by Tom Molloy
Finished with words, he opened the packages one by one, pausing to carefully examine the piece that would fit into the cash register. Opening the side of the machine, he gently pressed the device to the guts of the machine and held it over an identical piece set inside.
Lifting the defective piece out, he set the new part in and shut the small green door on the side of the register. His lips moved silently, tiny beads of perspiration forming on his forehead as he worked.
Exhaling, he relaxed, then pulled the roll of paper from its box and worked it into the register. Shutting the door he gave a few triumphant taps of the keys and the paper snaked out. He slammed the cash drawer, and the little bell rang.
“My favorite song,” he announced as the food arrived.
As I ate he drew a glass of water from the tap, then sat on a stool behind the bar opposite me.
“As I said, I believe in fate. Our society is paralyzed by the obscenity of the so-called scientific process, but I am not part of that process; don’t believe in it. Fate, lad, fate, omens and totems, such things rule mankind and always have. Ours is no different than the jungle societies we put in National Geographic to snicker at and ogle. But no snickering here, lad. You’re welcome as spring rain or summer sun, whatever strikes your fancy. There’s something for everyone in Fair Chelsea by the sea. And no, I am not a native, I evolved, some would say devolved, from a wealthy seaside suburb, but here I am, king of all I survey, the biggest fish in this here polluted pond, and right mighty thankful for the honor pardner, yippie-I-oh-kye-ay. It’s just swell to sit here on my spread an’ watch the ol’ sun go down on what was once America. Yup, I reckon I’ll spend my last days here pardner, ridin’ a filly or two, an’ a doin’ what comes natural to a man, just a doin’ what comes natural an’ waitin’ for the grandaddy of all pogroms to hit this here dad-blasted-infernal-God-fearin’-Jesus-lovin’ promised land. And at the risk of sounding redundant I can only repeat, yippie-I-oh-kye-ay.”
As he went on I listened, watching the sweat again begin to glisten on his face. When he finished I tapped the plate with the knife.
“Good food.”
“The best, pardner. Your wife like to cook?”
“Did I say I was married?”
“No, but I’m sensitive. I can tell.”
“Yeah, she’s a wonderful cook.”
“And you?”
“I bake.”
I pointed the utensil at him.
“You married?”
“Oh, in a manner of speaking. In a modern way. In the way of the world, the way of all flesh. Yes, happily thank you; she’s a wonderful girl. An American actually, from the Midwest. Been there?”
“Never.” “Oh you should go. They have such wonderful street numbers. You know like ninety-two thousand six hundred and forty-five South Main Street. A certain strength, a certain Protestant moral certitude to such numbers. Perhaps that’s why we’re so sinful back here in the East. Maybe our numbers are just too low. Why, I just love to cruise those long white boulevards and pull into a gas station and say Pardon mon ami, s’il vous plaît, but where is number eight million two hundred fifty-seven thousand and fourteen? My in-laws live there.’ And the fellow says, ‘Hey you ain’t no Jew-boy are ya? ’Cause if ya are, I’m gonna have to charge ya for the info. Haw, haw haw.’”
Beneath the sarcasm he seemed genuinely hurt as he continued.
“I do hope I don’t sound resentful or unpatriotic, I mean I think our Mideast policy is just divine and I go to all the Rambo movies. I fly my M.I.A. flag, I get all my jokes from the Reader’s Digest. I even read the Playboy interviews all the way through before I look at the pictures and jerk off, but well somehow, do you think that maybe …”
He dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned over the wooden bar.
“Do you think they suspect I’m not one of them?”
Before I could answer he snapped straight up.
“My favorite movie of all time is ‘Cabaret.’ A close second is ‘The Sorrow and the Pity.’ I think I died during the Holocaust. I think they killed me on Kristallnacht. I dream about the shattering glass, and I hear the voices singing in the dark. I can smell the beer on their breath, it’s not an unpleasant smell. One of their hats fell on the floor of my shop. You know those hats with the little feathers in them, little feathers like the things fishermen use on their hooks?”
He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, the perspiration drawing together in beads about his face. His eyes had been unfocused and now they came back to the room, and the odors of the place and the deep stained wooden bar, and his voice was like that of a child.
“You know the kinds of hats I mean don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’m glad you know. Would you like anything else? Ice cream, pastry, coffee?”
“No thanks. I have to get going, have to beat the rush over the bridge.”
“Right, that makes sense.”
“I’ll stop in again. We’ll talk.”
At once he shook off the mood that had come upon him.
“Of course we will, pardner. Sit around the old campfire and jaw a spell. Mix a few potions perhaps, a drink for you, a treat for me. Can we shake on that?”
We clasped hands as he said, “Out here a man’s word is law. Adios pardner.”
I stopped on the way out and turned to him.
“What about your car?”
He smiled, “I have eight others.”
9
Alone on the floor in silent darkness, the doubts and fears come. A man hears the creaks and groans of a building, the rapid tugs of the wind rattling the loose window in its sill.
At such times a man comes awake, his heart pumping. I remembered what a cop once told me. “They always kill the guy first.” Puma taught me at such times to picture the Earth in the black void of space, to see the Sun and to see the spin of the blue and brown Earth. Puma said to recall that in the coldest winter it is summer in the other hemisphere, that our summer is their winter. He said too that at highest, brightest, noon, we should think of the fearful in the darkness and perhaps help them through their journey.
I felt hot in the sleeping bag and strained for a repeat of the noise that had brought me awake, but if it had ever been, it was now gone.
Across the room I could hear Frances’ shallow breathing and, again the fingers of the wind at the loose window. The long minutes passed, but sleep would not come. In my mind’s eye was an image of my wife, frightened and alone with our little boy. I could see her deep in the bed burrowed in the sheets and silent blankets, the woodstove exhaling into the dark blue Maine sky.
The feelings became saturated with want, want of the fragrance and cool touch of her body. I came out of the sleeping bag, padded across the cold floor and awkwardly twisted on my clothes. With my shirt draped over one shoulder, I went to the window, its closeness turning the glass rattle to a reassuring sound. Pulling on my clothes, I slipped two instruments into my pockets. Gathering a pair of warm socks, I put my boots on in the hall, so as not to awaken Frances.
On the street a bank clock told the darkness it was a little after 3:00 and I went down the street, twice stepping into shadow as police cars swept past. When I reckoned it was 3:30 I stopped.
Above, the elevated track of the subway was silent and would remain so for another two hours. Again checking the empty street, I strode toward the looming presence of the Catholic cathedral, feeling myself shrink as one does approaching a ship at dockside.
Lightly touching the wall once, I grasped the faded green drainpipe with one hand. The ornate walls were ideal for climbing, and at the fifteen-foot level I gained a ledge and from there the black hollow alcove of a stained glass window.
Waiting for my breathing to slow, I sat in the ebony hollow, watching the street, listening for any sign I had been seen. Nothing moved and overhead I could see Mars and Jupiter in vertical alignment with the waning Moon.
Lifting both legs, I pressed
them hard against the opposite wall of the alcove and pulled the screwdriver and file from my pockets. The street remained unperturbed when the window popped open.
I pushed against the flow of warm musty air and gained the interior, gently pulling the colorful glass shut behind me. Breathing the inner warmth, not moving, I waited to see if I had caused alarm. But there was no sound, and as my eyes focused to the gloom, I saw that I was between the seventh and eighth stations of the cross.
In white marble clinging to the gray walls, the stations depicted Jesus falling for the second time, and His telling the women of Israel to weep not for Him, but for themselves and their children and their children’s children.
Lowering myself, I found the top of the nearest pew to be more than a foot from my boots. The strain went up my arms and burned in my hands as I let go of the ledge and ended up on my back on the pew.
Getting up, I adjusted the strap that held the instruments and went to the nearby confessionals, pulling back the purple curtain that covered each wooden chamber. Convinced I was truly alone, I moved back up the center aisle, went into a pew, and squeezed around a yard-wide marble column.
Kneeling, I unrolled the instruments and grasped two that I knew could deal with the heavily lacquered top of the pew in front of me. One would penetrate the lacquer, the other deposit the message.
Still kneeling, I unrolled the cloth, laying the tools out on the pew in front of me. Before beginning, I looked at the altar, at the stained glass windows, at the gloom, in which, I knew, the ceiling arched and soared above. All was as it should be.
Breathing on my hands, I bent to the task, planning these letters so they could be felt as well as read.
As I worked, the heavy cold musk of the empty cathedral seemed to quiver, and I stopped and looked up. Crouching low I swept the shavings from the narrow pew top to the floor with one finger. There was no movement, no sound, but again I sensed a draft, sensed it not so much by moving breeze as through a deeper pungency to the air.
The message on the top of the pew came fairly easily and when I was satisfied, I scattered the shavings with my breath.
I took special care with the phrase that would be on the pews that fed into the confessionals. The work went quickly enough so that when I had left the phrase on two pews there was still no hint of the coming dawn. Rolling up the instruments to move to the far side of the cathedral I hesitated, and then heard a door boom shut somewhere behind the altar.
Ducking, I scrambled across half the length of the church, then crawled behind a pillar. Keys rattled loudly and there came a set of footfalls sounding the solid gait of authority.
I stood up, my back pressed hard against the side of the pillar. The footsteps stopped, but there was no piercing beam of a flashlight, no crackling of a two-way radio. I squeezed the instruments in my fist, realizing I had dropped my gloves somewhere.
When it came, the voice was older, but with a subdued anger and sure resonance. He asked in Latin what I was doing.
“Quid faces?”
In the vast echoing building I did not have to raise my voice to answer.
“Narro veritam (Telling the truth),” I answered.
I heard him strike the match once, then twice before it flared, the yellow glow of the candle lifting the gloom, the flames of the second and third drawing forth the score of saints on the walls.
“I thought you were some damn crazy nigger.” “No.”
“Id est evidens (That’s obvious).”
