Rosie Mahoney, on the other hand, talked all the way home. She said everything.
I think it made a better man of Rex. More human. After that he was a gentler sort of soul. It may have been because he couldn’t see very well for some time. At any rate, for weeks he seemed to be going around in a dream. His gaze would freeze on some insignificant object far away in the landscape, and half the time it seemed as if he didn’t know where he was going, or why. He took little part in the activities of the gang, and the following winter he stayed away altogether. He came to school one day wearing glasses. He looked broken and pathetic.
That winter Rosie Mahoney stopped hanging around with the gang, too. She had a flair for making an exit at the right time.
LATE STORIES
MADNESS IN THE FAMILY
GOING MAD WAS A SPECIALITY of the family. Until a man had gone mad, it was understood that he was still a boy. If he never did, he was not the equal of those who had. Only a few reached the age of thirty unseized, and, over a period of a century, only two or three members of the family went the whole distance unseized. More than a few took the trip several times, after which they were considered wise men, or perhaps even holy men, as if they had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as, in a sense, they had.
With the women it was another matter, although most of them took the trip too; but with the help of the other women in the family, their journeying was fairly well concealed. Women on the trip tended to reject their children, their brothers and sisters, their parents, their parents’ parents, and themselves. Their madness was justified and reasonable, which may have made its concealment a relatively simple matter. The demands on women for diplomatic behavior were so severe and so taken for granted by the men that madness was upon the women practically all of the time.
With the men the madness took several traditional forms, including a repudiation of God, or rather of Jesus and Christianity, since nothing but trouble had come of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the Church. Another common form of the madness was a total rejection of the human race, based upon ancient and contemporary evidence that the human race was criminal and contemptible. Oddly, however, this rejection stopped at the threshold of the madman himself, who, during the seizure, whether brief or prolonged, considered himself alone to be the only hope of the human race. His wife was a stranger—some crazy man’s daughter. His kids were tricks played on him by shabby genetics. His brothers and sisters were simpletons, his parents sleepwalkers.
Yet another form of the madness was a conviction that all was in vain, all was corrupt, all was useless, all was hopeless.
In Bitlis my father, Manak, was considered wise and worthy because he had made the trip to madness before he was twelve, which was uncommon. During the year of his rage, he went about his life and work pretty much the same as ever, except that people avoided him, because anybody who looked him full in the face saw that he was on his way, and not receptive to small talk. But once the trip was over, there wasn’t an easier man to have around. Difficult questions were put to him by the oldest men, which he answered immediately, with unmistakable appropriateness. In the most complicated disputes, he was called upon to pass judgment, and his decisions were instantly accepted by both sides.
When the tribe packed up and came to America, first to New York, and then to California, the family madness continued, but the form changed. Of course, this was to be expected, since America was another kind of place entirely. The whole family hadn’t one member buried here. Everybody was on the surface of the country, flat on his feet, selling watermelons, or plowing a row of vines.
We were in Fresno, but we were nowhere, too. How could we really be in a place until death had caught up with one of us, and we had buried him and knew he was there?
This, in fact, was the form the madness took in my Uncle Vorotan, the tailor who worked for Bloom Brothers in their shop on Merced Street.
Each evening when he reached his home, he asked both his wife and his mother, “Has anybody died yet, to heal this fearful loneliness, this aimless walking about, the emptiness and disconnection?” And each evening everybody in every branch of the family was not only still alive but getting stronger and bigger.
Word got around to everybody in the family, including the kids, that Vorotan had gone mad in a new way, compelled by the New World. He wanted somebody to die, and to be buried so that he, as well as the rest of us, might know that a tradition had been established, that a culture must inevitably follow, and that, consequently, we might all be permitted to believe that we were in fact in Fresno, in California, in America, and, in all probability, would stay. Kids, who are supposed to be easy to frighten, rather cherished Vorotan during his madness, even when he looked at one of them and said, “Open your mouth, please,” and after looking in, said, “All in order.” But some of the older men felt uncomfortable when he looked at them and some of the women, especially those who had married into the family, cried out, “Don’t look at me with those eyes. I’m in perfect health, and pregnant!” And later, such a woman might say to her husband, “I really believe he’ll kill somebody, so he can go to the funeral, and end his madness, and be at peace with himself again.”
If anybody took even slightly ill, everybody in the immediate family was cautioned not to let word reach Vorotan, for on several occasions he had gone to the family, to the bed of the one who was ill, and said, “Yes, I believe you will be the one to save us. Do not be afraid, do not hold back, the best Bashmanians are already in that great homeland in the sky, and the rest of us will soon follow.” Whereupon the man in bed shouted, “I’ve got a stupid cold in the head. I’m not going anywhere, but you are, out of this house!”
Vorotan’s madness went on and on, because nobody in the family died, even though there were eleven men and women in their eighties.
Early one morning, however, old Varujan, the gunsmith, was found dead in his bed, as if he were only asleep. At last, the Bashmanians had their first dead in the New World. Vorotan was overwhelmed by the good news, donated ten dollars toward the cost of the funeral, made a short talk at the graveside, and was instantly healed of his madness.
