"How long did it take for you to come here?" asked he.
"It must have taken me two hours," I replied, after some mental calculation.
"Two hours?" the man laughed. "but you live Downtown; it does not take more than twenty minutes to drive here." He peered at me quizzically.
"Oh, I didn't drive here. I took the bus."
My host's mouth went agape in disbelief; the revelation had took him by surprise.
"Why? What happened to your car?"
Now, it was my turn to be surprised.
"I... I don't own a car," I stuttered. "I thought you knew."
The man did not say another word for a long time; perhaps too long. The faintest shadows of geniality faded from the corners of his mouth, and his well-mannered gaze turned sharp and inquisitorial, like a pair of screws... or two pins a lepidopterist uses to pin a live butterfly to a corkboard, a butterfly which he does not particularly like.
I froze where I stood, pinned to a spot, as the silence stretched out to an uncomfortable length. Finally I broke the silence, lamely, explaining:
"Buses around here come to a stop once every hour. I changed a bus at Eastgate, the second one took fifty-five minutes to pick me up, which was why—"
"Rabble!" he snapped abruptly. "Commoner! How did you end up here?"
"You invited!" I exclaimed, and ducked as a vase flew through the space where my head had been a fraction of a moment ago. The porcelain shattered above me, drenching me with water and showering me with ceramic shards. I scrambled back up to my feet among the shards, and saw that a baseball bat had materialized in his hands. I knew right then that I had to bolt. I took cover under the baby grand piano, whereupon the bat was brought down upon the keyboard with all its wielder's might. It made a cacophonous sound, betraying the fact that the piano was neither just-tempered, nor well-tempered, but left out of tune for a long time. Its owner, it turned out, had only bought it for want of an ornament to grace the living room, rather than to use it as a musical instrument.
"You are one of the bad guys, aren't you?" interrogated the man. "Are you here to steal my property?"
"No, I'm not!" I protested.
"Did you come here to steal my property!" He repeated, more loudly this time, in a way that made clear that he did not mean to ask a question.
One of the wires of the piano snapped, erupting through the wooden panel and whipping me painfully across my cheek. I decided not to be demolished among with the poor Steinway, and made a run for it for the back door through the pantry. I glanced behind me and the man was following behind me with a bow and a quiver of arrows. With difficulty he drew his bow, with an arrow loaded, and attempted to skewer me through with it. He was not very good, however, and the arrow whizzed through a carton of cloudy apple cider on the top shelf, far above me. It exploded promptly, and I was inundated with the sweet and sticky substance, the finest produce of Ohio. Another arrow fired, and a bag of flour was upended on me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the puddle, but I couldn't recognize myself anymore, being covered head to toe with congealed flour.
Unable to ensure my demise swiftly, the man of the house turned bright crimson in the face with frustration. He threw down the bow and quiver of arrows and began whinnying like a horse, and then he retreated to the depths of the house. I grabbed hold of the doorknob at the back door and realized with dismay that it was locked, and in my state of panic I had forgotten how to unlock a door from the inside. I ran the other way, to the front, taking advantage of the fact that the man had disappeared, and hopefully had given up for the time being. But as soon as I reached the front door, he re-materialized again with a shotgun in his hand. The gun had a casing colored a jocular purple, and it was hard to tell, at first, if it was a toy gun or a weapon in totally good faith. But he took aim at me and fired it, and the shot tore a hole into the wall next to me. Squealing pathetically in fear for my life, I bashed my way through a Christmas tree, its decorations still on, and took cover behind the television set.
"I worked hard for my stuff!" he snarled.
"I don't dispute that!" I yelled back at him.
He fired again, putting a hole into a corner of the flat-screen monitor, and he neighed and whinnied again in rage, having destroyed his only source of cable news. He would have to pay a not trivial sum to buy another one in its place, and to be able to follow the trends of national politics again. I noticed to my delight that his first shot had also taken out the lock to the front door, which now hung ajar. I clawed myself out again through the Christmas tree, took down three canvas panels with the words "Live", "Laugh", and "Love" emblazoned on each one, and threw it at his face, one after the other, hoping to distract him. Then I flung the front door wide open and sprinted out, dragging with me a motherload of pine needles, decorative bobbles, gold-colored plastic stars, and string lights stuck to the floury goop on my body.
I found myself out in the neighborhood's main boulevard, verdantly furnished, with great and ancient trees lining both sides of a two-lane road, dark and cool and graced by little shafts of sun peeping through holes in the foliage. A peaceful place, where nothing untoward ever happens— save for a hapless newcomer, who had committed the unpardonable crimes of poverty and trespassing, and therefore must be brought to justice by its resident libertarian vigilante. I ran fast as I could on the road, which thankfully saw little traffic. My erstwhile host ran behind me, some distance away. I was lucky to have a quite ample head-start, and he still had his plush slippers on, and kept felling further and further back.
