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Authors: Susan Palwick

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar
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“You think I am like my brother the drunk, is that it?”
“No, I don't think you're like him. He was a lot nicer.” She saw Macsofo's hands tighten on the table, the knuckles turn white. She swallowed. “Look, I don't know what happened with that Mendicant, and you don't either, but I do know that Darroti never insulted any of us, even when he was drunk. He never ragged on people for not earning enough money. He never spat on anybody, Uncle Macsofo. And you've got to stop blaming him and Alini and America for all your problems, and start taking some responsibility yourself.”
“Well,” he said, his voice icy. “Aren't you just the perfect little selfhelp American bitch?”
She was starting to shake; she could feel it. Behind her, she heard her father make a hissing sound, but he didn't say anything, and neither did
Timbor or Harani. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that's exactly what I am. And you're an abusive alcoholic SOB, and if you threaten anybody in this family, or outside it, I'll call the cops on you so fast it'll make your head spin. Got that, Uncle Max?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I'm very scared.” But he'd started to cry again.
“Good,” Zamatryna said. “You should be.” She turned to Timbor, who looked pale, and said, “I'm going to the hospital now. To see how Betty is. If Jerry calls, tell him I'll call him later, okay?”
The drive to the hospital calmed her down somewhat, and she was relieved to find Betty looking relatively comfortable in the CCU, despite all the beeping and buzzing. “Betty, how are you? I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner. I was busy this morning. And they'll only let me stay for fifteen minutes now.”
“Where's Jerry?”
“He's—at home, I guess. I haven't talked to him since last night. I know he's concerned about you. I'll call him later to tell him you're doing better.” Zama squeezed Betty's shoulder. “You are doing better, right?”
“Jerry loves you.”
Zamatryna sighed. Aliniana had always said that, too, although she'd only met him briefly a few times when he'd picked Zama up at the house—times Zama had carefully chosen because Max wouldn't be there. Zama had figured that Alini was just in hyper-romantic soap-opera mode, but Betty didn't have that excuse. “Well, I don't see how you can tell, after meeting him for ten minutes when you were having a heart attack.”
“He told me. I asked him, while you were carrying my bags to the car.”
“And what was he going to say, that he hated my guts? Betty, listen, I'm here to find out how
you
are, okay? Are you feeling better?”
Betty looked away. “Yes. For a little while. Zama, I'm scared.”
“For a—what do you mean? Are they going to do more tests?”
“They did them. This morning, while you were busy. They woke me up at dawn. I need—to live a long time, I need an operation.”
Zamatryna gave her shoulder another squeeze. “So you'll have the operation. That's scary, I know, but then you'll feel better.”
“Won't have it. Can't afford it. Too expensive.”
“What? Betty, they can't do that. They can't refuse treatment you need to live. Look, don't worry, we'll get this straightened out. I'll talk to the nurses and find out what this is about, okay? Please don't worry. You're going to be fine.”
But her conversation with the nurse wasn't very reassuring. “Your friend needs triple bypass. At least triple: maybe quadruple. And she doesn't
have any medical coverage. That surgery runs at least two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Wait a minute. She needs it to save her life, right? You're trying to tell me that bypass is elective surgery?”
“She needs it to
prolong
her life. We
saved
her life by putting her in CCU: that's the extent of the legal obligation. The hospital's swallowing that bill because it has to. But you're not going to find anybody who'll do free bypass on her. Look, honey, this is going to sound brutal, but even if you got a surgical team to donate its time, you'd still have to pay for the facilities and equipment and drugs. And frankly, she's not a good risk.”
“Medically?”
“Mentally. Don't look at me that way: I told you it was going to sound brutal. Anybody who donates that surgery will want to donate it to somebody who's going to be a productive member of society, okay? What was her quality of life like before she came in here? She's mentally impaired and she lives on the streets, right? Is that worth maintaining? Ask yourself.”
“
What?
” Zama felt the floor spinning beneath her. “Who are you to judge her quality of life! It's her life! She's a person! She wants to live, just like anybody else does!”
The nurse sighed. “It sucks. I know it does. But unless you've got two hundred thousand socked away someplace, I don't think you're going to be able to do anything. Welcome to America, huh? I have to get back to her now. You can visit again tonight.”
“Visit? And she'll be all right? You won't have cut her throat to save the hospital some money?”
“Hey.” The nurse turned, her voice sharp. “Don't talk to me that way. I didn't invent this system, and I don't like it any better than you do. I'm taking care of her as well as I can.”
Zama's mouth tasted like blood. “I'm sorry.”
“Yeah, well, you watch your manners.” But the nurse reached out and touched her arm. “Good luck. I know this is hard.”
Now what? She stood gasping for breath by the nurses' station, and finally turned to walk to the elevators. She had to go back home, call Jerry, get ready to go to work. At least things couldn't get any worse. That was some comfort.
But when she got home, Lisa was sitting in the kitchen, two suitcases next to her and a newspaper on the table in front of her. It looked like no one else had moved since Zama had left. They looked like they'd been punched.
“What?” Zama said. “What is it?”
“Hi, sweetie,” Lisa said. She sounded like she'd been crying. “Did you see the paper this morning?”
“No. I was distracted.” Zama grabbed the paper. What in the world?
“Front page,” Lisa said. “First column. See the headline? Camp clerk indicted on INS fraud?”
“Oh, no.” Zama stared at the newsprint, but she couldn't seem to take it in. “Oh no. Is that—the clerk who—the one you paid—”
“Smart girl.”
“But—I mean, do they know about us? Is there any way they could—we might be okay, maybe they don't know about everything, maybe they won't figure it out, nobody's called us or come knocking—”
“I don't know,” Lisa said. “I'm wondering that too. But Stan figured it out. He figured it out right away. And he figured out I hadn't told him the truth.” She smiled wanly. “So he kicked me out of the house. I'm going to be staying with you guys for a while, if that's okay.”
Darroti
Every night, now, he watches over his father's shoulder as Timbor writes letters. He writes them in Gandiffran, in the graceful rolling script of home; he writes them in a blank book with a drawing of stars and a smiling crescent moon on the front. The letters always begin, “Dear Darroti,” and at first Darroti thinks that this means Timbor knows he is here. But it soon becomes clear, from the letters themselves, that Timbor does not know that.
“Dear Darroti,” the first letter begins, “I wonder where you are now, and whether your spirit is learning anything. A friend of mine said that it would help me to write you letters, because I have been having very strange dreams. He is a doctor; he treats people whose minds have betrayed them. He tells me that people who have lived through difficult things often have such dreams. Do you dream where you are now, Darroti? You lived through more difficult things than I have, I think. The most difficult thing I ever had to live through was your own death. That was even more difficult than your sentence, even more difficult than exile has been.
“But I am writing these letters to tell you, wherever you are, that we are doing fine here in America, in exile, although I will never be as fine as I would have been if you had not died. It is silly to write the letters, because I know you will never read them, but my friend thinks they will help me, and I respect him, so I will try. And so I will tell you what we are doing now.”
And so Timbor tells Darroti about driving a cab, about how Harani is cooking in a casino and Erolorit is packing meat in a supermarket; he tells his son about everyone's job and about the children's school accomplishments, and most of all about Zamatryna, the family's joy. The letters never contain a word of uncertainty or discontent, and Darroti wonders whom his father is
trying to fool. He wonders how his father can believe that lies will make anyone feel better: and then he remembers his own lies—all the lies that led him here, that led the family here—and realizes that lies are the province of the living.
For Darroti, who cannot hear speech, can nonetheless perceive the storm of emotions in the house, the currents which bounce and buffet him whenever he is not hiding in his father's bookcase. He feels Macsofo's fury and Aliniana's despair, his father's endless sadness, the pain and confusion of the cousins on the rare occasions when they are home. He senses Erolorit's joyless resignation and Harani's yearning for the past. He knows that Zamatryna suffers pain, although he does not know why, and he knows that she works to keep the others from seeing it, just as Timbor works to make his letters cheerful.
There are sometimes other people in the house: the woman Lisa and her husband Stan—whom Darroti has often seen before, and whose names he now learns from his father's letters—school friends of Zamatryna's and her cousins', men who come to repair the pipes or the television set. Darroti cannot read these people well, because they are not his family, not connected to his story. Stan and Lisa are the clearest, because they are the closest to the others. They care the most. And yet Lisa's kindness is also cocooned in lies, and Stan stumbles in the darkness of his doubt.
And then one day there is a new person in the house, only for a few moments: a large young man, sun-browned, with hair so pale it is almost white. And Darroti, who has ventured out from the bookcase for a little while, hoping to avoid a gale, feels an updraft of love so pure and potent that it nearly lifts him through the roof.
