On the morning of what would eventually turn out to be the last day of happiness

in my life, I awoke knowing this day would be different than most other days. On this
day, I awoke at the same time, at the exact same hour at which I always awoke; yet while
I awoke in the same manner and in the same place on a day that I knew would be
different than any other day, this was a day that I assumed would be very much the same
as all the other days, as all days were different just as all days were always the same. And
so I awoke to the light, to the darkness, to the sounds and the silence that always greeted
me when I awoke.
And on this day, like most days, I awoke to a dream; I awoke wrapped in a dream,
I awoke in the midst of a dream, isolated in an unknown landscape of some indescribable
place that was nevertheless all too familiar; like something you own but never look at,
like the bottoms of your feet, there was not a single feature in this landscape I was in that
I did not own simply through the mere utterance of some word, perhaps nothing more
than a grunt or a whistle; I was a part of this place, perhaps the sovereign or even the
deity of this place, although nothing suggested that I had any such privilege or sanctity;
and there were people here, people who appeared only when I looked very closely at the
seemingly blank landscape below me, which at first was nothing but a dark featureless
desert, but then I looked more closely, or rather I looked at it in a different way, such as

2
when you stare just above the surface of something, and I found that I was looking at the
heads and shoulders of thousands of people, all gathered below me, a vast carpet of
people all amassed in every direction, a continental mob of people, all of them moving,
all whispering, all talking, all doing something I knew not what but I was assured in my
own mind they were all doing something of my bidding even though not a single one of
them seemed aware of my existence, not one looked up to me as I looked down on them,
they all moved about and jostled about and milled and jittered about, their movement
creating a life that spread out over acres and acres that subtly, now that I was looking
more closely, pulsed and roiled and teemed with a vitality that belonged to the mass and
not to any individual, until they all, everyone of them at once stopped what they were
doing, the entire field of people suddenly stopped and the mass turned a single color as if
a shadow had fallen across the land, then it lightened in its hue as the faces looked up, as
every single face in that expanse of thousands looked up at me, as if waiting for me, as if
expecting me to do, to say something, but what was it I was supposed to do? I asked
myself, my arms were heavy and motionless. What was I supposed to say? I asked
myself, my tongue was thick and useless. Yet I was certain that I had brought them here,
that I had delivered this mass of people, that I had created this continent of humanity yet
suddenly I knew not what for and then I felt it rising in my chest, I felt it climbing my
throat, I heard it rushing towards my mouth, a cry, a whine, an uncontrollable squeal.
Weeee all wee weeeee punctually: Mr. Harts kettle sang through the wall of the
next apartment.
And so hmmmm. Yes. I awoke at the exact same hour I always awoke, which on
this day was just before dawn, immediately knowing in my wakefulness that this day

3
would be different from most other days, at the same time knowing that while today was
going to be different, this day was destined as most days are destined to essentially be the
same as any other day; and so knowing that this day like all days could very well bring
forth some if not many things different than any other day, I knew that this day would
mostly likely stay the same and so be like most days; therefore I was feeling nothing but
a certain forgetful and vague sort of bliss from the moment I awoke, and so began my
first wakeful moment on this day, a moment filled with happiness as with every one of
my awakenings, yet perhaps even happier than usual, knowing that today would most
likely be just like the other days I had come to know and expect, and I was perhaps even
happier still knowing that this day could in fact be different than most other days, and yet
my god! perhaps I was happiest most of all because I did not know just how different this
day would be, and mon dieu! was even happier yet in that I had no idea that this would in
fact be the last day of happiness that I would know.
And so, merrily, cheerfully I got up to take a piss outside.

Sir Tommy Crapper,

e as a wee box,
On top o is lap sir!

-- crooned the morning cloud of Dougherty looming large and loud from the
water c. Vast and perspiring, Dougherty broadcast his own cheerfulness in both his jingle
and his bounce as he began climbing towards me on the stairs.

4
And so yes this was a morning just like every morning, the morning of a day that I
knew could be so different than any other day, yet like all mornings, on this morning, I
dreamily asked the very same questions: Was I awake or was this all still a dream?
Should I be taking notice of symbols veiled as fat men in their nightclothes? Would I see
a sky today from which I could glim either from clouds or sun a certain small victory
coming my way? What animals would appear to proffer me a sign? What words from
strangers should I seek to decipher? What sign, what clue, what direction should I seek?
Or would this just be like every other day? I had to turn sideways to let the stout
sewerman pass; Dougherty nodded his head, his plump lips busily pursed around his
toilet ditty:

Where e keeps safe

Under both key n lock
That dirty secret
To is ball-a-cock!

A throaty laugh casts an echo deep down the stairwell and back. Stuffed full the
night before with his Polish wifes supper of bone stewed in cabbage and turnips as
always, she had offered me a plate the immensely regular part-time sewer-rooter sang
without a mind of those still slumbering as he lumbered up another flight of the steps,
pushed ever upward by the faint light below, scratching his massive bum through his
night shirt, from his bare calves to the trunks of his thighs pimpled and bug-bitten, his
song punctuated by a last gassy note squeaking jubilantly from behind. Like all men,

5
Dougherty relished his morning meditations and since we had recently gained a second
hand toilet that flushed with water the result of a new city ordinance, not the
managements largesse men like Dougherty descended these steps in the wee hours
with joyous anticipation then climbed them again with triumphant relief.
Fact was, as with every other day, I expected no guidance, no sign or symbol. I
was comfortable in a world without fate. We all grasped chance as the staff of our
happiness, no longer did we search the stars, open our dreams or seek out meanings in
cards or lines in our hands. Indeed what fate was there to be had or believed in when
probability so stochastically drive the inner tickings of the world, a Bortkiewiczian horse
kick, an overheated cannon, when luck greeted us at every step, could fall upon us at
anytime, bring us fortune in a myriad of ways small and large. A man could entirely by
chance become rich, he could find love, by chance he could win in a game of cards, by
chance he could find a bit in the street, he could save a gentlemens life and receive a
reward, by chance he could be promoted if someone falls and breaks a bone, by chance
he could see his daughter marry a man of some small but sufficient means. By chance we
are wrought from the struggle of sperm and ovum, by chance we survive germs and
asteroids to grow old, by chance we succeed and by chance we fail. Chance, unlike fate,
is measurable, it is something that can be calculated, rendered to formula, it bends to
science, it is based on laws of physics and nature, whereas what is fate but something
wrenched from dreams, something created out of myth, woven out of the threads of
religion and weakness and fear. You could bet on fate, but that was a bet you always lost.
Chance on the other hand had a happy tone to it, if chance had bells they tolled not for
death or gloom, they pealed instead for all the hope of victory, for all that was possible,

6
all that could be, all that might possibly benefit us and make those many dreams come
true. And so lucky was I that I had chance as my profession and as my guide, as my sole
source of navigating this world. A blessed profession that gave me reasons each and
every morning to be nothing but hopeful, to feel nothing but happiness. As it was in the
minute and the obvious, the far-fetched and the certain, in the absolute and the negligible,
in the small and the large, it too was in the improbable and the definite of chance that I
found my most blissful purpose.
Having now descended the stairs and so facing the door to the small airless privy
just frequented by the mighty Dougherty, I hesitated. A strange stink was tolerable, but to
share in the reek of someone familiar was an intimacy that I would personally rather
avoid. So I chose to wait as my own needs were not too terribly pressing. Unlike many
of the others, I did take my morning stroll to the WC in my night clothes, instead I
dressed in some old pants and a flannel shirt, shoes even, with no cause for worry if
someone should see me or should I discover something of interest in the early morning
warrens. So while waiting for those fumes to rise and dissipate, I took a short stroll, well
not really more than a dozen steps, out into the dark morning, stopping to lean against the
short brick wall that favored our walk to the street. With my elbows perched atop the wall
and my head in my hands, I looked across the yard between the tenements, a small but
wasted space, a no-mans area at night, as people braving the wee hours slinked past on
the dimly lighted walkway hugging the walls of the tenement buildings. The fog rolled
in granular and heavy from the river, sulking like some translucent animal down the
streets, obscuring the reliefs of anything more than a few blocks in the distance, while
overhead the atmosphere was cast in great sheaths of clay one darker than the other,

7
heaped mightily and slovenly on top of each other. Even though I had never smoked, I
often thought that a time like this was the perfect time to light a fag, and so draw in and
expel forth the same gaseous elements, to thereby be a part of the same dense vapors that
cover us. Is it an accident that our bodies so crave the molecules of smoke? Is there not
some reason written in our biology and so in our history to create this disastrous union?
Why else are we comforted in the addiction to smoke and likewise why else does smoke
attach so quickly to our brains except that our constitutions were made to embrace this
dark poison, as though we were made in lungs and brains to dwell in the hazardous
chambers where we work, live and sleep, to breathe the hazardous air, to suck the filth
out of the sky and spit it back to earth.
And just then shutters flung open from an upstairs window and with a clattering
throaty effort a hocker arose, from pursed lips it was unfurled, tossed like a tumbling slug
until it hit the dirt path with a wet splat.
Blow me wife! Ya shoulda seen that one uh? Bottoms roared. Done near clear
the bloody path it did!
Watch yer self Crusty! Mrs. Bottoms shrieked. She had a spot on her neck:
turning dark.
Ah Christ Eurita! Aint no-one down ere, Bottoms replied looking at me. Nota
one I can see on!
Leaning out the window, he said: Me ad a dream I could fling em all the way to
the river I could, the best bloody phlegmeaver in the land me was!
An dont wake the neighbors now! the Mrs. cried.

8
And with that he winked at me, or so it seemed, then with naked arms hung from
a naked chest, he pulled in the shutters through which the inner light glowered. Then a
playful scream set inner shadows in motion, which vanished.
I stood my place at the wall and closed my eyes, which opened my other senses to
the world, sounds, smells, all the life that is not heard or smelt when the eyes are busy
searching. A storm was teasing its way into existence, the gusts of wind blowing through
the alleyways, bringing to me the odors of a city deep and complex. The sewage, the
smoldering coke, the spoilt beer and wet saw dust from the public house, the inner
tailings of fish from the boats being flushed in the river, the mud bubbling with gas along
the shorelines, the unwashed men huddled in the Salvation Army, the stench from the
waste of a million people , the smoke from a thousand furnaces, the belches of gases from
hundred of ships, the vomits of smoke from the growlers now taking to the streets, the
fresh blood from the butcher, the breaths from a million pairs of tepid lungs, from moths
of rotted teeth and coated tongues, the coughs and hacks of consumptive kids, the
flatulence of a million mules, as many horses, the ammoniac smell of gulls, the moldy
dank rot of wood and mold, the smoke from cheap tobacco, the sweet acid from the
opium pipe, the smell of boiled cabbage riding to the skin, the fragrance of flowers, the
fresh pastries rising on oven rack in the bakery: I could pretend to discern them all and
understand how the world was clothed by such fragrance and stink.
I kept my eyes closed, but turned my mind to the sounds of the city, there was a
low hum in the air, a sound that reverberated from distant places but hummed with the
static of electricity, of music that had been stopped before it could proceed to the next
note, that would be this, this sound not silence as you would expect, no, this was the

9
steady sound of machines, this sound was indeed the dampened rhythm of the machines
deep within the world, so deep with in the world that they were not only deep beneath the
crust and deep, deep in space, but deeply imbedded every so shallowly into the very
molecules and atoms of that space, machines that steadily and constantly propelled the
world forward, sounds of the engines that were not noticeable amidst the louder din of the
day, a sound that was not unlike the inner sound that hummed within the bones just
behind my ears, the steady but sharp pitch in my head that met and equaled the machine
sound of the world and at times seemed to bring forth the question of which sound was
which, which sound was the machine sound of the earth or the high pitched sound of the
brain, which sounds were the real pulses and rhythms of the universe, indubitable,
inexplicable, in essence and in constancy both deep and perhaps impenetrable patterns of
the universe we either knew or imagined, we saw as equally real and equally unverifiable.
Was this what would become music? Held taut between these inner and outer
reverberations, I was titillated as if wound myself around that very clockspring of the
universe before its first release!
From a groundfloor apartment, the Kittles infant cried, its blood-curdling shriek
that of a pained cat, and I could imagine those widely spaced eyes that terrified us all
when Mrs. Kittles first brought it downstairs, those wild eyes animal dark in its furry
head, its short thin fingers and toes like some arachnid, its mouth opened like a gullet, its
face crimson in fury at its gruesome appointment. Then the terrible sound stops. A pillow
to its mouth and nose perhaps? Anything possible when the unnatural invades your life.
This basic slow and somewhat distant reverberation was sliced from time to time
like this: by the lone shout of a man, the shriek of a woman, a voice that was unanswered,

