Her eyes opened. They were beautiful again. Bright calm blue.
“I knew it would be you,” she said.
Then she closed her eyes. Her lips were parched. Yellow spittle had caked at the left corner of her mouth. I took a cloth and washed it away. I cleaned her face, hands and throat. I took another cloth and squeezed a bit of water on her tongue. Then a little more. I wet her lips. I straightened her hair. I heard the women laughing through the sheets that separated us.
“Betty, Betty, Betty. Please, I want you to drink some water, just a sip of water, not too much, just a sip.”
She didn’t respond. I tried for ten minutes. Nothing.
More spittle formed at her mouth. I wiped it away.
Then I got up and pulled the drop sheet back. I stared at the three women.
I walked out and spoke to the nurse at the desk.
“Listen, why isn’t anything being done for that woman in 45-c? Betty Williams.”
“We’re doing all we can, sir.”
“But there’s nobody there.”
“We make our regular rounds.”
“But where are the doctors? I don’t see any doctors.”
“The doctor has seen her, sir.”
“Why do you just let her lay there?”
“We’ve done all we can, sir.”
“SIR! SIR! SIR! FORGET THAT ‘SIR’ STUFF, WILL YOU? I’ll bet if that were the president or governor or mayor or some rich son of a bitch, there would be doctors all over that room doing something! Why do you just let them die? What’s the sin in being poor?”
“I’ve told you, sir, that we’ve done ALL we can.”
“I’ll be back in two hours.”
“Are you her husband?”
“I used to be her common-law husband.”
“May we have your name and phone number?”
I gave her that, then hurried out.
The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove along in his new Mercedes-Benz. I had traced him down with the help of a slip of paper with the address of his father-in-law on it. Two long distance calls and I had him. By the time he had driven in, his mother was dead. She died while I was making the phone calls. The kid, Larry, had never fit into the society thing. He had a habit of stealing cars from friends, but between the friends and the judge he managed to get off. Then the army got him, and somehow he got into a training program and when he got out he walked into a good-paying job. That’s when he stopped seeing his mother, when he got that good job.
“Where’s your sister?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“This is a fine car. I can’t even hear the engine.”
Larry smiled. He liked that.
There were just three of us going to the funeral: son, lover and the subnormal sister of the owner of the hotel. Her name was Marcia. Marcia never said anything. She just sat around with this inane smile on her lips. Her skin was white as enamel. She had a mop of dead yellow hair and a hat that would not fit. Marcia had been sent by the owner in her place. The owner had to watch the hotel.
Of course, I had a very bad hangover. We stopped for coffee.
Already there had been trouble with the funeral. Larry had had an argument with the Catholic priest. There was some doubt that Betty was a true Catholic. The priest didn’t want to do the service. Finally it was decided that he would do half a service. Well, half a service was better than none.
We even had trouble with the flowers. I had bought a wreath of roses, mixed roses, and they had been worked into a wreath. The flower shop spent an afternoon making it. The lady in the flower shop had known Betty. They had drank together a few years earlier when Betty and I had the house and dog. Delsie, her name was. I had always wanted to get into Delsie’s pants but I never made it.
Delsie had phoned me. “Hank, what’s the matter with those bastards?”
“Which bastards?”
“Those guys at the mortuary.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I sent the boy in the truck to deliver your wreath and they didn’t want to let him in. They said they were closed. You know, that’s a long drive up there.”
“Yeah, Delsie?”
“So finally they let the boy put the flowers inside the door but they wouldn’t let him put them in the refrigerator. So the boy had to leave them inside the door. What the hell’s wrong with those people?”
“I don’t know. What the hell’s wrong with people everywhere?”
“I won’t be able to be at the funeral. Are you all right, Hank?”
“Why don’t you come by and console me?”
“I’d have to bring Paul.”
Paul was her husband.
“Forget it.”
So there we were on our way to half a funeral.
Larry looked up from his coffee. “I’ll write you about a headstone later. I don’t have any more money now.”
“All right,” I said.
Larry paid for the coffees, then we went out and climbed into the Mercedes-Benz.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
“What is it?” asked Larry.
“I think we forgot something.”
I walked back into the cafe.
“Marcia.”
She was still sitting at the table.
“We’re leaving now, Marcia.”
She got up and followed me out.
—POST OFFICE
For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:—
I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak
to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know:
her dress upon my arm:
but
they will not
give her back to me.
for Jane
225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
I Taste the Ashes of Your Death
the blossoms shake
sudden water
down my sleeve,
sudden water
cool and clean
as snow—
as the stem-sharp
swords
go in
against your breast
and the sweet wild
rocks
leap over
and
lock us in.
Then I developed a new system at the racetrack. I pulled in $3,000 in a month and a half while only going to the track two or three times a week
. I began to dream. I saw a little house down by the sea. I saw myself in fine clothing, calm, getting up mornings, getting into my imported car, making the slow easy drive to the track. I saw leisurely
everything
at once
almost alike,
the horses at peace with
each other
before the drunken war
and I am under the grandstand
feeling for
cigarettes
settling for coffee,
then the horses walk by
taking their little men
away—
it is funereal and graceful
and glad
like the opening
of flowers.
Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days’ leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and the action. It’s not a new story about how women descend upon a man. You think you have space to breathe, then you look up and there’s another one. A few days after returning to work, there was another one. Fay. Fay had grey hair and always dressed in black. She said she was protesting the war. But if Fay wanted to protest the war, that was all right with me. She was a writer of some sort and went to a couple of writers’ workshops. She had ideas about Saving the World. If she could Save it for me, that would be all right too. She had been living off alimony checks from a former husband—they had had three children—and her mother also sent money now and then. Fay had not had more than one or two jobs in her life.
