Chicago

Chapter 15

Behind the green curtain covering the window, in the room stacked with books and filled over the years with pipe tobacco smoke, John Graham kept a dark brown box covered with old brass ornaments. He would lock it carefully and forget about it for long periods of time. Then it would occur to him suddenly to lock the office door from inside and panting, drag the large box to the middle of the room. He would squat, take out the box’s contents, and spread them in front of him, on the floor, his whole life unwrapping itself before his eyes: black and white photographs of himself as a young man; newspaper clippings from the 1960s carrying headlines of important events; angry, antigovernment revolutionary flyers; leaflets showing pictures of children and women killed or maimed during the Vietnam War (some so horrendous he couldn’t, even after all these years, look at them for a long time); colorful, hand-painted invitations to demonstrations or open-air rock concerts; the program for Woodstock; buttons bearing the famous love and peace sign; and an Indian musical wood instrument that he used to play well. But the most cherished of the contents was a metal helmet that he took off a policeman during a violent clash in a demonstration. In the old photographs Graham was a slim young man with an unkempt beard and long hair gathered in a ponytail, wearing a loose-fitting Indian shirt, blue jeans, and sandals. Those were the “park days,” as he called them. He ate and drank, slept, and made love in Chicago’s famous parks: Grant Park and Lincoln Park.

John was one of the angry youth rebelling against the Vietnam War, who rejected everything: the church, the state, marriage, work, and the capitalist system. Most of them left their homes, their families, their jobs, and their studies. They spent the night discussing politics, smoking pot, singing and playing music, and making love. During the day they demonstrated. In August of 1968 the Democratic Party held its convention in Chicago to nominate its candidate for the presidency of the United States. Tens of thousands of young men and women demonstrated, and in a historic spectacle captured by cameras and beamed throughout the world, they lowered the American flag and raised in its place a bloodstained shirt. Then they brought a big fat pig, wrapped it in the American flag, sat it on a raised dais, and declared that they would nominate it as the best candidate for the presidency of the United States. One speaker after the other praised the pig-candidate in the midst of derisive cheers, whistles, and applause. Their message was clear. The government establishment itself was corrupt to the core, no matter which person was at the top: the rulers of America were sending the sons of the poor to Vietnam so that their profits might multiply by millions while their own sons lived a soft life away from danger. They were also saying that the American dream was an illusion, a race with no end in sight in which nobody won. During that race, Americans worked hard and engaged in cutthroat competition that showed no mercy, to get a house, a fancy car, and a second home. They spent their life chasing a mirage only to discover at the end that they had been deceived, that the result of the race had been fixed before it even began: a handful of millionaires controlled everything, and their ratio to the total population hadn’t increased at all over fifty years, whereas the number of poor people kept rising at a rapid pace.

The day the pig was nominated was a truly historic day and the message was conveyed to the public. Millions of Americans began to think that those young men and women might be right. There were violent confrontations with the police, and the parks turned into real battlefields. The police struck at the demonstrators with all possible means and with utmost cruelty: with thick nightsticks, water hoses, tear gas bombs, and rubber bullets. The students defended themselves by throwing stones and hair spray canisters that they lit and turned into small bombs. Many were seriously wounded. Ambulances carried hundreds away, and hundreds of others were arrested. That day Graham’s head was busted open by a heavy club, and he spent two weeks in the hospital. To this day he still has a scar behind his ear. Those were the days of real struggle. He was arrested several times, put on trial, and imprisoned for various periods of time, one of which was a full six-month sentence on charges of inciting riots, damage to public property, and assaulting the police. But he never regretted what he had done. He was homeless for years, even though he could have, had he wanted, led a comfortable life, for he had a medical degree, with distinction, from the famous University of Chicago and could land a good job any time he wanted. But he believed in the revolution as if it were a religion for which he had to sacrifice. He would come out of prison only to demonstrate again. Without a job or source of income, he lived with his fellow rebels. They were certain that the world would change, that the revolution would triumph in America as it had in many other places, that the capitalist system would collapse and that they, with their hands, would make a new, fair, and humane America; that all Americans would secure the future of their children. They believed that fierce immoral competition would be gone forever, that the signs declaring our loss is your gain posted by stores going out of business to play on people’s greed for cheap bargains, would disappear. Those were the dreams of the revolutionary youth, but they were not realized.

