by Tito Perdue
She sighed. “First, your application has to clear. Second, you receive a card. Third, it has to be laminated.”
“‘Clear?’”
“We have to contact your references.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Ho!” She went back to work.
“Do I get the card?”
“Absolutely not.”
He looked at her, her eyes sparkling in joy. Now he remembered the stripes and the extreme meekness of all those others in the building.
“I’m thinking of beating the shit out of you.” Normally, he would never have been able to leap the counter, high and broad as it was. At first, she seemed to imagine he was trying to dance with her; she was even wearing a sickly little smile. She was large; it summoned everything he had to put her on the ground and then, while she lay in wonder, set the cane under her chin. This was by far his most favorite position, to apply all the pressure he wanted by using one knee alone—he wished only that he had the whole world at the same disadvantage, all through the magic of leverage.
“Succubus! Alright, just tell me this—and this is as easy as it gets for you—who was Galla Placidia?” Nothing, she had no slightest notion about this nor anything else; he could see as much in her mammal’s eyes. Lee increased the pressure. Three of the ladies had come up politely and were peering into the pit.
“Goddamn it, you’ve been abiding here all this time with all these books, and you’ve learned nothing. Nothing! What have you been doing?”
“Working, she’s been working,” spoke one of the ladies.
“I see. Working when you could have been reading.” He increased the pressure. “Well then, tell me this: who was Prosper of Acquitaine?”
“I know.”
It was the knitting lady. Lee didn’t call upon her however. The librarian was now beginning to suffer in truth, obvious from the way her feet kept thrashing. Curious how completely she had surrendered, and what a fine person she might have proved, had she but met up with him sooner. Suddenly he took away the cane.
“Now hear me well: I’m returning someday, maybe a year, maybe tomorrow, and you had best know something. You mark me?”
She nodded. He even felt a sort of pride in this, his first real student.
“Remember!”
“I will.”
“Swear.”
She held up her hand, a pudgy one with rings. It now took the greatest effort to get back over the counter; nor did he forget to rip out the telephone. Amazingly, two of the ladies had gone back to their magazines. He took the Salvian, showed it to her, then went to the glass door and the world outside. It was fine weather, and yet he had not gone a quarter of a block before something cut across his view in the form of a tall benumbed boy with earphones, mouth hanging open, T-shirt with inane slogan on it. Others were straggling along behind. Lee could see a mile in either direction, and yet—it came to him in a sudden feeling of sadness without end—he was himself the only one in sight to remember what it was to have lived in a real country once.
Fourteen
HE RETURNED TO THE HOUSE, wending his way slowly after so much work. He had visions of a nap, a moist one in which he might lie in perfect unconsciousness for three or four hours, and then wake with a great clarity in his head. But first he would visit the “tea room,” with its cleanliness and numberless good things. Suddenly he broke into a run.
It was a police car that made him stop, a most untoward manifestation with an insignia on the door. He hated to see these things at his residence; indeed, for one brief moment he had the horror it might be that same humorless young man who had arrested him in ’49 and ’47. Immediately, he turned and went the other way while behind him, in the vacant car, a radio was giving off the sputtering commands of some nitwit downtown who couldn’t so much as frame a proper sentence. This time Lee wanted no woman on a porch pointing and giving him away, as in ’47. Faster he went, then, seeing he had excited a little dog, slower. Even after his nose was safely around the corner, it was still not too late for a bullet to come crashing into his rump.
He made a circuit of the block, moving in high dignity, then he turned into the alley. What staggered him was the sight of a fat man of huge ignorance framed squarely in his window, his loutish hand wrapped around a book. Lee had to change glasses to determine whether it be Hesiod or not (it was) and what the man was doing to him. Another such person was roving in the interior, no doubt handling his other possessions as well. Lee shivered; twenty years ago he might have taken on the both of them, but not now, not against 400 pounds, not even with a cane.
He did debate about the car, stealing it, but he had by now probably lost the art of driving. Upstairs, the man had taken up another of the books (Schopenhauer it looked) and was turning through it painfully, page by page, hungering for wisdom or, mayhap, clues. Lee calculated he had either to escape now and promptly, or risk, not so much the mild proceedings of ’49 and ’47, but of being handed over to a crowd of aroused Southerners. He knew what they could do.
He came out of the alley at high speed, around the corner, and past the house. Upstairs, the man had still another hundred pages of Schopenhauer, all of it in pure German, and other volumes besides. Again came the dog, once more threatening to break into noise should he step too fast. Lee was acutely conscious of his abandoned room and books—all of it now seized by two men whom he had no power to chastise. Indeed, it seemed unfair to expect it of himself at this age, when he was fit only for women and children, and then only with a weapon.
He aimed straight for downtown, even cutting through the cemetery to arrive the sooner. Here was a fresh-made grave; inside it were two living men joking over their shovels. Rare was it, rare that Lee caught anyone at such a disadvantage. And such an opportunity for urinating! Instead they merely looked at one another. Next was a vault, a sculpted business big as a house, all of it intended to prove, no doubt, that its tenant (now down to bones) had had much money one time. Vanities aside, these were the only people who knew something he did not. Perhaps if he got down and pressed his ear, here where a seventeen-year-old was lying radiantly in rouge and robes—perhaps she knew something he did not. Could aught be more strange? She had been but a naughty little girl at the time he was himself already being arrested. Lee scanned his memory, finally coming up with one brief glance at a certain wan face watching out of a window as he was driven off to jail.
