Love and Will: Twenty Stories

The Village

The man crashed through the second-story window and landed on the sidewalk. He was lucky he wasn’t impaled on the iron gate spikes in front of the building. I was tying my shoes at the time. Squatting near the curb and watching my hands deal with the laces, when I heard the crash and glanced up to see the man and glass. I covered my head thinking they were going to hit me. The glass did. I actually thought that about the man and glass. Things happened so fast. My thought processes, man and glass, screams from the street, screeching car tires whose driver didn’t see the glass but thought the man was going to land on his roof. The glass riddled his hood and doors. Some glass landed on my head and clothes. One piece slit my cheek but didn’t stay in it, and later a policeman said I should have the cut stitched, but I didn’t think it was that bad. He said it’ll make a scar if I don’t get it stitched, and I said I don’t think so and if it’s stitched they’ll be little scar holes where the needle went in with the thread. I held a handkerchief to my cheek till it was soaked and then someone else’s handkerchief till the bleeding stopped. The driver’s handkerchief. I offered to give it back or pay for it, but he said it only cost fifty-nine cents plus tax. Then a policeman told him to get his car out of the middle of the street, and I never saw the driver again. The policeman was right. There is a scar. Not one I mind, though. People say it gives me character on what they don’t say is a rather bland face. Maybe three people have said it since I got the scar a year ago. One person said “You originally German?” “No.” “Not educated there at least?” “No.” A total stranger, she spoke to me on a cafeteria line. “It’s the scar. I thought you might’ve gotten it dueling in a German university club.” “I didn’t think they still did that,” I said. “I was in Germany last summer,” she said, “Heidelberg, home of the Student Prince, I think, and they definitely do do it, yes.”

The man landed on his front and slid a few feet to within a foot of me, his head pointing to my knee. Blood popped out of his nose and mouth some time between the landing and slide, and spattered on my pants and shirt. The glass fell all around us. I yelled “Oh no,” and was still. People were screaming. Cars stopped, screeching one first. The whole block seemed to stop, but not all at once. Across the street was a bar with an outdoor patio. The tables were filled and all the people at them seemed to stop. A young woman dressed like a gypsy and leading two unleashed dogs crossing the street stopped, but the dogs started to bark. A troubadour was juggling and standing on a rope strung from a lamppost to a no-parking sign pole in front of the patio. Barefoot, four feet up, one foot raised. Holding three sticks with fire at the ends of them, once he caught the two he’d thrown in the air. The fires didn’t stop. He was up there a minute holding the sticks, statuelike, foot raised, staring at the ground, before he jumped down, unfolded an asbestos blanket and wrapped the fire ends of the sticks with it. When he opened it a few seconds later only smoke escaped. A bus at the corner stopped, though I didn’t see when, nor when it drove away. I remember hearing a helicopter, but it just went away. And other sounds from far off. Honking. Someone using a machine to get a plaster wall down to the original brick. That never stopped. The man because of the noise his machine made probably didn’t hear the window crash or else he didn’t want to stop. Later I walked past his window half a block away and saw him using the machine on the wall. Second story also. All the windows open. Furniture covered, mask over his nose, hair plastered white, room nearly stuffed with dust and some of it drifting outside.

Blood ran from the man’s face and hands to my knee. He seemed unconscious. I was still holding my shoelaces. I was going to untie and tie the other shoe tight but didn’t. I stood up. Movement began on the street again. Both my shoes were still loose, but I wasn’t aware of it till I got home. I was going to touch the man to see if he was still breathing but didn’t. Cars started up, drove off, people ran over, bus was gone, other people at the tables stood up, the gypsy woman began shrieking and turned around and ran off with her barking dogs. The troubadour made rapid mime looks one after the other: compassion, wonder, confusion, horror, fear, shock, pity, displeasure and then did several mime steps back to the rope and seemed to be concerned, because a woman running to the man on the ground ran into the rope and was choking. He slapped her back, saw she was all right, apologized with his hands and a look, took a lollipop out of her ear and put it into her pocketbook, unhooked the rope from the lamppost, untied the other end from the no-parking sign pole, folded up the rope and put it with his fire-sticks and asbestos blanket into a leather satchel, grabbed his money bag off the sidewalk and tied it to his belt, put his slippers on, satchel over his shoulder and got on a unicycle and made motions with his hands and arms for the people on the sidewalk to dear a path for him and cycled through it and around the comer.

