A Fairy Tale of New York

by J. P. Donleavy

  Flushing

  Toilets

  Along

  The track

  28

  At midnight. Christian walking along this blinking canyon of daylight. Past a window selling cupid undies. Hotel doorways reeking of loneliness and death. Glowing signs say come in and let us take the money out of your wallet.

  Christian wandering away from the lighted avenues. Further and further downtown. Crossing through bereft empty side streets. One eye on the shadows. Another out west and which way will she go. Through Scranton or Altoona. Or click clack by Ashtabula and Sandusky on the Brie Lake. Misery comes with you wherever you head. On this paper strewn street. Passing these doorways. Hear a voice. Says pardon me would you give me a light.

  Her black skin was like she lived in another country. And I came over there on my scooter and knocked on her door. Said when she was bored she posed naked for the art student's league. Puffed on her cigarette and said if you're not doing anything I live that way.

  We went up narrow stairs. Down a hallway that looked like a coffin. She had three little interconnecting rooms. Just space enough beside her bed to climb in. And sitting on her toilet bowl one's ass could be caught between the walls. On top of a table she took off her clothes. Said photograph me please, because I'm an esthete. I stood behind her camera pressing the button as Hephzibah told me to. She shook and shimmied. Said it started her engine. Shifted her into top gear. Kept feeling for my wallet as we screwed each other all over her unwashed dishes. And in the tight squeezes on the bare rickety boards of her floor. And she said when we finished, with your accent you must like tea. I said yes and tinted toast too. Told her I was an actor out of work and she said you sure are in tune. Man. And I'd like us to play again sometime. Gave her the phone number in my west side hall. And thought going back down the stairs. That Fanny's gone. By now nearly all the way to Buffalo. And I need her so.

  Stood desolate on the street corner. Varick and Broome. Looked up to read a sign. Said Entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Remember a little guide book I read as a child. That round here was The Long Distance Building. With telephone wires out to all the world. Let things go away. Just so you can start chasing them again. Paper said this morning there was a new move against crime. And even while I sat having tea, I thought the black girl would put out her white palm and say. Twenty bucks please. And instead she read me my horoscope.

  Christian entering a bar. Tip two steps. The only one in all these streets. Of closed and shuttered buildings. They say go in and drown your sorrow. Drink it as a friend. When lonely it gets. For all her blond limbs and pale eyes. Ratted on her already. Couldn't stand the pain. Of her missing. Fight to live. And don't die. Of my whole life ahead, can only see the veins of my hands stand out blue, resting on this bar.

  Christian lowering whiskey after whiskey. And lurching to the phone booth back in the dark. Dial the number of Charlotte Graves. Can I come out to see you. Why not tonight. I'm sorry you were asleep. Can it be sooner. No Saturday is the earliest. And now I wait. Till the end of the week. A voice telling another down the bar, boy what a murder that was, an Italian pineapple in her mouth blew her head and you couldn't tell her hair from her teeth. And when I lay with that dark skinned heart pumping against mine. Wondering what to say into all the frizzy black curls. With my little sorrow. Still lurking from a childhood of pain. Why don't we go back to love again. Spit over trees and piss in picnic brooks. Freeze up our lips on a hard cold ground. Bellywopping down the hills. Fumble through our coats. Tasting snow in our teeth. Gloves tied to sleeves. Perhaps it wasn't always a dump, this place. Playing marbles along the gutter. Boxball on the sidewalk slates. Autumn so gold. The springs squealed on her metal bed. She had my marbles out to play. Nice big shiny cockroach crossing the ceiling. Must seem like to him the Sahara. No where to stop for water. And then with her black Frizz like an electrocution out from the sides of her head, she said I'm going to have your baby. Because you just fucked me mister good and sound. I'll call you on the phone. Tell you how many pounds it weighs. And don't think I 'm kidding.

  Hear another voice on the back of my neck. Christian turning to a man nodding his head.

