Firmin (8 page)
Authors: Sam Savage
Tags: #Rats, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #Books and Reading, #Fantasy, #General
There was another interesting aspect of the book business, one that brought Norman closer to the hidden projectionist at the Rialto. You see, besides the good used books on the shelves and the very used books in the basement and the rare books in the glass-fronted cabinets, there were also books in the old iron safe in front of the Rathole. These were the banned books, white-covered paperbacks published by Olympia Press and Obelisk Press and smuggled in from Paris. They had titles like
Tropic of Cancer, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Ginger Man, Naked Lunch, My Life and Loves
. The customers for these books spoke the names in whispers. If Norman knew the customer, or after sizing him up (they were all men) decided to trust him, off would come the Friar Tuck disguise: Norman’s round eyes would narrow, his little pocketbook mouth would flatten to a hard slit. It was like watching a different movie - here was the secret agent of the French underground handing out forged papers, or perhaps an underworld fence passing stolen diamonds. ‘Just a moment,’ he would say, and he would shoot a quick glance around. Then, crouching in front of the safe so as to hide its contents from view, he would deftly angle the contraband into a plain brown bag, one without PEMBROKE BOOKS written on it, but not before a whiff of Paris - Gauloise Bleu and red wine and car exhaust - had wafted up from the open safe to mingle with the coffee smell on the ceiling. And I thought, Good old Norman, striking a blow for freedom. Which shows that even before meeting Jerry Magoon I was a revolutionary at heart. It also shows that I was hiding from myself the obvious fact that, besides the blow for freedom, Norman was making a killing. He was, I now understand, a mixed character. But in those days the only mixed character I had an eye for was myself
Tropic of Cancer, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Ginger Man, Naked Lunch, My Life and Loves
. The customers for these books spoke the names in whispers. If Norman knew the customer, or after sizing him up (they were all men) decided to trust him, off would come the Friar Tuck disguise: Norman’s round eyes would narrow, his little pocketbook mouth would flatten to a hard slit. It was like watching a different movie - here was the secret agent of the French underground handing out forged papers, or perhaps an underworld fence passing stolen diamonds. ‘Just a moment,’ he would say, and he would shoot a quick glance around. Then, crouching in front of the safe so as to hide its contents from view, he would deftly angle the contraband into a plain brown bag, one without PEMBROKE BOOKS written on it, but not before a whiff of Paris - Gauloise Bleu and red wine and car exhaust - had wafted up from the open safe to mingle with the coffee smell on the ceiling. And I thought, Good old Norman, striking a blow for freedom. Which shows that even before meeting Jerry Magoon I was a revolutionary at heart. It also shows that I was hiding from myself the obvious fact that, besides the blow for freedom, Norman was making a killing. He was, I now understand, a mixed character. But in those days the only mixed character I had an eye for was myself
All these new experiences got a tremendous battle going in my mind between Pembroke Books and the Rialto. To me they were like rival temples vying for my worship - sages and arhats on the one hand, angels on the other. Sometimes I gave in to the one and sometimes I gave in to the other. And when I gave in to the Rialto side I would often stay on right through the night. That way I could catch the daytime features without having to walk the streets in daylight. Among the continuously recycled black-and-white movies, besides Charlie Chan and Gene Autry, were westerns, gangster movies, and musicals, films with Joan Fontaine, Paulette Godard, James Cagney, Abbott and Costello, and Fred Astaire. The projectionist must have had a soft spot for Fred Astaire, he showed so many of his movies, and it was not long before I had a soft spot for him too. When his movies were showing I always stayed on. I was sure the projectionist was another guardian of the mysteries, like Norman. Two temples, two priests. I longed to catch a glimpse of him, but I never did.
Fred Astaire became my shining example - his walk, his talk, his tastes. So I naturally developed a soft spot for Ginger Rogers too, and I put her in with my Lovelies. It happened now and then that a movie with her in it was the last thing showing before the apotheosis at midnight. Dressed in a floating gown and clasping Astaire’s outstretched hand, the bejeweled and apparently weightless Ginger, suspended in
arabesque pench’
, would suddenly vanish, wrapped in a cloud of night like Eurydice. And I, huddled in the coughing, shuffling darkness that had swallowed her up, would imagine that she had disappeared forever. And I experienced real - not imagined - grief. In fact, I would manage to work up a pretty good head of emotional steam, when suddenly, accompanied by the whirr of the projector - a sound that had become as stirring as Wagner’s
Ride of the Valkyries -
there she would be again, back from the dead, naked and assumed into heaven, writhing on a rug. It was magical. I longed to approach her as a supplicant, a stemless rose in my paws, and humbly place the blossom in the little vase of her navel, like an offering. But I guess all that emotion, all that yearning, was too enormous for my little frame to bear, and on those nights, coming home to my dusty hovel in the ceiling of the bookshop, I would grow terribly depressed. Unrequited love is bad, but unrequitable love can really get you down.
arabesque pench’
, would suddenly vanish, wrapped in a cloud of night like Eurydice. And I, huddled in the coughing, shuffling darkness that had swallowed her up, would imagine that she had disappeared forever. And I experienced real - not imagined - grief. In fact, I would manage to work up a pretty good head of emotional steam, when suddenly, accompanied by the whirr of the projector - a sound that had become as stirring as Wagner’s
Ride of the Valkyries -
there she would be again, back from the dead, naked and assumed into heaven, writhing on a rug. It was magical. I longed to approach her as a supplicant, a stemless rose in my paws, and humbly place the blossom in the little vase of her navel, like an offering. But I guess all that emotion, all that yearning, was too enormous for my little frame to bear, and on those nights, coming home to my dusty hovel in the ceiling of the bookshop, I would grow terribly depressed. Unrequited love is bad, but unrequitable love can really get you down.
I wouldn’t eat for two days. I would read Byron. I would read
Wuthering Heights
. I changed my name to Heathcliff. I lay on my back. I looked at my toes. After that I would throw myself into my work with increased energy. I was Jay Gatsby. I showed a great capacity for bouncing back. I carried on with business. Outwardly I was my old affable self, and who could know that I was hiding a broken heart?
Wuthering Heights
. I changed my name to Heathcliff. I lay on my back. I looked at my toes. After that I would throw myself into my work with increased energy. I was Jay Gatsby. I showed a great capacity for bouncing back. I carried on with business. Outwardly I was my old affable self, and who could know that I was hiding a broken heart?
Every morning Norman and I read the
Boston Globe
. We read it all the way through, including the want ads. I became informed about the world, I became a well-informed citizen, and when the paper referred to ‘the general public,’ I felt a little pang of narcissistic pride. I learned to orient myself in space: when I stood facing the glass cabinet my nose drove a wedge toward Provincetown across the bay, and my tail sent a spear along Route 2 to Fitchburg. And in time: just behind me lay the election of a Catholic as president of the United States, the crash of a spy plane in Russia, a massacre in South Africa, while in front of me, according to the
Globe
, loomed nuclear annihilation, shorter skirts, and a lot of new movies.
Boston Globe
. We read it all the way through, including the want ads. I became informed about the world, I became a well-informed citizen, and when the paper referred to ‘the general public,’ I felt a little pang of narcissistic pride. I learned to orient myself in space: when I stood facing the glass cabinet my nose drove a wedge toward Provincetown across the bay, and my tail sent a spear along Route 2 to Fitchburg. And in time: just behind me lay the election of a Catholic as president of the United States, the crash of a spy plane in Russia, a massacre in South Africa, while in front of me, according to the
Globe
, loomed nuclear annihilation, shorter skirts, and a lot of new movies.
Closer to home, I learned how the Red Sox were doing and about the plans for the disappearance of Scollay Square. Disappearance by means of the persistent application of heavy machinery. This was a hard thing to read about, especially for me. After all, this was the only life I had ever known. Where would I be without the bookstore, without the Rialto? And I could tell it was hard on Norman too, because he talked about it a lot. He talked about it with tall, balding Alvin Sweat, owner of Sweat’s Sweets next door, and with adipose and balding George Vahradyan, who ran an amalgamation of drugstore and carpet emporium across the street called Drugs and Rugs. Some days, according to the
Globe
, the destruction was imminent, and some days it was projected, and some days it was impending. On rainy days, when there were no customers, it must have been just plain threatening, because on those days the three bald heads would bob around Norman’s desk below the Balloon, drink his coffee, talk about what was going to happen - and when it was going to happen and what in God’s name they were going to do after it had happened - and complain. Alvin had a weakness for colorful language and George had a weakness for big cigars, and standing around the desk talking to Norman, Alvin’s ‘flying fucks,’ ‘asses from elbows,’ and ‘busted nuts,’ would mingle with George’s cigar smoke and both would float up to the ceiling, where they mixed with the smells of coffee and Paris. These conversations naturally did nothing to save the neighborhood, and they usually left Norman and me so depressed we would just bury ourselves in work, taking out books and wiping them with a cloth, if nothing else. That was, of course, Norman. As for me, I lay on my back in bed and worked on my poem ‘Ode to Night.’ It began ‘Hail, Darkness.’
Globe
, the destruction was imminent, and some days it was projected, and some days it was impending. On rainy days, when there were no customers, it must have been just plain threatening, because on those days the three bald heads would bob around Norman’s desk below the Balloon, drink his coffee, talk about what was going to happen - and when it was going to happen and what in God’s name they were going to do after it had happened - and complain. Alvin had a weakness for colorful language and George had a weakness for big cigars, and standing around the desk talking to Norman, Alvin’s ‘flying fucks,’ ‘asses from elbows,’ and ‘busted nuts,’ would mingle with George’s cigar smoke and both would float up to the ceiling, where they mixed with the smells of coffee and Paris. These conversations naturally did nothing to save the neighborhood, and they usually left Norman and me so depressed we would just bury ourselves in work, taking out books and wiping them with a cloth, if nothing else. That was, of course, Norman. As for me, I lay on my back in bed and worked on my poem ‘Ode to Night.’ It began ‘Hail, Darkness.’
The neighborhood - which the
Globe
sometimes called ‘historic’ but more often referred to as ‘blighted’ and even ‘rat infested’ (true!) - was a bulwark in the path of progress, so the mayor and the city council wanted to move it out of the way, and it seemed that the best way of doing that would be to flatten it and then cover it over with cement. The
Globe
published some drawings of how Boston was going to look when they finished, when it would gleam like Miami across the gray waters of the harbor. They planned to replace Scollay Square with a large flat piece of concrete, and on top of that, to frighten people, they were going to put government buildings, like forts. Norman looked at the pictures of the buildings in the paper and just shook his head. And above him in the Balloon I shook my head too.
Globe
sometimes called ‘historic’ but more often referred to as ‘blighted’ and even ‘rat infested’ (true!) - was a bulwark in the path of progress, so the mayor and the city council wanted to move it out of the way, and it seemed that the best way of doing that would be to flatten it and then cover it over with cement. The
Globe
published some drawings of how Boston was going to look when they finished, when it would gleam like Miami across the gray waters of the harbor. They planned to replace Scollay Square with a large flat piece of concrete, and on top of that, to frighten people, they were going to put government buildings, like forts. Norman looked at the pictures of the buildings in the paper and just shook his head. And above him in the Balloon I shook my head too.
Destroying that much of the city was going to be a big job. The buildings were old and had deep roots and did not want to go. So the mayor and the city council went looking for the right man, someone who understood the difficulties of applying heavy machinery to very old buildings and narrow streets, and they found Edward Logue. He was nicknamed the Bombardier, because that was what he had been during World War II. In a B-24. So he had had firsthand experience with the largest urban renewal project in human history. He sent the mayor and the city council pictures of Stuttgart and Dresden and told them, ‘I can make Scollay Square look like that.’ He got the job. They put a huge photo of him in the paper, standing next to the mayor. They were holding hands, but they were not looking at each other - they were smiling at the camera. Logue was the man for the cataclysm. When I saw the picture, I couldn’t stop myself from dressing him up in the uniform of the Wehrmacht, and then I promoted him to general. And so life wore on. We kept one eye on the business and one on General Logue, and a sense of doom began to gather around us like a poison mist.
