Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“I pay three bills a month: rent, utilities and phone, and the last two every other month, so really two a month, average — all with money orders made out from money in my savings account. That way — though here, for the first time, it’s hurt me — I get my interest and also don’t impulsively spend money I don’t have. As for the other tenants in my building — nobody to go to. Either much too frail or old, one’s a dealer, another’s a man who illusorily accuses me of dumping garbage on his car and door, and one woman’s a drunk and, as my junior-high kids used to say, mental. I just don’t know that many people, many people as I know, and some I know I wouldn’t go into their apartments for any reason. And, impulsive as I am on money matters, or at least sticking to a system so as not to be, I was impulsive in calling you, in spite of the time I took to think about calling — what can I say? I, maybe because of the big lump and minor gash, but again, I don’t want to depreciate the main reason by giving neurological excuses, saw myself sleeping, with my head in an old clean rag, bleeding, on your floor. I shouldn’t have but I did, and with my last dime, not that it wouldn’t take another hour or two, which’d get me closer to daybreak and my keys, to borrow or beg another one. But I thought, it being my last dime would help persuade you to let me use your floor. But look, spilt head or not — split — if I’m anything — and that was an interesting slip — I’m—”

“All right, give me your number. Then tell me quickly this time how you hurt your head. A fight?”

“Stopping a robbery. And the number on the phone’s not clear. It’s — shit, who’d want to scratch out the number on a pay phone? Sorry, but it’s demented. Plug up the coin return with gum if you’re desperate to make some pocket money, because then at least the caller’s made his call, if he didn’t get a busy signal or Information. Though if he got Information and Information, after she gives him the number, sees his coin didn’t reach the coin tray, she can hook him into a live operator who can dial the number for him. But don’t, I’m saying, destroy the phone so it can’t be used for emergencies or scratch out the number so no one can call the caller back.”

“Are you telling me there’s no phone number there? Please, Mr. Krin.”

“It’s also my eyes, which is just part of the story, and Daniel or Dan. First my glasses got scratched. That was nobody’s fault but mine. But then, along with my head before and my wallet and keys going with my coat in addition to my valuable notebook, though only to me, is the only copy I own and perhaps in the whole country of one of the books of poems I’m to select from and translate to put into one big book of this particular poet’s selected collected — collected selected poems.”

“Who?”

“Jun Hasenai. Around my age. But you probably haven’t heard of him.”

“I suppose I should have, but I hate when people say that about writers I’ve mentioned and they haven’t heard of. I can’t read or hear about everyone.”

“No reason you should. He’s unknown here — few poems I’ve managed to place in little mags over the years — but pretty well known in several Eastern European countries. He’s major, style to get excited by, sensibility and themes to move and brood over and possibly transmogrify. I talk like a jacket blurb sometimes, but I really admire the guy’s work. I also like it that he’s lived fully but not maneuveringly and to keep his modest family life surviving he writes essays that are, well, eloquent and inciting and I eventually want to translate too, and translates Spanish and Portuguese novels and poetry and teaches Western literature in a high school for the physically handicapped and deformed. He’s a mensch and can be translated — he doesn’t only come across in Japanese. I just hope when I call him for another copy of the book, if one isn’t in a library I don’t know about here, he doesn’t think I’m a terrific bungler and assign his work to someone else.”

“I’m sure he won’t — not after the work you’ve no doubt put in and the feeling you have for it. But why not call his publisher for a copy rather than him?”

“Of course — thanks — I just hope it doesn’t get back to him.”

“Then have someone else call and give his or her address. But you shouldn’t be so worried. You have a book contract for it?”

“No, they all want to see the whole work first, intro also.”

“I’ll still look for your book when it comes out.”

“His book, but I shouldn’t minimize my own part that much. Sounds fake and is, since it’s not what I feel at all. But the glasses — what’s that?”

“Sammy my cat. Just jumped into my lap. He likes to speak on the phone.”

“Sounds like a baby crying. Siamese?”