To Play the Fool

by Laurie R. King

  Judaism doesn’t have fools; it has prophets. Mad—look at Ezekiel. Poor and uneducated—Jeremiah. Laughingstocks all—poor old Hosea couldn’t even keep his wife from making a spectacle of them both. Jesus ben Joseph fit right in, preaching to the poor, the prostitutes, the scum, scratching his lice and calling himself the son of God—and the ultimate absurdity, God’s only son strung up and executed with the other criminals: A royal diadem made from a branch of thorns, a king’s cloak that went to the high throw, his only public mourners a few outcast women with nothing left to lose. Then, to cap it off, Christ the original Fool is decently clothed in purple, his crown traded for one of gold, he is restored to the head of his Church, and the transformation is complete.

  But what consequences, when the jester assumes the throne? Someone must take his place in the hall, lest the people forget that the essence of Christianity is humility, not magnificence, that in weakness lies our strength.

  (This page was marked: “Taken from personal communication, 12 October 1983, David Sawyer.”)

  The three thinkers of Deventes—Thomas à Kempis, Nicholas of Cusa, and Desiderius Erasmus—all based their thought on Foolishness.

  The craving for security leads modern people to images of God that are powerful, demanding, and, above all, serious. We have lost the absolute certainty in God (God existing and God benevolent) which allows us to express religious ideas in freedom and good humour. In the twentieth century, God does not laugh.

  Foolishness can be a hazardous business, and not only to one’s mind and spirit. After all, one of the Fool’s main activities is to make a fool out of others, to throw doubt on cherished wisdoms and accepted behaviours: in a word, to shock. If this is done too aggressively, without caution, the result is more likely to be rage than enlightenment. Foolishness does not usually coincide with caution. Even the less flamboyant Fools courted danger: The half-and-half extremists seemed almost to glory in it. I know of twenty-two cases of violence against Fools, all but one of them a direct result of some inflammatory word or action on the part of the Fool. One Fool spent three days unconscious in hospital, put there by a motorcycle gang member who became enraged when the Fool made fun of the motorcycle’s role in the man’s sexual identity. Another Fool had one foot amputated following a particularly aggressive mocking episode which began when a young man came out of a Liverpool pub with his girlfriend literally in tow, bullying and abusing her. The Fool stepped in and soon had a crowd gathered, all ridiculing the young man. A more experienced Fool would have then turned the barrage of criticism into a more long-term solution—some pointed suggestion perhaps, that real men do not slap women around—but this Fool was new to street work and lost control of his mob. The man stormed off, got into his car, came back to the pub, and ran the Fool down.

  St. Francis wished his followers to become joculatores, clowns of God; his band of fools and beggars quickly became an order studded with intellectual giants.

  How can a movement embodying the antithesis of organisation possibly deal with the modern world? When I wished to interview a certain Brother Stultus about the early days in England, he was not to be found. One of the brothers told me he had gone to Mexico (we were then in San Diego), but that was some weeks before. Stultus was not a young man, and I was concerned, but there was not much I could do. Some weeks passed, and a rumour reached me of a “crazy Anglo” who had taken up residence near the border patrol offices in Tijuana. I immediately drove down, and there found Stultus, living behind a garage, fed by the generous Mexican women, and waiting for rescue with sweet patience (in between periodic arrests for vagrancy by the frustrated police). Stultus, of course, carried no identification papers, and without them the U.S. Immigration Service would not allow him back in.

  Eleven

  He listens to those to whom God himself will not listen.

