Rock Wagram

by William Saroyan

  “That’s too long,” the woman said. “Twenty years is plenty. Life is short. Many of us will be dead in twenty years.”

  “I’d like to meet Marcy Miller before I get shipped,” Haig said.

  “Shipped where?” his father said.

  “To the Pacific, or to Europe,” Haig said. “That’s where they’re fighting, isn’t it?”

  “You stay at Hammer Field in Fresno,” the father said.

  “Is it true Roosevelt is a Jew, like the Germans say?” the woman said. “And that is why we are at war with them?”

  “I don’t know,” Rock said.

  “They say his name is Rosenfeld,” she said.

  “Plenty of time to meet Marcy Miller,” Rock said. “Plenty of time to meet her husband and three kids, too.”

  “Husband and three kids?” Haig said. “Oh, frig her, then. I thought she was the way she is in the movies, a hot dame looking for a fine, healthy, red-blooded farmer’s boy. You’re kidding, aren’t you? She isn’t married, is she?”

  “They say he changed his name,” the woman said.

  “She’s been married six or seven years,” Rock said.

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” Haig said. “How about Clare Laney?”

  “They say he changed his religion, too?” the woman said.

  “Is it possible to do that? I mean, can one decide to become a Catholic, and become one?”

  “Clare Laney’s been married five years,” Rock said. “I’ll tell you what, Haig. I’d like you to take me for a little ride on your motorcycle.”

  He got up and went to Lula in the kitchen.

  “I’m going for a ride on Haig’s motorcycle,” he said. “We’ll be back in a little while. Is there anything I can bring you?”

  “Go along,” the old lady said.

  She blinked both eyes, which was her way of winking, and Rock knew she was thinking of the water-level woman.

  No man loves anyone but himself, but that is also a lie, as every man knows. Every man loves his own damned son, damned before he’s born, damned to live a variation of his own damned father’s life, damned to live a winking variation of the damned life every man lives. Every man loves his own damned winking daughter, winking in the eyes of her own damned mother. Every man loves his own damned winking daughter’s mother. Every man loves his own damned mother and his daughter’s mother and the damned nagging of them to get him to love them, notice them, remember them, and be their damned man.

  Small boys and girls, cousins all, watched Haig and Rock drive off on the motorcycle, away from the house on Winery Street, but only around the corner, where they could not be seen, Haig brought the machine to a halt and got off. He began to jump with uncontrollable laughter.

  “I hear Roosevelt’s an Armenian,” he said. “What do you hear?”

  “I hear you’re an Armenian,” Rock said.

  “Me?” the boy laughed. “You’re crazy. Whoever told you that is a dirty liar. I’m just a little sunburned, that’s all. I’m as white as the next man underneath. Whiter. Pale, you might say. Sickly. When did you ever see me peddling rugs? What makes Armenians so lovable?”

  “Christianity,” Rock said.

  “That’s it, that’s it exactly,” Haig said. “They’re the first Christian thieves of the world, but I hear Armenians are not really Armenians. I hear they’ve been passing. I hear they’re one of the lost tribes of Jenghis Khan, and I wish to Christ nobody found them.”

  “I hear they’re not even Christians,” Rock said. “I hear they’re dervishes who got tired of whirling.”

  “Got tired because there was no money in it,” Haig said. “Being a Christian’s the softest spot in the world for a thief.”

  He watched the boy calm down, study his motorcycle, kick the tire, then bounce the machine violently.

  “Well,” Haig said, “there’s your family.”

  “She’s no Vagramian,” Rock said.

  “Her kids are,” Haig said. “There’s your Armenians for you.”

  “They’re not so bad,” Rock said.

  “They make me sick to my stomach every time I see them,” Haig said.

  “Everybody’s family does that,” Rock said. “The Armenians have no more thieves among them than any other people.”

  “I’m sick of being an Armenian,” Haig said.

  “Why?” Rock said.

