Roy's World

by Barry Gifford

  Inside the front hallway it was dark and cool but musty. He walked up the stairs, past the first-floor landing. Sunlight streamed in through a hallway window, but it was muted and he could see dust floating in the air. When he reached the second-floor landing he saw two nuns, one very young, one an older woman. Their habits were gray or light blue, not black and white. The young nun came over to Roy and looked closely at him, studying his face. She was short and her eyes were strange, one blue, one hazel, and they were cast in different directions. She said, “Buona sera.” Roy was surprised that she greeted him in Italian, but he replied, “Buona sera,” to her. The older nun took the younger sister by an arm and steered her back toward the apartment door on the second landing. Roy did not see the older nun’s face and she did not speak to him, only to the other nun, whom she hurriedly guided into the apartment.

  Roy continued upstairs. He stood in front of the door to the third-floor apartment. The hallway was dusty and shabby, the door much like the front door to the street. He reached into his pocket and found that he had a key to this door. He inserted it in the lock and entered the apartment. There were oriental rugs on the floor, as there always had been, but the apartment was stuffy, close, as if it had not been aired out in a long time, and overcrowded with furniture. His mother wasn’t home, nobody was there. Roy decided to go to his room at the rear of the apartment to get a shirt. He walked through the rooms, particles of dust and dirt swirling in the shafts of sunlight that pierced through brown shadows. Even though he knew he was on the top floor of the building, Roy felt almost as if he were navigating his way through the entrails of a large animal.

  In the back room, Roy realized his clothes were gone. He knew now that he had not lived there for a very long time. He looked out the windows of his old room at tar-covered garage roofs and back porches with wash hung out to dry on clotheslines. Roy understood that he had gotten off at the wrong stop, that this was the land of the dead, and he was not supposed to be there.

  Roy would remember this dream for the rest of his life.

  The Secret of the Universe

  When he was eleven years old, Roy began writing stories. Using a lined yellow legal pad and pencil, the first story he wrote was about two brothers who fight on opposing sides during the War Between the States. One brother lived with their father in the South, the other with their mother in the North. They meet on a battlefield and recognize one another but are forced to fire their rifles and both brothers are killed. Roy titled this story All in Vain.

  The next story Roy wrote he called The Secret of the Universe. It was about a boy who every day sees an old man, a neighbor, going into a little cottage next to his house. One afternoon, as the boy is passing by, he sees that the door to the cottage has been left open. The boy walks over to it and peers inside. Test tubes and vials of chemicals are on a work table, dozens of books are piled around and there is a large blackboard on which are chalked what appear to be mathematical equations or formulas. The old man comes up quietly behind the boy and asks him what he is looking for. The boy is surprised, a little frightened, but curious about what he has seen. He looks at the old man, who has a kind face, and asks him what he does every day in the cottage. The old man smiles and tells the boy that he is a scientist and that he is trying to discover the secret of the origin of the universe before he dies.

  Before continuing his story, Roy wanted to know what the secret was. A few years later, when he read about Saul’s conversation with Lazarus after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, Roy thought he might have the answer.

  “Tell me, Lazarus,” said Saul, “what was it like? What is the difference between life and death?”

  “Other than the light,” replied Lazarus, “there really isn’t much difference.”

  In an attempt to erase the evidence of Jesus’s greatest miracle, Saul then stabbed Lazarus to his second and unrescued demise.

  The more Roy thought about Lazarus’s report from the other side, the more unlikely it seemed to him that the old man, no matter how dedicated a scientist he was, would succeed in solving the mystery of existence.

  Roy never finished the story.

  Far from Anywhere

  Roy read in the newspaper that Doctor Death had escaped and was believed to be hiding out in South America. Doctor Death, whose real name was Aribert Heim, had supposedly murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and other prisoners in unspeakable medical experiments at the Mathausen concentration camp during World War II. He had been captured by the Allies and held in custody with other Nazis for a short time following the end of the war, then, for some unexplained reason, released. Heim lived in Germany for fifteen years, until he was tipped off that he was about to be indicted and fled the country.

  Walking to work after school, Roy stopped in front of Vignola’s appliance store and watched the televisions in the window. There were three, each tuned to a different station with the sound off. At first, Roy watched the one showing a Porky Pig cartoon, then a picture of a man came on another set, the one in the middle. The man’s face was darkly handsome but hard, the almost oriental eyes staring to the left of the camera, the grim mouth tight and turned down at the corners, his severely widow-peaked hair slicked back. The name “Doctor Death” appeared under the photograph. Wet snow began falling, melting before it could accumulate on the ground. The wind blew flakes into Roy’s face, but he wiped them off and watched the TV with Doctor Death’s face on it until it switched to another story. Then he remembered that old man Vignola was from somewhere in South America.

  Roy went into the appliance store and saw the owner standing on a small stepladder, replacing a lightbulb. There were no customers in the store. Roy went over and stood next to the stepladder.

  “Hi, Mr. Vignola,” he said, “need any help?”

