Читать книгу Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes - Jan David Blais - Страница 8

JONATHAN LOOKS UP, PUZZLED. “I’m surprised how important religion was to Paul,” he says. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

“Those days, that was par for the course. The parishes, the parochial schools, they were immensely powerful. Totally different now, with Vatican II and the unraveling of the American Church. But I give old Pope John credit. He ran a risk, but sometimes overreaction is better than no reaction. The jury’s still out – it will be for centuries.”

“Politics was my family’s religion. My mother was a red diaper baby. She and my father met at Columbia in the Sixties.”

“Ah, Columbia – we watched you from afar. But as for religion, there’s no guarantee that conformist pressure will work. The individual determines the outcome surely as a glass shapes the water it holds. And if it’s all genes and wiring, what’s the point, anyway? I will say this, though, dissent has its price. And when what’s at stake is eternity, every inch you stray from the path magnifies the guilt and fear.”

“Not exactly how I see it.”

“Nor I, not since I figured out which end was up. Some people take it on themselves to redefine the game so nothing means the same. They call that growing in the Faith, but to me that’s simply dishonest. You’re in or you’re out. I’m out, though hope springs eternal, and incidentally, it’s a lot less demanding than the other two. All right,” I say, sliding a pile of folders toward Jonathan. “Today we start with one of Paul’s infrequent letters. After 9-11 we talked by phone but he had no time for correspondence.”

Everyman TeleVision Network

419 West 13th Street

New York City, NY 10014

October 1, 2001

Gus,

I found a couple of spare hours so here’s your next installment. You really need to get down here and go through the rest yourself.

Next week I’m in Paris. The French will be key to whatever Washington does about bin Laden, at least they should be. I need to know more about their thinking.

As I pulled this together it occurred to me, these reminiscences are similar to your young religious experiences, or as you called them, impositions. As for me, one thing is clear, everything was foreshadowed. The acorn does indeed possess the oak.

We need to talk about where this business of yours is going.

All the best,

Paul

* * * * * * *

ON COMPLETING FOURTH GRADE, a few weeks before my ninth birthday we acquired a dog. We always had cats – strays who saw a life commitment in a dish of milk, but dogs didn’t fit my mother’s concept of a home, particularly carpets and furniture. I grew up loathing carpets and furniture nearly as much as cats. My nose was always in a book and my father thought a rowdy animal might straighten me out. Girls read and had cats, boys were about roughhousing and dogs. True to form, though, after his announcement I headed for the library and checked out as many dog books as I could carry. Dogs, Breeds of. Dogs, Care and Feeding of. Dogs, Diseases. Dog, History of. That Sunday afternoon we headed for the country, the newspaper clipping in my pocket:

BEAGLES for sale. Pups, six weeks, 3 males 2 females, variety colors, markings. Shots and wormed. AKC regis. Irresistible. $35. Lincolnwood Kennels. Lincoln 2828B.

Thirty-five dollars was a fortune, an indication of the peril my father thought I was in. I loved Lassie, but my mother wouldn’t abide the hair. But a kid two streets over owned a beagle, a compact, friendly animal with acceptable hair. And so it came to be.

King was a wiggly black and brown fur ball who mostly slept and ate and messed. I fixed a box with a blanket and put it beside the kitchen stove so the pilot would warm him at night. The first night he whined so miserably my father put a hot water bottle and a clock in to settle him down.

A beagle named King? I settled on the name before my mother nixed the collie idea. Here was a creature with no name until I pronounced one over him. Now it was on his tag and he was beginning to answer to it. Disconcerting, such power over another creature. I knew how Adam felt setting up all those animals with names. One of the men in my father’s shop built a doghouse I painted white with red trim and ninety-three, our house number, on the front. We set it under the spruce trees behind the basketball hoop. King was an outside dog, though I could have him in the house as long as I dealt with the inevitable.

