Relatives

by George Alec Effinger

  It was getting even colder; low smog hung in swatches, hiding the flicker-lit skyline of Manhattan. Ernest shoved his hands into his pockets, walking hunched over against the gusty wind. He kicked chunks of brick and broken bottles out of his path, imagining the sound of each one crashing through the windshield of a police car or the great, green window in the front office of Jennings’ factory. Ernest laughed, thinking of what poor old Jennings was doing now, his meager empire made no smaller by events, merely pointless.

  “He’s just a harmless old guy,” Sokol had said once. “He can’t help it if he’s the apex of a considerable industrial pyramid. You can’t pick your parents, you know. And his family had lots of money, that’s all. Once you get a certain amount of money in this world, it’s nearly impossible for you to avoid making more.” Sokol had smiled, and Ernest had laughed skeptically.

  “Jennings, the voltmeter king,” said Ernest. “Jennings, the breakfast food king. Jennings, the toasted metal plate king. God only knows what else he does.”

  “Jennings?” said Sokol, surprised. “You ought to know better than that. He doesn’t do anything. I doubt if he’s done anything at all in the last fifty years. That includes normal bodily functions, too. You never saw a sourer face on anybody in your life. But he’s got money.”

  “Yeah,” said Ernest. “He’s got money.”

  The two men were silent for a few seconds, waiting for the hands on the timeclock to mark quitting time so they could punch out. “Wouldn’t you think that somebody with his money would do something with it?” asked Ernest. “You know, build parks or something?”

  “Where you going to build a park? Tear down some apartment buildings, huh? We could just pave over all of Brooklyn and make it a parking lot for Manhattan.”

  “That’s not what I mean, wise-ass. Okay, forget the park. But rich guys always used to give money for public things. They used to get libraries named after them and stuff.”

  Sokol nodded. “All right, Weinraub, you political baby, let me tell you why they don’t give away their millions any more. Because it doesn’t get them anything. There weren’t ever many people who donated their fortunes because they loved humanity, you know. We haven’t changed that much. It’s just that we working-class types used to be operated by the tycoons as a tax loss. But the Representatives, in their omnipotent mystery, have taken that kind of advantage away from the rich.”

  “The Representatives get it all. They get all mine, anyway.”

  “They get mine, too,” said Sokol. “And they get Jennings’. There just isn’t any way for anyone to score points. Not big business, not labor, not even the military. The Representatives have made us all equal.”

  “That’s terrific,” said Ernest. “Let’s go home.”

  Now, hours after the Representative had gone on television, solemnly to announce his regret at their coming annihilation, Ernest wished that he had listened to Sokol. For months the foreman had tried to teach him how things stood, how the Representative ran everything down to the lowest level, to the extent that even someone as invisible as Sokol had actually not the slightest room for initiative. North America had become a nation of redundants; the world, the entire population of continents was basically meaningless now. In more cynical moods, Ernest realized that humanity was always meaningless; all that the Representatives had done was put that condition in a more efficient frame. Today, everyone wasted his time and resources to the same ends; only the Representatives and their anonymous associates made decisions, and they made them all. And only the Representatives shared the rewards.

  “Maybe Sokol was right after all,” said Ernest. He walked back toward his modapt building. It was getting late. He wouldn’t have said that he was especially worried, but then he was rarely objective about his own moods; he knew that he would have to get a good night’s sleep. There would be a real battle in the morning. He couldn’t afford to get a late start; everything might well be over within a half hour after the token stations opened. “Maybe Sokol was right after all,” said Ernest. “Maybe we are only toys in the hands of the Representatives. Not even rich old Jennings could buy himself a token now. That’s a nice thought. Maybe Sokol was right.”

  A bright neon sign caught his attention: Bar’s Mike and Grill. Ernest stopped and looked in; Mike was behind the bar and Suzy was leaning against its nearer end. The place was dimly lit, but Ernest could see a couple of the regulars sitting on the stools. The scene cheered him immediately. It was good to know that, no matter what kind of catastrophe threatened, there was something unconquerable about the human spirit and the need for beer. He pushed open the heavy door and went in.

  “Hey, Mike,” he said.

  “Say, Ernie,” said the bartender. “Nice to see you. Come join the wake. We’re ringing out the old, ringing in the nothing.”

  “Hey, Ernie,” said one old whiskery man, very drunk, very shabby.

  “Hey, Eagle,” said Ernest. He took a stool next to the old drunk.

  “Ah, wine. There’s the rub,” said the Eagle. It was his inevitable pun on Ernest’s name. Ernest laughed shortly, dutifully. We’re making up a team, to get them slugs.”

  “It was his idea,” said the bartender. “To all work together tomorrow. We’d stand a better chance that way.”

  “And we could all wear Bar’s Mike and Grill bowling shirts, too,” said one of the other patrons. “And every time we didn’t get a token, we’d chip in a quarter, and at the end of the day we could have an awards banquet.”

  “Very funny,” said Eagel bitterly. “Some people still think this is all an advertising gimmick or something.”

  “I hear they’re going to have breath tests at the shelters,” said the same regular. “They don’t want no winos getting in.”

  “All right, Moran, that’s enough,” said Mike. The owner turned to Ernest. “So how are you tonight? Want something to stun the butterflies? I’ll bet Gretchen is really giving it to you tonight.”

  “You don’t know,” said Ernest. “Let me just have a beer, O.K.? And some change. I want to call my father.” He took the beer and the money and went to the public telephone in the back of the room. He noticed that Suzy followed him. He dropped a quarter into the phone and punched his father’s number. An operator interrupted and demanded another seventy-five cents. Ernest put the rest of the dollar into the coin slots and waited. He heard a lot of static, some distant voices having their own anxious conversation, and then a raucous busy signal.

  “I’m sorry,” said a woman’s tinny voice, “the long-distance lines are all busy. Please hang up and try again later. This is a recording. Two-one-two-four-three. I’m sorry, the…”

  “Aw, hell,” said Ernest, “she ain’t sorry.”

  “Who ain’t?” asked Suzy.

  “Nothing. Let me buy you a drink.” She smiled; their whole relationship had lost its commercial and historical basis, but they still went through the motions. Perhaps they couldn’t help it, plugged into the roles with no time for developing alternatives. There certainly wasn’t any place in the world for unambitious b-girls, not since early that afternoon. Ernest realized suddenly why Mike had given him the beer on the house: the bartender expected that the bank would be closed in the morning, to phrase it euphemistically. Nevertheless, the telephone company was still collecting its rates. That was a sign of confidence that Ernest found peculiarly unpleasant, more so than the black humor and irony of the bar’s resident souls.

  “You don’t have to do that,” said Suzy. “You may never have to buy me a drink again.”

  “I hope I do,” said Ernest. “I intend to get through it all unscratched. And you will, too. Somebody with your talents will be valuable after all this is over. I’d rather have you around than the six best dentists in the world.” She laughed.

  They went back to the stools and sat down. Eagle muttered to himself, and then went to sleep, his head resting in a sparkling smear of beer on the countertop. “Reality is the spice of life,” said o
ne of the others. Ernest got a free beer for himself and one for Suzy. Mike joined them. They drank and they talked for a while.

  Meanwhile 3

  “A poem,” thought Ernst. “I need a poem. Nothing impresses the uneducated mind quite like rhymes. But it must be the right sort, or it will bring nothing but ruin and humiliation. How they used to laugh at my romantic verses! How dismayed I was, left alone on the darkened balcony, holding the flimsy product of my innocent wit. The sonnet on the arch of her brow. Good God, how could I have done it? I wish I could return, go back to those iron moments, stand behind a curtain and listen to myself. I wonder if I would be amused. I cannot understand why those brainless princesses so easily dismissed me; they couldn’t have been so plagued with clowns. I ought to have been kept as a refreshing antidote to dawning maturity.”

