by Mark Helprin
She was ignored by everyone she passed. Even men went by without a glance, like bats or manta rays, in badly tailored suits that glistened in the light because they were made of petrochemicals that saluted the fluorescence with their own slithery gleam. That these men did not even glance at Fredericka, with her sapphire-blue eyes, buoyant blond tresses, and statuesque body (an immense amount of exquisite leg showed from her flattering olive-coloured shorts), was because she guided a trolley that held buckets, mops, squeeze bottles, and toilet paper stacked as high as the Eiffel Tower. Riding on the side like passengers hanging on to a cable car were two yellow plastic sandwich boards that would announce in English and Spanish for time immemorial (such things are never thrown away, and they do not rot) that the floor was wet.
The prospect of cleaning toilets before ending her days in an American almshouse was not as hurtful as that she had been overlooked. The way people held themselves, walked, and spoke, as in the dances of ants or bees, seemed to Fredericka to have the object not merely of excluding but of killing the people who, like her, were at the bottom. It was the single cruellest thing she had ever experienced, not because it was particularly intense—it wasn’t—but because she understood intuitively the untold number of times it had been and would be repeated. Thousands of millions gone and thousands of millions yet to be born had and would suffer through it. She had heard orators in England permanently impassioned by their memory of such a thing, not as it had applied to them but as it had applied to their parents and would to their children. This was the source of unquenchable anger and pity, and she had learnt it in the short time it had taken her to push her cleaning cart down a crowded hall to the first lavatory. When she arrived, for the first time in her life her head was bowed not as an insincere demonstration of humility but from heaviness and something like shame.
She knocked on the lavatory door. It was a men’s room, and she had been told to do the men’s rooms first. When she had set up her barriers and entered, she waited as the stragglers left. They were completely unembarrassed, for her status had trumped her sex. Then she had the lavatory all to herself. Fourteen urinals, five sinks, seven toilet stalls, several mirrors, and an ocean of white tile faced her, having been neglected for a week. The floor was littered with paper towels and newspapers. Urine and excrement had leapt beyond their confinements and had had days to cure and dry. Cigarette butts, spittle, and hair had mixed with the dirt tracked in and compressed by foot. She had never faced anything like this, she was alone, and she wanted to run away. But she had no place to go, so she looked at the room in cold fluorescent light as if it were an enemy, and her eyes narrowed. She remembered what Freddy had told her about battle. To survive, he had said, find the rhythm of the battle, and never let it go. This she began to do.
With a mop and heavy galvanised bucket, she attacked the first filthy toilet stall. To clean it took a great deal of strength and movement, but as she made headway it was just as Freddy had said. A certain music arose, a beat, a rhythm. She heard it in her breathing and in the blood as it pounded through her, and this she channelled into how she moved. The harder she worked and the more steadily, the more things gleamed. When she would burst from a stall and slam the door, headed for the next, she was like a gladiator coming into the arena. It was actually beautiful, in its way, when the porcelain sparkled and the chrome was a flawless mirror of quicksilver in which she saw her face now rosy red with hard work.
A report like a gunshot signalled that the last stall was done, and then she took up arms against the urinals. Her teeth were clenched and she breathed hard, for it was a struggle to wrest one’s dignity from the act of cleaning a urinal, but this is exactly what she did. To her own surprise, she was singing softly to herself a furious song that she had never heard before and that now possessed her. Somehow, though bound and low, she was freer and higher than she had ever been.
A man walked in, having ignored her yellow plastic sandwich boards, the tape stretched between them, and the sign hanging from it. He had ignored how the floors shone and that they were wet. He had ignored her work. And now he ignored her. Perhaps she would have accepted this an hour before, but that hour had passed.
“It’s closed,” she said quietly. “Didn’t you see the sign? I’m working on it.”
His answer was to smirk and turn slightly away as he approached the urinal. Then he took his place and began to relieve himself.
