Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

Pierro wouldn’t walk though. He’d take a cab. He ain’t got a pot to pee in but he’ll take a cab. What was wrong with kids nowadays. And all this opportunity.

  CHAPTER V

  PIERRO STRATTON, first cousin of Nick Stratton, nephew of Old Pete Stratton, sat in his bedroom on the second floor of the two-story walkup just off Ohio Street on the Near North Side. Before him on a battered old card table were two gallon containers each half-filled with water. In his hand was a rubber hose.

  For the past hour, with the exception of that time he had gone to the phone to talk to Old Pete, he had been blowing on the hose, forcing the water from one jug into the other, strengthening the one lung he had left. Pierro Stratton was twenty-nine years old. His other lung he had left at a beach town in Italy called Anzio.

  He inhaled deeply, blew once more on the hose, wincing slightly. The water in one of the containers gurgled. Slowly he lowered the rubber tube onto the table staring abstractedly for a moment at the jugs. Then his eyes lowered slowly to the table, to a heavy bronze medallion four inches in diameter.

  He reached over and picked it up holding it gently in his hands for a moment feeling its solid heaviness, its coolness, then ran the palm of one hand over his own image engraved in the bronze in profile.

  He turned it over:

  PIERRO J. STRATTON

  LIT

  FIRST WORLD FELLOWSHIP

  ARCHITECTURE

  1937

  He gazed at the lettering for a moment, then got up, and inching between the unmade bed and the card table, went over to his drafting board and set the medallion down carefully face up in the upper right hand corner.

  Standing there hunched over the drafting table in the dingy room that had been his room for seventeen years, the half-light sifting in from the window that looked out at the dirty brick wall of the building next door, standing in his old red wool bathrobe he had from his first year at LIT and was now almost a part of him; had warmed him as he studied in the cold and late of winter nights and early mornings (he had taken it with him and studied in it again in Athens, Rome, Paris, and Bloomfield Hills, then taken it back to Paris and Rome during the war) standing there studying the image of himself he felt the fear begin to well up, the horrible inadequacy multiplying with each silent second.

  He was a goddamn Stratton all right. A Stravoupoulous. There was no difference. It was there in the protuberant forehead, in the high cheek bones, in the square cut almost fighter’s nose, in the deep-set of the eyes: Stratton.

  A goddamn syphilitic Stratton.

  Remembering now suddenly, vividly, the fear of every blood-test. The hollow inadequacy and inferiority intermingled with the shame and fear as he waited for every result. Days or years? Time really had no perspective he learned after the first time, his last year in high school.

  He was fifteen then.

  And since, every cut—boil—pimple—producing again that same thwart-frustration-fear. Even when he embraced his mother the shame of the fear of not wanting to kiss her on the mouth. She did not have it. And still could not quite comprehend what it was. But why she didn’t have it was the miracle. As rotten as his father had been. The years of living with his rottenness. Of sleeping with it. No, she did not have it, the tests said. But it could be there. Down in some secret chamber of any one of them. Dormant. Waiting. Yet alive. In her. In him. In his sister.

  His sister was the one you would think would have the fear, he thought. But she didn’t. She was about to be married and it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. And certainly did not bother Old Pete at all marrying her off. Even if she did give birth to a couple of idiots. No, it certainly didn’t bother Old Pete.

  Not him. Not any more than it had bothered him when his, Pierro’s, father had died. It almost seemed a relief to Old Pete when he had died.

  Pete had really pulled one off when he had matched Perro’s sister Helene to that young Greek from Maine. Magna Cum Laude. Harvard Law.

  It always seemed to work out for Old Pete. No matter how crudely he approached anything. It seemed to work out just as he had planned it.

  An architect to build his buildings.

  A lawyer to take care of his legal problems as well as taking his niece off his hands.

  And Nick, poor goddamn Nick, to run his business.

  And on top of all that he had Mary whom he did not appreciate. Beautiful kind sweet Mary who had nursed him out of a bed he was never supposed to get out of, his mind and drive sick from the long sickness and sick again from the defeat and humiliation of the depression; of seeing almost all that he had built taken away, the terrifying fear of going broke of being destitute—Mary had nursed him again, nursed his almost broken mind and spirit until he came back. Mary who had never worked a day in her life—nurse, cook, scrubwoman, maid, and mother to Old Pete’s little-boy tantrums.

  Nick did not appreciate her either, Pierro had thought once. But later he had found out you couldn’t tell about Nick. Nick was much deeper than anyone thought. I mean anyone that took him at face value. For his athletic ability. Or his fights. The wild drunken fights. Or his women. Or the fact that he was Pete Stratton’s son. His heir. His boy. Not Mary’s. Not Nick for Nick. But his boy. Nick for Old Pete. His. As he, Pierro was his nephew.

  I wonder who Old Pete would put in Nick’s place if he got it. But Nick wouldn’t get it. Not in this war. Not yet. Somehow Pierro knew that.

  It would all be so easy for Nick. The same for him probably as for Old Pete. The same, that is, if Nick would learn some patience. Learn to wait as Pete waited: To actually thrive on the waiting.

  Suddenly his eyes focused in on the medallion. Quickly he took a cardboard folder and covered it. Then turned and wandered over to his closet and opened the door, glancing at himself for a moment in the mirror, running his hand through his almost metallic black crewcut hair that was already greying on the edges, then brushing two fingers over the thick black moustache which he had grown his first year at the Sorbonne and was now as much a part of him as—Remember what Tolstoy said a couple of years before he died, he asked himself suddenly, ‘When I think of all the time I’ve wasted trimming this beard’. He twisted one moustache between thumb and forefinger, then turned trying to decide whether to wear his good gabardines or just plain khaki OD’s. He decided on the OD’s.

  Slowly he began to dress, slowing down even more than he wished now that he realized that he had stalled long enough that he was sure to be late.

  “Pier-roo, Pier-roo,” he heard his mother call from the hallway in her heavily Greek-accented English. “Pouliki mou, dolly mou, hurry now. You not keep your Uncle Peterr waiting.”

  “Yes, Mother. I’ve been doing my exercises, dear. I’ll be along,” he said in that soft, refined voice of his. With his eastern schooling and two years abroad, he spoke with a polished, Eastern American accent; that typical, acquired Ivy League inflection of voice that was as much a part of the better-Eastern-schooled lad as were his dress and his manners.

  “Tha’s a good boy.”

  It was the third time she had reminded him since Old Pete had called. The Patriarch had spoken. Well, Pierro wouldn’t worry her being late. He’d take his time on the way.

  Slipping into his pants he thought, Old Pete couldn’t have met me at the Drake. Not him. It had to be at Lou Duck’s. Where he could show me off. As if Lou Duck hadn’t heard fifty-eight times about my Fellowship.

  He doubted if Lou Duck knew what a fellowship was, even. Well, Lou knew what a whorehouse was. He had run enough of them before going into the restaurant business and becoming, overnight practically, because of the war, one of the biggest restaurateurs in Chicago. A millionaire. And president, Pierro thought ironically, of the Men’s Club of the First Greek Orthodox Church of Chicago.

  Old Pete had of course helped put Lou into the church presidency. Old Pete practically ran the church anyhow, no matter who was president. But Lou Duck, in measure of appreciation to Pete, was preparing to appeal to the Diocese to
permit non-Greek wives of Church members to be buried in the Greek Orthodox section of the cemetery (indeed a tribute to Mary Stratton). At the same time, of course, it gave Lou Duck the opportunity to make profound speeches about the broadmindedness of the Chicago Greeks—their progressive nature.

  Oh my God, Pierro Stratton thought, all that power they were accumulating. All that power intermingled with all that ignorance. What would it give birth to? what?

  He had put his ribbons on his shirt. They were five: the three overseas being the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the European Theatre ribbon with three clusters for the three major campaigns that he had served as an air-liaison officer with Battalion and Regimental Headquarters Companies. And put his Airforce insignia on his left shirt collar and his silver Lieutenant Colonel’s leaf on his right collar, and the leaf on his overseas hat. Then he threw the hat on the bed. The hell with it. He wasn’t going to wear it anymore.

  He had never worn a hat before the army, and most of the time when he was in, except when he had been forced to wear one. And with only two weeks until his final discharge, he couldn’t get into much trouble not wearing it even if there was an MP every two blocks. At least not the kind of trouble he had gotten into the first time he had refused to wear one right after he had received his commission.

  “Pier-roo, Pier-oo,” his mother called again.

  He could hear the worry in her voice.

  “Right away, mother dear. I told Uncle Peter I was doing my exercises and might be a little late,” he lied.

  He finished dressing.

  He did not take a cab or his car, an old thirty-eight Ford, over to Lou Duck’s. He did not take the cab because of the expense. And he did not take the car because of the expense in case he could not find a parking space and would have to go to a lot. Pierro Stratton felt that he would need every cent that he had saved during the war to fulfill his plans. Because somehow he was sure that his days of touching Old Pete were over, and even if they were not the demands that Pete would make in lieu of any financial advances would be more than he could afford.

  When he arrived at Lou Duck’s Silver Saddle Restaurant a half hour late Old Pete was sitting in the corner booth of the bar with Lou Duck himself. He walked over and as he approached the booth, caught Old Pete’s eye. At once Pierro knew that he had made a damn fool of himself again with the old man. He had expected him to be late. And of course had reacted accordingly.

  They said hello around.

  Then Old Pete told him to go over to the bar and wait, that he and Lou were discussing some important confidential business, that he would join him shortly.

  Which he did not.

  It was almost an hour. And Pierro knew no matter what Old Pete had on his schedule that afternoon, there would be retribution for Pierro being late, the schedule could go to hell, Pierro would have to wait.

  Sitting there the hour waiting Pierro had had only one drink. He was not a heavy drinker primarily because he believed that drinking might lower his resistance, or even might activate the bug that lay, perhaps dormant now, but hidden waiting in that secret chamber within him. He hardly thought of this when he drank anymore; his way of drinking had just become so ingrained in him that it was his second nature to be careful and precise about the way he approached it.

  He sat there in that lax sophisticated way of his, an almost bored way, so unlike the animated way of all Strattons. He had been in college only one year when among Greek society he had begun to acquire a reputation as a sophisticate, a snob, the only reputation he had ever had outside of the fact that his father had died of syphilis.

  His manner irritated the Greeks. Especially Old Pete. They, the Greeks, with their deficiencies of speech, their lack of education, felt a certain inferiority unless they were among themselves or in a business conference with someone not as smart as they. Add that, Pierro had once thought, to the fact that though they had all practically attained American citizenship, by one means or another, they really did not feel somehow that the land was their land. Not any more than a dentist who was born and raised in Chicago and went to Muncie, Indiana, would feel that Muncie, Indiana, was his town: And it would not be his town, he would never be accepted into the circle of those four and five generation families at the country club. Not ever. Those circles were closed. Those four and five generation circles were closed not only to him but to the two and three generation circles...There was always a feeling of not belonging for almost everyone.

  Maybe, Pierro had once thought while he was at the Sorbonne and far enough and long enough away to look back at his home, with some semblance of objectivity, maybe the fact that they really did not consider it their land and really felt that they did not belong, was the reason behind their drive. Maybe the success they fought and worked for was, to them, the equalizer. After all every man always figured out an equalizer for himself, though he was usually disillusioned if he ever attained what he thought the equalizer should be, because in the very process of attaining what he wanted he had to change, and did, so that when he got where he wanted to go he had changed so much that he really didn’t want what he thought he wanted originally. That was the tragedy for so many.

  So Pierro’s acquired manner made them uncomfortable. It irritated them. But it also frightened them. After he had come back from the first two years of his fellowship, six months of which was spent at the American college of Athens, his Greek was so far superior to any of those Greeks he had known all his life in Chicago, a really cultivated Greek spoken in that soft sophisticated way of his, that no Greek wanted to speak in the native tongue with him.

  Well, he was an outsider to begin with, he had thought. They weren’t about to let him in, not that he ever wanted in, ignorance repulsed him really, but they didn’t like having to keep him outside when the weapons were his. And by God this was amusing.

  Sitting as far down the bar as he could get from the back booth where Pete Stratton was, he gently, delicately emptied his cigarette ashes into the tray. (Another part of his acquirement.) He smoked so slowly, with such a gentleness, with such an easy control that even now, though it had held the bartender fascinated over the last half hour it was also making him extremely nervous.

  Looking down the bar for a second, towards the back, down the almost empty room that was as dark and as dimly lit as any whorehouse that Lou Duck might have owned, Pierro saw Pete Stratton’s hand bang down on the table emphatically.

  That was all he could see (because of the high-backed wooden booths)—the hand. He watched it open and close with a concentrated power, then up and bang down again. Pierro laughed his amused laugh to himself: And they call me an actor. They say I put it on. He took another sip of his drink, still only three-quarters finished, chain-lighted a cigarette, and then a waitress came up to him and told him Mr. Stratton was waiting in the corner booth. She was a small brunette, wide-eyed; the kind of baby-doll manner that was the trademark of all Lou Duck’s girls. Pierro said he would be right there.

  He waited a moment, only a moment, then picked up his drink and walked to the back booth. Lou Duck was not there now. Pierro wondered for a second how he had missed him when he left.

  “How’s the young fellow?” Old Pete said pleasantly as he sat down.

  “Fine, thank you, Uncle Peter,” he said, giving the Peter a little more “r” than usual.

  I wonder if he’s a goddamn fairy, Pete asked himself for about the four hundredth time.

  “How’s your mother?” Pete asked, still pleasant.

  “I’m worried about her, Uncle Peter. I don’t think she’s well at all.”

  “Well, when are you going to do something for her?” Old Pete asked pointedly in a new voice. “It’s time you did something for her. The way she’s worked, slaved for you.”

  “I thought she might go stay with Helene. I don’t mean right after the wedding. But a few months afterwards.”

  Old Pete was unwrapping one of the ten cent cigars, seemingly studying the wrapper,
which Pierro knew he was not. Pete hadn’t even considered having his sister-in-law live with his niece. But it might be a good idea. A damn good idea. She’d keep her eye on things. And Old Pete could talk to her, know how things were really going. And, too, Helene would have someone who was close to her, to keep her company. And it would be good for her husband, too. In a sense it would free him to devote more time to his new practice. After all no man could help not being at least a little suspicious of a woman as exciting and beautiful as his niece. And besides all of those advantages, his mind whirled, there would be no more rent or upkeep on the apartment for him to meet. But what was Pierro up to, suggesting that his mother leave? My God, he doesn’t think he can go on living at the apartment at my expense?

  “I’ve never thought of your mother going along with your sister,” Old Pete said. “Has your mother mentioned it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Of course it would be up to Helene’s husband. You know I wouldn’t want to do anything to interfere when they’re just starting out,” he said, then put the unlit cigar into his mouth. “Anyhow I don’t know if it would be right for your mother. After all, Pierro, she’s lived here thirty-five years. All her friends are here. She’s never lived anyplace but here since she came over on the boat.”

  “Mother has very few friends. You know that, Uncle. In fact I think she’d rather like getting away for a while. It takes so little to please mother, really,” Pierro said in that soft way of his.

  Christ, why don’t he talk like a human, Old Pete thought.

  Pierro was smoking when he sat down but still had not puffed on the cigarette, just held it out over the table calmly, not moving the cigarette hand at all. Pete was studying the long ash on the cigarette end nervously, wondering when it was going to fall.

  “Have something. Another drink? A sandwich?” Old Pete said pleasantly.

  “I’m fine. Thank you, Uncle,” Pierro said.

  The ashes dropped onto the table top. Pierro made no move, as if really he didn’t know that they had dropped. Jesus, but that kid made him uncomfortable. Maybe it’s not so bad Nick quit school before the war. If education made you like this one, Pete thought. Dammit, I wonder if he is a goddamn fairy. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. There’s something definitely wrong.