  "Hey can I buy you a drink.''

  "No that's all right thank you."

  "O sure. Just being friendly. I want everybody to be happy.

  Like anybody should be. This is the only country in the world I 'd want to live in."

  ''Have you ever lived anywhere else.''

  "No."

  "How do you know.''

  ''Hey now fella don't start getting wise.''

  Christian turning back to his glass. Away from, this pasty face. Which leadeth itself by the still waters and he can't swim a stroke. While he drowns singing his litany. My wife is wonderful. My kids are wonderful. And my name's Mr Contentment.

  "Hey buddy, just let me say it again. I don't need to go no other place."

  Christian moving away down the bar. Everywhere. Some guy scattering sunshine. And all you can hope to do. Is burst into tears and wash the fucker off his feet. Can't you see you son of a bitch the last thing I want to be is happy like you. Or the god damn part you played in your mother's life. Much prefer to tint you up for burial. As a deceased personality. Memorable in your coffin.

  "And buddy, if you don't like this country why don't you get out of it."

  Amazing. As one stands here. That I was just thinking that. And leave a wife behind. Without a headstone for her grave. Because they said it needs money for a six foot foundation. And the deed they gave me. This indenture made the eighth day of February. For the use of one lot of land as a place of burial for the human dead. Now never go back to see you before I go. Or lay my head on your grave. So many whispered words to so many others ever since. You were just a few shivers. A sadness settled on all the pillows and sheets. Like my last entwinement with Fanny. When she whispered against my ear. I come to you in the night. You're like a lake in a forest where nobody was and nobody ever knew it was there. And when I slip in for a swim, so scared of drowning because nobody is around to save you. Just maybe a bird flies over and chirps a sound. And in this shadowy bar one more of those little dipping birds. Woman customer says it's kind of cute. The bartender moving down, quietly wiping around and under my drink.

  "Don't mind that guy buddy. Few months ago his whole family was killed. A train wreck crossing Snake River, Montana. They drowned in the rapids. Don't know why they were out there but I know how he feels. He's so lonely he thinks they're all still alive. He don't mean harm. Had two brothers myself crushed by a bulldozer. Here this one's on the house.''

  Another beer. And a shot of rye whiskey. Slapped down and pushed right at me with all this understanding. Just when one was nearly ready to play ping pong with that oaf's bicuspids. Or if his head w$s a tennis ball, Mrs How could clap for me as I served ace after ace in the ivied cathedral of tennis near her nice little home. Summer's over. Collect the dirty looks of all the faces in this town. Make enough humus to grow crops to feed all the starving foreign hoards. Black girl's filthy exhibition was mixed with smiles. And wide eyed demeanours. Held up squeezing her tits and said as I was trying to figure the crazy camera out. With these man, I can get anything I want, so that I'm rolling with dough, that's how you get to be a wheel, man, by rolling with dough. And I jumped like an invention back down her stairs. Only four blocks away from the Mott empire. Where I went in and said can you use me. If I'm of any use. Mr Christian what exactly can we use you for. Butter me as a slice of life. Bat me as laxative. Those who gobble the most will shit the more. Sail your ship of industry under the Brooklyn Bridge. Where recently folk ride across naked on bicycles. Dismounting in the middle to make courtesies to the Queen of Nutdom. You wonderful people here tonight in this bar. Thank you for allowing me to stand in your company. Because the whole world would clap for joy if they could have me washing dishes. The friendly brain I have in my head. Has got me nowhere. The rest of you run a few yards away to keep looking back to se
e if I'll get up again as I'm going down. And if I do, you bastards. I'll take the whole imagination of the world with me. Shut it off with a switch like they use on railway tracks. For the train. That took her away. I let her go. Her life got in my way. Blocking my hopes. Sitting forever surrounded by her money. Up to my teeth in her. And couldn't believe my lips. Crossing back in the gigantic gloom of the station. That even if I helped her go. I loved her I loved her. And one night in the automat a friendly black face looked down at my plate. Said, beans boy, it seems, them things you got am beans. Told Fanny and she laughed. Said say it again. And I said it. And she rolled on the floor clutching her sides. And I sit here. On a stool. No bands no nothing. Thought I would become. And now. It's time to be. And I'm not. Bent drunkard foolish at a bar. Every one of my best recent foots forward, someone stepped on the toes shined in my favourite store. Crawl now. On my hands and knees. Up a gangplank of that ship. Only days now to go. And hear the bartender telling a guy.

  "Don't mister get hot under the collar. Just telling you we don't want fights in the bar. Beatings outside. We let everybody come in here to knock around their girl friends and wives and the rush would block the street with traffic."

  Christian swirling the heel of his glass in a big circle in the wet. Make all your shapes round. My Rockaway uncle. Might be feeble voiced in some boarding house room. Find him hair all grey. Sinewy strings strung under his throat. Ebb myself. And can help no one.

  Door opens. Man comes in. Christian turns stares. That face. One of the first I saw on this shore. Sits at the end of the bar. The dark hair. As he takes off his hat. The wide brow. The quiet sympathetic eyes. And the voice, I'm sorry sir, about this. Steve Kelly, customs will get me. Puts a shot of whiskey to his lips, downs it and takes a gulp of water and is gone. Three o'clock in February. When all sky was blue and high. Over this city. Where I still hear words. Put them all together. They hurt so much. When Fanny said please don't use my towel. O god what a thing to say to me. As if I was unworthy. And she said, hey wait a minute, you're hurt, just because I said don't use my towel doesn't mean that my fondness is any less. Did all those lousy things I did in the neighborhood because with my name they called me a hebe to my face. The guy's heads I had to put up against walls and say take that back or I'll ram your brains through these bricks. And one girl I yearned for from a distance. She wore big fat plaits of dark hair down her back. And years later and older I walked with her to school. Through icy woods. The frosted bracken breaking. The wind freezing our shins. She laughed when I couldn't pronounce a word. As I spouted poems I made up in my head. That she said were beautiful. Until I said, a big dose of castor oil was better than college. And that's what I would say to any audience of shitting graduates. Toilet paper for parchment, when seeking employment, folks. Mr Quell went to college. Princeton as a matter of past fact and future face. Where they shout fire when a girl goes by so beautiful. Bet he wished he was back there with his bowels. And where tonight. Is my little brother. When I went east over the ocean. He went west. As a ghost. To Denver. Became a piano tuner. Play an anthem or two for the inhabitants of this bar. Let them know they're in patriotic company. Give them a red white and blue night to remember. The biggest jamboree of loyalty in their whole lives. Right in the center of everything. Where this is tonight. Folks. Before the boogey man comes. And the sand man too. To put you to sleep. Like seaweed waving up from the seabed against your toes.

  ''Knaves and thieves."

  Cornelius Christian shouting the words up at the ceiling. As the faces turn around. All the way back into the dark interior.

  "Knaves and thieves.''

  ''Heybuddy what's bothering you."

  "Knaves and thieves.''

  "Hey fella you ain't by any chance a medievalist out on a spree."

  "You knaves and thieves, give that man a prize.''

  "Buddy you better quieten down or I'm going; to throw you out."

  ''To the joust. Knaves and thieves. To the joust.''

  ''That 's it buddy I warned you."

  Bartender with his rolled up sleeves, running down to come out from behind the bar. Just like one before. Trying to step on my feelings. Just tattoo a few on his jaw. Give him a solemn memory. In honor of the freedom of speech. When you want to shout. That you can't stand anymore. Of shit and concupiscence. Wait for the first hand to touch me. Before I start swinging. Always like to be fair. Before breaking a jaw. Whoosh. Wham. Bam. Bunch of beans boy. Them things you got aim beans. And hello. What's this darkness. That's come. To invite me in. After a few fist swings. Just to celebrate goodbye. And leave you. And wake up a jackass.

  "That's what the hell you are. Mr Christian. You wake up a jackass. Now you know what. I have exactly the job for you. Where you can get your ass broken ten times a day. Join the fire department, that's what you need.''

  Cornelius stretched on his back. Surrounded by screens. A bottle dripping moisture into an arm. Trays of instruments. The light over my head. See the face of Doctor Pedro. The tiniest of smiles behind his consternation. And the walls everywhere are tiled.

  "Sure. Someone hammer you on your head. That's right. You got cut."

  "Doctor where am I.''

  "You 're in the hospital.''

  "O."

  "You had delirium. You call for me. Instead of your mother. I come. Like a good doctor should. Dreaming I am fucking somebody, a nice big fat woman with an ass like a cathedral and a face like a transmission of a truck. But who am I to be choosy at my age. And how do I know I could do what I was doing in my dream if I was awake. How many favours are you going to do for me."

  "I 'm very sorry doctor.''

  "Next time wear your football helmet when you go out. Rah rah, ciss boom bang. You want to splash your blood around this town who's to stop you. You'll wake up one of these days looking at Clarance instead of me. You know what he makes you do if you couldn't pay the bill. He makes you do like a restaurant. Instead you don't wash the dishes, you polish up his customers in his caskets."

  "Yes doctor."

  "How do you feel."

  ''I feel awful."

  "Now there, look at her she's a pretty nun. She going to take good care of you. But I stay and watch how they sew up your arm and head so it looks good. If they don't do a good job, I break their ass, how about that.''

  "That'sfine doctor."

  Cornelius Christian looking down his shirt. Arching up his head to see his chest covered in blood. All so calm, all the red. Turns light brown. Death is a visitant. Comes with shrewd glee. Watching for hours laughing as you warm up. To kill yourself. And cool off to die. Before the darkness came there were all the churning faces. So many, you couldn't be fair to everyone with a sock on the jaw. And this tender nun's face. Looks down in my eyes.

  "Mr Christian, O Mr Christian. The things you've been saying in your sleep.''

  The moments come back. Keep wanting to close my eyes. Close them. Goodnight. And Clarance sits there. Glittering in the green darkness. His voice so soft and calm. Hear him now. Across his desk drawling his careful words. Cornelius, it's good to have you here. Back with me again. There they all are. Waiting. And I have thought more than once that as they lay there just fresh collected by Fritz, that when you give a little color to their cheeks that they have smiled at me. Makes you nearly switch on the infra red and start resuscitations. But Cornelius, I learned more than once that efforts to bring the dead back to life can meet with hostility from the relatives. That's why now the drama of cremation interests me. The hall of flame. The hearth of heaven. Lot of folk don't want to be enveloped by heat planned thoughtfully in advance. They feel it's going to hurt. But when they are clinker cinder and ash, what could be cleaner or drier. A devouring conflagration. Pine trees, plenty of them. Lining the path in their marble plant pots to the edifice of sacred fire. It is an ancient method. Persons of distinction have been burned. Maybe too, they might have shouted, dang if that ain't real hot. And Cornelius. My new subterranean situation. Come. This way.
See. The couches are hydraulic. Just like the barber's chair I told you about. And green. My morticians in pink. Isn't this beautiful. Makes you feel at home. Miss Musk died you know. She lived in Norwood in the Bronx. Reservoir Oval East. Isn't that a nice address. I embalmed her body and all. You remember the physique she had. It was really something living. But beyond all earthly beauty dead. And Cornelius I want you to come clean with me now. Did you dishonor her in one of my deluxe caskets. Well, believe me, I'm relieved to hear that. What deceased could rest in peace on the satin where that happened. And Clarance I lie. To you about Miss Musk. Because the night I prepared Herbert Silver and all the other deceased were tucked up safely asleep. Peaches and I creeped hand in hand to the laying out room. Planting kisses along each other's neck. She kept saying lordy sakes I shouldn't be doing this as she ripped off her clothes. Threw them over the trestle of the crimson coffin. The sight of her body made me pale with anger. That we hadn't done this sooner. Hands flying all over her. Couldn't believe the feel. Of her luscious limbs. Tugged her by the hair. Down into the folds of satin. She bit. She blew. I pinned her squirming under me, nipples brushing back and forth across our chests. Her groans were loud and my screams nearly woke the dead. But please, Clarance, don't let me interrupt you, you were saying. Yes I was saying, Cornelius, that there, standing by the door in his tailcoat. Is my floor manager. You remember Mr. Hardwicke. From my west side branch. He's wearing a slightly lighter shade of tint in his hair. And that door there is the pedestrian entrance for those who want to walk to death. And up there. Behind that glass enclosed balcony. Is the restaurant. For the living to dine. In the time they have left. While watching down on the holiest of rites. Witnessing this scene and the quiet industry of these great artists at work. This gathering of future customers can enjoy a tranquil assurance when they think ahead. And eat their asparagus. Appetized by the pine scented breeze you smell blowing across the plaza. So convenient for those who want to remain near. That purple fire hydrant was installed specially for me by the commissioner. And I certainly do not think that a bar or two of contemporary music is out of the picture. The gentleman with the red flowing mane of hair and handsome roman face. That's Jack. I've hired him to play his own compositions. Even some rather high stepping ones. And sometimes the clapping and bravoes would burst your god damn ears. He was a prodigy. And now he is a genius. I know that everyman who works for me never wants to leave that room. Cornelius can't you see now why I'm so sorry you left. That standing here you can inhale the awe and reverie that pervades this sanctum. Enthroned by its requiem. A king among those remains collected from every corner of every borough. Although the influx recently is heaviest from the South Bronx. Over there is Tina, the Two Ton, her volume is a real challenge. And her surface a whole landscape. And we have our special annex for the darker complexioned, stab wounds being a distinctive feature of that department. Cornelius I'm glad you're here. Good to see you dead. And that I can put color back in your cheeks. And these others, the tenderest deaths of all. See them. The little children. Forgive me Cornelius, I still find that hard to take. The prostrate simple serenity of a child. And over there is your uncle. A kind large handed man. Altogether now in one big happy family. Passions cooled. Making room for others in the heavily crowded shopping districts. And there are those too, who in life might have been a burden to their dear ones, such as an alcoholic or an addict. And through here, my special room. Bound like my east side chapel was. Those arms sculpted on the walls embrace you. This is my masterpiece. And I am shamed sometimes to admit it.But I like it best here with these hundred thousand dollar people. As you know the big boys all come to me now. Some feet first. Himie The Horse, Zeke The Zero, John The Big Sneeze. Reuben The Gonad. You remember our meeting we had that day. All of them good family men. Although there are times when they find it necessary to eliminate others. But want such elimination to be carried out with a suitable send off. This Cornelius is the arch dynasty of death. Where the power and glory of the high and mighty receives its ultimate enshrinement. The monument to my life. Multiple bullet holes, semi decapitation, these are no problem. A rubout by a close discharging shotgun. Bam. At the head area. That certainly is not nice. When it sends the ears flying. But given a few photographs of the subject in life, even that challenge we turn into a triumph in wax. And where possible we use the original eyes. Ah Cornelius you are a good listener. Alive or dead. Never met anyone in my life before to whom I could say so much. And who understands so well. And that way there is the roof. Ascension by express elevator. To the solarium. Where a cherished one can get a tan for real. That alone is everything I have ever dreamed of. There on the skyline. Silhouetted against the heavens. Corpse Castle. No no, Cornelius, rather the Palace of Peace. And people passing in their own lives, just might nudge a travelling companion and say, and these words Cornelius are what I live for. They say. Do you see that. Over there, scraping the sky. Those golden pinnacles. That's Vine.