fiction
W
hen I was a boy and first upset by the strange filthy-looking people who paraded about our streets, asking for things, my father explained that they were called homeless, but that this was not their entire story. He told me, so as to not upset me concerning the state of their lives, that they usually liked being homeless, that their rags and unkempt hair were like the painted faces and wigs of the clowns we’d seen at the circus that Sunday. He explained it was only a costume, that some of them weren’t even homeless at all, that they had homes and wives and little boys like me, that the way they got ready for work each morning was to take a shower of dirt and wrap themselves in bandages, that there were even some who had other jobs, good jobs, as bureaucrats and bankers, and that these ones were really only actors when they walked about all crooked. The few, the very few, that slept on the streets because they had to, had chosen it long ago, had decided to take strange pills and give their money away in bright rooms of gambling. These were the ones who perhaps did not like to be homeless, but had chosen it just the same. I am older now and know that although these things are not exactly true, the homeless are part of the city, and that despite where they came from, they are not noticed often. But I am not homeless, and as this is my story, I know you would be quite caught up in boredom if I strayed from what concerns me into the shrunken limbs and plastic tarps. I am not a man taken to writing, to painting, to art. At the ballet last night, I found myself only thinking of the women I’ve known and will know, of dinner. My wife says she thought only of the dancing, but as I looked around the theater, and considered each person and what they were considering, be it the ceiling, their fingernails, the rain, I knew quite well that this was not only art for them, that if anything they were admiring the bodies of the dancers and not the dance. At museums we care far more about the artists than the art, how else would one explain the worthlessness of a perfect replica of Abaporu? I am writing this then only to answer a question of yours, my son. I worked hard as a young man, not as hard as I might have, but harder than other young men and I went to a good university and had a good job, and worked often. Not being fond of this first job, I soon found another, but this one was not entirely satisfying either. As I was working in a big finance firm, though, it was easy to flip about what I was doing. So I changed from investment analyst to strategic analyst to real estate analyst, all within in the same firm. After seven years of my moving, the company decided they would move me. But this job would be like a vacation. I would do it and it would lighten me, and when I returned, I’d work harder. It was a position at a non-
profit firm operated by my firm, and a few of the other for-profit firms, the consulting firms, the banks. And the workers at the non-profit firms were all workers taking breaks from their for-profit firms, CEOs and analysts who felt guilty or despondent. I felt no guilt because the bank I worked for did no more wrong than to operate in a society which itself may have been flawed, but the flaws of the bank itself were never the fault of the bank, and even less due to me. Prostitution is a sad affair but if I do not visit a brothel, they will still exist, and if I do visit a brothel, it is better for the prostitute that I am not an old filthy man who sees the whore as an object. I was not sent to the nonprofit for guilt. I do admit I was a little tired, my boss believed it would revive me. I knew he would relieve me if I did not go, and that if the time away did not improve me, I would be disposed of. I am still not sure exactly what many parts of the nonprofit did. The office was a cavernous, quiet space, suits bent over silver laptops, a seldom used coffee machine in the corner. After one week of being analyzed, I was assigned to a project in Rio de Janeiro. It was the year before a big event in Rio de Janeiro, and as always the city was working to pacify the favelas, the Brazilian slums. The company from which I was resting was always working to develop poor urban areas. They can be excellent pieces of real estate, and in a few short decades, excellent locations for luxury apartments. The non-profit was working to mitigate the effects of “integration” of the slums, which is gentrification of the slums, which is taking out the ugly. As it was not a place with a clear power structure, I was not given a tremendous amount of guidance or limitation for what I did with Rio de Janeiro. I was given the papers of the other people who’d been doing work in the area and had since left the non-profit to return to their real jobs. I would work to ensure educational opportunities for the favela children, and to be certain that the young who needed homes would not have them destroyed during integration. After months of spreadsheets and conference calls, I flew to Rio with my wife and you, my son. She was pregnant with you, and refused to stay in New York alone. She was prone to all sorts of strange wants during that time, due to the pregnancy. We had married one year before. Her family had been against it. They, from the South, were not confederates but the kind of family that had been. I, not being from the South, had upset them. They, all professors and politicians, and had called my line of work dishonorable which was both amusing and untrue when held up against their history. Her family also did not like me because although I’d always stayed within the firm, I’d cycled through it. They said I’d be out entirely soon, which I was afraid would prove true, now that their pregnant daughter and I were in Rio, a place further south than them. ydnmag.com | Yale Daily News Magazine | 28