Meanwhile Janko had a new load of bullshit. He sent me home each morning with my head aching. At the time I was getting numerous trafsteak dinners, preceded and followed by good chilled drinks in colored glasses. The big tip. The cigar. And women as you wanted them. It’s easy to fall into this kind of thinking when men handed you large bills at the cashier’s window. When in one six furlong race, say in a minute and nine seconds, you make a month’s pay.
So I stood in the tour superintendent’s office. There he was behind his desk. I had a cigar in my mouth and whiskey on my breath. I felt like money. I looked like money.
“Mr. Winters,” I said, “the post office has treated me well. But I have outside business interests that simply must be taken care of. If you can’t give me a leave of absence, I must resign.”
“Didn’t I give you a leave of absence earlier in the year, Chinaski?”
“No, Mr. Winters, you turned down my request for a leave of absence. This time there can’t be any turndown. Or I will resign.”
“All right, fill out the form and I’ll sign it. But I can only give you 90 working days off.”
“I’ll take ’em,” I said, exhaling a long trail of blue smoke from my expensive cigar.
—POST OFFICE
no. 6
I’ll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,
the wind twirling out
small wrens from
the upper grandstand roof,
the jocks coming out
for a middle race
silent
and the easy rain making
fic citations. It seemed that every time I looked into the rear view mirror there were the red lights. A squad car or a bike.
I got to my place late one night. I was really beat. Getting that key out and into the door was about the last of me. I walked into the bedroom and there was Fay in bed reading The New Yorker and eating chocolates. She didn’t even say hello.
I walked into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There was nothing in the refrigerator. I decided to pour myself a glass of water. I walked to the sink. It was stopped-up with garbage. Fay liked to save empty jars and jar lids. The dirty dishes filled half the sink and on top of the water, along with a few paper plates, floated these jars and jar lids.
I walked back into the bedroom just as Fay was putting a chocolate in her mouth.
“Look, Fay,” I said, “I know you want to save the world. But can’t you start in the kitchen?”
“Kitchens aren’t important,” she said.
It was difficult to hit a woman with grey hair so I just went into the bathroom and let the water run into the tub. A burning bath might cool the nerves. When the tub was full I was afraid to get into it. My sore body had, by then, stiffened to such an extent that I was afraid I might drown in there.
I went into the front room and after an effort I managed to get out of my shirt, pants, shoes, stockings. I walked into the bedroom and climbed into bed next to Fay. I couldn’t get settled. Every time I moved, it cost me.
The only time you are alone, Chinaski, I thought, is when you are driving to work or driving back.
I finally worked my way to a position on my stomach. I ached all over. Soon I’d be back on the job. If I could manage to sleep, it would help. Every now and then I could hear a page turn, the sound of chocolates being eaten. It had been one of her writers’ workshop nights. If she would only turn out the lights.
“How was the workshop?” I asked from my belly.
“I’m worried about Robby.”
“Oh,” I asked, “what’s wrong?”
Robby was a guy nearing 40 who had lived with his mother all his life. All he wrote, I was told, were terribly funny stories about the Catholic Church. Robby really laid it to the Catholics. The magazines just weren’t ready for Robby, although he had been printed once in a Canadian journal. I had seen Robby once on one of my nights off. I drove Fay up to this mansion where they all read their stuff to each other. “Oh! There’s Robby!” Fay had said, “he writes these very funny stories about the Catholic Church!”
She had pointed. Robby had his back to us. His ass was wide and big and soft; it hung in his slacks. Can’t they see that? I thought.
“Won’t you come in?” Fay had asked.
“Maybe next week …”
Fay put another chocolate into her mouth.
“Robby’s worried. He lost his job on the delivery truck. He says he can’t write without a job. He needs a feeling of security. He says he won’t be able to write until he finds another job.”
“Oh hell,” I said, “I can get him another job.”
“Where? How?”
“They are hiring down at the post office, right and left. The pay’s not bad.”
“THE POST OFFICE! ROBBY’S TOO SENSITIVE TO WORK AT THE POST OFFICE!”
“Sorry,” I said, “thought it was worth a try. Good night.”
Fay didn’t answer me. She was angry.
—POST OFFICE
His Wife, The Painter
There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too.
“I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work.”
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he
fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like
a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.
He feels the hatred and discard of the world, sharper than
his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he
self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his
hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.
Daumier. Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.)
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
“She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.”
“What is it? A love affair?”
“Silly. I can’t love a woman. Besides, she’s pregnant.”
I can paint—a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a
lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
/>
and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy …
men drive cars and paint their houses,
but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
Paris, Louvre.
“I must write Kaiser, though I think he’s a homosexual.”
“Are you still reading Freud?”
“Page 299.”
She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h’ve
time and the dog.
About church: the trouble with a mask is it
never changes.
So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the
wind like the end of a tunnel.
He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some
segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.
When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches
warmer and more blood-real than the dove.
Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.
He burned away in sleep.
Fay was pregnant. But it didn’t change her and it didn’t change the post office either.
The same clerks did all the work while the miscellaneous crew stood around and argued about sports. They were all big black dudes—built like professional wrestlers. Whenever a new one came into the service he was tossed into the miscellaneous crew. This kept them from murdering the supervisors. If the miscellaneous crew had a supervisor you never saw him. The crew brought in truckloads of mail that arrived via freight elevator. This was a five minute on the hour job. Sometimes they counted the mail, or pretended to. They looked very calm and intellectual, making their counts with long pencils behind one ear. But most of the time they argued the sports scene violently. They were all experts—they read the same sports writers.