Visions of Gerard Page 7

  A whole story in itself, the story of Emil, his mad brothers and sisters, the whole troop coming down from the barren farm, to the factories of U.S.A.—Their early life in early Americana New Hampshire of pink suspenders, strawberry blondes, barbershop quartets, popcorn stands with melted butter in a teapot, and fistfights in the Sunday afternoon streets between bullies and heroes who read Frank Merri-well—Of Emil much later more—

  But his rise from riotous family, to insurance salesman in the “big city” (for Lowell 14 miles downriver) and then to independent businessman with a shop, his waxing and puffing on cigars—His eager bursting out of vests and coats, tortured armpits of suits, quick short heavy steps on our history sidewalks—But a reverend, sensitive, apt-to-understand man, and understand he did, the mournfulness of his vision, the way he shook his head (that little Gerard imitated), the way he sighed—A citizen of the raving world, but eager to be good—Eager to be rich too—But a man endowed with qualities of interested apperception of the nature of things, as would qualify him to be a tragic philosopher—Insights, sadnesses, that leapfrogged his intelligence and came down on the other side and were light—“I see blind light—I see this sad black earth!” might have been one thought he had.

  Here he goes hurrying to Manuel’s for their night’s work—Manuel lives four blocks down near the big corner of Lilley and Aiken—As Emil turns off Beaulieu, which is the little street that bears the great burden of Gerard’s dying, a breeze blows, bringing whiffs of hope, voices, song, it’s a gay Saturday night, but the young father has no primer for that wellknown pump and only slowly ghostly sadly wends his way, thinking, “My father died drunk behind his stove—my mother died in her dishes and poor wash-clothes—father and mother, it happens to all of us one way or the other, we can pray if we want but it wont help—Go on, God, dont call yourself God in my face—Doin business under conditions like that, we’ll never win—”

  Manuel lives in a raucous tenement, first floor, you walk in from the woodporch which has rollers that run the washlines across a tar court to the porch of the other tenements, all closed in, with, on warm Spring Night, all windows open and families airing their rave and grievance—Crash! Old Paquette’s drunk again—Bang! Old lady Pirouette who lost her son in the war is dropping her dishes again—Boom! that damn little Petrie’s poppin off his lastyear’s firecrackers—It swims in thru all windows and revolves around and rumors and runs like a river, voices, language, gossip, crashes, jingles and jangles—“There’s no end to it!”—Whole rant-sentences can be heard in rising and falling snatches of vigorous Canuckois, coming from by old woodstoves in ancient rockingchairs—Sounds for the quick head and trailing robe—Emil walks in to Manuel’s kitchen unannounced, nobody in it, he stands questioning—It doesnt take long for him to realize that Manuel is in the bedroom with his wife having a fight—

  “They always told me not to marry you, you were a drunkard at sixteen—sixteen?!! I bet you was drunk as a hoot-owl at 15, 14—You’re not the man I married but dammit the reason for that is because you were puttin up a front when I married you, crook—”

  “Aw shut ya big ga dam mouth, it’s only good for blagues—I gave you your money, I’m goin to work, I’ll be gone all night, you oughta be satisfied, ya cow—”

  “Dont call me a cow, dog—”

  “Call yourself what you like, me I’m goin—and if I’m drunk tomorrow morning when I get back we’ll blame it on you”

  —“Aw yeah, look for excuses.”

  “Bein in the same house with a pest like you it’s enough to make a man drink poison!”

  “Why dont you do it then.”

  “And leave you my insurance that I took out because Emil Duluoz bullshitted my ear in 1920, not a chance—I’ll live and you’ll be poor—Go tell that to your mother.”

  My old man winces in the kitchen and bathetically would tiptoe out except that Manuel’s wife is suddenly exploding into the kitchen with a backward added yell to loverboy: “Aw sure, simpleton, I’ll go tell all this to my mother and make her happy she had a little girl and brought her up to well my goodness Mr. Duluoz is here!”

  My father, eyes to the ceiling, salutes at the side of his head, as if to say “Dont mind me, I’m the court jester.”