Every summer we piled into the car and visited some relative’s house. To qualify as a vacation it had to be a somewhat distant relative, about fifty miles at least. North was the preferred destination. As a driver, my father was fou, everybody said, never stopping except for gas. We always had to get there in one day, which meant an exhausting ordeal usually ending at Bic where he grew up. By the second time I went, Mémère had died. My father and mother went to the funeral but we didn’t because of school.

This summer was extremely rainy and our lot a sea of muck, so Omer and I spent hours on his porch working jigsaw puzzles and playing picture cards. King mostly slept, though sometimes he’d yawn and pull a card in for a chew. One morning on my way to Omer’s an airplane flew right down my street, so low I could read the number on the wing. Circling under the clouds, all of a sudden it dropped behind the trees. I held my breath, waiting... but it never came back up! I yelled at Omer to come on. It took him several blocks to catch us, King and I were running so fast. But nothing! No plane on the golf course, no plane up a tree. No police cars, no fire trucks, no sirens. How disappointing! Later I wondered if what I was really chasing was excitement, disaster. A sign of things to come? That night for the first time I had a dream which visits me to this day. In it I spread my arms and soar, swooping, turning, racing my shadow over the ground. Whenever that dream appears, the next morning I wake exhilarated, ready for anything.

RAINY DAYS MEANT BASEBALL ON THE RADIO. I was still a year away from getting on the school team but I hung around their practice and helped with the bats and equipment. I hoped to make it my first try. When it rained here it rained in Boston, so the Braves or Red Sox, whoever was home, were rained out and I’d listen to telegraphic recreations of games from other cities. For some reason it always seemed to be the Cubs and Cardinals. Or Cincinnati. Maybe it didn’t rain as much in that part of the country. The telegraph clacked as Jim Britt described somebody thousands of miles away stealing second or dumping a Texas Leaguer into short right. I always wondered how much of it he made up.

I was the next-to-smallest player. Only Omer was shorter. Then there were the glasses which kept people from noticing how good I was, which was not all that great, if you really need to know. Most of my hits were chipped to the opposite field, and I did not have what they called sure hands, tending to close my eyes on hard grounders hit at me. But what I lacked in ability I made up in desire and, of course, there was nothing about the game I didn’t know. I had my own Official Major League Baseball Rule Book and could tell you how many innings for an official game, the height of the mound, the score of a forfeit, and so on.

Our games started by catching the bat, then you and the other captain went hand over hand up the handle and around your head three times and you got first pick. We played ball all summer, all the time, mostly with a dirty, scuffed ball. The cover would fall off and you’d wind it with friction tape and douse it with baby powder which left a slippery, sweet-smelling ball for a few innings. Long fouls to right landed in the street bordering the lot, where every fifty feet or so there was a long, narrow opening in the curb perfectly located to swallow a well-hit ball. Once in a rare while somebody showed up with a new ball, birthday present or paper route money. A taped ball was no big deal but a new ball in the sewer called for retrieval measures involving a crowbar, rope, a flashlight, and one very unhappy player. Lot rules – that miserable job fell to the fielder if it was his error that let the ball get into the street. Next came the hitter, who complained don’t blame me for a good hit. As a last resort and the usual result, the ball’s owner. Not fair, but realistic.

One day we were short a player when Genie Sullivan didn’t show. About the third inning this tubby kid, Murph, who thought he was hot stuff, shouted, “Benny!” I looked around and saw a slim boy with dark curly hair approaching. I’d had never seen him before. “You’re on their side!” Murph yelled, pointing at me. The kids snickered as the new kid made his way to right field where the weakest fielder was put because fewest balls were hit that way. It turned out Benny was not very good, in fact he was awful. Balls hit right at him he missed. One fly went through his glove and got him in the face. He didn’t know what to do with the bat either, holding his hands exactly wrong. Though I joined in ragging this newcomer I pitied him. Too close to home, much too close.

Benny lived the next street over from the lot. His last name was Kaplan, and his family just moved from New York. As the summer went on we became good friends. He never showed up at the lot again, and I learned his lack of ability was matched only by his lack of interest. When we played together there was rarely anybody else around, which made me wonder if he had many friends. I always went to his house, for some reason he seemed reluctant to come to mine though once in a while he did.

