Collected Fictions (9 page)

The father says, "What is the law on this?"

The rabbi answers, "The law is don't kill."

The next day the father does not deliver the promised bribe, and the Germans kill his son.

The father wanted a miracle, and he decided God would not give it.

But God did.

God created a father who could abide by the facts.

OH, CHAP
, silent son, and all the beloveds I have promised, dear brother in heaven and dear brother still on earth,
this
is the one mir—I mean, m-i-r-a-c-l-e—there is. And you, Rupert, melodious child of our dreaming, for your birthday I give you this gift. It is the lesson I have placed before you—for when you are five and must be strong enough for the five fine candles aflame on your cake.

Breathe
.

Now blow them all out.

Now good luck and long life!

WEIGHT

THE FOUR THINGS
are a key, two benches, and a bicycle wrapped in festive paper but not where the handgrips and the foot-pedals are.

The key opens someone else's door.

The park bench looks out on a river.

The other bench is down where the subway runs.

The bicycle's a chimpanzee's.

The key is a duplicate.

The park bench stands in sunlight.

Four citizens are seated on the bench down here.

The one free place is next to me. The chimpanzee will speak for himself. But I say it's custom-made, the bicycle, balanced to the gram. See where the paper's split? That's chromium underneath.

The key is cut from cheap metal, a feathery replica of the brass original—lent, copied, seventy-five cents. It has no weight worth notice. Sometimes he does not know it's in his pocket. But it's there sometimes—once a week.

Of course, it's filthy down there, but it's also filthy up here. And the floor the chimpanzee rides on, this is filthy too—peanut shells, popcorn, gummy substances flattened out to ovals, a law of physics, the law of shapes.

"I started on the bicycle when I was half the size you see. It's adjustable, wing nuts for all the crucial parts. I did not have the hat at first. But after one circle without a slipup, I did. After four, the jacket. After eight, the trousers. When I could keep it up and keep it up, the shoes were what I got for it. They're sturdy. They're black. See the buckles for getting them on and off?"

Now for people.

There's the man in such a hurry, hand in pocket, wrist-watch raised to read the time. There's the couple in the park, the slowest pace of all, the bench they're oh so slowly making for. There's the woman down here marching back and forth. She reaches her mark, shouts "Leather from Morocco!" turns about, marches again, shouts "Leather from Morocco!" marching back and forth.

You don't want to see her. I try not to. They try not to, the others on this bench. We are just passengers, persons waiting to be passengers. Oh, we really cannot wait to be. Will your train come before she does?

The old woman has the old man by the arm, to hold him up and steer. See her steer him to where they are going—to the bench in sunlight, to sit, to see the river—and the going is immense.

The man runs now, runs the last little bit, then puts his shoulders into it as he hustles up the five flights of stairs. He takes his hand out. He takes the key out.

The marching woman shouts, "Handbags! Beaded handbags!" But there is nothing in her hands.

Oh, God, don't let her jump, not while I'm still here. Oh, God, don't let her think to sit, not while I am still here, not while my mind is still here.

Sit.

Is there anything else that this man wants?

It's been too long from the bed to the bench—and he is not yet there yet. "Up, my darling," she must have said. "Such a lovely sunny day calling such a lovely boy."

Oh, yes, this is how she, this woman, would talk.

"Up, sweet love," she must have said. "Come, my beloved, another look."

It must have taken hours to get him dressed. See how nothing matches? Oh, how it must have hurt to have the clothes come be put on him—for him to be in something, touching anything, living one more turn of the clock!

He has his clothes off. He tunes the radio. Goes away, comes back, retunes. He looks at the clock, looks again, puts his hand in a trouser pocket, takes out his wristwatch. He's learned—always take your watch off.

"I learned without the paper on. The paper's just for show. What isn't? Is there anything not for show? They put you on, you go. Listen, I can go and go. But I don't have to. An even dozen is all the turns I ever have to do. The bolero and knickers, they're satin, they're turquoise. See the pink piping? I had to wait and wait for the shoes. But I could have mastered the pedals with them. Cut off my feet, I still could have. The hat? It's red. Red's traditional. Black, turquoise, pink, red—some ensemble, Jesus."

I looked. Or one of them looked. It only took one look and here she comes!

Oh, Jesus!

Should I check my watch and get up? Perhaps I must hasten to an engagement farther along up the platform. But I am just sitting here, and now here she is!

Her beauty is impossible—oh, the back of her as she turns him by such considerate degrees.

"Sit, my love," she says.

He says, "You, dear—you sit first."

But I cannot really hear them speak.

