Unto One Of These

_____

If We Make It Through December

I saw my old sparring partner, Victor, hurrying along St. James with an armful of parcels. At first, he pretended not to see me, but then stopped—compelled, I supposed, by the goodwill of the season.

"How are we, how are we," he kept repeating his words, somewhat jittery.

"Eh what's up Victor?"

"Nothing at all, nothing at all. Why would you say that? Aha... though I saw your brother just the other day," he added.

"Max? I haven’t seen him in years," I replied, thrown by the sudden mention.

"Yes, yes... Max, that's him." Victor rubbed his nose with a gloved finger.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, forget it entirely.”

"Come on, what gives?"

"Well... the thing is... ha, ahem..."

"Yes?"

"Well, when I saw him—meaning, of course, when he saw me, as it were—"

"Yes?"

"He was sitting on the street, you know?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well... it’s like this: he was on the street... with a box... and a blanket."

"A box and a blanket?"

"Yes, a cardboard box. One of those big ones they might deliver a refrigerator in... or maybe a large chair."

"What are you talking about, Victor?"

"But he looked in high spirits! His cheeks were certainly rosy, oh yes, quite healthy indeed!"

Victor was shifting from foot to foot, looking more awkward with each word.

"Oh well... what can one say? What should one say?"

"You mean..."

"Yes..." Victor was almost dancing in his leather loafers. Ridiculous footwear for the weather. A tap on his back and he'd have slid all the way down the street.

"Yes, yes..." He continued.

"Where did you see him?"

"Well, Beggleys. The department store. A fine location, oh yes. A prime location!"

"Victor!"

"Well, maybe it wasn’t him. I can't be sure."

I hated Victor, but I could see his clumsy attempt at lying was, for him, a sort of kindness. We shook hands and wished each other a Merry Christmas, and I watched him slide away into the evening crowd. Women in fur shawls clacked past, arms full of bright paper packages. I stood there, fixed in place, pondering what he’d told me.

True, it had been a years since I'd seen Max.. What could have happened in such a time? I thought of footing it straight to where Victor had described. But to what end? To confront him in whatever miserable predicament he found himself in? It required thought.

I walked home, the shrill wind biting at my ears and nose. I thought of Christmases long ago, how once Max had filled my pyjamas pockets with snowballs while I slept, causing me to wet the bed.

I entered the warmth of home, where Marianna was busy preparing a traditional salted cod baccalà. The dog lay by the fire, legs sprawled in the air. Jacob was cutting out paper angels, his lips powdered with sugar mice.

I kissed them both and sat in my study chair watching the snow drift loosely along the street. The room was cold, bathed in the phosphorus glow of moonlight on the deepening snow outside.

That night I dreamt of a dark hill scattered with frozen headstones. Skeletons rose from the earth, their bones rattling beneath long wool coats. Annoyed, I scolded them for disturbing the newly laid graves. Shortly after Max appeared, and gave me a hug, then put me into a headlock and stuffed my mouth with snow. Laughing, he climbed back into the earth, tugging the snow over himself like a newly laundered bed sheet.

Silver Bells

I called in sick to the bank then next morning and hurried to the place Victor had described. I took a seat in Café Rotund, a small brasserie, across the road from Beggley’s, hiding my face in the window seat behind the patisserie menu. Out of nerves, I ordered a schnitzel. Then, a pain au chocolat, two cortados and a schnapps. In a strange daze, I found myself ordering my way down the menu.

It wasn't until noon, when Max appeared.

He was barely recognisable beneath a thick, bristling beard and an engineer's cap pulled low over his brow. Dishevelled and gaunt, yet unmistakably my brother. He spread out a blanket, circled it carefully, then settled down cross-legged, a tin cup at his feet. There he waited, still as a hunter in a trap.

