My Father More or Less

by Jonathan Baumbach

  He emptied his pockets, found a number of fragmentary messages on torn-off pieces of envelope, much of it at this point in unbreakable code. Tom’s address was not among the debris.

  With no clear intent he got out of the car, thought on foot he might find his son’s rooming house or some familiar street name that would lead him to it. Perhaps he thought nothing of the kind, wanting merely to be out of the car, to be free of that burden.

  The streets seemed to wind back on each other, but he walked energetically in a direction he had chosen arbitrarily, guided if at all by a trust in instinct. The buildings he passed were in states of disrepair, many uninhabited, some boarded up. He persisted in the sense that he was going in the right direction, took long strides—the faster he walked the less his bruised hip bothered him—anticipating that the next street (or the one after that) would be the one he sought. Never for a moment did he consider that he might be lost, or that a house with a Bed and Breakfast sign in the window might not after a certain point appear before him. It was one of those London days in which, though it appears not to be raining, almost everything is moist—the rain seeming to come up from the ground rather than down from the sky. He had the illusion from time to time that there were footseps behind him, but instead of looking to see who it was he quickened his pace.

  Three Arabs standing in front of a pub, stared at him as he passed. One called something to him in a nearly incomprehensible dialect. The others laughed unpleasantly.

  Did he know the man who spoke to him? He didn’t think so, though turned, despite his sense of urgency, to look. Something, a stone perhaps, hit him just above the right eye. He let out a scream, the sound like nothing he had heard himself utter before, his hand to his eye. The Arabs scattered, each taking a separate direction. The scream continued, despite his intent to stop, sustained itself like an electronic alarm that had to run its course. An older man, also dark-skinned (Indian or Pakistani, he thought) came over and said something unintelligble, the persisting scream overriding other voices.

  His hand came away from his eye, unglued itself from the wound. He had not, as feared, lost sight in the eye, though his vision, perhaps from the pressure of his hand, was somewhat blurred. There was a little blood from the wound, not much, insufficient to his response, the palm of his hand the wound’s mirror.

  Terman had embarrassed himself enough for one morning, refused the offer of the man’s arm, thanked him as an afterthought, and hurried off in the direction he had come.

  The man followed briefly, offering a hospital or something that sounded like hospital as if he had one in his possession. He said repeatedly that he was okay, that no real damage had been done.

  And then, he had difficulty retracing his steps, the street names not what they were. The walk back seemed to age him. After a half dozen blocks, he was too tired to go any further and he sat down on a bench in front of an abandoned church, took out a handkerchief and wiped the rain from his face. In a moment or so he would get up and locate a public telephone (that consideration sustaining him), and report to Isabelle his painful misadventure. Sweetheart, she would say, I’m so sorry.

  Her pity, in his imagination of it, was more than he could bear. Why, if she were as devoted to him as she pretended, had she gone off with Max?

  Oh Terman, she would say—or was it Luke?—you are a misery, luv, aren’t you?

  He continued to sit, clasping himself against the damp air. People passed occasionally, glancing at him with indifference. He imagined himself getting up, locating a Newsagent on the next street or the next, buying a Guardian to get some change—mostly he avoided the English papers—locating a phone box, closing himself in, dialing his number. All he really had to do was get back to his car on Barlby Street and drive himself home.

  When he looked up he saw the Pakistani and another swarthy man coming down the street toward him. Their impending presence moved him to cross the street, his gesture making it clear, he hoped, that he didn’t want to be interfered with again. The Pakistani called something to him and he shouted back, “Nothing to worry about, thank you.”

  What the hell did they want with him? He turned right at the next corner, though he couldn’t remember if he had come that way or not. It was the shock of it that caused him to lose his poise. On the next corner, standing with his back to him, was the Arab that had thrown the stone at him. (Had he thrown the stone because he recognized Terman as a Jew?) Stupidly—he knew it was a mistake to call attention to himself even as he gave vent to the impulse—he broke into a run. Not looking back, he took a left turn at the next corner, a narrow winding street called Vashti Lane, which connected with a series of other winding streets. His sense of direction betrayed him. He hurried from one tortuous street to the next only to discover himself returned to the very street from which he had taken precipitous leave.

  He stood awhile against the wall at the intersection of Calgary Road and Vashti Lane before daring to look around the corner. His adversaries were standing across the street in front of a red and white stucco house, their backs to him, heads close together like conspirators. It was at moments like this that he was most aware of being in a foreign country, of having nowhere in particular to turn in a crisis. Panic governed him. He returned up the series of winding streets, running at first, then walking quickly, atempting a new set of choices. Whatever he did, his choices blind, he found himself back on Calgary Road, his original point of departure. A third time (or was it the fourth?) he reversed himself, varying his route, taking two successive lefts then a right then another half right and another, until he found himself in a cul de sac, a medium-high fence backing on a small unkempt field. In all of the maze of streets he had come, there had not been one open shop or a single working public telephone.

  There was no entrance to the field at his end. Nothing to do, he thought, but climb the fence, no matter the difficulties, and trust there was an open gate on the other side. The fence seemed slightly lower on the left, round-shouldered from erosion, though the far right side offered the advantage of a cement pedestal of about two feet high that might bear his weight. If he raised himself on his toes while standing on the pedestal, he could grip the fence sufficiently to pull himself over.

  An old woman, banging on the sill with a shoe, called to him from the window to go away.

  He waved to her, asked if there was an exit on the other side of the field.

  “If you don’t scoot this instant, young man, I’ll have the bobbies on you,” she said. She had a face that looked as if it could turn you into stone.

  Terman walked away as though he had accepted her warning, not looking back until he judged himself beyond her range. The head was hanging out like a flag, peering blindly in his direction. He waited until it had withdrawn, and then a minute or so beyond that. If he could clear the fence at one jump, the unstatued pedestal his springboard, he might get by without the old lady’s notice. He got a running start, had one foot over, was awkwardly split at the top, when the head thrust itself out the window and squalled at him to get away.

  Her shouting harried him like a vicious dog at his heels. The second leg cleared awkwardly, ankle scraping the top. Unable to brace himself for the fall, he took all his weight on his left leg and pitched forward, his other leg folded under him like an afterthought. The pain came in flashes and seemed bearable except in moments of expectation. He was in a vacated lot, once perhaps a cricket pitch or a small park. There was the skeleton of a structure in one corner, the beginnings of an apartment complex that had either been temporarily or permanently abandoned.

  He couldn’t get up, reconciled himself to the arrival of the police, the inevitable nastiness and misunderstanding.

  It was possible that his leg was broken, one or the other (one banged up, the other severely twisted), though he was inclined to think not. When the pain receded—the left ankle its main source—he rolled onto his side. He rested a few minutes from his exertion. Using his right arm for leverage, he gradual
ly pulled himself upright, the preponderance of his weight on his right leg. How odd to be standing. How unnatural the position seemed. He walked a few cautious steps, putting one foot in front of the other, right first then left, then right, the process not quite as he remembered it. His body refused the upright position, longed to fall. He stopped his stuttering walk, stood with his legs apart, half-squatting, to purchase his balance. The ragged park, deserted except for an urchin kicking a soccer ball at the far end, extended itself before him. There was no sign of the police, but he could believe that the old lady would follow through on her threat. What else was there in her life? He forced himself to walk, pulling one foot, dragging the other, the space magnified by his urgency. He had to instruct his feet to get himself moving, each step ordered to specification. The far end of the park—he could make out an open gate where the boy was kicking the ball—approached him by degrees. Nausea came and went, settled in for a prolonged visit. His right foot must place itself ahead of his left and then his left must outdo, if only by several inches, if only by its own size, the presumptions of his right. The boy looked up at him, stared for a moment, then went about his business, which included a controversy with an imaginary adversary.

  The closer he got to the exit—he was more than halfway there, he thought—the greater his sense of urgency. He might actually escape his pursuers, avoid confrontation with the police, find a taxi and return to the safety (the relative safety) of his own house. He didn’t want to believe it, resisted hope, committed to no larger possibility than fulfilling the demands of the next step.

  Only for moments did he think of the target he offered, limping slowly across the open field. It would not require a particularly good marksman to bring him down.

  He was struck by the recollection of an airless Polish film he had seen in Cleveland Ohio the night of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In the movie a group of men attempt to escape the Nazis by moving through the city’s sewer system, a network of underground tunnels. The maze of entrapment had never seemed more claustrophobic. One man gets through at the end. When he rises from the sewer, after having miraculously endured in that underground hell, Terman had anticipated that enemy soldiers would be waiting for him. That they weren’t did not undo for him the expectation that they were there, and had chosen not to reveal themselves. The survivor redescends at the end to search for his comrades or perhaps merely because he is no longer able to bear the idea of freedom.

  The right ankle becoming increasingly tender, he gradually shifted the burden of his weight from the right foot to the left. Even the present limiting circumstances yielded choices. He had to decide whether to veer from his path to pick up an old broomstick that might, if it weren’t rotted out, be used as a cane.

  He cut down the space between himself and the stick in short order, wanting the digression concluded and the real trip resumed. He refused to regret his choice, but a rueful feeling persisted, a sense of unredeemable error.

  He squatted to acquire the warped broomstick, heard someone coming and raised his head to look, tilting backwards, restoring his balance as a trick of will. Two other boys, slightly larger than the first, had joined the urchin in his makeshift game. They were shouting at some unseen audience in mock bravado.

  Terman claimed the splintery stick and rose like Lazarus to his feet.

  “Hey, that’s me private club,” one of the newcomers yelled at him. There was some self-conscious laughter from the others.

