THE AMERICAN STORYBAG

by Gerald Hausman

“How could anyone forget that?”

  “That was me,” he whispered.

  "What?"

  He laughed roughly, and loudly, for him, letting me know that it was all right to be surprised, astonished, or whatever I was feeling, and then he said, philosophically, “It was a good thing that happened, hombre.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Well,” he replied slowly, “first off, nobody got hurt. Second, I realized – when the explosion happened – that I was a blind man who had no business being in a laboratory full of chemicals.”

  “What did you do after the blast? How did you get out of there?”

  “The way I got out of everything. I walked. Wasn't hurt at all. Nothing broken but test tubes, pieces of wall and ceiling. Walked away like nothing happened. Went all the way to the Spic and Span Bakery. Found an alleyway back there and lived in an abandoned shack that was used by winos who slept off their bad nights during the day. I couldn't see them but I sure as hell could smell 'em.”

  I gazed at Santiago. The more I looked at him, the better I seemed to remember him. “Did you go to the bakery to eat?”

  He snorted, chuckled. “I ate like a dog in the alley. The winos couldn’t see very well themselves, so they thought I was one of them. They always had some food they’d been given by Mrs. C. de Baca who owned the bakery. You remember her?”

  “She had very large . . .”

  “—Napoleons,” he finished. “I lived on them. Day old, two day old, sometimes three-day-old. I ate them with relish.”

  “You liked them that much?”

  “No, I didn’t like them but the old winos said when you put relish on them you can cure a hangover.”

  “Did that work?”

  “I don’t know. I never had a hangover.”

  “So what happened to you?”

  “I went home to my grandmother in Villanueva.”

  “Villanueva? That’s far from Vegas.”

  “I walked.”

  “How?”

  “By walking.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get hit by a car.”

  I felt a warm hand touch my neck. His fingers had a tingly touch. Every time he touched me, you felt the tiny electrical crackle of Santiago's powerful magic. He was from a long line of New Mexico mystics, herbalists, curanderos, people of power.

  “The apple isn’t there any more,” he said, adding wryly – remember, no more kips!”

  “No more kips,” I agreed.

  I got up from the massage table and paid him twenty-five dollars, which was his charge for any amount of healing with his hands. Even if it took all day, his fee was still twenty-five dollars.

  As I walked under the lintel, I read the sign – “You are blessed going out.”

  I was walking as easily as I had ever walked in my life. It felt good to be afoot, to be upright, to be moving swiftly in the light of day, having ears to hear and eyes to see, and I felt the sudden rush of unexpected, grateful tears that ran down my face.

  “I remember you now,” Santiago said as I got into my car.

  The Greatest Novelist to Come Out of Cuba

  Writers come in all kinds of packages. This package said, Do Not Open. But I opened it anyway. I do not regret it. How else are you going to find out what writers think of their own work? One thing I have noticed about writers, in general. They are all a bit lost. A bit out of -- and yet deeply stuck -- in their heads. Present company excepted of course.

  I was a guest storyteller at the Miami Book Fair for over ten years. Every year I looked forward to seeing some of my favorite authors come and go on their way to panels or meetings. Elie Wiesel came into the bar one time with a distracted head of gray hair and a cigar. He was looking for someone. I gazed at him and he thought I was his appointment, and then he smiled realizing his error and I smiled, and he left. I still remember the warmth of his gaze, the beautiful distraction – not just the hair but the whole man -- and the aroma of his expensive cigar.

  Another time I was in the author’s lounge known as the Hospitality Suite. The gracious hostess, Juanita, who knew me from years of visitations said, “See that man over there? That’s the greatest author to come out of Cuba. He’s internationally known and admired. I think you should get to know him.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips, wrinkled her nose and said – “I forget his name but he’s very famous, and you’ll know him the moment you talk to him. He’s in the program, here.”

  Juanita handed me a Miami International Book Fair Program. I searched through it while she took care of some authors who’d lost their way, but I couldn’t find the Cuban master’s photograph in the magazine.

  The author was sitting and looking quite famous by the vast picture window that was a picturesque Key Biscayne skyline and seascape, so lovely in the early morning sun it was easy to imagine you were on a movie set.

  On impulse, I sat down at the author's table, and introduced myself. I don’t know what possessed me -- but without any hesitation, and as if I’d known him all my life, I asked this perfect stranger what he was writing.

  That broke the ice. He roared with laughter and said, “What am I writing? What am I writing?” He looked at his companion, an attractive woman, sitting beside him. She shrugged, said sarcastically, “I don’t know what you’re writing.”

  “It’s just a question,” I said, grinning.

  “—And a very good one,” he replied earnestly, face full of intent. You see,” he continued, “it’s . . . ah, well . . . complicated.” He extracted the word complicated slowly and with great emphasis, drawing it out as if he were smoking a Cohiba and blowing soft, thick blue smoke into the air between us.

  He then frowned at me, brow deeply furrowed. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead and even though the AC was frosty, he was wet with sweat.

  With a beautiful oratorical flourish, he commented -- “You have asked a very deep question, my friend.” The voice was rich, heavily accented.

  “What am I writing?” he asked the space between us. But then, dramatically, he gazed into my eyes, patted the table with his broad hand. “It’s the future,” he said, smiling provocatively.

  There was a moment of silence and he laughed, shook his head, looked at me again -- “It’s the past,” he murmured.

  “The past and the future,” I added politely.

  He brightened. “It’s science fiction . . . it’s history. . . it's interesting.”

  I nodded.

  Then his animated face fell. “I'm afraid it’s really just boring,” he confessed, “b-o-r-i-n-g.”

  "You can say that again," his female companion said with a sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” I said sadly.

  “Don’t be,” he said, smiling. “It’s interesting.”

  “--Oh?”

  “You see, the truth is, it’s one thing, and then it’s another.” He fired a look across the table at his lady friend. “In truth, it’s all things.”

  He looked thoughtful, then depressed. He laughed.

  I sat waiting. I knew there was more.

  At last, he clapped his hands together. “Look," he said, it's nothing.” He said this cheerfully. His face darkened. “Yet it is something!”

  My escort arrived, I excused myself, but as I stood up, the Cuban novelist grabbed my hand. “You ask such a deep question,” he confided, “but the point is, I wrote it, I’m writing it, I will continue to write it -- all you have to do is read it.”

  I promised him that I would – the moment I find out who you are, I told myself.

  At the end of the day I went to the front desk of Hilton to ask for an extra copy of the Book Fair magazine with all the pictures of the authors so I could find out who he was. I planned to buy his book and read it that same night.

  The girl behind the desk asked me who I was. I showed her my author’s badge, and she said admiringly, “Michael Hausman. You’re the director, aren’t you?”
r />   “No,” I said apologetically, “I’m the storyteller.”

  “Of course you are, Michael, I know your films.”

  “You have a better memory than I do.”

  My badge really did say Michael instead of Gerald. And I suppose his said Gerald, but at least Hausman was spelled right, and all the kids liked my stories and I sold a lot of books and it really doesn’t matter who you are as long as you know what you’re doing. (I must make a note of that.)

  Tyger, Tyger

  This one originally appeared in the anthology Wheel of Fortune edited by Roger Zelazny. I'd been having a hard time explaining to Roger how William Saroyan had influenced me as a young writer, and here came an opportunity to explain it in story form. I used a mix of fact, fantasy with a generous sprinkle of Saroyan's manic optimism; I also used some characters of his -- the lucky little mouse, the gambler writer, and the man named Doughbelly. All in all, I feel it came out right. Roger got it anyway.

  New York City, 1939

  One week of gambling had turned my fancy to mice, or mouse, I should say. There was the Mouse, the one and only, the great genius, the luck-bringing mouse of The Great Northern Hotel.

  Yes, the Mouse...

  He, or it, arrived one night while I was unable to sleep. That whole day I was down at the waterfront, across from Pier 17, playing floating crap games with the longshoremen, who, during their lunch break went behind the empty boxcars, or behind the piles of lumber on the docks, and gambled away their weekly fortunes. The sun was out, but so was the wind, I got pretty cold, so I bought myself some scalding coffee.

  I was having a hard time with the Play, which wouldn't get itself written without a little personal wager. So I bet myself that I could write all three acts in less than two weeks. Hence, the gambling and the mouse...but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

  I'd made a friend of the great black crapshooter and game manager, Doughbelly. He would always call the points of the game in a funny way, throwing his big deep bass voice like that other "belly," the twelve-string bluesman, Leadbelly, from New Iberia, Louisiana. Every time my friend, Doughbelly, saw that I was down on my luck--my gambling luck was no better than my writing luck these days--he slipped me a ten, so I could get back into the game.

  So went the days. The nights fared no better. Until the arrival of the Mouse. When he came along, like a midnight muse, everything changed. He came prancing into my life the night I'd lost everything, including fifty bucks I borrowed from Doughbelly, and now feared I couldn't pay back.

  I was sitting on the chair in front of the desk where my Corona was perched, feeling as morose as seventy out of work violinists, when along came the Mouse with his mouth stuffed full of greenbacks.

  I blinked a couple of times. The Mouse looked for all the world like a miniature retriever. So help me, he had five ten dollar bills pressed between his little mouse-white teeth.

  Now I knew I had the shakes, and I knew my head wasn't screwed on right, but no matter....

  The Mouse didn't seem to care if I were a desperate author down on his luck. He just stepped up and dropped the bills at my feet.

  There I was, shaking like a leaf in a ragtime wind, staring insanely at those crisp, new-minted bills. Those fivers were so fine, and the Mouse holding them delicately, so his teeth wouldn't mark them. And then he just dropped them at my feet, and I picked them up, and realized the time had come to throw the shakes.

  "Could you do that again?" I asked the Mouse.

  The Mouse said, "Sure."

  "How about a carafe of hot coffee and some poppy seed rolls?"

  The Mouse looked dubious about that, but he nodded and high-tailed it out of the room. I took a hot shower, and shaved for the first time in three days.

  Afterwards, placing the clean stack of bills beside my typewriter, I began to write. Thunder is more like it, I began to thunder, because when I get going, the portable Corona starts gyrating like a belly dancer, making one hell of a racket.

  In a short while, room service knocked on the door. A young man in a red uniform with shiny buttons and gold brocade, offered me a tray with a carafe of fresh coffee, and some hot croissants. I slipped him a ten, but he refused it, saying, "It's on the house."

  Then he winked, knowingly, and apologized for not having any poppy seed rolls.

  I tossed down ten cups of coffee, one right after the other; and I ate a prodigious number of rolls. Then, back to the Corona, the momentous thunder, the powerful punch of words on paper, the miraculous creation of a play, a play, a play!

  At dawn, I awoke, my head cradled on top of the Corona. I'd fallen asleep, typing. The last word, before I hit the deck, was "sayeetyujkfogl." Or something to that effect.

  Anyway, I roused myself, took another scalding shower, came out of the bathroom. There was the Mouse, back again with another stack of bills, clean and crisp as the last batch, only these were tens.

  "Where do you get these things?" I asked the Mouse, as I rubbed my wet hair with a dry towel.

  He said, "I steal it, of course."

  "All right," I sighed, "that's your business, not mine. I'm not here to improve your morals, any more than you're here to improve mine. Besides, the play's the thing; and the thing's coming along fine. Time for some relief--a little refreshment out there in the big world."

  I folded the new bills, stuck them in my pocket, and left the Mouse to his own devices. First thing, I paid back old Doughbelly. Boy, you should have seen him laugh, which explains how he got that name. His big round belly shook like a bakery sitting on top of the San Francisco Earthquake.

  Doughbelly told me to take my place, but I told him that today wasn't my day to shoot craps. Then I headed out to the track.

  On the way, I stopped in at a little bar that I like to frequent, a place called Number One Opera Alley. There I met a man whose father had been stomped to death by a circus elephant. This gentleman--and I use the term loosely because he was a loose gentleman--was furiously poring over a copy of The Racing Form.

  "Seabird," the bleary fellow suggested--no, insisted.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because I like the sound of the name."

  "That's no reason," I crabbed.

  You see, I happened to know that Seabird was a worthless piece of horse poop ever since she crashed the barrier two years ago. Names, of course, have little to do with winning, but that got me to thinking about the Mouse, and I touched those brand new bills that were now burning a hole in my pocket.

  Well, there I went -- straight to the to the track to bet on that worthless scamp, Seabird!

  Why?

  Because I liked the sound of the name.

  I was cautious, though. I put a half dollar on her across the board, dollar and a half in all, four bits to win, four bits to place, and four bits to show. And Seabird, the windy steed from the salty south, came in first in a nine horse race. Suddenly, I had a bunch of money.

  Now, if I'd wanted to, I could have bought a new suit of clothes, gotten a pair of decent shoes, ordered a hot meal at the Algonquin. I could have gone to Canarsie, or Hoboken, or Patagonia. I could have flitted off to any city in the world, and I could have lived it up for a while, until the money ran out, anyway. But why press my luck?

  What I did, I went back to Number One Opera Alley, and gave half my winnings to the man whose father had been stomped to death by a circus elephant, my Seabird informant. And, I want to tell you, that felt just wonderful.

  The look in that guy's eyes when I handed him the dough carried me far into the night. I wrote page after page of the Play, worked myself deep into Act Two.

  The stuff was good, possibly great. Somehow, I knew this was the big one. But that night, the Mouse didn't return. I kept looking over my shoulder, but, alas, no Mouse.

  No matter, I had still had the good feeling inside me.

  If the Mouse didn't show, so be it.

  One page or so before dawn, when I was almost done with Act Two, I got myself in a jam. Or, to
put it another way, my characters got fed up with the author, and went on strike. I had no idea where to go because they weren't about to go with me. If I couldn't keep my characters on their feet through Act Two, how was I going to get them all the way to Act Three?

  I went to the window and watched the sun come up. Lighting a cigarette, I inhaled deeply, drew the smoke all the way down to my toes, and thought a little bit about my life. Thus far, all things considered, I'd been pretty lucky. Though the critics might not agree, or the head-shrinkers, I knew I had my fair share of lucky days.

  To begin at the beginning: I was always a gambler. My first book came about because of a bet I made with myself. I swore that if I could not achieve some amount fame in two months time, I'd quit writing, and take up a useful profession like optometry or plumbing.

  So, every day thereafter, I wrote one short story. One story a day for two months, non-stop.

  What were the odds?

  Fame in two months, or quit.

  Million to one, right?

  I sent my daily output, every day, to one magazine editor. Don't ask me why. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time.

  He happened to be the best editor of the best literary monthly on big American market. So I wrote him one letter, just one, and said: "I am sending you one short story each day in the hope that you will find my writing acceptable for your magazine."

  Somehow, that comical threat, combined with the evident talent of those early stories, charmed the editor, who not only published a half dozen of them, but got them into the most prestigious short story anthology in the country.

  After that I wrote one collection of short stories, every year for the next ten years, and all of them sold voluminously, making me one of the best known writers of short stories in the world.

  My next bet with myself was that I would write a screenplay, on order, for the movie mogul, Louis B. Mayer, who was the hottest producer of big shot films in Hollywood. I bet myself that I could achieve this in less than two weeks time.

  I appeared at MGM on a Monday, Corona in hand, and before the day was out, I'd pitched a story to L.B., and he'd pitched me back a six figure advance. Then I sat down and wrote a heart-felt fable about the life and times of a Western Union messenger boy. This was a safe story with a happy ending, with a song or two thrown in that you could whistle to, and L.B. lit up a large Havana when he read it. But before the cigar was half done, the fat little man was weeping.