Enoch's Folly

  The old man was right, he thought, and he knew that he’d had to look a big shot as well as talk big to move the right people. His cousins were settling now around him like colonists around the original outpost – and he could breathe more easily, though every day’s news brought a stronger cramp to his stomach.

  Years earlier, one Aldous Comely (who had heard that Judah Bauer was a serious man) had visited him personally to discuss the matter of protection. Bauer, thinking it the same old racket, told Comely he’d never paid protection money and never would. Comely had smiled his funny smile and said; “Well there’s no more to be said on that matter, but I do hope, Mr Bauer, that we have occasion to become acquainted socially in the future”. Bauer had thought it a threat and prepared for it; but nothing happened. He had been firm but entirely civil with Comely, and perhaps, mostly by chance, word had spread (erroneously) that they were friends, leading to a long period of peace and quiet for the trader. Comely had not visited again, and indeed showed little concern for the activities of those not affiliated to his loose federation of interests.

  At the height of Hadrian’s reign a Roman citizen could travel from western Wales to east Jerusalem protected by the red cloak of Rome; its vibrant colour a warning; those who harmed one man would answer to an empire.

  Comely was opposed to attacks on civilians; he despised them, in fact, but taking action to prevent them was not in his business interests unless the victim was a paid-up member. Arturo was a special case, he decided, without the means to acquire the cloak of Comely by the usual procedure.

  While Judah Bauer had made a favourable impression on him; Comely had no material connection to the man or his enterprise. This much was known widely enough for it to eventually prove complicating for his business – a kitchen wares, food stuffs and spice store wedged between China Town and Little Italy and popular with both communities.

  Bauer was not a pious man, but finished early on Fridays for Shabbat dinner. His observance did not extend to keeping the store closed on Saturdays and it was on a Saturday morning that he was visited by two men with an unhealthy interest in the health of his business. They told him, after a series of questions (each more irritating than the last, even to a civil man such as Judah Bauer) that the holy church must have its tithe.

  “I’m not Catholic,” he told them.

  When they said they figured as much and insulted his faith, suggesting he should have stayed in Europe, Bauer proved he was as American as anyone by producing a baseball bat from under his counter and asking them to leave. With an unseemly pair of smirks they did, and Bauer wondered if he would need more than his old Easton special for the next visit.

  * * *

  Nando Hammett did his best to avoid looking awestruck as he entered Victoria’s home for the first time. It reminded him of a smaller version of the city library’s map division with a bit of Grand Central thrown in. He was afraid to touch anything and carefully watched how he swung his bag. Victoria threw herself onto a fragile-looking sofa and he almost gasped, then turned when he heard someone come in behind him, assuming it was Victoria’s sister and praying it was not her parents, home early by some cruel accident. Instead, he saw a short dark-haired woman with light olive skin, dressed all in navy blue and white, about thirty, very pretty but clearly tired. He smiled. She gazed at him searchingly.

  “Hi Judith. Hammett, this is Judith. Judith, Hammett.”

  He shook hands with her, surprised and wondering about her name. Judith gave a small kind of bow he found disconcerting but said nothing.

  “Pleased to meet you Judith.”

  Judith smiled back; surprised and wondering about his name.

  Victoria had barely settled when she pounced back up and skipped away. “I left the record player in my room, I’ll bring it down.” As she vanished up the stairs he heard her fading explanation. “I moved it in there when my folks left…”

  Judith, who had been making her way out, turned to him and looked him up and down again.

  “Hablo espanol?” She asked quietly.

  “Si… poco.” She picked it, he thought, even though I look like my old man.

  Judith smiled.

  “Hammett?”

  “The name of the family of my father,” he responded in his careful Spanish. “He was a gringo.”

  “And what is your name?”

  “Fernando.”

  “And you?”

  “Judith – don’t you know we also have Judith?”

  “I didn’t.” He considered her use of the word we. Half was enough for them, he thought, but is not enough for ‘the Americans’. He hated to use the phrase ‘the Americans’ as though referring to a third party. He was American; his mother had reminded him so many times. ‘And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise’.

  Judith listened for footsteps and heard them coming, her ears finely tuned to the sounds of that palace.

  “Look out for this one.” She whispered.

  Nando tried to laugh it off and was still smiling nervously when he turned to face Victoria. Judith was already gone. He rushed forward to help the girl carry the player and she waved him off as best she could.

  “It’s not heavy.”

  “I should have come up and helped you,” he spluttered.

  “But then you would have missed out on getting to know Judith better.” Victoria set the player down and found a power socket before resuming her sprawl on the sofa. “How did you go?”

  “I think we understood each other. Didn’t tackle any complicated subjects.”

  “Talked about the weather?”

  “Baseball.”

  “You are such a liar,” she laughed, to his relief. “And a bad liar too, which is good, it shows you haven’t had much practice. My parents…” She gazed off at a framed picture of them on a near by dresser. “They lie beautifully – like artists.” She reclined and he watched her skirt slip up. “They construct their lies well, and look how well they construct from their lies.”

