Fools' Gold

by Wiley, Richard

  Outside the old man ran toward the beach, leaving the reverend to walk behind. He had never seen fishing like this. He saw as he approached that the big seal and all the others were being pushed on their bellies toward the shore. The hunting was over and Phil, in the center of the group, held the remaining owl feathers high above his head and walked along the line of children triumphantly, making each of them admit that his story must have been true. It had been the best single day’s catch in anyone’s memory.

  By the time the old man arrived the hunters and the others were in high, festival spirits. The old man ran his bare hand along the soft wet fur of the big seal and Phil commenced to telling the entire village the story of the snowy owls once again. While he talked a seal was slit and the liver brought to him as a trophy. Each of the successful hunters retrieved red feathers, and then everyone bent over the opened seal to eat. Phil, behind them, continued telling his story. Everyone in the village ate and listened. Phil’s wife took the old man a fine piece of meat and he knelt with the others.

  Only the children seemed uninterested in the story and the food. They’d heard it all the night before and had eaten just before coming down to watch the hunt. They stood at the back of the group near the reverend. They rubbed their jacket sleeves over the fronts of their golden snowflakes but soon edged away. The reverend alone saw them go. He had seen it coming since the moment Phil and the old man came back. The children wore their golden snowflakes with pride, but they were headed in a different direction now, in a quiet line toward the storage houses. By the end of the day all of the sleds of the village would be dismantled for ice skates.

  Finn picked up a few supporters and talked about the town in a few bars. The owner of the Gold Belt let him place his signs on the inside, but did not say no when John Hummel asked to place Dr. Kingman’s alongside them. Hummel had neat advertisements for his candidate, but he had taken to posting slim innuendos as well. “Has Nome Known Murder?” and ‘Is Killing Orientals O.K.?,” written in large letters on the bottom of the town’s new notice board.

  On the day of the second town meeting, on the day of the election, Ellen could find no one who was not going. She asked them on their way into the bath and on their way out again. She said that this was an election in which there was nothing really wrong with either man but that too much power in the hands of one was dangerous. Everyone seemed to agree with her. She’d tried to get the site of the election changed but had failed. Her bath and Dr. Kingman’s house were the only wooden buildings large enough. Besides, everyone wanted to look inside that house, to stand beneath the shining chandelier.

  Both Ellen and Henriette believed they noticed a change in Finn since his return. He smiled at them out of his wide beard and talked more softly than he had before. In the evenings when they sat beside the warm stove he would sometimes tell them how it was to be alone for so long, how it was being isolated within his own language as he’d been.

  “The evenings stretched out,” he said. “And when I would ask a question or make a comment they would turn their heads to me and answer differently, in other languages. And both of them were as satisfied as they might have been had we all understood everything perfectly. There were times when we laughed, when I myself forgot that none of us could understand the other and rolled back on my bedding in the utter hilarity of it all, in the utter hilarity of what had been said.”

  But Finn was not satisfied with the response he got from his two women friends whenever he mentioned his time at the creek. This was a philosophical point he was trying to make and yet it was received with silence or with momentary nods, until one or the other of them would make a comment that brought their talk back to the subject of the election once again.

  “Reality there was triple what it is when a single language is used, does that not mean anything to you?”

  But no, they would not answer or let themselves get involved in anything but talk of the matter at hand, and so Finn soon gave up. There’d been a breakthrough in his life when he’d sat by himself inside those ice tombs of his on that cold ground, but the nature of his breakthrough, of his discovery, meant that he’d not successfully be able to tell anyone about it. And in a way it was a pity for he had ideas now that would revolutionize the lives of those who thought them. He had plans for testing his theory the first time he found a priest who knew not a word of English. He’d go to confession though he hadn’t gone in years, and it would be no mere ritual. He’d pour his heart out to the man, make his tongue lick the very walls of whatever he knew that was sayable, and the priest would listen, not understanding a word. And then, what was most important, Finn would receive absolution, heeding the priest’s words, doing exactly as he was told, listening with ears wide, letting the words of the foreign language run together on his brain like hot wax.

  Ah, there were as many realities as there were languages, he was sure. And wasn’t that a revolutionary idea? There were as many as there were people and perhaps people ought to speak different languages, that’s the crux of it. Nobody understanding the slightest word of another, that would be the world for him. It was strange that he should come to this now, after having done so badly at the creek. It would not do to suggest that such a world would be easy. No, it would be difficult, impossible maybe, and that would be the beauty of it. But it would give our lives direction, and what’s more, it would give our lives charm. People would set about learning the languages of those they loved as an act of faith. They’d never be able to learn enough to really understand the language, but perhaps a few words, the basic grammar, maybe to the point of knowing a dozen or so verbs, a little about the syntax. Theories, speculation, comments upon the nature of the world: these would be reserved for one’s private language and therefore there would be no limitations. New sounds would be attached to the expanding world within your head. Not a bad theory.

  Finn was half listening to the political advice being given him by Ellen. She was telling him that he had a good chance, really he did, but that everything depended upon that speech, and she was right, he knew. There were many people in the town who were naturally against Dr. Kingman for his having struck it when they did not. And Finn would like to be mayor of Nome, helping to change the swirl of tents into a mass of buildings. He liked the layout of the town as it was now, twisted from its center outward. He might propose that the buildings be constructed in precisely that manner. He knew he would lose the election if, no matter how casually, he mentioned his theory about language, about the privacy of it all. Still, it was beautiful and true. Nothing could be more revolutionary than to live in such a world. It would be a testament, absolutely, to his new belief that only what is unthinkable is unreal.

  Finn was pulled back to ordinary life by Henriette.

  “Think of it, Finn,” she was saying. “You all dressed up and sitting solid as a tree trunk behind your own oak desk…. The mayor. Can you imagine that?”

  The crystal chandelier was bright and the path leading down from Dr. Kingman’s house was lined with oil lanterns showing the way. It was election day and all the bars were shut, laced from the top and tied at the bottom in bows. All the week before the meeting people had been talking about the weather breaking, and now many of them moved along without hooded jackets, cool with only wool bands tied about their ears. There was still an inch of ice curving the shore, but a thin film of water, pushed into practice waves by the warmer wind, rode cold upon it. On the election path the frozen land gave way, in places turning brown, the earth balding through its snow wig, showing its age.

  Inside the house Dr. Kingman and his wife had covered all the good furniture with sheets and brought in benches. The living room under the chandelier was twice as large as the main room of Ellen’s bath, and in the front with its back to the fireplace stood a small podium, and on a stand next to it a glass container with ice water, a tame version of the outside world. At another table Hummel sat with stacks of yellowing paper and his pens and ink. He wore a loose grin and
spoke to himself under his breath, mumbling murder more frequently now but still getting no response.

  Ellen and Finn and Henriette sat toward the front, together on a bench, warming their hands by sitting upon them, placing them under their thighs. Finn had been away from them all the day, pacing the floor of his room, practicing his speech and thinking, and Ellen, never tiring, had told each bather of the dangers of monopoly government, the safety to be found in diverse rule. “Let Finn be mayor,” she’d said. “Diversify. The other man already has a job. He is the richest man and the richest man should never be mayor.”

  Though Ellen was the constant campaigner Henriette was the tiredest of the three. She’d been the street canvasser, the one who’d relied on slogans, walking up to people and saying, “Vote Finn, Finn for mayor.” She’d kept the collar of her sealskin jacket turned tightly around her neck as she spoke, for she could feel the swelling of her pregnancy even in that part of her body. The jacket also was now too tight; it pressed against her skin and left a mark that faded slowly, even in the heat of the bath.

  Henriette worked for Finn’s election because she liked Finn, not because she cared. She hoped Finn would win but if he did not it would not matter to anyone in a week. She had been thinking a lot lately of men, of the first few who’d poked around inside her, thrashing about like hungry sharks. Now that she was with child she thanked God that the father was not one of them. She knew who the father was and she was proud. The reverend coming to her like a serious owl in the night. He was a light-boned man and rode her like a feather. And unlike Hummel, who locked himself to her peach skin like some hungry fruit bat, the reverend seemed to wash over her like warm bath water.

  Because her rounding body pressed so firmly against her clothing, Henriette now carried Fujino’s diary in her hands, like a Bible. She kept the reverend’s broken note still pressed inside it. She liked to take the note out and read it whenever she saw Hummel’s perfect script hanging from the notice board or tacked to the walls of the city. And somehow it did not seem odd to her that Hummel was a neat man. To Henriette, Hummel’s body was like a room where all the dirt had been swept under the carpet. And neat or not it was as if he were in balance with his own nature only when he was in ill health. The boundaries of his body, his very skin, seemed an artificial limitation.

  Henriette looked up and saw Hummel staring at her from his corner writing desk, so she took the reverend’s note out again and read it, holding it up between them like a cross. She saw him severely scratching at his pad and she knew that he was writing down a mean message, lies about the fate of Fujino, a habit he’d gotten into of late. The room was full and had grown quiet and then noisy again. Everyone was expecting an early beginning. What was keeping them?

  Dr. Kingman’s wife rose and rapped lightly with a gavel on the top of the table. Since her husband was a candidate it did not seem right that he be master of ceremonies as well. Hummel dipped the tip of one of his pens into an ink bottle and held it sharply in his hand, not letting it drip. There were people sitting along all the benches, lined along all the walls and floors. Finn tipped his head back and looked at the long tear-shaped shadows that were cast across the faces and below the eyes of his fellow citizens. He remembered the lonely day of the chandelier’s arrival. He remembered standing on the porch of this house and watching the workers lift it to where it hung now, ready to drop and stick him sharply to the floor. It was the chandelier that had first set him against Dr. Kingman. He had not known it at the time but he supposed that to look up among its tears and facets was to look, absolutely, along the corridors of another world, one to which he couldn’t belong.

  “First we have the election for mayor,” said Mrs. Kingman, “then the mayor will run the rest of the meeting and do what he thinks best for the smooth organization of our town.”

  The people in the room settled themselves like concert goers and Mrs. Kingman looked toward her husband and stood back as he got up to give his speech. The bright lights dimmed considerably as he began to talk.

  Finn did not listen. He could feel Ellen, tense and political to his right, and Henriette, listless and pretending to listen on his other side. He was aware that people considered Ellen the smarter of the two. Or, more correctly, that they thought Ellen intelligent and Henriette not. Henriette flickered in and out of intelligence like a faulty electric light. But she didn’t busy herself as much as the rest of them with the petals of her memory, so she lived her days well. He could tell that, like himself, she was not really listening to what the man said. Ellen, though, was taking notes.

  Oh, if Finn only knew enough Gaelic he would give his speech in it as a lesson on what it had been like living at Topcock Creek. What a joke that would be. Gaelic! He was sure of the reaction he’d get from his two women. From Henriette there’d be the same countenance that she now directed toward Kingman. But by Ellen he would be abandoned. In Nome everyone tried to speak the same language and expected that language in return. It was little enough to ask of him and he would comply. He would speak to them in English and would ask that they elect him mayor. He had practiced his speech many times though he’d refused when Ellen asked him to say it once in front of her. He wanted it to be a surprise.

  Finn looked at Ellen’s notes and for a moment heard what Dr. Kingman was saying. He heard the words “kindly consider what all this would mean…” and he thought of an aging Dr. Kingman walking along the boardwalks of a squarely built town nodding and tipping his hat. His house, though old, would still be the most prominent in the town. Once his plans were established he would pass the mantle of mayor on to someone else and would return his full energies to his business. When he spoke everyone would understand that he really did have the best interests of the town at heart.

  When the speech was over everyone applauded and Mrs. Kingman stood and said Finn’s name. Finn took a glass of water and looked at the audience through it. His vision was as blurred as he hoped his speech would be. He took a long drink.

  “If I had written my speech out longhand I would roll the paper into a telescope and look at you all more clearly,” he said, and a few people around the room laughed, surprising him.

  “I have been pacing about my room speaking to the walls about the mayorship and through many attempts I have rather telescoped in on what I believe the future of Nome to be.”

  Finn stopped again and saw that they were all taking him seriously. He sought the eyes of Henriette and found comfort in the knowledge that she, at least, was not paying any real attention to what he was saying. She sat comfortably listening only to the sounds he was making, and from then on he spoke directly to her.

  “We will build our buildings and make our laws no matter who the first mayor is so it might as well be me. You all heard Dr. Kingman say what he would do just now and I’m telling you that if you choose me above him I will do the same things. If I had spoken first then it would be Dr. Kingman who’d be standing here now copying my programs. So, rather than repeating everything so that you can hear what it sounds like coming from my mouth and using my voice, I’d like to say, ditto. I will do everything he will do and with equal energy.”

  It crossed Finn’s mind that he could sit down now if he wished, for he had explained himself clearly. Yet only a moment had passed and all but Henriette looked at him quizzically. He decided that as long as Henriette was not listening he would continue, for he was speaking for her. If she once cocked her head in that questioning way he would stop, but not until. It was the music of his voice that was guiding her daydreams, so it was for her that he must continue singing.

  “Of course it is easy to say ditto and I would not say it if Dr. Kingman’s programs were not sound. Those things which he spoke of would be good for our town, would be good for any town.” Finn could tell that the tone and speed of his voice were not satisfying Henriette. Though she was still not listening, she might begin to soon if he didn’t give a better accompaniment to her thoughts. A change of pace, a lullaby.r />
  “Back at home, I might say, back in Ireland where I come from, there are those who believe in the politics of chance. They don’t care who’s in charge or which party might be speaking, and I’ve seen what can happen when a people are like that.”

  Finn looked quickly at Henriette and found her safely back out of his control once again.

  “Let me tell you about a man I knew, Hugo Reily, who had connections everywhere, was disattached from none. He was a man of my own village and he spent a year of weekends riding in his carriage from farm to farm so that on election day he would be able to collect each vote as a man collects the fruits of his field labor.”

  Finn had succeeded now on two fronts. Henriette was not listening and neither, in a way, was he. For Henriette he could not say, but he was thinking of a day Hugo Reily had come to their farm, hat in hand, how he had roughed Finn’s hair while talking into the eyes of his father. Though Finn’s father and his elder brothers and perhaps even Reily himself had believed that the words were what got the votes, Finn had understood that it was the roughing of the hair.

  “He was a wardman in our area for seventy-five years and during that time he did not miss a funeral or a wedding or a single night at the pub that was known as a political center. Hugo Reily, I can see him now, and I wonder as I’m standing here if he’s not still making his rounds, for indeed when I left that country it was he that saw me off, it was he who reached up to my tall head and ran his fingers through my hair. It might have been my own hand he knew the terrain there so well.