  Kate closed the folder, unable to read any more. She felt as if she’d just finished Thanksgiving dinner: packed with more than she could possibly digest and experiencing the onset of severe mental dyspepsia. This wasn’t cop business; this was tea-and-sherry-with-the-tutor business, Oxbridge-in-Berkeley business, Greek-verbs-and-the-nuances-of-meaning business, worse than memorizing the latest departmental regulations concerning the security of evidence and treatment of suspects. That at least was of personal interest, but this—she couldn’t even convince herself it had anything to do with one charred corpse in Golden Gate Park. She thought it did, feared it might not, and all in all she had the urge to strap on her club and go rousting a few drunks, just to taste the grittier side of reality again. She scratched her scalp vigorously with the nails of both hands, knowing that there was no way she would be going back to continue her interview with Professor Whitlaw, certainly not tonight, and possibly not tomorrow.

  She reached for the telephone.

  “Al? Kate here. I had an interesting time with Professor Whitlaw.” Hawkin listened without interrupting while she told him about the interview with the English professor and gave him a brief synopsis of the papers she had waded through, ending with, “Anyway, I thught I’d check and see if you still thought we needed to interview Beatrice Jankowski. I could do it tonight.”

  “We definitely have to see her again. She knows more about the victim than she was willing to tell us last week. However, if you want to go tonight you’ll have to take someone else—Tom called in sick, I have to stand in for him on a stakeout.”

  “Hell. If this flu goes on we’ll have to put out a white flag, ask the bad guys for a cease fire.”

  “We could make it another time, or I can ask around here for somebody to go with you. What’s your preference?”

  Kate thought for a moment. “Would you mind if I went by myself?”

  “Martinelli, you’re not asking my permission, are you?”

  “No. I just wondered if you had any objections. It might be better anyway if I went alone; she might talk more easily.”

  “That’s fine, whatever you like.”

  “Where’s your stake-out?”

  “The far end of China Basin.”

  “The scenic part of town. Dress warmly. We don’t want you coming down with this flu, too.”

  “Yes, mother. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  Kate sat for a while staring at Lee’s books until gradually she became aware that the voices she had been hearing for some time now were not electronic, but indicated a visitor. She wandered downstairs in hopes of distraction and found Rosalyn Hall, wearing not her dog collar but an ordinary T-shirt with jeans and looking to Kate’s eyes eerily like a defrocked priest. She was standing in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, putting her jacket on, and Kate greeted her.

  “Kate, good to see you again. As you can see, I took you at your word that Lee might be interested in the project, and wasted no time.”

  “I’m happy to do it, Rosalyn,” said Lee.

  “It’s been tremendously helpful. I didn’t know how I was going to pull that section together. I’m so grateful I ran into Kate the other day; I’d never have had the nerve to ask otherwise. So what did you think of Brother Erasmus?” she asked Kate, her eyes crinkling in humor.

  “He’s an experience,” Kate agreed.

  “I’ve never really talked with him, but I’ve heard a couple of conversations, if you can call them that. It’s sort of like listening to a foreign language; you get a general sense of what people are talking about, but none of the details.”

  “It’s a challenge for an interviewer all right.”

  “I can imagine. I saw him again the other day; he sure manages to get around.”

  “In Berkeley, you mean. Yes, I knew he was back there.”

  “Well, actually it was over here, down on Fishermen’s Wharf last weekend. At least, I assumed it was him, though honestly I hardly recognized him, he looked so different.”

  “Why, what was he doing? Why did he look different?”

  “He was performing, like that juggling act he does sometimes, but a lot mo
re of it, and other things. Sort of clowning, and some mime, but weird, a little bit creepy, and his face was painted—not heavily, like a clown’s, just a really light layer of white on one side and a slight darkening of the other half—he looked like he was standing with a shadow across half of his face. And he wasn’t wearing his cassock—he had on this strange outfit. Well, it wasn’t strange, just sort of not right. He was wearing those sort of dressy khaki Levi’s, but they were too short for him, and a striped T-shirt that had shrunk up and showed a little wedge of his stomach, and a pair of white athletic shoes so big, he kept tripping over them. Oh, and a watch. I’ve never seen him with a watch before.”

  “What day was this?”

  “Saturday. I had a friend visiting, and you know how you only do the touristy things when friends and family come. I thought she’d like Ghirardelli Square.”