  She motioned around the sitting room, though Nando did not know it was a sitting room, or indeed what a sitting room was. He was watching her, and she watched back, the sound of Judith returning with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses broke the spell and he remembered the record under his arm.

  “This is the new record of that bluesman I told you about, Bill Broonzy,” he said, re-announcing the obvious.

  He noticed that Victoria did not thank Judith, and did instead. He thought of his mother – who was “worse” than Mexican (or Bolivian). She was part Indian – but her conquistador blood had triumphed as convincingly as Cortez himself, leaving dark eyes and black hair as the only trace of her native ancestors. He thought of himself then as a spy in a forbidden world and did not like the sensation. Victoria shifted on the sofa and he forgot about Judith and his mother and mixed blood, and again about the record in his hands. Her green eyes flighted from it, to the gramophone, then to the door through which Judith had vanished and back to Nando.

  “What is it?”

  “Pardon?”

  She sat upright and tugged her skirt back down.

  “Something is bothering you Hammett. Is it Judith? Don’t worry about her – she’s fine. She never tells my parents anything about me or Margarite. Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “My parents have smoked for years.” She pulled a soft pack with a label Nando didn’t recognise from her bag. “So they can’t smell a thing.” She fumbled with the matchbook then regathered her composure. “Judith doesn’t squeal on me – she does her job and that’s that. My parents like her because she’s quiet. Otherwise they wouldn’t have hired her.”

  Nando thought about asking ‘why not’ though he figured knew the answer. Instead he moved toward the record player and carefully put the record in place.

  She exhaled and enveloped the player and Nando in a blue cloud, looking at the record.

  “Red. I heard that’s the
best.”

  He repeated what his mother had told him about red and black shellac, but without the interest it had generated in him the first time. Indeed, without any interest. He was unfocussed, wondering what he was doing; wondering who he thought he was.

  “Christ Hammett take a seat will you, you’re making me nervous.”

  He laughed and put on the record, then sat on the other side of it in an arm chair he found to be as stiff as it was beautiful.

  “You’re a little more talkative at school.”

  “Why are you there?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our school. I mean, it’s a good school and all, but why didn’t your parents send you to…”

  “You mean, why are they so tight?”

  He laughed again.

  “Well.” she dragged. “They did. Two of them anyway. The crème de la crème of all-girl boarding hells. I was kicked out of the first when I was eleven – they said I attacked a girl with a pair of scissors, but it was more complicated than that. The second, well, I chose to leave. Long story. Daddy decided I was being spoiled by the system; so the ordered me to an almost normal school like it was a punishment. Then, of course, they found the co-ed day school with the most stringent academic entry requirements and the most money.” She grinned. “I guess it’s the thought that counts… This is good.” She kicked off her shoes and put her legs up on the sofa again. “The music, that is.”

  “You’re having trouble getting comfortable.”

  “Look who’s talking! You don’t like it here do you?”

  “Not really.”

  She looked away from him. “You jerk. I liked it better when you were trying to lie. Do you have help?”

  “With what?”

  “At home. Your mom runs a business doesn’t she? Who looks after the house?”

  “We both do, and my sister when she’s home. And it’s a small place really, so it’s not hard. Not like here.”

  Victoria smiled awkwardly. It did not suit her.

  “Right. Let’s get out of here though.” She leapt up and carelessly pulled the diamond from the record, sending the scratching sound up Nando’s spine. She mashed the cigarette into the lemonade tray and left it there before pulling her shoes back on.

  “What about the record?”

  “It’s great, we’ll listen to the rest tonight.”

  She grabbed his hand and hauled him up and out – his heart pounding now. She moved quickly across the shallow circular drive and within no time had led him to the sidewalk.

  “Do you think I look old enough to buy liquor?” She challenged as she hailed a taxi, something he’d last done when his mother was going to hospital for what turned out to be an inflamed appendix.

  “No.”

  “Jerk – when will you start lying to me again?”

  “When I need to.”

  *

  Nando Hammett was a kid, but he wasn’t easily impressed.

  Standing on the roof of the Holinshed mansion – he watched Victoria, not the sweeping yards.

  She held her cigarette without a holder, an affectation she derided as vain.

  ‘Yellow fingers? You’d need to never be without a smoke – it’s absurd. We ladies aren’t so delicate.’

  She watched the yards she’d watched countless times, the trees she knew branch by branch by memory – stages of the season looked the same each year. She watched anyway, the way she would if on her own – as she usually was up there – then, without turning to Nando, spoke.

  “You don’t like trees, Hammett?”

  Then she turned, and saw he hadn’t broken his gaze, entirely unembarrassed, continuing to watch her. He watched gently – the way people watch rain.

  “When I look away from you, I miss you.”

  She rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile.

  “Creepy.”

  “Awful, I know. I should be in B-movies.”

  “Oh you should. You look a bit like Rudolph Valentino.”

