The Ruby Slippers (11 page)

Michael Marcinkus, lying in his soft, warm bed with the heating gurgling lazily and his weary old wife sighing in her sleep next him, is suddenly struck, smitten by the realization that this is what led him to what he is, why he became the grocer, the deliman, the purveyor of food in all its plenty. Tears come to his eyes. How real and powerful these memories are. How astonishing that they can still, after all this time, turn you in the guts and flood your feelings with sorrow.

And that brings him to another resurrected memory: a procession of Jews being led away by soldiers with guns raised, the eyes of the adults cast down, those of the children reaching out, bewildered, to find his own. His father had once told him that these same Jews had grown fat on the backs of people like them, but all Michael saw was raggedness, hopelessness, wasted people. It was what he and his momma became after the soldiers took his poppa, when they had been left to suck their own filthy clothes for nourishment and then within days fled with thousands of others before the Russians took the city. They begged their way onto the overloaded ship bound for they knew not where, and found themselves in Germany for reasons no one ever explained. Once they had disembarked, they clattered down the gangway and came out into a roped-off square, and were herded into ranks by guards who never spoke to them. Then, right in full view, they were formed into lines for medical inspection by nurses and soldier-doctors in white coats, kids gaping their mouths to spatulas and women opening their blouses to be explored.

After this, they had been assigned a destination and were given papers with the words
DISPLACED PERSONS
and
BAMBERG
stamped upon them, after which they were loaded into carriages whose windows were black with filth and there made themselves vacant and sat for countless hours as the clacking of the wheels beat up through the boards and pounded their bones. They came at last to a town, complicit in the night, and were led through hushed streets with monstrous buildings that glowered dark and damp, a grey chain of silent people. They were herded through a gate, behind which were great blocks like factories, in a compound that was a town within the town, and were billeted, eight to a room. They were with two other remains of families, but at least it was clean and dry, and food, such as it was, came at the same times every day, although hunger always sat at the head of the table.

And that was the way of it for all of a year, before one day he woke to a miracle: his mother shaking him from sleep – the excitement on her face, smiles he had not seen for so long – saying the Germans had left and the Americans were coming. Sure enough, when he went outside with the other children, there were no guards to be found. They ran full pelt to the main gates and heaved them open, daring each other to stand on the other side, though none but the biggest and bravest were bold enough. They stayed right there until, gradually, the whole camp came and gathered – a great chattering throng, which fell suddenly silent when they heard the roar of engines coming and saw the braver boys running back, shouting, ‘Yankees, Yankees!’ And sure enough they came in a great rolling convoy: smiling soldiers sitting on the bonnets of jeeps and leaning out of the backs of trucks, their helmets shining and throwing cigarettes and candy. To think these were the first Americans he ever saw.

Abject and wasted is how they must have appeared to those well-fed GIs as they stood there in the great compound for the roll-calls and hand-outs. But it was never to be so again, because now they began to understand that they would be safe – now the food started to come regularly and in good portions, and the medicine began to work and they were put into classes and had lessons and grew to know that they were allowed to give the wrong answers as well as the right, and could laugh and not worry about who might be watching. And this is how it continued for another year, until finally the chance came for them to go to America.

At last Michael comes to a bright memory among the dark: the movie. One evening, to remind the people that they too were human, the Americans set up rows of chairs, borrowed from a church, in the main square, and spread a huge sheet over a gantry raised between two trucks, and he had sat on his mother’s lap and smiled at her and she had smiled back. Michael lies in his soft bed and remembers, painfully, what it was like to feel the outline of her bones – he had known even then that she was spent. The film they showed was
The Wizard of Oz
and it was all completely wild and beautiful. No one knew what the hell the characters were saying, although a man and woman who looked like professors in suits too big for them, since they had starved so long, stood at the side of the screen and barked out the translation, songs and all, in a totally mechanical way. They were drowned out by the soundtrack, though, and could only be heard in snatches. Yet it all had meaning, nonetheless: Dorothy’s escape from a colourless world into a fantastic one; Dorothy’s useless but adorable companions; the oppressed citizens of the City of Oz; the deaths of witches; the undoing of spells and the overthrow of bloated tyrants who turned out to be scared little men. It all had such meaning, such perfect meaning. And out of the whole dizzy mix, the sad, still presence of Dorothy, who was beauty and truth itself, and whose singing of that wonderful song said everything there was to say about loss and longing, even though the words were foreign. Dorothy, who found her way home with that cute click of the heels that belonged to the shining red shoes. How perfect a picture it presented, how neat and simple a trick to open a doorway to a better world. To have lived through terrible times and then to stumble across such a story told in such a place and time, and connecting so thrillingly to your experience – that is surely to know the meaning of meaning.

Michael’s thoughts turn again to Old Aunt Rosa. It’s odd how he had never truly connected her to the ruby slippers before. Of course he had known that she had gone west to LA for some time. He even remembers vaguely something about her working in Hollywood, but he had never properly taken it in, as if she had never been there for real. And now he berates himself for not having given any credibility to her life as a whole. She would have been only seventeen or eighteen when the movie was made. Strange to think that she had been so involved with the very shoes that had stood out for him, bright and blazing, in a war-dark square all those years ago. And it strikes him they must have had far more meaning for Rosa than they ever did for him. Why else did she keep them when she might have made a fortune from them? Thinking about it, it would be near blasphemous to even think of selling them now, especially as her death was no certainty. No, Grace is wrong in this, he decides, just as she is wrong about clearing out Rosa’s place without a care. No matter how rotten the apartment might be, Rosa’s history is there, hidden in all those old papers and, who knows, there may be things in there that might throw light on the darkness that has surrounded him all his life.

In a flash it comes to Michael: he knows what should be done with these shoes whose value is beyond value. He leans over and does something unthinkable: he squeezes Grace’s arm to rouse her from sleep. Her brow knits and her lips purse in a half-woken snarl. ‘Listen, Grace, listen . . .’ He tips her chin so that her closed eyes face his, the lids twitching. ‘Listen, Grace. We can’t do this. They are not ours; we had no right. The slippers belong to Rosa and with her they must stay.’ Her eyes are tight closed again, but he goes on, knowing she has heard him: ‘Besides, we should think hard about them before ever letting them go. These things are symbolic; they stand for things. They should be put up for people to see. God knows how, but . . .’

Grace lets out a long, guttering sigh and rolls over to face the wall.

■ ♦ ■

Come morning, she has plenty to say on the subject. Two hours of argument already, and still it goes on. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ she screams again, her voice louder than he has ever heard it. The neighbours must have heard every word: ‘What need does she have of anything? She is dead, Michael, the woman is the same as dead! She will never go back to that place anyways, the authorities would not allow it!’ So enormous is Grace’s anger that she is heaving and quaking, her fury having raged since they got up, but showing no sign of abating: ‘Fifty years, Michael. Fifty years is a long time, a long time to wait for that moment when it might just be OK, when it might just be safe to do what is normal for everyone else in the world to do – take it easy and retire!’

At least it had started quiet, and Michael has reason to hope that the neighbours didn’t hear the tricky stuff about how the slippers came into their possession. Attempting to bring things back to the everyday, he reminds her that her coffee is getting cold. ‘Fuck the coffee!’ she yells, and bangs the table so hard it spills all over. ‘Grace!’ he clacks back at her, genuinely shocked – not once did she ever use that word! But she hurtles on: ‘Because that is what we are going to do: retire. We are going to have the good things in life. The things that have been denied us: holidays, clothes, food that didn’t come off our own goddam chuck-out shelf. Retire? I sure as hell will; you do as you damn well please!’ And she throws down her mug in the sink, dashing it to pieces. She is getting far too uptight, too hot and bothered about it all, he thinks, desperate now for her to calm down before opening time.

‘Listen to me, Michael,’ she says in a last frazzled gasp, ‘this is the last time I’ll say it. We go on the way we been going, anyone works so hard so long, they die – die and go to an early grave! Look at me now and tell me you will not let that happen!’ Her look is awesome, her eyes massive and brimming with tears, and he sees in her the passionate, good-looking woman the world once saw.

