Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

At six o’clock I called Joseph to see if he and Kenneth had any plans for the rest of the day.

“I thought you might be spending the day with your new lady friend.”

“She’s in Connecticut.”

“I see.”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“Don’t be angry at me, Stephanos. I’m not in Connecticut. I’m here sitting by myself just like you.”

“Where’s Kenneth?”

“At work. Can you believe that? He said his boss asked him ‘to take one for the team’ and come in today. He was happy about it, though. He said it showed that they trusted him. Engineer or not now, he’s a damn fool.”

Joseph and I made plans to meet at our damp, sometimes crowded bar on the edge of the city in an hour. I would close the store early, while he would call Kenneth at his office and talk him into meeting us there. If all went well, the three of us would spend yet another Christmas night together, laughing at our isolation, mocking one another and ourselves for all we were worth until the night faded into a blurry, indistinguishable memory.

Since it was Christmas, I decided to take cab rides for the rest of the night as a present to myself. For most of the ride there, my cab was the only one on the road. The driver blew through traffic lights and stop signs, and he and I didn’t say a word to each other. It was exactly the way I wanted it.

I beat Joseph to the bar, which was already half full by seven o’clock, a horseshoe of men perched on their backless stools around a wooden bar covered in alcohol. By the time he arrived, I was already several drinks into the night.

“You’re drunk, Stephanos,” was the first thing he said to me.

“Maybe a little.”

“It doesn’t fit you. You’re too skinny. You look like you’re about to fall asleep. It’s those big eyes of yours.”

“You should catch up.”

“I’ve already had a bottle of wine. It was my Christmas present from work. Two bottles of cheap red wine that no one ever orders.”

“But you drank it anyway.”

“Of course. I’m a man of taste, not means. I drank it and read Rilke in German.”

“You don’t speak German.”

“No. But I love the sounds. All those harsh vert s and gert s. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Everything is beautiful to you.”

“Not everything.”

“But damn close.”

“You just have to have the right perspective.”

“Which is what?”

“Indifference. You have to know that none of this is going to last. And then you have to not care.”

“And then the world becomes beautiful.”

“No. It becomes ridiculous. Which is close enough for me. So what happened to you today?”

“Connecticut.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know.”

“That she would want to spend Christmas with you in that neighborhood? The three of you crowded in your apartment singing Christmas carols? Come on, Stephanos.”

“Is it that ridiculous?’

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then you understand.”

By the time Kenneth joined us, Joseph and I had been sitting at the bar for nearly two hours. He arrived dressed in his usual work suit, his tie loosened just beneath the collar. He was tired. His shoulders were hunched just slightly. His eyes had a weariness and vacancy to them that reminded me of the look you sometimes see on an injured child who has just caught a glimpse of something cruel and unfair happening to someone he loves. It was almost nine o clock. He had worked at least a twelve-hour day entirely alone.

“Look,” Joseph said. “The man even wears a suit when he’s the only one in the office. You’re the perfect immigrant, I tell you. The INS should make a poster out of you, Kenneth. You could even be their spokesperson.”

After a bottle of wine and half a dozen drinks, Joseph had finally managed to get drunk. He had grown practically immune to alcohol between the weight he had put on over the years and all the wine he drank during the off moments at his job. He was yelling and wagging his pudgy fingers at Kenneth as he spoke.

“I tell you, Kenneth. Ken. Had this been the eighteen hundreds, you would have been the perfect house nigger.”

“Which one is it, Joseph?” Kenneth shot back. “The perfect immigrant or the perfect slave? You can’t have it both ways.”

“Says who? The engineer? Maybe in your world you can’t. But in mine, everything is that way.”

Kenneth turned his back on Joseph. He placed his arm on the bar to create a wall between Joseph and the two of us.

“How are you, Stephanos?”

“He’s terrible,” Joseph responded. “He wishes he were singing carols and celebrating Christmas in Connecticut.”

“That would be better than listening to you right now. What happened? I thought you might be with that woman and her daughter.”

“Judith and Naomi, you mean.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Judith and Naomi.”

“They went to Connecticut,” I said.

“Without you?”

“Yes. Without me.”

“You ever find out about the little girl’s father?” Joseph interrupted.

“He’s a professor from Mauritania.”

“Ah. Mauritania.”

There was a wistful tone to Joseph’s voice when he said that. Ah, Mauritania. The words had a certain rhythm to them, just like celebrating Christmas in Connecticut and the vert s and gert s of German poetry that he claimed to find so beautiful.

“They were French too, you know,” Joseph continued. “I once had the pleasure of being told by a Mauritanian that he couldn’t understand my Negro French. That’s okay, I told him. Ce n’était jamais à moi. ”

He paused for a second and smiled to himself as he admired his own wit. These were the parts of our conversations that he loved the most. I could see Kenneth preparing another question about Judith, Mauritania, and Naomi. Joseph caught the expression as well, and before Kenneth could press the matter any further, Joseph said, with a sly, ironic smirk, “Shall we begin?”

“I think we already have,” I said.

“You’re right. We have. Fine, then. Who do we have in Mauritania, Kenneth?”

“I don’t consider Mauritania a part of Africa,” Kenneth said. “To me, they are Arabs. They belong to the Middle East.”

“So you don’t know, then?” Joseph asked.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Stephanos?”

“Ahmed Taya.”

“Not bad, Stephanos. And the year?”

“Nineteen seventy-eight?”

“Wrong coup. Try again.”

“Nineteen eighty-one?”

“Wrong one again. One more try?”

“I give up,” I said.

“Nineteen eighty-four. Just like the Orwell novel.”

“Taya was the head of the army?” Kenneth asked.

“No. Just a colonel,” Joseph said. “All the best dictators are colonels. Qaddafi. Taya. Both are still going. You have to respect that. A general would have never lasted as long. Even your Mengistu, Stephanos. He was a colonel.”

“But he’s gone now either way,” I reminded him.

“The point is he did well for himself. You have to admit.”

“You’re right,” I acknowledged. “Seventeen years isn’t so bad. He even managed to kill a few generals along the way.”

“You see? That’s the thing about these colonels. They get just far enough to think they deserve it all. A general has already been close to the top. They become lazy lions up there. The colonels, on the other hand, never rest. They’re too impatient. They know they don’t deserve it. And so they last. Name me one colonel removed by his own army.”

After a few moments of silence, Joseph declared triumphantly, “Exactly.”

“How many does that make now?” Kenneth asked.