  “Here,” said the old man, handing down the dead bulb to Roy. “Hold this.”

  Roy took it and Vignola finished screwing in the new bulb, then climbed down.

  “Thank you, Roy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Roy handed back the old bulb.

  “If you were going to hide out in South America,” said Roy, “where would you go?”

  Vignola stood half a head shorter than Roy, mostly because he was bent over and had a hump on his back. He had a head of thick, curly white hair, though, that made Roy imagine him wearing a tuxedo and conducting an orchestra with his hair flying.

  “That’s a strange question,” said Vignola. “Why do you ask me?”

  “You’re from there,” Roy said.

  “From Argentina, yes,” said the old man, “Buenos Aires. But not for forty years. I came to this country in 1922, and I have never gone back.”

  “This Nazi called Doctor Death that I saw on the news is probably hiding out down there.”

  Vignola nodded. “I heard. Heim. He and Mengele experimented on people in the camps. Beasts. Brazil, maybe. Many of them went there. Some to Argentina, sure, and Bolivia. Paraguay, too. Chile, perhaps, a little fishing village far from anywhere.”

  “Why are they allowed to live there?” asked Roy. “If they’re fugitives, and it’s obvious they’re Germans, not Brazilians or Bolivians, why aren’t they arrested?”

  “Because in many cases the governments sided during the war with the Axis. Also, the Nazis escaped with enough money to pay for protection for years, or their children now support them.”

  “Were you born in Buenos Aires?”

  The old man looked up and directly at Roy, who noticed for the first time that Vignola’s eyes were blue.

  “No,” said Vignola, “in Napoli. My father was a cobbler, but in those days Italy was not united, not truly a country. There was a great schism between the North and the South, there still is. In Napoli, there were many factions vying for power, political battles in which men were killed just for an insult. Tribe against tribe. My
parents took a boat with me and my sister to Montevideo, Uruguay, and settled eventually in Argentina, where there was already a large Italian population.”

  “Why did your father leave?”

  “They wanted him to go into the army to fight in Abyssinia, and he didn’t want to go there. The Abyssinians defeated the Italians in 1896, and after that Italy wanted revenge. They got it when Mussolini invaded again in the 1930s. This began the war for Italy.”

  “They sided with Germany,” said Roy.

  The old man shook his head, and said, “Italy has never ended a war on the same side on which it began.”

  “I’ve got to go to work,” Roy said.

  Vignola looked out the front window.

  “It’s snowing harder now.”

  “I’ve got a hat,” said Roy.

  “This Doctor Death,” said the old man, “they’ll get him. Maybe not right away, but they won’t stop.”

  “Who won’t stop?”

  “The Jews,” said Vignola. “The Americans won the war but they didn’t finish the job. The Israelis will. They’ll hunt down Doctor Death and the other Nazis, you’ll see.”

  “Even if they’re far from anywhere?”

  “The world is shrinking fast, Roy. Anywhere is not so far any more.”

  “You’re not Jewish, are you?” asked Roy.

  “I wish I were,” said Vignola.

  “I never heard anybody say that before,” said Roy, “that they wished they were a Jew.”

  “How old are you, Roy?”

  “I just turned fifteen.”

  The old man smiled. “Put on your hat,” he said.

  Rain in the Distance

  Roy was with Magic Frank and the Viper in Meschina’s Delicatessen when he saw a girl sitting in a booth across from theirs who looked familiar. It was just before midnight on a Friday in April. The boys had been to a basketball game at Chicago Stadium and then gone to a party in their neighborhood, which turned out to be pretty dull, so they left and went to get something to eat. Roy couldn’t remember right away where he’d seen this girl before. She wore her honey blonde hair up in a ponytail and had a slender, curvy shape. Roy couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He did not recognize any of the other three girls who were sitting in the booth.

  “You guys know who that girl is?” Roy asked his friends. “The one with the ponytail over there.”

  “She’s good-lookin’,” said Frank, “but no.”

  The Viper shook his head. “Wish I did. She looks older.”

  “What do you mean older?” Roy said.

  “Older than us.”

  Roy and Magic Frank were sixteen, the Viper was fifteen and a half. The girl got up and one of her friends said, “Wait, Daisy, I’ll go with you.”

  “Daisy Green,” said Roy. “I saw her at a party a few years ago. Ernie Nederland knew her.”

  “Nederland?” said Magic Frank. “He piped a kid at Algren and got thrown out. I had a couple fights with him over at the park when we were in eighth grade. He was small but tough. Smart, too. Knew when to quit.”

  Roy said, “Let me out,” and squeezed past the Viper.

  He caught up with Daisy Green and her friend outside in front of Meschina’s.

  A cold wind came up suddenly and Roy shivered. He’d left his jacket in the booth.

  “Hello,” he said to Daisy Green. “We met once back in about sixth or seventh grade, at a party. My name’s Roy.”

  “Gee, I don’t remember,” said Daisy.

  “Well, we didn’t actually meet. Ernie Nederland told me who you were.”

