All of Us (27 page)

The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one

whose cap had been burnt, walked in. He sat down and

listened. Then he, too, began to reminisce and tell stories.

Nikolay, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down,

listened and asked questions about the dishes

that were prepared for the gentry in the old days.

They talked about chops, cutlets, various soups and sauces, and

the cook, who remembered everything very well, mentioned dishes

that were no longer prepared; there was one, for instance—a dish

made of bulls’ eyes, that was called “waking up

in the morning.”

—
ANTON CHEKHOV

“Peasants”

What lasts is what you start with.

—
CHARLES WRIGHT

from
A Journal of Southern Rivers

At Sportsmen’s Park, near Yakima, I crammed a hook

with worms, then cast it toward the middle

of the pond, hoping for bass. Bullfrogs scraped the air

invisibly. A turtle, flapjack-sized, slid

from a lily pad while another pulled itself onto

the same pad, a little staging area. Blue sky, warm

afternoon. I pushed a forked branch

into the sandy bank, rested the pole in the fork,

watched the bobber for a while, then beat off.

Grew sleepy then and let my eyes close.

Maybe I dreamed. I did that back then. When

suddenly, in my sleep, I heard a plop, and my eyes

flew open. My pole was gone!

I saw it tearing a furrow through

the scummy water. The bobber appeared, then

disappeared, then showed itself once more

skimming the surface, then gone under again.

What could I do? I bellowed, and bellowed some more.

Began to run along the bank, swearing to God

I would not touch myself again if He’d let me

retrieve that pole, that fish. Of course

there was no answer, not a sign.

I hung around the pond a long time

(the same pond that’d take my friend a year later),

once in a while catching a glimpse of my bobber,

now here, now there. Shadows grew fat

and dropped from trees into the pond. Finally

it was dark, and I biked home.

                                        My dad was drunk

and in the kitchen with a woman not his wife, nor

my mother either. This woman was, I swear, sitting

on his lap, drinking a beer. A woman

with part of a front tooth

missing. She tried to grin as she rose

to her feet. My dad stayed where he was, staring at me

as if he didn’t recognize his own get.
Here,

what is it, boy?
he said.
What happened,

son?
Swaying against the sink, the woman wet her lips

and waited for whatever was to happen next.

My dad waited too, there in his old place

at the kitchen table, the bulge in his pants

subsiding. We all waited and wondered

at the stuttered syllables, the words made to cling

as anguish that poured from my raw young mouth.

Because it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern

and made a soup of the herring head. At midday

they sat down to have tea and went on drinking it until

they were all perspiring: they looked actually swollen with

tea; and then they attacked the soup, all helping themselves

out of one pot. The herring itself Granny hid away.

In the evening a potter was firing pots on the slope. Down

below in the meadow the girls got up a round dance

and sang songs … and in the distance the singing sounded soft

and melodious. In and about the tavern the peasants were

making a racket. They sang with drunken voices, discordantly,

and swore at one another.… And the girls and children listened

to the swearing without turning a hair; it was evident

that they had been used to it from their cradles.

—
ANTON CHEKHOV

“Peasants”

Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and

I was going to have to wear suspenders to school

next day. Nobody wore suspenders to second grade,

or any other grade for that matter. She said,

You’ll wear them or else I’ll use them on you. I don’t

want any more trouble. My dad said something then. He

was in the bed that took up most of the room in the cabin

where we lived. He asked if we could be quiet and settle this

in the morning. Didn’t he have to go in early to work in

the morning? He asked if I’d bring him

a glass of water. It’s all that whiskey he drank, Mom said. He’s

dehydrated.

    I went to the sink and, I don’t know why, brought him

a glass of soapy dishwater. He drank it and said, That sure

tasted funny, son. Where’d this water come from?

Out of the sink, I said.

I thought you loved your dad, Mom said.

I do, I do, I said, and went over to the sink and dipped a glass

into the soapy water and drank off two glasses just

to show them. I love Dad, I said.

Still, I thought I was going to be sick then and there. Mom said,

I’d be ashamed of myself if I was you. I can’t believe you’d

do your dad that way. And, by God, you’re going to wear those

suspenders tomorrow, or else. I’ll snatch you bald-headed if you

give me any trouble in the morning. I don’t want to wear

    suspenders,

I said. You’re going to wear suspenders, she said. And with that

she took the suspenders and began to whip me around the bare legs

while I danced in the room and cried. My dad

yelled at us to stop, for God’s sake, stop. His head was killing him,

and he was sick at his stomach from soapy dishwater

besides. That’s thanks to this one, Mom said. It was then somebody

began to pound on the wall of the cabin next to ours. At first it

sounded like it was a fist—
boom-boom-boom
—and then

whoever it was switched to a mop or a broom

handle. For Christ’s sake, go to bed over there! somebody yelled.

Knock it off! And we did. We turned out the lights and

got into our beds and became quiet. The quiet that comes to a house

where nobody can sleep.

The angler’s coat and trowsers should be of cloth,

not too thick and heavy, for if they be the sooner wet

they will be the sooner dry. Water-proof velveteens,

fustians, and mole-skins—rat catcher’s costume —

ought never to be worn by the angler for if

he should have to swim a mile or two on any occasion

he would find them a serious weight once thoroughly

saturated with water. And should he have a stone

of fish in his creel, it would be safest not to make

the attempt. An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance

suggests the propriety of anglers wearing
cork
jackets

which, if strapped under the shoulders, would enable

the wearer to visit any part of a lake where,

in warm weather, with an umbrella over his head,

he might enjoy his sport, cool and comfortable, as if

“in a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.”