His father had a job downtown which he left for every day in a suit and tie. Mr. Kaplan spoke in an accent different from our Canadians but he also mixed in foreign words. Benny’s house was bigger than ours with a giant oak in the back yard. One day his father built a platform, nailing planks together in the crook of the limbs then bracing it with two-by-fours. “Not too many nails,” he warned, “we do not want to damage the tree.” We spent a lot of time there playing ship or spy, games of imagination and high ground. One rainy day we dragged a tent up there but Benny’s parents wouldn’t let us stay overnight because he walked in his sleep.

Their house was dark, with old pictures and a strange object I’d never seen before, a silver candle holder with a bunch of branches, plus other things they used on Friday nights. Saturday mornings he went to religious school he called “schul.” He was studying for his “Bar Mitzvah” which sounded a lot like Confirmation. He let me try on the beanie he wore to schul. During the week he went to Sennott Street School. Benny was my first public school friend. He was also the first Jew I had ever known.

We didn’t talk about my Church or his either, which he called “Temple.” Why not, I don’t know, since I was proud of my religion. Though maybe that was it. My world was so comfortable I saw no need to explore outside it. When you live in a house whose rooms are perfect in every way, what is the use of windows? But actually, I was curious how these normal-looking people could believe in anything as odd as the Jewish religion, especially considering their ancestors killed Our Lord and Savior. How could they act so calm since without the sacraments they would never get to see God? Somehow, though, it didn’t seem right to question Benny. He wouldn’t have a good answer and I didn’t want to embarrass my new friend.

Everyone in Benny’s family read a lot, even his father. There were books all over the house, plus a newspaper with strange lettering he said was Yiddish. They had a lot of pictures in the living room and he said, yes these are my relatives but most of them are dead, killed by the Nazis. He told me many Nazis were Catholics, which made me angry. I knew Catholics wouldn’t kill old people and children, but he said sure they did. My mother said it wasn’t as simple as that, and when it came to cruelty the Nazis had nothing on the British.

One day I was having lunch at Benny’s house. As his mother set my sandwich down she stared at me. “Paul, how do you come by those eyes?” she asked, “whose child are you?” What a peculiar thing to say. I started to explain about my family, but she smiled then said something even weirder. “Those dark eyes, Paul. You are one of us.”

I’D BETTER SAY SOMETHING about my brother Jim. To start with, he got all the attention. My father made a big deal out of him getting his name in the paper after a game. My father had left sixth grade for the family farm, dispatched to the U.S. a year later to work in the mills and send money home. With no childhood of his own, he was making up for it with a double dose for number one son, crafting with favors and praise the boy he always wanted to be.

Jim lived without boundaries. He thought he could do anything, anytime, and with my father behind him, he was right. Girls called him at home. I know because I sometimes answered the phone. He’d flash a roll of bills at me, always a five on the outside, despite no after-school job and an allowance not nearly big enough for everything he bought. His closet was full of clothes and was always telling me, shape up, Paul, if you want to get anywhere you’ve got to look sharp. The kids he hung around with, a couple of them owned cars and they spent a lot of time cruising. He bragged, the day he got his license he’d have one too.

Jim owned the world, talking loud and getting into fights at school, which bothered my mother tremendously. She kept her distance, as if she feared Jim’s wild energy. My parents had struck a deal. Jim was my father’s domain, Catherine my mother’s. So far from my father’s idea of what a boy should be, I fell into my mother’s sphere of influence, though in reality I was invisible, the family Switzerland. This had advantages, for bad as it made me feel, it gave me space to enjoy my solitary, orderly pastimes. I envied Jim’s easy athleticism, his confidence and good looks, and though I would have liked his companionship, he had no time for me. Our paths diverged as we became more of what we were, ever more different.

