If You Can Keep It
A Short Story
Alexander Boychov wondered how he became an old man. The years passed like the daily flow of strangers on the city’s streets. They were all strangers because he was afraid to make any eye contact with anyone that could be misconstrued as a conspiracy, because there was always someone willing to report a crime, either a real one or perceived one. Alexander would create a picture of the people he passed based on their shoes. To this smiling picture he would ask, “How is it going today? What weather we are having” and “Say hello to your lovely family for me.”
The damp chill of the sunless November day reverberated in his joints as he felt every year of his life in his knees while he stood in line for his monthly allotment of food and supplies. He was running low on everything, especially toilet paper, so he couldn’t leave the line even though his whole body cried out to give up and go home.
Even the few square feet he called home seemed inviting as the wait dragged on. He lived alone in a government efficiency apartment that he was moved into when his wife seized the opportunity to flee to the west before the borders closed. There was no official divorce since the paperwork was never submitted, but since his wife had fled the country, she was as good as dead to the government. Since he was now single, he didn’t qualify for the bigger apartment and was moved within a week of her leaving. It was amazing how swiftly the government moved when it wanted to. That was nearly fifty years ago. She wrote for a while, and then the letters stopped.
A meager pension didn’t allow him to buy any luxuries on the black market, so he existed, barely, on what the government gave him. He prayed in bed every morning that he would survive another day with something small to eat and that his pain would be bearable.
He loved the memories of his grandfather and how he would take him to the early mass every morning at the grand Cathedral. The same shuttered building he passed on the way to this morning’s queue.
A few years ago he had gotten terribly sick and went to the public hospital’s emergency room and waited for a day and a half before he finally gave up and went home. He traded his last can of coffee for a few pills that he hoped were what the guy in the basement of his building said they were. Through providence he felt better after a week. But even the failed hospital was no longer an option, he was too old. The government stopped treating people when they turned sixty-seven. If you were too sick they were sent to “hospice” instead, which meant you were euthanized, although no one would ever say that.
He stood in line regretting his life and wishing he had had the courage to leave with his wife. But he was born here in the city as were his parents and grandparents. At the beginning he believed the politicians; that they would be able to take all the factories and businesses under their control and make sure that the economy was fair to all. They said that the government would make sure everything everyone needed was produced and made available to all citizens. It was all supposed to be better once the government took over and they made everything equal.
But none of that had worked and living turned into surviving. His wife had begged him to leave because the borders were closing on both sides. The west could not handle all the refugees and their own government did not like the image of all the people that wanted to leave. So he missed his chance and was paying the price for being afraid of freedom every day.
From his spot in line Alexander could see the luxury apartments where the top government officials lived in comfort. He couldn’t see them per se, but he knew they were behind the fences and walls that kept people like him away from those buildings. He thought that there were probably shoe closets in those buildings bigger than his apartment and pantries full of food. People used to complain about those issues but once they started losing their jobs, incurring some other penalty or simply disappeared, the noise quickly died off.
The best that Alexander could hope for was to die peacefully and not suffer. As his knees began to hurt even more after seven hours in line, he thought about ending it all by jumping off a bridge. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go he thought if he had the strength to see it through. What reason did he have to stick around? What he did day to day could not be considered living, especially to people in the west where his wife was now living, hopefully still alive and maybe thinking of him. It would finally be a decision he could make on his own without filling out paperwork and getting approval from some agency.
He recalled the stories from his grandfather about the great cities of the country, full of commerce and jobs. The people were free to decide their own destiny. But his grandfather’s memories were from a long time ago and so much had changed. It all seemed like a dream or a work of fiction, fiction like the newspapers seemed to be or the government reports of prosperity, record crops and zero unemployment.
At the front of the line the doors to the distribution center were finally opening. His knees had forgotten how to bend in the hours that he had been waiting and he hated that he now had to shuffle along with the line instead of leaning against the nice building.
Another hour in queue and Alexander was finally at the doors. The official behind the desk asked for his papers and wrote his name and government ID number on a long list of poor, dependent people. He was handed a bag with his supplies as the official yelled for the next person in line.
He looked through the bag and became deflated when he saw that it had only two rolls of toilet paper, only two books of food stamps for fresh food and maybe a week’s worth of cans. How would he last a month on this?
Leaving the center, he stopped when he reached the street. He had no idea where he wanted to go or if he could even go on. He looked back at the never ending line behind him, the line that kept you one step ahead of death and made him feel a caged animal, controlled and without free will. He made his decision and began walking toward the river one slow, agonizing step at a time. He reached the foot of the bridge just as the sun was beginning to set. He walked out to the middle of the bridge and looked to the south to the entrance of the decaying harbor and saw it full of ships from around the world as he grandfather had described. He cursed the arrogant politicians that made things so bad because they thought they were smarter than everyone and that if they were in charge, the country would be so much better.
The sun setting in the west turned his thoughts to his wife, how she had begged him to flee. In his mind she was still young and beautiful, her tear-filled eyes pleading with him to go with her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
It was easy to find a break in the railing because of the state of disrepair of the once grand bridge. He set his bag down, made the sign of the cross, asked God to forgive him and walked to the edge.
He saw the former great lady on her island, holding her unlit, silent torch aloft. A sudden break in the clouds allowed the setting sun to bring the dormant flames back to life.
He heard his grandfather’s voice reciting the poem;
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”
Alexander walked back from the edge and picked up his bag of supplies and slowly headed west.
See Tom Cosentino’s previous five short stories published at God of the Desert Books:
