BUYING A PAIR OF shoes is one of the most optimistic acts I know, next to falling in love. I like nothing better than to see an old man wearing a brand new pair of brogues or cap-toed oxfords, preferably jaunty orange-brown, unscuffed, heels unworn. We want to be here tomorrow, but buying new shoes, like falling in love, says I plan on being here tomorrow.
Notwithstanding this latest Fanny cherry bomb, I still felt positive about the turns my life was taking, so my last morning in Vienna I went shopping for a new pair of shoes.
Like many American tourists, I believed that in most European cities of any size, there were still bound to be a few stores run by craftsmen or eccentrics who sold goods of Old World quality. The first time I was ever in Venice, wandering those damp snaky streets, I had the luck to come upon a small stationery store that looked like it hadn’t been entered since the 1950s. The window was a desultory, sun-bleached mess of once-red school notebooks, curled paper party favors, and ink bottles with barely legible names like Bleu nuit. Standing defiantly in the middle of this defeated jumble was a carved plumwood Popeye about two feet high. One of those rare objects so familiar but unique that you literally erupt into a grin of love and recognition the moment you see it. I went in and, after pretending to browse, asked in a bored voice how much it cost. The old woman who ran the place couldn’t believe I wanted the figure but said the equivalent of twenty dollars. Even more thrilling, carved into the bottom of one of the feet was the name Del Debbio. One of the reasons I was in Italy then was to see firsthand the Roman stadium and sports complex Enrico Del Debbio had designed for Mussolini in the twenties and thirties. Even to Radcliffe, convinced-atheist graduate student, it was more than a spooky coincidence.
I didn’t expect to find a pair of Del Debbio shoes in Vienna, but maybe a shop with an old man in gold spectacles and his helper-elves … .
What I found instead was Palm.
After a couple of hours walking and window shopping, I found myself on the other side of the Danube Canal in the city’s Second District. Only a ten-minute walk from the posh center of town, the personality and color of the Second was entirely different from the chic fat-cat-and-tourist-on-parade feel of the area around the St. Stephen’s Church. Here were lots of dark, rough-hewed people looking like gypsies or peasants just in from the countryside. Women wore Russian babushkas and had gold-capped front teeth, their men moustaches thick as steel wool. They all seemed to be yelling at each other in hard, fast, incomprehensible words. Yet while they yelled they were often smiling, so I couldn’t tell if they were happy or angry. It was clearly a worker’s district, the buildings that dead-mouse brown of places where too many people live in each room and the only light in the windows at night is the smoke-blue flicker of televisions lulling the tired suckers to sleep.
Even the streets were dull and minimal. Anonymous apartment buildings and some stores, but very few and they offered only the essentials: small glum markets, an electrician, a Geschäft that sold toilets and bathtubs.
It wasn’t the best part of Vienna to find great new shoes, but I continued walking and looking at both the architecture and people.
A street sign saying Lucygasse stopped me. One of the great loves of my high school years was named Lucy Hopkins, so in her honor I walked along her street.
Halfway down the block I saw the store. It was small and undistinguished. I wouldn’t even have paid attention if there’d been more interesting sights around. The black-and-white unadorned sign over the window said “Morton Palm, Türen & Leitern.” A door and ladder store? In the window was a pile of round gray stones. Lying on top of the pile was an ornate art deco picture frame around a quotation nicely handprinted in three languages: German, English, and Swedish (I later learned).
“A door is the difference between in and out.”
That got my interest percolating. As if to steel myself before taking the next step, I peered up and down the street while slowly turning the doorknob and pushing in.
There was no one inside, but the desert menagerie stopped me and kept me wide eyed until Palm came out of the back of the store.
In that cramped, narrow room there must have been a hundred different cactus plants, varying from the size of a thumb to six feet high. Any time that many anything are together at once and in such a small space it’s both impressive and loony, like the newspaper photographs of the woman who lives with forty cats, or the man with the largest collection of beer coasters in the world.
