The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (3 page)

I asked Theodore Badal if he was an Armenian.

He said, “I am an Assyrian.”

Well, it was something. They, the Assyrians, came from our part of the world, they had noses like our noses, eyes like our eyes, hearts like our hearts. They had a different language. When they spoke we couldn’t understand them, but they were a lot like us. It wasn’t quite as pleasing as it would have been if Badal had been an Armenian, but it was something.

“I am an Armenian,” I said. “I used to know some Assyrian boys in my home town, Joseph Sargis, Nito Elia, Tony Saleh. Do you know any of them?”

“Joseph Sargis, I know him,” said Badal. “The others I do not know. We lived in New York until
five years ago, then we came out west to Turlock. Then we moved up to San Francisco.”

“Nito Elia,” I said, “is a Captain in the Salvation Army.” (I don’t want anyone to imagine that I am making anything up, or that I am trying to be funny.) “Tony Saleh,” I said, “was killed eight years ago. He was riding a horse and he was thrown and the horse began to run. Tony couldn’t get himself free, he was caught by a leg, and the horse ran around and around for a half hour and then stopped, and when they went up to Tony he was dead. He was fourteen at the time. I used to go to school with him. Tony was a very clever boy, very good at arithmetic.”

We began to talk about the Assyrian language and the Armenian language, about the old world, conditions over there, and so on. I was getting a fifteen-cent haircut and I was doing my best to learn something at the same time, to acquire some new truth, some new appreciation of the wonder of life, the dignity of man. (Man has great dignity, do not imagine that he has not.)

Badal said, “I cannot read Assyrian. I was born in the old country, but I want to get over it.”

He sounded tired, not physically but spiritually.

“Why?” I said. “Why do you want to get over it?”

“Well,” he laughed, “simply because everything is washed up over there.” I am repeating his words precisely, putting in nothing of my own. “We were a great people once,” he went on. “But that was yesterday, the day before yesterday. Now we are a topic in ancient history. We had a great civilization. They’re still admiring it. Now I am in America learning how
to cut hair. We’re washed up as a race, we’re through, it’s all over, why should I learn to read the language? We have no writers, we have no news—well, there is a little news: once in a while the English encourage the Arabs to massacre us, that is all. It’s an old story, we know all about it. The news comes over to us through the Associated Press, anyway.”

These remarks were very painful to me, an Armenian. I had always felt badly about my own people being destroyed. I had never heard an Assyrian speaking in English about such things. I felt great love for this young fellow. Don’t get me wrong. There is a tendency these days to think in terms of pansies whenever a man says that he has affection for man. I think now that I have affection for all people, even for the enemies of Armenia, whom I have so tactfully not named. Everyone knows who they are. I have nothing against any of them because I think of them as one man living one life at a time, and I know, I am positive, that one man at a time is incapable of the monstrosities performed by mobs. My objection is to mobs only.

“Well,” I said, “it is much the same with us. We, too, are old. We still have our church. We still have a few writers, Aharonian, Isahakian, a few others, but it is much the same.”

“Yes,” said the barber, “I know. We went in for the wrong things. We went in for the simple things, peace and quiet and families. We didn’t go in for machinery and conquest and militarism. We didn’t go in for diplomacy and deceit and the invention of machine-guns and poison gases. Well, there is no use
in being disappointed. We had our day, I suppose.”

“We are hopeful,” I said. “There is no Armenian living who does not still dream of an independent Armenia.”

“Dream?” said Badal. “Well, that is something. Assyrians cannot even dream any more. Why, do you know how many of us are left on earth?”

“Two or three million,” I suggested.

“Seventy thousand,” said Badal. “That is all. Seventy thousand Assyrians in the world, and the Arabs are still killing us. They killed seventy of us in a little uprising last month. There was a small paragraph in the paper. Seventy more of us destroyed. We’ll be wiped out before long. My brother is married to an American girl and he has a son. There is no more hope. We are trying to forget Assyria. My father still reads a paper that comes from New York, but he is an old man. He will be dead soon.”

Then his voice changed, he ceased speaking as an Assyrian and began to speak as a barber: “Have I taken enough off the top?” he asked.

The rest of the story is pointless. I said
so long
to the young Assyrian and left the shop. I walked across town, four miles, to my room on Carl Street. I thought about the whole business: Assyria and this Assyrian, Theodore Badal, learning to be a barber, the sadness of his voice, the hopelessness of his attitude. This was months ago, in August, but ever since I have been thinking about Assyria, and I have been wanting to say something about Theodore Badal, a son of an ancient race, himself youthful and alert, yet hopeless. Seventy thousand Assyrians, a mere seventy thousand of that
great people, and all the others quiet in death and all the greatness crumbled and ignored, and a young man in America learning to be a barber, and a young man lamenting bitterly the course of history.

Why don’t I make up plots and write beautiful love stories that can be made into motion pictures? Why don’t I let these unimportant and boring matters go hang? Why don’t I try to please the American reading public?

Well, I am an Armenian. Michael Arlen is an Armenian, too. He is pleasing the public. I have great admiration for him, and I think he has perfected a very fine style of writing and all that, but I don’t want to write about the people he likes to write about. Those people were dead to begin with. You take Iowa and the Japanese boy and Theodore Badal, the Assyrian; well, they may go down physically, like Iowa, to death, or spiritually, like Badal, to death, but they are of the stuff that is eternal in man and it is this stuff that interests me. You don’t find them in bright places, making witty remarks about sex and trivial remarks about art. You find them where I found them, and they will be there forever, the race of man, the part of man, of Assyria as much as of England, that cannot be destroyed, the part that massacre does not destroy, the part that earthquake and war and famine and madness and everything else cannot destroy.

This work is in tribute to Iowa, to Japan, to Assyria, to Armenia, to the race of man everywhere, to the dignity of that race, the brotherhood of things alive. I am not expecting Paramount Pictures to film
this work. I am thinking of seventy thousand Assyrians, one at a time, alive, a great race. I am thinking of Theodore Badal, himself seventy thousand Assyrians and seventy million Assyrians, himself Assyria, and man, standing in a barber shop, in San Francisco, in 1933, and being, still, himself, the whole race.

At a table in a far corner of the room Paul smoked a cigarette, looking into
New Bearings in English Poetry
, absorbing random phrases,
accuse him of sentimental evasions . . . meditations upon a deterministic universe. . . . Hardy’s great poetry . . . the impulse . . . Ezra Pound . . . Hugh Selwyn Mauberly
. . . .

He slipped the small book into his coat pocket and walked beyond the swinging doors, into Number One Opera Alley. Red, the bookie-clerk was telling a fellow how once, three years ago, he had been stabbed by a crazy Russian who had lost twenty dollars on the ponies. A month in the hospital, Red said. We didn’t
prosecute because it would have given the “Kentucky” a bad name. The Russian cried and said he would never come down to Third Street again, so we let it go at that. For a while they thought I was going to die.

He grinned tightly, smiling. This place is like home, he said. The boys caught him at the
Examiner
corner. My friends, all the boys who know me. They were going to kill him.

Red looked around to see if anyone was listening. Do you know, he said, when I was in the hospital I worried about that crazy Russian? He came into this place all of a sudden and started to make bets, the craziest bets you ever did see a man make, long shots, impossible horses. I told him once or twice to take it easy, but he was out to make a killing. Then he went broke and sat on that bench over there, looking at me. I could tell he was going nuts, but I didn’t know he had a knife. I thought he might make a pass at me and I would let him have one on the chin. When the races were over and all the fellows had beat it, he was still sitting on the bench, looking at me. Then I
knew
he was nuts. He got me right below the heart, but do you know, after he had stuck the knife in me, I began to worry about him. I had an idea I would get over the wound all right, but this nut, this Russian, the way he looked after he had done it. He began to jabber in Russian, and then he beat it down the alley, with Pat and Brown chasing him.

Paul went over to Red. You never told me that
story, he said. What did you think, right after he stabbed you?

I didn’t think anything, Red said. I began to swear because I had planned to go out to the beach with my wife that night. It made me sore because I wouldn’t be able to go out to the beach. I knew it was a cut that would send me to the hospital, and I began to swear.

Through the swinging doors Paul returned to the table in the corner, waiting for Lambough. Smithy, whose neck was as fat as his head, walked among the card tables, crying out every now and then, Seat here for a player . . . one more seat. Paul watched the men coming and going, counting their nickels, talking to themselves, the way it is with petty gamblers. He opened the book again, coming upon
existlessness, modulation, shift of stress and rhyme
. Then he rose and sauntered about the room, studying the men and remembering fragments of their talk.
There is a horse in the seventh at Latonia, Dark Sea. I like Foxhall. Yesterday, three winners, but I was broke. A small fortune
.

The small Irish waiter, called Alabama, was carrying coffee to a table, looking dully at nothing and asking: How many sugars?

Paul stood in the smoke, waiting for Lambough. It was almost eleven and the appointment was for ten-thirty. Paul handed his package of cigarettes to a thin consumptive Jew. Take several, he suggested, and the Jew smiled and asked how it had been with Paul.

Graceless, said Paul. The Jew groaned and lit a cigarette.

I sell flowers in the streets, he said, and there is a law against it. Saturday night they took me to jail. I just got out. Two nights. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I felt dirty. All night the men yell. Is it wrong to sell flowers?

Hardly, said Paul. Tell me about the jail.

He led the way to the table in the corner, and the Jew sat across from him.

It is not for us, that place, the Jew said. They put me in a cesspool with three others. One was a beggar. I don’t know what the others were, but they looked bad. I don’t mean they were criminals. Bad, they themselves. All night I felt like a man in a room with frogs, warty things, and I kept holding the door and crying. I am ashamed. It is not often that I cry, but it was rotten. In another cell . . . but it is too rotten.

Go ahead, said Paul. I’ve never been in jail. Tell me what it is like.