  “I just think it’s silly to be an Armenian,” Haig said. “What nationality is that, anyway?”

  “What’s eating you?” Rock said.

  “Nothing,” Haig said. “We’re all sick of being Armenians, aren’t we? Aren’t we getting tired of it? I’ll be damned if I’ll ever marry an Armenian girl. Inflict that on my kids? Not me.

  “How long has this been going on?” Rock said.

  “All my life,” Haig said. “Who wants to be any nationality? Isn’t it a lot of shit? A man’s his own lousy self and nothing else, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” Rock said.

  “No man belongs to any lousy nationality or religion or anything else,” Haig said.

  “He belongs to something,” Rock said.

  “To his own lousy self.”

  “Why lousy?” Rock said. “What’s happened to you?”

  “I want to lay Marcy Miller before I get killed,” Haig said.

  “You’re not going to get killed.”

  “Somebody is.”

  “What’s bothering you?” Rock said.

  “I get shipped a week from Saturday,” Haig said. “I haven’t told Pop. I was just kidding about Marcy Miller. I just didn’t want that woman to talk too much. She wants the war to last twenty years, so they can get more money for their raisins. They’re loaded already but live like misers. A hundred-year war would be too long because she’ll be dead. She was born dead, wasn’t she?”

  “No, she wasn’t,” Rock said. “And she’s the mother and grandmother of quite a few people.”

  “Frig her and them, too,” Haig said. He stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I take that back. She’s your father’s, brother’s wife. He seems like a nice guy. I guess I hate anybody who isn’t in the Army.”

  “That leaves plenty to like,” Rock said.

  “And don’t think I don’t like them,” Haig said. “I feel sorry for every sucker in every Army in the world. I like them all, just so they’re in the Army, because in the Army you don’t belong to any nationality, you don’t even belong to your own lousy self any more, you belong to the twenty-year raisin war. Do they feed me raisins? she wants to know. When I can’t get anything else to eat and I’m dying of hunger and there’s raisins all over the place, I’ll die of hunger.”

  “Grapes are pretty good,” Rock said.

  “So are raisins,” Haig said, “but I’ll die of hunger. I’m not going to help the price of raisins go up.”

  “How about the price of wheat and beef?” Rock said.

  “O.K., I’ll eat raisins,” Haig said. “Let’s go get a drink someplace. I apologize.”

  “For what?” Rock said.

  “For everything I said,” Haig said. “I love the Armenians: so much it’s stupid. It’s just that loving anybody makes a fool of a man. If I wasn’t in love, do you think I’d talk the way I’ve been talking?”

  “Who are you in love with?” Rock said.

  “Nobody,” Haig said. “I’m just in love. I’m in love with any girl who happens to come along. You’re not sore at anything I said, are you?”

  “Come on,” Rock said. “We’ll go get a drink, but drive this, contraption slow and easy, will you?”

  They got on the contraption, and began to go, moving slower than a man walks.

  “Sometimes I think I’ll open the thing up and smash it against a brick wall,” Haig said.

  “Then what do you do?” Rock said.

  “I slow down and get a root beer somewhere and bust out laughing,” Haig said.

  “Manic depressive,” Rock said.

  �
�Who? Me?”

  “No. Human beings.”

  “What’s a manic depressive do?”

  “He gets depressed by the things that are depressing.”

  “Such as?”

  “His own lousy self, as you put it.”

  “Is this slow enough?” Haig said.

  “It’s fine. It’s just right.”

  “Three miles an hour.”

  “Fine.”

  “After the war, can you get me a job down there?” Haig said.

  “I think so,” Rock said.

  “Acting?”

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “I can’t act,” Haig said. “What I want to do is loaf.” “It’s a lot like loafing after you get the hang of it,” Rock said.

  “What is the hang of it?”

  “The same as the hang of anything else.”

  “How do you get all those different expressions you get, like when you’re mad but smile? How do you do that?”

  “By being your own lousy self,” Rock said.