Many of the plants were blooming—brilliant, pastel flowers which contrasted vividly with the drabness of the store and the street outside. At first it almost felt like the room was filled with unmoving tropical birds keeping very still and silent, until the next moment when they’d just as mysteriously burst back into a havoc of screech and song.
“Guten Tag.”
The first time I saw Morton Palm I thought he was either dying or carved out of marble. He was so thin and his hair was shaved so close to the skull that I immediately thought of men in concentration camps. What would have been normal features on another face jutted out on his like a bunch of umbrellas beneath a sheet. His skin had the silvery yellow-white pallor of good marble. When he smiled, his teeth were the same color as his skin. Long nose, small mouth that curved up at the ends, biggish ears. Hard to tell what color his eyes were because they were sunk so deeply into his head.
“Do you speak English?”
He held up his hand like a benediction. “I speak Swedish and English. What can I do for you, sir?”
I made a sweep with my hand. “Your cactuses are impressive.”
He nodded but made no comment.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know why I came in. The quote in your window, I guess.”
“‘Were I a door I would wish to swing out upon my hinges, and allow my room to fill with what has come from the outside.’ They are both from a poem by an American, Russell Edson.”
“Oh, do you like poetry?” I felt idiotic asking but there was something about this marble man that made it important to keep our conversation going. He was the strangest combination of peace and odd. His diminutive, sickly appearance was offset by the turtle-slowness of the way he moved and spoke. The skinny people I’ve known are usually nervous and hyper. But everything Palm did was too damned slow. His blinks must have lasted half a second; when he moved to gesture, it was with the languorousness of a sea fan under water. I’d never seen a person run at 331/3 speed.
“No. Someone gave me the poem because of my business.”
“You make windows and doors?”
“Yes. And I raise cactuses because they’re strong and funny-looking. Would you like to see my work?”
From beneath the counter he took out two wooden boxes about the size of a car battery. There were brass handles and fittings on both. He opened the first and spoke. Slowly.
“I make three kinds of doors and three ladders. These are the miniatures that I show customers. Which are you interested in having?”
“I’d like to see both, if you don’t mind.”
“It is my pleasure, sir. People coming in are usually in a hurry. They want a door in a day. They want to buy a ladder instantly. There are firms that do seven-hour service, but I must make each of my pieces from the beginning. It is the only way I can work. I must warn you of that right now. It takes many more hours than most people are willing to give.” He smiled and took out the first ladder. Slowly—the smile, the hand into the box, the lifting out. Soooo slowly …
How I wanted them to be special! Jack and the Beanstalk ladders, doors to perception. What he showed me was good solid work but nothing special. His different ladders and doors would do the job for many years, but wouldn’t open on to heaven or cause you to have an epiphany once you’d reached their top.
Palm held each miniature a long time and carefully explained their pros and cons. He was honest and dull. He did his job and the result was okay. Yet there were things about this man that made me both like and w
ant to like him very much. The plants, his strange physical appearance, the great affection for his trade.
What sealed my feelings for him was the way he had returned all the small doors and ladders to their proper places when he was finished with his presentation. I forgot to mention that inside these two boxes he’d cut slots to size for each model.
“Why doors and ladders, Mr. Palm? Why not tables? Or chairs?”
“I am forty-six and not so intelligent, Mr. Radcliffe. There is a finishedness to doors and ladders that I have not been able to find anywhere else in my life. A ladder is a ladder. Once you have completed it, whether there are six steps or ten, it is there to do its job. To be a ladder. A door is the same. Hang it and it is there to open and close.
“Chairs change from one year to the next. Sometimes people want them comfortable, sometimes to look at and put in museums. But not ladders, really. They can be wood or steel, but a ladder’s job is permanent and unchanging. A door too. They don’t have a choice, do they?”
For lunch that day I ate fried mice. After we’d talked a long time, Palm asked if I’d like a cup of tea. We sat there amid the cactuses drinking tea and eating “fried mouse,” a Viennese pastry he had which tasted like a heavy, dry donut.