In the next room, said the Jew, were two pansies. And the other two men, they were talking to those fellows . . . I mean whispering and begging, and the pansies were saying
no
, just like cheap women. I didn’t know men were really that way. I thought it was just talk, joking. And in all the rooms was that dirty laughter. I was sick all the time, and I had no cigarettes.

What food did they bring you? Paul asked.

Slop . . . dirt . . .

Bread?

Yes, bread, but I couldn’t eat. Only the bread was fit to eat, but I was too sick.

Do you remember any of the things the men said at night? Did they sing?

Yes, said the Jew.

Any religious songs?

Yes, religious, with dirty words.

Did anyone pray?

I heard only cussing, said the Jew.

Across the room Paul saw Lambough walking slowly, holding a copy of the morning paper. He came soberly to the table and sat down without a word.

This man just got out of jail, Paul said. He sells flowers. They put him in Saturday.

Lambough glanced at the Jew and asked him if he felt all right. It seemed to him that the Jew must be very ill.

I feel better, the Jew said. Anything is better than that place.

What are you going to do? Lambough asked.

The Jew coughed. I’ll try again. If they catch me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t beg.

Paul said to Lambough, How much money have we?

I’ve got sixty cents, Lambough said.

The Jew got to his feet. Thanks for the cigarettes, he said to Paul.

We’re almost broke, Paul said. Can you use a quarter?

He brought some small change from his pants pocket.

Thanks, said the Jew. I’ll try again. If they come after me, I’ll run.

He hurried away from the table in confusion. Lambough watched him walk away. Everybody around here is either sick or cracked, he said. That poor fellow is ready to keel. What’d he say?

Nearly killed him, the jail, said Paul.

I went up to a place on Jones Street, said Lambough. They had an ad in the paper for a student to work for room and board. I didn’t get the job.

But you
are
a student, said Paul. You had a right to go up. By the way, what
are
you studying?

Starvation, said Lambough. Sure I’m a student. I felt lucky not to get the job, though. It was a cheap rooming house. They hired a Willy from Manila.

What’s on your mind? Paul asked.

Nothing, as usual, said Lambough. I’m just killing time.

Do you think we’ll ever get jobs?

Oh, said Lambough, it’s a cinch.

So it looks bad, said Paul.

Well, said Lambough, it doesn’t look good. Everything looks the same as ever, only more well-dressed men are begging in the streets. I had a talk with that girl up on Eddy Street. We get to sleep in the waiting-room again if business is slow.

How was she? said Paul.

Who? said Lambough. The girl? Oh, fine; she looked all right.

What can you think of to talk about? Paul asked.

You know me, said Lambough. One thing or the next. I know a little about everything.

Paul slipped
New Bearings in English Poetry
from his coat pocket. What do you know about English poetry? he asked Lambough.

What? said Lambough. You don’t want to go on discussing economics?

Nuts, said Paul. We covered all that.

Yes, said Lambough, but what has English poetry got to do with us?

Nothing has anything much to do with us, said Paul. We’re a bit out of the picture at the moment. So you don’t know anything about English poetry? Did you ever hear of T. S. Eliot?

No, said Lambough. What about him?

Well, said Paul, he is a pretty fine poet.

Well, what of it? said Lambough. Who cares?

I mean, said Paul, if you knew something about him, we could talk and kill time. As it is, tell me about Ireland. You’re Irish, aren’t you?

Sure I’m Irish, said Lambough, but what the hell, I was born in Kansas. I’ve never seen Ireland.

All right, said Paul. Tell me how you imagine Ireland to be. It’s a long time till midnight. We’ve got to talk about something. Ireland is a good subject.

He began to listen to Lambough explaining that he knew nothing about Ireland, except maybe what he had gathered from Irish songs, most of them written in America by Jews and others. Once every year, he thought, while Lambough talked, to be among the lost, to know how it feels to be out of things, to have no present, no future, to belong nowhere, to be suspended between day and night, waiting.

At midnight, he thought, I will go with this boy
to that waiting-room and try to sleep in a chair, Smithy shouting, Seat here for a player . . . one more seat, and the petty gamblers coming and going, Lambough talking in the morning about Ireland, the sick Jew in jail, Red stabbed by the crazy Russian, sentimental evasions,
the winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways
, meditations upon a deterministic universe,
the readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
, the impulse,
when Mr. Apollinax visited the United States his laughter tinkled among the teacups
, the day dwindling amid talk, the country perishing, all the young men waiting, hunger marches,
as she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter
, Ezra Pound, the American in France,
an old man in a dry month, being read to by a boy, waiting for rain, defunctive music under sea, the smoky candle end of time declines
, democratic progress, the Jew in jail, holding the door and crying,
in the beginning was the Word, for Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro
, the small Jew weeping, a flower peddler among beggars and homo-sexuals, meditations amid the smoke and ruins of a deterministic universe, the crazy Russian running down Opera Alley, and Red bleeding,
wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh
, and laugh, and laugh, the little Jew standing in the filth, holding the door and weeping, everyone waiting everywhere,
there will be time to murder and create, and indeed there will be time
, there will be time, a young man listening to the talk of another young man, waiting for national recovery,
time to murder and create
.