MENKOVICH THE MARKETEER

141. MENKOVICH THE MARKETEER:

I was listening to theme music for an imaginary silent film - it sounded good and reminded me of the 1920's right off the bat and it seemed complete with a villain and the sound of a villain in a black felt hat and a damsel tied to the tracks and all the rest and everything that went with it - lawman buffoon laborer pauper and a rich man too - what a concept it seemed : imaginary music to listen to : DISTRESS so enamored and yet I knew somehow just as well that I was the evil twin of genius a maniac gone wild a madman on the loose something stalking stalwart starts and it just seemed as if EACH day was an over-and-over-again affair much without any reason or gain or persuasion but I knew that even bad things get good over time but the seemingly endless performance of day-after-day went really for nothing but to produce experience OR the experience of (instead say) some form of reality and I turned into some tilted church where people were singing - well-tuned girls with mothers and sons - where the preacher was atop his little concrete hill and saying 'these buildings shall not stand for the DAY of the LORD is coming when all these things will fall and all the world will falter - black smoke toil flames and ash - and mankind will wander in pain and danger with Evil unloosed and marauding at will and every brick and every block of this kingdom shall tumble when God takes back His stand!' - the man was nothing if not committed and he could light matches with his incendiary words and he made me want to be a storyteller too and not one who'd merely stopped in to get warm and I wished to be one who was able to mesmerize with words too and to jolt the limited potential of every scheming jerk before me - just as now with outstretched feeble palms upturned and the kiss of peace and all that they sought their misplaced Jesus in some dimension unknown but unable to recognize it when it appears and I saw nothing but wanted everything - or the other way around - but sometimes I was unable to tell or make distinction : lost houses where they used to be and old pilings where a waterfront once was - there were shards of red pottery laying about - broken pieces of some church-formatted Easter worship left right where they had fallen for after all it was too cold for Easter too cold for Hell too cold for anything else and redemption resurrection and all the rest was quite simply out of the question and I listened to the organ I listened to the lyre and I turned about to see the stained glass windows - an industry of light and refraction and money - then I got up and got out of there and St. Jude St. Thomas St. Francis Xavier too they were all too certain of themselves for me to know ! and besides I had something else on my mind and it was all just beginning and I had things to do...
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There's a marvelous beginning to everything once you get it straight and if you can see that right from the start often then you can KEEP it marvelous as you move along but not always and this old Jew guy I once knew Menkovich was his name he'd sell absolutely anything he could get his hands on - marvelous beginnings or not - because he figured he could add a penny or two to most anything he'd salvage and re-sell it at a price higher than for what he got it and every little bit counted and if he could 'market' any of this with manufactured stories or histories he'd surely do that too : 'Menkovich the Marketeer' I called him : and in reality he wasn't anything much more than an auction flea market hawker the type you see yelling out to passers-by for their junk to see (he'd often invert his English in just that old-world Jewish way) but he made a solid living from it for years and he'd buy heaps of things - fabric cloth rope hemp straps whatever - and he'd bundle things tight and put the very best on the outside as he stashed the junk inside unseen and hawk this stuff to buyers and they'd usually buy after haggling for pennies and agreeing finally to some price they never wanted anyway for stuff they didn't need but that was 'Business' in the barker's way - Menkovich was good Menkovich the Chiseler Menkovich the Cheat would have better described the man but he prospered and I'd help when I could - listening to his rant hearing his crap sorting buttons and bolts cotton cloth and old wheels shade pulls and glass doorknobs washclothes and socks hammers cheap screwdrivers mirrors and glass - EVERYTHING was fodder for the Menkovich mill - and at his five feet one inch he made me feel gigantic and that led to pride as I finally towered over something in that stupid little west 17th Street hovel all dirtied glass and broken doorway soiled oily floor and a crammed-in-the-corner desk cluttered with pencils and paper ledger books and glasses of old lousy tea and he had eyes like a blind man and feet like a cripple but his hands were fat and lively little and lithe and he moved like a crane and threw things around in his old battered clothing same every day the gray shirt turned gray from a white it once was or may have been and could have been lucky he never sold that too for I don't know what else he'd have worn and he could calculate pennies like a whiz in his calculating mind he'd break out the figures for hundreds of this or that and say what you're paying per piece and why not and how many and 'what a bargain it may have was been' and then he'd leave it at that and walk away and they'd lunge back after him so as not to lose the deal he'd just described and they'd make the arrangement and pay what they had to and go away happy and satisfied too - it was like that every day Menkovich the Crafty Menkovich the Brave Menkovich the Marvelous Menkovich the Penny-Pinching Wiseman Bastard-King.