  “And that’s where you saw him?”

  “Across the street—you know that park where the vendors set up? Necklaces and sweatshirts? Lots of times street performers wander up and down there. Isn’t that where Shields and Yarnell got their start?”

  Kate had never heard of Shields or Yarnell, but she nodded her head in encouragement. However, it seemed that was about the sum of the report. After a bit more fussing and arrangements for the next phase of the grant application, Rosalyn hugged Lee and then left.

  “Nice woman,” Lee commented, her wheels purring after Kate on the wood of the hall. Kate turned and went into the kitchen to stand in front of the refrigerator.

  “Did I have lunch?” she called to Lee. Nothing in the gleaming white box looked familiar.

  “Once, but who’s counting?” Lee answered. Kate fingered the increasingly snug waistband of her trousers and settled for an apple; Jon’s cooking had its drawbacks.

  “I’m going to have to be out tonight,” she told Lee.

  “I’ve been surprised you haven’t had more calls at night,” Lee said in resignation. “I expected it, with you back on duty.”

  “Yes, I’ve been lucky. It’s been quiet—nobody feels like shooting anyone in the rain. But I need to talk to one of Brother Erasmus’s flock, and Friday’s one of the few times I can find her without a search.”

  Sentient Beans was your typical Haight coffeehouse, self-conscious about its location and the sacred history of the district in the Beat movement and the Summer of Love. In this case, however, it was without the superiority of age, for its even paint and the cheerfulness of the furniture within gave it away as an imitation, set up by people who in 1967 would have considered an ice cream cone a mood-altering substance.

  Still, it was a harmless enough place, and discreetly notified customers that the venerable Graffeo Company had deigned to supply it with French-roast coffee, the smell of which grabbed at Kate when she opened the door, a heady aroma, sharp and dark and rich as red wine. She ordered a latte and watched with approval as the man assembling it tipped the coffee over the steamed milk with a flip of the wrist rather than using the effete method of dribbling it cautiously over the back of the spoon to create multiple multicolored layers in the glass, a drink filled with aesthetic nuances but, to Kate’s mind, lacking the pleasurable jolt of contrast between milk and coffee. Reverse snobbery, Lee had called it once, admiring on that distant occasion her own tall glass with at least nine distinct strata.

  “Have you seen Beatrice tonight?” she asked as she paid.

  “She’ll be down in a bit,” said the man, and slapped Kate’s change down on the wooden bar. She picked up the dollars, tipped the rest of the change into the tips mug, and found a seat at a table with the surface area of a dinner plate. There was a guitarist at the far end of the L-shaped room, a woman all in black, with perhaps a dozen gold loops running up her ear and one through her nose. She was attempting classical music, with limited success: The notes kept burring and her fingers squeaked as they moved along the strings. However, the flavor was there, and Kate did not mind waiting.

  Twenty minutes or so later, the guitarist took a break, and shortly after that, Beatrice came through the bar area and into the room, a ten-by-twelve artist’s pad in one hand and a small tin box in the other. She sat down in the point of the L and without fuss opened the box, took out a black felt-tip pen, and began to sketch the person sitting in front of her, her pen flashing across the page in sure, quick gestures. In a couple of minutes, she put the cap on the pen, tore the page off the pad, and put it on the table, then stood up and moved to another vacant chair and another face. A mug marked FOR THE ARTIST had joined TIPS and FOR THE MUSICIAN on the wooden bar, and as people left, they tended to put some change and the occasional small bill in Beatrice’s cup, even those who had not been sketched.

  Eventually, when Kate had finished her second latte (this one decaffeinated) and was beginning to think she would have to approach the woman, Beatrice finished her dual portrait of a pair of nearly identical bristly-headed, metal-and-leather-clad punks, reached across her drawing on the table to pat the girl’s black leather sleeve affectionately, and then took her pad and tin box over to Kate’s table. She opened both and began to sketch.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “I thought I might see you one of these nights.”

