White Tears

by Hari Kunzru

  And the next morning I am eating eggs and drinking coffee and Chester is beside me, unshaven, eating eggs. I butter a slice of toast.

  —Did you go somewhere last night?

  —Where? I went out for a smoke, if that’s what you mean. Where else would I go?

  CHESTER SEEMED TO FILL UP THE CAR. I was sick of him, the look of him, fidgeting and mopping his brow. He called frequent bathroom breaks. He said he must have eaten something. I suppose at some point he ran out of heroin, and I ran out of any desire to be around him. A sharp ammoniac scent rose up from his clothes, curling into my nostrils. Somewhere around DC I began to feel nauseous, as if my very guts were rejecting his presence. I was never more happy to pass the turnoff for Newark and see the Manhattan skyline on the other side of the river. It was frustrating, having to wait in the fug of gasoline fumes, edging the old station wagon forward foot by foot to enter the Holland Tunnel. We sat on Canal for almost an hour, crawling towards Brooklyn. Finally I dropped him at his hostel and was free.

  I abandoned the car in the first spot I saw in the Village, not really caring if it would still be there the next day. Carrying my suitcase and a package containing thirteen rare 78 records, I staggered home, pushed open the front door and climbed the six flights to my stifling little room. When I got in, I opened the windows, switched on the fan, and bolted the door. Manhattan in August had never felt so good. I tried to do the things you do when you get home, the things you do to make yourself feel “at home.” I showered. I lit the burner and made a cup of coffee. I sat and drank the coffee, listening to the whirring sound of the electrical converter in the closet, the soundtrack of every cheap apartment in the city.

  I did not feel at home.

  I went out again, drifting down to the Washington Square fountain. As usual it was a nut house, art school girls in leotards and long skirts and Mexican peasant blouses, bearded guitarists sporting the plaid and denim of the working man. I got a hollow laugh out of a guy in overalls, doing a phony rendition of “Reynardine,” accompanying himself on a lute. The asshole college bongo players were out too. It was unbearable.

  Back at the apartment, I opened the package. I carefully cleaned my acquisitions, sleeved them in uniform brown paper, wrote out cards for them and filed them with the rest of my collection. The real thing, not the circus down by the fountain. The real thing, in my possession.

  But I didn’t play my records. I filed them and looked at them, lined up on the shelf in their brown paper sleeves. I was pleased with the way they looked, but I didn’t play them. Instead I did other things. I went to work. I drove around, looking for new hubcaps for my aunt’s car. I dropped off the car with my aunt and took a train back to the city. I hung around on Fifth Avenue, looking in shop windows. I went to work. I drank an egg cream. I rode the subway. I went to work. But I didn’t play those records. I didn’t play any records at all.

  Without understanding how it had happened, I found myself locked out of the world. The perimeter was everywhere and nowhere, but it excluded me as surely as a wire fence. The city seemed hazy and insubstantial. I moved through the newsroom, across Washington Square, without really touching anyone or anything, braced for the moment when I’d try to take a sheet of copy or lift a cup and it would pass straight through my hand. When I got dressed in the morning, my image in the mirror seemed like a film overlaid on the moldy fixtures of the bathroom, thin, nearly transparent, not the substantial body of a living man. At the Tribune, I avoided Chester. I only saw him in the distance, through the haze of smoke. He looked raggedy and tired. Before, he’d always looked sharp at work. I kept my head down and tried to do my job. I didn’t talk about my vacation. I didn’t talk much at all.

  It was too hot to spend time at home. There I sat around in my underwear, a wet towel draped round my shoulders. I felt guilty every time I ran down the stairs, out onto the street. Guilty for leaving my record collection. It was too hot for shellac records, which turn to the consistency of pizza dough when you leave them in the sun. They needed to be stored somewhere cooler, or they could get horribly warped. Instead of rescuing them, I draped a batik cloth over the shelves and left the apartment. Out of sight, out of mind.

