Enoch's Folly

  “What?”

  “You got to have a reason for me smiling?” He smiled more.

  “You seem to be almost saying something, I can see the idea on your face.”

  “Sure an idea, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Just thinking about how crazy I am about you.”

  Anna rolled her eyes and smiled.

  “What is this expression, as if to go crazy is so good? I prefer to not go crazy.”

  “You already are crazy.”

  Robert had recently developed a habit of not sitting with his back to a door, and he watched a man shuffle in. Ivo watched him warily at first, arms crossed by the swinging kitchen doors, but he made his way to the bar and ordered a drink, sitting with his back to Robert and Ivo alike – uttering not a peep as he nursed whatever it was he’d bought.

  Anna was keenly reading the menu, dismissing Robert’s inquiries about her work and graciously accepting praise of the new dress. Robert looked up and saw the guy at the bar had swivelled around on his barstool and was watching him. He stared back but the guy didn’t flinch. On his own Robert would have ignored this but being with Anna it riled him. He excused himself and walked across the room. He spoke peacefully.

  “Do I know you from somewhere friend?”

  “Oh I’m not your friend.”

  “Then maybe you ought to learn some manners. You can stop staring or take yourself elsewhere.” Robert stayed calm.

  “Don’t take it so personal, kid. It’s just that we haven’t met. Maybe we could be friends.”

  Robert studied the guy – about forty-five, wiry, full head of hair going grey and cropped short, a ring of indented sweat marking the band of his hat, green eyes that would have been pretty had they not been beady and darting around, bad teeth.

  “Sure,” Robert started. “But I’m out with my girl and…”

  “I can see that.”

  “And I don’t have too much time to spare so let me know what it is you’re looking for over at our table.”

  “You work for him, yeah?”

  Robert knew exactly what the guy was saying, it was all in the way he said him, but he wouldn’t give an inch.

  “Comely, you work for Comely don’t you?”

  “Why phrase it as a question?”

  “Well are you his flamer? You a torch man, buddy?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How much time you got?”

  Robert didn’t answer.

  The man grinned hideously.

  “You know what the old timers say about Comely? They say the Devil is afraid of him.”

  Robert couldn’t hear anybody else in the place, nor the clinking of the glasses and rattle of washing cutlery behind the now silently flapping doors to the kitchen, Robert become acutely aware only of a drop of spittle in the corner of the man’s mouth, of the uncommonly viscous spit that clung to his bad teeth, of the sinking pit in his belly and the burning knowledge Anna was very much alone at the table behind him.

  “I’m listening.”

  The man knew he had to make it good and make it quick.

  “You know a little about The Blue Man, don’t you?”

  “Some.”

  The guy told him the rest, presented here with a degree of augmentation.

  Around the time The Blue Man first appeared, Comely had bought a small building on the lower East side. It was a double-storey place built around 1880 but already run down. He restored it personally, working with a stone mason and a carpenter who held that grand and now fading idea one should build beautiful and to last for generations. He turned the place into a restaurant which he sold to a family who arrived from out of town for, it was whispered, one dollar. Some people suggested they were Comley’s cousins. No one knew for certain. Comely was not seen in the restaurant again.

  Two hoods showed up one day in navy blue suits and no hats. Witnesses said they told the manager ‘the holy church must have its tithe’. He told them he wasn’t Catholic and it turned out they didn’t have a sense of humour. About forty minutes after close the hoods came back with ten other guys, busted down the door and smashed every window and display cabinet in the place. They broke the manager’s nose and arm, and they punched his daughter – she was a teenager – in the face, knocking out two teeth… for a start.

  The following morning, two of the twelve guys showed up more ash than flesh. Even in those primitive days the doctors had been able to ascertain they’d likely been alive and handcuffed when set on fire. They were not difficult to identify because their wallets, scalps and tattoos – as intact as possible – were found in a bag near by. They’d been partially skinned alive before being roasted.

  The remaining ten goons were understandably troubled by this development. The next morning another two materialised in the same condition. The other eight ran as far as they could, but again, the next day, two more showed up skinned and burned.

  And then again the next day.

  And then again the next.

  Police officers twenty years on the job got the shakes. Journalists could scarcely string the words together and editors wouldn’t have run it if they did. The attack on the restaurant had shocked people but this apparent retaliation pushed the pundits beyond shock. No one had ever worked like this – and none had since. The last two were the main goons. They showed up scalped and black as coal the following morning… in New Orleans.

  The Blue Man was finished. His operations folded overnight and he vanished. Someone spread the story that he pissed himself when he was told about the final two deaths, but beyond that no word at all. After a while, people never even said his name. The restaurateur and his family had left town. Comely, it was whispered, never forgave himself for what had happened to them.

  The man with the bad teeth had told his story with less detail and more colour. He leaned against the counter and waited, watched for Robert’s reaction which was already unravelling before he uttered a word.

  “Your name.”

  “Mine?”

  Robert’s eyes flashed, striking off against his now pale skin.

  “Cash Tyson.”

  “Cash Tyson? Come on, you can’t expect me to trust you if you’re going to play games like that.”

