CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
1988
———
LONDON, ENGLAND
SUNDOWN
THE WRAITHLIKE WINTER FOG, curling itself into wraithlike associates here and
wraithlike ancestors there, was nowhere near as dense or as saturated or as
overstuffed with divers populations of microscopic particles of wood and coal
soot, wood and coal dust, and wood and coal ashes, hemorrhaging upward to
showering downward from the numberless collections of chimney-potted chimneys,
often three, six, or nine to a building (depending upon the number of sitting
rooms or bedrooms wall-side but not frontal-side), stretching their shielding
brickwork or copper-clad throats to precarious heights and arcs, standing
perfectly upright or mildly loose-bricked—mildly crooked or mildly goosenecked,
as if peeking stealthily at cobblestones beneath scurrying city feet—adding
more grime to the already dirty costumes of slushy streets below their
scattered footprints, but ornamenting the myriad precipitous rooftops of
yesteryear, or as thick as the sparky residue flowing from hand-warming
burn-barrels, bottomed with ember-embellished toe-holes for like relief,
blackening partially melted snow cropped wearily against curbing, storefronts,
or waiting boots, as it was in the wintry days of long-dead these many years,
napkin-jawed Charles John Huffam (Boz) Dickens, but the fog was thick—indeed, pea-soup thick.
Indoors of a tiny side-street boutique, not all too
distant from mooring docks along the Thames River, near the closing hour of
evening, sitting comfortably at a thirteenth-century gold-inlaid writing table
set snugly before a frostbitten split-glass sidewalk window (pintsized, smiling
children huffing and rubbing pintsized and clear-circled areas into its lower
pane), a young, stern-faced Arabian man (evidently well-rounded in the English
language) layered heavily in seafarer apparel, another curious customer (who
had arrived twelve minutes prior to the entering of the Arabian man), and the
owner of the shop sat.
“I captain an oil tanker,” the seafaring man declared,
“During my last voyage east, I vacationed and visited Calcutta,” in a bass voice,
as he placed a weighty and lidless brass oil lamp, engraved with a thousand
Arabian panicles, on the table, “A street vendor sold this to me,” with a tip
of the Captain’s head, yet eyes toward the owner of the shop, “How old would
you say it is?”
The shop owner lowered his
jeweler’s loop, lifted the weighty vessel, and drew it scrutinizingly close to
his nose. In a moment and a squint, he rendered an indeterminate but tempting verdict. “Rahther difficult to say, chap:
three, maybe four ’undred years old, possibly a thousand. Veddy, veddy difficult
to say, frightfully so, that! Do you wish to part with the thing; and, if so,
for whot kind of money?”
“I am not sure,” the Arabian
man replied indecisively. “Often I look at it and think about my country and my mother. She would like to see something like this, I feel. And I hope to
spend time with her when I return to my homeport.”
“May I?” the other customer interrupted, but
congenially, as he glanced a nod at the seafarer and extended an upturned hand
toward the merchant.” The shop owner waited courteously for the Arabian man’s
response, noted a consenting tip of his forehead, and slid the item carefully
across the table to he who had made the request.
“Interesting piece,” was the
sole reaction to the customer’s inspection. He returned the vessel to the
tabletop area before the Arabian. “Interesting.”
THE TWO CUSTOMERS DEPARTED, and the proprietor closed the door and toppled the
vertical bolt into its catch. The fog had grown even thicker; and, as though
Contemplation was lingering herself in the thoughts of the pair, deciding which
direction each should wander off to next, the seafarer smiled and spoke. “You
seemed to be signaling something to me when you were holding my lamp. Should I
have suggested a price?”
“I, my fine friend,” the other smiled likewise, as he
buttoned his overcoat, “would have no business in suggesting anything. But
thousands of those are sold in Calcutta every year. Either the shopkeeper in
there was larking you, or he simply didn’t realize the true age of your lamp.”
“Are you sure? Is my lamp
older?”
“Quite sure, young man. And no, no, your lamp is not
older. Seems like a century ago, but while seeking a friend in a trading
settlement along the banks of the Hugli River, Calcutta, precisely, I came
across, and had a conversation—a very brief conversation—with the young man who
used to manufacture and falsely give them age. He used to be an awfully clever
man.”
