Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  They walked through the room towards a table in the back. Practically everyone said hello to Joe and Joe slapped some of them on the back, and said humorous things in Greek, and they laughed. Some said hello to Old Gus too. And one bearded old man came up to Old Gus and took his hand and kissed it reverently. They sat down at a table for two and ordered ouzu and a deck of cards and began to play. Old Gus hummed along to the songs of the banjo player as he played his cards. They played each card carefully, with great thought, sometimes taking almost a minute for a single play of the cards. They drank of the ouzu very slowly, with leisure. But played the game in silence, with great gestures of the arms, slapping of the cards, humming but not talking, concentrating very hard with the cards. They were playing five cents a game.

  The waiter came over once and stood at the table until they had finished their hand out, then told them they had three drinks of ouzu each coming, and he told them who had bought each drink. They did not offer to buy back this morning. It was not necessary to buy back at once. In fact it was not considered to be in good taste, as it was with Americans. Often it would be a year before they would ever buy back. But it seemed somehow that they never forgot who had bought. And always some day would buy back.

  They played cards for over two hours. Then Joe suggested they stop playing and eat of some goat’s cheese and drink of some wine and talk for a while. This was agreeable to Gus, even though he was four games (twenty cents) behind. They ordered the cheese and the wine.

  “Tell me,” Joe said, “how is Nick?”

  “He looks far older than his years,” Old Gus said.

  They were speaking in English now. Joe liked to speak in English. His own native Greek was so bad, because of all the time he had spent in America, that many Greeks could not understand him in the native tongue.

  “We are going fishing, maybe, soon,” Gus said.

  “Where?” Joe asked.

  “To the North. Wisconsin.”

  “You go fish in Florida. I go too.”

  “You know nothing of fishing,” Gus said. “And you are afraid of the water. You will not get in a boat.”

  “No. I will not get in a boat. But I will go with you. If you go to Florida. We can stop in Atlanta—I have a cousin there. And in Jacksonville—I have a nephew there. And a friend in Clearwater. And our friend Tony has his fine restaurant in West Palm Beach.”

  “Well, then, when will we fish?” Old Gus said.

  “You will fish. I will visit. And I will cook your fish.

  Tell me when you plan to go. Maybe I will sell my place first,” Joe said. “I am tired of that place.”

  “You have a fine business there.”

  “I know. But I am tired of it.”

  “We will go in three weeks, maybe. After the wedding.”

  “Good. I will try and sell my place.”

  “Suppose Nick does not want to go to Florida.”

  “He will go,” Joe said.

  “Suppose not.”

  “Then we will tell him we are going. And he will come.”

  Gus smiled that sweet sad smile and scratched his almost shaven gray-black head.

  “I will ask Nick,” Gus said.

  “We will have fun. It will cost nothing. We will sleep for nothing. And eat for nothing. My friends and relatives will not allow us to pay. That is the way my friends and relatives are,” Joe said.

  Gus knew this was true. Joe could live a year in good style. With the best of food. Best of drink. On less than five hundred dollars, and travel all the while. He had friends and relatives everywhere.

  “Old Pete, he come in the place the other day with Lou Duck. They had coffee,” Joe said. “He doesn’t know how to live, that Old Pete. Sometimes I think he is sick. He enjoys nothing but to scheme.”

  “That is his business. His life,” Old Gus said.

  “He does not enjoy it. He was much fun when he was young. When we first came and lived in the hayloft over the car bam. Just one block from here. That was in the nineties. We laughed much then. Now no one laughs about the real things. Only about what they have schemed. It is a shame,” Joe said. “Are you going to the wedding?”

  “Of course. Will you?”

  “Of course,” Joe said. “I am worried for a present. I am not good at presents. Shall we look at things today when we shop. Maybe at something religious. That seems good for a wedding.”

  “Sophia is religious. I do not know of the husband-to-be,” Old Gus said.

  “You have no feelings of him?”

  “Yes, I have feelings of him.”

  “Are they good?”

  “They are not good. Nor bad.”

  “And do you feel of Nick?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Joe asked.

  “He suffers.”

  “He was born to suffer,” Joe said. “He has the sweetness of the soul of his mother. And the stubbornness and the will of his father. He is split.”

  “There is more than that.”

  “Will he die then?” Joe asked.

  “We all die,” Gus said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do not know,” Old Gus said. “Pierro will die. I have dreamed that. I have seen it.”

  “Pierro!” Joe said. “That is hard to believe. Even from you.”

  “Yes, he will die. It is not hard to believe, though,” Gus said sadly.

  “America is a strange place,” Joe said, taking a piece of the white goat’s cheese and slicing it carefully, then dipping it into the wine carefully and taking a small bite. “A strange, wonderful place. God made this land surely. Yet here we lose the real God quickest. That is strange.”

  “I think it is good we look for a present,” Gus said. “At least look. I have not thought of a present. My Bible I am going to give some day to Nick. I do not have anything else I can give. So I guess I must buy.”

  “I think I will buy something religious. I will spend a hundred dollars,” Joe said. “Not a cent less.”

