Archive for: Fiction

A Symphonic Afternoon
by Irving A. Greenfield

Mario’s fourth epiphany occurred in Avery Fisher Hall. He came into Manhattan from Fairfield, Connecticut, to attend a 2 o’clock performance of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the featured soloist, a young Russian violinist, who would play Dvorak’s Violin Concerto.

Mario bought a ticket for the cheapest seat—a third tier box seat—though he readily could have afforded to buy a center orchestra seat. But he was there to immerse himself in the music and not be distracted by the conductor’s bouncing movements. In his opinion, having a conductor was just another example of showmanship and had nothing to do with the music.

Though there was an elevator to the third tier, Mario slowly climbed the marble steps. He told himself it was good for his heart, and therefore worth enduring the pain in his arthritic knees and hip joints.

Settled in his seat, Mario laid his coat neatly over his lap, took out his white metal frame glasses and began to read the program notes. He read carefully. None of the three pieces to be played were familiar. In addition to the Violin Concerto, there was another Dvorak composition, the “Overture” to The Devil and Kate, and Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony, the Little Russian.

When he finished reading the program notes, Mario replaced his glasses in the outside breast pocket of his brown tweed jacket; and the folded program went into the inside breast pocket to show Anya, his wife. But he knew that she wouldn’t even bother to feign an interest in how he spent the afternoon. Rather than think about Anya and become upset, he gave his attention to what was happening in the concert hall. A French horn player and a trombonist tuned their instruments. Two violinists began to bow.

Suddenly the woman on his left said, “Isn’t it exciting to see and hear such a talent?”

He was about to answer, because the soloist will be on the conductor’s left, we will not see him. That would have been an accurate statement. But instead, he smiled and said, “Certainly to hear him.” Though it was half an answer, it seemed to satisfy her.

More of the players drifted to their places. The timpanist tuned his drums.

Mario’s attention was again diverted by the woman next to him. She said, “I have a subscription. I spent the morning in the museum and come here in the afternoon. Friday is my culture day,” she laughed.

Because it was an open invitation to engage in conversation and the woman seemed to be so jovial, Mario answered. “I’m in the city for the concert,” he said looking at her. She had gray hair done up in a bun, tortoise frame eyeglasses and wore a white jacket with a green sweater under it, and black slacks. In his opinion, carelessness not fit for a concert hall. He, on the other hand was fittingly dressed for the occasion: wearing a white shirt, a Brown tie and tan slacks and a brown Harris Tweed jacket, perfect attire for the afternoon event.

“I live within walking distance,” she said.

“I don’t think I could take the city on a full-time basis,” Mario responded. “I’m always thankful when I return home.”

Her round face became pensive, and several moments passed before she said, “I like the country, especially the seashore. From time to time, I go to Cape Cod or Sag Harbor. I’ve done paintings of each of those places. But the city—well, it throbs and I like the throb.”

Out of courtesy, he asked, “Should I know your work?”

She laughed, “I’m just an amateur painter with a means to indulge my amateurism.”

He was going to say she was in an enviable position. But he was in one too. He had been left a considerable sum of money by his father and received a substantial monthly pension check from the university where he had taught philosophy for thirty years.

“Painting provides me with another language, a way of expressing myself,” she said.

It was the way she said it—the self-congratulatory tone that immediately rankled him.

During his thirty years of teaching, he had heard and had read so much about self-expression that he had come to believe it was just another excuse a certain type of person would use to avoid responsibility either for an act of omission or commission. He wondered which of the two it was in her case.

“I’m not very good, but I have a great deal of fun being not very good,” she said with a smile.

Mario wanted to end the conversation before the woman said something that would disturb him. At sixty-six he was easily disturbed. Luckily the house lights dimmed, and there was a burst of applause for the concertmaster who began tuning the orchestra.

“Enjoy,” the woman said.

Mario managed a smile.

The conductor came on stage, and the applause was louder than it had been a few moments before and lasted longer. Eventually the applause subsided. A heavy silence filled the hall broken by several staccato coughs. Then, the music began.

The first selection, the overture to The Devil and Kate, didn’t last long enough to impress Mario. But the audience applauded wildly. The conductor took his customary walk offstage, returned and left again for several minutes while the stagehands rearranged the chairs to accommodate the additional instrumentalists for the Violin Concerto.

“The last piece had such lovely dance music,” the woman next to him said. “You could just feel the youthful exuberance.”

“Perhaps that youthful exuberance was a youthful lack of ability,” Mario suggested. “And to cover, if you will, to hide what he lacked the talent to express.”

The woman looked as if she were about to answer; but another burst of applause signaled the arrival of the conductor and the soloist.

The house became quiet and the music started.

Closing his eyes, Mario listened intently. The soloist played deftly and with emotional involvement. The music was intricate, and Mario found himself drifting away from it. Anya was the cause. She was his third wife. Lily was his first. He had been married to her for twenty-three years, long enough for his son, Paul, to graduate from college. He had endured almost a quarter of a century of marital and agony. He would have ended it sooner; but he not only had a son to consider, he also at that time had been a practicing Catholic.

The marriage ended without any explosion, not even a whimper. On a Friday afternoon he walked into the kitchen and said, “I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.” Lily didn’t even bother to look up from whatever she was doing, washing her hands, Mario remembered.