“Falsely give them—Used to
be?”
“Passed away a good deal of
years ago. But his son, I heard, has taken over in his parent’s stead, following
in his ill-directed shoes, one might say, quite following. I would, however,
like to interest you in something…and at no charge—not a fleck off a pared
sovereign. I am not a man of the street.”
The Arab showed just a shade
of reluctance; but, after further consideration and an appetite for the
mysterious, accepted the peculiar invitation. His now strange
acquaintance took him gently by the elbow and led him merely three doors east
of the boutique and up three narrow and winding flights of stairs to a
commodious flat in which in the main living space sat several persons chatting quietly and taking their leisure
with a variety of refreshments. Shaloms and Aleichems were traded
across the room, which awoke a double-take in the Arab.
Other than a mutual salute,
the loungers acted as if not a mortal had entered. The stranger, upon hanging
his hat (exposing a remarkable but neatly clipped head of white hair), woolen
coat, and scarf over a brass hook on an antique oaken clothes tree in the hallway,
beckoned his guest into an adjacent parlor.
“You may think me odd, young
man, but I have another request to make of you. I had asked the first request
in the shop where we met, when you handed me,” pointing to a large, bulging
pocket on the Arab’s brown, pea-type jacket, “your lamp.”
The Arabian man puzzled at
these words, but felt neither an encumbrance on his spirit nor an inclination
to speak.
“Do you see,” the
white-haired gentleman recommenced, “that lengthy artifact resting along the
far wall?”
“Yes.”
“Would
you feel it eccentric of me to ask you to take it out of here and store it with
you until…say, another day? if you have the space, of course…?”
“I have the space, and your artifact is
amusing, but I have not the slightest use for—”
“You
won’t…ever have…a use for it, my young friend. I merely asked if you would
store—”
“Is this
a sort of trick you are trying to—”
“Peace,
young man. Peace. Is your spirit perchance mounting the saddle of a storm?”
“A storm
on the sea of my mind, sir,” the Arab grinned, yet with an obvious and tranquil
measure of restraint, “as I know not what you are asking of me.”
“My friend,” the gentleman
consoled, “remember these words and let them justify the day: A storm beating against the open sea has no usefulness whatsoever, unless there are men on the
sea to learn in the storm.”
The seafarer, judging this
truism, fleetingly but personally, as if the paints in his logic were beginning to spread
themselves into a rainbow of reasoning, conceded at last, “A man
without usefulness is a man of shame, doubly
on a sea filled with anger. I will take your overgrown toothpick. For what, I
know not…but I will take it and will assume its responsibility.”
The seafarer enjoyed a cup of tea with the others,
graciously excused himself to the street, and returned to his ship.
“The Bedouin shall deliver
again,” the white-haired gentleman declared. “In time, brothers…in good time.”
THE FOG was now thinning to drifting ghostly sheets, and sheets of
ghostly warmth, yet as though forgiving the merry old town of George III
nobility. The Captain’s oil tanker lay at anchor by a London dock of the Thames
River; and, as the seafaring man approached the mooring and the tanker: What
made him speak of money in sovereigns? He mused. And why did he call me young
man, and he himself not a day beyond my age? White hair or no white hair,
his face did not reflect a day beyond my age. And what in Allah’s name does
this surplus piece of timber have to do with me?
———
Traveling the world is
usually appreciated by the rich and often appreciated by the rich and lonely. A
man of wealth, lonely or not, with money to burn (as I have often heard of but
am yet waiting patiently to behold and interrupt with outstretched hands) might
lavish himself with scores of passport testimonials. Great Britain, for
example: London and its pristine Buckingham Palace: nearly six hundred rooms,
fifty acres of gardens, and an awesome collection of paintings; Westminster
Abbey, its famous dead, its famous Stone of Destiny, and the old London thrill
of crossing the New London Bridge and into South London.