Tears filled my eyes. I ordered another schnapps. A tableau of passersby drifted around him—shoppers, nannies with prams, businessmen with wives in silk scarves and tailored coats. Some paused to drop a coin in his cup, but most hurried past. A brass band played. while a man in a baggy Santa suit rang a bell and bellowed "Ho Ho Ho."

I had to intervene, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how. A gray sleet drove in like rain.

I ordered three more beers and a cinnamon torte. I sat rooted to the spot. Eventually dusk settled, casting a warm glow from the shop fronts onto passing faces. Max remained unmoved, occasionally rattling his cup at the crowd, only to set it back down again.

What was this all about? I couldn’t square it. Was it real? A sad cry for pity? A philosophical exercise? Absurdist art? No matter how I turned it, I couldn't understand.

At last, as the evening crowd thinned, he stood, folded his blanket over his shoulder, and slipped into the dark with his cup in hand. I had time for a final limoncello before stumbling out into the frost-bitten air.

I returned home just as if everything were as usual, mentioning nothing to Marianna. Outside it snowed. I calmed myself with a Glenn Moray. I wondered what part I played in my brother’s downfall. He was never a one to confront head-on about his feelings. He was a loner; a wolf without a pack. A man of high ideals. But noble philosophies make thin bedsheets.

I rolled a satsuma under my thumb, pressing its fragrant skin to my nose. Its scent conjured memories of Christmases long past, a time when the fevered hope of possibility and promise filled every thought, unspoiled by the realisation that such dreams could never be wholly realised.

All those years gone by.

I Wonder As I Wander

I worked all morning but couldn’t shake the image of Max from my mind. I should speak to him, I thought, embrace him, bring him home.

I took an early lunch. I tightened a woollen scarf around my ears and pulled a trapper hat over my brow. I passed him, unrecognised, and dropped a coin into his cup, prompting a rattling gesture of thanks. He nodded.

I turned to look at him. He was gaunt and ghostly. Still, no words came to me. Momentarily he looked up; I diverted my eyes, then looked back. But I sensed no recognition. His eyes were distant and hollow- a living spectre. I longed to grab him by the shoulders and shake out of him whatever had happened. But I was mute. My body moved beyond my control. I wished to ask, but imperceptibly I found myself turning my back and walking on. And still, I couldn’t leave the scene. I headed across the road, back into the Café Rotund, and reflexively ordered an almond liqueur.

In some respects, none of this was new. It had become customary over the years for me to provide Max with a kind of fiduciary “support,” though usually dressed up as investment. Three Christmases past he'd talked me into a new investment; bouncy-castles modelled after famous landmarks, saying profits would soon “inflate.”

He'd turned up drunk on Christmas Eve, slept the night, and urinated on the sofa. We woke to the sound of alarms and a house filled with acrid smoke after he attempted to dry the cushion covers in the oven. He left Christmas morning early with my signature on a guarantee.

By spring, he’d cleared out to Italy, leaving me with a garage stacked to the rafters with inflatable Taj Mahals.

Marianna scolded me. It was a compulsion, a way of soothing some restless, unresolved part of myself.

“You shouldn’t be alone with him,” she warned. “You need a chaperone.”

And she wasn’t wrong. Life was simpler without Max. Not because he was a bad person... he wasn’t immoral, exactly. He seemed instead to occupy a strange, sidelong category of being unmoral: a man outside the usual weather systems of conscience.

Yet here I was again, passing by, dropping coins that clattered too loudly into his cup. I kept telling myself I would speak to him, really speak to him, but whenever I opened my mouth the words vanished into the frozen air.

And so it went, day after day. Coins became notes, and soon I was slipping handfuls of folded bills into his hand, a silent exchange, punctuated only by the faintest nod between us.

I would take breakfast and lunch nearby; consuming anything from a variety of Greek yogurt, mixed fruit, English muffins, bacon, poached eggs, Spanish ham, salami, French toast, brioche, toast, crepes & pancakes with honey or syrup. Accompanied with a cappuccino and later a Dutch beer.

Each evening, I found myself inventing excuses for Marianna, choosing instead to take supper alone in the window booth at Café Rotund.

From there, I could watch Max lingering on his stoop. I watched him closely. His stillness at the edge of the darkening street. The wind herding the last stragglers of the holiday crowd. And yet, despite everything, there remained something almost noble in his position. His plain, unbe­leaguered stare, looked matter-of-fact. Untroubled. Free, in a way. Freer than any man I knew.

I waited... waited for that quiet moment when he would rise, stretch the stiffness from his back, and disappear into the night, off to whatever shadowed avenue he called home.

Some nights I delayed coming home, sitting in the emptying restaurant. The waiting staff wore bored and luckless expressions, like animals in a zoo on a Monday morning.

A waitress with her hair tied up approached me. I ordered a bowl of borscht, and she hovered for a while beside the table.

“Christmas,” she sighed.

“An unavoidable destination...” I said.

“The Trainwreck at the year’s end,”

I ordered a schnapps, along with a side of olives stuffed with almonds.

It went like this on the days in the run-up to Christmas. I was a somber man. I found myself increasingly avoidant of returning home. When I did, it stirred a sense of restlessness.

Marianna and Jacob had decorated the tree without me. It sat winking quietly in the corner of the room, lit by a multitude of little tapers and a menagerie of glass curiosities. Somewhere in the branches hung a drummer boy with painted rosy cheeks, a red and gold metal fire engine, and a felt dormouse. I was lifted momentarily but quickly slid back down. All the brightest illuminations and distractions couldn't prevent the inevitable descent. My heart was a lagoon of sorrow.

Jacob jumped into my lap before bed.

"Do you remember Christmas when you were my age?" he asked.

Of course I did. I remembered the smell of the tree sap and spiced biscuits, the incandescent glow that shone in everybody's eye. I was back there in a moment, when Max and I were young. Snow piled as high as the hedgerows; dark evenings where the moon glowed across the snow-draped fields, our little home glowed with warmth and hope.

It was a time when each day unwrapped itself with a small excitement, like opening an advent door en route to Christmas Day itself.

I thought of Max and myself at Jacob’s age, both in matching pyjamas, opening the window on a freezing Christmas Eve to listen for the distant tinkle of bells. What was this time travel the season brought on? Christmas is a bridge between tomorrow's hopes and the dreams of yesterday.

I wiped a tear from my eye and put Jacob down; he ran up to bed.

Marianna did not speak.

Outside, the sky had begun to clear, and the last snow clouds hung tethered in the dark expanse. The bare branches of the naked trees shimmered with ice.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Christmas Eve, I was at my cubicle, blackening my ledger. Turning zeros into ones, then ones back into zeros.

My co-workers had gathered nearby, speaking in low, funereal murmurs. Barrowman from Accounts wheeled over.

“What is it? You look peeky—yellow fever? The plague?” he said. “Walking Corpse Syndrome? Working Stiff Disease?”

“What do you want, Barrowman?”

“Have you been in yet?” he whispered, jerking his chin toward the manager’s office. It was appraisal day, and the rumor mill was in full swing.

“How bad is it?”

“You haven’t heard? Rock bottom. Rates are high, stocks are low, nothing’s flowing in the right direction…” He waggled a hand in a vague manner. “Something something…”

“No bonus,” I said.

“No bonus,” he confirmed gravely. “No new bike for Timmy. No dolly for Sally.”

“What am I going to do?” I sighed.

“What can we do? We’re cutting out at four, heading to McGinley’s.”

“I have plans.”

“Ah. The family man. A noble creature in dark times.” He rolled away again.

Another year of desk-bound sterility, and this was my prize. Thoughts crowded in quickly.

They released us early, and I drifted out to clear my head, wandering aimlessly down Rove Avenue. The freezing air gnawed at my ears. Families streamed out of the theaters, their laughter spilling into the icy night. How was I going to make Christmas happen? Presents had been bought on credit. Whatever cash I’d had, I’d poured into Max’s cup. What a sap. I was in the red, and not in the festive way.

