Chapter 20

From Here to Eternity

Theresa’s only physical wounds from her battle this trip came from a desperate product of the cause of our trip, from a young African American who snuck into her house to steal money and then beat her for all he could get when she demurred.  Of course, her compassion spoke up for him, but nevertheless Elaine helped her move from that busy little house to a quiet grand apartment on the 25^th floor of a building overlooking the river between the still hardly United States and Canada.

And that new aerie for her was appropriate not only from its being so high above the white pines of Michigan and the houses of Albion.  Since Canada had been a promised land for many before the emancipation and others during the Vietnam question, the Detroit River has seemed much like the Jordan.  Theresa enjoyed the peace, while she awaited the times of her last few actions this trip.  And her hair was growing white like an American eagle’s.  She enjoyed this high aerie, pointing toward our home.  She sang with her little Singer she’d kept for sewing.  She waited for the gate.

And, in helping Theresa win the fame she had earned, Elaine helped her toward her final grand event, a little something beyond the fame, the legacy.  Nearly at the end of the millennium which had largely defined itself by the century her life on Earth this trip had nearly spanned, the Congress of the United States of America awarded Theresa its Medal of Freedom.  Then she made her most toppling statement against bigotry, against the hypocrisy that fed it.  And she made that statement utterly silently, for the future.  Parabolic, for ears that don’t now hear, or are not born.

Clingon and Cauchon.  Comparing those names was compelling.  Cauchon, calling himself a Christian, had burned Theresa at the stake a half-millennium before this trip.  Now, Clingon, called by some who bought his baloney the first black president, placed her on a pedestal.  Both he and Cauchon used her to support their hypocrisy.  Both will be remembered for it.  That’s their legacy.

Theresa, giving Clingon a copy of a book of her legacy, an autobiography she had written for the children of her institute and beyond, inscribed it for Clingon’s mother who had died the year before.  When she presented it to him with words of blessing for his mother, he wept and thanked her.  But he did not weep for shame, and he did not thank her enough.  His best thanks were accidental.

When he delivered the last presidential state-of-the-union address of that millennium, while his congress was debating impeaching him for ruining the career of a young female intern in his care, rather than just saying no to the young woman’s offer of adultery, he sat Theresa beside his wife for all to see.

His party had been the party of segregation before emancipation, and had preached some part in integration after, when African Americans could vote.  His party later absorbed some sincerity from people its hypocrisy attracted, but Clingon fostered the hypocrisy, made it his own and festered in it.  That day with Theresa, he showed not people’s state of union, but his separate rot.

So, the legacy of the last person elected in the last passed millennium to preside over the United States of America will be the opposite of Oliver’s, the opposite of the legacy of Moses.  Like Joshua’s legacy, that irresponsible president’s legacy shall instigate an ending, not a beginning.  Theresa’s small and comely fingers left that legacy.  Her timing once again made sure of that.  And silently.

But she had one small thing still left to do.  Finally, she and Nelson, America and Africa, hugged for all the world to see, at the international airport of a city founded by French and named for its waterway strait like a gate, a city now full of people of all colors, freely for all time.  In Motown, Theresa caught the political revolution up with the industrial revolution, singing like the little Singer in her eagle aerie.

“Theresa,” chanted Nelson, at home anywhere out of the straits of prisons, and maybe in them also in the breadth and depth of his soul.  “Theresa!”

For all of Earth to hear and see, and Heaven.

So it was time for us to go.  But Lev wasn’t ready to let us.  Back in New Orleans, he had to tell me one more story, to try to get me to stay.  He knew how I felt about bigotry and the further alienation by which hypocrisy feeds it.  So he told me a story of hypocrisy and alienation, in the cradle of liberty.

This book, as I suggested at its beginning, is a tale of two cities.  But I suggested that the two cities are New Orleans and Detroit.  The French founded both, and both are now capitals of African American music and African American people otherwise as well, although they are separated nearly as far as north and south could separate two cities in the United States of America before the manifest destiny spread to Hawaii and Alaska.

But, whatever the symbolism, the manifest destiny of America is more often said to hinge from east to west, and so I’ve also mentioned martyrs in the cradle of liberty and the city of angels.  Lev’s hopeful going-away-gift was a story set in the so-called cradle of liberty while manifesting itself across the continent, to many cities besides those four.

