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[W r i t e r' s N o t e b o o k]
Sketches of Those We Have Known: BERKELEY PEOPLE
He always boasted that he would live
without women. Then he would wait for a reaction and
modify this statement to mean he would never live with
a women. A significant pause emptied the listener
of the thoughts he may have conjured at the thought of
a young man living without a woman to his last breath.
Well, he went on, I'll treat them like sisters.
And that was true because women came to him often for
advice and though they may have had many illusions
in their minds, they always left the young man with the
perfect advice they had been looking for.
Allen was explaining this once again to a new friend
who lived in the next apartment. The new friend had
recently separated from his wife and had moved to a dispirited
neighborhood in the flatlands of Berkeley, with the idea
of collecting himself for another go at living a life.
They sat opposite each other with a jug of wine
between them and discussed their lives with alternative
tones of openness and distrust.
The apartments they rented were boxes; fit for
one person and no more. Red Spanish tile lay broken
on the roof and the bright red steps leading from the sidewalk to each apartment had become
dull and spotted by the black marks of rotten walnuts
falling from the old tree in front.
At night the neighborhood became exceedingly
quiet as though everyone were in prayer. The Santa Fe
rolled freight from Seattle to Los Angeles along the
tracks laid narrow through the neighborhood and at
nine o'clock the whistle blew each night like
an excited sentence before trailing off into the dark.
Phillip's daughter came to visit every week-end
and at nine o'clock, as she was preparing to go to sleep,
she would imitate
the whistle as it shot through the backyard
and into the dim room.
Phillip and Allen had finished their third glass
of wine. Allen had asked his new friend about his divorce
and Phillip was managing in his mind the rationalizations
he had made to cover this particular pain. It was a sweet pain because
now he was free and moving to his own tune. But, it was painful because
divorce is an enormous pain and each divorce replicates the millions, if
not billions of divorces that have happened through time. They are bundled
in the genetic code and released each new divorce so that the divorcing
members are forced to visit the hellish regions.
Well, he said slowly, we were going different
directions. She wants her dreams worshipped and that's
asking plenty from a man who doesn't worship much of
anything.
He paused and looked at the strange, new friend
and then felt embarrassed about what he had said.
Allen was stroking the black beard he had
recently grown and then fit a cigarette between his lips
and waited until Phillip had finished before he lit a match.
"What's the use of talking about these things to
someone who hasn't gone through it? That's an understatement.
Especially to someone who has sworn off women or dreams
that he will."
And this answer, "I dream of women all the time.
They are speaking to me in my dreams. Do you think that's
crazy? Well, I don't care if it is. There now, they'll
speak to me, the dreams of 'em anyway and...they tell me
the things I need to know."
Phillip stirred in his chair and began to think
of an excuse to leave. But then Allen laughed. "Don't
be put off by that- people who say they don't hear voices
are insane."
Phillip began to laugh a strange laugh and then
shrugged his shoulders. He thought to himself that the
man was harmless and simply wanted to impress a stranger
with the occult and sublime power of his own loneliness.
"In fact, right now, a woman is speaking to me-
yes, that's right- she's telling me bad things about you.
But...now she's terrified and angry- no- not at you but
what...ah, she's gone."
Phillip stood in exasperation and threw out his
arms, "We've been drinking too much wine!"
And then Allen asked him again whether he thought
he was insane.
"Aren't you putting the wrong kind of responsibility
on my head?" Phillip answered. His voice had pitched an
octave higher than usual.
"I simply want your opinion," Allen answered.
"Wouldn't that be a judgement rather than an opinion?"
Allen laughed with a pixyish flavor and his eyes
nearly closed so they appeared as slits.
"I'll decide whether it's a judgement or not."
Phillip drew in the air of the room and looked
at the strange neighbor who up until a week ago had
been unknown to him.
As he thought about it he suddenly realized how
much information he had given Allen about his private life-
how that information had been drawn from his mouth like
a lovely, honey-dipped string. Within a week he had revealed more
of his past to this man than he had to any other person
in a lifetime.
"1...I don't think you're crazy. But I don't think
you're a normal Joe either."
Allen's eyes flamed open. "Ah, a cross between
insane and a normal Joe. Hm. What if I told you I
believe in angels as well?"
"I would suggest to you to visit another century."
"Bravo! Could be done, could be done."
"I'm an intelligent guy," Phillip was saying. "I have
never given thought to the existence of angels but something
in me rejects the idea off-hand."
Allen got up out of his chair and retracted three
steps to a cage hanging in front of the hall closet.
Inside the cage a stoic Parrot observed the room, blinking
quickly out into the dim, candle-lit surface with
Phillip now deep in shadow drinking his wine.
A laden stick of sesame seed was held up for the
Parrot who bent its head and pecked at the stick until
it brought it into the cage and fit its talons over the
crusted seed. It had two evil eyes and looked matted. Below
him the floor was littered with seeds and droppings. "He rules
the roost," Phillip had thought at one point. Later in the year
he discovered that the Parrot was a dangerous bird but now he saw
it as a harmless thing, owned by a harmless nut. His neighbor, who
looked sometimes like Charles Manson.
"We're no more intelligent than this bird here,"
Allen said. "It has been listening to us for the last
several hours and is bored. Not only is it bored but it
is laughing at us...whether we know it or not."
"You read the birds thought I guess?"
"It's face tells the story of its thought. Don't
you think?"
Phillip poured the two glasses full of red wine
again and staggered into his chair. He seemed confused
and frustrated at the same time. On top of everything else
he had a job interview scheduled for the next afternoon.
The Oakland Tribune was offering a position as an assistant
copy editor and his resume had got him an interview. All
the time ho spoke to Allen he was thinking of questions
they would ask him at the interview and the answers
he would give for each question.
"When I mean angels I don't mean the arrogant
things you see painted in old paintings. I'm talking about
beings who know when a person is in trouble and arrive
at the right time to help that person out. They can
be in any guise but they are of a different breed altogether.
A person could speculate for years on their origination-
that they come from somewhere else besides this
planet is as good as guess as any."
Phillip now seemed curious. In his own mind he
had forgiven the man's delusions as symptomatic of the
times. Something told him that he shouldn't add to
this loneliness by rejecting the man or his story outright
but to bring it to some resolution even if it was a
bizarre resolution.
"Maybe it's true...what you've said." And then
with a strong voice Phillip related, "I've always believed
there's something behind the UFO's.
And not only the UFO's but natural phenomena
such as increasing earthquakes and changing weather patterns."
"Yes- less rain and less snow.
The drought of several years ago was only a
prelude."
Tight-lipped Phillip said, "We'll get through
everything."
The candle resting on the wood table had burnt
to a thick curdled end and the dried pink wax folded
several times inside a tin pie pan. It became evident
that Allen no longer wanted to talk about the "end of the
world" or angels or voices.
Later in the evening Phillip suggested they go to
a club he had recently been too called La Salamandra.
Every evening the club provided entertainment by
struggling musicians or else held an open mike for
poets and comedians. He had, in this interlude of his life, come
to embrace the struggling musicians, poets, and comedians as brothers
of a sort who acted out a craziness he felt in himself. Brothers, that
is, who were much worse than he because every musician, poet, or comedian
he met harbored a grand dream of becoming rich and famous.
No-no, Allen insisted he stay in his room and
tell Phillip as story.
Phillip was irritated but agreed to listen to
the story. The red wine had pinned him to his chair and
he was becoming more worried about the impending interview
the next day. Perhaps, he felt, with a bit more success
she would return to him and they would be a family again.
Or, at least, someone would be impressed by his show
of ambition.
The story was long and involved and too strange to remember. For one, Allen insisted
that the world had ended and only a few people knew about it. And that the turning point
in his life was when he read roadsigns believing they were speaking to him and he ended
up in a church garden trying to sleep before someone threatened to call the police. "They
threw me out! Can you imagine such a thing? A Church?! Where God lives!" After that he decided to die and drove to the desert to perish. He became vague during this part of the
story but mentioned a Bible his mother had given to him, among other things. And then
his experience of the sulphuric end of the world that he had smelled through fog fingering
up the streets of San Franciso early in the morning before anyone was up. "They were all dead
but for one bar that was open and when I entered they looked at me as though they were expecting me and several men came up and ripped my shirt off my back and they beat me. That's
when I went to the church."
There was Thomas who was now burdened with the thought he had entered Hell. It came as such a shock to him that he had forgotten three important "missions" as he called them; to be executed that day he promised to himself. He was travelling through Hell. What an unalterably normal man he'd been! The reader can make up her own mind about what normal is but, the man had worked five years at the hugegrey-glassed hospital in the north end of the city. There was his mother who he'd left years before. There was the last image of her picked up nearly by accident, so sadly waving from the window, her aging face pressed against the glass. Why had he turned back? Now, it was the city. He stood on the corner of a long street, surveying the motion of machines and the blank strangeness of men like himself. Never would he let his face fall like that but, perhaps, he would hide from mirrors. There were always the chrome bumpers of parked cars which made the body curved and unreal and, naturally, downtown if he had the patience he could stand across the great black-windowed superstructure and spot himself among the moving crowds along the sidewalk. Black windows were made like mirrors so the flesh looked pale and sad. Now he sat in his favorite chair, lit a cigarette, then bent down to turn the knob of the radio and when the strains of music began he laid back, took the book he'd been reading up off his lap and thumbed easily through the pages, wondering through the pages as the music entered a new refrain. It was all quiet now, for him. She wouldn't return for another hour. He repressed his natural taste for drawing those casual connections so easily drawn when love is alone among a thousand strangers. The music now sounded as if it played out of the nooks and crannies of the house. He put the book aside and immediately the yellow cat leapt onto his lap and demanded either to be fed or stroked. He began by stroking the pale yellow fur to the contented purring of the cat's underside and then their eyes met for a moment and he was stunned by the familiarity in the cat's eyes. Back to Top David Eide eide491@earthlink.net © 2002 David Eide. All rights reserved. |