10
a cry of someone lost, someone who sought to query the planet for a guidepost, for a sign
of life, some sot who blinded by drink was seeking a bed, who would crawl back into the
mud, life but a passage from ooze to ooze. And once the world was certain that the
besotted had found his place of sleep, silence again gave way to the hum of the
underlying machinery that paced the world and the mind. The sleeper would awake and
in rediscovered spirits take to reclaim what he had lost the night before.
I opened my peepers again.
Indeed. The world remained the same. The dull glow of kerosene lamps now
appeared behind some of the windows on all three floors of the building. How many are
now shaking off their dreams as if shrugging off a separate life that clung to your mind in
this dark, early chill. Some dreams make us spatters of heroic proportion. But rarely do
they promise something better than life: never hear of people dreaming of being rich or
being the king. If not a nightmare you get some sort of dream that gave you something
you didnt want: another child discovered in the toilet, a bug in your soup, a house full of
water, a blackened nail. Perhaps dreams were to show you life could be worse, not better.
Or maybe theyre for our amusement only.
How else to look at life? If not with amusement then what? So many have blamed
the melancholy that claimed nearly all the inhabitants of K on its drab and gloomy
weather. As much as people liked to complain or bemoan the perpetually grey skies, the
nearly constant cast of clouds across the sky, the smoldering oyster flesh that hung above
us, I saw it differently. I for one could find as much that was wonderful and amazing in
those muddy celestial waters, those slag heaps that filled the sky with their subtle but
forever shifting patterns, the fleshy gutty swirls that clung to those drab leaden shells

11
above us. For what is there to truly see in clear skies? What stands to be revealed in that
depthless and meaningless blue? Naked and bare, the blue sky beholds nothing to be
imagined, nothing to be desired, there would be nothing clothed, nothing hidden that
could then be lusted after, nothing left forsaken to our imagination. To live in a land
where the skies are clear and the waters pure is to inhabit a place you never question or
investigate, and what kind of place is that, what kind of life, you grow dumb and inert, as
there is no battle taking place between your inner moods and the beauty outside, there is
no fight to protect your happiness when all is bright and sunny outside, there is no sudden
joy when the sky of slag breaks apart to reveal the hidden rays of sun, under clear blue
skies there are no miracles only mirages, no salvation only vast emptiness. In paradise
you die another death, one that comes without warning, without thought or reflection,
without expectation, fear or longing, in paradise you simply die like the animal. Here in
these skies are the ridges and serrations of continents stripped bare to their lifeless bone
of clay and rock, there are swirling storms and whorls boiling and mixing about. Here
are the changing and evolving patterns that suggest some distant communications, that
speak of mythological torments, that hint of natures bloody and perpetual force. Here
are the designs that came about not by any force random or capricious, but with an
elegance and a manner that is far superior to our own merely human capabilities, or else
they would not bewitch us with such awe or mystery. Here is a myriad of influences
intent on damping your inner being, on bending your spirit down nose-first to the ground.
These, our slaggy skies, forced contemplation and so subscribed life, charmed the brain
and so engaged the sprit.

12
So! What melancholy? Truth is, no one stands over these inhabitants to watch
them awake as they do with broad smiles on their filthy, bloated faces. Behind sleep
stitched eyelids, stars burst and rainbows burn as we chase after uncertain memories,
fragments of dreams that flitter away, leaving behind nothing of their substance but a
faint glow at the base of the brain, a palpable bliss, a kiss from a full-lipped savior; from
sleep arises desire. Grasp the morning staff and plant it firmly into the fork of a new day.
No, the morning brought not sadness but a prick of hope. I look up into these dreary
heavens and find but fascination and joy!
Indeed, the clouds and fog dispense a palpable sensuality and mystery to the sky.
This was the beauty of the early morning hours, the time when the great clockspring that
wound and pulsed our world was still, coiled and ready but as yet unmoving. The
patterns and rhythms of life which were dependent on that spring, they too were stilled
not as in death but as in anticipation; and so what was so beautiful and mysterious about
the morning was that it could harbor such stillness yet such potential to explode, that it
posed such calm upon ones mind yet was tense and alive with what would eventually,
would soon emerge.
Furthermore, what of purest nature remained in our world other than these
marvelous skies? Everywhere else in our city Nature had been ablated, stripped away, all
that remained was the sometimes angry, sometimes querulous gestures sketched in the
grey sky. The earth, that which would seem most permanent, has been scraped of its
fecund topsoil, the mountains and valleys formed by patient forces over millions of years
have been leveled and filled, riverbeds dredged and retrenched, our geophysical history
as well as its character carelessly reshaped, mutated, even its subterranean levels cut and

13
mauled into tunnels and chambers. And so only to the sky can we still gaze, can we
divine or simply guess at a relationship we once shared with the natural world. And so at
times, when storms appeared, one could see the swirling anger and condemnation Nature
has of the ignorant and the proud, one could hear the voices, distant in both time and
place, at times faint at other times terrible in their force, striking upon an inner timpani, in
turn whose vibrations were felt but no longer understood. I looked up and felt completely
triumphant amidst this cacophony!
Just then, as if to substantiate my own staggering thoughts, from the gloom of the
streets where the lamps still cast a melting light, a figure slowly made its way, pitching
from side to side, lumbering on three or four limbs more often than two, yet with a
conveyance that assured me he was simply knackered and not grievously wounded or
dying. In fact, my only worry became that I would have to watch this wretch struggle all
the way down the walk until he reached me, at which point, whether I knew him or not, I
would certainly be required to lend a hand. But I was saved from this Samaritan duty
when a woman darted out from the building, descended on him, grabbed him round the
collars and began a struggle with his inert and uncooperative form. The two predator
and prey now clear to me as Mr. and Mrs. Ping battled with each other loudly and
clumsily until she finally managed to lug him across the threshold and slammed the door
shut. Some shouts and otherwise harmless sounding clamor arose from inside their
apartment but that soon quieted. It was the kind of scene one felt was simple to interpret
and the blame easy to cast: drunken husband and angry wife.
Yet, I knew this was not so simple. In fact, Mr. Ping, a dependable laborer at the
docks, was a teetotaler to be fair, if any one would abuse the gin it would have been the

14
Mrs. But it seems that Mr. Ping came home one day to find his wife sitting alone with a
strange man, this mans hands around hers, her eyes wet with tears. Mr. Ping was
understandably taken aback by this scene; he stammered, he caught his balance and
almost fell, he remembers thinking that he must find a shovel or pick and do away with
this intruder. It required no little effort on the part of Mrs. Ping to raise herself from this
strangers grasp and calm her husband down. When she explained that this was a man
she had known seventeen years ago and had not seen since, Mr. Ping was relieved but
still suspicious. When the stranger then told him that he had recently lost his wife and
had come to the city to escape his small town and the suffocation of its memories, Mr.
Ping felts his doubts dissipate. When the stranger went on to explain how he knew no
one here but had remembered that Mrs. Ping, an old friend from many years ago, lived
here, Mr. Ping opened up in sympathy to this man. Within the comfort of this simple
explanation, the two men exchanged some pleasantries and Mr. Ping even offered his
wishes that they could see each other again. The stranger accepted and everyone smiled.
But when the man got up to leave and they faced each other to shake hands, Mr. Ping
counted the fingers on the strangers hand, he counted the thumb and then the fingers just
as he did with every man and woman he met, he counted them not once, but twice and
then again because suddenly, for the first time in his long and obsessive study of human
hands, here in this mans hand he counted not four fingers and a thumb, but five fingers
and a thumb, the last finger, the smallest finger farthest from the thumb small and
impotent but shaped in every way like a finger even though it hung there without
function, to be caught on the sleeves of shirts and sweaters, to be forced into five fingered
gloves, to be snagged by the shawl of a passerby, to be smashed in a door, the very same

15
curse of Goliath that Mr. Ping had only hereto known in his seventeen year old daughter,
the one true love of his life. That night his teatotalling came to an end as did his oath to
privacy: he told me this and many other things not really worth remembering. And now
on this morning, I imagined, he lay with arms and legs extended upon his bed, in clothes
drenched in vomit and piss, snoring in his knackered fuckyouness while his wife sits
against a wall, but a crumpled heap of clothing that sobs quietly, dampening the floor.
And yet I knew that these two would wander and fight the ugliness that surrounded them,
they would blunder and grope, only to emerge as humans emerge: less agile, less capable,
but reborn all the same each with a smile that was truer than ever before.
If you look at it all, you would most likely be drawn to the conclusion that we
were here on earth for another purpose, not our own, since our purpose is one that we
cannot manage at all. A higher purpose perhaps? Perhaps, but not one with god or any
special design, otherwise a greater degree of sympathy would have fallen upon us
individuals! If there is a higher purpose it must be a mathematical one, a refinement of
what seems so complex into something more simple and pure. Yet whatever it is, we
survive, carry on, even if we eventually drift to a level of subsistence that seems
unbearable.
Indeed who knows life better than these people, for they know what life is not, for
who but they have had to abstract life from its many superficial elements, the elements of
hunger for example, the drive we feel and that we most often connect with the need to
survive, yet who knows better than they that life is separate from hunger except those
who have learned to separate all hunger from life, those who have had to steal the pangs
of hunger from the beat of their hearts, the peristalsis of their body. Who knows life

16
better than these people who know that love is not part of life, that love needs to be
separated from life as love cannot survive the pains of daily living, love cannot survive
the disappointment that builds quickly over the years, love cannot look past the changes
in face and features that bend to old age, to disease, to life in the dirt, love cannot survive
what children learn of love, what children expect of love, what they believe but never see,
what they try to understand but never realize. Who knows life better than these people
who also know that death is not part of life, they too have separated death from life for
how else can one carry about a shriveled week of life, who else can see death in an
infants face days before the tiny body grows cold. Who else can remove themselves from
the dusty bag of cloths set in a corner, a bag of bones and flakes from which two eyes still
stare, from which dry lips still smack, a carcass made more of insects than a mothers
human flesh, vanishing. Finally. Remove hunger, remove love and remove death, and
what you have is that abstract and impatient substance called life, that aspect of living
that most of the living will never, ever possibly know. But what is known here and is read
here in eyes that are not sad, in faces that are not bitter, for here when people laugh, they
laugh for real, and they laugh here, they smile here, they are happy here, happy in a way
you can only be if you have embraced and know the abstract nature of life, this is pure
happiness, this is pure life, this is where purity is achieved, by embracing the abstract.
It was quiet once again. Perhaps as a requirement in the same city ordinance, the
landlord had planted a few chestnut trees after putting in the new crapper. Despite ample
watering these trees had no chance to survive the gravel and clay into which the roots had
been thrust and so stood there weeks later, leafless, dead already perhaps, mere sticks that
reminded us more of our dour existence than that of Nature. They also reminded us that

