After the bright loneliness of the subway ride, Mott Street was a twist of dark and swollen cold: he labored through a tortuous ravine in a lonely country. He gasped for breath, his ears hurt, his eyes were clotted with snow. All the doorways looked the same. He went up several stoops that looked like the one he was searching for, brushing at snow-covered numbers and then reading them like Braille. For a moment he had the strange feeling that he was the only person left in the city, or that he was in the wrong city, or . . . He sighed in relief as the unbelievable brilliance of the recently installed fluorescents suddenly spilled out upon him through the swarming flakes.
Going up the steps to the door he could see no other footprints, and he wondered whether Gaylord and Bodien could have, or would have, bothered to fight the storm. What would he do? he asked himself, looking at his empty hands. Could he pray Basellecci’s wall into transfiguration?
After one last study of the dark snowy street, he went inside and up the brightly lit stairway. Jerry Wung’s apartment was silent. From Kram’s door came the hiss of his airbrush. Beeler’s television boomed complacently. At last he was on the fourth floor, and he knocked on Basellecci’s door.
Slow footsteps approached. The door opened, and Basellecci looked at him.
26
“WELL, I’VE COME to do it,” Norman said.
“What?” Basellecci asked, holding on to the door for support. His face was barely more than a skull, seemingly held to familiarity only by the glasses and the hairline. His skin was loose and hung below his jaw in a tissuey fold. Worst of all, his eyes seemed to accept the fact that nothing at all was owing to him. “Do what?” the two words together made him sigh wearily.
“The wall,” Norman said, stepping inside.
Basellecci wrinkled up his face, and his eyes tried to recall when that had troubled him last. “Oh, that,” he said. “Yes, the plumber is here. He . . . said he was . . . here to do . . . something.”
Bodien got up and waved a cup of coffee at Norman. “I’m here,” he said, smiling like a horse. “Ready to go.”
“How come you left no footprints?” Norman asked him, with his eyes upon the ailing Italian.
“Neither fire, flood, nor . . . I been here an hour. The snow musta covered them.”
“You brought your tools, the plaster and all?”
Bodien gestured grandly at the metal box and the bag of plaster sitting in the small cement trough.
“Ahh,” Norman said. “Well then, we only have to wait for Gaylord.”
“The colored guy?” Bodien asked.
“He should be along any time now.”
“Sure. Have a cup of coffee while you wait. This fella makes great coffee.”
“May I?” Norman asked Basellecci as he sat down across from Bodien.
Basellecci stared at him dazedly and then nodded. He poured coffee with a trembling hand and sat down between them, looking from one to the other with eyes much too large for his face.
Norman took a sip and nodded smilingly at Bodien. “Mmm-m,” he said.
Bodien shrugged modestly.
Basellecci appeared to be swimming upward through his pain. He chewed his lips, he squinted, he turned to look at the seething black at the window, at them, at the dark mouth of the toilet chamber. A part of him that had been anesthetized to his fate now broke free and assaulted him. He was in the presence of madness, and wondered whether to fear it or welcome it.
“Why are you here?” he asked Norman.
“To fix the wall,” Norman answered, sipping the fragrant coffee.
“What in the world for?” Basellecci asked.
“It’s been bothering you for a long time.”
“No, no, it doesn’t matter now. I see it was all so silly now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You will look at me and know. I am suffering from cancer. The business with the toilet, with the wall, was all a dream.”
“A dream of what?” Norman asked with a merciless smile.
“Of what? Who knows what men dream of? I have been modest in dreams. I had dreamed perhaps of dignity. . ..”
“Of dignity,” Norman echoed musingly, his eyes flaring up like prodded coals. He looked around as though to acquaint himself with a place where he might have some great success. “I wish I knew what I dreamed of. How about you, Bodien, what do you dream of?”
“Sexy girls,” Bodien answered shyly.
Basellecci looked at both of them as though they were figments of dream. “On such a night, a blizzard, you come here to fix that wall? Are you insane? Is this a joke? I am a dying man. Don’t bother. Drink your coffee and let me die in . . . Let me alone.”
