Firmin (14 page)
Authors: Sam Savage
Tags: #Rats, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #Books and Reading, #Fantasy, #General
The armchair on the fire escape was also the cause of the first knock we got on the door. It was the fire people, a small man in a uniform and a big man in an open-collared white shirt. The big one had chest hair like Jerry’s except that his was black. He told Jerry that the armchair was blocking an emergency exit. He called it a ‘safety hazard.’ Jerry argued a while, saying that if there was a fire he could jump over the chair, did they want to see him jump over the chair? They did not, and they were angry that he was arguing, and they told him just to take the fucking chair of the fire escape. So Jerry went and wrestled the chair back in, grumbling and growling like a bear. Two days later he put the chair back out. It was what he called fighting the system.
When my leg had finally healed I set about exploring in earnest, searching for an exit. Nice as it was, the room was still a kind of prison. And after a few weeks I had started to really miss the bookstore, the hum and bustle of a busy Saturday, even the frightening night journeys into the Square, but above all I missed the Rialto and the Lovelies. Jerry had a couple of issues of a magazine called
Peep Show
that I liked to look at, with color pictures of Lovelies almost naked, sometimes on all fours, sometimes not. They often had rugs to lie on, but it was not the same as in the movies.
Peep Show
that I liked to look at, with color pictures of Lovelies almost naked, sometimes on all fours, sometimes not. They often had rugs to lie on, but it was not the same as in the movies.
At first I thought there was no way out of the room, that escape would prove impossible. The crack under the door was too narrow, and though I probably could have gotten down the fire escape, I could never have climbed back up again, and I had no desire to leave for good. Of course I could have just dashed out one day when Jerry opened the door - even with my bad leg I was faster than he was-but that was not what I wanted. I didn’t want to turn on Jerry in that way. I just wanted to know that I could step out whenever I liked, to have that feeling of freedom. And besides, since I had already read all the books in the place at least twice, things could get pretty boring when Jerry was away, a lot of empty afternoons and lonely nights. I had learned from my reading that you can do really awful things when you are bored, things that are bound to make you miserable. In fact you do them in order to
become
miserable, so you won’t have to be bored anymore.
become
miserable, so you won’t have to be bored anymore.
I was close to that point when I started work on the Great Hole. I have learned a lot about holes over time, about where you are likely to find one - ill-fitting light fixtures, loose baseboards, and wherever plumbing has been run through walls or floors - and patient exploration inch by inch had convinced me that in Jerry’s room there was nothing of the sort. The only hole of substance, if
substance
is the word, was a small crack around the drainpipe of the sink, big enough for a fat mouse, just maybe, but not for even the most emaciated of rats. But as heir and student of the ancient Pembroke diggers I was not daunted, and one day while Jerry was out I set about making the little crack into a big crack. I called it Constructing the Great Hole. It was not that hard, really. Decades of dampness had left the wood spongy and eminently gnawable, and in two short days I had the hole finished, edges nicely smoothed and corners rounded. Waiting to try it out, I could scarcely contain my excitement. I paced the room like a madman, pulled out books and left them open on the floor - I couldn’t keep my mind on the words - or gnawed distractedly, and noisily, at the edges of my box. At one point Jerry threw down the newspaper he was reading and shouted at me, ‘For Christsake, Ernie, can’t you sit still for one fuckin’ minute?’ Luckily for our relationship, a little later that afternoon he finally got up, looped on his tie, and left. As soon as I heard the street door open and shut behind him, I lowered myself down. I hated deceiving him like that, but how could I explain? Had I been able to write I might have left him a little note: ‘Dear Jerry, I have eaten a hole in your floor and gone for a small walk. Forgive me and don’t worry. Love, Ernie.’ Or maybe I would have said ‘Your Ernie.’
substance
is the word, was a small crack around the drainpipe of the sink, big enough for a fat mouse, just maybe, but not for even the most emaciated of rats. But as heir and student of the ancient Pembroke diggers I was not daunted, and one day while Jerry was out I set about making the little crack into a big crack. I called it Constructing the Great Hole. It was not that hard, really. Decades of dampness had left the wood spongy and eminently gnawable, and in two short days I had the hole finished, edges nicely smoothed and corners rounded. Waiting to try it out, I could scarcely contain my excitement. I paced the room like a madman, pulled out books and left them open on the floor - I couldn’t keep my mind on the words - or gnawed distractedly, and noisily, at the edges of my box. At one point Jerry threw down the newspaper he was reading and shouted at me, ‘For Christsake, Ernie, can’t you sit still for one fuckin’ minute?’ Luckily for our relationship, a little later that afternoon he finally got up, looped on his tie, and left. As soon as I heard the street door open and shut behind him, I lowered myself down. I hated deceiving him like that, but how could I explain? Had I been able to write I might have left him a little note: ‘Dear Jerry, I have eaten a hole in your floor and gone for a small walk. Forgive me and don’t worry. Love, Ernie.’ Or maybe I would have said ‘Your Ernie.’
Beneath the floor I found the usual dusty canyons between the joists, but no sign, no tooth marks or tunnels, that the ancestors had ever ventured this far. I followed the sloping drainpipe across the floor to where it connected to a much larger pipe that came up through a dark shaft from far below. I pushed a bit of broken plaster over the edge and listened to it ricocheting off the walls of the shaft, followed by silence from a long way down. I figured this was the same shaft and big black pipe that I had used to climb up out of the basement that fateful day so long ago. I had learned a lot more about plumbing since then, because of all the books I had read under HOME IMPROVEMENT. I knew, for example, that this black pipe was the central drain line into which all the sinks and toilets in the building emptied, which is why it was so big, and that it was connected at the top to a smaller vent pipe in the roof that kept a vacuum from forming when someone flushed a toilet. I loved knowing things like that, even though knowing how a toilet works is not the same as flushing one, a pleasure I could only dimly imagine.
In the Dry Sewers of the Mind: Fantasies of an Armchair Plumber.
In the Dry Sewers of the Mind: Fantasies of an Armchair Plumber.
I named this central shaft the Elevator. It went straight down to the basement of Pembroke Books, with stops on every floor. Clambering up and down the shaft was difficult this time, much more difficult than during any previous escalade, and not just because of my damaged leg. I wished it had been just my leg. I often had to pause to catch my breath and I could not hang by my forepaws the way I used to.
That first time down I stopped off at the dentist’s office on the second floor. It had two rooms, a waiting room and a drilling room. It had white walls, a linoleum floor, smooth and oily, and a smell like wet newspaper. In the center of the drilling room stood an enormous chair mounted on a steel pedestal, with the drilling instruments hanging from a rack beside it. There was nothing to eat in either room and nothing to read but a pamphlet on tooth decay with color pictures of rotting teeth. I ran my tongue over my own front teeth - no problems there. I shall die, and centuries from now archaeologists - will there still be archaeologists? - will dig up my long yellow teeth and say, ‘Look at these, Joe, no cavities.’ Like the little boy in the pamphlet who says, smiling brightly, ‘Look, Mom, no cavities!’ Look, Mom, no cavities. Oh, Flo, funny old Flo, she had her ways, ways that seem almost winning now, her odd gait, stupendous snores, and funny-tasting milk. No cavities, but memory, corroding, carious. I notice you do not laugh at my jokes anymore. Where has the laughter gone?
Once I had access to the Elevator I fell into the habit of slipping down to the bookstore whenever Jerry was away. I even started taking in shows at the Rialto again. That was the only establishment in the whole neighborhood where business was actually up. I suppose with so many other places closed down and boarded up there was not much for people to do anymore, so they went to the movies. Jerry sometimes got home before me. He could see that I was taking trips on my own, and he clearly did not mind. He treated me like an equal. I would haul myself up through the hole, and Jerry, sitting at the table, would turn and say something like ‘’Lo, Ernie, how was your walk?’ It broke my heart that at those moments I could not say, ‘Hi, Jerry, it was swell.’
Now that I could reach the bookstore again, I often hung out there at my usual posts during the day, peering down from the Balloon, looking out from the Balcony, always cautious, hidden, just an eye and the tip of my nose showing, and I sometimes spent whole nights there reading. The bookstore was not at all the happy place it had once seemed. An air of defeat hung over it, and a depressing layer of actual dust as well. Shine obviously had not been using his turkey duster lately. No duster and no whistling, and huge bags like bruises under his eyes. And there were not nearly so many customers as before. People just did not come to this part of town anymore. I guess in their minds it was already gone.