The Vietnam War ended and so did the revolution. Most of the comrades joined the system they had rebelled against only yesterday. They got jobs, had families and children, and some of them made vast fortunes. They all changed their way of thinking, except for John Graham, who was now over sixty but who remained loyal to the revolution. He didn’t marry because he did not believe in the institution of marriage, and he couldn’t shoulder the responsibility of bringing children into this rotten world. His faith was never shaken in the possibility of creating a better world if Americans got rid of the capitalist machine that controlled their lives. Despite his advanced age he continued to be active in various leftist organizations: the Friends of Puerto Rico, the American Socialist Union, the Vietnam Generation, the antiglobalization movement, and others. He has paid an exorbitant price for his struggle. He’s ended up a lonely old man — no family and no children. He had two relationships that didn’t work out and left him with deep emotional wounds. He had two bouts of depression and was institutionalized and tried to commit suicide. But he got over the crises, not because of medication or therapy, but thanks to an internal solid core, which he called on and which didn’t fail him. He also got over his problems thanks to his love for his work and his total immersion in it. For despite his controversial political affiliations and his problems, Graham is one of only a few professors in the science of medical statistics, and he has published dozens of important papers throughout the world. He considered statistics to be a creative art depending on inspiration more than just math. He had a favorite sentence with which he began his lectures to graduate students: “Statistics has suffered a historical injustice brought about by mediocre bourgeois minds that consider statistics merely as a means of tallying profit and loss. Keep that in mind: statistics is a truthful means of viewing the world; it is simply logic flying with the two wings of imagination and numbers.”

Despite Graham’s tremendous popularity at the university as a nice personality, an extraordinary scholar, and a great lecturer, he rarely had genuine friendships: those colleagues sympathetic to him considered him a kind of funny, interesting folkloric personality, eliciting curiosity. But they also kept a distance between him and themselves. As for conservatives, like George Roberts, they shied away from him and attacked him publicly as an atheist, an anarchist, and a communist who espoused evil, subversive ideas. Thus John Graham’s life proceeded, approaching its expected end: the old, leftist university professor who would live and die alone, with the most important events in his life behind him. He began to feel, day after day, that his ties to the world were eroding. He tried to imagine what the end would be like: How was he going to die? Perhaps in his office or while giving a lecture, or maybe he would have a heart attack at night and his neighbors would find out that he was dead a few days later.

Two years ago, however, a surprise had changed his life. The antiglobalization movement held a rally in the park and John Graham delivered a scathing speech against neocolonialism hiding behind multinational corporations. He received a loud, long round of applause on account of his advanced age, his enthusiasm, and his reputation as an old warrior who had kept the faith. Graham left the podium carrying his papers, returning the greetings of those present and shaking their hands. It was then that a beautiful young black woman approached him. She introduced herself as Carol McKinley and said she wanted him to clarify some points in his speech. What she asked for required only a few minutes, but John and Carol began talking and soon seemed unaware of anyone around them. They stayed together from midafternoon until midnight. They went to three different bars and drank and talked the whole time. Graham became attracted to her at a phenomenal speed. What was more surprising was that she fell in love with him despite a whole lifetime of difference in age. He appeared irresistibly attractive to her, with his gray hair, his leftist ideas, his unshakable belief in his principles, and his intelligent sarcasm that expressed his disdain for things that ordinary men clamored for. She had just been through a long, failed relationship that had left her with deep sorrow and a five-year-old son. When Graham asked her weeks later to move in with him, she didn’t seem surprised. She looked at him with a calm smile and said, “I love you, but I cannot leave my son.”

“You won’t have to leave him. He’ll come and live with us.”

“Are you sure you’ll accept him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it means to live with a child who is not yours?”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you to regret it later.”

“I won’t.”

“Do you love me that much?” They were walking along the shore of Lake Michigan. It was bitterly cold and ice covered everything. They were all alone, as if they were the only two people in Chicago. Graham stopped her, held her shoulders, then looked at her for a long time as his hot breath created a constant cloud of steam. He asked her in a serious tone of voice, “You want an answer to your question?”

“Please.”

“Now or later?”

“Now. Right away.”

He hugged her hard and gave her a long kiss on the mouth, then smiled and said, “That’s my answer.”

“It’s a convincing answer,” she said, laughing. Graham loved little Mark, who grew attached to him, and the two spent a lot of time together. Mark found in him the father he was deprived of, and Graham found that their relationship satisfied his instinctive affection for children. More important, he loved Carol as he hadn’t loved a woman before. She was his enchantress, muse, lover, friend, and daughter. He lived with her the most beautiful love experience in his life; so much so that sometimes he imagined that her presence with him was not real, that it was just a dream from which he might wake up suddenly to not find her. The difference in race, however, brought them many problems: when they embraced or engaged in intimate talk or held hands in public, it provoked racist feelings among many people, such as some waiters in certain restaurants and bars who treated them coldly and insolently. They also experienced some prying inquisitive and disapproving glances in public places. This even applied to some of Graham’s more conservative neighbors on his street when they met them by chance; the neighbors would address him and totally ignore her, as if she were invisible to them. Many a time did a restaurant owner refuse to seat them with the pretext that the kitchen was closed even though other customers were at the very same moment waiting for the food they had ordered. On weekends, Graham and Carol were used to being on the receiving end of hurtful comments from drunks on the street, like, “Black and White!” (in reference to the famous scotch brand).

“Why don’t you go sleep with a black person like you?”

“Do you like making it with Negroes, Grandpa?”

“How much did you pay for this slave girl?”

Even at the University of Illinois where he worked, there was a regrettable incident. One morning, Carol had to drop in on Graham at school. Unfortunately she met George Roberts, whom she didn’t know. She greeted him in a normal manner and asked him where John’s office was. She was surprised when he asked her, “Why do you want Dr. Graham?”

“I’m his girlfriend.”

“His girlfriend?” asked Roberts loudly, clearly expressing his surprise to make the insult complete. Then he fixed her with a scrutinizing glance from head to toe and said, “Dr. Graham’s office is at the end of the corridor, room 312. But I don’t believe for a moment that you are his girlfriend.”

“Why?”

“I think you know why,” said Roberts and then turned away and left. When Carol entered Graham’s office sobbing and told him what had happened, the histology department witnessed a unique incident. Graham pulled Carol by the hand and rushed through the corridor, dragging her as if she were a child. He stormed Roberts’s office and shouted in a thunderous voice, “Listen, you’ve insulted my girlfriend. Either you apologize to her now or I will break your head. Understand?”

Roberts raised his head slowly. He was busy preparing a lecture he was to deliver in a short while and realized (being intelligent, and from his long experience with Graham, whom he thought capable of any behavior, being an anarchist communist with almost no morals) that Graham would carry out his threat. So he looked calmly at Carol (whose face changed expression from crying to fear of the consequences of a fight) then placed his hands together in front of his chest in the Indian way and bowed his big head, laughing to make it all sound like a joke, “I apologize for what I said to you, madam; please forgive me.”

At that point Graham looked like an angry child who was not able to have his revenge, so he sighed and left the room with Carol at his heels.

Racist harassments, however, despite their viciousness, did not affect the lovers. After every racist incident they experienced, they’d go home and take delight in making love passionately. They would rush at the beginning then take their time and enjoy their pleasure leisurely as they used to do in their early days together, as if clinging to each other against that unfair ugly world that persisted in trying to separate them, or as if the person insulting them were watching them making love so they wanted deep down to defy him and prove to him how wrong he was.

One day after mad lovemaking that exhausted them, they lay naked, panting. She lay on his chest and began, as usual, listening to his heartbeat and playing with the gray hair on his chest with her fingers and kissing it. He said to her in a dreamy voice that reverberated in the stillness of the room, “If I could, I’d marry you right away.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Civil marriage procedures remind me of the articles of incorporating a commercial company. As for standing before a fat, dyspeptic priest to repeat after him prayers that would make us a couple, that’s something I couldn’t stand.”

“Why?”

“If God exists, do you think he needs official papers and seals?”

“These are church rituals.”

“The church is one of the biggest lies in history and it has played, in most eras, the role of the commercial, colonialist establishment more than anything else.”

“John!”

“I can prove to you, if you wish, with historical evidence that Jesus Christ never existed to begin with. Man has invented religions to get over his fear of the unknown.”

She placed her hand on his mouth and said, “Please, I am a believing Christian. Can you respect my feelings a little?”

When she got angry, when she pursed her lips and her face looked like that of a child about to cry, when she stared at him with her beautiful eyes as if he had disappointed her, she became irresistible, and he would take her in his arms and shower her with kisses. That usually led to a new round of lovemaking.

Their love was wonderful, but troubles loomed when Carol lost her job. A new white manager was appointed at the mall where she worked and he fired her and another black colleague for no obvious reason (unless it was their color?). For ten months Carol fought obstinately to find a new job but she couldn’t. The two lovers found themselves in unexpected financial straits. Graham had no savings at all. He spent money right away, as if he were getting rid of a burden or shame. Like most people advanced in years, he spent sleepless nights worrying about suffering a debilitating illness, so he chose a very expensive insurance coverage whose monthly premium ate up a considerable portion of his university salary. At the same time, Mark’s tuition and his basic expenses were high while Carol’s unemployment compensation was negligible. Faced with that, Graham reined in his expenses to overcome the crisis: he stopped taking Carol out to eat and he also did not buy the clothes that he needed for winter. For the first time in many years he stopped buying the expensive Dutch tobacco that he loved very much and replaced it with a cheap local substitute that had an overpowering smell as if it were burning wood. He did all of that gladly, without grumbling or unease. To the contrary, he was more cheerfully playful with Carol and said to her more than once to console her, “I don’t have a problem. So long as we can have the young one’s tuition and our food, nothing worries me. I’ve accustomed myself to live on very little. The most beautiful days in my life were those I spent on the street, homeless.”