  Manuel comes out of his gloomy bridalchamber with a chamberpot in his hand, and slippers on his feet. “Ah—Emil—”

  “Come on, Manuel, before Rosie throws you out on your face—”

  “I’ll throw him out to the Devil, damn him!” she screams, slamming the door that leads to the parlor which is never used.

  (Sigh) my old man, “At least you dont have any children—Put on your shoes and come on—You got drunk again there yesterday?”

  “Just a little nip.”

  “Poor Manuel, come on I’ll buy you a little nip—just one hour of work then we’ll go to the club.”

  “How is it at home?”

  “Well, there we dont fight, we—” he was about to say “we die” but checked himself.

  Together they leave the tenement and get on Manuel’s motorcycle with the side car, Emil in it, stately with hat-in-hand and goopy look, and off they go put-putting and bouncing over the Aiken Street Bridge—Almost exhilaration sweeps over both of them as the river winds whip their faces, and they both yell and point at the moon, which is rising yellow-huge on the horizon over Pawtucketville—About a mile to the left are the glowing windows of the mills, some windows dye-blue, all reflected on the thrashy waters—About a mile to the right, Pawtucketville’s hill of houses and the moon and one vast darkness cloud burlying over Spring—

  It’s the time of the juices—

  They go careering up Aiken thru the tenement streets of Little Canada and cross the canal bridge and along to the high Medieval granite walls of St. Jean de Baptiste church (where Gerard was baptized), then left on Moody Street along busy storefronts, then right, to Merrimack Street, with its trolleys and busy cars, and down to the bright corner where stands the Jewel Theater, and the Royal Theater—Manuel roars to a stop, they get out like brave mechanics, and toddle off down the alley by the Royal, redbrick, past the fire escape, to the rear—Emil turns on the light—You see the press, the hand presses, the piles of glossy paper, the paper cutter, the roll-trucks, the inky shadows, rolls, rags, cans, inks, the long sad stained planks of the floor leading to the back entrance which fronts Market Street where the Greek coffee shops show dismal cardgames and barbutte dice games going on in green interiors among gloomy men in black, the long lost sad scenes.

  “What you thinkin, Leo, will we do it before 8 o’clock?” comes the cry now in English from the rhythmic chomping press where inky Manuel (inky from so much) in blue striped scullion’s apron stands feeding sheets between the yawns of inkpan and types, sheketak, sheketoom, shketak, shketoom, and out come orange circulars advertising stores their Spring bargains and Specials:—

  THE MODERN WONDER

  Shoe Sale

  MEN’S SHOES

  WOMEN’S

  BOY’S SCOUT SHOES

  $7 or $8 values

  $6 low shoes

  $2.49

  As low as $2.98

  Goodyear welt $2.98

  THE MODERN SHOE STORE

  143 Central St Opp. Talbot’s

  —to be delivered door to door by boys on bikes or by Tao hoboes who assemble under the pharting trills of birds at daybreak to receive their day’s bagful of circulars, which will go for booze and beans—

  “All I gotta do, Manuel, is finish this ad and get my foldin done, turn the key on Red Line Taxi and Cantwell optical, be done. Did you finish that new Pollard mat?”

  “The great underpriced basement? All don
e, Leo, everything twenty-three skidoo and ready to roll.”

  “Well oil her up, we ‘ll be outa here by eight and maybe go down to the Keiths’ for a game.”

  “Ah ben mué, les cartes, son pas assez bon pour la soif pour mué, (ah well me, cards, they’re not good enough for thirst for me.”)

  “Ben mué too shpeux usez un bierre, (well me too I can use a beer,”) both of them suddenly reverting to Frenchy slang since nobody’s there to hear them anyway, just as you might expect the Greeks that you could see across the way thru the great dirty wire windows, breaking from their usual Greek to talk some English for the benefit of business there “ska ta la pa ta wa ya” here we go again, the great raving patois of Lowell on all sides, Polocks on Lakeview Avenue and Back Central, and practically pure Gaelic or at least lilting lyric Gaelic English on the Highlands and down town—Syrians to boot, up the canal somewhere—And your old New England Yankees eating Indian Pudding for desert in old stately houses with lawns, on Andover, Paw-tucket and Chelmsford, with names like Goldtwaithe and Smith—And thin noses and thin lips and read Walden by the fireplace on howling nights—

  Eight o’clock Pa and Manuel close up shop and go across the street to the Jewel Theater for a chat with the manager Sam, the cameras are running off the latest photopaly replete with thrills and fast action and gray rain streaming across the screen and the piano rumbling suspense thunders in the pit, the oldtime movie stars with their prim painted lips set grim—“We grow through suffering,” is written for what says the hero in flickery letters, “Jesus God,” says a bum in the seat, “by now I oughta be as big as the side of the house”—Sam gives them an introductory warming nip that goes like a prairie fire thru Manuel’s belly, then they get back in the contraption and go bouncing down Merrimack to the Square, as acquaintances shout “Weyo, Emil, when you gonna enter in the races? Buy yourself some goggles and a hat that comes down over your ears! Manuel’ll get you in the river, give im time!”—

  “Ho Emil, how’s the boy?”

  “Ho Slattery—still swingin em?”

  My father is a popular fellow around Lowell, in insurance he’s buttonholed practically every small (and some big) businessman in town and extolled the virtues etc. etc. of seeing that your grave doth not rot in vain and you leave your successors some of your ghostly change—Then as a printer, to get ad-work, he’d followed up old acquaintances and hotfooted everywhere and was a proficient, nay much more proficient with the non French usually Irish segment of his customers, a proficient persuader and general good-time Charley—“Ha ha ha!” rang his harsh laugh, and you heard him cough as he left thru the door, bound for another—

  They go rattletrapping in the strange comic French Movie contraption down past the City Hall and for want of shamelessness go sneaking thru the back streets to avoid the great Main Kearney Square where all Lowell’s in the lights—The clock, the Chinese restaurant, the Number One soda-fountain, the trolley stops, the big stores, the newspaper—They go instead around by Kirk street and down a railroad switch alley for the mills, across spectral-in-my-mind Bridge Street where stands the great gray warehouse of eternity and into the little alley that runs between it and the stagedoor side entrance of the B.F.Keiths theater.

  “If you want your moonshine there he is now, old Henry—I’ll meet you backstage.”

  Emil goes under the iron fire escape and’s just about to disappear inside when some of the vaudeville performers who have gathered in the warm night for a smoke, call him over—As one-time ad man making up the B.F.Keiths Vaudeville ads he is wellknown by a lot of the performers on the famous old circuit—

  “If it aint Ben Oaklander, where’s your piano, boy?”

  “Emil—What you been doin these past two years—know Billy here, Billy Dale?”

  “Shore I know Billy Dale—Say, what’s on tap with the new show?”

  “Just opened tonight—There’s Rialto and Lamont, the Talkless Boys—Oh, Lois Bennett, you know her—”

  “A Ray of Western Sunshine—”

  “—Western Sunshine, and Muriel Pollock the Popular Composer—and old Prop-Prop himself—”

  “Prop-prop, did they ever throw him in the canal like they said they’d do the night he puked all over the trunks and suitcases?”—

  “No—Say, boy, we took pity on him—Wal, you know what happened to him, wal, he’s in South Bend now; wal sir Emil, how are you boy?”

  “And do I understand we’ve got the dainty captivating vivacious Miss Corinne and Dick Himber offering Coquettish Fancies with Ben Oaklander on the piano?”—

  “Say, boy, you got that memory—Yes sir, and there’s Bob Yates and Evelyn Carsen in ‘Getting Soaked’ by Billy Dale and Bob Yates and there’s Clarence Oliver, ‘Wire Collect”‘—

  “I’ll be damned, he’s still around—”

  “Yes sir, old mountain man too, and Billy McDermott the only survivor of Coxey’s Army and on the screen a photoplay of speed and derring-do, me boy, forget what the name of it is—”

  “A little bit of canned music, a title, a couple of sighs, and there’s your money’s worth—”

  “Me boy, if it wasnt for vaudeville the man on the street wouldnt have a place in the world to get himself a good night of entertainment—Pathe News and topics, and Aesop’s Fables all right, but when you got them flesh n blood performers up there, me boy, that exit march at eleven P M wouldnt be worth the paper ‘t’scored on! Stop me if I’m lying.”