Four years later, Mario married a former student of his, Ellie. The marriage lasted two years. The woman was pathologically jealous; and he was guiltless of any marital indiscretion.

Shortly after his divorce from Ellie, his father died. His mother had died while he had been married to Lily. With a sizable inheritance from both his parents, he no longer had to scrape by on a professor’s salary out of which he had to pay two alimonies. His new status had enabled him to consider marriage again. By this time, he had met and had fallen in love with Anya, an Indian woman.

Of his three wives, Anya was the most beautiful and twenty-three years younger than he. She had a classic Indian face, black flashing eyes, waist-long, black hair that at times seemed to be iridescent, and exquisitely proportioned body. Her beauty captivated him; held him spellbound. Looking at her nude body not only gave him erotic pleasure but also artistic delight. Her breasts were high in fall with large pink nipples. Her ivory colored skin had a unique scent, especially when she oiled it with body lotion. And, unlike his supremely first wife, she thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of sexual intimacy.

Mario frowned; and the flow of the music caught him again. But the frown lingered. His own sexual needs and her ability—obviously her desire to fulfill them waned as he became more cognizant of the intellectual disparity between them, or so it seemed. But in truth he was aware of the difference between them before they married. She was an ordinary woman with no more than a secondary education while he had a doctorate in philosophy and taught aspects of it, especially those connected with Platonism, at the University. He hoped his overwhelming feelings for her would compensate for her lack of intellectual maturity. Even with this hope for their future, he came close to cancelling the marriage, but couldn’t see any way to do it and continue to maintain his dignity.

The sudden eruption of applause wrenched Mario away from his thoughts and back into the concert hall.

“Wasn’t that wonderful?” The woman next to him asked.

“Yes, quite spectacular,” Mario answered.

“It’s soulful music,” she said.

“Soulful?”

She laughed. “You know—the longing that is expressed. Something just beyond reach.”

Mario cocked his head to the left and raised his eyebrows.

“Haven’t you ever had that feeling that—you know something is out there but you can’t grasp it? I feel that way about my painting. Even with my dabbling, I feel I could do something… something better. But it’s not within my grasp.”

Mario nodded gravely. He understood what she said. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.” His tone of voice matched his considered nod.

The conductor returned for the last number on the program, The Little Russian Symphony.

Mario thought about the woman’s words. They expressed something about his own ideas about art, but they also expressed his concept of love—the passion, the sexuality, and the intellectual ties between a man and woman. He knew his problem: he wanted to be loved absolutely; and none of the women he married were capable of that kind of absolutism. Lily was passionless. Ellie’s accusations killed his desire. Though Anya had the passion, but she mistook soap opera reality for REALITY never bothering to think about those things that he spent his life thinking about. Once he asked her what she thought about good and evil; and she answered, “They exist.” He waited for some sort of development, a follow-up. But none came. “Why do they exist?” he pushed.

Anya shrugged. With her eyes glued to whatever nonsense she was watching on the TV she said, “Does it really matter?”

Mario wanted to scream, Of course it matters. It matters very much. But he restrained himself and walked out of the room.

Suddenly Mario sensed the end of one of the symphonies’ movements was coming. But because he had not been following the music, he had no idea which one it would be.

The music’s last three chords sounded and the applause exploded.

To Mario surprise the symphony had ended.

“What a delightful afternoon!” The woman next to him said; and she clapped vigorously each of three times the conductor reappeared on the stage.

The applause subsided. The house lights came up; and the people began to gather up their coats and move into the aisle.

Mario followed the woman.

When they reached the corridor behind the box, she said, “It was a pleasure to speak to you.” She held out her hand. “My name is Florence Winter, but my friends call me Flo.”

Mario took her hand and shook it. “The pleasure was mine,” he responded “I’m Dr. Mario Fusco.”

“A medical doctor?” She asked.

“To my father’s disappointment, only a Dr. of philosophy,” he answered. They were still holding hands, and he liked the feel of her hand in his.

“I’m impressed with anyone who has the stamina to get any kind of doctoral degree,” she said.

Mario nodded and released her hand.

“Will you be here next week?” She asked looking at him as they walk toward the stairs.

Mario hesitated looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, and with a smile, he answered: “Yes, I think I will.”

Fata morgana in Amsterdam
by Raouf Mousaad Basta

It was after two months in the Camp: the political refugee camp on this island, which is not sure of its name. Then at last I received an invitation from my lawyer to discuss my case.

My case is simple, but my lawyer thinks it is not easy. (I met her only once before. She had been appointed by some ministry.) In this country they think many things are not easy.

However, I told her—my lawyer—“madame lawyer, I do not care about the result of the trial. I care about one thing: going back.”

She asked: “Back where?”

I said: “Back to the desert.”

Of course, she—like all people here—wants to find logical reasons for human behavior. Logical! From the beginning ‘they’ did not know what to do with me. I had come to ask justice but they arrested me to subject me to their own justice.

I told them: “Sorry to have come without visa, just let me go back” but they said: “Sorry. You cannot go back till we subject you to our justice. Then you can go back.”

And so on and so on. It just means they want to punish me.

