Visions of Gerard Read online

  The Kat is up on the sink actually fascinated by the drip drip of the faucet, there he is with his paws under him and his tail curling down and his ruminative quickglancing face bending and earpricking to the phenomena, as tho he was trying to figure out, or pass the time, or make fun of us—But Mama has a headache, it’s a cold windy night in Old February and Pa is out late at work (playing poker backstage B.F.Keiths maybe with W.C.Fields for all I know with my drawn yawp masque)—The winds belabor at the windows of the kitchen, Ma is on the couch on the newspapers where she’s flopped in despair, it’s about 9:30, supper dishes have been put away (tenderly by her own hands) and now she lies there head back on a kewpie cushion with an ice pack on her head—The woodstove roars—Gerard and I are at the stove rocker, warming our feet, Nin is at the table doing her “devoir” (homework)—

  “Mama you’re sick,” demurs Gerard with the gods, with his piteous voice, “what are we going to do.”

  “Aw it’ll go away.”

  He goes over and lays his head against hers and waits to hear her cure—

  “If I had some aspirins.”

  “I’ll go get you some—at drugstore!”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s only 9:30—I’m not afraid.”

  “Poor Lil Gerard it’s too cold tonight and it’s too late.”

  “No mama! I’ll dress up good! My hat my rubbers!”

  “Run. Go to Old Man Bruneau, ask him for a bottle of aspirin—the money is in my pocketbook.”

  Together Gerard and I peer and probe into the mysterious pocketbook for the mysterious nickles and dimes that are always there intermingled with rosaries and gum and powder puffs—

  Little Gerard runs and puts his muffcap and draws it over his ears and draws on his rubbers with that tragic bent over motion no angels who never lived on earth could know—A cold key in a tight lock, our situation, the skin so warm, thin, the night of Winter so broad and cool—So Saskatchewan’d with advantage—

  “Hurry up my golden, Mama’ll be afraid—”

  “I’ll go get your medicine and you’ll be all right, just watch!

  Gleefully he goes off, the door admits Spectre into the kitchen an instant and he slams it–I watch him tumble off.

  Beaulieu Street going down towards West Sixth, 4 houses, to the Fire House, is swept by dusts—The lamp on the corner only serves to accentuate by contrast the lightlessness in the general air—The stars above are no help, they twinkle in a vain freeze—The cold sweeps down Gerard’s neck, he tries to bundle in—He hurries around the corner and down West Sixth, towards the lights of the big corner at Aiken and Lilley and West Sixth where bleak graypaint tenements stand with dull brown kitchen lights under the hard stars—Not a soul in sight, a few cruds of old snow stuck in the gutters—A fine world for icebergs and stones—A world not made for men—A world, if made for anything, made for something dead to sympathy—Since sympathizing there’ll not be in it ever—He runs to warm up—

  Down at Aiken the wind from the river hits him full-blast with a roar, around the corner, bringing with it the odor of cold rocks in the river’s ice, and the savor of rust—

  “God doesnt look like he made the world for people” he guesses all by himself as it occurs in his chilled bones the hopeless sensation—No help in sight, the utter helpless-ness up, down, around—The stars, rooftops, dusty swirls, streetlamps, cold storefronts, vistas at street-ends where you know the earthflat just continues on and on into a round February the roundness of which and warm ball of which wont be vouchsafed us Slav-level fools as but flat—Flat as a tin pan—So for winds to swail across, a man oughta lie down on his back on a cold night and miss those winds—No thought, no hope of the mind can dispel, nay no millions in the bank, can break, the truth of the Winter night and that we are not made for this world—Stones yes, grass and trees for all their green return I’d say no to judge from their dead brownness tonight—A million may buy a hearth, but a hearth wont buy rich safety—

  Gerard divines that all of this is pure division, a grief of separation, the cold is cold because there are two to know it, the cold and he who is en-colded—“If it wasnt for that, like in Heaven, . . .”

  “And Mama has a headache, aw God why’d you do all this this suffering?”