17
we cannot grow Nature when and where we want. It also has to be desired, something we
have long forgotten how to feel. Yet how incredible it feels to be able to stir wild
imaginings out of this sterile mulch, to carve striking thoughts out of the barren hills and
desert sea. None of this, no nothing could squelch my joy!
The dense fog had begun to condense on the roofs and large drops of water fell,
while through the air the lightest drizzle swirled, lighting upon my face, covering me with
a cool sweat, while through the streetlamps, these drops of spray too small, too light to
fall to earth, but confused, like tiny flying bugs, upward and about, rising and falling.
The air was indeed a body of water, an ocean of sorts, where currents flowed, life sought
patterns, new life began. Life came not from the dry dust, the sterile ground, but from the
fecundity of water that flowed through the air, and from these clouds rained the fish, the
frogs and the creatures that passed to the muck below.
I wondered in fact if this was how the farm boy felt, the young boy who tried to
read the mystery in the skies, who turned up the soil, who stuck and gutted the pig, who
plundered the crops, who knew death and its opposite in every shape and form. Was it
from the force of renewal that he maintain his joy? I knew nothing of the rustical, being
a child born and raised on the docks, having spent my entire life in the city, yet what I
imagined I knew of things pastoral I witnessed in the dreamlike shapes and forms that
lumbered through the fog, the awkward shapes that roamed behind the smoky screens,
floated and drifted like great fish beneath the waters murky surface: heavy, simple beasts
with simple minds, simple needs, beasts laboring, clumsy and dark. These shapes I
discerned and so mythologized were the horses, the men and women, the children, dogs
and gulls of K, the only beasts of nature that I knew. Then suddenly, as if to mock me in

18
this moment of pastoral rumination, I heard a familiar rooster crow. Always a strange
sound to hear in the city, not just in the city but here in the slums where you would think
something as edible as a male chicken would crow but once. Yet every morning it
seemed this beast found the courage to sing from his place of privilege; or were the
people here, many of whom had come from the countryside at one time of another,
simply able to put their basest instincts aside, including hunger, and allow one aspect of
an older life remain? I loved the cock and felt his song in me every morning as well!
Yes, I was always up early, and the light of morning came shortly after awakening
now that summer was close upon us. I missed that hour or two of complete darkness
during the winter months, the morning darkness always different in temperature and color
than the darkness of the night which seemed burned and marred by the day and the
struggles to make something good of time and fortune. I enjoyed those few, fresh and
unadulterated hours before dawn. I would have set my clock earlier in order to wake up
amidst the still dark of dawn but the fact is I had no such clock. Well, my clock was the
kettle of our neighbor, Mr. Hart, who set his water to boil every morning at five am and
so when the whistle blew, I was thereby awakened and soon out of bed. Everyday of the
week I could depend on that kettle, just as I could count on the other sounds from Harts
room, the opening of the shutters, the tossing of the contents in his night pail despite the
law against that, the stirring of the sugar into his tea, the clink of his cup upon the table
when he was finally done. Yes, the walls and the moments that separated us were that
thin.
In contrast, I despaired of the early darkness that came of winter evenings, those
times when I felt shortchanged on color and light, when objects began a premature

19
retreat, and I was too quickly separated from the things of the world, left for too many
hours with only my fading imagination. Yet it was in the evening hours, in the darkness
of evening that we, my wife and I, were reunited each night; and so if darkness came too
soon there was the chance that I would succumb too early, that I would fall asleep and so
miss her return. On the nights when this happened, I would wake up at some point and
feel her warmth, feel and hear her stolid breath, the human flesh that was my wife, who
had once again come back to me while I was asleep, as if growing substantial from my
thoughts and dreams, the perspiration of my creative efforts filling the thin spaces
between the sheets, molded into something that I should know with total familiarity but
was strange to me now complete in form, a strange form of humanness that I dared not
touch, the horse tail of hair, the nails at each fingertip, the teeth inside that open mouth
that breathed and gaped with life that was connected yet so distant from my own, as if I
had imagined a partner who would join me in deaths sleep, who would lay with me
during the night when life can be gained or lost without ever knowing; who would be
there with me to witness what no one can ever witness, the keeper of such secrets that I
would never wish to bear. I would never wish to bear this, some other persons last secret
because I was too filled with my own happiness to be shaded by anothers mortality.
I was thereby musing that women were not equally privy to this pleasure men
coveted each morning, that women did not have the freedom to clamber down into the
yard in their nightclothes and enjoy their evacuations in the dark as men did when I
caught a glance of a small, frail gnome-like creature dart past me, followed by the squeak
of the crapper door being pulled shut, the iron latch being cautiously pulled across and
lowered. This was all done by a woman old widow Pritchard I believed who indeed

20
made a few muffled remarks to the iron seat inside, still warm I bet from Doughertys
generous buns, before opening that mysterious spigot all women have and the sound of
her water falling beautified the morning further. She was soon talking to herself with such
clarity that I began to think she had snuck in there with a pissoir partner as women were
sometimes apt to do, and I would not blame her either what with this new contraption
being in there and some mishap possible.
I had begun to dwell absentmindedly on the practicalities of toilets, the unseen
and labyrinthine systems that must service these machines, the tanks and pipes and
tunnels that must carry this waste away, out to the river I assumed, thinking about how
this conveyance must be sloped, how it was to be serviced by rooters such as Dougherty,
and how much shit and sludge did our monstrous city of more than five million produce,
how much of yesterdays cabbage and sprouts could our river take in during a mornings
rush like this, how did the tides affect this, how were the fish affected, the propellers of
boats, the viscosity of the tide, the absorbance of the sun and how much more could the
ocean itself swallow when another voice interrupted me.
Would this be our mornin queue? the voice chirped quite cheerfully.
I turned my head to greet the wet, unshaven face of Mr. Sphenctor, a man my age
but a good bit shorter and sporting not so successfully the additional wear and tear eight
kids and a convalescing mother will bring you. His ample hair was combed but unclean,
bits of fluff stuck upon his cheek and neck and what looked like a hairpin or a twig stuck
above his left ear. One eye still looked a bit closed, perhaps from sleep, perhaps from too
much drink the night before. The human face as it grows older loses its plasticity and

21
embraces our follies and expressions of pain much longer than we would like. Rarely
does it preserve our pleasures for some reason.
Nah, go right ahead Emil, I said. Just enjoying the morning.
Cant see how that is possible, Mr. Sphenctor said, when its dark an grey an all
you gotta listen to everyones morning whizzin. But never was a queue ere fore they
put this new Crapper in. Gotta get out ere early now more than ever these morns.
What he said was true, before when all so released fell through a cold hole into
the septic tank, there was nothing but a muffled splashing trapped in those horrible
earthly bowels. The stench of hell below. And no one rushed to be here.
Who should miss the morning? I said.
Come winter you wont be crowing so, Emil said, Least not until your arse kisses
that metal seat!
True! But mornings only good part of winter. The frost, everything frozen in its
movement. Like a photograph it is out here.
Then turns yellow with the day right? Just like the snap I got this weekend. Paid a
shilling for a picture of the family, already turning on me.
Just then a few flatulent squeaks from the WC did not pass unnoticed by either of
us.
Tis my opinion, Emil commented softly and confidentially, that women ave a
problem with these new diets nowadays.
Is that so?
Yea. Sure. Tis all the rage to be vegetarian now, antivivisectionist you know, and
so they consume far too much legumes. Breeds gas by the liter it does.

22
The toilet flushed sulloooooog without scream or other incident, the latch
screeched back across, the door opened and her small, diminutive and shuffling figure
disappeared back into the tenement where she lived alone ever since her sister died a few
months back.
An denies us men our meat, Emil continued, we men have gone feeble enough
me thinks but now they take away our meat as well. Dont know bout you, but me
muscles dont flex like they used to.
None of em?
Not a one. Not like they used ta. Course may be a good thing, the salt peter of
age, right Mate? Gives us time to devote to more worthwhile pursuits.
We both stopped talking as an even smaller shadow passed below us and the WC
door once again squeaked open and slammed shut. We looked uncomfortably into each
others eyes as we waited until finally we heard a deep sigh and then a low, visceral grunt.
Tis Winston me thinks, my companion whispered to me.
A disabled soldier, Sergeant Winston was but the essential remains of a man: he
had also both his legs in a freak accident. Standing before a cannon that was being
prepared for its role as part of a celebration for the Prince of Wales, the gun misfired, the
explosion shattered his eardrums, the ramrod breaking both his legs so terribly that they
had to be cut off high above the knees. He had a wooden leg which on some days he
attached to one of his stumps and with that swung uncomfortably about with crutches, the
other empty pant leg pinned up to his back pocket. Usually, to go to church or to get some
air at the park, his wife would take him about on a wheeled cart, hed sit up front dressed
in his jacket, white shirt and pants, the pant legs rolled up and tied so they would not

23
accidently get tangled up in the spokes of the wheel, as had happened on at least one
occasion. Most of the time, he palm-walked up and down the stairs, scuttled along the
path on his hands, swinging his torso along with him. We had been seeing less and less
of the Sarge and rumor had it that the circulation in one of his arms was failing and so he
could very well lose that appendage as well. Time was taking him away, bit by bit, each
of his limbs being replaced by a bit of metal and wood, a man becoming machine but not
more efficient, not more capable, indeed he was becoming less present in the world the
more he became mechanized, an argument against mechanical superiority, I thought.
Me hears that no less than a score abandons the army each day, Emil said, no
doubt a comment on Sarges current state. .
I knew the numbers even better than that: 7759 deserters a year ago, 2025
discharged, the average number of soldiers committed full time to hospital was 3628.
And so as these numbers add up you begin to wonder who filled the ranks. The recruiters
like Sarge were to be applauded for creating such roseate lies and illegal stratagems to get
fresh young men to fill in the slots left open. Sarge had been one of the finest and most
diligent recruiters if there ever was one.
Did Sarge tell you the story, Emil began with a hurried whisper, of the time
before is accident when e brought in a new recruit and was paid is ten shillings but
within days the recruit done fled and the corporeal e demanded that commission money
be returned. Sarge was facing a tough go of it at the time you know what with is wife
sick and a new baby and so e decides to unt down the wayward recruit imself instead
of losing is commission, and so e travels far across the countryside, falling into all sorts
of misadventures, even selling off bits of is uniform to pay rent for rooms and buy some

24
crusts until he finally e found the deserter after some fourteen days of lost wages. e
discovered that e was further out of pocket than e would ave been ad e simply anded
back the ten bob of commission an forgot the chase, but e gained something else that
day, e had the respect of the corporal who went and made im one of the ighest paid
recruiters in the region, a post that done im real well, that is until is accident a few years
later of course.
I had heard the story, but not enough times to tell you the truth. When you see a
man has lost his legs, you dont immediately think about the other things he may have
lost. As if to illustrate his plight, Sarge still wore bits and pieces of his uniform, which
was all that remained of his jacket and trousers patched and repaired with other cloth of
various colors and materials. With knuckles twisted from the demands of functioning as
both feet and hands, he made walking sticks out of wasted centers of wood stripped for
caning, his canes he sold to other veterans while his wife sold flowers on the streets. They
seemed to get along well enough and he even helped her in the creation of her hand
bouquets, an art she claimed that he had possessed over most others and the reason why
she was able to command a higher price among the street patrons. But we rarely saw him
except when he stood on a wooden crate on his balcony and saluted the sky on certain
military holidays.
I wanted to say to something to Emil, but thought the Sarge deserved better than
someone talking about him a few steps away even if he could not hear. So
Ah! was all I said and we both turned our midwifery faces back to the struggling
birth of sunrise. Then
So the Missus is a vegetarian! I said.

25
Right! And two of the daughters as well! Im doomed Im telling you. It is the
emissives that will kill you. The three of them like penned cattle in there, eruptions all
through the night. Cant breathe. Strange dreams too. All cuz of that gas me thinks. I
woke up this early morn and opened me eyes to the window and saw a terrible fog
bucked up against the moon there. When me eyes settled I could see it wasnt a cloud at
tall, but me womans arse, she be sleeping with er arse riding igh in the air, asleep with
er ead deep in her pillow. I says to her: what nonsense is this woman! This is indecency
it tis! I got me some gas again, she says. And so I says: so you going to sleep ere like
this, I said, like you was inviting some swallow to build its nest there? Tis but for you,
she said. Im doing this so as not to bother you. And suddenly I thought: my, what a
wonderful wife me as! An so I went back to sleep with me eyes closing on that beautiful
arse pointing like that towards the moon, all mine that lovely woman is.
Gotta worship a wonderful woman like that, I said.
Aye! And you should know! Got yerself a down right exceptional lass yourself,
looks like someones daughter still.
She is, I said. But I never met the father.
Youre twice lucky then, Emil continued. Aye, tis all good then. Just like the
morn, huh? I prefers the mornings, me does. Nights becomin a bit too chaotic fer me.
There tis a science to sleep me thinks.
You think?
Yeh. Sure. Some biologic emanation forces the body to decompress in the
morning, natural drugs swim in the blood, bring it composure, a certain resistivity. Just

26
read an article on this very subject. Seems to corroborate my perspective, could be some
basis to it all, you know?
Could be, I said wondering if all scientific accounts required more and larger
words than normal explanations. And as I knew this conversation would soon stop and so
these specific thoughts about science would too stop, I wondered for a brief moment how
many times in the history of man have ideas sprung forth, emerged from the dullest of
minds, caught some life on a burst of enthusiasm, a bolide of neural activity, these ideas,
these truths even, that could either gravely or spectacularly impact the world, ideas that
flash brilliantly yet are as quickly snuffed out, nullified, buried by the other ordinary and
uncaring courses of life: a war, an accident, an interruption of the smallest sort? How
many ideas are made available to us in one century, then vanish, only to be left to another
century to be unearthed? How many ideas briefly came to spark but never reoccur? How
many ideas are born into the wrong mind, into a brain capable of giving birth but unable
to nourish it? What ideas are we now groping like a blind person to something new,
things we will soon forget, that we will let vanish beneath the chaos we create that churns
the ground and blackens the skies? How many times and how many men have woken up
with a dream about relativity? How many times have scribbles on a scrap of paper
contained the answer to explain gravity or light, only to be thrown away, forgotten? How
many times has someone grinned with certainty that there was one way to understand the
entire universe? Ah! Who could not enjoy the idea that we ground-groveling beasts were
bursting forth at all times with the keys and answers to the universe? What joy to think
these gases of truth are constantly being burped and farted and someday will ignite into
what we will then call genius. The bubbling, joyous gases of the minds of all mankind!

27
At night, Emil continued, well who knows that the ell goes on at night, too much
goes on I say! Stress, work, children. Body chemistry all out of equilibrium it tis. Tis
why we imbibe. We seek ourselves to attain some natural balance. No balance in real
life, no.
I was silent but at the same time I took note that we all drink for different
purposes.
And seems to be a new feud stating twixt the Knightsbridges n the Thompsons,
Emil said as if to answer my silence.
You think so?
Know so. Last night at three ayem you must o eard it no?
No, didnt hear a thing.
Ah! If only I could have your blood. Littlest thing wakes me. Got the blood of a
mouse me thinks. You got an ungulates blood or some other lunkish animal as that ifn
you ken sleep through such bloody chaos. But them two took to each other like two rats
in a cage, I eard. The physiognomies of both o them pretty well rearranged, took to each
other with some glass, can see the mess down there still. Me eard that Busters lost an
eye.
Not good, I said indifferently.
No it taint good at tall, Emil continued with what I heard to be a swagger to his
tone, as if he were somehow engaged in these events. Word now is there is goin to be an
eye for an eye an more to boot.
I listened and spoke without emotion, yet I wasnt truly indifferent to what this
turgid man had to say. On the other hand, I was no stranger to violence and certainly no

28
stranger to the rage that propels one to ruinously damage another. But the thought of two
men willing to slice and maim and murder each other because of a mere name was more
horrifying than if they had a more suitable cause such as money or a woman even. This
told me that we were worse than brutes at the core, that all this fuss about brain and mind
and thought and reason held no sway over our real and inner beings. Words could cause
as much death and mayhem as love. It not only bothered me, it reminded me of who I
was. And so I chose to ignore it.
Listening to the paper rattling inside the crapper and knowing full well the Sarge
couldnt be reading in the dark, I realized I had no wipes with me. As I looked around for
something on the ground, I enviously spotted the fluffy wad of tissue in my companions
pocket.
Were you there to hear the new preacher yesterday morn? Emil said realizing I
was not going to pursue the other topic.
Me? No... you know I dont like to go there
Ah! Still you should. Good man, I think. Only my opinion of course. Young man
e is. Wont last long of course, but got a good presence up there. Makes you want to
actually believe in what he says.
A good quality to have in his profession.
Tis, tis it not? Although e seems to ave a softer spot for the Socialists than old
Father Abernathy done ad. You know ow Father used to go off on them an them
commies too.
Never witnessed it, I thought, but heard about it. I was relatively new to this
apartment complex, my wife and I had been evicted from our flat on the West side, and

29
had no choice but to take a room here a few months ago. There were worse places than
this, and I figured we may as well save those worse places for when we had to move
again. But being new in a place like this was not a handicap really, no one came here
because they wanted to be here. This was a way station, for many the next step was a
simple fork in the road: either heaven or hell. For others like ourselves, tomorrow was
unknown. Either way, we shared in the unknown, and so in a way that brought us
together. This glance to the unknown also gave us direct sight into the preacher whose
self inflicted raison detre was to save our souls and help us right our lives. That said, I
had not known the earlier pastor, and still had not seen this new one. I was not a churchgoer, and I was not planning to become one either. Regardless you could not live here
and ignore the church, you could not ignore the issues and fears that lurked in everyones
mind, fear of death, fear of losing ones job, fear of being put on the streets, fear of some
disease, some cough that would daily grow worse, of a red toe that would spread to your
leg, or a black lump on your chest that multiplied like leeches sucking your color from
heard to foot. All this could serve to get you down, but not for me. Even if it was my
fault that we lived in this slum, I felt nothing but lightness here, I was content and free.
I think Winstons done dozed off in there, Emil said and banged on the door, Hey
Sarge! You got a queue backed up to the river out here!
Something large and encumbered rustled and struggled inside the brick shack, like
some rodent caught up in there, Emil mused out loud, and one had to be amused thinking
of Sarge trying to maneuver around the toilet, then finally the toilet flushed and the door
flung open and the ground-hugging shade of Sergeant Winston appeared and scuttled

30
across the dirt on his hands like some kind of panicking animal, not a word for either
Emil or me.
Beauty before money, my companion said gesturing for me to take the throne.
Go right ahead, friend, I said still hoping to avoid the dank warmth of one of my
neighbors inside there and wondering what kind of mess Sarge had left after the
gymnastics he must have performed in there.
I am pretty comfortable right here, I said, but leave me a few pieces huh?
Emil accepted the terms of my generosity, though I doubted he would comply, and
stepped inside the WC. But Sphenctor was right in what he said about the morning.
There was a different order to it all, a sense of calm, a renewed and regenerative feeling
of stillness that one never could find in even the smallest, darkest corner of night.
My reason for being down here was becoming a bit more urgent and defined. My
sockless feet were become damp in my shoes. While I waited a little impatiently for Emil
who was whistling as he worked, the two Faulkner daughters appeared and stood behind
me, cold and trembling despite the blankets they had about their shoulders. It was a
shame. They had both lost the cherished beauty of childhood, had grown lanky now, long
in face, equine like their mother, heavy brows above their eyes like their father, their thin
hair hanging piecemeal from beneath their nightcaps, the older ones bare feet were long
and mannish, proving that beauty like spilled mercury vanished quickly. With this
passage out of childhood they gained new fears. They huddled next to each other
seemingly afraid to look at me as if the morning was too intimate for young eyes to meet
the face of older men, as if knowing that the morning was a cure for even the most
hopeless mans impotency.

31
How are you two girls? I asked.
Fine, fine, was the answer from both.
And your mom?
Shes fine.
They lived with their mom, a gin drinker, and their pa, a good man who was a
street cleaner and chimney sweep. They had three other siblings although it had been
weeks since I had last seen the youngest, a mere infant. I was not surprised at the answer
she gave me, but had hoped I would see a glance between the two, a sign that would
confirm for me what I only assumed. I saw nothing.
Youre both up early.
Neither girl looked at me as they seemingly searched for an answer.
Tis all er fault, said the youngest one finally with the tired tone of someone who
still had a childs indifference to grown ups in her she done woke me.
Got to go, the oldest said softly but not in any defense.
I knew even in the darkness that the older girl was pregnant. The younger one on
some kind of protective duty, even though now all was in essence lost that had been
worth protecting.
Well, you both can go ahead, I said in betrayal to the lower realms of my being.
Appreciate that, sir.
Thank you, sir.
As if on cue, Emil re-emerged, whistle and all. The girls swept right past him like
two rats scurrying for cover. As they sidled into the WC, their arms around each other, I

32
wondered if either one of them looked behind wondering about the youth that had
vanished in the wake of time. No, that and other forms of remorse would come later.
Careful girls, Emil said. I could tell Sphenctor had no intention of going back
inside his flat just yet.
Ah blimey, Emil moaned, ere comes that sniffer Glansy.
What do you suppose is wrong with him? I asked what I knew to be a silly
question.
Dont know, a certain proteinate missing maybe, who else names their twins Uri
an Nate? If you were from outer space and you came across Glansy as you only human
specimen, youd conclude we were all rats, y would.
Just then the haggard, hunched Peter Glansy of black tooth and urine reek arrived
to join us.
Broxtons telling everyone es got ticket to the Ashes, Glansy said without even a
good morn to either of us.
No one paid much attention to this poor man, ignoring him like an arsehair for the
most part. Speaking of which, the hair on his head was in wild disarray. His head was of
the most marvelous construction: a balding noggin was pulled in a lopsided fashion over
the back of his collar while an aubergine nose forged a certain balance in the forward
direction. His shirt was opened and great tuffs of dark hair spurted forth. I couldnt help
notice his hands as he preened the interior of his long and bristled nose, the nails dark
with dirt. In the corners of both eyes the crusts of sleep formed salty nests. This statement
he had about Broxton could have been the sentence he last asked someone last night and
received no response. Woke up now with it still on his tongue. His wife was a mute with

33
the face of a dog. Yet they had some of the comeliest children in the tenements. Go
figure. Flowers grow finest in the darkest dirt. Story was Glansy actually had an
education and carried a respectable pedigree, but no one can account for his fall: no
accident, no crack to the head, no drink, no illness. Seems that just one day he decided
on the life of an idiot and now made a few shillings a week as a board walker, other times
picking up bits of iron and tin from the dust outside peoples homes for a few extra pence
a day. He must have been a good board man, cause there he was nearly every day with
the ad-boards sandwiched on him, always on the move, his head sticking up completely
indifferent to the pictures of high-kicking lasses appearing at the theater or a new found
invention to cure your ails, the man stoically unperturbed which booted by a coachman to
the gutter or turned about by a bunch of boys knowing they could topple him without
reproach. Absurdly enough, Broxton was known to pick up a role in the local theaters
from time to time, never a speaking part of course, but still to imagine the sight of him on
stage was near impossible unless of course he played the role of the filthy, unkempt and
destitute man that he had perfected in real life. I know there was more to Broxton than
appeared, but not even his wife seemed to care, they lived their lot without complaint. I
heard one of the girls inside the WC suddenly begin talking loudly, the other retching
dryly as the toilet flushed.
If you came to now the folk here, you might come to believe that they had all
once occupied finer positions, that they all had higher educations, that each and everyone
of them had once worn full pleated petticoats or woolen trousers, but that is not the case.
There are some, many is truer to the fact, that seem to reside here with a certain comfort
and even dignity. Topper was one of these, an intelligent man in his own way, not

34
without a good head on his shoulders, but in that head he carried a terrible disdain for
education or anything that would change his way of life. What would I want with
edication? he would say to me. Edication to them what has it makes them wusser. They
learns tricks that don belong to no natural agent. Any chap who knows how to write and
count cant be trusted at a bargain, he would say. But he was one of the few. Most had
other lives that they either longed for or were trying to forget. Some started here and then
by chance rose to an elevated status only to find that their new lives were fragile as their
perception of this new reality. They came back with a terrible crash. All found that
chance event that brought them down, it could be a flood, could be an accident, could be
just bad luck.
Is that so? Emil answered immediately lowering himself in my opinion. How did
he manage that you suppose?
Figures wed never know the truth, Glansy said having found what he sought in
his nose. Not like es asking one o us t join im.
And why would he lie? I asked looking away.
Same reason every man lies, Emil said. Run out of things to say otherwise. Truth
only stretches so far. The worlds finite y know, at least when it comes to one mans take
on it.
Seems to me like every moment is filled with an infinite number of new things, I
said.
Or maybe just the same things over and over again, Emil said, depends on your
outlook huh?
I think I prefer mine.

35
Yours sounds like perpetual confusion to me.
Keeps me occupied, I said. We had succeeded in forgetting about Glansy.
Truths not to be found in the chaos o the world, Emil said stuffing his tissue
back into his pocket as if to punctuate his message to me. I was sure a couple were going
to fall and I was hoping they would.
tis in the order we find there, he said.
I would agree with that, I said.
Well, I can tell you got other things you want to contemplate. When you agree
too often you are really offering a man his leave.
Dont be so uppity Emil, I said. Like you said yourself, morning is a time of
peace sniff it for yourself the anesthesia of sleep is still fragrant.
Just then we were all startled by a womans scream. A ways down the walkway, a
woman was standing in the sidewalk screaming as if she had seen a ghost. The door to
the loo opened as the two girls skittered out and ran away, their heads looking back over
their shoulders as they clung to each other and ran to escape whatever was created the
commotion down at the other end of the walk. Glansy, dressed only in a flimsy, filthy
nightshirt, was unprepared for such a public commotion, and slid inside the WC without
saying a word to anyone and latched the door. Mrs. Nettleton screamed again and Emil
and I rushed down the walkway. I took the hysterical woman by the shoulders and
looked down at what was frightening her.
There was a man in the weeds a few feet from the edge of the walk laid out
against the wall. He had undoubtedly been there most of the night but in the lessening
darkness his image was just now growing visible, who knows how many had walked past

36
him. And if a passerby had perchance looked down, would they have seen this as a man?
Sure, the clothes were there, the wool pants, what must have been a fine jacket, but most
of it had been partially ripped from his body, the buttons opened or torn free by someone
looking for items to confiscate. The form on the ground had legs and arms but these were
set to his body at such off-kilter angles that it took some time to group them together as
belonging to the same being. Yet it was his face that was the most disguised, smacked as
it was by something blunt and heavy, the features rearranged, the skull flattened and
deflated sinking into the black puddle that must have been blood and spilled brains, the
dark hair following this mass as if disappearing into the earth. The mouth was rent into a
horses laugh, the teeth missing or blackened with blood. The nose was set against one of
the ears, the other ear was down upon the poor fellows shoulder. If not for the one eye
that shone dead and dryly in the lush low light, without that one point of reference no one
would have recognized a face in this mess before us. Emil appeared to be whimpering in
fear while Ms. Nettleton continued to scream despite my arm around her back. For me
this only brought to mind all the other times I had noticed how when one feature of a
persons face was moved, altered, however minutely, your mind lost its perspective, the
entire picture and reference of humanity was threatened. In this case, you sought
evidence of humanity in the bits and pieces and struggled to resurrect it through efforts of
your own cognition.
Within minutes two bobbies appeared off the street and ran down the walkway
towards us. One of them, a younger fellow with a chalkwhite face that nearly glowed in
the darkness, bent over the dead man, then nearly lost his balance as he vomited into the
dirt. The other bobby looked at all of us without saying a word, but we all knew what he

37
was intent on asking. No, we did not know who this man was. The question of course
did not need to be asked, no one with these fine of clothes lived in these tenements. The
two bobbies, once the younger one had regained his composure, took the dead man by his
feet, the only parts that seemed willing to support what they were about to do, and
dragged the corpse out to the street. We all walked away, probably each one of us
wondering if they were going to come back and take those pieces of skull and matt of
hair left behind.
Glansy who had been silent standing behind us through all this, suddenly snorted
through his bulbous organ then spoke up again.
Says he got two tickets to the Ashes, n es not taken any o us.
Finally as the street lamps were being extinguished, I had my turn and the wait
had made it all the better to tell you the truth. Inside Emil had graciously left me a
sufficient number of sheets that the neither the girls nor Glansy had not touched. The
morning light beamed through the slats near the roof, the fog creeping in on its mission to
infiltrate existences every nook.
As I relished in my privacy, I thought of my wife who was still asleep in hers.
Long ago I had learned to work the kitchen in the mornings with relative quiet. As the
stove was but a few steps from the bed, I was careful in how I moved the irons about, I
even crushed the starter paper deep in my hand so as to muffle the sound. I did not let the
kettle boil to a whistle, but removed it from the fire when I heard the bubbles beginning
to rattle about inside. I smeared some soap to the ends of the chair legs to eliminate any
sound as I pulled it away from the small table to sit and drink my tea. As I read, I
unfolded the news paper slowly, as if peeling back layers of pure silence. I did all this so

38
as to allow her to sleep even though what I wanted more than anything was for her to be
awake and be with me especially on this morning. Part of me believed that if I was more
demonstrative in my routine that she would have to wake and so we could in fact share a
life together instead of an existence where one of us dreamt and the other fought with
reality in alternating shifts. I even thought that if she started this routine with me that she
might even start to come home earlier and go to bed when I did and so our lives could be
enjoined diurnally and nocturnally, in a circadian fashion as love was certainly supposed
to be.
Yet I have to admit, while I could very easily have told myself that I could change
my schedule to meet hers, I was deep down afraid of what really created this separation
between us. It was not simply a fear of what she did at night, where she went, or who
was she with. Of course these thoughts came to me and came often. But the real fear
was that we were both this way for a reason and if we changed, if either of us changed,
that fragile hold we had on love, the thinnest of vows that still held us together would rent
and cast us both asunder. That was my real fear and in the face of that I was willing to
bear not having any answers to these other, smaller questions.
It was dark in here, or perhaps my headlights were failing. Along the floor were
the holes chewed through by rats where some glimmer of morning seeped through.
Through each one of those holes I seemed to hear Sphenctors voice.

There once was a rat from Dunliddy

Who burrowed into a strong womans titties
When she grabbed him real fine

39
And stomped on is spine
e said, now you wouldnt ave done that to a kitty.

Emil was a rat catcher. I had stopped asking him if he had caught any lately, as
that always brought out the answer that rat catchers, despite their moniker, rarely catch a
rat. And so I would have to hear again how peoples ideas of rat catchers as men who
dwell in a world of blood and disease, carrying a bunch of dead rats tied around their belt,
all that was fable, rat catchers are called when someone suspects a rat, a rat that may or
may not exist, that may or may not have been in a certain room, how rat catchers
basically are called out to the scene and never see a rat, that rat catching like sleep was a
science now, with poisons perfected to work on rats and not upset a household even with
the smallest of children, how the rat catcher works with the most sophisticated of traps
and knows the latest techniques in attraction and swift collection of he vermin, and that
the rat catcher is more a collector of statistics than a collector of rats, a good rat catcher
can provide all the information needed to diagnose a neighborhood, a parish, by the
number of calls, the types of calls, the number and frequency of sighting, the rat catcher
can predict an infestation of rats, he can pattern the ebbs and flows of rat life and rat
population and thereby reveal other truths, as rats both lead and follow other patterns in
the world, whether that be pattern in weather or water, patterns in human migrations,
patterns in foodstuff changing from flour to rice, patterns in bird migrations, patterns in
flea populations, patterns in sewage disposal...
Which was not a conversation that disinterested me. You see, I am a statistician
with a natural attraction to all that can be enumerated, counted, sorted and configured.

40
Yet I had decided to be a math tutor, and such a poor one at that, I had no pupils to teach.
No kids to teach, no money. And so you would have thought I would have been
melancholy about this. On the contrary I couldnt have been happier, or at least I hadnt
been happier in many a year. I spent much of my time right here at our apartment or
outside in the yard our building shared with others in the tenement. I consorted with the
women, I commiserated with the men, I looked after the kids, I watched the dying, I tried
to feel sympathy for the newly born. In a way, my wife and I had reversed roles,
although she did not work either, we lived off a diminishing stipend from her mother. She
believed that she belonged somewhere else. So she left the apartment each day and came
home late at night; she had not the time even if she had the disposition to get to know the
people who lived here, it was I who stayed behind to partake in gossip, to learn the news.
Really I was studying and found an inner bliss in the patterns and rhythms that I found.
Within weeks of settling here, I knew everyone here, everyone and practically
everything. I knew about the old woman living with consumption, sleeping on but a
piece of wood and some blankets. I knew about the laborer and his wife who had three
children, all of them in a sickly way. I knew of the two old men, brothers some say, who
had saved a bit of money between them and hoarded it as they hoarded up everything else
in their lives, you couldnt open the door let alone find them in the piles of rubbish they
had piled in their room. I lived amidst all that was broken, and hobbled and diseased and
beyond any hope or repair. I was surrounded by all that was pitiable, all that was
horrible, all that was ugly and cursed and without salvation. And to tell you the truth, my
life was not much better.

41
But as miserable as life was here, joy was never scarce. I often wondered why this
was so. Most of these folk did manage to get themselves into the pews on Sundays, many
of them had one book in their rooms which had all its pages intact, never once used to
start a fire or wipe up some mess. Yet, I could not help but think that they like me saw
nothing in this Holy business, nothing in this Christ and salvation stuff, any more than
they believed that enlightenment could come from study and meditation. And what good
was to be told of the stability to be found in this Kingdom in Heaven if all it did was
throw into even greater uncertainty this Kingdom on Earth? What good was this Heaven
if all if did was cast the sordid into even greater sordidness? And what good was
salvation if it did nothing to ameliorate the day at hand, the hour at hand, the moment at
hand where all concentration and resolve was needed to maintain an even balance, a
proper keel?
Life was the dirt and the soot and the hard edge of the earth on which they dwelt,
and that was as safe and as predictable as anything they could ever imagine. It was so
safe and predictable that to suggest there was another life, to suggest that there was
another form or level of existence, to suggest that there was something better or
something worse and you were preaching to deaf ears. They knew where they lived, they
knew this ground on which their feet thudded through their worn soles and ripped
stockings; they knew the sky up above with its leaden cover of clouds, it bitter rain, it ash
and smoke; they knew the cold of morning, they knew the terrible heat of summer, they
knew the insects that bit and sucked, they knew the stale bread, the rotten milk, the moldy
bits of cheese; they knew the sickly child, they knew the infant that would be cold as the
furniture come morning, they knew the grandfather who pissed his self and fell and broke

42
open the skin on his knees thin as paper; they knew all this and knew that there could be
worse, there could be better, but still they knew this; they knew this and they knew that
they could be stupid, they could be fools, but they knew this; they knew all this and they
knew they could be barbarians they could be imbeciles, but they knew this; they knew
this and they knew they could be dying they knew they could be dead, but they knew here
was what they knew and in that there was always a way, hard as it was sometimes, there
was always a way to take what they knew, to take a bit of this life or take all of this life
and bend it a little this way or that, turn it and fold it and open it again, so that it looked a
little differently this time, a little comical, comical enough that one could hardly suppress
a snigger, one could not help but chuckle and begin to laugh, and so amidst their dirt,
their pain, their sores and their death, they took what they knew and found a way to
laugh.
Although a luxury for most, our previous residences had private baths and toilets,
an amenity that was always important to my wife, who required a place of her own when
it came to performing those functions, but there was an undeniable part of me that
enjoyed sharing my privacy not with one person with a vast and therefore abstract
multitude. I actually relished the opportunity to be conjoined with a stream of humanity
when seated upon a toilet seat, vulnerable in terms of dress and posture, united in both
physical function as well as in a process that regulated both time and history when
touching through these shared surfaces, mixing the same airs, feeling the wet remnants of
another, knowing that these barterings were as good as anonymous, that somewhere in
the world we were all brought together, we swirled as one, joined first with our neighbors
and then with more distant brethren until we created a soup that had no racial or cultural

43
definition. It was more than simply a humbling experience, it was more that simply
acknowledging that we all piss and shit and vomit and spread our pestilence throughout
the world, it was more than being reminded that however we smelt on the outside, our
insides were foul and unsavory, more than a reminder that no matter how clean were our
hands and cheeks, we shared our mortality through the slime and sludge that leaked from
our bodies, it was a reminder that no matter how beautiful we thought the human body to
be, it was completely built around cavities that spewed elements as elemental and as
disdained as any other. In these thoughts and in these moments of repose I found a
sublime comfort, I was whisked away to lengthy moments contemplation where I
suddenly understood what I never considered ponderable, where I wrote entire novels
whose essence captured entire eras of existence, where I tossed aside humility,
understood no limitation, feared no repercussion.

There was something to the darkness, the rents of light, the shards of day and
fragments of the outer that pierced the closes of the walls. There was something to the
feeling of sweat, of human humidity, of wet vapors and damp air that settled on your
suddenly bare skin like layers of near weightless cloth. There was something to the odors
of the wet earth at your feet, the smell of mold on the baseboards, the nutty ureic stank
that becomes sweet and fruity with starvation, the bitter smell you could taste of blood, of
iron, or rust, the peppery hint of old chocolate, there was the ammoniac small of life
redefining itself in the admixture all that came and went here. There was something
primeval but primordially holy, something base yet percolant with all that would ever
define the most superior intelligence. Something here that was all a man could ever

44
desire of a brick shed, a place so simple and unimagined, yet so complete in its sheltering
nature.

Eventually I would finish my business and would walk back upstairs, back to out
apartment, where I would quietly make my tea and maybe some toast. When I would get
dressed, I would stand in front of the mirror behind the closet door and I would think
about the first time I had looked into this very mirror. This piece of glass framed in dark,
simply carved wood, was the furnishing we had kept from our previous residence.
Usually we lost the beds and tables as we owed back rent. Somehow we always managed
to leave with this mirrored glass, the most valuable of any of our possessions, as if it
contained all the many images that had stood before it. What I saw now was different
from what I first saw in it seven years ago. The skin on my shoulders and chest is clean
and uniform, no bruises, no scratches, no healing cuts; scars remaining but there were
blurred and softened by the added flesh I had put on during these last few years. Indeed I
was a bit soft now, the muscles between the ribs and across the chest were invisible now,
and the angry striatum across my belly was now given over to a bulbous swelling of
contentment. Not until I saw my face in the mirror would I think again about the man
who had been bludgeoned last night outside the apartments. Had I truly seen too many
blows smash a face, too many fists rock a skull to even think twice about something as
atrocious as what I saw but an hour ago? Someone in our apartment had lured him here,
one of the boys probably, picked up the dandy on the streets near the theaters, promised
him the services of a sister or some other form of entertainment. The stupid swell was
met by a couple of the boys friends with a club, could have been their first time given the

45
senseless brutality of the garroting, not experienced enough to know when death has
appeared despite the twitchings, the instinctual gripping of the hands, the arms stretching
out seek a purchase even when the brain has been crushed, how movement which so
defines life continues on when all life has spilled. And so they kept on beating trying to
obliterate all traces of movement even though life had long dissipated. And so it was
hard to imagine that I was that kind of a man, but still I felt nothing and knew once I
ceased thinking about it, it could be forgotten forever. But it was not the sight of my
body or the changes there in that would make me pause in this mirror, it was the clothes I
would be putting on, the shirt, the cravat, the vest, and now the jacket. Seven years ago
these clothes barely fit me, hung off me like a child wearing his fathers things. Now
they fit tight and fit well. I would indeed be looking at the same man who seven years
ago never imagined he would be able to grow into these clothes, who may have wondered
back all those years ago what it would mean to grow so, what it would mean when these
garments of a dead man he never knew, fit now like a glove. In the mirror I might see my
wife stir in the bed, but she would not awaken and even though she had brought these
clothes out for me to wear, insisted, no begged me to wear them, I would not want her to
see me. I would leave quietly and quickly.
Even though today was a special day, it was in fact quite usual for me to be up at
this hour, up and about, to be preparing myself to take a stroll, but to be fair, not dressed
the way I was today. On most other days I was dressed more casually, in some casual
pants, perhaps a sweater if it was old, a jacket, and so prepared for my walk to and
around the park, where I often went to observe, listen to and sometimes record the
patterns of life. Indeed, from my usual bench I was able to see with astonishing

46
regularity the comings and goings, the appearances and disappearances, the growth and
attrition, the steadiness and the changes that was all part of and integral to life. I came
here nearly every day in fact, every day at the same hour as if engaged in a scientific
experiment of sorts, but these appointments I kept with regularity so as to satisfy my need
to see the evolution of all things that stayed the same, to see the change in the regular and
unchanging patterns of people and nature, to watch and as I said sometimes record the
oscillations of these small events that on some level must add up to oscillations in larger
events such as history, such as cosmology, I could only imagine and to tell you the truth
rarely did. Yet what was most amazing was how this regularity took place amidst the
most astonishing diversity of life, human and otherwise, a variety of beings and faces and
skin colors and dress and states and footwear and clothing that you would have never
imagined regularity to find its rhythm here. For indeed on these streets were the obvious
gentlemen and women in their suits and dresses, but there were also the workers in their
still dirty, always dusty pants and shorts, there were the bums in their rags, there were the
street urchins in their ill fitting hand-me-downs. Then there were the Chinamen in their
dark pants, their collared shirts, their hats and their wooden sandals. There were the
Arabs in the bellowing pants and loose, wide sleeved shirts, the turbans around their
heads, the Africans in the cacophonous attire that they seemed to have borrowed from
each and every passerby, the Ceylonese in their mismatched shirts and saris. There were
the Italians with nervous expressions and seeming expectations, the French with their
rheumy savoir faire, the Turks with their watchfulness, the Indians with their proud but
humble haste. Yet with all this nonuniformity, this admixture of culture, class, language,

47
history, place and purpose, the word still pulsed and beat with a steady and predictable
regularity and I loved it all.
To witness this mechanical state of the universe it was best to come here to the
park midweek, Tuesday and Wednesdays for example, days which were clocked to the
routine or work and family life and society, the patterns set by stores opening, boats
appearing in the harbor, workmen taking to the streets for breakfast as their favorite
coffee shops, carriages appearing as the fog still grovels on the streets, as the children
begin to awake, some darting about on errands before school, others seeking to gather up
any spoils left by drinks and others during the night. Each hour has its nature and its set
of events from the first to the last, the rhythms of life set long ago, changed every so
slightly, pulsating against a beat long forgotten, never considered. The beat of hunger, the
beat of light, the beat of darkness, the beat of warmth, the beat of cold, the beat of making
money, the beat of survival, the beat of love, the beat of hate, all these beats gathered and
leaped and passed from one to another, all striking a different course on any particular
hour or any particular day, but when run and strung through all the various individuals,
all the various atoms of the city, it emerged as a steady, predictable heartbeat that carried
on predictably and rhythmically day after day, hour after hour, year after year, able to
withstand the most savage shock, the most terrible events, the most incredible fortune.
But it was Monday that I like the best of all the days, this first day of the week for
most of the Christians here, the Jews and the Arabs on their own schedules but still
regulated by the majority. There was the drowsiness of Monday that you did not see in
the other days, the body awakening a little different this day compared to the other run of
the course days of the week, movements were either a little slower as bodies adjusted to a

48
new day of routine or a little faster epically if that body was late, had slept in or otherwise
dallied too long remembering a pleasantry of the day before. Mondays were the day most
likely to be affected by either love or hate, the two great perturbations of life. Love could
have come about over the weekend and would have a profound effect on the individual
now trying to carry this burden of heart and mind into a workday that offered no
sympathy, no condolences and certainly no patience for such human passion. But it could
just as well be hate that crossed the brow on this individual this Monday morning, as
Sunday was a day when love was lost, love was unrequited, fidelity broken, secrets
discovered, fears revealed. And so that individual had the energy and the thrust by which
to take on the new day, but again with cloudy mind, bereft by thoughts of revenge,
betrayal, loss or in some case nearly debilitated with grief.
And so these things I could readily see either as I strolled the path through the
park or as I sat on my favorite bench near the parks entrance way where I could see both
the people who took the park path to get to work as well as the people who rushed past on
the main streets. I knew none of them yet knew them all. I recognized them by their
countenance, their eyes and lips, but their dress, their coats, their parasols, their shoes. I
recognized them by their gait, their posture, the proportionate size of their heads to their
shoulders, the length of their necks, the ampleness of their bellies, the width of their
asses. I knew them by their stroll, by their attitude, their perceived place in this world,
their sense of themselves, their sense of their place on this spinning planet amidst so
many millions of like stars and planets. I knew them by their place in history, by their
sense of presence in time, by their evolutionary stature, their social status. I knew them
and I knew them all. And I watched them and I saw them all and so with repetition and

49
with time, with patient study and with a kind of affection, I saw them as they were the
changing unchanging nature of themselves and the changing unchanging nature of man
amidst this total changing and unchanging nature of life, of the world, or the universe.
All this you can eventually see from a simple park bench. But this was not where I would
be going today. Today I had something else to do, something I must do.
As much as there was regularity in the flow of time and humanity when viewed in
its total masses, there was the violent reality of the unexpected, the unforetold and the
unpredictable when life was presented to you in its more singular moments. Indeed that
was how life was much of the time living in the tenements of the slum. The patterns and
rhythms of life were constantly disturbed by such things as illness, insanity, rage,
drunkenness, fear, pain and a host of factors both known and unknown. The cry of a
child for reasons unimaginable, the raging anger of a woman scorned, the terrible shouts
and screams of agony when men take bottle and club to each other. Each day there was
death, but it was not the rhythm of death that comes with life, it is more a terrible renting
of life by death that came at night or day when a body was removed, a body found. The
dreams were not the regular and expected dreams of mankind to be heard above, it was
not even the shouts and cries of those seeking justice or to announce their faith, these
were the bare and naked scores of pure fear, unmitigated pain, of seeing the senselessness
of life or finding oneself facing termination like an animal, like an insect, or finally
giving forth a host of utterance not unlike belches or farts as that is all the body can utter
when faced with the terrible unknown now made known.
I heard footsteps outside, they came closer and then passed without hesitation. I
had time to think through my day. Later in the morning on this patch of dirt a gaggle of

50
kids would be playing cricket with a wooden box for a wicket and a bat carved from a
plank of fence. A group of older girls taking on a team of smaller boys, and as I had
watched these teams before, the girls were more than likely getting the better of them.
The bowler would try his best to rifle it past the girl who stood barefoot in front to the
wickets, her dress tucked between her knees as she smacked the ball in this and then that
direction, changing positions with her sisterhood on the other side of the pitch.
We should send some of these women to bowl in the Ashes, a voice might call out
from above me. Id look up and probably see Mr. Winfields head hanging over the
banister to the upper floor. The deep nostrils peered back deep into his cranium, while
his lips fluttered obscenely below his moustache at this angle rarely seen of him. A pipe
in his hand, his arms crossed in front to him.
Looks like theyre winning again, I might answer.
And forget these kids, our men cant even beat a pale bunch of gaolmates, hes
say, not sure what is happening to our collective manhood.
Maybe were seeing changes in our womanhood, Id answer as if to start an
argument, knowing Mr. Winfield well enough that he would rather capitulate his own
mothers life than enter into a row.
Could be, hed say, and with that his head disappeared as if abruptly falling from
the railing and his footsteps indicated a retreat to a quieter place to contemplate mans
loss of virility. Id be immediately struck with a sense of guilt, knowing that I had
purposefully taken advantage of a cowardly man and had even with my soft remark
thrown a bullys punch.
Ear we got a new preacher? Mr. Winfield might shout.

51
I was not sure if these was Winfields cowardly way of having the last word or if I
should take this as a warning before I set out down the street.
I heard, I might shout back.
e aint got a belly though, Winfield would say, dont know we can trust a pastor
without a belly. Could be a commie or something we dont know.
The crapper was warming up some, my eyes had grown accustomed to the
darkness and I could see the bits of trash, a woman shoe on the floor. For me, the most
interesting people are those we call the simplest folk, the ones without an education, the
ones who suffered through some childhood that deprived them of food, heat and
cleanliness, who were brought up from birth as an afterthought, if they survived they
were lucky, but they never were given a single advantage beyond that, they soon had to
look for their own crumbs, they had to figure out for themselves the dangers of doors,
steps, coals, and knives, no one taught them to look out for strangers, no one told them to
avoid rats or bugs. They lived and grew and learned on their own, they did not have
anyone other than an older sibling who barely watched them, they did not have much
schooling if any at all, they were dragged to church but drugged by a tit or a slug of cold
medicine to keep them quit. They grew up knowing nothing and everything, they grew
into maturity dumb as an animal and wisest of all human beings. These were the people I
enjoyed whether it was a cursory greeting or an extended conversation to bring the
morning.
Not only pleasant in their dispositions, many of these folk used their conviviality
and humor to create vocations themselves. How many here in this tenement alone would
count the theater as their second home? Must be more than half a dozen. Glansy, the

52
vilest man alive, could apparently be found behind the stagelamps during the Christmas
season. Nil Bender was an independent shoeblack who claimed to have played every
major Shakespearean role during his youth and prime, and so with little provocation
would place a foot atop his case and begin to recite long memorized passages from the
Bard. Good he was too, true to the pure Shakespearean form that uses little in the way of
props and or other stage elements, he had but his heavy brows and fluid mouth to
supplement his hand and arms but could convincingly bring to life, if but for moment, a
Macbeth, an Othello, even our poor Hamlet. Yet he is still laughed at today for the
mistake he made on stage one night years ago, being asked for the first time to play
Hamlets ghost with no rehearsal, he stood before the packed house and somehow made a
fatal blunder: Instead of the Bards words: the glow worm shows the matin to be near, he
orated: the glow worm shows the mating to be near, a colossal guffaw that was caught by
every one in the audience and follows him still today. Then there was Colin Ploughman,
a strangely and perpetually single man who prefers the cognomen Pinafor, a man who
once enchanted thousands under the big top until a fall from a Russian Arabian horse
crushed his hip and left him barking for a living until he could take it no more and set off
a nomad who preferred to stop and entertain a child at a train station or a group of drunks
in a pub than to be a second rate employee of a traveling sideshow. Eventually he found
a short-lived calling as a clown in the street processions that the neighborhood public
houses sponsored so as to get people to drink, but Pinafors calling to make people laugh
came from his willingness to wreck his body in terrible looking falls and threw himself
onto the concrete, from barrows, off roofs, even to be mercilessly entangled in the wheels
of omnibus or between the legs of a horse, all for a laugh. But a body already broken

53
cannot stand such continued punishment and soon he was too lame to do perform the
terrible pratfalls that had to be ugly and painful to be funny, and now repairs umbrellas
and canes the occasional chair. Everyone once in a while Pinafore will rise up from his
squatting place and show off some of his clowning antics that made him near famous
years ago, but he does it for someone watching from the shutters of his own memories
and not for the few pence that end up spinning about his feet. Most famous and most
popular of all in the neighborhood though is Joseph LiVecchi, a tall, beautiful young man
from the Calabrian Mountains who like so many Italian boys comes to our city trained in
the musical arts so as to make a living upon our streets. The people here love music and
adore song even if not a one of them can be found to carry a tune, and so when the sweet,
sonorous voice of the young Joseph lilts through the air, everyone stops and listens, a
smile to every tired face.

Io ti voglio ben assai

Ma tu non pensi ami.

Wisely, probably learned from years on the streets, he stays away from the heavy
arias and sticks with the light, cheery songs that make everyone happy and adds a
moment of warmth and lightness to even the most burdensome existence, the most vapid
day of the uncouth laborer. ITt was his face as much as his voice that stirred his every
admirers, it was his eyes, those large and dark brown ova eyes set beneath heavy lids that
seemed to give him an air of sleepiness, an air of melancholy, that so many of the
Mediterraneans seemed to have beneath the other, livelier aspects of their personalities.

54
The Italians make up a colorful section of our city; throughout the streets one can hear the
piano organs, the harps, the pleasant cries for ices. Few made more money than the
others, but you would look at them and be ill prepared to place them in the same
mendicant class as the others on these streets. The fact is the beggars in Italy have
discovered that they can make a good living in our country, a tribute to their natural
beauty, their light and flowing frames, the penetrating smiles in their sharp and angular
faces, a pleasing comparison to the often coarse, ungainly, dirty and unartistic likes of our
natural inhabitants.
But as lumpy and unattractive as we were as a race, we were not unpleasant and
indeed offer up our own forms of entertainment. Such as Mrs. Dendum and Mrs. Showers
who were so often together doing their wash next to the boiler when Id come down the
steps for one of my morning walks. Only this time, Id be dressed in my dandies.
Aye Goldie! Ask him where es going all fancied up like that, Mrs. Dendum
might say to Mrs. Showers, loud enough of course so I could hear. Mrs. Dendum was a
broad, man-faced woman whose hips spread out like a vast landscape when she bent over
her wash, these expanded into the great continents that ran down her legs and then sank
into the wet earth. She wore a short-sleeved undershirt from which the huge swells of her
underarms shuddered like the heavy froth of an overworked animal. Others called her
Pooh.
But I didnt even recognize the bloke, Mrs. Showers might answer playfully. Mrs.
Showers was the opposite of Mrs. Dendum in that she was too thin, wasted to but willow
branches for arms, her chest but a sunken stump from which a sickly branch, her neck,

55
rose meekly carrying on it the burred and ratty head with feminine features that had long
ago shriveled and spoiled.
Me thinks he done figured out that it dont pay to tutor us dumb folk, Mrs.
Dendum would say to Mrs. Showers.
Im just going for a stroll, I might answer.
On this here day? Mrs. Dendum would say. In those clothes? Tis going to rain you
know.
Not to doubt your fine instincts, I might answer, but how do you know it will rain
today, other than of course it rains every day.
Does not! Look at the clouds dear!
Cumulonimbus, I would probably remark.
Ah! Mrs. Dendum would shriek, hear him? What did you say?
Cumolumino Goldie would say, ell I dont know!
Cumulonimbus, I would repeat with the emphasis of a school teacher, the storm
clouds you see out there.
See! What I tell you uh? Smart uh?
But if you are so sure of rain, then why are you ladies hanging your wash?
Cuz ifn we didnt, then it wouldnt rain fer sure. If we hang our wash, it rains, if
we dont it dont. Simple as all that.
Dont you be insinuating you done got a ladyfriend now, Mrs. Showers would say
with a scowl, you got a good thing with your Missus.

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Yah, Mrs. Dendum would say standing up to deliver her admonition, and if youd
go an do something stupid as all that, why wed be the first to beat the living ell out o
ya!
You know me better then that, right? I might say quickly.
We knows you well sure enough, Mrs. Dendum would say without a chuckle,
after all you is the lady of the ouse an so be one of us.
Just likes one of us, Mrs. Showers would affirm.
And so your flat as been pretty quiet at night, said Mrs. Dendum who lived right
below us with her husband and six kids.
What? Id say. I beg your pardon.
Not a peep or a creak from the two of you, she might say, honestly, we ope all is
right with you.
We believe in courtesy, I might answer.
There ave been nights when you musta forgotten those simple manners, Mrs.
Dendum might retort.
Now Mrs. Dendum, that very well could have been Tates in twelve, Id offer with
playful indignation, referring to a young man who occupied the flat next to mine with his
mother. Tates had recently taken a young prostitute in with him, and we were all waiting
to hear the story about this.
Tates is but milquetoast, without a bone in im, Mrs. Dendum said. And that
trollop o is why shes too tired from er daily bread to butter anything up for im.
Tis is mothers the one that ought to be shamed, Mrs. Showers might say, no
mother should allow that in er home.

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Ah! Pash! Id do it for money too, Mrs. Dendum would say, bleeding right I
would. What other goods it for?
You aint so ignorant woman, Mrs. Showers might say returning to her wash,
what with a new one popping out from ya fresh each year.
Aye, tis true, Mrs. Dendum would say with a snort, an each one uglier than the
last.
It was then that I might look into the sheets and undergarments pinned to the
lines. A slight breeze tossing them a bit, turning them just enough to see that there were
no stories in those fabrics. Good washerwomen know how to remove the signs and the
sins.
Could use your mouth some, Mrs. Showers might continue in all seriousness.
What! Ackk! Thats bleeding disgusting wench! Mrs. Dendum would say spitting
something imagined to the ground. e didnt bathe when e was courtin me, think es
going to wash his pecker now?
Perhaps Id notice just them how the mud around the feet of these two women had
splashed high upon their the thighs exposed with their rags tied around their waists, the
steam from the boiler wafting through their wiry hair, the sun beginning to bring beads of
sweat upon their faces.
I heard a funny one from Diesel Sheppard, I would say thinking I had a closer that
would send me off from here -- you know the old man Diesel across the block.
Ah, yah e, that old ladies man? Goldie ere as a leg up for im.
Well Diesel was talking with some of the younger guys over there. Seems they
were asking him how he managed all these years, seeing hes got to be seventy right?

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Asking him if he had some kind of prophylactic, some sex aid or other love secret he
could share.
Yea, Mrs. Dendum would say, looking at me like a cat and I was holding up a
piece of liver -- yea, an what did e say?
Me as to ear this, Mrs. Showers would squeal.
See! er weasels a jumpin for ol man Diesel!
Shut up Pooh! Let him go on!
I would continue:
It aint no secret, Diesel was telling them, although for sixty years
I know, Mrs. Dendum would shriek, for sixty years he could have sworn it twas a
bone!
uh? Mrs. Showers would desperately ask, what you mean a bone?
A bone! Mrs. Dendum would laugh, raising her hands like she was holding a bat
with her flabby arms, rolling her hips. All them years e thought his pecker was a bone!
Oh! Mrs. Showers would shout with surprise. Yes, a bone! But ow could e? Oh
my!
And so I would leave these women to their laughing and chattering to themselves
over Diesels bone and so finally I would be able to go on my way.
As I would begin my walk, I would pass the kids playing in the water closet,
dashing in and out of the shed, pulling the chain to flush the toilet in some kind of game
that found endless fun and laughter centered around being alone with a steel chair that
threatened to suck you down its dark gullet. Yes, I looked at the young kids most
sympathetically, followed their antics with both a bit of a smile and a tug of sadness. How

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many of these young beings possessed the capabilities of the most brilliant, the most
talented. How many scientists, how many mathematicians, how many poets, how many
artists, how many statesmen, how many philosophers were there in these swarms of
youth, these rat nests of children, where for a brief moment their faculties might flash as
brightly as any other, perhaps with even more luminescence, even greater radiance as
they had to shine through such miserable darkness surrounding them; how many would
so shine, ever so briefly, to then fade away, go the way of all beauty, of all youth. Yet,
still here they were in the infinite possibilities of youth, unhaltered by knowing their
limitations. Look at them: cannot even tell which are the boys and which are the girls. So
perfectly unformed in their formation they are. So perfectly capable of anything,
everything.
They all had a chance, as slight as it may be, but stories abound of what bit of
luck can turn fortune and life around in a moment. But aside from poverty and lack of
nutrient, they had a host of other malevolent forces acting upon them. You only had to
look in the face of the young girls, the ones who every night had to go to the pub to bring
back their ma or their pa, the very act of retrieving their drunken parents taking a toll, the
worry and the pain was already there etched in their small nine and ten year old faces,
lines that would grow deeper beneath eyes that grew darker and more removed. Yes, there
were the girls who were dressed up and painted when they achieved puberty and offered
for a price to men who would pay for unstained flesh. There were the boys who were
turned out into the streets when their parents could no longer care for them, feed them,
offer them a bed that did not come with a switch or a kick. What chance did these
children have? What could even be conceived as luck that would change anything for

