Ben Soul

by Richard George

pedestrian had to navigate around fallen cornices, gargoyles, and other impedimenta that had recently decorated the facades and rooflines of the buildings.

  Haakon was so concentrated on finding his way safely that he didn’t notice the frequent passage of the police in a patrol car. During one of their traverses of a parallel street, he found his basement hideaway and let himself in. Once inside he quickly extracted his cash and the small gold cross that had been his mother’s from their hiding place behind a brick and stuffed them in his pocket. Then he went to the cupboard to count the cans of beans he kept as an emergency ration.

  The police made him drop the beans when they shone a bright flashlight on him and shouted at him to drop whatever he held. Slowly he raised his hands into the air. He tried in every way to cooperate with the police whenever they questioned him. Haakon firmly believed anybody with a gun was dangerous, whether uniformed or not. When he could not produce any papers to prove he lived here (he had never registered to vote, nor gotten a driver’s license, nor a receipt for rent on this illegal apartment), the police presumed he was a looter. His flashy blue polyester outfit marked him a petty criminal in the police mind. When Haakon could not produce any receipts for the money in his pocket or a bill of sale for the gold cross, the police assumed he had stolen them, as well as the beans.

  The police incarcerated Haakon. During his booking, conducted by a desk sergeant who was heavily medicated, his name was written down as Haven Fitz. It was under this name he was later tried.

  In the weeks following the Great Temblor, the City Administration made a great show of punishing looters. An ambitious young politician, Assistant District Attorney Dayton Mann made a great noise prosecuting suspected looters. He fancied himself not only a brilliant prosecutor, but also a wondrous draw to the ladies. Very few of the prosecutors, and none of the ladies, agreed with his self-assessment. At the time he was drawing up the charges for Haakon, under the name Haven Fitz, he was also pursuing Vanna Dee. He frequently maneuvered himself into a seat at her cafeteria table in City Hall. During one lunch, as Vanna stoically ate her salad, crunching the lettuce between her teeth with force and fury, Dayton complained that he could charge only a few looters with felonies. Most had been caught with goods whose value was too small to qualify as more than a misdemeanor.

  Vanna said, “Do you include anything they’ve got with them, such as a watch, or rings, that kind of thing?”

  “Well, no,” Dayton said. “We can’t prove those things don’t belong to them to begin with.”

  “When they cannot produce a receipt or bill of sale for any item of jewelry, such as a watch, that they wear, this constitutes de facto proof they’ve stolen the item. Include that in the charges. Let them prove different.” Dayton smiled his smirking smile. Vanna concentrated on her salad, lest she be ill.

  “Wonderful idea!” Dayton said. Then he invited Vanna to accompany him to dinner that night. She developed an immediate ill relative who needed her attention, and thereafter seldom took lunch in the City Hall cafeteria.

  Haakon wore an expensive gold watch a grateful client had given him. That, with the gold cross, and the cash he had had in his pockets, allowed Assistant District Attorney Mann to charge him with felony looting. To be certain the amount was enough, Mann even added the value of the seven cans of beans to the supposed loot total.

  The judge, Molly Fyde, was Mann’s maternal aunt, and nearly as interested in Dayton’s career as he was. Haakon made the mistake of believing honesty would win the day (too many movies when he was young), and defended himself. Judge Fyde sentenced him to twenty years in State Prison at La Lechuga without possibility of parole. So Haakon Spitz went to prison as Haven Fitz.

  In prison he strove to keep a low profile. He was too handsome to succeed. Within weeks guards moved him to the cell of one Percival Algernon Hurr, known in prison as Butch Hurr. Butch was a large man, born to be mean, a quality exacerbated by the name an unfeeling mother and father foisted on him. For the rest of his imprisonment Haakon catered to the moods, whims, and needs of Butch.

  He lost his good looks over time, but Butch did not cast him aside for another, younger, companion. Some lost spark from who knows where fixated Butch’s attention on Haakon until the day a younger, meaner, bigger con erupted in fury and beat Butch to death. By then, nearly through his sentence, Haakon actually mourned Butch’s passing.