  En route back with the aspirins he hears a forlorn rumble in Ennell Street, it’s the old junkman coming back from some over extended work somewhere in windswept junkslopes, his horse is steaming, his steel-on-wood-wheels are grinding grit on grit and stone on stone and wind swirls dust about his burlaps, as he smiles that tooth-smile of the cold between embittered lips, you see the suffering of his mitts and the weeping in his beard, the woe—Going home to some leaky rafter—To count his rusty corsets and by-your-leaves and tornpaper accounts and pile-alls—To die on his heap of mistakes, finally, and what was gained in emptiness you’ll never find debited or credited in any account—What the preachers say not excepted—“Poor old man, he hasnt got a nice warm kitchen, he hasnt got a mother, he hasnt got a little sister and little brother and Papa, he’s alone under the hole under the open stars—If it was all together in one ball of wool—!—” The horse’s hooves strike sparks, the wheels labor to turn into West Sixth, the whole shebang sorrows out of sight—Gerard approaches our house, our golden kitchen lights and pauses on the cold porch for one last look up—The stars have nothing to do with anything.

  In some other way, he hopes.

  “There, your little hands are cold—thank you my child—bring me a glass of water—I’ll be all right—Mama’s sick tonight—”

  “Mama—why is it so cold?”

  “Dont ask me.”

  “Why did God leave us sick and cold? Why didnt he leave us in Heaven.”

  “You ‘re sure we were there?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “How are you sure?”

  “Because it cant be like it is.”

  “Oui”—Ma in her rare moments when thinking seriously she doesnt admit anything that doesnt ring all the way her bell of mind—“but it is.”

  “I dont like it. I wanta go to Heaven. I wish we were all in Heaven.”

  “Me too I wish.”

  “Why cant we have what we want?” but as soon as he says that the tears appear in his eyes, as he knows the selfish demand—

  “Aw Mama, I dont understand.”

  “Come come we’ll make some nice hot chocolate!—”

  “Hot chocolate! (Du coco!)” cries Ti Nin, and I echo it:

  “Klo Klo!”

  The big cocoa deal boils and bubbles chocolating on the stove and soon Gerard forgets—

  If his mortality be the witness of Gerard’s sin, as Augustine Page One immediately announced, then his sin must have been a great deal greater than the sin of mortals who enjoy, millionaires in yachts a-sailing in the South Seas with blondes and secretaries and flasks and engineers and endless hormone pills and Tom Collins Moons and peaceful deaths—The sins of the junkman on Ennell Street, they were vast almost as mine and brother’s—

  In bed that night he lies awake, Gerard, listening to the moan of wind, the flap of shutters—From where he lies he can just see one cold sparkle star—The fences have no hope.

  Like, the protection you’d get tonight huddling against an underpass.

  But Gerard had his holidays, they bruited before his wan smile—New Year’s Eve we’re all in bed upstairs under the wall-papered eaves listening to the racket horns and rattlers below and out the window the dingdong bells and sad horizon hush of all Lowell and towards Kearney Square where we see the red glow embrowned and aura’d in the new (1925) sky and we think: “A new year”—A new year with a new number and a new little boy with candlelight and kitchimise standing radiant in the eternities, as the old, some old termagant with beard and scythe, goes wandering down the da
rkness field, and on the sofa arms of the parlor chairs even now the fairies are dancing—Gerard and Nin and I are sitting up in the one bed of conclave, with a happy smile he’s trying to explain to us what’s really happening but by and by the drunks come upstairs with wild hats to kiss us—Some sorrow involved in the crinkly ends of pages of old newspapers bound in old readingroom files so that you turn and see the news of that bygone New Year’s day, the advertisements with top hats, the crowds in Hail streets, the snow—The little boy under the quilt who will have X’s in his eyes when the rubber lamppost ushers in his latter New Years Eves, one scythe after another lopping off his freshness juices till he comes to bebibbling them from corny necks of bottles—And the swarm in the darkness, of an ethereal kind, where nobody ever looks, as if if they did look the swarms ethereal would wink off, winking, to wink on again when no one’s watching—Gerard’s bright explanations about dark time, and cowbells—Then we had our Easter.