  “No, I do not think I will buy a present,” Gus said. “I will send the few dollars I have in the tin can to the church Pete has built in Verdamah. That will be the present. The holy card I will receive in return, I will give. I must do that at once.”

  “You need money?” Joe asked.

  “No,” Gus said. “I have what I need.”

  The old man who had kissed Gus’s hand when he first came in came over to the table. He had a beard and was very old, and had on work clothes.

  “Tell me,” he said to Gus, “is there a God?”

  “Yes,” Gus said.

  “Why, if there is a God, did he do what he has done to me?”

  “You admit there is a devil?” Gus said.

  Yes, the old man said. “And he has no arms. But sharp hooks, like great fish hooks, on his artificial arms.”

  “How do you know this?” Joe asked.

  “I have seen him,” the old man said.

  “Why, then, if you believe there is a devil, do you not believe there is a God?”

  The old man looked puzzled. He did not speak for a moment.

  “Because I have seen this devil with his artificial arms and great fish hooks. He tried to strangle me with the hooks. But I escaped,” he laughed gleefully, crazily. “I have not seen God.”

  “You will,” Gus said. “You look for him and you will.”

  Joe reached into his pocket and took a ten dollar bill from it and handed it to the man.

  “Is this the God?” the man asked.

  “No,” Old Gus said.

  He fondled the bill, then began to cry. He thanked Joe. He took Gus’s hand and kissed and walked away and out of the place.

  “He gets worse,” Joe said.

  “Does Old Pete still give you money to give him?” Gus asked.

  “Every month,” Joe said. “It is hard to believe that he had twenty restaurants and five million dollars once.”

  “That makes no difference now,” Gus said.

>   “As if he was dead. That is how he is now.”

  “He tried to be much. What he could not be better than, he tried to destroy. We all do that. For him, he tried to better that which was too much for him. Maybe he is better for the world now. I do not know. He does not destroy any more.”

  “Nor does he cry to anyone of his loss,” Joe said. “Every day he walks through the city and looks at the locations of his old restaurants. We have all seen him. But he cries to no one of his loss. And his wife, who he let his bowels upon when he was rich, he now treats with kindness, though she is crazier than him. He cares for her tenderly. His children have all gone away. And have changed their name,” Joe said. “And do not even write. The woman does not remember that she had children. She thinks now always that she is with child. And holds her stomach. And .screams at times when she has had too much wine that the baby his kicked her. She is sixty years old. And really believes she is with child. And when she is not watched, goes to the doctor’s office for child examination. And calls the hospital to check on her room. She is very bad,” Joe said. “Where do you wish to eat?”

  “At the Athens would be good.”

  “They will not charge me,” Joe said.

  Gus smiled.

  “I begin to feel the ouzu and the wine,” Joe said. “I think I will dance. If you will play the zither, I will start a dance.”

  There was a small room in the back where there was a set of drums, and a guitar, and a zither.

  “I will play,” Gus said.

  “I will tell the banjo player. You can play together.”

  Gus got the zither, and he and the banjo man began to play. About nine men, led by Joe, began to dance the Greek dance in a circle. Everyone began to clap. More and more people began to dance. They danced for over an hour, and Joe seemed to be the only one who was not tired. He jumped and leaped. And hollered in Greek. And danced alone in the center of the circle, danced and slid along the floor on his knees, and laughed and drank wine as he danced. And when he finished, everyone clapped and hollered and embraced him and patted him. It was almost like the Old World, this place, this morning, Gus thought.

  They ate at the Athens. Then shopped. And ate confections in the sweet shop. And salami in the butcher shop. And drank wine in the wine shop. And ate cheese in the cheese shop. Joe got very drunk and took a string about twenty feet long and tied twenty dollar bills along the string every foot and threw the string over his shoulder and walked down Halstead Street singing and dancing, and stopping to talk and drink. It was an old habit of his, and people came out of their shops to watch him walking away with the string of twenty dollar bills trailing from his shoulder, and waved and laughed at him. And Gus laughed too.

  Joe hired a small immigrant boy to carry the packages. The boy did not speak any English. Joe would not go in the religious store, however. He told Gus it was not right to go in a religious store, feeling the way he did. He wanted a woman. And that was no way to go into a religious store, especially to buy a wedding present for your niece.

  After they completed the shopping, Joe insisted they go over to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was a little restaurant and coffee house where they played cards, too. But women were permitted. And Joe had long been going with the fat old red-faced black haired waitress who looked more like a gypsy than a Greek. Gus went along and they had a drink there, and Joe pinched the waitress on the tail and laughed, and she laughed, and she was getting off soon. So Gus left carrying his own packages.

  Then he went and got the lamb. And carrying the baby lamb in one arm and the packages in the other, began the long walk back to his shack. It was late afternoon but the sun was still up, and there was little wind, and he sweated as he walked, and looked very strange walking the streets of the city with the live lamb and all the packages. And the sweat poured from his wrinkled old sad face, and he hummed laments to the lamb as he walked, bent over slightly, as if he were climbing a high hill, up a slight grade.

