CHAPTER SEVEN

HUMAN CURIOSITIES

Walking out beyond the seminary grounds that day, I experienced the sensation that passersby were viewing me unclothed. It’s something one isn’t supposed to do . . . walking away from one’s self.

My pace accelerated the farther away from St. Joseph’s I got, fearful that someone might yell, “He’s escaping. Catch him!”

I remember boarding a bus and then exiting at the end of the line in an unfamiliar neighborhood. No one will recognize me here, I thought, and then began laughing at myself:

How in Christ’s name could they, since I’m no longer who I was? The poor guy vanished like a prayer.

I found a diner and sat in a booth at its far end. The waitress was the first person to speak to the new me.

“What can I get you?” she asked.

“Coffee, please. Black, no sugar.”

So this is how constructing an identity begins, I thought. Seems normal enough. But what continued to unnerve me was that I’d begun to suffer pangs of guilt for having abandoned myself.

He’d dedicated himself to learning Hebrew and Greek so that he could read the Bible and the New Testament in their original tongue. He’d studied Latin to become proficient in the Roman Catholic liturgy. In the eyes of God, he’d fully committed himself to be among the very best of St. Joseph’s priests . . . Father Westley Mueller. Periodically, I’d look out the diner window to see if he might be standing there, peering in at me.

“Hey! You don’t get off that easy. It’s me, Westley Mueller. Remember?”

I paid the bill and walked for some distance until I entered an area occupied by boarded-up foundries and derelict buildings.

“I don’t want Westley to find me,” I fretted.

I was startled to see my image mirrored in a windowpane. “Christ, it’s him!” I cried, and began running. Soon I was on the outskirts of town with open fields on either side of me. There was no walkway, only an open two-lane macadam roadway.

At some point, feeling both famished and exhausted, I lay down in a field. The sky was overcast and threatening rain.

I could have been praying now, I thought. Dinner would be served soon. Then to my room, where I could close the door to be alone with my thoughts. The crucifix on the wall above my simple cot. Two wool blankets folded neatly at its foot.

And as a light rain began to fall and the sky darkened, I tried to fight off sleep, afraid that I’d awaken to my old self lying beside me. I stood and proceeded down the road.

With the rain falling harder, I sought shelter. I passed several large and ancient oak trees but was fearful of being struck by lightning.

On the verge of ignoring that concern, I spotted a male figure walking toward me, pulling a child’s wagon. His gait and manner of dress did appear familiar. Once we were several feet apart, the stranger was smiling at me as if we had met in the past.

Where have I seen him? . . . until I realized it was the old monk I’d encountered at Berryville, the one whose stall was graced with plaster of Paris saints, which now sat upright in the red wagon.

Within that senile character and his gilded dolls lay the ineluctable mystery of God, it seemed.

Brother Stanislaus greeted me like an old friend. I wryly gestured to his Kewpie-doll passengers.

He enunciated each in broken English: St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Bruno, St. Stephen, St. Dominic, St. Therese or Little Flower, St. Agnes, St. John of the Cross, St. Lucy, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Thomas.

Several were strangers to me.

“Where are you going?” he asked, appearing distressed that the saints had been caught in the rain.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Well, then you must come with us.” He laughed.

Brother Stanislaus moved at a rapid pace. The saints jostled together before me like milk bottles.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We must hurry,” he said. “Any moment now they will appear.”

“Who?”

“Our brothers.” He said it as if there was no question that I was one of them. Dusk had begun to settle, yet Brother Stanislaus appeared untroubled and kept humming a couple of bars of what I assumed was some folk song from his native country.

As I was becoming afraid that night would overtake us, I saw pale headlights in a distance approaching. They lit up the faces of the saints, ironically exaggerating their lighthearted demeanor. Out of the 1952 Chevrolet sedan stepped the guest master, Brother Paul, in his white hooded cowl, grinning widely and not the least bit surprised at my presence.

“We’ve been expecting you, Westley. Haven’t we, Brother?”

“We just didn’t know when,” Brother Stanislaus responded, as he began placing St. Benedict et al. on the mohair backseat, but not before drying each one off with the underside of his cowl.

Brother Paul placed the wagon in the trunk of the car, and the old monk and I settled into the front beside him.

Neither of the monks inquired where I’d been or what I’d done since I last saw them. It was as if only yesterday I’d visited the monastery in Berryville. In fact, it was as if time had no meaning for them. Now it was ink-black outside, and the headlights of the Chevrolet cast anemic yellow arcs of illumination before us. Soon we turned down a dirt road, and the passengers in the backseat chattered against each other. At one point Brother Stanislaus turned around and chided, “Please!”

The two monks thought that sublimely humorous, since their order was committed to silence.

The anguish that had preoccupied me earlier concerning having abandoned myself at St. Joseph’s and my fear of being overcome by a sense of void had begun to dissipate. “I may not know who I am or who I am supposed to be,” I thought. “But these brothers don’t seem to care.”

For the first time that very long day, I felt strangely at peace. As if I, Westley Mueller, was nothing more or less than those fourteen letters. That neither of the brothers on either side of me was going to require that I become somebody. That I assume a new identity. That I invest years in forging a new persona . . . one that coalesced nicely with theirs.

