by Jay Fox
Patrick takes down his two double-pints in the time it takes Tomas and me to get through our respective cups of coffee. The bartender sends another two in our direction. These coffees represent the first comped drinks of the night for us. Patrick has been drinking for free for well over an hour and a half.
The jukebox begins to regale the bar with hits from post-adolescent melancholy—depressing stuff with esoteric lyrics and bizarre noises that mask the band's poor musicianship and inability to (as opposed to desire to not) construct a complex melody. The new inhabitants embody a world in which there's nothing to really complain about except for the vicarious poverty experienced via cheap commodities and those horribly depressing commercials about famines taking place in those countries that sit in the nosebleeds of the UN. Heartbreak, consequently, becomes a pretty serious test in endurance. There are other issues these newcomers address. The group directly behind us complains about how pretentious Williamsburg is becoming. The group to our left does the same. The group in front of us chastises the band the Red Thread for becoming too commercialized. All three of these groups look in the directions of one another with contemptuous eyes and askance curls of the lips. Though never stated explicitly, the three of us wonder if we are stuck in a crossfire or if all of this negative attention is directed at us.
“So this party is really going to be something tonight. Have either of you heard of the A-R-E?”
“No,” Tomas responds. “What is it?”
“It's a 'they', actually; a group of sorts. A lot of eccentrics—mostly musicians and artists. Some people like to think that Andy Warhol founded the group, but this is just baseless speculation. Anyone who has ever had any interaction with the A-R-E knows that it was founded by Dick Keens.”
“Dick Keens?”
“Yes, Dick Keens. Very intelligent man, but a bit off his rocker.”
A man cheers from the bar, “Ain't we all, Paddy!”
“Indeed we are, Louie!” he laughs. “A toast! To madness,” he adds, at which point Patrick and everyone at the bar drinks. He continues:
Oh, let us howl some heavy note,
Some deadly dogged howl,
Something, as from the threatening throat
Of beasts and fatal foul!
As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,
We'll bell and bowl our parts,
Till irksome noise have cloyed your ears,
And corrosived your hears,
At last, when-as our quire wants breath,
Our bodies being blessed,
We'll sing, like swans, to welcome death,
And die in love and rest.
There is a round of applause. He exhibits his gratitude with several bows, and then turns back to the table. “Don't you love the rhyme scheme? It's Elizabethan.” Tomas and I nod uneasily. “Anyway, Keens founded the A-R-E—The Acolytes of Risus, the Enlightener—back in the early-seventies. The goal, obviously, was to promote laughter in the world.”
“How is that obvious?”
“Risus was the ancient god of laughter. Hence the name.” He holds up his glass: “To laughter!” The folks at the bar all drink. The bartender takes down the Jameson shot that he has poured for a girl with glacial blue eyes. She is ostensibly upset. The bartender fills another glass and passes it her way. Her expression does not change. Patrick takes a small sip before continuing: “Anyway, Keens, it is said, was related to Jose Balaguez. You know of him, right?”
“I've heard the name before,” I respond vaguely.
“Me too,” Tomas adds.
“But do you know his story?”
“He was rich.”
“Yeah—wasn't he a robber baron?”
“More or less. Is that all you know of him?” Tomas and I nod slowly. “Well then, allow me to give you a brief history lesson. I will try to simply relay the events that transpired, as a poet-historian is the worst type of historian, on par with the philosopher-historian, but certainly far above the critical-historian—literary, that is—who is really no historian at all. Not to go too far off topic here, but have you read some of the social construction of blank essays that are out there? I swear, they just tell you what a few novelists said about this and about that, add some obscure details featured in the dailies from the era, and suddenly you're to think that they have unlocked the most arcane aspects of a society. It's a racket.”
“So you don't think that anything is socially constructed?” Tomas asks.
“That's not the point. The point is that there are an endless number of subjects and references. One can claim one thing, and someone can contradict them, and someone can contradict them, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. All an author needs to do is introduce a new piece of referential material to alter the thesis of one of his or her colleagues. And this perpetuates the argument—indefinitely. This is the heart of my complaint: it's intellectually lazy because the topics are so fecund and yet so esoteric and ultimately inane that they cease to say anything intellectually stimulating. The only things I find mildly interesting about such papers are the anecdotes of the famous authors and personages. There's always a few.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, back to Balaguez. He was one of the lesser-known robber barons, which has already been established. I believe he was the only one of Spanish heritage. With that exception, he was more or less like Carnegie: he and his parents came over to the States sometime in the eighteen-fifties. He was still a young boy then. The family was poor, as can be imagined, but he caught a few breaks, made some money, and invested it well. He was an incredibly shrewd man, a cautious man. Are either of you familiar with Gay's The Miser and Plutus?”
“No.”
