“Look. . Here you are. . Since the beginning of the week, you’ve bought eight souvlakis, and it’s only Wednesday. Last week you went into Zorba’s eighteen times.”
“Why are you counting people’s souvlakis? What does it matter to you if I eat souvlaki or not?”
“I have your chart too. . Look, it shows an even progression. You even go there late at night. If you want my opinion, you’ll start picking up the rhythm next week….. Look, Réjean is already at thirty-six souvlakis a week and climbing. In two weeks he’ll hit fifty. He could even beat Leblanc’s record, which was fifty-three before he had his accident. You’re not up with the leaders yet, but it won’t be long.”
“Are you telling me those guys had something to do with her?”
“They were Agamemnon’s army, coming to free her.”
“Now what are you talking about?”
“See that guy over there with the six dogs? That’s Achilles. No joke, he took that name. And that guy who looks like he’s thinking, over by the tree? That’s Ulysses. They’re all here. Ajax too. Our gods accompany us.”
“What did you do for a living before this?”
He smiles.
“I knew you were going to ask me that. I was a teacher, just down the hill. I taught history to teenagers. I used to go through the park twice a day and not notice a thing. One day a kid who could have been one of my students sold me some heroin. I wanted to have the experience. I figured that, since it was only an experiment, it wouldn’t change me. But it wasn’t an experiment — it was reality. One day I just didn’t see the point of going in to teach anymore. What could I teach those kids when I didn’t know anything about life? I bought myself a sleeping bag. It was the only thing I needed. I settled in under that tree across from Helen of Troy… Now, I have to go and sleep.”
He curls up on a bench. He makes me think of Basho. To live beneath a tree. To change your life. Could I do it? I watch him for a minute, then decide to go back to salmon. There is no danger at the big fish market at the next corner.
Any minute now, night will fall and the park’s fauna will change. The girls from the tourism school will go home and be replaced by young prostitutes who, most of them, are former students from the same school, the big building across the way whose only interest is the subway station underneath it. The souvlaki-eaters will be replaced by coke dealers. The businessmen from downtown will drive in slow circles around the little park under the watchful eye of the policeman, who gets a percentage for every customer — not for every car, the way it used to be.
A DISH OF SPAGHETTI IN FRONT OF THE TV SET
I HEARD HURRIED steps in the stairway behind me. I was already fumbling for my keys.
“Didn’t Plato show up?”
“What Plato?”
His face grew dark.
“My rent.”
“You’ll get it…”
“I want it today!”
“But Mr. Zorba…”
“My name isn’t Zorba.”
I’d never seen him in a mood like this.
“We still have time.”
That drives him crazy every time.
“I don’t feel like chasing after you all night.”
“You’ll get your money, like every week.”
“Well, I didn’t get it this week.”
Poor guy — the fear of being ripped off! I can hardly put him off even a half day. Once I went to New York with friends, and he didn’t get his rent until three days later. That look of his! He went back down the stairs, murmuring peasant curses between his teeth. I opened the door, placed the rent money on the table, pulled off my clothes and got into bed. I had time for a little snooze, and I’d be up before he returned. That doesn’t happen every day. I even had time to make a spaghetti sauce out of garlic, onions and green peas, then eat it in front of the tv set as I watched an old Columbo episode. I discovered some low-rent wine in a bottle lying under the table — enough for one glass. Lucullus receives Lucullus. I sat down to the left of the set; I was both audience and antenna. The old TV and I know each other well. Actually, it’s more like a radio, since I can make out only vague shapes, though the sound is still good. The TV is perfect for Metropolitan Orchestra concerts, if you like that sort of thing, which I hate. Sometimes I listen, hoping for a miracle. Most of the time its gray eye stares at me in dumb accusation. Zorba is only good for demanding his money. Every time I ask him to get a better television, just to bug him, he acts like he doesn’t understand me. He can broadcast, but he can’t receive.
THE COP'S NIGHTSTICK
A KNOCK AT the door. It’s eleven o’clock. I won’t give him his money until ten minutes to midnight — not a second before. Those ten minutes are his tip. Another knock. Someone’s insistent. He knows I’m here. Okay, I’ll open up. Two cops. They barge in without wiping their feet. They begin a minute inspection of my room without bothering to tell me who they are (though I can clearly see that), or what they want, which I can’t know without their help. When it comes to the police, you just have to wait. And that’s what I do. I sit down. Downstairs, the landlord must be going nuts. Not only does he hate the police the way all immigrants do, but he’s wondering if he’s going to get his rent if something happens. The cops move around my place like they own it. They look this way and that. They open the dresser drawers and come upon a pair of women’s panties which they start playing with in the crassest kind of way. They go to the window, speaking to each other in low voices. I sit and wait patiently. Sooner or later they’ll have to talk to me. And here they come: now they’re standing in front of me. Two cops and a black man in a crummy room in a bad part of town in Montreal — the scene is set. The oldest of the two comes so close to me his knee brushes my thigh. Suddenly the room starts smelling like shit.
“Let me tell you how it goes,” the older one says. “You’re her pimp. She shows up to give you her money. You do some coke together. Then all of a sudden she really gets on your nerves, I can understand that…. What I don’t get is why you threw her out the window when you could have got rid of her down the stairs. A little fall downstairs wouldn’t bring me running. . But you were too stoned to know the difference, am I right?”
I don’t answer. He turns to the younger cop, who is gaping in amazement at his seamless demonstration.
“That’s thirty years of experience, kid…. Now let’s run him in, I’ve got other things to do tonight.”
I don’t stir from my chair. I know this is only the beginning. I’ve seen too many episodes of Columbo. The young cop (if it isn’t his first day on the job, it’s his second) moves towards me, ready to handcuff me. If this really is about the Hideko business, that happened days ago. If they had the slightest suspicion that a murder had been committed in this apartment, the whole neighborhood would be sealed off. And they wouldn’t have sent these two assholes (a young one and an old one), but a whole army. These two have just dropped by to see if there isn’t any coke on the premises. Just don’t move— that’s all I have to do. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything. On the other hand, I’m starting to have serious doubts that any of this has even happened. As Paul Veyne reminds us, “truths themselves are simply imagined stories.” For him, what is imaginary can become reality. I could have been drunk and brought a woman back here with me, and then she threw herself out the window, and I fell asleep afterwards. The next day, with the fragments of images that lingered in my head, I dreamed up the whole story. It’s true that I did go to see Midori at the Café Sarajevo, but I didn’t feel well, and I left after the Kiss Inc. show. Instead of walking home, which would have calmed my nerves and my stomach, I took the subway. The closed-in atmosphere didn’t help. I was reading Basho with my eyes on the Chinese girl across from me. I lost consciousness as I was leaving the train, and she had the presence of mind to catch me before I fell. Aren’t I building a new story because of the police? Did she come back with me? I have no idea. But something did happen. The morning after my illness, I stole the landlord’s newspaper in front of the building, and that’s when I saw the girl’s body on the sidewalk — right under my window. On page one. The shock of seeing yourself publicly involved with death. Death is a misunderstood star. It wears dark glasses in order to go incognito. It attracts everyone’s eye. In an instant, a nobody who dies becomes a somebody. Maybe I was too quick to conclude that she’d fallen from my window, just because she was lying underneath it. I was thinking like the police, who see murder wherever they go. For every murder, they need to find fifteen suspects. And never the right one. So I’d better think fast. First of all, this is not a fiction film. Next, which death are we talking about? Maybe Zorba pushed the beautiful Helena out the window. Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, right? But I don’t think it’s a good idea to embark on that kind of discussion with two cops on a Thursday night.