The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

by Paul Theroux

  In church we could be near, we could stare at each other, examine each other's clothes, study each other’s face and body. At school this was impossible—someone would notice us and start teasing. And anyway, Evelyn Frisch did not go to my school. But in church, in the candlelight, in the mottled shadows of the stained-glass windows, it was possible for me to gaze at her for a long time and satisfy myself—and today, Good Friday, more than ever, for the slip that had been just peeping out last Monday at the Novena was now sagging lower, giving me a glimpse of satin and lace flopping against her leg as she mounted the stairs to St. Ray’s.

  “How did you know her sister’s a tramp?” Chicky said.

  Burkell said, “She’s a pig. Vinny Grasso saw her making out with a tenth-grader at the drive-in.”

  A sharp voice startled us: “Why are you hanging around here? Get inside.”

  With a frown on her bristly face, a nun loomed over us like a bat in her black cloak.

  “It’s disrespectful to loiter here. This is the house of our Lord and Savior. Get a move on!”

  As we started to go in, slightly hunched for fear she might hit us, she snatched at me, got a grip on my arm, and pulled me aside. Chicky and Burkell hurried ahead.

  “I saw you yesterday,” the nun said. “You were smiling.”

  That was true—I was sitting in the pew, smiling at the sound of the name Serenelli. But how had she seen me?

  She pinched my chin and said, “Do you think there’s something humorous about immorality?”

  “No, Sister.”

  “Do you think that mortal sin is something to smile about?”

  “No, Sister.”

  “Are you going into church to mock Jesus today?”

  “No, Sister.”

  “And betray our Lord, like Judas?”

  “No, Sister.”

  “Do you know what happened to Judas?”

  “He went to Hell, Sister.”

  “He took a halter and hanged himself by the neck,” the nun said. ‘And then he went to Hell, because he was a sinner. Do you know what Hell is?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Hell means you never see the face of Christ.”

  That did not seem so bad to me—in fact, I was relieved when she said it. She still had a grip on my chin. “I’m going to be watching you. I know your parents. If I see any mockery I’m going to tell them.”

  She pinched my chin one last time and pushed me so hard I stumbled on the granite step and almost fell. As I got my balance and looked back I saw her crooked lips and bristly cheeks.

  Chicky and Burkell were waiting for me inside the door by the holy water font. We dunked our fingers and blessed ourselves and went up the aisle, sitting together, far behind Evelyn Frisch. When the praying Father Staley said the word “chrism” Burkell muttered it and had a laughing fit, covering his mouth.

  Saint Theresa, Saint Patrick, Saint Michael, and Saint Rose of Lima looked down on us, and so did the nun. Chicky picked his nose and flicked a piece of snot into the aisle, and the nun hauled him out of the pew, gripping his head. A little later, Burkell folded the Easter Message into a paper plane and kept it on his lap, and he was next to go. Then I was alone, hungry from having fasted, no breakfast, no lunch, and straining to see Evelyn Frisch.

  Good Friday was a terrible holy day. The service lasted three hours—each time I thought it was over there was a new prayer, more kneeling, another procession, an upraised ciborium, and a louder chant. The day commemorated the arrest of Jesus, his denunciation by Pilate, his robe stripped from him, the whipping, the jamming onto his head of the crown of thorns. He was given a heavy wooden cross to carry. He was spat upon by the same people who had welcomed him on Palm Sunday.

  “And he was brought to Golgotha, which means the Place of the Skull,” Father Staley was reading. And he described the rusty nails, the hammering, the bleeding, the cross raised up with Christ slumping upon it.

  “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani—Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?”—Father Staley was still reading.

  Christ asked for a drink of water. A Roman soldier dipped some bread in vinegar and hoisted it on his spear to torment him. Another soldier stabbed Christ in the side to make sure he was dead, and later Christ was taken down from the cross by Mary and some others, and he lay dead and bleeding on their laps.

  The service continued, recalling blood and pain, death and darkness, “Free Barabbas,” the Jews saying “Crucify him! He is not our king. Our king is Caesar!,” the rusty nails, the suffering of Jesus, “the passion and death,” the Good Thief, the Bad Thief, the storm, the earthquake, the suicide of Judas. Much worse for me was that I was sitting at the back of the church, too far from Evelyn Frisch for me to see her. But at least I knew her name.

