She glared up. “Your cap, man, your cap!”
“Oh!” Flushing, I seized the old cap from my head.
Now I had a cap in each hand.
The woman cranked. The “music” played. The rain hit my brow, my eyelids, my mouth.
On the far side of the bridge I stopped for the hard, the slow decision: which cap to try on my drenched skull?
During the next week I passed the bridge often, but there was always just the old couple there with their pandemonium device, or no one there at all.
On the last day of our visit, my wife started to pack the new tweed cap away with my others, in the suitcase.
“Thanks, no.” I took it from her. “Let’s keep it out, on the mantel, please. There.”
That night the hotel manager brought a farewell bottle to our room. The talk was long and good, the hour grew late, there was a fire like an orange lion on the hearth, big and lively, and brandy in the glasses, and silence for a moment in the room, perhaps because quite suddenly we found silence falling in great soft flakes past our high windows.
The manager, glass in hand, watched the continual lace, then looked down at the midnight stones and at last said, under his breath, “‘There’s only a few of us left.’”
I glanced at my wife, and she at me.
The manager caught us.
“Do you know him, then? Has he said it to you?”
“Yes. But what does the phrase mean?”
The manager watched all those figures down there standing in the shadows and sipped his drink.
“Once I thought he meant he fought in the Troubles and there’s just a few of the I.R.A. left. But no. Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that also. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren’t many ‘human beings’ left who look, see what they look at, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running here, jumping there, there’s no time to study one another. But I guess that’s bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.”
He half turned from the window.
“So you know There’s Only a Few of Us Left, do you?”
My wife and I nodded.
“Then do you know the woman with the baby?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And the one with the cancer?”
“Yes,” said my wife.
“And the man who needs train fare to Cork?”
“Belfast,” said I.
“Galway,” said my wife.
The manager smiled sadly and turned back to the window.
“What about the couple with the piano that plays no tune?”
“Has it ever?” I asked.
“Not since I was a boy.”
The manager’s face was shadowed now.
“Do you know the beggar on O’Connell Bridge?”
“Which one?” I said.
But I knew which one, for I was looking at the cap there on the mantel.
“Did you see the paper today?” asked the manager.
“No.”
“There’s just the item, bottom half of page five, Irish Times. It seems he just got tired. And he threw his concertina over into the River Liffey. And he jumped after it.”
He was back, then, yesterday! I thought. And I didn’t pass by!
“The poor bastard.” The manager laughed with a hollow exhalation. “What a funny, horrid way to die. That damn silly concertina—I hate them, don’t you?—wheezing on its way down, like a sick cat, and the man falling after. I laugh and I’m ashamed of laughing. Well. They didn’t find the body. They’re still looking.”
“Oh, God!” I cried, getting up. “Oh, damn!”
The manager watched me carefully now, surprised at my concern. “You couldn’t help it.”
“I could! I never gave him a penny, not one, ever! Did you?”
“Come to think of it, no.”
“But you’re worse than I am!” I protested. “I’ve seen you around town, shoveling out pennies hand over fist. Why, why not to him?”
“I guess I thought he was overdoing it.”
“Hell, yes!” I was at the window now, too, staring down through the falling snow. “I thought his bare head was a trick to make me feel sorry. Damn, after a while you think everything’s a trick! I used to pass there winter nights with the rain thick and him there singing and he made me feel so cold I hated his guts. I wonder how many other people felt cold and hated him because he did that to them? So instead of getting money, he got nothing in his cup. I lumped him with the rest. But maybe he was one of the legitimate ones, the new poor just starting out this winter, not a beggar ever before, so you hock your clothes to feed a stomach and wind up a man in the rain without a hat.”
The snow was falling fast now, erasing the lamps and the statues in the shadows of the lamps below.
“How do you tell the difference between them?” I asked. “How can you judge which is honest, which isn’t?”
“The fact is,” said the manager quietly, “you can’t. There’s no difference between them. Some have been at it longer than others, and have gone shrewd, forgotten how it all started a long time ago. On a Saturday they had food. On a Sunday they didn’t. On a Monday they asked for credit. On a Tuesday they borrowed their first match. Thursday a cigarette. And a few Fridays later they found themselves, God knows how, in front of a place called the Royal Hibernian Hotel. They couldn’t tell you what happened or why. One thing’s sure though: they’re hanging to the cliff by their fingernails. Poor bastard, someone must’ve stomped on that man’s hands on O’Connell Bridge and he just gave up the ghost and went over. So what does it prove? You cannot stare them down or look away from them. You cannot run and hide from them. You can only give to them all. If you start drawing lines, someone gets hurt. I’m sorry now I didn’t give that blind singer a shilling each time I passed. Well. Well. Let us console ourselves, hope it wasn’t money but something at home or in his past did him in. There’s no way to find out. The paper lists no name.”
