Erzo

Mark Keane

Erzo finishes the carton of Pulpy Juice and licks the stray bits from his lips. He drops the empty carton in the bin, then washes his face at the sink. Before leaving the house, he checks his pockets to make sure he has his keys and two plums.

            The blackthorn trees murmur in the neighbouring gardens. Scraps of cloud hang in the deep blue sky. The approach of a dirty grey mass in the distance promises rain. Erzo feels good in himself. He can’t explain this onrush of positivity. Sometimes it happens that way.

            Erzo lives in a middling-sized town on the Atlantic coast. Not a particularly nice or friendly town. There’s nothing remarkable about it; very much an unprepossessing place. Not a town Erzo would choose to live in if Erzo had a choice, which of course he should have.

            He heads for the seafront, stopping to examine the display in a pharmacy window. A hill of blue and yellow tablets sits on a bed of red crenulated paper. The banner overhead reads, Let us take you to the summit.

            At the Births kiosk, he asks for the latest figures. The official inside consults a computer screen, scrolling down a table of data.

            “As of two o’clock,” he tells Erzo, “there have been sixteen births in the last twenty-four hours. A cumulative figure of ninety-three in the past week, and four thousand two-hundred and ten in the last year.”

            “A good number,” Erzo remarks. “You don’t do deaths?”

            “No, only births. You’ll have to enquire at the other kiosk.”

            Babies are important in this unremarkable town. Pushing them out like billy-o, Erzo often thinks. The continuation of the line, keeping the show on the road—isn’t that what it’s all about?

            Erzo waits at a junction for the traffic light to turn red, and remains waiting, counting the seconds in his head. Eight, nine, ten … he runs across the road as the light goes green, and the car engines growl at him. It’s a game he plays when he’s feeling good in himself.

            As he passes the convent, four nuns exit the adjoining abattoir. Their hands are red, the white of their habits blood-stained. One nun rushes towards him.

            “What are you looking at?” she demands. “Watch it, or you’ll be next.” She makes chewing motions and sounds. “Owmm nom nom.”

            Erzo walks away, picking up the pace, a walk-run that becomes a run.

            He slows down once he reaches the safety of the rope shop on the next street.

            “Phew … that was a close call.”

            He feels his pockets, worried he’d dropped the plums in his rush to escape the bloody nun. No, they’re still there, one in each pocket.

            A man with ruddy jowls waves at him.

            “Hey you,” he calls. “Turn around and face me. I can’t see your badge.”

            Erzo turns, and puffs out his chest.

            “Your badge,” the jowls tell him, “must be clearly visible at all times.”

            Erzo undoes the clasp, and positions the badge higher on his lapel.

            “What’s your colour?”

            “Blue,” answers Erzo.

            “A bluey, I thought as much. Off with you.”

            Erzo continues walking, not feeling as good in himself as before. A visit to Happy Faces should cheer him up. He goes past the vinegar shop and the aphid shop. A security guard in a brown uniform stops him at the entrance to Happy Faces. Erzo hands over some coins.

            “Okay, that’ll get you five minutes.” The guard steps aside. “Remember, no touching.”

            Erzo opts for the room on the left where a priest kneels at a prie-dieu.

            “How are you, my son?”

            This is not what Erzo needs, and will not make him feel good in himself. He hurries on to the next offering, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike caked in makeup, blonde wig askew.

            “Boop-boop-be-boop.” She simpers over ill-fitting dentures.

            No time to waste, Erzo doesn’t linger at the smiley displays he has seen many times before: the happy schoolgirl or the nurse or the astronaut. He comes to a granny on a rocking-chair, knitting and humming to herself. A new display—an excellent granny, grey hair in a bun, round glasses, long shimmering blue dress and bleached white apron.

            “Hello there, dearie,” she says.

            Now this is a proper happy face, one that makes Erzo feel good in himself again. Such a kind granny, and so reassuring.

            As Erzo reaches to touch the granny’s bun, he’s knocked to the floor. Looking up, he sees the guard standing over him. The guard starts kicking Erzo.

            “What did I tell you?” Another kick from the guard, and one more for good measure. “No touching.”

            Erzo is thrown out the door of Happy Faces and lands on the pavement. He drags himself to his feet, his knee stinging, his ribs on fire. Angry faces glare at him.

            “A disgrace,” says one woman, tea cosy hat plopped on her head. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

            Erzo limps over to a public bench and eases himself onto the seat. He leans back, and lets his eyes glide over the buildings across the street. A sliver of Atlantic is visible through a gap between the aglet shop and Aquari-Yummies. Erzo definitely doesn’t feel good in himself. He feels sore in himself. Maybe he should have a plum, but he decides to leave the plums for later. He calculates how much money he has left; not enough for a visit to Aquari-Yummies to nosh on live guppies and goldfish.

            An old guy with a stick hobbles over and sits beside Erzo. The oldie starts coughing and snorting and hawking, releasing a meaty discharge of mucus that splats on the ground. He looks over at Erzo.

            “How’re you doin’, Bluey?”

            “Alright.”

            “Feelin’ good in yourself?”

            “Not particularly.”

            They sit for a long time in silence. Erzo examines the tapering shadow cast by the walking stick. Finally, the oldie speaks.

            “I haven’t felt good in myself for eighty years. And I remember nothin’ of my first three years, but I doubt I felt good even then.”

            “I’m sorry to hear that,” says Erzo. “Earlier today, I was feeling good in myself.”

            “Were you now?” The old guy shakes his head and laughs. “It didn’t last though, did it?”

            “No, it didn’t.”

            “Best thing you can do.” The oldie taps the ground with his stick. “Take yourself over to Nelly Silke’s contentment shop. She’ll sort you out.”

            This is a new shop to Erzo, but shops open and close all the time in this town.

            “Where’s that shop?” he asks.

            “Over there.” The oldie waves his stick. “Beside the second-hand pram and nappy place.”

            “And will she be able to help me?”

            “You never know. She comes highly recommended. They say she’s a very contented woman.” The oldie shrugs. “What do you have to lose?”

            Erzo thanks him and makes his way gingerly across the street.

            Nelly Silke waits behind a counter. A big woman, hair cut like a schoolboy, eyes bulging from bad goitre.

            “How can I help you?”

            Erzo puts money on the counter. Not all he has, for he’s wise enough to keep some aside. His day hasn’t ended.

            “I’m not feeling good in myself.”

            Nelly Silke counts the money and says, “That’ll get you three statements.”

            “Will that work?”

            “I’ve never had any complaints.”

            Erzo leans on the counter, taking the weight off his sore knee.

            “First statement,” says Nelly Silke. “It’s not as bad as all that. It could get a lot worse.”

            Erzo waits, expecting more.

            “Second statement. Accentuate the positive—the sun is shining, and it isn’t raining.”

            “Do people actually pay for this?” Erzo asks.

            Nelly Silke stares at him through her googly eyes.

            “Third statement. You’re still young, and have your health. Wouldn’t it be worse to be a snail without its shell, nothing to live for, other than sliming around and having people look at you in disgust?”

            As the part concerning the snail was phrased as a question, Erzo believes the business about being young and having your health is Nelly Silke’s third statement.

            “You’ve never had any complaints?”

            “Never, not a single one,” says the contented Nelly Silke.

            When Erzo leaves the shop, it starts raining. He shelters under the awning of a pharmacy. There are many pharmacies in this town. The display this time shows a sea of blue pills and a sandy patch with a tropical island tree represented by brown and green pills. A flag in the sand reads: Let us take you to paradise.

            He watches the fat raindrops spatter the ground, then looks up and spots the oldie with the walking stick, shuffling along the other side of the road. Should he go over and tell the old guy that Nelly Silke did nothing to make him feel good in himself? It’s not worth the effort—no point getting drenched in the rain. In any case, it might be a different oldie. There are so many of them about, and they all look the same to Erzo. This oldie goes into a bookmaker. Second only to pharmacies, there is an abundance of bookies in this town. People like to bet. Winning is a bonus, and losing confirms that not everything is certain.

            The rain ceases abruptly. Erzo continues on his way, stopping at the Deaths kiosk. The official inside looks very much like the one in the first kiosk.

            “What are the numbers today?” Erzo asks.

            The official turns to his computer and presses the refresh button.

            “As of ten minutes past five,” he says, “there have been nine deaths in the last twenty-four hours. A cumulative figure of seventy in the past week, and four thousand one-hundred and eighty-eight in the last year.”

            “More births than deaths recently,” Erzo observes. “But it evens up in the long run.”

            “That tends to be how it works,” the official replies.

            A band practices in XY Park for an upcoming parade. People like to march and display their determination. The drummers pound their goatskin lambegs. Erzo blows out his cheeks in time to the music. Bum-te-de-bum-bum-bum.  

            He makes his way along the coast, passing rows of parked cars. A favourite pastime of the people in this town is to drive to the seafront, stay in the car and read a newspaper or listen to the radio, smoke a cigarette or eat a sandwich. Some even contemplate the white-capped Atlantic.

            On Erzo goes, towards the diving tower. A romp of nuns from the convent abattoir run along the beach, stretching out a net filled with crusts of bread that they use to catch seagulls. Motorboats zoom by, pulling skiers in their wake. Erzo is not a strong swimmer, and finds the water too cold. It makes him slightly sad, hearing the excited whoops as, one by one, divers somersault into the ocean.

            The light shimmers on water lapping the basalt rocks that line the promenade. Erzo sits on a rock and gazes at faraway grassy headlands. He puts his hand in his pocket, and feels a squidgy mess. His fingers are coated in sticky pulp. He turns the pocket inside-out, and dumps the remains of a squished plum on the ground. It must have happened when he received that kicking from the guard at Happy Faces. Slowly and very carefully, he slides his hand into the other pocket and sighs with relief on feeling the reassuring solidity of the second plum. He holds it up, like an offering to the heavens, delighted by its purple roundness and imagining its plummy sweetness. Another onrush of positivity, and Erzo feels good in himself.

            A seagull, fleeing the nuns, swoops down and grabs the plum in its beak. Wings flapping, it wheels away, the sharp gull claws ripping a long tear in the sleeve of Erzo’ coat, cutting his arm and drawing blood.

            “Ouch,” cries Erzo.

            Tears of pain and defeat fill his eyes. He leans forward on his rock and submerges in himself, slipping momentarily from his circumstances.

            Twilight ensues, the distant headlands canted against an afterglow of sun.

            The divers stop diving, the skiers stop skiing, and the nuns return to the abattoir with their catch. Erzo lingers in the growing darkness, a cool breeze easing the sting of his cut.

            It’s time to return home. He stops on the way at Last Orders Ice Cream, and hands over his remaining coins.

            “A raspberry ripple, please.”

            The fat man who serves him points at the tear in his coat.

            “You need to get that seen to. Was it a seagull?”

            “It was.”

            “Savage buggers,” the ice cream man says. “Here, you’ve given me too much.”

            He hands back one coin.

            Erzo takes his time over his raspberry ripple, slowly spooning it into his mouth. Others come in, and Erzo listens to the banter of the after-hours ice cream crowd.

            “Just got in under the wire. Pull us a cone there.”

            “Make mine a Ninety-Nine. What are you having?”

            “A Choc Ice, if you’re buying. But it’ll have to be quick, I’ve got to get back to the ball and chain.”

            Erzo licks his bowl clean, then gets up to leave. On the way out, he drops his last coin into a charity box. It bears a generic head silhouette and the words: Please give generously and feel better about yourself.   

            The end of Erzo’ day. Not such a bad day, all things considered. A single kicking and only attacked by one nun and one seagull. He didn’t get to eat his plums, but it could have been a lot worse as Nelly Silke had told him.

            Erzo strolls past the bookies and pharmacies, the aphid shop and the vinegar shop, Aquari-Yummies and Happy Faces. Maybe not feeling good in himself, but not feeling so bad.