Now, Italy, say, Rome, with
its exquisite and glistening marble statues, and its numerous museums stuffed
with the histories of illustrious and drama-filled empires; Florence, with its
legendary bargello stitching; Switzerland, its cuckoo clocks and those lofty
members of the snowcapped Alps; Germany and its many gifted composers, its
diversified, emerald- and dark-colored ales, and its alluring and singing share
of the Alps; Holland and its pictorial gardens, its endless canals, and its
rich, dark and tantalizing chocolates; France and its towering Eiffel and
little cars; Japan with all its mysterious pavilions, and numerous scurrying
rickshaws forever scurrying to somewhere; China and its Great Wall, the
powerful dynasties, and its irresistible silk, spun by extremely committed
silkworms; Russia’s world-famous and often dominating reserves of mineral
resources, its celebrated opera houses, and its supreme companies of classical
ballet; Turkey’s awe-inspiring Istanbul; Korea’s captivating and myriad Korean
Proverbs; India and the great Mumbai—formally Bombay—the entire Orient with all
of its Oriental fixtures; islands in the South Pacific; islands of the Bahamas;
islands of the Caribbean; but, to visit a faraway location is not necessarily
to enjoy it, for often the visit pertains strictly to business.
———
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
TRAVELING THE UNITED STATES was as natural and flowing to Shanan as water is to a
sandy brook; and, for the next two weeks, he did nothing else but travel, in a
business sort of way, that is. The best part of his birth, he once wrote, “…was
Mom’s trip to the hospital…short as it was.” A speedy twenty-dollar job in one
county or state, a fast hundred-dollar job in another, hitting garage sales,
flea markets, and pawnshops to increase his tools and appliances, and when the
labor demand was affluent and plenteous enough, he finally charged more than
deserving rates.
Through this state, that state, and the next state, he
tried so hard to overcome his incredible loss. Two young women, both of them as
free-spirited as a liberated lioness in a zoo filled with uninhibited lions,
attempted to tie him down with various types of offers, surreptitiously and, to
a fair extent, boldly. A beautiful suburban matron in Kansas City forced him to
take five times the money he had originally charged her and, in addition
(Shanan’s brows deepen with reductionism here) wanted to purchase him a closet
full of fashionable clothes, and get his hair styled in the bargain. He took
the money; he really had no choice—she was as persistent with her overbearing
benevolence as she was insistent with her affections (reductionism proven),
escaped affections.
Although he had appraised
these proposals as flavorful and potentially comfortable amenities, Mr. Bin had
no sincere desire whatever to become involved: Who could ever fill Amy’s place?
—Nobody! I love my Amy. She’s hidden here in the middle of
eternity. I’ll scour all the neighborhoods in eternity if I have to, til my
baby peeks from behind a bush. I’ll keep searching for her. Besides, Second
Kings and Revelation say horses are in Heaven: fiery horses, white horses, red
horses, black horses, and pale horses; and the angels have to stable them
somewhere. And all those four-footed beasts of the Earth, let down on the sheet
in front of Peter when he was on Simon the Tanner’s rooftop: Where are they? in
Heaven, where I’ll be someday, looking for my Amy, you can bet.
DESPITE Memphis, Tennessee,
being nestled cordially in the mid-south, its muggy winter weather at tops was
pleasant, but usually cold and rainy. On the north side of the city, at the
intersection of Peris and Hollywood, absent of money again and desperate for a
piece of work, Shanan found blessings in a temporary position as carpenter’s lead
man at the United Membership Missionary Baptist Church, a many windowed and
aging T-shape-framed building of modest structure, tall-steepled, sided with
lightly mildewing white clapboard, and pastored by a good-natured old black
man.
By the time he arrived in
Memphis, Shanan had built his van into a mini-palace: desk, cabinets,
recreational-vehicle refrigerator, and a huge microwave he had found in a
woman’s trash. He had knocked at her door, asked if she was throwing it away,
and she told him, “Take it. The microwave was a hand-me-down but still works.”
Moreover, he now had an electric heater and a food box: a navy blue
fifty-four-quart Igloo Cooler. His bed spanned wall to wall perpendicularly at
the rear (six feet two inches long by thirty-eight inches wide) and was covered
with a four-inch-thick heavy-foam mattress layered with a “real” sheet topped
with two light blankets. He had arranged five more blankets neatly underneath
his mattress, in ready for emergency conditions of cold. His clothes, now a
sizeable wardrobe of work and Sunday-goes, hung from a thirty-inch bar. If he
was without house electric, he screwed a motor-home bulb into a lamp fixture
and switched to direct current. He drew power from his automobile battery to
operate the portable television and transistor radio, and inverted power off
his inside deep-cycle battery, allowing him to run his hair clipper or a
sixty-watt lamp.