This same gentleman thinks that a bottle of
Reading
sauce,

a box of “peptic pills,” and a portable frying-pan

ought to form part of every angler’s travelling equipage.

Take Mans Fat and Cats Fat, of each half an Ounce;

Mummy finely poudred, three Drams; Cummin-seed

finely poudred, one Dram; distilled Oyl of Annise

and Spike, of each six Drops; Civet two Grains,

and Camphir four Grains. Make an Oyntment.

When you Angle, annoint eight Inches of the Line

next the Hook therewith, and keep it in

a pewter Box. When you use this Oyntment

never Angle with less than three hairs next Hook

because if you Angle with but one hair

it will not stick on. Take the Bones or Scull

of a Dead-man, at the opening of a Grave,

and beat the same into pouder, and put this pouder

in the Moss wherein you keep your worms. But

others like Grave-earth as well. Now

go find your water.

Narrow-bodied, iron head like the flat side

of a lance,

    mouth underneath,

the sturgeon is a bottom-feeder

and can’t see well.

Mosslike feelers hang down over

the slumbrous lips,

and its dorsal fins and plated backbone

mark it out

something left over from another world.

The sturgeon

lives alone, confines itself

to large, freshwater rivers, and takes

100 years getting around to its first mating.

                         Once with my father

at the Central Washington State Fair

I saw a sturgeon that weighed 900 pounds

winched up in a corner

of the Agricultural Exhibit Building.

I will not forget that.

A card gave the name in italics,

also a sketch, as they say,

of its biography —

    which my father read

    and then read aloud.

The largest are netted

in the Don River

somewhere in Russia.

These are called White Sturgeon

and no one can be sure

just how large they are.

The next biggest ones recorded

are trapped at the mouth

of the Yukon River in Alaska

and weigh upwards of 1,900 pounds.

This particular specimen

    — I am quoting —

was killed in the exploratory dynamiting

that went on in the summer of 1951

at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River.

I remember my father told me

a story then about three men he knew long ago in Oregon

who hooked what must have been the largest in the world.

                         So big, he said,

               they fastened a team of horses

               to it—the cable or chain, whatever

               they were using for line —

               and for a while, even the horses

               were at a standstill.

I don’t remember much else —

maybe it got away

even then—just my father there beside me

leaning on his arms over the railing, staring, the two of us

staring up at that great dead fish,

and that marvelous story of his, all

surfacing, now and then.

I am sick and tired of the river, the stars

that strew the sky, this heavy funereal silence.

To while away the time, I talk to my coachman, who

looks like an old man.… He tells me that this dark, forbidding river

abounds in sterlet, white salmon, eel-pout, pike, but there is no one

to catch the fish and no tackle to catch it with.

That time I tagged along with my dad to the dry cleaners —

What’d I know then about Death? Dad comes out carrying

a black suit in a plastic bag. Hangs it up behind the back seat

of the old coupe and says, “This is the suit your grandpa

is going to leave the world in.” What on earth

could he be talking about? I wondered.

I touched the plastic, the slippery lapel of that coat

that was going away, along with my grandpa. Those days it was

just another mystery.

Then there was a long interval, a time in which relatives departed

this way and that, left and right. Then it was my dad’s turn.

I sat and watched him rise up in his own smoke. He didn’t own

a suit. So they dressed him gruesomely

in a cheap sports coat and tie,

for the occasion. Wired his lips

into a smile as if he wanted to reassure us,
Don’t worry, it’s

not as bad as it looks.
But we knew better. He was dead,

wasn’t he? What else could go wrong? (His eyelids

were sewn closed, too, so he wouldn’t have to witness

the frightful exhibit.) I touched

his hand. Cold. The cheek where a little stubble had

broken through along the jaw. Cold.

Today I reeled this clutter up from the depths.

Just an hour or so ago when I picked up my own suit

from the dry cleaners and hung it carefully behind the back seat.

I drove it home, opened the car door and

lifted it out into sunlight. I stood there a minute

in the road, my fingers crimped on the wire hanger. Then

tore a hole through the plastic to the other side. Took one of

the empty sleeves between my fingers and held it —

the rough, palpable fabric.

I reached through to the other side.

So I returned here from the big capitals,

To a town in a narrow valley under the cathedral hill

With royal tombs. To a square under the tower

And the shrill trumpet sounding noon, breaking

Its note in half because the Tartar arrow

Has once again struck the trumpeter.

And pigeons. And the garish kerchiefs of women selling flowers.

And groups chattering under the Gothic portico of the church.

My trunk of books arrived, this time for good.

What I know of my laborious life: it was lived.

Faces are paler in memory than on daguerreotypes.

I don’t need to write memos and letters every morning.

Others will take over, always with the same hope,

The one we know is senseless and devote our lives to.

My country will remain what it is, the backyard of empires,

Nursing its humiliation with provincial daydreams.

I leave for a morning walk tapping with my cane:

The places of old people are taken by new old people

And where the girls once strolled in their rustling skirts,

New ones are strolling, proud of their beauty.

And children trundle hoops for more than half a century.

In a basement a cobbler looks up from his bench,

A hunchback passes by with his inner lament,

Then a fashionable lady, a fat image of the deadly sins.

So the Earth endures, in every petty matter

And in the lives of men, irreversible.

And it seems a relief. To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway.