Rock Wagram Read online

  “Yes.”

  “It will make a great difference. What brought you here, at last?”

  “I came to see you, to be at home, to sleep in my bed, to speak to you.”

  “Why did you wait so long?”

  “I am a false man.”

  “Why did you begin to be a true man suddenly?”

  “I am dying.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “No.”

  “Do you mean you are getting born?” the old lady said. “The way the man at the church says it is written? Is that what you mean?”

  “No, I am dying.”

  “Then, tell me, how old are you now?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that is the year. It happened to Manuk when he came to that year. That whole thirty-third year he went about dying, and then began to be born again, as the man at the church says it is written. A dying man, as I remember it, is a greater man than ever if he was great in the first place—but a difficult man to love. You remember Bitlis, of course.”

  “I was born here, in this house,” Rock said. “How could I remember Bitlis?”

  “I mean in your travels you surely went to Bitlis,” the old lady said, “and saw where we lived, the houses surely standing there together, being made of stone, standing on the mountainside where they’ve stood so many years, the stream passing beside them from which we fetched our water.

  “I mean you saw how Bitlis was when you went there,” she said. “When winter came we were kept in our houses five months waiting for the snows to melt. Those five months that year were the most terrible I have ever known, for he would not be loved and said, ‘Go to America, this is no place to live, this is a place to die.’ He said many things, but I understood only that my man was dying. He was mad of course, but all great men are. He spoke madly in three languages, and everything he said had a second meaning. He was too proud, dying, to ask me to love him, but I was his woman, whom he had created. I had put myself to him when I was twelve. I had given him his sons and daughters. I therefore understood the second meaning of everything he said. If you want to know how a woman is created by a true man, plain or mad, listen to this.

  “It was the third month of winter and madness,” the old lady said.

  “‘Go to the cellar,’ he said, ‘and look among the melons there for the one that is the best. Bring it to me to eat.’

  “I went to the cellar, knowing there was only one melon left, the poorest one of the lot we had put aside, but I stayed in the cellar the time it takes to look among two dozen melons or more. I took him the melon and put it before him. He looked at it, a dying man, a mad man, a great man, a man of great manners, and he looked at me, the woman he had created. I did not speak. I knew when not to speak.

  “‘No,’ he said.

  “He had long ago stopped saying my name, but we had not become strangers, for he had created me his woman, and plain or mad, I remained his woman.

  “‘No,’ he said. ‘This is not the melon I want. Take it back and bring me the best melon.’

  “I took the melon back to the cellar and stayed there the time it takes to examine a dozen or more melons carefully again, and then I took him the melon. Again he looked at it, and at me, his woman.

  “‘This is a better melon,’ he said, ‘but it is not the one. Bring me the best melon there, the one I want.’

  “I went to the cellar nine times, do you hear? Do you want to know how a real man creates his woman? I went there nine times and each time returned with the same melon. I did not say, ‘Man, you are mad. Man, this is the only melon in the cellar, as you yourself know. Man, do not torment the one who loves you.’ I neither frowned nor smiled, for he had created me out of all of his nature. In the cellar I wanted to throw myself upon the earth and weep, but I did not permit myself to fly from him because he was mad. Nine times I brought my man the same inferior melon and on the ninth time he looked at the melon again, and at me, and he said, ‘My woman, my lovely Lula, this is the melon.’ And he sat and ate it. Now, sit at this table and eat this melon. Eat it and know how a real man creates his woman. It’s not the poor melon he ate, but a sweet ripe melon fifty years later, for his grandson. Then go to the telephone and call them one by one to come here before they die.”

  Rock sat across the table from his grandmother and began to eat the melon.

  “Why was he mad?” he said.

  “It is necessary for a great man to be mad,” Lula said. “It is necessary for the woman he has created to love him, plain or mad. Do you like the melon?”

  “Very much.”

  “Why are you dying?”

  “It is necessary to die, too.”

  “Is your sleep fighting you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What hunger and thirst do you have there?”

  “Hunger for bread and thirst for water.”

  “They are yourself. What do you seek there?”

  “A home.”

  “Your woman,” the old lady said. “What word is written or spoken there, by yourself, or by others?”

  “The word more.”

  “Your sons and daughters. Any other word?”

  “Now and then the word again.”

  “Yourself in your children,” the old lady said. “It is a decent fight, a fight to be born, as the man says it is written. The thirty-third year is the year of dying, of madness, of being born, one or the other, or all together. As you have hungered for bread and thirsted for water, begin now to be born. Here before you is new bread which I made yesterday when your cousin Haig came and said you would soon be here. Here in this clay pitcher is cool water. And here you are at a table, awake, but, for all that, as deeply asleep as when you dream of bread and water. Take the bread and break it. Pour water out of the clay pitcher into the clay cup. Eat the bread, drink the water. Satisfy your sleep and fight with it no more, or fight another fight. Go to the girl who tells lies, and create her into your woman, and again satisfy your sleep. Love the truth into her and behold your son and daughter, and satisfy your sleep. Grow your moustache and be the man you are. You are dying of falseness, your very own, which out of youth and luck and laziness you have permitted. It is time to die of falseness. It is time to begin again. To live is not a jolly thing. It is mad. It is a joke, but for a real man, a man with his moustache, it is an enormous joke. Eat more of that bread, drink more of that water. You are not dreaming, you are the dream itself, healthy with death and madness.”

  The old woman got up and walked in her bare feet to the front door, passing air in the parlor as she went, and something winked.

  There is meaning to a man. It is a secret meaning. It is something like this:

  A man’s best meaning means nothing, therefore it is good to wink and laugh.

  The luckiest man is the one whose half-words and half-acts, left in half-places at half-times, one by one grow whole, winking. He is luckiest who winks as he himself is winked, winking half to half and whole to hell and says to himself, “I didn’t know then, but I know now,” but winks at this, too, knowing he does not know, did not know then, does not know now. But he is no luckier than the unluckiest man, the man who is winked but does not wink. He is no luckier than that man, for there is no experience, winked or not, that is without madness from the time a man is born to the time he dies, and the madness of every man is enormous.

  He went to the telephone and called them one by one, and one by one, winking, they came: the men and the women and the children, who were his family, the eyes of the men laughing and winking, the women losing their breath with the gladness of seeing Arak Vagramian in his own house again, with his own grandmother, the boys and girls as arrogant as himself, as easy to take or leave.

  Haig came by on his motorcycle with his father hanging on.

  The cars piled up on Winery Street.

  The family overflowed out of the house into the front and back yards, men and boys, and women and girls.

  Two s
mall girls.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the war. He’s come home before he goes.”

  “Isn’t he famous any more? Does he look famous to you?”

  “He’s tired of it. He doesn’t want to be famous any more. He sat at the table in the kitchen and ate bread and water for breakfast. They say he’s looking for a wife.”

  “Who’d have him? Just because he knows all those actresses. I hear they sleep with everybody, and one another, too. What do they call them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the name of that city in Portugal?”

  “Lisbon.”

  “Something like that is what they call them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two women.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Fool around, I guess. How should I know what they do? But that’s what they say most of those famous actresses are.”

  “What?”

  “Lisbons. That’s why he never married any of them.”

  “Can’t they have babies?”

  “They don’t want them. They’re too busy fooling around to have babies.”

  “Some of them have them.”

  “I wouldn’t have him.”

  “He’s your cousin and you’re eleven.”

  “You’re thirteen. Would you have him?”

  “For a husband?”

  “If you weren’t his cousin, would you?”

  “If he was nice.”

  “Isn’t he nice?”

  “I mean to me. Not just nice to be nice, but nice to me. I’d have him.”

  “Would you, not for a husband? You know.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’d be scared.”

  “I would, too. Somebody’d find out. My father would kill me.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Two small boys.

  “What is it?”

  “He’s taking her to San Francisco with him. He’s going home to visit his mother.”

  “Isn’t he going to act any more?”

  “He’s going into the Army.”

  “Who said so?”

  “My father. I’d go with him if I could. Do you know how old he is? Thirty-three.”

  “I’m twelve. I read in the paper where a fellow somewhere went into the Marines, twelve years old. They put him out and gave his mother a ribbon.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to wrestle on the lawn?”

  “You’re only nine. You’re not old enough to wrestle me.”

  “I’m big enough, though.”

  “I’m almost as big as Rock is, but I’m not thirty-three, and I can’t wrestle him.”

  “You’re not as big as he is. You’re just a little bigger than I am. Do you want to wrestle?”

  “All right, but I’ll use only one arm.”

  “Use them both.”

  A husband and a wife.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing, woman. He wanted to see his family.”

  “He’s your own dead brother’s son. Why don’t you go inside and speak to him about the government?”

  “I don’t know anything about the government.”

  “Find out what he knows. He may know something. Go in and speak to him.”

  “No.”

  “Speak to your own nephew. Ask him intelligent questions. You know the water level of the whole San Joaquin Valley has been falling for years. What are we going to do for water ten years from now? Ask him about that.”

  “No, woman.”

  “Is he too good to hear of our troubles?”

  “There’s plenty of water.”

  “It’s falling every year. I read about it in The Asbarez. Go back inside and sit down like a man and ask him about Roosevelt.”

  “He doesn’t know Roosevelt.”

  “Of course he knows Roosevelt. Everybody famous knows Roosevelt. Why do you wish to remain ignorant all your life? Here is an opportunity to learn something. The neighbors are going to ask us what he said. What are you going to tell them?”

  “I’m going to tell them the truth.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said what all of us say when we meet, what we’ve been saying all our lives. No intelligent questions and no intelligent answers. I embraced my brother’s son and kissed his cheek, and he said my name. He said I was looking well.”

  “You’ve been ill. You’ve aged a great deal.”