One day in August my father called from work. He’d forgotten his lunch, would I bring it to him? He had something to show me too. I found the bag in the fridge and set out for his shop, wondering what was up. Passing my school I thought that in less than a month I’d be entering fifth grade. I didn’t consider myself a big shot, though I stood first in my class and had a stellar reputation with the nuns that helped me not at all with my friends. What I excelled in, they cared nothing about. Grades didn’t mean that much to me, either. They came so easily I didn’t see the point, but I sensed if you’re going to spend that much time on anything, you might as well do it right. This practical approach would carry me along until I figured out what I was doing, more or less.

I proceeded downhill along Manton Avenue past Clift’s Variety, provisioner of picture card gum and comic books, past Virgilio’s where I had my first slice of flat bread with tomato and melted cheese in a greasy wrapper that later became such a big deal, past the dry cleaners, past Francoeur’s where I watched myself watching myself watching myself from a high leather chair, the spring shearing producing summer’s crewcut, past the tap rooms, their sweet, dank odor spilling onto the sidewalk, open early every day though later on Sunday for sad-eyed men and women on stools hunched over their drinks. But not my father. Not even a quickie on the way home. He had class.

You approached the brick building that was my father’s shop by a steep driveway angled between two mill buildings, one abandoned, the other with only a few cars outside. It always thrilled me to see the sign on the roof – Bernard Bros. Tool & Die. Somehow, his work belonged to me, and I to it. From the parking lot you could see across to Merino Park beyond the railroad tracks, beyond the willows and brush and the brackish, foul-smelling river. Merino, where winters we played hockey, terrorizing the girls, my sister and cousins, as they skated backward and did spins. We helped them spin, all right. Merino, home to St. Teresa’s baseball. I was already obsessed with my tryout. On my knees each night, I pounded my glove and pleaded with God, aware I was testing His patience and power to the limit.

Walking into the reception area I waved at Miss Grenier, a stout older lady who’d been with the business since it started in the Thirties. A distant relative, she’d been in the States a long time. Her gloomy face and dour expression are permanently etched in my memory. She nodded as I opened the door to the corridor where my father and Uncle Antoine had side-by-side offices, black letters on frosted glass.

JULIEN BERNARD – PRESIDENT

ANTOINE BERNARD – VICE PRESIDENT

I peered into Uncle Antoine’s office but he wasn’t in. My father’s door was ajar and I heard voices so I knocked. No answer, so I knocked harder. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me. I brought your lunch.”

“Well, don’t just stand there! Come in!”

My father was seated at his desk. Lorraine, his secretary, was standing by his chair, brushing the front of her dress, kind of pulling it down. Sweeping up some papers she floated past me with a big smile, which reminded me of something my mother said about perfume, that its presence should be felt but not smelled. That didn’t make any sense to me. Isn’t that what perfume’s for, to be smelled? But I have to admit Lorraine’s particular perfume was extremely powerful, in fact, the room reeked of it. If it had been my office I would’ve opened a window, that’s for sure.

My father had two secretaries, Lorraine and Mrs. Lamontagne. Mrs. Lamontagne was another of those other people who’d worked for him forever. His bookkeeper, she knew everything about the business. As well as being my father’s personal secretary, Lorraine helped out in front. The person in her job changed often, younger women who left to get married and have kids. This day I thought how pale Lorraine’s hair was, white, really, which recalled another of my mother’s comments, about women who bleach their hair. Everyone knows what kind of woman does that, she’d say, scowling at my father, and we know what they’re after. Her hair would have made Lorraine look old except she was pretty and not at all fat which you could tell since her dress was very tight. I don’t know, maybe it shrank.

“Ti-Paul!” My father waved me into the chair in front of his desk. As I said before, he rarely called me that, but the shop was one of those times. “I’ve got something to show you, something-you-will-not-believe!”

It had been a dull day, nobody around, and I ended up on my hands and knees clipping grass along the edge of the driveway, a dreary, pointless task. I placed the sack lunch beside my chair. My feet easily reached the floor – I was pushing five feet.

“There!” he said, inserting his gold pen in its holder and blotting a paper. “We’ll give this to Mrs. Lamontagne then we’re off!”