“The wall is important,” Norman said solemnly.
Basellecci gaped. The night sped around them in thick, falling silence. Basellecci was appalled by the resurrection of a part of himself he had already buried. “Do you know how long it has been since I dreamed anything?” he cried, his emaciated fingers clambering all over each other. “Don’t you understand? I am almost sixty years from where I began. The world has diminished to the space my body occupies. From here I can see that none of it mattered. I feel only impatience now. The humiliations, the loneliness, all are less than nothing. The wall, the wall, stop trying to make it of significance. I don’t care. I am just decaying flesh. I was never more. I was . . .”
Norman said, “I think I hear Gaylord coming now.”
Basellecci closed his eyes and posed for his death mask.
They heard a pair of feet clumping up the stairs, stamping on the floor outside the door.
“Gaylord?” Norman called.
“Who you think?” Gaylord answered sullenly, stepping inside. His black head was frosted with snowflakes, which twinkled in the light like tiny chips of glass, and he brought the sweet smell of cold in with him.
“Well now,” Bodien said. “What’s the deal?”
“That wall,” Norman said, going to the small chamber and turning on the light. Bodien and Gaylord groaned. “We have to fix it.”
Bodien went over to it and touched it. He made a face. “It’s terrible,” he said.
“What do you think it is?” Norman asked.
“What do I think it is?” Bodien repeated. “I think that there’s something wrong in there.”
“Sshhee-et,” Gaylord muttered disgustedly.
“Do you think it’s some pipes or something?” Norman asked.
“Do I think it’s some pipes . . .”
“Or something,” Gaylord supplied mockingly.
Bodien looked at him disapprovingly for a moment before turning a professional expression back to the wall. “Now it just could be some kind of pipe trouble,” he said.
“Well isn’t it lucky we got a plumber along, then,” Gaylord said sarcastically. “Just in case it is.”
“Do I have to be insulted by him?” Bodien asked Norman.
“No, please Gaylord. We’re all in this together.”
“You said a mouthful that time,” Gaylord agreed, looking at his wet trousers.
“Well how . . . where do we begin?” Norman said.
“This is ridiculous,” Basellecci croaked from behind them.
“Maybe it’s got something to do with that wood box up on top the toilet?” Gaylord ventured.
“I could go down and turn off the main for a starter,” Bodien suggested.
“Maybe, just maybe it’s got something to do with the heating,” Gaylord said contemplatively, warming to the challenge.
“Or the wiring?” Norman added. “Is this one-ten?”
Gaylord looked at him, and Norman shrugged.
“Could come from the roof,” Bodien said, looking upward.
Norman tilted his head, considering that. One by one they sat down and took on serious expressions. Basellecci began to look faintly interested: a certain suspense had slipped beneath his sheath of despair.
“Or the floor,” Gaylord said, bringing their eyes down.
> “How about . . .”
They looked expectantly at Norman, but he shook his head. “No, it couldn’t be that.”
Basellecci stepped outside his pain and began studying their faces with great intensity. The snow piled up on the window ledge, and little drafts crept in around their ankles. Gaylord and Norman and Bodien stared at the wall, grimaced, squinted, contemplated. Basellecci felt a vague premonition of warmth, imagined something was being done. He pushed himself up with some effort and said respectfully, “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee. Perhaps a little Strega will not be amiss?”
“Yeah, do that, Mr. Basellecci,” Norman said seriously, without taking his main attention away from the silent conference.
Bodien scratched thoughtfully at his mangy skin; Gaylord played his lips like a guitar; Norman fondled the scar on his forehead.
“How about the roof?” Gaylord said.
“Bodien already said that,” Norman answered.
The smell of fresh coffee leavened their thoughts, and the silence grew richer. Basellecci grunted as he moved against his murderous pain. A cat squawked dimly from the air shaft. The building hummed like a great hibernating beast.
“Anybody said about the wiring?” Bodien said excitedly.
“Moonbloom said that,” Gaylord answered testily.
“Oh,” Bodien said.
Basellecci sighed in shared disappointment.