  6

  Kneeling alone in church on Holy Saturday in a thinner crowd than yesterday—today was not a holy day of obligation—I was not watching the altar. My gaze was fixed on Evelyn Frisch, now in the pew just in front of me. She had entered the church after me, she had chosen to sit where I could see her. She knew what was in my head: that I had come there to worship her.

  I stared at her neck, her tangled hair, her limp jacket, her droopy slip. She was kneeling, and so I knelt. I was praying to her; I hoped she was praying to me.

  The priest appeared with two altar boys hurrying beside him. He busied himself at the altar, muttering in Latin, the boys replying. He opened and closed the tabernacle, he fussed with the chalice, he smoothed the linen napkins. At the consecration one boy shook the hand bells and Father Staley shuffled the host and snapped it apart with his scaly fingers and said, “Hoc est enim corpus meum, ” and I thought, This is my body, Evelyn.

  The host was not bread anymore; it had been transformed into the body of Christ, as the wine sloshing in the chalice had been made into blood. Father Staley was leaning on the altar, his elbows on the marble, eating and drinking, chewing body, swallowing blood. I knew what was happening, I had half believed it because there was nothing else to believe. But now I believed in Evelyn Frisch, body and soul.

  The way she knelt and prayed in a posture of struggle seemed to show that she was trying to believe, praying for strength. I was also kneeling, but I was not praying anymore, I was thinking: It is so hard to believe in God, and harder still to love him, or Christ the criticizer. It was so easy to love this skinny girl, who was full of life and yet frail, dressed poorly, probably in hand-me-downs, and yet her clothes attracted me. And half Jewish was alluring too; she was odd, exotic, didn't really belong here, and although she had never looked directly at me, she knew exactly where I was. We were together in church, worshiping together, worshiping each other, amid the watery flicker of lighted candles.

  “On this Easter vigil, the burial of Jesus, we light a candle to signify Christ's passing from death to life,” Father Staley was saying in his sermon. “God is love, and if your soul is pure, you too can have eternal life.”

  The candle flames were a nice part of the ritual that day, the warmth, the fire, the light, the dripping wax on the knob of the candle stump. And as I knelt she sat back in the pew and her head was against my face, her sweet soapy hair-smell in my nose and mouth.

  I did not want eternal life. I had no idea what the words meant. What I wanted most of all was this, an hour in church with Evelyn Frisch, even if it meant I had to betray Jesus and be a sinner. She was love.

  7

  On Easter Sunday at eight o’clock Mass she glowed in a pink and white dress, wearing cream-colored gloves and a white hat with a gauzy veil over her face and the same scuffed shoes and falling-down socks. We were in the same pew, about ten feet apart—three people between us—but still I could see just beneath the hem of her Easter dress the same scrap of lace-trimmed slip like a lovely sin.

  The day was warm and the sun so bright even the stained-glass windows poured bars of reddish light into the church.

  People sang, their voices raised, their prayers flying up to Heaven.


  I murmured earnestly but I knew that my prayers were not rising. I was glancing at Evelyn Frisch and not at the altar, imploring her, so that she would be kind to me, so that she would want me. I venerated her, I prayed to her, and all that I wanted from life was that she, or someone just like her, would want me.

  I was frightened at the thought of seeing her outside, and perhaps having to speak to her, in the larger harsher world of light and air. I understood Judas—why he was tempted, why he gave in, why he was lost long before he betrayed Christ.

  After the service, people left quickly, noticing each other’s new clothes. I waited, I looked around, and seeing that the church was empty except for us, I slid a few feet toward Evelyn Frisch. She slid toward me until we were close enough to touch—her thigh against mine. I let my hand stray until I could take hold of hers. I asked a question with my shy fingers, and she answered with her hot damp fingers, and we sat there a long time, holding hands and not looking up.

  II. Pup Tent

  TO CONSOLE MYSELF at night when I was small, I used to prop up my blanket in bed, pretending I was in a tent in the wilderness. I crouched inside with a flashlight, reading. Only then could I get to sleep. I was nine, then ten. I dreamed mainly of monsters, lumpy potato men or wild children with bucketlike skulls, a huge particular woman in a cone bra, and bunny-faced girls in snug panties. I was naked and fleeing in all my dreams. Maybe it was the books I read—Trap Lines North, Campcraft, horror comics. I wanted to sleep outside the house. I thought: I’ll camp in the yard first, and later I will go to the ends of the earth.

  My parents were confused by my books and hated the horror comics. “Those things belong in the trash. Why don’t you read Penrod and Sam?” I was so closely peered at I couldn’t think straight. “Get a haircut!” “Wash your hands!” “Elbows off the table!” I felt lightheaded and helpless, like the tickle that teases your scalp the second before your hat blows off. Ever since Louie was born I had wanted to leave, and I was saving up for the journey. My books were my banks: I hid dollar bills, some between the pages of Rich Cargoes, some in Treasure Island. Eight dollars toward the voyage. I never bought anything new, always looked for bargains.

  The confidence of my parents’ friends made me gape. The loud woman who said “Is this thing an ashtray?” as she mashed a cigarette butt into a good saucer. I had no obvious confidence, only shyness. I sensed I was a sneak, but sneaking gave me some of the freedom I needed. The aromas of perfume and cigarette smoke, the sight of red lipstick on that cigarette butt, aroused me, but nothing aroused me more than being outside the house alone.

  One of my pleasures was to take the electric car, the ten-cent trolley, to Boston and walk past the wharves, the ship chandlers and outfitters and nautical supply stores, that lined the ocean side of Atlantic Avenue. The wind off the harbor had the smell of kelp and the sea. In the window of Bliss Marine was an old diver’s suit—a brass-domed helmet with a round goggling face of glass and breathing tubes, canvas arms and legs, heavy boots, and a belt of lead weights. The stores that attracted me most sold army surplus from the war. The war had been over for only five years and much of the equipment was new-looking—C rations you could eat, unused ammo boxes, polished leather belts, smooth helmets, gleaming bayonets.

  Seeing these objects convinced me I could defend myself in battle, travel a great distance, survive hardships, endure severe heat or cold, even gunfire and enemies. I could live life in a foxhole or in the north woods.

  They were piled on counters—tin mess kits, canteens, water bags, rucksacks, web belts, pistol holsters, flares, traps, goggles, field jackets and ponchos—all of them very cheap and most of them stenciled US Army. Gas masks too, and sterno stoves, German helmets looking wicked with upturned edges, sleeping bags, combat boots, jackknives, hatchets, khaki metal flashlights with dents in them. The things that interested me most were faded, scuffed, beaten up, “war-torn.” I looked for traces of blood on the bayonets.

  “This has seen some action,” the salesman would say, turning over a holster or a worn canteen, and I could imagine gunfire, a muddy trench, Nazis, General Tojo's buckteeth. Most of all I imagined survival, making it through a dark night, watching the sun come up, being alone and self-reliant, like a fur trapper or a Canadian Mountie or a GI. I was a woodsman, alone in the forest, living in a tent.

  Of all the tents, the cheapest and best was the pup tent. This was a model of simplicity that matched the lines of a church roof, steeply angled, with a ridge and guy ropes, supported by two poles and a clutch of tent stakes. A fly of two flaps was the door. Army surplus, ten dollars.

  At Raymond's (motto: “Where U Bot the Hat”) on Washington Street, pup tents cost more because they were new and oily, smelling of fresh waterproofing. Not having the stink and scuff of battle on them, they seemed less reliable to me.

  The pup tent I saw as my own space, a little Eden where I could do as I pleased, a way of leaving home and being safe. The tent was just my size and seemed a familiar extension of my upraised blanket in bed, where I lay and read Trap Lines North with an army surplus flashlight. When I had had enough of a fur trapper in snowy Canada, snaring foxes and muskrats, and skinning and curing the pelts, I read the horror comics: Tales of Terror and Weird Fantasy. I needed a place to hide my books, to hide myself, a place to dream.