He burst out the gate, then down in front of the library for the second time that day. Remarkably—and this gratified him more than anything in years—the librarian was reading, and reading well, to judge by it. He found himself swaggering, past the post office, then the bank itself, with its reverential interior and specters that moved back and forth. A policeman was assigned here, one that seemed rather more intelligent than the mass of them. He had an unblinking gaze that, according to the uncanny intuition of these people, settled precisely on Lee. Lee hummed, grinned, then, suddenly, whipped out his account book, which had a quieting effect. The clerk was middle-aged, with sweater and nipples and a smile that must have been warm at one period but now had something sour in it. Never in this world had she thought to be still here after so many years. Lee grinned. He did not approve of her hands, or that they had grown so much larger than the rest of her, like garden gloves with nails pasted on. More than that, it depressed him that they were so willing to let his money go when they ought to have tried to have it stay.
He took all of it and then retreated behind the column. He had wanted mint-new bills, whereas, in fact, some of these had been passed around, person to person, as far back as ’47. He did have some of larger denomination, the bulk of his holdings, a year’s worth perhaps.
He went five blocks, in and out of a pale people with ashen faces. Up to now it had been summer and fall, sweet times all, now to be followed by the horrors of an Alabama winter. Leaves were scuttling; some were brown. Also there was a good man hastening home whilst holding to his hat. Blustery weather it was,
out of the north; holding to his coat, Lee let it waft him to the corner and spin him around. Now he was facing the slum itself, a wedge of brown manure that blocked off the horizon and emitted smells. Somehow he had known from the beginning he must end up here, even from the first time he had strayed out of his own good precincts and wasted an afternoon touring the place in 1948. Then was a dead cat in the gutter; now a drunk man sat in his route. Lee stepped over him.
Previously it had been a thoroughfare for children on their way to school, whereas now, the population thinning, the children having grown up and gone to Birmingham, it appeared to be going back to weeds. He could recall when the poor were in full flower, numbers of them dressed out in the nobility that comes from wanting only a living and having a hard time getting it—all gone to Birmingham. It was old people he saw now, leftovers from the ’40’s and ’50’s who seemed genuinely ashamed for being still alive. He approached a theater where a line of unspeaking and sullen old men stood waiting to see James Dean.
It shocked him too that the slum was as diminished as it was, a mere residuum of twenty acres worth and with apartment houses of the new type nibbling at the edges. He had to remind himself it was daylight still and not the early evening suggested by appearances. Here, in winter, nights would be long indeed, the sun small and far away. For the life of him he could not imagine why he had checked into the “tea room” in the first place, not with an authentic slum next door. He wished to die in a place that was meet for it, among a glum folk that needed none of his punishments.
He saw a boy with cigarette burns for eyes, while on the porch his pregnant sister sat singing hymns. He preferred his poor people to keep silence; in fact, he preferred everyone to be poor, saving only a few seers in great estate. It brought back to mind the time when he used to be able to peer into the homes of the poor and spot every time a sick person lying on a couch. Then he noticed a young woman with two babies, both in worse condition than he was himself. For it had come to this: that he loved those only who were striving always, and always failing.
He rounded the corner, and then, seeing where the poverty stopped and the blandness commenced, he turned and came back. He could step across this tiny demesne in minutes, from the corner store with the wood-burning stove, all the way down to the nasty little park full of drunks. Someone had been tossing out sanitary napkins; never had he seen quite so much evidence of so many bleeding women. A dog was carrying one of them as proudly as a bone.
He had a choice of two hotels, one, a red structure with failing spine. It was not so very high, not when compared to what he had seen in big cities, yet high enough, he thought, to let him look past the ramparts of the town. At once he went in and lay his cane on the counter.
“I’d like to see one of your rooms.”
“Would?”
“Yes. If I might.”
“You might not like to see it—once you’ve seen it.” A wag, the first he had come across in his whole journey down south. Moreover, as if that were not enough, he had a chess set on his desk.
“Do you have a room at the top? Whence I could see over the wall?”
“Top floor’s full of niggers.”
“I don’t mind.”
“They mind. However, they only come out at night.”
“Well, how about next-to-the-top?” (He had started to say “penultimate.”)
“Oh yes, I think there’s a floor there.”
Oddly, Lee found himself grinning as well. “And does it see over the wall?”
“Let me understand: What now exactly is it you want to see over there?”
“Well! That I might view the sun once in a while.”
“So’s he can ‘view the sun once in a while.’ Gad! Alright, as you wish, come on, come along.”
Lee followed to the elevator, an unstable contrivance with a spittoon in the corner. They were traveling slowly in the extreme, and the pilot wore a grim expression. Lee was hardened to graffiti, so he believed; still, it amazed him how someone had inscribed on the very face of the escarpment now passing in review. He had a sight of the third floor, the rooms closed off, not with doors, but blankets and hanging shawls. He simply could not credit it, that such an institution had been doing business all these years in the same town in which he had grown up.
“Have you lived in this town your whole life?”
“Don’t know. It ain’t over yet.”
Useless, Lee could feel his patience waning. However, the cage was too tight for using the cane. The next hall was darker and more narrow still, but equipped with doors, as Lee was glad to see. Footsteps overhead. He had the impression that all noises had fallen silent the instant he stepped out of the box. Now the wag was gesticulating for him to make it quieter still.
“Sssssh, Gorblimey! Look, some of this trash is on night shift.”
“Night!”
“Sssssh!”
They went to the right then. The wag took out a key and tried it, turned and came back. The first good circumstance was that the place did have electricity, also a light that worked. There was a bed, rather sad-looking, and not much else. The room was long, the way he liked, and did have a niche to it; he reckoned the free space as enough and more than enough for all the books he was still likely to collect. Best of all, he saw a window, or porthole really, that looked down through smoke and haze directly into the very district in which he had grown up without once suspecting that he could be observed. He had a great impatience now to be left alone.
“Yes, yes, this is fine, fine; how much do I owe you, as it were?”
The man pondered, doing numbers in his head, then finally coming out with a sum that Lee paid at once while inadvertently exposing his money. Even now the sun-wheel was dropping behind the barrier and would soon be gone.
“What about your belongings?”
“Have none.”
“You don’t have any belongings? The kind of money you’ve got?”
“I’ll get ’em tomorrow.”
“The rood! ‘Tomorrow,’ he says.”
It seemed he would never leave. Finally, Lee raced to the window. He had hoped to view children playing, even, if possible, a dark-head urchin in a scene from the ’40’s; instead, he found himself scanning the edge of town with fence and tower and, beyond that, where his eyes gave out, cornfields green as paint. The sun itself was globular just now, or rather, the more he looked at it, a knot of snakes. He liked to take it on the tongue, stingingly.
In fact, there was just light enough to let him see the room in its true horror, a thing of wet brown plaster with a bed so narrow it looked like a trap with teeth beneath the sheets. Someone had died here recently; his old man’s instinct told him so. He was loath to sit, loath likewise to move down into the darker part, which seemed to extend on for a considerable way. No books. Finally, he did sit, but on the floor, one full minute before leaping up suddenly and snatching away the veil from off the bed. It was not a griddle, not wired, not a stove, merely a mattress with spurs sticking out. He pressed once with his foot, sending up a spray of dust and pollen and the stink of activities for which no agreed-upon names had been devised.
He remembered dragging it out by force, down the hall and to the stairs. Here was a window that looked directly into the core of the slum where already congeries of neon advertisements were spitting and hissing and giving off the sort of granulated light that he recalled from his own dear epoch. So many years! He ran down, cane clattering, then drawing up in dignity before marching out past the clerk.
If it were dim upstairs, here below it was actual night. He bumped into a beggar, who bounced off and then stood grinning at him through blue glasses in which Lee could see a magnified reflection of the moon and its pits. Behind, the first of the black people were coming out quietly, one by one, looking in both directions. It was an evil night, with fog, or a gas that kept changing in shape. Moreover, the gate had been closed and bolted, and a tall man had taken up guard with what looked like a blunderbuss and
tin hat. Somewhere he could hear a radio—so he imagined—playing the old programs.
He crossed the street, went a block, then stepped into an eatery that remained very dim in spite of the neon. Here were booths, people smoking, a whore at the bar—precisely the sort of sight and adventure that sixty years ago would set his heart pounding. Those days he was too young for such places; now, too old. Now he asked for no greater windfall than an empty booth and found it, but then made such a dash for it as to bring down more attention upon himself than he wanted. True, the situation was excellent, the best in town; he could see everyone, and no one could see him. He rather liked the smell of beer, while here and there he caught sight of a face of so much thoroughgoing ignorance as to take his breath away. One was looking at him haplessly, as if asking not to be judged with too much harshness. Lee looked at him coldly at first, but then began to soften. Here was perhaps the last place left for him where he could still feel pity, here among the truly poor and the genuinely ignorant. Next, the man was gazing down at the floor, revealing that he had big ignorant ears as well. Suddenly, Lee began digging for the matches, so as not to have to describe it for his wife later on. As for the whore, this one was already too old for it, it seemed to him, yet seemed also just starting out.
He had rolled his sleeve and was doing his work when the waitress came and caught him at it. He grinned.
“Oh, Lord!”
“No, no; this is the least of it. Could I have a menu:
It was his age that saved him, age and his suit. At once he began ordering, faster than she could write it down. Outside, two black men had come up and were peering in uncertainly, still not quite yet entirely willing to step inside. He could see the tower, miles away, where one of the lights had gone out. It had been weeks since he had had an aesthetic experience; now, between the smell of food and beer, bad music and ignorant conversation . . . Sometimes he could sit smiling, his work-ruined hands clasped benignly over the massive head of his oaken staff, could do all this even while the reality around him dissolved into pure Idea. He was so warm, so deep in the building, and the building was so deep in the slum—no one he had ever known would dream to look for him here.