The Story of a Man by Barry Garelick, green tea

Daniel’s father was Robert but everyone called him Bob. Daniel had heard many stories from his father as he was growing up; some about World War Two, some about fleeing the pogroms in Russia, some about growing up poor in Brooklyn. When he was fourteen, Daniel’s grandfather died, and then there followed stories about his grandfather, told by the many friends and relatives who populated their house for the first week or so after the funeral. From the stories he heard, his grandfather had been a saint apparently, and though Daniel knew him to be friendly, he didn’t really know his grandfather that well. He felt he had missed out on something.

A few days after the funeral, Daniel was presented with one more story; unlike the others, this one had no words. ‘Come on in the bedroom; I want to show you something,’ Bob said and emptied onto his bed the contents of a blue woolen bag on which the Star of David was sewn. A variety of objects lay on the bed: A well-worn sepia photograph of Daniel’s grandparents with Bob and his sister, a Hebrew prayer book, his grandfather’s identification and other papers from Russia, a yarmulke, and a prayer shawl.

The two of them looked at the objects in silence. Daniel knew his father was waiting for him to say something. The expectation annoyed him, and though he knew better, he was surprised to hear himself say: ‘It’s just a bunch of papers and things. So what?’ He immediately regretted his disrespect.

Bob glared at Daniel and said ‘It’s the story of a man!’ and walked out of the room. Nothing further was ever said about the event, though Daniel thought about it as he grew older, often wondering why his father did not show more anger than he did.

Bob had a bad temper at times, particularly when he was drinking, though he had not been drinking that day. Bob’s drinking was sporadic, which he used as evidence that he wasn’t an alcoholic when the subject would occasionally be raised. ‘If I were an alcoholic I’d be drinking all the time. But I don’t have to drink and I can control it,’ he would say to Daniel’s mother who, though skeptical, went along with the theory. When he was drinking, Daniel tried to avoid him as best one could in their small house.

Over the years, Daniel learned to disappear within himself as necessary to avoid confrontations with Bob; for the most part he was successful in this. Some were unavoidable, however, such as his decision to not go into Bob’s art business. In the early seventies after graduating from college, he moved out from Detroit to San Francisco. ‘You do not have my blessing!’ Bob had said, but as was typical of him, accepted Daniel’s decision and told the world how proud he was of Daniel when he became a reporter for a newspaper there.

His parents would visit Daniel occasionally. Sometimes it was just Bob, when he would stop in San Francisco on his way to and back from Japan on art-buying trips for his gallery. On one particular solo visit, Bob had returned from what was to be his last visit to Japan. Daniel was to meet him in the hotel where he always stayed, a few blocks from Union Square. ‘The hotel brings me luck,’ he would often say.  He called Daniel in the mid-afternoon when he arrived from the airport. ‘We’ll have dinner and talk; I want to know what my wonderful son is doing.’

 

Daniel stood before the door of his room, and took a deep breath. He would have liked to walk away, but knew he couldn’t – or wouldn’t. He knocked on the door; a muffled ‘Yeah, I’m coming,’ could be heard. When the door opened Bob spread out his arms and hugged Daniel. ‘My beautiful son,’ he said.

‘Come in, come in; here, sit over here, let’s talk, it’s so good to see you.’ He motioned to a chair by the small table by the window where a bottle of almost empty Cutty Sark sat like a still life. Bob sat down in a chair next to the table. ‘So tell me what you are up to.’

It was a simple question. With anyone else Daniel could have answered by talking about how he had just interviewed people at the Salvation Army Officer Training Centre for an article he was writing for the San Francisco Examiner where he worked as a reporter. But that would have been asking for trouble given Bob’s disdain for religion and his belief that if there were a god, then he wouldn’t have let six million Jews die in concentration camps. ‘We’re born alone and we die alone,’ he had told Daniel over the years. ‘No one is going to look after you.’

But instead Daniel answered as neutrally as he could ‘I’m doing all right.’ Daniel had learned to navigate his father’s drunken states. He had learned to stay away from topics that would provoke him into anger– which were many. He sometimes wondered if there was a time when his father didn’t drink so much and what had triggered it, or if in fact there was a trigger at all. As he had done for many years, he disappeared into himself, and became a muse.

            ‘Are you lonely, Daniel?’

            ‘No, I’m not lonely.’

‘You have friends?’

‘I have some.’

‘Good. It’s good to have friends.’ Bob filled his empty glass and looked at it.