“Ah, well I can picture Balaguez stalking his own shadow, furiously pacing in lieu of sleep, which is the one thing a rich man can never afford. If Wealth and Youth bear Folly, then Avarice and Old Age rear Misery.” Tomas and I look to one another in bewilderment. Patrick notices. “What I mean to say is that he came to be incredibly wealthy—I believe the wealthiest man in Brooklyn before or slightly after eighteen seventy-five—at the expense of what many would consider a worthwhile life.
“In his youth he worked in the newspaper industry, which is where he made a good deal of money, but the railroads made him his fortune. Once he became the wealthiest man in his city, however, he gave up on trains and went back to publishing papers. This wasn't simply a desire to return to the business with which he held the greatest affinity; rather, he wished to once again have an artistic outlet—which was something wholly denied to him in the railroad business, as he was not an engineer or an architect. So he returned to newspapers, initially because he wanted to publish his poetry under the pseudonym Lord K. Ruchmord. I’ve never read any of it myself, but I’ve heard that it was of…well, we’ll say pedestrian quality. But the quality of the poetry is irrelevant,” he continues, “The point of that matter is that Balaguez's primary goal, when he returned to the industry at least, was simply to publish himself.
“He acquired several more papers over the course of the late-seventies and early-eighties, and during that time his control over the content began to grow, too. People enjoyed his poetry even though it was shit, and he eventually started writing editorials fairly regularly. I can't recall any of the various pen names he employed when doing so.” He shrugs. “Not that it's particularly important. Either way, by eighteen eighty-two, Balaguez owned eight papers, all of them based in Brooklyn. Each one has since shut its doors, but, at the time, they were some of the most popular dailies in the city—more like The Post than The Times.
“Although Balaguez was not particularly political, he did attempt to control public opinion to a certain extent, especially once he came to think of himself as being gifted with the pen. It was less ideology and more his ego—he was not evil, nor was he particularly adamant in his beliefs. Perhaps this is a cynical belief. Maybe it was simply business even then, a way to distinguish himself, as well as his product from his compe
titors. Because he did distinguish himself, very much so, by going against the grain, by stirring things up, by making himself and his commodity a spectacle. He rarely, if even, upheld the opinions of his competitors. In fact, he went out of his way to be contentious and made sure that his editors and writers were equally aggressive. He was fond of slandering other papers and other moguls, and found himself as the defendant in a myriad of libel cases.
“Now, Balaguez did not utilize his power in the manner one might expect. He didn't like to push politicians on people—as he was skeptical of all politicians—and, for the most part, he allowed his writers free-reign on foreign affairs so long as they didn't openly endorse communism, anarchy, or any international labor movement. One could assume that he was pragmatic, but, from what I can infer from his actions, I believe this accredits him a certain degree of political shrewdness that he never truly possessed. It's not that politics eluded him; rather, it bored him. Consequently, his writers were allowed to sympathize with striking workers in the States and in Europe; so, too, were they free, if not encouraged, to criticize other industrialists. They were even allowed to take whichever side they wished on issues such as the gold standard, even if Balaguez had come down on the opposing side. The most important restriction, however, was that no one was to question the 'natural order' of capitalism. It's similar to how papers are run today: lament the most flagrant injustices of the system while ignoring the fact that capitalism necessarily exploits the working class.” A smile appears on Patrick's face when Tomas and I nod gingerly. “But I want to reiterate the main point in all of this: The most important thing the writers had to remember was simply to be distinct from the competition.
“Now, even though Balaguez manipulated the truth to a certain degree, he ended up gaining something of a reputation for selling a fairly honest product. The writing was not the most eloquent, but all of his papers were considered fair-minded and levelheaded. To use an American buzzword from today, the reporting was thought to be objective.”
“Ahhhh, 'ere all bullshidh,” a man from the bar yells in that dialect of inebriation where harsher consonants have the tendency to disappear. “'on't alleve a word a' 'at shidh, Paddy; ya' smarda' 'an 'at.” Let me revise that. He doesn't just sound drunk; he sounds like Jame Gumb.
“I'm talking about the papers from a hundred years ago, Rich,” he responds. “Trust me, I know that information was monopolized by the capitalists long ago. It's a commodity, Rich, no different than corn or sorghum.”
“Capaliss?” he laughs. “Ya' a commie or someding, Paddy?”
“Of course. There's a war going on out there, Rich, and there are only two sides. No one can claim neutrality anymore; any form of complacency is an act of support for the plutocratic interests of the world.” He pauses. “Now, there's only one question you have to ask yourself: Are you upset because your workers are asking for too much, or are you upset because your boss doesn't share the company’s profits with equitable consideration to his employees?”
“Equitihuh…”
“Does your boss pay you what you’re worth, Rich?” somewhat seriously.
“My fuckin' boss,” he says to the chorus around the bar. “My fuckin' boss is a Goddamn cock-sucker.” At high volumes the consonants apparently reappear.
“Well, it would do you some good to join in the fight on the side of those against all bosses,” he responds with his Styrofoam cup in the air. “But first another toast. To drinking.” The proletariat party goes to drink, but Patrick stops them with an open palm. The bartender gingerly nods while pouring a pint of Brooklyn Lager. Patrick then begins:
Drink today, and drown all sorrow,
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow:
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.