We’d reached the point where we were addressing each other by first name and had begun to give certain details about ourselves. As I’d expected, Morton’s story was far more interesting than he’d first let on.
He’d been a professional soldier for fifteen years with the United Nations peacekeeping forces. One would have to be either supremely tranquil or nuts to spend as much time as he did where he did: Cyprus, Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe, the Sinai. Along the way he’d married an Austrian woman who worked at the United Nations in Vienna. It didn’t succeed because he was away too often and she worried too much after he was shot the first time. They were divorced, but he’d had such pleasant times in the city that after being shot the second time, he retired and went to live there. Ten years later he had little money but liked his life.
We went into the back of the store, where he showed me his tools. Many of them were old, bought in junk stores and flea markets around Europe. He said they enabled him to work with the wood rather than against it, as happened with modern power tools. Most endearing was Palm’s sheer delight in what he did. A placid, albeit good-natured man, the only time he genuinely smiled or became animated was when describing ladders and doors he’d made. I envied him that. There’d been a time when my work defined and justified me to myself. I knew there was a distinct possibility that that time had passed for me, despite the moment’s enthusiasm for the trip to Saru and the new project there. I told Palm these thoughts, then felt embarrassed for crying on his shoulder.
“I’ll tell you a funny story, Harry. When we were on the Golan, there was a guy there who read without stop and was always telling us good parts out of his books. Once he read something, I don’t remember from what it was, but the story was great: This old woman was in her bed and she was dying. Her family was only waiting for her to breathe a last time. She got worse and worse, so now it’s really close to the end. But suddenly she farted like a cannon. You know what she said? ‘Good, a woman who can still fart isn’t dead yet.’” Palm ran his hand across a piece of smooth wood. “I think you are still farting, Harry.”
HIS STORY KEPT ME chuckling the whole walk back to the hotel. Evening had come and suddenly the streetlights blinked on all around me. Traffic was heavy and slow. The eerieness of faces inside cars at night. Cigarettes flicker, a snatch of music heard on a radio as you pass. Men in funny-looking yellow and red coats stood on street corners selling newspapers. Loaded trolleys racketed by, their bells clanging impatiently. People wanted to get home, meals were cooking there, bathtubs filling. That rich energy at the start and end of a day; beginnings get us going.
On Vienna’s main shopping street jugglers, mimes, and opera and folk singers vied for the attention and spare change of the crowd. I was in no hurry and stopped often. Whenever I saw this kind of street scene, it made me think of medieval markets, and even further back. Were there mimes in the time of the pharaohs? In Jerash I’d walked over smooth giant stones in the marketplace that served as road for the chariots and still showed the grooves of the wheels. What songs were sung there to distract and hold passersby on their way home? What tricks did the buskers play? How did things smell? What did the air feel like?
Back at the hotel I had two telephone messages: one from Fanny, the other from Claire. Please call back.
I didn’t feel like talking to Ms. Neville, so I called Ms. Stansfield instead.
“Oh, Harry, finally! I didn’t think I’d get you. I’m so sorry about what happened. If there’s anything I can do—”
“Wait. What are you talking about, Claire?”
“The Sultan.”
“What about the Sultan?”
“You didn’t hear? He’s dead! He was murdered.”
“Who killed him? Where’d it happen?”
“In Saru. Rebels shot him. His daughter was riding in a horse show and he was in the audience. Something like twenty people died. It was similar to the Sadat assassination years ago. The news said other members of the royal family were killed too.”
Half an hour later I was listening to the news in German, understanding nothing but “Sultan” and “Tod.”The phone rang. A secretary came on and said Mr. Awwad, Saruvian ambassador to Austria, would like to speak with me. Awwad wasted no time asking if I’d be willing to remain in Vienna a couple of days. He said the Crown Prince had returned home, but before leaving had specifically requested that I stay in case they still might need me to go there.
“Why would anyone want me in Saru, Mr. Awwad? Especially now?”
“This is off-the-record, all right?”
“Sure.”
“I go off-the-record very often, Mr. Radcliffe. I have been misquoted too often.”
“Okay! Okay! Why would the Prince want me in Saru after what has happened?”
“Off-the-record, there are two possibilities—he would like you to attend his father’s funeral because he knew how much the Sultan liked you. But more possible is because the Prince is a very headstrong young man. I would not be surprised if he had you build the museum for his father anyway.”
I called Fanny, who said many of the same things as Claire. After she asked what I was going to do, I told her about my conversation with the ambassador.
“I don’t know how true that is about Hassan, Harry. He’s not crazy about you, and now that his father is dead—”
“Then why would he ask me to stay here?”
“I don’t know, Buckaroo.”
PALM DIDN’T KNOW EITHER. I spoke with him next and asked if he’d like to have dinner with me.
That dinner turned into two days of poking around together. I went to the Saruvian Embassy, got Big Top, and the three of us walked in the parks, drank wine in different heurigen, and the second evening went back to Morton’s shop, where I helped make a door. What was the point of returning to Los Angeles? Vienna was something new, Palm good company, and the chance of adventure in Saru still hung like a small cloud over the horizon.
I also wanted to pay the Sultan homage. Besides what he had done for me, from all I’d heard he had been a good leader who genuinely cared and tried to do something about the well-being of his people. At different times in our conversations he had spoken with great pride about the growing literacy rate, a new hospital complex in Bazz’af, and the fact the educated young were choosing more and more to return to Saru after completing their education in England, France, the United States.
“They want to be lawyers and doctors at home, Harry. No one is forcing them back. They could make their riches in Beverly Hills or Paris, but they are coming home! This is a very positive sign.”
What would happen now to his nation was anybody’s guess, according to a long and detailed article in the International Herald Tribune. Unlike E
gypt at the time of the Sadat assassination, the opposition in Saru was not splintered into warring factions. The Sultan’s sole opponent had been his cannibal brother, Cthulu. Having murdered both of his siblings, it was down to a face-off between Cthulu’s people and those loyal to Prince Hassan.
Another question: Did Harry Radcliffe want to be in a country at a time in its history when fratricide had succeeded and chaos, Arabian style, was sharpening its scimitar right outside?
The answer to that one came easy. After we’d put the finishing touches on his door, Palm and I had a couple of glasses of plum schnapps and then I got up to go. Big Top had been sleeping by the wood stove and was not happy about getting up and walking home through the chilly night.
Outside the air smelled of coal and wood smoke. It wasn’t very late, around eleven o’clock, but the streets were empty and not many lights were on in the windows.
We moved slowly, like two old men trudging home after a night at the bar, because the dog’s rheumatism made him limp. For the hundredth time I wondered how old he was and how much longer he would live.
His wide white ass toddled from side to side. Limp and toddle made his body move in a number of directions at the same time.
He stopped, but his tail started wagging like a windshield wiper on high speed. Another Big Top trait was that he rarely barked—only stood his ground and furiously wagged when something was interesting or a threat.
Seeing him frozen in that familiar pose, I looked up. At first there was nothing—no people nearby, no scene, no danger. Frowning, I looked down at him to see where he was pointing. Left, off to the side. Still nothing until I looked away across the wide street.
“What is that?”
Big Top needed no encouragement. Tail still a whipping blur, he pulled us across the street to the car.
Because many of the pieces were so savagely hacked and torn, shapeless, dangling, and wet, it took me long ghastly moments to realize that what was dumped and smeared across the length of the car had once been an animal and not a person. Brains looking like buttery cauliflower were scattered in soft blobs and red clots over the windshield. Islands of shiny purple-brown slabs lay on the white, white hood of the car. There was a rough circle of blood drawn on the roof—as if whoever had done this took one piece and rubbed it like a polishing rag there. Volvo. I saw the name half covered by a large sliver of raw heart? lung? A white Volvo.
Outside the Dog Museum Page 12