I ran past the neighborhood church, a squat, rectangular building knocked together with red bricks. The sign in front of the church stood out to me in that instant, because the Bible quote, spelled out with big black letters on a white background, seemed especially relevant. Turning to my pursuer, who was still far enough away, I pointed at the sign and shouted, quoting:
"You Will Always Have The Poor Among You! (Jn 12:8a, NIV)"
This appeared to give him some pause, but after a moment of thought, he retorted with a quote of his own:
"Whosoever Hath Not, From Him Shall Be Taken Away Even That He Hath! (Mt 13:12b, KJV)"
I was at my wit's end. "How Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit! (Mt 5:3a, NJB)", I wailed, and was back on my way. "All This I Will Give You," I could hear him say, increasingly distant. "If You Kneel Down And Worship Me! (Mt 4:9, Good News Translation)"
The boulevard ended in a T-junction, where the main road of the city lies. I will go there and be safe at last, I thought to myself. But, for many an agonizing minute, my flight did not seem to bring me any closer to safety. It seemed to me that this suburban road warped one's sense of time and space; the more I ran, the further the main road seemed to be. All around me, the plots of land the houses were built on grew vaster and vaster in size, and the distance between them stretched out and became so great, that I began to doubt that I would make it to the next house at all.
After an agonizing and interminable stretch of time, I reached the main road at last. In stark contrast to the boulevard, the houses here were built of wood instead of brick and stone. I realized as soon as I stepped in that this was what they considered to be a bad part of town, where criminality reigned; and where skulduggery, misery, and violent death held their vice-like grip on the populace, who were in any case not all angels here. The foliage which graced the boulevard with splendid shade no longer covered me on the main road, but a harsh daylight filled every nook and cranny of the sidewalk and of the shophouses.
Presently, a procession came marching down the great road. First came a cheerleaders' troupe, a team of thirty or so girls dancing and chanting to the sound of drums, and a banner announced the name of the local parish school where they went. Next came a truck which had a fitted snow-blade up in front of its bumper, but a banner was draped over the snow-blade, explaining to me that a special, annual yearly festival to chase away winter and welcome spring was in progress. Then after that came a second pick-up truck. The cargo bed of the second truck was loaded with cuboid bales of hay, and a band of musicians, decked in exotic national costumes of a distant country, were perched on them. Among them were a trombonist, a tubist, a double bassist, and two accordionists who swayed and played a cheery tune in almost perfectly-coordinated unison. Then came a third truck, carrying as cargo a team of college-age youths in grey t-shirts and wearing traffic cones as headgear, whose prime task was to reach into their satchels and throw candy at the crowd of onlookers, who cheered them ecstatically and welcomed every salvo of twinkies delivered.
Behind this third truck was a group which traveled on foot, comprising several families, young children, their parents, even some elderly folk. They were dressed atrociously in the most absurd fashion imaginable. One boy was dressed as a chocolate cake. That or a chimney sweep, it was hard to tell. He wore a big black foam cylinder on his head, with feathers stuck on top; he had put dirt on his face and carried a pair of huge black tongs with him. Another one, a bearded man, wore a suit which made him look as if he had been covered with post-it notes. Yet others came with ribbons draped all over them, or wore colorful masks in white, blue, and red. A grumpy old greybeard walked alongside them, a little to close to the crowds. He bumped into me, and with a start I moved aside, inadvertently landing right into the middle of the costumed throng.
At first I panicked, and looked for a way out, but after walking a short way with them, and thinking my situation through, I figured that being here provided me much-needed cover from the armed madman pursuing me, and he might just figure that I was no more a threat to his safety and go home. I finally began to relax, even dancing a little to the accordions and to the brass band. A young mother in costume, pushing a stroller with her toddler child, who was also in costume, called out to me and gave complements to my get-up. It was then that I realized that I had come dressed fit for the occasion unintentionally; I was caked from top to bottom in flour and cloudy apple cider; I was adorned all over with porcelain shards, pine needles, and Christmas tree decorations. In this disreputable neighborhood, among these goofy strangers, I could fit right in!
One young lady opened a can of India Pale Ale, pushed them into my hand, and disappeared among the spectators. I tried to find her to thank her, but it was in vain. Instead, I caught the eye of a rotund, ruddy-faced, smiling man on the back of the third pick-up truck, sitting at the foot of the candy-throwers on a bale of hay. I saw that he, too, held a similar can in his hand. The man rotated serenely about his axis, his entire frame beaming with peace and joy, like some majestic old planet of the solar system, until he faced me directly. Then he raised up his ale in my direction.
"Na zdravje," he toasted.
"Na zdrowie," I croaked in reply, weakly.
What had happened to my pursuer, the rich man, who only wanted to safeguard his turf from marauding villains? He was barely visible from where I am now. He had not come as far as to chase me through the parade. Instead he had stopped where the leafy cover of the boulevard ended, just the main road. He had refused to step into the "bad part of town" for even an inch. At first I thought he was screaming in frustration that an intruder had been allowed to go free, but later it seemed to me more likely that he was burned by the bright sunlight from the clear skies. If he did so much as stick out his hand beyond the shade, the harshness of the light seared his pale skin, turning it a painful, angry red. From time to time I looked over my shoulders to watch the man, lonely in his impotent rage, until finally he shrunk down to a tiny, faraway speck, a most inconsequential blemish on the face of the city.
 |
| Cleveland, February 22, 2020 |
References:
1. Cleveland Kurentovanje (Slovenian Mardi Gras),
February 22, 2020, St. Vitus Church and St. Clair Avenue
2. TEDx Talk by Rich Cochrane: "Thriving cities ... are trees the answer?".
Cleveland State University, 2015
3. The Great Divorce, novel by Clive Staples Lewis (1945)
4. Beyond Libertarianism, article by James David Vance, published 2019 on First Things
5. Devil on the Cross, novel by by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1980)
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