Peru

by Gordon Lish

  It’s probably like standing and waiting for the frankfurter when it was boiling—some people being the kind of people who can just pick up and walk away while it is doing it, other people being the kind who have to stand there watching, who can’t keep themselves from watching, who have the feeling that the frankfurter needs for them to be standing watching, who actually think they hear the boiling talking—the frankfurter, the water—the whole thing of it going ahead and asking for you to keep doing it.

  No, no—not asking you to.

  Telling you to.

  I tell you, I watched things for people.

  IT WAS THE FEELING I HAD—it was the one which I had. When I was six years old, I had the feeling that I was the one who had to watch things for people, who had to see things for people, that if I didn’t, then that it wouldn’t be. I tell you, it was this way with everything—that I felt this way about everything, that I felt that I was the one who had to smell it for everybody, who had to hear it for everybody, who had to know it for everybody—that when she yelled “Phil! Is that you, Phil?” it would have been terrible for them if I had not been there for me to hear it for them, plus hear it for them when he yelled back at her “Reg!” It had to go through me to get to them.

  How do you like that?

  Through me for them!

  You know what I used to sometimes think?

  I used to sometimes think that if I did not hear it on the linoleum in the front hall by the front door, that if I did not hear it like that when he came home from the railroad station like that, that by the time he got up the stairs and I had to go run kiss him, that by the time I ran to kiss him hello he would not have to have it on anymore, that the big shoe would be just like the other shoe he wore, that the big one would be all gone and that he would have on one like everybody else’s on and not like a sack of something soft on instead.

  Because you know what I used to think? Because I used to think that if I didn’t pay attention to something, then it would just go away, just not be there anymore, whereas I knew that what my problem with this was always going to be was that I couldn’t not do it, that I just could not not think of things, that I just could not not think of anything, that I was just like God was, that I was always going to be thinking of every single solitary thing like God was—of all of the grains of sand in the sandbox, for instance, of every one of those.

  I tell you, when I was six, I had the thought that I had to keep everything but everything in my mind, that it was my job, that it was up to me for me to keep it all going by keeping it all in me in my mind.

  I used to feel like as if I had to have a bath whenever I felt a feeling of unruliness coming over me.

  I used to always want to run home and wash off and go get my hair cut and be put in new clothes—but it was my job for me to be outside and keep on playing.

  I wanted to look nice, smell nice, have people saying that I was being nice—and then be nice, really be nice.

  If somebody said something was spoiled or was soiled or was no good anymore, my first thought was it was me.

  I don’t think I told you, I don’t know if whether I told you, that Iris Lieblich had her own sandbox and that it was exactly the same as Andy Lieblich’s sandbox was, that the only thing which was any different about her sandbox was that hers was where you couldn’t see it from his, that hers was over on the other side of the shrubbery or the of hedges or of the bushes or of something, but that hers was just as good as his was and that she had her own friends for them to come over for her to play in hers.

  They both had like little roofs on them, like little shades made out of awning, like sun shades or rain shades which tilted so that you could aim them, plus maybe they had a kind of fringe around the edges of them, but I could not swear to it, little twists of cord, but I don’t think I can swear to it so many years afterwards.

  You know what the overall feeling was?

  When you looked at the Lieblichs’, the overall feeling you got from it was that it was all smoothed over and was creamy and that they never had to take care of it or do anything to it, that it was just always going to be there and and be buttery and sugary and you could sit down anywhere and start eating it.

  Even the nanny’s chair, even though that was the kind of thing it was, made out of slats, slatted, even that, when you looked at it the way I looked at all of the Lieblichs’ things, even the nanny’s chair actually looked creamy and looked edible to me even though I knew it really wasn’t.

  This was where she watched us from—the nanny watched us from the chair, and gave me the feeling that she was just as slatted as the chair was, which was probably just from the feeling which you got from looking at the nanny in her uniform, which was so stiff from being starched that it more or less looked to me, that to me it looked like as if it was getting cracked into pieces as the day went along and as the nanny herself sat more and more watchingly in the chair in it.

  But I can’t think of anything else of theirs which did not give you the feeling of being a creaminess, of it being all smoothed over and a creaminess—everything from Iris Lieblich’s place when she got her underpants down off of it to even the dark green shutters on all of their windows. Why was it their things did not have the torn-off look which our things did? Not that our things were really in and of themselves torn off as such. What I am talking about is just the look which they had, the things of the Lieblichs and things of ours.

  Or which they did to me.

  I was the one who tore the business end of Andy Lieblich’s hoe off, but not that after that had happened to it he did not have, still have the shovel and the rake to play with.

  Agreed, agreed, some boys just go for showers, some boys just take to showers, my own Henry, my own son Henry, for instance, I suppose he is the shower type as a boy—whereas I myself was always the type of boy who liked to just lie back and be in a bathtub and see the little bubbles which bubble up off of you.

  This is the type of boy I was, bubbles.

  Even if my mother did not have the time to be with me and then be ready for me and have the towel for me when I was ready to get out, I still loved a good long tub bath and the way you felt new when you got out.

  I think that he said that the whole thing of it was a question of how much hot water we were going to be able to count on getting from our particular kind of pipes, that the landlord was going to have to do something so that this was it, this was it, so that from here on in we were going to have to just make up our minds and get used to the fact that we were not ever again going to be getting as much.

  That it was, that taking a bath in a bathtub was babyish and sissyish and only what girls did, besides.

  I am going to say something which I cannot believe that I am really going to hear myself say—which is that when I heard my father say this, that I knew that my father knew.

  Knew that that was what I was always thinking when I was lying there in the water soaking, knew that I was always thinking that I am doing this for him, that I am lying here in this bathtub for him, that I am getting myself ready for him, for him to come home to me and find me, that I am waiting for my father to come home to me and come up the stairs to me and come see me and find me—see not his son but me, his lady-in-waiting waiting for him—clean.

  WE HAD FRANKFURTERS AND BEANS on Saturday nights. Actually, just I did—it was just me who had them— a frankfurter and beans was just what I myself would have on certain Saturday nights—but not on all of them, just on some of them—a frankfurter and a can of Ann Page beans.

  But probably I shouldn’t have said Ann Page.

  I can’t swear to the brand of Ann Page.

  I would not swear to the brand of Ann Page.

  All I think I can swear to is the fact that the beans were not Heinz beans and that the frank had to keep boiling until it split open before it was okay for me to eat it—namely, that the frank did, that splitting open was the sign as such that it was now okay for me to go ahead and eat it th
en.

  This is also how you ate it—starting at the split, that is, and then peeling the skin off of it starting from that point, getting an end of skin at some point along where the split was and then pulling it off of the frank until you had all of the skin peeled off of it.

  I don’t know what they themselves had afterwards.

  They ate afterwards.

  I was always upstairs in bed by the time they got around to the time they ate afterwards.

  I could not even theorize as to their various menus. In all truth, in all sincerity and truth, I did not know much about what went on in our kitchen, although I probably knew more about what went on in our kitchen than I did about any other room in our house.

  My mother had a meat grinder—this there is no question of it but that I remember, that my mother had a meat grinder and did not have an eggcup.

  One of the thoughts I had about the meat grinder was that there might be some way in which the pool of cess had something to do with it, but this was a thought which only lasted in my mind for just a fraction of an instant—I mean, it only took a fraction of an instant for me to see that there could not conceivably have been any connection between the two different things, even though what was left over in the meat grinder gave me the idea of the cesspool, or gave me the idea for me to think about the cesspool, despite the fact that I had never actually gone ahead and gone over to it and looked down into it to see anything down inside of it but just saw the hoses themselves going down into it and then coming up back out of it and smelled the smell which came smelling up out of it.

  And which I really didn’t mind as much as I think I was supposed to or should have.

  I even think I liked it more or less—not the idea of it, definitely not the idea of it, but the smell of it—why not?

  Except don’t think I knew I shouldn’t—and knew I had better not ever let anyone know I did.

  Like in the way that I actually think I almost liked it when I thought of how the blood was gushing out of me like there was a hose running and the fact that my knees had actually buckled when Kobbe Koffi had clunked me one, like in the way in which I had had the same crazy automatic thought that this was secretly great, that it was shameful to think it, that I knew I should be totally but totally ashamed of myself to even think it, but that it was wonderful, the wild thing of my knees actually buckling and of my getting my head clunked open and of me running up and down the sidewalk with all of the blood which was running out of me like that, which was running out of me all over me like that, and of everybody out there on the street watching it, all of the mothers out strolling with their toddlers in their strollers and all of the fathers on their way to their offices and all of the kids who were waiting to get picked up for just day camps and not for a real sleep-away one like my own one was going to, like my own boy was going to go to, like our Henry was getting ready to get himself off to that very morning, and which he is off at in attendance at right now for the rest of the so-called eight-week season, even though they only really give you, only seven and a half weeks for the price of eight—namely, from June twenty-ninth to August twenty-first.

  Listen to this—I wanted to kiss Kobbe Koffi.

  I DON’T KNOW WHEN I STOPPED HAVING NAPS. I must have had to have naps at some point. All children have to have naps at some point. All I know is that I wasn’t having naps anymore by the time which I have been talking about. However, I went to bed early, didn’t I?—up in bed before they even started up their supper.

  Here’s something else—the frankfurter, the frankfurter, it sometimes never split all of the way at all.

  I used to think about the type of bed which Andy Lieblich had his naps in—and about the type of bathtub which he had his tub baths in—I used to have the wacky idea that there was some kind of a way in which they were something like the Buick, that his bathtub and his bed were—but don’t ask me how, I could not give you any specifics about it as to how. It was just that I did not think his bed was made out of the same kind of thing which mine was, or that his bed was shaped the same which mine was, and that the same thing went for his bathtub, that when I pictured it in my mind, I did not picture it like ours was, up on little claw feet which had turned black and which had dug their way down through the linoleum into the wood which was under it. But on the other hand, I can’t say how I did in fact picture Andy Lieblich’s bathtub, except to say that whenever I tried to, what I saw wasn’t a bathtub in and of itself so much as it was Mrs. Lieblich kneeling down for him with her arms down for him in the water for him and the nanny waiting right behind her for him with a nice big warm big towel.

  You know what I thought it would look like if you saw it with the shoe off of it after he had taken the shoe off?

  Pink-looking and wet-looking.

  With no specific shape to it.

  Actually, when you heard it on the linoleum when he came home from the railroad station, this is exactly what it sounded like to me even with the shoe on it—to me, it sounded like there was something pink-looking and wet-looking down inside of it.

  It had a soft sound and a little sloshy.

  Whereas the sound which Steven Adinoff made was more soggy than sloshy—all told, it was less watery, even though there was actually water going, although it was only just spraying really, just hissing where the hose wasn’t fitted thoroughly tightly enough. Or, yes, sizzling, sizzling.

  Not that I ever saw it with the shoe off of it.

  I might have looked at him in its general direction—like when I was in the shower with him, for instance, like when for an instant I just was not thinking for an instant—but I never actually saw anything in particular because even if I had forgotten for an instant where I was looking in general for an instant, I was always careful never to let my eyes get focused on anything down there in particular.

  It wasn’t just the thing of not seeing it. It was also the whole question of not seeing his place, either. It was bad enough just to be in there in the shower stall with him and to see all of the hair which was all over him and not to know what a lady-in-waiting was supposed to do next.

  Sometimes the steam and all of the rest of it was all of it just too much for me, and I would get woozy-feeling and floppy-feeling and all set to keel over and faint, but then I would not actually do it, I would not actually faint—what I would do, instead what I would do was this—I would lean back away from the feeling of fainting, I would actually lean back away from the feeling of it, but I would have to lean back so hard that I would actually end up with the feeling that I was really leaning and that it was making me stand funny, that he was going to look at me and see me standing funny, that if he looked at me he would see me standing under the water funny.

  When we got out, he would put the Wildroot or the Kreml on—so that I would smell one or the other of those ones on his hair and not the gluey smell.

  In all reality, he wasn’t anywhere near as big as the colored man was, but you thought he was when it was you and him and you had your clothes off.

  You know what?

  We did not have anything anywhere in our house which smelled like either one of them.

  Like lilac.

  Or like cocoa butter.

  I just automatically kept my eyes from really seeing.

  I had a way of me not really seeing anything with them. But mainly, but for the most part, I kept them closed, even when I sometimes lost the little piece of soap and had to feel around to get it back again, even when I had to crouch down and put my hand down there and feel around down there—I mean, even if it meant having to put my hand down where there was like a little furry place in one certain part of the shower stall, I still did not open my eyes up, I still did not take a chance of opening my eyes up—I still would take touching the furry place over maybe having to, over me maybe having to accidentally see it without the shoe on it.

  We had a meat grinder.

  We had a clothes wringer.

  It was not like as if we did not h
ave certain of the various different household conveniences.

  You know what I had?

  I had freedom, freedom!

  That’s what I had.

  If I wanted milk, then all I had to do to go have some was just go ahead and go get it out of the icebox—whereas in the case of Andy Lieblich, the nanny said he never had it without somebody first getting the chill off of it for him—because she said that drinking milk without the chill off was just like taking poison.

  So you see what I had?

  Plus I had it when I wanted to!

  Agreed, agreed, the frankfurter had to boil in the water until it was split all of the way open, but did anybody ever make me eat spinach when I was six years old, let alone any of the things which the colored man named when he named the eight things which he said I had to go home and get my mother to cook for me if I ever wanted to grow up and have muscles like him and be strong?

  But I’ll tell you something which every child knows.

  I knew what I could be and what I couldn’t be—and of all the knowledge I had, this was the biggest knowledge of all.

  The nanny said she wouldn’t put anything past a mother who would feed a child a frankfurter and beans or let him have his milk without getting the chill off.

  Whereas the colored man said for me to go get her to give me kale and collards and so on and so forth.

  But I knew what the both of them were up to.

  It was just like it was with Miss Donnelly, it was just like the way it was with Miss Donnelly when Miss Donnelly said, “Say gossamer.” It was exactly just like that! The whole idea of it was to make you feel exactly just like that!

  YOU COULD MAKE THEM TALK TO YOU FAST or you could make them talk to you slow. It all depended on which speed it was you walked at on your way to school or on your way back from it to back home.