  Vanna Dumps Dickon

  Dickon met Vanna at the Chow Down Cafe. It was a favorite place of Dickon’s. Vanna did not like it as well. She always suspected that there were dirty places hidden from public view that probably contaminated the food, a paranoia she had learned from her father.

  Dickon suspected, though he had never researched it, that some entrepreneur had created the restaurant by blocking off the ends of a short alley between two larger buildings. The kitchen occupied the ground floor. A narrow staircase at the left led to the dining areas on the three floors above the kitchen.

  Hung Sam ordered them upstairs. Hung Sam, the owner and chief cook, brooked no liberties from his guests about their opinions or desires being more important than his own. Seating choice was his prerogative. So they went to the third floor.

  Marbleized linoleum covered the third floor tables. It matched well with the real marble window ledge at the single small and dirty window. Through the dirt on the outside of the window one could see the neighboring brick wall. Dickon took the seat with his back to the window. That way he could watch the other people who came into the room or went. Since they were lunching late, there were no other people in the third floor dining area except the young waiter. Vanna sat down opposite Dickon.

  “Thanks for coming to lunch with me,” Dickon said.

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Vanna said, with that little twist of her mouth that she used to express her disapproval. Dickon felt something shriveling inside himself.

  “How did your morning go?” Vanna’s temper often brightened when Dickon asked her about her work.

  “Oh, so-so,” she said and shrugged.

  “What’s wrong?” Dickon asked her. She glared at him. Her voice, when she replied, was quiet. Dickon had to strain to hear her over the muffled surf sound of the traffic that came through the closed window.

  “I’m wrestling with a decision,” she said.

  “Can I help clarify it?”

  “No, I can’t talk about it. Company Confidential,” she said, and smiled at him. Dickon had an immediate sense that she was lying to him. Inwardly he scolded himself for his uncharitable thought. There was much about her job that Vanna couldn’t tell, or shouldn’t tell. She had told him many confidential things, and had often helped her work through problems with her subordinates. He knew she didn’t tell him everything; she was in many ways a very secretive person.

  “What do you want to eat?” he asked her.

  “You order—it all tastes the same to me in this place.” Dickon signaled to the waiter, and when he came, ordered two servings of tomatoes and beef with chow mein noodles. The waiter brought a teapot and left them alone. The teapot was white and glazed on its side was the Chinese character for tea in muddy green. Dickon sighed at the tea. It was also green.

  “Green tea,” he said, and reached for the small gray cup without a handle that was in front of Vanna. She smiled with something approaching pleasure.

  “I wish we had something besides Lipton’s at home,” she said.

  “We can have green tea, too, for you,” Dickon said. “I don’t like it too often, but you could have all you want. I could get some on the way home tonight.”

  “No, that’s too much trouble,” Vanna said, and twisted her mouth in disapproval again. Dickon lifted the teapot to pour Vanna’s cup.

  He spilled the tea.

  Dickon was of the private opinion that potters specifically made teapots in Chinese restaurants to dribble tea across the table. He could seldom pour from one without
spilling. Vanna seldom had difficulty. On several occasions, she had watched his pouring methods to determine what slight twist of his wrist or what uplift of his pinkie caused the trouble. She could not, and. When she had tried to imitate his movements, she had not been able to make the tea spread out from the spout in the way Dickon did. Today she was not patient about the tea.

  “Here,” she said, taking Dickon’s cup, “let me pour the damned stuff or you’ll have it all over. This new dress cost me a lot. I don’t want tea stains on it.”

  Dickon’s hurt must have shown on his face. Vanna assumed a contrite air.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What does that Chinese character on the pot mean, do you know?”

  Dickon understood her question for the apology she intended.

  “It’s one of the ones I know,” he said. It’s ch’a, which means tea. I think the short horizontal line with the two little strokes above it means ‘plant.’ The shallow inverted vee stands for person. It probably indicates a sound or something in this character. The diagonal strokes in the lower quadrants indicate tree. All put together it means the noble tea.”

  Dickon looked up at Vanna. Horror and anger contorted her face. It frightened Dickon.

  “Vanna,” he said urgently, “what’s the matter?”

  She did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the