The History of Now

by Daniel Klein

  “Did you pack my book?” Ned Shields, as President of the United States, intones earnestly to his wife (Sally Rule) on the stage below.

  The audience snickers appreciatively.

  “The Bible?” the First Lady responds.

  “No, the other one,” the President replies petulantly. “You know, Bicycle Repair for . . .’” Here, Ned cups a hand around his mouth and stage-whispers, “Dummies.”

  On this boffo line, the audience roars.

  Franny has read the play several times and sat through many rehearsals, but this is the first time she has seen it performed before a live audience. She knows from experience that most Grandville audiences arrive at the theater aching to laugh and willing to do so at the puniest provocation. Jean-Marc used to call such audiences—say, an Ithaca College audience filled with visiting parents—‘red hatters’ meaning that all it would take for them to double over in hysterics is one character coming onstage in a red hat. Babs Dowd has a houseful of red hatters tonight. They are here to giggle and howl, especially at the president and company; for them, anything relating to the current administration is a red hat. That is what always bothered Franny about How’s Never? She sees it as all goofy hats sitting upon empty heads, easy laughs without a single compelling revelation. And tonight she grits her teeth as laughter echoes inside the theater. The audience is not only complicit in Babs’s bludgeoning polemic, they are applauding themselves on their political astuteness. When Ned-qua-George W. says, “Sometimes I think evil people have a real hard time doin’ good things,” the audience acts as if it is being swept away on a wave of high wit. Franny feels a rush of contempt for everyone inside the theater.

  During the act break, Franny remains in her seat while the rest of her group goes downstairs to buy Kaela a soda. A few people she knows come over to praise her set and Franny accepts it uneasily. She would like to tell them about Gil Crespert’s pretentious tweaks—she wants no credit for those overthe-top shadows—but she decides to let it pass. Eavesdropping on audience members discussing the first act, Franny’s suspicions about their discrimination are confirmed: the author of How’s Never? is being compared to Brecht. The world is loaded with idiots and most of them appear to have taken up residence—at least second-home residence—in Grandville.

  Early in the second act when the fanciful bassinet descends to the bunker with the Clown/Angel aboard, the audience howls, then breaks into applause. But Franny observes one exception to this spirited response: two seats away from her, Kaela is hiding her eyes behind her hands. The ten-year-old is terrified. Esther puts her arm around her daughter and pulls her close. For a moment, Esther and Franny’s eyes meet, both imagining what horror the image has awakened in this once-abandoned child. Franny finds herself thinking that for the first time this evening the play has had a profound impact on a member of the audience.

  As the Clown/Angel flounces around the stage tossing off politically correct platitudes, a super spot follows him, making it look as if he is superimposed on the rest of the action. Franny shifts forward in her seat, studying the spot-lit set behind him. The set is different from the way she designed it and she can easily perceive that now. It is a difference in coloring. How had she missed that? Instead of the watery greens and browns she had appropriated from the children’s Bible, Gil Crespert had shifted the palette to the Renaissance masters, rich earth tones with glistering highlights. Under the spotlight, any subtlety that the New York designer’s alteration might have possessed in dimmer illumination totally vanishes. Gil knew what he was doing; he was giving Babs Dowd precisely what she craved— a patina of classiness. And in the process, of course, he had erased every trace of irony Franny had planted there.

  Franny is furious. The son-of-a-bitch probably thought Franny was too dimwitted to discern the real effect of his sneaky tweaks. It was a fucking conspiracy—Babs, Gil, the whole bunch of them parading around on the moral high ground while there was nothing to which they would not stoop to inflate their infantile egos. Franny suddenly stands up in front of her seat. She needs to get the hell out of here before she shouts out something that will bring this stuporous audience to its senses. But before she can do either, Wendell grabs her hand.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” he whispers.

  Franny hesitates, then sits down again. “Okay,” she whispers. She manages to sit still for the rest of the performance.

  There are five curtain calls, Babs Dowd appearing with her actors for the fifth with a bouquet of roses in her arms. She is wearing a Vera Wang one-shoulder silk gown. She throws kisses like a prima ballerina. She bathes in the applause for several minutes, then raises her hand for quiet.

