A Good Place to Come From

by Morley Torgov

  I expected my father to take a seat at the rear of the sanctuary where there was always a vacant pew, and where he might regain his composure. Instead he hurried through the exit not bothering to close the door behind him, and started to march down Bruce Street toward Queen, his steps coming down hard on the sidewalk, his body bent forward against a non-existent wind. It was the march of a man burning with emotions—embarrassment, shame, anger. I was obliged to take extra-long strides just to remain two or three paces behind him. Not until he came to the first corner, at Bruce and Albert, did he halt, and as he waited for passing traffic before continuing, I caught up. Without looking at me, but staring straight ahead, he said hoarsely, "You see, you damn fool; you thought temples are built by saints, didn't you? Well now you know, it's not saints that accomplish anything in this lousy world, it's sonsofbitches."

  "I never said you were a son of a bitch."

  "And if I was, so what? It shouldn't have made one goddam bit of difference to you. I was no worse than the rest of them. You had no right to look down on me, to desert me, to betray me."

  I took a very deep breath. "I'm sorry," I said.

  Refusing still to look at me as I stood there on the streetcorner beside him, he went on, the rage and bitterness of past months leaking through his words, his voice barely under control. "Sons are meant to stand by their fathers, not to kick them in the face when they are down. The Bible says even if your father disgraces you, you cover him with a blanket and hide your eyes; you don't call in the whole world and shout 'look what a bastard my father is!' "

  I wanted to say, "But I can't stand by anybody that much. It's just not in me." All I said, however, was, "I'm sorry. What more can I say?"

  "That's alright," he responded, voice still hoarse and unsteady. "Someday you'll have your chance to get even with me. When you're a man and I'm dead you can piss on my grave all you want."

  He resumed his march down Bruce Street toward Queen Street without looking to see if I was following or not. But I knew that I had been forgiven.

  The Messiah of Second-Hand Goods

  Throughout his life my father was a missionary who combed the streets offering shelter and salvation to all sorts of world-weary goods—odd remnants of cloth, bent nails, used lumber, rusty tools. Over the years, the basement beneath his store became a hostel for a vast collection of castaway property. Each and every item in that collection he hoarded against the improbable day when it might come in handy.

  During one of my last visits with him, my father confessed to me, in anguish, that the local fire department inspector had declared the place a hazard. Worse still, my father's insurance agent heartily endorsed the inspector's verdict.

  "The bastards are in cahoots," he said bitterly.

  "You mean, it's a conspiracy?" I asked, pretending to be horrified. "You think they really want all that stuff for themselves?"

  "Why not? I bet between the two of them they haven't got a pot to piss in."

  "They'll find one in your basement, that's for sure."

  "If you're such a smart guy," my father said, sliding the phone book across his desk at me, "then call the sonsofbitches and tell 'em they can't force me to clear it all out."

  "I can't do that," I protested. "At least, not until I've had a chance to study your insurance policy and the local fire regulations.''

  "I thought you're a lawyer—"

  "I am."

  "Then how come you don't know these things?"

  "I was absent from law school the day they took 'Junk Collections.' Just give me fifteen minutes please and I'll have some answers for you."

  A half-hour later I was ready with my report. My father glanced impatiently at his watch. "What took so long, Lawyer? You're an hour late already."

  "I read your policy and talked with the inspector—"

  "And?"

  "And they're right. It is a hazard. You'll have to clear out the basement, that's all there is to it."

  "For this I needed a lawyer in the family? I could've got better advice from a doctor.''

  I could feel my face reddening and suddenly my shirtcollar felt two sizes too small for my neck. "Let's not get into that lawyer-versus-doctor routine again. I'm thirty-seven years old and there's no way I'm going to medical school at this point in my life. It's about time you got used to the idea."

  "With those hands," my father said, shaking his head sadly, "you would've made a brilliant surgeon."

  "Don't change the subject. I'm a lawyer and I tell you the City is going to lay a charge against you under one of the bylaws. What's more, your insurance may be cancelled."

  "I just don't understand it. Why all of a sudden now, after I've been in this place nearly thirty years?''

  "Because last week—in case you didn't know it—was Fire Prevention Week."

  "Fire Prevention Week?" My father was unimpressed. "That's for little kids, to teach them they shouldn't play with matches. What the hell has Fire Prevention Week got to do with me?"

  "They're afraid you'll burn down the ·entire town. Like Mrs. O'Leary's cow."

  "Mrs. O'Leary's cow took place in Chicago. This is Sault Ste. Marie."

  "They claim you've got enough flammable material in the cellar to burn down Chicago too."

  He refused to be convinced of the potential danger. Besides, he pointed out, he'd spent a lifetime accumulating the collection. "My God," he pleaded, "there's a goldmine down there, now."

  To prove it, he conducted me on a tour of that dank subterranean space, and we squeezed ourselves along a narrow aisle that parted mountains of cardboard cartons, wooden boxes, and old steamer trunks. Spread out around me was a museum stuffed full of unremarkable objects, most of which should have been condemned to the rubbish heap years ago. I let out a low whistle of astonishment. "You sure don't believe in travelling light in this world," I commented.

  He ignored me and gave his attention instead to a pile of round iron bars that lay on the floor near his feet, counting and re-counting them. "That's funny," he said, "there's only eleven and I could swear I had an even dozen."

  "What're you planning to do with them?" I asked, picking up one of the bars.

  "I'm thinking of opening a jail, schmeckle," he answered, taking the bar from me and replacing it carefully on the pile.

  I raised the lid on a large carton of men's rubber footwear. "What are you saving these for?"

  "World War Three. They'll be worth a fortune. First thing that's short in a war is rubbers."

  "How come they didn't sell in World War Two?"

  "The sizes were too large."

  "What makes you think they'll go over big in the next war?"

  "People's feet are getting longer; it's a fact."

  Crammed in a dark corner was an uncomfortable quartet of derelict female mannequins, their wigless heads almost touching the low joists overhead, their nude featureless bodies frozen into stiff unnatural poses. "And when do you expect to use them again?" I asked.

  "Their time will come," he replied confidently.

  "Do you really think women will ever look like that again? They haven't even got any nipples on their breasts."

  "Nipples I can always buy in a drug store."

  "Look," I said, "let's be serious."

  "I am serious. You're the one who's treating this whole thing like a joke."

  I tried to sound sympathetic. "I'm sure all this stuff means a great deal to you, and maybe some of it should be kept."

  "Some of it!" he exploded. "You're all alike—you, the fire inspector, my wonderful insurance agent. Easy come, easy go; that's all you people know."

  "Take it easy."

  "Take it easy my ass! I'm not moving one stick, one nail, one piece of thread out of this basement. I'll set fire to it myself first."

  After years of training, I had learned to walk away from the blowtorch of his temper. "You're crazy," I said quietly. And I turned and made my way through the narrow canyon that led out of the basement. I left him standing
behind me in the aisle, in the company of the four hairless mannequins, calling after me, "I'm not crazy, the whole world's crazy; I'm the only one with any brains!"

  All during the return flight from the Soo to Toronto I could think of nothing else but the man bellowing back there in that basement. How did he become the Messiah of Second-hand Goods? How does anyone become a Messiah? Is it all in the way one is conceived?

  My father was conceived on the rear platform of a horsedrawn cart, between bundles of clothing and an assortment of pots and pans, one black winter night while his parents were in full flight from a band of drunken Cossacks. It was the time of the annual pogrom, when Jews in that part of Russia were once again "in season" and were picked off in bunches, the way ripe strawberries are ravaged by hungry bears.

  These were hours of frantic activity. Russian swords were swung and guns were fired. Jewish household goods were flung into wagons at midnight. Flames crackled in barns.

  Horses were whipped and cursed at to go faster along the back-country roads. In the midst of a frantic dash for the safety of the forests, my paternal grandfather—ever mindful of the uncertainties of tomorrow—entrusted his horse's reins to Fate, and there—in the back of their clattering cart—he and his wife pitched and rolled together, encouraged by sudden passion, and assisted by the rocky contour of the road.

  Thus did my father come into being. How do I know this?

  I don't. There's nothing in the family records to bear witness—who would record such an act anyway? Certainly my father—gifted as he was with hindsight—remembered nothing of the precise circumstances, and if he did, he saw fit to disclose nothing. No matter. I have a photograph of my father's parents that tells all. There they stand, in their seventies, looking more like an old pair of boots than man and wife. There is snow on the ground and their faces are fierce and frostbitten. "Get on with it," they seem to be saying, "take. the damn picture before we freeze to death here!" That they are being preserved on film for posterity is of little importance to them at this moment. Hurry up, get on with it. For today it's the winter that oppresses. And tomorrow it'll be the Russians again. And the day after—who knows?

  Who knows?

  There was another possible explanation for my father's nature: the devils in his life. Of them my father spoke frequently. Descendants of the demons that inhabited his boyhood home in Russia, these mid-twentieth century devils were much more innovative and proficient than their European predecessors when it came to fouling things up. Applying contemporary techniques to ancient evils, they hovered over the stock market in his later years, casting sinister lights and shadows over his investments so that each speculation rose hopefully, plunged sharply, then levelled off many points below his aspirations. Sardonic memos in his diary summed up each day's luckless ventures: "Sold today 500 shares Consolidated Crap, bought 300 shares International Garbage." The same devils concocted overnight changes in the length of women's dresses so that yesterday's saleable garments became transformed into today's giveaway rags. Like vampires, certain of the devils bled his cash register to pay income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and a hundred other levies imposed by other devils. Like masters of psychological warfare, they caused his love affairs to run aground on reefs of suspicion and jealousy. Like experts of chemical warfare, they poisoned old friendships and turned them sour.

  Nature conspired against him. People could no longer be trusted. At this stage of his existence he believed in, and loved, only those things he could truly possess: land, buildings, chattels of every description. He loved things that could be spoken to and relied upon not to talk back, touched and relied upon not to bite; things that could be polished and were guaranteed to remain brilliant; that could be stored without aging and rotting; that could be nailed down, locked up, buried away from the sun in chests and closets without ever clamouring for freedom.

  He loved equipment: tools, shovels, rakes, polishing cloths, paint brushes. He loved his sixteen-foot runabout with the silver-green outboard motor, and his fishing rods lined up absolutely parallel with each other.

  He loved everything in its place. He loved horizontals and verticals, ninety-degree angles and perfect circles.

  Whenever I brought my wife and children from Toronto to visit, he would greet us with wide-eyed enthusiasm, like a hermit happy to be discovered at last in his cave. But within twenty-four hours the smells of furniture wax and mothballs came between us and it was apparent that we were intruders in his world of order and timeliness. On the final day of our visit, he would begin to restore everything in the cave to its exact pre-arrival position, even before our bags were packed.

  Whenever it came time to say goodbye to my father, we didn't depart—we checked out.

  Six months after the local fire inspector ordered him to jettison all that excess cargo in the hold, my father learned from a chest specialist that he might also have to dispose of one of his lungs.

  "I can never understand all that Latin baloney. What did the doctor call it again?" my father asked.

  "He called it a slight irregularity, a minor tissue change." I tried to adopt the same casual manner displayed that morning by the doctor, tried to sound like a mechanic easing the mind of a Sunday driver whose engine had overheated. "On the X ray it just shows as a tiny white spot."

  "I didn't ask you to describe it in English. English I could understand. What did he call it in Latin?"

  "I don't remember—"

  "I heard it before, once. Carson-something."

  "I tell you I don't remember—"

  He snapped his fingers. "I remember. Carcinoma, that was it. What's it mean, exactly?"

  "How should I know?"

