Brian Kindall's Blog - Posts Tagged "old-buildings"
The Menagerie
When I was one and twenty, I rented a squalid room in a ramshackle building. My intention was to hide myself away so I could learn to write. Because I was broke, the old tenement seemed my best option. Rent was cheap, like something out of Dickens – a mere farthing per month. I could tough out the inadequacies of the place – the odiferous communal bathroom, the sparrow-sized bugs, the threat of plague, the radiator that proved itself a medieval mockery of heating units. I just needed privacy and a little nook where I could scribble my poems and stories. But the one thing about old apartment buildings that I didn’t count on was that they inevitably come with thin walls. They also come with an assortment of peculiar neighbors who, no matter how reclusive you might be, find a way to weave themselves into the fabric of your daily life.
The first fellow resident I encountered was Monsieur Le Fou, or Mister Crazy. (I never learned if that was his real name.) He sported wild white hair styled after the fashion of Albert Einstein. Le Fou had been a French professor at the local university. Upon reaching retirement, he took his entire savings and blew it on an extended, extravagant trip around the world. He trekked to the headwaters of the Ganges; he sailed the South Seas; he visited an outpost in Antarctica. At the end of his journey, he found himself back where he began, penniless. The only home he could afford was a room in this dilapidated building.
“I expected to die on my journey,” he told me. “Or I thought I would perhaps hang myself from a palm tree in Tahiti, or take poison.”
“So what happened?”
“I became scared,” he smiled. “I became to think that even a bad life is better than not life.” He shrugged. “Besides, I am not so not happy. I have good memories to be my friends.”
And so now Le Fou wandered the halls of our building with his invisible friends, wearing nothing but socks and a dingy blue and white striped bathrobe. He never went out. I don’t know how he got his food. I would hear him shuffling past my door, singing Frere Jacque, or muttering a few lines from Rimbaud.
Sometimes I would hear Le Fou speaking very animated French with Boscoe. Boscoe was a young man from Cameroon, and was in the states studying to be an engineer. He was lanky and tall and had the most musical, deep voice I had ever heard. I met him one day on the stairs.
“So you are living here now?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So you are one of us?”
“One of you?”
He laughed and spread arms to the building. “A member of the menagerie.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”
I didn’t know whether to be pleased, or worried.
Old men gravitate to old buildings. Or at least that’s how it seemed. With the exception of Boscoe, myself, and a Vietnamese student living on the third floor, most of the menagerie consisted of old fellows who had somehow made a bad plan for their dotage. The two most prominent of these men were Grumpy and Smokey Joe.
If you’ve ever wondered where your favorite Disney characters go after they retire, you need to look into the dark corners of old buildings. Apparently Disney has no good retirement offerings for its former employees. Grumpy was the dwarf from the movie Snow White. He had always secretly hoped to win Snow White’s heart and live with her in a little cottage at the edge of the woods, away from the nuisance of his other six crones. But then when that fop Charming showed up, all of Grumpy’s plans went south. He took to the bottle, which triggered a growth spurt, became unemployed (nobody wants a six foot dwarf), and wandered aimlessly for a few years. Eventually, heartbroken and disgruntled, he took a room down the hall from my own.
Grumpy was disheveled and unpleasant and uniformly gray. He never spoke, only growled or gurgled. I got to where I would wait for him to leave before I would go out into the hall because he was so surly. He swaggered and tipped down the corridor, banging into the walls along the way, as if he were moving through the bowels of a ship experiencing rough seas. Of course, he was merely drunk. The passageway always reeked of his boozy mien after he had passed.
Smokey Joe, on the other hand, left behind a sweet and lingering aroma of apple wood pipe smoke. He was the antithesis of Grumpy. This dapper little octogenarian always dressed in tweeds. He smoked a pipe. He wore a wool driving cap. And he always carried a black leather case under his arm. He was deaf as a post, and the few times I tried to talk with him, he only cupped a hand to his ear, smiled, and shook his head. He left the building every evening, and once, being curious, I followed him down the street at a distance. He shuffled along, leaving his trail of smoke, until he turned into the local pool hall. I watched through the window as he greeted everyone there like old friends. They slapped him on the back and brought him a pint of beer. Then Joe opened his case and fitted together his pool cue. He bent over a table set up for a game, lined up his stick with the white cue ball, and – Crack! – he came to life. It turned out that Smokey Joe was a brilliant billiards man. He went out every night and hustled the locals out of their loose cash. One man told me he was sure that Joe had a million dollars hidden somewhere. He lived so frugally, and was so successful at his trade, that he had to have a stash. I imagined the old hustler back in his room at night, sorting his piles of money, making plans for – what? Who knew? We members of the menagerie were generally secretive and unforthcoming about our hopes and dreams.
The menagerie was exclusively a men’s club. I suppose the general atmosphere of the building made it inhospitable for feminine occupation. But when January rolled around, the vacant room next to my own became the home of two young women. At first I was annoyed. The thin walls made it seem that they were right in the room beside me, and this was disturbing as I tried to write. But the women were Greek, and I, unable to understand their language, came to think of their foreign prattle as a sort of melodic white noise. I even got to where I liked to hear them laughing and talking when they came home at the end of the day. I guessed they were students, too, and probably taking classes at the university. Not knowing the facts, I guessed a lot of things.
Sometimes in the dawn, as I was sipping my tea and sharpening my metaphoric pencils, I would hear the women leave their room and walk down the hallway to the stairs. Curious, I would stand at my window and watch from above as they left the building and passed below me on the square. They walked arm in arm, huddled close. They left a trail of dark wet footprints in the new snow. The scene was very artful to my eye. Like something captured by a great photographer. I remember feeling an inexplicable fondness for these women. I knew nothing about them but what I could glean from this image and the little sounds they made beyond my walls. They were strangers, and yet there was something about them that made me think of them as my friends.
The first fellow resident I encountered was Monsieur Le Fou, or Mister Crazy. (I never learned if that was his real name.) He sported wild white hair styled after the fashion of Albert Einstein. Le Fou had been a French professor at the local university. Upon reaching retirement, he took his entire savings and blew it on an extended, extravagant trip around the world. He trekked to the headwaters of the Ganges; he sailed the South Seas; he visited an outpost in Antarctica. At the end of his journey, he found himself back where he began, penniless. The only home he could afford was a room in this dilapidated building.
“I expected to die on my journey,” he told me. “Or I thought I would perhaps hang myself from a palm tree in Tahiti, or take poison.”
“So what happened?”
“I became scared,” he smiled. “I became to think that even a bad life is better than not life.” He shrugged. “Besides, I am not so not happy. I have good memories to be my friends.”
And so now Le Fou wandered the halls of our building with his invisible friends, wearing nothing but socks and a dingy blue and white striped bathrobe. He never went out. I don’t know how he got his food. I would hear him shuffling past my door, singing Frere Jacque, or muttering a few lines from Rimbaud.
Sometimes I would hear Le Fou speaking very animated French with Boscoe. Boscoe was a young man from Cameroon, and was in the states studying to be an engineer. He was lanky and tall and had the most musical, deep voice I had ever heard. I met him one day on the stairs.
“So you are living here now?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So you are one of us?”
“One of you?”
He laughed and spread arms to the building. “A member of the menagerie.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”
I didn’t know whether to be pleased, or worried.
Old men gravitate to old buildings. Or at least that’s how it seemed. With the exception of Boscoe, myself, and a Vietnamese student living on the third floor, most of the menagerie consisted of old fellows who had somehow made a bad plan for their dotage. The two most prominent of these men were Grumpy and Smokey Joe.
If you’ve ever wondered where your favorite Disney characters go after they retire, you need to look into the dark corners of old buildings. Apparently Disney has no good retirement offerings for its former employees. Grumpy was the dwarf from the movie Snow White. He had always secretly hoped to win Snow White’s heart and live with her in a little cottage at the edge of the woods, away from the nuisance of his other six crones. But then when that fop Charming showed up, all of Grumpy’s plans went south. He took to the bottle, which triggered a growth spurt, became unemployed (nobody wants a six foot dwarf), and wandered aimlessly for a few years. Eventually, heartbroken and disgruntled, he took a room down the hall from my own.
Grumpy was disheveled and unpleasant and uniformly gray. He never spoke, only growled or gurgled. I got to where I would wait for him to leave before I would go out into the hall because he was so surly. He swaggered and tipped down the corridor, banging into the walls along the way, as if he were moving through the bowels of a ship experiencing rough seas. Of course, he was merely drunk. The passageway always reeked of his boozy mien after he had passed.
Smokey Joe, on the other hand, left behind a sweet and lingering aroma of apple wood pipe smoke. He was the antithesis of Grumpy. This dapper little octogenarian always dressed in tweeds. He smoked a pipe. He wore a wool driving cap. And he always carried a black leather case under his arm. He was deaf as a post, and the few times I tried to talk with him, he only cupped a hand to his ear, smiled, and shook his head. He left the building every evening, and once, being curious, I followed him down the street at a distance. He shuffled along, leaving his trail of smoke, until he turned into the local pool hall. I watched through the window as he greeted everyone there like old friends. They slapped him on the back and brought him a pint of beer. Then Joe opened his case and fitted together his pool cue. He bent over a table set up for a game, lined up his stick with the white cue ball, and – Crack! – he came to life. It turned out that Smokey Joe was a brilliant billiards man. He went out every night and hustled the locals out of their loose cash. One man told me he was sure that Joe had a million dollars hidden somewhere. He lived so frugally, and was so successful at his trade, that he had to have a stash. I imagined the old hustler back in his room at night, sorting his piles of money, making plans for – what? Who knew? We members of the menagerie were generally secretive and unforthcoming about our hopes and dreams.
The menagerie was exclusively a men’s club. I suppose the general atmosphere of the building made it inhospitable for feminine occupation. But when January rolled around, the vacant room next to my own became the home of two young women. At first I was annoyed. The thin walls made it seem that they were right in the room beside me, and this was disturbing as I tried to write. But the women were Greek, and I, unable to understand their language, came to think of their foreign prattle as a sort of melodic white noise. I even got to where I liked to hear them laughing and talking when they came home at the end of the day. I guessed they were students, too, and probably taking classes at the university. Not knowing the facts, I guessed a lot of things.
Sometimes in the dawn, as I was sipping my tea and sharpening my metaphoric pencils, I would hear the women leave their room and walk down the hallway to the stairs. Curious, I would stand at my window and watch from above as they left the building and passed below me on the square. They walked arm in arm, huddled close. They left a trail of dark wet footprints in the new snow. The scene was very artful to my eye. Like something captured by a great photographer. I remember feeling an inexplicable fondness for these women. I knew nothing about them but what I could glean from this image and the little sounds they made beyond my walls. They were strangers, and yet there was something about them that made me think of them as my friends.