  “It’s polite not to notice such things, certainly not in company. Just because he’s an actor doesn’t mean he’s no longer polite.”

  “Take me back in and I’ll ask him some questions.”

  “What will you ask him?”

  “I’ll ask him if they’re immoral.”

  “Who?”

  “Actors and actresses.”

  “You will not ask any such question.”

  “I’ve heard they are.”

  “Suppose they are? What business is it of yours? Perhaps I’ll speak of my brother.”

  “Well, speak of something.”

  It was an old house, occupied by an old woman, overflowing with a family, the house winking, the old woman going around to instruct and criticize every member of the family, winking and passing wind as she went.

  A man lives instantly. He may take a lifetime to go home again, but when he is finally there, he is instantly there, and even though everything has changed, and he himself has changed, everything is instantly the same, and he is instantly the same. Some of those he knew are gone, others are come. The places are changed, yet the same, as the house on Winery Street was changed and the same.

  Here again was his father’s brother, one of three, the farmer in Reedley, with his four sons and his large, loud-voiced daughter of seventeen, the boys married, each with a child or two of his own, the girl violent with cheerful power and shy boisterousness.

  They had already greeted one another, and the man had gone off with his wife, a little dark woman with a sharp nose, a stranger among them, but here they were back again, and the man wanted to say something.

  “Arak,” the man said. “You are your father again, my own brother.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I said so myself just now in the yard. ‘Isn’t it astonishing,’ I said, ‘how exactly like his father he is?’ Didn’t I?”

  “That makes me very happy,” Rock said to the woman. “You’re looking well. Younger than ever, I think, and your children are all looking so well.”

  “Our life is a life of work and worry,” the woman said. “The water level is falling.”

  Her husband looked at her, then at his nephew.

  “There is plenty of water,” he said softly.

  “The boys picked their own wives,” the woman said. “Each of them picked his own, not the way it was done in the old country, the parents of the boy and the girl coming together to discuss the matter intelligently. But at least they picked Armenian girls, girls who know a thing or two about cooking and housekeeping. Have you found a nice Armenian girl to marry?”

  “Woman,” the husband said softly.

  “Do you know one?” Rock said.

  “One?” the woman said. “There are hundreds, and most of them are here in Fresno. Girls are not lacking. To marry a stranger is perhaps an adventure, but the question is, Can the daughter of people who do not understand us be a true wife to one of our sons? Isn’t the eye of the stranger’s daughter forever out? Is it fitting for one of our sons to marry the daughter of a stranger?”

  “Who is that talking?” Lula called out from the kitchen. She stepped into the dining room to look, and then said, “The Armenian girl is also the daughter of a stranger. When a man takes his woman, she becomes his woman if he is a true man. If he is an Armenian, she becomes an Armenian, if he is a Turk, she becomes a Turk. His mother was a Vagramian who married a Vagramian, and that’s enough of that.”

  “I have heard they w
ere not related, however,” the woman said. “The father’s grandfather having become a Vagramian through adoption.” She turned to her husband. “Is that not so?”

  “It was said,” the man replied.

  “I was not a Vagramian when I married my husband,” Lula said. “I was a stranger’s daughter. Anybody he marries will be a stranger’s daughter. Whoever wants to eat, come to the kitchen.”

  The man took his wife by the arm and said, “Let us have a piece of bread and cheese.”

  “I am not hungry,” the woman said. The man went off to the kitchen alone. The woman was about to ask another question when Haig said, “If I’m ever down there when you’re down there, Rock, will you introduce me to Marcy Miller?”

  “Who’s Marcy Miller?” Haig’s father said.

  “She’s the girl we saw in the movie with Rock,” Haig said.

  “That’s a very pretty girl, Rock,” the man said in English.

  “I’d like to meet her,” Haig said.

  “If we’re ever down there at the same time,” Rock said, “I’ll introduce you to her.”

  “When are you going to be down there?” Haig said.

  “Isn’t it true,” the woman said, “that the longer the war lasts, the higher the price of raisins will be? I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  “Yes,” Rock said because he didn’t want to disappoint her. “The longer the war lasts, the more the farmers will get for their raisins.”

  “Is it because the government is going to buy raisins for the soldiers?” the woman said.

  “Yes, that’s it precisely.”

  “Haig,” the woman said, “do they feed you raisins in the Army?”

  “I never eat in the mess,” Haig said. “Will you be down there Saturday, Rock? I’ll pay a pal five bucks to go on duty for me and I’ll come down on my motorcycle.”

  “That’s too far,” Haig’s father said.

  “Have you heard how long the war is going to last?” the woman said.

  “It looks as if it’s going to be a long war,” Rock said. “No, I won’t be down there Saturday,” he said to Haig.

  “Was there not a twenty-year war?” the woman said. “It seems to me I read it in The Asbarez.”

  “There was also a hundred-year war,” Rock said.

  “Why not?” Haig said.