Enoch's Folly

  Anna looked past him to see if there was family with him and saw none.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “Do you… Who do you live with?”

  “Sisters, brothers. We have a room. You have sisters, brothers?”

  “Sisters – but not here. They are home?”

  “To the west?”

  “To the east – a long way east, on the other side of the Atlantic.”

  He looked serious at once, studying her intently.

  “It is sad to be apart from them.”

  A young man carrying a sack of oranges, rushing and inattentive, thumped into the boy – sending him into Anna. She grabbed him tightly to stop him from falling over and into the street and he held on to her for balance at first, then, pulling away and looking up, did not let go.

  “It is okay. You know, they are with you still.” He let go, then smiled and pointed behind her.

  “Here he comes, for you.”

  Anna turned and saw Robert striding through the crowd, seemingly a foot clear of the mass of jet black crowns and grinning olive faces. She waved and turned back to the boy to ask him how he knew but he was already slipping away.

  “I will see you around, miss.” He cried out.

  She tried to call out her name by way of an introduction, and so he could find her store if he need to, but bottle rockets burst above them as she did – and Arturo was gone.

  Robert smiled at her, laughing locals bouncing off him, crying out to one another around him as though he were a huge tree in their path.

  “Ciao bella.”

  “Hmm? You are cosmopolitan now – after such short time in the big city.”

  “When in Rome…”

  She shook his hand and they stood awkwardly for a moment.

  “The, uh, that kid – he looked familiar. Who is he?”

  “I do not know. I met him now – not that I met him. He seemed like a sweet boy. He asked if I was lost.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Fire-crackers burst behind Anna and she jumped.

  “So when does the old girl’s bones show up?” Robert put an arm around Anna.

  The second marching band was coming through; they were timed to keep almost non-stop music at every part of the procession without clashing with one another. The swarm of people bulged further down the street as it poured forth around a corner and the carriage lurched into view – the band heralding the arrival of the awesome sight, fluttering with greenbacks, the faithful surging forward to touch the holy icon. Anna enjoyed the music and the fireworks, but found the worship of the holy arc itself distasteful, perhaps even frightening. Robert, the staunchest of rationalists, could not help but be moved by the army of believers – the stirring clarinets and trombones, the white silk robes, the swinging chains and clouds of incense, the glistening cortege of the martyr pitched against the white sky and framed by the endless redbrick of the tenant houses. Not long ago, he’d have looked upon the devoted with an easy contempt – but now he looked at the awed dark eyes, the love-filled desperate eyes and felt an acute pain for them.

  He waited for the high thunder of the Roman candles to subside.

  “It’s beautiful – all these people. Look how friendly everyone is – they are like ten thousand members of the same family.”

  The carriage passed, and Robert and Anna walked alongside the procession but in the other direction until the third and final band came into view. He bought her some roasted chestnuts from a street stall; she held the bag in her hands a while for warmth then offered them to him.

  “You first.”

  The smokiness was welcoming, and she relished the heat. The energy of the band filled Robert with a kind of lightness and his face was already starting to ache from smiling.

  “Have you had lunch?”

  “Are you always thinking only of food?”

  “It’s worth thinking about. Have you? You said the procession goes into the night as well – where will it be in a couple of hours? We can have a late lunch, or early dinner, and then watch the finale.”

  Anna thought the third band was the best so they changed directions and meandered alongside it, switching between single and double file as the crowd demanded, Anna sometimes resting her hand against Robert’s back as he cleared a path for them.

  The found a street less busy than the rest and slipped away, stopping at a trattoria neither of them had tried before and checking the chalkboard specials before going in. Comely had once said to Robert; ‘Don’t trust a restaurant that doesn’t post its prices in the window’, which had struck him as funny advice from a rich man. The bread arrived and Anna stared at it, suddenly solemn. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “I miss it; home. And my family. And my husband. I was married Robert. He went mad, then ran away. He had suffered a lot in his life. He fought in the war... You do not need to know any of this, I don’t know why I so foolishly tell you. But I don’t love him now – I only miss him as a very good friend, which he was – always, right until the end. In the end, he thought it was what a friend would do – disappear. He wanted me to be free of him. Don’t say anything Robert. Don’t tell me things. There is nothing anyone can say. Now I tell you, now you know. That is all.”

  Robert ripped open the bread, poured bright green olive oil on the inside of one half and handed it to her.

  “Does this look like good oil to you?”

  “Beautiful colour – it’s a good sign.”

  He did the same to his own half and took a bite.

  “It is good. Now it’s safe for you to eat.”

  “We need wine for this ritual,” she said, and poured a glass.

  *

  It was noon and Comley stood stock still in the middle of the side walk, staring at the small strip of wall between the building’s edge and the shop window, his hands in his pockets and his scarf hanging open over his dark suit as it was not a particularly cold day.

  The ox is slow but the earth is patient.