  “Bah.”

  “I mean now.”

  He didn’t laugh.

  “He’s been dead a decade.”

  “I know – it just wasn’t funny.”

  “Jerk. You miss me when you don’t look at me, but I bet you don’t miss me when you can’t hear me.”

  He crumbled.

  “No no – that’s a bit too mean.”

  “No no,” she said, laughing. “Women are to be obscene and not heard.”

  She blew a mess of smoke into his face and he didn’t cough, instead reaching around her.

  “It’s getting warmer.”

  “I come up here in the winter too.”

  They sat on the tiles, having climbed up from one of many balconies, their backs against the heart of the city, looming across the water, their legs in front of them, Nando’s left cocked up steep, right straight – Victoria’s left straight, right propped up gently on a broad angle. She didn’t squirm or shrug off or laugh off his embrace, pushing up against him to answer the tiny gap he’d nervously left between them as a question. She offered no other reply – enough had been said.

  “You never grow tired of the view?”

  “I don’t come up here for the view, not even the first time. This place,” she pointed down, as though there could have been any doubt as to which place she meant, “is a solid gold straight-jacket.”

  “But you can leave any time you want – go anywhere, by car if you want, and by cab if you want it to be kept a secret. Judith doesn’t grass on you when you’re here, and your family rarely is.”

  Victoria looked at him, a little annoyed, but didn’t shrug him off.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, Valentino.” She paused. “You remember her name. Judith. It’s funny.”

  “Why?”

  “None of my other friends do. But I suppose I only ever tell them once. Do you like her?”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “Do you find her attractive?”

  He shifted uncomfortably.

  “She is attractive… For an old lady.”

  “Hm.” Victoria couldn’t look any less like Judith and found the idea bothersome. “You really don’t know how to lie, do you?”

  “Why ask if you don’t want to know? Seriously, Victoria, what do you want me to say?”

  She shrugged and looked out over the trees.

  “I don’t care if you want to fuck our maid or not. Men are animals so it comes as no surprise to me at all.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  Victoria giggled. “I love it when you’re shocked. You’re such a priest.”

  “I don’t want to do anything to your maid.” While unaccustomed to foul language, it was the use of ‘our maid’ he was most uncomfortable with.

  “Not anything?”

  “Victoria – I remember people’s names and people’s faces. I remember people. If you want to know why I’ll tell you – it’s no great mystery. People matter. People count. It doesn’t matter who they are or how useful they can be. Do you know why your friends don’t remember her name? It’s because they barely remember the names of their own maids. If you’re to invite me here in the future I’m going to talk to Judith and be polite. I’m going to ask her how her family is, assuming she has one. I’ll ask about her kids. Does she have children?”

  Victoria looked at him blankly, with only the slightest hint of guilt.

  “Well I’ll find out. And you know what – my being polite to her doesn’t mean anything other than that. Or maybe you think foreigners are only good for work and… and fucking?”

  Victoria looked irritated.

  “Hammett – what the hell is wrong with you; why are you so angry?”

  “I just don’t like the idea that… that I have to have an ulterior motive to remember someone’s name. It reflects badly on the way you see me – and on the way you see her. How long has she worked for your family?”

 
Victoria looked at him blankly.

  “Ten years, I think.”

  “Ten years?”

  She could see where it was going and didn’t like it, but found she liked him more for it. Victoria thought of most boys as basically jesters or minstrels in a royal court around her; and she found it boring and suffocating. Hammett was nothing if not an original. He represented a challenge, she thought, but anything, and anybody, can be mastered in the end.

  “Judith arrived when I was about five and mother was starting to find that I was no longer a cute conversation piece but a genuine inconvenience. Before that there was Henry and a cleaner who came in just once a week.”

  “Just once eh?”

  “Well, I needed to be distracted – often – and Judith was just arrived and happy to work for… Not much.”

  “Happy?”

  “A bad choice of words,” Victoria said absently, looking out over the yards now. “But we could… afford to hire her full time.”

  “Do you still need to be distracted?”

  “Not by her… But she remains with us, I suppose, because my mother has become accustomed to doing nothing. Addicted, even.”

  Hammett looked at her and she saw the accusation on his face.

  “A son. She has a son. About ten, I think.”

  “She raised you both at the same time, almost.”

  Victoria’s eyes flooded with tears, alarmingly. Hammett softened, and abandoned his next question. As it turned out, she answered it anyway.

  “I don’t even know his name.”

  * * *

  Anna stood by the shore which she loved when alone; staring out at the great green lady with her blistering torch, her titanic back, interestingly, turned against the immigration centre. Anna looked at the red-brick building on the isle and wondered if she was the only one who thought it strange that she had never returned, that none of them ever return – but pass through, some faster than others, and from then it remains a memory or distant image. It is the first unaccustomed American earth on which they step, and they nor their descendents will tread foot on it again. The room assigned her would still be there and still the same, she imagined, but of her; only a name on a file remained on Ellis Isle.