Peru

by Gordon Lish

  Kobbe Koffi from Togoland!

  What a joke!

  That’s not a joke?

  What a joke!

  And if you count up the total loss in dollars and cents—if you take into account just the sport coat and the necktie, on the one hand, for instance, and then, on the other, the costs for the emergency room at Mount Sinai and for the overnight truck to get the stuff up to Henry, if you just take those for starters, just take those specific expenditures for starters—then you will see that in and of itself it was not some cheap joke, either, was it?

  Not that Florence and I are exactly starving, mind you—but neither do we have money as such to burn.

  I mean, come on, it is not like as if we lived in Woodmere, for instance, is it?

  Agreed, agreed, anyone can talk to you like a child some of the time—but make no mistake of it, make none of it, there are times some of the time when one must talk to you as would a grown-up!

  I am not a child!

  Do you people hear me?

  This is the Upper East Side!

  SHE ALWAYS HAD THE SMELL OF LILAC ON HER. You did not even have to get up that close enough to her for you to smell it on her, to smell the lilac which was on the hankie which was on her, which was the hankie which she went and pinned every day to her bodice to her, every day a fresh hankie with fresh drops of something with lilac in it on it on her.

  I tell you, I have been turned the wrong way ever since Kobbe Koffi.

  What happened to me?

  Something happened to me.

  My son is coming home to me very soon now.

  She said it was the scent of lilac.

  She said scent and lilac and bodice.

  Here are some of the words she said—she said drops and dewdrops and mist—she said cottony and ribbony and whispery. Or was it lily of the valley?

  She said, “Boys and girls, can you say gossamer?”

  You want to hear the words I heard?

  I heard quilted and cuticle and petal and sleeve and opal and hosiery and unguent.

  I once heard Miss Donnelly say contour.

  It is very complicated. The idea of this is very complicated. I mean the words and the rhyming—I mean, thinking that you were rhyming.

  LISTEN-HE FELL OVER.

  I think his feet were still in the sandbox.

  I think he still had the rake and would not let go of the rake and that his feet were still in the sandbox.

  That he had sandals on.

  That he had overalls on.

  White buttons—two for the front, two for the back.

  Big white ones.

  The hoe, I had the hoe. It was the hoe which I had just hit him with. Whereas Andy Lieblich, he had the shovel.

  Andy Lieblich always had the shovel.

  And a sunsuit on.

  Had his sunsuit on.

  The little roof, the little fringed awning, it was up over it—the roof was up over the sandbox to keep the sun out.

  It was suffocating.

  She said it was suffocating.

  It was August.

  Unless it wasn’t fringed, unless the fact is that it actually wasn’t fringed but was just plain awning.

  The trick which I had, the secret which I had, the secret which was just between me and the sandbox, was to dig down in the corner where the sun hadn’t gotten because down there the sand was gluey not just only because it was almost actually like wet actually but because the sand down in the corner of it was different.

  You could say it had body to it.

  You could say it felt gluey-feeling.

  I’ll tell you something else.

  This will show you, this will show you!—when I tell you how much I used to put all of my heart into it when I was in Andy Lieblich’s sandbox playing Builder with Andy Lieblich, this will really show you how much I really meant it—namely, the fact that you could look at it and think that there was a bug in it of some kind, that there was some kind of a sand bug down there in the sand, a little round type of crablike sand bug which could roll itself up to look like a pellet of sand when it wanted to, when it had to hide itself from you before it got itself set up in the best position for it to go ahead and bite you.

  You must know what I mean.

  Don’t you remember when you were six?

  Am I remembering when I was six?

  Like a little ball of it which moved like there was something inside of it which was keeping it going, a pellet of it.

  Little mind, little feet, little pincers.

  Oh, I don’t believe you don’t remember what I mean—or how you had to, had to pick it up and squeeze.

  How you, how you yourself, just couldn’t not squeeze!

  But there was never anything but just more sand in it. There was never any actual sand bug in it. Except it didn’t matter the next time, did it? I mean, when you saw another little ball of it that looked like it was going all along all by itself in it—it was always the terror of it, wasn’t it? And then the murder of it over and over!

  With nothing ever dead.

  Little clumps of sand.

  No goo ever oozing out, no insides ever oozing out, nothing squashed ever there in your hand—all that was ever there in your hand was just more sand.

  But it took courage to dig down for it. No other boy would do it, dig down for it. I was the only boy who would dig down for it. Andy Lieblich was too delicate for him to ever dig down for it, dig down for it—and then get it and squeeze.

  Just like it took it to feel around for the soap. Or to stand and watch for it for when the frankfurter split. Or to keep looking at the colored man when the maid saw me look.

  I always knew that she was watching me look.

  What was she thinking when I was killing him?

  Don’t people always have to be thinking something?

  THE OLDER I GET, the more times there are when I think I am thinking everything.

  It’s going to be very hard for me to tell you about the rhymes. You are going to have to think back with all of your mind to remember what I am going to tell you about when I tell you about the rhymes, or what I think I am going to try to. Because as much as there is any reason for why I killed Steven Adinoff in the town of Woodmere in the year of 1940, I think that I have to say that the rhymes probably come as close to it as any reason does—even though, even in the sense that there still wasn’t really any reason. But I don’t know how anybody goes about the whole thing of telling anybody about the rhymes, or if whether there is even any way for them to.

  For one thing—just to begin with, I don’t think I mean rhymes in the sense that w^e in general mean them.

  What I mean is like with like.

  I think I mean like with like.

  Like take the names Henry and Florence—take Florence and Henry—because to me these are rhymes, or almost like rhymes, whereas to somebody else, I don’t know what they are to somebody else—all I can do is tell you about my own feelings as far as feelings about rhymes.

  Or guess at what they were when I killed Steven Adinoff

  Lieblich and Adinoff—Adinoff and Lieblich—do you hear it, do you hear it?

  Or this one, this one—Lackawanna 4-1810.

  It’s not going to be possible.

  I don’t think it’s possible.

  I think I thought I knew something, but I probably did not know it except for just a minute.

  YOU COULD WASH OFF THE REGULAR SAND, but the sand which came from deep down, this was the sand which stayed stuck on you sometimes, sometimes it stayed stuck on you onto your fingers or stuck on you in up under your fingernails, and even later on, even when you were all washed off, you could sometimes still feel it reminding you that it was still there, actually feel even just one single solitary grain of it pushing up—a grain of it, a granule.

  I want you to realize something—namely, that he had the shovel to dig down with if he wanted to, whereas I had to use my hand because the hoe was too slow.

  I
was the colored man when I did it.

  I was a lady-in-waiting when I did it.

  I was the boy who was ready for the Christians.

  I was the boy who liked the smell.

  But who were they when I was doing it—who was she in her chair with those things going up and down over her wristwatch—and him, who was Andy Lieblich?

  LET ME TELL YOU THIS—my Henry is not delicate. Talk about a camper, my Henry is a camper. This Henry of mine is a camper through and through.

  Pay attention to me—we live in a world where there are words like torque in it.

  Listen to these—torque and carborundum and drogue and dredge.

  Do you hear what I am saying to you?

  What I actually have in mind, I think, is this word here and that word there, here being Ninety-first just off Fifth, there being Eighty-third right on Fifth, a distance from one to the other of a little over what? Of eight blocks?

  My opinion was we could have walked it, and should have walked it, whereas Florence’s was taxi, taxi, cab, cab.

  Florence’s opinion is always taxi, taxi, cab, cab.

  What I am getting at, what I am preparing to talk about, is the morning of—namely, how I got my head smashed and my fingers mashed, or what I should probably say instead, what would probably be a more honest way of stating the whole thing instead, scraped and pinched—how I got my head scraped and some fingers pinched.

  As I’ve said, like I’ve said—you choose, I’m getting tired of choosing for you!—the whole thing came to three Band-Aids, it’s a three-Band-Aid story—not that this has got anything to do with what I think the point of it is, which is that—here goes—the camp gives you these instructions—namely, that if your son is not flying up—the cost of an airline ticket is preposterous, totally preposterous—or not driving up—we don’t keep a car, we don’t have a car, because of the lunatic costs of what they get for garaging a car as such here in Manhattan—then, for a reasonable fee, for a moderately reasonable fee, he can make his way up to camp on a bus the camp charters for the purpose if he will only present himself—on time, on time!—in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—which is roughly, let’s say, Eighty-third Street and Fifth Avenue—at eight-thirty, or at nine o’clock, I frankly forget which, with his footlocker and with his duffel bag in his personal possession, please.

  Now there you have it.

  I am no fool, I tell you.

  This—this!—was the situation.

  I forget which day—I mentioned it a little bit earlier—late June, the end of June, the date is not important—it’s a weekday, it’s a weekday—if anything is important, then it’s that it was a weekday that’s important and that I went ahead and laid out for a new sport coat and for a new necktie by way of making myself presentable, by way of at least doing my best, for Henry’s sake, to not make a less than good impression on the other mothers and fathers, on the other campers, plus on any camp counselors that probably would be riding along on the bus and so forth.

  What I am saying is that between us, even with the footlocker and with the duffel bag, it wouldn’t have been any big deal for us to have walked it, the eight blocks plus, with Henry and me handling the actual manpower and with Florence just walking with us. But I will admit that it was a slightly insane morning to begin with. For one thing, the two of us, Florence and I, we had been up to all hours all night packing up the last of Henry’s things and getting the rest of his labels sewn on everything they weren’t sewn on yet, and all of his other stuff marked with his name and meanwhile knocking together a list of every single solitary item the boy was taking up—and then there was this whole thing of what I happened to catch sight of on television, so who, so who could sleep after that?

  No, I was not myself in the morning.

  Yes, I was more than normally distracted in the morning.

  But make no mistake of it, however—I still insist, however, that there was totally but totally no need for a taxi or for a cab—on this point I do not see any reasonable argument to the contrary.

  There is no legitimate argument to the contrary.

  No one is saying it was a question of the money.

  It was not a question of the money!

  However, it definitely is a question of the money now—when you stop to consider what this little episode has cost me—yes, yes, yes, yes, it certainly, from every aspect, is definitely but definitely a question of the money now, plus the fact that I have been able to think of hardly nothing other since—namely, this totally clownish little episode, the famous Three-Band-Aid Episode, it almost looks to me like it has turned me looking rearward for keeps.

  I mean, I really don’t see how I am supposed just to step right out and go be in the future anymore what with Henry expected home before you know it, plus Florence counting on me.

  She is not the one who killed anybody!

  My wife and son, my wife and child, you think they even know, either of them, where Woodmere even is?

  His feet, he had sandals on—I saw he had his sandals on—whereas my own feet, tell me, tell me, were there shoes and socks on them or not?

  I see a lime-green sport coat—and a Squadron A necktie—both from Dunhill’s, and neither one of them cheap!

  Imagine it, imagine it—a telephone number you haven’t heard, you hadn’t heard, in how many years?

  I want you to think of something.

  What if Henry hadn’t made the bus?

  I’m the one who could dig down and touch the sand, hear the shoe shluffmg along, look at what the hoe did.

  Look while it was doing it.

  Kids are stronger today. No question about it, kids are much stronger today. It doesn’t matter what social rank your kids of today come from, what kind of background they come from, they are all of them so much stronger these days.

  For instance, I actually couldn’t turn the handle of the meat grinder or of the clothes wringer for my mother—in all honesty and sincerity, I couldn’t, I actually couldn’t.

  I’m going to tell you something—which is that I was proud of the fact that we had a clothes wringer, but I wish we could have had it standing somewhere else and not always standing out in the garage for the whole world to come see it if they wanted.

  And the clothesline always up between the poles, they didn’t have to have it up all of the time between the poles. It wasn’t always sunny enough to have it up all of the time. And yet I always think of summer, of August, and never not of a day when the colored man could not have come for the Buick for him to work on it because it was too rainy for it or blowy or snowy.

  I wish I was six years old.

  She said we had to keep things where they were because it was the landlord who made us.

  I used to have meat loaf from the meat she ground up, or a hamburger fried in the frying pan. I never had things broiled. She said she didn’t even know what a meat pattie was, that she had never even heard of anything which was called anything like a meat pattie, a meat pattie. She said couldn’t I tell her what I meant. She said for me to just tell her what I meant. She said for me just to describe for her a meat pattie and if I couldn’t, then just shut up.

  I never told her the names of the things which the colored man said.

  But look at Henry, look at Henry!

  I remember a sound like the sound that you would say sogginess would have if sogginess was something which could have its own special specific sound for it. I remember this—and even the sound of slowing down, of a kind of slowing down, and of the tingling I told you about, the buzziness up deep inside of way up inside of my backside—and rhymes—rhymes and rhymes in my head.

  It was a question of minding the rule.

  It was a question of obeying the biggest one of her rules.

  It was all of it just a question of the rules.

  I did not make the rules.

  When did I once ever make the rules?

  If I made the rules, wouldn’t we have walked?

  Wa
lked!

  It was just a toy.

  They were just toys.

  I think they used to call them peewee-size, or sized.

  Or just peewee.

  A peewee hoe, a peewee rake.

  Wasn’t there a baseball player named that because he was small? Not that I ever knew about him then. I did not know anything about baseball then. I did not care anything about baseball then. How was I supposed to know anything about Johnny Mize then? I didn’t care anything about Johnny Mize then. I didn’t care anything about any of them then—Johnny Mize, Peewee Reese—whatever all of their names were. I never cared anything about any of them, not even to this day do I care about any of them then. I only know about Johnny Mize because of Steven Adinoff—and Peewee Reese, him I don’t even know how I just suddenly knew about, except he was small, I bet.

  Let them ask Henry.

  Ask Henry.

  Henry knows about baseball inside-out.

  All of the sports, sports in general—not just only the sport of baseball in particular.

  Andy Lieblich had a peewee lawn mower for him to make believe that he was mowing his lawn with it. Didn’t Iris Lieblich have a million different peewee things like this, too? Maybe everybody did—I don’t know.

  Maybe the reason we didn’t have a lawn was because of the coal itself—or was because of the Blue Coal truck having to always drive up so close to get the chute to reach over to our house to get to the cellar window.

  I would like for me to be six years old again and have her looking down at me with me looking up at her again and seeing her see my place again.

  Here is one of the things the nanny used to say—she used to say that if people wanted to keep having the best lawn on the block, then they could not tolerate them always having little boys ever getting sand on it.

  She said nothing came for free, that you got what you paid for, that if you wanted to have nice things, then that you had to pay good money for them—she said that contrary to popular opinion, that the Lieblichs were not made of money, that they did not just go pick money off of trees, that they did not coin money or have money to burn or have money burning a hole in their pocket or money to throw away or money to put a match to or to just pour down the drain, that they did not mint money and were not rolling in money, that they were not rich people from being chiselers or from cutting corners or from squeezing every last nickel and every red cent.