  Daisy Green laughed. She had a slight overbite, but other than that her teeth looked perfect.

  “Ernie’s probably in jail,” she said.

  “Or should be,” said her friend. “I’m Donna.”

  “Hi, Donna,” said Roy.

  He looked at her, then immediately forgot what she looked like.

  “That was a long time ago,” Daisy said. “How did you recognize me?”

  “I never forgot you since that night.”

  “How romantic,” said Donna.

  “Did we make out or anything?” Daisy asked.

  Roy smiled. “No. Like I said, we weren’t even introduced. I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. You still are.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Donna said.

  “Why didn’t you talk to me at that party?” said Daisy.

  “I think you were there with somebody,” Roy said. “Do you want to come back in and sit with me and my friends? It’s cold out here.”

  “There’s rain in the distance,” said Donna. “That’s what my grandmother always says when there’s a wind like this.”

  “I can’t,” said Daisy. “I’ve got to go home.”

  “Can I call you? What’s your number?”

  “Do you have a good memory?”

  “I remembered you all this time, didn’t I?”

  “Rogers Park 4-32-32.”

  “I’ll remember,” Roy said.

  “Nice meeting you,” said Donna.

  “Nice meeting you, too,” said Roy.

  The girls turned away and Roy went back inside.

  “We ordered,” said Frank.

  Roy fished in a pocket of his jacket for a pen and wrote down Daisy’s telephone number on a paper napkin.

  “You get anywhere?” asked the Viper.

  “I got her phone number.”

  “How old is she?” Magic Frank asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Roy. “She’s supposed to be dead by now.”

  “Dead?” said Frank. “Why?”

  “Ernie Nederland told me she had a heart problem and had already had a big operation and that she wasn’t supposed to live very much longer. She went with older guys he knew. Men. Nederland said she’d do anything.”

  A waitress brought Frank and the Viper’s food to the table.

  “You want something?” she asked Roy.

  “He wants Daisy Green,” said the Viper.

  “She ain’t on the menu,” the waitress said.

  “Corned beef on rye and a ginger ale.”

  The waitress left.

  “Maybe she had another operation,” said Magic Frank, “and she’s okay now.”

  The two girls with whom Daisy and Donna had been sitting got up from their booth and put on their coats. One whispered to the other and then the one who did the whispering came over and stood and looked at Roy. She was short and heavy with stringy brown hair.

  “I heard what you said about Daisy,” she said. “About doing anything. I’m gonna tell her.”

  Both girls walked away.

  Roy stared at Daisy Green’s phone number on the napkin, then he folded it and put it into the right front pocket of his trousers.

  “You should call her anyway,” said the Viper.

  Bad Night at the Del Prado

  Roy’s mother’s third husband, Czeslaw Wanchovsky, was a jazz drummer whose professional name was Sid Wade. His fellow musicians called him Spanky, a reference to his style of appearing to slap or “spank” his drums as he played. Roy was ten years old when Sid Wade married his mother, and from the beginning Roy and his new stepfather did not get along. Wade was in his early forties and had not been married before, nor did he have any previous experience dealing with children. Wade had lived with his mother and was used to being taken care of: cooked for, having his laundry done, sleeping as late as he wished. During a meal, if he saw a piece of meat or other morsel on someone else’s plate that he thought looked better than what he had on his own, Wade would spear it with his fork and then scrape his portion, or what was left of it, onto theirs.

  About a year into the marriage, Roy and Sid Wade had a terrible fight that very nearly came to blows. Wade had t
aken to using Roy’s room to nap in during the day, which meant that Roy could not go in there, for fear of waking him. One afternoon, however, Roy needed to get his baseball gear out of his closet, so he snuck into his room and, as quietly as possible, gathered up his glove, bat and spikes. Sid Wade woke up, saw Roy and yelled at him, cursing Roy for disturbing his rest. Roy talked back, one angry word led to another, and Wade, a big, bearlike guy who had wrestled in college, came at the boy as if he were going to mangle him. Roy dropped his baseball glove and spikes and held up the bat, ready to defend himself.

  At this point, having heard the shouting, Roy’s mother entered the room. Her husband stood glaring at Roy, breathing heavily, his large hands frozen inches from the boy’s neck.

  “What did you do?” Roy’s mother yelled at him.

  “I needed my stuff for the game,” he said. “I had to get it out of the closet.”

  “You know Sid works nights,” she said. “You should have taken your things out earlier.”

  “Next time, son,” said Sid Wade, his barrel chest heaving like a gorilla’s, “it’ll be your ass.”

  Roy stared hard at this sweating, red-faced beast more than twice his size and said, “I’m not your son. And the next time, as you say, I find you sleeping in my room, I’ll stick an ice pick in your ear.”

  “You hear that, Kitty?” said Wade. “He’s just like his father.”

  Roy’s mother spat on him.

  Sid Wade said to her, “I told you he was going bad.”

  Roy did not wipe his mother’s saliva off his face. He picked up his glove and spikes and, still holding the bat, walked out of the room without saying another word.