The Fool of New York City Read online

  THE FOOL OF NEW YORK CITY

  Michael D. O’Brien

  THE FOOL OF

  NEW YORK CITY

  A novel

  IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

  The music and lyrics of The Sidewalks of New York were composed by Charles Lawlor and James Blake in 1894.

  Needless to say, the giants and extremely old people who play crucial roles in this story should not be identified with the giants and extremely old people who are living among us at the time of this writing. All characters and incidents are entirely fictitious, with the exception of certain public events known to us all.

  Cover art:

  Hope of the Drowning by Michael D. O’Brien

  Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum

  © 2016 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-62164-073-8 (PB)

  ISBN 978-1-68149-713-6 (EB)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2016931675

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  1 You awake from a dream

  2 The Metropolitan Museum of Misplaced Memories

  3 Homeland security

  4 Hidden rooms of the mind

  5 Voices in empty rooms

  6 The mystic mountains of Vermont

  7 East side, west side

  8 The end of the world as I knew it

  9 A medieval exegesis of love

  10 The grammar of memory

  11 Light fantastic

  1

  You awake from a dream

  You awake from a dream. The dream dissolves in the frosted breath of your mouth. From where you lie on the bed’s metal springs, you can see a window permitting light to enter the room. You see rooftops of a neighborhood, old and weary, with chimney pots and bobbing Santa Clauses and television aerials, no longer used. A band of cerulean blue sky has been slashed across the glass, and above it is boiling charcoal. Snowflakes drift down, only a few. It is winter here, which is somewhere you do not recognize.

  You swing your legs over the edge and drop your feet to the icy floor. Recoiling, you slip your damp sock feet into plastic beach sandals. You do not recognize your clothes. They are old men’s things—rumpled khaki trousers, an undershirt, a wool sweater with holes and unraveled strings of wool. The garments are not clean. You pull a stinking gray blanket around your shoulders.

  Your belly, your thighs: you are not fat. You are not too thin. Your face is rasping with days of stubble. You touch the dome of your skull. There is hair, thick, curling, the color uncertain. You can see nothing of your face, though you are in it and there is full sensation. You blink—darkness. You open your eyes—light.

  There are layers in existence. Many of these are visible, though flattened into a single plane. The invisible layers are present but incomprehensible. They may be seen in brief flashes, as if hints were scattered as errant snowflakes. The layers are beyond counting. They are in relationship, yet how it works, and why it does, remains indecipherable. You exist as an element of the whole phenomenon and may observe parts of it—yourself a part, of course. To see and understand the invisible, you must wait quietly. You must not frighten it away.

  Oh! Is this correct? Can you frighten phenomena? Yes. You can. A deer bolts for the deep sanctuary of evergreens. The fish flashes into deep reeds. The mind hides in deep sleep. Fear may be a necessary part of the whole, preserving the integrity of things. Yet when a man awakes in a cold room and does not know where he is or why he is, he may stand and wave his arms about and make sounds with his mouth, and in this way affect the infinite movements all around him. As you sit shivering on the edge of the bed, you know you should not do this. If you are waiting for the invisible phenomena to appear, it is best not to create confusion. Best not to disturb the layers. But now you are very cold, and your body cannot wait. It makes you stand up and shuffle through the dust toward the window, making small clouds—which is disturbance.

  You are a stone dropped into a forest pond, when snow has covered the earth and the stripped birches are sleeping sentinels ringing the pond. The water is not yet frozen. There are a few yellow leaves clinging to branches, exposed nests cupping little mounds of snow, and an elderly tree with wizened apples hanging upon its leafless limbs. Rust red against white, touched by brushstrokes of gold. At some time while you were asleep, there had passed through this region a tentative painter of visual haiku.

  So you drop the perfectly smooth, unflawed oval of stone into the pond, and it makes concentric waves, silver foil blossoming from black water. Cold water is always black. Though sometimes, if you are able to walk upon it or bend over it, you may see a carpet of orange and yellow and crimson and Tyrian purple spears on the bottom. Bottles too. Broken eyeglasses. The green circuit boards of abandoned computers. A toy racing car. Lost wedding rings.

  Do you remember the autumn thrill of the first ice-walk on shallow water? Beneath is the carpet of leaves. Between it and your rubber boots there is the frozen layer as clear as glass. When you step onto it, it splinters but does not collapse. Then another step, and another. You are looking down into the real world. You laugh when you hear the splintering sound, once a year. It is recognition, the reliability of the seasons, the dependability of the world.

  But that is not the point. You mean to say to yourself that if you affect the world of phenomena, it is only in your immediate environs, like a wave dissipating as it is absorbed. Or the weight of a single child in the epicenter of an outward-expanding web of fractured glass. Are you now—at this moment, in this room, this winter—are you now frozen or fluid? Are you the mass of your being, like water? Or are you the wave of your being, like speech and the gestures of your muscles?

  You know there is something uneven in this question. Do you need to ask it? The answer must be wrong too. You have taken a wrong turn somewhere; you have fallen asleep and lost yourself. And now you are awake again but have not refound yourself. Though you know the names for things, you do not know how you know. You do not know the way things have come to be, or why they continue to exist and to move. Like yourself.

  The sky is divided into strata, or else appears so. Now a flock of small brown birds cuts diagonally across the glass, moving from churning gray into serene blue, circling and darting in unison, whirling, dancing in air, rising again. It is beautiful. This word flows through your mind. Yes, it is a word for something. It attracts and consoles, but you cannot say any more about it.

  There is a street below the window. A human being walks past, an old woman in a heavy brown coat, moving slowly, pulled by a little leashed dog wearing a red coat and leggings and hat. Then two other human beings pass by, slender and swift, their legs scissoring. They wear black clothes; their hair is green; their faces are hardly human. They do not look up at you, but they are frightening. The world has become peopled with creatures you have never seen before.

  The blanket around your shoulders no longer preserves your heat. You are shivering hard now, your teeth chattering. The room is growing darker. The bird dance has finished; the air dancers depart. Are there other hints out there? Will they tell you your name and your purpose? Will they explain why you are here? You are pressing your face to the glass, waiting for the answers to these questions.

  It is nearly night when the giant comes. You remember giants from the books someone read to you. Someone carried you then, kept you always warm and without fear. They laughed when you laughed, smiled when you smiled. And the rocking horse in the room—that was another room, not this one. And the glowing bunny lamp. The giants were all in books. There are bad giants. There are many of these. There are good giants, though fewer.

  You are staring
down at the street, watching the giant approach in long easy strides, his enormous body inside a heavy coat of curry-colored canvas, under a knitted cap and with a long scarf flying out behind him, the pennant of a masted schooner, and with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. You wonder if his head will be able to peer into your window when he passes by it, though your room is high up, for you are gazing over rooftops and the dead Santas and it is many feet down to the concrete below. Nearer and nearer he comes, and his face is raised to the sky. He is whistling. You can see now that he is not as tall as a house, not as high as the layer of building in which you are standing by the window, waiting and observing. Yet there is no doubt he is a giant. His face is not frightening, though you cannot know for certain if he will become dangerous, because giants are willful and some of them would deceive you. It is a beautiful thing to see a real giant, as long as he does not see you.

  But that is not always the pattern of things, for the world is, at times, inconstant.

  The giant slows his pace and comes to a halt beneath your window. He sees you! His face changes, his eyes narrowing, his brow folding, his mouth opening in an Oh. Is he angry? Or is he hungry? Is he the colossus you have always dreaded, always knew would come? Or is he Saturn, who devours his children?

  You quickly step back from the window. You hear heavy footsteps, the clumping of large boots on the staircase. There is only one door in the room. The floor is littered with broken glass, mouse droppings, a frozen bat, the bed, the rusty springs. You try to open the window, to climb out and drop to the sidewalk, which is swift and better than being slowly eaten. The window will not open. You sit down on the floor and cover your face with your hands. You sob and sob, for now the ramparts will splinter and shatter. You will dissolve. You will evaporate. You will become something else in the belly of the giant.

  Will you become a whistling in his mouth?

  You cannot bear to look. You hear his boots splintering the shards of glass.

  “Hello,” says the giant, his voice like distant thunder. He has whispered so as not to break your eardrums. This is generous. He may eat you, but he does not want to frighten you. He does not want you to bolt into the forest.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  You press your hands tighter over your face.

  “You’re going to freeze to death here.”

  You cannot speak. If you are silent, you will become smaller and smaller, not worth the effort of a bite.

  “I won’t hurt you,” says the giant.

  Now your sobs become wails, a child in the room of the rocking horse, with the coffin in which you laid a dead golden hamster. The coffin was an empty matchbox, for large wooden matches, with a blue sailing ship on the cover. You made a memorial label for her and pasted it on the box. In crayon: Beloved daughter. Gone but not forgotten. And someone helped you bury it in the backyard. Someone helped you make a little cross to put into the soil.

  “Don’t be afraid,” says the thunder, with his hand cupping the back of your head, a hand so large it holds your entire skull in its palm. The hand is warm and holds things lightly. You can feel the contours of its shape, the complex planes you have drawn again and again with charcoal, and perspective, at times with chiaroscuro. Though this hand’s strength is self-restrained, it could crush you.

  “What is your name?” asks the thunder.

  I cannot remember, you think, opening your cracked lips to speak, but fearing that words would vibrate the air, disturb the layers, provoke the giant, and invite a painful conclusion.

  “Why are you here? This is an abandoned building and not very safe.”

  You open your fingers a little, to see if he is toying with you before his meal. The giant obscures the sky, the room. He is kneeling before you. His face is enormous and too close. The eyes are gray and clear, the face is a Bronzino, a lord of that time, though lacking arrogance. It is a kind face. It is worried. It is sad.

  The giant gently pulls your hands from your face. You are no longer wailing. You are not sobbing. But you will not look up. This is what people do when they are shot by killers—they look away. To look at a human being, face to face, eyes to eyes, is to say that between us there is recognition. And sometimes trust.

  “My name is Billy,” the giant rumbles. “I want to help you. I won’t hurt you. Are you hungry?”

  You nod, instinctively, impulsively, and you regret it. But still you cannot look at him.

  The giant adjusts the blanket covering your shoulders, tucking it under your chin.

  “All right then. We should find you some food and shelter. You can’t stay here. You’ll die if you do. Can you stand up?”

  It is not wise to converse with giants. Not until their true nature is revealed.

  The giant is so strong that when he lifts you to your feet you are standing before you know it.

  “Come on. Let’s go find a place for you to stay.”

  Out on the street a bitter wind is blowing. The giant removes his own coat and drapes it over you. Its hem brushes your ankles. He puts your blanket over his back and a hand on your shoulder, and guides you along.

  “Am I a child again?” you ask, and are shaken by the words that have come from your mouth. The words are rasping, broken words.

  “No,” says the giant.

  Five blocks, ten blocks. People and cats. Winter birds. Automobiles with smoking tails. Ice in concrete runnels, fumes rising from drains. The enormous hand cradling you—to crush, to guard, it is not certain.

  Now you are through a glass door and in a room full of people, seated along a wall, waiting. The people all look up and stare at the giant, saying nothing. A child hides his face in his mother’s arm. Others whisper and stare. They do not look at you. They look at him.

  The giant helps you to sit on a chair, and he takes an empty one beside you. The metal creaks and bends. He is too large. But even giants need to sit at times. And still his arm is around you.

  Now you and he go into a room where a lady at a desk asks for your names. You sit down. The giant stands, his bristling brown hair brushing the ceiling.

  The giant explains. The woman looks worried, or irritated. You cannot understand what is being said.

  Later the giant brings you to a bright and shining place full of people waiting with their broken legs, bleeding hands, coughing lungs. Everyone stares at the giant. No one sees you.

  A doctor inspects your body. Nakedness. Shame. Needles extracting tubes of violet-red fluid. Thermometer. Pressure band. Stethoscope.

  “Stethoscope,” you say aloud, to no one.

  The doctor speaks to you, but you can say no more.

  You are laid down onto a sliding tray by two burly black men with friendly smiles. As they strap your body tightly with bands, one of them says, “Don’t you worry, pal, this ain’t gonna hurt. Try to hold still. Please don’t move or we’ll have to do it all over again.”

  They feed you into the open mouth of a machine that hums and buzzes. You hold yourself perfectly still, hoping you will go through the tunnel into another universe. But the bed slides out again and you have not escaped. They unstrap you, help you to stand, take you out to see the giant, who has been waiting in another room.

  “He’s not ill,” says the doctor to the giant. “No trace of drugs or alcohol. No wounds, no head trauma. A touch of hypothermia, but body temperature is rising well. Malnourished too. The psychiatric unit would be best, though without identification and health insurance, we can’t admit him. You could take him to the free ward for itinerants at Bellevue. Have you tried the police? Missing Persons bureau?”

  “I am not missing,” you say. “I am here.”

  “Yes, you are here,” the giant rumbles with a pat that shakes your bones. “Thank you, Doctor, we’ll check with them.”

  The police are busy. You sit on a bench and wait and grow warmer. The giant stands beside you, his hand nearby, ready to reassure you, or to guard the ramparts of your integrity.

&n
bsp; A policeman discusses many things with the giant.

  “He doesn’t look like a street person,” says the giant.

  “They usually don’t in the beginning. This guy’s falling through the cracks, buddy. He a friend of yours?”

  “We just met.”

  The giant goes through album after album of photographs, names, places. All the while, the policeman stares at the giant, observing his face, his limbs, the way his hands flip pages. The policeman is not suspicious. He is curious, amazed. You see now that other people observe unexplainable things, are startled and expanded by phenomena.

  “You from a circus?” the policeman asks.

  The giant glances at him and shakes his head, then returns to the albums.

  You are photographed, a burst of light, glow-spots in your eyes.

  Later, faces flash across a computer screen. Face after face after face.

  “I am not in there,” you say, though they cannot hear you. “I am here.”

  Your fingers are inked and pressed onto paper. You wash them off in a bathroom, the giant standing watch over you.

  You return to the desk out there in the office.

  “What’s your name?” asks the policeman. “You sure you can’t remember who you are?”

  You do not answer. Who are you, really?

  The policeman says to the giant:

  “All we know is he’s a Caucasian male, early twenties, no distinguishing marks or features. No fingerprint match. No cyber track anywhere. Facial recognition software narrowed it down to about ten thousand guys in this state who look like him, more or less, but can’t seem to pinpoint him. And he could be from anywhere. If we had some ID, there’d be a way to start looking. Until then. . .”

  “Surely there’s a place he could go.”

  “Good Shepherd shelter, not far from here. Want me to call them?”

  He telephones. The voice on the other end says that the shelter is full. All the city shelters are full tonight. But there’s one on the south side of Jersey that has a bed.