The Necessary Beggar

by Susan Palwick

  And so each night, having either reached for the bookcase or successfully resisted, I lay behind my screen and talked to the clown on the wall. He was a large clown in clashing shades of pink and yellow and purple; he was one of the weeping clowns, and his tears were palest blue. Lisa had offered to take him down when she removed the smaller clowns from the bookcase, but I told her that I welcomed him, that he would keep me company. And so he did.

  I spoke to him partly as a way of delaying sleep, for every night I dreamed of the burning camp, of screaming and the smell of smoke; and every night Darroti came into my dreams, urgently trying to tell me something I could not understand, and every night I was overjoyed to have found Darroti again, although he could not speak to me. And every morning I awoke and Darroti was gone again, still dead, and the people who had died in the fire were still dead, and sorrow crushed my chest as if an ox were standing on me. Mornings were terrible.

  And so at night I talked to the clown to keep the dreams at bay, although I always entered them at last. “Clown,” I would say to him, but not aloud, “this is hard work, this being merry when all you want to do is weep. Clown, this feels like death. Tell me how you smile for the crowds, Clown, for I must become like you. I must put on my floppy shoes and my rubber nose, and cheer the children. Clown, why do you weep? Do you miss your home? Do you have a child dead by his own hand, a child whose hands dealt death to someone else? Clown, are you like me, enmeshed in lies and riddles, in things you cannot say?”

  For there was also the puzzle of the towel which would not dry. I had ceased to cry, outwardly at least, but the towel remained damp, no matter if I put it in the sun or in Lisa’s dryer. The water I squeezed from it was salt; the towel was wet with tears. “Clown, are they your tears that wet the towel?” But they could not have been, because the towel had come with us from the camp. And so I kept the damp towel folded in the bookcase, behind the blanket, and did not speak of it. It was too strange. It was a hole into which Stan, I feared, would plug his Devil.

  And thus I felt myself swallowed by a maw of many silences. For outside the house, of course, we could no longer speak of the camp, any more than we could speak of Lémabantunk. The Army must believe that we had died in the fire. And yet the fire, and the people dead in it, haunted me almost as much as Darroti did. We had known many of those people. The family in the tent next to ours, from Pakistan, had died: a mother and a father and three children. One of the social workers had died who so often asked us questions. And the Army man with the buttons and ribbons on his shirt, the one who had stood in our tent with his hat in his hand, the one who had tried to comfort me when Darroti died—he too was dead, burned. His name was Neil Glenrock, I learned from the television. I had not paid attention to it when he came to our tent. I had been rude to him when he tried to be kind, and I had no way to make amends. I could not go to his widow and his children and tell them I was sorry. I could not tell them the story of how he had been decent to a fellow man in pain, who was churlish in return. I could not do that, because the Timbor who had been there was not supposed to be alive.

  “I’ll do it,” Lisa said. I broke down when we saw the man’s face on the television—Aliniana was outside with the children, and Stan was off building houses, but the rest of us adults were watching the morning news—and she made me tell her why I wept. “Timbor, you just tell me anything you want to say about that man, and I’ll tell his family. I can say I was there. I’ll make it sound like I was in your tent when he did that, or like you told me about it. All of you: you just tell me anything you want anybody to know about all those poor souls, and I’ll be your voice. I’m the reason you can’t talk about it, so I’ll talk for you. That’s the least I can do.”

  And so she did. I told her the story, and she went to see Neil Glenrock’s wife and grown sons and told it to them. They were very grateful, she said. There were Nuts in their family—the kind who wrote letters, not the kind who built bombs—who did not approve of the camp and had not approved of the work Neil Glenrock did there. It comforted them to know that other people thought he had been of value.

  She stopped for a moment, then, and went on carefully. “They’d heard about you and your family, Timbor. Neil, he’d told them about Darroti and how bad he felt about what happened, how you’d lost your son and all. It ate at him, that his men were the ones who weren’t paying attention when Darroti died. So it meant a lot to his family when I showed up and said how nice he’d been. He’d felt like he hadn’t done any good. He’d told his wife that, and I was able to tell her that he’d been wrong, that he had so done good. I was able to comfort her.”

  “And now she thinks we are all dead,” I said, seeing nothing but gloom.

  Lisa looked unhappy. “I know. Timbor, I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to handle it. We’ll turn this all to good yet, I promise. You’ll all learn English and get jobs and earn money, and the kids will go to school and do real well, and someday you’ll look back on everything you’re going through now and it will have been worth it, just like being in jail was worth it for me. You just have to be patient. It’s hard now. I know it is. It’s hard for me too. We all just have to do the best we can. If I hadn’t gotten you out of there, you might really be dead.”

  She was a good woman, Lisa. But her secrets worried me, for I did not see how she could keep them from her husband for long, and I foresaw nothing but trouble when he learned that she had been lying to him. She was treating him like a fool, although she loved him. The love would make the lies sting more, when they emerged. And Stan Buttle was no fool, although I had thought he was at first; I felt for him even as I feared him. For he was determined that my family become the followers of his god. That, I knew, was why he allowed us to stay in the house he wanted for his church. He would not tolerate us long if we refused, whatever Lisa said.

  And I could not follow his god, Jesus who had risen from the dead, and who was useless to me. The forgiveness I recognized and valued, for Jesus did what the Necessary Beggar does in Gandiffri: blesses people and releases them from the past, that they may venture into the future unburdened, free and able to do good again. But Stan insisted that the dead would rise again in their bodies at the Judgment, and my dead—Darroti and the people in the camps—had no bodies left but ashes. And Stan insisted that the only path to heaven was through Jesus, and how could I accept that, who had come from a world where Jesus had never existed, and where no one knew his name? And Stan insisted, when I was bold enough to ask him, that Jesus had forgiven everyone once and for all, everywhere and in all times. But I could not accept that either, for it made a mockery of crime. How could Jesus already have forgiven Darroti for murder, which had caused such pain to Gallicina’s family? And if Darroti had already been forgiven, then our exile meant nothing, and I needed to believe—indeed, I did believe—that it was just. I clung to that belief in justice, lest all that we had suffered be a waste.

  Stan Buttle’s god would have turned my sorrows into nonsense. And Stan Buttle’s heaven seemed a bleak, cold place, for as he told it, the spirits of the dead were plucked forever from the world, rather than remaining in fruit and flowers, in leaves and lizards. And I needed to believe that my dead were in sight, even if I could not speak to them. I needed to believe that they were growing and learning and alive.

  And so I used the blessings we had brought with us from home. I allowed Stan to say his grace, but I always said my own. Souls of the dead, thank you for succoring us, that we may remain among the living. I could wear American clothing, eat American food, speak American words, but I could not forego the grace of Gandiffri, for Darroti could be in anything I blessed. And when Stan insisted that I tell him what the words meant, and frowned and called them Satanic superstition, and said that he feared greatly for my soul, I answered only, “I am fifty-nine years old, Stan, and I have been saying this prayer my entire life, and it is a piece of my homeland. I have lost more than you will ever understand. You cannot expect me to give this
up so quickly.”

  I did not intend ever to give it up, but I could not tell him that. I had to let him believe that he might convert us, in time. I had to let him have that hope, lest he cast us out of this new, precarious home, as he had told us that his god cast unrepentant sinners into the outer darkness, where there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And yet he called his god a god of love. I could not fathom it, unless the outer darkness be like exile. Certainly we had wailed and gnashed our teeth, in this new world. And yet there was hope here, too, and beauty, and kindness, and wonders like toilets and ice cream. There were flowers here and rainbows. It was not all the endless, dreary misery of Stanley Buttle’s hell.

  And so, for my sake and my family’s, I worked at being friends with Stan. I wanted there to be some bond between us, so that he would continue to help us for our own sake, not simply for his god’s. Before he learned of Lisa’s lies, as I knew he someday must, I wanted him also to have learned to care for us as people in ourselves, apart from her.

  So I asked Stan questions about many things other than his god: about his work, and the machine he used to cut the grass, and the things we saw on television. I let Stan teach me about wristwatches and peanut butter and jogging shoes. I learned that he missed his father, who had died when he was small, and who had loved old cars and old movies, as Stanley loved them now.

  I spent many hours sitting in the dark with Stanley, watching Chaplin and the Marx Brothers and fifties comedies, in which people who spoke entirely too quickly blundered through endless errors, always emerging into marriage and money. “Now, those were movies,” Stan said happily. “None of this stuff with half-naked teenagers being chased by psychos with chainsaws. Good movies don’t need blood and cussing: there’s too much of that in the world already. Give me Groucho and Harpo any day.” And indeed, the movies made me laugh and eased my heart, and the children loved them too, and in that way Stanley grew to love the children. Poliniana learned to walk like Charlie Chaplin, and Rikko and Jamfret memorized the lines from “A Night at the Opera,” and Stanley laughed until his cheeks grew red, and praised them.

  And the cars were wonderful, although I could not at first imagine how they could be. We had only ever seen ugly cars here, like the trucks in the camp, raising dust and belching smoke. Other cars, like Lisa’s van, were quieter, and did not belch smoke, but they were still ungainly boxes. I could not fathom how anyone could like cars. “They are hideous,” I told Stan.

  “Aw, Timbor, you only think so because you’ve never seen the old ones. New cars are butt-ugly, that’s right, just like new movies are. But vintage cars…” He shook his head and smiled. “You just have to see them. I’ll take you to the Auto Museum tomorrow.”

  And so he did. It was one of my first trips downtown, wearing American clothing; at the beginning the family only went out a few at a time, lest we attract attention. I wore my new American clothes, a pair of short pants and a Coca-Cola shirt, and sat in Stan’s ugly car, the Ford, and looked out the window, as I had not been able to do when we were in the van coming from the camp. The speed made me dizzy, and I braced myself against the roof.

  “Just relax, Timbor, and put your arms down. If you’re sick to your stomach, look at a point on the horizon, something fixed and far away. I learned that when I was in the Navy. You okay?”

  I nodded. I did not want to talk; I feared that if I opened my mouth, I would vomit. I put my arms down and tried to relax, and looked at a mountain on the other side of the valley. We were driving east, toward downtown, where there were more buildings, and taller ones, than I could ever have imagined. It was bewildering even from a distance, and when we got there it was more so, because the buildings rose on all sides so that one could not see the tops of them. “Don’t crane your head like that,” Stan told me, laughing, when we had gotten out of the car. “You have to learn not to look like a tourist, old man.”

  “But I am one,” I said; and so I was, except, of course, that tourists can go home again, and I could not. But Stan was very pleased when I acted like a tourist in the Auto Museum, when my eyes got big at the sheer size of the building, with its huge rooms and its rows and rows of cars.

  Stan was right. They were beautiful, intricate things, gleaming and graceful, made of wood and polished brass and other metals; one was even made of burnished gold. The older ones had lanterns, and baskets in the back for food, and fluid curves that comforted the eye. The cars were still and silent. I suppose they had belched in their day, but now they rested, inviting admiration. “They’d never look that good if people were still using them,” Stan said with a sigh. “They’d be full of dust, you know; it takes a ton of work to keep them spiffed up like this. But anybody who could afford a car like this back then had servants, too. I bet the servants didn’t like these cars one bit. Too much work. Look at that, Timbor: this car cost sixteen thousand dollars in 1921! That was a fortune, back then. You could have bought five houses for that, probably.”

  We were in front of a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, all gleaming copper and sweeping running boards. Against a wall were cases of the clothing people would have worn then, like the costumes in the movies Stanley loved.

  “Nineteen twenty-one,” he said. “Eighty-nine years ago. This car is almost twice as old as I am, and it looks brand new.”

  “And much more ele—ele—what is that word, Stanley? Elegy? The one that means beautiful?”

  “Elegant,” he said. “Elegy is a noun, not an adjective. It’s a kind of poem. A mourning poem.”

  “A morning poem? To greet the sunrise?”

  “No, the other mourning, mourning with a ‘u’—a funeral poem. A poem you say when someone’s dead, to talk about how good the person was.”

  “Oh,” I said, and shivered. “Then this museum is an elegy, is it not? An elegy for the elegant?”

  Stan looked at me. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I suppose it is. That’s exactly what it is.” He shook his head. “You’re amazing, Timbor. I’ve spoken English my whole life, and I wouldn’t have thought of that. An elegy for elegance. That’s—that’s perfect.”

  He sounded as if he might cry, and I realized then how much alike we were. Both of us looked backwards to a beloved time that was lost to us, a time where everything had been beautiful. Both of us looked forward to some time and place that would be better. And both of us were here, now, in a grim, unhappy time where little was as we wanted it to be. We lived in our memories and in our hopes, enduring the present because we had no other choice, and because we loved the people who lived here with us.

  “You should wear a tux like this,” Stanley said more cheerfully, and pulled me to the case of clothing. “Darn, but you’d look good in that. Tails and a top hat, Timbor. You’d look elegant. You’d look like Fred Astaire. You’d look right at home in one of those cars.”

  “Yes,” I said. “A tux is more elegant than a Coca-Cola shirt. But hotter, too. And it costs money, yes?”

  He nodded. “A lot of money. Nothing like that at Kmart, I can tell you. But you need one anyway. A tux and a top hat, and maybe a cane.”

  “And the car,” I said. “I need the car, too. How much would it cost now, the one from 1921?”

  “More money than we’ll ever see,” he said with a laugh. “Much more than the tux and top hat, that’s for sure. But it’s a nice dream, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, and looked at the clothing in the case; and suddenly I saw my face reflected in the glass, and saw Darroti’s mouth and chin, Darroti as he would have looked had he grown old. And I remembered then, in a rush, a morning in the garden in Lémabantunk, long ago when Darroti was very young, and a toy wagon he had pulled behind him on a string. The wagon was wood. I had made it for him, a pretty thing with curves and sturdy wheels. How Darroti had loved his wagon! How he would have loved these cars!

  “Timbor,” Stan said. His hand was on my shoulder. “Timbor, old man, are you all right? What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing. Just—just an elegy. I am fine now. I think I am hungry. Is there food here?”

  “Not here,” he said. “But there are restaurants real close. I’ll buy you a hot dog. Your favorite American food.”

  “Yes,” I said. I enjoyed hot dogs a great deal, with mustard. “I eat American food, and now I want an American tux. What will be next, Stanley?”

  6

  Names

  “New names,” said Lisa. The family was gathered in the kitchen on a glorious October morning, two months after their arrival at the house. Sunlight pooled on the kitchen table; outside, the Truckee chattered along its bed, carrying fallen leaves. Stan was working at a construction site north of town, and Lisa had called a family conference. “Listen, we really lucked out in the documents department. There’s a clerk in the camp who’s willing to sell me the papers of some of the folks who didn’t make it through the fire, God rest their souls. A couple with two kids from Palestine and a couple with three kids from some little mountain village in Afghanistan that got wiped out by an earthquake. That’s nine people: that’s all of you. That way you’ll be in the INS computers as having entered the country legally, if anyone checks. And this guy can get us fake green cards and Social Security cards, too. But it means you have to take new names.”