No man loves anyone but himself, not even his own mother, not even his own wife, not even his own daughter, for love is a lie.
No man loves anyone but himself, but this, too, is a lie, and no man loves even himself.
Every man is damned, as he himself knows, and the damned hate one another, each in his own damned way. They hate one another, pity one another, regret the failure of one another.
A man’s own mother happened to meet his own father at a time of hunger and need in each of them, and every wedding is a wedding of male and female needs and failings, and a lie.
Every wedding is a wedding of failure to failure, one boy and one girl in love with the terrible hope of one another, the girl in love with herself and boys, the boy in love with himself and girls, the wedding itself in love with weddings and the world. But the love is damned, the wedding is damned, and so is the world. The unborn children they are in love with are damned. The longing of each of them, the boy and the girl wedded, the son arrived, the daughter arrived, is damned. The love is a lie, the wedding is a lie, the politeness is furious and brave, the tenderness is fierce and bitter, the doing of time together is fearful and beautiful.
The doing of time together, winking at the posture of time, at one another, each of them flying, and time doing nothing, loving nothing, hating nothing, wanting nothing, receiving nothing, giving nothing, is holy, and hell.
He was asleep on an airplane, flying through the posture of time to death, to the end of his mother, to the departure of another of his girls. The old Lula was gone three years to her husband Manuk. Ann was gone a year to safety and silliness, hats and hotel rooms. Little Lula mistook the men of the hotel rooms for her father.
And now his mother was lying in a bed in a hospital in San Francisco, lying and dying, asleep in the violent sleep of dirty death, lying in a strange and hateful building, her helpless body cared for by gentle and hateful strangers, her sleep clamoring with the lies she had always believed, lying there and knowing at last how all of it had been lies.
Yesterday he had slept in snow, in a storm of black snow, in a bed of cold, and he’d drawn close to the secret, which is death.
Another of his girls had been struck down. Her being in him had fallen at the feet of standing time, to the bottom of time’s posture. Hadn’t he danced in the kitchen of the house on Winery Street, danced for joy at the smell of his girl and the bread she had baked? That girl now fallen? Araxi Vagramian, the daughter of Lula Karagozian who married Manuk Vagramian? Araxi Vagramian who married Vahan Vagramian, bringing together two unlike families bearing the same name, the female side laughing at the male side for being unworldly, the male side looking down on the female side as scoundrels with good-looking daughters? That girl fallen?
Ann was gone to safety because marriage to a Vagramian was too much trouble: a Vagramian who had contempt for everybody she knew, for everything she believed was important—clothes, hats, cosmetics, shoes, parties, nice people, famous people, exciting people, happy people, plans for parties, plans for eating and drinking and talking the rest of their lives with nice people. Ann was a year gone to the resignation of their failure, to the social smartness of their divorce, of being seven years married, the mother of two kids, still only twenty-five, still a beautiful girl, a girl with many old friends and many new ones. She was gone to safety.
Lula was gone to Manuk in Bitlis by way of a weed-covered grave in the Armenian Cemetery in Fresno, Ararat.
Little Lula was gone with Ann.
Each had fallen, and now it was his girl Araxi, too.
One by one the girls had fallen and gone.
He had been at a party, sitting at a table, talking to a girl named Eve Ellis. A waiter had taken him to the telephone and in a moment he was listening to his sister.
“Mama’s dying,” his sister was saying. “What shall we do to keep Mama from dying, Rock? Mama’s in the St. Francis Hospital, dying, Rock. They pierced her spine and took out fluid. It was full of blood. It was black, Rock. Mama’s not Mama any more. She’s asleep, but it’s not the way Mama slept. When she wakes up it’s not the way Mama wakes up. We talked this afternoon, but it wasn’t Mama the way Mama talks. She talked about the bread she was supposed to bake when she got up this morning, but didn’t bake because of her head. She told me to be sure to bake the bread. She told me not to call you, Rock. She said you’ve got troubles enough of your own, but the doctor told me to call. Mama’s dying, Rock.”
He left the party angry at his mother. He’d just run into a girl he wanted to know. He’d just decided to go to work. He’d just gotten hungry for the first time in months, and wanted to eat. He’d just decided that he had lost Ann and the children forever, and he’d just begun to love them all the more for being lost. He’d just begun to go back to being a son again until he could find another girl to marry and by whom to have children, and through whom to become a father again. He’d just decided it was time to begin again. To eat, to drink, to tell jokes, to look at girls again out of the eyes of a son, to talk to them with the voice of a son, to begin again. To begin everything again, to put aside the father’s wisdom and take up again the son’s confidence that he can achieve anything.
He was pleased when there was no plane until morning.
“She’s dead,” he said. “She’s dead now. The rest is foolishness. Araxi’s dead, too. Back to Eve Ellis, then. Back to food and drink, then. Back to the jokes, the looking and the laughing. Back to the fun of the son.”
He went back and told no one, not even Myra Clewes, who said, “Is anything the matter, Rock?”
“No, Myra.”
“Was it Ann?”
“No. Everything’s all right.”
He would fly out and see her, talk to her, and she would be home again baking bread in a few days. When he returned to New York he would go to work. He would visit the kids when Ann was out. He would find an apartment. He would have them visit him, stay overnight, hear him talk and sing in Armenian.
Lula had been almost ninety when she had died. Araxi was only sixty-six. She wasn’t going to die. He’d fly out and talk to her. He’d let her know how much more he loved Ann and the kids now, now that he knew they were lost, now that they were less Vagramians than New Yorkers, now that learning to speak Armenian was out of the question for them, now that he had stopped being infuriated about what was happening to them, what was going to happen to them, now that he knew that anything that happened to them would have to be considered good enough, and from this knowing, which would come from beginning again as a son, his old girl, Araxi Vagramian, would begin again, too, getting up and going home to bake the bread Vahan had loved so much, and her son Arak and her daughter Vava, and as long as he had lived her son Haig.
He had to begin again. This time he had to begin in New York, for that was where he was, where he would be no matter where he happened to go. He was there in Ann, in Haig, in Lula. He would fly to San Francisco to get his mother home for twenty years more of it, and then he would fly back to forty years more of it for himself, beginning in New York.
“What happened?” Eve Ellis said. “Where did you go? I’ve had three propositions since you left. I didn’t even know if you were coming back, but I turned them down. Are you really fond of Mozart?”
His mother wasn’t going to die because he was going to begin again with this girl.
A man’s truth is instantaneous and everlasting, marvelous and miserable. There is nothing in him which is not true, wonderful, pathetic, delightful. He is drenched in innocence. He is anything he decides he is at any moment he chooses to decide, his hat on his head.
A man is an actor, as he himself knows. He acts all men, and each is a lie, as he himself knows, but he himself is not a lie, he himself is the truth, for it is himself which is himself, which cannot be acted, which is, which is truth itself, bellowing and bloody, or bright and bland. A man is a liar who cannot lie, a crook who cannot be crooked, an imitation who is an original, for a man is an ac
tor, he is all men, all things, the original lie, the final truth.
A man invents truth as he goes, he invents mankind as he goes.
There is no end to a man’s acting. The bounce of his acting is everlasting. The measuring of it is instantaneous and impossible. A man cannot lie, cannot know the truth. He can only be innocent, as he himself knows. He is a true thing come from nothing. He is a false thing come from everything, high-rolling for home.
Let her be awake when I get there, he said. Let me see her. Let her see me. Let her seeing of me tell her there is time. The dough is in the tub, ready to cut and shape. The. bread will be made. Her son’s daughter lives, a woman like herself, and there is time for them to go to one another, see and smell one another, speak to one another, know themselves in one another. Let her see her son and know his son lives, a man like her father Manuk, like her husband Vahan, like her son Arak, and there is time for her to see these men in Haig, and take him in her arms. There is still time for them to be alive together. Let her hear him when he tells her in words which deal in other things that there is time, time for bread, time to hear the voice of his daughter, the laughter and shouting of his son, the chanting, embracing speech of Ann, even. Let me get her up and home for twenty years more, he said. Let me get her into my old car and drive her along the ocean, high above the ocean, beside the sand cliffs and the rock cliffs. Let her see the sunset upon the water, and let me speak to her in Armenian.
“Would you like a blanket over your feet?” the girl on the airplane said.
“No thanks,” Rock said. “How long do we stop in Chicago?”
“Twenty minutes,” the girl said.
“I’ll do this, he thought. Ill telephone Doc Kirmoyan and ask him to tell me what to do. Only, I know it’s the end. I know it’s death. What can the Doc tell me about that? Araxi’s dead. She had almost thirty years more than Vahan, but twenty years less than Lula. What’s Vava going to do now? She has her husband, her three sons, her two daughters, but what about her pal Araxi? She used to go to Araxi’s house every morning and call out, “Araxi, are you up? It’s Vava.” And her pal used to laugh and call back, “I know it’s Vava. Do you think I forget overnight?”
He would telephone Doc Kirmoyan, anyhow. There might be something new now, a mystic powder. You take this powder and instantly it heals the broken vein. It makes all of the veins young and resilient. It was figured out by a druggist’s clerk in Cincinnati, a remarkable thing called Nu-Vein, thirty-five cents a packet.
Already he was on the phone.
“Doc, what about this Nu-Vein?”
“It works, but only on people past sixty-five.”
“Wonderful, Doc. She’s sixty-six. Is there anything else she ought to have? Air? Water? Light?”
“Yes, those are the things. She’ll be fine.”
“Now, Doc, about later. Her mother died several years ago, almost ninety. There wasn’t anything they could do. Have they got something for that?”
“Yes, they’ve got something called Nearing-Ninety, it’s a powder, white, teaspoonful in a little water. Half a dollar a throw. Most people that age have got great-grandchildren who can afford it. It only came out this year. Too bad.”
“Yes. I knew there ought to have been something.”
“Yes, Rock, they finally figured it out.”
“Now, Doc, after ninety, what?”
“They’re working on it, Rock. Another couple of months, another year. A lot of them when they get that old don’t want to spend the money. They want the funeral. But they’re working on it. There’s a fellow’s got a powder almost worked out, not quite white, a little gray, that seems to be effective where they want the funeral. A teaspoonful to every member of the family and they don’t want the funeral.”
“Oh, it’s for the family, not for the old lady? Is that it?”
“That’s right, Rock. That one—he hasn’t given it a name yet—it has to be something polite—is for the family.”
“Now, Doc, tell me. What have they got for Death?”
“Oh, the usual. Everything. The mind boys are in on some new things. Anybody can get his Death in no time at all just by concentrating on it.”
“No, Doc, I mean what have they got—what kind of mystic powder have they got that prevents it?”
“Well, they haven’t got that, Rock. But what you want is Nu-Vein. It’s fine.”
He turned in his seat, as if to get away from the mystic powders, saying, What’s the poor sick girl dreaming? Do they know anything about that? Can they guess what a dying girl dreams?
Poor Mama, he said. Poor Araxi. Well, let her see me. Let me see my old girl before she goes. Let her see her own body’s stranger once more before she goes.
A man’s truth is instantaneous and preposterous, as he himself knows, as he is carried by a piece of junk that flies through the posture of time to Death, to the end of his mother, to the death of the bread-maker, a man’s own girl, a man’s own mother.
A man is many men. He is each of his friends and enemies, each of them going, taking him with them, as he takes them. He is the men who made him, each of them in despair about his own failure.
Day-dreaming on the airplane, morning-dreaming, afternoon-dreaming, night-dreaming, sleep-dreaming, life-dreaming, death-dreaming, he wandered among the girls.
He hugged the one Myra Clewes was sure he would like, as sorrow hugs and heals sorrow, healing itself upon it, with tender arrogance and violent pity, each sorrow watching the body of the other sorrow.