“Now, at last, we are here,” he said. “We can breathe easier. Varujan, old in years but young in spirit, has saved us all, our first traditionalist in the New World. He is in Ararat, where we shall all go.”
Ararat was the Armenian cemetery, which in those days had only a few graves, but is now almost as well populated as Fresno, and with more interesting people, including Vorotan himself.
FIRE
ONE OF THE FEW THINGS all of the Bashmanians are agreed about is fire, which we love, as we do all things in the fire family: the sun, all reds and yellows, California poppies and sunflowers. No wonder the Armenians fought off the Persians when they came with swords to demand that we join them in fire worship. Why should we spoil a good thing by making it official? We had official Jesus, and that was wonder enough.
When a building was on fire in Fresno and the Fire Department came roaring up in its red fire engines, we would already be there, laughing, and rejoicing in the light, heat, color, and music of the fire eating wood to ash.
The greatest fire I ever witnessed was a comparatively insignificant one. The thing that made it great was that it was my house. I had gone with my family in 1919 to Armona—about forty miles southwest of Fresno and three miles from Hanford—where there was good work in the fresh-fruit packing houses, and we shared a house bought for his family by my uncle Gunyaz Bashmanian after he suffered losses in three consecutive business enterprises. A small grocery store on O Street in Fresno went bankrupt because of the lower prices at the big store that suddenly opened next door. Then an orchard of peach and apricot trees in Biola brought forth two crops so meager that the place had to be given back to the bank. And finally this unlucky man bought a jewelry store on Mariposa Street in Fresno, next to D. Yezdan’s Clothing Store. One night it was emptied of everything by robbers, who were never apprehended.
“Robbers?” Gunyaz said when he heard of the theft. “Not police?”
Gunyaz put all of his remaining money into the buying of the old house in Armona, so that he and his wife and his two sons could work in the packing houses and perhaps save money again, but his wife took ill, one of his sons broke his arm, and Gunyaz himself sprained his back so badly that even with a brace holding him together he could do no more than stand and walk. When he was almost entirely out of money, with a lot of doctor’s bills to pay, Gunyaz took all of his business papers to a lawyer named Jivelikian and asked him to study them carefully. The following day the lawyer said, “I have found all of your papers in order. You paid two thousand dollars cash for the house and its furnishings. I know the house well, as the previous owner asked me to help him sell it three years ago. At best, the furnishings, the house, and the lot on which it stands are all together worth one thousand dollars. However, the fire insurance policy on the house is for six thousand dollars, and has a week to go.”
Gunyaz said, “The house is old and rotten. I’m afraid it might catch fire some night when all of us are asleep.”
“That is something to avoid at all costs,” the lawyer said.
“I can’t stand guard every night,” Gunyaz said. “I have a bad back and many debts.”
“My fee is one dollar,” the lawyer said.
Gunyaz paid Jivelikian a silver dollar and went home. As luck would have it, everybody was either at the packing house or at the doctor’s, and Gunyaz Bashmanian was home all alone, his head full of sorrow, anger, and fire.
That night, when everybody was home from work or from the doctor’s, he said to his wife, “Prepare a feast. We shall enjoy our good health and good fortune in this world, under the fig tree in the back yard.”
The feast began a little after ten, by which time I was more sleepy than hungry. Nevertheless, I kept myself awake enough to have a little of everything, and then I began to long for my bed, which I shared with my brother Bakrot Bashmanian, called Buck for short. But Gunyaz said, “No, you must eat now. You are eleven years old; it is not time to go into the house.”
He himself went into the house by way of the back door and came out by way of the front door. He returned slowly to the great table under the fig tree, a very solemn and thoughtful man.
Now a nice variety of flashes of light began to come from inside the house, but everybody was having such a good time eating and drinking and talking that I decided that the house was not on fire, and that the flashes of light were only rather large flickerings from three kerosene lamps there. Five minutes later, though, there was a large and crackling light coming from inside the house, and I decided that now the house was on fire, and glad to be. Still, I was better than half asleep and thought I could be dreaming, so I didn’t leap to my feet and holler “Fire!”
When I began to feel hot, however, I took Gunyaz by the arm and pointed to the house.
“Wah,” he said. “Our house is on fire.”
My brother shouted, “I’ll go call the Fire Department,” and ran off as fast as he could go, barefoot.
“Hurry,” Gunyaz shouted after him. “Perhaps we can save something.”
Everybody ran to the empty lot next door, and then across the street, where we stood in a religious group, crossing ourselves, as we watched the house being devoured by a big, busy mouth with a ferocious appetite—after which everything fell into the house, and then the fire died. The light went out, the heat ended, the world grew philosophic.
The fire engines came. The happy firemen splattered water on the smoking half-skeleton until all that was left was a lot of wet black cinders where the house had been. A smell of bright living gave way to a smell of dark dying. I wanted to go to sleep. Even so, we were all of us up until long after midnight, and then we found places to sleep on the floors of the houses of various friends who were also in Armona for the summer work.
“How did it start?” somebody asked, and somebody else said, “From the kitchen stove, after cooking.”
It was the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most artful, the sweetest, and the most philosophic fire I ever saw. Even so, I felt especially bad about losing the bed I shared with my brother—the whole thing gone up forever in smoke.
THE INSCRIBED COPY OF THE
KREUTZER SONATA
GASPAR BASHMANIAN, who understood the enormity and majesty of the human experience, who loved children (the human race of tomorrow, he called them), suddenly became engaged to a girl of seventeen who lived on a muscat vineyard in Reedley with her father and mother, the Apkar Apkarians. These good people threw a great party in honor of the groom-to-be, Gaspar the gentleman, Gaspar the reader of Tolstoy, Gaspar the twenty-seven-year-old philosopher and personal friend of trees.
And everybody was invited.
By horse and buggy, by Ford and Chevrolet, by Dodge and Dort, and by Moon and Kissel Kar, the relatives of both sides began to arrive at the vineyard in Reedley, and I myself, twelve years old, riding with Gaspar in his Overland, arrived there too, just at dusk, at that most somber moment of the day.
And the first thing I heard was the laughter of an unseen girl, a laughter that made me believe everything was worthwhile. Gaspar sat behind the wheel of his open car and listened. The laughter came again, and all I knew was, I loved her, whoever she was, but Gaspar said, “Who is that laughing?”
“Some girl at the party,” I said.
“That kind of laughter is no good.”
“It sounds good.”
“It is the laughter of the animal.”
We heard the laughter again, and then from around the neat white farmhouse, where the lilac and rose trees stood together like ladies and gentlemen, came running a dark girl dressed all in white, still laughing, herself prettier than her laughter. Chasing the girl were three more girls of her own age, or perhaps a little older, in dresses of green, blue, and red, who were making the sign shame, shame, at her, scraping one forefinger upon the other.
“My God,” Gaspar said, and I thought he meant how beautiful, how charming, but he went on to say, “how vulgar.”
“Who is that girl in the white dress?” I asked God, or anybody.
“I don’t know,” Gaspar said, “but God help the man who marries her.”
Around the house they disappeared, and out of the house came Apkar Apkarian himself, straight to the car, straight to my uncle Gaspar. “Come, my son, come into the house,” he said. “What took you so long?”
“‘Slowly to the wedding, slowly to the grave,’” Gaspar said.
“The old sayings are wise sayings,” Apkar said, “but there may be sayings we have never heard and shall never hear that may be even wiser. ‘Swiftly to the wedding, swiftly away from the killer.’”
“Swiftly away from what killer?” Gaspar said.
“Loneliness, my boy,” Apkar said. “It is better to be in a lifelong fight with somebody one can see—one’s wife, one’s children—than to live in the empty peace of the killer who can never be seen. Come along, I’ll have her mother bring her to you.”
The parlor was a shambles of loud people drinking, singing, talking, and dancing, and after the cheers and the jeers—“Ah, why should you be so lucky, and I so unlucky?”—the girl’s father took Gaspar to a far room, followed by her mother, several very old men and women, and four or five boys and girls. In the room was a very large bed, and the father said, “Everybody, sit down, please. And you, woman, go fetch your daughter and present her to Gaspar Bashmanian, her husband-to-be.”
I couldn’t wait to see who it was that Gaspar was going to marry, and when I saw that it was the laughing girl in the white dress, I felt “What a lucky dog you are,” but at the same time I felt “Oh, no, let this one be for me.”
As for Gaspar, he tried very hard to conceal his disappointment, and failed. To him, this was the animal girl, and there she stood before him, all composed, deadly serious, and just a little scared, just a little worried about
how to be because he was a handsome man, perhaps the handsomest she had ever seen, and appropriately severe and demanding. Therefore, she didn’t want to make any mistakes that might impel him to notice who and what she really was; but that was precisely what he was noticing—the healthy, bathed, dressed-up daughter of a vineyardist and his illiterate but very wise wife. Should she hold out her hand, small and white and for two weeks rubbed day and night with lotions, or should she bow, or should she smile, or should she just stand there like an exposed fraud and wait?
At last she put out her hand, but when Gaspar didn’t go for it instantly, she drew it back, blushing, and then he put out his hand, but now she was bowing, and her hands were clasped behind her back, so that Gaspar had to reach all the way around her to meet her hand on its way back, but as it wasn’t on its way back, he withdrew his hand, whereupon the girl straightened up from the bow, brought her hand out again, smiled, her face as red as the petal of a rose, but again Gaspar hesitated, she drew her hand back, and then, slightly pushed by two running small girls who were in her family, she began to lose her balance, reached with both arms to Gaspar for help, he embraced her, but only in order to keep her from falling, she wrapped her arms around him, their heads were almost together, Gaspar forgot his reading and kissed her on the mouth, while the little girls cried out and the little boys whistled, and Apkar said to his wife, “They will have a happy marriage and many children.”
Gaspar stopped kissing the girl, but now she kissed him, and the girl’s mother said to her father, “A happy marriage and many children, but perhaps not beginning this very minute. Take the young man to the men and let him get drunk, I must talk to my daughter.”
Fresno Stories Page 4