A foggy heaviness descended. A suffocating weight. I felt cursed. Somehow, once again, Max had relieved me of my Christmas wage. It was suddenly, blindingly clear—it was I who was the problem. The grand enabler. Fate extended a single bony finger and it pointed downward.

How would I explain this to Marianna? I invented excuses of being pickpocketed, ambushed in an alley, beaten senseless by a marauding gang. Tales of confidence tricksters, professional fraudsters who prey on the generous and weak.

I found myself at Café Rotund. Max was nowhere to be seen. He was probably high on his horse by now; drunk, merry, treating the world and his wife to drinks bought with my pay.

I ordered a Japanese whiskey, pretzels and a wheat beer.

I would have liked to have seen Max, I thought. I would have liked to punch him square in the nose. Somehow, despite everything, he’d conned me again. What a performance. A scam, a fix, a diabolical masquerade. Professional panhandling at its finest.

The Café Rotund grew busier and louder as the evening wore on. The bar filled with office workers, their ties askew and faces flushed, and desperate Christmas Eve revelers.

I stayed put, working my way through the top shelf; schnapps, a Japanese whiskey, clarified butter rum, highball, snowball, lowball.

The waitress came over. "At least I have to work here," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"I’m down and out," I replied. “I'm on the losing end.” I feel like the rug’s been pulled... The rug, the floorboards, the lot."

I looked about at the faceless drunk crowd.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I said.

“I’ve got enough trouble with the living.” She said.

"They walk right out the past, through your life and back out again."

She walked away. I wondered what it would be like to go home with her.

I imagined she had a small one-bedroom flat. A cat curled up on a threadbare chair, a small twinkling tree in a paint pot beneath the sloping roof of the kitchenette. She’d mix snowball and change out of her uniform. She’d put on a record collection, something slow, Chuck Berry, Merry Christmas Baby. "You sure did treat me nice..." She might dance very slowly, her back to me.

I got up and staggered into the cold, feeling heady. Across the street, people were milling around the neon glow of a basement bar, I could see snow starting to fall.

A man in a suit and a Santa hat was urinating on a stop sign. Three drunks sang Silent Night before turning the corner.

Light flakes of snow were beginning to wet my cheeks.

The house was still. Perfectly wrapped presents encircled the tree, which glimmered in the dim light. I ate a chicken leg and went upstairs. Outside, the cold wind roared.

Marianna lay sleeping, her slender back pale and porcelain in the moonlight. She stirred as I climbed into bed beside her, her eyes glimmering faintly in the dark.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Walking,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“I mean… where have you been these last few weeks? It’s like you’ve disappeared.”

“I…” I stuttered, but no words came. Then, haltingly, I began to spill the story of Max and the money. How he was homeless, and how I’d used up the Christmas bonus in a misguided attempt to help him.

She didn't say anything, but she held me. Her arms were soft and warm. The guilt in my chest burned cold. She was an angel flown down from the very top of the tree, while I—what was I? A fool. A jester. A Lord of Misrule in my own chamber.

We lay in silence, drifting in and out of sleep. Near dawn, I awoke. Outside, the first faint glimmers tinged the sky. It was Christmas morning.

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day

“I have to find him,” I said softly.

Marianna stirred. “Who?”

“Max,” I said. “It’s Christmas Day. I have to find him and bring him home.”

She stayed silent. It was barely light. I slipped out of bed and made my way downstairs. The house was still and dark; the floorboards were cold. I pulled on my galoshes and wrapped my long overcoat over my pyjamas, bracing myself as I stepped outside into the cold, fragrant air.

The snow had stiffened into a fine crust. I walked with my breath clouding the air and my thoughts circling endlessly. A light, powdered snow began to fall.

As I trudged, the pain in my ankle fell into a nagging, frozen throb. Houses slept, their windows glowing faintly, frosted with icy halos in the softening dark.