I know also she wants to wash her hands off me and off my case. I do not blame her. She told me in our first meeting in her expensive office at one of the canals, that my case confused her. Jokingly she said that. I asked her why. She said because I challenged the basis of her convictions as a lawyer. I did not understand it but…I did not comment. I know now that I made a mistake.

*******

If you ask me now what mistake and why this is happening, I can tell you in length the whole story of the journey, which became more important and even more interesting than the reason of the journey itself.

I have no special likening or hatred for the cities and countries and refugee camps I passed through asking justice. They are just places which belong to other people different from me in everything: color of skin, language, habits, even the way they laugh and of course the climate and food of these places.

However, in spite of all that or perhaps because of all that I do not care much about these places, countries, people, language, food, climate, etcetera, because I know I am not going to stay here and live in a small concrete place like my cousin.

And, by the way, I did not come here to look for work or to live or even to visit my cousin who has a shop in Amsterdam. The mistake I mentioned before, was that I came looking for a mirage in concrete buildings around people who have their own way of justice.

*****

For a person like me, born in a tent in the desert with lots of space around, there are many ways of justice. For instance if a camel enters the small farm of my aunt Fatima we do not punch the camel, we give Fatima something instead .But If the camel insists on visiting her farm, we give her the camel and she is free to do what she likes with it. Most probably, she will let him go on eating.

This land here, small and with watery grey rainy mornings, long dark rainy nights, gives me uneasy feelings about myself and the idea of asking help and justice. I was born near the mountain on top of which, according to the popular belief, God spoke to Moses when Moses and his people were looking for refuge. Everybody knows that the desert is the land of refuge.

When somebody comes to us to ask for help and refuge we do not put him in prison (we do not even have one … although the government has many), but we put him in the guest tent, offer him food and water, and after three days we would go to him and ask him what he wants.

My family earned their money and reputation by giving refuge to people and by leading believers to the top of the Mountain, either by mules or by foot (for those who want to suffer more than others). When I was very young, I used to climb the Mountain, waiting for the voice of God to speak to me, because I was stuttering like Moses. I grew out of stuttering and wishing to hear voices from the Mountain.

But then when I became fifty-six, I had to leave the Mountain, the tent, my family and the desert, traveling to other countries, asking for justice, or, because I thought that I should fight for justice I had to travel, leaving behind me the interrogations, torture (and possible death).

But let me tell the story slowly, in my old way of telling things, not in the new quick way people want to hear things from someone like me “please can you hurry up, we do not have all the time in the world ” smiling politely (or so they think), to show “no offence intended”. I am not sure why, as they spend a lot of time sitting in the cafés and bars waiting for someone to speak to them.

However, let me concentrate. Some three years ago, when my youngest daughter was born, I became the leader of my tribe after my father’s death. I inherited it, as eldest son. I got his camels, (and his Japanese four-wheel drive), his sword (there were also modern weapons) and a large piece of land in the desert, which is also part of the common heritage of the tribe.

This land is the prettiest scenery between the Mountain and the sea. It is near the place in the red sea where Moses and his tribe are believed to have crossed when fleeing from the Pharaoh.

I was born in this land, as was my father and his father and all my ancestors.

This piece of land has a history of hiding people fleeing injustice. There are places where one could live in peace and listen to stories beside the fire, where nobody can find you if you do not want to be found.

And, lots of mirages.

Here is the problem I mentioned in the beginning, which started with our mirages. People who do not live in the desert know nothing about mirages, which turn slowly – if you believe and have patience – to things with which one can play.

It would become what you believed you saw.

Are you patient now so I will explain?

They turned to playful things to play with us, the people of the desert. Why? Because they are bored… When you live in the desert you have to do lots of things just to survive, but if you are sure of your survival like the mirages are, you do not have anything to do. They are just there.

That’s how they get bored.

If you having nothing to do, then you are bored…

Then you want to play or you want to kill.

However, because we, the people of the desert, know mirages well enough, we only let them play with us and do not let them kill us.

They—and we—enjoy having games, tricks, and the fun of playing together games and tricks. The funniest game is what we desert people call “catching Mirages”.

The desert is like human beings, she loves tricks and games. She also behaves often like them: angry, moody, deceiving, loving.

Some time self-pity like us.

I could not tell my lawyer or the investigator of the minister of justice about this thing of the desert’s self-pity. Or games. They would think I am crazy. I told them about other things, which are part of reason.

Some of the reasons are like this: Some rich tourist company from across the sea wanted to take the common land of the tribe and build hotels and swimming pools (the sea is so near!) but I refused to sell it for any price.

The other reason that the whole tribe does not want to sell: this land is full of mirage games. I played here “mirage catching” and now my children and their children are playing here.

Even some other tribes ask permission to play mirage catch on our land. We make it in to a great festival.

The games are like this: We all know the perfect time for the mirages to appear. .. So we wait. They always come in time… and than begin to call us to play with them ….One would say, “I see the lost camel of so and so … he is walking beside the tent of so and so.” Somebody else would say “no, it is not the camel you are seeing… I am seeing the four-wheel drive of my brother, which has been stolen. I see it in the oasis of so and so.”

The players divide themselves into two teams. The players of the first team agree with the person leading their team. The second team agrees with the second person. Then we, the elders of the tribe, agree between each other which team should win.

