Enoch's Folly

  I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

  ‘That has happened already, a long time ago. Maybe more than once,’ he thought. But he knew better. He was walking to Rida’s because he wanted to see her that day and knew he couldn’t see her that night. He wanted to see her every day, and he knew what that meant. Would running hot so late, so very late, make a difference when the great spewing began? He smiled to himself; a worried smile that, just as his last worried smile had done, perplexed Robert as he ran into Comely by chance for the second time; the men rounding the same corner in opposite directions.

  “No cake this time,” he said before either of them greeted the other. Robert laughed and Comely felt at ease quickly.

  “I’ll be there tonight. I’m, uh, bringing someone. A friend.”

  Comely lost his short-lived peace of mind. He took Robert’s arm just below the elbow and pulled him gently towards the wall. He opened his mouth with a grave expression on his face and then softened it.

  “Well, that’s just grand. How are you getting to the hall?”

  “By the subway of course.”

  “Of course of course. And, your friend, what line is she in?”

  Robert looked at him with a mildly perplexed expression, one that told Comely he should have worded his question differently.

  “I mean, what does she do?”

  “She’s a tailor. She prefers the word tailor to seamstress and so do I.”

  “That’s a noble calling. My grandfather was a tailor.”

  Robert paused. It was the first time Comely had told him anything about his family.

  “Are you alright Mr Comely?”

  Comely seemed pale, and looked like he needed sleep. Eternally ageless, for the first time he appeared to be almost middle-aged.

  “Sure. You know, he was a tailor on the lower east side. Came out… came out from the…”

  He collapsed, drawing some glances but no inquiries. Robert reached down and hauled him into his arms, noticing for the first time how small he was, how easy to lift. He made for the nearest café and the owner blanched as soon as he recognised Comely.

  “Through here,” he whispered and guided him to a back room. Robert lay Comely on a table and the proprietor rolled a towel to place under his head before filling a glass of water.

  “What the hell happened?” He hissed at Robert while handing him the glass of water, too frightened to try to administer it himself.

  “I don’t know, he just collapsed.”

  “How do you know Comely?”

  “What? I work for him.”

  The owner took a step back.

  “I’m a foreman at his wholesale yard – you know; it supplies general stores.”

  The man looked relieved.

  “How do you now Mr Comely?”

  The man motioned to Robert to follow him into the front of the café. Robert looked at Comely and saw he was breathing evenly and seemed tranquil on the table. He trailed the proprietor behind the counter and saw him reach behind a sink and extricate a revolver. He blew the dust from it.

  “See this Colt? It’s been behind that sink for eight years. I take it out once a year to oil it – and that’s it. Before Comely, I was pulling it out every couple of months and not for oiling. I was probably spending more on bullets and new windows than I do now.”

  Robert looked back to Comely.

  “Than you do now? You mean, you’re still spending money on windows and bullets?”

  The man laughed and Robert flushed with embarrassment then almost instantly paled with realisation.

  “I pay for protection, but it’s hardly anything. You wouldn’t believe how little it is – especially compared to what some of the bums used to squeeze out of us before he cleaned up this town. The money they asked, it was so damn high, it was…”

  “Extortionate?”

  “Ha! You’re a funny guy, you know that? A lot a people pay Comely. You know, it’s peculiar. We don’t pay him because he’ll work us over if we don’t; we pay him because it’s actually protection money. Only the dumbest hoods will hit a place that pays Comely.”

  “Why?”

  The café owner looked around as if to share his amused disbelief with an audience that was not present.

  “Ok kid. Let’s get back to looking after your boss.”

  Comely was rousing slowly, and holding the edges of the table tightly. Robert handed him the glass of water and he downed it greedily.

  “Christ. Oh hey Harry how’s tricks?”

  “Not bad Mr Comely.”

  “Please, call me Aldous. Or Al. Hell, just call me Comely – everyone does.”

  He hopped off the table and brushed down his jacket, adjusting the sleeves and pushing back the sides of his hair.

  “Hm. How’s business Harry? I didn’t realise I was visiting. Do you still make the best meatball sandwiches in the state?”

  Harry laughed. “Some might say.”

  “Robert you have to try them here sometime.” He turned back to Harry. “Alice alright? Those kids of yours are good too?”

  “They sure are.”

  “How many meatball sandwiches does it take to put a kid through college these days?”

  Harry laughed again.

  “Not sure – but I must have passed that mark a few times.”

  The colour had returned to Comely’s face and with each second, in Robert’s eyes at least, he seemed to grow – not just in confidence and strength and smoothness – but literally, physically grow. With a spring in his step he beckoned Robert to follow him out, but the young man wouldn’t budge. The strut and smooth routine, easy friendliness and quick grasp of what made people tick made Comely seem a bigger man than he was in many ways; Robert was realising.

  ‘Capitalism is organised crime may be a neat slogan,’ he thought, ‘but Comely’s business is literally organised crime.’ Robert wondered if it really made Comley worse than any other businessman, and if his employment practices made him better than most.