A good half of the bar drinks after this. Even the newer members of the congregation manage to give Patrick his due. “What was I saying?” he asks as he turns his attention back to us. “Oh, yes, Balaguez's papers. They were thought ideal examples of journalistic integrity. Well, I won't go that far, but they were not denounced as rubbish. And it's because of this…let’s call it faith…in the integrity of his papers that he was able to take advantage of a lucrative opportunity, one which came to his attention in the early-eighties. I won't say that he exploited the trust of the people; he simply changed their vague perceptions of a rather obscure region of the world. Some features were ignored; others received more attention than they should have. This locale of which I speak is none other than Siberia.”
“Siberia?” skeptically.
“Yes, Tomas, Siberia. I kind of wish I knew an ode to Siberia, but I doubt there are all that many of them written in English—and I don't speak Russian. Smith mentioned it in his Wealth of Nations, and M. P. Price, another economist writing in the early twentieth century, did too, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, the paucity of references just proves the point to be taken away from all of this: the less information there is about something, the easier it is to manipulate the perception of it. Siberia proved to be a very easy target.
“Balaguez was first intrigued by the area after meeting with George Kennan—not to be confused with the notorious Mr. X of this century—who had gone to eastern Siberia in the service of a telegraph company based out of either Toledo or Akron—I always forget which one. The company wanted to explore the possibility of an Asiatic line that went from east to west as opposed to one that went from west to east. Kennan wrote a book about it, too. I don't remember its title—something about a tent. It's a fascinating read, I've heard; apparently there's a rather sardonic humor throughout it that one wouldn't expect from a nineteenth century travelogue. It sold well, too, as there was a market for books like that.” Tomas shoots Patrick an incredulous look. “Think of David Livingstone—he was incredibly popular at the time, and there was a great deal of public interest in adventures similar to the ones he…well…let's say endured.
“The point of the matter is that the book gave Kennan his career. During the seventies he lectured throughout America, and by the end of the decade he had established himself as one of the leading American experts on Russia.”
“Did he spend any more time in Russia besides that one trip?”
“I believe he went to Crimean in the seventies. It may have been during the Russo-Turkish War, but I'm not entirely certain. Beyond that, I'm fairly certain that he didn't go again until the eighties.”
“I see.”
“Regardless, Kennan and Balaguez met sometime in either eighty or eighty-one. I'm not entirely certain where this meeting took place; all I know is that the two spoke of Siberia for a long while, particularly about the land's mineral resources and the exile system. Balaguez took a serious interest in the subject—after all, nonexistent labor laws and untapped resources, both human and mineral, in the same locale meant one thing to a capitalist like him: profit. The only thing that the area needed, the two men agreed, was a transportation system—a railroad.
“Now, Kennan was initially in support of the tsarist regime. As a consequence of his trips to the country—again, I know not how many—he established something of a rapport with some of the more notable members of the Russian government. They thought him an important ally in the fight for a better image of a ruling class, which, at the time, was rather brutally attempting to suppress a nihilist insurrection. I don't know how familiar you two are with late-nineteenth century Russia, but it is not an exaggeration to say that public officials were being assassinated at the rate of one every other week—perhaps more. Many of the nihilists were ruthless sociopaths. If you're familiar with Sergei Nachayev, then you know just how deranged the leadership of the insurgency was.”
“Sergei who?”
Patrick shrugs. “I guess it's immaterial.” He takes a long sip from one of his cups. “Now, the Russian government didn't want the international community to think that the country was in crisis. Having a history of inferiorit
y complexes in regards to European opinion, this was something of a given. On the other hand, the leaders were not exactly eager to disclose the niceties of the exile system, as most of these exiles were not political prisoners—which was something Dostoevsky touched upon in his pseudo-memoir, The House of the Dead, though this book was written significantly earlier than the era with which were are currently dealing. No, the majority of the exiles and the prisoners to walk the Sibirskii Trakt were guilty of relatively innocuous offenses—kind of like the majority of American prisoners today. Rather than clean up their act, the Russian government decided to do some PR. Guess who they recruited?”
“George Kennan.”
“Very good! Around eighteen eighty-five or so, they asked Kennan to go to Siberia to examine the prisons firsthand. The hope, presumably, was to have Kennan report that the horrors of the prisons—which were, by then, well-known to most of the educated public…kind of like Darfur today—were just exaggerations contrived by the sensationalist media. Kennan's testimonial, in other words, was meant to counteract all of the negative press. He was even granted access to areas no foreigner had been able to examine in order to easily trump the argument that he had been restricted from witnessing the truly horrendous conditions in which many prisoners were living. Without going into the details, I'll just say that the plan backfired terribly. Mr. Kennan was appalled by what he saw, and he immediately began writing a series of articles condemning not only the exile system, but the barbarity of the Russian government, as well.” He pauses. “I think he was banned from Russia as a result.