He laughed, childlike.
“Pardon the racism, but we don’t get too many little old ladies at 4 a.m.”
The laughter came again, wet, light, completely divorced from the tired voice that now called out.
“Vene introba ad luminem (Come into the light).”
With the instruments in my right hand, and my left hand in my jacket pocket, I stepped from behind the pillar, and stood tight against the back of a pew. He was tall, angular, and wore his gray hair in a severe crew cut. We were nearly 100 feet apart and because of the candles, I could see him better than he could see me. Even so, his features were indistinct, seeming to waver in the flickering light.
He wore a black robe with the wide leather belt of his order. Beneath the robe I could see the thin line of a white t-shirt. He seemed a man used to the coarse whispers of insomnia.
He stood before the first of the three marble steps that led to the tabernacle. Arms folded, perhaps against the chill, he peered at me. I could discern black reading glasses and a gold chain around his neck. Connected with the face, the voice now seemed louder.
“Who taught you Latin?”
“Myself.”
A sound passed from him, like a soft grunt of recognition.
“Catholic?”
“At one time.”
He answered softly. “Weren’t we all?”
Turning his back to me, he ascended the stairs. With a deft move he opened the small door of the tabernacle and pulled out a chalice. I sat down, noting the first hint of gray sky beginning to flush the colors of the windows. This time his voice was louder.
“Know what the ancient Greeks said?”
“What?”
“‘Those who live near the temple laugh at the gods.’”
In the silence trailing his words the aroma of melting wax reached me. When again he spoke his voice was very low.
“Are you laughing?”
“No.”
Lifting the robe slightly, he sat on the topmost of the three marble steps.
“Why did you learn Latin?”
“I was disoriented. I was looking for some sort of lineage, for a pattern to the events that had put me where I was.”
“And where were you?”
“Korea.”
“And did you study Korean?”
“No.”
Hitting the walls, his laughter cluttered back and forth between us.
“Perfect. Jesus, you’re an American all right.” Controlling his laughter, he asked: “You were in the military?”
“Right.”
“But not during the war, you’re too young.”
Now it was my voice that rose.
“The war never stopped.”
He nodded, then rose, turning he went up the stairs. When he turned again, he had the chalice, and I could see his fingers grasped it as Rome decreed. He proffered it with one hand.
“Drink?”
“No, thank you.”
Outside, I heard a motor running high and fast, but the pitch of the engine fell as the vehicle sped past and vanished. The priest sipped the wine, sat on the top step and took a long draught.
“What impressed you most about Korea?”
“The animals in the DMZ. They’ve been unmolested for years. They’re not afraid, and they’re beautiful. The flowers there are beautiful too.”
“That all?”
“Strangers trying to kill you is impressive.”
Smiling, he lifted the chalice and drained it, then spoke, his face hidden by the gold cup.
“Yes. I happened to be in Jordan in ’67.”
With a cloth he carefully wiped the liquid from the cup.
“Did you know the Israelis are not very nice?”
“I’ve heard.”
He kissed the chalice.
“Not very nice at all.”
Both of his hands came around the gold chalice and his fingers were spread wide, giving the goblet the appearance of a caged bird. He shifted slightly before speaking, the movement causing the reflected light of the candles to flare, then quickly fade on the curved sides of the chalice.
He drew himself up straight as though he was about to speak, but then his shoulders sagged and I thought I heard a sigh brush the walls of the building. In an instant he stiffened again, his voice much louder.
“How did you get in here?”
Keeping my gaze on him, I reached out to touch the nearby pillar with the fingers of my left hand, gauging how long it would take me t
o reach the open window.
“I’m here,”
His voice was almost guttural when he replied.
“So am I.”
Turning, he knelt before the tabernacle, then rose to ascend the stairs. When he had replaced the chalice he faced me, arms folded.
“And what truth are you telling us?”
I spoke the words I had left in his cathedral.
“I am without.”
Long seconds passed and I found myself wishing for more light, for more air.
At length he spoke, his words a coarse stage whisper.
“That’s it?”
He laughed, at first gently, softly, but then louder, and the laughter grew uneven and harsh. I did not want to speak again to this man. I had a sudden perception of physical danger, realizing that he could shoot me right now and receive nothing but adulation from the media and the cops.
Bending sideways, he brought one hand up to his eyes as though shading them from a harsh glare. He spoke again.
“Where are you, where’d you go?”
I didn’t answer.
“Here’s a line for ya, old buddy. ‘Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why then art Thou come to hinder us?’”
His voice rose. “Can you name that tune, friend? How about this one? ‘Tomorrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.’”
I went down on all fours and began crawling across the darkened floor toward the open window.
His voice came again, now louder than ever.
“Wait, aren’t you going to kiss these bloodless lips?” His laughter slipped its chain, the cruelty in it drawing strength from the echoing walls. “You’re not going to make it friend, they’re already coming for you.”
He saw me as soon as I stood beneath the open window. “Dostoevski, friend, old Fëdor was right on the money. You should show more respect for your elders, young man.”