In fact, Daniel had very few friends and was, in fact, lonely. But Daniel’s social life wasn’t a subject he wanted to get into. Thankfully, there were no more questions about that. Instead Bob talked about his trip to Tokyo, how exciting the city was, how big it was, how Daniel would love it. ‘It’s better than New York!’

New York! The mere mention of the city where Bob grew up led him to recount how he could have been in charge of an art gallery there, but he turned it down. ‘Too much back stabbing. There were others who wanted the job, and they were ruthless. So I was better off staying in Detroit, in my own gallery.’ He looked at Daniel. ‘Your life would have been a lot different if we had moved there.’ It probably would have, Daniel thought. He was twelve when the possibility of a move came up. He didn’t really know whether he would have been better off, or how his life would have been different. It was an alternate pathway he didn’t dwell on.

Tokyo! He talked about how nice the people were, but it’s become westernized ad the businessmen are like businessmen everywhere. ‘You can’t trust anyone. Everyone wants something from you no matter what country you’re in. It’s becoming commercial like every place in the world; no matter where you go it’s starting to look the same, he said, the same restaurant chains, clothing styles, hair styles, music. Everyone looks so young,’ he said. He talked about a restaurant he went to called The Volga. ‘An imitation Russian café’ he said, and not only an imitation, but around the corner from Tokyo Tower which is an imitation of the Eiffel Tower of Paris. He hated the café, with its balalaika orchestra of all Japanese musicians. ‘Terrible! And they all looked sad and bored and utterly lifeless,’ he said with a sigh.

The art was expensive there, he said; the art business is dominated by people who don’t give a shit about art, he went on. They’ve priced themselves out of the market, he said; it wasn’t like this when he first went a few years ago. ‘This is my last time to Japan,’ he said and took another gulp of scotch. He then told Daniel what he had been telling him for years: he was getting old. And bitter. ‘The art world is big business now. I had one of the first galleries in Detroit. Now I’m just some small guy with an art gallery that no one will remember. What the hell have I accomplished in life?’ he asked.

            As was his habit, Daniel tried to buoy his father’s sagging spirits. ‘You’re not that old; you’re only fifty-nine. You’re probably doing better than you think.’  He knew he was being patronizing but Bob found such advice coming from a twenty-three year old endearing; so much so, that he laughed out loud and exclaimed ‘Oh Daniel, you’re so beautiful.’  The moment of humor and adoration passed quickly, however, and Bob was back to his drunken reverie.

‘You’ve always been naïve, Daniel. I’m some immigrant with a high school education who worked his way into the art business. I know what people are thinking in their pitiful condescending ways. The big shots, the elites, the intellectuals. They look at me like I’m some know-nothing. They talk in their special ways; they weigh their words, they don’t say fully what they mean, but people who are part of that group know what’s being said. As if I can’t read between the lines. Status seekers; they buy art to impress and act like they know so much about it. Believe me, what I’ve forgotten about art, they’re still learning.’ He paused and looked at Daniel. ‘You’re not saying very much. So what do you think about what I just said? What do you think about your father? I’m talking to you man-to-man; as an adult. I want to know what you think.’

Daniel knew the moment would come. So he would tell him what he thought. ‘You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Do you think Grandpa felt sorry for himself?’ The ‘feeling sorry’ comment he learned from hearing his mother say it through the years with fairly good results. The part about his grandfather was his alone.

‘My father was a simple shoemaker,’ Bob said, angrily. ‘He was part of the old world. Yes, he knew how to survive, and he got us out of Russia. But as far as how the world worked or what I was doing, he knew nothing. He wanted me to take a job in the post office when I got out of the Navy; a good-paying government job. The Navy gave me my citizenship papers when I was discharged; I was illegal up to then. Grandpa thought that was great, and all I needed was a steady good-paying job. I had other ideas.’

Fathers and sons are destined to be at odds, Daniel thought. Bob stood up and looked out the window. It had been late afternoon when Daniel had come in, but now the sun had set and the city was now a mix of lights from houses and apartment houses on hills, and in the proliferation of new high-rise office buildings downtown.

‘That was one good thing about the Navy. And the war. I became a citizen. I was part of the world. It was every immigrant boy’s dream to be a part of the world. In the war everyone was equal. It didn’t matter what your background was on the battlefield. All that mattered was surviving. We would joke with each other. They’d say ‘There's a bullet out there with your name on it, Bob. That's how we talked. We joked about death; to keep from being scared. We were all scared; we just didn’t talk about that.’