  “I think I’ll stay for one of those meatball sandwiches. You did such a good job promoting them. Are you on commission?”

  Comely laughed but it was unnatural, and his eyes flicked nervously from Harry back to Robert.

  “Suit yourself.”

  And he slipped away.

  “Strange cat,” said Harry, surprising Robert with his choice of term.

  “Hm?”

  “Some kind of cat, maybe. That would explain a bit. You just look after yourself hey Bob.”

  Robert started, Bob was what everyone his hometown called him and he couldn’t recall telling Harry his name.

  “Thanks. You too.”

  Robert stepped out and Comely was already out of sight. He decided against the party and made his way to Anna’s store with the intention of forming an alternative plan.

  Comely cursed himself for not telling Robert exactly what he’d intended to tell him. In fact, he was going to visit him on the way to Rida’s for that express purpose and had been surprised by seeing him by chance before getting there. He was not fond of surprises, and the fainting fit had distracted him further. He wondered why such a thing would happen and tried to remember when it had happened last. Never, he concluded.

  * * *

  Rosti awoke. He could recall speaking with Watson and Mrs Hatfield… They were no longer in the room. They had been asked to leave when a nurse came by and saw Rosti asleep. They had been told they could not stay unless Rosti was conscious, as a ‘courtesy’ to the other patients in the room. Mrs Hatfield glared at the other patients almost involuntarily; wondering if one of them had complained about Watson. The two returned to their hotel, not before asking when he night watchman would start his shift and resolving to return long before he did.

  Rosti turned and looked the red brick w
all a few metres from the window. Under normal circumstances he would have said ‘some view, huh?’ but these were abnormal circumstances. He saw the aged and shaggy grout between the bricks interwoven with moss and small weeds looking for a place from which they could eek out some kind of existence. Rosti’s consciousness was enhanced by his moment of intimacy with death – the second of his life – and by the opiate which stilled those busy mortal thoughts that plague the modern human (even when they share their town with only one other person) and left in its place a tremendous silence in which his mind could move. What brings the seed to the tiny crevice in the grout? he wondered. Life can be cruel – an unfavourable wind can take a germ away from fertile soil and land it between bricks, where it fights to survive – where every grain of dirt and every drop of water is an extraordinary reprieve.

  Rosti thought in English; crisply and clearly. He found his mother tongue rarely these days, and already had forgotten that it came to him in the delirium of the ride to Havana. He turned and looked up at the small sign over head, attached to the painted metal bed-head, and ignored it – he knew his name and did not want to remember his age. He watched the men in his room, who either slept or watched him back. One of them grinned, creasing his already weathered face and showing a startling, immaculate denture.

  “Rosti is it? What are you in for?” He croaked.

  “Fell off a roof.”

  “Damn.”

  In the silence that followed he sourced a solution from an unlikely origin.

  “You know I once met a man who had been kicked off an island for saying damn. He was an Australian – told me he was playing cards in a tent on a small island, off the coast of somewhere – it’s one big island and a few little ones, he said – and got a bad hand. Well he says damn and sure enough a police officer of some kind, I don’t know what he called him, sticks his fool head in the tent and demands to know who said that bad bad word! He confessed and was put on the next boat home.”

  “Damn.”

  “Damn right!”

  They laughed gingerly, both nursing wounds.

  “And you?”

  “Had a fall and broke some ribs, shattered my hip bone too. The kind of fall I had a hundred times when I was young and just bounced up from.”

  He paused, thinking about the falls he took young.

  “Rosti. What kind of name is that?”

  “I’d wager you have a fair idea already.”

  “Probably close enough.”

  “I can’t read your little sign from here.”

  “Well not close enough in that case,” the old man laughed. “Conlon.”

  “Well then, close enough to where I’m from.”

  “Maybe out by a couple of hundred years though, so I was told a long time ago. What do you think will happen over there?”

  “Nothing good. You wouldn’t guess it to look at me, but I was there last time – US Army. I knew rail, shipping – so didn’t see the worst of it, but what I saw was enough. I remember the day I signed up. My old ma tearing out her hair, saying they’d left the old world to get away from all that craziness.”

  Conlon looked at him with a grave expression.

  “But you went anyway. Why?”

  “Why did any of us go? I’m an American. And, my parents – they never really stopped living in the old country. So it was for me and for them. Worked out for me that the two countries were on the same side. She said my father was lucky not to live to see me enlist, but I tell you they were both lucky not to live to see what’s happening this time. Would make them sick to see what’s happening this time.”

  Rosti saw something in Conlon’s eyes.

  “You too?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “The war with the Spaniards. I didn’t enlist for that; I’d just timed signing up real bad. Then they sent us to the Philippines. They… we… did things that reserved a lot of places in hell. One of them for me.” Conlon looked at the other men, now all asleep; only he and Rosti remained. “Three years – I saw women and children running around on fire. I saw them cut in half – guts on the road, still alive. I’m never alone, did you know that? I’ve always got ten thousand dead in the room with me.”

  Rosti felt cold. He wanted to close his eyes and open them again and see that Conlon was gone.