  I hung around a bookstore on 8th Street, pretending I had enough money to buy. I kept ending up back in Washington Square. The folksingers there were terrible frauds, but at least they were alive. They were young people singing in the sunshine. And there were some passable musicians. A burly man with a booming voice and a decent fingerpicking guitar style, a little curly-haired guy who played an autoharp. Usually you could wander around, hang at the edges of different cliques—the bluegrass mafia, young communists singing about unions, Zionists singing about irrigation. There were a couple of Flamenco guitar players, a Senegalese who plucked a kind of lute-harp thing called a kora. That dude always drew a crowd. Whenever he was there, I listened to him, this living man plucking living strings.

  I needed more life all the time. I craved it. It wasn’t that I didn’t make an effort. I asked one of the secretaries at the Tribune to go to a movie with me. We saw The Defiant Ones and made out in the subway on the way home. I began to think I might be finished with 78’s. Maybe all that had run its course.

  Then I got a card from Chester, slipped into my pigeonhole at work, an invitation to one of his listening parties. I read his meticulous handwriting and swore to myself I would not go. I would not travel out to his spartan room and sit on a hard chair as he played music he had grubbed up out of the past.

  A long subway ride. The train clattering across the river. The train going underground, running express. Stations flitting past, rectangles of light, there and then gone. Insects battering themselves on the kerosene lamp.

  I did not want to go. I did not want to go and listen in that stifling little room.

  THE CHESTER WHO OPENS THE DOOR does not look well. Gaunt and sallow, he barely speaks to me. I hand him a fifth of some godawful sweet wine and take my seat among the others, the sweat running down my body, soaking my shirt. The usual crowd is there. Morton, coughing. Fat old Pinkus, lecturing Tom Grady about some instrument, the origin, he is saying, of all blues guitar.

  —What is?

  —The diddley-bow. Just a simple length of wire.

  —Jesus, Morton. Put a hand in front of it. You sound like you got TB.

  —Don’t joke about such things.

  The men bicker in the distance. The insects are murdering themselves overhead and I’m leaning on the porch in the heavy night, listening to the little boy scraping, singing

  Pharaoh army sure got drownded

  Pharaoh

  Voices far in the distance, at the very edge of perception. I’m outside in the summer heat. I’m in a tiny stifling room. I’m at the fountain, watching a pretty redhead dancing to a drum played by a young black man in a fez. The cops don’t like it, the lewd dancing. They move everybody on. No bongos without a permit, Sammy Davis. Chester is playing something I have not heard before, Vocalion 1704, Jelly Jaw Short, “Snake Doctor Blues”:

  I’m the snake doctor man: everybody trying to find out my name

  He is playing Patton, very worn.

  They got me in shackles wearing my ball and chain

  And they got me ready for that Parchman train

  I am on the train, going underground. The kids at the fountain are arguing with the cops. If you sing, dig, it’s just an extension of speech. You can’t tell us not to sing. This is Nazi Germany.

  —You ain’t in Nazi Germany, you’re in denial.

  Rotten old cop yuk-yukking at his own joke, doubling down.

  —And that’s where you can make your protest. In de Nile.

  The kids at the drained fountain. Chester, haunted. He has a conspicuous mustard stain on his shirt. Ordinarily that kind of thing would be intolerable to him. He plays some Texan gospel singer asking what are they doing in heaven today and coughs into his sleeve. Then he takes a record out of the box and I see it’s on a nothin
g label called Key & Gate. A label that only lasted a couple of years, it put out novelty records, minstrel acts and third-rate dance bands. All trash, every side. Nothing a collector would care to own.

  —This, Chester says, is the only copy.

  And it rises up to meet me.

  Believe I buy a graveyard of my own

  Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own

  Put my enemies all down in the ground

  Put me under a man they call Captain Jack

  Put me under a man they call Captain Jack

  He wrote his name all down my back

  Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand

  Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand

  Said Captain have mercy on a long time man

  Well he look at me and he spit on the ground

  He look at me and he spit on the ground

  Says I’ll have mercy when I drive you down

  Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep

  Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep

  I may dream things cause your heart to weep

  It ends. Around the room there is silence, a palpable relief.

