Being Invisible: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  Jimmy seemed to have settled down to a long conversation, for he had now perched himself on a bar stool. Why should Wagner need permission, in a room full of empty tables, none of them, so far as he could see, bearing “reserved” signs? He started into the dining area. But a waiter suddenly emerged from the swinging doors at the rear and advanced to block him before he got far.

  “Seating by management only,” said this functionary. He was new since Wagner had been there last. He had dead eyes and a downturned mouth.

  “It’s just that Jimmy—”

  “You wait at the bar,” the waiter said, spun around, and rapidly marched through the kitchen doors. He had made a special trip to perform this one bleak function. This was a new tone for Jimmy’s establishment, where the service had always been informal, to say the least, but genial. The soup might get sloshed onto the tablecloth, but not without a compensatory grin. Forgotten side dishes were routine, but when they did finally get delivered, there would be a quip enjoyed by all: before the chef could deep-fry the zucchini he had to slaughter one and butcher it, or some such.

  Wagner now honored the proscription against self-seating, but had no intention of ordering a drink before being assigned a table at which to sip it. But the bartender, a young, sandy-haired man whom he did not know because he never drank at the bar, now shouted at him, so loudly that one would have thought Jimmy, on the phone nearby, might have objected, but the restaurant owner was immersed in his conversation to the exclusion of all the rest of life.

  “What’s your pleasure?” cried the bartender.

  “I’ll wait till I get to the table,” Wagner answered, purposely using a voice that though quite audible was at a relatively low volume.

  “I’ll make it now,” bellowed the man. “Get a head start before the gang arrives.”

  That made sense, or would have if he had wanted a precise kind of martini for which the vermouth was to be measured by the droplet.

  “I won’t give you a problem,” Wagner said. “I always drink the house wine with dinner.”

  “Coming up!” screamed the bartender, and quickly brought up into view a gallon jug that had apparently been kept in ice water, for it was dripping. He used it to fill a stemmed glass to the very brim with white wine.

  “No, red,” said Wagner, “and I don’t want it yet.”

  The bartender’s next speech was somewhere between a plea and a threat. “It’s already poured.”

  Despite hearing a private voice, very like Babe’s, that told him, fiercely, that he didn’t have to take this, Wagner went to the bar and stoically lifted the glass by the stem, which was the wrong way to address its natural top-heaviness. Some white wine flowed across the back of his hand. The bartender was ignoring him now: he had to ask twice for a rag. The one with which he was at last grudgingly furnished was slimy. He got no help in cleaning the top of the bar. Would Jimmy never get off that phone?

  But when the restaurateur finally hung up, he spoke only to the bartender. “Hey, I got to go around the corner for a minute.” He left without a glance at Wagner.

  After a moment Wagner shrugged and asked, “What should I do about my table?”

  “Go sit down at one,” the bartender said with an impatient gesture of his trunk. “But pay me first.”

  “You can’t put it on my bill?”

  The sandy-haired young man gave him a steady look. “I’m asking nicely, sir.”

  “So am I,” Wagner said, seeking to placate him with a smile, but of course paying for the glass of wine he had not ordered. Jimmy’s prices seemed to have doubled since his last visit. He felt it politic, in view of the bartender’s manner, to add more of a tip than the standard. “Oh, I might as well order a glass of red as long as I’m here.”

  “You’ll pay for it before you go to the table,” said the bartender, who had for no reason at all turned into his nemesis.

  “I’ll take a raincheck,” Wagner said. Quickly, before anyone could run out again and oppose him, he went to a table, nowhere near the one favored by himself and Babe, and put up a fence of lifted menu, even though he always ordered the same meal at Jimmy’s.

  He sat there, untended, for ever so long. By the time the waiter appeared, three more tables were occupied by people who had seated themselves without opposition. The waiter took all these orders before finally coming to Wagner.

  “No more osso buco,” he gloatingly announced. “The other special’s haddock Parmigian’.”

  “Spaghetti and sausages,” said Wagner. “Salad. Glass of red. Have you got any breadsticks? There always used to be a glassful on the table.”

