Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

by Stanley Elkin

  “You know,” he would say to the girl beside him, “I think that if all the world’s leaders would take drugs and lie down on the bed naked like this without any unclean thoughts, the cause of world peace would be helped immeasurably. What do you think?”

  “I think so too,” she would say.

  Once he knew he was going to take the drug, Bertie made his preparations. He went first to his trumpet case and took out the last small packet of powder. He opened it carefully, first closing all the windows so that no sudden draft could blow any of it away. This had once happened to a friend of his, and Bertie had never forgotten the warning.

  “I am not one on whom a lesson is lost,” Bertie said.

  “You’re okay, Bertie,” a Voice said. “Go save France.”

  He placed the packet on the Premingers’ coffee table and carefully spread the paper, exactly like the paper wrapper around a stick of chewing gum, looking almost lustfully at the soft, flat layer of ground white powder. He held out his hand to see how steady it was, and although he was not really shaky he did not trust himself to lift the paper from the table. He brought a water tumbler from the kitchen and gently placed it upside down on top of the powder. He was not yet ready to take it. Bertie was a man who postponed his pleasures as long as he possibly could; he let candy dissolve in his mouth and played with the threads on his tangerine before eating the fruit. It was a weakness in his character perhaps, but he laid it lovingly at the feet of his poverty.

  He decided to wait until sundown to take the drug, reasoning that when it wore off, it would be early next morning and he would be ready for bed. Sleep was one of his pleasures too, and he approved of regularity in small things, taking a real pride in being able to keep hours. To pass the time until sundown he looked for something to do. First he found some tools and busied himself by taking Norma’s steam iron apart. There was still time left after that, so he took a canvas and painted a picture. Because he did not know how to draw he simply covered the canvas first with one color and then with another, applying layer after layer of the paint thickly. Each block of color he made somewhat smaller than the last, so that the finished painting portrayed successive jagged margins of color. He stepped back and considered his work seriously.

  “Well, it has texture, Bertie,” Hans Hoffman said.

  “Bertie,” the Voice said suddenly, “I don’t like to interrupt when you’re working, but it’s sundown.”

  “So it is,” he said, looking up.

  He went back into the living room and removed the tumbler. Taking up the paper in his fingers and creasing it as if he were a cowboy rolling a cigarette, Bertie tilted his head far back and inhaled the powder deeply. This part was always uncomfortable for him. “Ooo,” he said, “the bubbles.” He stuffed the last few grains up his nose with his fingers. “Waste not, want not,” he said.

  He sat down to wait. After half an hour in which nothing happened, Bertie became uneasy. “It’s been cut,” he said. “Sure, depend upon friends to do you favors.” He was referring to the fact that the mescaline had been a going-away present from friends in Oklahoma City. He decided to give it fifteen more minutes. “Nothing,” he said at last, disappointed. “Nothing.”

  The powder, as it always did, left his throat scratchy, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. His soft palate prickled. He seized the water tumbler from the coffee table and walked angrily into the kitchen. He ran the cold water, then gargled and spit in the sink. In a few minutes the bitter taste and the prickly sensation subsided and he felt about as he had before he took the drug. He was conscious, however, of a peculiar smell, unpleasant, unfamiliar, nothing like the odor of rotting flowers he associated with the use of drugs. He opened a window and leaned out, breathing the fresh air. But as soon as he came away from the window, the odor was again overpowering. He went to see if he could smell it in the other rooms. When he had made his tour he realized that the stench must be coming from the kitchen. Holding his breath, he came back to see if he could locate its source. The kitchen was almost as Norma had left it. He had done no cooking, and although there were some empty soup and beer cans in the sink he knew they couldn’t be causing the odor. He shrugged. Then he noticed the partially closed door to Preminger’s study.

  “Of course,” Bertie said. “Whatever it is must be in there.” He pushed the door open. In the middle of the floor were two blackish mounds that looked like dark sawdust. Bertie stepped back in surprise.

  “Camel shit,” he said. “My God, how did that get in here?” He went closer to investigate. “That’s what it is, all right.” He had never seen it before but a friend had, and had described it to him. This stuff fitted the description perfectly. He considered what to do.

  “I can’t leave it there,” he said. He found a dustpan and a broom, and propping the pan against the leg of Preminger’s chair, began to sweep the stuff up. He was surprised at how remarkably gummy it seemed. When he finished he washed the spot on the floor with a foaming detergent and stepped gingerly to the back door. He lifted the lid of the garbage can and shoved the broom and the contents of the dustpan and the dustpan itself into the can. Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands.

  In the living room he saw the Chinaman. “Jesus,” Bertie said breathlessly.

  The Chinaman lowered his eyes in a shy, almost demure smile. He said nothing, but motioned Bertie to sit in the chair across from him. Bertie, too frightened to disobey, sat down.

  He waited for the Chinaman to tell him what he wanted. After an hour (he heard the chime clock strike nine times and then ten times), when the Chinaman still had not said anything, he began to feel a little calmer. Maybe he was just tired, Bertie thought, and came in to rest. He realized that perhaps he and the Chinaman had more in common than had at first appeared. He looked at the fellow in this new light and saw that he had been foolish to fear him. The Chinaman was small, smaller even than Bertie. In fact, he was only two feet tall. Perhaps what made him seem larger was the fact that he was wrapped in wide, voluminous white silk robes. Bertie stared at the robes, fascinated by the delicate filigree trim up and down their length. To see this closer he stood up and walked tentatively toward the Chinaman.

  The Chinaman gazed steadily to the front, and Bertie, seeing no threat, continued toward him. He leaned down over the Chinaman, and gently grasping the delicate lacework between his forefinger and his thumb, drew it toward his eye. “May I?” Bertie asked. “I know a good deal about this sort of thing.”

  The Chinaman lowered his eyes.

  Bertie examined the weird symbols and designs, and although he did not understand them, recognized at once their cabalistic origin.

  “Magnificent,” Bertie said at last. “My God, the man hours that must have gone into this. The sheer craftsmanship! That’s really a terrific robe you’ve got there.”

  The Chinaman lowered his eyes still further.

  Bertie sat down in his chair again. He heard the clock strike eleven and he smiled at the Chinaman. He was trying to be sympathetic, patient. He knew the fellow had his reasons for coming and that in due time they would be revealed, but he couldn’t help being a little annoyed. First the failure of the drug and then the camel shit on the floor and now this. However, he remained very polite.

  There was nothing else to do, so he concentrated on the Chinaman’s face.

  Then a strange thing happened.

  He became aware, as he scrutinized the face, of some things he hadn’t noticed before. First he realized that it was the oldest face he had ever seen. He knew that this face was old enough to have looked on Buddha’s. It was only faintly yellow, really, and he understood with a sweeping insight that originally it must have been white, as it still largely was, a striking, flat white, naked as a sheet, bright as teeth, that its yellowness was an intrusion, the intruding yellowness of fantastic age, of pages in ancient books. As soon as he perceived this he understood the origin and mystery of the races. All men had at first been white; their different tint
s were only the shades of their different wisdoms. Of course, he thought. Of course. It’s beautiful. Beautiful!

  The second thing Bertie noticed was that the face seemed extraordinarily wise. The longer he stared at it the wiser it seemed. Clearly this was the wisest Chinaman, and thus the wisest man, in the history of the world. Now he was impatient for the Chinaman to speak, to tell him his secrets, but he also understood that so long as he was impatient the Chinaman would not speak, that he must become serene, as serene as the Chinaman himself, or else the Chinaman would go away. As this occurred to him the Chinaman smiled and Bertie knew he had been right. He was aware that if he just sat there, deliberately trying to become serene, nothing would happen. He decided that the best way to become serene was to ignore the Chinaman, to go on about his business as if the Chinaman weren’t even there.

  He stood up. “Am I getting warm?” Bertie asked.

  The Chinaman lowered his eyes and smiled.