He dropped the bag into a desk drawer. “That can wait,” he said, plucking his hat from the hat rack. I followed him down the corridor through the heavy metal door to the factory side of the shop. I always liked watching the machines, some going up and down, others side to side or in circles, punching holes, slicing, bending, filing. Most of them were quiet which these days wasn’t unusual. We passed the timecard rack which could hold a couple hundred cards but these days had a lot of empty spaces. I often heard my father and mother talking about how bad business was. But today he was in a really good mood.

“Pretty soon, ti-Paul, pret-ty soon! Before long, this place’ll be hopping, just like the old days!” He bent down and put his face close to mine. “I’ll tell you something not even your mother knows. We just landed a contract from one of them big jewelry makers! A ve-ry big contract! First time we’ve ever been able to crack them.” He nodded. “The other news you’ll hear about soon enough.”

“There’s more?” I asked.

He paused. This time his face was serious. “It looks like we’ll be having another war. Them Orientals are up to their old tricks – this time it’s the Koreans. They better watch out or we’ll kick their ass again!”

Wow! This was the first I’d heard about another war.

Our car was in the first parking space, in front of the PRESIDENT signpost, a black Plymouth we’d had a long time. If things pick up, I thought, maybe we’ll get a new one! Soon we were driving through the Olneyville business district down the hill. We turned into a side street and pulled up in front of a store with the sign QUALITY RADIO SALES AND SERVICE – ALL WORK GUARANTEED. The front window was full of radios and victrolas and dead flies and bees on the sill with a lot of crumpled paper. As we opened the door a chime sounded and a man pushed his way through a curtain from the back room.

“Ça va, Julien!” It was my father’s friend, Mr. Lemieux. He ran the Mongenais Club Christmas party every year.

“Ça va, Roland, damn good, in fact.”

Mr. Lemieux was a short, balding man with a lean face and a heavy beard and something that shocked me every time I saw it, something that wasn’t even there, his right arm. It had been shot off during the war, they said, in the Battle of the Bulge. He was another hero of the neighborhood, though seeing this incomplete person, in an odd way it made you feel worse than Cosmo or cousin Maurice who didn’t come back at all. I once asked my father how Mr. Lemieux could repair radios and he said, lucky thing, he was left-handed to start with. When he was working Mr. Lemieux strapped on this fake arm with a metal hook. Unbelievable how he could move things around and pick them up with that hook. Today he didn’t have the arm on and the sleeve of his short-sleeve shirt flapped as he moved. I always wanted to see what it looked like, some kind of stump, I figured, but I never dared ask.

“So, ti-Paul, you ready for the big show?” Mr. Lemieux asked.

No idea what he meant but I nodded anyway.

“Allons-y! Back this way. Just got it in this morning.”

He led us through the curtain to this amazing indoor junkyard, thousands of radios and other stuff in every state of disrepair. Next to the workbench a calendar lady in a red swim suit gazed down on us from August. “Here it is!” he said proudly.

There it was all right, in front of Mr. Lemieux’ workbench, a... I didn’t know what it was. Some sort of cabinet like our living room radio except bigger and with a round window and a bunch of dials. I ran my fingers across the cool glass.

“First one in the city,” Mr. Lemieux said, winking. “The Dumont man’s a friend of mine. Here, let’s start it up.” He turned one knob and fiddled with another that had little numbers around the edge... circumference, that is. This knob clicked when he turned it.

“This is television, ti-Paul!” said my father, looking extremely pleased with himself.

Now the box was hissing and giving off a tone. The window grew lighter and a design appeared, several circles and a star with a black arm, a white arm and two shaded arms, and the words WJAR-TV - Providence - Channel 10. “That there’s the test pattern, they’s nothing on that station til later,” Mr. Lemieux said, reaching for the numbered dial, “but look here!” He turned the dial through several clicks. The test pattern disappeared and what was this? The window was fuzzy but I saw a baseball field, with a pitcher at the top of the window! Near the bottom, a catcher and a batter! I leaned forward.

“It’s Ted Williams!”

“You bet!” Mr. Lemieux said, fiddling with a V-shaped thing on top of the box. As he moved it around, the picture faded, then returned. “This here’s the Boston station. Comes in okay with the rabbit ears. When I hook up the roof antenna we’ll get rid of that snow.”

Ted Williams, my idol, here in this... this box! “Two men out, last of the first, here’s the three-one pitch.” Williams swung and the ball disappeared through the upper right corner of the window. Suddenly the picture changed and you could see the second baseman flip it to first for the out. Again the picture changed and a Narragansett sign appeared. The announcer started talking about seedless hops and all, just like radio except you could actually see somebody pouring the beer. It rose in the glass and foamed over. I felt my father’s arm on my shoulder. “Well, how do you like it?”

I was speechless. It was a miracle!

He glanced at his watch. “I gotta get back but maybe Roland will let you watch a couple innings.”

I looked at Mr. Lemieux, “Can I?”

“Sure, you bet. You’re the first one, my own kid hasn’t even seen it.” Mr. Lemieux dragged a stuffed chair over. I watched until the fourth when I had to go back up the hill for my own game. When I left it was Sox three, Tigers nothing, thanks to Ted’s homer with two on his next time up. I don’t remember anything about my own game.

The next week a red QUALITY RADIO SALES AND SERVICE – ALL WORK GUARANTEED truck appeared in front of our house and two men staggered up the steps with a huge carton. Of my friends I was the first to have a television. My father moved the furniture around so we could all watch it. We began having more company. Television changed our lives – only later did I come to realize how much.

ONE EVENING AFTER DINNER I wandered back to the lot. This older kid named Jerry Shields was sitting on the rock in back of home plate, smoking a cigarette. Jerry was on the basketball team and smart, an altar boy, even. My mother was friends with his mother. I took a seat next to him on the rock. “Want one?” he asked. He held up a pack of Luckies, big red circle with a black rim. I had never smoked before but I thought, why not? I’d seen lots of people smoke – my mother and father, Jim snuck them in the back yard all the time – so I knew how it was done.

He tapped the bottom of the pack. A new pack, they were in there tight. I pinched one out, which kind of messed up the tip. I put the other end in my mouth and Jerry handed over his matches. I tore one off and struck it, holding it against the tip, breathing deeply. Suddenly I coughed and the match went out. Jerry nodded. “Windy, ain’t it?”

Another match. This time I kept my mouth closed and was able to get the thing going. I puffed a few times then took it out of my mouth. The paper stuck to my lips. “Great,” I said, my mouth hot and dry, “really great. Thanks.”

Jerry looked at me. “Not inhaling tonight?”

“I was getting to that.”

I raised the cigarette to my mouth and sucked, letting the smoke collect in my mouth, then inhaled. Again I began to cough. The fit went on until my eyes were watering like crazy. So were Jerry’s. He couldn’t stop laughing. “It’s a rotten habit, Paul.” He ground his butt under his foot. “Take my advice, don’t start.” A few minutes later he lit up again, this time with special flair. I was in awe of Jerry. He knew how to do things – practical, manly things. Something had been on my mind for a while. “Jerry,” I said, “mind if I ask you something?”

“Be my guest,” he said.

I hesitated. Again I’d be showing my ignorance but this I needed to find out. “The word ‘fuck.’ I was wondering, any idea what it means?”

Jerry started to speak but held up. “I could tell you,” he said, “but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a bad word. You don’t say it around people, especially grownups.”

“Come on. I won’t let on you told me.”

“No,” he said, inhaling thoughtfully. “Besides, you’ll find out soon enough.”

He knew but wouldn’t tell me? I’ll find out? “At least tell me what it’s about.”

He blew a cloud my way. “Girls and babies. That’s all I’ll say.”

Girls and babies. So that was it. But what did that mean?

Looking back, it was fitting. My first cigarette, same time as my first talk about sex, though I didn’t know that’s what it was. I had stumbled across an idea of great power that could have made me rich and famous. Too bad the advertising people beat me to it.