  “I wish I could tell you I was joking. Cash is the stupidest name I ever heard too, and being almost always short of it made the joke even worse… And I don’t expect you to trust me.”

  He weighed up the story. Robert always knew Comely held back on the subject of The Blue Man, and Robert always avoided asking certain questions. Once an impossibly decent, rock-solid citizen, Robert had learned to bend with the wind and it made him feel sick. He considered Cash’s words, he imagined Comely there – watching in a seat. Doing nothing. Comely coolly in a chair, one leg loosely crossed over the other. One hand up to his chin. His eyes black and empty. Comely saying nothing, simply watching while the skin was cut from their arms and heads and they were doused in fuel and burned alive in front of him. Comely silent while they screamed and screamed, his face unchanging; impassive. The crazy bastard.

  What was it he had said?

  “There is one thing I can not abide by, Robert, and that is gratuitousness.”

  Robert put a hand to his forehead and instantly regretted showing some weakness in front of Cash – who ever he was he had an agenda that was most likely horrible. Robert felt the extraordinary heat in his forehead and brought his hand down, balling it into a tight cold fist which he stuffed into a pocket.

  “So what?” He gritted out.

  Cash shrugged.

  “Just thought you should know what The Blue Man’s got on his mind.”

  Robert looked through the man, through the walls and the streets. He saw beyond the city limits and rolled down through and past darkest America - he saw the border and beyond, where he would have to be, where he always had to be but now more than ever, because they would get to Anna. They would get to her and after that nothing would ma
tter. He turned his back on Cash and returned to the table. He’d only been gone two or three minutes but had missed her badly. He asked for them to move on to somewhere they could be alone and behind locked doors and she saw his face and knew something terrible was happening. She said yes, “but you must tell me everything” and he agreed that he would because he wanted to get away as soon and as far as possible in one night. He knew where he was going wasn’t safe either, but somewhere in between they could find the right place and stop if only for a few days between the hell this city would sink into and the wild unknown waiting for him.

  *

  The party went on without a hitch, only larger than usual, with Comely at his warm and cold consummate best – alert but never troubled – as his people were reminded that their boss was also their friend; and their loyalty was assured once again.

  While watching the swing band he had thought briefly of Hartley - a gifted classical musician he’d met years earlier in Britain who would achieve fame as the martyred band leader on the White Star liner ‘Titanic’. Comely had not thought of him for more than twenty years, and quickly swept the memory out of sight.

  * * *

  Arturo had avoided the roof in the four days since the murder; and he worried about the garden. His younger sister Felicita had gone up every day with a tin of water and returned with glowing reports but little harvest. He was not afraid of being seen, and had – by necessity of course – left the building as often as usual, but the roof held some dread for him now. He hated it, and hated himself for being unable to conquer it. He stared down through the taped and somehow slightly smoked glass at that wretched building and narrowed his eyes.

  Arturo knew that if the garden failed he would have to find more money. He thought of the hundred still safely hidden and cringed involuntarily, it was for an emergency. To him, it was for a life and death situation. Knowing it existed unscathed and within reach was a source of great comfort to him – and he knew that once it was breached it would eventually be gone, and once it was gone he would again be subject to a host of anxieties.

  There is a unique brand of uncertainty felt by someone unsure of their next meal – words such as despair or terror are not adequate; a new term is needed for precision’s sake. Whomever operated in the building opposite – to him they were nothing, he assured himself. Their business was not his business – his business was his family.

  Along with the anxiety building in Arturo’s chest; when he finally lay down at the end of the day a sensation he likened to a trapdoor held closed under a room full of water woke him throughout the night. He felt something tight flicking in the base of his throat and coughed, short, heavy coughs into his mattress and his hands as to avoid waking his siblings.

  He stood on the corner outside Little Vincent’s. Europe was spoiling like a dead raccoon and the stink was good for the newspaper business. A special edition meant more work for Arturo and he jumped at the chance. The print house loved him – no one was more reliable, more punctual, more polite. If any regular came past they’d mention the foreign kid who not only sold the paper but could answer any question about it – and would keep one reserved if you asked him the day before.

  Arturo did not like being away from his family, but it was a chance to make more money – and the spring, thank god, was a welcome relief from the harsh winter. It was just on seven and he knew workers on the seven to seven shifts often loitered around this corner and its bars, looking for a little window between the dull ache of work and the sharp unease of home. Vincent himself was behind the counter; an ageless figure and a permanent fixture, and as always Arturo had said hello to him on arrival. He had tried to give Arturo pizza in the past to take home when his papers were gone and the boy had refused emphatically; Vincent suggested that Arturo encourage people into the store so the pizza would be a commission – something he would be prepared to accept. Vincent never reminded Arturo again to encourage people to enter his store, and Arturo always did. On the one occasion it slipped his mind and he realised only when saying goodbye, he refused the food.

