me” off-key but when she hugged him life was good. In the morning a pigeon patrolled the windowsill very near their sleeping heads. All significant. And God put it all in a cloth bag and swung it around and tossed it lightly into the river.
DEPORTATION AT BREAKFAST
The signs on the windows lured me inside. For a dollar I could get two eggs, toast, and potatoes. The place looked better than most—family-run and clean. The signs were hand-lettered and neat. The paper had yellowed some, but the black letters remained bold. A green-and-white awning was perched over the door, where the name “Clara’s” was stenciled.
Inside, the place had an appealing and old-fashioned look. The air smelled fresh and homey, not greasy. The menu was printed on a chalkboard. It was short and to the point. It listed the kinds of toast you could choose from. One entry was erased from the middle of the list. By deduction, I figured it was rye. I didn’t want rye toast anyway.
Because I was alone, I sat at the counter, leaving the empty tables free for other customers that might come in. At the time, business was quiet. Only two tables were occupied; and I was alone at the counter. But it was still early—not yet seven-thirty.
Behind the counter was a short man with dark black hair, a mustache, and a youthful beard, one that never grew much past stubble. He was dressed immaculately, all in chef’s white—pants, shirt, and apron, but no hat. He had a thick accent. The name “Javier” was stitched on his shirt.
I ordered coffee, and asked for a minute to choose between the breakfast special for a dollar and the cheese omelette for $1.59. I selected the omelette.
The coffee was hot, strong, and fresh. I spread my newspaper on the counter and sipped at the mug as Javier went to the grill to cook my meal.
The eggs were spread out on the griddle, the bread plunged inside the toaster, when the authorities came in. They grabbed Javier quickly and without a word, forcing his hands behind his back. He, too, said nothing. He did not resist, and they shoved him out the door and into their waiting car.
On the grill, my eggs bubbled. I looked around for another employee—maybe out back somewhere, or in the washroom. I leaned over the counter and called for someone. No one answered. I looked behind me toward the tables. Two elderly men sat at one; two elderly women at the other. The two women were talking. The men were reading the paper. They seemed not to have noticed Javier’s exit.
I could smell my eggs starting to burn. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. I thought about Javier and stared at my eggs. After some hesitation, I got up from my red swivel stool and went behind the counter. I grabbed a spare apron, then picked up the spatula and turned my eggs. My toast had popped up, but it was not browned, so I put it down again. While I was cooking, the two elderly women came to the counter and asked to pay. I asked what they had had. They seemed surprised that I didn’t remember. I checked the prices on the chalkboard and ran
g up their order. They paid slowly, fishing through large purses, and went out, leaving me a dollar tip. I took my eggs off the grill and slid them onto a clean plate. My toast had come up. I buttered it and put it on my plate beside my eggs. I put the plate at my spot at the counter, right next to my newspaper.
As I began to come back from behind the counter to my stool, six new customers came through the door. “Can we pull some tables together?” they asked. “Were all one party.” I told them yes. Then they ordered six coffees, two decaffeinated.
I thought of telling them I didn’t work there. But perhaps they were hungry. I poured their coffee. Their order was simple: six breakfast specials, all with scrambled eggs and wheat toast. I got busy at the grill.
Then the elderly men came to pay. More new customers began arriving. By eight-thirty, I had my hands full. With this kind of business, I couldn’t understand why Javier hadn’t hired a waitress. Maybe I’d take out a help-wanted ad in the paper tomorrow. I had never been in the restaurant business. There was no way I could run this place alone.
A VERY SHORT STORY
One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night.