After his study of psychology, Lev decided to look especially into how mental-health professionals treat the down-and-maybe-out, the citizens so derelict that they don’t have a home, the most alienated of Earth’s society.  He knew that that would interest me, because I am so far from home so much.  And so he looked around his Earth at that.

He found in Boston, that cradle of American liberty, the home of Slavey’s mosque and Oliver’s alma mater, a homeless shelter named for the love of Saint Clare.  It was a world-model homeless-shelter, a thirteen-story building a half-block from Boston Common in one direction and a half-block from Boston’s Chinatown in another.

Central to that short block, the edifice was of about the era of the Empire State building, gray concrete but with fancy details.  Big glass balls in black bronze fixtures stood on an external otherwise unused balcony a story above the entrance, and they were lit at night.  Lev knew not how they were electrified, by whom or by what power.

Nor did he know who changed the little candle-bulbs in the chandelier in the lobby.  Like the globes above the entranceway outside, the first thing that caught his attention inside was that brass chandelier.  By now, he’d learned to keep his gaze uplifted, most of his time on Earth.  But he still looked down from time to time to keep from stumbling.  He focused on his path to help the monkeys in the trees, ye and I.

So, looking down, the next thing that caught his attention in that homeless-shelter named for Sainte Claire was that nearly every person in the lobby was black, both the employees and the customers, called guests there.  Unable otherwise to be sure which were which, he addressed a man with a metal-detector wand, to acquire direction.

“Can I get something to eat?” Lev asked.

“Sure,” said the man, looking at the new dark blue pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit and black leather Bostonian shoes Lev had materialized for the occasion.  “But, next time, you’ll have to go through the metal-detector.”

He pointed to a big box through which guests were walking.  Some of them had baggage they left in a pile on the street-side of the narrow big-box gate.  Others’ clothing indicated that they had nothing not on their backs.  Some had things in their pockets that set off the alarm.  One had guitar strings, but no guitar.

“I’m letting you through now this time,” said the man, after wanding Lev, “because we don’t have much of a line today.  But, next time, you’ll have to wait out front like everybody else.  You didn’t get that suit here, did you?”

Lev noticed that the man wore gold chains, like he'd seen on some in less savory circumstances.  So he wondered about how people were hired to work there, what human resources management thought might be resourceful, and for what.

“No,” said Lev, and he followed the wave of the man’s wand past a window where people were gathered talking to a smiling middle-aged blonde woman who was handing them envelopes and other packages, always with kind word.

“What’s that?” asked Lev of a woman who had turned away with an envelope.

“Mail,” said the woman.  “You know, social security checks, whatever.”

“Do you have to live here to get your mail?” asked Lev.

“You think I live here?” asked the woman.

Lev shrugged and smiled.  He walked on into the dining-room and joined the queue for food.  Some of the others in the line talked with one another, but most stood silent and showed no attention to anything.  Some young men and women, wearing aprons and rubber gloves, wiped tables and mopped other messes and carried trays from a cart near the exit to the kitchen behind the cafeteria counter.  Some of the people behind the counter seemed to Lev perhaps as old as he.  Lev noticed that the old people smiled more than the young ones.  But all of them were very nice to all.

It was lunchtime, and the lunch was chicken a la king on mashed potatoes, with canned peaches for desert and a choice of milk or some fruit-flavored drink.  Some of the guests asked for more than the servers served, and the servers smiled and said they were sorry they couldn’t comply.  And they were, désolés.

“We have to be sure we have enough for everyone,” said, to a guest, an elderly lady with big blue eyes and a bigger smile.

“You’ve got plenty,” said the guest.  “You all just make money off of us.”

The little old lady passed her smile to the next person in line, who was Lev.

“Thanks,” offered Lev, with his head and eyes lowered.

“You’re welcome,” she accepted, looking straight at him.

An exception to the serving limitation was bread.  The servers permitted the guests to help themselves to that, and some of them stuffed slices into their pockets.  They also helped themselves to the drinks, but not to the cups.  They had to come again to get more milk of that human kindness.   And few of them did.

After lunch and a little conversation with the people at his table, Lev took his tray and cup to the cart.  The cart was beside a door to the street, but Lev left through the doorway back to the lobby, and he approached again the man with the metal-detector wand.  The man gave him a chin-up look of inquiry.

“Thanks,” said Lev.  “Nice lunch.  I wanted to see how people feel here.  Where can I go if I want to make a donation?”

“Fifth floor,” said the man, smiling and pointing to the elevators.

On that fifth floor, Lev found a receptionist behind an open window.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“You’re Russian?” he asked.

“Georgian,” she said.  “Are you Russian?”

“Yes,” he said.  “I’m Lev.”

“Ludmila,” she said, taking the hand he offered through the widely open window.  “But I am called Millie.”

“What are you doing here, Millie?” asked Lev.

“Working,” answered Ludmila, grinning with all of her blonde Georgian face.  “I came here with my husband.  He is a computer programmer.”

“He works here too?” asked Lev.

“No, in Cambridge,” said Millie.

“Well, Millie,” said Lev, “it’s very nice to meet you.  Whom can I see about maybe making a donation.  I had a very nice lunch downstairs.”

“I’ll get someone,” answered Ludmila.  “Would you like some grapes?”

She raised from beside her telephone a paper plate piled with purple grapes.

“Maybe one or two,” said Lev, taking a small sprig from the plate.

Ludmila pushed a button on her many-buttoned telephone.

“A gentleman would like to make a donation,” she said.

“She’ll be here in a moment,” said Millie.  “Would you like to sit down?”

She gestured toward two chairs beside a small table outside her window.

“Would you like some more grapes?” she asked.

“No,” said Lev, sitting.  “You’re very kind.  Thank you.”

An African violet shriveled on the little table.  After about a quarter of an hour, a very thin woman emerged from a hallway beside Ludmila’s little office.  She looked at Millie with a scowl and turned to Lev with a smile and offered her hand.

“I’m Bette Kroll,” she said.  “I’m our director of development.  What can I do for you?”

“Lev Tolstoi,” said Lev.  “I’m thinking I might be able to do something for you.  Is Kroll Polish?”

“Yes,” said the director of development.  “But Bette isn’t.  And it’s worse than that.  My real name is Betty Sue.”

“Such a nice American name,” said Lev, all this in the process of taking her hand and rising from his chair and deciding what next.

“Would you like to come to my office?” asked Betty Sue.

“Your wish, my dear,” said Lev, “is my command.”

“Oh, you’re a charmer,” said Betty Sue, as she receded down the hallway, as Lev followed, after exchanging smiles again with Ludmila, who was chewing a grape.

On the way, Lev glanced through the doors of other offices off the hallway.  In the first was a thin white man behind a desk, talking with a young black man seated near the door, which was closed but had a window.  In the second was a young white woman, sorting envelopes with an e-mail program open on her computer-screen, and a spider-plant shriveling on her windowsill.  In the third was a white man punching computer keys, with sunlight streaming between open blinds of a window over a Christmas cactus, and a desk with little paper on it but obviously organized for work, and a print of Eichenberg’s Christ of the Breadlines, hanging on the wall beside the desk.  In the fourth was another white man but with the blinds of his window closed and paper scattered everywhere, and obviously not organized for work.  In the fifth was a white woman eating a bagel, while a pile of other pastries sat atop a pile of papers like a haystack all over her desk, and a poster of Jack Kerouac with a cigarette or a joint, on the wall beside her desk.  In the last, an elderly white man closed the door to that office as Lev and Betty Sue passed, shuffling along the carpet, through that hall.    

Betty Sue’s office's door faced the hallway, and pigeons perched on the sill outside its only window.  Lev stepped to the window to give Betty Sue time to sit before he did.  A nest was there, with several baby pigeons in it.

“You even help to find some pigeons home?” asked Lev.

“We do the best we can,” said Betty Sue, settling into the chair at her desk, and waiving Lev into a little chair near the window.  “How can I help you?”

“Well,” said Lev.  “I’d like to dispose of a million dollars by my conscience.”

Betty Sue’s right hand fluttered on some paper on her desk.  Then, with the same hand, leaving the other lying in her lap, she pushed a button marked “CONF” on her telephone.  Lev didn’t know what CONF meant, but he later learned that it meant conference, and that one pushed that button to transfer calls to voicemail without ringing.

“You’ve come to the right place,” she said, “Mr. Tolstoi.”

“Lev, if you please,” said Lev.  “Thank you for lunch.”

“You had lunch downstairs?” asked Betty Sue.

“Yes,” answered Lev.  “Quite pleasant.”

“Well, we do more than that,” said Betty Sue.  “We provide clothing and medical treatment and mental-health and substance-abuse counseling.  Our seventh floor is a program for teaching life-skills, such as how to find a job and to make it a career, how to write a résumé and dress for success.  We give them the clothes, and we teach them how to use computers, and we let them use ours.

“We have a day-center, where our guests can be out of the weather all day, and we use it for triage.  We don’t operate an emergency night-shelter, but the City of Boston operates one with a hundred beds on our fourth floor, and our top three floors are 39 single-occupancy rooms with shared dining and kitchen and bath facilities and a nice little living-room with a television, for people who have been clean and sober for more than six months.  We’re a whole-health operation, in the true spirit of Santa Clara.  But we’re ecumenical and leave not a soul behind.”

She had closed her door, and now someone knocked on it.

“Yes?” said Betty Sue, as though the word had two long syllables.

            The door opened, and a blonde head leaned in and smiled.

“Sorry, Betty Sue,” said the head.  “I didn’t know you were with someone.”

Betty Sue smiled.  The head receded.  The door closed.

“How do you get your funding?” asked Lev, looking at the door.

“Private donations from people like you,” said Betty Sue.

“You don’t get government funding?” asked Lev.

“Surely,” said Betty Sue.  “But people like you have to match it.”

“Do you develop the funding or the services?” asked Lev.

“I, myself,” said Betty Sue, “develop the funding, but we all work together.  We’re all a team here, one big happy family.  Here, let me show you something.”

She dug through the mass of paper on her desk and found a photograph and showed it to Lev.  It was a picture of two persons’ heads superimposed atop two evening-gowns, one of the heads being of the elderly man who had closed his door on their passing down the hall, the other Betty Sue's.

“That’s our executive director,” said Betty Sue, pointing to the former head.

Betty Sue grinned, looking at the photograph she held, but Lev didn’t.

“Whose dresses are they,” asked Lev scowling, finding nothing else to say.

“Princess Diana’s,” said Betty Sue.  “Isn’t that wonderful?  She donated them to us before she died, and we auctioned them off for a lot of money.  Mo Vaughn, the Red Sox slugger, donates money to us too, and one season he gave us a thousand dollars for each of his homeruns.  We called that homers for the homeless.  There’s the check.”

She pointed to a Styrofoam check about five feet wide leaning against a wall.

“He brought his parents to visit us once, and his father wept,” she said.  “Now he’s moved to the city of angels, but we’re hoping he’ll continue his support.”

Lev wasn’t much into baseball, having been through too many wars to care much about sports, and he’d lost all the fondness he’d had for royalty, by the same pathway.  So he lapsed into silence, and Betty Sue had to struggle to bring him back out.

“Would you like to meet our executive director?” she asked.

“I’ll see if he’s in,” she said, without waiting for answer.

She rose from her chair and opened her door and knocked on the one the elderly man had closed.  After a few seconds, a voice seeped singing through the door.

“Who is it?”

“Ari, do you have a minute?” asked Betty Sue, opening the door and leaning in, as the blonde head had through hers.  “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

            “Oh, sure,” sugarly said Ari.  “Come on in.”

            Lev arose and followed Betty Sue into that other office.

            “This is Lev Tolsoi,” said Betty Sue to Ari.

            “Ari Hamm, our executive director,” said Betty Sue to Lev.

            “Nice to meet you,” said Ari, shaking hands with Lev and grinning a wide-eyed grin.  “Did you write War and Peace?”

            “A lot of people ask me that,” said Lev, again not grinning.

            “Lev is thinking of donating some money,” said Betty Sue.

            “Good,” said Ari.  “Sit down.  Do you have any questions I can answer?”

            Ari’s desk faced the wall at the end of the office furthest from the door, but he had a round pine table with wooden and canvas director-chairs between it and the door.  He gestured to the table and they all sat down.  Ari folded his hands on the table.

            “I think Betty Sue has answered all my questions,” said Lev.

            “Betty Sue?” asked Ari, looking first at Lev and then at Betty Sue, turning the beginning of a smile into a frown.  “Who’s Betty Sue?”

            Betty Sue pointed at her small roe chest.

            “Oh, Bette!” said Ira.  “I didn’t know your name was Betty Sue.”
            “I don’t use it much,” said Bette to Ari.

            “Well,” said Ari.  “Good.  I can’t think of a pun.  I’ll have to work on it.”

            “Well, alright,” said Lev.  “Oh, I do have one question I thought of downstairs but forgot to ask Bette.  Most of the guests I saw downstairs were African Americans.  How do you deal with that?  How about your employees?”

