1995
PART 4
Life, Death and Affairs of the Heart
Whither Goeth That Bullet
One hates to have to say this straight off, but the United States is, as all its citizens are already convinced, the greatest country on earth. The place where the story of mankind is being breathlessly told in its very latest chapter. It is also a place where it’s damn easy to be killed.
I have always taken every comfortable precaution to stay alive. As a professional pedestrian who pleasures much in his reverie, and as one who does not trust fate to do me well, I have regarded the possibility of being put in the way of a bullet as being an unnecessarily ludicrous way to go. And I have always believed rudeness to be, as much as anything, the cause of violence. Fortunately, I am, to beggars and tycoons alike, unfailingly polite. A trait for which most people are not yet being shot. But it does sometimes leave you, in New York at least, holding open a door for the whole city to walk through. And ready to shoot the next son of a bitch who goes by without saying thank you.
Living in the Republic of Ireland in recent years, surrounded by fields and walls and monstrous dogs at large, one never gets a true feel of danger. No poisonous snakes, spiders or grizzly bears. Trespassers, if they haven’t already been frightened miles away by the thundering concert of massive Irish wolfhounds barking, might, unless one rushed to the scene, already be chewed to death. Other places I have lived in Europe, such as the Isle of Man and London, were traditional in their peacefulness, and harm to the person was relatively rare. But now, a perceptible if slow change is in progress. The odd mugging has at last come to Dublin. In London, passengers have been assaulted on the underground trains. One now finds one has to go further afield, behind the Iron Curtain in fact, to be where one is still relatively safe. With maybe a drunken dissident trying to swallow his words on a street corner as one approaches looking as I do, slightly like Joseph Stalin.
But everywhere the world over is growing faster and faster like America. Even in a Prague or Budapest street, there are at last emerging folk who just might want to rob you, and hurt you to do it. One supposes that easy money and greed are the moving forces, fanned by the propaganda of happiness through the consumption of products and aided and abetted by the theoretical equality of man, recognized in the United States and communicated by film and television to the rest of the world. Class and caste barriers, at least in matters of material possessions, are down in America. Where a busboy, taxi driver or mortician can be a hero behind the wheel of a shiny new car. Yet the majority of millions will never swagger triumphantly across the carpet of a country club.
Perhaps because of its vast array of ethnic origins, American culture demands the standardization of its citizens and the availability of what they want. Freedom from scrubbing, celibacy, boredom and self denial. A steady supply of jeans, pot and coke. The throbbing belief in each American soul that I’m as good as anybody. And that why shouldn’t I get mine as well if the man at the corporate and political top has his fingertips in the till. And, dear me, does that lead to trouble. Especially when your neighbour on your leafy street or crowded train lets you know by look, sneer or shove that you’re not as good as him. And you want to sock or blow his goddamn head off. This is how I have always remembered this country as having been.
But to come up to date. And see America more recently. As I did in spring 1981, on returning from Budapest. Where there is nothing quite like the Hungarian language to keep you in the dark. At a hilltop window staring out over battlements from Buda to Pest across late winter mists lowering over the Danube, church bells pealing, the soul purring in the strange silence one feels far across the eastern reaches of Europe. And with the accumulated days of no newspapers, television or radio, I wondered, sipping my iced mineral water, what on earth was happening way out there beyond the spires in the distant west. Had the stock exchanges yet exploded with the news of a biogenic organism that happily excreted crude oil. Or had the Russians invaded Poland yet, and as the big, powerful nations said slightly more than boo to one another, would the Iron Curtain suddenly slam shut on the toes of this poor, innocent, bog trotting Irishman.
With a military precision provided by the hotel, I departed with ease next early morning, chauffeured to the airport. Somewhat glad, chewing one’s apple, to lift into the sky over the Danube past Vienna, out of the constraints of a society rigidly controlled, and safe for the body and unsafe for the soul. I fell asleep all the way to London. Arriving to walk out into a less than bustling airport. My bag for the first time came out sooner than later on the conveyor belt. Encouraged by this omen, I walked on, nothing to declare. Past the single customs officer, his elbow propped upon his knee, daydreaming. As I stepped out into the expanse of the terminal, there it was. A newspaper headline. Held up in a man’s hands. PRESIDENT REAGAN SHOT. As I quickly made my way to buy a paper, I was reminded yet again why I, an American born and reared writer with a haunted love and awe of that land, had ever since my twentieth year been living in Europe.
The America I had left in 1946 still seemed, aside from the mob rub out and family feud, the place of the fair fight. Where only the cowardly and the distinctly from the other side of the tracks would pick up a bottle, a knife or kick or scratch. All my own fights, with rare exception, had been in the ring and on the wrestling mat among interested spectators and referees. Then I went to Trinity College, Dublin. To a land where the natives would agree to either side of an argument so long as it could result in a fight. I was horrified to suddenly find overnight that I was in one brawl after another. In pubs, at parties and, indeed, even in water closets, churches and latrines. With nowhere safe and all the Queensberry rules abandoned. Boots, maces, pick handles and objets d’art flying. But still no knifing, no shooting.
