Enoch's Folly

  He was not sure where to find Comely, but he knew he could find the lady – Rida. He had seen her once through a shop window and recognised her. He tried to remember the name of the store but could not, but he knew the area and tracked it down. Spring was at full power and Arturo breathed greedily, enjoying the baked goods, and the flowers and plants that defiantly grew in cracks and on balconies amongst. It had been a while since he could breathe with abandon, rather than carefully as though rationing his oxygen. It compounded for him his sense of attachment to Comely; whom he liked but had not trusted entirely until now.

  The wood and glass door was shut, so though the sign read ‘open’ Arturo knocked from force of habit. Rida looked up from the newspaper beside her cash register and beckoned for him to come in; though she did not recognise him at first.

  He pulled his cap down and held it in both hands, walking forward with a degree of anxiety.

  He said ‘good morning ma’am’, employing a word he’d only picked up recently to add to ‘miss’ and ‘lady’.

  She looked at him, short and wiry but with a strong expression – and wondered how old he could be, or how young.

  “Good morning. How can I help you today?”

  Arturo looked around the store with some degree of confusion before reaching out pulling a paper sleave from a wooden tray and gently slipping the record out from within; allowing only two inches or so to show, glistening. He gazed at it intently.

  “They are phonographic records.” He said quietly with disguised wonder. He had read about them, seen photographs and had heard them played but had never handled one himself. He turned to Rida again. “Sorry – I am ill mannered.” He came closer and spoke in hushed tones. She recognised him.

  “You are a friend of Mr Comely. I need to find him.”

  Rida blushed.

  “Well, I… Yes, I am a friend of his. I can help you contact him… I have a telephone here and I have his telephone number, or… or you could…” She paused, hesitant, unsure if the boy was literate. “Leave a message with me.” She decided on an unspecific medium.

  Arturo looked at her hard and suppressed a frown. He did not want to involve her in his troubles.

  “I wait here.”

  She looked troubled.

  “I wouldn’t mind the company, but I… to be honest I don’t know when he will be here next… Aren’t your parents worrying abou…” She saw the expression on his face and stopped.

  “I believe yes. I think they do worry, but they need not. Comely is a friend of mine. I will wait here.”

  Rida did not want to insult Arturo and considered what she could do.

  “I was about to have lunch, but one of the girls who helps me in the store sometimes called in sick so I prepared too much, you know. It’s a casserole.”

  “Sick? Is it bad? She will be healthy soon?” He looked startled.

  Rida gazed at him. He was so genuinely concerned about a complete stranger that she felt guilty for her white lie. ‘White lie,’ she thought. ‘The country is full of them.’

  “She will be fine. She might even come in later today… but too late for lunch.”

  Arturo looked relieved and agreed to eat with Rida without asking what was available. He was grateful and, because of the ruse, unashamed. “No point letting it go to waste,” Rida said.

  Arturo ate silently, but paced himself carefully, always looking at Rida’s meal. At first she wondered if he wanted more… but soon noticed his pace decreased until eventually he stopped short of finishing, moments after she had eaten her last forkful. There was an awkward silence. Finally, he asked;

  “Do you still have hunger?”

  She looked at him.

  “No, I’m quite satisfied.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Of course.”

  He devoured the remaining portion without looking up once, then smiled at her broadly. She smiled back, but felt the beginning of tears pricking her eyes. What he’d done was clearly born of habit, and Rida felt like throwing his arms around him and hugging him tightly, but was worried it would annoy him.

  “Very nice meat.” He said, and she, knowing she’d used the worst cuts for her lunch and left the best for her son, decided he was too young and too earnest for sarcasm.

  “Thank you. Art… Artie?”

  He smiled. “It is Arturo. Artie is new. You can call me Artie.”

  Comely was at the door, watching with interest for a moment before walking in. The pause was barely noticeable, but Rida had noticed it and suspected something about the visit would prove unusual.

  Arturo’s smile vanished as he remembered at once the grimness of his business. Comely smiled at him warmly but to no avail. He saw the kid was serious and turned back to Rida. Still, none of them had said a word.

  “Honey I’m home,” he offered.

  “Ack, too many radio shows for you.”

  “That’s no way to talk for a lady in your line,” he replied, surveying the store. “How are things with you young man?” He only turned to look at Arturo as he finished his question, but the boy was unperturbed.

  “You missed the lunch,” he said. “But I came here to see you. We must talk, only for a short time – then I go.”

  “We’ll head out,” Comely said, sensing the Arturo’s preference. “I waited a long time for this Spring and I need to grab just a few more minutes of sunshine before this one (he motioned towards Rida) keeps me cooped up in here for a few hours, scrubbing the floors and listening to Glenn Miller.”

  Rida’s eyes flashed but she smiled. “You like Glenn Miller.”

  “I’m not fussy.”

  Arturo reached his hand towards Comely who, shocked as he was by this, was even more shocked at his instinctual response; clasping that small hand in his.

  “Come on then,” he managed and led the kid outside.

  Arturo looked both ways outside, looked from face to face and at the vehicles hooting by.

  Arturo hated violence and above all killing. To kill, he thought, was a crime against the person, their family, their history, their descendents – both realised and potential – and god. Their god – any and every god. Arturo believed in a creator and in an afterlife. He was imbued with the vague spiritualism of his native hills, not the formal ritual of the towns. He did not think of paradise or damnation. His conception of eternity was that of a child’s; that there was a place somewhere, not two - for good and evil, but one - for the dead. This was home to his parents. To Aldo. To his grandfather.

  He spoke simply.

  “A man was killed, I think, in my street. Six days ago.”

  Comely did not shrug; but only as it was a habit he believed uncouth and worse still impolite. He listened with nominal interest, assuming a murder and appreciating that it was likely new to the boy… hoping it was new.

  “I saw it.”

  Comely went pale, took the hand away from the ledge upon which he had been leaning.

  “How?”

  “From my garden. It was the night.”

  “Did you see it done?”

  “No, but I know it to be done – in the building. He arrived, there was a quick light and bang – then nothing. He never came out.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “I do not think they see me.”

  “Was it possible they saw you? Where were you?”

  “I said to you; on my roof.”

  “Looking over the edge? How close were you to the edge?”

  “Close enough to see their front door and most of the street.”

  Comely was feverishly calculating angles in his mind while continuing his interrogation.

  “How many windows in their building at the front? Do they have shutters or curtains? Were any open?”

  “I don’t know how many – and they have the curtains.”

  “Which one were you watching? Were there any you couldn’t watch? Did any of the curtains move?”
>
  “One moved I think. I’m not sure – it was late and I had much fear.”

  “You must tell me! Have you ever seen anyone else come out of the building? Have they ever seen you before?”

  Comely was forming and reforming scenarios in his mind. If they – the eternal they, he thought – had seen him they would have made their move already, unless they were trying to track him down (it was not as if they could knock on every door of the tenement) or waiting for the right time. It had only been six days. ‘Why had he not told me sooner?’ Comely thought. ‘He didn’t trust me. No one really does.’ Six days, he concluded, was nowhere near enough to be safe, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “Kid, nothing is going to happen to you – I guarantee that. Which building?”

  “It is not a tenement – between two of them. It is short and grey. What do you think it is?”

  “Nothing good.” Comely thought he should have known already, should have known exactly and long ago. ‘You’re getting soft old man’, he heard.

  “Ok. Today we will go to your apartment and clear out everything, the garden – everything. I’ll find you a new apartment somewhere else.”

  “We have contract for the rent. The rent is low so for us to stay a long time. Aldo died; and I signed again.”

  “You? What kind of people make a child sign a contract and take money from them?” Comely felt sick. “What kind of a world is this?” He swallowed a profanity-spiced blasphemous phrase and shook his head. “No no, you’ve got to break the contract and leave.”

  “No, I give my word.” Arturo was calm and resolute.

  ‘This is some kid,’ Comely thought.

  “I’ll pay them out.”

  “No!” He cried.

  “Use that hundred then. Come on. Let me pay them off – it’s nothing between friends.”

  “The money – the money must be preserved.”

  “Your English is coming a long nicely, you know, better than most people’s.” Arturo nodded.

  Comely changed the subject once he realised the kid wouldn’t budge. He was fixed on that room for some damn reason – to him, it seemed, there was something special about it, and there was no time to debate the matter.

  * * *

  Robert guiltily avoided the unforgiving grimace of his typewriter – its keys bored, its arms atrophied. He had been so close to finishing his screenplay when he volunteered for the assignment; he assumed the deadline would push him to finish it in two weeks. Instead, he’d not so much as put another dent in the page that sat, half empty, in the spool, since the day he met Comely.

  Comely.

  He would have cursed him and that day but for one inescapable equation; Comely had kept him in the city and the city had Anna. A good materialist would say Robert was brought to Greco’s that morning by his stomach, but materialism’s grip on Robert was weakening – and he suspected, foolishly and to his own chagrin, that perhaps, though almost certainly impossibly, something other than hunger led him to Greco and thus Comely and, ultimately, Anna. He had seen her from the window and then in the street – in a city of four million; how could that happen by chance? ‘The same way anything else happened by chance, Bob.’ He walked up to the typewriter and peered at the page. The idea of telling this story – his story – and casting the existing one out the window appealed to him on some weird level, but he pushed it away.

  He sat down, then stood up again. He sat down, turned the spool and re-read the last half-page he’d written, reinserted it, shifted the ribbon and cracked his knuckles, then stood up again. He walked to the window and peered out. He wondered about Mrs Cottlesbridge, whom he had not seen for a while, and considered paying her a visit. He was sure she had a story or two, something inspirational, then shrugged off the notion. It was true, no doubt, but he didn’t like the idea of using her like that. Her experiences belonged to her and weren’t to be chewed up so cheaply. Besides, he decided, he should visit her for its own sake – and he resolved to do so once he had completed the scene. Just this one scene and then a break; a well earned break.