            “Forty percent of our employees are minorities,” said Betty Sue.

            “Yes,” said Ari, grinning again.  “It’s all pretty black and white.”

            “You’re so funny, Ari,” said Betty Sue, and Ari grinned again.

            “Well,” said Ari.  “If you have any other questions for me, just call Betty Sue.”

            Lev looked at Ari to see if he was grinning at that, but he wasn’t.  He was frowning at his hands, which unfolded as he rose from his chair.  Betty rose as well, and Lev followed suit in wonder, wonder at how folks could be so crude.  Nevertheless, he shook hands again with Ari, and bade farewell to Bette.

            “Ari’s wonderful,” said Bette.  “He loves puns, and he sings at all our staff functions.  Here’s a brochure that tells about our programs in more detail. So how do you like our little agency?  Do we fit your conscience?

            “I’ll have to let you know,” Lev said to her outside the office doors.  “I have to talk to my accountants.  Taxes are important, too.”

            “Of course,” said Betty Sue.  “Can I show you out?”

            “I’ll be alright,” said Lev and turned away.

            The pastry person was not at her desk when he passed this time, but some crumbs remained atop the paper pile.  The computer keypuncher was outside his office, closing the door.  He smiled and nodded as Lev passed.

            Lev smiled and nodded to Ludmila, and received a smile and wave in return.  Lev looked at the elevator buttons and turned back to Millie, just as the keypuncher spoke to her, bidding her goodnight.

            “You are leaving for today?” asked Millie.

            “Yeah,” said the keypuncher.  “Dosvidania.”

            “Dosvidania,” said Ludmila, smiling again.

            “Is there a stairway?” asked Lev.

            “Right here,” said the keypuncher.

            He opened a door, and Lev followed him through it and down the stairs.  The keypuncher began taking the steps a half-dozen at once, swinging himself between them by his hands on the banisters.  But Lev stopped him with a question.

            “In a hurry to get out of here?”

            “Not at all,” said the keypuncher.  “I love this place.  But my job’s too easy.  I ran out of things to do.  So I asked my boss to let me take some vacation time for the rest of the afternoon.  What the hell.  It’s Friday.”

            “What’s your job?” asked Lev, as they descended the stairs, now both in ordinary fashion, the keypuncher clearly in no hurry.

            “My official title is Finance Administrator,” said the keypuncher.  “But I do a lot of other stuff too, and I still run out of work.”

            “I’m thinking of making a donation?” offered Lev.

            “It’s a wonderful place,” replied the finance-administrator.

            “Any qualifications to that?” Lev asked him.

            “Some,” answered the finance-administrator.  “How much time you got?”

            “All the time in the world,” said Lev.  “Do you drink beer?”

            “Since I was two,” said the finance-administrator.  “I practically breath it.”

            By this time they were on the street, and a slight drizzle wet the autumn air.

            “Know a bar near here?” asked Lev.

            “Sure,” said the finance-administrator.

            He turned away from Chinatown and toward the Common, and they walked silent side-by-side until the light on Tremont Street, where Lev broke the silence again.

            “I love that Eichenberg print in your office,” he said.  “It suggests that not all Germans have been French corporals.  But one never knows about hypocrisy.”

            “I know what you mean,” said the banister-swinger.  “I inherited the print from my predecessor.  She also left a button stuck to a bulletin board in that little office, saying ‘Don’t panic!’  She panicked and left in about a year, and I’ve been here almost seven.  I kept the button too, as a memento mori.  As I said, I love this place.”

            “I’m the ghost of Lev Tolstoi,” said Lev.

            “Good,” said the finance-administrator.  “I knew, if I hung around l’amore de Santa Clara long enough, I’d run into someone like you.”

            “Like me?” asked Lev.

            “Someone bigger than the other people I know,” answered the finance-administrator.  “I read War and Peace in Russian once.  That book’s big enough by itself.  It took me four months.  I wore out a dictionary.”

            “Most of my kids were born while I was writing it,” said Lev.

            “I didn’t notice much change of tone as I read it,” said the finance-administrator.

            “I’m a slow learner,” said Lev.  “That’s why I’m a ghost.”

            “You’re hanging around to clean yourself up?”  asked the finance-administrator.

            “I’m hanging around to try to let that happen,” answered Lev, matter-of-factly.

            “Yeah, well I was Billy the Kid, and I have kids, too.”

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