I was tired of playing a role, especially the one from which I’d just escaped.

The car’s headlamps illuminated the familiar wooden gate. Brother Stanislaus got out and swung it open for us to drive through. As Brother Paul waited for him to climb back in, the old monk waved us on, yelling something in his native tongue.

Brother Paul laughed out loud. “The monks tease him about his retinue of saints,” he explained. “This way he’ll retrieve them once we’re inside.”

But I was not prepared for what I saw.

Brother Paul and I entered the refurbished barn where I’d last visited the monastery library. Once inside, he turned and said the following:

“No one enters here who hasn’t dispensed of himself as you have done. What you see inside may strike fear in you initially, but it will pass. It’s simply that we must embrace the truth of who we believe we are, Westley. Brother Stanislaus carts around those saints not only because he prays to them to intercede in his behalf—that’s part of it, of course. What would you expect of a humble, less sophisticated brother like him? But there is something more truthful about each of those figures. If his wagon were larger, there would be even more. He is carting his multitudes of selves about.

“You have crossed the threshold of bidding your first self good-bye.

“Who was that Westley Mueller you walked away from, fearing that he would follow you? You could hear its steps catching up, couldn’t you? Yes, it’s the same for each of us here. Brother Stanislaus has made it easy for himself. He carts them about. St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Bruno, St. Stephen, St. Dominic, St. Therese, St. Agnes, St. John of the Cross, St. Lucy, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Thomas. He’s attired himself in each of their garments. Mostly in his imagination, of course, while we acknowledge him as simple Brother Stanislaus.

“And in this long hall, which we are to enter, we will lift the scrim of illusion and confront others like you and me and their others.

“Come.” He gestured.

When Brother Paul opened the door, I expected to see monks stationed about the library stacks, as if I were about to undergo some initiation ceremony that I hoped would end harmoniously, given the Christly nature of Brother Paul.

But there was no library. Nor were there monks in the gray working cowls or the brown choir cowls.

Instead I had entered what approximated for me the fabled West End Bar on Broadway, patronized for decades by students and faculty at Columbia University. I, too, had visited there often when I’d briefly lived on 114^th Street in Riverside Suites. Late one Saturday, I’d even witnessed Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Neal Cassidy pettifogging there. A Babel of literates is how I saw the eating and drinking establishment and felt as if I belonged, even though nobody knew me or could have cared less. Being there, I absorbed its character all the same.

In the corner of the large room, two brothers of Asian descent sat alone. Curiously, despite all the extra room about them, their bent-wood chairs were nestled next to each other.

They smiled a greeting that indicated we had met before.

I turned to look at Brother Paul for some guidance, but he had disappeared. One of the brothers asked if I had “any smokes.”

I shook my head. The other shrugged and gestured that I sit down.

“The Bunkers,” they exclaimed in unison. “Chang and Eng.”

At which point Chang gestured to Eng to get up and fetch us each a drink.

Eng declined and said, “No, it’s your turn.”

Then they both doubled over in laughter and stood up, connected by a nine-inch ligament, which could stretch somewhat beyond that, at their chests.

“What’ll you have?” asked Eng.

“A whiskey,” I said.

“Three Jack Daniels!” he shouted to one of the many bartenders.

Like the two monks, neither of the brothers wondered why I was sitting opposite them. In fact, it felt as if we knew more about each other than was apparent as we sat there conversing. Eng, who was quite pleasant and had a good sense of humor compared to his more choleric brother, mentioned he’d been sick earlier in the day, to which Chang countered that he’d felt just fine. Apparently their wives, Sarah and Adelaide, were awaiting them at home, but neither man appeared too concerned.

“The shows wear us down,” Chang groused. “Here we can be ourselves.”

At that, he gestured to a person sitting alone at a table alongside us. “Alberta,” Eng whispered. “Albert,” Chang corrected.

My view was partially obscured by the Bunkers bending toward me, but I could see under the neighbor’s table and spotted one foot wearing a man’s shoe of average length and the other modeling a diminutive woman’s high heel. When I looked up, I saw a face whose left side was lacking any semblance of whiskers and appeared soft as a woman’s, while the right side was hirsute and coarse. What I could view of the body above the table line indicated that the person was half man and half woman. Buxom on one side, flat as a skillet bottom on the other.

Eng, bending himself and his brother close to me once again, pointed to their chests while gesturing with his eyes to our neighbor’s and molding his hand as if about to cup a breast . . . sotto voce pronounced: “Birdseed.”

“Birdseed?” I asked, flummoxed.

“A gaffe,” Chang replied. “His breast is birdseed.”

“Not Adelaide’s,” Eng japed.

I politely excused myself and headed to the bar.

“Whadizit?,” a voice behind me called out. I turned, spotting a man with huge ears and a bald head resembling a dunce cap, atop the point of which rose a tuft of black hair cinched by a purple ribbon. He was covered in fur, but even in the dim light of the establishment it looked like a union suit. He held out his hand to me.

“Whadizit?,” he said, grinning wide.

I had no idea how to respond.

Appearing at his side was a nattily dressed man I guessed was no taller than two schoolhouse rulers. He pulled at my trouser leg. “It’s his name,” he advised in a high-pitched German accent. “We call him Zip. Mine is Hans . . . and yours?”

“Westley,” I said. “Westley Mueller.”

Whadizit? began laughing.

“Why is he laughing?” I asked Hans.

“He thinks your act is funny. Watch his.” At that, Hans jumped up on a chair, put his fingers to his lips, and gave a shrill whistle. The patrons around us fell silent.

“Zip is going up for more rounds. Anyone thirsty?”

A man in a tuxedo and nine feet tall tossed Whadizit? a coin. “Schlitz!” he cried.

Whereupon the pinhead tossed it back.

A bearded lady who had sat down alongside Albert/Alberta winged a coin at Whadizit? and cried, “Schlitz!”

The convivial patrons began following suit. Soon Whadizit? was fielding coins for Schlitz from all corners of the ersatz West End Bar and tossing them back just as rapidly.

I looked to Hans for an explanation. But he was now sitting in the lap of a lovely woman of normal height, engaged in an amorous embrace.

Whadizit? stared at them wistfully.

He saw the look of befuddlement on my face and pointed to me, exclaiming “Schlitz!” as others joined him in laughter.

It was only then that I noticed in addition to the ribboned tuft of hair on his dome, he wore half of an orange peel.

Whadizit? affectionately placed his arm about me and introduced me to other “human curiosities” or “living wonders” around the room. I met the Great Waldo, outfitted in formal wear, who would swallow white rats and bring them back up alive and kicking; the Living Venus de Milo, who was born armless but was at the bar holding a lit cigarette between her toes on one foot and drinking from a bottle of beer with the other; there was Prince Randian, the human torso, who lacked arms and legs but was married and had five children.

“My new friend Schlitz,” Whadizit? would greet each patron before identifying them. He even led me over to a baby carriage parked at the end of the bar. “Serpentina, pleased to introduce you to my dear new friend, Schlitz.” Inside lay a diminutive woman devoid of any bones in her body except for her cranium and a couple in her arms. “Welcome,” she smiled. “You new around here, Schlitz?”

She and Whadizit? thought her remark was hilarious, and the wicker carriage literally shook with mirth.

When I asked her if I could buy her a drink, she graciously asked for absinthe.

I had begun to feel very much at home with these new friends. I liked my new name and how they immediately accepted me as one of them. Perhaps because I was so unlike them physically, I was a “human curiosity” too.

I left Whadizit? assisting Serpentina with her green liquor and wandered back to Eng and Chang’s table. Chang, dyspeptic as before, was complaining about the din in the room, inquiring why everybody always had to be chattering, while Eng grinned and said he liked how Whadizit? had christened me.

And as I sat across from the two brothers, I couldn’t help thinking that I had a brother too, one I was equally attached to . . . yet mine nobody could see. But Jeremiah was as present at that table, I believed, as I was, sitting across from Chang and Eng. I never went anywhere without him. Yet we were just as dissimilar as the conjoined Bunker twins. At various moments while watching them, I found myself thinking I was in the proverbial hall of mirrors, seeing Jeremiah and me. The true reflection of what only I knew beyond any doubt. There were two of us. Nursing a drink, I’d occasionally glance over at Albert/Alberta and we’d exchange knowing grins of recognition. He was not in the least strange to me, but instead a visual manifestation of how I’d often felt while wearing the chasuble emblazoned with a cross of gold on its back and sweeping up the aisle of an empty sanctuary at night, the incense still wafting in the air from a late holy mass. There were moments I’d felt very much like a seraphic woman under that garment.

I had begun to experience a sensation of liberation.

Whadizit? came over to our table and pointed to the door that led off the bar. Standing there was Brother Stanislaus, who was trying to attract my attention. He gestured me over.

Passing in front of the bar again, I heard the bartenders shout “Happy hour!” At that moment, every bar denizen became mute, focusing intently on his or her image in the gigantic mirror that ran the counter’s length. I, too, became mesmerized by what I saw. Each of the “living wonders’” images projected normalcy. They looked no different from those strolling the midways outside the circus tents, the special attraction booths, the so-called freak shows.

Suddenly the tables behind them became silent as if happy hour was a moment of reflection, a kind of memorialization. The bartenders stood immobile. I didn’t know what to expect and dared not look anybody in the eye. Even Whadizit? seemed fascinated by his image of normality, as if it were his long-lost brother staring back at him. The one who had died, or maybe whom he had simply been told about, or yet again perhaps it was his imaginary brother, the one he missed more than any living thing.

It was the Living Venus who broke the spell, bursting out laughing, whereupon all the others joined in. Caught up in the expression of exuberance, patrons began tossing coins at Whadizit? once again, while he flung each one back just as the reflections in the blue-tinted grand bar mirror turned normal once again.

Brother Stanislaus now stood opposite me. “Come,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

He opened a door that had the markings of an entrance portal to a sanctuary; as I was about to enter, Whadizit? hollered, “Schlitz!” I turned.

“We go on soon. Hurry back.”