I travel west with a sort of Mr.
Bleaney — that’s not his real name, but it does pop into my head when I hear
his story. I listen with some sympathy, too, for don’t we all sometimes fear we
are Mr. Bleaney? The original Mr. Bleaney was a boarding house tenant in Philip
Larkin’s 1955 poem, and he has nothing to show for his life than his presence in a shabby
rented room:
But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature
My own Mr. Bleaney, the one sitting beside me on the
bus, was a former bricklayer, but he has just been fired from a caretaking job
in an old folk’s residence because: “I was drunk on the job.” His grin is
rueful. “Doesn’t matter because I hated the place anyway. Now I’m on my way to
Washington for a cure paid for by my veteran’s pension. It’s not a bad place:
I’ve been there a couple of times already.”
He has been married four times, once for one day only.
His next marriage lasted a month: “She was beautiful, a German, but on the
first night, she tells me she already has a boyfriend. I tell her I’ll kill
both of them if I ever see them together, so what does she do? She calls the
police, and I go to jail. Later on, I met a few of her ex-boyfriends, and they
all told me she was nuts.”
Everything he owns in the world is
in four shapeless bags. He’s sixty years old, but still hopeful, and
disarmingly cheerful: “Life can only get better.”
***
In Berkley, California where I’m to
give my talk, the room is packed with people but the atmosphere is depressed.
“The woman who was in charge of the talks just died
yesterday,” her replacement informs me. “Everyone loved her, and they’re all
here seeking comfort.”
And definitely not a book talk. But I soldier on —
what else can I do? — then go recuperate in a café across the road where a bird
struts around the room as if his presence is perfectly normal.
“Free Range,” says one local wit sitting in a corner.
At a table beside mine, a man orders a full meal —
hash browns, ham, three eggs, toast. He eats one egg, one piece of bread, throws
his used napkin on the plate, pushes it away. The waste shocks me, reminds
me of one early morning in the train station restaurant of Kosice, Slovakia,
when five skinny gypsy children swarmed in, began shoving all the leftover food
on plates and in rubbish bins into their mouths… until the waitress and cashier
began screaming, threatening to call the police.
***
In small-town northern California, things do get
better. Here are sleepy streets and wooden houses; squirrels leap from tree to
tree; and huge self-confident birds peck like chickens. Even the coffee shop
where I breakfast is right out of a 1950s movie: local cops sit at the counter chewing
the fat with a chubby warm-hearted waitress and plus-size cook. On the menu is
the message: “Thank you so much for making our dreams come true. We love it
here.”
Ukiah, Willits, Petaluma, and Eureka: people show up
for my talks. I’m wined and dined, driven to the coast for sight-seeing, and
I’m even asked to give another talk in a long-abandoned synagogue tucked into an
empty, misty valley. This is what a book tour should be: exchanging ideas,
meeting new people, seeing another way of life, finding beauty.
The area, the welcome, both make me want to pull up
stakes, come live here immediately, wander each day along these tree-lined
streets, eat good food, inhabit a frame house. However, in my life, this is
just a stop along the way.
***
On the long journey up to Washington, I travel along
roads I knew half-a-century ago. Where I once saw fields, there are ugly strip
malls, chain stores, fast food joints, and the traffic is bumper-to-bumper. Look
what we’ve done to the world.
The woman responsible for book talks in the cultural
center in Mercer Island is hostile. Clearly, she hates her job.
“We don’t have
much of a turnout for these things. Fifteen came to one last week, and that was
a big crowd. Anyway, I’m on my way home.”
Thank you, ma’am.
The auditorium is huge...and empty: half-an-hour to go.
A nice man comes in with fresh coffee for the crowds that will soon be pounding
down aisles, but he’s looking at me with pity, as if he already knows this will
be a dud. He leaves.
The room is still empty when, at ten minutes after eight
o’clock, an elderly couple shuffles in; they’re followed by a younger man in
glasses and wearing a heavy overcoat. An audience, at last. The talk should
have started ten minutes ago.
“Good evening,” I say. The faces in that big space out
there are unreceptive. Well, to quote Herodotus, neither snow, nor rain, nor
heat, nor gloom of night can stay me: the show must go on. So I give my very
best to these three impassive people who never laugh, never smile, and never
nod. At least there’s the possibility of selling two books, isn’t there?
Half an hour later, I conclude, mention that a signed
copy of my book is available for purchase. The man in the overcoat gets up and
quickly exits. The old folks stand.
“We didn’t come for this,” says the
sour coot. “We came for a film about Brazil. We must be in the wrong room.”
And the two of them shuffle up the aisle and disappear.
Leaving me, and my suitcase of books in the empty
auditorium. And, once again, I think of Mr. Bleaney.
and on my podcast at
https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner
