Taking Off (15 page)

“I'm turning here.” Mr. MacPherson pulled to the side of the road.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said as Raskol and I got out.

“My car's an old and crotchety beast,” he said, “certainly no Thunderclap, but then, ‘the biggest horse is no aye the best traiveller.'”

Raskol and I walked the rest of the way to the salvage yard, where we bought everything we thought I was going to need. The owner's brother-in-law gave us a ride home, and he heard the story of the epic Gunfight at the Rancho Grande Corral, the reversion of the ranch, and El Patrón's happy sunset years, spent largely on the expansive porch of the ranch house, in the company of his aged cronies, shooting the shit.

Chapter 32

The Best in Town!

ALBERTINE AND I did stop in Babbington on our way back to the city. We left the train station, a few blocks north of Main Street, and walked southward, along Upper Bolotomy Road, to Main, and then eastward to River Sound Road, where we turned to the south again and followed the estuarial stretch of the Bolotomy River to Leech's Boatyard. The boatyard was still called Leech's, though discreet lettering below the name read
R. LODKOCHNIKOV, PROP
.

“Do you want to stop in?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said, and I meant it.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to spend the time. Mr. MacPherson would have recognized the full implication of the phrase
spend the time.
“Ken when to spend an when to spare,” he might have warned me. There is in the notion of spending time the strong suggestion that time, one's time on earth, is like money, and that one can overspend, run out, be called to account, bankrupt oneself, before one's time ought otherwise to have been up. I had little money, and I was beginning to feel that I had as little time. Having little money, I had the feeling that I should always be at work, turning time into money as well as I could, doing whatever work I could find to try to keep the household afloat. The full version of the Scottish saying that Mr. MacPherson might have quoted to me is “Ken when to spend an when to spare, and ye needna be busy.” Ahhh, yes, but if in the early days of your life, when time seemed cheap and plentiful, you did not ken when to spend and when to spare, then in the later years you must needs be busy all the time.

“You're still on vacation,” Albertine reminded me.

I checked my watch. Yes, I was still on vacation, but my vacation time was running out. I knew that Raskol would probably be there, at the boatyard, busy, but not so busy that he couldn't spare some time for his old friend, and I would have been glad to see him, but I decided that the time I might have spent shooting the shit with him at the boatyard would be better spent on something else. If I had had more time … but I didn't. One has to budget one's time when the days dwindle down to a precious few. (Sorry, Raskol.)

We passed the boatyard and continued to the street where my paternal grandparents had lived, turned onto it, and walked past the house as inconspicuously as we could while examining it, sidelong, for alterations. Only from certain angles was it recognizable as the house I had known as a child. Seen from directly across the street, it was greatly altered, or seemed greatly altered, though the actual changes were neither so many nor so extensive that I couldn't have reversed them if I had had the money to buy the place and have the work done, or if I had had the money to buy the place and the time to do the work myself. I felt a great weight of remorse and guilt for my never having prospered sufficiently to have had the money to buy the house and preserve it. It should have been then, that afternoon, just as it had been when I was a boy and sat with my grandparents on the porch on summer evenings.

“If I had ever made any real money, buckets of it,” I said to Al, “we could have bought this house, and all the others—all the ones that you and I ever lived in—and preserved them as they were.”

“In our permanent design collection,” she said.

“Over the course of a year, we could make a progress from house to house—”

“That would have been folly,” she said consolingly, squeezing my hand, “no matter how much money we had.”

We had passed the house, so we thought that we could safely stop and turn and stare.

The current owners had enclosed the front porch (or perhaps the owners before them had done it; the house had passed through several hands since my grandparents had died). They had done it in a clumsy way that made the entire front of the house look like an awkward addition. They had also painted it.

“What color is that?” I asked in a whisper, as if we might have been overheard.

“I guess I'd call it saffron,” said Al.

“I'd call it aggressive,” I said, “an assault on the past, battery of the memory.”

I think that whoever had decided on this bellicose use of color had meant to make the house appear larger thereby, but to my eyes the brightness had diminished it. Formerly, it had been a dark gray, and the quiet dignity of the color had made the small house seem much more solid and staunch, made it more of a presence, than this saffron did.

We went on our way, made the next right, and headed back up to Main Street, where we hoped to find a place where I might get some clams, freshly dug from Bolotomy Bay, full-bellied, fried golden and crunchy. As we walked along, we noticed a number of small signs in wire frames stuck into the front lawns of the houses we passed. Some pleaded with the passersby to support the Andy Whitley Airport, others advanced the project of a new waterfront park, and some screamed
NO CONDOS
!

“What do you suppose that's about?” I asked.

“The airport, a park, and condominiums, I'd say,” she said. “Chips in play in the game of defining Babbington's future.”

“Mmm,” I said, in the manner of one aloof from the fray of small-town politics.

We had reached Main Street. Only five years had passed since Albertine and I had left Babbington, but the mix of businesses along the town's throbbing commercial thoroughfare had changed considerably in that time. The diner had become a sushi bar. Many of the shops that had been idiosyncratic and local were now standardized outposts of national retailers. There seemed to be twice as many banks as there had been and three times as many insurance companies. There were five nail salons where formerly there had been none. The post office had become a restaurant called Not the Post Office Anymore.

“Clever,” said Albertine, and I think she meant it.

We entered and were greeted by a smiling host.

“Do you have fried clams?” I asked peremptorily, even a bit contentiously, prepared to turn on my heels if told that they did not.

“The best in town!” declared the host with trained confidence. “Two for lunch?”

“Umm—” I said, looking around, trying to decide what I thought of the place.

“Yes,” said Albertine, and she tugged me along as the host ushered us to a table.

“Stuart will be your waiter, and he'll be right with you,” the host claimed. He put menus in front of us and smiled his way off in the direction of his post at the door. Stuart arrived almost at once.

“How are you folks doing today?” he asked in a breezy tone.

“We have fallen under a dark cloud of nostalgia and regret,” I said.

“I hate it when that happens,” he said, pouting in sympathy. “How about a little drinky?”

As we walked along, we noticed a number of small signs …

“Anderson's Amber,” I said. “Two pints.”

“And do you know what you'd like to eat?”

“The grilled chicken sandwich,” said Albertine, making an assumption, since she had not looked at the menu.

“Best in town,” Stuart assured her. “Comes with Whirly-Curly Fries and a side of Super Slaw. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“And for you?”

“Fried clams,” I said.

“You also get Whirly-Curly Fries and a side of Super Slaw with that,” he said, without assuring me that the clams were the best in town. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okey-dokey,” he said. He swung a tiny mouthpiece into position, said, “Number nine,” listened for a second, and then said, “GC platter, FC platter,” and he turned to go, but Albertine caught his sleeve.

“Stuart,” she said in her most confidential tone, “what can you tell us about the airport-park-condo dispute raging in town?” I think she must have given him the impression that she and I were the vanguard of a television news team and that he had a good shot at an appearance on the six o'clock report, because he leaned toward the table and spilled his guts, figuratively speaking.

“Basically, it's all about the airport and its fate,” he confided. “There are three camps. One wants to keep the airport forever and even expand it some. Naturally, the people who have planes are in that group. Another group calls the airport a playground for the rich and wants to bulldoze the whole thing and make a big park out of it. The
Babbington Reporter
—that's the local paper—is behind that. And then a third group supposedly wants the airport land to build a huge development of luxury condominiums. I don't know who's behind that.”

“Where do you stand, Stuart?” Albertine asked.

“Off the record,” he said with a wink, “I think the condominium plan is a fake, just a scare tactic. I mean, who in his right mind would buy a luxury condominium in Babbington? And as far as a park goes, haven't we got enough parks? Who uses them anyway? Just a lot of stinking bums—excuse me—stinking homeless people. I say keep the airport. It's been a part of this town as long as anybody can remember—and it's historic. I mean, you may not know it, but this is the Birthplace of Teenage Aviation!” A soft beeping sound began to emanate from Stuart. He swung the mouthpiece into position again, said, “Number nine,” listened for a second, and then said, “Roger, sir, I copy.” To us, he said, in the same confidential tone he had used for the straight poop on the airport dispute, “Your orders are up.”