  Bend the drapes to your purpose—

  And as they’re standing there, smoke fragrantly rises from their cigarettes to the spring moon, and here crunching down the cindered alley comes a man in a strawhat (like Emil), but fatter, huge, with cane and great pot belly and bulbous red nose, a namelessly battered and muggled eaten-up and almost disappeared face:—Old Bull Baloon.

  “Emil, want ya to meet Bull Baloon here—”

  “Glad ta meet ya—”

  “This the boy plays poker?”

  “Same.”

  “How ‘bout a little swiggle a Mother Machree’s ancient revitalizing monkey juice, Mister Emil?”

  “Why—well—”

  “Sometimes known as continental bug joy juice, or joie de vivre” (Old Baloon pronouncing it JWA-DAY-VIVRAY to Emil’s great amused delight)—

  “No, no, non, non, non—it’s joie de vivre, I’m French, I know.”

  “This here business at hand, the poker game, somebody called Charley Sagely, and somebody O-BRIEN or other, brings my attention to the fact that—” upending his flask, swallowing, looking around, wiping the neck of it, “—brings my attention—” but again repeating it slowly as now his eye has caught one of the principals coming down the alley and it’s time to get the game underway, and meanwhile Manuel has come back with his bottle, and they all go inside to start the game in one of the dressing-rooms—

  As the game progresses the participants increase, and soon they can hear the B.F.Keiths’ orchestra playing the exit march in the pit and the audience is filing out for a soda in Paige’s or Liggett’s Drugstore or in Dana the Greek’s and there will be dense dyed neon of oldtime city night in America, like old cartoons showing the boy newspaper seller with little cloth cap and scarf and knickers holding out a paper to two men, one in derby, one with elegant cane, their coats flapping in the aftertheater wind, and beyond, a great crowd, some reading papers, and the wallsides of buildings in the city night and the dimmed marquees and the general drizzle of activity in the furthest reaches of the scene, where I see Gerard’s dead face—Old Fish Street, it is all incredibly dense, dark, soft, rich as if Spanish Night, the blue of tombs is in the neons, the secret of the Old Fish is on Old Fish Street, the dark spoor of real profound red throbs up from the assemblied lights and makes a halo overhead, it is all slightly alien, ugly, but soft and kindly—It is a dream, in the middle of it the kings and queens a
re being dealt by the mysterious cardplayers in the empty theater.

  “What in the hell kinda concoction by the way you got in that new flask, Bull?”

  And he, Old Bull Baloon, man of a long life (60) cluttered with a hundred thousand misadventures the whole story of which can never, will never be told except you see it written in the picotée carnation of his nose, the swim of winkles in his eyes, the wrinkles there, indicative of earlier olden eyes like of a hardboot on a Kentucky rail, the crooked coy smile and yellow-teeth, the big ring on thick Neroid finger like fingers of old whores successful and retired or fingers of Roman prelates given to regurgitation ere their excarnification comes due and all the banquets fall:—“It’s a little mixture of wine, gin, and bourbon, I learned it in Panama some years ago with a little man named Low stood about four foot one inch and was half Chinese for all I know, lived in a wattle tenement on the edge of a river sewer system with dead rats and crapsticks floatin in the tide, and green spiders where he hid his dice—One afternoon some hobo from Pratt Street Baltimore I believe and I believe the name was Slats came up to Lady Nicotima at the bar and slapped her rump, congratulatin her for the good showing that afternoon, whereupon she turns around and says ‘Dont you believe in God?’ and aims a delicate little pistol and fires, hitting Charley Low dead between the shoulderblades and the bullet goes thru him and ends up I aint never seen him no more—and so,” he says, receiving his hole card and his face card, “better be jocund with the fruitful grape, as sadden after none, or bitter fruit” (quoting Omar Khayyam) and glances down at his hole-card, a nine of spades.

  “By God I dont drink as a rule like you do Bull—Manuel you see this guy?”—to Manuel who’s watching the game sitting on a trunk drunk—“but by golly have you seen that boy guzzle up that whisky tonight, Charley? Jim? Two bottles now?”