  I mentally rehearsed the buying of the pup tent, and when I had the full ten dollars I took the trolley to Sullivan Square and the El to North Station and walked to Atlantic Avenue. I was fretful, anxious at the thought of being alone and having to hand over money to a clerk. The process of taking possession of a purchase made me fearful of being mocked or cheated.

  The pup tents, rolled up, poles inside, were stacked like little logs. I chose one that was tightly rolled and carried it in both arms to the cash register.

  “What can I do you for?” the clerk said to me. This was the sort of banter I feared.

  I showed him the bundle.

  “That’ll be ten simoleons.”

  I handed over the money. I didn’t answer or make eye contact, just held on to the pup tent and thought: When I get home and set it up and crawl inside, I will be safe.

  Walking home from the electric car stop on the Fellsway, just past Hickey Park, I approached Evelyn Frisch playing hopscotch alone in front of her house, tossing a pebble onto a square, clapping her hands. When she saw me she held the ankle of one leg from behind and balanced on the other leg. Then she hopped toward me on the chalked squares as her short skirt jumped above her pink panties, five hops and she was in front of me, in white socks and buckled shoes, tugging down her short skirt.

  She squinted and said, “What’s that for?”

  “Sleeping out.”

  “Want some fudge?”

  I shook my head and walked on.

  “You got a hole in your fence,” she said.

  She was twisting and screwing up her face at me when I looked back.

  At home I took the tent into the back yard, unrolled it, and pitched it as far as I could from the house, banging in the stakes and tightening the guy ropes. I crawled inside and lay down with my hands under my head and thought, Paradise!

  That night while I sat at the dinner table my father seemed surprised and annoyed. He was not eating; he was shaving. He shaved twice a day, morning and evening. He kept his razor and strop by a mirror in the kitchen, where he shaved—no one asked why—every evening before his bath. He held one soapy cheek tight with a finger and jerked the blade of his straight razor at the window. He said, “The hell’s that all about?”

  “Pup tent.”

  He scraped at his face. “Thinks money grows on trees.”

  “I saved up for it.”

  “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

  “I got it cheap on Atlantic Ave.”

  “Get what you pay for. Bet you dollars to donuts it falls apart.”

  My mother said, “Andy, your dinner’s getting cold.”

  I clawed at my
mashed potatoes with the turned-over tines of my fork while my father wiped the suds from his ears and sat down.

  “Can I sleep out?”

  “Pup tent is a peck of trouble,” my father said. He snatched at my fingers. “You could grow vegetables under those nails.”

  The next day I put down a ground cloth, a rubber sheet from Louie’s cot, and stocked my tent with a flashlight and a canteen of water and Trap Lines North, Campcraft, and the horror comics.

  The horror comics I hid from my parents; they said they were violent and disgusting. I liked the comics because they were violent and disgusting. The women shown in them wore tight blouses and short skirts and had big red lips and were terrorized. Now and then they were dismembered, chopped into pieces and put into bloodstained bags, but only if they were cruel. Horror stories always had a moral. Good people were never killed in them, but guilty ones were always beheaded or devoured by ghouls or choked—blue tongues out, bloodshot eyes popping, neck squeezed small.

  One hot afternoon in the summer of my pup tent I was reading Tales of Terror, two separate stories intertwined. In one a shapely blonde in a skimpy bathing suit was always lying in the sun, trying to darken her tan; in the other a pale-skinned brunette spent the day applying cosmetics, trying to devise ways to stay youthful. Their husbands were tormented by their vanity, one wife wasting time in the sun, the other wasting money on skin creams. By coincidence, in the middle of the story, both men met on the beach, just bumped into each other. “Sorry!” “Excuse me!” They did not realize how their lives were similar: henpecked by vain, demanding wives. One man was an electrician, the other man a chemist. This meeting was brief, a chance encounter before the stories diverged again, a detail of storytelling that impressed me.

  Not long after, unable to stand the nagging, the men snapped. The electrician tied his wife to a table and burned her black, toasting her to death under the glare of a hundred sunlamps. She lay naked and scorched, her skin peeling.