Carol, however, did not accept the crisis so simply. She felt guilty because she had brought him this hardship. She told herself that she had been unfair to him. His salary had been enough for him, and now, together with her son, they had become a burden on him. Why should he suffer when Mark’s father didn’t want to support his son? She felt very bitter that she had lost her job, not because she was negligent or inefficient, but just because she was black. Graham was surprised one day when he found her hanging a large wooden sign at the entrance to the living room, with the inscription:

Graham was disturbed and asked her why she had written the sign. She smiled sadly and said, “Because it’s the truth, John. I put it up there so I would never forget.”

She became irritable and moody. She would be silent for a long time then suddenly cry, for no reason. Sometimes she was aggressive and combative and fought with John for the most trivial reasons. He met her rage with the understanding and tolerance of someone in love. At the peak of her anger when she yelled at him and waved her hands hysterically, he would resort to silence and smile affectionately. Then he would get close to her, embrace her, and whisper, “I don’t want to talk about details. I love you and I apologize for all that angers you, even if I am not responsible for it.”

ON SUNDAYS HE USUALLY SLEPT in, but for one reason or another that morning he got up early and didn’t find her next to him. He looked for her throughout the house, and when he didn’t find her he was worried that she had gone out without telling him. Where had she gone and why hadn’t she left him a message? She had left early knowing that, as usual, he wouldn’t get up before noon. What was she hiding? Did she go to Mark’s father to ask him to support his child? She had told him once that she wanted to do so, but he had objected strenuously. He said she had to maintain her dignity. But he knew that he objected out of jealousy. He was afraid that her love for her old mate might be rekindled. He was a younger man and the two of them had a long history. Had she gone to him? He would never forgive her if she had.

Mark had got up, so Graham prepared breakfast for him, made him a large cup of hot chocolate, and turned on the cartoon channel. Then he went back to his room, closed the door, and lit his pipe, but he couldn’t help himself. So he went back and asked Mark, “Did you see your mom going out?”

“I was asleep.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Don’t worry about Mom, John. She’s a strong woman.”

John Graham laughed at his precociousness and hugged Mark and kissed him and sat next to him to play with him. A little while later he heard the door open, squeak, and close slowly. Soon Carol appeared at the door of the room. She was frowning and looked engrossed in distant thoughts despite her elegant appearance, which confirmed his suspicions. Graham led her gently but firmly to their room. He closed the door, doing his best to control his anger. “Where’ve you been?”

“Is this an official interrogation?”

“I’d like to know.”

“You don’t have the right.”

She was speaking in a hostile tone and at the same time avoiding looking at his face. He threw his stout body into the chair and took a few moments to light his pipe and exhale a thick cloud of smoke. Then he said calmly, “Carol, I am the last person on earth who seeks to possess the woman he loves. But I think, inasmuch as we live together, it is only natural for each of us to know where the other is going.”

“I am not going to ask for your written permission to go out,” she cried, apparently determined to escalate the disagreement as far as it would go. She was carrying the Sunday Chicago Tribune and in sheer anger threw it down and its many pages scattered all over the floor. She shouted, “This is unbearable!”

She started to rush out of the room but just one step away from the door she stopped suddenly, frozen in place. She didn’t go out and didn’t turn back toward him, as if she had responded to that established mysterious rhythm that grew between people who had been married for a long time. She just stood there, as if waiting for him or summoning him. He got the signal: he rushed toward her and embraced her from the back, then turned her around and hugged her, whispering, “Carol, what’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer. He started kissing her passionately until he felt her body soften little by little as if opening up before him. He led her gently toward the bed, but he felt her tears wetting his face and he asked her in alarm, “What happened?”

She moved away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. She was exerting an extraordinary effort to control herself but finally collapsed and began to sob uncontrollably. Speaking in a disjointed manner, she said, “I went to a job interview. I told myself I’d tell you only if I get the job. You’ve had enough disappointment on my account.”

He raised her hands and began kissing them. Her mellow voice reverberated, as if coming from the depths of sadness. “I can’t take this anymore. With all my experience, what more do I need to prove to get a job.”

A profound silence descended upon them. Then she whispered as she buried her head in his chest and succumbed to a new fit of crying, “Oh, John, I feel so humiliated.”