"New Year’s Eve on Chew Avenue"

Railroad Train to Heaven, the first volume of the memoirs of Arnold Schnabel, will soon be available at long last in a handsome large-format paperback edition, as well as an “e-book”, but in the meantime, and in lieu of any new episodes of Arnold’s chef-d'œuvre at this time, we present again one of our hero’s most beloved sonnets, originally published in the Olney Times for January 4, 1963; two weeks later he would be in a padded cell at the Philadelphia State Mental Hospital at Byberry.




New Year’s Eve on Chew Avenue

It’s New Year’s Eve, it seems we’ve made it,
if only barely, through another year;
the terror, if not gone, has abated
into a dull and grey persistent fear.
My mother’s sound asleep by eleven,
so I go to the VFW,
shove to the bar of this drunkard’s heaven,
and say, “Pat, if you please, I’ll trouble you
for a Schmidt’s, backed with an Old Forester,
and keep them coming till I say not to,
or until you throw me out; whatever;
do what your conscience says that you’ve got to.”
I take that first sacred drink of cold beer:
“Happy new (let’s hope it’s not our last) year.”




(New episodes of Arnold’s adventures will appear in the coming year, and, who knows, perhaps even poems.)

An Arnold Schnabel Potpourri, Vol. 3

The new year will bring us, at long last, the publication of the first volume of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs, Railroad Train to Heaven™and our staff of volunteers and graduate interns are now busily preparing the e-book edition as well; in the meantime, here is another collection of bons mots from that first volume... 



I walked down the windy dark empty street to Congress and turned right, and down the block and a half to the VFW. It’s just a plain long building, dull and brown, it’s windows made out of filmy glass bricks like ice cubes. I opened the door and went in. The first thing I heard was Steve’s distinctive tenor, singing along to a song on the jukebox called “Be My Baby”. And there he was in the middle of the crowded bar, waving a beer mug in time to the music.

Amazingly, it didn’t look like anyone wanted to beat him up.



****




…I slowly recognized her as a pretty but somewhat somber face I had seen around town in past summers, each year a little taller and a lot more — what’s the word? Imperious? Or even like the way the Blessed Mother looks in some old paintings, beautiful and calm but somehow somewhat bored or even miffed about something.

By the way I just want to interpolate that if despite my present lamentable state of willy-nilly agnosticism there really is a Blessed Virgin I mean no disrespect by the above sentence or, now that I look at it again, should I say sentence fragment.




****




I felt like a ghost wandering through a carnival swarming with mad midgets.




****

Universes collapsed, stars exploded and disappeared, new galaxies burst into creation, gods and entire races lived and died as she went into her little kitchenette and took a bottle of Gordon’s gin and poured healthy drams into two of the Flintstones glasses that my aunts had supplied the apartment with. She came up to me and handed me one of the drinks.




****

I turned and walked out, closing the door behind me. I walked gingerly over to the bathroom, went in, closed the door, unzipped, and splashed cold water from the tap onto the offending portion of myself.




****




Their words passed into my ears and out again, leaving only the vaguest impressions on my brain.




****



Miss Rathbone sat down and poured Steve a glass of ice water.

He thanked her, lifted the glass and drank it all, his Adam’s apple palpitating like a small creature trapped in his throat.




****




I could never describe the complex of emotions, hidden but obvious, conversation, superficial but fraught with meaning, all of it somehow managing to be deeply boring but completely unmemorable, which ensued in the next three minutes of chatter among the old women and Miss Evans.




*****



I said nothing. What could I say? It seems to me that for years I talked to people, and they talked to me, primarily in a sort of code composed almost entirely of clichés, a code whose purpose was not the transmission of meaning but the lack of meaning.


****

People were starting to come back from the beach, blistered-red, sweating and weary, looking as if they had been through a battle. Even the little children hobbled and staggered as though on a death march, or else were carried by their sandal-dragging parents or brave older siblings.

****



Real life always comes back to bring us down to planet earth even in the midst of our most exalted philosophizing, and so it was that I realized that I had to urinate.

****

I didn’t know what to say, which is not unusual for me of course. However, after many years of social doltishness, I’ve gradually realized that people are much more comfortable if you say something, anything other than saying a great resonant nothing…



****



Next thing I knew we were in a café drinking peppermint schnapps, and pretty soon after that I was being frog-marched into a brothel, gibbering with fright as if I were being dragged to the gibbet. And as terrified as I was going in I was even more terrified an hour later when I shuffled out, expecting a lightning bolt to strike me down at any moment and cast my wretched unshriven soul screaming hellward.

****

It occurred to me that I was happy.

How odd.

****



(Fear not, fans –  brand new and exciting chapters of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs will be appearing in this space soon.)

An Arnold Schhnabel Potpourri, Vol. 2

John Facenda: "The Voice of God"

We are very close to the publication – in both paper and electronic forms – of Volume One of Arnold Schnabel’s 73-volume memoir, which shall bear the title Railroad Train to Heaven; in the meantime here is  a second culling of literary bouquets from that volume, ideal for those who  have short attention spans:

A yellow Oldsmobile hissed slowly by, and Steve stood across the street, under his now seemingly repaired umbrella, or perhaps another one. He waved, and then he disappeared, into thin air, or rather into thick rainy air.

****

It was odd, but just watching her do something so simple as shaking the water off of her umbrella made me want to go to bed with her.

****



By this time the women were getting back to work on the food. Elektra asked if she could help with anything, but they all said no. Elektra asked again, they said no again. Then one more time around.

I wondered if I could take getting married if it meant listening to all these repetitious verbal rituals, and it occurred to me that I would probably just be a typical man and leave the women to their own arcane devices.

****

I was afraid this was going to happen, my Aunt Edith’s famous duck’s blood soup. I realized now that they had really gone the whole hog, reverting back to their dark past in a little village in Germany, and that Charlie had brought the duck over still alive. Thank God I had slept through that. I had stood witness once as my aunts killed a duck and then held it upside down to let it bleed into a bowl. It was not an experience I wanted ever to repeat.



****


John Facenda came on with the news. We watched it for a bit. Some gang in England had robbed a train of £2.6 million.



“When I grow up I’m gonna be a train robber,” said Kevin. “No offense; I know you used to work on the railroad.”

****

The ladies had also brought out the good china, which I find annoying to eat off of. It’s got all this fancy gilt along its scalloped edges which when you wield your knife and fork upon it makes for an awful scraping noise like desperate mice trapped behind a chalkboard.

Kevin and I sat; for some reason he always sits immediately to my left when we eat. Or is it I who always sits to his right?

****

It was almost twilight now, the rain had abated to a salty thin spray that seemed not to fall but to shimmer in the air. The air smelled of honeysuckle and gladioli, of wet dirt and the ocean. I sat down in my usual rocker, lit up a Pall Mall, and stared out at the street, covered like a forest floor with gleaming green leaves and fallen brown twigs.

****

“You don’t understand women. We’re always submitting ourselves to absurd situations. It’s our lot in life.”



****

The misty rain had stopped, but the light that just a few minutes before had brightly colored the street had now fallen away. A silence fell, or was allowed to resume, but it was still rather windy out, so this was the silence of wet leaves hissing in the trees, of fallen leaves scudding along the street like flotsam in a river, and, from seemingly far away but only a few blocks away, the ocean endlessly crashing at the edge of the continent.



****



I was having one "first" after another these days, and in my forty-two years this was the first time I had shared an umbrella with a woman who was not my mother. I took the umbrella, it seemed the gentlemanly thing to do, walking on the street side of the pavement, as I had somewhere heard the gentleman was supposed to.

For some reason we hadn’t been talking as we walked; I can’t account for Elektra but for me it seemed redundant and meaningless to add anything to the sound of the rain drumming on the umbrella, the murmuring of the wind.

****



If I must go into a bar, and apparently sometimes I must, I prefer to slip in quietly, the unknown quiet man quietly drinking his beer or Manhattan. The last thing I need is a bar full of hearty fellows clapping me on the back and asking me how it’s going.

****

I walked down the windy dark empty street to Congress and turned right, and down the block and a half to the VFW. It’s just a plain long building, dull and brown, it’s windows made out of filmy glass bricks like ice cubes. I opened the door and went in. The first thing I heard was Steve’s distinctive tenor, singing along to a song on the jukebox called “Be My Baby”. And there he was in the middle of the crowded bar, waving a beer mug in time to the music.

Amazingly, it didn’t look like anyone wanted to beat him up.

****

As I came out though I saw a woman in a long gown in the dark hallway. Her hair was dark gold.

My immediate thought was, “Oh, great, now it’s the Blessed Mother, this is all I need.”