The winner must slaughter a goat or two and offer it to the losers so they can take the best parts and then we all sit together and eat.

Then this tourist company came and with them the money they offered us for the land. Of course, the news spread across the desert and all tribes were angry. I felt that the desert became angry and more hostile and the water in the secret places was disappearing. Palm trees refused to give dates in their time. The desert could hear and listened like human beings.

I asked the elders for a meeting to discuss what was happening. The meeting went on for days. We all agreed not to sell.

*****

This decision was received badly by the tourist company and by the police officers in the desert because they knew how much allowance the company would give them to close their eyes for collecting corals from the sea, or when the tourists go diving in the forbidden areas or shooting eagles.

It happened suddenly: they came with guns and many soldiers to dismiss us from the land of the tribe which belonged to us for thousands of years. They said we do not have papers to prove the ownership of the land. True, we do not have silly papers, because simply our ancestors came here before they came to the valley.

What happened later is a sad and long story; I am not going to bother you with it. The elders of the tribes asked me to travel to the other side of the world and put our complaints in front of the chiefs of the tribes of the world.

So I went to the embassy of the land of America where the nations sit and listen to complaints. They refused to give me visa and laughed at me. They told the local authorities about me.

This is why I fled because they wanted to arrest me.

However, I knew people who take money and help other people to travel. My cousin in Amsterdam said: why go to America… come here to this land because there is a court to do justice around the world. So I decided to go to see and speak with my cousin who lives in the city of Amsterdam city he has a big restaurant. He had met a woman from this country some years ago when she came to climb the Mountain and she took him back with her.

Only once he came back to visit his mother and he told us fantastic stories about this country of his wife and how he eats a lot of halal meat every day, because his mother was worried that he was not eating halal meat.

He told us stories about the important people who came to his restaurant and ask his advice about many things. He said these people like justice so much that they make a special court to put the bad people in front of judges, even if they are big kings or high police officers.

Why I was been chosen to travel? Because I know the tongs of the other two countries at the other side of the sea. I learned their tongs when I used to trade in the town near by the place where tourists come to climb the Mountain.

The Tourist Company did not like that either, so they send somebody after me to put obstacles in front of me, so I would not be able to speak to the court. And of course I did not get visa from their embassy. I was smuggled in after I paid a lot of money.

My cousin in Amsterdam has a small shop selling “Halal shwarma” not a big restaurant as he said. But never mind, he seems happy to see me. He named his shop Fata Morgana. I asked him what it meant. He smiled and told me it means Mirage. He said because he misses the mirages.

Then the police arrest me one day because I have no visa. My cousin brought a good lawyer who said that I came here to ask political refuge, although I told him and the police that I am asking only for justice and would like to return back to my tent and my desert and my mirages as soon as I finished.

*****

That is how I become a refugee in the camp. You see… if you are patient and give me time then you will get to the bottom of my story and may be find a way to help me to go to this big court. If I succeed, then I will bring justice. If not then they will send me back accompanied by soldiers to another prison in my country because the two countries consider me dangerous.

My new lawyer believes me or that is what she tells me; she is asking to meet me today to discuss the case, as she put it. My cousin advises me to drop the whole thing.

I ask him—after I agreed—if he can put me in contact with people who can smuggle me out from here and back to my tent. He looked to me as if I am crazy.

I am sitting now in his mirage shop after he came to collect me from the railway station. I smell the food he is giving to his clients… Not really nice. I ask only for coffee.

I think I would not mind much to return back to the desert or even to a prison in my land where every thing is clear… The mirage is a mirage the injustice is injustice; the prison is called prison and not a camp…

I think he began to like my idea because he looked to me and began to laugh. “People pay a lot of money to come here and you want to pay money to get out… where is the logic?” he asked.

We both laughed. I heard him speaking to some people in his phone asking about a way to smuggle me out.

Chapter X from The Other Man
(A novel written in the 1970s)
by Ronald Linder

Early Sunday morning, weary but buoyed by the fact that he might be discharged that day, Ralph shaved, preparing for the psychiatrist’s visit and his decision whether or not he would let Dr. Ralph Bouman go home. The telephone rang, and for an uncontrollable instant, he hoped it was Jeff. But Ralph realized that was weak and wishful thinking.

As the phone kept ringing, he turned off the water in the sink and thought about answering it, wondering if it was Jeff begging for a second chance. But how could a second chance get rid of Jeff’s family or his idea that the world came on a serving tray? Jeff would probably laugh at his story of the orderly he’d ditched who’d been assigned to guard him last night so Ralph didn’t “hurt himself.” Jeff had to learn they were through.

Ralph wiped his mouth and chin and picked up the phone. A familiar coaxing voice with the clink of ice cubes in a highball glass greeted him. “Ralphie – is that you?”

“Yes—Agnes.” Ralph hadn’t expected a call from his sister. They hadn’t spoken in two years.

“You have to come down right away! Dad’s had a heart attack and Mom’s going crazy. I can’t handle her. And she blames you because you weren’t here being his doctor!”

