Belief
A group of senior citizens on a bench in Washington Square Park in New York City. There were two female senior citizens and two male senior citizens.
“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” one of the women said suddenly. She turned her head to each of the four corners of an imaginary room as she did so.
The other senior citizens stared at her.
“Why did you do that?” one of the men asked.
“It’s the first of the month. If you say ‘rabbit’ four times, once to each corner of the room, or the space that you are in, on the first of the month before you eat lunch, then you will be loved in that month.”
Some angry black people walked by carrying steel-band instruments and bunches of flowers.
“I don’t think that’s true,” the second woman senior citizen said. “I never heard it before and I’ve heard everything.”
“I think it’s probably just an old wives’ tale,” one of the men said. The other male senior citizen cracked up.
“Shall we discuss old men?” the first woman asked the second woman.
The two men looked at the sky to make sure all of our country’s satellites were in the right places.
“What about your daughter the nun?” the second woman, whose name was Elise, asked the first, whose name was Kate. “You haven’t heard from her?”
“My daughter the nun,” Kate said, “ you wouldn’t believe.”
“Where is she?” Elise asked. “Georgia or somewhere, you told me but I forgot. Going to school you said.”
“She’s getting her master’s,” Kate said, “they send them. She’s a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech. I was going down to visit at Thanksgiving.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I called her and said I was coming and she said but Thanksgiving Day is the game. So I said the game, the game, O.K. I’ll go to the game, I don’t mind going to the game, get me a ticket. And she said but Mother I’m in the flash card section. My daughter the nun.”
“They’re different now,” Elise said, “you’re lucky she’s not keeping company with one of those priests with his hair in a pigtail.”
“Who can tell?” said Kate. “I’d be the last to know.”
One of the men leaned around his partner and asked: “Well, is it working? Are you loved?”
“There was another thing we used to do,” Kate said calmly. “You and your girl friend each wrote the names of three boys on three slips of paper, on the first day of the month. The names of three boys you wanted to ask you to go out with them. Then your girl friend held the three slips of paper in her cupped hands and you closed your eyes and picked —”
“I don’t believe it,” said the second male senior citizen, whose name was Jerome.
“You closed your eyes and picked one and put it in your shoe. And you did the same for her. And then that boy would come around. It always worked. Invariably.”
“I don’t believe it,” Jerome said again. “ I don’t believe in things like that and never have. I don’t believe in magic and I don’t believe in superstition. I don’t believe in Judaism, Christianity, or Eastern thought. None of ’em. I didn’t believe in the First World War even though I was a child in the First World War and you’ll go a long way before you find somebody who didn’t believe in the First World War. That was a very popular war, where I lived. I didn’t believe in the Second World War either and I was in it.”
“How could you be in it if you didn’t believe in it?” Elise asked.
“My views were not consulted,” Jerome said. “They didn’t ask me, they told me. But I still had my inner belief, which was that I didn’t believe in it. I was in the MPs. I rose through the ranks. I was a provost marshal, at the end. I once shook down an entire battalion of Seabees, six hundred men.”
“What is ‘shook down’?”
“That’s when you and your people go through their foot lockers and sea bags and personal belongings looking for stuff they shouldn’t have.”
“What shouldn’t they have?”
“Black market stuff. Booze. Dope. Government property. Un-authorized weapons.” He paused. “What else didn’t I believe in? I didn’t believe in the atom bomb but I was wrong about that. The unions.”
“You were wrong about that too,” said the other man, Frank. “I was a linotype operator when I was nineteen and I was a linotype operator until I was sixty and let me tell you, mister, if we hadn’t had the union all we would have got was nickels and dimes. Nickels and dimes. Period. So don’t say anything against the trade union movement while I’m sitting here, because I know what I’m talking about. You don’t.”
“I didn’t believe in the unions and I didn’t believe in the government whether Republican or Democrat,” Jerome said. “And I didn’t believe in —”
“The I.T.U. is considered a very good union,” Elise said. “I once went with a man in the I.T.U. He was a composing-room foreman and his name was Harry Foreman, that was a coincidence, and he made very good money. We went to Luchow’s a lot. He liked German food.”
“Did you believe in the international Communist conspiracy?” Frank asked Jerome.
“Nope.”
“You can’t read,” Frank said, “you’re blind.”
“Maybe.”
“I haven’t decided about whether there is an international Communist conspiracy,” Elise said. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“What’s to think about?” Frank asked. “There was Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia says it all.”
Some street people walked past the group of senior citizens but decided that the senior citizens weren’t worth asking for small change. The decision was plain on their faces.
“When I was a girl, a little girl, I had to go into my father’s bar to get the butter,” Kate said. “My father had a bar in Brooklyn. The icebox was in the bar. The only icebox. My mother sent me downstairs to get the butter. All the men turned and looked at me as I entered the bar.”
“But your father bounded out from behind the bar and got you the butter meanwhile looking sternly at all the other people in the bar to keep them from looking at you,” Elise suggested.
“No,” Kate said “He was on his ass most of the time. What they say about bartenders not drinking is not true.”
“Also I didn’t believe in the League of Nations,” Jerome said. “Furthermore,” he said, giving Kate a meaningful glance, “I didn’t believe women should be given the vote.”
Kate gazed at Jerome’s coat, which was old, at his shirt, old, then at his pants, which were quite old, and at his shoes, which were new.
“Do you have prostate trouble?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jerome said, with a startled look. “Of course. Why?”
“Good,” Kate said. “I don’t believe in prostate trouble. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a prostate.”
She gave him generous and loving smile.
“You mean to tell me that if you put the piece of paper with the boy’s name on it in your shoe on the first day of the month he invariably came around?” Elise asked Kate.
“Invariably,” Kate said. “Without fail. Worked every time.”
“Goddamn,” Elise said. “Wish I’d known that.”
“There was one thing I believed,” Jerome said.
“What?”
“It’s religious.”
“What is it?”
“My pal the rabbi told me, he’s dead now. He said it was a Hasidic writing.”
“So?” said Elise. “So, so, so?”
“It is forbidden to grow old.”
The old people thought about this for a while, on the bench.
“It’s good,” Kate said. “I could do without the irony.”
“Me too,” Elise said. “I could do without the irony.”
“Maybe it’s not so good?” Jerome asked. “What do you think?”
“No,” Kate said. “It’s good.” She gazed about her at the new life sprouting
in sandboxes and jungle gyms. “Wish I had some kids to yell at.”
Wrack
Cold here in the garden.
— You were complaining about the sun.
— But when it goes behind a cloud —
— Well, you can’t have everything.
— The flowers are beautiful.
— Indeed.
— Consoling to have the flowers.
— Half-way consoled already.
— And these Japanese rocks —
— Artfully placed, most artfully.
— You must admit, a great consolation.
— And Social Security.
— A great consolation.
— And philosophy. Futhermore.
— I read a book. Just the other day.
— Sexuality, too.
— They have books about it. I read one.
— We’ll to the woods no more. I assume.
— Where there’s a will there’s a way. That’s what my mother always said.
— I wonder if it’s true.
— I think not.
— Well, you’re driving me crazy.
— Well you’re driving me crazy too. Know what I mean?
— Going to snap one of these days.
— If you were a Japanese master you wouldn’t snap. Those guys never snapped. Some of them were ninety.
— Well, you can’t have everything.
— Cold, here in the garden.
— Caw caw caw caw.
— You want to sing that song.
— Can’t remember how it goes.
— Getting farther and farther away from life.
— How do you feel about that?
— Guilty but less guilty than I should.
— Can you fine-tune that for me?
— Not yet I want to think about it.
— Well, I have to muck out the stable and buff up the silver.
— They trust you with the silver?
— Of course. I have their trust.
— You enjoy their trust.
— Absolutely.
— Well we still haven’t decided what color to paint the trucks.
— I said blue.
— Surely not your last word on the subject.
— I have some swatches. If you’d care to take a gander.
— Not now. This sun is blistering.
— New skin. You’re going to complain?
— Thank the Lord for all small favors.
— The kid ever come to see you?
— Did for a while. Then stopped.
— How does that make you feel?
— Oh, I don’t blame him.
— Well, you can’t have everything.
— That’s true. What’s the time?
— Looks to be about one.
— Where’s your watch?
— Hocked it.
— What’d you get?
— Twelve-fifty.
— God, aren’t these flowers beautiful!
— Only three of them. But each remarkable, of its kind.
— What are they?
— Some kind of Japanese dealies I don’t know.
— Lazing in the garden. This is really most luxurious.
— Listening to the radio. “Elmer’s Tune.”
— I don’t like it when they let girls talk on the radio.
— Never used to have them. Now they’re everywhere.
— You can’t really say too much. These days.
— Doesn’t that make you nervous? Girls talking on the radio?
— I liked H. V. Kaltenborn. He’s long gone.
— What’d you do yesterday?
— Took a walk. In the wild trees.
— They spend a lot of time worrying about where to park their cars. Glad I don’t have one.
— Haven’t eaten anything except some rice, this morning. Cooked it with chicken broth.
— This place is cold, no getting around it.
— Forgot to buy soap, forgot to buy coffee —
— All right. The hollowed-out book containing the single Swedish municipal bond in the amount of fifty thousand Swedish crowns is not yours. We’ve established that. Let’s go on.
— It was never mine. Or it might have been mine, once. Perhaps it belonged to my former wife. I said I wasn’t sure. She was fond of hiding things in hollowed-out books.
— We want not the shadow of a doubt. We want to be absolutely certain.
— I appreciate it. She had gray eyes. Gray with a touch of violet.
— Yes. Now, are these your doors?
— Yes. I think so. Are they on spring hinges? Do they swing?
— They swing in either direction. Spring hinges. Wood slats.
— She did things with her eyebrows. Painted them gold. You had the gray eyes with a touch of violet, and the gold eyebrows. Yes, the doors must be mine. I seem to remember her bursting through them. In one of the several rages of a summer’s day.
— When?
— It must have been some time ago. Some years. I don’t know what they’re doing here. It strikes me they were in another house. Not this house. I mean it’s kind of cloudy.
— But they’re here.
— She sometimes threw something through the doorway before bursting through the doorway herself. Acid, on one occasion.
— But the doors are here. They’re yours.
— Yes. They seem to be. I mean, I’m not arguing with you. On the other hand, they’re not something I want to remember, particularly. They have sort of an unpleasant aura around them, for some reason. I would have avoided them, left to myself.
— I don’t want to distress you. Unnecessarily.
— I know, I know, I know. I’m not blaming you, but it just seems to me that you could have let it go. The doors. I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but still —
— I didn’t mean anything by it. Well, let’s leave the doors, then, and go on to the dish.
— Plate.
— Let’s go on to the plate, then.
— Plate, dish, I don’t care, it’s something of an imposition, you must admit, to have to think about it. Normally I wouldn’t think about it.
— It has your name on the back. Engraved on the back.
— Where? Show me.
— Your name. Right there. And the date, 1962.
— I don’t want to look. I’ll take your word for it. That was twenty years ago. My God. She read R. D. Laing. Aloud, at dinner. Every night. Interrupted only by the telephone. When she answered the telephone, her voice became animated. Charming and animated. Gaiety. Vivacity. Laughter. In contrast to her reading of R. D. Laing. Which could only be described as punitive. O.K., so it’s mine. My plate.
— It’s a dish. A bonbon dish.
— You mean to say that you think that I would own a bonbon dish? A sterling-silver or whatever it is bonbon dish? You’re mad.
— The doors were yours. Why not the dish?
— A bonbon dish?
— Perhaps she craved bonbons?
— No no no no no. Not so. Sourballs, perhaps.
— Let’s move on to the shoe, now. I don’t have that much time.
— The shoe is definitely not mine.
— Not yours.
— It’s a woman’s shoe. It’s too small for me. My foot, this foot here, would never in the world fit into that shoe.
— I am not suggesting that the shoe is yours in the sense that you wear or would wear such a shoe. It’s obviously a woman’s shoe.
— The shoe is in no sense a thing of mine. Although found I admit among my things.
— It’s here. An old-fashioned shoe. Eleven buttons.
— There was a vogue for that kind of shoe, some time back, among the young people. It might have belonged to a young person. I sometimes saw young persons.
— With what in mind?
— I fondled them, if they were fondleable.
— Within the limits of the law, of
course.
— Certainly. “Young persons” is an elastic term. You think I’m going to mess with jailbait?
— Of course not. Never occurred to me. The shoe has something of the pathetic about it. A wronged quality. Do you think it possible that the shoe may be in some way a cri de Coeur?
— Not a chance.
— You were wrong about the dish.
— I’ve never heard a cri de coeur.
— You’ve never heard a cri de coeur?
— Perhaps once. When Shirley was with us?
— Who was Shirley?
— The maid. She was studying eschatology. Maiding part-time. She left us for a better post. Perfectly ordinary departure.
— Did she perhaps wear shoes of this type?
— No. Nor was she given to the cri de coeur. Except perhaps, once. Death of her flying fish. A cry wrenched from her bosom. Rather like a winged phallus it was, she kept it in a washtub in the basement. One day it was discovered belly-up. She screamed. Then, insisted it be given the Last Rites, buried in a fish cemetery, holy water sprinkled this way and that —
— You fatigue me. Now, about the hundred-pound sack of saccharin.
— Mine. Indubitably mine. I’m forbidden to use sugar. I have a condition.
— I’m delighted to hear it. Not that you have a condition but that the sack is, without doubt, yours.
— Mine. Yes.
— I can’t tell you how pleased I am. The inquiry moves. Progress is made. Results are obtained.
— What are you writing there, in your notes?
— That the sack is, beyond a doubt, yours.
— I think it’s mine.
— What do you mean, think? You stated . . . Is it yours or isn’t it?
— I think it’s mine. It seems to be.
— Seems!
— I just remembered, I put sugar in my coffee. At breakfast.
— Are you sure it wasn’t saccharin?
— White powder of some kind . . .
— There is a difference in texture . . .
— No, I remember, it was definitely sugar. Granulated. So the sack of saccharin is definitely not mine.
— Nothing is yours.
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