  The waiter was scribbling on his pad. “That all?”

  “Breadsticks? You don’t have them any more?”

  “Look, I only work here, uh...” He stared and added with hatred, “Sir.”

  “That’s why I’m asking you.”

  The man continued to stare. “OK, be sarcastic. I’m the one’s doing the work.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Wagner. “I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings.”

  “Apology received,” the waiter said sardonically.

  He went breezily through the swinging doors and, as if in a cartoon, came back almost immediately with Wagner’s order, on a cold plate that was growing tepid by the heat it extracted from the spaghetti, which was perforce losing it. At first it seemed that the sausages had been replaced by meatballs, undersized examples, but in fact further investigation established that the sausages had been cooked so long as to fall apart, which if unfortunate was so only aesthetically, for the flavor had not been lost but rather incorporated into the sauce, now sufficiently assertive to deny to the tongue any other taste till next morning. But that, the classic aftereffect of Jimmy’s cuisine, was for Wagner all to the good. And the harsh red wine had the taste of old. The waiter had forgotten the salad: he in turn must remember not to pay for it. Otherwise he went untouched by the omission, for truth was, he believed greenery belonged in a landscape and not on a plate. It had been Babe who pushed salads on him, along with citrus fruits, which he swore, to her derision, gave him chapped lips.

  In time the waiter asked him whether he wanted “expresso” or regular, and though Wagner ordered the former, he was brought the latter, along with a check on which his fears were exceeded: he was charged, at one of the new hefty prices, not simply for salad but rather for that mix named for some Caesar not the author of De Bello Gallico.

  His anticipation assured him that the waiter—whose own name seemed to be, remarkably, “Gonzo,” or such anyway he had scrawled in the space provided on the check for “Your Servitor”—would give him an argument, perhaps even a nasty one, if the subject of the missing salad were broached, and he was weighing his dislike for a quarrel, especially one that had the capability of tainting what had been, on balance, a pleasant experience, against his memory of Babe’s contempt for his habitual failure to claim justice from the petty tyrants of quotidian life.

  While he was so occupied Babe herself, accompanied by a short, thickset, very hairy man, entered the restaurant and in fact went to “their” old table. She took no notice of Wagner, and sat down with her back to him.

  The hirsuteness of her companion was only a matter of his head, Wagner could see now: the face, though pitted, was clean, but his wiry scalp began just above his shaggy eyebrows, then fell on both sides to conceal his ears under muffs of thick black wool. He looked in a triumphant mood, his dark eyes glittering all over Wagner’s estranged wife.

  If he reaches across and takes her hand, Wagner swore to himself, I’ll take this knife and go over there and stab him in the heart. But in the next instant the man enacted to the letter his part in the fantasy, yet Wagner could not begin to bring off his own. For one thing, the knife at his disposal was blunt as a tongue-depressor. For another, though he lived in a world in which some human beings casually killed others to gain possession of a piece of costume jewelry, he could not murder an unarmed man merely for ruining his
life.

  Instead he left enough cash to pay the check plus tip, slipped back to the men’s room through the now crowded tables, and, in a toilet cubicle, became invisible.

  3

  INVISIBLY, WAGNER LEFT THE tiny men’s room, squeezing past a stocky man who had entered after him and who while standing at the lone urinal was airily whistling a tune without melody.

  Wagner almost found himself saying, “Excuse me.”

  Out in the dining room, he steered towards the table Babe shared with her ugly escort. To keep to the direct route was not easy: people kept coming and going in a space which, unless they saw someone else in the way, they assumed was theirs to occupy exclusively. Of course, if three or more persons were in a cluster, Wagner found he could push past them or even be involved in mild collisions with impunity; no one looked for a man who wasn’t there but rather blamed those at hand. Invisibility could be used to cause a lot of mischief, but at the moment he had a grimmer purpose.

  Who was this man Babe had got hold of? Or vice versa: the skunk was still clutching her hand.

  The answer came shortly, for just as Wagner reached their table, so did the waiter named Gonzo.