  “Hello, Ms. Jankowski.”

  “Beatrice, dear; call me Beatrice. I always feel that when someone calls you by your last name, it’s because they want something from you. Either that or they want you to know they are better than you. Funny, isn’t it, something looks like respect but underneath it’s a power trip. Do they still use that phrase, I wonder? My vocabulary is so dated, it’s coming back into style. You need a haircut, dear. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Martinelli. Kate,” she corrected herself with a smile.

  “Just Kate? Not Katherine?”

  “Katarina,” she admitted. Beatrice looked up from her drawing, both hands going still.

  “Oh that’s very nice. Katarina. It sounds like those beautiful little islands down south, near Santa Barbara, is it? Or San Diego? Kate is too abrupt. Do you have a middle name?”

  “Cecilia,” said Kate patiently.

  “Katarina Cecilia Martinelli. Your mother was a poet. There’s power in names, you know,” she said, going back to her drawing. “Last names are safe, generic, but when you give someone your first name, you give them a part of yourself. What about your partner?”

  “Al? You mean his name? It’s Alonzo. Hawkin, and I don’t know if he has a middle name.”

  Beatrice stopped again, to gaze in an unfocused way at the shelves over the bar. “Alonzo,” she repeated softly. “Oh my. I am such a sucker for a pretty name. Other girls used to fall for eyes or a lock of hair, but I would just melt at a melodious name. My three husbands were named Manuel, Oberon, and Lucius. Of course, they were all bastards; you’d think I would learn. I don’t think Alonzo would be a bastard though, do you?”

  “No, but he’s already spoken for.” Kate exaggerated his marital status slightly for Al’s own benefit.

  “I figured he would be.” She flipped the page of her sketchbook over to a fresh one. “But this chitchat is not why you’re here, is it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about that odious man.”

  “John? I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh, why can’t you let him just…be dead?” she said crossly.

  “Because if we let the ‘odious’ people be killed, where would it stop?”

  “Oh, dear. You are right, I suppose. Very well,” she said, turning to her pad again, “ask away.”

  “Do you know anything about John’s history? Where he was from, what he used to do?”

  “He never talked to me, not that way. I don’t think he much liked women, certainly not to talk to. Not that he was gay, but a lot of men who sleep with women don’t much like them.”

  “Did he sleep with many women?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. Just because people don’t have beds doesn’t mean they lack sexual organs,” Beatrice said, p
rimly amused.

  “Beatrice, I’m a cop, not a nun in a cloister,” Kate reminded her. “I was surprised because the way you’ve described him made him sound unattractive. Were other women attracted to him?”

  “He was presentable enough, and certainly kept himself cleaner than a lot of the men do. I found him repulsive, true, but he could have a very glib tongue when he wanted to bother, and many women fall for a clever line even more than they do a pair of shoulders or a handsome face. I’m sure he got his share of female companionship.”

  “Who in particular?” Kate asked, but Beatrice’s lips went straight and she bent over the pad. “The homeless women in the park? Wilhemena?” Beatrice snorted. “Adelaide? Sue Ann?” Kate tried to remember the names that had cropped up, but Beatrice shook her head. “Did he have lady friends in the area, then?” Kate asked, and thinking she saw a slight hesitation in the moving hand, she pressed further. “One of the women who has a house near the park? Or someone who works here?”

  “Shopkeepers. He liked shopkeepers,” Beatrice admitted.

  “What kind? Bookstore, grocery store, restaurant, coffee shop—Beatrice, please tell me, I need to know.”

  Beatrice pursed up her mouth and rubbed her lips with the side of her thumbnail, a portrait of anxious thought. It wouldn’t do for a woman living on the margins, dependent on the goodwill of her settled, more fortunate neighbors for what degree of comfort she managed to achieve, to offend them. Kate realized this and waited.