Bob sat down again, and rubbed his forehead. He closed his eyes, and Daniel thought he was going to sleep but when he opened them again, he looked at Daniel, as if seeing him for the first time.

            ‘I killed a man once,’ Bob said. ‘You didn’t know that, did you?’

            ‘When?’

            ‘During the war. On Iwo Jima.’ He scowled. ‘I killed many men who were far away and I didn’t see them die and it was easy to make myself forget what I was doing. But one time it was up close. The battle was almost over, and they put up the flag and took that photo that everyone knows. But there were still Japanese on the island. I was walking by myself and I saw a Japanese soldier coming towards me. He had his rifle pointed. I shot him. He fell and I ran over to him. I looked in the pockets of his flak jacket and pulled out a wallet that had photos of his wife and kids, and his identification. I took it with me. I don’t know why. I had it for years.’ He looked at Daniel.

            ‘I’m talking to you man to man,’ he said again. ‘I want you to know certain things about your old man.’ He ran his hand over his face. ‘I brought his wallet with me to Tokyo,’ he said.

            ‘Why?’

            ‘I wanted someone to get it back to the poor guy’s family. I figured the War Museum might help me. It’s in Tokyo – a part of Tokyo, like a suburb. Chiyoda City. I took a cab there. I said I wanted to go to Chiyoda City. The cabbie said ‘To the war museum?’ and I said yes, the War Museum. I felt like he was a ghost. He didn’t say anything the whole ride and when I got out and paid him, I said ‘Are you a ghost?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ ‘ Bob laughed and pointed at Daniel. ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

 ‘He may not have known English that well.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, suddenly somber.

‘Were you drinking?’

‘No. But I think there are ghosts. There are ghosts, Daniel. I’ve talked to others who were in the war. They tell me the same thing; there are ghosts. Sometimes I hear them in my dreams.’

Daniel heard laughter in the hallway. There were three or four people, Daniel guessed. They passed by the room; when they could no longer be heard, Bob continued. 

‘It’s a big museum. I went inside and spoke to a guard and said I wanted to speak to someone. I said I had some things from a soldier who died on Iwo Jima. He went and talked to someone who came out. Mr. Hayashi. He gave me his card and I gave him mine. That’s how they do it in Japan. I told him the story and showed him the wallet. I said I wanted to get this to the man’s family if that was possible. He thanked me and said they would try to locate his family and get it to them.’

‘He said he’s met many Americans through the years and he’s heard similar stories. They come here to confess, to apologize. He said that he can tell they are hurting. If I hadn’t killed that soldier, I would have been dead, he told me. War is horrible, he said and I said yes, it is. He asked what I did and I told him. He asked if I came here often to buy art. I said this would probably be the last time.’

            The sound of the cable car down below could be heard. Bob stood up and started to walk toward the window. For a brief second it looked like he was going to fall and Daniel stood up and came over to him.

            ‘Are you OK?’

            ‘I’m fine. I just stumbled a little.’  He pointed to the streets below. ‘Look at all those people. Everyone going somewhere.’  Daniel nodded. There were indeed many people, he thought. He longed to be with them.

‘I was going to take you to dinner. But I’m very tired. And I had too much to drink. I’m sorry I’m not much for conversation.’  Daniel thought this last remark funny but didn’t laugh.

Bob looked at Daniel as if he just remembered something. ‘Let’s get together for breakfast tomorrow. Down at the restaurant here. My flight leaves at noon, so there’s time. I want to hear what you’re up to. Do you have time? Seven o’clock?’

            ‘I have time.’

They hugged each other at the door; Daniel felt the familiar nap of stubble against his cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Daniel said.

‘It’s so good to see you, Daniel. Really good to see you.’

 It was not yet cold out; the fog had not rolled in as it usually did. Daniel decided to walk home. He knew Bob would not remember what was said that night, and would probably ask Daniel what he had talked about. Daniel would tell him as best he could. It felt as if there was an opportunity to talk about everything and anything, but he knew better.

Bob would probably ask Daniel once more if he were lonely, and he would say no. Maybe he should say yes, he thought and see what happens, though he knew he would not. Maybe he should ask Bob if he were lonely. He would probably say no. Daniel would always be a listener and his father would always be a mixture of things; things Daniel knew about him, and secrets he would never know. 

 

About the author

Barry Garelick has fiction published in Heimat, Cafe Lit, Ephemeras and Fiction on the Web. His non-fiction pieces have been published in Atlantic, and Education Next. He lives in Morro Bay, California with his wife. 

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