  “Hiya, Mr. Zirko,” the servitor crooned sycophantically.

  “Yeah, Tommy,” said Babe’s hairy escort. “Hop to it.”

  “Tommy,” who couldn’t even write his name legibly, scuttled obsequiously into the kitchen. Speaking of names, who would have one like “Zirko”?

  Wagner couldn’t bear to look too closely at Babe. Luckily the nearest table was still vacant, and he therefore had some choice of standing room.

  “This poor slob,” Zirko said to Babe, “loves me. And not just because of the tips. It’s because I give him distinction, make him feel important. That’s it. He won’t let anybody else come near!” He had a raspy voice that went with his pitted skin. He wore a dark suit, a gray shirt, and a black necktie. He was some kind of thug, for God’s sake. What could Babe be thinking of?

  Wagner tried to keep from looking at her. She had a new sideswept hairstyle that gave her a cheaper aura, but she was still a far cry from the kind of woman whom Zirko should frequent.

  “You’re not going to let me order a drink?” Wagner was startled to hear Babe’s new voice. Or perhaps it was rather the tone that was new. She was not chiding Zirko; she was submitting to him.

  “That’s right,” said Zirko, who left off fondling her hand to erect an index finger. “Trust me.”

  “Oh, I do, I do.”

  How awful this was for Wagner to hear; yet he stayed. Right now nothing was more important than trying to understand what she saw in this hoodlum, painful as it might be. Until this moment, if asked what kind of man might appeal to Babe, Wagner would have put Zirko’s type at the bottom of the list.

  And he had pondered a good deal on the matter of whom she would eventually take up with—if anyone, for she seemed off men entirely at the time she left him. Not that she was unnatural: he was no Pascal, to call inverse those women who spurned him. But in truth, he had half expected her to be attracted to one of the effeminate male artists who exhibited at the gallery where she was employed. Wagner had attended only one opening and had soon despised all the persons he encountered there, men or women: something seemed to be wrong with all of them. Of course he said nothing derogatory to Babe about the people or that which was exhibited—a series of sculptured forms that resembled coned coils of dog stool, which were even colored dung-brown. But she must have intuited his lack of approval, for never again was he pressed to come. Which was quite OK with him. That’s how smoothly things had always gone with them. It had been a no-fault marriage, and yet she had left him after four years. For the likes of Zirko?

  Tommy returned, bringing filled plates, though no audible order had been placed with him.

  “Uh-huh,” Babe breathed, considering her portion with every evidence of delight. “Prosciutto and, um, figs? Fresh figs?”

  Zirko’s index finger, bearing a large brute of a vulgar ring, was raised again. “Parma ham,” said he. “Not the ‘prozoot’ that is slapped on a cheap hero. And black figs only and always.”

  Tommy lingered to grin slavishly. “Mr. Zirko, you know your gourmet foods.”

  The object of his worship ignored him to pick up a fig in short thick fingers and split it open to show Babe the indecent red vulva of its flesh.

  “Look like somebody you know?” he asked.

  This seemed humorous to Babe, who simpered as she cut a fragment of ham.

  Wagner was too shocked at first to feel anger. During her years with him Babe had been famous for her modesty. She rarely made a sexual reference of any kind, and never used foul language. Wagner in fact would have been embarrassed to repeat to her, even in derision, some of Pascal’s comments and jokes. Yet she now watched in delight as Zirko obscenely tongued the interior of the split fruit.

  “Did I ever tell you—” Zirko then asked, lowering the fig.

  “By the way, this is delicious,” Babe told him, tapping her fork on the plate.

  Zirko frowned at the interruption, even though its purpose had been to praise his taste. “Did I ever tell you,” he doggedly repeated, “I was dirt-poor in my earlier life. I was a street kid. I used to press my face against the windows of places like this, watching everybody stuff their gut while my own belly was empty, and I used to think, by God I’ll get me a gun and then I’ll eat regular and get respect besides!” He actually gritted his teeth.