One last time, he tries to reason with her: ‘If only it was so simple —’

‘Which is exactly what it is: simple. Sell them! And maybe, just maybe, we won’t drop dead right off and can get some of the things that are long overdue in our lives! How dare you put the needs of that evil, selfish old woman who woulda happily seen you dead, your whole family dead, before our own!’ And with that she goes out the door and clumps down the stairs. Yet another first – he always goes down before her in the morning.

Michael looks heavenwards. He is going to have to rethink his whole position on this, bide his time, see what gives. For now, though, it’s important to keep her sweet. He clambers after her and stretches out to her as she reaches up for her shop coat. ‘Listen, Grace, listen,’ he says, softly. ‘I know we need to talk some more, but this ain’t gonna be resolved here and now. Look, tonight, you take some time out. Go over see Jenny, stay the night. Only promise me, keep this just between the two of us.’ She looks at him, sniffing and dewy-eyed as he goes on playing the part of the wise old man: ‘For God’s sake, don’t let them get involved – Karl and Dan and whoever – or we’ll never hear the last of it.’ She sniffs again, but is otherwise silent, her anger apparently dampened. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good.’ Taking her calmness for consent.

F
OR
three whole days James lies on the couch, his soul in the scales, hot anger distilling to thoughts dark and hateful of himself. The family, Paolo’s people, have made it clear he is to stay away from them and therefore from Paolo. And so, having no one else to punish for what they have done to him, he punishes himself: ‘Let me not eat for that is to love the world. Let my body fall away from the world. Let my beard grow, let my clothes be stained and dirty, let me stink.’

Friends have cared. Marcia from work rang morning, noon and night until, worried, she turned up at the door and was sent away unseen. Jack, too, knocked and called softly through the door to him and was ignored: ‘I will lie in darkness; shut out light, shut out kindness. Let them drum like monkeys on the door. Let the phone keep ringing till it dies too. To hell with work, with friends and family; I will not be a father. Having no father, I can be no father. I will be a stone, hard and empty of feeling.’

Siobhan has not called, because he did not call her. A hundred miles away, she stays in her room, turning up the TV, lying lifeless, the door barricaded. For each day he lies in fire, she lies in ice, two people of one blood: the hurt of the one mystically communicating with the hurt of the other across the miles. And every day he turns away from the world and from himself, she hates him all the more, and in the end chooses to hate herself.

■ ♦ ■

Safe and invisible in the record-store doorway, Harrison sits on an old crate and watches, unblinking. The night has a damp chill about it, and staring into that dreary old store front these hours on end can take a person to a lost, lonely place. For now, though, he’s feeling good about the way things are going. The past two nights he has ‘cased the joint’, standing on this very spot, doing no more than chewing gum and smoking, and now it’s all there, safe inside his head. It has been brain-numbing stuff, and if nothing else it has taught him that he would sooner cut off both his legs than ever be a grocer.

Once more he runs through it: 7 p.m. – the shop boy comes up from the basement, carrying a whole stack of flattened cartons, takes them out front to the side alley and dumps them there. When he returns, Mrs Grocer hands him the mop, and he goes to it. She then hangs up her shop coat and goes upstairs to their apartment and starts to cook something nice and stinky for Mr Grocer, who likes fish. Soon as she is gone, Shop Boy puts down the mop, grabs the Coke and candy bar he stashed behind the shoe polish earlier, goes, where the CCTV cannot see, and sits down on the floor to guzzle them. By seven thirty, business being pretty much dead, Shop Boy starts to knock off. Then, just as he is going out the door, Grocer Man always pulls him up about the cartons, his voice ringing out clear as a bell, wanting to know if he has stacked them properly against the wall because: ‘We can’t have boxes just dumped willy-nilly in the alleyway.’ (‘Willy-nilly’ – who the fuck is Willy Nilly?) Anyhow, it is at this point that the grocer man risks it, leaving the place unattended to take the boy round the side to inspect the carton situation. Seventeen seconds in the alleyway, at the last count – seventeen beautiful seconds when the two of them are clean out of sight. Yes sir, he deserves one big pat on the back for bringing this off!