Chicago (23 page)

Again we sat silently, listening. For some reason I couldn't explain then or now I believe we were both thinking of Edward for a while. It must have been one in the morning by this time but you could still hear a remarkable number of things in the city. I heard a bus sighing to a stop somewhere within a couple of blocks, and cars whirring singly along Lake Shore Drive, and someone laughing, and somewhere far away the thump of music from a door propped open in an alley. I thought I could hear the lake muttering, and once an airplane far overhead, and then again the nighthawks, although only two this time. Did nighthawks have regular rounds like nurses or doctors on the night shift?

And then I said aloud that I was going to Boston. I still wonder sometimes how that popped out of my mouth; what was the proximate cause of
that
? But some things you just decide inside, I suppose. Some things you decide without deciding. If I was being cool and literary I could say something mysterious like the two nighthawks were the cause, and if there had been only one I would still be living in Chicago and probably still going up to the roof on summer nights to gawp at the stars and listen for nighthawks and tankers on the lake and laughter in the streets below, but I am not cool and literary, and I have no idea, even now, why I suddenly knew that I had to go, had to take the unreasonable chance, and said so. A few minutes later we went downstairs and shook hands and went to bed.

 

22.

EVEN THE
NAME
“CHICAGO”
seemed cool to me as a child—it was
itself,
it was idiosyncratic, hatched in its own place, not a colonial name like New York or New Orleans, or a paean to a particular religion's heroes like San Francisco or San Antonio, but a name grown from the land and water of that place; although it was while I lived there that I discovered from Mr Mahoney that the word
Chicago
was an abbreviation of the Potawatomi name for the place where the river entered the lake, roughly
chicagouate,
referring to a species of garlic that grew particularly well there.

“So it is,” said Mr Mahoney in his wry tone, “that every day many thousands of people around the world use a word meaning ‘garlic' for the city in which we live; we might as well call ourselves Garlic City, or Garlicville, or Garlicton, or Garlicsburg, any of which would be not only historically accurate but redolent, in a manner of speaking. A visionary man such as yourself might see to it that a proposition for a name change make it onto the Cook County ballot. I would do it myself but at the moment I am seriously discommoded by His Eminence the Cardinal, who is threatening to have me excommunicated from Mother Church. I have replied with evidence that his financial wheeling and dealing has lost some five million dollars from the coffers of the archdiocese—coffers filled by donations from most of the two million Catholics here, many of whom are poor as mice. An honest man, a man who adheres to his vows as a priest, would admit chicanery, apologize, ask for forgiveness, and amend his ways. That is not the way of the Cardinal Archbishop. Some observers of all this find it entertaining, in the same way they found the heavy-handed blundering exploits of our former mayor Richard Daley amusing. Neither man is amusing. Both use their offices as gathering points for money and power, and both ignore and demean and insult the very citizens they are sworn to represent. There is nothing entertaining about criminal activity, despite the evidence of popular culture, which insists on celebrating thieves and assassins. For us to be famous as the city of Al Capone and John Dillinger, for civic corruption and strong-arm politics, is a shameful thing. It is especially shameful when the man sworn to lead two million of his companions in an effort with the most blunt and direct mission statement of all time—feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, succor those in despair—instead leverages personal profit from business transactions, lies and dissembles, stashes money in slush funds and shady real estate investments, lives as floridly as an ancient emperor, flaunts his power with supercilious glee, and attacks those who would call him to account for the breaking of his vows and the shattering of trust among his fellow congregants.”

Thus Mr Mahoney, in the full flower of his considerable oratorical skills. His suggestion about the ballot measure appealed to me, though, and for a week or so I pursued the possibility, until I discovered that there was no such provision in Illinois law for a general plebiscite of that sort; there was only the possibility of “initiatives,” which were so complex and difficult to file that essentially it was impossible. Edward was of the opinion that Abraham Lincoln would have eventually suggested an amendment to state law, allowing voters more direct influence occasionally than merely through their elected representatives, but he himself was suddenly elected president in 1860, and had to generally abandon what had been close attention to the peculiarities of Illinois legislation prior to that time.