I limped through the streets, the cold seeping into my bones. Snowflakes swirled in the air, catching on my coat and stinging my face.

For the first time in weeks, a quietness settled over me. I passed the chapel of St. Matthew. It neared six, and as I passed, I heard its bells ring out in solemn celebration. I wandered through the city, eventually arriving at Beggley’s. Its usually busy streets were deserted. I followed the direction from which my brother would usually disappear, imagining the path he might have taken:

Through St. James, where the gardens lay heavy under snow. Across Langston Bridge, arching over the cold, grey water. Along Torrington Mews and past the galleries on Dashfield Street. Everywhere, the city was quiet and empty—sweetened by snow, it was an idealised version of itself.

It was near mid-morning when I passed the hotels on Belgrove Avenue. I looked as I passed down the alleys between the buildings and saw a curious congregation gathered outside the service door of the Moritz. A ragged bunch were in communion with a collection of busboys finishing up their night shifts. I moved closer.

Kitchen leftovers were being handed about. Sides of rich dishes and cans of preserved fruit were passed into waiting hands. Those that were served sat upon pallets and fruit crates, eating together in quiet accord. At their feet, a stray cat picked scraps of salmon and turkey bones.

It was a holy tableau. The signature piece of an old master, gilded in the morning sun now peering through the heavy clouds.

There, amongst them all, was my brother. Humbled and silent, his still face almost angelic.

“And low was I not the beggar with battered and bruised feet..”

It was a miracle of sorts. To have found him on this gold and silver morning.

I watched around the corner. Others joined them and passed bottles of leftover house wine between them.

After a while, the busboys gathered the dishes, retreated inside, and closed the door. The gathering broke away. Some together but mostly apart; thin figures slipping silently in separate directions.

I followed my brother, who walked alone through the swirling snow. It fell thickly—large, fat flakes that caught on my cheeks and blurred my vision. I quickened my pace, catching up to him. I hesitated a moment in the frozen air then placed my hand upon his shoulder. He recoiled sharply, spinning to face me.

For a moment, we stood silently, observing one another. The snow fell between us. I looked him close in the face. My tired eyes began to feel heavy with tears. Two thousand Christmases became real; the healing, the hope, a sudden longing for home. The ghosts of the past, present and future. Before a word was said, I hugged him. He did not speak. He was thin. His arms hung limp at his sides. I pulled back and looked at him again.

“You recognise me,” I said.

“Yes. You came every day.”

“I know… It is okay.”

“Okay,” he replied.

“Please,” I said at last, “let me just walk with you.”

He nodded, saying nothing. His breath was visible in the cold air.

We walked side by side through the snow, the silence heavy between us.

His gaze stayed fixed forward, as he pressed on. I stayed beside him, following his lead.

We walked silently for what seemed an hour, trudging through the near-silent streets. The snow muffled every sound, the world softened into a white haze. Finally, we reached the Mary Cross underground. It was there I stopped and turned to him.

“Come home with me,” I said. “Marianna and Jacob will be there. There’s turkey, boiled ham, everything. You can stay and eat. We needn’t talk.”

For a moment, he didn’t look at me. His breath came out in small clouds, his face unreadable. At last, he uttered a quiet, “Thank you… but there's a shelter I go to,” he added. “People who are waiting for me.”

Then he fell silent. I stared at him almost admiringly.

“I should go,” he said after a pause.

“Of course,” I replied. I stepped back, watching him. My hand ached to reach out, to pull him back, to insist, but I stayed still. What could I say that would change anything? Perhaps, in time, the little I'd done would be enough.

So humble he seemed now, quiet and reserved, as if in penance—or maybe he'd found a queer peace. But he seemed almost saintly, embued with a quiet dignity I had never observed before. Silent as a saint in stained glass, in empty church on a silent night.

I watched him go until he was lost in the snow. I raised a solitary hand then turned away towards home.

I'll Be Home For Christmas

I took off my coat and shook off the cold. Marianna appeared in the hallway, her face red with frustration.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but she cut me off. “To warn you—he’s drunk.”

“Who’s drunk?”

“Who do you think?”

“Jacob?”

“What?” she said. “And he has some woman with him—heavily perfumed.”

“Eh?” I said.

She sighed and led me by the arm towards the dining room. “He's telling the most inappropriate jokes.”

“Come again?”

“Your brother.”

“My brother?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you keep repeating everything?”

“Repeating everything...” I stammered.

I turned my head to peer around the corner.

There was Max—holding forth in the living room, a paper hat perched precariously on his head, his face flushed with seasonal cheer. His grin was broad, his laugh booming—the very image of festive spirit. He looked ruddy, and healthy in a robust sort of way. He was regaling Jacob, who sat grinning in his own paper hat, with an anecdote about the Netherlands Antilles. Beside him sat a woman wrapped in a fur shawl, fixing her lipstick in a pocket mirror.

“Frère!” he bellowed, leaping to his feet as he spotted me. “Here he be!”

He laughed, clapping his hands together. He rushed to greet me and threw his arms around me. He smelled of brandy and spiced cologne.

“Max…” I stammered, my voice barely audible. My confusion thickened into something closer to horror. I stared at him, searching for the broken man I had seen on the street. But this was someone else entirely.

“You look… so fresh,” I said, the words barely making it out. I sniffed him. “You smell… redolent.”

“OK!” he declared. “I’ve been in the Philippines for the last two weeks. Arrived yesterday.”

“The Philippines…” I echoed, dumbfounded.

Then his tone dropped to something conspiratorial as he threw an arm around me. “I’ve got something new, too. No doubt you’ll be interested in this one—”

“Right..” he skirted me off with an outstretched arm towards the kitchen.

“Listen to this,” he continued “All perfectly legitimate. Just a little scheme—very smart…”

“Stop, Max,” I said, cutting him off, my voice cracking slightly. “I can’t.”

He blinked, “What do you mean? You’re worried about—”

“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, I can’t. I don’t have the money. The bonus, the extra—the usual…” I trailed off.

He frowned. “Yes?”

I hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I thought you were homeless, Max. I’ve been giving money to someone I thought was you for the past two weeks. I thought it was you…”

Max stared at me unblinking.

“There was a man... I mean... ”

“Yes, yes? “

“He was you. But wasn't if you understand. I've been giving him money... All of it.”

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Have you been scammed, little brother!” he said, grinning.

“No,” I said quietly, my voice barely audible. “I gave it... willingly”

Marianna approached and took me by the arm and led me away from Max. She spoke for me, “He’s been under stress.”

Max finished his wine. “Come visit me sometime,” he said. “Get some sun. There’s a whole world waiting for you. I'll send a note. Oh Jeanette!”

He called out to the woman in the fur shall, who stood and blew a kiss to Jacob. They then departed towards the front door in a heady mix of presumed scents and port and disappeared into the snow-dusted night. I watched them go from the bay window. With every departing step, a sense of relief washed over me.

For the first time I looked about the house to see the extravagance Marianna had laid on . “It's wonderful," I said. There was a big plum cake, and angel tarts, and mince- pies– two enormous dishes. Everywhere to look was gold, reds and greens.

Marianna left the room then entered moments later in her long jacket and bundling Jacob into his duffel coat. “We’re going to Mothers.” She had with her her overnight bag.

I watched them depart from the bay window. The world was black and white as funeral piano music.

I sank into my chair, resting my aching foot on the stool, and threw another log on the fire. The room was still. The quiet settled around me, broken only by the crackling of the fire.

I stared into the flames and let my thoughts drift. The ghosts had left and departed their wisdom. But I was alone now. I poured a brandy and clung my miserly fingers around the glass.

Over the streets of the city, the snow was falling, soft and silent, blanketing everything in sight.

_____