Four Different Stories Page 2

  “We have to trap him,” said Mozart, who then removed a tiny violin from the pocket of his coat.

  “Oh, do you know the muffin fiend?” Inspector LeChat asked the odd peasant.

  “I never heard of him,” the peasant replied.

  “Well? Where is Don Pastrami?” Inspector LeChat asked Mozart.

  “I used to play this when I was a very small boy,” Mozart said. Then producing a tiny bow, Mozart began to play.

  “What is this music?” asked LeChat.

  “It is the music of the spheres,” said Mozart. “It is cosmic music.”

  “It doesn’t sound funny to me,” said LeChat.

  “Cosmic, not comic!” Mozart shouted. “This music will bring the extraterrestrial to us.”

  Mozart tuned up.

  No one turned up.

  Mozart fiddled.

  Nothing happened.

  LeChat listened.

  No one appeared.

  “I don’t think he’s coming.”

  “He’s coming,” said Mozart, strumming.

  “I think he’s going.”

  “He’s not going,” said Mozart, bowing.

  Then a being was seen, hiding behind one tree and then another, coming closer and closer to the tuneful Wolfgang.

  Then, when the flitful figure was behind the nearest tree, Mozart put down his tiny violin and baritoned, “Don Pastrami! I’ve come to get you!”

  “You’ll never get me!” sang Don Pastrami.

  “You are the awful muffin fiend!”

  Don Pastrami sang, “I am!”

  Mozart: “Why did you take the muffins?”

  Don Pastrami: “I did it. I felt like it. That’s all.”

  Mozart: “You must have had a reason.”

  Don Pastrami: “I didn’t have a reason. Go away.”

  Mozart: “Tell me. Tell me why you took the muffins.”

  Don Pastrami: “No!”

  Mozart: “Tell me!”

  Don Pastrami: “No!”

  Mozart: “Tell!”

  Don Pastrami: “No!”

  Mozart: “Tell!”

  Don Pastrami: “No!”

  Mozart: “Tell! Tell!”

  Don Pastrami: “No! No!”

  Mozart: “At least shake hands to show that you’re not chicken.”

  Don Pastrami: “O.K.” (Don Pastrami shakes hands with Mozart.) “Hey! What is this? I cannot get loose!”

  Mozart: “It’s Viennese jiujitsu—now will you confess?”

  Don Pastrami: “What choice do I have?

  In the powerful grip of Mozart (who had mighty fingers from practicing the piano every day) the miserable Don Pastrami confessed: “I come from a far distant planet in a solar system you never heard of,” the apprehended Pastrami said.

  “As I suspected!” said the excited genius. “But there is something else—something about your voice. I’ve heard that voice before.”

  “For a time I was an opera singer. I used the name Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo.”

  “Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo! The greatest operatic tenor ever to live, up to and including most of the eighteenth century!” Mozart exclaimed. “You are my fave! Why did you quit singing?”

  “The singing was only a way to earn money to buy muffins. But soon I needed many more muffins, and had to resort to stealing them.”

  “Such a muffin monkey! How can you eat so many?”

  “I do not eat them Signor Mozart.”

  “Not?”

  “Not.”

  “Not eat?”

  “Not one even.”

  “So, what do with um?”

  “Keep um.”

  “Keep um all?”

  “Every one of um.”

  “For why do you keep um?”

  “Keep um for fuel.”

  “For fuel?”

  “Fuel.”

  “Fuel for keep warm?”

  “No, Fuel for go home.”

  “Go home?”

  “Go home. Don Pastrami go home!”

  “Amazing,” said Mozart.

  “You said it, buster,” said Don Pastrami.

  “What do you think of all this?” Mozart asked Charles LeChat.

  “By the bells of Notre Dame! It amazes!” said the Frenchman.

  The extraterrestrial Don Pastrami led the composer and the policeman through the forest. In a clearing they found an enormous machine. “My spaceship,” said Don Pastrami.

  “I don’t understand,” said LeChat.

  “This is your ship?” asked Mozart.

