Enoch's Folly

  They walked at a brisk pace, Arturo’s short legs threshing through the snow. Comely noticed he was more talkative this time, more than ever – and growing in confidence with English. Surely it had only been a few days. Had it? He wondered what was happening, were weeks just slipping past? One day did seem to melt into another. Comely tried to distinguish his activities yesterday with those of the day previous and he struggled.

  “Why does someone not shovel this snow?” Arturo kicked at the dirty snow.

  Comely knew it was shovelled in his neighbourhood and he knew why it was not shovelled here.

  “How far is the market?” He asked.

  “Do you have an automobile?” Arturo answered. “You can purchase an automobile for less than one thousand dollars. That is still a lot of money, but you are a rich man. It is not so far as to need one, but – no place is.”

  “I do not.”

  “Good. They are stupid machines unless for moving heavy things.”

  Arturo fell suddenly, collapsed more than slipped, thudding down on both knees and throwing his left hand out to catch himself, Comely darted to help him up and the boy swatted him away with his free right hand. Pushing himself up with one foot, rather than his hand, and walking on. Comely knew from the sound he’d hurt himself – must have – but he did not limp.

  “There’s much money in the big trucks, for moving things. Is this your business?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “It is part of your business. The drivers smoke cigarettes – do you know what they do with them?”

  He knew the answer, but hoped the boy had some other theory.

  “They keep them between their fingers on the long trips, up like a… like a little chimney – so that if they fall asleep the cigarette burns down and wakes them up. Did you know that?”

  “I did.”

  Arturo glared at him, looked at him for the first time during their walk.

  “Then why make them work so hard?”

  “My drivers do not do that.”

  “They are not your drivers, Comely, they are God’s and no one else’s.”

  Comely was stunned; by the boy’s fury and the way he spat out his name as though it were an obscenity.

  “I mean, the men who work for me. How did you know about the cigarettes?”

  “When I sold papers, sometimes I would go to depots and sell to drivers. I saw the scars on them so I asked. One of them told me. Simple.”

  “I do not work the drivers that hard. It is not safe.”

  Arturo looked at him with no expression.

  “If they crash, that is bad business.” Comely put it to him.

  Arturo smiled.

  “That is not the only reason for you.”

  Comely smiled, relieved, and the kid was right. He did not want to see any more widows than was absolutely necessary.

  The market stalls were in sight and Comely stopped abruptly. He put his hand on Arturo’s shoulder and this time it was not refused. The boy stopped.

  “Kid, how did you know my name was Comely?”

  Arturo smiled at him.

  “The lady told me. I saw her again and said hello to her. She asked me how I knew her, and we talked. She is a nice lady.”

  “Rida?”

  “Yes Rida. Why ask? You know who I mean.”

  Comely saw the market, or market street as Arturo had called it, and smiled broadly. His concern at being so slow at pouncing on Arturo’s use of his name vanished; as it was a beautiful sight. The slick black and smattered grey street was hidden beneath the surging mass, the women in their shawls brilliant against the grey sky and grey buildings, the grocers red faced, the pulsating colour of the crowd – visually and aurally, brought life – and Comely saw more people walking to the street from others, flowing in to the heart.

  “Every street has some stalls,” Arturo spoke as they walked closer. “But here, there are more stalls than street. It is the best place to come because it is cheap, everyone comes here, everything sells, the grocers can sell cheap because they sell everything.”

  “How does one claim right to a stall?”

  “It has always been full. The lines on the road are painted, I think they put fresh paint sometimes. They told me their fathers held a stall in the same places. It is… it is a thing to be passed from parent to child. Come sei dici?” Arturo asked himself.

  “Inheritance – or heirloom.”

  “Inheritance I know, the other is air loom? Loom is a machine. Air loom?”

  “Heirloom, it is a thing passed from generation to generation.”

  “Heirloom. And they pay rent, but the spot is heirloom.”

  “That’s it. So, what do you need – I will look with you. Not to buy, just to help. Or I can carry the bag.”

  Arturo, still thinking of the semi-hereditary nature of the stall spaces, added; “I heard once something about forty years, another time ninety-nine years… But I do not know certainly” as he pulled the cloth sack from his pocket and handed it to Comely. The man’s fine coat and clean shaven face stood out brightly, sharply in the crowd and grocers eyed him with wariness. He looked enough like the boy to be a relative, and this saved him from being confronted.

  Arturo alternated between a little English and a lot of Calabrian, speaking furiously in his native tongue with the most extraordinary animation, as though having been stifled by English for some time and then being freed – the levy bursting with passion. The boy filled the bag with mostly zucchini, eggplant, spinach, potato and a few apples – paying for everything with coins. Comely marvelled to watch him work the street, calling out to friends, young and old, kissing the old ladies, pumping hands, barely stopping the torrent of words as he darted between people and carts, buying items and throwing them to Comely. He’d seen the kid at home, but never in his element like this – he had something, something that would be called charisma if charisma wasn’t such a wretched, nasty condition. With a bit of luck, Comely thought, this kid could grow up to be anything. In time he took the bag from Comely and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Andiamo.”

