by Steve Weiner
I went to the train station. The Czech circus was not there. I wandered back into town. People ducked into the spray. I was curious about the United States. I visited the police museum.
The building had been a dry cleaner’s. Now the exhibits were framed and screwed on to metal folding tables. On a red cloth were mannikins of the Grayback twins, their necks broken. Behind them was a lacquered yellowed newspaper: Death with a Crowbar in Negaunee. There was a doll with nylon stockings around its neck: Louise Flecks Strangled in Skanee. A doll was slumped against a railroad tie: Herman Dodd – Nail Pounded into Back of His Head. Upstairs was Helen Leszke, barbed-wired to a chair: Tied with Wire, Left to Die.
In the chemicals room were forensic tools: awls, forceps, pipettes. There were signed photographs of the Marquette policemen playing baseball. I went to the buffet and stole a sandwich.
I went back to the station. Trains slid through steam, dissolving, trains coming in, waiting, going out. There was no Czech circus.
I wandered Marquette again. Spray lurched through the streets, parking lots, Americans jumping over flooded gutters, cars stalled. I went into a billiards hall and slept behind a Coke machine. All night a calendar of pornographic women fluttered over my head. In the morning the owner threw me into the alley. Canada was nowhere, a wall of rain in the north.
I went back to the station. The Czech circus had come. An American man opened the door of a rear compartment. I put my ear to the door.
‘So, this is your first time?’ a Czech girl asked.
‘I am new to this.’
‘To this, too?’
‘I am so large!’ he exclaimed.
‘Every American’s tool.’
‘Like a telephone pole!’
‘Now do like this – ’ she said.
‘Mama – yes, oh Mama – that’s good. That’s very good – ’
‘Oooooooo. He hurts me!’
‘Do I? That excites me!’
‘Uhhhhhh!’
‘AHHHHHH!’
‘OOOOOHHHH!’
‘EEEEEHHHH!’
‘Oh … my …’
‘So that is what it is all about …’ he said.
I walked to the head of the train where a Czech sat under an iron lamp. He had blue shade where he shaved. Behind him more Czechs rolled crates toward the freight cars. The Czech turned at a noise and yelled. One of the circus workers had dropped a heavy box. There were no animals, just crates and heavy boxes. He turned back to me, handed me a cigarette.
‘I want to join the circus,’ I said.
‘You’re Ojibway?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Basque?’
‘French.’
The Czech turned again and shouted at the circus handlers. He turned back to me.
‘What can you do?’ he asked.
‘Anything.’
The Czech girl walked to our bench. She wore a white and black checked coat. She walked carefully, like she’d had an operation. Her slender lips were blue with cold. She sat down.
‘This is Lilaine,’ the Czech said.
Lilaine sat with her hands in her coat pockets, legs straight out in front of her, staring at her white boots. Her thin body was heavy. One had the impression of a great heaviness, though she was slender. She smelled of lilacs. She had a beautiful smile and speckles on her forehead. She had scars on her wrists.
‘You like her, don’t you?’ the Czech asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Lilaine speaks English, German, French, Mexican, Basque and Romany.’
‘Would she speak to me?’
‘Lilaine will do anything you ask.’
‘Anything at all?’
‘Anything.’
‘Extraordinary,’ I said. ‘How like a doll she is.’
I watched her face.
‘Where do you come from, Lilaine?’ I asked.
‘Lübeck.’
Sheets of filthy water thundered on the glass roof. Grit sluiced down the girders. The concrete was cold and wet and we were chilled. A guard came down the concrete and the Czech looked away. When the guard passed the Czech looked at me again. Lilaine’s silver eyes stared ahead, their pupils black, wet black.
‘Lilaine,’ I whispered. ‘What is it like being a woman?’
‘What a strange question,’ she said.
‘Are all women like you?’
‘Of course.’
Her accent changed, more French.
‘But aren’t women different?’ I asked.
‘Different from men.’
‘What is it like,’ I asked, ‘being you?’
She cleared her eyes by bringing her forefingers to the bridge of her nose. By now her accent was identical to mine.
‘He is a strange boy,’ she said.
‘Tell me,’ I begged.
She trembled, looked up at the rain. She sighed, but her breath did not come out evenly.
The Czech Girl
‘I was an orphan.
‘I grew up on a farm near Lübeck, Germany. It was after the war and many people had been killed and many were starving. I was sold to a Protestant sect that forbade speech on the Sabbath. Their dialect was hard to understand, even for the Germans.
‘I had epilepsy. Like a winter wind that threw snow these blizzards blew across my brain. I forgot everything. Every morning the brethren taught me to feed the pigs, pluck the chickens, bake bread. Every night I forgot.
‘After ritual bathing in the forest – even in winter – we read from the Bible. We made a special kind of cheese bread with pork in it and set it under the beds at night so nobody would have to cook on the Sabbath. On Sunday we took the Betenbrot to Bible meetings. Afterwards we came home over the snow and ice. There were crystals in my eyes. By Monday I had forgotten the Bible.
‘My parents – all the brethren were my parents – taught me again the German script. They explained the meaning of Himmelreich, Ewigkeit, Seele. I was quick, and copied out the prophets’ names: Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Messiach. They kissed me. They embraced me. We prayed together on the floor. But, of course, by afternoon, or the next morning, I had forgotten everything.
They made me stand naked in the snow. My mothers hit me with a poker. But what could I do? It wasn’t my fault. I forgot who these Germans were and why they had power over me.
‘A stone wall separated the pigs from the kitchen. From them I caught a sickness that made my ears run red. I was afraid of the dark forest. Deer ran out into our farm. The brethren stunned them and killed them. They skinned the deer and sold the meat to the village. I was afraid of the boys that worked as itinerants. They were rough, and crude, and they snored. Every night I pushed my dresser in front of my door.
The brethren took me to Lübeck. There was a medieval market with a fifteenth-century clock. At the hour the people stopped selling and watched. Two knights came out and jousted. The red knight fell dead. The black knight went forward into the clock. The merchants heard the bells all over Lübeck. The brethren sold me to the Lollingen family. I was eight. The Lollingens were well known in northern Germany. Gunther and Waldemar were the brothers. Fernand, Anton, Petrus and Klackus with the bowed legs were the cousins. The wives were Agatha, Elsbeth, Marie and Katrine. They spoke Romany, a strange language.
‘I slept in Petrus’s wagon. There was a red mannikin nailed to my bed named Malthusius. I was told Malthusius would stick briars in my eyes unless I did what Elsbeth told me to do. Elsbeth came in to stroke my hair.
‘“Cashty natty,” Elsbeth whispered. “Good night.”
‘My wagon creaked when we were moving. Malthusius grinned down at me. Straw flowers rubbed against the red paint. The moon came and went, came and went, through the wagon opening. There was a smell of cognac. But it couldn’t mask a strange stink.
‘Klackus named our horses dirty names in German:
‘Plackscheisser, Unflath, Nessler, Matzpompe, Misthammel, Gorsthammel, Kuh-Fladen.
‘Occasionally a drunkard pe
ered in. Petrus or Klackus threw him back. The Lollingens performed magic tricks, gymnastics, and animal acts. I had a thin soprano and beat a snare drum. Petrus’s wife twirled a red crepe. A peasant bet his wife on a cock fight and after he lost Anton tried to collect. There was a fight with pitchforks and we moved to Kiel.
The Lollingens lived in canvas tents that bent around a black pole. We slept on grey blankets sewn together, carpets with scarlet braid and scarlet pillows. The kettle hung over a fire. We boiled tea and dried Norwegian fish called matjo. We ate balivar and goodloo, bacon and sugar. Petrus was a hunter and shot rabbits in the black forests. We travelled to Bavarian villages.
‘They hung Sapeau the snake from a rafter in my wagon. They said Sapeau would bite me if I didn’t obey.
‘“Rankny rackly,” Marie whispered, putting scarlet ribbons in my hair. “Pretty girl.”