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them once so handicapped? And yet, you see it everyday, even the hungriest child rises
up on springy legs to play when the sun comes out. Every girl finds a pleasant tune to
sing to her doll despite the weight of the night before. They will sing and laugh and play
until that special character is finally driven from them and that, I suppose, marks the line
between childhood and adult.
No, these kids were for the most part condemned to the same life, to the same
place in life, to the same station as those who brought them here. For the most part and
without any real exception this meant working at the lowest jobs offered to man: street
sweep, rag picker, scrap collector, dust picker, costermonger, wallmen, public
disinfectors, corpse haulers, show blacks, street musicians, sweats laborer, dock worker,
chair caner, shellfish, mush fakers, cabbies, ginger beer makers, boardman. The lowest
jobs of the low, the occupations not even considered worthy of many a species of our
race, yet when you truly begin to examine our society and the workings of our financial
systems, you would soon discover that it all begins here. Our wealth as a nation, the
wealth of the wealthiest and even ironically the coin that gets tossed charitably down to
the poor, it all starts here.
Like most of the men in this building, I did not work. Unlike them though, I did
not even pretend to work. Most of them got up each morning and took off in their
various uniforms that defined them for sewage or wood or plaster or soot, and they would
leave each morning filled with at least some hope that this day would be different and
sometimes it was. They took off each day leaving behind the rat nests where they lived,
the rat nests where they were forced to live, the vile and savage nests of rats that their
existence was reduced to and as this was a society built and grown from one principle and

61
one principle only, the principle of survival, it was everyman and every woman and every
child, battling for existence every day, battling for pence not pounds, for farthings not
schillings, battling for position, for their pitch, for their flowers, for their fish, it was man
and woman battling against each other in competition that would eventually rake them all
to bones and destroy them all, it was a principle that was faulty in it assumption that was
crooked in its meaning, there was no survival, no one ever survived this game, the game
was played as always to the death and if not to the death to the near death, there was
never any compromise, no mercy, money knows no mercy, it was here on the streets and
here in these neighborhoods that capitalism in all its dirty colors was played out, where
capitalism in all its glory could be seen, how it operates, how it works, its dynamics, its
terrible temper, its uncompromising tone, its devastating effect on this the lower reaches
of society, it was here that capitalism advanced its toil, garnered its advances, claimed its
success, here in the lower realms, never in the upper echelons, down here it scratched and
clawed its way to millions and billions but did so via pennies and farthings, pennies
scarped from the minions, appearing in the bank accounts and pockets of the wealthy few,
pennies fought over in the garrets and the sweats and the gardens amongst the
costermongers, the sweepers, the sweat workers, the board men, the flower girls, the
charwomen, the streetsweeps, the ragpickers, the Jews and the Italians, the Irish and the
cockney, here is where the economy was played out, not in the board rooms of massive
corporation, not in government offices, not in the banks or the stock markets, not in the
museums occupied by royalty, all together those contributed a mite compared to the piles
of pennies raked from the hands and the legs and the fingers and the backs of the men and
women who scuttled through these streets and alleyways.

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And so down here, in this jungle where our capitalism breeds and claims its roots,
here is where the forces are most cruel, for here is where the coin is made real, here is
where the value of life is wrought, squeezed and discarded once the product, the pennies
of profit are secured. It is here where the competition in each of these lowly trades
kindles the fire that steams the greater engines of our industry. It is here where the
competition takes it most natural root, plays out with such extreme ruthlessness as to
deform all it touches. Here you have men fighting as street cleaners for pennies, once
able to make a living by selling the refuse they collected, until someone came along and
found a way to collect up the bits of iron and tin and so rob the poor street sweep of his
chance to have some bread for dinner. Here you find the fish mongers who fought their
way each morning to buy their pile of morning fish after the shop owners were done
selecting the best, leaving behind a motley pile of fish suited only for the minions, but
once this was enough, the bits of good fish selling for a premium to the Jews and the
French, as the day wears on the older pieces would go for stews, and finally the remains
to be ground for mulch, but all told enough could be earned to eek through another day
for the fishmonger. But no more. Machines now take fish of all size and quantity and
chop it and prepare it and place it in cans that are sold in the shops. Cheaper manures
have been devised and so that scraps are only good for ht gulls. And so the fishmonger
has been squeezed out of any meaningful subsistence except if they can find a pitch next
to a pub and so sell to the tongues that have been numbed and pockets loosened by drink.
The cabbies in their numbers have to fight amongst them selves driving down each other
wags until they have no recourse but to stoop to other ways to make a living, stealing
pieces of metal, keeping articles of clothing left behind by their customers, offering their

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back seats as for a john and his girl, running errands for the syndicate. Otherwise they
would never survive. These rules of competition and the fight for survival affect every
industry and occupation. Even the men selling Italian ices, to make the smallest profit he
has to resort to watering down their milky concoctions, the dust collectors work only by
receiving bribes as their main source of income, picking bits of goods and scraps from the
dust they collect is now done by machine. The water men, the locksmiths, the shopkeeps,
the owners of public houses, each and every one has to resort to a certain level of trickery
and dishonest behavior just to survive, forget about making a living! This is about
survival! But if these proprietors of the most lowly business are squeezed, the pennies
are still paid for their good and services, and what this means is that a larger portion of
these revenues are trickling upward, rising from the poorest of the poor, rising through
the echelons of middle men, suppliers, promoters, marketers, packagers, wholesalers,
retailers, mangers, owners and financiers. From this great sea of lowly commerce rises
the many thousands and millions and perhaps billions of pennies like a swarm, like a dust
storm of money rising off the feet and head and sweat and blood of the many poor and
destitute, the bent and filthy, this mass plucked from the poor, collecting in the sky, great
dark clouds of wealth that water but a few. But this is our system, this is our capitalism.
Here in these filthy street is where it starts, no! here is where it is spawned, here are its
roots, without these swarmy alleys and death ridden rooms, there would be no commerce,
there would be no empire. And standing here like I can, I can see it all in its glorious
cruelty, in its unrelenting and relentless passion to succeed. This is where the phrase
survival of the fittest has its strongest and most meaningful purchase. Not upon some
wild plain in Africa, not amongst natures oceans or skies, but here in the muck, in the

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mud and filth of this all too human, all so unhuman life. Darwin never set foot in a place
like this, never dirtied his shoe in these streets, never bore the uncertainty of this life,
never questioned God for these works upon our earth, never felt the pain that dulls you to
all pain. Yet he was right, only he was an economist not a naturalist.
What is lost by each through this process is not just a bit of wealth, or a piece of
the proverbial pie; in reality, each person here in some way understood their role and
accepted that these things would be taken from them that these thing were in fact not
theirs to begin with, that they were like plants to be harvested, they were like cows to be
milked they were chickens to produce eggs, like sheep to shed wool. But what was taken
from then was the pennies, the coins, the copper, the nickel, the sliver the metal, from
them this was what was harvested, this was what was expected, this is what they gave.
They knew all too well it was for not to complain, for not to expect that these pennies
were ever theirs in the first place, in any way, that they had any claim to a single coin.
And so they gave it up, they gave it away, they left it behind at public houses and opium
dens, they left it behind at poker tables and gambling halls, they left it behind in wet
alleys and beneath dark bridges, they left it behind at the costermonger carts, at the
bakeries, they left it behind in a box passed through pews every Sunday at church, that
they left behind on the laps of crawlers who had lay down to die in some empty
doorjamb. They gave freely to the most destitute; they gave most, because they knew it
would never be theirs.
Everyone here is, in fact, missing something more integral than coin, each lived
here lacking some piece, some element of body, mind or life. Could be but a finger,
could be a tooth or an eye, could be a faculty such as the one for remembering the past or

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the one for forgetting what no longer should be remembered. Could be the simple but
inevitable loss of beauty, the loss of eyesight, the loss of nimbleness in fingers that were
once straight and skillful. Could be the loss of a child, the loss of innocence, the loss of
hope. Could be a lack of empathy, a sense of what was right, what was wrong. It could
be a father who was missing, in some cases it was the mother who has disappeared. But
what was amazing was that but a strange few lost the core to their being, the solid and
central aspect of life that each hung on to and expressed with a joke, a laugh, or just a
smile. Theirs was a ubiquitous faith in word, in speech, in talk and in the slovenly ability
humans had in all ways to communicate. Yet through and with it all they all knew what
happiness was and never questioned it despite all the other questions large and small.
From these each, these persons each, these lives each, these histories each, from
these many each there are many and there are one, from these rare and unique each there
are multitudes and there are one, from these same and sameold faces there are many and
these is identity, from these iterated and reiterated old faces there are many and there is
one story, from these blurred and blurring eyes there is one and many memories worth
remembering, many worth forgetting, from these full and plumpy lips, from these thin
and crusty lips, from these tight and wetted lips, from these loose and hungry lips there is
one and there are many songs worth singing, from these tears there is one tale and there
are many tales worth remembering, from these drops there are clouds and between these
drops there is open air for all to breath, from these ashen bits there is smoke and between
these ashen bits there is hope, from these elements there are patterns, from these patterns
there is life, from this life there is all that we cherish and all we avoid, from this life there
are ways to survive and ways to expire, from this life there are ways to remain and ways

66
to leave, from this life there is a past that is both tender and horrid, from this life there is a
future that is both before us and behind us, from this life there is a future that is both for
us and against us, from this life there is a future that forgets us and forewarns us, from
this life there is a future that foreshadows and forebodes us, from this life there is a
future, a future that forgive us
The rain had begun and so I rejoiced in the solitude of my shelter. The storm was
still some miles away, but near my feet water began to dribble in through the holes along
the floorboard.
And so bound to this community, stitched as I was into this society, how could I
too not be happy? Surrounded by this admixture of sky, of grey and slag, of poverty and
misery, of beauty and ugliness, I was for the first time in my life happy, as happy as could
be, free and unbounded in my happiness. Still, there had to be a reason for this. Each
day brought all sorts of new miseries, dead infants, broken bones, wasted lives, stench,
filth, neglect but none of this had any effect on my staid and permanent bliss. There
was only one reason for this and it was not insanity. No, that reason was my wife. She
alone was the reason for my mood, my spirit, my smile, my frequent laughter, my delight
in every minute of every day. I dont credit her for this, I blame her. I blame my mood
on her, I blame my happiness on her place in my life. Since the day she lifted me up
from the muck, since the first days we spent together, since our decision to be husband
and wife, there was implicit in her support a reciprocating commitment on my part, but I
have not in any way upheld my bargain. I guess I believed there was still time. I guess I
believed I had a few chances left, a few chances to redeem. Yet with her I feared nothing,

67
with her I had a place on earth that was as solid as any other, with her I could venture out
into the world and know that I had a place to return,
And at this time of morning, before sunlight, before life itself awoke, there was a
low hum in the air, a sound that reverberated as if from distant places but hummed with
the steady sound of machines, this sound was indeed the dampened rhythm of the
machines deep within the world that steadily and constantly propelled the world forward,
sounds of the engines that were not noticeable amidst the louder din of the day, a sound
that was not unlike the inner sound that hummed within the bones just behind my ears,
the steady but sharp pitch in my head that met and equaled the machine sound of the
world and seemed to bring forth the question of which sound was which, which sound
was the machine sound of the earth or the high pitched sound of the brain, which sounds
were the real pulses and rhythms of the universe, which one controlled what we saw,
what we perceived, what we thought and what we believed, as both seemed distant from
all we knew and understood, neither seemed to contribute directly to anything else in the
world around us, yet both were there in steady and undeniable fashion, indubitable,
unexplainable, in essence and in constancy both deep and perhaps impenetrable patterns
of the universe we either knew or imagined, we saw as equally real and equally
unverifiable. One, the outer sound of machines, and the other, the inner sound of the
brain, were only possible, could only be heard together and during these early moments
when their patterns were perceptible in source and in echo. Held taut between these inner
and outer reverberations, I looked up and was titillated as if wound myself around that
very clockspring of the universe before its first release!

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And so this morning, I decided, I would walk down the path beside our building
with a decidedly different purpose, I would walk past the water closet where children
sang as if being baptized in their own water, I would walk past windows where neighbors
shouted and yelled, laughed and wished me well, I would walk past the dark stains in the
dirt where a man had died, walk to the street, and beneath the raging stratocumulus face a
wind that now foretold of coming rain, a rain clearly made certain now that Mrs.
Dendums undergarments would be hung up to dry, I would walk under a moon faintly
hanging amidst the broken clouds midway in the morning sky, a moon that once shown
brightly, looking down upon the beautiful arse of the worlds most dutiful wife, and so I
would begin a journey on what would be the last, in fact the very last day of happiness I
would ever know.