Brother Carnival Read online

  BROTHER CARNIVAL

  BROTHER CARNIVAL

  a NOVEL

  DENNIS MUST

  • • •

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  RUSS SPITKOVSKY

  Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA

  Brother Carnival

  Copyright © 2018 by Dennis Must

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Book design by Ann Basu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  ISBN: 978-1-59709-684-3

  The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, and the Riordan Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

  First Edition

  Published by Red Hen Press

  www.redhen.org

  It’s as if there is little in life that makes any recognizable sense; and the pathway to inner peace—or to God, if you prefer—is to rejoice in what especially doesn’t.

  CONTENTS

  Book One

  Prelude

  Part One

  Chapter One The Meeting

  Chapter Two Origins

  Part Two

  Chapter Three The Quest

  Chapter Four New York City

  Chapter Five Revelation?

  Chapter Six Shifting in and out of Character

  Part Three

  Chapter Seven The Window Harp

  Chapter Eight Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

  Part Four

  Chapter Nine The Midway and The Monastery

  Chapter Ten Find Him by Becoming Him

  Book Two

  Part One The Metamorphosis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two Jeremiah’s Brother

  Chapter Three A Normal Man’s Daughter

  Chapter Four Jeremiah Died for Me

  Part Two

  Chapter Five Hall of Mirrors

  Chapter Six Saint Joseph’s Seminary

  Part Three

  Chapter Seven Human Curiosities

  Chapter Eight “Frere, Il Faut Mourir.”

  Chapter Nine We Live to Audition

  Chapter Ten Holy-Schlitz

  Epilogue

  Part One

  Part Two

  Endnotes

  Biographical Note

  BOOK ONE

  PRELUDE

  Ethan Mueller November 13, 1956

  142 Westover Street

  Pittsburgh, Penn.

  Dear Ethan,

  Enclosed is Westley’s last communication, having arrived, once again, with neither a salutation nor a return address, several months later than the story collection I gave you on Sunday.

  If you are reading this letter, I’m deeply relieved . . . and gather you’ve decided to pursue the quest. His “Going Dark” might assist you more than the others.

  Love,

  Papa

  “Going Dark” was the last of the many works of short fiction that Christopher Daugherty, a pseudonym, published in various literary journals in the early decades following World War II. Since fiction writers often seek inspiration for their work from their own lives, from this story and others, I have endeavored to piece together his true identity.

  What follows will reveal why.

  GOING DARK

  by

  Christopher Daugherty

  I am an aging actor. Well, I was one, but I seldom get opportunities to audition any longer. When I do, I’m rarely called back.

  Actors are notorious prevaricators. There’s a simple explanation for this: we like to think of ourselves as a tabula rasa until the script or dialogue is in hand. That’s when we come to life. But it isn’t ours. Luigi Pirandello wrote about such matters.

  So if you were to ask, say, Where do you live?—I would lie, recall my most recent role, and offer that person’s address.

  How many children do you have? Then I must think back to when I played a father and answer: six. He was a German soldier in a little-known World War II drama I starred in Off-Off-Broadway. His name was Josef, and he’d hidden his Waffen-SS uniform under the attic floorboards for fear that it would be discovered by one of his offspring.

  And your wife—who is she? I’ve had many, but then I picture the comeliest, Alana, whose raven-black hair she’d braid in one glorious plait. When she climbed the stairs to bed at night, I’d watch it sweep from the left side of her porcelain back to the right, pendulum-like. In a pre-Technicolor film, I’d taken her home to my widowed mother, who lived in Ohio. That evening, when Alana retired to my old bedroom, Mama inquired if she was a “Jewess.”

  Immediately, I visualized my uniform up in our attic. But there was no attic. And my surname is Daugherty. Well, it was anyway, in a television commercial where I played the bank manager, Christopher Daugherty. When we’d wrapped up the one-day shoot, walking out of the studio famished, I laughed to myself. I hadn’t a dime in my pocket. If I had borrowed the bespoke three-piece suit and those to-die-for calfskin cap-toe shoes I wore, posing before a Chippendale desk, I could have passed myself off in a restaurant as someone of means. When the check arrived, I’d feign I’d left my wallet in my Bank of North America office and would return posthaste with cash.

  “And your name, sir?”

  “Daugherty . . . Christopher Daugherty.” I’d grimace to the waiter. “My wife, Alana, who comes in here often, will be mortified to hear what I’ve done.”

  Then I’d gather my overcoat and gesture, Be right back. But where did I put it? I remember seeing it, a camel’s hair model with bone buttons, on a coat tree alongside the desk. And wasn’t there a hat also—a felt, narrow-brim Dobbs? Did I forget that?

  Christ, Alana will think I’m losing my mind.

  Will she inform the neighbor, Mrs. Mueller, who periodically knocks on our side door and hands Alana a tuna fish casserole she’s prepared? The two women talk as if they’re old friends. But how could they be? Beatrice Mueller is Josef’s wife. She must know what he’s secreted above their bedroom ceiling. She complains to Alana of severe migraines. Alana commiserates. Of course, I know why she has headaches.

  I’ve suffered from one ever since I watched a chiaroscuro Nazi movie as a twelve-year-old. Except when I took on that cinematic role, I was a graduate student at the University of Southern California, smoking cigarettes and seeing women. Not Alana—I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet. But I knew it would happen one day because, as I ran through them, the women kept growing lovelier. Once the studio technicians applied my makeup, I was genuinely frightened with what I saw in the mirror. A good ten years had been lopped off my life. And with them the anxieties of adolescence returned within minutes. From puberty through my early teens, I’d suffered this inexplicable anguish that I was about to die. In fact, there was this character in my head who owned a basso profundo voice—it could have been Josef Mueller—lecturing me how utterly stupid life was and insisting that to save me hurt and heartache I must “leap off a trestle bridge,” of which there were several in our town.

  So in truth, I was an adult, looking twelve and having to relive the torment that I would commit suicide if I was honest with myself. Mama—she could have been the one I mentioned who called Alana a Jewess—preached that to be true to myself, I had to follow my conscience to
the letter. Except now my conscience turned out to be a German SS officer who, paralyzed by guilt, had secreted his uniform under the attic floorboards, instructing me to off myself. “Just fucking do it, Tom!” he’d command.

  But my name wasn’t Tom. I mean, it isn’t today. My name could be any one of these characters who is not prepared to die inside an aging actor . . . me.

  Already pitched up because of the mirror incident, I was filmed heading off to the movies with my father on a winter evening during the height of World War II, when air-raid blackouts in the neighborhood were quite common.

  Papa, whose name was Philip, bought us popcorn, and we sat in the balcony of a rococo movie house, second row. It, too, was a black-and-white film. The script stipulated that I was possessed by fear that the Germans were going to bomb our small mill town just as they were blitzkrieging London at the time. The Waffen-SS officers appeared on the screen, twenty feet taller than Papa, in jodhpurs, gleaming boots, and officers’ caps with black patent leather bills and silver skull emblems on their crowns. Several wore gold-rimmed glasses. Headlights from their ebony motor cars reflected off the spectacles’ lenses, shooting sparks of phosphorescence across the screen. At that very moment, the real me and the celluloid me coalesced.

  I knew exactly what Josef, my conscience, looked like.

  I’d been unable to picture him earlier when he cajoled me on my way to school to forgo classes and accompany him off one of the bridges spanning the dark Neshannock River that ran through our hometown. “Tell me what you look like,” I’d stall. “I have to see you, to look you in the eyes, if I’m to believe you’re for real. Otherwise I won’t listen.”

  But portraying this young spectator in the movie house, I saw my conscience. He wore a Waffen-SS uniform and wire-rimmed glasses with oval lenses that penetrated the soul. When he removed his officer’s cap, the moon reflected off his brilliantined hair. One of my finest performances, the director, Ernst Kirchner, exclaimed, adding that he’d never experienced a more authentic melding of actor and character.

  I played it as if it were nothing.

  But now that I’m in the last stage of my life and considering the scant roles that I might perform, it’s not simply that boyhood memory that haunts me. The numerous other characters I’ve performed have memories, too.

  The marquee ones hang like so many suits in my closet. There are the winter weights and the summer weights. The bit roles reside in my bureau drawers alongside fading bow ties and dress shirts yellowing at the collar. It’s how I recall their personas. Costumes, uniforms, changes of shirts or ties or even underwear—the silk kind, or practical cotton briefs. Some roles I even compare to the shoes lining my closet floor. How a certain individual walked, or how big I thought his feet were. If he was inclined to have an effeminate side . . . the white-and-black spectators are stored on a higher shelf for him. The footwear’s leather has begun to crack, not unlike the film clips I’ve stored in tin canisters in the attic.

  As I lie about my small room in Riverside Suites, just south of Columbia University and a block east of the West End Bar (I once saw Ginsberg and Thomas Merton pettifogging there), hoping for a call to some casting, or while I scour Variety, it’s not just me in attendance. They are sitting waiting, too. Some are on the windowsill smoking or alongside me in bed, watching the traffic outside. Others, with their coats and hats on, are at the door in case a call should come so they can be the first out.

  And since I am a blank slate—at least I was one in the beginning, bereshit bara Elohim—they won’t let me be. In fact, they squabble among themselves.

  Every role I’ve ever performed is now rising up because they can see where this is all headed. I’m going to die soon. Christ, does that word send them into a dither. They stir nervously about the room, sharing smokes. Their chatter is a raucous din that causes me to lose even more sleep.

  I’ve begun to anticipate what will unfold.