I was so distracted by the actions of the troubadour that for a minute or more I’d forgotten the man on the ground. People had crowded around us. “What happened?” they asked. “Is he okay? Dead? Did he jump? Was he pushed? Is he insane? What caused it, drugs? A fit? Alcohol? Money he owed?” “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head, hands over my eyes, on my ears, by my side. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Later someone said to me “Why did you think he leaped?”

“Did I say he leaped?”

“I heard you. Someone asked how you thought he did it and first you said you didn’t know and then that he probably leaped.”

“Well, maybe he had to have leaped. If not that then he could only have been thrown out the window headfirst by two very strong men holding an arm and leg of his each, but I don’t think that was it. He had to have gotten several feet away from the window and then like a sprinter starting off, ran to it at full speed and leaped. I say that because the window was completely knocked out and it was a big window, almost ceiling to floor, and the old kind, I don’t know about the glass, but a thick wooden frame. The mullions as you can see were completely smashed except for a few small pieces hanging to the sides, though not hanging by much. The force of him crashing through the glass, not being pushed, could only have done that, I think. Unless of course four to five very strong men pushed him with all their might from behind at exactly the same time. But then I couldn’t explain his dive. No, he leaped.”

Several ambulances were called. Before one arrived, someone tried to stop the man’s face-bleeding by pressing down on various pressure points, but it didn’t work. The man bled a lot. People were horrified: some. A few boys — teenagers — passed by the crowd saying “What happened? What’s happening, baby? Hey, look at the stoned-out dude down there,” and they all laughed. Some people got angry at the boys but only expressed it to one another or said it aloud to themselves after the boys had left.

An ambulance came. And police and voluntary auxiliary police. The police asked the questions and searched through the second-story apartment and the auxiliary police kept the crowds back and cars from driving along the street. The police asked me the most questions and someone who lived in the man’s building, whose answers had to be translated by an auxiliary policewoman, the second most amount of questions. One policeman asked me what did I see? Almost everything. Did you see anyone push him? No. Did you see him jump through the window? No. Did you see anyone else in the apartment before or after he jumped? No. Then what did you see? “I saw him in the air after he leaped through the window.”

“How do you know he leaped and wasn’t pushed?”

“You said jumped, so I thought you meant leaped, but I don’t know if he leaped, jumped or was pushed. Maybe he accidentally fell.”

“He didn’t. Did he say anything, this man?”

“No.”

“On the ground, in the air, from his apartment before he came out?”

“Nothing that I heard.”

“What was his expression when he was in the air?”

“He looked like a bird.”

“What expression’s that?”

“His eyes were open and arms were out and he seemed to have the expression of a flying bird.”

“I don’t get it. What is that expression? Happiness? Nastiness? Pride in his flying? Hunger, plundering, fear, what?”

“Disconcern.”

“You mean unconcern?”

“No concern. No expression. He was just flying. Face like a bird, partially opened beak. Not a calm face like a pigeon but just a face of no concern like a gull or tern.”

“To me the gull always looks nasty, and the tern I don’t know as a bird.”

“The tern looks like a small gull, and the man didn’t look nasty, so maybe he didn’t look like either of those birds.”

“Did he have the expression of someone who you might think had been pushed or thrown out of a window?” No. “You don’t live around here then, or not for long?” Wrong. “Where do you live?” I gave my address. Gave my profession. That was when he said he first noticed the slit in my cheek and asked if I’d like the doctor to see it. When I said no, he mentioned the possibility of my getting a scar.

He called over the doctor, who said “Let me see this famous cheek.” The doctor applied merthiolate, “just to lessen the chance of getting an infection. If you want that stitched we can have one of the police take you to the hospital too.”

“No thanks.”

“Getting back to the man,” the policeman said. The man was being strapped to a stretcher. He still seemed unconscious. Bandages had been wrapped around his face, hands and neck.

“Excuse me, what?” since we were both watching the stretcher being slid into the ambulance.

“Oh … nothing. I don’t have any more questions. What’s your phone, business or home, so we can reach you?”

I had none but gave him the hours and days I could best be reached at work and home.

“Oh yeah. What, and I don’t want to hold you any longer with that cut, were you doing when the man came through the window or seconds before? I have to get that down.”

“No problem. Tying my shoes.”

“Tying your shoes, good. Though too bad you didn’t think of tying them sooner or later.”

“Too bad also I wasn’t wearing sandals or loafers or those sneakers whatever they’re called with no laces which you can just slip on. I was thinking of buying a pair this summer.”

“Too bad you didn’t.”

“Why? I’m not sorry I was here when it happened. Sorry for the man, of course, but not for me. I feel lucky enough I wasn’t two feet closer in to the sidewalk, not that I’d ever be, since I always do my shoelace-tying by the curb so people can pass. By the way, what do you think, he’ll die?”

Can’t say so but probably no. They usually don’t.”

The auxiliary police had to clear an opening through the crowd so the ambulance could get through. “Let’s go, folks, help them out, help them out,” a policeman said, I suppose meaning the ambulance and man inside or the auxiliary police. Lots of people stayed around talking after the ambulance left. Nobody seemed to know the man. “At first I thought I did,” someone said, “but then knew I didn’t.”

“He did live there though,” a waiter from the bar patio said, still holding a cocktail tray. “That I’m sure of, as I’ve seen him coming in and out of that building around the same time at night for five years, though never once in the bar for a drink.”

“You’ve worked here that long, Chuck?” someone said. “I thought for one year, maybe two at the most.”

“That long, really. I don’t want to sound hackneyed, but it’s amazing the way time goes.”

“How do you stand it? I heard your boss is a bastard of the worst order.”

“Just between you and me and the whole city, he is, but what’s not that easy to get these days is a decent living.”

“Then you do all right? I wouldn’t’ve thought it.”

People passed, stopped, joined the crowd, left, most of those from the beginning or so were gone. Cars were allowed on the street now. The auxiliary police prevented everyone but the tenants from entering the building. Even these people had to show proof, or the landlady, or maybe she was the super sitting on the top step of the stoop, had to give an okay with a head sign or hand wave to the auxiliary police below.

“They’d never let people like that on the real force,” someone said, looking at the auxiliary police.

“You mean they’re not?” woman behind him said.

“Those four? Your first clue’s no gun, which our real cops have to have, on duty or not. They’d also never let them get like what is that big girl there, seventy to eighty pounds over-weight, and the tall skinny one in a uniform five times too tight and his hair a pigsty?”

“No gun, that’s true. Why do they do it then if they can’t even protect themselves?”

“They want to play patrolman, that’s why. They’re stupid, because they don’t even get paid.”

“They do a good job,” someone else said. “One of them was killed stopping a mugging this year just a few blocks from here.”

“That I didn’t know. I apologize for all the harsh things I might have said about them.”

Suddenly a young man ran up the block screaming “Ricky, Ricky, what’s happened to Ricky?”

“Get off that glass,” an auxiliary policeman said, holding his club lengthwise across his chest and moving to the man and stepping on the glass himself.

“Glass? Where?” He was right on it. “Oh Christ, I didn’t see it. I’ll get it in my feet.” He jumped around as if the glass was already sticking in him, smashing the glass under his sneakers even more.

“I said get off it, now get off,” and the young man ran into the street and around the glass there and tried to get up the building’s steps.

“You can’t go up there,” an auxiliary policewoman said, guarding the steps and holding the club across her chest.

“But my brother Ricky. Somebody said he got hurt. Look at his place.”

“He your brother? Excuse me, maybe you should speak to the officer. Officer Gulanus,” she yelled to the window.

A policeman stuck his head past the broken window.

“The man’s brother he says.”

“Come on up here, kid.”

The crowd had thinned out by now, but with the appearance of this young man, it grew to the size it was soon after the man had jumped through the window. “The brother,” a few people said.

“Of who?” someone said.

“The man who went through that window.”

“That what happened? I thought someone got mad at the landlord there and busted it out. The guy die?”

“From one story up ten feet to the ground? He more likely only got a sprained ankle and walked away.”

“That’s his brother all right,” the waiter said, coming over again, this time with no tray. “I’ve seen him around too. Mostly helping his brother up the stairs when his brother was dead drunk or high on drugs. I couldn’t tell which.”

“You should speak to the policeman there,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what you said could be useful.”

“I got work to do and my own reasons for not talking to police.”

“What a neighborhood,” someone said to me.

“It has its moments.”

“Moments hell. You live around here?”

“Few blocks away.”

