| Little
Casino
Excerpt
The
imprint of death
People
enter and then inhabit, helplessly, periods of their
lives during which they look as if death has spoken
to them, or, even more eerily, as if they themselves
are companions to death. It is not usual for others
to notice this in daily intercourse, but the look is
manifest in photographs taken during these periods.
He and his wife stand side by side in casual summer
clothes, comfortable, and, as they say, contemporary,
but in no other way remarkable. Behind them is a cluttered,
even messy kitchen table, in the center of which, curiously,
a tangerine sits atop a coffee mug, and on the wall
behind that is a very poorly done pencil drawing made
by a neighbor's daughter, a senior at the High School
of Music and Art. Such infirm productions attest to
the inevitable errors of talent selection. In the man's
face we can see, clearly, the imprint of death left
there years ago by the deaths of his mother and father,
who died less than a year apart. They died badly, as
do many people, gasping, fighting, twitching, their
staring eyes registering amazement at how their bodies
were impatiently closing themselves down, literally
getting rid of themselves. Enough! Enough!
And then they were gone, they passed away. His wife's
face has, uncannily, borrowed the subtly peaked, grayish
blandness of his own, and so she, too, looks as if she
has to do with the other side.
But here is another photograph of a middle-aged man,
let's say he's the wife's brother, whose eyes, in a
placid, contented, almost smug face, have the half-mad,
glazed expression which used to be known, among infantrymen,
as a thousand-yard stare. Precisely at the spot at which
those thousand yards end, or, perhaps, begin, is the
more precise word, stands death itself, in mundane disguise,
of course, looking like James Stewart in one of his
honest-friend roles. The face of the man in the photograph
is unsettling, since its peaceful demeanor belies the
crazed eyes, which reveal the dark truth. Death, as
James Stewart, may have even been approaching when the
photograph was taken. Which would go a long way toward
explaining the ocular terror.
And here is a group of eight or nine children in a Brooklyn
playground in 1959. There are four boys and two girls
and they are smiling and mugging with their gap-toothed
mouths, their shirts and shorts soaked from the sprinklers
whose gossamer spray can be seen in the background.
They are enough to break your heart. One of them, a
sweet girl with straight black hair, cut short, and
with a tiny Miraculous Medal on a chain around her neck,
has her hands crossed on her chest. It is this pose
which somehow allows access to the expression beneath
the sweetness of her lovely face. The occulted expression
is the one that can be seen on prisoners in Auschwitz,
although this little girl knows nothing of Auschwitz.
He puts the photograph down, he hides the photograph,
but has no true idea why. Yet the message has been delivered,
oh yes. It is at such times that we are brought to consider
how completely strange death is, how remote from us,
how foreign, how impenetrable, how unfriendly. In its
ineradicable distance from our entire experience, it
is inhuman.
Or:
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live
to experience death." (6.4311)
Click. Now you see us; now you don't.
Click.
Many people cannot understand why certain religions
do not allow animals to enter heaven. Well, we know
that they have no souls, but many people wonder about
that, too. Do they? When the Rapture snatches Joe Bob
Joe out in his Ford pickup, it'll be tough on Mr. Joe
to leave Rend and Tear, his "really gentle"
Rottweilers, behind.
"Let him change his religion and truly be saved!"
Bob Joe Bob says, perhaps irrelevantly.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen. Which
implies, maybe, that if God does not wish, in, of course,
selected cases, to be merciful, these faithful departed
may not rest in peace.
Tangerine was, indeed, all they claimed, but she's been
dead for about 50 years. Bob Eberle knew her well, and
even, so they say, had an amour with her. He may be
dead by now as well.
Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
John Webster was, clearly, unfamiliar with the rhetoric
of grief counseling.
I once heard Ray Eberle, Bob's brother, at the end of
his rather undistinguished career, sing in a Brooklyn
saloon named Henry's. His backup band was a disastrous
trio, piano, accordion, and drums, but he was game.
He bummed a cigarette from me at the bar. I was going
to tell him that I'd seen him at the Paramount with
Glenn Miller, but what was the point?
Click.