This Fredericka found so demeaning, such an attack upon her dignity, her person, and her honour, that something snapped. She cocked the mop behind her right shoulder like a samurai sword and took two swordsman’s steps toward her blissfully unaware antagonist. Then she brought the mop-head down like an executioner’s axe, separating him from the urinal—in the shock of his life—like a faggot split from a round of oak by a twenty-five-pound maul. The force of the strike threw him against a toilet stall, where he rapidly collapsed. Before he knew it, the sharp end of Fredericka’s mop was pressed against his windpipe, and a huge, fit, crazed woman, her magnificent Norse-blond hair shining in the light like metallic fire, her noble nose like the prow of a galley, had been smart enough to choke up on the shaft so that even had he dared he could not have pushed it aside.
And then, as much with her sea-blue eyes as with her savage, growling voice, she ordered him, a mouse-tinted person who did not know how to fight, to leave her lavatory. “Get out,” she said, “or I’ll presently cleave you from your tiny apparatus.” Still holding his apparatus in his hand, he did.
Then she cleaned up the uncleanliness he had left, and fell back into the work by which, as surely as if with sparks flying, she was forging a new self.
AFTER A MEAL of compressed turkey with colloidal gravy, ultra-soft succotash, instant mashed potatoes, weak iced tea, and papaya Jell-O, they took an armful of junk food to a bench overlooking an expressway. It was seven o’clock, the sun was still high, they were freshly showered, and their muscles burned as if after a full day of skiing or fox hunting. They had loved the dinner and taken seconds and thirds, thanking the ancient serving ladies with a sincerity that bespoke their hunger. Now they were exhausted, and looked forward to an hour or so of sun, during which they would watch for license plates. America was a paradise for license-plate hunts, with fifty states, the District of Columbia, the Canadian provinces, Guam, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and various European countries in the running. Freddy knew that with its Congressional staffs, lobbyists, diplomats, and tourists, Washington was the best place in the world for his favourite game after polo, so he had expressed the wish to play it while they could. In North Dakota, the thrill was not the same. He had been there once, to hunt buffalo, and his take had been one buffalo, three Minnesotas, two Manitobas, a Saskatchewan, a Colorado, and a dozen South Dakotas. You could do better, he said, in Nigeria. But in Washington, Fredericka wrote down the plates that she saw or Freddy called out, and within ten minutes they had Alaska, Wyoming, Prince Edward Island, and Curaçao, not to mention so many multiples of so many other states and countries that Freddy was almost in tears. “Did you have a good day?” he asked. “North Carolina, California, Maine.”
“Yes. I almost castrated a middle manager. Maryland, Arizona, Peru.”
“Peru! Why did you do that?” Freddy asked, exultant over Peru.
“I was cleaning lavatories—Massachusetts—and he came in when he shouldn’t have. Iowa, Ontario.”
“Isn’t that—Montana—a rather Draconian punishment? I don’t mean to take his side against yours, but if I were castrated every time I went into the wrong room or parked where I shouldn’t have, you would long ago have divorced me even had I been a kind of centipede. You haven’t let American feminists brainwash you, have you?”
“You don’t understand. Texas, Oregon, New Hampshire.”
“Ahlahbahmah. That’s where we’re from. Jolly good.”
“He just came in, as if I didn’t exist. I asked him to leave. I asked him nicely. And then he smiled and bega
n to relieve himself. You should have seen his expression. What would you have done in my place?”
Freddy took his eyes from the road and looked with interest and respect at his wife. “Sometimes,” he said, “it is right only to be unreasonable.”
She felt wonderful. Marriage is, among other things, having someone deeply and unreasonably on your side, and Freddy had often been infuriatingly impartial. They ignored the traffic, and stared at one another.
“You cleaned toilets?”
“I don’t mind. It’s my job. I’ve never seen lavatories cleaner than the ones I cleaned. It made me happier than water-skiing off Skiros or being on the cover of She. They wanted to hire me full time, with medical, 401(k)—isn’t that a vitamin?—and two weeks’ vacation per annum. I told them I couldn’t, but that I was honoured. They begged me to think it over, and said that you could work there, too. They like hard-working immigrant couples better than anyone else.”