*   *   *

I have not said enough about Edward's friends, I think. He had an inordinate number of friends, of many species, but let me concentrate on the dogs for a moment. There was Basher, a young boxer dog, and Wendell, who was some amalgam of wolfhound and husky, and so tremendously powerful but graced with the most gentle temperament. There was Maximus, who had been a racing greyhound before being adopted by the cantor at the temple, and there was Beatrix, of indeterminate species, and the blue-tick brothers, two hunting hounds with voices like faraway church bells. There were several black Scottish terriers I could never tell apart (although Mr Pawlowsky said he could tell them apart easily by their idiosyncratic gaits), and a Newfoundland named Grahame who reportedly had lost her left ear in a battle at sea. There were free-range dogs, many of them of mixed ancestry, who ranged as they chose along the lake, and there was one small lean gray dog that looked awfully like a slumming coyote to me, although Edward had made it clear that I was not to mention coyotes in this dog's hearing, for reasons that were not explained. Mr Pawlowsky told me once that one of the many things he had learned from Edward was that most dogs were exquisitely sensitive about parentage and heritage, and that a lot of scuffles and disagreements started with scurrilous remarks and muttered caustic comments that were ostensibly offered as jokes but were neither meant nor received as such. “Not unlike human culture,” as Mr Pawlowsky observed, “where a great deal of what passes as social discourse is more verbal jockeying and snide commentary; you have to admire canine culture at least for the fact that you can respond to what clearly is a sneering dig by biting the speaker in the ass. We don't get to do that so much, and maybe we would be a better society if we did.”

October that year stayed warm and clear and crisp all the way through Halloween, and something about the nights being so pleasant and starry sent people out to clubs and cafes in remarkable numbers; I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the most profitable October ever in Chicago, at least judging by the crowds of people I saw crammed into blues bars, jazz clubs, gyro shops, pizza joints, party boats on the lake, street fairs and festivals, school barbecues and picnics, church carnivals, block parties, and impromptu parades and processions of every conceivable shape and size. I saw a Catholic priest cradling a silver box (called a pyx, I discovered later) reverently in his hands as he walked along Clark Street, followed by perhaps a hundred people, many of them singing a song I did not know. I saw a line of eighteen firemen walking slowly down Roscoe Street, for reasons I never discovered. I saw a dancing line of more than a hundred people in Portage Park, on the west side, all of them dressed in amazing bright colors and dancing with absolute abandon while dozens of men and boys hammered steel drums in a dozen different rhythms at once, a mesmerizing sight and sound.

The epic event for me that October, however, was the Greek Festival at Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church on the west side, just past Lincoln Avenue. This was an epic event for the whole west side of Chicago, a famous street party that people for miles around began talking about and preparing for months, but I will always remember that year's festival for a single infinitesimal moment—not even a whole moment, but a slight gesture that I realized even then wasn't slight. Sometimes even now I watch it unfold slowly again in memory, almost lost in hoopla and bustle and tumult, almost obscured by throngs of laughing people and wriggles of smoke and tides of shouts and music and the billowing of tents breathing in and out with the evening breezes; but not lost.

According to Edward it was Miss Elminides who had suggested to Mr Pawlowsky that he and Edward come to the festival; the way Edward remembered this was that there had been a discussion of the best Greek food, and Mr Pawlowsky had opined that the greatest achievement of Greek cuisine was the gyro, the perfect marriage of flavors and edible packaging, and Miss Elminides smiled and said that while the gyro was an excellent version of the sandwich it could not be mentioned in the same reverent tones as many other savories traditional to her ancient culture, savories she had many times marveled over during her lifetime, and Mr Pawlowsky demurred politely, and said something about other Greek foods in his experience being like Greek music in that a little went a long way, and Miss Elminides at that point proposed that Edward and Mr Pawlowsky attend the Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Festival, which she knew for an inarguable fact to be a remarkable and thorough and entertaining celebration of Greek food and music.