Chapter 11
I
t was a beautiful September morning when Jerry took me to the Common the first time. We had just finished our usual breakfast of toast and strong coffee, when he reached up and brought the red wagon down from the pinnacle of boxes. I expected him to load up the waffle iron and toaster that had been lying in the closet for weeks, but instead he pulled down the topmost box from the stack, placed it on the floor, and began taking books out of it and piling them in the wagon. I caught sight of the red and yellow cover of
The Nesting
, the dripping red fangs of the giant rat, but there were also many copies of another book, this one with a plain cardboard cover and the pages falling out. He loaded a bunch of each, and then he picked up the wagon and books together in his arms - he was that strong - and I listened to his footsteps stumping down the stairs. I was on the verge of taking the Elevator down to see what was going on in Pembroke Books, when I heard him stump back up. ‘Come on, Ernie,’ he said. He bent down and scooped. He lifted me onto his shoulder, and, perched there, clinging with one paw to a lock of loose hair, I rode down on him to the sidewalk.
t was a beautiful September morning when Jerry took me to the Common the first time. We had just finished our usual breakfast of toast and strong coffee, when he reached up and brought the red wagon down from the pinnacle of boxes. I expected him to load up the waffle iron and toaster that had been lying in the closet for weeks, but instead he pulled down the topmost box from the stack, placed it on the floor, and began taking books out of it and piling them in the wagon. I caught sight of the red and yellow cover of
The Nesting
, the dripping red fangs of the giant rat, but there were also many copies of another book, this one with a plain cardboard cover and the pages falling out. He loaded a bunch of each, and then he picked up the wagon and books together in his arms - he was that strong - and I listened to his footsteps stumping down the stairs. I was on the verge of taking the Elevator down to see what was going on in Pembroke Books, when I heard him stump back up. ‘Come on, Ernie,’ he said. He bent down and scooped. He lifted me onto his shoulder, and, perched there, clinging with one paw to a lock of loose hair, I rode down on him to the sidewalk.
I had ridden on his shoulder before, around the room, and had always loved it. I liked to pretend that he was a camel and that I was Lawrence. The first time he put me up there, of course, I used the occasion to investigate his temples. After my bad experience with Norman Shine I was not taking anything for granted. But poking around in the undergrowth I had found no crescent ridges, just a reassuringly planar surface somewhat scaly with dandruff, so under Jerry’s picture I had posted HONEST and KIND.
Kneeling beside the wagon, Jerry arranged the books in stacks with their titles facing up. I climbed on top of the tallest stack, and he pulled the wagon and the books and me in the warm sunshine all the way down Tremont Street to the Common, which is how I got into the selling side of the book business again.
Only once before had I seen the human world by daylight, in full sunshine, the tall buildings and the leafy trees and the different-colored flowers and the people passing, and that time I had been nearly numb with fear. This time, riding in Jerry’s wagon, I had no fear and was able to look into people’s faces and up at the trees and feel what I think they call joy. I formulated ‘a beautiful world’ and let it float off into the blue sky, rippling like a banner. Sure, envy was there too, a taste in my mouth bitter as bile - after all, it was not my world - but I swallowed it. People stared at us as we passed, especially at me, and I looked back at them with my black unblinking eyes.
We set up shop next to the Park Street subway station. Jerry propped a cardboard sign against the wagon. It said, in hand-painted letters, BOOK SALE - NEW BOOKS AUTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR. I had, of course, considerable experience with this sort of merchandising effort, and had my advice been asked (if only it could have been!), I would have suggested - tactfully and without playing the know-it-all - that we go out and buttonhole people. I would have said, ‘Jerry, boy, you gotta stick the goods under their fat noses, make ’em cough it up just to get you off their back.’ I would have been like an old grandfather in a movie giving advice to a kid just setting out in the world (I can see him there with his weak chin and slicked-back hair). But Jerry was not pushy like that. As a businessman he was really terrible. He just leaned against the station wall, smoking one cigarette after another, and waited for people to come up. We did not get very many customers that way.
In the afternoon, after the schools let out, a pack of big kids passed on the other side of Park Street, and they shouted across at us, chanting in unison ‘Magoon, Magoon, man from the moon’ over and over. Jerry had a lot of self-control - he did not look once in their direction, and you would never have known that he even heard them. Some smaller kids came by too. They came because of me, and they knelt beside the wagon and talked to me in baby talk and tried to coax me into doing tricks as if I were some kind of monkey. One little moron held out his pencil and said, ‘Bite this, rat, bite this.’ That from a kid who probably stumbled over Dick and Jane - it was really humiliating.
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