He knows that kind of love. It is what he feels for Gallicina. It is the world reformed, made new, each time the lover sees the beloved's face. It is the miracle which makes the cosmos dance, which keeps the planets in their courses, which fuels the fire of the stars. It is salvation.
And no one else in the house seems aware of it.
Who is this young man?
“Dear Darroti,” Timbor writes that evening, “Zamatryna has a new boyfriend now, a football player named Jerry. He looks like a collection of tree trunks lashed together, and he is not very clever.”
But he loves her! Darroti would shout this into his father's ear, if he could. Jerry loves her! He will save her; he will make her happy. He will save you all. He wants to shake his father's shoulders, but the pen still moves across the page, oblivious.
“Aliniana thinks that he is fonder of her than she is of him. Zamatryna says that he is just a friend and that it is nothing serious, but they have a good time eating food together, even if they do not bless it. Her sorority sisters are very impressed that she is dating Jerry, and that is mainly why she sees him, I think. Ah, she is a little American now, in ways I will never understand.
“Erolorit has gotten a raise at work. This will allow us to repay our debt to Lisa sooner. Harani burned her finger on some grease tonight, but we put a bandage on it and now she is fine.” The letter meanders on, talking about money and utility bills and the glass Timbor broke this morning, and Darroti is helpless to bring it back to what he wants to know. Jerry. What of Jerry? There must be more about Jerry.
Darroti desires information, indeed is desperate for it. And so now he ventures more often from the safety of the bookcase, the security of the towel, which remains perpetually wet with his tears. No longer needing sleep, he watches ceaselessly for any sign of Jerry, but these are few indeed. Twice more Jerry comes into the house, each time for five minutes; each time his radiant love finds no reflection in Zamatryna's distracted indifference. Darroti invades Zamatryna's bedroom when she is not there, hoping to spot photographs, love letters, any sign that she realizes or returns the ardor she has kindled, but there is nothing: her bureau and desk are bare, fastidiously neat, the bed meticulously made, the closet always shut. The room looks as if no one lives there at all, and Darroti never stays long. Were he to penetrate the surfaces, creep into the drawers of the desk as he creeps into the towel, for instance, he knows he might discover more, but delicacy stops him. He barely knows this child at all. She was seven when he died. He has no real right to spy upon her secrets; and if once she realized Jerry's love, surely she would not keep it hidden.
So he searches Timbor's letters, which he knows he has permission to read, for any clue that the family understands the depth of Jerry's devotion. He finds none; he finds nothing else, either. The letters are tissues of fact containing no truth, surfaces as seemly and off-putting as the ones in Zamatryna's bedroom. Timbor describes his passengers and the routes he has driven; he talks about Rikko and Jamfret's prize in the Science Fair; he shares Aliniana's gossip about the mayor's cousin's fingernails.
Because Darroti now spends much more time outside the bookcase, he knows just how artificial Timbor's letters are. He watches Macsofo and Aliniana fight and fight and fight again. He watches Harani weep in the garden when she thinks no one can see her; he watches Timbor weep in bed and mumble to the clown on the wall, saying all the things, presumably, he will not say in his letters. Darroti strains to understand the words his father
mutters, strains to read his lips, but he cannot. He watches Aliniana throw the costly, bejewelled clown at her husband, watches it shatter on the floor. He watches her storm out of the house, watches Macsofo rage and weep, watches Zamatryna confront him the next morning. He watches Lisa arrive, also weeping, with the newspaper and her suitcases. He thinks that his towel, the one that never dries, is a fitting symbol for this weeping house.
He wonders how long it will take his father to start telling the truth in his letters, to the memory of his son, and not just to a painting of a clown.
It does not take very long at all, after Lisa comes. That same night, after everyone else has gone to bed—Lisa is sleeping in Poliniana's room—Timbor takes out the blank book and stares at it. He stares at it for several minutes, until Darroti wonders if he plans to write in it at all. But at last he opens it, his hands shaking, and lifts his pen.
The pen which used to roll so smoothly scrambles now, and skips. The handwriting looks broken. The sentences sound broken. All of Timbor's surfaces have broken. He does not begin by writing “Dear Darroti”; he simply writes.
“I cannot pretend anymore. All is wretched. All is misery. More misery than Darroti's death? No, but as much misery. From so many places. From everywhere and everything.
“Darroti, if you could read this, could you ever have imagined what you have done to us? I tell myself it is not your fault. But I do not understand. I do not understand why. Why this is happening. Why you killed the Mendicant. Why you killed yourself. Those things began it all.
“Your brother takes after you, and drinks. He works on the poison trains, and drinks. He curses us. He drove his wife away. She has gone away. She wants a divorce. She says—but I cannot write that, and Zama thinks it is not true.
“The clerk who sold us our fake papers has been caught. They say he will confess. He will offer information to spend less time in jail. What will happen to us? It will be the same questions: where are you from, and what direction did you walk in to get here? I remember Zamatryna saying, ‘We walked forward.' We cannot go back. But the Americans will not believe that. Will they send us to Afghanistan, where we know no one?
“We are caught. Lisa is caught. Stan kicked her out because she lied to him. She is here now, in her mother's house. In the house where she grew up, where she is now our guest. Stan wants a divorce. Stan, who does not believe in divorce. Aliniana, who never heard of divorce before we came here.
“I went to the Auto Museum. It is Saturday. I always meet Stan at the Auto Museum. I wondered if he would be there. He was there. He was sitting
on a bench near the De Soto. He was crying. He asked me why I had lied to him. He asked me how he could go on living, when he knew that his wife had lied to him. I thought he was angry at me, but then he wept in my arms. Like a child. Like Darroti did when he was small and had nightmares. He told me he could see no light anywhere. He told me God is dead. He told me Jesus is a joke. He told me forgiveness is impossible. He said he could not keep living. He said that twice.
“He is alone in his house now. I am terrified. I want to stay with him, to keep him safe, but I could not keep Darroti safe, even when we were in the same tent. I could not keep him alive when he did not want to stay alive. And I must stay in this house, to keep Macsofo safe. And to keep the others safe from Macsofo. I cannot be in two places at once. I cannot watch Macsofo and Stan at once, because Lisa is here too.
“Zamatryna said I should call the police. She said I should tell them that Stan was in danger. I told her please to call if that is what we must do. I do not know what to do. She knows what to do. What would we do, without her?
“Jerry called to ask how Betty was. Zamatryna did not want to talk to him; she says he is not important right now. She says there is no way he could understand what we are going through. She says she has too much else to think about. So I told him how Betty is.
“Betty is dying. She needs an operation on her heart. The Americans will not give it to her. It costs too much money. She has no money. People do not help beggars, here. No, some do. We do. Stan and Lisa do. Jerry did. But doctors do not. Or not doctors who operate on hearts. This is a terrible country.
“I hate it here. I hate everything that is happening and everything that has happened. I hate exile.
“I have told Macsofo that he must stop drinking. Everyone has told him that, but I told him again, tonight. I did not think he would agree. He never has before. But tonight he said he would try. He is frightened, I think. He understands our danger from the clerk. He asked me if Aliniana knew, if she had read the news, if anyone had spoken to her. It is the first concern he has expressed for her in months.
“He asked where his children are. I said I do not know. Zamatryna said they are probably with Aliniana, and Macsofo nodded. He said, ‘We must stay together now.'
“No one answered. It is he who has driven us apart. After a little while he looked at his shoes, and said, ‘I will throw out my beer. I will not go to
those meetings, but I will throw out my beer. You must take care of me when the visions start.'
“Lisa said he must go to a hospital. Lisa said he could die. She said that people can die, if they stop drinking without medicine. She said it would be safer for him to keep drinking. But he said, no, no hospitals. He wants to be with his family. And Lisa told him he was crazy, and she told us that we are crazy if we do not take him to the hospital. But he will not go.
“At least he has remembered that he loves us.
“Everyone is dying. I do not know what to do.”
Timbor closes the book. He puts the book away. He lies down in his bed and stares into the darkness. He does not talk to the clown, tonight. Darroti believes that Timbor does not need to talk to the clown because he has talked to the book. Timbor has told the book the truth. He has told the book that he does not know what to do.
And because Timbor has done that, Darroti does know what to do. Or, at least, he knows what he must try to do.
He remembers lying in Stini's apartment, raging and howling, his thirst for drink like knives and chewing worms all over his body. He remembers the visions he had then: of terrible flying lizards, of giant eyeballs with mouths at their center, seeking to devour him, of Gallicina performing obscene acts with other men. He saw venomous snakes slithering from holes in the walls; he saw his feet and hands detach themselves from his body and crawl away, transforming into purple crabs; he saw motes of dust become volleys of arrows aimed at his eyes and his genitals. He watched his clothing twist into ropes to strangle him; he watched the floor become a stormy sea in which he would surely drown.

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