  * * *

  On the outskirts of the city a defunct army base, built for the Civil War and abandoned in 1919, would have, in time, proven to be a favourite among niche market tourists had it survived beyond the frenzied 1970s. In 1939 it was an embarrassment and an eyesore, an ugly, low building squatting in the shadows of a grand bridge; Studiously avoided for years by all but low rent sex workers and desperate junk addicts. It was a forgotten corner, so much so that a curious event on Christmas Eve the year previous took place there without it coming to the attention of even Aldous Comely.

  By accident of bureaucracy the former base was still serviced by an electrical supply – the bill vanishing negligible into the interminable bowels of the military budget. In the harsh December cold some of the then regulars had planned a gathering; a wood fire and some food scrounged from local churches made for a sorry kind of party under the surviving globes, but one better than would have otherwise been available. The distinguishing element was that of company – and company in the festive season can often be the difference between survival and suicide.

  Somewhere between a dozen and fifteen men huddled and told stories and sang songs just after their makeshift dinner there, when six trench coats all glistening teeth and guns pushed through the rear door – which normally would have been no easy proposition. The revellers, at first weak with hunger and sluggish with the cold, and perhaps feeling accommodating due to the season, were ill-prepared for what history had planned for them and left the door unsecured.

  The coats, out-of-towners, were the worst kind of button men; without roots or understanding and thus without pity. They were upon the poor men without a word, clubbing and threatening them and creating an atmosphere of dismal terror. Shortly the men were bound and gagged. Once secured, one of the coats went out to retrieve his man; who upon entering put an end to even the muffled complaints of the prisoners. He was a ghastly sight; under his fedora a glistening alligator face and lipless smile, welted and a mess of white and red and pink patches; his eyebrows a memory and his spittle a constant menace at the sides of his horrible smile. His hands seemed to be two white serpents, moving fast and fidgeting with the buttons on his tasteless but impeccably clean bright blue suit.

  “I’m casting you out, boys,” he hissed. “And you’re not coming back.”

  The bums, in dumb terror, had nodded – quite content to agree to escape regardless of the condition riding on the offer.

  The Blue Man’s goons worked them with a wrench for nothing but sport; breaking the fingers on every left hand among them; maybe sixty in all – likely more. The poor bastards thrashed and cried out as best they could, one almost swallowed his own tongue, but they survived to have their legs untied and be marched to a truck parked outside. The wind whipped them without mercy and the dark provided cover. They were carted even further out of town and dumped, wretched and broken, by the gates of a junk yard, where they were left to their own devices. Without clout or money or names to say aloud there was nothing they could do but heal badly and never return.

  The Blue Man did little to clean the base, but the iron shutters were oiled, repaired where necessary and locked closed and the doors reinforced. The process took weeks, working only at night, and the prostitutes – pimpless and entirely unconnected – were scared off easily during this period. Telegraph wires still attached to the building proved a windfall – and in fact he barely left the place once it was ready; corresponding mostly by telegram and telephone with his operatives (in rudimentary code), even when they were but a few blocks away. He gave paranoia a new and almost spiritual definition, taking precautions to the ridiculous; belying his once rampant recklessness. Like his contemporary Stalin; he would come to believe he knew someone was going to betray him even before they knew themselves.

  Modelled unconsciously on the clandestine movements of the early twent
ieth century (and the early twenty-first, for that matter); The Blue Man’s network of ‘police’ and tithe collectors was broken into cells – with the members of each cell aware only that there were more like them operating in some parts of the city, and that they owed their livelihoods to the cruel nous of their leader. Their hits could appear to be isolated, or the activities of distinct small-time groups.

  Only a handful of his “best” even knew of the base and stayed there with him, the rest were scattered satellites throughout the town. Orders were received in brief terms; details worked out at a localised, autonomous level and results reported back. Takings were pooled and re-distributed, with cuts set aside for what the leader, in a fit of foresight, liked to call infrastructure. He was chronologically still a young man but had been rendered ageless by his reptile face and definition-defying brand of madness.

  He promised the world and, though flying low at first, pulled enough small jobs to deliver plenty to those depraved enough to throw their lot in with him. Only when they cleaned out the big yard and killed two men did the sleeping Comley stir – and by then enough blocks were poisoned for any antidote to be hard and dangerous.

  * * *

  Watson was dozing alongside Kristian, rocked to sleep by the rhythm of the motorcar and the hot but gentle wind. The driver maintained a stubborn focus and energy, and chatted sparingly and quietly with Mrs Hatfield, on whom Rosti was comfortably slumped. There is only so much talking to be done within a period of time - mitigated by a range of fluid factors subject to no set mathematical formulation; including heat, company, intimacy or lack thereof and others beyond quantification – before it becomes less meaningful than it should be, though certainly not by necessity meaningless. Mrs Hatfield had paused while contemplating a notion of Kristian’s and turned right, gazing at the country side and what appeared to be the beginning of the outskirts of a town, and then turned sharply back to him.