  He took out a pen and began to compose on the back of a soiled napkin. The atmosphere of the Fée Blanche was not the best for the generation of poetry, he realized. But he also understood that the unknown recipient of his craft would be more awed by the fact of the poem than by any singular verbal charm. Surely no friend of Ieneth’s could be sophisticated enough to appreciate anything but the grossest of street chants. In that case, all that was required was a quick, simple collection of lines, without attention to musical values, arranged visually in a recognizably poetic way. The ink from the fountain pen blotted on the napkin, spreading quickly and obscuring each letter, obliterating all sense and intention. Ernst cursed and crushed the paper into a ball, tossing it to the floor.

  “My life would have been greatly different, Eugenie, if this had happened while I loved you. If I had only known enough to keep my mouth closed, to express myself only in abstract looks and gestures, so that it all might be disowned quickly as worldly nonsense. Wisdom does not necessarily come with age, only silence. And that is the greatest treasure of all.” He returned his pen to his pocket and called for M. Gargotier.

  In the time it took for Ernst to drink two more bowls of the warm dark Arabic beer, the parade had ended. The crowd broke up, shouting new slogans which Ernst could not understand. The other patrons finished their drinks and departed, and the café was again empty except for its single poet. The sun had marked noon and now, hotter still, moved down the sky just enough to hurt his eyes as he looked westward across the street.

  “West,” thought Ernst, rocking restlessly in his chair. “What absurd, boring thoughts can I think about that to help pass this hour? One day after another. It gets to be so tedious. I should begin walking through this rancid city, through the wealthy sections clustered here about this square, through the more populated tradesmen’s quarter, through the filthy paupers’ streets, past the noisy, dangerous rim of utter human refuse just within the walls, out the western gate and across the dunes. Then what? Then I’d die in about twelve hours, crisped by the sun of noon, chiseled by the windborne sand, frozen by Barid, the cold wind of night. Westward, toward the Atlantic, toward England and her debauched civilities. West, the direction of death, decay, finality, and poetic conclusions. Into Avalon. Perhaps if it weren’t for Ieneth and her sly, snickering hints, I would wander off that way. Pack a picnic lunch, perhaps, and bake myself dead upon a hill of sand. I always dreamed of a heroic death, defending Eugenie’s recurring honor, or fighting for Marie’s bemused favor. Gasping, I’d lie upon the specified lap and she’d weep; her tears would restore my fleeing mortality. Then I’d smile, as would Eugenie or Marie in her proper turn, amazed and joyful. A signal that would be for me to begin the dream anew. Another way of getting through the hours, though much too unfulfilling for my present needs.”

  Ernst watched the clock on the hotel impatiently. The pedestrians moved by in their aimless courses, and each ticked off a few seconds on the yellow clockface. But the traffic could not beguile Ernst’s furious expectation, and was too sluggish to move the clock’s rigid hands quickly enough.

  It was while Ernst was silent in thought, staring at the damned clock, lost in his own strange anticipatory horror that someone moved a chair to his table and joined him. He looked up, startled. The stranger was a tall, thin Polish man named Czerny, a wealthy man who had come to the city a political refugee, and who had made his fortune by teaching the city’s hungry inhabitants to require the luxuries of Europe. Ernst had been introduced to Czerny a few times, but neither had been overly taken with the other’s company.

  “Good afternoon, Monsieur Weintraub,” said Czerny. “Although there are a number of tables free, I have preferred to join you. I hope you will forgive my rather forward behavior.”

  Ernst waved away the apology, more curious about Czerny’s motives. He did realize that the blond man was the founder of the Gaish, the Citizens’ Army, and its principal financial support. His appearance after the parade was not mere happy chance.

  “I’d like to speak with you for a moment, if I may, M. Weintraub,” said Czerny.

  “That’s Weinraub, without the ‘t’. Certainly. Would you care for a drink?”

  Czerny smiled his commercial smile. “No, thank you. This new religion of mine doesn’t allow it. But look, M. Weinraub, I wonder if you realize the service you could render, in the time you spend idly here?”

  Ernst was slightly annoyed. Surely Czerny wanted something, and his patronizing attitude wasn’t going to help him get it. “What service do you mean, Monsieur Czerny? I doubt if I have anything that you might envy?”

