Bloom Small
Gregor never understood why James cried.
"It is a thing of the woman, this!" he said, mournfully, as James sat on the side of the bed in white underwear--white undershirt with holes in it, white boxers--put his head in his hands, and cried. Gregor pleaded. Gregor begged. He hated to see James cry, hated to see James snivelling, hated to see James hidden deep inside himself, so far that he couldn't remember that there was anybody in the whole world but himself, so far that all he could do was cry because he was alone.
Gregor was never alone, although he had no friends and never went anywhere except to the store where he worked, and when James was not crying he teased him about this. Gregor carved things out of wood, and for that reason he was always busy. He stayed in their apartment and filled it with prowling tigers the colour of sand, or birds with big pale brown wings that spread out were the same length as James' pencils.
James liked to call their apartment La Menagerie. When he wasn't crying, he sat around in white underwear and named the animals. James had a sprawling way of sitting anywhere, with his big long legs out in front of him taking up a huge part of the floor, and his big hands behind his head or crossed on his stomach or his elbows propped up on whatever object was closest. He would sit by the window, sprawled out like that, and point at the new elephant perched up on the windowsill.
"That's Edgar," he would say. "Edgar's just come from Africa. Look at his ears. Anybody can see he's an African elephant. He was being studied by a student of thingummy, zoology, who read Shakespeare aloud to him to see whether it would improve his mind. 'And Duncan's horses,--a thing most strange and certain,--beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make war with mankind', and so on. Edgar doesn't give a shit, of course, but he's heard it all. Oh, and he can squirt water up to thirty feet with his trunk. It's practically a sport to him, and all the other elephants hated him for it."
Gregor wouldn't say anything. He'd just shake his head and get back to work on his cat, carefully picking tiny wood chips out of the curve of the inside of the ear to smooth it.
"And that's Anna," James said, pointing out the peacock. "Anna is shy. She's the only shy peacock in the world."
"It is not that the peacock can to be Anna," Gregor corrected, slicing down the cat's humped unfinished back.
"Why the hell not?"
"The peacock, it can to be Miklos, the name of my brother. Anna must to wait for the--you see what I say--the woman bird."
"Damn you. The peacock is Anna."
Gregor shrugged and made the cat tiny claws on each of its little wooden feet.
"And she's shy," James went on. "She's the only shy peacock in the world..."
But that was only when James was all right, and Gregor could never guess when he would be and when he wouldn't. Gregor might come home from work at the store and find James on the floor looking through old records or playing his thumb piano, or he might come home and find James on the bed, head in his hands, crying. Then Gregor would say, his voice strained a little with begging,--
"It is a thing of the woman, this! You must not to cry. You are a man. You must to be what a man does! See, I will to find the box where you are to make music, and you will to be a man. You will to make music and I, Gregor, I will to make a donkey to-day."
James ignored him. James' huge hands hid his face completely, but his nose poked out because he knew that he couldn't breathe if he put his hands over his whole face, and he'd have to stop crying to rearrange his hands and take deep breaths if he didn't do it right. James' big, thin, lanky body shook inside the white underwear, and his crying made a horrible noise, a shaking, roaring noise of misery that rattled Gregor's nerves so badly that he couldn't concentrate on his carving.
He had thought he'd get used to James' crying. They had lived together for five years, but James never said why he cried and he still did it just as irregularly as ever, and Gregor still tried to do something about it, even though nothing he did ever worked. Sometimes he would leave again before James had stopped, and sometimes he stayed around and worked out how much money he would need to buy food and coffee and have the nice girl at the automatic all-night laundromat help him to wash his clothes. He could never carve when James was crying, but he didn't have any trouble with figures.
Sometimes he wrote letters to his brother Miklos. Sometimes he wrote to his wife back in Czechoslovakia, Eliska, who wrote to him too to tell him that their little girl, she was well, she was growing up small, like a little flower that stays closed up longer than the others before it blooms.
"Because it will be more beautiful than the others when it finally comes?" Gregor wrote in Czech, where his grammar was perfect, trying to complete something he'd heard Americans say.
"Because it is smaller and not so strong," Eliska wrote back. "Some flowers, they do not grow to be more beautiful. They are just flowers that bloom small."
"Tell her her father loves her," Gregor answered, and they didn't speak of flowers again.
James had asked to see one of Gregor's letters from Eliska once, but he couldn't read the language, so he gave it back. "Are you going to bring her here?" he said.
"No," said Gregor.
"It's the land of opportunity and all that stuff. Good place for immigrants. That's what they say."
"Not a good place for Eliska and Zelenka," said Gregor. "I do to leave them away. With Miklos they are to be well. With me, it is the little house of this kind and the all-night laundromat. Also it is that I do to have no money."
"Oh. Right. Will you ever go back, then?"
"Maybe when I do to have enough money, but I do not to think this I will. Also that Eliska does to like Czechoslovakia."
"She likes it?" James asked, incredulous.
"It is the home of Eliska. Even if bad in parts it is, most important it is the home of Eliska--and also her mother and father cannot to leave, and also Eliska does to love her mother and father."
"I guess that makes sense. Jesus, though. If I had a wife in some other country, I'd make her come here as fast as you wouldn't believe."
"You do to have no wife," said Gregor, and went back to writing his letter.
On a different day, James asked, "So, how many kids do you have? Just the one?"
"Zelenka is not to be just the one," said Gregor, but James didn't understand why he was angry. "Zelenka is not to be just. Zelenka is not to be the one," said Gregor, but James just said,--
"Okay, okay, sorry," and changed the subject.
For days afterwards, Gregor worked at the store and spent hours saying over and over to himself, 'Zelenka is not a just. Zelenka is my daughter,' in Czech, making long explanations that sounded fine but didn't really explain a thing, so concerned about it that when people caught him off-guard he burst out, 'Zelenka is not to be just!' and they stared at him. He could not understand wholly why he couldn't forget, but he couldn't, and when he carved all week long he hid the new animals in out of the way places, a long wooden snake in the cupboard with the food, the cat with her wooden claws sticking out of her wooden toes under the sink, so that James had to search for them. When James had to search, he would put them on the kitchen table after he found them and while Gregor worked at night say--so nonchalantly it sounded cruel--
"This is Malkie, the cat, and he bites kids... Her name is Emily, and she's a python... Malkie belonged to a family in Memphis, and the kids miss him even though he bit them... Emily thinks America is exotic, but that's because she's sort of dumb..."
Gregor felt stretched and pulled, convinced they were fighting, that it was tight between them, that James was being nonchalant in a pointed way, that he, Gregor, he sat there and carved without saying a word because it was his way of defying and laughing in James' face for giving the an--he had to stop, because if he went on he would have made it impossible to go back, even when they stopped fighting. The animals were a bridge between them. Even though Gregor could not understand why James cried, and James couldn't understand why he had made Gregor angry, they could both understand that they were two gods, that Gregor made the bodies and James brought them to life. No matter how little sense it made to Gregor when James put his head in his hands and sat on the bed in his white underwear, he still understood exactly when James decided that the horse was called David, and had come from Arabia.
He didn't know whether James understood exactly why he made the horse to begin with, but he thought--it felt as though James did. That was good, Gregor knew, carving the tiny scales on a big-jawed alligator with a beautiful fierce tail. That was good, because Gregor didn't understand at all.
They were no longer fighting. James looked at him steadily, pointed at the cat, and said, "He's pretty happy now, because cats never like anybody that much. He doesn't miss the kids. They pulled his tail."
Gregor didn't even look up.
"And when you're done with that crocodile--hold it, hold it. He's an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile." He said it in the sing-song way people use when they recite poetry. "Yeah, his name's Professor Twist."
When the alligator was finished, James put it on his bedside table, and told it on nights when he didn't fall asleep right away, "Professor Twist could not but smile. Professor Twist could not but smile."
Gregor wondered how the rest went.
One evening, after Gregor came back from the automatic all-night laundromat, James sat on the side of the bed and cried. Gregor tried first to put his clean clothes away, but the hoarse, lonely, embarrassing sound wouldn't stop, didn't get louder or softer, just went on and on and on in his ears until he cried out, just like usual,--
"It is the thing of the woman, this! You must not to do this!"
James ignored him.
Gregor pleaded.
"Please, you will not to do this. Look, I am to make to-night the sea-snake. He is to be almost of a complete! Almost of a complete, and he is that is to be sick of the anger if you do not to give him a name. He will do to sting, and I, Gregor, I will not to work again, for the sting will do to make bad for me. Then there will to be no new animals."
James went on crying. His big lanky shoulders shook, and Gregor threw up his hands helplessly. He had talked. Always he had pleaded and talked and reasoned. Always he had tried: he had been angry, he had been gentle, he had hit James, he had pushed him, he had stroked James' hair, he had rocked James' great big skinny body against himself like a mother. Nothing ever worked.
Gregor sat down at the kitchen table and wrote to Eliska.
"Zelenka is not a little flower that will bloom small. Zelenka is not a just. Zelenka is not a the one. Zelenka is like the snake, Emily, when I put her in the cupboard with the packets of oatmeal and James found her and took her out and gave her a name. Zelenka will be beautiful. Zelenka is my daughter. I will send all the money I have in with this letter, and you must be careful with it, and make it last, but you must buy good food for Zelenka, and for you, Eliska. I love you, Eliska. You must not cry. You must not ever cry. I love you, Eliska," Gregor wrote, so quickly that his words started to blur together. "I love you, Eliska. I love Zelenka, and you must remember to tell her so. She may forget me. You must not be sad. I am afraid you may forget me, because I am so far away, but you must not be sad, you must not cry, you must know. You must tell Zelenka I love her. Zelenka is not a just."
When he had finished, he put all his money into the envelope and made it ready to send. He sat at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands, just like James, who still sat on the bed.
That week Gregor was very hungry. James worked as a waiter in a little restaurant where people didn't tip him very much, but he always had enough to buy his own food and get his own clothes washed and pay for beer and cigarettes--he only bought one pack of cigarettes on the first day of every month, and made them last until the last day. He was all right. Gregor got paid at the end of the week, and he had put his week's money into the letter to Eliska. They both understood that James had only enough for himself, and Gregor asked at the back doors of restaurants for things that the diners hadn't wanted.