  Which came with lilies in April, and you had white doves in the fields, and we went seesawing thru Palm Sunday and we’d stare at those pictures of Jesus meek on the little azno entering the city and the palm multitudes, “The Lord has found that nice little animal there and he got up on his back and they rode into the city”—“Look, the people are all glad”—A few chocolate rabbits one way or the other was not the impress of our palmy lily-like Easter, our garland of roses, our muddy-earth Spring sigh when all in new shoes we squeaked to the church and outside you could smell the fragrant cigarettes and see men spit and inside the church was all dormant and adamant like wine with white white flowers everywhere—

  We had our Fourth of July, some firecrackers, some fence sitting pitting of sparks, warm trees of night, boys throwing torpedoes against fences, general wars, oola-oo-ah pop-works at the Common with the big bomb was the finale, and popcorn and Ah Lemonade—

  And Halloween: the Halloween of 1925, when Ma dressed me up as a little Chinaman with a queu and a white robe and Gerard as a Pirate and Nin as a Vamp and old Papa took us by the hand and paraded us down to the corner at Lilley and Aiken, ice cream sodas, swarms of eyes on the sidewalks—

  All the little children of the world keep quickly coming and going to the holidays that only slowly change, but the quality of the brightness of their eyes monotonously reverts—Seeds, seeds, the seed sown everywhere blossoming the fruit of our loom, living-but-to-die—There’s just no fun in holidays when you know.

  All the living and dying creatures of the endless future wont even wanta be forewarned—wherefore, I should shut up and close up shop and bang shutters and broom my own dark and nasty nest.

  At this time my father had gotten sick and moved part of his printing business in the basement of the house where he had his press, and upstairs in an unused bedroom where he had some racks of type—He had rheumatism too, and lay in white sheets groaned and saying “La marde!” and looking at his type racks in the next room where his helper Manuel was doing his best in an inkstained apron.

  It was later on, about the time Gerard got really sick (long-sick, year-sick, his last illness) that this paraphernalia was moved back to the rented shop on Merrimack Street in an alley in back of the Royal Theater, an alley which I visited just last year to find unchanged and the old gray-wood Colonial one storey building where Pa’s pure hope-shop rutted, a boarded up ghost-hovel not even fit for bums—And forlorner winds never did blow ragspaper around useless rubbish piles, than those that blow there tonight in that forgotten alley of the world which is no more forgotten than the heartbreaking and piteous way Gerard had of holding his head to the side whenever he was interested or bemused in something, and as if to say, “Ay-you, world, what are our images but dust?—and our shops,”—sad.

  Nonetheless, lots of porkchops and beans came to me via my old man’s efforts in the world of business which for all the fact that ‘t is only the world of adult playball, procures tightwad bread from hidden cellars the locks of which are guarded by usurping charlatans who know how easy it is to enslave people with a crust of bread withheld—He, Emil, went bustling and bursting in his neckties to find the money to pay rents, coalbills (for to vaunt off that selfsame winter night and I’d be ingrat to make light of it whenever trucks come early morning and dump their black and dusty coal roar down a chute of steel into our under bins)—Ashes in the bottom of the furnace, that Ma herself shoveled out and into pails, and struggled to the ashcan with, were ashes representative of Poppa’s efforts and tho their heating faculties were in Nirvana now ‘twould be loss of fealty to deny—I curse and rant nowaday because I dont want to have to work to make a living and do childish work for other men (any lout can move a board from hither to yonder) but’d rather sleep all day and stay it up all night scrubbling these visions of the world which is only an ethereal flower of a world, the coal, the chute, the fire and the ashes all, imaginary blossoms, nonetheless, “somebody’s got to do the work-a the world”—Artist or no artist, I cant pass up a piece of fried chicken when I see it, compassion or no compassion for the fowl—Arguments that raged later between my father and myself about my refusal to go to work—“I wanta write—I’m an artist”—“Artist shmartist, ya cant be supported all ya life—”

  And I wonder what Gerard would have done had he lived, sickly, artistic—But by my good Jesus, with that holy face they’d have stumbled over one another to come and give him bread and breath—He left me his heart but not his tender countenance and sorrowful patience and kindly lights—

  “Me when I’m big, I’m gonna be a painter of beautiful pictures and I’m gonna build beautiful bridges”—He never lived to come and face the humble problem, but he would have done it with that noblesse tendresse I never in my bones and dead man heart could ever show.

