Peru

by Gordon Lish

  It was one of the reasons why summers were lonelier—namely, because summers you didn’t wear corduroys—and even if you did, you didn’t have to walk to school.

  The colored man always did everything slow, or it always looked to me like the colored man was always doing everything slow—although the fact that it was slow or that it felt like it looked slow, that just made whatever it was all the better for you to watch him at. On the other hand, I don’t think it was just the colored man who was slow in particular. Frankly, I think that it was grown-ups in general—that to my way of seeing as a child, this is how all of the grown-ups seemed to do things, slow.

  I am thinking of Miss Donnelly and of the way she turned the pages of the storybook, for instance, or of how the ladies reached their fingertips out and turned each one of the tiles over, or take the nanny rolling the rubber bands up and down over her wristwatch, or the colored man flattening down the chamois cloth and pressing the last little bit of the water out of it, or my father coming up the stairs, or my mother coming down them before she fell all apart like sticks falling in a house.

  Now when I look, you know what I see now?

  I see the whole thing turned exactly the whole other way around now—people my own age doing everything much too fast for me, whereas youngsters Henry’s, whereas young people Henry’s age, hey, talk about slow. You ever hear of slow as molasses?

  And here’s proof, here’s proof.

  Kobbe Koffi!

  How’s Kobbe Koffi for proof?

  It’s proof positive—Kobbe Koffi with the cab’s door, Kobbe Koffi with the cab’s trunk.

  Or do you say taxi?

  I loved to watch the colored man getting all of the things out or getting them all of them put back. The only thing about it which I did not totally but totally like was the maid watching me watch. Except that you could never really see her eyes on account of the light—so, I don’t know, so maybe she wasn’t, so maybe she really wasn’t—maybe when she was there just inside of the screen door or inside of the storm door, maybe what the maid was doing was not really looking specifically at anything at all.

  She said that I had better take stock, that I had better face facts, that I had better take myself in hand—because didn’t I realize that life was going to be a rude awakening?

  She said that I shouldn’t put all of my eggs in one basket, that I shouldn’t count my chickens before they were hatched, that I shouldn’t be such a silly goose and kill the goose which lays the golden egg.

  You know what she said was wrong with me?

  She said that I was always taking too much for granted, that I had to learn to share and share alike, that I was not a law unto myself, that I was too high and mighty for my own good, that the day would dawn when I would get my comeuppance, that butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

  Listen to me—I knew what the nanny meant.

  HE HELD THE SPONGE in one hand and the hose in the other. The hand which held the sponge, the hand which held the sponge, he ran the water over the back of that hand with the hand which held the hose.

  I DIDN’T EVEN WASH THE SHOES OFF. I just used the Vernax on them right the way they were. But the sport coat and the necktie, they were totally but totally ruined.

  They were just no good anymore, those things, the new things, the things which I had gone ahead and got for just that morning, for the morning in question—plus the shirt, plus the pants, plus the socks—all of it, every bit of it, all a total loss. The only thing which was any good anymore was just the shoes, the shoes! But this is thanks to Vernax. Believe me, we can thank the Vernax for that.

  I just put it on them.

  I didn’t even wash off the blood off as such.

  Actually, if the facts be known, they look even better than they did before the whole thing happened.

  But just think of it, just think of it—even my socks, my socks—that’s how it was just pouring out of me. I’m telling you, I was soaked, soaked, drenched, drenched—I was even walking in it, actually walking in it, it was down inside of my shoes, the blood.

  But what did the whole thing come to when they got me all cleaned up?

  Three Band-Aids.

  It came to a grand total of three Band-Aids, two of which didn’t even have anything to do with the blood itself as such.

  Incredible.

  Definitely but definitely incredible.

  And, hey, didn’t I think that this was it?

  In all sincerity, I was so scared.

  But I think the thing I was actually the most scared of was of Henry missing the bus up to camp.

  Of that probably and probably of something else.

  HE JUST FELL OVER.

  It amazed me, it was amazing to me, the way someone else could just fall over. It was really an amazing thing for me to see, how you could just go ahead and do something and then someone else just falls over just because you yourself actually went ahead and did it to them.

  I THINK I SHOULD MENTION THIS—that we did not have screen windows or have storm windows or have any setups of that kind for our doors.

  I think I should mention this—that when I think back to the time which I have been talking about, it is always suffocating, the weather is always August.

  On the other hand, isn’t it sometimes really August?

  It wasn’t always the hoe which I hit him with. A certain part of the time it was just the handle of the hoe that I did it with, the reason for this being that the other part of the hoe broke off of the hoe, that at a certain point the hoe broke.

  She said we were always getting overexcited or getting overheated or all worked up and carried away.

  She said moderation was always the best policy.

  She said slow and easy always won the race.

  She said it was better to be safe than sorry.

  I never didn’t obey her. I just always automatically did what the nanny said. I had the idea that if I didn’t do it, then that she would go tell the Christians.

  You know what I used to think?

  I used to think that when the day was all over and done with, that she used to go somewhere down past the Aaronsons’ and talk to them, report to them, turn over to them a kind of report for the day—that the Christians were waiting for her down past the Aaronsons’ property for the nanny to come tell them what she said all of us did.

  You know what else?

  I had the thought that nobody else knew about it—that I myself was the only one who knew anything about it. But in all actuality, I think that I had the same thought about not just the nanny herself but about also everyone else—namely, that there was a secret which they had and that I was the only one who knew that they had it, except that the strangest thing about it was that I did not actually know what the secret was.

  Or at least not in so many words, I didn’t.

  Where Miss Donnelly put her finger, for instance, or how he ran the water over the back of his hand, or the looks they gave our house when they drove the truck up and one of them got.out to shovel in the Blue Coal.

  Everything made me tired.

  Everything sapped my strength.

  Every time I finished playing in the sandbox, there was no more strength left in me for me to ever play anything again, there was no more strength left in me for me to ever be the best again, and I would think to myself, I would have the thought to myself, that there will never be anymore of anything left in me again, even to live with, even just for me to live with, let alone for me to play.

  No boy made buildings any better than I did!

  Didn’t she ever hear it when I said gossamer a million times better than all of the rest?

  I want to say something, I have to say something—it doesn’t matter what you say!

  I used to wait for her to come take me by the hand. I used to wait for all of them to come take me by the hand.

  You know the question I had?

  Here is the question I had.

  When was the best boy going to
go ahead and be allowed for him to go to the Woodmere Academy?

  Or get to be able to sit in the Buick?

  Here is how it felt when his mother came over—it felt the same to me as it felt to me when I looked up and saw Iris Lieblich looking down at me. It felt the same to me as when it was my turn for her to look at me.

  It felt good.

  Florence says mineral oil on a regular basis, she says that always depending so much on mineral oil on a regular basis, she says that she read it somewhere that too great a dependency on mineral oil on a regular basis can result in intestinal damage.

  In a loss of something.

  Whereas all I can say is thank God that Henry, God love him, does not take after his father.

  They said for me to go inside and ask her what was happening—they said that if I did not know what was happening, then that I should go inside and ask her what was happening—they said that they themselves were not going to have the time to sit me down and explain it to me, but that if I went inside, that then my mother would. But I did not think that I could do that. I did not think that I should do that. I thought that it might hurt her feelings if I did that. I actually even thought that maybe it was why they were there in the first place, that this was why the men were there at our house just to begin with, that the whole thing of it of them being there—the hoses and the lid off and the smell of it all over everywhere—was just to hurt her feelings, that the landlord had sent them over to our house just to hurt my mother’s feelings—that it was because of the hot water, that it was all because of the hot water, that it was on account of him getting angry with her for her always asking him to give us more of it—the thought I had was that she must have always been asking him for him to give us more of it because I wanted for there to be more of it, because she knew that I wanted for there to be more of it, because if there was more of it, because if there was more of it when we needed to have hot water for something, then would I have to keep on getting into the shower stall with him? Would I have to wait for him to come home and come up the stairs and then have to get into the shower stall with him?

  I never asked anyone about the cesspool. I decided never to ask anyone about the cesspool. I decided all about it without ever asking anyone about it. What I decided was that getting them to come over with their hoses and go to work on it with their hoses didn’t work for the landlord as much as the landlord probably planned for it to because—look, look!—I liked the smell of it, whereas you weren’t supposed to, nobody was supposed to.

  You know what I decided?

  I decided that it was because of me that we always came out ahead and beat the landlord.

  But here is another thing which I decided—namely, that the cess came off of him from when he took a shower, that the water and the soap washed the cess off of him from where the shoe was and then the cess went down the drain and into the pipe and ended up out front in the front yard down in the ground under the concrete in a big pool of it.

  I think Steven Adinoff’s mother wanted to do something nice for me. I think that she wanted to, but that she didn’t know how to. I think that the whole thing of it was a question of her being afraid of getting caught at it if she tried to—and so that this is why, so that that was the reason why she made up the business about how her brassiere was binding her bust line too much. In all honesty and sincerity, this is why I think that she did it—that it was a secret way of saying thank you to me, that it was the only way of her saying it so secretly that only I myself would know but my mother wouldn’t that Mrs. Adinoff was thankful to me.

  I am not wrong about this.

  I know what I am saying.

  Take it from me, a parent.

  She owed me.

  She was thanking me. It was the secret which we had between us—that she was thanking me, that she had to thank me, that this was going to be the one time which she was ever going to get to go ahead and say thank you to me.

  Because up until I had come along, up until I came along, you know the kind of boy she had? Here is the kind of boy she had—she had a boy who nyalked nyike nyis.

  I had it coming, something nice from her—something like hankie from her, like gossamer, like bodice.

  Don’t you dare try to tell me about parents!

  IT FEELS LIKE SAND SOMETIMES, it feels like grains of sand to me sometimes, like sometimes the granules of sand to me, like the pressure of sand sometimes, it sometimes feels to me like there is this grit sometimes, these grains of it pushing up from under my fingernails, like there is still some sand in there which is stuck up in under there, that special sand I specifically dug way down in the corners for, for me to get the, sand for buildings and for houses which would always come out of the pail perfect.

  Because this was the thing about that sand as opposed to the regular sand, as opposed to the sand which Andy Lieblich got off the top of the sand and which he put into his pail—namely, that the special sand which you had to dig down for stuck together like this—like glue, like as if it was glued.

  You know what it was like?

  It was like a secret between me and the sandbox.

  There were probably only two hoses—in all reality, there probably were only, all told, just a total of two hoses—but to me it looked like there were hoses everywhere, and not the kind the colored man had for when he went ahead and did the Buick but big white thick ones, like these big white thick hoses which were made out of like something like canvas or something.

  What I mean is that they were just automatically there, that I just came home from school and that they were just there, that there they were and that no one had told me to get ready for them, that in the morning when I went to school, that no one had told me anything beforehand, and so I just came home like that and then there they were, that I had just been walking along like that and just looked up, and that no one, not my mother, not my father, not anyone in all the whole wide world, had said anything to me first, had told me to get ready for it first, had said to me that they were going to be there like that when I got home from school, that they were going to be there in the front yard like that, hoses, hoses of a kind which I myself had never had any experience with before, big thick white ones going down into the ground where there had been a round lid of concrete moved off the top of it to make way, hoses going down, or hoses coming up, and the noise of something pumping, and people out to watch, maids from different houses, from houses past the Aaronsons’ house, from houses where I didn’t even know the names of the people.

  I felt like my corduroys had been in on it, like even my own corduroys had been in on it and had gone back on me, gone against me, had been in on it and kept it a secret from me, that it was my property and that I had a right to be ready for it, that wasn’t I the one who knew all of the secrets and was supposed to be ready for everything, even for the Christians, even for the Christians!

  But then when I got to like the smell of it, then it was all okay with me again—because I knew what the truth was, which was that you were not supposed to like the smell of it, whereas if I did, whereas if I myself did, then I was back to being the best at everything again—the best at everything from playing in the sandbox to saying gossamer again.

  MY ATTENTION WAS ON THE PACKING, my attention was completely but completely on the packing, which could account for, which could actually have been a big contributing factor, which actually probably accounts for a lot of the impact—just looking up from something you are so completely absorbed in, just being taken so totally but totally by surprise by something—that plus just being so tired just to begin with, so worn out in the first place, so totally exhausted from just the lateness of the hour and from still trying to get all of that stuff jammed down into the duffel bag and shoved down into the footlocker and from even still doing the inventory when it should have been done long ago, from just trying to count undershorts and T-shirts, if you can imagine it, if you can really imagine it, there at that hour of the night like that, or re
ally actually at that hour of the morning.

  I do not know if I have informed you of this yet, but it is a top-rated, top-notch camp, you know.

  You know what else?

  Not to think it doesn’t have a price to go with it!

  But as for what happened the morning of—go ahead and call it a case of distraction, pure and simple.

  I just wasn’t paying attention.

  I was just acting like an idiot, just like every other city idiot—overtaxed, overtired, overexcited—a city husband, a city father, a man overburdened, a fellow with too much on his mind—tiredness, excitedness, burdens.

  My God, just to be able to concentrate on something the way you could do it when you were six—just to be able to put all of your mind into it and all of your heart into it—and your whole body, your whole body—just to be able to do this with anything again just for, you know, for one single solitary instant.

  But you know what?

  I could not even get all of my attention all concentrated on myself even when I thought that my head, even when then and there in that first wacky instant of it when I was absolutely but absolutely certain of it, convinced, convinced that my head was all bashed in, all clunked open, smashed, totally but totally broken.

  Even then my mind, it was somewhere else.

  DOT!

  When they played mah-jongg, when they said bam this, said bam that, said crack this, said crack that, they also said dot, they also said dot!—said something like, I think, “One bam, two crack, three dot.”

  I made a fool of myself. I made a complete fool of myself. And I almost made my boy Henry almost miss the bus.

  Plus which I cost us plenty in special freight charges getting the stuff up to him on an overnight truck.

  It was really just total lunacy from start to finish—from one end to the other, it really was. I tell you, the only thing which was missing from it, the only thing which you could say was left out of it was the banana peel—the banana peel and the cane and the top hat.

  It was slapstick, it was farce.

  You know what it was?

  It was a joke.