Enoch’s Folly
Giovanni Torre
Some of the characters and events in Enoch’s Folly are based on real people and actual events. Certain elements of their stories presented here are based on fact; the rest, that is to say the vast majority, is the product of the author’s imagination.
The proper noun ‘Comely’ rhymes with homely.
G. Torre
2015
The first time Aldous Comely was killed he found the experience disappointing.
The motive was base, the method unimaginative and the consequences predictable. Comely was certain he would never have embarked on such a banal and brutish exercise, but, having on some reflection conceded it was possible, had he – it would have been executed with a little more panache.
Gambling was a childish pastime, and certainly not worth one’s life, but a point of principle was an entirely different matter. He rarely lost at cards and never lost significantly, so he knew the catastrophe was nothing more or less than the outcome of a rigged match. Beyond that, he knew his opponents were the worst and most cynically amoral degenerates in the city. So he, perhaps immaturely, refused to pay.
One week after he went down in what the newspaper men are addicted to calling a hail of bullets, he was asked why he had played against them in the first place.
“I usually win,” he had answered.
Asked why he hadn’t stopped when his game was so clearly in free-fall;
“I thought I could fight my way back to the top.”
He was that kind of man, if he was a man at all, and he wouldn’t learn enough from the first lesson, which in turn made subsequent episodes necessary that someone with better sense – or indeed better taste – would have avoided. In time the lessons became few and far between as he honed his skills, and his being, into Aldous Comely as we find him today.
Death proved to be more of an inconvenience than he had anticipated, but a wealthy man can get around just about any trouble one can imagine. Money had not been the issue behind his refusal to pay his debt, but, as established, a point of principle. He knew he was crooked, everyone knew – at some level, at least, but his word was his bond and he never cheated anybody out of anything. He understood if he let go of principle he was just an animal walking on two legs, and that would keep him awake at night. And Comely was a man who valued his sleep.
Of course he wasn’t Comely then, not to suggest he is necessarily Comely now. The story, as he explained it to Robert, was a simple fable and the moral: don’t dice with the Devil, came before the end of the story, which he left out. Robert, Bob to almost everyone else, was an upstanding young man, more upstanding than seemed possible at first, and had met Comely while making plans to travel to Mexico for some holy mission. So he paused in Comely’s company, as so many had and did and would, because the light of the great man was, while not exactly warm, undeniably entreating.
Robert was a firm believer in the importance of a firm handshake, but while he found Comely’s handshake unpleasant, he could not resist his conversation and the dynamism of any evening, and often subsequent mornings, spent with him and his coterie of misfits, geniuses and charlatans.
Comely was not quite a colossus, Robert thought, but he certainly had a foot on either shore.
He was a respected entrepreneur with a love for the community around him, best known for his ability and inclination to extend a hand to someone down on their luck. With his strange agelessness, he was the well-connected uncle, the savvy friend, the devoted son. At the same time, there were questions, and there were whispers. Some of his friends seemed unseemly, some of his habits inexplicable. And there was the troubling fact that matter how much business was (or wasn’t) coming through the gate, there was never a rainy day. Not once.
The two men made their way along familiar ground, ducking the rain-filled potholes and slipping between the trams and buses and rattling motorcars that sounded their crazed hooting klaxons for no reason other than the opportunity. The shoe shine boys huddled under the awnings as it was a bad day for business but the newspaper boys knew bad days were the best and shouted louder than when it was fine. A burly man with a mop of grey curls under a cap stood by a fruit stall and nodded at Comely and the end of his cigar glowed. Comely smiled warmly and nodded back and called out “How’s Maureen?” and the man just smiled, a broad toothy smile between which he kept the cigarillo firmly clasped. The rain ran slowly on the sides of buildings with unstraight edges, working around each brick, then through the moss and mould between them and down around another. Puddles formed slowly as so much was unsealed still in that end of town, the black water catching what little electric lights adorning the outsides of the most successful, or most desperate, businesses.
They took their usual table at Greco’s; a Greek coffee for Comely and a glass of hot milk for Robert. Greco never laughed at Robert’s choice, no one who knew him did. This was not simply because he had the country edge about him, that look of a man who’d worked enough years on a farm to know how to lay someone out without much trouble, but because his good-heartedness was so earnest, so infectious, that everything he did simply enhanced people’s fondness for him. Thinking he had some idea of what Comely was, Greco would have been excused for being surprised by his friendship with Robert, but Greco had survived long enough to not be surprised by anything. Beyond that, he appreciated just how much fun Comely could be ninety-nine times out of a hundred. That remaining one time, however, is best left undiscussed.
Comely was not a big man – but he looked dangerous enough to avoid being small. Exquisitely dressed at any hour of the day, his suits fit to perfection, disguising the short legs he had grown as the result of a malformation of his ankles. He could move fast, that much was clear, and people whispered he was good with a knife when he was young. But he still seemed young, and it was hard to nail down the details in stories about his past. In the cold world of mathematics Robert was no less than six inches taller than Comely, but it was not readily apparent behind the film of character.
“How’s the milk?” Comely asked his companion with a genuine smile.
“Same as always.” Robert looked into the endless depth of the other man’s coffee. “I don’t know how you can drink that tar.”
“I don’t think I could go without it,” he paused. “I’m glad you came through this part of town, I needed a fellow like you at the yard. The others tell me you’re a born leader.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I just do my best and I try to help the others do theirs. It beats working in a slaughterhouse.”
Comely stirred his tar. “But nothing beats writing for a living, right?”
Robert smiled.
“Who could ask for more?”
“Quite right. But you are looking for more. What’s in Mexico?”
“A job.”
“You have a job here.”
“And I’m grateful for it, but we’ve been over this and I have said already that Mexico is something I need to do.”
Greco had moved through the kitchen and the storeroom and beyond the rear door to the alley behind the café. He rolled a cigarette knowing no one would get into the till in his absence, that he could take his time and a reliable customer would let him know if someone new came in, because the regulars were his friends and that’s what friends are for. The rain had stopped suddenly and without warning and already the sun was starting to celebrate its victory. The smoke alternated between white-blue and black-blue as the slats of a fading fence cast stripes across most of what Greco could see. He drew long, it was good tobacco and no one appreciated good tobacco more than a former smoker, which is what Greco was at heart. Twenty ye
ars earlier, the day they signed Versailles – in fact – so Greco could tell you the exact date, a gypsy woman told him smoking would eat him from the inside out and he’d perhaps had one cigarette a week since that day. He had always been skinny, so he didn’t want to take many chances.
Inside Robert told Comely of life on the farm, of his romance with books that bloomed fast and hard under the wary gaze of fellow American peasants. Comely knew the basics of the story already, he knew the spine of the plot, but each rendition had variations and every single one of them was true. He never grew tired of listening to Robert and Robert was always delighted to listen to him. They complemented one another in a way people with a shallow understanding of human relationships would not understand. Their union represented a challenge to the way such people understood the world, and once people have finally, painstakingly established their understanding of the world, the last thing they want is anything improving it.
Comely asked Robert many questions and Robert returned the favour. Today had been a good one, and the two men parted ways moments before Greco flipped the sign on his door to ‘closed’. It was a weekday and he was closing at sundown. Outside the chill was already on and Robert flipped up the off-white wool collar of his checked heavy jacket. Comely buttoned up his flawless cashmere trench-coat before saluting his friend and turning away and off into the next stage of the evening. Robert returned to his little flat, a tiny yellowing place he had no intention of staying in much longer than the four weeks for which the party paid in advance.
He read diligently on his stiff and sterile single bed in the sickly light of a solitary lantern. Knowing he could only afford to run the heater seven hours a week he decided that particular night was not quite cold enough and left it off. He dreamed of the revolution and the long hot blinding bright flats of the south, and he smiled, despite his fear.
*
Robert had been closer to his destination when he started his journey than he was now and this troubled him. He was needed in Mexico but had had to make a detour, just one stop for two days, before departing again. On the first night he’d met Comely and the two days were starting to spiral into a far longer time than permissible. Permissible to whom? To himself. Robert read voraciously and he believed as voraciously as he read. His cause was a desperate one and needed him along with everything it could get. Why had he stayed? He was sure a wire would arrive for him any moment now; that it was probably waiting for him as soon as he returned to his room. He disliked the room but already was starting to think of it as home, which troubled him some more.
Robert had never known anything like what he had seen in just a short time, and people like those Comely had drawn into his life. Or was he being drawn into theirs?
He had been walking around staring up at the buildings that seemed gigantic to him – because they were gigantic – mouth agape like the silliest cartoons of a country yokel in the big city. Robert had done his homework, knew the inner mechanics of the system better than most educated Americans, let alone most 24 year-old country boys, but couldn’t help but be awed by the city – already by then the greatest in the world. He was to be there for two weeks, two weeks and then expected at his final destination shortly there after… He’d met Comely that first day.
After devouring two packed lunches on his first night, Robert had emerged from a building in which he had an over-priced cheap apartment and wandered about, getting lost easily and finding Greco’s, fishing a few coins from his pocket and being startled to find they were more than enough for a decent feed. Greco had recognised in Robert a foreigner in a strange land, and had shown him the kindness he was sure his grandfather would have appreciated when he arrived on Ellis Isle. Robert remembered it clearly, though it now seemed almost like another life;
Greco’s was narrow but deep, bright at the front and dim at the rear with a counter running three quarter’s the length of one wall – to the patron’s left as they entered. Behind the counter was barely two feet of space and at the far end a doorway (the door removed from its hinges before living memory) to the kitchen. The counter was well served by bar stools and the wall behind it adorned with a framed daguerreotype of Greco’s grandfather – the only known photograph of the man – pictures (mostly paintings) of Greece and some prints of men Greco considered great American heroes… Lincoln, Lafayette, John Brown, Einstein, and Charles Ponzi. Ponzi was a conversation piece.
“You know he never missed a payment,” Greco would say with a straight face when someone asked about it.
Ponzi was the godfather of schemes that now carry the same name, but as a pioneer he was not sabotaged by any absence of confidence – people kept putting the money in, and as long as they did, the earlier investors never had a problem. Only when the state intervened did Ponzi and his supporters become unstuck.
“Could it have gone on forever?” Greco asked. “Who knows!”
He thought the story of Ponzi reminded everyone that in the end, money is ink on paper; “The whole system is part bricks and mortar, part smoke and mirrors,” he would say.
Robert sat at one of the tiny round tables, away from the front door to avoid the cold as much as possible, legs not quite fitting right, one knee pressed against the bottom of the table, the other leg to one side. Too transfixed by the food before him, he had not noticed Comely arrive… but, looking down, felt something change in the room. Chairs shifting, people bustling… the people who seemed to know Greco well, the regulars, Robert had gathered before his food arrived, were animated, crowding around someone and shaking his hand… but very briefly before returning to their seats. Robert stared openly… He didn’t recognise the man and looked down at the book he had pulled from his pocket. Robert was well-read but not surprised he didn’t know him; it was a big city and likely home to a million minor big shots.
He’d barely looked up at the sound of a chair being drawn back and Comely was already sitting next to him.
“You’re the only guy in here I don’t know which means you’re new to the city.” He was grinning. “Now that says nothing about me and everything about Greco’s coffee. But you’re not drinking coffee. You will be. You’re from the mid-west?”
“I am, sir.”
“I’m not so much older than you, and this is America. At least, I am pretty sure it is. So call me Aldous. Or Comely. They both fit. And you are?”
Robert wondered if the man was from the new federal bureau and simply said Robert. Holding back his family name was enough and Robert could not lie – not even in this situation. Telling the truth was a habit of a lifetime, one he’d been warned could be a lot of trouble.
“New in town, any contacts here? Never mind, don’t answer that – it’s a boring question. The real question is what do you hope to get out of this city? Maybe you’ll take a look at the Fair. Everyone talks about the Futurama, but I haven’t seen it. If you’ve come for an education you’ve come to the right place, though I don’t doubt you already have one.”
Robert started a little, wondering – is this guy a fed, or a nut?
Comely leaned in.
“Look, sorry if that was a somewhat supercilious comment. I run a yard near here – wholesale stock; household goods, hardware – basically it’s a big general store for retailers. I employ people; men and women, coloured and white, Hessian and Mexican, who are new to the city and needing work. If they find something better – I wish them well and write them a reference.”
“Alright,” he said, barely believing the word as it came out. “What do you think I could do, based on the vast amount of intelligence you’ve gathered so far?”
Comely grinned.
“You’re a big guy, big enough for trouble makers to stay away from – but you’re no guard. My foreman is leaving shortly. It’s a tough job and hardly more pay then anything else, so I don’t know who would put their hand up for it.”
Robert looked at Comely more closely now. The accent was almost North American, but definite
ly not local, nor recognisable in any other way. He seemed unlike any kind of civil servant or cop, or any businessman. He was more like a talented cadre, Robert recognised quickly, quick on his feet – dynamic, a believer of some kind. Robert understood people, in simple and easy ways. It had set him aside from a very early age, made him too sensitive as a child – but gave him advantages as a young man.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Not at all. Why would I? Look – come down and do some work. You’re not staying near here are you? Where are you staying?”