Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“Maneuvers?”

“Yeah. Maneuvers. Your cousin Lesley was killed on them.”

We were never close; we didn’t see each other often. He was just a fat, humorless cousin I had I used to run across once in a while, but his death was a shock to me. After a while I thought, Poor Lesley, unconsciously eulogizing him with the gag name with which I had come to associate him. Poor Lesley, foolish Lesley, who should have died in bed, somebody’s fat and aged uncle, somebody’s loyal, uninspired employee in honor of whom maybe the office was closed a couple of hours the day of the funeral. And now he was dead who had this silly, lethal vision of himself, which was, ultimately, the correct vision, the true one, however ridiculous or inappropriate. Now my cousin was a dead Marine, killed in a war game which was no game, outmaneuvered. Poor Lesley, I thought. He played it straight. A straight man.

I went downstairs to the candy store. I wanted to cry. Fein was an old man, his candy was stale and hard, his egg creams without life. “My cousin died,” I told him.

“Condolences,” he said. I wondered if he remembered me.

“Where is everybody?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Where are the lousy people?” I asked him.

Some recognition came into his face.

“In a little while Belgium comes in to make his phone calls.”

“Belgium’s around? Good old Belgium. What phone calls, Mr. Fein?”

“He sells a policy. Between you and me, the policy is in drerd . You pay for sixty years, collect nothing. But he calls up people on the telephone. They buy from him sometime. Falls he sells football-parlay cards to school kids.”

I sat down on a stool to wait. It was getting dark. About seven-thirty Belgium came in. He gave Fein a dollar and Fein gave him a bunch of dimes. He went into the booth. I went up to the booth and hammered on it. Inside, he jumped as though he was very scared. “Just a minute,” he squeaked in his effeminate, pugnacious voice. Then he recognized me. He scooped up the dimes he had laid on the ledge and burst out of the phone booth. “Pal,” he shouted. “Pal, it’s you? No crap, it’s you?”

“Sure it’s me,” I said. “How’ve you been, Belgium?” I shook his little hand.

“Never better. Never better. You want to buy a policy? I sell policies. I’m in insurance. I’m an insurance man. You still go to school?”

“No more, Belgium. All through,” I said.

“Moving back? You moving back?”

“No,” I said. “Where are the lousy people?”

“No more lousy people,” he said. “Just me. All gone away. Want to buy some insurance? Fire? Comprehensive? Automobile? Accident? I got it. I got every kind of insurance. You need some? Shake hands. I show you fancy way I shake hands. In business world very important. Shake.” He pulled my hand toward him and began to pump it with ornate, mystical gestures. “In business world very important. Rockefeller. Vanderbilt. J. P. Morgan. Baruch. Those boys knew how to shake hands. Want to buy some insurance?”

“No. No insurance. I heard about your lousy insurance.” He looked hurt. “What do you mean all gone? Where’d they go?”

“Gone away,” he said impatiently.

“Old Guy?”

“Ain’t seen Old Guy three, four years. Upstate somewhere. Somewhere upstate,” he said, waving his hand vaguely.

“Shelly Malkin?”

Belgium shrugged.

“The Ox?Ox Hersh?”

“The Ox? The lousy Ox? Don’t speak to me about that mumser . Don’t say his name. He wrestles carnivals. Travels. Remember in the old days when I’d want to leave the bastard? Well, he left me. Travels all over the country, wrestles carnivals. Big bastard. I got a clipping from the paper where he broke a guy’s neck in Jersey. I got a clipping. You think they’d arrest the rat? No. Jersey’s crooked. You can break a guy’s neck in Jersey they don’t do a thing to you. How come he always gets away with it? How come? The Ox is married. Married a woman.”

“Belgium, where’s Danny? Where’s Danny Lubell?”

Belgium grinned. “You want to hear something about my pal Danny? Remember that car of his? Now you know well as me a thing like that got no right on the streets. I mean, it’s fun to play with, but it ain’t a car. It’s a toy. But I go up to him in all good faith after I become a businessman and I tell him, ‘Danny, for old times’ sake I get you coverage on the car.’ He looks at me like I’m nuts and says, ‘Look what happens. Look who all of a sudden is doing the protecting.’ That’s a hell of a thing to say to a pal, right? I try to tell him, ‘Danny, you got to provide, you got to provide,’ but you might as well talk to a wall. Well, the thing is, after the fat Ox started wrestling carnivals there was nobody to drive the car, so Danny takes it out himself. Well, don’t you think he smashed it up?” Belgium was grinning broadly now. “ He smashed it up. It looked like a smashed can he got through with it. No insurance, nothing. He didn’t know how to provide.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Hurt? He was damn near killed. Hospital for a month.”

“He’s home now?”

“Yeah, he’s home. He’s home. He’s in a home, that’s where he is.”

I asked Belgium what he was talking about, but without Danny, or without the Ox, or maybe without even me there to watch him, Belgium had become just another self-centered nut. It was hard to get a straight answer out of him. He kept asking me if I wanted some of his insurance, and when I told him no, finally with real severity, he wanted to shake hands again. He kept saying that it was very important in the business world and that he was surprised I didn’t realize this and buy some insurance. Finally he told me that Danny had had what Belgium called a “nerve breakdown” and that he was a real nut now, and that this was all you could expect from a guy who didn’t know how to provide.

“You ever been up to visit him?” I asked Belgium.

“That nut?” Belgium asked with real outrage. “I ain’t got no time to be a fool. I give him good years. What I got to show? Ox breaking guys’ necks over in Jersey, Old Guy upstate somewheres, Danny in a home. I got a business to look after.”

I asked Belgium for the name of the place where Danny was. He told me he didn’t have it written down but that he thought it was on Long Island and that if he saw the name he might remember. Finally we got it from the operator. I told Belgium I was going to go out to see Danny and I asked him if he wanted to come with me. He said Sundays were his best days for making contacts and I didn’t press him. I saw that in a screwy way he was providing.

I said, “So long, Belgium,” and he looked at me shamefaced for a moment. I thought he was feeling guilty about Danny, but finally he said to me that he was in business now, and that if I could remember I should call him by his real name. “It looks better,” he said, “ you know what I mean?”

When I left the candy store I gave him my hand to shake, but he must have been thinking of something else. He merely took it and pumped it mechanically. There was no art.

On Sunday it rained but I went downtown and caught a train going out to Long Island.

There is something faintly disreputable and sad about people using public transportation on a Sunday. They are so obviously people on “outings,” desperately counted-on holidays complicated by train and bus schedules, or they are cautious visitors, stiffly carrying their inexpensive boxes of candy to luckier people than themselves. I had written down the name of Danny’s home on a slip of paper and beneath the name I had printed the address. On the train I showed this to a fellow passenger. Handing him the paper, I felt inexplicably sad and depressed, like a foreigner who does not know the language, or like an orphan shipped to relatives across the country with a tag pinned to his overcoat. It was as though I had no business going to Long Island by myself at all. I deliberately chose to ask directions of a well-dressed man, and as I handed him the slip I regretted having written down the name of what was so obviously an asylum. I almost told him it was a friend I intended to visit, just an old friend who had not taken care of himself.