“How could you? There’s craziness all around every minute of the day. Pimps, whores, cars running you over, burglars, pickpockets, muggers, women getting raped, drunks, bums, people peddling dollar joints right under your nose, three card monte sharks right nearby cheating everyone blind with their shills. I’m from Chicago and we’re supposed to be bad, right? Riots, gangsters, politicians who fraud your votes and install their friends, but we’re not a quarter to what you guys are. You’ve a family to live with too?”

“No.”

“I was thinking if you had one and lived here, I’d really feel sorry for you. I don’t mean to be rude, but if I was told I had to on my life raise my little kids in this neighborhood, and we just have one, I’d kill them both.”

“Okay, show’s over, why not everyone go home?” an auxiliary policeman said.

“Because it’s a slow Tuesday night,” someone said. This made a few people laugh.

“Listen to them,” the man said to me. “People would never speak to a cop like that in Chicago. They’d be considerate, would listen to what he said, or be afraid of getting their head bashed in by one.”

“It’s only meaningless talk,” I said. “No harm to it.”

“That’s what you have to think perhaps, but you’re going to see one happy guy to leave this hole tomorrow,” and he moved on.

By now I could only recognize two people from the original crowd, and the landlady and auxiliary and regular police. In the window I could see the young man crying and the policeman with his arm around the boy’s shoulder.

“Is that the kid who jumped?” someone said. “He looks okay to me.”

“He’s standing at least,” someone else said. “That’s a lot more than you can say for a lot of people in this area.”

I wanted to say something to correct their information or interpretation of the situation and even of this neighborhood, but didn’t. It was already an hour since the man had jumped or whatever he’d done through that window. The waiter was going off-duty for the night. At least I assumed so because he had his street clothes on and was heading for the avenue, but maybe he was only on his break. The policeman got in a patrol car with the young man. The auxiliary police continued to guard the glass part of the sidewalk and the building stoop.

“What are they going to do, arrest the kid for breaking a window?” someone said, watching the patrol car drive away.

“If they do, don’t worry, tomorrow he’ll be out bright and early to break another window or somebody’s leg,” someone else said.

I started to walk out of the crowd.

“He wasn’t the one who jumped, was he?” someone said, meaning me.

“I think so. He’s got the blood all over his clothes, and did you see his face?”

“Not him,” a third person said. “He was standing on the sidewalk when the lady on the stoop there threw a TV set out of the window.”

“Was she throwing it at him?”

“Go ask him. All I know is she threw it out without first opening the window, and whether it’s the glass or TV that hit him is a good guess. Somebody did say a man grabbed the TV right after it landed and ran away with it.”

“When it was so smashed up?”

“Apparently it wasn’t.”

A few blocks away the troubadour from before had drawn a chalk circle with a diameter of maybe twenty feet on a sidewalk comer. A crowd was standing on the outside perimeter of the circle two and three deep. I stood and watched his act for a while. He rode the unicycle on the circle lines a few times, never once getting more than half an inch off the line either way. While he was riding he took a hat off a woman’s head and put it on a man’s head a few feet away. He tried to light someone’s cigarette while he was riding but couldn’t do it after three tries, and snatched the cigarette out of the man’s mouth on the fourth time around and threw it away. He did manage to take a watch off a woman’s wrist while he was riding, and gave it back to her his next time around when she didn’t even know it was gone. Then he put the bike on its side and did tricks with his hat, rolling it down his arms and catching it just before it touched the ground, balancing it on his nose, knee and toes and kicking it off his toes and landing it on his head. He next did a juggling act with scissors, hatchets and knives and then the same juggling act with a borrowed kerchief around his mouth, which broke most people up, and then with the kerchief tied around his eyes, which got the most applause. He gave the kerchief back to the woman, looked angry at her and took a gun out of his hat. Someone screamed and he swiveled around and aimed the gun at the screamer and pulled the trigger and out flew a parachute with a message attached to it at the ends of the strings which said “These days, generosity really counts.” Then he bowed and passed the hat around. He did quite well. Got lots of compliments also. One woman said to him she’d traveled throughout Europe and Eurasia and had never seen a performer with so many consummate skills. A man emptied his change purse into the hat and said “Bravo, Horatio, you are simply divine, the world’s best.” When the troubadour shoved the hat in front of me, I backed away and nearly fell off the curb. Someone grabbed my arm to stop me from falling. At that moment when this person was helping me to stand straight again, the crowd was laughing. When I turned around, the troubadour’s painted white face was right up against mine and he suddenly jumped back and shook his body and head as if I’d just frightened him. Then he continued to pass the hat around and I walked home.