  It’s a bright cold morning in December 1925, just before Christmas, Gerard is setting out to school—Aunt Marie has him by the hand, she’s visiting us for a week and she wants to take a morning constitutional, and take deep breaths and show Gerard how to do likewise, for his health—Aunt Marie is my father’s favorite sister (and my favorite aunt), a talkative openhearted, teary bleary lovely with red lipstick always and gushy kisses and a black ribbon pendant from her specs—While my father has been abed with rheumatism she’s helped somewhat with the housework—Crippled, on crutches, a modiste—Never married but many boyfriends helped her—The spittin image of Emil and the lover of Gerard’s little soul as no one else, unless it be the cold eyed but warm hearted Aunt Anna from up in Maine—“Ti Gerard, for your health always do this, take big clacks of air in your lungs, hold it a long time, look” pounding her furpieced breast, “see?”

  —“Oui, Matante Marie—”

  “Do you love your Matante?”

  “My Matante Marie I love her so big!” he cries affectionately as they hug and limp around the corner, to the school, where the kids are, in the yard, and the nuns, who now stare curiously at Gerard’s distinguished aunt—Aunt Marie take her leave and drops in the church for a quick prayer—It’s the Christmas season and everyone feels devout.

  The kids bumble into their seats in the classroom.

  “This morning,” says the nun up front, “we’re going to study the next chapter of the catechism—” and the kids turn the pages and stare at the illustrations done by old French engravers like Boucher and others always done with the same lamby gray strangeness, the curlicue of it, the reeds of Moses’ bed-basket I remember the careful way they were drawn and divided and the astonished faces of women by the riverbank—It’s Gerard’s turn to read after Picou’ll be done—He dozes in his seat from a bad night’s rest during which his breathing was difficult, he doesnt know it but a new and serious attack on his heart is forming—Suddenly Gerard is asleep, head on arms, but because of the angle of the boy’s back in front of him the nun doesnt see.

  Gerard dreams that he is sitting in a yard, on some house steps with me, his little brother, in the dream he’s thinking so
rrowfully: “Since the beginning of time I’ve been charged to take care of this little brother, my Ti Jean, my poor Ti Jean who cries he’s afraid—” and he is about to stroke me on the head, as I sit there drawing a stick around in the sand, when suddenly he gets up and goes to another part of the yard, nearby, trees and bushes and something strange and gray and suddenly the ground ends and there’s just air and supported there at the earth’s gray edge of immateriality, is a great White Virgin Mary with a flowing robe ballooning partly in the wind and partly tucked in at the edges and held aloft by swarms, countless swarms of grave bluebirds with white downy bellies and necks—On her breast, a crucifix of gold, in her hand a rosary of gold, on her head a star of gold—Beauteous beyond bounds and belief, like snow, she speaks to Gerard:

  “Well my goodness Ti Gerard, we’ve been looking for you all morning—where were you?”

  He turns to explain that he was with . . . that he was on . . . . . that he was . . . . that . . .—He cant remember what it is that it was, he cant remember why he forgot where he was, or why the time, the morning-time, was shortened, or lengthened—The Virgin Mary reads it in his perplexed eyes. “Look,” pointing to the red sun, “it’s still early, I wont be mad at you, you were only gone less than a morning—Come on—”

  “Where?”

  “Well, dont you remember? We were going—come on—”

  “How’m I gonna follow you?”

  “Well your wagon is there” and Oh yes, he snaps his finger and looks to remember and there it is, the snow-white cart drawn by two lambs, and as he sits in it two white pigeons settle on each of his shoulders; as prearranged, he bliss-remembers all of it now, and they start, tho one perplexing frown shows in his thoughts where he’s still trying to remember what he was and what he was doing before, or during, his absence, so brief—And as the little wagon of snow ascends to Heaven, Heaven itself becomes vague and in his arm with head bent Gerard is contemplating the perfect ecstasy when his arm is rudely jolted by Sister Marie and he wakes to find himself in a classroom with the sad window-opening pole leaning in the corner and the erasers on the ledges of the blackboards and the surly marks of woe smudged thereon and the Sister’s eyes astonished down on his: