Read Online The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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psychological—all those of kind intention who would kill me for my own good, either by keeping me in my place or sending me back to it. Oh, up with the coattails and all that, of course, but it was a long way between signals, and already the second day of spring. And right now, at the hour before dawn, when the blood-sugar level is lowest, I needed to be told that taking something off could be as positive and worthy an act as putting something on—a policy our children aren’t bred to. I could make use of a fortune cookie that said it.
When I shouldered my bag again, and put down the money for the tea, the two Chinese who had been cluttering in the back came forward. Though the old Chinatown tongs that brought them here were said to be dying, recruits like these still arrived regularly in the poorer eating-houses. Two pale boys with coarsely shining hair, lips swollen with youthful serenity, and inquiring nostrils, they had waited upon me together, teaching each other how to learn by serving a single pot of tea in unison. Three weeks ago, perhaps, they had been in Taiwan, and their landscape still walked with them; I could see their bent backs sculptured in the field. There is a kind of innocence that hangs for a long time about people who leave their homeland early. They don’t know precisely what events, which people in the new land, must be called strange.
And now once more, as these two ovaled up to me, bowing and curving, I was reminded of how, in Bangkok, Oriental gesture had always seemed to me to be fluently addressed to a point beyond me, its immediate object—as if all but me were chorus to a play whose main roles were being played elsewhere.
Surely my tip, modestly suited to my new status, couldn’t have caused all this twittering. “English?” I said into it. “Do you happen to speak any—”
In their seashell language, they deprecated themselves, humbly powerful. Grow grass they could, or set a table of teakwood thoughts in this wilderness, or mend the sky—with a gesture—when it was in danger of falling—but no, they spoke no English.
When I finally understood them, I couldn’t speak either. For, finally, one brought me a small wooden salad bowl, cupped my hands round it gently, as if valet to a personage, and even more humbly set my money—the quarter for the tea also—inside it. So, once again, I saw myself in somebody’s mirror, and this time I smiled.
As I left, tucking the bowl under an armpit, I pressed my palms together and bowed over them, glad that my travels had educated me enough to say thank you in monk language. In their final flurry of bows, they seemed even to be pointing me on my way—to the viaduct.
When I looked back, they had stopped bowing. One leaned in the doorway, staring out into the neon-thumbed night. The other, head bent, studied the carnation reek of our gutters. And I?—I’m a silly woman—I tripped along mystically, thinking of all the new roles my new head might have in store for me. I thought I saw the pattern of the life it held out to me and all wanderers, a life that was all episodes, through which I was the connecting string. Though these were to fall tangential as snow, it was my fate to unite them. Is this ordinary?
And is it customary to stand still on the pathway and give thanks to the general scene that you are in it, uncomfortable as you are? I did that! When the wild jackass coughs by night in the desert, bringing up all the poetry he has chewed by day, that’s what it must sound like. For, think of it, I had never before felt the absolute hilarity which comes of knowing that one’s equipment is equal to one’s intentions! Face to face with the diorama of where I could go—(and would) up to and including captain death’s table—my head fairly dizzied itself. I turned it yet once again—this large, superbly bare fact on my shoulders. I wanted to thank the boys back there for being my signal. Then it came to me—that I had been
When I shouldered my bag again, and put down the money for the tea, the two Chinese who had been cluttering in the back came forward. Though the old Chinatown tongs that brought them here were said to be dying, recruits like these still arrived regularly in the poorer eating-houses. Two pale boys with coarsely shining hair, lips swollen with youthful serenity, and inquiring nostrils, they had waited upon me together, teaching each other how to learn by serving a single pot of tea in unison. Three weeks ago, perhaps, they had been in Taiwan, and their landscape still walked with them; I could see their bent backs sculptured in the field. There is a kind of innocence that hangs for a long time about people who leave their homeland early. They don’t know precisely what events, which people in the new land, must be called strange.
And now once more, as these two ovaled up to me, bowing and curving, I was reminded of how, in Bangkok, Oriental gesture had always seemed to me to be fluently addressed to a point beyond me, its immediate object—as if all but me were chorus to a play whose main roles were being played elsewhere.
Surely my tip, modestly suited to my new status, couldn’t have caused all this twittering. “English?” I said into it. “Do you happen to speak any—”
In their seashell language, they deprecated themselves, humbly powerful. Grow grass they could, or set a table of teakwood thoughts in this wilderness, or mend the sky—with a gesture—when it was in danger of falling—but no, they spoke no English.
When I finally understood them, I couldn’t speak either. For, finally, one brought me a small wooden salad bowl, cupped my hands round it gently, as if valet to a personage, and even more humbly set my money—the quarter for the tea also—inside it. So, once again, I saw myself in somebody’s mirror, and this time I smiled.
As I left, tucking the bowl under an armpit, I pressed my palms together and bowed over them, glad that my travels had educated me enough to say thank you in monk language. In their final flurry of bows, they seemed even to be pointing me on my way—to the viaduct.
When I looked back, they had stopped bowing. One leaned in the doorway, staring out into the neon-thumbed night. The other, head bent, studied the carnation reek of our gutters. And I?—I’m a silly woman—I tripped along mystically, thinking of all the new roles my new head might have in store for me. I thought I saw the pattern of the life it held out to me and all wanderers, a life that was all episodes, through which I was the connecting string. Though these were to fall tangential as snow, it was my fate to unite them. Is this ordinary?
And is it customary to stand still on the pathway and give thanks to the general scene that you are in it, uncomfortable as you are? I did that! When the wild jackass coughs by night in the desert, bringing up all the poetry he has chewed by day, that’s what it must sound like. For, think of it, I had never before felt the absolute hilarity which comes of knowing that one’s equipment is equal to one’s intentions! Face to face with the diorama of where I could go—(and would) up to and including captain death’s table—my head fairly dizzied itself. I turned it yet once again—this large, superbly bare fact on my shoulders. I wanted to thank the boys back there for being my signal. Then it came to me—that I had been
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