  “We had this negro over there, a solider. I can’t remember his name now – he went over to the other side, fought on the side of the natives for years. At the time I was young and stupid; so to me it was shocking. Now I can see why a negro would have done it. Hell, now I see I should have done it.”

  Rosti paused; there were no easy answers.

  “We all learn.”

  “I don’t think I’ve learned enough. I certainly didn’t learn fast enough. Now I’m done with the learning – all I will pick up is what I hear from you or the nurses or these poor bastards here.” He waved dismissively at the sleeping men, though he was a world apart from them. “And whatever I pick up, I’m not taking anywhere. I’ve seen a lot of rooms. This is not the worst, but it’s the last.”

  “But broken ribs, that won’t kill you.”

  “I’m through with it. I can’t walk and I won’t walk. Worse still I don’t want to walk. Bring those grits and coffee and I’ll just run out the clock. We got one newspaper between six but we’ve got all day to share it.”

  Rosti paused again, and then noticed an odour in the room he did not recognise at first. He was certain it had only just manifested itself, and looked to see if someone had walked in, or if a window was open… But nothing. The odour bothered him, though it wasn’t a tangibly unpleasant smell. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant to the physical sense, but something about it disturbed another part of his brain. It bothered him emotionally. It started to suggest to him that they knew one another, indeed were old friends. I don’t know it, Rosti thought, but the odour, now a stink, was insistent.

  Rosti recognised it.

  He told himself it was a product of his imagination, not coming from Conlon at all.

  He told himself he had been forced to think about the Great War and the impressions made by associated stimuli returned to him vividly; that there is no smell of death, only the odours that can accompany death depending upon the circumstances. It could be burnt or rotting flesh. It could be blood. It could be faeces, gun powder, whisky, vomit, flowers, coal dust, ink or perfume.

  He told himself death is to be defined only as the end of life; an event and a state, not a discernible, detectable force of nature.

  ‘You just keep telling yourself that,’ it answered.

  Rosti wondered briefly if the silver cloud of morphine came with a grey lining. He did his best to ignore death by talking to its sidekick Conlon, but the old man was now just staring behind Rosti at the door way, face frozen in a grimace.

  “It’s him,” he whispered.

  Rosti turned back and saw only Watson and Mrs Hatfield.

  “Fagen… holy Mary mother of Jesus. He’s still alive. You were right, Fagen, you were right – I was just saying to Rosti here, tell him Rosti. I should have done what you did.” Having been a patchy red and white, Conlon had turned pure grey.

  Rosti whispered to Watson.

  “Tell him it’s okay, tell him you forgive him.”

  Watson turned his head slightly to angle his ear to Rosti, something he rarely did but did now because he questioned what he was hearing.

  “Excuse me?” he said quietly.

  “Just tell him. Tell Conlon.”

  Watson stared in the direction of Conlon’s voice and reached out one hand.

  “I forgive you.” He said calmly, deeply – as though born to say it.

  Colour returned to Conlon’s face as he went from the dead to the living. Within seconds, Rosti watched as the colour drained again with and the light in Purcell’s eyes simply went out, though they stayed wide open; his face frozen again but now in an expression of
sheer relief. And again, he was the dead – this time for good.

  Mrs Hatfield rushed forward and seized Conlon’s wrist, his body still propped up against three pillows, still upright, still warm.

  “He’s dead.” She said quietly. “My God.” It was not the first time someone had died before her eyes, but it was something to which she would never grow accustomed. Rosti – who had, like any soldier who survives a war, lost count of such occurrences - remained stunned – and as still as his late companion.

  Watson moved instinctually to Rosti’s bed and reached out his hand; Rosti seized it. Mrs Hatfield hurried to get the orderly – there was no point finding a doctor now; the pressing need was to remove Conlon before the other men awoke and were panicked by the material evidence of their mortality sitting with grotesquely correct posture in their midst. Standing behind Watson, peering over the man’s shoulder, Death smiled at Rosti.

  Words slithered out of its mouth.

  ‘It could have been you Rosti.’

  He focussed on Watson.

  “There’s still time – like you said. When Mrs Hatfield comes back, would you please ask her to get a wheelchair and get me out of here. And some morphine. It’s a terrible thing to ask a lady to steal, isn’t it Mr Watson, but I can assure you the alternative is far worse. Also, from each according to their ability – to each according to their needs. Right now my ability is limited and my need is great.”

  Death grinned.

  ‘It should have been you Rosti.’

  Rosti grinned back.

  “But it wasn’t, so get out of here.”

  Watson was troubled, but put Rosti’s strange behaviour down to the trauma and the drugs.

  “You did a good thing just then Mr Watson. Who can put a price on a man’s conscience? Who can determine the value of peace of mind? You gave that man the only thing he needed and just in time too.”

  There was a manic urgency and an out-of-place cheerfulness to Rosti’s temperament and Watson did his best to keep the man calm.

  “It was like the last rites,” Rosti continued. Watson placed on hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t move around so much. Stay calm – Mrs Hatfield will be back in no time.”