  It involves a couple of the more prominent characters I’ve played, those where I channeled Stanislavski, say, like Brando and Dean. You would’ve exclaimed, Josef, you were magnificent! If Alana were here, she’d confess to you how I broke her damned and precious heart.

  These stars are packed and ready to go. They’re the ones who have begun to aggressively assert themselves in the scarce days, months, perhaps a year or two that I have remaining. Of course, we are all doomed. When I go, they go. But these personas are not about to exit gently.

  One keeps urging, Go up into the attic and get my film. Pull out the projector from the closet and watch me again. That’s who you are, Josef. I live in that canister. It’s number four, dated 1968. God, I was magnificent then, don’t you recall? Then, as if he were sticking his celluloid tongue in my ear, he whispers, These others are imposters. We can live again. Watch me, Josef. Bring me back alive.

  We can do great things together. We’ll go to a thrift shop and dress me up again. Don’t you recall how elegant I looked in that white linen two-piece suit in white shoes and the foulard that looked like a Gauguin Tahitian print?

  And we’ll find Alana. I swear I’ll help you. That will bring us alive again.

  We can do it all over.

  Screw these other characters hanging around as if they are in a union hall, waiting for the phone to ring.

  We make our own phones ring, Josef. Believe me.

  And there’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you now that I can see the blood circulating in your face again. You’re listening to me, aren’t you? Yes, friend. Now listen up. Alana. You know where she is? In Argentina, Josef.

  Does it surprise you?

  She’s living among those expatriates. Do I need to name them for you? Their kind never die.

  Why do you look at me so?

  As if I were a casting director, each day another makes his or her pitch.

  Oh, I’ve played the gentler sex in my time, too. Quite convincingly, in fact. I’ve even wondered if, had I performed more women’s roles, I’d be in the fix I’m in now. With a man, they see what they see.

  It wasn’t always this way.

  But it truly is too late.

  I finally don’t much care if the phone rings or a part comes my way. I rather enjoy being nobody . . . and nobody desiring my services.

  But these characters flitting about, cuddling up to me during the long nights—they want to live in the worst goddamn way.

  That’s what terrifies me.

  The source of my deep anguish.

  One morning I’m afraid I’ll mount the attic stairs with a crowbar and pry out the floorboards’ ten-penny nails, then step into my moth-eaten Waffen-SS uniform, boots, jodhpurs, patent leather visor cap . . . the full emblematic works. Lift down the crop that I’ve hidden in the rafters and, after brushing off the years of dust, snap it against my beefy thighs and then tramp back down into my room and announce to all the others their fate.

  They know what it is. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then I will head down the apartment stairwell, parade through the marble lobby, and go out onto the street to begin hunting for my lovely, my darling, my porcelain-skinned Alana, whose neck blushes a rose red before her cheeks do.

  What is there to be afraid of? I will cry at the top of my lungs.

  And bystanders will drop jeweled rings and eyeglasses in his wake.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MEETING

  It was a weekend in September when I decided that what I was about to do must occur prior to daybreak the following Monday. I believed that I owed a final goodbye to my father and didn’t want to leave a note for fear that it might never be read.

  One may expect I would have gone instead to my devout mother. Better that she explain it to herself after the act, I reasoned, rather than confront the dark truth head-on. Having spent my formative years in her shadow, and being their only child, it was no surprise to friends or family how I chose to spend my life.

  My resolve drew breath th
e Sunday morning an elderly widow waited behind in the sanctuary while I stood at its door bidding good day to the congregants.

  It was a new pastorate for me in a farming community parish comprising three dozen or so members, none of whom had inquired about my past. Each Sunday one of the women, unseen, placed a cooked meal at my study door. I’d look out across the faces during the service, imagining who it might be. But my impulse was innocent, for I solemnly assumed the role as their shepherd.

  Until that week I had awakened to an emerging crisis of faith. Initially, it wasn’t that I doubted the existence of God but was tormented by an insidious will to suspect the miraculous Virgin Birth. I consoled myself by repeating, “This too shall pass.” But once the doubting commenced, each passing day it felt like the whole foundation of my faith had begun to crumble.

  Then, it was as if God himself appeared before me one evening, challenging, Why not me?

  And I replied, Why not?

  Come morning, there was only myself, and I knew not who he was.

  That Sunday when I ascended the pulpit, I looked out over the expectant parishioners and froze. Panic-stricken, I blurted, “Let us pray.” But no homilies came forth. I raised my head, gesturing that I was at a loss for what to do, but the congregation’s heads remained bowed. Occasionally someone looked up and, seeing me staring in anguish at them, would bend back down.

  Then a church elder raised his head and mouthed—Say Amen.

  But how could I?

  I was an imposter standing there before them . . . and sought refuge by returning to the pastor’s chair.

  Now several heads were lifted, gesturing—Say Amen.

  One crusty old farmer volubly uttered, “For Chrissake, say AMEN!”