The
chums of 6B4
Mario
wore rubbers to school every day, for the uppers of
his shoes were cracked and split, and the soles worn
all the way through. He could have chosen not to wear
rubbers, of course, for this was, even in the thirties,
America, and freedom, enough to choke a horse, was in
the unfailing ascendant. An unkind youth with a belief
in his own superiority once thought to bait him about
these rubbers, industrial rubbers, as they surely were,
slaughterhouse rubbers, with their unmistakable thick
red soles. The rage that he saw within Mario's tautly
held body dissuaded him, however, and warned him away.
A lot of the boys in class, knowing of his plans, were
disappointed, because they hoped that maybe Mario would,
in the parlance of the day, clean the little bastard's
fucking clock. Maybe, God willing, even kill him. Nobody
would miss him, least of all the chums of 6B4.
"I
wish that all the pain that _______ is feeling could
be visited, in spades, on my worst enemy," is a
refreshing phrase. If one can't wish one's enemies misery
or death, what is the use of sin and redemption?
Follow the leader: Mario, after his bitter childhood
years of poverty, which he shared with his older brother,
Mike, followed Mike and Mike's wife, Connie, to Trenton,
NJ, for God knows what reason. They may still live there,
doing the Jersey bounce.
It is generally agreed, or so I understand, that the
word "chum" is no longer in general use, save
for ironic or parodic affect. It functions, that is,
much like the well-made short story.
"Of which we've read, ah, plenty."
On
a Studebaker coupe
He takes bubbsy, whom he hates, but has no idea why,
up to the roof, for reasons never explained, reasons
never even suggested by the quiet, handsome boy, who
has lived, more or less, in saloons most of his life.
His mother has kept him in food and clothes, despite
the fact that she rarely leaves the bar, save to stagger
into the ladies' room with one drunken lothario or another.
He pulls Bubbsy, by the hair, to the edge of the roof,
and throws him off. Bubbsy lands on a Studebaker coupe,
crushing the roof with his head, which cracks open in
a mess of blood and brains. He leans over the edge of
the roof and lights a cigarette, then carefully drops
a burnt match, aiming at the body, but the wind blows
the match well off line and out of sight. He thinks
that the coupe belongs to that stupid prick who lives
over the candy store on the corner. That would be nice.
Hide
and seek: death. He had been in Lincoln Hall. After
the death of Bubbsy, he was sent to Coxsackie, then
Dannemora. Nobody knew where he went from there, although
there were recurring, preposterous rumors that he was
acting in the movies, with a different face.
"They can do fuckin' anything in Hollywood."
Bubbsy liked to torture cats and cruelly tease and hurt
little children. Had he lived, there is a good chance
that he would have become a hail-fellow-well-met regular
sport of a bully, drunk, and dedicated beater of women,
like his older brother, Mac, the cop.
"There are always, sure, a few bad apples in the
barrel, but it's very wrong to condemn and blacken all
the other honest, hardworking, law-abiding people who
and so forth, and who and so on, and who, day in and
day out, do this and do that and do the other thing
too."
It could happen to you. Hide. And seek.
The same darkness envelops them all.
The
burdens of the Depression
Have a spaghetti sangwich! have a spaghetti sangwich
with pieces of cold frankfurter on it! Have a cod-liver
oil sandwich, a sammich that'll put hair on your chest,
your head, your hands, and your freezing feet!
A ketchup sammich? A ketchup-and-mustard sammich? Or
how does a cold stringbean sammich strike you, little
fella? A canned pineapple sandwich might go well with
a big jelly jar chock by Jesus Christ up to the brim
with lemon Epco or grape Kool-Aid, as too might a canned-spinach
sandwich. Succotash on moldy rye? Mmmm.
A cottage-cheese-and-cold-boiled-puhtaytuh sangaweech
on stale Bond bread, now that is the absolute ticket!
You're talking nutrition? Then, too, sandwiches of sliced
green pepper and Crisco will surely refresh after a
long day of career discussions. And don't neglect to
pop over to friendly Gallagher's, sport, for a pitcher
of Trommer's: crisp, light, and tingling! And zesty!
It's the Ivy League beverage of choice, you'll recall?
How to feed your family of five, or even six, on a dollar
a day, without endangering their health or welfare.
Just takes a little g-u-m-p gumption!
Stay away, oh, stay far hence from those terrible crumb
buns, cinnamon buns, coconut buns, crullers, doughnuts,
and Danish pastries: they'll send you to your grave,
yowzah.