  Babe continued to enjoy the first course. This too was new; in the past she had eaten merely to live. “A perfect combination, and you’re right, the Parma—”

  Zirko’s voice rose shrilly to drown hers out. “I tell you I came this far from doin’ just that.” He showed two fingertips. “I was raised by my dear mother, God bless ’er, to hate violence above all things. But I could be capable of taking life in one or two circumstances, like racial injustice, you know, or old people. So I come close but never robbed anybody, actually. What I did was use my head, see. Me and my friend Petey, we’d go to a restaurant and eat a big meal and when it was time to pay Petey would pull out a bratwurst he brought along for the purpose, and he’d slide down under the table, and I’d hold it between my legs and he would suck on it.”

  Babe was now listening intently.

  “So they’d see that, and we’d get thrown out as degenerates, see, and never had to pay.”

  Babe asked, “Are you serious?”

  “So after we done that a few times, my friend Petey says, ‘Hey, how about letting me hold the sausage for a change while you suck it?’” Zirko grinned extravagantly: he seemed to have more teeth than a normal man. “So I asked him, ‘What sausage?’”

  After an instant, Babe squealed with laughter, and when she could breathe again, said, “Oh, Siv. I took you seriously. How can I ever tell?”

  Zirko was the kind who would not laugh at his own jokes. He shrugged, then squinted at his ham and fruit and began to eat.

  Siv?, His name was Siv? As if “Zirko” wasn’t enough. Irrespective of his name, he was a hyena. Couldn’t Babe see that?

  The waiter showed up with a bottle of wine, displayed it, label up, to Zirko. “Hit me,” Zirko said. Tommy extracted the cork, handed it over, and Zirko elaborately smelled the discolored end, then scratched it with a thumbnail. “Vino,” he said to Babe and rolled his eyes. “If I was ever starving again I’d take wine before food.”

  When Tommy poured a sample, it was no surprise to Wagner that Zirko sucked and slurped and sniffed and closed his eyes and worked his tongue behind his closed lips and finally, eyelids lowered again, made a majestic nod.

  Wagner could endure no more of this. Why should he? He was invisible.

  He waited till Tommy had filled Babe’s glass and brought the bottle to Zirko’s; then, stepping to the waiter’s side, using two hands he forced Tommy to pour wine into the lap of the pretentious little thug.

  For a few moments nothing else happened. A str
eam of red fluid was falling into Zirko’s lap. Tommy was struggling but not too vigorously, for he knew not what he was struggling against. As to Babe, she was serenely tasting the contents of her own glass.

  Then Zirko began to shout obscenities. But still he made no move to elude the falling stream. Wagner now used both hands to maintain the bottle in the offending position and while he might not have been stronger than Tommy in a fair match, he was for the first time experiencing a noteworthy concomitant of invisibility: greater physical strength, or perhaps merely the illusion thereof. At any rate the waiter was unable to alter the situation, or the attitude, of the bottle.

  Babe had now begun to observe all of this—well, scarcely “all,” for she couldn’t see the man who pulled the strings!—but thus far had remained noncommittal. Not that much could be done except by Zirko himself, who could simply have moved away from the table. No one was stopping him. But some kind of vanity kept him in place: he intended to triumph over this inexplicable adversary. So, though shouting vile language, he stayed. Moreover, he stared into his wine-soaked lap and not even at Tommy.

  The waiter was sniveling piteously. “I don’t know—I can’t seem—oh God, I’m sawry. Oh Christ. Oh shit.”

  Wagner released him only after the last drop had fallen. Tommy’s response to freedom was to drop the empty bottle and sprint through the kitchen doors.

  Still Zirko stayed in place. At last he raised his eyes from his lap to say, through his teeth, “I’m going to carry this off, you’ll see. I don’t want anybody to think they got ahead of Zirko. I know I do crazy things, but they’re always my idea. If I’m a clown, then I’m my own kinda clown. Not some fuckin’ waiter’s.”

  Wagner had not had time to note the reaction of the many other diners to Zirko’s cries. He was interested only in Babe.

  Who said, “I can’t think he did it on purpose, Siv. It must have been a nervous fit of some kind. He didn’t look well. Here, can you use my napkin?”