Scatching a sudden painful itch on his neck, Ralph saw blood on his fingernails. “Just wait a minute.” He tried to keep his voice low and controlled. His arms and hands dropped with a special heaviness he always felt when he talked with Agnes—those weights of anger, fear and disappointment. The older sister who should have been around and never was, when Ralph was growing up. She was a ghost who never helped with anything. For years Rob hadn’t been able to finish reading a story or sit through a movie with happy brothers and sisters or families.

Ralph was also surprised that he felt no reaction at the news to his father’s heart attack, but years of his father’s schemes and promises that never came to pass dulled his son’s senses and feelings. He didn’t believe anything his father said or did.

“Agnes—you’re calling me at the hospital. I’ve been sick myself,” Ralph said flatly.

There was a pause at the other end, then Agnes’s young, surprised voice asked slowly—“I didn’t know. I thought I was getting you at work. Are you better? Uh—what was wrong with you? Anything catchy? Agnes was always the hypochondriac.

“Just pneumonia and a coma.”

Another pause, “Then—you’re better now?”

“Yes, I hope to go home in a day or two.”

“Good Ralphie—then you’ll come down. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“You don’t need me that fast! I haven’t been to Vegas for two years…and Mom’s last letter said I was dead to her!”

“Oh, you don’t take her seriously! Remember—A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish one is the grief of his mother—.“

Ralph shook his head wearily. His sister had always been conspicuously religious, but only for her own purposes. “Please do me a big favour and don’t quote the Bible. It makes my stomach hurt, coming from you.”

“—Whoso despiseth the word shall suffer thereby. But he that feareth the commandment, shall be rewarded.”

“Agnes—I’m going to hang up!”

“Don’t do that. I’ll stop.” But you know, we don’t hold grudges. Mom and Dad need you now.”

Dizzy and angry, Ralph twirled around, just catching the edge of the bed in time to sit down. “Why do they want me around just when they need me?”

“You know, that’s not fair. They really love you.”

“Then why couldn’t Dad ever pay the bills or have food in the house?”

“Ralphie—they had a lot of hard luck.”

“Because Dad would never quit the theatre and get a real job. He always had to be the star.”

“He was a star, Ralphie, twelve shows a week, and don’t you ever forget it!”

Ralph could see Agnes sitting at a desk in the back at one of her ice cream parlours in Vegas, her young, underpaid, high school soda jerks out front scooping ice cream, making malts and shakes and stealing a little money out of the till. She had the highball glass in her hand as she read the Bible on one side of the table and How to Win at Blackjack on the other.

His father had always praised Agnes. “Such a good girl, so smart and sweet with a real future.” He hardly said anything about Ralph who’d been born thirteen years later.

“Let’s not fight,” he said. That’s all Mother ever does.”

The voice from Vegas became frantic. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Don’t you have a heart? Your father—your Dad almost died! Mom wants you here! She needs help to get back and forth to the hospital—I’ve got a business to watch!”

“So do I! Listen, Agnes, I was very sick. I almost died. I didn’t let Mother or Dad know because they’d only say I brought it on myself. That I deserved it, because I didn’t live down there with them and support them.”

“You’re ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful for what? Oh, Christ, I’m sorry you called. I was planning to go down there anyway in four or five days—God knows why. I really must be crazy, but maybe that was to convince myself one final time before I break all ties that I wouldn’t be losing anything worthwhile!”

Agnes’s voice changed from a sullen, self-pity to a bright, saleswoman’s banter. “Listen, Ralphie, if you’re interested in something new, I’m thinking of opening up another store, right on the Strip.”

Rob looked for cigarette, but saw none in the room. “I’m broke, Agnes.”

“You always say that. How can a doctor be broke?”

“It takes careful planning.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The new shiny voice went on. “Five thousand will do it.”

“I don’t have five hundred!”

“What the hell do you do with your money?”

“And what about yours, Agnes?” What about your husband and daughter? Do you have any insurance for them or do you trust your luck, like Dad did? Or do you have a son who’s a doctor who they don’t know about?”

“Don’t get nasty, Ralphie. George is still working. I don’t have to worry about him. I’m warning you…!”

“Or you’ll do what?”

“You know—!”

“What?”

“You— you and your roommate!”

“Me and my roommate what?” Agnes didn’t know that Chuck had been gone for four years.

“Oh—you know!”

Ralph remembered his fights with his family always came down to something like this—some innuendo or half statement he was supposed to carry the rest of the way—so that he’d been forced to pay his mother and father a hundred dollars a month for years to keep them quiet—to keep them from bothering Chuck—and forcing him never to be able to tell Agnes what a stinking bad, big sister she was.

And Ralph blamed them for his never having any money—because they would want it. Any savings would mean a fight. He couldn’t have money and just tell them “No,” because he’d feel too vulnerable as a queer. It was easier to say, “I don’t have it.” But he knew he’d have to learn to say “No,” or he’d find himself trapped in a net of yesses and sures and okays, with no way to escape except by taking another bottle of sleeping pills.

Talking to Agnes he felt a bone-hollowing loneliness. He looked down at a stack of books he had checked out of the hospital’s library. For years when there was no one to talk to, he lived with books. They were his mother, father, sister, friends—but Jeff showed him there could be so much more. He caught himself almost crying.

Ralph’s father and mother tried to take everything away from him. They’d been American nomads—with their midnight elopements from landlords who kept Ralph’s books hostage in hotel basements, never to be recovered. Ralph brooded over how many other families in moving-crazy America drifted from city to city with stuttering jobs and incomes. He wondered how many other men his age could never remember a home—not even a kitchen-heated tenement. He could see himself, age nine or ten, sitting in big chairs in hotel lobbies, reading—because his father and mother were upstairs “busy for awhile.” But they had taught him how to fight in a silent sneaky way. He had to battle to stay in school. His father wouldn’t have minded if Ralph had dropped out of school to get a job and “contribute to the house.”

So he fought and stayed in school—despite his father’s demeaning smiles, his mother’s angry, nagging eyes, Chuck’s putdowns—because his medical-student-lover was poor and he didn’t want Ralph to ever feel good enough to leave him.

“So, will you be here tomorrow?” Agnes asked.

“No!”

“You have to—it’s your duty!”

“Right now it’s my duty to stay alive! I told you I almost died, you bitch!”

Ralph thought of the parents who depended on him—he had a responsibility to them. They were mostly simple, trusting people who could never understand the complications of his life—but who knew if they were sick, he usually made them well. Some of Ralph’s patients had died when he had left New York because they refused to go to anyone else. The doctor who took over his practice told him. And though he’d always considered himself dispensable, always thought if he wasn’t around there would be some other doctor to take his place, there were certain patients who wouldn’t go to anyone else. He had saved lives because he was somewhere at the right time and did the right thing—if he hadn’t been there, those people would have died—and death is the only real endpoint in life that can’t be apologised for or corrected—no matter what anyone straight, gay or “family” yelled. He realized that his keeping alive meant that probably at least a few other people would live, instead of die. But if he gave in anyone longer to what he wasn’t himself, he wouldn’t want to live.

After the long pause on the phone…softly…hurt…”Ralphie—you don’t have to use dirty language.”

“You don’t understand any other way—and even then you don’t understand! Mother won’t have anything to do with me unless I give her my whole life—and father wants money—any money—from anyone—that’s Mom and Dad! God—you people make me angry!”

“If I were you, I’d come running and pray to God and your parents for forgiveness.…I can’t keep driving Mom around…she screams for her darling Ralphie!”

“Agnes—I won’t be there at all! You’ve convinced me. Thanks! The faster I forget all of you and the rotten life I had with you, the better. I’d only give Mother a heart attack—or get blamed for one anyway.”

“You have to come!”

“I’m hanging up. Tell Dad good luck!”

“How can you be such a bastard?”

“Maybe I am a bastard! Maybe that’s why the three of you are so different from me. I was born by accident—Mother told me a hundred times. Doesn’t that make me a legitimate bastard?”

“But we always treated you like one of us!”

“No you didn’t. I was a pain in the ass to all of you—then a pain in the ass who was a doctor who could do the things a doctor does. I was never a son or a brother!”

Ralph slammed down the phone, furious and guilty and lonely and for an instant, he wanted to try to ram his body through the tenth-story, wire-reinforced window.

Economy
from Book II, Chapter 3 of Out of Zion
by Robert Marswood

Surprisingly after his unnerving meeting with Joe, Brad slept soundly for the first time since he’d arrived in the San Francisco. He knew the postcard would comfort his mother, even if she thought he was at the other end of the country. In the next weeks, Brad’s guilty feelings and survival anxiety also began to dissipate and a new, genuine curiosity about the City began to grow. He started thinking about staying in California and going back to university.

By some miracle, he’d managed to flee Provo with just a five-minute warning and all he could stuff into a backpack. Now after having lost two weeks’ rent and a month’s deposit on his first shared apartment, he’d still managed to get a second, studio apartment—“roach motel” or not—for himself. And he had a steady temporary job photocopying documents—even if it was just for two more months.

In addition, he was becoming familiar with San Francisco’s unpredictably hilly streets and its changing neighbourhoods and microclimates that had him unzipping and then zipping his jacket as the sun shone and then hid suddenly behind clouds or fog as he commuted from work to his apartment.

Brad could now find his way around town without looking at a map. He automatically knew where to get off the bus, tram or Bart. And he finally realized, after watching the scores of “clones” with short hair and tight T-shirts walk under his kitchen window each hour, that by accident he had ended up in a place most gay men dreamed of living.

Brad’s escape fantasies, however, had always run geographically in the opposite direction—back East where he wanted to get a Masters degree or a PhD and then teach. He wanted to live again in some green, suburban neighbourhood similar to where he’d been born in Ohio, where the trees planted themselves, were watered by rain not artificially irrigated and grew in forests thick as broccoli tufts. As an adolescent, Brad had daily fantasies about running away from his Mormon convert family in Utah back East to his relatives. From what he’d seen, it seemed that people only got more zealous about religion and/or sex the farther West they went. Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles were proof of that.

For the first time since he’d arrived in San Francisco, however, Brad began to see the City not as an irritation or a temporary weigh station, but as his new home—even if his uncomfortable, noisy, expensive, tiny, cockroach-infested apartment could ever be compared to the two, large, detached homes with front and back yards where he’d lived in Ohio and then Utah. Brad comforted himself by remembering this apartment was safe and warm and his own. It had a long way to go, though, before he could call it comfortable.

