Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“This game, then, was devised to let the lord, or king, see which of his knights had the skill and strength in his hands to control a horse. Without moving your feet, you must try to jerk the one next to you off balance. Each man has two opponents, so it’s very difficult. If a man falls, or if his knee touches the ground, he’s out. The circle is diminished but must close up again immediately. Now, once for practice only—”

“Just a minute,” I interrupt.

“Yes, Push?”

I leave the circle and walk forward and hit him as hard as I can in the face.

He stumbles backward. The boys groan. He recovers. He rubs his jaw and smiles. I think he is going to let me hit him again. I am prepared for this. He knows what I’m up to and will use his passivity. Either way I win, but I am determined he shall hit me. I am ready to kick him, but as my foot comes up he grabs my ankle and turns it forcefully. I spin in the air. He lets go and I fall heavily on my back. I am surprised at how easy it was, but am content if they understand. I get up and am walking away, but there is an arm on my shoulder. He pulls me around roughly. He hits me.

“ Sic semper tyrannus ,” he exults.

“Where’s your other cheek?” I ask, falling backward.

“One cheek for tyrants,” he shouts. He pounces on me and raises his fist and I cringe. His anger is terrific. I do not want to be hit again.

“You see? You see?” I scream at the kids, but I have lost the train of my former reasoning. I have in no way beaten him. I can’t remember now what I had intended.

He lowers his fist and gets off my chest and they cheer. “Hurrah,” they yell. “Hurrah, hurrah.” The word seems funny to me.

He offers his hand when I try to rise. It is so difficult to know what to do. Oh God, it is so difficult to know which gesture is the right one. I don’t even know this. He knows everything, and I don’t even know this. I am a fool on the ground, one hand behind me pushing up, the other not yet extended but itching in the palm where the need is. It is better to give than receive, surely. It is best not to need at all.

Appalled, guessing what I miss, I rise alone.

“Friends?” he asks. He offers to shake.

“Take it, Push.” It’s Eugene’s voice.

“Go ahead, Push.” Slud limps forward.

“Push, hatred’s so ugly,” Clob says, his face shining.

“You’ll feel better, Push,” Frank, thinner, taller, urges softly.

“Push, don’t be foolish,” Mimmer says.

I shake my head. I may be wrong. I am probably wrong. All I know at last is what feels good. “Nothing doing,” I growl. “No deals.” I begin to talk, to spray my hatred at them. They are not an easy target even now. “Only your knights errant — your crack corps — ever have horses. Slud may dance and Clob may kiss but they’ll never be good at it. Push is no service animal . No. No . Can you hear that, Williams? There isn’t any magic, but your no is still stronger than your yes, and distrust is where I put my faith.” I turn to the boys. “What have you settled for? Only your knights errant ever have horses. What have you settled for? Will Mimmer do sums in his head? How do you like your lousy hunger, thin boy? Slud, you can break me but you can’t catch me. And Clob will never shave without pain, and ugly, let me tell you, is still in the eye of the beholder!”

John Williams mourns for me. He grieves his gamy grief. No one has everything — not even John Williams. He doesn’t have me . He’ll never have me, I think. If my life were only to deny him that, it would almost be enough. I could do his voice now if I wanted. His corruption began when he lost me. “You,” I shout, rubbing it in, “ indulger , dispense me no dispensations. Push the bully hates your heart!”

“Shut him up, somebody,” Eugene cries. His saliva spills from his mouth when he speaks.

“Swallow! Pig, swallow! ”

He rushes toward me.

Suddenly I raise my arms and he stops. I feel a power in me. I am Push, Push the bully, God of the Neighborhood, its incarnation of envy and jealousy and need. I vie, strive, emulate, compete, a contender in every event there is. I didn’t make myself. I probably can’t save myself, but maybe that’s the only need I don’t have. I taste my lack and that’s how I win — by having nothing to lose. It’s not good enough! I want and I want and I will die wanting, but first I will have something. This time I will have something. I say it aloud. “This time I will have something.” I step toward them. The power makes me dizzy. It is enormous. They feel it. They back away. They crouch in the shadow of my outstretched wings. It isn’t deceit this time but the real magic at last, the genuine thing: the cabala of my hate, of my irreconcilableness.

Logic is nothing. Desire is stronger.

I move toward Eugene. “ I will have something, ” I roar.

“Stand back,” he shrieks, “I’ll spit in your eye.”

“ I will have something . I will have terror. I will have drought. I bring the dearth. Famine’s contagious. Also is thirst. Privation, privation, barrenness, void. I dry up your glands, I poison your well.”

He is choking, gasping, chewing furiously. He opens his mouth. It is dry. His throat is parched. There is sand on his tongue.

They moan. They are terrified, but they move up to see. We are thrown together. Slud, Frank, Clob, Mimmer, the others, John Williams, myself. I will not be reconciled, or halve my hate. It’s what I have, all I can keep. My bully’s sour solace. It’s enough, I’ll make do.

I can’t stand them near me. I move against them. I shove them away. I force them off. I press them, thrust them aside. I push through .

I went home to see my mother and to visit with the lousy people.

My mother showed me a photograph. It was of myself, my cousin Lesley and Lesley’s sister, taken when we were kids. I hadn’t seen Lesley for years but I had no trouble recognizing him. There he was, in the picture, inevitably its center, looking directly into the camera, staring at it — as he stared at everything — as though perhaps he did not understand what he was looking at, as though the camera were some strange object which could be stared into comprehension. His eyes wide, the expression vaguely blank, troubled, the thick dry lips of the mouth breather slightly parted, his face suggested that there was danger an unspecified number of feet in front of it. The big body, not heavy but giving the impression of bloat, was at an awkward, stiff attention, and his arm, partially extended like a patrol boy’s at an intersection, shielded his huge-breasted sister — perhaps from the forgotten photographer. He looked like someone standing at the edge of a jungle clearing staring into brush which had suddenly moved. The picture had been taken years before when we had visited Lesley’s family in Chicago.

“Poor Lesley,” I said.

“A good boy,” my mother said.

“I heard his sister is engaged.”

“Maybe engaged. Maybe not engaged,” my mother said.

Of course I did not see them often — they lived in Chicago, too far from The Bronx — but there had been a time when I saw Lesley’s sister a lot. We went to the same Midwestern university. Her brother had been at the university before her and she was there, I think, because he had been there. She took a room in a place next to Lesley’s old boarding house, and this proximity, and the knowledge that there were still people at the school who had known Lesley, must have been a comfort to her, like the arm in the photograph.

She used to come over to talk about her brother. She would sit on the couch across the room from me, her posture stiff, uncompromising, and tell me, trusting mistakenly in my interest, of Lesley’s life. Always in the purse which she held primly in her lap was some long letter of Lesley’s from which she could quote endless passages of brotherly sententiae. He called her Sister and advised her in clinically sensuous terms of the baseness in men’s hearts. The letters were absolutely pornographic.