For non-electric warmth, he had assembled a four-inch stovepipe
that ran from his desktop, up to and along the ceiling, and through the roof above the
rear of the driver’s seat, and he could place a lighted oil lamp beneath the
inside opening to promote radiant heat and dryness off the tin of the pipe. To
top this abundance of Earthly possessions and this abundance of temporal
estate, he had a generous assortment of tools—electric and otherwise—stashed
below his bed. All this luxury—and in one Ford Van (a four-wheeled,
gasoline-powered vehicle with rubber tires and a substantial amount of cargo
space)! Shan’s Little House on the Axles.
On the day he had landed his employment, Shanan called
Joe Cooney in Denver (collect, fourteen rings, he had just come in from a game
of golf, and I quote: “Yes, they golf in Denver in the winter”), told him the
sad news concerning his departed Amy, and requested of Joe to forward whatever
mail he might be holding, to the new job site for the next week and half or so.
Mr. Cooney said he was sorry about Amy; but, “No prob on the mailing thing, buddy.”
Shanan and a black three-man crew were to build a
six-foot deep by thirty-foot-high addition onto the front of the frame church.
The old, gray-haired pastor (nearing his sixty-second birthday) was always so
obliging and grateful-looking, Shanan would bend over backward for him at his
slightest request. An odd piece of wood tacked on here or an extra-fancy length
of trim set stylishly over there constantly sketched a broad and friendly smile
onto the pastor’s elated face. To compensate the modest amount of money Shanan
was being paid by the contractor (small money is better than no money at all),
the pastor allowed his new builder the privilege of parking his van on the
church parking lot and to run a heavy-duty extension cord from the church’s kitchen
(which also housed a television) for his van light and an evening heater.
The United Membership
Missionary Baptist Church. Earthly shepherd—Pastor Rivǎts:
five-feet-eleven inches tall, trim for his age, a bright-colored individual,
always found in contemporary and elegant suits, except when gardening his backyard vegetables, a broad and silently inward joy usually gracing his lips
outwardly, had a creative way with words, especially from his pulpit, and drove
a new Cadillac.
When Shanan had accepted the job, he had also hinted
at and supplemented this peculiar accessory to his status as carpenter: that he
was also a preacher—of sorts. Pastor Rivǎts was impressed by this clerical
announcement and invited Shanan to “Join me in the pulpit area during this
Sunday’s Service and offer whatever Biblical perception or concluding message
you might have. I’ll give you a minute or so to deliver it.” On the second
Sunday, which, during this sojourn in Memphis, was the last of Shanan’s
encounters with pulpit eloquence, Pastor Rivǎts transported from a
High-powered preaching mouth to low-budgeted but captivated ears a dreadfully
blazing sermon on tithing.
The pastor must have
elaborated on a penetratingly hot point during that memorable Service, because
Shanan’s flesh began to tingle, his spellbound eyes began to drill their
unexpectedly self-conscious way over the splendidly coifed pates and decorative
hats of the lectern-focused congregation and through the wall behind them (none
of which he actually saw), and grew twice the size of their sockets. The
inspired words of the black sermonizer had unquestionably (with a little help
from Above) convicted our carpenter’s unconventional soul of his negligence and
obvious lack of ecclesiastical charity, and Shanan vowed in his heart that,
“From now on I’ll remember to give my ten percent to whatever church I happen
to be in on Sundays. I give you my solemn word, Father.” This, Shanan kept to
himself.
THERE WAS SHANAN, three weeks into the work, spirits high and happy,
expressions of great satisfaction and contentment rolling like vertical oceanic
waves correlatively over his chilly face. This was by far the best mood he had
displayed since the passing of his baby, Amy.
Shanan’s unfaltering portable
radio was blaring a grave hymn into the luminous afternoon, as two
amiable-sounding evangelists (who claimed to be true apostles preaching
certified messages of the Lord) were pumping for callers to respond to
the program’s distressing issue, “A real crisis, folks!” and, at the same time,
appealing indirectly for funds as the one sure way to solve this distressing
issue, “A real crisis, folks!” Shanan, while leveling a two-by-four, listened
attentively to their critical problem; and, feeling he had an excellent Biblical
solution, Shanan excused himself humbly from his coworkers, scurried eagerly
into the church, and dialed from the pastor’s private line.
Shanan merely said “Hello”
and excitedly quoted a couple of Bible verses corresponding directly to the
radio show’s doleful predicament, when, as his brief words were expounding
plainly and clearing away the obstacles from the sensitive topic, a click and a
buzzing sound emanated suddenly from the receiver, and “The
number to call…” reverberated loudly from
the radio’s speaker and through the pastor’s quarter-opened window.
Shanan became furious on the
spot and cursed harshly through the window and at the radio. He raged
vehemently, yet under his breath, but now hunched over as if he were cursing
the center of the Earth, at this treatment coming from presumed men of
God. He began brooding, roasting, aflame, imagining other souls and hearts of
the poor of the flock of the Lord, going through this same contemptible
treatment.
“Wicked-evil men dressed in sheep’s clothing,” he
bellowed, but warily, as he stomped through the sanctuary. “Slapping their
beguiling words across the face of Christianity,” he growled as he shoved at
the front door of the church. “The crumbs which fall from the master’s table?
Hah! They jerk the whole loaf of bread right out from under the children of
Jesus! These turkeys don’t want anyone calling,” pausing and facing away from
his coworkers, whose heads were now directing inquisitive stares, “who may
actually enlighten their easy-to-fleece audience with a legitimate answer that
doesn’t cause animosity toward a particular person or somebody’s religion.
TROUBLEMAKERS! They want to be the big shots, these bums! They just probably
wanted to peddle me a ton of their needless junk, too. These lousy, rotten,
deceiving————rip-off artists!”
Shanan Bin was as blistering
as Mount Vesuvius in her first molten outburst: Irresponsible
communication-monitoring within a city, he soon thereafter rationalized, equals
a corrupt city. And no fear of God equals a corrupt man.
Our church carpenter would
have redialed the self-appointed apostles a dozen times and slammed the
telephone without saying a word, but he was no longer living “…in the same
gutter as those Christian beguilers, deceivers, cheaters.” An oven full
of warm hours had to pass before this hot ice would thaw.
I
know thy works, and thy labour,
and
thy patience,
and
how thou canst not bear them which are evil:
and thou hast tried them
which
say they are apostles, and are not,
and
hast found them liars
NOW, AS IF THAT EVENT was not enough to instantly petrify the healthiest redwood
in northern California, two days after the invaluable lesson on wolves in
sheep’s clothing, Shanan’s mail arrived from Denver, and you would not want to
have read the official reply from the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, nor would you have wanted to be standing anywhere near Shanan.
The printed matter, as I would prefer to call—well…came in
a yellow envelope, which radiated the appearance of a genuine
WESTERN UNION telegram—but was not—and read to the effect: Dear Mr. Bin, To
confirm your order for the lapel pins, we need to double-check your address to
be positive we have the correct residence.
Shanan lingered at this
dubious phraseology: They could have double-checked it by looking at what the
operator wrote. Hmm, maybe they should hire smarter operators, or ones they can
trust. Shanan finished the letter: Please fill out the included form and
return as promptly as possible. And, oh, by the way, if you wouldn’t
mind enclosing a minimum gift of “—TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS! For those—cheap
Japanese tie tacks?” Shanan screamed. “And for a million more bucks, we’ll even
think of sending you TWO SETS!” Oblique stare toward the church’s restroom. “…?
No. It’d only clog it…!”
Need I elaborate further? Oh, okay: Donning a pair of
thick rubber gloves and grabbing the ends of a pair of high-power lines and
jamming them quickly into your ears produces an identical facial expression
and—cranial smoke—exogenously.
But
evil men and seducers
shall
wax worse and worse,
deceiving,
and being deceived
†