  He ignored them as a matter of choice, walked conscientiously, using the stick as a third leg, toward the open gate.

  He would have liked to avoid crossing paths with the ragged soccer players, but to go out of his way was to call attention to his fear (was he even really afraid of them?), might invite some form of interference. If they decided to mug him—it could come to that without premeditation—there was little he could do to prevent it. (Where were the police the old lady had threatened to call?) He noticed another possible exit, an iron gate on the far right that was closed and possibly locked. He decided—the decision made instinctively—to continue in the direction he was going. Involved in their game, the boys might be willing to overlook his trespass.

  The largest one called out to no one in particular. “That gent has got me big stick between his legs.”

  He thought to joke back, show them he was one of the boys himself, though held, instinct again predominating, to his decision to ignore them. The cane preceded him, step by step, had become an integral part of his act.

  He passed through, had got beyond the arena of the game, without incident.

  In the next moment, the ball rode by him, barely missing his leg, buckling the cane. The boys pursued the ball, were rushing helter skelter in his direction, bumping each other as they ran. The implication of the ball being kicked in his direction was hard to avoid.

  They brushed him slightly as they went by (did he imagine the contact?), did him no notable damage. It might have been the wind that stroked his elbow. Was that all the harm they meant to do?

  One of them, he noticed with a sideglance, was moving the ball toward him with his foot. Terman sidestepped cautiously, a delicate maneuver. The ball skipped by him.

  “Goal Rangers,” the boy who had been kicking it called.

  They were behind him now, their movements unobservable, their loud chatter announcing the progress of the game. They played to him, their voices too loud for themselves alone, dogged his heels.

  The ball again skittered past him, bounded headlong toward the open gate.

  “Penalty kick,” one of them called out.

  He readied himself for trouble, held the cane in both hands.

  In a moment they were past him, scrambling after the ball, calling to it to stop its flight. They disappeared through the open gate, pushing each other for position as they left his view, their cries of complaint hanging in the air, surviving their departure.

  He felt a loss of energy like the sudden dying of a wind. Each step required more effort than its achievement seemed to warrant. He inched toward the gate, which was almost directly in front of him, his pace so slow it seemed like virtual immobility. It was curious that the soccer players hadn’t returned. Terman strained to locate their voices but they were silent or had gone away. The more immediate danger became the less it frightened him.

  Just as he stepped through the gate—the boys for all he knew were waiting for him on the other side—he thought of Tom hating him.

  6

  The truth is I had never stolen anything—maybe an occasional quarter from my mother’s pocketbook—until I came to London at my father’s invitation. This is not offered in defense of my behavior which I never thought of as other than indefensible. It was not even that I was driven to do what I did, though there was more than likely some element of compulsion in it. I thought of it as a game I played against myself, a game in which I forced myself to steal as a demonstration of will and a proof of competence. The pleasure, if it could be called that, was in being able to override my own resistance, which is to say I stole because I found it hateful to steal. I stole like a person writing a poem against his predilection to do something else with his time, anything else.

  He was in his study when I left, Isabelle lying down in one of the second floor bedrooms. Were they looking for me? I made no serious effort to muffle my steps when I came down the stairs, expected my father to come out of his study after me, continued to expect it after I had let myself out. We’re in this together, I thought.

  I was walking home (or toward home, undecided on destination) when I saw him go by on Holland Park Ave. in his Ford Escort, an intense look on his face. The light turns red before he reaches the corner and he rides the brake, then races through. I watched him from the doorway of a second-hand bookstore, then followed his car for a few blocks. I had to hurry to keep the car in view, gun in jacket pocket banging against my thigh. He turned left without signalling, turned as if the decision to turn had not been made in ad
vance.

  I walked back to the second-hand bookstore, a place called River-run Booksellers, and looked in the glass door. A blond woman with thick-lensed glasses was sitting at a raised desk halfway back, reading a magazine. There was also an older man in the shop (her father?), but he was even farther away from the door and engrossed in some kind of inventory work. There were no other customers in the shop, which was not ideal though not necessarily disadvantageous. The woman in the glasses glanced up when I came in—a bell jingling with the opening and closing of the door—then in an unbroken gesture returned to her magazine. She didn’t care.

  I didn’t see anything I wanted. The paperback shelves appeared to have had all the good stuff winnowed out, contained dated political tracts, old almanacs and the usual smattering of romances and mysteries, sci fi and unremembered popular fiction. I read across each shelf, starting at the top and working down, looking for a discovery or an echo, something worth the risk.

  I passed it by at first, then came back to it, a title neither familiar nor unfamiliar, a book called Out of Itself. The title’s very familiarity retarded recognition. The author’s name was Terman, my own name. I thought in a hallucinatory flash that it was a book I had written myself (though of course I haven’t written any books), whose existence I had stupidly forgotten.