Class Warfare

by D. M. Fraser

  “The trouble with tourists,” the small man grumbled, “is that they insist on relating everything to their own two-bit neuroses.”

  “That’s as may be,” Jamie said. “Toward the end, it got harder and harder to sleep. Eventually, I gave up trying. I went for the prescribed long walks, muttering to myself, repeating the wisdom of the masters. The streets were full of mubble. Everywhere I looked I saw ordinary life, ordinary travail, assembly lines of men, women, little children, all of them doing what was there to be done. Whatever they were doing, they were absorbed in it, as spilled fluids are absorbed, soaked up, by commercial tissues. I couldn’t speak to them … My friends fell away, one by one: some to wives, some to jails, asylums, the stringencies of the working world. They made their excuses and went. At the farewell parties, the best of them blushed and grinned, promised an early return … but who’s returned, and from what? Eh? … One day I alone remained, awake and frightened, in a universe of strangeness. I’d missed the boat. I heard the weeping then, louder than ever, and I knew it was aimed at me. It was a summons. Summoning me here, perhaps. To this, to you. I should never have asked you to help me.”

  The small man sighed hugely. “Listen,” he said, “I haven’t got forever. You have. In the long run, the subjective analysis breaks down, because it lacks verifiable referents, in the external world, so-called. You may have noticed the crowds, as you came in here; you may have noticed that the Tourist Bureau does a roaring business in Lonesome Town. Ponder that in your heart, if you’ve nothing better to do. As for me, I fell off a cliff last night, and woke up without a scratch, a bruise, a torn ligament, a thought. You’ve got me working overtime, and there’s no reward, no compensation. The Tourist Bureau doesn’t care what I fell off, or why, or when, just as long as I didn’t do it on their time.”

  “I’ve imposed on you,” Jamie said. “I hadn’t planned to do that.”

  “Plans.” The small man stared past Jamie to the next in line, whose problems were manifestly of a different order. “I can do without plans, thanks just the same. Hell, I could be hauling coal, if they demote me. This, what I’m doing now… it provides an occupation for those of us who are otherwise unemployable. It gives us a focus, of a kind. If you mean to stick around, you might consider applying for a job here yourself.”

  “I’m not sticking around,” Jamie said, “if I can help it. I’m a tourist like the others. Passing through …” He straightened up, composed himself to leave, put together the appropriate parting words, and separated them before the glue had set. In the silence that ensued, someone in the line-up farted. “I guess I should thank you,” Jamie said, making a stab at objectivity, “but I wish I knew what for.”

  “So do I,” the small man said. “Next, please.”

  How easily we’re dismissed, when it’s time for dismissal. We just wander on … Jamie had to jostle his way past shoulders, hips, unforgiving biceps, as he made his way out of the Tourist Bureau. Babes in arms shrieked at him; the human condition, they said in a number of languages, is not supportable. “You think you’re so goddamned original,” Jamie snarled. Everyone winced. The tiles glistened, the mirrors winked after the fashion of Tourist Bureau mirrors everywhere, as Jamie took his leave.

  VIII. Ordinary Converse

  His feet will find their way, through the maze of Lonesome Town, toward the Licensed Premises, the local watering hole. What’s served there isn’t water. The room—past doors that creak and sing as they close behind him—is full of dishevelled lyricism, yearning bodies, the electronically amplified sounds of Gladys Gorman & the Gamins, bopping. Conversations wax and wane on all sides. Murder awaits its out, behind opaque eyelids. Jamie finds an empty table, contentedly embraces it. Beer arrives. Even in Lonesome Town, the amenities are supplied (albeit unpredictably), the proprieties observed. Grace is extended to the hopeless, even here, in the sweaty reaches of the Licensed Premises. The waiters are attentive; the glances they give him are tolerant, the glasses full. The music is in C, F and G7, with periodic incursions of A-minor, that loneliest of chords. The songs speak of highways long travelled, of high-rollin’ trucks and faithless lovers, of gun-totin’ sheriffs, the crimes of history, the patient gallows. Gladys Gorman vocalizes:

  I didn’t cry the day you said

  that it was time to go,

  I thought I wanted to drop dead

  but you would never know,

  I had to keep my wounded pride

  all locked up tight inside,

  and never let a bit of heartbreak show.

  The conversations are about everything. “The sleep of reason,” someone nearby is saying, “brings forth monsters. Goya said that. Do you know Goya?” “Not intimately.” Jamie’s mind ambles away, toward a passing vision, blonde and radiant. “Do you mentally undress every woman you see?” the vision enquires, in transit. She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt with FREE MARIE TYRELL printed in block letters on the back. Who’s Marie Tyrell? “Nice ass on that one, eh what?” says a man in a lumberjack shirt, at the next table. Jamie nods, disconsolate. Gladys Gorman builds up to her chorus, her finale, with a spectacular intake of breath:

  But last night, makin’ dinner for one

  with the radio turned on

  Listenin’ to our fav’rit Nashville group,

  I found that I was missin’ the fun

  and the fuckin’ since you’re gone,

  And one little tear,

  one little tear,

  Yes, one little tear

  splashed in the soup.

  “You look like an intellectual,” someone is saying over Jamie’s shoulder. “Are you a knee-jerk liberal?” Oh, probably. His assailant has wire-rimmed glasses, a crewcut, a piratical beard, the face of an emaciated Trotskyite. “How much are you ready to sacrifice?” Everything. There’s not much choice about that, is there? “Existentialist,” the stranger murmurs. “The woods are full of ’em. No discipline. No appreciation of the fine points …” He saunters off, toward a party of clean-cut young people. The lumberjack shirt brushes Jamie’s shoulder. “Funny world, eh what? You get all kinds.” “Oh, hilarious,” Jamie says, stroking his glass; if it were a kitten, it would do something kittenish at this moment.

  Jamie wills himself to relax, takes two or three major swallows of beer, settles back to watch the knife fight that’s just beginning to shape up at the pool table. Everything is very quiet. In this perilous lull, a freckled woman in second-hand combat fatigues stands up; she wants to create a diversion. “I am a writer,” she says, “and I want you all to hear the latest thing I’ve written. I wrote it this morning, on mescaline, and it’s dedicated to the one I love. I call it

  IN CONDOMINIA

  Only this morning, your name came up again. Someone was wondering where you’d been. The innocent can ask such things, without anxiety. I wanted to explain, to say: What happened was happenstance, just that, an unintended collision. No need to be alarmed. Most likely, you’re at work now, or asleep, or off somewhere getting drunk. You’ll have forgotten it. Or perhaps you didn’t notice; people often don’t. I know you didn’t say anything at the time. It could have been dangerous, but it wasn’t, then. It could have been difficult for both of us. Here, we get by as best we can. What I remember is chiefly a way of speaking, a hesitant rhythm, accidental pressures. It goes on constantly, everywhere. It’s not important.

  In Condominia, the children are demanding breakfast, the goodwives are rising to the occasion. The light is kindly. I haven’t a word of anything you ever said to invoke you. At least one of us is young enough to go mad. I saw the risk long ago and put aside hope. I’m not saying anyone deceived me.

  Are you getting the message? The sleep of Prospero continues, undisturbed. In Condominia, in dancing class, the little girls lift their legs; they spin; they fall down laughing, laughing and laughing. One of us might have spoken. Today, all I can do is glance through Great Historic Places of Europe: pictures of architecture, far away and stony. And I won’t apologize
for drinking whisky before noon.

  You’d have to love me for this, if it meant something. Wouldn’t you? These obliquities we steer among, untenanted rocks in a placid strait … You’ll never guess. In Condominia, the fireplaces burn clean, the appliances glisten, the little girls dance mazurkas. The price of everything is sailing skywards. The seizure may not be permanent. If you walked in right now I’d say, Where have you been?

  In Condominia, you’d answer. Where the lawns grow sprightly and the wind is mild. Where the little girls go home for lunch, at last, to sit at placemats imprinted with homilies. Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together. In Condominia. Traffic moves sluggishly past the petrochemical plants. I haven’t learned, yet, to dream of you. We may both escape. Nothing is resolved.

  These obliquities, these indeterminate resistances, yourself elsewhere hereafter, the streets bright with rain. You told me what I needed to know, a long time ago. In a happier world, it wouldn’t matter.

  Your name keeps coming up. Do me one kindness, before I die.”

  The diversion has been successful, temporarily. A posse of waiters encloses the freckled woman, propelling her away, gracefully, without apparent effort. The knife fight has, for once, ended in a truce: a few unserious scratches, a mumbled Aw shit, we was just playin’ around. There’s more beer at Jamie’s table. Gladys Gorman is taking a break, taking requests; the Gamins are ogling a tableful of bikers who’ve just installed themselves, with a maximum of flourish, within spitting distance of the stage. The jukebox fills the void:

  I never meant

  to keep you waiting, baby,

  I only meant

  to stay behind,

  So you could go

  on celebrating, baby,

  So you could rest your worried mind.

  One of the pool players approaches Jamie’s table; he’s wearing a massive identification bracelet with the legend Snake takes the Cake engraved into a confusion of writhing serpents. “Name’s Snake,” he says by way of introduction. “Did you see what happened?” He sits down, appropriates one of Jamie’s beers, empties it in a gulp, reaches for another. There are people in the world who can’t hang out alone in a beer parlour for more than five minutes without attracting some manner of grotesque company, and Jamie is beginning to suspect he may be one of them. “I sort of saw,” he says hesitantly. “I didn’t want to see too much, if you know what I mean.” Snake looks pensive. “Yeah, it’s always the same,” he says. “I coulda killed the little bugger. Killed a guy once, for less than that. Happened so fast, didn’t have time to feel bad. Buddy of mine, too. Want a game?” Jamie shakes his head; he’s never had much talent for pool. Snake hiccoughs, spreads his arms. “They’re all out to get you,” he says. “They’ll take anything you got. Beat you down, leave you for dead, never come back. It’s just the usual shit. Makes no difference. You been here long?” “A while.” “Me too. Weird place, it gets into your bones, holds you. Nothing you can do. Drink beer, fuck around, play a little pool …” Gladys Gorman assembles the Gamins, fiddles with her microphone, and frowns at the audience, which largely ignores her: Well, howdy folks and welcome once again to the Licensed Premises. Everybody havin’ fun? Everybody … happy? For our first little number I’d like to do a song that has a real special meaning for me, and I hope for you too … Are you ready, group? The group is at least as ready as it will ever be; the guitars are almost in tune; Gladys throws back her head, closes her eyes, and serenades the ceiling:

  There ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ lonely

  There ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ blue

  You needn’t think that you’re the only

  Guy or gal it’s ever happened to …

  Yes, if you got troubles, honey

  you just come and talk to me

  I got troubles worse than yours and some to spare

  I got troubles all around me

  and as far as I can see

  Trouble is the only thing we share …

  The applause is less than overwhelming. Snake shrugs and picks his nose. “Whaddya expect from a hick-town band anyway?” A waiter leans over: “Ya criticizin’ the live entertainment, fella?” In a distant corner a middle-aged woman in a formidable hat, sitting by herself, is carrying on a monologue. “Okay,” she’s saying. “Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay … Don’t bother me. Okay okay okay. The tears I shed, and what for? I said to him, I said, you’ll never make it on your own, and wasn’t I right? Okay okay okay okay. War, famine, pestilence, and death. I want civilian control. I want a drink, isn’t anyone gonna buy me a beer? Okay okay okay. The plague is coming to get us, it’s on the way right now. I want a cigarette. Okay okay okay okay okay. The tears I shed …”

  “The poolroom,” Jamie says to distract himself, “the one we always hung out in, was called the Rat Hole. You can guess why. I didn’t play a lot of pool, in those days, but it was a place to go. It was in a basement, down a long flight of concrete steps, and it smelled of piss. In the winter you could actually see a film of moisture on the walls, which were painted green—exactly the shade of green you’ve probably seen in the washrooms of reform schools and orphanages.”

  “I been there,” Snake says.

  “One Christmas eve, after church, the Spook and I went down to the Rat Hole as usual.” Jamie pauses; suddenly too much is coming back, it’s unfair, that was all so long ago … “We’d been there maybe an hour when the air began to whine; it was that sort of soundless vibrato you get just before a fight. Then there was a noise like … like mortar fire.” He’s heard mortar fire in the movies, heard it first at some Saturday matinee at the Savoy Theatre, just around the corner from the Rat Hole; come to think of it, he had his first hand-job there, too, not so many years later. Oh, well. “It was hard to catch what was happening. I thought I saw a knife flash, but I may have imagined it.”

  The monologist raises her voice, in open competition with Gladys Gorman: Okay okay okay okay okay. What’s a poor girl to do? The birds are dropping out of the sky, the earth is strewn with their little bodies. Okay okay okay … “The Spook and I wanted no part of it,” Jamie continues, “whatever was going on. The main thing was to get out of there before the cops came. We left. Outside it was beginning to snow, and the sidewalk was already white. A few cars went by, silently. The Christmas tree in front of the Post Office was covered with blue lights, winking on and off. I stamped my feet, as though to shake off a bad moment. Then for some reason, I looked down; where my boots had been, the snow was red.”

  Snake fidgets, tapping a fingernail against his glass. “You’re a funny cat,” he says. “I don’t figure you. How did you end up here?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Jamie signals for more beer; why is there never enough? “One thing leads to another, as they say. And then here I was. Do you blame me, really?”

  “Hell, no, I was just curious. There’s all types, here.”

  Okay okay okay okay … Jamie has to keep talking. “I was on the train once, going somewhere. Home, I think, though by that time it wasn’t what I thought of as home, it was only a place on the map, a destination. It was winter when I went. And I took the train, because I wanted the time, the sense of distance, 3,000 miles of track, the famous emptiness of this fucked-up snowbound country. For the record, this is the obligatory Canadian Content; you’d better enjoy it. Maybe I wanted to see if it were possible, at last, to love the damn place. It’s supposed to happen like that; it can happen, on trains; I don’t understand it, but it does, sometimes … happen.” Jamie’s getting drunk now, winding up to a pitch he’s not certain he can sustain. Snake sits quietly, feeling trapped: this guy seems to be one of those compulsive blabbermouths. Gladys Gorman is singing about the last round-up.

  “I’ve tried not to think about these things, but they keep crowding in anyway. On the train, there was no escaping them. There was a … a connection, between you and all that shit out there, the ordinary noise behind all the blank night you rode through
. I’ve lost it, lost the track of it. At certain moments, there seemed to be a link. The link. To whatever I used to be, or could have been. Whole tundras of absurd love, to lease or purchase. One agency or another would assume the debt; love, sweet dimwitted love, would swallow it all. And it broke down even such resistance as I’d always had to it …”

  Snake is concerned with more immediate things. “You gonna shut up long enough to pay for some beer?” Well, why not?

  Jamie will do anything, say anything, to keep him: anything not to be left alone. Gladys Gorman is lamenting the fate of nations, the fate of marriages entered upon in good faith, the disposal of the children. Give him a football, it’s a present from his dad. Don’t you ever let him know that his old man’s been had. “I just want to talk,” Jamie says. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here, I don’t know what you expect, but no one else is listening. I was on the train, going back. People bought me beer, borrowed money, lent me money when I was out of it, told me stories. They worked in places I never knew existed, at jobs I couldn’t do; they’d dealt with heavy equipment, foremen, scabs, filthy weather, jail. The scenery went by, endlessly. It was like living in an anthology of poems by local bards …”

  “Well, yeah,” Snake says, “I’m not so much into poetry, if that’s all right with you.”

  Jamie makes a bravado gesture in the direction of the waiter; he’s willing to continue this lunacy, at whatever expense. “I had to give in to it, once,” he says. “I had to discard all the wisdom of history, as I’d learned it, the way I’d learned it; I had to make an asshole of my mind just once, to have something to return from. I had to discover what was mine. Mine. So many strangers had told me about it, so many of them had waited for me to recognize it. IT. Beside the train, it all went past. The cities, the overfed villages, sleeping out the patient night in their native granite and brown brick, relentless miles of rock and trees and frozen water, listless prairie, postcard mountains, all the crap in all the bad poems we ever learned in school, the …”