chaplin
11-15-2009, 09:42 PM
(October entry for the Story Competition)
-------
A Mess of Numismatic Pottage
I lay on a soiled, slack-springed mattress, surrounded by gold. Silver, too. From out of this treasure, I stared up at the ceiling, whose stains and dents and holes--like the disfigurements of some gap-toothed gargantuan--were the only parts of my room not covered with my glittering coins. Otherwise, the brilliant reigned over the dull, the radiant over the matte.
I would soon be leaving this room, and this treasure would, of course, accompany me; so I rose from my bed, composing a little chorus of creaks as I did so, and pulled a large suitcase from the floor. Into this went my wealth.
I first packed away my collection of Roman denarii, which I had spread across an old desk: These are little, century-thinned discs, whose imprint--of a dull-eyed, often curly-haired monarch--sometimes only covers half the coin, leaving a crescent of plain metal just above the truncated emperor, like a little halo. Then, after these, a set of Grecian medallions, two thumbs wide and etched with cloud-robed goddesses.
And so on. Steadily the suitcase filled, and the walls began to emerge from their gold-and-silver dream. The kitchen sink, around which I had arranged some particularly vibrant specimens, was once again merely a corroded basin, its golden glimmer now packed away. A seldom-frequented corner of the floor, devoid of its silver rubles, was now just a bit of dusty wood; so too with the window sill and the counters, the headboard, and the seat of an unused chair. I removed lastly a big gold dollar that had concealed a burn spot. As I closed the lid over the coins I felt as if their shine were gathering inside.
I then slid the suitcase off the bed; its weight, plunging to the floor, sent my body into a rigid twitch as I struggled to keep it in my hands. I crossed the room, legs locked in support, and stopped at the door to hunch down to the peephole (feeling, as ever when doing this, a bright flash of the forbidden--as if I were peering into a chambermaid’s little boudoir). I saw, however, nothing. Despite stretching open then squinting tight both eyes, my cheek scraping against the door, I could see only a fluttering blackness. At the moment I began to ponder the possibility that my room had been torn from all reality and placed in an empty void, I remembered, with some disappointment, that the eviction notice was still hanging on the other side of the door, carelessly affixed there, over the peephole, by my old-lady landlord.
More urgent than stealthy, I cracked the door open, shot my hand through the opening, and ripped the paper back into the room. Then, letting the notice drop to the floor, I resettled my eye to the door’s little lens: a deserted hallway, lit with time-rimed light bulbs, and a row of doors opposite. I darted out and down the stairs.
As I strode through the lobby, I passed on the right, as everyday, the metal mosaic of built-in mailboxes and the mural-like water stain stretching across the wall; I gave both a farewell glance. As I neared the glass exit door, a female figure suddenly appeared therein, rising up in increments as she scaled the front steps. Instinctively, I stopped--the suitcase continued forward, swinging my arm like a little pendulum, as I watched the figure materialize. I resumed my progress when I recognized her as my young neighbor, Priscilla (coincidentally, also the name of my brother’s short-lived kitten). She and I had exchanged decreasingly awkward hellos since moving in, and had achieved a pleasant, if laconic, rapport. Her ear had a small mole on it, and her hair--in pristine curls--lightly bounced whenever I met her coming down the stairs.
I reached the front door just as Priscilla was coming through it; I readied, eyes up, for another one of our hellos. She had paused at the threshold upon noticing my approach, and now took a step back, pulling the door with her, to more fully clear my way to the street. I passed through and she smiled mutely, as if delighted with her role in my departure. Despite this unforeseen perfidy, I, too, smiled--and as courteously as any time in our, now terminated, series of greetings (however I did decline to return her little half-wave). I nearly dropped my suitcase as I dashed down the steps.
The early-afternoon crowd in this city is depressing: those people with nothing to do--usually men in sweaters--walking slowly from store to store, constantly looking down the street and over their shoulders as if someone cared enough to follow them; and the homeless people--usually men in old sweaters--sitting singly on benches, either half-dazed or fully-smug, their lives in a bag at their feet. And then myself, a neat harmony of both types.
All of these same, sad men--now and then contrasted pleasantly by a shop girl sweeping up the sidewalk--compelled me to decide upon a destination. Firstly, there was the train yard, whose distant clattering I had heard nightly in my old room; however, the memory of this clattering--a gaunt, soulless sound--prevented me from turning there. There was the park; but it probably got very, very dark there. And the factory district. That probably held some interesting nooks, but the smell I associated with it--a sour stifle of rust--was intolerable when merely passing through an adjacent block…After several more rejected possibilities, I decided to just walk toward the suburbs, vaguely hoping and expecting to find some suitable corner there to spend the night in.
I reached the first row of houses well after night had settled in. Careless, I walked the clean sidewalks, listening to the equally clean quiet, often stopping under a streetlight to set the suitcase down and look around. The usually grand houses lining both sides of the street, were, for now, in the gloom, merely formless blocks, sitting sleepily on their haunches. Nothing to aspire towards. However, there was a sickening poignancy in the stray lighted window, floating afar, like a beacon, in a wall of black.
Fatigue hit me suddenly, after miles of abeyance. Not caring any more, I swerved into a small grassy area--not a park really, just some benches and a sandpit--and laid down under a picnic table to keep hidden. With my head resting, a bit painfully, atop the suitcase, I gazed up at the few stars visible between the spaces in the tabletop. The moon was looming, irritatingly bright, just above the horizon.
My hiding was unnecessary; I awoke involuntarily hours before dawn the next day, my back wet with dew, and started walking again. The suitcase felt heavier than it had the day before.
A pre-dawn suburb: empty roads, raw and foreign and very black; infrequent cars passing like motored phantoms; one or two housewives walking small dogs, both of which (the dogs and the housewives) are eager to greet you as if actually meeting in a real world. Somehow, I managed to shrug them all off. Just before reaching the city, crossing under an overpass, I encountered a hobo man, another type also awake at this hour. He took his hands from his pockets, watched me pass, then returned them to his coat--we almost nodded to one another. He looked just like a bearded Swedish king on several of my old kronor.
Upon reaching the city, my stomach, for hours and hours so solid, suddenly snapped with hunger when I visualized all the meals I would have to provide it--a redoubtable thought because I had no money. I did have a suitcase of expensive coins, but what good was that? Sure, it was a wealth, indeed a trove of riches, and duly recognized as such, but, alas, wholly invalid within any contemporary system--it was a worth confined completely to itself. And, anyway, I refused to exchange my obscure, but resplendent riches, for a uniform, but practical, security.
Such an honorable resolution fades, however, when the rather unreal dawn transforms into morning. Soon, the sterile smell of empty sidewalks was replaced with the perfume of nearby breakfasts. Every store seemed to reek with this savory scent; every businessman, holding cases somewhat similar to mine, carried with them a piece of this redolence. Another homeless man (another looking exactly like a Scandinavian monarch) even had his share of it--quietly consuming something from a napkin held to his face. (To go yet further, the man’s gray-streaked beard, catching the crumbs from his lips, even had more than myself.)
I resisted though--or for a while, at least. But before long the morning departed, and took with it my last vestige of will. Around noon, as I turned onto a main road, fleeing from a street of aromatic cafes, I came upon the sight and smell of hot dogs. They were being peddled by a short man, whose shoulders barely surmounted the cart from which he was selling them. I watched him as I neared: every time he sold something or checked on his wares, he had to press his chest to the rim of the cart, using it as leverage to reach into a compartment, from which he lifted out a bun or a sausage, the latter dripping with the water it had been boiled in. I’ve never even liked the things, yet this sight--a tepid hot dog glistening with cloudy water--was the limit of my endurance. (It’s strange how the lowest form of certain things is often the most enticing.)
With deliberation, I ducked into a doorway and set my suitcase on some stairs. I opened the lid--ignoring how weakly the coins seemed to shine--and began sifting. I mainly had foreign and discontinued items, but once I had bought a set of turn-of-the-century quarters--not very valuable, and not a cherished part of my collection, able to be sacrificed with little import (as I then reasoned). I soon found them, waiting loyally, at the bottom. They didn’t look too much like the ones currently minted, but there were perhaps enough similarities for a quick exchange.
Pocketing the quarters and sealing the suitcase, I stepped back onto the sidewalk and made directly for the hot dog cart. I passed it by once, not because of a resurgence of resolve, but merely from diffidence. However, I abruptly turned on my heel and walked back to the man. I asked him, simply, for “one.” He nodded up at me, then leaned and strained all over the cart as he assembled the order. As he did so, he asked, “Mustard?…Onions?…”, going through every condiment he owned, like some strange monk chanting--to which I answered, in equally monastic tones, “Yes…no…Yes…”
Finally, he named his price, holding the sausage in one hand, the other palm-up, waiting for payment. I gave him the quarters from my pocket, adding, “Keep all the change.” He passed me the hot dog and turned to insert the coins into his cash box. Just before he dropped them in, he hesitated, the way one does when about to sneeze. I quickly turned and started off, fully expecting to be called to--but I continued on, without protest.
Oh, if only he had charged up to my retreating back, roughly tapped my shoulder (or more precisely my shoulder blade, since I doubt he could have reached the former) and told me, “These things are fakes,” or some such thing, then shoved the quarters back into my hands. But he didn’t, and I devoured my unpleasant purchase (the first of many). As those foul things often do, it had a faint metallic taste--almost like an old coin.
-------
A Mess of Numismatic Pottage
I lay on a soiled, slack-springed mattress, surrounded by gold. Silver, too. From out of this treasure, I stared up at the ceiling, whose stains and dents and holes--like the disfigurements of some gap-toothed gargantuan--were the only parts of my room not covered with my glittering coins. Otherwise, the brilliant reigned over the dull, the radiant over the matte.
I would soon be leaving this room, and this treasure would, of course, accompany me; so I rose from my bed, composing a little chorus of creaks as I did so, and pulled a large suitcase from the floor. Into this went my wealth.
I first packed away my collection of Roman denarii, which I had spread across an old desk: These are little, century-thinned discs, whose imprint--of a dull-eyed, often curly-haired monarch--sometimes only covers half the coin, leaving a crescent of plain metal just above the truncated emperor, like a little halo. Then, after these, a set of Grecian medallions, two thumbs wide and etched with cloud-robed goddesses.
And so on. Steadily the suitcase filled, and the walls began to emerge from their gold-and-silver dream. The kitchen sink, around which I had arranged some particularly vibrant specimens, was once again merely a corroded basin, its golden glimmer now packed away. A seldom-frequented corner of the floor, devoid of its silver rubles, was now just a bit of dusty wood; so too with the window sill and the counters, the headboard, and the seat of an unused chair. I removed lastly a big gold dollar that had concealed a burn spot. As I closed the lid over the coins I felt as if their shine were gathering inside.
I then slid the suitcase off the bed; its weight, plunging to the floor, sent my body into a rigid twitch as I struggled to keep it in my hands. I crossed the room, legs locked in support, and stopped at the door to hunch down to the peephole (feeling, as ever when doing this, a bright flash of the forbidden--as if I were peering into a chambermaid’s little boudoir). I saw, however, nothing. Despite stretching open then squinting tight both eyes, my cheek scraping against the door, I could see only a fluttering blackness. At the moment I began to ponder the possibility that my room had been torn from all reality and placed in an empty void, I remembered, with some disappointment, that the eviction notice was still hanging on the other side of the door, carelessly affixed there, over the peephole, by my old-lady landlord.
More urgent than stealthy, I cracked the door open, shot my hand through the opening, and ripped the paper back into the room. Then, letting the notice drop to the floor, I resettled my eye to the door’s little lens: a deserted hallway, lit with time-rimed light bulbs, and a row of doors opposite. I darted out and down the stairs.
As I strode through the lobby, I passed on the right, as everyday, the metal mosaic of built-in mailboxes and the mural-like water stain stretching across the wall; I gave both a farewell glance. As I neared the glass exit door, a female figure suddenly appeared therein, rising up in increments as she scaled the front steps. Instinctively, I stopped--the suitcase continued forward, swinging my arm like a little pendulum, as I watched the figure materialize. I resumed my progress when I recognized her as my young neighbor, Priscilla (coincidentally, also the name of my brother’s short-lived kitten). She and I had exchanged decreasingly awkward hellos since moving in, and had achieved a pleasant, if laconic, rapport. Her ear had a small mole on it, and her hair--in pristine curls--lightly bounced whenever I met her coming down the stairs.
I reached the front door just as Priscilla was coming through it; I readied, eyes up, for another one of our hellos. She had paused at the threshold upon noticing my approach, and now took a step back, pulling the door with her, to more fully clear my way to the street. I passed through and she smiled mutely, as if delighted with her role in my departure. Despite this unforeseen perfidy, I, too, smiled--and as courteously as any time in our, now terminated, series of greetings (however I did decline to return her little half-wave). I nearly dropped my suitcase as I dashed down the steps.
The early-afternoon crowd in this city is depressing: those people with nothing to do--usually men in sweaters--walking slowly from store to store, constantly looking down the street and over their shoulders as if someone cared enough to follow them; and the homeless people--usually men in old sweaters--sitting singly on benches, either half-dazed or fully-smug, their lives in a bag at their feet. And then myself, a neat harmony of both types.
All of these same, sad men--now and then contrasted pleasantly by a shop girl sweeping up the sidewalk--compelled me to decide upon a destination. Firstly, there was the train yard, whose distant clattering I had heard nightly in my old room; however, the memory of this clattering--a gaunt, soulless sound--prevented me from turning there. There was the park; but it probably got very, very dark there. And the factory district. That probably held some interesting nooks, but the smell I associated with it--a sour stifle of rust--was intolerable when merely passing through an adjacent block…After several more rejected possibilities, I decided to just walk toward the suburbs, vaguely hoping and expecting to find some suitable corner there to spend the night in.