And I was ready to walk right past her or through her without a word, but she said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

“You’re Arnold, right?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to sigh.

The whole Holy Family had it in for me, or so it seemed. And where was Joseph?

****

I digress, but after all this is my memoir and no one will ever read it anyway, probably not even its author.

****

(New and thrilling chapters of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs will return after the publication of Volume One. )

An Arnold Schnabel Potpourri, Vol. 1

Yes, if all goes well we should be publishing Volume One of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs within the next couple of weeks, in both paper and electronic forms, but in the meantime, in lieu of any new episodes at this time, we present this selection of bons mots culled from that volume, suitable for recitation at dinner parties or literary gatherings, or for private pondering in the dark watches of a sleepless night:

I did something I should not have done yesterday. Against not only several doctors’ orders but my own personal experience and supposed good sense, I had one too many last night, all right, perhaps two, what am I saying, three, all right, say four, four too many considering two is my limit and I had six, but no, wait, I think I had seven.

****

The day after my previously recounted escapade at the Pilot House was no worse than what might have been expected, viz., killing hangover, suicidal depression, pathetic and meaningless remorse and guilt, and unremitting boredom relieved only by an infinite self-loathing, in other words nothing to get excited about, just another day at Villa Schnabel.

****

She arrived, stepping in from the still-bright but dying summer daylight. I suppose she felt she looked radiant. Her hair was like some modernistic light fixture with a hundred watt bulb turned on inside it. She wore a flowery dress of what looked and eventually felt like wallpaper, and she reeled towards me on high heels.

****

The waiter handed me a wine list. All I knew was you were supposed to drink red wine with meat and white with fish. But she had ordered lobster and meat, making the choice impossible. I settled on a bottle of Mateus rosé.

****

I kissed her. It didn’t kill me to do so. And for once I surrendered, and I fell, and it was as if a great part of me finally opened up to life. Previously I had felt that nothing could be quite as pleasant as lying in bed on a cool afternoon with nothing to do, staring at the ceiling and dreaming of a world beyond this world, but now I was not so sure.

****

Her eyes, which seemed suddenly to have grown enormously, looked into mine. I felt as if I could fall into them. So here I was, precariously suspended between being thrust backward out into the stars or falling into this interior universe which seemed to me just as unknowable.

****

Perhaps life didn’t have to be so difficult after all. Perhaps I had been denying myself life itself all my life in the service of some random superstition. After all, what if I had been born a Hindu, or a Pygmy, or a Hottentot...

****

The air was cool and clean and fresh, the ocean wind smelled alive with the grace of the universe, of seaweed and salt and bushels of glistening fresh oysters, and so naturally I had to have a cigarette.

****

I awoke next morning feeling odd. Well, I should say, odder than usual. I lay there and realized that one odd thing I was feeling was not hungover. So that was one good thing about marijuana.



****


People were slowly walking up the bright street, in their bathing suits, carrying their umbrellas and beach chairs and blankets and towels, in this already stifling and blazing heat. They were quite mad, to go to the beach on such a day. But then of course it was their vacation and they wanted to get their money's worth. But they were mad nonetheless. They would broil on that merciless beach like so many lobsters. Even I was not that insane.

****

My aunts and mother tend never actually to eat a meal, per se. One of them will eat half a slice of toast, say, and then pass it on to one of her sisters. If it’s a big holiday meal, forget it, they won’t even sit down for more than a minute at a time. There’s no changing them. And yet they’re all rather solid somehow, and strong, albeit very short. They’re almost like the remnants of some race of immortal and stoutly-built dwarves who have emerged from the darkest depths of the Schwarzwald to dwell for a time among men.

****

I sat in the shade of an oak tree while Kevin crept down to stare at the ducks. He stopped at the water’s edge and crouched down. Some ducks slowly glided back and forth along the water’s surface. They looked bored, but then it was a hot day.

****

The shop was busy on this rainy day, what else was there to do for poor vacationers? Well, at least this was one day when they wouldn’t have to lie in the blistering heat of the beach, their flesh burning, their children wailing. They could drag themselves and their families into places like this and eat pie and ice cream.
What joy.

****

When I awoke again I felt much better, very rested. The rain was still coming down, but much more lightly now, and the wind had settled too. The green of the leaves on the oak tree outside my window sparkled dully, like seaweed in clear water.

****