Break out the lettuce-and-oleo sammiches, pliz. Look
at those smiling children in the sunny kitchen! Look
at those cavities and suppurating ears! Bacon and eggs
and sausages and toast with butter, again! That will
do it every time.
Afterward, when the coughing lets up a little, these
tykes can build a little character selling Liberty at
the subway station. "How to Feed Your Growing Family
on Fifty Cents a Day" is in the latest issue, wow!
And for the love of God, who does not cotton to the
idle poor, as we all know, please avoid those thick
steaks, buttered mashed potatoes, rich sauces, cream-laden
desserts, all those deadly foods that will damage the
courageous heart, ok?
Lard on toast might allay certain yearnings, but moderation,
moderation.
How amazing that the poor have always eaten a healthy
diet, rich in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains,
and low in fat and sugars. They've had it puh-retty
darn good!
Here you go-a kohlrabi sangwich on what looks like a
fetching pale-green slice of Silvercup! Fulla vitamins
Q and T.
Herbert
Hoover died at the age of 137, of course. It is said
that he never ate a steak in his life, and that his
favorite dinner was farmer cheese on soda crackers with
skim milk.
He did not call the unemployed "the shiftless idle,"
and the rumor that attributed this remark to him has
been traced to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, described
as "Godless un-Cristian [sic] Jews" in Jesus
Knows News. It is a cruel rumor, and one that is in
very poor taste as well.
When the burdens of the Depression and such aberrations
as the Bonus March could not be lightened by cheery
thoughts of Tom Mix, Mr. Hoover often went fly-fishing,
called "the sport of dukes." He wore his Stanford
tie.
"Don't fence me in!" the doughty President
would exultantly cry to the aromatic woods. And soon
it would be time for a raw onion.
The
very picture of loneliness
Desolate lot. a boy of perhaps four, in a tattered and
patched hand-me-down windbreaker, a knitted cap on his
head against the raw cold of a late March afternoon.
He is alone, rooting with a stick in the rubble of broken
red and buff bricks, shards of stained porcelain, diseased
shingles, tree limbs, all the rubbish and detritus of
this failing neighborhood, struggling for life on the
thinnest edge of utter decay. It is the very picture
of loneliness. The boy's father, who has gone to look
for him as the bitter darkness begins to slide across
the low roofs of the neighborhood houses, watches him,
heartbrokenly, in silence. He knows, although he has
no idea that he knows, that the boy, alone in the sad
quiet of this gray, dispirited lot, will be alone always
in his life, and that the distant, perplexing world
that he is to inhabit is one to which he will be forever
strange. This knowledge enters the father with viral
efficiency, and years later, he will remember this day,
even remember the shape of a brown leaf that lies at
his feet, crepitant.
And years later, after a long period of estrangement
and silence, the boy, now a solitary man, will write
his father a letter, suggesting that the years of separation
and misunderstanding might, possibly, be ended, might,
possibly, be "cured," is his odd word. And
the father, tentatively, carefully, replies, with guarded
love and exquisite care, but hopelessly. The boy will
have no memory of the death of hope that lay at the
center of that lot, at the center of that raw afternoon,
eerie in thin, failing sunlight and dirty cold. The
father will have no way of telling his son of the truth
that was thrust upon him, as he watched from the sidewalk
before he called to him to come home. The fact of the
loveless void of that shattered lot on that unremarkable
block in Brooklyn in the fading years of the 1950s will
be in and of his letter, and even as he mails it, the
letter, full of carefully phrased sentences that demand
nothing and expect nothing and promise nothing, that
is but a salute, labored yet authentic, will not, he
knows, be answered.
Céline
writes that "the living people we've lost in the
crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the
dead that the same darkness envelops them all."
No one used to think that a vacant lot was owned, rather,
lots were everybody's property, loci of quiet anarchy.
A lot took its character from that of the surrounding
neighborhood. Because of this, it was an accurate index
of a neighborhood's present, but held no hint of its
future. To place a living human figure in the center
of a lot is to compose a kind of iconic reality that
is, oddly, more real than the presence of an actual
living figure in the center of a lot.
It is hard to be a father.
No love. No nothing.
Also Available by this Author:
|