“I’m fond of my job loading trucks,” Freddy told her. “The other workers, however, are not fond of me. They say I work too fast and too hard, like someone who’s going on to something else. Indeed, I loaded a lorry with five hundred Die Hard automobile batteries. That was ten tonnes, or twice as much as my nearest competitor. The temperature in the trailer was one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit. Work like that makes me feel worthy of my ancient forbears who were not kings, and for some reason it is they whom I wish always to impress in my imagination. It is they who I pray are watching as I cross the heath, cut wood, or fish for trout on the gravel bar of a deafening stream. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it’s because, in being separate from and above everyone, my family have fallen. We live the dream of the common man, but haven’t the courage to tell him that what he has is far better than what he wants. It is his imagination that is faulty, not our execution of our role.”
“Freddy, how much money do you have?”
“Thousands of millions, if you count land, paintings, real estate. . . .”
“In your pocket.”
“Forty dollars. My wage was six dollars fifty, but after taxes and deductions I’ve come out with considerably less than what I earned. What do you have?”
“The same.”
“If we clear eighty dollars a day between us, that’s four hundred a week. Let’s say we paid a hundred and fifty a week for a room, and a hundred and fifty for food. That would leave a hundred per week for supplementary medical care, insurance, clothing, travel, furniture and decoration, entertainment, books, utilities, subscriptions, and savings.”
“Freddy, how can two people live for a week for the price of an entrée at Citron, Foie, et Feu?”
“Citron, Foie, et Feu is an expensive restaurant.”
“How much did it cost to have the window fixed on the Rolls?”
“The one that caught my head?”
“Yes. That was the grey one, wasn’t it?”
“It also happened in the green one. Both times it was two hundred and seventy-five quid, which is more than the two of us earn in a week. What of it?”
“It’s not fair.”
“But, Fredericka, poor people never have to fix the windows of Rolls-Royces: they don’t have them. Things are not symmetrical, and never have been. That doesn’t render them unfair. As long as the competition is free and open. . . . What is the name of that fellow who makes all those arrogant and pretentious computer programmes that are physically ugly, offer only a Hobson’s choice, and are so riddled with frivolous junk that they break down all the time?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I know. The one who looks like he works in a butcher’s shop. He seems very nice, actually. What’s his name? He lives in a town on the West Coast—Sea Eel? Sea View? Tree Eel?”
“Whatever his name is, he’s now the richest man in the world, richer than we are, and he was born in his parents’ garage.”
“Why would he be born there?” Fredericka asked. “Why wouldn’t they at least have had him in the bedroom?”
“I don’t know,” said Freddy, “but, think of it, a baby born in a garage became the richest man in the world—practically before it grew up. That’s America. The rich can become poor and the poor can become rich. Now and then they trade places, and anyone can go anywhere.”
“Isn’t that Socialism?”
“No, it’s Capitalism, and it’s why we, having dropped from the sky with nothing, have a chance of acquiring anything. There is no limit. We might even bring in Mexico as well. Why not? We already have Canada.”
“Who cares?”
“I do.”
“But why?”
“It’s my job, and I want to do my job as well as I possibly can. You see, it’s like cleaning toilets.”
“Ah,” she said. “I understand.”
BECAUSE THEY WERE such good workers that each had earned promotion and a higher wage, and because they had told the Salvation Army that they would leave Washington at the end of July, they were allowed to stay for longer than usual. Every evening they wolfed down the cafeteria dinner and went out to the bench near the expressway, junk food in hand. After a while, they had five Guams, a hundred Idahos, two Perus, two Czechoslovakias, a Yemen, and thousands and thousands of Marylands, Virginias, and Districts of Columbia. In fact, they stopped counting Districts of Columbia after ten thousand.