‘They pierced my ears and hung gold hoops. They dyed my hair red. They put sparkle on my hands and forehead. Klackus was an expert boshimengro, a fiddler. Polkas were popular in the woods. They sent me in to dance with peasant men.
‘She introduced me to a Bavarian peasant. But I didn’t remember what happened next.
‘“Boro rye,” she said as he left, counting money. “A great gentleman.”
‘They called me dirty endearments in German:
‘Pritsche, Sackgen, Klunte, Hurenbag, Schandbalg.
‘By morning I always forgot everything. My wagon walls were luminescent with silver that sparkled down the rafters. A giant snail must have crawled through. The crescent moon shone through the earth’s blue haze.
‘Elsbeth sang a song in Basque:
‘“Chorinac kaiolan
Tristeric du caulatcen,
Duelarican cer jan
Cer edan,
Campoa du desiratceu;
Ceren, ceren
Libertutia hain eder den.”
“Little bird in the cage
Sings sadly
What to eat
What to drink
He wants to be free
Because, because
Nothing is sweet but liberty.”
‘We went down the rutted roads of Bavaria. The maples swirled red. Klackus’s long knives jangled in black holsters. Turquoise and silver hung from my canopy. Spielverderber, our mastiff, killed a rabbit. Petrus had a curious round stone around his neck which he made me touch.
‘I went into the disappearing cabinet for Gunther’s magic. Klackus twirled his fjukei, the bamboo cane, both ends loaded with lead, and beat up a policeman. We had to leave Bavaria. Elsbeth hung Tjun the knife over my bed. She told me Tjun would pry out my eyes if I did not obey.
‘Petrus made up morality plays to suit the mentality of the Catholic villages. In those parables of Jesus, the Devil, and Pontius Pilate the Devil won every scene except the last. We performed along the frozen streams, in taverns, in warehouses. We crossed into Bohemia.
‘Villages had been burned. Trains were still derailed. Tanks lay inside out in ditches and buildings had bloodstains on the walls. I saw a peasant woman give birth standing up. We stripped bodies and pried out the gold in their teeth. The Italian and Yugoslav borders closed so we slipped into lower Austria. The blue fog streaked in from the marshes, obscuring the white Austrian churches. We set up on the frozen plain of St Pölten. Petrus and Klackus slit a fox and threw the entrails to Spielverderber. Every night they dressed me in red fox fur.
‘“Juch he! Wer wollte traurig seyn?” Klackus laughed, ringing the bell outside my wagon. “Who wants to be sad?”
‘One night I escaped. The chains must have broken. Elsbeth grabbed me but slipped and fell. I stumbled across the frozen marsh. As I crossed a frozen pond in the moonlight, iced cat-tails snapped and sprayed me with silver crystal. I went further and further, into the wide open, Austrian stars shining over the black forest. The moon turned upside down. The ponds suddenly chimed like glockenspiels.
‘The Virgin Mary glided over the forest. She sat on a blue pillow. Starlight streamed up from her beautiful bare feet.
‘“Thou hast suffered,” the Virgin told me, “in the manner of women.”
‘“Dear Mother of God – “ I prayed, kneeling in the snow.
‘“Therefore, thou art blessed.”’
‘Gunther caught me, dragged me back to the wagons, and made me drink horses’ urine. They hung weights from my ankles. They burned my neck with hot gasoline rags. But I was not afraid.
‘The Lollingens sold me to a Romanian who broke my arm and pulled out clumps of my red hair. The Romanian sold me to an Italian policeman who took me on his boat on Lake Constance. When he was through with me he sold me to a munitions dealer in Montreal. In Canada I was used for parties and he gave me to his partner who sold me to a cement manufacturer in Sudbury. Chinese merchants sold me to the Czechs and now I work the summer fairs.
‘I remember when it rains.’
Four
My father belted me twelve times by the coal bin. I became delirious. My lungs filled with damp. My father made soup of sheep’s brains and bathed me. Then he set me on clean sheets in the living room. My mother swept a broom over my chest, sweeping away the sickness.
‘D’une feuille on fit son habit
Mon Dieu! quel homme
Quel petit homme!
D’une feuille on fit son habit
Mon Dieu! quel homme
Qu’il est petit!’
I laughed. Because like the little man who had a leaf for a coat I was small for my age.
‘Of a leaf he makes his clothes
Dear Lord! What a man!
What a little man!
Of a leaf he makes his clothes
Dear Lord! What a man!
So very small!’
I dreamed I chased Czech women. I woke in St Croix. I got to the linoleum, to my knees to pray in gratitude. But I must have been still dreaming because suddenly a gigantic hand, invisible and furious, grabbed me by the seat of my pants and threw me out the window, high over the Dybs’ roof.
In spirals of black, dead trees I fell, fell, and woke up in St Bonaventure, taking an algebra exam.
Father Przybilski punished me for truancy. He made me turn the harmonium, a blue wooden post with a heavy crossbar in the courtyard. One walked it round and round until it squealed. But the rain had lubricated the post. I couldn’t get a sound. Catholic boys watched from woodworking class, Catholic girls from the caged housewifery windows.
There’s no music!’ the boys yelled.
I pushed until I drooled. The rain blew into my face. I prayed to St Martin to let me die. I saw two suns, one over the housewifery roof, the second, oblong and red, above the laundry room.
‘There’s no music!’ the girls yelled.
I saw St Christopher at the gymnasium window.
‘There’s no music!’ St Christopher yelled.
Every night at seven we listened to Cardinal Léger on the radio. We recited the rosary with him. Afterwards our mother turned on the brass lamp. She was illiterate, as I said, so Ignace read aloud the Diocesan Newsletter while I played my father’s red accordion. The Dybs’ house glowed into our house from the purple twilight. Brown leaves rattled at the gutters. Headlights swept down LeClerc, turning Ignace’s face chalky.
‘An eighteen-year-old girl crippled from birth decided to visit her former Mother Superior in Quebec,’ Ignace read. ‘She left St Croix at midnight and crawled east to Highway 17. She was seen by two labourers who raped her and left her in a ditch. The police arrived, by which time she had crawled a further quarter-mile east.
‘The Poniatowskis took up a collection and drove her to the Greyhound station, where they bought her a ticket to Quebec. She prostrated herself before her Mother Superior, who recognized her, and cured her with a sprig of holly. The girl rode back to Gilbertsonville. The moon shape was gone from her face.’
We crossed ourselves.
‘Le bon Dieu soit béni!’ our mother whispered.
M
y father taught me to be a prison guard.
‘When the vice-warden comes, step aside,’ he said. ‘Tilt from the chest and cock your head, like this – but when the warden comes, take two steps backward. You do not breathe. It is offensive to him. You make your eyes to him. By this incorporeal contact he knows you are his.’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘But as for the other guards watch for the knife in the back. Remember: in prison friendships are provisional.’
‘Yes.’
‘And life itself is a prison.’
‘It is clear to me.’
‘Oh, Jean. What a future you have!’
Two prisoners jumped into Swallowfield’s well. Guards shot into the well. My father pumped ammonia down the shaft. Later the guards found interlocked prisoners’ hands on the banks of the Petit Croix. My father varnished them, and put them in his black museum.
‘Nobody escapes Jack Verhaeren,’ he muttered.
Red Two Hats, my father and I went hunting.
Shafts of sun poured into la forêt. Gold, brittle ferns carpeted the red maple leaves. Bark became moths and flew into the shadows. Toadstools spat spores as we trudged through. Red shot a small buck, strung it up outside his quonset hut in Ojibway Flats and boiled the brains.
‘Jack,’ Red said. ‘I’ll give you a haunch.’
‘That’s for you.’
‘No. You take it. You got kids to feed.’
‘Thanks, Red.’
Red brought a branch from the fire and lighted his cigar.
‘What you give me in return?’ Red asked.
My father rubbed the sweat from his face with his khaki sleeve.
‘Oh hell. Take Jean.’
Jack DePré’s penis died. We saw it in the locker room. It turned purple, fell in ribbons, hung in maroon threads and finally fell off. All that was left on him was a vertical scar.