Chapter 6
P
embroke Books was a very well-known bookshop, the kind of place famous people sometimes visit. More than once I had heard Norman tell about how Jack Kennedy, who had become president of the United States, used to drop in for coffee and a chat when he was just a congressman, and also Ted Williams, who was a famous hitter for the Red Sox. I didn’t care much about them. But Norman also liked to tell people about the time the famous playwright Arthur Miller stopped in to buy a copy of his own play. I wished I could have been there. I kept hoping he would come back, or if not him somebody else - John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, or even Grace Metalious. None of them lived that far away. And then there was Robert Lowell, who lived around the corner. But he never came either.
embroke Books was a very well-known bookshop, the kind of place famous people sometimes visit. More than once I had heard Norman tell about how Jack Kennedy, who had become president of the United States, used to drop in for coffee and a chat when he was just a congressman, and also Ted Williams, who was a famous hitter for the Red Sox. I didn’t care much about them. But Norman also liked to tell people about the time the famous playwright Arthur Miller stopped in to buy a copy of his own play. I wished I could have been there. I kept hoping he would come back, or if not him somebody else - John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, or even Grace Metalious. None of them lived that far away. And then there was Robert Lowell, who lived around the corner. But he never came either.
Only one writer ever came in during my tenure and he was a disappointment at first. He was not famous yet, and Alvin, talking to Norman one day when the writer had just left the shop, called him ‘that bohemian character.’ At that time I was still in my bourgeois phase and so this was not yet an appellation that I aspired to. Norman also once described him as an experimental novelist, though he might have meant that as a joke. At other times he called him a crackpot and a drunk. This writer lived upstairs from the bookstore, though I did not know that yet - I did not even know there was an upstairs. You reached his place through a doorway between Pembroke Books and the Tattoo Palace. This doorway was under ROOMS and the door itself had frosted glass on its top half and DR LIEBERMAN PAINLESS DENTIST written in a semicircle of gold letters on the glass. Usually when this writer stopped in the store he was on his way someplace else, often faraway places like Harvard Square across the river in Cambridge, and he was going there on a very old bicycle with a large wire basket in front. It had green fenders and between the bars a little white button for the horn. I don’t know if the horn worked. He often left the bicycle leaning against the store window, despite the fact that Norman had asked him not to. I did not know how to admire that trait yet, so I took Norman’s side and at first did not feel a lot of respect for this writer. He was not at all a young man and I thought he had better hurry if he was going to be famous. That’s how bourgeois I was. He was the only man I had ever seen with hair to his shoulders. It was gray and thinning and bound at the top by a blue headband like an Indian’s. Otherwise he did not look anything like an Indian. His name was Jerry Magoon. He was a short stocky man with a big head. He had a small Irish nose, a big drooping mustache over a wide thin-lipped mouth, and blue eyes, one of which was always staring off to the side. People could never be sure if he was looking at them or not. And he always wore the same rumpled blue suit and black knit tie. This gave him an oddly contradictory appearance, as if on the one hand he was trying to be neat and proper and on the other hand he was sleeping in his clothes.
Except for the suit and tie, he looked like a prospector in one of the Rialto westerns and before I learned his name I always called him the Prospector. Later I called him the Smartest Man in the World. He came often during my tenure at the store. He was one of the regulars, and he always hung around a long time, usually in the basement, where the cheapest books were, pulling volumes out of the shelves, leafing through them, and putting them back, and sometimes, when he found one he liked, he would read it all the way through just standing there. While he read he mumbled to himself and wagged his big head. It was a long bike ride to Cambridge and he was a pretty old man, so I supposed he was in no hurry to get going. And Norman didn’t seem to mind. After a while it occurred to me that Norman was in fact quite fond of the writer, so I got fond of him too.
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