  —What was that?

  —Exquisite. Do I detect Piedmont in the guitar picking?

  Chester looks smug.

  —Yes, I’m guessing Georgia?

  Voices in the distance. He can’t meet my eye.

  —How did you get it?

  A long subway ride. The train clattering across the river. Sitting on a hard chair and listening. The train going underground again, running express. Rectangles of light. Insects battering themselves on the kerosene lamp.

  He puts the needle down on Okeh 8885 “Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down” by the Mississippi Sheiks, ending the conversation. The collectors applaud.

  —Good call, Chester.

  —Oh yes. I like the flip, too. “She Ain’t No Good.” Real swing to that one.

  —Shut up and listen, Pinkus.

  What has Chester done?

  I’m a stranger to you and you a stranger to me

  I did not want to go. I bolted the door. I lay down in bed. The train ran express. As soon as he lifts the needle I make my accusation. My voice is loud, in the small room.

  —So you have Miss Alberta’s copy.

  —It’s the only copy.

  —And you paid for it.

  You don’t happen to know where this Sheiks was recorded? Pinkus tapping a pencil stub against a little notebook. Jackson or Atlanta? Who’s Miss Alberta, asked Tom.

  —You paid for it, right, Chester?

  —I only ask you to be quiet. To do these records the courtesy of not talking through them.

  I put my paper cup of wine down on the table.

  —I think I’ll leave.

  Chester sets his jaw, looks furiously at the floorboards. The others are openmouthed, gawkers at the theater of human emotions. They feel no more empathy than fish. As I open the door he shouts after me.

  —Don’t you want to hear what’s on the other side? Well, don’t you?

  The train clattering across the river. Underground, running express. Stations flit past, rectangles of light. Insects batter themselves on the kerosene lamp. I bolt the door. I lie down in bed. The train runs express. Passing stations, commuters shadowed against white tile. Chester’s eyes glitter in the lamplight. His bared teeth. He would have bitten out her throat. I climb up the station stairs and walk along the street to the Saint James Hotel. The sheets smell of lavender. I bolt the door. I lie down. I am afraid.

  I WAS GOING BACKWARDS. I was driving, exhausted. The traffic ran behind my eyes, headlights and taillights, smears of white and red. I must not slip, I told myself. I must not. I reached down to the radio and music flooded the car. I could not hear the music. I could not relax. I am always on the road, I said to myself, so why am I going backwards?

  I could not remember. I could not remember if we had done what I thought we had done. The heavy fob clinked against the door as she put the key in the lock. We were always in the same place, this motel made of particleboard and sadness. Rooms rented by the month. The front desk protected by a thick scuffed sheet of Plexiglas.

  The door rattled when our neighbors walked by.

  She was from long ago. I saw her in the yellow light of long ago. In the yellow light I watched her unpack, concentrated, burrowing down, throwing shoes and underwear on the floor. She took out her Ziploc bags of supplements. You could hear next door moving about in their room, then an EDM beat began to punch its way through the wall. Neither of us could speak. We knew we were both thinking about the same thing, about the gaping wound in the young man’s side. The bloody rise and fall of what? Not his heart. Some other organ.

  From the second-floor walkway, you could see the oil-stained parking lot. A line of fast-food neon over a chain link fence. Some guy was kicking the hell out of the vending machine.

  motherfuckeryoufuckeryoumotherfucker

  The clerk hovered nervously. Stop with that. You break it I’m gonna call the cops.

  Hello my name is. I had the pleasure of cleaning your room. A handwritten God Bless and a smiley. Leonie’s head, moving back and forth at my hips, the hollow of her cheek, the eye drugged or lazy, fixed on me, daring me to challenge her, daring me not to come.

  —Not my machine, I tell you not my problem! Call number on side and talk to them.

  —Seth.

  motherfuckeryoufuckeryoumotherfucker

  —Seth. Calm down. Stop doing that. Get a grip on yourself.

  I told her I’d go out for food. Let her go, I thought. She’ll never find another man like you.

  —Get a bottle too?

  —What kind?

  —Anything. Tequila? Get tequila and a big bottle of Sprite. The ice machine works, right?

  I was too tired to drive to the liquor store. I couldn’t trust myself at the wheel of a car. So I was walking, and I had always been walking, I have always been walking, I am walking and my mind is clear, my consciousness sharp, in the present moment, in the bubble, and I even dare to think of the future. A starless night, nobody on the street. I have wandered off the strip into a landscape of dead theaters, one on every block. Roxys and Ritzes with their blank marquees. Do not trespass signs. For sale serious only save the BS. The other stores all boarded up. I can’t see anywhere that might sell liquor. I can’t see anywhere open at all. There is a diner on a corner, blazing with light, a beacon of plate glass and chrome in the darkness.

  I take a booth and order a steak, looking out at the desolate street, the red sign of the Saint James Hotel visible over the roofline.

  My steak, when it comes, is thick and bloody. I cut into it with relish. I realize I have been very hungry. The sign over the counter. Whites Only.

  At one point I had been carrying records. I look down to check. No records. Instead, by the side of the bench is a battered black guitar case. How long have I been carrying a guitar?

  I am sitting in the booth. I am walking along the highway, as trucks roar by. Let her go, I think. You have to let her go. I am paying my check, scattering coins over the table. I am in the darkness, the highway in the distance, picking my way through parking lots, over the barrier from one to the next. I am leaving the restaurant, stepping over the dividers, carrying a bag from a liquor store. Behind me, taking the same path, is a man walking a large dog, a pit bull or a mastiff. I look over my shoulder every so often. The man and his dog keep their distance, neither gaining nor slowing. I walk more quickly. The man with the dog is behind me, making his way between the parked cars.

  The motel sign up ahead. A red neon arrow. Rooms. At first I take the blue lights for decoration, some feature the manager switches on at night. Then I see there are police cars. Uniformed officers everywhere, on the walkway, milling around in reception. I walk through the parking lot and they see me and as one organism, one blue body, they turn and draw guns and there is the sound of running feet in the lot around me an
d someone yells drop it.

  —Drop it! Now!

  Three, four guns. Panic, repeating it, shouting. Slowly I put down the guitar, I put down the box of records, I put down the plastic bag with the tequila and the plastic bag with the Sprite and the paper bag of takeout on the ground. I straighten up and raise my hands.

  The door to our room is open. Cops all milling round, craning their necks to take a look.

  —Down! On the floor!

  My hands are forced behind my back. There is a knee on my neck. I can’t breathe, I say.

  —Shut up.

  —Leonie? Leonie!

  —Shut up. You’re calling out to her? You vicious little bastard. You sick fuck.

  The open doorway. The shadows beyond it. All the uniforms down now. Down on me. Knees and elbows and heavy out-of-shape breathing and someone grinding his knuckles into my temple, digging on some nerve. I begin to scream. All the uniforms down on me.

  AFTER I LEFT HIS APARTMENT, Chester Bly vanished from my life. The next day he was missing from his desk in the newsroom. By the following week, someone else was sitting there, accumulating messy piles of paper in a way Chester would never have tolerated. One of the other messengers said he got fired. No one seemed to know what for.

  Soon afterwards I quit my own job at the Trib and become a clerk at the 8th Street Bookstore. The owner said I was hanging around so much I might as well get paid for it. I went to readings, hovered on the edges of conversations about art and politics. I told myself I was done with record collecting, and whatever evil hung around Chester Bly had spared me as it passed overhead. My only unsevered connection was the shelf of 78’s lurking behind the batik cloth, untouched and unlistened to.