They drank the coffee with Strega, then the Strega with coffee, and finally just Strega. When they ran out of Strega, they had another pot of coffee with anisette, anisette with coffee, and finally plain anisette. Their contemplations grew more fertile, more subtle and complex. They wore responsibility with greater expressiveness. Bodien sat forward, his fingers dug into his scalp, his eyes burning with possibilities. Gaylord reclined on one forearm, studying the ceiling with the gaze of an astronomer. Norman sat with his hands on the table, poised, ready for levitation, staring intensely at the horrid, narrow tableau of the toilet chamber.
“How about magnetism?” Gaylord asked.
“Termites?” Bodien said.
“Air pressure?” Norman whispered.
“Underground spring?” Gaylord said, intent on the ceiling.
“Something growing in there?” Bodien said.
Basellecci found a half-empty bottle of Chianti, and no one noticed its vinegary taste as they sipped it from the coffee cups. Silence came from outside, a different silence; the snow had stopped. Basellecci, quite drunk in his weakened condition, lurched around the kitchen looking for other bottles, an odd animation on his skeletal face.
“Radioativikity?” Bodien muttered.
“Shounwavesh,” Gaylord rasped, “from shouns.”
“Organismm-ms,” Norman hissed, “from organs.”
“Human . . .” Basellecci hiccuped and looked around apologetically.
“Molsh,” Bodien said ponderously. “One mole or a lot of molsh.”
“Or ternsh,” Gaylord added.
Suddenly Norman stood up, his face wild with decision. Gaylord almost fell off his chair. Bodien did fall off his. Basellecci uttered a sharp cry of alarm.
“We just have to!” Norman cried.
“What, what?” Gaylord asked, half standing, his eyes bulging.
Bodien clambered slowly to his feet, blinking.
Norman walked over to the toolbox, opened it, and examined what was there. “Ah,” he said, picking up a short-handled pickax. “It’s no sense waiting any more. Life is short. There’s only the Trinity of . . . only love, dream . . .” He gestured graciously toward Basellecci, whose face filled with blood like a life-tinted corpse. “And . . .” He walked into the tiny chamber, raised the pickax, and drove it full force into the hideous bulge of the wall. “Courage!” he shouted. Then he began to chop away in a fury at the swollen thing. Plaster flew like a miniature snowstorm. Bodien picked up the toolbox in one hand, a wrench in the other. Gaylord stood with his hands out from his hips like a gunman ready to draw.
There came a rumbling, a choking, a gurgling. The wall exploded in a wet vomit of brown thick liquid. Norman was inundated. His eyes and mouth were clogged with a vile and odorous viscosity, his clothes soaked. The torrent went on for about eight seconds, then belched and fell off to a trickle. No one breathed or moved. The other three just stared at Norman in horror. He was a reeking, slimy figure gleaming in the harsh light over the toilet. The world waited for his outcry.
“I’M BORN!” he howled, with unimaginable ecstasy. “See, Basellecci, I’m born to you. See, see, smell me, see me. You’ll be healed. Everything will be all right!”
“But I’ll die?” Basellecci squealed in terrible excitement.
“Yes, yes, you’ll die,” Norman screamed, laughing.
“In terrible pain?”
“In terrible pain.”
“Alone?”
“All alone.”
Basellecci began to laugh and cry at the same time. “I’m drunk,” he wailed. “I’m so drunk that I’m happy.”
“The wall will be new and clean and worthy of you,” Norman said, wiping his filthy face and shaking with laughter.
Basellecci drew himself up with great and reverent dignity. “Dreams then . . . yes, yes, I have had . . .”
Bodien, meanwhile, had pushed past Norman and was now groping with a screwed-up face for the meaning inside the rotten wall. Gaylord came in, crowding the tiny chamber, and began to do the same thing. Bodien began pulling ugly pieces of pipe and cloth-soft bits of wood out of the crater. They began to rip the whole wall apart.
Basellecci said, “Coffee, I will make more coffee.”