One day, later, James came home a long time before he usually did. The little store where Gregor worked was owned by a man whose mother had just died, and it was closed that day, and Gregor stayed home, carving. James came back early, with a bottle of milk over his shoulder and a paper bag under his arm.
"Hey. I've got food," said James, without seeming at all surprised to see Gregor. "Some fellow at work came with an assload of people and ordered a bunch of things specially and then only took a little of each of them, so we split the leftovers on the sly."
"You have to remember what it is that I was to be telling you of Zelenka?"
"Your kid? Of course."
"Good."
James looked at him for a minute. "Well?"
"What?"
"Never mind. Have a sandwich." James threw himself into one of the chairs and sprawled out across the kitchen, big and lanky and in everything, and took things out of the paper bag. Half a sandwich, a thick piece of cake. A few pieces of fruit. A covered bowl of buttered corn and peas. Three or four rolls. A little wrapped package that turned out to be grilled shrimp on a hamburger bun. Gregor had never seen this kind of food before, especially in this kind of quantity, and he stared a little.
"Have a sandwich," James said again. "I'm going to." He reached out and took the wrapped package.
Gregor slowly picked up the sandwich. It was curried chicken, stuffed thickly along with lettuce leaves between two big pieces of bread with crusts. The smell was like the run-down Indian restaurant that struggled along a few streets over. The fat bread felt good in his hands. He ate a bite and chewed slowly.
"I am to be sending my money to Eliska one time again this week."
"Great."
"It is that I will do to be telling you something. This thing, it is what you are to call a secret."
"Okay."
"Zelenka--you are not to have to forget Zelenka?"
"Nope. She's your kid. What about her?"
"Zelenka has done to die."
James stared. He had finished his sandwich, and he dusted his hands against each other as slowly as Gregor had chewed a moment ago. Then he picked up the half-finished dragon which Gregor had put aside when he took the chicken sandwich. He turned it over in his big hands. Finally he looked up again. His face was funny, a little changed and squinched, as though he were about to do something and he didn't know what it was, whether he was going to laugh or cry or make an expression of sympathy or--or anything.
"When did she die?"
"Seven years ago, when I made to come first into America."
"What?" James asked again, calmly.
"Eliska and I did to love her very much. Always we were to write about her, and when it was that she was to die, we did not to stop. Now Eliska is to write and to say 'Zelenka, she is to be well' and back to her I am to write and say, 'This is to make me glad. To say to her, please, Eliska, that her father does to love her very much, and so she will not to forget me' and Eliska is to write one time again and say, 'She will not do to forget you. She does to love you very much'. Then it is that we are to be happy," said Gregor steadily. He did not cry the way James did.
"You know when I get messed up? You know--shit. Hey," said James gently, putting the dragon down. "You know when I--?"
"Are to do the thing of a woman, that?"
"Yeah. ...Yeah, that. You know, when we were in Okinawa? When we--America? I was in there, too. I kept seeing dead people everywhere. They were everywhere. There were all these holes because of the bombing, and there were dead people in the holes, and they had worms in them, and I kept thinking maybe I knew who they were but I never did, and they were dead, and it wasn't the same as shooting people and seeing them dead, it wasn't anything like anything we'd done before. Everybody was dead. All we saw were dead people. Some of them were in pieces, and some of them were cut up all over so that they were falling apart, and some of them had worms in their eyes--" James picked up the dragon again and ran his big hands over her sides, where Gregor had only just begun to cut scales. "Shit, you have no idea. Jesus. There were flies, too. All these flies. And the people in the holes--the holes were all filled up with water, so the dead people were rotting and getting slimy and grey underneath the water, and the flies, and the worms, and--" He stopped. "Jesus," he said.
Gregor reached out and took the dragon from him. Gregor's fingers eased James' apart and slid the dragon away, taking her back, and then took the knife and began to cut the rest of her scales. Her head was already made, and they sat for a while without saying anything while Gregor cut down the wood and gave her a long curling tail with a spine on the end, a pair of folded wings with the feathers neatly arranged, claws on her toes like the cat's, and scales all over. James watched without ever looking away, watching Gregor's hands, watching Gregor's knife, watching the little chips of wood flying aside while the dragon came forward out of the funny-shaped chunk of wood and twitched about as Gregor shifted her to add details to her wings.
"Her name isn't Zelenka and she didn't come from Japan," said James. "Her name is Maria. She's from India. They have dragons in India. But she liked to eat cows, so she had to go."
Now James understood why he had made Gregor angry. Now Gregor understood why James cried.
That night, Gregor sat at the kitchen table with one of the two flashlight-lanterns they always used because they couldn't afford the electricity to use the lights, and wrote a letter to Eliska. As he wrote, he could hear James, lying in bed with the door open, saying to the alligator,--
"Professor Twist could not but smile. Professor Twist could not but smile."
"Tell Zelenka that her father loves her," wrote Gregor. "Tell her so that she does not forget."
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