  “You want to get a drink at Fat Aram’s?” Haig said.

  “I’m half afraid to go into the place,” Rock said.

  “Why?”

  “I may not want to leave it again,” Rock said. “We laughed there years ago. We laughed three whole years. It wasn’t so long ago. It could happen again.”

  “Quit kidding yourself,” Haig said. “It’s gone. Everything you had then is gone. You know it.”

  “I do,” Rock said.

  “How about it, then?”

  “Sure. Let’s go to Fat Aram’s.”

  No man loves his own lousy self alone. Every man loves the men who were there then and laughed with him then because there was no telling then, and a man could wink and believe almost anything could happen.

  Is every man a liar? Is there not one righteous man in the world? Is the small man a liar, and the great man, too? Is the lie in the man himself, winking? Is the man himself the lie? Is the lie the wink?

  Is the kiss itself a lie, out of which he came?

  Every man is a liar. He is a lie. The lie is in his eye all his life.

  But what’s a man to do, for all that? He is to wink and go about his business.

  Is there not one righteous man in the world?

  How could there be, since righteousness itself is a wink?

  The motorcycle moved slowly down Ventura Avenue and came to the old red-brick church.

  “Let’s go in,” Rock said.

  “What for?” Haig said.

  “For the fun of it.”

  “Let’s go in and pray for the price of raisins,” Haig said.

  “I want to see where I stood that Sunday my mother made me sing,” Rock said.

  “Did your mother make you sing, too?” Haig said.

  “Just once, though.”

  “Mine did, too,” Haig said.

  What did you sing?”

  “The song of the alphabet,” Rock said. “A for Art, most glorious. B for—What was B for?”

  “Bitlis?” Haig said.

  “No,” Rock said. “The Armenians from Bitlis aren’t the only Armenians. They may be the most brilliant and arrogant, but they’re not the only ones.”

  “And the crookedest,” Haig said. “Aren’t you going in?”

  “Let’s walk around the church first,” Rock said. “B wasn’t for Bitlis, it was for something else.”

  “Business?” Haig said.

  “No. Wait a minute,” Rock said. “A for Art. B for—was it Beauty?”

  “Baseball?” Haig said.

  “Or was it Birth?” Rock said. “Which one did you sing?”

  “Morning Light,” Haig said.

  “How does it go?”

  “You know how it goes.”

  “Sing it.”

  “I’ve forgotten the words.”

  “Hum it, then.”

  Haig began to hum. He was about to stop when Rock began to hum with him. They hummed the song as they wandered around the church, up the steps, and in.

  “Shall we buy candles and light them for somebody?” Haig said.

  “Yes,” Rock said. “I want to light one for my father.”

  “O.K. I’ll light one for my mother.”

  The candles were there to take. In the plate where the money for the candles was placed were two quarters and a half dollar. They took a candle each. Haig took the money out of the plate and put it in his pocket, and then they went down the center aisle. They lighted the candles and placed them in the place for them where three others were burning. Then they crossed themselves, and Rock went to one knee.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve done anything right or not. I remember the poems. I’m sorry about the fight. I’m home and in the church, as you see. My cousin Haig is here, kneeling beside me, named after my brother, your son who died so long ago. I sometimes forget that this one is not the other one. I’m looking for a wife, for I cannot wait any longer to see my children. I shall soon see my mother. I shall speak to her, as I have already spoken to her mother. I thank you for the time and trouble you took for me, for the love you gave your wife, who lives in it still, and for the poems you spoke in our own tongue. I have lived poorly, but I regret none of it.”

  They got up together and left the church.

  “Well,” Haig said, “that’s that. Let’s get the hell to Fat Aram’s if we’re going.”

  Every man is a liar who in the end cannot lie.

  Is a man many men, or vagrant parts of many men, each part desperate with failure? Is he something in shoes, which gets up and walks, all of the parts standing in his shoes?

  They stood on the steps of the church and lighted cigarettes.

