Untitled chapter
THE CHALLENGE
“- Timmy, oh, Timmy, dear, / Oh, my God, stop drinking beer! Otherwise you will go nuts/ And you break poor Helen’s butt! ”
This is how the four hobos sang, with choral skill, at the closing time at the neighbourhood pub, with cheap wood panels. They didn’t know the current name of the pub, even though they were loyal customers. In order to trick the tax authorities, the establishment kept on changing its name - “Three underpants”, “7 shits”, “The last road” (because it was near the cemetery), “Three Colours Ltd”, “Give me, to Give You”, “The pussy without fur”, “Uncle Sandu” and “The Dick on the Deck”.
“Uncle” Sandu, the publican, without being anyone’s uncle, was angry, because it was almost midnight, although he should have closed at 10 PM, and he was struggling to convince his customers to leave the pub and maybe to continue the evening on the terrace, though it was snowing with flakes as large as the coins from the defective coffee vending machine. Anyway, who would have drunk coffee at “7 shits”?
After long negotiations and deliberations, Uncle Sandu eventually obtained a compromise.
- Okay, I’ll give you another round of beer. Just don’t take off your shoes! The next round, on the terrace, outdoors.
-Let me tell you one more, guys, grinned Brusli, the self-proclaimed leader of the alcoholics quartet, ignoring the ultimatum of the publican. After drinking a litre of rubbing alcohol, I was lying on a bench in that park, downtown. It was snowing, so in half an hour I already had a quilt. And when I was snoring better, I heard something of a band music. Next to me, some douchebags from the town hall were inaugurating a statue of a fiddler. Beethoven, Bruno, something like this. And there comes a big guy from the town hall, he looks at me like that, and what do you think he wants?
- Your ID card? asked shyly Giani, second in command from the gang of hobos.
- No, Giani. An opinion, my friend. He looks at me, weird guy, I tell you, and says: “Old man, look what a fine statue we made. What do you say, do you like it?” The point is that no one bothered to come to their inauguration, and they wanted some praise. I got up from the bench, I went near the statue of that Beelzebub guy, that musician, I look at it and said: “Well, don’t you see that the statue is not standing straight?” That guy stares at me, stares at the statue, and at me again. And he says, “You’re stupid, man. The statue is straight. You don’t see it straight. Because you only have one shoe. ”
The laughter could be heard from the street.
Proud, Brusli continued.
- I’m looking down, and what do I see? He was right, my brother. While I was sleeping, someone had stolen one of my shoes. Who, my friend, could be so broke as to steal a hobo’s shoe?
- Anyway, adds Giani, knowing how your feet stink, the thief could not have gotten too far.
- But you, Biba, why don’t you laugh? Brusli asked, between two sips of beer. Another fight with Mona? Did you kick her butt? Or this time she kicked yours?
- No, man, I don’t feel so good, came quickly the response. I let her sleep again in my manhole. I don’t want to hear the other hobos gossiping. We have our dignity.
As the discussions didn’t seem to stop any time soon, Uncle Sandu took the last of their money and invited them to continue out, on the terrace, luring them with a pack of beer.
Without being bothered by the cold weather, the customers continued to have fun, and the dry noise of beer caps could be heard with a rhythm that could be heard only during the fiercest summer heat. At minus ten degrees Celsius, on the terrace of “Three underpants” the customers were partying like in a Caribbean resort.
The hobos enjoyed now the climax of the evening. The ”You don’t dare to…” game.
- You don’t dare to ... drink this glass of Diane ... Brusli began the series of challenges, filling for the younger Biba a generous glass with Diane rubbing lotion, a product for rheumatics with 60% pure alcohol, which he kept in one of the pockets of the overcoat, for sore days.
- What are you saying, my brother?!, the alcoholic pride swelled in the challenged hobo. With trembling hands, from cold or alcoholism, Biba raised the lavender-scented glass with a milky content and began to gag it, with small but resolute throat movements. When he reached the bottom, with his neck and hand raised, somehow leaned back, for sucking force, Brusli and Giani quickly unveiled the stake of the challenge: with their boots, they pushed Biba’s plastic chair back. As behind him some workers had dug a large pit, during the spring, for a sewerage project that stopped at the bribing stage, Biba, without sketching a rebalancing gesture, plunged back into the hole, still sitting on the chair. A snow cloud rose from the pit, as in a cartoon scene, being greeted with laughter by those left at the table.