  “I cannot tell you how happy you make me,” Babs begins. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It goes without saying that this production is the result of a synergy of talents—from Ned and Sally and Tom and Frank and Amy’s superb acting to Franny deVries’s magnificent set. My stage manager, Billy Foutier. Milly Desmond on lights. Danny Cohen’s sound. This was a collaboration made in, well, a manger!”

  The line gets a laugh, then more applause. Franny has no doubt that Babs rehearsed it for hours in front of her hallway mirror. When the audience quiets again, Babs hands off her flowers to Sally, then gestures to someone in the front row. It is her husband, Michael. He now shuffles with studied shyness to the steps at stage right. A moment later, he is standing next to his wife, his arm loosely around her waist.

  “I’m not usually very good at keeping secrets,” Babs goes on. “In fact, a week before Christmas everybody in my family knows exactly what I’ve gotten them.” She pauses here for another trill of titters. “But this time, I’ve managed to keep my big mouth shut until right now.”

  For one heady moment, Franny is convinced Babs is going to announce that she and Michael are getting divorced. Considering all the rumors about Babs and Ned’s backstage romance, that simply has to be it. God knows, for Babs Dowd everything is show biz—why not her sex life too?

  “Michael and some of his old Harvard buddies have done something quite wonderful,” Babs goes on. “They have put together a rescue team. A twelve-million-dollar rescue team.”

  Wendell again reaches for his daughter’s hand, squeezes it tightly. He does not know precisely what is coming, but he knows instinctively it will collide with their lives. Franny’s hand lies limply in his. She sits there numbly.

  “Michael and his friends have purchased this magnificent theater and starting this winter, they will begin restoring it to its former glory,” Babs says. “They will enlist the finest artisans and craftsmen in the world. And when they are done—with a little help from yours truly—live theater, dance, and opera will once again tread these hallowed boards all year round. The Phoenix will rise again!”

  The applause is instant and thunderous. In a moment, it is joined by cheers of ‘Bravo!’ Virtually everyone inside the Phoenix is on his or her feet, including Franny, who releases her hand from her father’s and steps alone into the aisle. She is both light-headed and frantic, floating free and sinking fast. She feels utterly weak yet she moves with keen determination. She makes her way to the stairway as the cheering goes on, now accompanied by stamping feet that make the balcony floor vibrate beneath her. Franny is barely cognizant of her transit to the stairs or of the pale yellow light of the sconces on the stairway walls. She feels as if she is being led by an exotic external force. If she is aware of anything about herself, it is that she is entirely on her own, utterly and irrevocably on her own.

  Her head bowed, Franny pushes her way down the center orchestra aisle, brushing against the shoulders and hips of the exiting audience. Here and there her name is called in greeting, but she does not respond. In truth, it does not even register. The curtain is still open and many of the players still stand on the apron accepting the hands and good words of friends and relatives. Among them is Sally Rule who motions to Franny, beckoning her to join this receiving line of praise. As if
following Sally’s direction, Franny goes to the steps at stage right and ascends the stage, but instead of moving toward Sally, Franny steps behind the row of actors to the set for How’s Never? There, she reaches into her jacket pocket for her cigarette lighter and ignites the manger straw.

  II

  ~ Migrations ~

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  If, some one hundred and fifty thousand years ago when homo sapiens first appeared on the African contintent, we had resolved to stay put—to root ourselves forever after in the soil where we found ourselves—human history would be a far simpler affair. To be sure, the force of expanding population would have elbowed us out of the Original Cave or Hole in the Ground or Mountaintop Stump, bumping us out in concentric circles to new caves and holes and stumps where we would propagate anew and push ever outward. But over the millennia, however far we spanned from that First Place, we would be one contiguous tribe with one language and one culture. And despite variations in climes and topography, soil and wildlife, this world would be a single place.