At the moment, Brad had only two chairs “for friendship,” but no third “for company” as Thoreau had said in Walden. After three months of living in his apartment, the only other pieces of furniture were a mattress and box springs that were on the floor in his studio’s living room. The rest of the apartment was echoingly empty. Brad needed a desk, a kitchen table, a nightstand and a dresser. In desperation, he took a board out of the kitchen cupboard and put it over the bathroom sink in order have a “desk” where he could write. And the bathroom was the only room in his studio with a door that could close to shut out the constant rumble of Haight Street traffic. To shut out his loneliness and fears, Brad re-read Walden cover-to-cover as he did Emerson’s philosophical works—especially his essay on Self-Reliance and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass along with Der Zauberberg, which Brad read to keep up his German. These books were more than enough to satisfy any sudden urge he felt to open the Scriptures or get dressed and go to church, especially on quiet Sunday mornings when he seemed to be the only one awake as he ran through the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park.

And as he ran in the early morning on the weekends, Brad began to notice abandoned tables, chairs, lamps and other furniture left at street corners or along curbs. Brad guessed that these had been dumped at night by people who had left town quickly. In addition to the furniture, piles of clothes were not uncommon. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks and shoes were often left behind in a line or in a pile on the pavement. Brad wondered if their wearers had performed a striptease or been squirted out of their clothes, taken up in a sudden Rapture or abducted by aliens. And there were the abandoned boxes of personal belongings—books, stereo records, framed pictures, cigarette lighters in the shape of guns and ships, bookends—personal knickknacks that were too heavy, bulky or considered worthless.

Brad soon began to collect some of these abandoned items for his own use. And furniture and clothing that were good, but for which he had no use, he “recycled” to second-hand stores to make some extra money.

Some furniture was too bulky or heavy to carry. For that, he used a dolly his supervisor, Cathy, had been complaining about at work.

“I wish somebody from building services would come down here and get rid of this,” she said as she stumbled into it every Monday morning as she tried to hang up her coat and forgot the dolly was still there. “We don’t need this anymore to move files.”

“Don’t worry,” Brad told her. “I’ll take care of that.” And he did, putting it over his shoulder after work that day and walking right past the security guard who didn’t even look up.

He used the dolly to move a pine desk someone had painted army green that had been abandoned on the corner of Fell and Clayton. It now stood in his living room against the wall facing the kitchen.  Its pinewood was light enough that he hadn’t had to take the drawers out before he rolled it up two blocks to his apartment. The neon purple and orange, four-drawer, oak dresser that stood next to the silver steam-heat radiator across the room, however, was different. Brad had found that farther away at Cole and Judah. It was so heavy he had had to take out its drawers to make the shell light enough to roll it back to his apartment. He prayed that the drawers would still be there when he got back. And by some miracle, they were. Less interesting finds were a saggy, six-shelved, cherry bookcase that was missing its back. It had been abandoned, for good reason, at Oak and Masonic. Brad brought it home and wedged tall books between the shelves to straighten them out. He also had a piece of pegboard cut at the Haight Street hardware store that he nailed to the bookshelf’s frame to close up the back and add support.

On the corner of Ashbury and Page, Brad found a blond-wood telephone table. He used it as a nightstand on top of which was a digital AM/FM alarm clock, the only new purchase he’d made for his apartment. On the floor in the alcove of the three bay windows, was a black, plastic stereo record player. Next to it was a stack of Longines Symphonette Society recordings of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and ballet music. Brad had found all of these things in a box left out on the curb at Cole and Page with a sign that said: “Take What You Need.” Brad guessed that since most people played music from cassette tapes or CDs, no one had wanted the plastic ’60s portable stereo and worn classical records. The stereo still worked, though the scratches on the records and the hiss from the old needle spoiled the quiet passages. And in the kitchen in front of the windows and next to the refrigerator was a maple table that had a deeply scratched top and two broken legs. Brad had glued and wire-trussed the legs back together and covered the scratched top with a red-and-white checkered restaurant tablecloth he’d found sticking out of a dumpster.

With his apartment “furnished,” Brad turned his attention to making extra money from collecting more things abandoned on the street. The biggest moneymakers were the books, especially hardbacks with dust jackets that he bought sometimes for $5 a box at garage or estate sales in the Haight or the Inner Richmond. Just one book, if it was a first edition or a relatively popular one like Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, could be worth at least what he paid for the entire box when he resold them to used bookstores on Mission Street in the City or on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Clothes were initially Brad’s least popular kind of second-hand goods, but Brad needed “new” clothes since he’d only been able to jam two pairs of jeans, one pair of dress pants and temple undergarments, three button-down shirts, and two pairs of socks into his backpack before he ran out the back door and jumped over the back fence to elude the Provo Police. The first items of clothing Brad looked for were things he could wear himself—especially to work. Things like socks and underwear seemed to wear out the fastest, but were hardly ever sold at second-hand stores.

Brad sorted the clothing under his bathroom’s bright, 100-watt light. Wearing rubber gloves, he shook the clothes against the tub’s white enamel to see if any articles harboured wildlife. Clothing, which was too worn, torn or stained, was moved immediately from the cardboard collection box to a plastic garbage bag that went down the building’s trash chute that evening. Clothes Brad thought might fit him or which he thought he could resell to second-hand stores, he washed first, by hand, in the tub. Then, he took them to the Cole Street laundramat for a complete wash and dry. Within two months, Brad had an extra dozen pairs of wearable socks, three pairs of dress pants and shirts, four T-shirts and a week’s supply of “normal” underwear.