“This is my name,” she said. “This is my address. This is my telephone number here. This is the number where they’ll know where I can be reached when I’m not here. I’m writing it down because I want you to hear the Mozart.”
“O.K.”
“I mean the music itself I told you about,” she said. “I think you especially will like that music.”
“I like it.”
“I mean, when you actually hear it.”
“I hear it.”
“I understand,” she said. “Yes, you do.”
“Everybody hasn’t got the taste for Mozart you have,” he said.
“You will keep the numbers and call, so we can hear the music itself, won’t you?” she said.
He fished into his pocket, brought out the card, looked at the writing, and put the card in his wallet, a man flying through the posture of time, hanging onto the girls, trying not to let any more of them get away, to get lost in the crowds, or in safety, or in the grave.
A man is forever asking questions.
Why did she lie? he said. Why is she a liar? Why did I fail to win her away from lies? Why did I fail?
For the sake of my children why didn’t I marry the girl in Dublin? She may not have been a liar.
Why did I drive for Murphy instead of going the way my father wanted me to go? Why didn’t I learn to read and write the language and go with my father to the paper and work there? Why didn’t I work there, and buy a small vineyard around Kerman, Clovis, or Malaga? Why did I turn away from my father? Why did I stand on the corner of Eye and Tulare and break his heart? What good did it do me to stand there and talk to a couple of street girls when I knew it meant to him the failure of the language itself, the failure of the word as he knew it, the failure of the people, the failure of the family, the failure of his own fatherhood?
Why did I turn away from my father? What harm would it have done to put on the red shirt Sunday mornings and sing the song of the alphabet or the one of morning light in the red-brick church? Why couldn’t I have made a gift to my mother of the voice singing the songs she had known from childhood, who is now dying, who is now coming to the end? Why couldn’t I have made a gift to my father of knowing his language?
He drove for Murphy because he liked Murphy.
The year before he had gone to an employment agency to get a job during summer vacation. He had filled out the application.
“Here under nationality,” the woman said, “you have writt
en American.”
“Of course.”
“Aren’t you—? Isn’t that name, Vagramian—?”
“Armenian?” he said. “Of course. I was born in Fresno. I was born on Winery Street.”
“Hadn’t I better put down Armenian?” the woman said.
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you do. Change the name from Vagramian to Basoglu, change the religion from Christian to Mohammedan, change the nationality from American to Turk. My father and his father filled out forms for the Turks long ago. They filled them out accurately, too. They were Armenians, not Turks. They were Christians, not Mohammedans. They lived in Armenia, not Turkey. If you’re going to change my nationality, let’s have some fun. I don’t want the job anyway.”
Murphy said, “What are you, another Armenian?”
“That’s right,” Rock said.
“Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“Fast?”
“As fast as you like.”
“A dollar every day you drive,” Murphy said.
“A dollar and a half,” Rock said.
“A dollar and a quarter.”
“O.K.”
“Get in the car and drive,” Murphy said. “I want to go to Reedley, then to Sanger, then to Clovis. Bring me back to the Hotel Fresno. Put the car in the garage down the street. Go home. See me at the hotel five o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ve got to drive to Bakersfield and back.”
Rock got into the bright yellow-green Cadillac, and drove.
Murphy sat in the back.
“Food is your own problem,” he said. “Girls, too. Your pay is a dollar and a quarter a day. I pay for gasoline, oil, garage, tires, repairs.”
In Reedley, though, Murphy asked Rock to have lunch with him. After the drive to Bakersfield and back the next day, Murphy paid Rock two dollars instead of a dollar and a quarter. A couple of days later he paid Rock three dollars. After that he paid three dollars every day whether Rock drove or not, and when he went back to Brooklyn at the end of the season Murphy gave Rock a hundred dollars.
“You drive good, Rock,” he said, “but you tell the best jokes I’ve ever heard. This is for the jokes.”
Rock Wagram Page 17