- Are you still alive, Biba? Brusli shouted in the direction of the pit, from which no sounds could be heard for a whole minute. Then a hand appeared from the pit, still holding the glass that somehow was still intact. Returning, breathing heavily, to the table, Biba began to treat his rather large wound from the top of his head with what remained in the Diane rubbing lotion. He appeared half-scalped and his smile was a little crooked.
It was Giani’s turn to come up with a mission. The target was Old Ticu, the veteran of the band.
- Grandpa, you don’t dare to go to Sandu’s house - you know that his house is behind the pub, to take a dump on the door matt, to knock on the door and to ask for some toilet paper.
- Come on, Giani, protested Ticu ... He will get upset and won’t give me anything to drink as long as I live...
- No, he won’t be mad, because you’re old ... You will just tell him that you didn’t find the shithouse from the yard ...
- But I don’t feel like taking a dump, Giani, Ticu tried a last line of defence.
- Wait, I had a yogurt in the fridge, replied Giani, searching in the supermarket trolley where he had stored all of his homeless belongings. After ransacking for more than five minutes, he returned triumphantly with a yogurt with a brand that could no longer be distinguished.
- Look, it’s expired, too! Just to hit the spot! You throw it down the throat, you add some beer, and I think that uncle Sandu will no longer find his door matt.
After unwillingly drinking the yogurt, and removing the taste with a bottle of beer, Old Ticu did not need any further encouragement. He disappeared in the night, holding his pants with both hands, and the hobos kept quiet, so as to hear what was going to happen, as if listening to a theatre play on radio.
After the expected natural noises, they could hear a knock on the door, and a sharp scream, meaning that not uncle Sandu was not the one who came out, but his wife. After a series of indefinite sounds, Ticu appeared victorious from the fog, with blood on the forehead, and the pants down, running as fast as the fabric allowed him to. Behind him was a hulky silhouette, holding menacingly a huge snow shovel.
- If I see you again here, I’ll break you on the knees, yelled the wife of the publican. Initially she wanted to crack open the head of all those who had remained on the terrace, but she had seen Brusli sitting at the table, and as she had a certain romantic secret crush for him, she turned back, as elegantly as possible, with one last curse and waving the shovel.
- How was it, Grandpa Ticu? Giani laughed. Did you show her your plumbing?
- Oh, yeah, confirmed Ticu, she’ll probably remember me for decades. And she didn’t even see what she stepped on when she ran after me to crack my head.
Cheers, alcohol, laughter with all the total amount of 20 teeth at the table. The only one who did not fully participate was Biba, who was still touching the area of the skull that had been scalped by the pipe at the bottom of the pit where he had been thrown by the kick of the leader of the gang. At one point, after emptying a bottle of beer without breathing, to give him courage, he shouted at Brusli:
- You don’t dare! You don’t dare to... go into the cemetery and to stick a knife in Gigiuc’s grave!
Suddenly, there was silence. Brusli remained frozen with the beer in the middle of the path between the table and mouth.
- What ... What did you say?
- You heard me very well, said Biba. You are brave here, on the terrace, with the beer in your hand. Let’s see you there.
- Shouldn’t I rather stick a knife in you? replied Brusli, trying the „offensive defence”. But he looked at the other two companions at the table and understood that, if he didn’t accept the challenge, he would risk losing his position as leader, as the alpha mongrel of the pack of strays. And he was very fond of this position, more than anything else, in a life that hadn’t given him too many reasons to swell his chest.
- All right, all right! So you want me to go to the cemetery, to disturb Gigiuc? Let’s do this too. But when I get back, I think you’re going to go check the pipes again, you hear, Biba?
- Yes, said Biba, looking straight in his eyes for the first time. But come back first.
Brusli got up from the table, arranging his ragged overcoat, after a last mouthful of beer, and slowly started to walk toward the concrete fence beyond which laid, on a few acres, the Cemetery of the Poor. He knew that there, in the midst of the bent and rotten wood crosses, some tied up with rags, as in an old Indian cemetery, Gigiuc was waiting for him. Or, at least, what was left of him. At some time Gigiuc had been the absolute alcoholic of the neighbourhood, and the king of the hobos. All the experienced boozers remembered him as he came to their tables, with a glass in the hand, asking them a refill, without uttering a word, but only grimacing and contorting his body crooked by cirrhosis. Finally, in a cold winter, not his liver finished him, but the heat. After drinking an impressive amount of rubbing alcohol for “internal combustion”, Gigiuc fell asleep on the hot pipes that were coming from the power plant. Something happened that night, according to the police report, a pressure gauge that controlled the hot water pressure broke, and the pipes were over-heated. They found him in the morning, baked, like a grilled chicken, on the half of the body that was on the pipes, and covered with snow on top. “Like Two-Face, in Batman,” laughed the hobos back then. “The happiest death in the world,” said the forensic doctor, who had come to the death scene merely for the weirdness of the case. That didn’t seem to be Gigiuc’s opinion. On winter nights, the boozers of the neighbourhood claimed to have seen Gigiuc coming towards them, carried by the fog, with the glass in his hand. They claimed that, if you upset him, he would show you his other face. It was enough for some of those who were drinking heavily in the pubs of the area, to avoid the cemetery, or even to call a cab to take them home, which seemed to be the ultimate luxury or sin when you can still get three beers or a half litre of vodka for the taxi money.
Towards Gigiuc was heading Brusli now, with a wavering pace, and, Lord, he surely hoped not to find him at home. He felt in his neck the stare of the hobos, who remained at the gate of the cemetery. But, as he tried to find his way through the darkness, and not to step on the crooked crosses, he felt that other eyes were turning towards him. He was walking slow, in the snow, searching in the pockets of his coat, for after another bottle of “Diane” lotion. He finally reached the middle of nowhere, where he knew that Gigiuc had been buried by the City Hall’s undertakers, in the cheapest coffin they could find, with the lid fixed with six inches nails, so that the smell of barbecue could not be felt. Someone, probably disturbed by the posthumous meetings with Gigiuc, on the night paths, had tied a braided dry garlic rope to the cross. Which gave a little courage to Brusli. “The ghouls are afraid of garlic.” Hesitating, he was trying to find the knife in his pocket. He pulled it out and, with a short movement, without thinking too much, plunged it into the frozen ground. “That’s it! I did it !” Relieved, he wanted to get up, but something pulled him back to the ground. He felt his heart stopping. He tried one more time. The despair with which he pulled himself up resulted in a similar force that drew him back to the ground again. Angry that he had been disturbed in the middle of the night, Gigiuc did not want to let him go. He wanted to keep him there, in the realm of dead hobos. To sleep in the clouds, just as they sleep on the pavement, covered with cardboards. To prepare some brandy, using the apples in the Garden of Eden. Or to warm up their legs, always frozen, to a large tar boiler and with the fork of Beelzebub, to scratch and remove the lice from their long beards...
Brusli felt his pants wet and warm. The urine was pouring towards his boots. A wave of warmth coming from his heart blocked his breathing, making him to bite the air. With a loud yell, he tried once more to break free from the grave that would not let him leave... He felt again an unseen force pulling him down, and this time he fell to the ground, breaking the wood cross, and remained with his eyes turned upwards towards the glassy sky.
* * *
“And that was the end of Brusli,” concluded Giani, at the commemorative feast, after the funeral, with plenty of beer and vodka, still on the terrace, at Uncle Sandu’s pub. Who would have thought, my brother? A man like him, tall like a mountain, to die like this, like a fool ... And for a petty joke... We saw that he was afraid, since he passed the cemetery gate, but we did not tell him anything. We felt ashamed for his shame… But even so ... When he stuck that knife into the grave, he also accidentally caught with the blade a part of that long overcoat he was wearing all the time, even during the summer. And when he wanted to get up, he could not, because his coat, pinned to the ground by that knife, was holding him down. And he thought that the dead man grabbed him, and wouldn’t let him go. That’s why he had a heart attack. But maybe this is how it was meant to be, it was his time to go. Let him rest in peace! Now Gigiuc has company, the poor bastard. Cheers!”