  But we made no such resolution. Rather, individually, in pairs, but most often in hordes, we gathered up our sharpened stones and desiccated skins and mewling infants, and traipsed to new worlds where life and survival might somehow be better—safer, easier, a more harmonious match of place and desire. In a trek that required untold generations to accomplish, we put entire mountain ranges and rivers and emerging continents between us and our forebears as we marched north to the Himalayas along what one day would be called the Silk Road, making our way to Eurasia and eastward to Oceania, or branching across the Straits of Gibraltar and, scores of millennia later, westward to the Americas.

  Along the way, we awake one morning to see that an antelope is munching contentedly on a red orb that has dropped from a tree, so we take a bite too. Finding it sweet and nourishing, we gaze around and see that these red orb-bearing trees cover the hills on every side of us. Such is the provocation to abandon our millennia-old journey, to stop right here and make this newfound land our own. From this decision, a new people will grow as if we had been born here at the beginning of history. We evolve to match this place, with, say, eyes the color of its sky or perhaps of its soil, with lank hair or curly, pink skin or brown. A language is bred too, say, Aramaic or Latin, or at other times and places, Norse or Basque. An indigenous way of building a house, of styling a hat, of wooing a mate—all of these follow ineluctably from a bite of succulent fruit that promises a better life.

  * * *

  The only times Hector thinks of his birthplace are when he sings the songs he learned there from his father: “El Pilon,” “En Una Tiniebla Oscura,” “Zafra,” and, of course, “Mis Flores Negras,” the melancholy ballad that will forever resonate for him with the randomness of death—his father’s murder in front of their farmhouse by a boyhood friend turned revolutionary guerilla, and Rico’s murder in his Soacha hut by Hector’s own hand. Singing “Mis Flores” with Mano and Sylvia in the alleyway alongside the Casa Medina, Hector can smell Puerto Alvira’s sugarcane-scented mountain breezes while in his mind’s eye he sees the stilled body of his father.

  Because the income from Hector’s street performances permits him to house his family in a fine, two-room apartment in La Sabana, he no longer needs to sell contraband cigarettes in the Sagrado. On his trio’s expanded round of Bogotá tourist spots, he gives wide berth to that section of town lest any street hawkers from Soacha see him; the coincidence of Rico’s murder and Hector and his family’s sudden disappearance surely did not go unnoticed in the shantytown. Nonetheless, Hector is convinced there is no room for revenge in the feeble hearts of Rico’s survivors. As it happens, Hector is mistaken about this.

  Hector’s trio has prospered. In the mornings, they perform in the outdoor cafés in the Plaza de Toros de Santamaria, at midday in front of the historic homes in La Candelaria, then to cafés in the Parque de la Indepencia before finishing the day at the Casa Medina. Hector designed the route himself after painstakingly translating a chapter entitled “A Fun Day Tour of Bogotá” from a copy of Fodor’s English language guide to Colombia that he found discarded in the Medina’s trash. In this way, the musicians shadow the day tourists, those visitors who want to pack their allotted twenty-four hours with as much authentic Bogotá experience as possible and who, grateful for any efficiency to this end, are big tippers. Each day, Hector, Mano, and Sylvia pocket more pesos than a dozen Bogotá factory workers.

  The pinched nasality of Hector’s voice notwithstanding, he has a natural gift for love songs. With his large mournful eyes and animated, long-fingered hands, he can sell the torment of a broken heart more convincingly than any number of balladeers with rounder timbres. He and Sylvia often conclude a set with a duet of “Amor Sin Medida” that brings tears to the eyes of women of all ages and pesos by the handful into Hector’s upturned hat. Yet Hector’s real heart is far more pragmatic than the romantic one with which he sings; he is, after all, a survivor.

  It is a sweltering afternoon in December. Under a towering palm, the singers perform for the outdoor patrons of the Café Flora in the Parque de la Indepencia. The café is cited in Fodor’s for its sweet crepes with ice cream, strawberries, and chunks of dark chocolate, so most of the patrons are foreigners—today, English and French, thus the trio’s sprinkling of Beatles and Brel. The day has been long, hot, and already quite profitable, all of which takes its toll on the liveliness of their performance. Much as they usually enjoy making music, their singing this afternoon is merely a labor of habit. They sound like a cheap recording.

  But when they segue from “Zafra” to Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” Sylvia unexpectedly drops an octave at the line, ‘Et le temps perdu, a savoir comment oublier ces heures qui tuaient parfois,’ adding a tremolo ache of longing to its stark depiction of a past that is forever lost. It takes a moment for her now-impassioned voice to rouse Hector from his listlessness, but once revived he shifts from picking at his cuatro to stroking it like a flamenco guitar, echoing Sylvia’s lament. Thus following her lead, he now follows her eyes to see what it is that inspires her. It is a lanky American in a seersucker suit who has risen from his table at the Flora, espresso cup in hand, and is walking toward her.

  It is hardly unusual for men to gaze at Sylvia with ardor or lust or, most often, a mixture of both. She is dramatically beautiful and, though regal in bearing, she projects the easy availability of all beguiling performers. But Hector is unconcerned. He has accompanied Sylvia so many times that he can comfort himself with his knowledge that however rapturous her performance, she is just teasing her audience. Yet at this moment he realizes he is witnessing an exception: Singer and song are one. Sylvia is singing of the absolute necessity to seize passion before it passes, and she is singing this imperative directly to the American.

  The song finished, the man speaks to her. He introduces himself in perfect Spanish that is accented not by American English, but by Colombia’s purer mother language from Spain. For a moment, Hector wonders if he was mistaken to assume from the man’s boyish haircut and self-assured smile that he was American, but then he hears him inform Sylvia that he works at the American Embassy. They immediately begin to walk off together when Sylvia abruptly turns to Hector and Mano and sweetly asks their permission to call it a day. Permission granted. A Dios.

  “God in heaven, now we have to drown our sorrows,” Mano quips to Hector.

  The two young musicians laugh. Both of them adore Sylvia. Late one night over tumblers of rum they had confessed this to one another, concluding that if one of them ever won her heart, the other was clearly entitled to plant a knife in the winner’s heart.

  Arm in arm, Hector and Mano start for the Café Andes just outside the park. It is early in the day for them to have time to spend just on pleasure, they have money to spare in their pockets, and the blazing winter sun that oppressed them only minutes earlier now invigorates them. Yes, the price of their delight is Sylvia’s departure with a handsome fore
igner, but so it goes in life as in song. Hector looks back over his shoulder for a final glimpse of Sylvia. And that is when he spots a boy in rags darting behind a cycas palm that now barely conceals him.

  Hector recognizes the boy immediately—Diego from a Soacha mud hut just meters away from the one Hector’s family formerly inhabited. The boy looks malnourished, his arms spindly and his belly distended, impetigo blisters on his lips and chin, but this hardly distinguishes him from other children from the ‘city of the disposables.’ What is distinguishing is the intensity of the contempt in Diego’s eyes when he boldly steps out from behind the cycas and glares back at Hector.

  “Did you think you could hide from me?” the boy cries. It is a familiar accusation.

  “What do you want, Diego?” Hector responds, reaching into his pocket for money.

  “Killer! Murderer! You’ll pay for it in blood!” the boy shouts, and he runs away.

  “My God, what was that?” Mano asks, amused.

  “A ghost,” Hector answers flippantly, but he is trembling. Diego has obviously been following him, although Hector has no way of knowing for how long or to how many places on the trio’s daily rounds. In that moment, Hector realizes that it is not loyalty and certainly not affection that bound a boy like Diego to Rico. No, it was something far more basic: subsistence. Rico, the sadist and cheat, had kept the boy alive, and with Rico gone, Diego is now on the brink of joining his erstwhile benefactor in the grave. What greater reason could there be for contempt and its natural consequence, revenge? Diego probably does know every location where Hector sings with his group, perhaps even where he lives. And limp and weak as the boy is, he undoubtedly has many confederates in Soacha. Banded together, they would be capable of avenging their late savior’s murder with one of their own. God knows, they had little to lose by trying.