I start to jog to the park’s chess house. Little by little I see signs that perhaps a minor disturbance took place. A broken car window…an abandoned bike…a row of garbage cans turned over…a speeding police car and army truck with their emergency lights on. Then that a riot if not a fierce battle took place, with stores without windows…buildings without walls…streets without buildings, and smoke, flames, bodies, limbs, teeth, hair…I head home. This time across the park, which was bombed and strafed. Past the gutted chess house. Through several residential neighborhoods: now smoldering mounds of debris. My own street’s been torn up while I was gone, my building blown apart. Only the old-fashioned marble staircase remains, ending in the sky. “Georgia,” I scream. “Jimmy!” I shout their names repeatedly as I dig and pick away at the rubble.
The super comes out of a hole in the ground where the entrance to his basement apartment was. “No use wasting your energy and voice doing that, Mr. Devine. Whole building’s occupants either been wiped out or buried under or went scrambling out of here between the time the explosions started and the place caved in. Really can’t say who was responsible for it all. Either the revolutionaries who rushed into the building and for one strategic reason or another set it off, or else the government tanks that came up the street chasing them. Didn’t see any of your family leave, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t. I just know nobody else is around but my wife and me. We were the lucky ones, living so deep in the ground with no floor to fall from. All our friends used to say ‘Why do you want to live in a dungeon like that? Steam pipes all over your ceilings and no view but the next building’s blank wall.’ Now they know. Because I always felt this would happen one day, which is why I took this place and job. What do you think you’re going to do now?”
I haven’t been back in this city for nine years. First thing on arriving I go to our former street. Twenty-to thirty-story apartment buildings have gone up where our five-story buildings used to be. There are trees and shrubbery on the sidewalks now, and all the stores have become so sophisticated with their wares and window displays and exorbitantly priced: ours was a neighborhood of apparently poorer workingmen.
I check the tenant directory in the apartment house where our building and several others once stood. Only name I recognize from the old days is the super’s and I ring his bell.
“Who is it?” he says over the intercom. He can’t quite place the name so I say “You know: Georgia, Phil and Little and Big limbo from number thirty before it was blown up.” Now he remembers and he tells me to take the apartments A to L elevator to basement two.
“So how goes?” he says in the basement corridor. “And did you ever find any of your pretty family and your wife’s dad?”
“Nope. They just never turned up or were found. How’s your wife, father-in-law and son?”
“First wife cracked up, got a new one now, and I never had any in-laws or son. You must be mistaking me for another super.”
“How do you like your new building?”
“The walls are like cardboard, most of the plumbing and wiring’s already shot, and it’s either way overheated or drafty and cold. But it’s a more cheerful looking and social place. And there are no rounded hallways and big staircases and high ceilings and such like the old one, which makes it easier for my staff and me to clean. Well, it’s been good talking to you, Mr. Devine. And every bit of luck in your future living, okay?”
I press the elevator button for the lobby, but it takes me to the floor we lived on. Our hallway floor was made of a lively terrazzo and at the end of it was a casement window we threw open on the warmer days. On the walls were forged iron fixtures with light bulbs. This door would be where our thick oak one was if this was still our third floor. Georgia would be home now preparing dinner, and instead of using my keys today I think I’d ring the bell. She’d say “who’s there, please?” and when I’d tell her, though first posing as a special delivery postman with a message about her missing husband or maybe just a grocery boy, she’d open the door and say how unusual it is for me to forget my keys. I’d kiss her lips, ask where’s our son. She’d yell out the window “Jimmy, your father’s home,” or “Dinner’s ready,” or “Come quick—the surprise of your life is here.” The front door would still be open. I’d hear him run upstairs. He could take the elevator of this new building, but like me he likes racing up rounded stairways. But I’m getting confused. Our building was destroyed, this one went up in its place. The same super’s downstairs—that’s true: ten years older and with a different wife, though he said he never had an in-law or son. If Georgia’s on this floor it’s because she moved in some time after the building was constructed, and because of a number of errors, neither of us was told the other was alive, and the super might not have told me she’s here because over the years he’s developed mental blocks about certain people, events and times. I’d knock on the door. I’d knock because I don’t live in this building and never had the keys. She’d open the door. Jimmy would be there and they’d be overjoyed at seeing me, we’d all kiss and hug. I’d tell them how neither my hands and then the most advanced digging equipment could turn up any of their remains. How I stayed in the city for a year, each day canvassing all the police stations for some word of them, till I was told to give up or at least stop pestering the police, so I got a job with a Central Region orchestra, remarried, had two children, Laurel and Rose. Then a revolution started in Central. I was on tour, my wife and children were at home, they too were never found. We had the basement apartment—I’d taken that safeguard of my former super’s just in case there would be another revolution—but this time the building fell on top of it rather than around. The revolution ended as quickly as the last one. One of the sides won. The other side is now in power. It seems there’s going to be another revolution there, which is why I came to this city. I’d heard that because of the extensive death and devastation of the last revolution here, this region had become the most peaceful of the five. She’d tell me her story. While I was searching for her father, she and Jimmy were watching the television special when suddenly all the electricity went and seconds later the building fell apart. Both were quickly hospitalized in different cities and were incoherent for a year till a relief agency brought them together again. “No, that’s not how it happened,” Jimmy would say. “I was in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, when the tap stopped running and then the windows and walls went. Just as I was looking at Mom through the space where the living room wall used to be, the floor under me went also. Then I don’t remember anything but a lot of tumbling, and next thing I know it’s a year later and Mom’s holding me.”
I get on the elevator and press the button for the lobby, but the door opens on a penthouse floor and then on the super dragging a garbage bag in the basement.
“Say, I was hoping you hadn’t left and might drop by again. My wife says I was very rude not asking you in before. She says I forgot how much you lost ten years ago and how much I was personally spared. So come on in now to meet the missus and also for a stiff apologetic drink.”
I go into his apartment. It’s almost palatial compared to his old basement flat. The television set is on. He hands me a drink. A woman comes out of the kitchen carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
“My wife, Gerta. We had two kids, something the first wife didn’t want, but they were snatched up from us during one of those harsh flus. Drink strong enough for you, Phil? And where you planning to bed down for the night if I can ask?”
“In a hotel downtown. I’ll find one, thanks.”
“Lots of nice hotels in town.”
“Most are too expensive for the ordinary man,” Gerta says. “Expensive for us, maybe, but I don’t believe for him. But what do you know about hotels here? You ever stay in one?”
“Our friends have told us about them.”
“She’s right. Visiting friends who come through not so much to see us as a whole slew of people. I forgot about them.”
“I wish you wouldn’t forget that maybe I don’t forget.”
“I’m sorry. It seems all I’m telling people today is I’m sorry, but I am. To both of you for what I didn’t remember and should have done.”
The television program concerns a hospital resident who wants to operate on a woman before she takes her first flight to Earth. This series about a traveling space hospital has been running a long time or perhaps this is a rerun, as I remember my daughters watching it. The patient says “Honestly, Doctor, is it plausible for me to think I’ll ever reach my affianced alive?” The doctor bites his thumb. The super asks me how I like the set’s reception. “Real sharp,” he says. “Like real life, if not clearer.”
“Sets have certainly progressed in the last few years,” Gerta says.
“Remember old lady Longmore, Phil? How she got the first giant color set in the building? Cost her a fortune it did, and she was never found either. All those unmarked graves under this building. All-tolled I’d say a few hundred.”
“Well, that’s not very much for a new set,” Gerta says. “People. I meant people.”
“Lon!”
“Okay. She doesn’t like me talking about it so I won’t. But it has been ten years since it happened, which should be time enough to mention it without someone else getting upset.”
“I’d think so,” I say.
“You see?’” He refills my glass. The doctor says “Everything will go smoothly—I swear.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” the patient says. She’s put on a stretcher, wheeled through the hospital’s many halls. Through a window in the operating room, Earth and passing spaceships and comets can be seen. A nurse fastens a surgical mask over the doctor’s mouth, another nurse slaps a scalpel into his hand. “Gently does it now,” the doctor says, when the screen goes blank. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice says. “We are having difficulty with our transmitters, so please stand by,” A sign on the screen says the regularly scheduled program will resume shortly. Court music from another century and country is played. Just as I’m beginning to enjoy a rare flute and double bassoon duet, the music stops and an army officer stares at the audience from behind a desk. “It’s just like our first revolution here,” I say to Lon, “except this guy’s got a pistol in his hand instead of a pointer. And much like my last region’s revolution three years ago, except then there were two officers from different military branches sharing a stand-up mike.”
“This is not a television drama or news documentary,” the officer says. “I am the designated communications spokesman for the national government in power. Minor revolutionary activity has broken out on both sides of the border of this and the Central regions. All noncombatant citizens are ordered to evacuate any outdoor areas and stay in their business, living or shopping quarters till the conflict has ended. Most of the rebels have been defeated, tried and executed, but hundreds more need to be caught and exterminated before the two regions can be considered safe from siege and slaughter and the country at large free from similar outbreaks and bloodshed.”
A second officer appears on the now split screen. He says the president and his military staff will give a report soon from their permanent underground building, and then gives specific instructions to people in this region. “Though there’s little chance the hostilities will increase or spread, go to the bottom of whatever building you’re in or nearest to. Lie flat with your body against a wall till the all-clear sirens are sounded. If the sirens aren’t working, then the signals may also be heard on your radios and TVs. If the radio and TV stations aren’t operating, the all-clear will be delivered over bullhorns by servicemen dispatched to all populated areas.”
A message “Go to your building’s lowest floor” flashes on the screen till it’s replaced by the title and credits of a film dramatization of what people should do from the time they learn of a local armed disturbance till the moment the all-clear signal is made. Actors, carrying portable televisions and supplies, take elevators and stairs to their building’s basement, undo their top buttons, buckles, laces, ties and belts, and lie face-down on the floor with their hands behind their heads—”But as far away from any wall with a window in it,” one child actress stands up to demonstrate and say, “because of the danger of flying glass.”
“If this position becomes unendurable,” an actor says, “try mine as a substitute,” He removes his shoes, empties his pockets of eyeglasses and sharp objects such as pens and keys, crouches down on his shins, crosses his feet, sticks his head between his chest and forearms—”Which in this position should be as huddled up to your knees as you can get them.”
“Looks like we’ve again got no place to go down to,” the super says. “And seems you’ll have to stick it out with us, Phil, unless you think you can make it to a hotel in time.”
“Nonsense,” Gerta says. “Mr. Devine will stay here and think of it as his home till the city’s no longer threatened.”
We hear faint reports of what seem like distant explosions and buildings crumbling to the ground.
“There it is,” the super says. “You hear it once you never forget.
Oh how I’m reminded from the last time when just our simple brownstone went. Remember, Phil? There we were, Gerta—my first wife and I having ourselves a fine old supper, when all of a sudden—”
“I thought it was around lunchtime when you said the first rumblings came.”
“Then a fine old lunch, which in those days were as big as our suppers are today, when all of a sudden—but why don’t I stand you both to another drink?”
“Might as well,” Gerta says. “Mr. Devine—the same?”
Should I run up and get Georgia and Jimmy? Warn them at least, because maybe their television’s on the blink and for some reason they didn’t hear those explosions and cave-ins before, if that’s what those sounds were. I start for the door.
“You don’t want to be leaving now,” Gerta says.
“If he thinks he’s got some better place to go to, let him. He’s experienced and of age.”
“But it can’t be safe out there. In fact, it’s—Mr. Devine, where, you going?”
Outside their apartment people are lying on the floor, pressed against the walls, most in either of the two positions suggested in that film: mothers and fathers lying on their younger children, the elderly and sick with their medicines close-by, piles of food and beverages in communal out-of-the-way corners and in unbreakable containers, several televisions on showing that army communications officer with the anchor persons of the country’s leading network news shows.
“Because of the thousands of skeptical phone calls we’ve received regarding the authenticity of the government’s reports,” the officer says, “I’ve asked these people to appear with me to verify that a revolution is indeed taking place.”
I ring for the elevator. But it’ll be bouncing me back and forth between penthouses and basements if it does come, so I run up the service steps, race down the hallway. I search for my keys. Hang the keys, and I rap on the door and ring the bell. Georgia says through it “Who’s there, please?” and then “You lose your keys a second time today, Phil? That’s so unlike you—really so rare,” and she opens the door.
“Who’s it, hon?” a man says from somewhere inside. “Who’s here with you besides Jimmy?” I ask her. “Beg your pardon, sir?” an elderly woman says.
“Excuse me, Miss, I mean, Ma’am, but I took it on my own to hurry all the tenants to the shelter below. There’s a good chance the entire city’s going to be directly involved in the war.”
“No picnic—we heard,” a man says, coming to the door. “But at least they didn’t throw the bull this time, which—bad as the situation is—is the way we like it. ‘All civilians,’ this spokesman guy said, ‘must take every precaution against antigovernment attack and cooperate with the government in every possible way,’ which is how it should’ve been worded in that last revolt here: full of facts and open and aboveboard.”
I enter the apartment. It’s much different than the one we had on the third floor. Smaller rooms, many more home appliances, recessed spotlights in the ceilings and linoleum looking like parquetry on the living and dining room floors. From the windows the neighborhood seems calm: no moving vehicles, only a trio of singing drunks walking in the middle of the street, though a mile or so downtown I see lots of smoke and what looks like fire.
A television’s on in the bedroom. The picture focuses in on the president sitting at a long table with about forty military men. “Once again,” he says.
I get a beer and sit in front of the set. I prefer their thick carpet to the single prayer rug we had in our room. The sounds of gunfire, explosions and buildings collapsing get louder. They can’t be coming from the television, as what’s on now is the president introducing his family to us from what he previously described as his noise-and bombproof bunker.
I go to the window. A few foot soldiers are shooting at some civilians in the street. The civilians, who first seemed unarmed, fire back. A tank moves into the street from the avenue and machineguns what I suppose are the revolutionaries. Though maybe the revolutionaries captured the tank and the people in civilian dress are government soldiers made up to look like ordinary pedestrians so they can get closer to the tank to retake it or blow it up. A woman climbs on top of the tank, shoves something through a turret slit and jumps off as the tank explodes. Six tanks enter the block single file. I look back at the television set and see the same scene I just saw happening on the street continue to happen on the screen. The woman and several other people run into an apartment house. The lead tank swivels around and moves after them. I think this must be live or taped coverage of the fighting on in another city or maybe in a section of this city that looks very much like this one, till I recognize the number of this building’s awning and the nymph statue in the middle of the working fountain in front, which I was admiring from inside the lobby just before I rang the super’s bell.
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