Then in my brief return of a year to America in 1951, American violence, as such, seemed to make its first impression. It was a time of McCarthyism. Suspicion had spread everywhere in the land. Much of it directed instantly at me, being as I was the only man on the entire continent wearing a beard. With perhaps the single exception of a man who came smilingly around the corner of Fifth and 52nd Street early one afternoon and said as we confronted, ‘Ooh la la, vive le barbu.’ Or French words to that effect. The hair on my face produced hostile stares and growling at every turn. Met, of course, with stares of my own, as I reluctantly readied fists to defend against the first hand laid upon my person. No one did try to sock me. But one was aware that something had changed in America. In their street gang wars, kids were using zip guns instead of bottles, knuckle dusters and chains. The killings once reserved for family anger and mob vengeance had now come randomly to the streets. I heard that a bandit in the suburban peace of the upper Bronx, where doors had once been left unlocked at night, was shooting people dead on their front lawns after relieving them of their valuables. One now knew that America had truly become dangerous.
However dramatic and overnight, the hostility to my beard miraculously abated. Willie Sutton, the bank robber, had been identified on a subway train by a fellow passenger and arrested. The gentleman recognizing him was found slain a few weeks later. And now, as I would enter a subway carriage, instead of being confronted with hostile stares, all faces and eyes were averted. Arriving at the next station stop I would be sitting utterly alone in the car, every passenger having left to be seen along the platform jumping into other cars on the same train. On the street, sidewalks cleared ahead of me. And people apologized if they brushed my elbow. A case, for one citizen at least, of a bullet producing a kind of privacy and peace. And death in somebody else’s body.
Then as the years went by and bigger and better people were being shot in America, I found myself one morning in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, where a man knocking on the door said he was room service and I said I hadn’t ordered any room service and immediately pushed my wife, who was about to open up the door, and myself to the wall, out of the line of fire. There followed his long pauses of silenc
e between his admitting he was a fan of The Ginger Man. It was a sad occasion as he recounted the influence the book had on his life and that all he wanted to do was shake my hand and tell me so. But one had learned plenty about America, that there now floated aimless men who for no good reason would even kill what they professed to love and admire.
People simply and sensibly do not like people who are not like them. And all of us harbour some vengeance to equate with the slights and wrongs that daily befall us because of our penury, colour, creed, accent, father’s job or even the hayseed in our hair that keeps us out of the country club or social register. We all want to rise above our station and, preferably, keep others permanently in theirs. And violence, alas, is the executive hand of this evolution. Whether it be a savage’s spear, the big nuclear guns of nations or the .22 calibre pistol of a thief or jealous woman. It is also an intimate part of the spiritual efficiency of the United States. Where the bullet is the ultimate of democracy at work. Relieving the frustrations of a vast computerized nation. Blowing holes through choking webs of litigation. Giving the small man a chance to hold the behemoth football tackle at bay. Or the starving, desperate man who can go to a bank and demand money to feed his children. And even deterring the grasping hand of the grabber at life’s banquet. And one can’t help feeling that if America had no guns or knives, insolence would be epidemic and intolerable.
America, too, is embalmed with its mythologies of democracy. The good life, streets paved with gold, where people no longer bend to pick up a penny. The propaganda of products, preaching life without pain, no toil no sweat no tears. Phoney glad faces blaring on every side, ‘I’m happy, I’m cool, I’m contented.’ Even self importance is sold between the covers of a book, to be learned in 310 easy lessons. Indeed, it produces results. And also, as a consequence, makes life seem cheap, with every kind of personality hearing and seeing constant mirror images of themselves. So why take unpleasant lip from any one of these cardboard reproductions who, according to the Constitution, is no better than you are. And who wouldn’t, then, especially the downtrodden, the poor and the not so bright, finally think that the answer to all such bullshit was a bullet in someone else’s head. When in your own true heart you squirm at the mealy mouths making noises of deceit.
In the middle of this, I have flown to America, where at one a.m. I stare out a window high up over the trees of Central Park. A great black cauldron of mist ringed with twinkling windows and blinking blue with lightning as the city rumbles with thunder. A symbol ominous and beautiful. A story in the newspaper amid all the other random homicides. Someone in the theatre district is throwing concrete blocks off a building and killing people in the street. It happens that from childhood I know Lieutenant Richard Gallagher, who is handling the investigation. Even in all his years of confronting the gory and gruesome, one sensed his extra concern to catch this cunningly mad killer. And over grape juice and ginger ale I asked this anciently wise and fair minded man what he thought of violence. And he said that what amazed him most was that it wasn’t even worse.
In the morning I turn on the television. One channel is telling ladies how not to be cock teasers, and on another channel they’re telling ladies how not to fake their orgasms. And this is nearly as mad as the insane violence most of us fear. That which comes without warning or reason from those harried into silent, brooding dementia. In search of their own celebrity and symbolically breaking the encasement of lifelong lies preached to their ears, which in believing them has left them lonely, desperate souls abandoned in ignominy.
But holy cow, it’s you who has been randomly chosen, by this malcontent aiming his gun, to be the victim. And perhaps this is the bullet that can’t be avoided. Especially if he’s at a distance, watching you with telescopic sights while you are out walking your dog beneath the leafy ambience of East 72nd Street, and you have no close up opportunity to smile and promptly yell, ‘Hey, good to see you, gee, you look swell. And please don’t shoot.’
And to be shot by someone deranged seems sadder than to be shot by cold blooded contract. The latter at least means you were important enough to be an obstacle to someone. As are so many American witnesses before a trial. Who’ve earned the dignity of a conspiracy to decide their demise. Perhaps brought about by a young, beautiful wife who wants your lifelong earnings sooner than later. Or you want to get rid of this same monster greedy bitch plus her tanned gorilla chested tennis club lover. How many of us, even in wishful thinking, have found it imperative to call upon this kind of bullet justice. And in how few countries is it able to so luxuriously flourish. For what is often now not even noticed about America is its burgeoning subliminal violence of litigation, which murders more than bullets, is countered by those facing it, who subtly murder back. By car accident, by syringe, by snake, by disease. Yet, again one feels the antidote is courtesy. And civility to those made, by marriage ordeals gone awry, the hated and despised. But then murder is one of the most profound acts of life. The self appointed administration of a justice or injustice. Happening in America because people have no faith in their politically appointed judges. That they sense no truth in the words of the rich and powerful. And that there is no king in the land who does not cheat and lie. Who holds aloft a symbol of public conscience. At which they might bend heads and pray. And obey.
But then just as you think of America at its very worst, it’s suddenly, in front of your face, a magic and most humane land. A man gives you a free apple and a smile. Another says have a good day and a swell life. You see the joggers trotting along. Happy in their belief, coast to coast, that they are in better shape than anyone else. Bringing to their bodies some of the pain American bodies so desperately need. To counter the dreams. And to sober the kids growing up in this land. Getting what they want. By whines, threats and screams. Instead of a good boot in the ass. Demanding toys, cars and cocaine. Getting them all, till they need heroin. And mom and dad, while jumping dutifully to their every physical whim, serve them up their moral code, which they daily breach themselves. Till these children grow out into the world and suddenly somebody says, ‘No, you can’t have that for free.’ And they find they still can. If they get a gun.
Yet to me all the best in civilization comes simply with being able to take one’s perambulating reverie. Along a sunny street. Playing romantic space shuttle in one’s own world of dreams. And especially in a land where a novel erupts in one’s vision around every street corner. And the language blooms anew in every mouth. At such times, one does not want to have to think of the inconvenience to the spirit, or to feel, as one takes a pee, that one might also feel a pistol in one’s vulnerable back. To lose your valuables, piss all over your shoeshine and lose faith in man’s humanity to man. And I once asked the artist brother, T.J., who spends his reclusive life between painting pictures daily roaming the TV stations, examining the Ouija board of America’s mass communications, what was the defence against, say, a random mugger or an armed lunatic. He said there’s only one. Whimsicality. And that a display of your own personal brand of this will throw a mugger or a madman off balance. But only for 2.3 seconds before he again assesses the common denominator of your vulnerability, and then if you can, even with your fly open and urine splashing, you’d better run.
But as one knows, the civility of a nation can be ruined by just one man’s rudeness. And so still again I’m thrown back on my solution of courtesy. And that one has nothing to lose even in displaying it with a criminal who already may have the upper hand and who already is fed up with your mealy mouthed corporate guff. One might then murmur at the barrel of his gun, ‘Gee, fella, have a good day.’
But let us take solace concerning whither goeth that bullet. That whatever happens there remains the great human failing.
Although
One does not
Want to be shot
Oneself
Yet one would like
To be able
To shoot others
1981
Sentimental Journey – My Favourite Hotel
Hotels must achieve a great deal of their charm from the fact that people who go to stay at them are, while on their way, temporarily dispossessed itinerants looking for a safe and hopefully comfortable place to sleep, who, unconsciously working up an anxiety through traffic jams, boats and planes, arrive with much relief. Along with the terrorism that now stalks the world these days one’s travelling peace of mind is not getting any better. And is it any wonder that one falls thankfully into the casement enfolding us as a door of one’s chosen hotel opens and you see there before you a welcoming cloistered elegance.
Now Paris is a place where at least a small part of everyone’s life ought to be lived. And it was just following the Second World War, when I was not long removed to Dublin from the wonderworld of New York City and America, that I first heard spoken of the gloriously wide boulevard of the Champs Elysées and that it was perhaps even wider than Dublin’s O’Connell Street. I heard further of the splendour of Paris as one stood at an easel painting the university nights away in my austere rooms in Trinity College and conversing with a young Frenchman and undergraduate like myself. And who, in the chill damp of the Irish winter and disillusioned by Ireland’s amatory prospects, would wistfully recall the heated comfort behind the glass enclosed terrace of a café on the Rue de Rivoli and there in the morning aroma of coffee and croissants he would watch the chic ladies of Paris go by. As I would proffer him more Madeira, he would then wax lyrical concerning the treasures and beauties that lay everywhere carelessly in abundance under the light tinted blue sky of this city to which I now knew I would soon have to go.
J.P. Donleavy: An Author and His Image Page 13