What surprised Brad the most, however, was how much money baby’s and toddler’s clothes brought at the Mission Street thrift stores. The first time Brad put the baby clothes on the counter next to the jeans and T-shirts, the store owner’s hairy, tattooed arm reached surprisingly for the toddler’s garments. He offered Brad a dollar for each piece in good condition. Brad didn’t realize how many poor, young families lived in the Mission.

And as he became more experienced and made more money at his “recycling hobby,” as he called it, Brad bought a second-hand bicycle. He fitted it with saddlebags like those he’d used in Germany on his mission. The bike increased his range, so he could cover all the garage sales in the Richmond and the Sunset from early Saturday morning to early mid-afternoon before the fog rolled in and people usually gave up for the day. Sometimes they just dumped what they hadn’t sold at the curb with a sign that said: “Take What You Need.” And Brad did, again and again.

Brad was able to replace many of the books he’d left behind in Provo, especially the 19^th– and 20^th-century novels and the Norton Anthologies. He even came across a copy of Hortense Powdermaker’s Stranger and Friend from his anthropology courses. He added these books to the old bookshelf in his living room. Within a few months, all its shelves were filled.

As Brad put the last book in his bookcase, he decided that he needed to change his “hobby” from something a little less hunter/gatherer to something more settled. He continued scanning classifieds every Thursday and Saturday. However, instead of concentrating on estate sale ads, he looked under the help wanted category to find work on the weekends since his “temporary” weekday assignment had been extended for another two months. Most of the ads he saw were for second- or graveyard-shift cleaners, security guards and attendants at senior citizen centres.

Brad had thought about getting a second, weekend job for a long time. He couldn’t really afford to go out to the bars—not if he wanted to save money. Most bars in the Haight and South of Market charged a cover on Friday and Saturday nights. Once he paid to get in, all he could afford was a bottle of mineral water, which he spent the night nursing and refilling from the bathroom sink tap when no one was looking. And the people Brad met at the bars—if he could even communicate with them over the deafening music—seemed only interested in one-night stands. Three times he’d made the mistake of inviting guys home. All three men had looked and seemed nice in the bar. Once in his apartment, however, all they did was complain about Brad’s mismatched, “junk furniture,” “an apartment with no TV” or that Brad wanted to use a condom. So Brad finally decided it wouldn’t really make much difference to his “social life” if he worked seven days a week.

He interviewed for job at a new senior citizens’ centre on Geary Boulevard in Japantown. The interviewer, an overweight middle-aged woman, was so desperate to fill the second-shift, weekend position she hired him on the spot without doing a background check.

“We can get that done later,” she said.

Brad wondered for a moment what would happen when she did. Then he decided: ‘Flip. I need the money,’ and just crammed that worry, along with many others, so far back into his brain that he didn’t even think about it again for the rest of the week.

His new boss’ name was Peggy. Peggy Lee from the way she piled up her hair in the kind of a beehive Brad hadn’t seen since he’d left Utah. And Peggy was so happy that Brad showed up for his own and other’s shifts early—unlike many of other security guards who came to work late and half-drunk or stoned—that she decided to let sleeping dogs lie. She was afraid that if she dug too deeply she might lose Brad like all the other attractive, seemingly well-adjusted men who had come into her life, who, with a closer look and a few hours of research by private detectives, turned out to be con artists and/or living under an assumed name usually so that their wives couldn’t track them down for alimony payments.

In addition to working the second shift weekends, Brad was called in at least once a week to pick up a graveyard shift. Brad soon began to look forward to working at the centre because he got a free, hot meal for every shift he worked.

And as he worked seven days a week, Brad tried to forget the $6,000 he’d saved and spent on his two-year German mission. That money would have been more than enough to have gotten him started comfortably in San Francisco without Brad having to work two jobs and scrounge through other people’s trash. Brad wondered if he could ever save that much money again living in San Francisco. At the moment, he was only saving about $250 a month. He wondered if that would be enough eventually for him to go back to university and get a degree. But thinking about the past or the future only made Brad feel angry or panicky during the day and unable to sleep at night, so he forced himself to concentrate almost exclusively on the present.

When he got home one Saturday night around 1 AM, he left the lights off in his apartment as he looked out through his windows down at Haight Street. The electric #7 bus twanged by, singing along the overhead wires. Above the store tops across the street were the hills of Cole Valley, which led upwards towards Mt. Sutro and its red-and-white striped radio and television tower, tipped with red flashing lights. Up by the tower, simple, two-story, three-bedroom homes were built into the hills. Brad followed the housetops and streetlights westward until he could see the gray-and-white concrete blocks of the University of California San Francisco hospital and its parking garage wedged into the side of the hill. This is where Glenn worked as an intern. Brad had stayed away as Glenn had instructed him when he’d first arrived in town so that Glenn wouldn’t get involved in any of his trouble. But now, six months later, Brad thought it was time to pay Glenn a visit again.