The Boatman

It would be nice to talk to him again. A nice, normal drink with an old friend. There weren’t many people I felt like seeing these days, and even fewer places I felt like going. But I was curious about what Josef had gotten up to over these past two years I’d been overseas. I met him in front of the library of his university, where he was studying psychology. He was leaning against the bike railing in a pair of faded jeans and brown, scuffed shoes. He looked the same. As I neared, I noticed a tall girl talking into a cell phone at his side and he told me she was a friend he had just run into. She finished her call and turned to us.

“So what are we doing?” She smiled at us like we all shared some inside joke. Was this flirting?

“Well, Mike and I are going down to Café Roma,” Josef said. “We haven’t seen each other in ages.”

“I’ve still got some time,” she said. She just stood there smiling at us. Josef and I looked at each other.

“Would you like to join us?” Josef said listlessly. “Is it OK if she comes along?” he asked me. What was I going to say?

We all started off in the direction of Café Roma, a little café I had a yearning to visit since being back. As we walked, the girl said she wanted to go to Maxine’s—an overcrowded café where you always had to raise your voice to be heard. You could sit outside, but the street was on a steep incline, making it impossible to get comfortable at a table. Café Roma had plenty of steady, level, outside tables. Tables you could breathe at. Tables you could catch up at, man to man. Café Roma was also the haunt of a woman I was hoping to run into—if she was even still around.

“Maxine’s is farther away,” I pointed out.

“Maxine’s has the best cheesecake,” the girl said. “That’s what I’m getting.”

Josef stopped and stood uncertainly.

“So where are we going?” he asked.

“I don’t care as long as we can sit outside,” I finally said.

We walked and talked in a stilted manner. I was drilled by the girl as to my doings that day, and I tried to explain to her that I had been walking around downtown for hours in the sun, looking for a job. She seemed not to hear anything I said, but smiled in an annoying, false way. I asked her how it had happened that she had run into Josef.

“At church,” she replied.

I certainly had no interest in hearing about that. We walked on in silence.

We got to Maxine’s and I surveyed the place as we entered. Among the squawking throng were some worn out Florida-looking people and a couple petting each other on the velvet couch. The girl motioned to the tacky flowered sofa opposite the couple.

“We could sit here,” she said.

“Or we could sit outside,” Josef suggested, looking at me.

“Let’s just sit here,” she said and sat down on the couch.

I was tired and wasn’t going to fight for anything as silly as where to sit. The simplest thing was to humor the girl. We all sat down.

I wanted a nice cold beer, but ordered a mint tea. I felt nauseous from the heat and leaned back into the couch. Just then Josef noticed someone outside the big windows of the café and waved to them. He went outside to say hello, saying he’d be right back, and I was left with the girl. I sighed and looked over at her. She kept drilling me about my day, and what it was like to be a soldier, to fight in a war.

“What’s it like to kill?” she whispered at me.

The facial muscles couldn’t hold up this horrible charade and finally I just stopped answering. My tea had come, and I sipped it in the first moment of peace I had had since the meeting. She shifted in her seat and stared with an unpleasant, blank expression across at the wall. My abrupt rudeness had caused her facade to malfunction, and her inner grossness showed forth like a dead fish head. I sipped my tea, leaned back, and closed my eyes. I was shattered from the exertion of the day. When I opened my eyes, I had an unpleasant surprise: a large family had entered the cafe and sprawled themselves directly across from us. They had not one, not two, but three babies. I had to turn away in disgust, but not without noting that I would still have to hear their grating baby sounds—gurgles and screeches—and the nauseatingly indulgent parent noises. Josef returned, to the great relief of the girl and myself. He sat down between us, and as I looked over at him, I noticed the girl was—of course—gazing at the babies with a saccharine expression that made my stomach churn. I knew exactly what she was about to say.

“Oh, they’re so cute!”

I averted my face, and looked at the metal piping on the ceiling. It was painted brass-color, and the ceiling, a dark gray; the walls were vermillion. Nazi colors, I thought to myself grimly, and began to contemplate a favorite subject of mine: World War II—a good war. I felt somewhat relieved that I was able to escape to a place of safety, create a comfort zone for myself in the midst of chaos and inanity. Service had taught me that. But I had to return at some point, look back down at the crawling, throbbing, screaming mass of this place, and when I did so, I chose to focus on Josef as the least offensive thing.

He pulled out a notepad.

“We’re studying debunked psychology tests right now. Would you like to take one?” he asked. “It’s quackery, really.”

“Aren’t they all?” I said.

A flash of uncertainty behind Josef’s eyes before he broke into laughter.

I played along. First we looked at inkblots. The girl saw a butterfly, then a tree. As I looked at them, I didn’t see anything but stupid inkblots. I looked at my watch.

“So, you don’t see anything, hmmm. That’s an unusual response,” said Josef, as if that was meaningful.

“It’s bullshit, right?” I looked at him askance.

“Oh yes, total and complete bullshit,” he said meditatively. “But the test is still widely used.”

Next was a little story about a murder and who was to blame. As they yabbered and jabbered on I drifted away in a little wooden boat, not much bigger than myself, further and further out to sea. The waves washed and sluiced around the boat, and then the waves washed over and through the boat and I felt myself just peacefully, slowly falling down weightless to the bottom of the sea. I landed gently, disturbing a cloud of silt in slow motion. On the bottom of the sea it was quiet and more peaceful than anywhere I had ever been. I just floated there, on the bottom of the sea. I looked down and I was wearing an old fashioned diving suit with a long tube that piped air to my lungs and connected me with the outside world. I put my hand on the gauge that held the air tube in and realized I could just stay down there forever in the murky, peaceful darkness. All I had to do was yank off that gauge. I floated in the vast silence, hand on gauge, considering…

I felt a sharp push sideways. I opened my eyes. It was Josef.

“Well? Who do you think is to blame?” he asked.

“Blame?”

“For the murder.”

“Well, whoever did the murder, I guess,” I said.

“She thinks it’s the boatman,” he said. “But I disagree; he just wants to clock out and go home. Whereas the wife chose her destiny when she crossed the river. She made it impossible for her own return.”

“No, no, no,” said the girl. “She’s not responsible for her own death. That’s blaming the victim.”

I had no idea what they were talking about nor did I care.

“Anyway,” Josef laughed, “it’s just a silly pop psych test, there’s no right answer—it’s meaningless, just for fun.”

I nodded absently and took another sip of my tea.

As I reflected on how I could eventually extract myself, by accident my gaze fell on the family opposite and I watched as the mother took the pacifier from one of the children—a small boy—dipped it in her white wine, and then stuck it back into the child’s mouth. The woman cackled grotesquely and squeezed the child. The idiot kid just sat there staring blankly. He didn’t even have the good sense to grimace. Fine, I thought to myself, an idiot kid born of idiots: fine.

Meanwhile, Josef and the girl were trying to figure out where the family was from.

“Not here,” I declared.

The girl leaned forward, thinking I had some sort of interest in the asinine family.

“Do you have any siblings?” she asked.

Silence.

“One more antiquated test,” said Josef. “Last one!”

He asked us each a bunch of arbitrary questions.

“Imagine a living room,” he asked me.

“I hate living rooms,” I said. “I’d rather not.”

Josef’s eyebrows rose and his mouth became a tight circle.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” he said. “You question the whole paradigm. But just imagine one anyway—humor me.”

I described the living room as I saw it: it was actually outside, like a courtyard, very lush, with water running through it and a sunken fireplace in the middle.

“The living room represents marriage,” Josef said. “At first, you’re like: no way, I don’t want it. But you come around.”

I swallowed the last dreg of my peppermint tea.

“OK,” I said. My head was hurting. “What else?”

I don’t remember what they said after that.

Sometime shortly thereafter I rose, took out my billfold, and walked over to the bar to get change. I had to wait a few minutes while standing next to a heavily perfumed woman who was studying me, trying to arouse my attention. I ignored her without the slightest pretension of acknowledgment. I looked over at the old useless phone hanging on the wall, and thought about the one time S. and I had come here. How everything had seemed so predestined. The duel. How I had stood making small talk to a man with an accent like Diego Montoya from The Princess Bride, while S. stole a pomegranate from the potpourri. She had come up, pointed the pomegranate at me like a rapier, and said, ‘You killed my father. Prepare to die’ and her eyes had sparkled. How she had come to sit closer to me on the velvet couch, and gazed up at me with childlike awe. Had I looked the same to her? That was before everything, of course.

I walked back to Josef and the girl, glanced at the bill, and tucked the money under the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table.

“Let me pay,” said Josef.

I avoided his eyes.

“No,” I said. “Listen, I need to go buy some gray spray paint before the store closes. Will you guys be here when I get back?” I asked perfunctorily. To my surprise, they answered in the affirmative. I said I’d be back within half an hour.

Outside it was breezy, though humid, and I walked away. The further away I got, the lighter I felt.

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A native New Yorker, J.W. Seabrooke studied writing at Columbia University and is currently living and writing in Switzerland.