KIM FARLEIGH
A FINE LINE
The beggar came up the street, jaws champing, but he wasn’t eating. He walked with an effeminate shuffle. He wasn’t big, but his shoulders were too wide for his pimpled head.
He sat against a parked car. A man carrying a kettle gave him a cup of tea, no money exchanged.
The beggar sipped the tea. Free tea was one of the benefits of his “profession”. He put the cup beside him on the road. He was the only man on the street who didn’t have a moustache. He was thin; his shirt hung off him, two sizes too big.
“Five shekels, five shekels...” he repeated.
He wore the same dark blue shirt each day.
“Five shekels, five shekels...”
A boy gave him five shekels. The boy’s father stood under a ceiling fan’s swirling helicopter blade inside a shop.
“Tell your father,” the beggar said, “his spices are the finest in the land.”
The boy chortled as he ran back into the shop.
An umbrella’s drooping edges wafted in a breeze next to the spice shop. The gilt thread in a woman’s orange dress glittered when caught by light. The woman went by, staring ahead, ignoring the beggar.
“Five shekels,” the beggar said. “Come on, you miserable bitch. It’s only a fiver!”
A man pushing a watermelon trolley laughed.
“You can laugh,” the beggar said. “You think you’re going to get away with that five shekels you owe me?”
A man stopped and asked: “How’s business in Nablus today?”
“Terrible,” the beggar replied. “If it wasn’t for my heady investments in the Saudi property market, when that joint was nothing but camels, fat women and sand, then one would have to describe the situation as dire. Where’s that fiver you owe me?”
The man gave the beggar five shekels. This looked good in front of his newly acquired wife.
“But, of course,” the beggar added, “one is usually able to pull through without too many liquidity problems due to the loyalty of one’s long-standing clients.”
The couple left smiling.
The shadow from the beggar’s hand moved on the road. The top of his balding head was brown. Self-assurance shone in his cheeky eyes.
He got up and disappeared into the old town. When he came back he was chewing bread. One of his “clients” was a bread seller.
The street was lined with parked cars; he started staring through each of their windows. His feet pointed away from each other as he walked. A boy stopped to watch him. The beggar’s blue shirt fell well past his waist, his head tiny on his wiry shoulders. His curiosity for other people’s possessions was unrestrained.
He sat against a parked car, rubbing the index finger and thumb of his right hand. His thin, gangly legs were too long for his torso. His lips quivered as his fingers moved.
He got up and pointed at passers-by, saying “Five shekels.”
Someone yelled from a café, “One shekel!”
“The sort of puerile offer I expect from people like you who sit around all day smoking, playing cards, drinking tea and not working,” said the beggar. “If you had even an ounce of my grit you wouldn’t have time to make jokes that ridicule those spinning the wheels of production.”
The men sitting in the café laughed.
The beggar used his right hand to ask for money because his left held up his pants that were four sizes too big. He didn’t have a belt.
He sat down. Two women stopped.
“How are you?” they asked.
“Carrying on regardless,” the beggar sighed. “Despite the barriers a senseless society places before the gifted and the sane.”
The women smiled.
“Do you think the period of suffering will be long?” one asked.
“Present indicators suggest,” the beggar replied, “that posthumous recognition is the most likely possibility. But one’s work must still be done.”
The women gave him five shekels and said, “Good luck.”
Some children smiled as they passed.
“Let your parents know,” the beggar said, “that my terms are reasonable: only five shekels for thirty seconds of absorbing entertainment.”
The children giggled, one slapped his hands together.
“And age,” the beggar added, “isn’t a barrier to clienthood. My lawyer believes a loophole exists permitting contracts signed by minors to be legitimate for establishing financial obligation. Remember that.”
The children went away laughing.
The beggar was almost toothless. His jaws constantly champed, voice high-pitched. Some said it matched his feminine gait. His face converged to a sharp chin.
The tea seller returned, a cigarette in his mouth. He now wore a blue cap and apron. Mint hung out of the apron’s pocket. His silver kettle had a wooden handle the same colour as his brown-framed glasses. His shirt was blue-and-white striped, jeans blue.
“Get a job!” someone passing by yelled out to the beggar.
“And be like him?!” the beggar said, pointing at the tea seller who laughed.
“How can you expect a man of genius,” the beggar continued, “to go beneath dignity and peddle cheap wares? Are you mad?!”
“Another poor fool,” the beggar told the smiling tea seller, “who’s incapable of distinguishing high-class entertainment from begging.”
The tea seller gave him another tea and moved on.
A woman stopped. The woman’s shoulders sparkled like sunlight on water where the sun’s rays met her head scarf’s crystals. She gave him five shekels and asked, “Do you ever want to get married?”
“Yes,” the beggar replied, “but you’ll have to make all the arrangements. I’m too busy working to engage in time-consuming organisation.”
She smiled. The man who insisted the beggar get a job had disappeared into the old town.
“Anyway,” the beggar said, “marriage is a business between partners and I’m a sole proprietor.”
“But it gives people great pleasure and comfort.”
“And pain and frustration.”
“Get a job!” another man yelled.
“And be like you?” the beggar retorted. “You’re too stupid to recognise underpaid artistry is a crime against aesthetics.”
The woman grinned. The man sneered.
“Here I am,” the beggar continued, “laying down an ingenious method of wealth distribution and I get treated like this! There’s no respect for revolutionary trendsetting in the field of welfare.”
“You lazy bastard!” another sneering man belched.
“Lazy?” the beggar replied. “I’ve been working since nine o’clock this morning. And all my customers have left satisfied! Have you got even the most microscopic sense of artistic sensibility?”
The man stood over the beggar and said: “Get off this street – you filthy pervert!”
“How do you know I’m a pervert?” the beggar asked, getting up. “Have you been looking through my bedroom window again? I know I’m irresistible but, come on, please...”
The fact that the woman couldn’t stop laughing added to the man’s fury. He kicked the beggar hard. The beggar backed off, saying, “You’re so beautiful when you’re angry. You keep flexing those gorgeous muscles of yours and I won’t be responsible for my actions – you hunk. You violent welter of sensuous masculinity. I bet you just love giving weaker men like me the helping hand of justice.”
The angry man chased after the beggar, kicking him again in the legs. A man on the café’s terrace yelled out: “Leave him alone. He’s harmless.”
“The filthy pervert said I was gay!”
A big man came down the street. He saw the angry man kicking the beggar. He tapped the angry man on the shoulder and asked for an explanation. The angry man’s eyes were white and astounded, hands opening out, maintaining his pretence of moral outrage.
image: Alex Tisdale