On weekends they would go on daylong rambles through Washington, happily and easily covering twenty or thirty miles, taking in the sights anonymously. This was one of the greatest pleasures of their lives, especially after Dr Popcorn had agreed to grind down their teeth for only $200 and they found themselves casually but elegantly clothed, in magnificent physical shape, smiles debeavered, well rested, and finally comfortable. After the rambles they would read in the Library of Congress or go to the National Gallery to refresh their souls with the most open, beautiful, and promising scenes man had ever witnessed or imagined. All through the capital they found fountains; shaded grottoes in which to sit; cool marble halls where, with educated commoners, they took refuge from the heat; and river prospects along which they walked relaxedly.
On a trip to the periodicals room at the Library of Congress, they discovered that the world thought they were still in their ordinary habitat. “Look,” Freddy said, leafing through the glossies. “Here we are in the Aegean, and here we are at Balmoral. With old photographs you can lull the world. We could be dead and no one would know—like an American politician or Mao Tse-tung. I wonder whose idea it could have been to grant us a year of press holiday in exchange for regular pictures and stories?”
“I haven’t been on the cover of She for three months,” Fredericka said not even wistfully. “It’s hard to believe.”
“But you’re inside, and half-naked, too.”
“I am?”
“Look.”
“Oh, that was last summer. Don’t you remember? There you are, on the terrace at Sorrento, reading that book about Leonard O.”
“Who?”
“Leonard O. The Italian.”
“Oh yes, him.”
“I was trying to tan absolutely all over. You didn’t even notice.”
“Yes I did, and so did the photographers. How long were you able to stay upside down?”
“Only a minute or so each time. The blood ran to my head.”
It was strange that the public thought they were carrying on normally, because, finally, they were. They ate ice cream once a week, and had their hair cut. Freddy asked his barber to cut his hair like the Prince of Wales’, and the barber told him that he couldn’t, because “Your hair isn’t like that. It doesn’t go that way. And what do you want to look like him for? He’s an asshole.” Fredericka was told, on the other hand, that she did bear a passing resemblance to the Princess of Wales, but, rather than imitate, she should go her own way, as she was much prettier.
“Am I?” she asked.
“Oh yes. Fredericka’s horsey, and has a hu
ge nose. They hide it in pictures. You’re beautiful, and although you have a strong nose, it’s not even half the size of hers.”
So Fredericka got a new hairstyle, a French braid that nonetheless made her look very Scandinavian, very young, and very gorgeous. This delighted Freddy, who was pleased not only with her appearance but with her. Now she had far less appetite for nonsensical and petty things. At one point, it had seemed as if, while sitting on a bench in the trees near a fountain, she was thinking. But he had no proof.
He, too, had changed. For the first time in his life he thought a great deal about money. They had paid the Salvation Army for room and board, and after the outflow to Dr Popcorn, fifteen dollars for each of their weekend excursions, and minor purchases of toiletries, sunglasses, a folding knife, and a water bottle, they were left with $1,600, which seemed to them like a fortune. They had no intention of spending it unless they had to, and resolved that wherever they might land they would work to support themselves, drawing from savings only during travel.
Freddy was vexed by how much it cost to go anywhere. Flying was out of the question unless they were to proceed directly to the West Coast, but what then? The train was out of the question as well, and the bus cheap but punishing, and, in a sense, too fast. They needed to see the country, and, for the country to open to them, they needed friction.
When they decided not to pay for transport, the prospect of working at each extended stop left them with what suddenly seemed like superfluous wealth. Freddy thought Fredericka would want to buy clothes or go to an expensive restaurant. He himself wanted to buy books, and they both had a yearning for staple foods—smoked Scottish salmon, caviar, huge prawns, seared quail, truffles, dry Champagne. But a change from the simplicity of their routines would only have bankrupted them and broken their lovely, trance-like equilibrium. Now they were incognito in letter and spirit, and dared not jeopardise it. Perhaps the best thing would be simply to save. This appealed to Freddy and, eventually, to Fredericka as well, who had never saved money or known anyone who had to, and had thought it a religious practice.