He was gone. He was back. Brisk service was a feature of Not the Post Office Anymore. He put two pints of Anderson's and two large platters of food in front of us.

“What are these?” I asked, regarding the pale beige battered strips on my plate.

“Fried clams!” he said, as if I were an idiot. “Fresh from Ipswich, Massachusetts!”

Chapter 32

I Play the Losing Game of Translation

THE TITLE PAGE of the book that Mr. MacPherson had given me said:

Alfred Jarry

Gestes & Opinions

du

Docteur Faustroll

pataphysicien

roman néo-scientifique

I began my translation there. I hesitated at
gestes
and spent some time vacillating between translating it as
jests
or
jokes.
The obvious choice seemed to be
jests,
but it sounded antiquated, even quaint, while
jokes
sounded too casual, too—well—jokey. I was about to settle for
jests
when I recalled Mr. MacPherson's caution against the treachery of
fauxamis,
those pairs of French and English words that resembled each other enough for the student to think that they must be the same, or nearly so, when they were actually so different as to be barely on speaking terms. I turned to my French-English dictionary. It told me that a
geste
was a gesture, a motion or movement, an action, or a wave of the hand. Hmmm. The gestures and opinions of Doctor Faustroll? Not likely. The actions, then. No. Acts. No. Too inactive somehow. Deeds? Accomplishments? Adventures? Adventures. If it were
my
book, I would certainly prefer
adventures
to
acts
or
actions
or even
accomplishments.
Thus:

Alfred Jarry

Adventures & Opinions

of

Doctor Faustroll

Pataphysician

A Neo-Scientific Novel

I could have stopped there and counted it as a page done, but, flushed with success, I decided to push on. “Livre Premier: Procèdure” I translated as “Book One: Procedure,” and the first part of that book I translated as follows:

I

COMMANDMENT

IN ACCORDANCE WITH ARTICLE 819

*   *   *

IN THE YEAR eighteen hundred ninety-eight, on the eighth of February, in accordance with article 819 of the Code of Civil Procedure and at the request of Mr. and Mrs. Bonhomme (Jacques), owners of a house situated in Paris, at 100½ Richer Street, for which residence, abode, house, or premises I am the elected member in my residence, dwelling, or abode and also in the registry office of the Qth or 15th District, I, the undersigned, René-Isidore Panmuphle, bailiff within the civil tribunal of the first instance of the district of the Seine, situated in Paris, residing there, at 37 Pavée Street, have made Commandment in accord with the Law and Justice, to Mr. Faustroll, doctor, tenant or lodger in various premises annexed to the aforementioned house situated in Paris at 100½ Richer Street, where having gone to the aforementioned house, upon which was found equally indicated the number 100, and after having rung the bell, knocked, and called the above-named on different repeated occasions, no one having come to open the door for us, the nearest neighbors declared to us that it was indeed the residence or domicile of the said Mr. Faustroll, but that they were not willing to accept the copy and whereas I did not find at the aforesaid premises either parents or servants, and none of the neighbors was willing to assume the duty of being presented with the copy upon signing my original, I returned immediately to the registry office of the Qth or 15th District, whereupon I returned to the Mayor, speaking with him personally, who gave me his initials or signature on my original: within twenty-four hours as a total extension of time, to pay to the plaintiff in my hands for which will be tendered to him good and valuable receipt the sum of three hundred seventy-two thousand francs and 27 centimes, for eleven terms of rent on the above-named premises, due the following January first, without prejudice of those falling due and all other rights, actions, interests, fresh or newly put into execution, declaring to him that failing to satisfy under the present Commandment in the said extension of time, there will be or he will be compelled by all the ways or means of right or law, and notably by the seizure as security or in payment of furnishings, furniture, and personal belongings, furnishing or filling the rented premises. And I have at the domicile or residence as I have said below left the present copy. Cost: eleven francs 30 centimes, which includes 1/2 sheet with a special stamp at 0 francs 60 centimes.