Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“He has this crazy haircut.”

“ Drink ,” I command. I shake him. “ Drink! ”

“Push, I’ve got no glass. Give me a glass at least.”

“I can’t do that, Eugene. You’ve got a terrible sickness. How could I let you use our drinking glasses? Lean under the tap and open your mouth.”

He knows he’ll have to do it, that I won’t listen to him until he does. He bends into the sink.

“Push, it’s hot ,” he complains. The water splashes into his nose, it gets on his glasses and for a moment his eyes are magnified, enormous. He pulls away and scrapes his forehead on the faucet.

“Eugene, you touched it. Watch out, please. You’re too close to the tap. Lean your head deeper into the sink.”

“It’s hot , Push.”

“Warm water evaporates better. With your affliction you’ve got to evaporate fluids before they get into your glands.”

He feeds again from the tap.

“Do you think that’s enough?” I ask after a while.

“I do, Push, I really do,” he says. He is breathless.

“Eugene,” I say seriously, “I think you’d better get yourself a canteen.”

“A canteen, Push?”

“That’s right. Then you’ll always have water when you need it. Get one of those Boy Scout models. The two-quart kind with a canvas strap.”

“But you hate the Boy Scouts, Push.”

“They make very good canteens, Eugene. And wear it! I never want to see you without it. Buy it today.”

“All right, Push.”

“Promise!”

“All right, Push.”

“Say it out.”

He made the formal promise that I like to hear.

“Well, then,” I said, “let’s go see this new kid of yours.”

He took me to the schoolyard. “Wait,” he said, “you’ll see.” He skipped ahead.

“Eugene,” I said, calling him back. “Let’s understand something. No matter what this new kid is like, nothing changes as far as you and I are concerned.”

“Aw, Push,” he said.

“Nothing, Eugene. I mean it. You don’t get out from under me.”

“Sure, Push, I know that.”

There were some kids in the far corner of the yard, sitting on the ground, leaning up against the wire fence. Bats and gloves and balls lay scattered around them. (It was where they told dirty jokes. Sometimes I’d come by during the little kids’ recess and tell them all about what their daddies do to their mommies.)

“There. See? Do you see him?” Eugene, despite himself, seemed hoarse.

“Be quiet,” I said, checking him, freezing as a hunter might. I stared.

He was a prince , I tell you.

He was tall, tall, even sitting down. His long legs comfortable in expensive wool, the trousers of a boy who had been on ships, jets; who owned a horse, perhaps; who knew Latin — what didn’t he know? — somebody made up, like a kid in a play with a beautiful mother and a handsome father; who took his breakfast from a sideboard, and picked, even at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, his mail from a silver plate. He would have hobbies — stamps, stars, things lovely dead. He wore a sport coat, brown as wood, thick as heavy bark. The buttons were leather buds. His shoes seemed carved from horses’ saddles, gunstocks. His clothes had once grown in nature. What it must feel like inside those clothes , I thought.

I looked at his face, his clear skin, and guessed at the bones, white as beached wood. His eyes had skies in them. His yellow hair swirled on his head like a crayoned sun.

“Look, look at him,” Eugene said. “The sissy. Get him, Push.”

He was talking to them and I moved closer to hear his voice. It was clear, beautiful, but faintly foreign — like herb-seasoned meat.

When he saw me he paused, smiling. He waved. The others didn’t look at me.

“Hello there,” he called. “Come over if you’d like. I’ve been telling the boys about tigers.”

“Tigers,” I said.

“Give him the ‘match burn twice,’ Push,” Eugene whispered.

“Tigers, is it?” I said. “What do you know about tigers?” My voice was high.

“ The ‘match burn twice,’ Push .”

“Not so much as a Master Tugjah . I was telling the boys. In India there are men of high caste— Tugjahs , they’re called. I was apprenticed to one once in the Southern Plains and might perhaps have earned my mastership, but the Red Chinese attacked the northern frontier and…well, let’s just say I had to leave. At any rate, these Tugjahs are as intimate with the tiger as you are with dogs. I don’t mean they keep them as pets. The relationship goes deeper. Your dog is a service animal, as is your elephant.”

“Did you ever see a match burn twice?” I asked suddenly.

“Why no, can you do that? Is it a special match you use?”

“No,” Eugene said, “it’s an ordinary match. He uses an ordinary match.”

“Can you do it with one of mine, do you think?”

He took a matchbook from his pocket and handed it to me. The cover was exactly the material of his jacket, and in the center was a patch with a coat-of-arms identical to the one he wore over his heart.

I held the matchbook for a moment and then gave it back to him. “I don’t feel like it,” I said.

“Then some other time, perhaps,” he said.

Eugene whispered to me. “His accent, Push, his funny accent .”

“Some other time, perhaps,” I said. I am a good mimic. I can duplicate a particular kid’s lisp, his stutter, a thickness in his throat. There were two or three here whom I had brought close to tears by holding up my mirror to their voices. I can parody their limps, their waddles, their girlish runs, their clumsy jumps. I can throw as they throw, catch as they catch. I looked around. “Some other time, perhaps,” I said again. No one would look at me.

“I’m so sorry,” the new one said, “we don’t know each other’s names. You are?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You are?”

He seemed puzzled. Then he looked sad, disappointed. No one said anything.

“It don’t sound the same,” Eugene whispered.

It was true. I sounded nothing like him. I could imitate only defects, only flaws.

A kid giggled.

“Shh,” the prince said. He put one finger to his lips.

“Look at that,” Eugene said under his breath. “He’s a sissy.”

He had begun to talk to them again. I squatted, a few feet away. I ran gravel through my loose fists, one bowl in an hourglass feeding another.

He spoke of jungles, of deserts. He told of ancient trade routes traveled by strange beasts. He described lost cities and a lake deeper than the deepest level of the sea. There was a story about a boy who had been captured by bandits. A woman in the story — it wasn’t clear whether she was the boy’s mother — had been tortured. His eyes clouded for a moment when he came to this part and he had to pause before continuing. Then he told how the boy escaped — it was cleverly done — and found help, mountain tribesmen riding elephants. The elephants charged the cave in which the mo — the woman —was still a prisoner. It might have collapsed and killed her, but one old bull rushed in and, shielding her with his body, took the weight of the crashing rocks. Your elephant is a service animal.

I let a piece of gravel rest on my thumb and flicked it in a high arc above his head. Some of the others who had seen me stared, but the boy kept on talking. Gradually I reduced the range, allowing the chunks of gravel to come closer to his head.

“You see?” Eugene said quietly. “He’s afraid. He pretends not to notice.”

The arcs continued to diminish. The gravel went faster, straighter. No one was listening to him now, but he kept talking.