  It was twilight and still brisk for the season, he felt, so Arturo wore his scarf wrapped tight. As the human traffic grew he felt his voice fall in volume, being lost among the milling morass – he looked at his stack of papers and knew they weren’t moving fast. He cried out what he thought would be louder and couldn’t hear himself. People stopped and coins and papers changed hands without him discerning it clearly. Lips moved but all he heard was shuffling footsteps and a one-note drone. He sweated against the cool and pulled at his scarf. ‘It’s choking me’, he thought, panicked. He pulled again and was sure it did not budge. He threw down one paper and ripped the scarf from himself with both hands, looking up at the now burning lights above him, not flickering as usual but relentless. He coughed involuntarily on to the paper on the ground and saw but refused to see flecks of red. He coughed again and now it was a smattering. He looked up again and desperately scrambled the tainted paper into a ball and threw it into the nearest trash can. The scarf hung loosely over his shoulders and he used it to clear some spit from the edge of his mouth. ‘It’s just spit,’ he said to himself and refused to check its colour.

  Vincent’s eldest, Antony, emerged and surprised Arturo by asking him if he was alright. The kid insisted he was fine and almost pushed Tony back into the store. His nose running now, Arturo found it hard to sell papers with one hand and carted his wagon into the store, bumping into customers. He stood before the counter with a hand over his mouth while clutching at some napkins. “Sorry,” he managed between coughs before slumping down, sitting on the stack of papers. He looked up at the men milling and wondered about what life was like as a son rather than a de facto father; tried to remember when he last had nothing to worry about and couldn’t; tried to find the strength to stand up again and failed, telling himself he could sell the papers later. Later did not come, as he slumped a second time and slipped into unconsciousness.

  *

  Arturo awoke in an enormous bed, still dressed but for his coat and shoes, and immediately worried he’d ruin the immaculate sheets. He threw both arms to either side and couldn’t reach the edges of the bed. He wondered if it was a hallucination, though he did not know the word, and looked around. Grand curtains were drawn and sunlight crept around them, casting enough illumination for Arturo to make out a large and elegant but Spartan room. He fancied himself dead and laid out in a funeral parlour. Daylight meant, at best, early morning, and he panicked for the sake of his siblings. A gentle rap on the door startled him and he responded in his native tongue, forgetting himself. Comely walked in.

  “Your brothers and sisters are fine, and they know where you are,” he started.

  “But I do not.”

  “This is my place. I had my doctor examine you last night, do you remember?”

  Arturo looked around again. The surroundings hinted at a memory, but it was just beyond his reach.

  Comely moved over to the curtain and opened them half-way, then turned back to Arturo.

  “More light?” And the boy nodded, so he drew them the rest of the way.

  “What is wrong with me?”

  “You’re lucky – it was just a chest infection. The doctor gave you a shot of something, and also left these.” He held up a dark-glass bottle the size of a can of beans; Arturo noticed it had no label. “Take two a day with food, do not forget. You got that? Two a day, every day, with food – until the bottle runs out.”

  Arturo had sat up and moved to the edge of the bed.

  “So not tuberculosis?”

  “No.”

  “It is also called consumption, that sickness.”

  “It used to be.” Comely was putting the pieces together in his mind and felt any questions would be both unnecessary and unkind.

  Arturo hopped up, a little unsteady, and looked around for his shoes.

  “Through here,” Comely motioned and as Arturo followed him he
noticed the smell. An enormous breakfast was laid out – and in the American style; abundant in sausage, eggs and bacon. “But would you be so kind as to have breakfast with me? I don’t like dining alone.”

  Arturo looked up at him startled but nodded. Comely pointed to a small basket on the table, lined with waxed white paper but as yet otherwise empty.

  “You can put whatever you want to take with you in this.”

  He had sensed, rightly, that Arturo would feel guilty about the breakfast unless he could share it with his family. Once assuaged of this worry, the boy ate with abandon.

  “I feel stronger,” he said, a small piece of sausage falling from his mouth back to the plate. Comely laughed and Arturo giggled – reminding Comely that he was, after all, just a child. Arturo quickly snapped up the rogue piece of sausage.

  “Good.”

  Arturo stopped.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Little Vincent’s a friend of mine. His son Antonio gave me a call when you fainted.”

  “You? Why?”

  “He must have seen us talking before, figured I was a friend of yours. He figured right, so that worked out well.”

  Comely had some time ago asked Vincent to contact him if Arturo ever looked like he needed help. Arturo saw through the cover story which he appreciated was designed to protect his pride. He smiled.

  “You are not so good at telling lies, Comely. So,” he pointed at the medicine bottle and the breakfast, “why do you do all this?”

  “I like trying new things.”

  *

  Comely had tried to deceive Arturo about how serious things could have become and had failed; and it was difficult for Arturo to ignore the fact Comely had likely saved his life. The Calabrians, like other Southerners, are a people of convictions; they have the sophistication to appreciate shades of grey but, given their druthers, deal in absolute truths. Loyalty is more precious than any commodity and not given half-heartedly. The building opposite Arturo’s tenement troubled him; kept him from his garden and, he suspected, clouded his judgement in a more general, daily sense. He needed to be at his best at all times, needed all of his strength if he was to carry his family and – Arturo knew he needed, at least, to clear his head.