THE WALLS

by Jay Fox

  “Regardless, newspapers throughout the world jumped on the bandwagon. The New York Times even published selections from the Russian penal code at one point to show just how draconian the regime really was. It's really amazing stuff—you could actually get exiled to Siberia if your house accidentally caught on fire.”

  “Holy shit,” exclaims Tomas.

  “A few papers, however, rejected Kennan's claims. Among them, as you can probably guess, were those published by Balaguez—mercedibus emptae. It wasn't because Balaguez himself was a monarchist. He was just a man who was never blind to an opportunity.”

  “Is this the fucking theme from Taxi?”

  “You mean ‘Angela’.” Caesura. “By Bob James.” Tomas and I look to one another. “'Sun Runner', another track on this album, sounds almost like the Grateful Dead of the mid- to late-eighties. Are either of you fans of the Dead?”

  “Fuck no,” Tomas grunts.

  “I'm not a fan, but I don't mind their music.”

  “I see.” He takes a small sip of beer. “Well, as I was saying, the Balaguez papers were skeptical of Kennan's findings. That much is clear. But the reason why…well, there is little evidence to support the why, but here we go. Kennan's investigation of the Siberian penal system at the request of the Russian government coincided with the beginning stages of the planning and construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the critical piece of infrastructure that was necessary to transport the prodigious natural resources of the land to the world market—shipping was out of the question for much of the year because of the ice in virtually every Siberian port. When Kennan refused to be the apologist for the exile system, Balaguez saw an opportunity that he couldn't pass up. And he made a few things happen.

  “First, as I've already said, he started publishing pro-tsarist articles in his paper. This is the very late-eighties now. And although the majority of these people writing editorials for Balaguez have never been to Siberia—had never even been to Russia for that matter—the public began to think of the tsarist regime a little less critically—for even a ham-fisted apologist can draw some support. Not all of these editorials came from hack American journalists, though. Some came directly from Russia, from diplomats and other pro-tsarist camps, in order to appear more authentic, more accurate.

  “But these articles were not the most important element to Balaguez’s scheme. To him, it was critical that he not only praise the regime for dealing harshly with the nihilists; he also sought to relegate the status of the nihilists to that of a small group of bandits. It was a brazen lie, no less egregious than calling a wasp a gnat, but the truth was difficult to come by. Russian dissenters were unable to vocalize their opinions, as the practice of samizdat or any form of journalistic freedom was nil. Just like anyone with something to prove, the regime was not about to let the rest of the world know just how chaotic things had become, and Balaguez was happy to accommodate such tripe because of his desire to see the Trans-Siberian built.”

  “And that was the lynchpin of this whole endeavor. The Trans-Siberian. His spin on the matter was simple: Oriental Manifest Destiny—though this ignored the fact that the vastness of the American West was often perceived in an optimistic light by colonists, whereas their Russian counterparts viewed the expansive Asian steppes with despair and pessimism, especially since most of the people out there had been sent against their will. Regardless, people knew that the Russians were making a strong effort to populate the rather dismal area. Furthermore, Balaguez made sure to note that there was a vast store of not only arable land, but of gold and other precious metals, too. It was the conquest of yet another hinterland for the sake of its unused resources, and he followed the process, or progress,” derisively, “with a tenacity that a war might not even get in today's press. You may ask why, and this is certainly a good question.

  “The Russians were obviously paying for the bulk of the Tran-Siberian's construction, but they were hungry for foreign investment. They needed unthinkable funds not only to advance the project, but also to finish it sometime before the twenties. Furthermore, they needed American engineers to assist them—Americans, after all, had conquered the intractable wilderness of their West.

  “Now, though there is no proof of this, it seems as though Balaguez put in a lot of his own money by making a deal with the Russian government, which was very simple: I give you a great deal of capital to build your railroad and encourage other Americans to help you out, you give me a cut of the profits made off of the mines. He certainly did not publicize the fact that he had a vested interest in the railroad, let alone such a lucrative understanding with the Russians—he had established something of an 'in' with the tsar because he had befriended Alexis when the prince came to the States back in seventy-one or so—, but he did let it be known, albeit tacitly, that the Russian were willing to pay special favors to those who helped them out. Yeah, quick history lesson: without American capital, the main line of the Trans-Siberian probably wouldn't have been completed until the Stalin years.

  “As an aside, it's even said that Balaguez and the Russians tried to finance a tunnel under the Bering Straight, but every engineer who surveyed the area came back and told them that the endeavor was suicide. Still, he publicized the tunnel as a possibility, and it played to investors, as well as all of the Positivists in New York still captivated by the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Now, you may ask, how did Balaguez clandestinely encourage American capitalists to invest in the project? Very simple. In fact, I've already told you: he emphasized, if not exaggerated, Siberia's vast mineral wealth, in particular its vast store of gold. When these investors came to see him, he explained to them the deal with the Russians: if you invest in the railroad, you can invest in the mines.