I reached the first row of houses well after night had settled in. Careless, I walked the clean sidewalks, listening to the equally clean quiet, often stopping under a streetlight to set the suitcase down and look around. The usually grand houses lining both sides of the street, were, for now, in the gloom, merely formless blocks, sitting sleepily on their haunches. Nothing to aspire towards. However, there was a sickening poignancy in the stray lighted window, floating afar, like a beacon, in a wall of black.
Fatigue hit me suddenly, after miles of abeyance. Not caring any more, I swerved into a small grassy area--not a park really, just some benches and a sandpit--and laid down under a picnic table to keep hidden. With my head resting, a bit painfully, atop the suitcase, I gazed up at the few stars visible between the spaces in the tabletop. The moon was looming, irritatingly bright, just above the horizon.
My hiding was unnecessary; I awoke involuntarily hours before dawn the next day, my back wet with dew, and started walking again. The suitcase felt heavier than it had the day before.
A pre-dawn suburb: empty roads, raw and foreign and very black; infrequent cars passing like motored phantoms; one or two housewives walking small dogs, both of which (the dogs and the housewives) are eager to greet you as if actually meeting in a real world. Somehow, I managed to shrug them all off. Just before reaching the city, crossing under an overpass, I encountered a hobo man, another type also awake at this hour. He took his hands from his pockets, watched me pass, then returned them to his coat--we almost nodded to one another. He looked just like a bearded Swedish king on several of my old kronor.
Upon reaching the city, my stomach, for hours and hours so solid, suddenly snapped with hunger when I visualized all the meals I would have to provide it--a redoubtable thought because I had no money. I did have a suitcase of expensive coins, but what good was that? Sure, it was a wealth, indeed a trove of riches, and duly recognized as such, but, alas, wholly invalid within any contemporary system--it was a worth confined completely to itself. And, anyway, I refused to exchange my obscure, but resplendent riches, for a uniform, but practical, security.
Such an honorable resolution fades, however, when the rather unreal dawn transforms into morning. Soon, the sterile smell of empty sidewalks was replaced with the perfume of nearby breakfasts. Every store seemed to reek with this savory scent; every businessman, holding cases somewhat similar to mine, carried with them a piece of this redolence. Another homeless man (another looking exactly like a Scandinavian monarch) even had his share of it--quietly consuming something from a napkin held to his face. (To go yet further, the man’s gray-streaked beard, catching the crumbs from his lips, even had more than myself.)
I resisted though--or for a while, at least. But before long the morning departed, and took with it my last vestige of will. Around noon, as I turned onto a main road, fleeing from a street of aromatic cafes, I came upon the sight and smell of hot dogs. They were being peddled by a short man, whose shoulders barely surmounted the cart from which he was selling them. I watched him as I neared: every time he sold something or checked on his wares, he had to press his chest to the rim of the cart, using it as leverage to reach into a compartment, from which he lifted out a bun or a sausage, the latter dripping with the water it had been boiled in. I’ve never even liked the things, yet this sight--a tepid hot dog glistening with cloudy water--was the limit of my endurance. (It’s strange how the lowest form of certain things is often the most enticing.)
With deliberation, I ducked into a doorway and set my suitcase on some stairs. I opened the lid--ignoring how weakly the coins seemed to shine--and began sifting. I mainly had foreign and discontinued items, but once I had bought a set of turn-of-the-century quarters--not very valuable, and not a cherished part of my collection, able to be sacrificed with little import (as I then reasoned). I soon found them, waiting loyally, at the bottom. They didn’t look too much like the ones currently minted, but there were perhaps enough similarities for a quick exchange.
Pocketing the quarters and sealing the suitcase, I stepped back onto the sidewalk and made directly for the hot dog cart. I passed it by once, not because of a resurgence of resolve, but merely from diffidence. However, I abruptly turned on my heel and walked back to the man. I asked him, simply, for “one.” He nodded up at me, then leaned and strained all over the cart as he assembled the order. As he did so, he asked, “Mustard?…Onions?…”, going through every condiment he owned, like some strange monk chanting--to which I answered, in equally monastic tones, “Yes…no…Yes…”
Finally, he named his price, holding the sausage in one hand, the other palm-up, waiting for payment. I gave him the quarters from my pocket, adding, “Keep all the change.” He passed me the hot dog and turned to insert the coins into his cash box. Just before he dropped them in, he hesitated, the way one does when about to sneeze. I quickly turned and started off, fully expecting to be called to--but I continued on, without protest.
Oh, if only he had charged up to my retreating back, roughly tapped my shoulder (or more precisely my shoulder blade, since I doubt he could have reached the former) and told me, “These things are fakes,” or some such thing, then shoved the quarters back into my hands. But he didn’t, and I devoured my unpleasant purchase (the first of many). As those foul things often do, it had a faint metallic taste--almost like an old coin.