The Blue Afternoon

Carriscant entered the little cream-coloured cable car and moved up to the front where he took his seat. I waited until it was about to depart and slipped in at the last moment and stood at the door. There was a small jolt and the car began to move down the gradient towards the busy streets below. It was a clear night, so clear I could see the lights of Huntington Park and Montebello and, over to the south, the glow of big orange flares burning at the Dominguez oilfields at Compton.

I followed Carriscant as he crossed Hill and walked over to Main Street. The sidewalks here were busy: on either side of the street were movie theatres, burlesque joints and dime museums, pe

He did not seem at all surprised to see me, which made me irritated for a moment and made me regret my impulsiveness. He rose halfway from his seat and tipped his hat in a formulaic gesture of politeness. The act seemed to remind him he had the thing on his head and he removed it carefully, setting it down on the empty seat beside him, then he brushed his hair flat with the palms of his hands in two slow stroking movements. He looked fatigued, much older suddenly, and the bright lights of the lunch room cast sharp shadows across his face making the prominent lines deep, like gashes. I took the seat opposite him.

'I would offer you some food – ' he began.

'No, no. I came to see you. Your letter… You said you needed help.'

'I do, indeed I do.' He smiled at me. 'Did you follow me here?'

'Yes.'

He chuckled. 'Dear Kay.'

I ignored this. 'Are you in trouble?'

'Trouble?' He appeared to think about the word, as if pondering its semantics. 'Not exactly, but I do need help. I am a total stranger, you see. Total.'

A waiter brought him his food, a large plate of dark pasty stew with mashed potatoes and what looked like squash. He ostentatiously searched for the meat and then cut the few cartilaginous strips deliberately into small cubes before begi

'More meat on a wren's shin,' he muttered, angrily. 'This is disgraceful food,' he said. 'There's no excuse, in this country of all places. I would have cooked myself but there are no facilities at the lodging house.'

'Do you like to cook?' I knew I was making conversation, gauche conversation, and disliked myself for it, but I felt strangely awkward with him, as if in responding to his invitation I had somehow lost the advantage of our encounters. He, by contrast, appeared very relaxed and smiled patiently at me.

'I am a cook. I love cooking.'

What do you mean? It's your job?'

'Yes. At least it has been for the last fifteen years.'

'On your letter you signed yourself "Doctor".'

'I was a doctor first, then a cook.'

He ate his meal with surprising speed, as if someone was likely to snatch his plate away, with a concentration and energy that were almost alarming. After he had finished he said he was tired and did not wish to talk further. We walked back towards the funicular – the 'Angel flight' – that would take us back up to Bunker Hill. He was silent but I noticed he was looking about him at the city almost fearfully, awestruck by its scale and business, its din and brightness.

His skin under the diffused electric light of the street took on marked olive tones, to the extent that he might have passed for a Mexican or Latino, and I thought again of this gift of patrimony he had brought me and how preposterous it was. My own skin was pale and insipid beside his. Shared dark hair and brown eyes made a flimsy case in a paternity suit.

At the door of his lodging house we made an appointment to meet the next day. The little men sat on the steps up to the front door where we had left them an hour since: they stared at me curiously, with no malice or hostility.

'Why are there so many Japanese here?' I asked him quietly.

He turned and spoke to the men on the steps in a language I did not recognise. They all laughed, with genuine hilarity, it seemed.

'Japanese?' he said, reproachfully. 'These men are Filipinos.'

SEVEN

I sat with Salvador Carriscant on the slatted wooden bench of a red car as it rolled and rattled as we crossed over Pico Boulevard at Sawtelle and headed out westward through the beanfields towards Santa Monica. Here and there the boulevard was being widened and long stretches of the small one-storey shops had been flattened to take the new roadway. Soon everyone would be able to drive to the beach. The trolley car stopped at the Ocean Avenue depot and Carriscant and I wandered down to Ocean Park. Once again I noticed that the press of people, the noise and the vivid colours of the sunshades seemed both to attract and disarm him. We stood at the Japanese gambling galleries watching men and women gambling for merchandise rather than money, and strolled past the beach clubs and the many piers, the loop-the-loop and the ride-the-clouds attractions; the air jangling with the shouts of children and the fretful buzz of the speedboats carrying anglers from the shore to the fishing barges-old mastless schooners, and wooden-hulled clippers-anchored a hundred yards or so out in the ocean. Only the Monkey Farm seemed to upset him. The crowd around the cages was six deep and when we managed to push through to see what the lure was I saw the expression on his face change at once from curiosity to disgust when he contemplated the melancholy chimpanzees and the neurotic mangy gibbons in their close-barred pens. He took hold of my elbow and steered me away.

'What's wrong?' I asked.

'Those monkeys in the cages, I don't like it… They remind me of someone.' He changed the subject. 'Let's eat,' he said. 'I want to eat fish.'

We went to one of the new apartment hotels, the Sovereign, which had a public dining room. Carriscant ordered broiled Spanish mackerel which he ate with his usual concentration. 'This is fresh,' he said, grudgingly, 'the best food I've tasted in America.'

The success of the menu dispelled the anger caused by the Monkey Farm and I sensed he was begi

'I could never get enough fish,' he said, 'for all those years, even though we were not far from the coast. We sold all the fish we caught.'

I did not press him, or ask him what 'those years' were he was referring to. There would be time enough later for interrogation, and, besides, I thought he would tell me everything in his own good time, if he felt like it. I realised that this jaunt to the sea was just a means for him and me to become further acquainted – very much the father reestablishing his relationship with his long-lost daughter-and my silence, my reticence, encouraged this mood and that would please him, I knew.

And then I wondered why I should want to please him, why I was encouraging this-what?-this friendship, this evolving relationship. He knew my date of birth, but what did that prove? He knew what time of day I was born but that could have been an inspired guess, a lucky shot… But there was a quality of confidence about his dealings with me that seemed different, indicated a fundamental certainty of purpose that I felt no trickster or flim-flam man could simulate. It was not striven for, did not seek to impress. He appeared relaxed in my company – as if my company were all that he wanted-and that in turn relaxed me.