Authors: Sam Savage
Tags: #Rats, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #Books and Reading, #Fantasy, #General
Firmin (2 page)
And then, timid and uncertain, she must have crept from her cave out into the room. A faintly humming fluorescent lamp hanging by a pair of twisted wires from the ceiling cast a flickering bluish light on her surroundings. On
her
surroundings? What a laugh! On my surroundings! For all around her, everywhere she looked, were books. Floor to ceiling against every wall as well as against both sides of a counter-high partition that ran down the center of the room stood unpainted wooden shelves into which rows of books had been jammed to bursting. Other books, mostly taller volumes, had been wedged in flat on top of these, while still others rose in towering ziggurats from the floor or lay in precarious stacks and sloping piles on top of the partition. This warm musty place where she had found refuge was a mausoleum of books, a museum of forgotten treasures, a cemetery of the unread and unreadable. Old leatherbound tomes, cracked and mildewed, rubbed shoulders with cheap newer books whose yellowing pages had gone brown and brittle at the edges. There were Zane Grey westerns by the saddleload, books of lugubrious sermons by the casketful, old encyclopedias, memoirs of the Great War, diatribes against the New Deal, instruction manuals for the New Woman. But of course Flo did not know that these things were books.
Adventures on the Planet Earth. I
enjoy picturing her as she peers about at this strange landscape - her kind, worn face, her stout body, no, her rotund body, the glittering, hunted eyes, and the cute way she has of wrinkling her nose. Sometimes, just for fun, I put a little blue kerchief on her and knot it at the chin, and then
adorable
says it all. Mama!
her
surroundings? What a laugh! On my surroundings! For all around her, everywhere she looked, were books. Floor to ceiling against every wall as well as against both sides of a counter-high partition that ran down the center of the room stood unpainted wooden shelves into which rows of books had been jammed to bursting. Other books, mostly taller volumes, had been wedged in flat on top of these, while still others rose in towering ziggurats from the floor or lay in precarious stacks and sloping piles on top of the partition. This warm musty place where she had found refuge was a mausoleum of books, a museum of forgotten treasures, a cemetery of the unread and unreadable. Old leatherbound tomes, cracked and mildewed, rubbed shoulders with cheap newer books whose yellowing pages had gone brown and brittle at the edges. There were Zane Grey westerns by the saddleload, books of lugubrious sermons by the casketful, old encyclopedias, memoirs of the Great War, diatribes against the New Deal, instruction manuals for the New Woman. But of course Flo did not know that these things were books.
Adventures on the Planet Earth. I
enjoy picturing her as she peers about at this strange landscape - her kind, worn face, her stout body, no, her rotund body, the glittering, hunted eyes, and the cute way she has of wrinkling her nose. Sometimes, just for fun, I put a little blue kerchief on her and knot it at the chin, and then
adorable
says it all. Mama!
High in one wall were two small windows. The panes were grimed black with soot and hard to see through, but she could make out that it was still night. She could also hear the quickening pace of the traffic in the street and knew from long habit that another workday was set to begin. The shop above would be opening, perhaps people would be coming down the steep wooden steps into the basement. People down the steps, maybe man-people, big feet, big shoes.
Thump
. She had to hurry, and - let’s have this out now - not just because she was not keen on being caught by the sailors and kicked again or worse. She had to hurry especially because of the huge thing that was going on inside of her. Well, not a thing exactly, though there were indeed things inside of her (thirteen of them), more like a process, the sort of happening that people, with their enormous sense of humor, call a Blessed Event. A Blessed Event was about to occur, there was no question about it. The only question is, whose blessed event was it? Hers? Or mine? For most of my life I was convinced it had to have been anybody’s but mine. But leaving me aside - oh, if only I could!-and returning to the situation in the basement: there was the Blessed Event on the verge of happening, and the question was what Flo (Mama) was going to do about it.
Thump
. She had to hurry, and - let’s have this out now - not just because she was not keen on being caught by the sailors and kicked again or worse. She had to hurry especially because of the huge thing that was going on inside of her. Well, not a thing exactly, though there were indeed things inside of her (thirteen of them), more like a process, the sort of happening that people, with their enormous sense of humor, call a Blessed Event. A Blessed Event was about to occur, there was no question about it. The only question is, whose blessed event was it? Hers? Or mine? For most of my life I was convinced it had to have been anybody’s but mine. But leaving me aside - oh, if only I could!-and returning to the situation in the basement: there was the Blessed Event on the verge of happening, and the question was what Flo (Mama) was going to do about it.
Well, I’ll tell you what she did about it.
She went over to the shelf nearest the little cave in back of the warm metal thing and pulled down the biggest book she could get her paws on. She pulled it out and opened it, and holding a page down with her feet she tore it into confetti with her teeth. She did this with a second page, and a third. But here I detect a doubt. How, I hear you asking, do I know that she chose the
biggest
book? Well, as Jeeves likes to say, it is a question of the psychology of the individual, who in this case is Flo, my impending mother. ‘Rotund’ was, I fear, too kind. She was disgustingly overweight, and just the daily grind of stoking all that fat had made her horribly edgy. Edgy and piggy. Urged on by the voracious clamor of millions of starving cells, she was always sure to grab the biggest slice of anything, even if she was already stuffed to the gills and could only nibble at the edges. Spoiled it for everyone else, of course. So rest assured, the biggest volume around is the one she went for.
biggest
book? Well, as Jeeves likes to say, it is a question of the psychology of the individual, who in this case is Flo, my impending mother. ‘Rotund’ was, I fear, too kind. She was disgustingly overweight, and just the daily grind of stoking all that fat had made her horribly edgy. Edgy and piggy. Urged on by the voracious clamor of millions of starving cells, she was always sure to grab the biggest slice of anything, even if she was already stuffed to the gills and could only nibble at the edges. Spoiled it for everyone else, of course. So rest assured, the biggest volume around is the one she went for.
Sometimes I like to think that the first moments of my struggle toward existence were accompanied, as by a triumphal march, by the shredding of
Moby-Dick
. That would account for the extreme adventurousness of my nature. At other times, when I am feeling particularly outcast and freakish, I am convinced that
Don Quixote
is the culprit. Just listen to this: ‘In short, he so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus with little sleeping and much reading, his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason. Having lost his wits completely, he stumbled upon the oddest fancy that had ever entered a madman’s brain. He believed that it was necessary, both for his own honor and the service of the state, that he should become a knight-errant.’ Behold the Knight of Rueful Figure: fatuous, pigheaded, clownish, naive to the point of blindness, idealistic to the point of grotesqueness - and who is that if not me in a nutshell? The truth is, I have never been right in the head. Only I don’t charge windmills. I do worse: I
dream
of charging windmills, I
long
to charge windmills, and sometimes even I
imagine
I have charged windmills. Windmills or the mills of culture or - let’s say it - those most delectable of all unconquerable objects, those erotic grinders, lascivious little mills of lust, carnal factories of kinky joys, fantasylands of frustrated fornicators, my Lovelies’ own bodies. And what difference does it make in the end? A hopeless cause is a hopeless cause. But I won’t obsess about that now. I’ll obsess about it later.
Moby-Dick
. That would account for the extreme adventurousness of my nature. At other times, when I am feeling particularly outcast and freakish, I am convinced that
Don Quixote
is the culprit. Just listen to this: ‘In short, he so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus with little sleeping and much reading, his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason. Having lost his wits completely, he stumbled upon the oddest fancy that had ever entered a madman’s brain. He believed that it was necessary, both for his own honor and the service of the state, that he should become a knight-errant.’ Behold the Knight of Rueful Figure: fatuous, pigheaded, clownish, naive to the point of blindness, idealistic to the point of grotesqueness - and who is that if not me in a nutshell? The truth is, I have never been right in the head. Only I don’t charge windmills. I do worse: I
dream
of charging windmills, I
long
to charge windmills, and sometimes even I
imagine
I have charged windmills. Windmills or the mills of culture or - let’s say it - those most delectable of all unconquerable objects, those erotic grinders, lascivious little mills of lust, carnal factories of kinky joys, fantasylands of frustrated fornicators, my Lovelies’ own bodies. And what difference does it make in the end? A hopeless cause is a hopeless cause. But I won’t obsess about that now. I’ll obsess about it later.
Mama had made a huge pile of paper and with great effort was dragging and shoving it back into that little dark cavern she had found. And here we must not allow ourselves to become so distracted by the doleful cacophony of her portly grunts and wheezes as to lose sight of the fundamental question: where did all that paper come from? Whose broken words and shattered sentences did Mama churn into the indecipherable m’lange that, moments later, would cushion my fall into existence? I am straining my eyes to see. It is very dark in that place where she has pushed the pile and where now she is busy stamping it down in the middle and humping it up at the edges, and I can see it clearly only by leaning over the precipice that is the moment I was born. I am looking down at it from a great height, screwing up my imagination into a kind of telescope. I think I see it. Yes, I recognize it now. Dear Flo has made confetti of
Finnegans Wake
. Joyce was a Big One, maybe the Biggest One. I was birthed, bedded, and suckled on the defoliated carcass of the world’s most unread masterpiece.
Finnegans Wake
. Joyce was a Big One, maybe the Biggest One. I was birthed, bedded, and suckled on the defoliated carcass of the world’s most unread masterpiece.
Mine was a large family, and soon thirteen of us were cruddled in its struins, to speak like itself, ‘chippy young cuppinjars cluttering round, clottering for their creams.’ (And after all these years, here I am hard at it still - clottering, dottering, for my creams, my crumbs. O dreams!) All of us were soon fighting it out over twelve tits: Sweeny, Chucky, Luweena, Feenie, Mutt, Peewee, Shunt, Pudding, Elvis, Elvina, Humphrey, Honeychild, and Firmin (that’s me, the thirteenth child). I remember them all so well. They were monsters. Even blind and naked, especially naked, their limbs bulged with sinew and muscle, or so it seemed to me at the time. I alone was born with my eyes wide open and clothed in a modest coat of soft gray fur. I was also puny. And take it from me, being puny is a terrible thing when you are little.
It had an especially damaging effect on my ability to participate fully in the feeding routine, which usually went something like this: Mama tumbles home to the basement from wherever it is she has been, in her customary foul mood. Grunting and complaining as if she were about to do something so heroic that no other mother in the history of the world had ever even thought of doing it, she flops down on the bed -
kerplop
- and falls instantly asleep, gape-mouthed and snoring and totally deaf to the chaos breaking out around her. Clawing, shoving, biting, squealing, all thirteen of us simultaneously dive for the twelve nipples.
Milk and Madness
. In this game of musical tits, I was almost always the one left standing. Sometimes I think of myself as He Who Was Left Standing. I have found that putting it that way helps. And even when I did occasionally manage to be first man on, I was soon muscled off by one of my more sinewy siblings. It’s a miracle that I made it out of my family alive. As it was, I survived pretty much on leftovers. Even today, just by remembering, I can feel again that awful sliding sensation as the nipple slips from my mouth, as I am dragged backward by my hind feet. People talk about despair as a hollow feeling in the gut or a coldness or a nausea, but to me it will always be that slipping-away feeling in my mouth and across my gums.
kerplop
- and falls instantly asleep, gape-mouthed and snoring and totally deaf to the chaos breaking out around her. Clawing, shoving, biting, squealing, all thirteen of us simultaneously dive for the twelve nipples.
Milk and Madness
. In this game of musical tits, I was almost always the one left standing. Sometimes I think of myself as He Who Was Left Standing. I have found that putting it that way helps. And even when I did occasionally manage to be first man on, I was soon muscled off by one of my more sinewy siblings. It’s a miracle that I made it out of my family alive. As it was, I survived pretty much on leftovers. Even today, just by remembering, I can feel again that awful sliding sensation as the nipple slips from my mouth, as I am dragged backward by my hind feet. People talk about despair as a hollow feeling in the gut or a coldness or a nausea, but to me it will always be that slipping-away feeling in my mouth and across my gums.
But what do I hear now? Is it silence, an
embarrassed
silence? You are pulling at your chin and thinking, ‘Well,
that
explains everything. This character has spent his whole useless life just searching for the thirteenth tit.’ And what can I say? Should I grovel and admit it? Or should I protest and cry out, ‘Is that
all
? Is that really
all
?’
embarrassed
silence? You are pulling at your chin and thinking, ‘Well,
that
explains everything. This character has spent his whole useless life just searching for the thirteenth tit.’ And what can I say? Should I grovel and admit it? Or should I protest and cry out, ‘Is that
all
? Is that really
all
?’
Chapter 2
E
very night Mama left us to sneak out to the Square, to go ‘up top,’ as we called it, for supplies. The neighborhood was a good place for foraging in those days. After the bars and strip joints had shut down for the night most people liked to throw things on the sidewalks. Along with the paper bags, crushed beer cans, cigarette packs, and vomit, they also threw plenty of nutritious stuff, sometimes whole untouched meals. In addition, the City of Boston was cracking down on lowlifes, which in those days included pretty much the entire population of the neighborhood, and had stopped picking up garbage to punish them. The gutters overflowed with provender, and people had to watch where they stepped.
very night Mama left us to sneak out to the Square, to go ‘up top,’ as we called it, for supplies. The neighborhood was a good place for foraging in those days. After the bars and strip joints had shut down for the night most people liked to throw things on the sidewalks. Along with the paper bags, crushed beer cans, cigarette packs, and vomit, they also threw plenty of nutritious stuff, sometimes whole untouched meals. In addition, the City of Boston was cracking down on lowlifes, which in those days included pretty much the entire population of the neighborhood, and had stopped picking up garbage to punish them. The gutters overflowed with provender, and people had to watch where they stepped.
Mama would be gone for what seemed like forever, and we would horse around there in the dark, even though we were supposed to be very quiet on account of not being legal tenants. We were in fact squatters, though seeing that the whole kit and caboodle, the bookshop, the strip joints, even the garbage cans, were on a straight path to oblivion, with us just hanging on for the ride, maybe
stowaways
would be more accurate. But we didn’t know that yet, I mean about the ride to oblivion. At that age you think everything is forever.
stowaways
would be more accurate. But we didn’t know that yet, I mean about the ride to oblivion. At that age you think everything is forever.
After what seemed hours and hours, when we were practically desperate with hunger, we would hear her coming back.
We
were supposed to be very quiet, and there would come Mama crashing and stumbling down the stairs.
We
were supposed to be very quiet, and there would come Mama crashing and stumbling down the stairs.
I may as well call a spade a spade and say right off that Mama was some kind of tosspot. That - and her enormous girth - accounted for her problems with the stairs. In those days you could lap up booze off the sidewalks in our neighborhood, and Flo was not one to lay obstacles in the path of temptation. She was that kind of girl; it was that kind of neighborhood. So she was always pretty well tanked when she finally tumbled back home, which probably explains how she could nod off in the midst of all that shoving and squealing. Out like a light and snoring, that was Mama. A lot of people have boozehounds for parents, nothing special in that, but looking back I can see that in my case it was a great piece of luck and probably saved my life.
Alcoholism’s Silver Lining: A Child’s Story
. By the time she tottered back from one of those trips up top she usually had soaked up so much sauce her milk would set your head spinning. Not mine, of course. I was predictably off on the sidelines somewhere eating my heart out while the rest of them slurped and gurgled the great-tasting stuff she had brought home, stuff that would have caught fire had there been a spark. In the end, however, alcoholic beverage had the same effect on my brothers and sisters as it had on Mama, and one by one they nodded off, the nipples slipping from their little pink-gummed mouths. By this time, of course, most of the alcohol had worked its way out of Flo’s system and the milk was starting to run pure. So all I had to do was clamber over the rows of sleepy little tipplers and go from tit to tit emptying the last delicious drops from each. It was never enough. But it made the difference, keeping me alive, though just barely.
Alcoholism’s Silver Lining: A Child’s Story
. By the time she tottered back from one of those trips up top she usually had soaked up so much sauce her milk would set your head spinning. Not mine, of course. I was predictably off on the sidelines somewhere eating my heart out while the rest of them slurped and gurgled the great-tasting stuff she had brought home, stuff that would have caught fire had there been a spark. In the end, however, alcoholic beverage had the same effect on my brothers and sisters as it had on Mama, and one by one they nodded off, the nipples slipping from their little pink-gummed mouths. By this time, of course, most of the alcohol had worked its way out of Flo’s system and the milk was starting to run pure. So all I had to do was clamber over the rows of sleepy little tipplers and go from tit to tit emptying the last delicious drops from each. It was never enough. But it made the difference, keeping me alive, though just barely.
I don’t have to lean out over the precipice of my birth to find Mama anymore. Now I could lie on my back in the confetti, adorable pink feet curling in the air above me, and look up at her great bulk. And I did this often. Yet the picture of Mama I have kept from that moment, aside from the sheer mass of her, is scarcely more than a featureless blur. I scrunch up my eyes, I drag out my telescope, I focus, I focus - and I hardly see anything. When I think of Mama at this point nothing enters my mind but
words.
I screw my concentration up to the point where I am almost fainting, and still nothing is there but a blurred shape and the words
not enough tits -
that, and a thick sawdust-and-beer fragrance like a saloon floor.
words.
I screw my concentration up to the point where I am almost fainting, and still nothing is there but a blurred shape and the words
not enough tits -
that, and a thick sawdust-and-beer fragrance like a saloon floor.
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