Rock Wagram

by William Saroyan

  “No, let’s get a drink, anyway,” Rock said.

  The bartender was an Italian boy.

  “Be right with you,” he said. He was busy, and at the other end of the bar so was the other boy.

  “I like this,” Rock said. “I wanted to see the place again. I’m seeing it. It’s a money joint for sure now. What’s Fat Aram doing with all the money?”

  “He’s investing it,” Haig said. “He looks like a business man these days. He belongs to the Rotarians, the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions, and just about everything else there is to belong to, and I understand he gets up at the lunches every now and then and gives a success talk.”

  “That’s great.”

  “The Indians clear out when it’s busy this way. You saw some of them in the street.”

  “What’s in the backroom now?” Rock said.

  “Cards and the book when the town’s open,” Haig said. “It’s closed now, on account of the soldiers. The Indians have games all the time at one or another of the hotels, though.”

  The bartender got to them at last, and Rock ordered double Scotches over ice.

  The cousins touched glasses and Rock said, “Well, boy, I’m in Fresno, I’ve been to the house on Winery Street, I slept there last night, had breakfast there this morning, had a long talk with Lula, we’ve seen most of the family that’s been near enough to come by, most of them are still in the house on Winery Street, we’ll go back after a couple of drinks and have dinner with them, we’ve been to the redbrick church, we’ve lighted candles, we’ve prayed, we’ve been to The Asbarez, we’ve talked, and now we’re at Fat Aram’s. You’re in the Army, and I’ll soon be. Here’s to us, boy. Take care of yourself.”

  “Here’s to you, Rock,” Haig said.

  They finished their drinks, and as luck would have it the bartender was near and was pouring Scotch, so they extended their glasses and he poured for them again.

  “I just wanted to see the place,” Rock said. “I’m seeing it. It’s not the way it was, but it’s fine. It’s another world now all right.”

  “It’s the same world,” the boy said. “It’s just another time, that’s all. We said we’d be back in a little while. We’ve been gone at least an hour, haven’t we?”

  “It’s all right,” Rock said. “We’ll be back in time. Lula’s rousting them all around, and they’re having fun. I need these drinks badly, and here at Fat Aram’s.”

  “Listen, Rock,” the boy said suddenly. “Get out of it if you can. Don’t fool with it. It’s not for you. It’s not for me, either. It’s not for any of them who got drafted or any of them who enlisted because they knew they were going to get drafted, but it’s especially not for you.”

  “No,” Rock said. “I’ve turned myself over to the machine. Whatever it’s got to do will be O.K. with me. I’ll do what I’m told, go where I’m told, when I’m told. That’s more than I ever did for my father, my mother, or anybody else I know.”

  “Well, get married, anyhow,” Haig said.

  “I’m thinking about it,” Rock said.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Beautiful, but a liar.”

  “How do you know?” Haig said.

  “I know when a girl’s beautiful,” Rock said.

  “How do you know she’s a liar?”

  “I know when she’s a liar, too.”

  “Maybe the two go together,” Haig said. “Is that possible?”

  “It is.”

  “Marry her,” Haig said. “Suppose she is a liar?”

  “I like liars,” Rock said, “but I don’t know how it would be to be married to one, to have kids by.”

  “It would be fine,” Haig said.

  “Marry her.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Rock said.

  “Don’t think about it,” Haig said. “Just marry her. Where is she?”

  “New York.”

  “Tell her to come out here,” Haig said. “Tell her to fly out. What else has she got?”

  “She’s got seventeen years,” Rock said, “but they’re loaded. They’re loaded with something. Damned if I know what, though.”

  “Marry her,” Haig said. “Telephone her and tell her to fly out. What’s her name?”

  “Ann Ford.”

  “Marry her,” Haig said. “You’re too Armenian to marry an Armenian. Mix it up. For the sake of your kids mix it up. It wouldn’t do to marry an Armenian, or anybody like an Armenian.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Rock said. “Let’s go back to the house on Winery Street.”