  “Well, then,” Bertie said, rubbing his hands, “let’s see.”

  He went into the kitchen to see if there was anything he could do there to make him serene.

  He washed out the empty cans of soup.

  He strolled into the bedroom and made the bed. This took him an hour. He heard the clock strike twelve and then one.

  He took a record off the machine, and starting from the center hole and working to the outer edge, counted all the ridges. This took him fourteen seconds.

  He found a suitcase in one of the closets and packed all of Norma’s underwear into it.

  He got a pail of water and some soap and washed all the walls in the small bedroom.

  It was in the dining room, however, that he finally achieved serenity. He studied Norma’s pictures of side streets throughout the world and with sudden insight understood what was wrong with them. He took some tubes of white paint and with a brush worked over the figures, painting back into the flesh all their original whiteness. He made the Mexicans white, the Negroes white, feeling as he worked an immense satisfaction, the satisfaction not of the creator, nor even of the reformer, but of the restorer.

  Swelling with serenity, Bertie went back into the living room and sat down in his chair. For the first time the Chinaman met his gaze directly, and Bertie realized that something important was going to happen.

  Slowly, very slowly, the Chinaman began to open his mouth. Bertie watched the slow parting of the Chinaman’s thin lips, the gleaming teeth, white and bright as fence pickets. Gradually the rest of the room darkened and the thinly padded chair on which Bertie sat grew incredibly soft. He knew that they had been transported somehow, that they were now in a sort of theater. The Chinaman was seated on a kind of raised platform. Meanwhile the mouth continued to open, slowly as an ancient drawbridge. Tiny as the Chinaman was, the mouth seemed enormous. Bertie gazed into it, seeing nothing. At last, deep back in the mouth, he saw a brief flashing, as of a small crystal on a dark rock suddenly illuminated by the sun. In a moment he saw it again, brighter now, longer sustained. Soon it was so bright that he had to force himself to look at it. Then the mouth went black. Before he could protest, the brightness was overwhelming again and he saw a cascade of what seemed like diamonds tumble out of the Chinaman’s mouth. It was the Chinaman’s tongue.

  Twisting, turning over and over like magicians’ silks pulled endlessly from a tube, the tongue continued to pour from the Chinaman’s mouth. Bertie saw that it had the same whiteness as the rest of his face, and that it was studded with bright, beautiful jewels. On the tongue, long now as an unfurled scroll, were thick black Chinese characters. It was the secret of life, of the world, of the universe. Bertie could barely read for the tears of gratitude in his eyes. Desperately he wiped the tears away with his fists. He looked back at the tongue and stared at the strange words, realizing that he could not read Chinese. He was sobbing helplessly now because he knew there was not much time. The presence of the Chinaman gave him courage and strength and he forced himself to read the Chinese. As he concentrated it became easier, the characters somehow re-forming, translating themselves into a sort of decipherable Chinesey script, like the words “Chop Suey” on the neon sign outside a Chinese restaurant. He was breathless from his effort and the stunning glory of what was being revealed to him. Frequently he had to pause, punctuating his experience with queer little squeals. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Oh.”

  Then it was over.

  He was exhausted, but his knowledge glowed in him like fire. “So that’s it” was all he could say. “So that’s it. So that’s it.”

  Bertie saw that he was no longer in the theater. The Chinaman was gone and Bertie was back in the Premingers’ living room. He struggled for control of himself. He knew it was urgent that he tell someone what had happened to him. Desperately he pulled open his trumpet case. Inside he had pasted sheets with the names, addresses and phone numbers of all his friends.

  “Damn Klaff,” he said angrily. “Damn Second-Story Klaff in his lousy jail.”

  He spotted Gimpel’s name and the phone number of his boarding house in Cincinnati. Tearing the sheet from where it was pasted inside the lid, he rushed to the phone and placed the call. “Life and death,” he screamed at Gimpel’s bewildered landlady. “Life and death.”

  When Gimpel came to the phone Bertie began to tell him, coherently, but with obvious excitement, all that had happened. Gimpel was as excited as himself.

  “Then the Chinaman opened his mouth and this tongue with writing on it came out.”

  “Yeah?” Gimpel said. “Yeah? Yeah?”

  “Only it was in Chinese,” Bertie shouted.

  “Chinese,” Gimpel said.

  “But I could read it, Gimpel! I could read it!”

  “I didn’t know you could read Chinese,” Gimpel said.

  “It was the meaning of life.”

  “Yeah?” Gimpel said. “Yeah? What’d it say? What’d it say?”

  “What?” Bertie said.

  “What’d it say? What’d the Chink’s tongue say was the meaning of life?”

  “I forget,” Bertie said and hung up.

  He slept until two the next afternoon, and when he awoke he felt as if he had been beaten up. His tongue was something that did not quite fit in his mouth, and throughout his body he experienced a looseness of the bones, as though his skeleton were a mobile put together by an amateur. He groaned dispiritedly, his eyes still closed. He knew he had to get up out of the bed and take a shower and shave and dress, that only by making extravagant demands on it would his body give him any service at all. “You will make the Death March,” he warned it ruthlessly.

  He opened his eyes and what he saw disgusted him and turned his stomach. His eye patch had come off during the night and now there were two of everything. He saw one eye patch on one pillow and another eye patch on another pillow. Hastily he grabbed for it, but he had chosen the wrong pillow. He reached for the other eye patch and the other pillow, but somehow he had put out one of his illusory hands. It did not occur to him to shut one eye. At last, by covering all visible space, real or illusory, with all visible fingers, real or illusory—like one dragging a river—he recovered the patch and pulled it quickly over one of his heads.

  He stood stunned in his hot shower, and then shaved, cutting his neck badly. He dressed.

  “Whan ’e iz through his toilette, Monsieur will see how much better ’e feel,” his valet said. He doubted it and didn’t answer.

  In the dining room he tried not to look at Norma’s paintings, but could not help noticing that overnight many of her sunny side streets had become partial snow scenes. He had done that, he remembered, though he could not now recall exactly why. It seemed to have something to do with a great anthropological discovery he had made the night before. He finished the last of the pizza, gagging on it briefly.

  Considering the anguish of his body, it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he was hooked. Momentarily this appealed to his sense of the dramatic, but then he realized that it would
be a terrible thing to have happen to him. He could not afford to be hooked, for he knew with a sense of calm sadness that his character could no more sustain the responsibility of a steady drug habit than it could sustain the responsibility of any other kind of pattern.

  “Oh, what a miserable bastard I am,” Bertie said.

  In near-panic he considered leaving the Premingers’ apartment immediately, but he knew that he was in no condition to travel. “You wouldn’t make it to the corner,” he said.

  He felt massively sorry for himself. The more he considered it the more certain it appeared that he was hooked. It was terrible. Where would he get the money to buy the drugs? What would they do to his already depleted physical resources? “Oh, what a miserable bastard I am,” he said again.

  To steady himself he took a bottle of Scotch from the shelf in the pantry. Bertie did not like hard liquor. Though he drank a lot, it was beer he drank, or, when he could get them, the sweeter cordials. Scotch and bourbon had always seemed vaguely square to him. But he had already finished the few liqueurs that Preminger had, and now nothing was left but Scotch. He poured himself an enormous drink.

  Sipping it calmed him—though his body still ached—and he considered what to do. If he was hooked, the first thing was to tell his friends. Telling his friends his latest failure was something Bertie regarded as a sort of responsibility. Thus his rare letters to them usually brought Bertie’s intimates—he laughed at the word—nothing but bad news. He would write that a mistress had given him up, and, with his talent for mimicry, would set down her last long disappointed speech to him, in which she exposed in angry, honest language the hollowness of his character, his infinite weakness as a man, his vileness. When briefly he had turned to homosexuality to provide himself with funds, the first thing he did was write his friends about it. Or he wrote of being fired from bands when it was discovered how bad a trumpeter he really was. He spared neither himself nor his friends in his passionate self-denunciations.