Bodien ran downstairs. There came a crash as he fell a few steps, laughed, and continued down. Soon he came back, carrying a length of pipe and a pipe-cutter. There was a frenzy of labor, in which Norman was involved without knowing in the least what he was doing. Time passed without reckoning. Basellecci made an untold number of pots of coffee. Somewhere he found a full bottle of vermouth, which they had with coffee and then plain. The filth dried on Norman, and he was like a living creature cracking a fragile shell. They spoke constantly, yet none of them would remember afterward what they said. Heat and joy were generated; untold numbers of stories and reminiscences passed between them in an intimacy no normal men ever achieve. Norman’s head rang with the tremendous noise of the experience, his heart filled to bursting, burst, and went on. Dimly he heard Basellecci enunciating Italian words with the fervor of a great lover. There was a clanging and a thudding loud enough to waken the entire city, and at various times screams of anger came in to them from below.
Perhaps, Norman thought, if we all reach our last day of life at the very same time, it will be something like this. He stole glances at the heathen faces of Bodien and Gaylord, the suffering, yet oddly consoled, eyes and mouth of Basellecci, noting the brave enthusiasm of men who had never dreamed of anything very definite, and it occurred to him through the reek of his person that there was only one hope for him, and for all people who had lost, through intelligence, the hope of immortality. “We must love and delight in each other and in ourselves!” he cried.
“You’re drunker’n a . . .” Bodien could find no simile and just chuckled happily as he threaded the piece of pipe.
“That Norman’s the craziest, insanest nut,” Gaylord roared, acting as a vise for Bodien as he gripped the pipe with both hands from behind the plumber, so that it appeared he was embracing him. “That Norman Moonbloom got a idea he can do something to the world. He thinks he’s a giant superman. He’s so crazy he makes me crazy too, makes me think I’m building the pyramids in old Pharaoh country, or maybe the friggen Yewnited Nations. You hooked us, Norman, you got us mainlinin’ the same fix you been taking. Hah, Basellecci, Bodien, ain’t we all drunk on the same stuff he been drinking? You lousy rat, Moonbloom, this man here is dying, Bodien here is a disbarred plumber without no future who won’t have another plumbing job after you go. And me, me, I’m just a poor shine with nothing t
o look forward to except sweeping up other people’s shit till I’m too weak and old to do even that. So how come, how come I’m happy as a friggen lark? You got me drunk, Moonbloom; you got me so drunk I’ll never sober up.”
“No, no, what I’m saying is what Sugarman says. There’s a Trinity—Love, Courage, and Delusion, I mean Illusion . . . I think I mean Illusion. I think I mean . . .” He raved as he carried cartons of filth down the stairs to the basement, raved to the angry faces of disturbed tenants who thrust their heads out of their doorways at him. “Of course I’m roaring drunk, and this is all probably delerious tremb . . . delerium treml . . . But still and all, I’m born and I’m living and I worry and love. . ..” Once he fell, but by then he was so dirty that any further contact could only clean him.
He watched Bodien and Gaylord working and admired the cool dedication of their faces and bodies. He grew very tired and hardly spoke at all. A great serenity seemed to wrap them all as Gaylord stroked the surface of the plaster with a trowel, and there was such a silence that the silky rasp of metal on plaster was like a great toneless note. After a while Norman and Bodien and Basellecci sat down and watched the gliding trowel in Gaylord’s dark hand, and they seemed to rock somewhere on the edge of sleep.
Basellecci made more coffee, moving in a dreamlike slant, and then, with their eyes narrowed to that one movement on the wall, they sipped and existed.
It was something as real and at the same time unreal as the hot coffee on his tongue, Norman thought. Or as real and unreal as sight, which takes in the huge depth of landscape with all its large movements and colors and planes and yet makes it all convincing in mysterious imprint on a dark whorl of tissue. Sentiment had to disintegrate under what his drunken mind knew now, and in its place come an immense capacity to consume. He felt carnivorous, as though he could devour all of them, himself included. Small, dusty man indeed! Why, he was huge, united with all of them! His eyes, his brain, his ears, all swallowed the universe. “Oh my,” he belched.
The Tenants of Moonbloom Page 22