  “Yes.”

  “And the muffins?”

  “Are inside.” Don Pastrami led Mozart to the side of the ship and opened a little door.

  “Ach, du Lieber!” Mozart exclaimed. “This thing is practically full of muffins!”

  “They will power the spacecraft for my journey home,” said Don Pastrami. “Rocket fuel on my planet is in solid form and very similar to the muffins of Earth.”

  “Do you have enough of these muffins to reach your planet?” Mozart asked.

  “With the muffins I have stolen today, I have enough,” said the former Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo.

  “Then go,” said Mozart.

  “Wait!” shouted LeChat. “He is a criminal.”

  “If he remains on Earth, he will only steal more muffins,” said Mozart. “Let’s give him a pass.”

  “I don’t know. This goes against the code of a French policeman,” said Inspector LeChat.

  “Be a sport,” Mozart said, “and I’ll dedicate a concerto to you.”

  “Well—seeing that it’s you who’s asking,” Charles LeChat said.

  “I’m going,” said the visitor from space. “Nice planet. I had a good time.”

  “Drive carefully,” said Mozart.

  Don Pastrami climbed into his spacecraft, which took off impressively.

  “This has been my strangest case,” said Inspector Charles LeChat. “Now let’s go get some Viennese cooking.”

  “I’d like to, but I have to go home and work on the Requiem,” Mozart said.

  “Do that later,” said the French policeman. “For now come to a restaurant with me.”

  “Well, all right,” said Mozart. “I am feeling hungry after solving this mystery.”

  “Good man,” said LeChat. “Incidentally, how did you know that the man we sought was an extraterrestrial?”

  “Remember when we were back at the Municipal Muffin Bakery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember when I looked in the bakeshop window?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And there were only price cards—and all the muffins were gone?”

  “Yes, yes?”

  “And even the Gorgonzola muffins were gone?”

  “Yes, I do remember that.”

  “That is when I knew the man we were after was not an inhabitant of this world.”

  “How did you know that?” the detective asked the great genius.

  “I knew that because no one on Earth would eat a Gorgonzola muffin.”

  End

  WINGMAN

  For Mr. Yee and Mr. Yee

  A neighbor of mine was a Chinese-American guy, who unsurprisingly had connections in the Chinese community in New York City. Thus he was on hand when a Chinese restaurant that had gone out of business was being broken up and he brought home a booth. This was, in my opinion, then and now, a brilliant thing to do.

  There was a Formica table, pink in color, and two upholstered bench seats, just like you’d find in restaurants. He also brought home one of those napkin dispensers, some thick, chipped teacups, and little stainless steel teapots and sugar bowls. He set the booth up in his back room, hung a light over the table, and it was just like sitting in some diner or Chinese greasy chopstick restaurant.

  Now he could sit in the booth, drinking tea, without having to take the subway or go anywhere. If he wanted to, he could cook Chinese food, which he knew how to do, and eat it in his booth. If he didn
’t feel like cooking, he could call out for Chinese food to be delivered and eat that in his booth. Sometimes he would invite me to come up to his apartment and sit in his booth with him.

  Sitting in the booth, my neighbor told me stories about growing up in Washington Heights, which is part of New York City, living in back of his father’s laundry, and about kids climbing the structure of the George Washington Bridge. I found these stories very interesting, and my neighbor agreed to take me for a tour of his old neighborhood, show me his old school, the family laundry, which was still there, and even show me kids climbing up into the girders of the George Washington Bridge. I brought my camera along, a 35mm Miranda, which took quite good pictures.

  Then I wrote the story. In the story, A) everything is true; B) some things are true; or C) nothing is true. I am saying no more. I’ve given you a pretty good hint.

  At school he was Donald Chen, but at home he was Chen Chi-Wing or Ah-Wing. Although he was born in New York, he didn’t know any English before he went to school. He had been going to school for a while now, and he knew English. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was Donald or Wing. He was sure that it was cold at home in winter and cold at school. He was sure he was the poorest kid in class. He was sure he was the only Chinese kid in Public School 132.

  The cold didn’t bother him. He didn’t care how cold it got. He never wore a coat. Every day he went to school in the fresh white shirt his father washed and ironed for him the night before. He had a coat though. He wore it once, when the rumor spread that he didn’t have one. He just wore it one day, and made sure everybody saw it. After that he didn’t wear it anymore because the cold didn’t bother him.

  When he was a very little kid, before he could remember, the whole family was together and they lived in Chinatown. He couldn’t remember anything about it. Now they lived in Washington Heights, and their mother was in the hospital, and they were poor, and he was the only Chinese kid in school. Sometimes his father took him to Chinatown. It was always warm there. There were lots of people in the streets, and there were good smells from restaurant kitchens. He would help his father get the groceries, and wait at the newsstand while his father talked to his friends, and played a game of Mah-Jongg. The newsstand belonged to an old guy called Oi-Lai Bok. Lai would talk to him, and let him read comics. Lai called him Ah-Wing.

  Wing lived behind his father’s laundry with his little brother and sister. He ate and slept there, and he kept his comic books there in a lot of old wooden boxes. He got comics with money he made collecting bottles and helping in the laundry. He had over two thousand of them. It had taken a long time to get them, and he worked very hard for the money. But they were very important, so he didn’t mind working hard.

  He had always loved comic books. He couldn’t remember when they hadn’t been a part of his life. They were the best part of his life. He could remember when his family had been thrown out by the landlord. It had happened twice before they came to the laundry. All their beds and chairs and clothing, and Wing’s comic books, were carried out and left in the street. Wing stayed with the furniture and his brother and sister while his father went to find someone to help them get a place to live. Reading about Hawkman, and Captain Marvel, and Mr. Scarlet helped him not to worry about things. Once he walked a hundred and twenty-four blocks because he had spent his subway fare on an old Flash comic. He never minded working hard when something was really important.

  When he went to school he was Donald, and nothing very good ever happened to him there. He wouldn’t have gone at all, but his father wanted him to go. He liked to do the things his father wanted. When he was little, it seemed to him that his father was always carrying him. When he remembered being little, he remembered being carried by his father. He had begun to help his father, ironing handkerchiefs, when he was four years old. When he was five, he began to deliver shirts. His father always gave him work to do, but somehow he always made him like it. When he helped his father in the laundry, sometimes he felt as if his father were carrying him again. His father wanted him to go to school, so he went to school.

  School had not been so bad at first. Then everybody found out about how poor Donald Chen was. On the last day of school before Thanksgiving, his teacher, Miss Spinrad, had five baskets of food next to her desk. She explained to the class that some children were very unfortunate, and that we should all be kind to them. The way she talked made Donald Chen feel very sorry for those children. He wished he had known about the baskets before, so he could have brought some comic books to put in them. Then Miss Spinrad called out the names of the five poor children who were going to get the baskets. Donald Chen did not hear the teacher call his name. When he looked up, she was standing in front of his desk. She was holding the basket. It was for him. Donald wanted to say no, but he couldn’t say anything. Everybody was looking at him. Miss Spinrad put the basket on his desk, and he took it home.

  That night he saw his father cry. He also saw him jump up and down on a turkey, and throw a lot of groceries and cans of stuff into the garbage. Donald didn’t go back to school after Thanksgiving. His father didn’t know anything about it.

  D onald had a schoolbag. Every morning he would fill it with comic books. Then he would start out for school, but he would turn right a block before the school and head for the river. It was only a few blocks, across Broadway, across Fort Washington Avenue, then down a little street to a footbridge across the Henry Hudson Parkway.

  When Donald Chen, Chen Chi-Wing, crossed that footbridge, he entered a little park. There were trees there; the river flowed past, with the wild jungles of New Jersey on the other side. Stretching over everything, so big that he couldn’t see the whole thing at once, was the George Washington Bridge.

  He knew how to climb the bridge. No other kid he knew was able to do it. The only hard part, really, was scrambling up the bottom part, which was like a wall. Once he got to the big steel beams, it was easy to go from one to the other. With his schoolbag hanging from his belt, he climbed. The steel beams, that looked like spider webs from the little park below the bridge, were big enough to walk on. They slanted up, meeting other beams—roads leading to roads.

  He worked his way up to the place where the bridge curves out over the river. He could hear the cars and trucks rumbling over his head. The river flowed slowly beneath him, and boats passed underneath. Pigeons fluttered and sea gulls glided beneath and about him, but he didn’t pay much attention. He just checked these things when he arrived in the morning to make sure everything was still the same. Then he would open his schoolbag.

  Donald read comic books all day. He read Skywolf, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, and Plastic Man. He read Batman, Airboy, The Spirit, and Superman. They were real people. They were strong. Everybody respected them. Crooks were afraid of them.

  The steel beams of the bridge were made in the shape of a letter H. There was room for Donald to sit inside the H, and when he lay on his stomach, nobody could see him. As he read the comics, the rumbling of the cars on the bridge sounded farther away, and after a while it would fade out, and Donald would read his comics in silence.

  In the afternoon, Donald would leave the bridge. It always made him sad to realize that school would be letting out, and it was time to go home. As he crossed the little footbridge over the highway, his feet felt heavy, as though he were tired. When he got home, his father would give him a bowl of vegetable soup, and Donald would do some work in the laundry. His father never caught on that Donald was not going to school.

  Donald went to the bridge for a long time. It was getting to be real winter. It snowed a couple of times, but Donald never minded the cold. He put a few comic books under him, and was very comfortable.

  When Donald met Wingman, he met him on the bridge. Donald looked up from the Aquaman story he was reading, and there was someone standing over him, legs apart, balancing on the edges of the beam. He had steel armor that covered his body, his arms and legs were bare, and he carried a long sword. On his
head he wore a strange pointed helmet, and over his shoulders a cape made of gray feathers. It looked like a pair of wings. He seemed to shine all over. He was Chinese.

  Donald held his breath. The shining figure looked stern and friendly at once. Suddenly, with a rush of feathers, the figure jumped off the beam. Donald felt his heart thump once, hard. He realized all at once that it was very high up and dangerous on the bridge; he had never thought about it before. At the same moment, he looked down over the side. The man in armor was gone. Donald knew he could not have fallen all that way at once. He looked up and saw something like a big gray bird disappear, flying into the sun.

  Donald thought about what he had seen. It seemed that the winged man had just lighted on his particular beam by accident, as pigeons sometimes did, not knowing Donald was there. And just as the pigeons did, he had flown away when Donald had looked at him. Donald decided to be careful not to look at him if he came back. That way, maybe he would stay.

  Donald was too excited to read anymore. Usually he could read comics anytime. He even read comics the two times his family had been kicked out of their apartment. He read comics the day his mother went to the hospital. But Wingman’s appearance excited him. He had never seen anything like him outside a comic book. Now he was impatient with the stories, and the colors looked dull.

  Donald stopped reading and looked out over the river. The sky was blue and clear. A tugboat in the distance made puffs of white smoke. Sea gulls soared and dived, calling to one another. Donald noticed that his nose was running. He thought he might bring his jacket the next day.

  Donald didn’t see Wingman again that day. He thought about him. He remembered every tiny moment. Sometimes he remembered so clearly that he could almost see him. Almost, but not quite. At night he dreamed Wingman’s appearance again and again.

  The next day Donald climbed to his beam and opened his schoolbag. Police Comics Number 58: Plastic Man Meets the Green Terror; but he didn’t really read. He just turned the pages and waited for Wingman. He went through comic after comic, waiting. Then he got involved in a Captain Marvel story. Mr. Mind, a tiny worm in a general’s uniform, was the head of a gang called “Mr. Mind’s Monster Society of Evil,” and Captain Marvel was trying to stop them from stealing two magical black pearls. As Donald read, the bridge noises faded away and things became silent.