  Comely offered to carry the sack and was rebuffed. Within moments the boy keeled over, this time landing heavily on his elbow. He cursed in his own tongue and hurriedly gathered the spilled goods. Comely, this time, would not be swatted away. He helped Arturo up and insisted on taking the bag. The boy held his elbow this time, and fought back tears.

  Comely did not make him talk, and Arturo appreciated it. He knew what it was like for the boy, unable to run to his mother with his wound for comfort, and seeing him in this state had a profound affect on him – more profound than he would have expected and more than he was comfortable with.

  They had reached the boy’s home before speaking again. Comely offered to carry the food upstairs, which Arturo turned down proudly but not without warmth. He carried the bag with his good arm and took the first step up before stopping.

  “Go see the lady, Rida. She is a nice lady.”

  He did not wait for a reply, but turned his back and raced up the stairs, leaving Comely standing on the stoop with his mouth half open.

  *

  In the room above Anna’s tiny store the rain was hammering the frail windows and two leaks had half-filled the only two pots she owned. She preferred the snow, she told Robert, and he wrapped her in his enormous arms while they looked out into the street below.

  “I always hated the snow.” He said. “Frost was always bad news on a farm.”

  He wondered why he used the past tense; frost is always bad news on a farm. He realised it was because the farm was vanishing. He looked to Anna. Where he came from was gone, and he wondered if where he’d thought he was going had ever really been there.

  “You are sad.” She said.

  He looked back out the window and saw a small dark-haired boy charging through the rain, with his hands in his pockets. ‘If he trips, he might hurt himself’ Robert thought and worried for the kid. r />
  “No, not sad. I’m not sad.” He offered, unconvinced.

  “Do you expect me to believe it, when you do not?” She said quietly.

  There was more silence.

  “You don’t know me so well,” he said with a strange flatness. “How do you know you can trust me?”

  She laughed.

  “You can know you love me, and I can not know that I trust you? You are a crazy man.”

  There was silence but Robert was smiling and Anna could hear it.

  “There’s…”

  Robert stopped.

  Comley was hosting a party that evening; which was once not unusual but in recent times seemed unlikely and perhaps not particularly desirable. Comley had called it from nowhere – posting a notice at the yard and extending an invitation to all workers to attend, which Robert found strange, but had not mentioned it personally to Robert, which Robert found stranger still. When Robert first met the great man, there were few evenings that did not involve some gathering, but recently he had become far less sociable. Now, after this period of almost seclusion, Comely was evening the scales – eschewing the smaller get-togethers once common place for an enormous gathering. Robert wondered why, but knew he would attend regardless. He had caught himself early when about to ask Anna to come with him.

  She turned and asked him to finish his sentence and he knew why he was reluctant. The Blue Man – that childish name had been gnawing at the back of his mind, though, despite Romero’s conviction, there’d been no word since earlier rumours, no sightings, no incidents since the disappearance of the two night watchmen.

  “There’s a, uh, there are some people having some drinks tomorrow night. I was going to attend – it’s a thing for my work. My boss is running it.”

  “It is late for Christmas.”

  “Well, Mr Comley likes to hold parties for the people who work for him now and then, you know, once or twice a year.”

  “And the last? When was it?”

  “I… Before I started working for him. Why?”

  “Hm.”

  Anna looked back out again at the rain.

  “And you would like for me to come with you?”

  Robert paused. “Well, yes and no. I want to be with you – all the time, and I want to go to this – but I am worried. There’s been some trouble, just recently. I don’t know if, well, if it’s safe.”

  “Not safe? Is there danger? What trouble? You should not go – no one should. Who is this Comley?”

  Robert addressed the questions one at a time without answering any of them; on the last he paused – as it is far harder to evade a question when you do not know the answer. He suggested a walk and Anna told him it was raining. He claimed it wasn’t so heavy and she pushed away from him. She turned back and her brow fell to grim in one of those exceedingly rare moments in which Anna almost looked her age, something Robert was yet to ascertain nor develop any desire to discover. It concerned him not. Age was a matter for children, the vain and the almost dead. He did not know Comely’s age, nor Anna’s, nor ever thought of his own. Robert knew life was finite, but this was merely an abstraction for him. As a child he had been typical and atypical of his kind, to be laden with responsibilities early was common in farm life – but his reaction set him apart. Most accepted the logic of perpetual circles between back-breaking labour and a few hours rest, punctuated with some moments of joy. Robert had seen something sick with the system and looked for a cure; When he found it he subjugated Robert Hart the individual to Robert Hart the comrade. Whereas once he had a fervour for the cause pushing his personal concerns into shadow, now it was Anna who made anything else seem trivial. He found keeping the truth from her impossible and within seconds he began to tell her everything he knew about The Blue Man, the holy church and Comely.

  “You know nothing of this Comely.” She said plainly, adding that this holy church seemed more like the work of some devil.

  “Do you believe in the Devil?”

  “I believe more than that – there is more than one.” She was not joking.

  “Before I stopped believing in God, or any god, I reached a point where I thought there was a tiny piece of God in everyone. I was a child then, and I imagine if it was true – then there must be a tiny piece of devil too.”

  “In some the piece is not so tiny.”

  She told him the holy church seemed the kind to take their tithe seriously.

  Robert looked out the window and he saw two local hobos he knew - who everyone knew – though not well, and he tried to remember their names. One was called Shanks, and the other ‘The something’ but Robert couldn’t recall what. They were more than harmless; they were friendly, decent folks and he’d not even dreamt of asking what made them the men they had become. He already knew. Whatever the details; be it bad luck or politics or drink or madness or a broken heart, or some diabolical combination, the system failed people. We could hurt ourselves, we could fall for our own reasons – but when no one was there to catch the fallen, it was society that stood condemned. The terrible logic of the system was not reserved for matters material, it infected the way human beings related to one another in almost all aspects of their lives. Friends fell out over money, saw each other as rivals, families disintegrated under the weight of anxiety or desperation or petty jealousies, people were driven to despair and to crime by the lack of work and worse than anything let themselves be separated from the people they love by ambition, or greed, or - more commonly - desperation to survive. Robert thought of love, of all things, subjugated to the voracious fury of the market and it made him feel sick. He held Anna’s hands and felt the still gentle calluses from work and held tighter, imagining her as a wheel in the relentless machinery of the world. ‘No’ he thought ‘she is above this world’.

  “So, you are going?”

  “I have a feeling that I should. He needs me.”

  “Who needs you?”

  “Mr Comely.”

  “I know his name, but that is not what I am asking.”

  No answer.

  “I am coming with you.”

  “I want you to be with me – all the time. I want to see you all the time, but this is something I need to do and I would feel… If something happened to you there, I don’t imagine anything would, you need to understand all there has been is rumours, really, and a robbery, and nothing since. Not a word.”

  “If there is no danger, I will come too. The others, they bring their women too?”

  Robert’s heart pounded suddenly, thumped loudly in his ears and he felt a burning in his hands and neck and churning in his stomach. It was the first time Anna had, in her way, described herself as ‘his woman’. He gathered his thoughts.

  “Their women?”

  “Yes, there will be ladies there as well?”

  “Uh… After a fashion.”

  “Prostitutes? Women of the night? Is that why you do not say yes but instead give me this ‘after a fashion’?”

  Robert stalled awkwardly, she was almost right. Some of Comely’s business associates seemed… unseemly, and some of his employees had a rough edge. Together they made a challenging mix and the idea of exposing Anna to them had made Robert uneasy. It had only been a small part of his worry, but a part nevertheless.

  “Come with me. I want you to come with me,” he said, and even believed it. “I am sure everything will be safe enough.”

  She smiled strangely at his choice of words. “Enough is enough for me.”

  *

  Arturo stood on the roof of his building and looked at his little garden, starting to thaw now, then down into the street below. It was night and cold but he’d had enough of the room he shared with his siblings and needed to breath. He had concluded that room was beginning to stink of fear, and it was this notion rather than the physical sensation itself that overwhelmed him and drove him to the roof.

  At day Arturo enjoyed watching the activity of the street from his roof in
those rare moments of peace he had between his duties. He would sit and force his way through yesterday’s newspaper then watch the street. There was a building he’d noticed, narrow and unpainted red brick crammed between two tenement houses not unlike his own; from which no one emerged during light. At night, Arturo has seen visitors – but rarely, and only for short stays. There was never any light visible on the ground floor, but always one window on the first glowed behind its perpetually closed shutters.

  Arturo pulled his cap low and scarf high before jamming his hands back into his pockets. Only his black in black eyes pierced out from between the two garments, set against his pale skin. He watched the street now and as the rumble of a streetcar and the sporadic crackling of its wires approached he looked up to watch it come and smiled under his scarf. Whatever the burden Arturo carried, he was still a child and loved the streetcars. It shuddered to a halt with a clang not far from his building and a solitary well-dressed man in a fine coat alighted, looked quickly both ways down the street and walked with an air of great purpose towards the narrow red building. He entered and Arturo watched with interest in the hope that some new break in the usual routine would give him greater insight into the purpose of the structure. The sound of the city, even at that late hour, meant that Arturo could not hear any faint sounds that may have been coming from the occupants, but watching closely he saw a faint flash of light around the frame of the door and a muffled bang followed almost instantly by a quickly stifled cry; a woman’s voice – he was certain. He gasped aloud, and in that moment of silence after the woman’s cry his gasp seemed horribly loud. A curtain moved and Arturo jumped back out of sight, but he’d been in sight for somewhere near a second. He held still, crouching down, and listened. Against the murmur of the city he could detect no further sound. He crept forward and peered between two steel pipes down into the street. The curtains closed and still again. He waited. No one emerged from the building – not within the half-hour more Arturo tolerated in the cold. He could have easily missed it – as did every single living person beyond the walls of that narrow red building – but he did not, and having witnessed it he became instantly fixated with the notion the well-dressed visitor was dead and his killer remained beyond justice within those red brick walls. Downstairs and surrounded by the clamour of his siblings, he kept his hands in his pockets and remained silent – staring at his older sister, who stared back. She motioned to him – beckoned him to speak and watched his lips closely for his answer.