White Tears

by Hari Kunzru

  I have been up twice to heap my plate. Leonie is not eating anything, because of MSG. She has a can of club soda and a straw. Her mood has darkened. The mountain family sit down at a nearby table. One of the kids, a little boy of two or three, gets down off his chair and begins to wander around. Suddenly Leonie buries her head in her hands. This is her rhythm. For hours at a time she will make conversation, talk about her friends, movies and books, the things people talk about. Then for a while she will seem distracted, lost in her thoughts, and I know that sooner or later it will come—as it does now—a sudden pang of grief for her brother that racks her body with convulsions. Electromagnetic grief. Mesmeric grief, raising up her corpse and dropping it down again. The little boy watches her, the shoulders lifting, the head thrown back, eyes, mouth and nose streaming fluid. When it is over, she collapses forwards like a doll.

  —What you doing, the little boy asks.

  I get up to comfort her but she waves me back to my seat. She sucks in air, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt.

  —Don’t treat me like I’m sick. I’m not sick.

  So I drop back onto my chair and we eat. At least, I eat and she watches me, toying with the straw in her can. The sorrow has passed like bad weather, leaving a few traces, blotchiness, a redness to her eyes. She wears an increasingly skeptical expression, the look of someone who needs to be on her guard.

  —You are such a weird guy. That night in my apartment you were sobbing, but all day you’ve been putting out this whole friendship is forever vibe. Like we’re on vacation. You were terrified and now all of a sudden it’s spring break. Do you see how insane that is?

  —I just think it’s best we maintain a veneer of normality.

  —Normality? Nothing’s normal about this. I believed what you told me, Seth. I believed you. That you heard a story from a guy about the record Carter bought.

  —He didn’t buy it.

  —That he found, then.

  —It’s hard to explain.

  —Some things can’t be explained, I get it. Stuff has been happening to me too. I went to see a psychic the other day, to ask about Carter? She looked at my hand and wouldn’t take my money. She told me I had to leave. I believe we’re in danger, but you need to talk to me. You need to tell me what it is you know, otherwise I don’t see what I’m doing here.

  Then it is night, and we are drinking and watching TV in a pine-paneled motel room that smells of lavender disinfectant. I feel knife-sharp, hyperauditory. The room is full of tiny harmonics that connect the wide spectrum hiss of the people next door flushing their toilet to the irregular snare of the air-conditioning and the long sweep of a truck passing on the highway, making the bug screens vibrate. Filaments of order, fleeting hints of meaning. I think about how different Leonie is from Carter, how I have no money to pay for anything, not even in a cheap place like this, not gas, not lunch, nothing, how I have responded by becoming as passive as a baby, how Leonie is sitting there wearing a flesh-pink kimono and a towel wrapped round her hair, how the kimono has fallen open to show me one long bare thigh and her throat is still damp from the shower and she has only rented one twin room, giving me a world-weary look as she put down her credit card at the front desk.

  —So you’re broke.

  At the front desk, in the room. She asks the question simultaneously in both places, muting the TV and looking over at me as the receptionist processes her payment. I shrug noncommittally and pretend I haven’t really heard, buying a few moments to compose myself, because I’m not sure where I am, when I am, whether I’m in the room stealing furtive glances at her legs or at the front desk wishing I had money, wishing I wasn’t being swept along by events like a twig in a fast-flowing current.

  —You don’t have money because my brother was paying for everything.

  I try to concentrate on the TV. A couple is walking through suburban rooms, dull beige rooms that leave no retinal trace of their passing. They are accompanied by an orchestral score, a string section playing minor key stabs, as if something threatening is about to happen. But it never does and they keep on walking, from room to room to room.

  —Seth.

  —No. I don’t have money because your brother’s henchmen locked me out of my studio which is my only means of making a living.

  —Your studio?

  —It’s as much mine as his.

  —He’s the creative one, not you.

  —Is that what he said? He actually said that?

  She unmutes the TV. Now it’s her turn to feign interest in it.

  —Leonie, did he say that to you?

  —Well, isn’t it fair? He told me he was the producer and you were just the engineer.

  —Wow.

  —So what? Let me guess, it’s the other way round? You do everything and my brother’s just a spoiled rich kid, a dilettante?

  —Look, Leonie, I know what you think of me.

  —That you’re like, his paid best friend? No offense, but I don’t get it. No one gets it. You don’t have anything in common.

  —That’s what you people think.

  —Yes, that’s what we people think. We don’t know why he keeps you around.

  —Jesus, I’m not a pet.

  —But you’re poor, so he always has to look after you, just like a pet. Just like I’m doing. Are you talented? You’re obviously clever in an assholish way but it’s not necessarily the same thing. So what is it? I’m just being honest. I don’t know you, Seth. You’re right at the center of my brother’s life, but I have no clue about how you got there. As far as I can see, you’re nobody.

  —Nobody.

  —I’m just being honest. What’s your deal, Seth? What do you actually want?

  —I don’t know how I can answer that.

  —Why? Why would you not be able to answer? It’s the simplest question.

  —I don’t know. I’m sorry. I suppose I don’t want anything in particular.

  —God, you are always apologizing. One little push and you just roll over. Put up a fight. Tell me to go to hell.

  —I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m just trying to do what’s right for Carter. What’s the matter?

  —What’s the matter? Seriously?

  —I mean right now. What’s the matter now?

  —And again with the drippy concerned expression. You’re fake, Seth, that’s what’s the matter. Why don’t you just tell me what you’ve got going on? You know something you’re not telling. It makes me nervous.

  —I don’t know anything.

  —Bullshit. You always try to handle me. We’re in this together—I don’t know what to call it. This situation. And what I need is for you to be real with me for one minute. A single minute.

  —I genuinely don’t understand what you want. If I did, I’d try to make an appropriate response.

  We watch the television for a while, black-and-white footage of some kind of protest, firemen playing hoses over people huddled against the side of a building. Leonie sighs.

  —Actually, fuck it. It doesn’t matter anyway.

  —Why not?

  —I’m saying, it doesn’t matter. Forget about it.

  —Why not?

  —Because this has all already happened, so logically I must already know. You get what I’m saying?

  —I’m not sure.

  —I know you have that feeling, same as me. Don’t tell me you don’t. I must already know you’re OK, Seth, because otherwise I wouldn’t have come.

  She changes the channel. The TV shows us a police shooting, yellow incident tape flapping back and forth as a reporter does a piece to camera, surrounded by a jostling crowd. A woman appears in the frame. Why would they kill him, she asks. His hands were up.

  Leonie says she’s going to sleep. She pulls the covers over herself and turns out the light by her bed. She puts her phone under her pillow. She has a panic button on her phone, she says. Press that button and they will come for her, abseiling out of a clear sky.


  WE STAYED IN A HOWARD JOHNSON’S in Virginia, eating an early dinner in the restaurant. The next morning, Chester banged on my door at 5 a.m.

  —Stop tugging on it! Time to hit the road!

  I almost leapt out of my skin.

  —What are you sulking for? he asked, as I fumbled with the ignition key a few short minutes later. I want to put on at least a hundred miles before breakfast. We’ve got a way to go.

  Around eleven that morning we were somewhere south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Chester pored over a gas station map and directed me off the highway and over a railway line into an evil-looking settlement of shacks and tumbledown cabins. Chicken coops. Fierce dogs chained up in the yards. Here and there a woman or a child turned to watch as the woody pitched and yawed its way down the rutted track. Park up over there, Chester said, and straightened his tie.

  He turned to me, flipping up the polaroid lenses clipped to his glasses so he could look me in the eye.

  —Now listen. Ground rules. There are some records we can dispute over and some I will let you have for your education, but there are others about which I will brook no argument. I always take the lead in any kind of negotiation or sales talk. I will banter and put at ease. You will not speak, unless spoken to. You do not attempt any side deals or in any way indicate that you consider any material valuable or even interesting. That’s the quickest way to screw this up. Party line is it’s all junk and we’re doing them a favor by taking it off their hands. Understand?

  I nodded.

  —Good. So, let’s go see what they have here.

  He got out of the car and picked his way through a yard to a shack, knocking on the door and calling out to see if anyone was at home. By the time I’d locked the car, he’d already moved on to a second. He knocked on doors at a furious rate, not waiting for a reply before he turned away. This was Chester’s idea of efficiency. If he could have knocked on all the doors simultaneously he would have done so. When anyone opened up, man, woman or child, he’d give them the same speech.

  —My name is Bly. I’m traveling in these parts, buying and selling, and I wonder, might I ask if you have any old gramophone records? Under the porch, maybe? Out back? Give you ten cents for every one I take.

  Rickety doors, barking dogs. No we don’t got nothing like that. No records. No sir. No. All kinds of people opening doors, but only one kind of people. Black people. Black people opening doors, white eyes in black faces, nervous eyes. Two white men on the porch never meant anything good. I found it hard to meet those eyes.

  In a couple of places we did turn up some records. A toothless old fellow had a few in the drawer of a broken Victrola, sermons and religious music that Chester declared worthless. Then a woman let us into her home and showed us a stack a foot high sitting under the bed. Among a lot of dull military marches was a copy of Okeh 8455, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” / “Match Box Blues.” They had a couple of Bessie Smith Columbias and an unplayable-looking Irene Scruggs. We took the Jefferson and the Smiths. Back in the car, Chester handed them to me. “They’re not particularly rare,” he explained, “and I don’t much care for Papa Blind Lemon.”

  I was pleased, but also distracted. I had never been inside houses like that. Little shacks patched together with sheet metal and crating. Blackened cooking pots hanging over brick fireplaces, pictures from old calendars pasted up for decoration. I had not thought such places existed, not in America. Honestly, I hadn’t known.

  We drove all day and on into the night, as Chester “wanted to make time.” He was constantly tuning the radio, hopping from one station to another. About the only thing he’d stay with were the religious stations or the ones playing country music. There were songs I would have listened to, snatches of The Coasters and Fats Domino swept away in static. We stopped for coffee at a gas station and he used the bathroom. I think he must have taken a shot because when he came out, he was a different man, all his nervous kinks smoothed out. He found a station and stuck with it, though as far as I could hear, the reedy voice reciting Bible verses was no different from a dozen others he’d passed over in the hours we’d been on the road. And one of the company said unto Him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And He said unto him, Man, who made Me a judge or a divider over you?

  —Were you in the army, Chester?

  —Navy.

  —You get to see the world?

  —Sure. Keep your eyes on the road.

  But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

  By the time he finally decided we could pull in to a motel, I was exhausted. I went to bed without eating, the lights of the cars streaming on behind my closed eyes.

  WE WERE IN MISSISSIPPI, driving through rolling hills, then out across the great flat bottomlands of the Delta. Long straight roads, our old Ford ghosted by the dust. High cotton. Fields bounded by stands of hickory and pine. There were signs, Chester said. You could tell the houses where there were records to be found. Lace curtains, flowers on the porch, old jugs or oil cans on poles as nest boxes for the martins. Any sign of old ways or old people. What you wanted was a place where the same family had lived for years.

  Driving down long roads. Long dry roads. Instead of goading me to make time, Chester began to consult his maps more frequently, directing me along zigzag routes to small towns, where we’d pass by neighborhoods of neat clapboard houses into zones of tin roofs and patched walls and decay, always some line to cross to get there, a highway or railroad track. Chester, knocking on doors, asking his monomaniacal question. Got any records? Under your porch, maybe? Pay a dime a piece.

  —I don’t know Rev’nd. Could have.

  If there was digging, or lifting, that was my job. Worming under foundations. Dragging trunks and crates out of sheds and barns, while Chester made conversation. He would adopt a bantering manner, laughing loudly, slapping his non-Bible hand against his chest in counterfeit glee. It went over less well than he thought. Those old pickers and sharecroppers had seen carpetbaggers in their time. I watched faces close down as they tried to work out his angle. They could sense something straining, something violent kept on a tight leash.

  There was something secondhand about the way Chester treated those people, as if he’d learned it from a manual. He had no real warmth. But because he was determined, we found records. We grubbed them up out of the dirt.

  We found Columbia 14299, Barbecue Bob “Motherless Chile Blues” / “Thinkin’ Funny Blues” and Victor 21076 Luke Jordan “Church Bell Blues” / “Cocaine Blues.” We found Brunswick 7125 Robert Wilkins “That’s No Way to Get Along” / “Alabama Blues” and Brunswick 7166 Joe Calicott “Fare Thee Well Blues” / “Traveling Mama Blues.” We had two Pattons, a worn copy of Paramount 12909 “High Water Everywhere Part 1” / “High Water Everywhere Part 2” and a clean Vocalion 02680, “High Sheriff Blues” / “Stone Pony Blues.” We had a dozen good commercial female vocals, mostly Ma Rainey and Ida Cox, as well as a number of country records, which was a surprise to me, as I’d thought black people had no interest in the Carter Family or Jimmie Rodgers. Chester was oddly excited by Okeh 8960, The Memphis Jug Band “Memphis Shakedown” / “Mary Anna Cut Off,” which he declared he had been hunting for ten years.

  We would get to the end of our day, coated in sweat and road dust, and eat at the counter of whatever diner was nearest our motel, spooning up mashed potato and guzzling sweet iced tea. Then Chester would take one of his bathroom breaks. On the road, he never fixed up in front of me. He was, I think, very worried about the police. A child could have seen how we stood out, him in his preacher’s black suit, me in the patterned shirt and cutoffs that made me look like what I was, a semi-beatnik northern kid. In white neighborhoods, people stared at us, even more than in black ones. Sometimes the attention was kindly. Sometimes not.

  —Where you from, son?

  There was a local way of repea
ting “New York.” A special curl of the lip.

  When he was floating on his cloud, Chester would lie on whatever motel room bed under whatever picture—Jesus, a waterfall, dogs playing poker—and ramble on about wanting to “suck up every damn record” in some place, the place we were in, a place up the road, a place we’d been or were planning to go. He wanted to leave nothing for the next man. That was his oft-repeated vow. It got old quickly. I would drift off into my own fantasies. Barefoot girls in cotton dresses. Skinny dipping. Sometimes he would touch on other topics, talking about records he had, records he wanted, records he thought ought to be smashed to pieces “to do the world a favor.”

  —Actually since you ask there are several lady collectors. I have corresponded with a Mrs. Levison in San Francisco. A Mrs. Audrey Levison. She has an interest in polkas. Also Yiddish folk tunes.

  Eventually one of us would turn to the portable record player and play one of our discoveries. Voices, rising up out of the hiss.

  They accuse me of forgery: can’t even sign my name

  They accuse me of forgery: can’t even sign my name

  Accuse me of murder, I never know the man

  THIS IS HOW WE CROSS THE LINE. Farms set back from the road. Flat open country, flatter sky. Signs saying No stopping for next 5 miles and Do not pick up hitchhikers, then a prison, high blocks visible beyond a parking lot. I turn my head to read a billboard.

  Walxr: Correctional solutions for a multipolar world.

  The perimeter flies past, mute gray sheds inside the wire. Leonie looks over at me, gauging my reaction. You can’t choose where you’re born, she says, as if she expects me to disagree. You can’t choose your family. When you say someone’s from something, some place or group or category. When you say that, what does it even mean?

  She talks about guilt, about how her shrink told her that no one should have to feel guilty all the time.