When she sits, she is not crazy anymore. She sits primly, ruined ankles primly crossed. She breathes a small sigh and falls silent, just another citizen, speechless like us all.

He flexes the fingers on this hand, then on that hand, then all the toes. He looks at the clock, at the door, at the clock, at his clothes. There they are, all laid out for him to put back on—his turquoise knickers, the fitted jacket, the shoes.

But why bother with it all? Just the trousers, then—then open the door and go run take a look.

"Buckle this side, buckle that side—even a horse could do it if he had a thumb. But the children shriek their approval. Yes, they like the buckling of the shoes better than the bicycling. Yes, yes, the leather hurts. But what doesn't?"

No, she is not waiting for a train. This is where she is when she sits. Yes, it is because she has kept him waiting longer than she has ever kept him waiting, longer than any of them ever did. Oh, it is because she has never kept him waiting that he runs down to take a look. Is the buzzer broken? Does she stand there, five flights down, calling him and calling him and he is way up here? She stands there, nodding, pleading, saying, "Please, my beloved, sit now—please, just sit." Look at his fingers flexing. Oh, God, he hurts! Oh, God, she's going to get up—and do what? Jump? Just march? Five flights half-undressed? Is there nothing he won't do? "I can do anything if you make me." But no one is waiting, no one is calling, no one is saying, "My beloved, my darling, my sweet." She's marching, she's shouting. "Why must they be children? How can children know what it takes to do this? How can children ever know what it costs to keep your balance? They think everything does—houses stuck on mountain peaks of crayon going up." "Leather from Morocco!" Just march, don't jump! Back up the stairs, begging God, the slowest pace of all. "No, sweet love, first you—sit, please, sit," and so she does. She sits and says, "Now you, my love," and guides him down. He stands there at the door. Nothing in this side, nothing in that side, nothing anywhere at all. "There are no pockets in my trousers. If there were, I would load them down. Put rocks in, put everything in, just to show them what I could carry and still go on." He turns and turns, these mute rotations—shirt, shoes, ghastly jerkin all locked up inside.

I never had that duplicate.

Or a bicycle that fit my size.

Or the courage to stay seated when here comes havoc and I haven't got a rhyme.

I have a wife.

I have the ungainly weight of my love for her.

I am the beast who can circle without letup.

In theory.

So far.

FLEUR

HONEST TO GOD
, it's something, how a thing comes back, how nothing is ever lost. Look at this—the Strand, the Columbia, the Laurel, the Lido, the Gem. And that's just from the night before last, from when I was sitting on the toilet, urinating.

The Central. I almost forgot the Central.

These are the theaters where I went to the movies back in the days when you went every Saturday. That's what? Thirty-five years ago?

Also, I saw the large carton of Kotex leaning, or leaned, up against the side of the bathtub.

News to me they had a yellow rose on there, long-stemmed and photographed to make it look misty. So what's the story, they do this how? Gauze over the lens? Vaseline? Real fog actually fogging it?

So how come I turned on the light? Or did I?

I don't know. If I did, then maybe I did it on account of the kitchen.

LISTEN
, I say the thing with evil is it's a time thing—whereas where you get your basic appeal with lust and violence is because they're not. You see a person stick a person with a knife or with a hard-on, it's the quick effect which gives you your theater. Let's not kid ourselves, impulse enacted with all good speed, that's what the eye likes. What the eye wants is something it can catch all at once. But evil, there you're talking about a different story altogether—because with evil, the mind's got to get into it, and the mind doesn't work that way. The eye does.

Be honest with yourself-—isn't this why Aristotle didn't give a fig about any of this, and was twice required to say as much? Not that I am asking you to see it as how I am bringing in Aristotle to back any of this up. Hey, with proof like the proof that follows?

GO BACK TO BEFORE
when I was sitting on the toilet and saw the box of Kotex and the rose. Go back, say, let's say, fifteen minutes from that. To me asleep. To me out like a light. Which for me is an interesting exception, the case being that I am no great sleeper. I mean, even if you hear me snoring, I am probably not sleeping.

Here's the second interesting exception about the night before last—which is that I am not a nose-breather when I'm supposed to be sleeping, which the reason for is this.

You smell things, right? (In your bed, what's to taste?)

If it's not your wife, then it's the pillowcase—or, no less turbulently, yourself. But let's say that whatever it is, it gets in the way—when the whole thing of it for sleeping is for you to struggle to think a certain thought and work your way down into it—like a beetle falling asleep inside of what the beetle is feeding on—even though I personally never really fall asleep.

Not that I think a serious thought, like the thought I gave you about evil. What you want instead is something playful, even crazy. It's the truth—the crazier the thing you think about, the more it's like a mallet knocking you out.

