Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

He made a list of the countries left to him and was pleased at its wieldiness. Of course there were still problems. What would he do for money? He took stock of his resources and realized that he still had more than enough money for one more passage. The countries on his list were either on the continent or near it. Once he had established himself on the continent it would not be difficult to find jobs that would support him while he searched. And he did not need much. He had his medallion, his clothes; he had lived before in small, dark bedrooms. He had only to discover some procedure, some technique of pursuing seriously what before he had actually expected to come to him gratuitously.

He did not know how the occasion would arise, but he had suspected that when recognition came, it would come suddenly, unanticipated, except in the broadest sense: the result, perhaps, of his casual sunbathing on a public beach, the duke’s yacht anchored a quarter mile off shore, the duke himself on deck scanning the beach with a high-power telescope, bored, absently lowering the glass to his chest, checking its magnification against what his own eye could see, lifting it slowly to his eye again — appearing to one beside him almost to fit it to his skull — once more swinging it slowly across the beach, the long tube suddenly catching the dazzle of the medallion; the duke momentarily blinded, muttering, “I say, what’s that damned thing that lad’s got about his neck?” as he slides the telescope back into position for another look, catching again the sudden flare of the medallion intensified in the long glass, stopping, refocusing on the medallion itself now — which to the duke seems ludicrously like a chunk of brilliant fire burning impossibly at the end of a golden chain — waiting patiently until a shadow can bring it to heel, rewarded suddenly by an unplanned sigh from the boy on the beach, who stretches expansively and leans forward as far as he can, placing one palm on the sand beside each ankle, the chest’s forward arch angling the medallion into shadow; the duke excited now, remembering something he had seen once a long time ago, calling anxiously to the regal-looking woman in the deck chair, “Martha, look at this a moment, will you? I’ve the strangest thing trapped in my glass….”

So he crossed the sea again, like a lost Columbus retracing his steps, for the first time aware (since for the first time he understood that whatever it was he expected would have to come through his own efforts) of the possibility of failure. Certain resources were available to him, of course: the facilities of museums and great libraries in whose dark carrels he checked heraldic and armorial records and illustrations against the frieze figures of the medallion laid covertly on the corner of the study table toward the window. He found that the figures on his medallion — the lion, the knight, the eagle and the crown — were standard symbols on royal coats-of-arms; it was the combination which was unique and which he could find no duplicate for in the heavy, ancient books.

For a year his money had been gone. Finding that he was no longer able to present himself as a tourist to the countries he visited, he discovered that at some time during the year that had passed he had inexplicably become an immigrant while he was not looking. It was because he no longer had money, but he supposed that there was something else. The officials who met him now at the dock no longer smiled so warmly at him. That pleasure was gone from his traveling they somehow sensed immediately. Once necessity had been introduced into it, everything changed. Like the men checking his passport more carefully than they had ever done when he was still merely a tourist, he was now involved once more with the world, with the business of making a living, and men did not give their smiles so freely to such people. Even his health was now a matter of suspicion to the officials who peered closely at papers for subtle omissions which they, sneering when they found them, did not accept as accidents. Coming to live and work in countries where once he had come to play, he found himself quarantined for reasons which were never fully explained to him. Even to strangers it was somehow obvious that he was no tourist. They no longer took the time to explain expansively when he asked some question of them regarding a public building, its long history or some unusual feature of its construction, or to walk with him part of the way, talking happily to him, holding his arm, to the street he had asked about. Now when he asked a direction of them they mumbled it hurriedly and walked on. He was sensible for the first time that others were suspicious of his accent.

Many things had changed for him. He needed work. In a new country he no longer walked at leisure through the unfamiliar streets. Indeed, he seemed scarcely to notice that they were unfamiliar and fell into step quickly with those who had lived their lives there.

Usually he found work on the docks — heavy immigrant work. He took jobs as soon as they were offered, never promising to come back the next day, never telling some vague lie about a man he had to see that afternoon, careful always to avoid raising the suspicion in hiring agents that he shared the peculiar irresponsibility of the poor. Seasonal, subject to wildfire strikes, dependent even upon economic conditions elsewhere, his jobs had a temporary quality about them, a provisional aspect which he insisted upon. Otherwise, he demanded very little of a job, and even found a sort of satisfaction in dealing with time clocks, in seeing the purple, indelible evidence of his labors accumulate on the lined white cards.

He did his work steadily, but when the slack time came, he was laid off with the others. He even knew when it would come. He would feel a sudden chill in the air and he knew that in distant, northern countries the rivers and seas were blocked with ice. Nothing would get through. The men grumbled and slowed down, dragging out for as long as they could the little work that was left, but he continued to work steadily in a kind of desperate, clipped hurry. Often when the time came for him to be laid off, the foreman distributing the pay would hand him his and smile at him, and sometimes even put his arm about his shoulder, as if to say, “It’s a tough thing, but what can we do? You’re a good man.” It was recognition he was neither grateful for nor understood. He always left quickly, and within a few days would find another job.

Once, after disembarking, he saw a sign advertising for men to unload cargo. He left his luggage in customs and went off to find the foreman. The foreman looked suspiciously at his fine clothes. “Look,” he said. “I’m very strong. I’m a good worker and I’m used to the work.” He called off the names of ports where he had worked. “Please,” he said. “I need the job.” For a moment he hesitated. He had heard the desperation in his voice and recognized that it was strained, forced, not accurately the fact of his condition. Why did he insist upon a helplessness so self-conscious? A despair which set aside in the very waver of his voice all the things he had before insisted to be true about himself? With a sense of all the wasted miles he had already come, he feared that perhaps relinquishment had become a new cause with him. No, he thought, interregnum is not exile. “I can do the work. It’s nothing for a guy like me,” he said more firmly. “Come on now, fellow. Use me or not. Don’t keep me waiting.”

The foreman suspected that the man before him in the fine clothes was some sort of rascal on a lark, a rich man’s son, probably. He laughed and set him to work unloading the very ship he had a few moments before stepped down from himself.

There were some on the docks like himself, young men in whom he recognized a terrible transience. But most were older men, hard from heavy work, their movements cautious, almost stolid, as if they feared to rekindle the ache of old ruptures. Their faces were lined with the wounds of their expressions. Confused, they seemed trying to understand what had happened to them, like men stunned in awful automobile accidents. Endlessly they struggled with boxes too big for them, with crates marked “Fragile” which they came to hate for the cynical reminder of the fragility which somewhere they had lost. He remembered a man who one day had stumbled against such a crate, kicking it with his heavy shoes. Recovering, the man had taken his hammer and torn the nails from the thin wood wildly, like one pulling burs from his own flesh. From the open crate he had pulled handfuls of excelsior like the grotesque hair of a dowager, and ripping the green, tissuey paper had come at last to the bowl inside. He held it for a moment in his hands, examining it closely. Disappointed, he spit into it from deep in his chest and put it back.