  “That's all well and good, you may say, but you probably want to know why the American capitalists didn't just invest in the mines and leave the construction of the railway to the Russians. This is very simple: The mines were the property of the tsar, and, until the early twentieth century, the tsar only allowed one the privilege of investing in one of his mines by personal favor. Furthermore, the incentive to invest in the mines was not particularly strong—until the railroads got built, the costs of mining, processing, and transporting the gold, which were all very inefficient processes, were going to outweigh the price the gold went for on the market.

  “So there arose something of a standoff. Even with the potential boon of the gold mines, investors didn't want to finance the construction of the railroad—not because they were worried about the system never being completed or being repeatedly sabotaged by nihilists or even being socialized by the communist regime to follow the inevitable revolution, a revolution many did not think all that likely because of the lies being spread in Balaguez's papers; no, their primary concern was the fact that their money would be tied up in a venture that would take several decades to bring about a substantial return. This is where Balaguez's true brilliance came in.

  “He anticipated the South African War—or, as it is commonly known, the Second Anglo-Boer War. This is now the middle of the nineties. As you may or may not know, South Africa exported more gold during the late-nineteenth century than any other country, and back then, as you two surely know, every industrialized country was still operating on the gold standard. If the flow of gold dried up, the world economy did, too. Consequently, Balaguez pressured his writers to focus on the instability of South Africa, the ensuing war, and the disastrous effects it would have on the gold market. Imagine his solution to the problem of how to deal with this potentially catastrophic situation while allowing the plutocrats of the country to make even more money.”

  “He told people to invest in Siberia.”

  “Exactly. Other papers followed suit, too. If you read the articles published in the New York Times between say eighteen eighty and nineteen hundred, you'll see a substantial shift in the manner in which journalists discuss Siberia. First it's a desolate wasteland, then it's a giant penitentiary,
and then it's referred to, and I've seen this with my own eyes, 'the next California'.

  “By the turn of the century, South Africa is being torn apart by one of the most gruesome civil wars in history…” he begins. He then turns to Tomas. “Not to go too far off topic here, but did you know that the concentration camp was invented by the British during this war?”

  “No,” he responds.

  “Fucked up, huh? Ah, well, I guess it's true that history is written by the victors—that's why the redacted chapters always make you remember that war is nothing more than, as Sorely said, the blind fighting the blind. Anyway, by the turn of the century, the war is raging in South Africa, the tsar is allowing Americans to buy into his mines, and the Trans-Siberian is operational, but only from the Pacific into the Siberian purlieus. Oh, and yet another windfall comes of this—for whom else but the Americans. Their goods, particularly their farming machinery, come to dominate the markets of Eastern Siberia. Not only were they of higher quality when compared to their Russian counterparts—they were actually cheaper due to the railroad.

  “Why do you think that was? Why would an empire build a railroad that connects its hinterlands to a port more than six thousand kilometers away from the capital? Why do you think the Americans took the Philippines and Hawaii right around the same time? Why do you think America invaded Siberia after World War One? They said it was because a few thousand Austrian POWs were running amok, but that's silly, transparent. It was all for control of Siberian, and, to a lesser extent, Manchurian, gold. And none of this would have happened had it not been for Balaguez, who, as you can imagine, made a pretty penny from all of this. Some have said that he got Walter Murray Gibson in on it, too, but I'm rather skeptical on the matter. Still, I will have to concede that there is a possibility, however unlikely, that the Bayonet Constitution was written to attract wealthy Americans to Hawaii, and that this colony was established to be a base of operations to more effectively galvanize and augment their sphere of influence in the Amur region, Manchuria, Korea, China, and the rest of Southeast Asia, but I can't award credence to a theory that is reliant on so many unverifiable conditions.”

  “That's some story,” Tomas responds incredulously. “What does it have to do Dick Keens?”

  “Well,” he begins as he stands, “I'm going to run to the toilet. I'll continue in a moment.”

  “Walter Murray Gibson?” Tomas sighs. “What is this? Are we in eighth grade social studies?”

  “Let's see where he goes with it.”

  Patrick returns after a few moments. “Where was I again?” he asks.

  “The Siberian conspiracy.”

  “Okay. You were wondering what all of this had to do with Dick Keens. Well, apparently, one of the Balaguez heirs was Dick Keens' father. As the story goes, Keens' mother, Beatrice, was a union gal, worked mostly with the stevedores up and down the piers in Red Hook and whatever neighborhood that is to the north. Columbia Heights, right?”

  “Cobble Hill,” I respond.

  “It's Carroll Gardens, man,” Tomas counters.

  “It's irrelevant.” He takes a small sip from the double-pint in his right hand. “Supposedly, that's how Balaguez's son and Beatrice met. But I'll get to that in time. The story actually begins with Beatrice's mother, Freda.”

  “Freda Keens was the daughter of Irish immigrants. They left the Emerald Isle because of the Potato Famine, which, it seems, was the reason most emigrants of Ireland found their way here back then. Her story is a sad one, not that that's too different from most immigrants' stories you hear today, but we'll avoid politics for now so as to not rob Freda of the limelight.

  “Freda was born around eighteen fifty-four, the only child of the family to be born in America. The family lived in the neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, a little tract of land that runs from the Navy Yard to about Gold Street or somewhere around there.”

  “That's DUMBO,” Tomas interjects.

  “It's to the east of DUMBO,” he counters. “The eastern portion of what is now considered DUMBO used to be part of Vinegar Hill,” he says as though admonishing a child. “Regardless, she grew up there, probably living in a little flat no bigger than the ones you and I have, only there were eight people in the space.” He pauses. “No, ten. There were eight children. Suffice to say, Vinegar Hill was not a particularly nice part of town; it was Irish, it was poor, and the housing was substandard to say the least.

  “It was a rather dismal environment for a child, but things were not so bad that she had to go to work to help the family—this being largely due to her status as the youngest and all. Instead, Freda goes to school, and it turns out that she has something of a knack for poetry. In fact, the small girl is so precocious that she draws the attention of a rather famous poet of the time, one with whom Walt Whitman is rather close. You've heard of him, I take it?”

  “Whitman? Who hasn't?” one of the men from the bar, who happens to be walking past after using the bathroom, responds. Once he gets back to the bar, he holds up his pint. “To Walt fucking Whitman!”

  Patrick smiles to the man, stands upon his chair, which arouses a stern admonishment from the bartender, and then recites the following:

  Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

  Cheerful, for freest action formed under the laws of divine,

  The Modern Man I sing!

  He goes to sit, but he is first asked to take a bow. Applause continues as he takes down a fair quantity of beer, bows again, and then sits back down. “Now,” he begins after wiping his mouth, but the remainder of the statement is truncated by the same man as before, who says,

  “Do another!”

  “Another Whitman?”

  “Another!”

  Patrick thinks for a moment. “An epithalamium for past and present, then; for the morose scions of Modernism and their megaloprepous, who has now become eidolon:

  I met a seer,

  Passing the hues and objects of the world,

  The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,

  To glean eidolons.

  Put in thy chants said he,

  No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in.

  Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,

  That of eidolons.

  What I believe to be a protracted caesura turns out to be a rare lapse in Patrick's memory. His face is a disappointed shade of embarrassment. “Does the next line begin 'Ever the mutable' or is it 'The ostent evanescent'?” He shakes his head. “I'm terribly sorry for the lack of a proper encore, my friends. On a more sober occasion I could probably recite at least half of that poem, but now must not be the time.” This is met with facetious hisses and jeers. I'm still wondering what the hell the introduction to the poem meant. I think the mega- word comes from Aristotle. “In due time I will return with a retinue of muses to restore my standing amongst you, the august court for whom this humble Silenus performs,” he begins as the audience calms, “but unfortunately I have a wealth of information to divulge to these two, and unfortunately, again unfortunately, I am a bit low on time.”

  “Do a dirty one,” the bartender yells.

  “A dirty poem?” Patrick is amused. He ponders a moment. “Well, who here has heard of Gaius Valerius Catullus?”

  Silence.

  “Allow me, then, to present to you the most…let us say lewd…poet of Rome in the time of the first Triumvirate, a fresh voice influenced not only by epic and tragedy, but by the epithets of love and passion, and his own misfortune at the hand of a woman whom he adored and Cicero denounced—Clodia Metelli.” He clears his throat. “This will be in prose, by the way, as I have opted to follow in the steps of Smithers. While I do believe that Whigham's rendition is quite good, I feel it deviates from the Latin a bit too much in order to maintain the—”

  “Just recite the fucking poem already.”

  “Fine:

  Tavern of lust and you, its tent-mates—at ninth pillar from the Cap-
donned Brothers—, do you think that you alone have the right, that it is allowed to you alone, to fuck only virgins, and to think the rest are as goats? Because you curs sit one hundred, maybe two, in line, do you think I have not the daring to force fellatio upon your insipid—

  “What the fuck?”

  “Yo', Eddie, it was ancient fucking Rome. Those guys fucked everything and anything.”

  “Remind me to tell you all about Tiberius' minnows.” Patrick pauses. “Now, to continue…

  —Just think of it! With slanderous graffiti upon your tavern's facade I will shame your progeny. For my girl, who has fled my embrace, she whom I love as none will be loved, for whom I have fought valiantly, has seated herself here. All of you, good men and rich—and also, all of you, piddling back-alley cornholers—are making love to her, even you, Egnatius, one of the long-haired race—the son of Celtiberia and its bounty of hares—whose quality is revealed by dense-grown pelt, and teeth scrubbed with Iberian piss.

  The man who ordered the Whitman asks Patrick to the bar. “You gotta' take a shot wit' me, Paddy. 'Specially afta' that.”

  “A glass of hellebore, courtesy of Mr. John Jameson!”

  Patrick returns after a quick moment, beaming with an afflatus of whiskey and an eye for mischief. “What do you think of my rendition?”

  “I doubt the Latin's that dirty,” Tomas responds.

  “Ha,” Patrick says. “You obviously don't speak much Latin.”

  “Or any.”

  “I suppose it's time you learn then. Did you know that there is a verb, irrumo, that specifically means to force one to suckle? When a man says it…well, you can guess what that means.”

  How does one respond to that?

  “Now,” he begins, “Where was I?”