Snow fell silently across our sight. Below, the dark shapes waited. It was hard to tell whether snow was making sheep of the wolves or sheep of the sheep, gently manteling their shoulders, their backs, their hats and shawls.
A moment later, going down in the haunted night elevator, I found the new tweed cap in my hand.
Coatless, in my shirtsleeves, I stepped out into the night.
I gave the cap to the first man who came. I never knew if it fit. What money I had in my pockets was soon gone.
Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.
What’s it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?
Do they even know I’m HERE?
THE FLYING MACHINE
IN THE YEAR A.D. 400, THE EMPEROR YUAN held his throne by the Great Wall of China, and the land was green with rain, readying itself toward the harvest, at peace, the people in his dominion neither too happy nor too sad.
Early on the morning of the first day of the first week of the second month of the new year, the Emperor Yuan was sipping tea and fanning himself against a warm breeze when a servant ran across the scarlet and blue garden tiles, calling, “Oh, Emperor, Emperor, a miracle!”
“Yes,” said the Emperor, “the air is sweet this morning.”
“No, no, a miracle!” said the servant, bowing quickly.
“And this tea is good in my mouth, surely that is a miracle.”
“No, no, Your Excellency.”
“Let me guess then—the sun has risen and a new day is upon us. Or the sea is blue. That now is the finest of all miracles.”
“Excellency, a man is flying!”
“What?” The Emperor stopped his fan.
“I saw him in the air, a man flying with wings. I heard a voice call out of th
e sky, and when I looked up there he was, a dragon in the heavens with a man in its mouth, a dragon of paper and bamboo, colored like the sun and the grass.”
“It is early,” said the Emperor, “and you have just wakened from a dream.”
“It is early, but I have seen what I have seen! Come, and you will see it too.”
“Sit down with me here,” said the Emperor. “Drink some tea. It must be a strange thing, if it is true, to see a man fly. You must have time to think of it, even as I must have time to prepare myself for the sight.”
They drank tea.
“Please,” said the servant at last, “or he will be gone.”
The Emperor rose thoughtfully. “Now you may show me what you have seen.”
They walked into a garden, across a meadow of grass, over a small bridge, through a grove of trees, and up a tiny hill.
“There!” said the servant.
The Emperor looked into the sky.
And in the sky, laughing so high that you could hardly hear him laugh, was a man; and the man was clothed in bright papers and reeds to make wings and a beautiful yellow tail, and he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a universe of birds, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons.
The man called down to them from high in the cool winds of morning, “I fly, I fly!”
The servant waved to him. “Yes, yes!”
The Emperor Yuan did not move. Instead he looked at the Great Wall of China now taking shape out of the farthest mist in the green hills, that splendid snake of stones which writhed with majesty across the entire land. That wonderful wall which had protected them for a timeless time from enemy hordes and preserved peace for years without number. He saw the town, nestled to itself by a river and a road and a hill, beginning to waken.
“Tell me,” he said to his servant, “has anyone else seen this flying man?”
“I am the only one, Excellency,” said the servant, smiling at the sky, waving.
The Emperor watched the heavens another minute and then said, “Call him down to me.”
“Ho, come down, come down! The Emperor wishes to see you!” called the servant, hands cupped to his shouting mouth.
The Emperor glanced in all directions while the flying man soared down the morning wind. He saw a farmer, early in his fields, watching the sky, and he noted where the farmer stood.
The flying man alit with a rustle of paper and a creak of bamboo reeds. He came proudly to the Emperor, clumsy in his rig, at last bowing before the old man.
“What have you done?” demanded the Emperor.
“I have flown in the sky, Your Excellency,” replied the man.
“What have you done?” said the Emperor again.
“I have just told you!” cried the flier.
“You have told me nothing at all.” The Emperor reached out a thin hand to touch the pretty paper and the birdlike keel of the apparatus. It smelled cool, of the wind.
“Is it not beautiful, Excellency?”
“Yes, too beautiful.”
“It is the only one in the world!” smiled the man. “And I am the inventor.”
“The only one in the world?”
“I swear it!”
“Who else knows of this?”
“No one. Not even my wife, who would think me mad with the sun. She thought I was making a kite. I rose in the night and walked to the cliffs far away. And when the morning breezes blew and the sun rose, I gathered my courage, Excellency, and leaped from the cliff. I flew! But my wife does not know of it.”
“Well for her, then,” said the Emperor. “Come along.”
They walked back to the great house. The sun was full in the sky now, and the smell of the grass was refreshing. The Emperor, the servant, and the flier paused within the huge garden.
The Emperor clapped his hands. “Ho, guards!”
The guards came running.
“Hold this man.”
The guards seized the flier.
“Call the executioner,” said the Emperor.
“What’s this!” cried the flier, bewildered. “What have I done?” He began to weep, so that the beautiful paper apparatus rustled.
“Here is the man who has made a certain machine,” said the Emperor, “and yet asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only necessary that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this thing will do.”
The executioner came running with a sharp silver ax. He stood with his naked, large-muscled arms ready, his face covered with a serene white mask.
“One moment,” said the Emperor. He turned to a nearby table upon which sat a machine that he himself had created. The Emperor took a tiny golden key from his own neck. He fitted this key to the tiny, delicate machine and wound it up. Then he set the machine going.
The machine was a garden of metal and jewels. Set in motion, birds sang in tiny metal trees, wolves walked through miniature forests, and tiny people ran in and out of sun and shadow, fanning themselves with miniature fans, listening to the tiny emerald birds, and standing by impossibly small but tinkling fountains.
“Is it not beautiful?” said the Emperor. “If you asked me what I have done here, I could answer you well. I have made birds sing, I have made forests murmur, I have set people to walking in this woodland, enjoying the leaves and shadows and songs. That is what I have done.”
“But, oh, Emperor!” pleaded the flier, on his knees, the tears pouring down his face. “I have done a similar thing! I have found beauty. I have flown on the morning wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses and gardens. I have smelled the sea and even seen it, beyond the hills, from my high place. And I have soared like a bird; oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky, with the wind about me, the wind blowing me here like a feather, there like a fan, the way the sky smells in the morning! And how free one feels! That is beautiful, Emperor, that is beautiful too!”
“Yes,” said the Emperor sadly, “I know it must be true. For I felt my heart move with you in the air and I wondered: What is it like? How does it feel? How do the distant pools look from so high? And how my houses and servants? Like ants? And how the distant towns not yet awake?”
“Then spare me!”
“But there are times,” said the Emperor, more sadly still, “when one must lose a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already has. I do not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man.”
“What man?”
“Some other man who, seeing you, will build a thing of bright papers and bamboo like this. But the other man will have an evil face and an evil heart, and the beauty will be gone. It is this man I fear.”
“Why? Why?”
“Who is to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of paper and reed, might not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great Wall of China?” said the Emperor.
No one moved or said a word.
“Off with his head,” said the Emperor.
The executioner whirled his silver ax.
“Burn the kite and the inventor’s body and bury their ashes together,” said the Emperor.
The servants retreated to obey.
The Emperor turned to his hand-servant, who had seen the man flying. “Hold your tongue. It was all a dream, a most sorrowful and beautiful dream. And that farmer in the distant field who also saw, tell him it would pay him to consider it only a vision. If ever the word passes around, you and the farmer die within the hour.”
“You are merciful, Emperor.”
“No, not merciful,” said the old man. Beyond the garden wall he saw the guards burning the beautiful machine of paper and reeds that smelled of the morning wind. He saw the dark smoke climb into the sky. “No, only very much bewildered and afraid.” He saw the guards digging a tiny pit wherein to bury the ashes. “What is the life of one man against those of a million others? I must take solace from that thought.”
He took the key from its chain about his neck and
once more wound up the beautiful miniature garden. He stood looking out across the land at the Great Wall, the peaceful town, the green fields, the rivers and streams. He sighed. The tiny garden whirred its hidden and delicate machinery and set itself in motion; tiny people walked in forests, tiny foxes loped through sun-speckled glades in beautiful shining pelts, and among the tiny trees flew little bits of high song and bright blue and yellow color, flying, flying, flying in that small sky.
“Oh,” said the Emperor, closing his eyes, “look at the birds, look at the birds!”
HEAVY-SET
THE WOMAN STEPPED TO THE KITCHEN WINDOW and looked out.
There in the twilight yard a man stood surrounded by barbells and dumbbells and dark iron weights of all kinds and slung jump ropes and elastic and coiled-spring exercisors. He wore a sweat suit and tennis shoes and said nothing to no one as he simply stood in the darkening world and did not know she watched.
This was her son, and everyone called him Heavy-Set.
Heavy-Set squeezed the little bunched, coiled springs in his big fists. They were lost in his fingers, like magic tricks; then they reappeared. He crushed them. They vanished. He let them go. They came back.
He did this for ten minutes, otherwise motionless.
Then he bent down and hoisted up the one-hundred-pound barbells, noiselessly, not breathing. He motioned it a number of times over his head, then abandoned it and went into the open garage among the various surfboards he had cut out and glued together and sanded and painted and waxed, and there he punched a punching bag easily, swiftly, steadily, until his curly golden hair got moist. Then he stopped and filled his lungs until his chest measured fifty inches and stood eyes closed, seeing himself in an invisible mirror poised and tremendous, two hundred and twenty muscled pounds, tanned by the sun, salted by the sea wind and his own sweat.
He exhaled. He opened his eyes.
He walked into the house, into the kitchen and did not look at his mother, this woman, and opened the refrigerator and let the arctic cold steam him while he drank a quart of milk straight out of the carton, never putting it down, just gulping and swallowing. Then he sat down at the kitchen table to fondle and examine the Hallowe’en pumpkins.