  CHAPTER XIX

  WHEN Nick left Yvonne to go over and talk to Ellen the Fair on the beach, he had honestly intended to come right back, with or without her. Instead, he had walked Ellen up the beach. He told her after they had walked a while that he wasn’t going to the races, and she said she hadn’t intended to go either.

  Up the beach, he sat down on a piece of driftwood and she sat in the sand and they smoked a cigarette. She seemed strangely fascinated by the scar on his leg wound just above the ankle. And sitting in the sand she examined the wound professionally and wanted to know where he got it and how he felt when he got it, was it really a hot pain. Then she examined the scars on his face and shoulders and wanted to know how he had gotten each one, then sat back down in the sand staring that strangely fascinated stare at the leg scar, which was very deep and red. Her fingers felt cool and gentle on the leg scar, and with the sun coming almost straight down, hot now, he felt very content.

  “It’s a wonder the bone wasn’t shattered,” she said, still fingering the scar curiously.

  “That’s what the doctor said,” he answered her. “How do you know about this?”

  “I worked in a hospital for a year. And I was a Red Cross worker at Great Lakes for a while.”

  “You didn’t mention that last night. Or the other night.”

  “I thought I told you. I liked the work. It was hard and dirty working in the hospital. I had never done anything like that. At Great Lakes it was much easier. Except for what I saw in that hospital.”

  “The wounded ones?”

  “The young ones that were wounded blind. They had them all together. There must have been over a hundred of them. All young. In their early twenties or teens. They had canes and would go to therapy in groups. And you could hear them coming, tapping, from far away. They were so young.”

  “I haven’t seen many blinded ones. Though one of my good friends was blinded in Italy. I didn’t go see him. Though I could have.”

  “Why?”

  “It would have made him uncomfortable, I think.”

  “You mean make you uncomfortable.”

  “No—him. I mean that.”

  “I heard men got like that. It’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s true,” Nick said. “Though you may feel uncomfortable later. That is why a soldier always visits another soldier that has tough luck. He has to see for himself. Because everyone who has tough luck increases the chances of your own luck holding. That’s why after you’ve seen a wounded one, or a dead one, you feel guilty. Because you somehow feel glad that your chances have increased.”

  “That’s cruel,” she said. “Why do you always talk so crazy?”

  “It may be cruel. But it’s nature. And that’s the way nature is. Whether you like it or not.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “That’s because you’re too Catholic.”

  “That’s not the reason either.”

  “I suppose you don’t believe a child in the womb is a parasite.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I delivered babies. In the war I did that too.”

  “A parasite,” she said. “You don’t even know what a parasite is.”

  “A child in the womb is a parasite,” he said. “It takes all the nourishment it needs from the mother’s blood. If the woman does not have what the child requires, the child takes it anyhow. At the mother’s expense.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then, let’s face it. A child in the womb is a parasite.”

  “I don’t like the idea of that,” she smiled up at him.

  “Truthfully, neither do I,” he grinned. He was looking down at her pretty little nun’s face, with the quick round dark nun’s eyes, and at the firm brown body in the two-piece black bathing suit. And over her, as he was, as she still fingered the wound curiously, he could see down the alleyway of her good breasts. She had plenty of tan already this year, he thought.

  “How come you weren’t going to the races?” he as
ked her.

  “Too much of a production. I like the beach. You know how I’ve always liked the beach.”

  “Yes. We used to come here a lot. I remember.”

  “Are you going to the party tomorrow?” she asked him.

  “Yes. I think I’ll go. I’ll see you there, won’t I?”

  “Yes. I’m going.”

  “Who’s bringing you?”

  “I don’t have any date,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Cigarette?”

  “I just put one out,” she said.

  He lit one for himself, then leaned forward from his perch on the driftwood.

  “Nick,” she said, “don’t look like that. Haven’t you any sense of decency.” She straightened up.

  “I guess not,” he laughed.

  “You’re impossible.”

  “You’re kind of hard to figure out yourself,” he said, pokerfaced and serious.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you got practically no clothes on and you wonder why I look like that. Christ, I can’t be expected to look at you the same way as if you had on a big old flannel bathrobe or something. Can I? Well, that’s silly. I can’t, that’s all.

  “I mean it’s not my fault if you’re attractive, is it? Matter of fact, it isn’t your fault either. I don’t suppose I can blame you because you’re the way you are, any more than I can blame me for reacting the way you make me.”

  “If I ever met a bullshitter in my life—”

  “Now they didn’t teach you to talk like that at Sacred Heart, did they?”

  “And they didn’t teach you to look like that in the Army, either—I know that,” she half-laughed. “You knew how to look like that long before this war started,” she said, adjusting the top piece of the two-piece suit. “My God, Nick, why don’t you act like a human being once in a while. You’ve got brains. Money. You’re young. You’ve no reason to act like you do.”

  With the sudden hound-dog hurt expression of a cocker spaniel that had just been caught urinating on the bathroom rug, he looked down at her, scratching himself on the right buttocks at the same time, as if he could not quite comprehend what she had just said.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, perplexedly.