So as to the night before last, I remember exactly—I'm thinking they should invent a cigarette with a negative gas in it—you smoke it and it sucks all of that crap in you out of you. Naturally, I must have been mouth-breathing to keep from smelling things. So go explain this little packet of molecules that for an absolute fact it's my nose, not my mouth, which detects.

It's like a spear of perfect olfaction going up in there—
coffee burning, kitchen burning, get up and go take a look!

Here's the smell. You know the smell of what coffee smells like when it's boiled away and the residue's been turning crisp and the stove's next? But even in my semi-sleep I know it's me that makes the coffee in my house. Are you kidding? Let her make it? Besides, now that I am smelling things, I smell her right where she belongs.

You can see how there is another interesting thing here, which is this package of intrepid vapor. Consider, all day long it's been poking around the house, a look here, a look there, but come three, four in the morning, hi, hi, it's like a dagger's been directed deep into this one nostril and there's this solitary drop of disaster on it—
Jesus Christ, fire!

Think of it—the Brownian motion. God, I love this shit.

Stop to consider. Molecules that could have maybe been airborne days ago. Maybe weeks, months, what? Centuries, whole epochs even—coffee left on too long by Adam, right?

So it's this which gets me up and gets me investigating. The scare, I mean. Go put out a fire out and all that. Go save our lives or at least the life of the kitchen.

HERE'S THE STORY
. I just stood there in the darkness, looking. The next fellow would have snapped on the light for him to make certain. But me, I understood—I know science, I know philosophy—Aristotle isn't the only one. Turn on the light, what? There goes mystery, there goes art—stove empty of event, porcelain vacant, not anything disruptive of anything.

I got milk and cookies. Eyes closed, mind open, I got milk and cookies and propped myself against the counter, nibbling and sipping—a box with a mouth, a thing that wants things inside it, its lid wide open, check?

Aristotle, are you listening?

I needed a crazy thought. I needed crazy. I needed the little bit of sleeping I ever get.

So what came, what comes, is this—is me and Izzy and Eddie and Mel. It's from the days of me and them—of Izzy and Eddie and Mel, an age in there, a whore Izzy said we could all get if we got her a bottle and had enough money. So I don't know—getting the bottle was even harder than getting the money was. But I got the bottle, and I did the talking when we got there. Her, the whore, she said we were nice enough boys, and I said seeing as how she said that, could she see her way clear to shave it to six per jump. She said okay, six per, round it off at twenty-five, but just blowjobs, a woman maybe fifty, forty, small and soft this fritzy hair the color of gum.

Izzy went first and then me.

Then Eddie came out, and Mel said no. So then I went back in instead of Mel going at all.

This was when I get her to drink all the rest of the bottle and when that's what she did, drank it, I'm sorry, but money's money, you know?

So I come out and say we don't have to pay her, she'll never know. Eddie says give her half. Izzy says what's this?

Hey, it was what they used to call a little black book back in those golden olden days.

Izzy says, "You see this?"

WE TOOK IT
. We didn't pay her. We didn't give her one red cent.

Here is the aggravation I remember.

I say, "I don't think we should have taken it."

Izzy says, "We'll look at it. We'll see the names in here. The guy which told me about her, we'll see if he's in here "

Mel says, "Suppose we call them and tell them they have to come across with something or we're telling their wives or something, all of the guys."

Eddie says, "No, what we do is we call her and tell her it'll cost her just for her to get it back."

I say, "That's terrible. We can't do that. You've got to see it this way—it's stealing something, it's robbery."

Izzy says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm thinking there's something here we're not thinking yet."

I say, "Give it to me. This is lousy. You guys are louses. The day will come when you will stop and remember this, and hang your heads in shame."

SO THE THING IS
I got it away from them and I went back up to her place, and I got her to give me a double sawbuck for her to get it back.

Or it could have been I just took the twenty because she was too plastered for her to give it to me herself.

Night before last I was sipping and nibbling and just being a thing that was leaning and letting all of this come, even the part about how for all of the time I knew them after that, I never stopped showing them who the disgusting ones were and who the nice guy was because of who it was who took it and went and gave it back. Eddie, Izzy, Mel—want to bet me they're still a mess? Then I tiptoed to the bathroom off the bedroom and sat down on the toilet and turned to other thoughts. That's when those names came—the Strand, the Columbia, the Laurel, the Lido, the Gem—and let's not forget the Central!

Look, I sat there urinating.

The thing was for me to keep my eyes closed and keep ready to fall more or less back to sleep. So why did I turn on the light to see the big blue box and the yellow rose on it, the million-dollar decision in some genius's brain to make the whole deal hazy?