  "You're a lawyer aren't you? How come you don't know Latin?"

  "I was away the day they took 'Carcinoma.' "

  "You must have been away a lot of days," he said, looking at me out of the corners of his eyes, shrewdly; he knew I was lying.

  "Carcinoma happens to be a medical, not a legal, term." He sighed. "You would know what it means if you had gone to medical school like I wanted."

  "Okay, I'll make a deal with you," I said, inspired. "You submit to a biopsy, like the doctor recommended, and I'll apply for admission to any medical school you say. Is it a deal?"

  "Are you crazy, or are you just out of your mind?" he retorted. "You really think I'm going to let those butchers play around with my insides?"

  "I thought you worshipped doctors. Now all of a sudden they don't know what they're doing? You are incredible!"

  "What's so incredible? You take Bill Lundy, the plumber. Looked like a million dollars. Went to the hospital for a hernia and never came out. Take for instance Tom McLatchey. Remember him? Strong like a bull; used to carry a tool box that weighed a ton. They found something in his stomach and he died right there on the operating table. And what about Milt Hershbaum, the traveller, wasn't he the picture of health? So what do you think happened to him? He went to some fancy clinic in Boston for a checkup—so help me God, a lousy checkup!—and they killed him and shipped his body home in a box."

  "Alright, so Lundy and McLatchey and Milt whats-hisname had tough luck. What does that prove? Thousands upon thousands of people come out of hospitals cured. The exceptions are not the rule.''

  "It's always my luck to be an exception. Besides, I could tell from the way the doctor acted that I'm a goner. You and the doctor suppose maybe that I'm a yokel from Shtipovitz, don't you? Well I happen to have a damn good idea what Carcinoma means. It's a fifty-dollar word for cancer."

  ''Goddamit!" I yelled, furious. "Here I've been making an honest effort to keep the truth from you; the least you could have done was to make an honest effort to keep it from me. You're one helluva lousy sport!"

  "I'm sorry. I never had cancer before. Nobody ever told me it's a game and I'm supposed to be a good sport."

  "Listen to me," I said, calming down. "You're not a goner. The doctor says it’s at an early stage and if you undergo this biopsy—"<
br />
  "Ach, what do doctors know? Look what they did to poor Sarah Blackstein. Cut her up and sent her back to Sam in pieces. A real mess. Know what he told me confidentially? He says it's like sleeping with a jigsaw puzzle."

  "But a biopsy is a fairly simple procedure."

  "Alright alright, I'll have the biopsy. Just leave me alone already."

  "You will? When?"

  "Soon."

  "When?"

  "When I'm ready."

  "When will that be?"

  "When I've looked after all my things. First things first."

  "What things?"

  "Everything. I want to check over everything, organize all my things, see they're stored properly."

  "You can do all that when you get out of the hospital."

  "And suppose I don't get out of the hospital? Don't forget what happened to Benny Koffman. I bet he wasn't a day over fifty when—" .

  "Forget Benny Koffman, will you. There's no need for that now. Time is of the essence."

  "Like I said before, first things first. I have to do what I have to do. That's my way."

  "I'll stay here for a few days and look after your precious things."

  "Like hell you will. The minute I'm out cold on the operating table you'll hire a couple of husky Talyainer and a truck and haul the whole kit and caboodle out of here. Just like you wanted to do when that low-life from Fire Prevention Week thought he discovered a volcano in my building."

  "That low-life did you a favour."

  "It's the other way around," my father said, slyly. "I did him a favour. I had him bring his wife into the store—you should have seen her—like a stray cat searching for milk, that's how she looked. But when she walked out of the store she looked like the Queen of Sheba. After that, I could've planted an atomic bomb down there and they would've given me a gold medal!"

  "In other words, all that crap is still in the basement?"

  "Every bit of it," he exulted.

  "Look," I said, raising my right hand, "I solemnly promise not to touch one stick, one nail, one piece of thread down there. I'll put it in writing if you don't trust me. I'll even swear an affidavit.''