  A man’s mortality, his children’s mortality, comes to him haphazardly in his mother’s womb. It is a disease, and incurable.

  If a man and his friends are liars to one another, is their lying worth the trouble? For is it not impossible to be a liar, after all? Is not the lie also the truth?

  They were about to leave Fat Aram’s when Rock saw the four young men who had been standing outside the saloon on Tulare Street come back in. They came over to where the cousins were standing and drinking, and one of them said in English, “Are you Rock?”

  “Yes.”

  “A fellow was here about an hour ago asking for you.”

  “Have a drink,” Rock said.

  “We’re not drinking,” the speaker said. “We saw you come up on the motorcycle. We weren’t sure it was you, but we decided to take a chance.”

  “Thanks,” Rock said. “What sort of a fellow was he?”

  “Fat.”

  “Schwartz?” Rock asked.

  “Did he mention his name?” the speaker asked the other three.

  “Did he?” they asked one another.

  “No,” the speaker said. “He just asked if we’d seen you. He said it was important.”

  “Did he say where he was stopping?”

  “No,” the speaker said. “If we see him again, shall we say we saw you?”

  “You know the house on Winery Street?” Rock said.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there.”

  “O.K.,” the other said. “How are things going?”

  “O.K. How about you?”

  “We’re going in, too. Maybe we’ll run into you someplace.”

  “Sure,” Rock said. “Come on out to the house later on if you feel like it.”

  “No,” the other said. “We got a game coming up.”

  They went along, and Rock turned to his cousin.

  “How about another?” he said.

  “Sure,” Haig said. “Who do you think it was?”

  “It was Schwartz all right.”

  “Anything important?”

  “No,” Rock said. “Do you know these fellows?”

  “Not by name,” Haig said. “I’ve seen them around.”

  “They look alike, don’t they?”

  “They’re not even from the same city,” Haig said, “but they were all born in Fresno.”

  “I thought they might be brothers and cousins,” Rock said.

  “No,” Haig said, “one’s from Bitlis, one from Van, one from Moush, one from Harpoot.”

  “Which is our boy?”

  “The one who spoke. He felt he had a right to, being from Bitlis.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They work on the vineyards, in the wineries, in the packing houses, or they drive trucks.”

  “Weren’t they a little reserved?” Rock said.

  “They don’t know you,” Haig said. “They wanted to talk, but the one from Bitlis wouldn’t let them. They wanted to come out to the house, too.”

  The bartender handed them fresh drinks. Drinking, Rock wished he didn’t have to leave town. He wished he was back to stay. Even with Fat Aram’s another kind of place altogether, he wanted to stay. He wanted to sit down in an allnight poker game, get up from the game at six in the morning, get in a truck loaded with muscats, drive to the winery in Madera. He wanted to hang around the winery and smell the ferment of the grapes. He wanted to gam
ble all night and work all day and eat a bunch of muscats. He wanted to be back in Fresno, but it was too late. After the war, though, he’d come back, he’d buy a vineyard around Malaga, put up a house, have his wife and kids in it with him, and be home at last.

  “I’m going to be drinking tonight,” Rock said. “You going to be going along with me?”

  “I’m supposed to go on duty at eight,” Haig said, “but I’ll get out of it. I’ll telephone a pal and give him ten bucks instead of five.”

  “Can you find the game?” Rock said.

  “Sure,” Haig said.

  “I’d like to get in it. How about you?”

  “I could use a hundred or so. I need money in the Army.”

  “I hope you’re lucky, then,” Rock said.

  “I like to gamble too much to be lucky,” Haig said. “I love to gamble so much I always lose.”

  “Do they play high?”

  “Not too high. You’ll see a three-hundred-dollar pot every once in a while, though.”

  “Sounds like a good game,” Rock said. “I hope you win yourself enough to pay a pal all through the war.”

  “Pals pay me, too,” Haig said. “I run out of money, too.”

  They went out, got on the motorcycle, and slowly passed through the heart of the city, and then on to the house on Winery Street where the liars who were their family were telling lies to one another and little by little getting nearer and nearer to the truth, or something better, or something just as irrelevant.

  The children of the family saw them coming, the motorcycle moving slowly, going from one side of Winery Street to the other. The children ran down the street to the motorcycle, and then ran after it. A man was on the lawn with a leather briefcase under his arm. It was not altogether unlikely that he was a member of the family, too.

  Almost before the motorcycle had stopped this man went to Rock and Haig, both of whom were a little drunk by now, and said, “I am Craig J. Adams. My mother is the second cousin of the Vagramians which did not come to America but went to Beirut, in Syria. I practice in New York. Harvard. I am here on government business. It was by accident I heard you were passing through. I’ve spoken to your grandmother. Can I take you to dinner?”

  “No,” Rock said. “Have dinner with us. Have you met everybody?”

  “Is he a dentist?” Haig said. “He looks like a dentist.”

  “Yes, I believe I’ve met everybody,” Craig J. Adams said.

  “Do you speak Armenian?” Rock said.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “He talks like a dentist,” Haig said.

  Rock opened his mouth.

  “What’s happened to this tooth?” he said in Armenian.

  The lawyer, who wore a thin neatly trimmed moustache, looked into Rock’s mouth.

  “What is it?” he said in English.

  “Can’t you understand, either?” Rock said in English.

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” Craig J. Adams said.

  “What’s the matter with this tooth?” Rock said.

  “Is something the matter with one of your teeth?”

  “The nerve’s been jumping in this one lately.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing,” Rock said. “Do you enjoy dentistry?”

  “I am not a dentist,” Craig J. Adams said.

  “Oh?” Rock said. “I don’t know why I got the impression you were.”

  “No, I’m a lawyer,” Craig J. Adams said. “Corporation and insurance, for the most part. A dentist would scarcely be out here on government business.”

  “Son of an Armenian,” Rock said in Armenian to the lawyer. “Don’t you understand? Aren’t you an Armenian, a littler?”

  And then in English he said, “Listen, Abbott, I’m delighted to see you.”

  “Craig,” the man said. “Craig J. Adams.”

  “Yes,” Rock said. “You’ve lived in the East all your life, have you?”

  “Yes,” the lawyer said. “Our ties there with the older generation are not as close as yours are here.”

  “I want to ask a legal question,” Rock said. “These children will witness it, and my cousin Haig Vagramian. Haig, this is Craig J. Adams.” The cousin and the lawyer shook hands, Haig saying softly, “You should have been a dentist.”

  “This is the question,” Rock went on. He turned to the children. “Witness this, please,” he said in Armenian.

  “He can’t speak Armenian?” Haig said to Rock in Armenian. “What a phony.”

  “This is the question,” Rock said again. “I love a girl who is not Armenian. If I marry this girl and we have children, who is going to teach them to speak Armenian?”

  “That is hardly a legal question,” the lawyer said.

  “Who is going to teach them, however?” Rock said.

  “I don’t know,” the lawyer said.

  “Another question, then,” Rock said. “The girl says she wishes to learn Armenian, so she can speak to me, to my mother, to my grandmother. If she learns to do so, will she become an Armenian?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” a boy of eleven said.

  “Who is this boy?” Rock said to Haig.

  “That’s your first cousin,” Haig said. “Don’t you recognize him? Avak Vagramian.”

  “Is that who you are?” Rock said to the boy.

  “Yes,” the boy said. “Avak Vagramian.”

  “Krikor’s boy?”

  “Yes,” the boy said. “He’s inside. We’ve been here about an hour. We came from Kerman. My father brought you two bottles of rakhi.”

  “That’s my father’s younger brother,” Rock said to the lawyer. “He brought me two bottles. Will she become an Armenian?”

  “Legally,” the lawyer said, “a wife accepts or acquires the various identifying cultural or religious labels of her husband, insofar as he himself is aware of them or has employed or accepted them.”

  “Witnesses,” Rock said. “You have heard for yourselves.” He turned to Haig. “I’ll telephone her as soon as I have a little of Krikor’s rakhi. Let’s go inside, cousin,” he said to the lawyer, “and drink to your health.” He turned to the children. “Any of you under twelve kindly drink strawberry pop.” He put his arm around the lawyer and said to him warmly, “Please overlook my being so glad to be home. I’m delighted to see you.”

  They went inside, and Rock and his father’s younger brother Krikor embraced. Then Rock went into the kitchen to speak to Lula.

  “Who’s cooked all this food?” he said.

  “I put them all to cooking,” Lula said. “There is everything each of them knows best how to cook. I have done nothing but watch. There’s an open bottle there on the table.”

  Rock poured a tumblerful of the transparent liquid and handed it to his grandmother. He then poured three more and handed one to the lawyer, one to Haig, and one to Krikor. He himself lifted the bottle.

  “To Lula Vagramian,” he said.

  He lifted the bottle, as the others lifted their glasses, and everyone drank.

  The old lady coughed and said, “It’s good for my cough.”

  Rock found the water-level lady in the parlor and sat down beside her, drinking from the bottle.

  “Please tell me about the water level,” he said.

  “It’s falling,” the woman said. “There’s no telling when the whole place will become a desert again.”

  “Is there something we can do?” Rock said.

  “I have been thinking that if we appointed a committee to write to Washington, it would perhaps help,” the woman said.

  Haig came to Rock and said, “Get on the telephone and talk to her. She’ll be here tomorrow. Meet her at the airport. Take her up to San Francisco with you in the car. By the time you get there Lula will have her talking Armenian.”

  “I’m going to call her,” Rock said. “Right after dinner.”

  “Call her now,” Haig said. “I want to meet her.”

  “O.K.,” Rock
said.

  He got up and started for the telephone in the hall, but on the way he ran into the lawyer and took him to the water-level lady.

  “Here’s the man to talk to,” Rock said to the woman. “He has just come from Washington. He works for the government. He’s a lawyer. Speak English. He doesn’t speak Armenian.”

  He drank from the bottle again, and went to the telephone.

  He was suddenly scared to death she wouldn’t be home, that he wouldn’t be able to reach her, that she was out with Junk, or with somebody like him. The operator went to work on the call, saying she would call him back. He stayed beside the telephone, hanging onto the bottle. When the bell rang he was so excited he had to take another swig.

  “She’s not in,” the operator said. “Shall I try again in twenty minutes?”

  “Where is she?” Rock said.

  “Just a moment, please.” The operator went off the line a moment, came back, and said, “Her mother’s in, but she doesn’t know where she is. Will you speak to her mother?”

  “Yes,” Rock said, “let me speak to her please.”

  And when the mother came on the line Rock said, “Where can I reach Ann?”

  “She went out a few minutes ago,” the mother said.

  “I’d like you and Ann to fly to Fresno tonight.”

  “Fresno?”

  “Yes. It’s my home town. I’m visiting my grandmother, on my way to San Francisco, to visit my mother. I’d like you both to fly out and meet my family.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” the mother said.

  “I’d like Ann to fly out, then.”

  “She couldn’t,” the mother said. “She’s not eighteen yet.”

  “When will she be eighteen?” Rock said.

  “Tomorrow night,” the mother said.

  “One day more or less, doesn’t make much difference,” Rock said.

  “Are you going into the Army?” the mother said.

  “Yes. In a few days.”

  “Is there anything I can send you?”

  “Ann,” Rock said.

  “What?”

  “You can send me Ann.”

  “Ann couldn’t come to California alone,” the mother said.

  “Send a friend with her,” Rock said. “I’d like her to meet my family.”