In Edward's opinion the next few seconds were some of the most enjoyable seconds he ever spent in this life, because Mr Pawlowsky was so evidently torn by warring impulses, and of two contradictory minds, and wholly flummoxed, and trying to entertain two conflicting ideas in his head at once, that you almost expected his ears to spin, or smoke to issue from his eyeballs, or what hair he had left to twirl itself madly in the manner of a desert dervish. He wanted to instantly accept a direct and alluring invitation from Miss Elminides, but also instantly realized it would entail a serious voyage for him away from the apartment building. Saint Demetrios was easily three miles away—maybe forty blocks!

But to his credit Mr Pawlowsky said yes before you could count to ten, and Miss Elminides said that would be lovely, and she would check the schedule of events and choose the best of the music being performed, and then she took her leave, and Edward noted with high glee that Mr Pawlowsky then went into something of a brown study, from which he was only resurrected by having to fix a leaking faucet in 2A.

So they did all go to the Saint Demetrios Festival, and somehow I was roped into it too, because I was coming back from playing basketball at Northwestern University and would pass right by and might as well pop in if only to make a heroic effort to sample the wide array of gyros being sold, and so I was there at about ten o'clock, eating gyros happily with Edward, when we saw the slight but not slight thing. Miss Elminides had seen the musicians opening their instrument cases, and said something to Mr Pawlowsky, who realized that he ought to go claim two good seats in front of the bandstand. I think now that he didn't think about what he did next, but just did it out of the love and tumult in his heart. He bowed ever so slightly and held out his right arm for Miss Elminides, and without hesitation she put her left arm into the crook of his elbow, and they walked down the aisle of the little bandshell toward seats in the first few rows.

Edward and I were behind them as they walked toward the stage, so we didn't see their faces, but the way they held each other's arms so gently and naturally, as if they had always walked that way, with Mr Pawlowsky leading by a hair so he could gently use his shoulder to part the crowd and Miss Elminides sailing just slightly in his lee, was as eloquent and articulate as any facial expression I ever saw. We make too much of faces, I think, and often miss the supple expressiveness of the rest of the countries of our bodies; and not just human beings, either, but all beings; we all shiver and leap and shuffle and drag and skip and scuff and wriggle and wave and wag and flitter and flag in so many ways that language can't keep up, and we are always having to invent words for the ways we move to say how we feel.

Edward and I looked at each other, but we didn't say anything, because it wasn't like any words were necessary, but each of us knew that the other one was delighted at what he had just seen, and we went to try the spanakopita, which was extraordinary. I have looked in vain for spanakopita as good as that spanakopita at the Saint Demetrios Festival for years now, and have not come anywhere close. Perhaps, as a friend of mine says, you have to be actually at a Greek festival, in a city, on a wild Saturday night, just before the band starts, surrounded by people who are laughing and jostling and talking and eating, to savor great spanakopita properly. I'd like to say that he's wrong about this, because I dearly love spanakopita, but more often than not I suspect he is right, and there are even times I think maybe the very best spanakopita has to be eaten while marveling with pleasure that you just saw a slight thing that isn't slight at all.

*   *   *

You would think after my decision was made I would be happy, or anticipatory, or thrilled to contemplate prospective romantic and geographical and occupational adventures, and certainly I felt something of this, but mostly I found that I was melancholic. Indeed, to coin a phrase, I had the blues, and there was and probably still is no better place in America to have the blues than Chicago, all due respect to the Mississippi Delta where the form was invented, but where blues clubs do not have delicious steaks from Kansas and Nebraska and vibrant cheeses from Wisconsin, paradise of cheeses. Also Chicago had been where the acoustic blues of the country became the electric blues of the city, and I was partial to the electric blues, which had verve and snarl and punch in it, like the rock music I loved, while retaining the old dark weird of the blues as it had squirmed to life in the slave lands of the South.