Fortune, Fate, God, Kipling, Robert Crumb, A Broken Radio, and the Father of My Friend Who Tortured Turtles

Literary Review, Fall, 1998 by Thomas E. Kennedy

In any event, I was surprised to see my friend's father there sitting in the chair, and even more surprised when he opened his mouth and began to say, "You were so much greater than the monkeys. I had such hopes for you ..." (I hurried in to retrieve that scrap of paper I had written on the bus a month or so before and had cast onto the heap of discarded notes.)

Then I realized that my friend's father was an image of a benevolent God who had attempted to create a wonderful Eden for mankind, a fallible God perhaps, for surely something must have transpired to sour my friend so. In fact, I can recall that we used to pick on him some because he was a somewhat gullible, naive kid--perhaps his father had taught him only kindness without giving him the capacity for brutality people need to be able to call upon occasionally to survive in this harsh world. Perhaps "God the father" had made some mistakes. Perhaps God wished to discuss this with someone. Perhaps God had engineered a meeting with Victor Travesti to discuss this matter--a more kindly god than the one of the Job story. This one is not conversing with the devil, this one wants to level with the man himself instead. This God is looking for help; he has given man the power to think, to consider, to weigh, and he is looking for this man to level with him, too.

By this point the story was running on its own steam. All I had to do was not to force it, to let it have its lead, to follow its headlights through the dark and to observe, while writing, to witness as I wrote the report, as the facts of the situation slowly dawned on the not exceedingly bright Victor Travesti. In time, he comes to realize that he is indeed, in the presence of God, that perhaps all the events of his life, every moment of every day had led him to this ultimate experience of being in the presence of the creator.

Here again, we see--I saw--Victor chosen for a fate he could in no way rise to. Think of the wonderful multitude of possibilities offered by a conversation with a God willing to talk, a God willing to level with you, a God willing even to admit to fallibility.

Victor knows the right gestures--he kneels, though not before dusting the floor to avoid soiling his pants (dignity in what he wears), and then he pops the question foremost in his heart: he asks for money.

Now I did not know that Victor would do this until he did, and I confess that I laughed when I heard him say it because I knew that the carpet men were waiting downstairs for him, I knew that this was inevitable, but I did not yet know there was one last twist remaining in the fate of Victor--whom, I must admit, I had come to like somewhat, despite his shortcomings. It was really not a great deal he asked for--just a little bit of dignity. Unfortunately, he steadfastly declined to examine what dignity might be.

In any event, this god in the garb of a senile plumber is still God, still full of the Old Testament, still capable of rage, and he is, after all, a god. Slighted, he explodes, rages, picks Victor up like a piece of luggage and pitches him down the stairs right into the clutches of the Kipling Karpet Ko people.