  “Do you remember Easter here?” Rock said. “Five times as many people outside the church as in, everybody playing Eggs?”

  “Do I remember?” Haig said. “I was here last Easter.”

  “I thought I’d fly here and get in the crowd with a dozen hard-boiled eggs in my pocket,” Rock said, “but at the last minute I didn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I got scared,” Rock said. “If I could have played Eggs and won a few or lost them all, it would have been great. It was what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a pocket full of eggs to play, tapping a stranger’s egg, breaking it and taking it, or breaking my own and giving it. I hate eggs. To eat, I mean. But I like to see them, and any time I see them I remember Easter here, all of this area around the church full of them, playing Eggs.”

  “You should have come,” Haig said. “You should have come out to the vineyard. I’d have got three or four of the boys together who look like you, and like me, and I’d have given you an old suit of mine to wear instead of your New York and Hollywood clothes. The five or six of us would have come here together and nobody would have known you from me or from any of them. I had two dozen eggs and lost all but six, which I ate. Pop came here with six eggs and brought home three dozen, but I think he either uses a phony egg or knows how to tap. He wins every Easter. I lose. You should have come.”

  “How did they look?” Rock said.

  “They looked great,” Haig said. “They had on their Sunday clothes. No, their Easter clothes. It was a bright day. Everybody was talking and laughing and pushing and challenging and winning or losing, and every once in a while somebody would come out of the church and shout at the top of his voice, ‘Quiet! Christ is risen, is He not?’ Somebody would holler back, ‘Who?’ They don’t believe any of that stuff.”

  “They believe something,” Rock said.

  “They like sunshine,” Haig said.

  “They worshipped the sun in the first place,” Rock said. “They probably still do, probably never managed to figure out anything as complicated as Christianity. How were the girls?”

  “You know how the girls are,” Haig said. “They’re either Americanized, as they call it, or full of lustful looks accompanied by shameful blushing.”
/>   “Any of the Americanized ones any good?” Rock said.

  “For what?” Haig said.

  “For God’s sake, for a smile, for instance,” Rock said. “To say hello to. To talk to as if it didn’t matter that they were Armenian.”

  “I thought you meant to lay,” Haig said.

  “Are they any good for that?” Rock said.

  “Well, the answer is yes,” Haig said. “The answer is they’re just about the best in the world, and they’ll do your laundry, too. Why? Don’t you know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s true.”

  “How come?”

  “They were like sisters, every one of them,” Rock said. “Do they still have the Water Day?”

  “That’s even better than Easter,” Haig said. “Sure they have it. Everybody throws water all over everybody else. They really have a time that day. That’s not a Christian day.”

  “No, it’s not,” Rock said. “They don’t celebrate the Christian days the way other Christians do, anyway.”

  “Let’s face it,” Haig said. “They’re not Christians.”

  “It’s not important to be Christian,” Rock said.

  “It is if you want to be President,” Haig said. “You can’t even be a Catholic, you’ve got to be a Protestant.”

  “I never met anybody who wanted to be President,” Rock said.

  “Somebody seems to be getting elected every now and then, though,” Haig said, “and he’s never a Catholic, a Jew, or a Negro.”

  “Or a woman or a midget,” Rock said.

  “Or an Armenian.”

  “Have you ever run into an Armenian who wanted to be President?”

  “No,” Haig said. “The ones I ran into only wanted a vineyard and a family. I asked an old farmer why he wasn’t President, and he said, ‘The responsibility is great.’ I’m not making this up. He couldn’t speak more than twenty words of English, either. I told him he owed it to America. He said, ‘I am bashful and peace-loving. If there was a war, we would lose.’ I told him he might be provoked and angered. He said, ‘In that case, we would win.’ I go to the coffee house on Eye Street near Mono almost every day every summer and sit and talk with them, or I stop when I see them at work in the vineyards. I ask them all kinds of questions.”

  “That’s The Asbarez across the street,” Rock said.