  “It is your talent. As you know, the Gaish is still small in numbers, even smaller in resources. I have been doing my limited best to help, but for our purposes even all my savings would be too little.”

  Ernst finished half a bowl of liquor in one swallow. He raised his hand for M. Gargotier. “What are those purposes?” he asked.

  “Why, liberty for all, of course,” said Czerny, disappointed that Ernst had need to ask. “We distribute leaflets at all parades. Surely you’ve seen them.”

  “Yes,” said Ernst, “but not read them.”

  “Ah. Well, then. Perhaps if they were composed in better style. …”

  “Might I ask who has the task now?”

  “A young man of great promise,” said Czerny proudly. “Sandor Courane.”

  Ernst leaned back, lifting the front legs of his chair off the pavement. “M. Czerny,” he said slowly, “that is very interesting, but I must embarrassedly admit that you have chosen an inopportune time for this interview. This afternoon I have something of an assignation, and so…” Ernst settled his chair, smiled drunkenly, and shrugged.

  Czerny looked angry. He rose from his seat. “M. Weintraub, I will return later. I believe it is time that you considered such matters as duty and honor. Perhaps this evening you will be more of a mind to discuss this thing. Good day, and have a gratifying … assignation.”

  “Weinraub,” whispered Ernst, as Czerny strode away down the sidewalk. “Without the ‘t’.”

  Czerny walked swiftly along the eastern edge of the square until he came to a parked limousine. It was one of the very few automobiles in the city; Ernst did not doubt that it was Czerny’s private car. The driver got out and handed Czerny a gray uniform coat, taking the wealthy man’s more expensively cut jacket in return. “Ah,” thought Ernst, “at least I rated a change of clothing. We shall see whether or not the same thing happens this evening. It is sad that the scheme of great men may be deciphered by such paltry tokens.” Czerny put on his uniform coat and waited until the driver opened the rear door of the limousine for him. Then he entered; the driver walked around the car and disappeared inside. In a moment the vehicle moved slowly away from the curb, its siren crying shrilly and the pennants of the Gaish whipping in the breeze. The car drove down the length of the square, turned along the north side, and went on for a short distance. Then it stopped again, while Czerny spoke with two figures on the sidewalk. From that distance Ernst could not recognize them.

  “If I were you, Czerny,” he thought, “I would not involve myself too deeply with the people of
this city. There is always the danger that you may find people to like or, most deadly of all, to love. What should you do, having fallen in love with some rare lady, and then find yourself betrayed? Ah, I anticipate your outraged answer. We are both too far along to have that happen to us again. Perhaps you are right, though one can never be too careful. But what if you are not betrayed, eh, Czerny? What then? No final demarcations, however painful. You have forgotten that. Nothing to chop it off before weariness sets in. Lifetimes go by that way, Czerny. Boredom and angry frustration are only the first symptoms. No mistresses for you, no wives, no playful daughters of police commissioners. We find that we need them, sooner or later. And that is the first of the body’s spasms of death. Years, years, years in this city, with the same faces, yours and hers. Years, years, years. Do not stop for them, Czerny. Tend to your army.” Czerny’s car drove on, and after a few moments Ernst saw that one of the two people walking toward him was the girl Ieneth.

  With her was another girl, taller and darker. When they approached, Ernst rose from his chair by the railing, and the two girls joined him at his table. M. Gargotier, evidently expecting that Ernst would soon depart, did not come to take an order; he stood glaring in the bar’s doorway, obviously resenting the presence of the two lower-class women. Ernst made a flamboyant gesture to summon’ the proprietor. He switched his drinking to absinthe, and the girls ordered wine.

  “What is her name, Ieneth?” he asked, staring at the new girl. She looked shyly at the table.

  “She is called Ua,” said Ieneth. “In her language, it means ‘flower.’ She does not understand our speech.”

  “How lovely her name, and how charming she is. Truly a flower. Convey to her my sincerest compliments.” Ieneth did so. “What language is that?” asked Ernst.