  He stared at the graffito, written in English in a firmly Chinese neighbourhood. He stopped an old man walking past and in Cantonese asked if he knew by whom it had been written. The old man laughed, and Comely thought at first it was at his pronunciation, but the man shook his head and said it was an ancient saying – that no one could answer his question.

  “But why is it in English?”

  “The modern generation.” the man answered.

  Comely turned and faced the other side of the street; people were already enjoying the first sign of the frost’s relent, strolling and laughing. He noticed young men and women with tiny children; white-haired couples, five foot each, still holding hands; teenage boys trying awkwardly to talk to teenage girls as they bought bok-choi and spring onions at market stalls. He looked back and saw the old man vanish around the corner, realising the two of them had been the only ones on this side of the street, and now it was just him. He turned back to the graffito.

  The ox is slow but the earth is patient.

  He smiled. ‘I like that,’ he thought, and made good time for his destination. A dark-haired boy with one blind eye played the piano-accordion beautifully and in a fit of sentimentalism Comely slipped him a green likeness of Alexander Hamilton before bounding on. Rida had said ‘you know where to come if you want to visit’ but likely didn’t realise that if Comely visited a place once, he’d know how to find it for a century – from anywhere else. It was something he’d always been able to do, ‘like a homing pigeon’ he used to say when he was a lot younger, but he’d learned over time to keep a great many things about himself to himself, no matter how impressive or harmless they might seem.

  Rida lived above her business, and he’d only seen the building after dark – having walked her there after that first day on which they talked far longer than he’d planned or even imagined possible – but he recognised it easily and walked up to the large shop window, press
ing his nose gently against the glass and waiting until she looked up. Rida jumped then laughed and opened the door.

  “You’ll scare away my customers!”

  At the window he’d only watched Rida, once inside he stopped and looked around in awe.

  “It’s a record store. You sell records. You had the shutters closed but I can’t believe I did not notice the sign the last time I was here… That is fantastic.” He was genuinely impressed. “Gramophones too, and wireless sets?”

  She walked ahead of him, keeping an eye on the two young boys in the store.

  “They never buy anything,” she whispered, “but they seem to be good kids… Yes, gramophones too, and wireless sets – radios to some.”

  The store was small but well organised; making the very most of the available space.

  “You’re a visionary” he said genuinely. “One day – this will be the biggest businesses around. Have you heard about television?”

  She stopped and turned to face him, the two boys looking up as well.

  “Tele-vision?”

  Comely turned to the boys.

  “About ten years ago, a scientist built a machine that shows images – like a movie – but on a small screen, without a projector. I’m not exactly sure how it works, but the screen uses a whole lot of tiny tiny lights that glow in different colours – to make a picture. And the lights change very very quickly so the picture looks like it is moving.”

  The eyes of the boys went wide. Rida, shaking her head but smiling, slipped behind the cash register and leaned on it with one hand.

  “You’re making that up, mister,” the older of the two said.

  “Do you know what a tapestry is? Different coloured threads knitted through a net – a whole bunch of tiny holes – so different dots of colour come together to form a picture. Now imagine that instead of small loops of thread you have little lights that can change colour extraordinarily fast – in a way that makes the picture move. Maybe I don’t have the mechanics right, but trust me – it works a bit like a… (he turned to Rida)… a radio (then back to the boys)… in that the pictures are broadcast to the television and then play on the screen. With sound too. Not many people have them, in fact, hardly anyone – just some very rich people.”

  Rida crossed her arms.

  “You know, I think I read something about that a while ago – but nothing since. What’s happening with it?”

  “Economics. Until someone realises they can make a lot of money out of it, it won’t go into mass production. I tell you what though – when someone figures out how to combine it with music; they’ll make a fortune.” He rubbed his hands together.

  Rida raised an eyebrow.

  “Cooking something up? Some scheme?”

  “Not my area of expertise I’m afraid. More suited to these young music aficionados.”

  She smiled at the two boys who had gone back to rifling through her stock

  “They’re a bit young aren’t they? That might take a few years.” She said quietly.

  “The ox is slow, but the earth is patient.”

  “You been reading fortune cookies?”

  “Barbarian! When these two are finished do you want to come back with me to China Town and get some lunch?”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t go that far – I have to eat lunch here (she held up a sandwich wrapped in paper), and stay open… There’s a whole heap of offices around here and the girls from the typing pools are some of my best customers during their lunch breaks.”

  “I’ve always enjoyed typing to music. What do they buy mostly?”

  “You know, they love swing. Sometimes jazz, for the intellectuals among them, but mostly swing – they practice dancing at home with each other.”

  “I hope they keep the gramophone on a steady table.”

  The boys were eavesdropping but it didn’t trouble Rida or Comely.

  “I’ll go get you something better than a sandwich for lunch. What would you like?”

  “Come on – do you want some of this sandwich? Look at the size of it. This could choke a pig.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if the necessity arises. You put that sandwich in your icebox and I’ll be back in no time at all.”

  He slipped out of the door without a further word, moving fast – faster than Rida expected and before she could say anything. She marvelled, on reflection, at the way he’d opened the door and virtually vanished without evening ringing the bell.

  True to his word Comely arrived within the half-hour to find the boys gone and Rida dealing with a half-dozen women aged eighteen to twenty-two at the most.

  When did adults become so young? Comely wondered, troubled. He carried what appeared to be a large casserole pot wrapped in a tea-towel and stood beside Rida at the cash register. The customers looked at him and the commerce ground to a halt.

  “How long do you have for lunch?” he asked.

  “Me?” The first woman asked, mildly flattered and a little embarrassed.

  “All of you.”

  “Oh,” she went red. There was a quick chatter and they chorused “twenty minutes”.

  Comely contemplated the turned to Rida.

  “How much do the records they’re holding cost?”

  Rida had already calculated how much each woman owed so the answer was easy. Comely put down the pot and pulled the exact sum from his pocket.

  “The records are on me today – now go get yourself something nice to eat and relax for a bit – you’ve earned it.”

  Disbelieving, the women looked to Rida who threw her hands up and then nodded – to which they chirped their thanks and flew out.

  Rida watched Comely who followed behind them and flipped the closed sign over.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is best hot – it’s perfect right now and there was not a moment to spare.”

  He pulled cutlery from his other pocket and Rida burst out laughing.

  “I have no plates though,” he confessed.

  “Crazy. We can just eat out of the dish, am I right?”

  Part of him agreed it was lunacy; the madness was caring as much as he already did about an incomplete stranger. He put this disquieting thought aside, which was easy –before Rida, troubles blew away as leaves in a gale.

  * * *

  Shanks and The Wretch stood sober and bright in the door way of the soup kitchen, hands in pockets and smiling. The Wretch even tipped his hat to a stone-faced lady with no sense of graciousness, and then to one who did and so smiled politely. Fed, warm for the time being and uncharacteristically focussed – they almost skipped out into the street and made their way past a series of familiar faces. This was their home, if anywhere was, and they always made a point of being sober on Sunday; impressions count and dignity is the last thing pried from the hands of the destitute, if it ever is pried. Between them they rarely had two dollars to their name, but they walked tall and were neither insolent nor obsequious to any man.

  They had work today; a very simple task that would be rewarded handsomely – and it had come like manna from heaven. The duo had sheltered in a particularly narrow alleyway alongside a tenement recently after The Wretch had seen a huge abandoned wooden case sitting in it – with barely a few inches space from the walls on either side – large enough for two men to huddle within and still containing a not inconsiderable length of sack cloth which put to good use did much to insulate them. It was a miraculous find and the good fortune did not end there. The morning traffic, slight in that particular back street but enough to rouse the men, brought with it an employee of a new near neighbour – who rather than cursing and herding Shanks and The Wretch away, something to which they had become accustomed when they experimented with keeping the company of those who did not know them, asked them if they could return at the same time in five days – completely sober – for less than an hour’s work which would net them the princely sum of ten dollars. This coin
cided perfectly with their Sunday policy so it made the double blessing ideally tailored to them. The man told them that if he failed to appear they could leave a message for “Hoss” with the janitor at number seventeen.

  They’d remembered, or to be precise Shanks had remembered – as he did almost all things, and returned to the lane, where after a short wait Hoss emerged from a narrow red-brick building two doors down and approached them. He was the plainest man imaginable; so much so that Shanks, with his still-formidable memory, did not recognise him until he was within ten paces, and The Wretch until he began to speak. His hair was a wilted yellow at best and in most light simply off-white, dying out from under his crammed-down brown hat. His skin neither white nor pink, his eyes a colour people forgot after five seconds and his lips two ghosts cowering under an unobtrusive nose. His suit, dark brown for the most part, appeared to have been slept in for days on end and his shirt had gotten lost somewhere between tan and grey. At the first encounter with Hoss the duo had been too bleary to record an impression had there been one, but now they had the wherewithal to note he did not make one under any circumstances. ‘We are as poor as poor can get,’ Shanks thought. ‘But we have some kind of presence.’

  “You know the chess players in the park?”

  “China Town?” The Wretch did the talking, which was unusual for them.

  “Did I say ma-jong? Chess – in Central Park.” His voice was as lifeless as his face, betraying not even a hint of annoyance.

  “Sure, who doesn’t?”

  Hoss handed Shanks a parcel. It was heavier than he expected and he wondered why it had been tightly wrapped in so much white paper; it felt like at least twenty sheets.

  “Go there now and wait, both of you together – holding the parcel in your hands. Both of you, not just one - a man will approach you and say ‘you remembered my birthday’ and you give him the parcel. That’s all.”

  “What if some comedian says that to us out of the blue for a laugh and we give it to the wrong guy?” Shanks couldn’t help himself.