Pictura

Arthur

Wes Callihan

urning the corner at a fast walk, knowing I had taken too long over lunch again, I nearly stumbled over the old man. I had dawdled deliberately over my lunch, looking at my watch to see how close I could cut the end of the lunch hour. When I realized how late it actually was, I had to push past several people ahead of me in line to pay my bill, and run out of the cafe and down the street. The crowd hindered me, slowed me to a fast walk, and I realized I had cut it too close and would be late back to work. Again. And then, turning the corner at a fast walk, I nearly stumbled over the old man.

He sat with his back to the bricks of the only auto parts store in the downtown district, ignoring the rush of passersby on the noon sidewalks and stretching his legs in the sun. His khaki pants were tattered, and his coat was stained and faded, but his hair was neatly combed. All this I noticed as I awkwardly tried to step over him; this and the words he crooned repeatedly as he rocked himself gently against the warm brick"Rex quondam, rexque futurus." The phrase didn't actually register until I was halfway down the next block, but when it did, I came to a sudden stop in the middle of the surging crowd. Then someone jostled me from behind"Move it, guy!"and I saw my supervisor, late too, hurry into my building, and I snapped out of my daze and ran into my building, up my two flights, and to my desk.

But I kept thinking, as I settled back into my work, why did the old man say that? I hadn't read Malory in his entirety, but surely that phrase is from the most well-known part and is perhaps the most significant. Why would an old bum on a downtown city sidewalk be quoting Malory to himself?

I thought about it as I ran my programs, hating the mind-numbing tedium of a job I had taken for the wrong reasons and couldn't drop. I thought about it as I leaned against the wall at the coffee machine, killing time with some of the other programmers, guiltily hoping no supervisor would catch us idling even though there was nothing left to do except to look busy, and we hated the ones who looked busy when they really weren't. I thought about it as I waited for the computer to run its checks for another round of programs to start the whole cycle again. I thought about it as the hour hand hit five and I locked my station with relief.

I put on my jacket and said to myself, who does this old transient think he is with his Latin tags, as though that'd get him breakfast and a place to sleep? But I knew I was being unjust and asked the question a different way. Where did this old bum pick up a Latin tag and why that one? I hadn't thought about my college English studies in years, because of the constant urgency of rushing to this tedious job and rushing home and eating and falling asleep exhausted in front of the television. But the old man's words brought it all back. One phrase half-heard from a derelict human lying in my path during my lunch break, and I remembered all the dreams I had forgotten.

I remembered that when I read in college, windows opened and vistas shimmered and breezes blew. With Malory, the faint autumn airs of the fifteenth century wafted in its cool, green glory. With Xenophon all was courage and the will to live and the piercing suns of the East. And Donne and Sappho were the agonizing silent pauses in a midnight conversation and Herbert and Horace were the purple twilight lawn at sunrise. And as I read I knew that to keep it all to myself would be a crime and that I would be a teacher, so that others, younger than me through no fault of their own, would also open the leaves of books and so pull aside the curtains and open the shutters and stare, with a wild surmise, at the breathtaking prospect spreading before them. I would lead others where I had gone. I was rich and would not keep it all to myself. I was, as I sat with my beloved books around me, a king; I was a king then, and I would be a king in the future.

And now? Now, a peasant. A slave. I had stepped aside from my duties and the glorious martial music of the tournament trumpets had moved off, was now so distant I could barely hear it. The Ten Thousand had marched on without me. The Boat had sailed off to Avalon and I. . . where had I been?

I shook my head and straightened my jacket and stepped into the elevator. I pushed the lobby button. My head hurt. I wanted to be home and rest. All this because of some old bum on the street. But, I said to myself as the doors slid open and I pushed out into the street, I could not deny all the thoughts whirling in my head, thoughts of lost time and lost dreams, lost simply by neglect and lack of courage and the tyranny of necessity and taking the easy options when they presented themselves and then never having the guts to say enough! I was to be something different and I willI will!do it! And then I thought for the thousandth time: why had the old man said that?

As I turned down the street in the late afternoon warmth, I hoped the old man would still be there. I hoped that in the next block, leaning against the bricks of the only auto parts store in the downtown district, surrounded by traffic lights and parking garages and police sirens and concrete and hazy heat, I would see a piece of the flotsam of humanity quoting a line that alone of all the words humans have said had the power to jar me out of years of my own moral dereliction, my own version of lying in a stupor on the sidewalk.

I hoped he'd be there although I didn't know what I might do if he were. It wouldn't do to walk up to him and say, "Hey you! Why did you quote Malory?" People would think I was as touched as he probably was. Then too, you never knew how these old winos might react. All city people know the ruleslook straight ahead, never speak to them, do not acknowledge their existence. But I wanted to know. But why was he quoting Malory? Who knew Malory any more?

Was he a cast-off English professor? I knew the stories: half the bums on the streets had been successful at something, then hit a streak of bad luck and chucked it all. Maybe this guy had been at a hot-shot college, got fed up for some reason and wound up here. On the other hand, why would a college teacher trade one kind of getting stepped over for another?

Where would a man have come from who quoted Malory? I managed to become so entangled in my own curiosity that I told myself I would sit down next to him and get to know the old fellow and his secret.

But when I saw him still sitting therethe ratty clothes, the vacant stare, the mumbling lips! the real man, not the form of my afternoon imaginationstill sitting near the now-shady corner moving his mouth noiselessly, I lost all my nerve and swung wide of him, heart pounding at the audacity of the thing I had planned for myself; I told myself I was a creature of habit, not of bold spontaneity. That I lived inside my own head too much. That I needed a life.

Still, all evening, in my little apartment, I was bothered. How did this old bum have the nerve to sit on a street corner and quote Latin tags from English literature while I lacked the courage even to ask him why he did it? Here was a break in my monotonous routine, a sudden remembrance of what I was once and what I had hoped to be in the future, and a puzzle that fascinated methe intrusion of fantasy into reality, of poetry into prose. But bums were real, English professors were not. Computer programmers were real, fifteenth-century knights were not. But now, without any fanfare, King Arthur and Sir Thomas Malory had shown up on the third-to-last street corner of my route to a workplace housed in the world's most nondescript building and had molested my existence with tantalizing hints of significance. Why?

Late in the evening, fed up with stewing over it, I dug into my box of old school texts and found the book and read: "Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say: here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: HIC JACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM, REXQUE FUTURUS."

The longing that had swept me the first time I read those words as a younger man now washed over me again, the longing for I knew not what, but it was for something I had had once, and I wanted to find the old man and ask him why he was saying those words; I wanted to tell him how he made me feel the ache again and shake him and ask him who did he think he was to stir up from the past things better left dead; and then in a better moment I knew that of course he knew the ache too, and perhaps I want-ed, after all my mental agonies, to finally say thanks to him.

And who was Arthur, Once and Future King? An old man lying on a street corner? Had kingship once been his, too? Had he too once had a real soul? And what would he be again, this Future King? Or was he speaking to me only? Perhaps his meaning was: rise up, you lie dead, yet will you be king again! Rex quondam, rexque futurus!

I determined to find out and have an end to all of this, and I put on my coat.

Then, suddenly, I recognized and accepted a better end. I took off my coat again. I checked my savings passbook, called my supervisor, and quit my job. He was even more surprised when I told him I was going back to school and become a teacher. So was my landlord when I told him five minutes later that I'd be out when the month was up. . . .

The old man slumped against the bricks. He was pleased with the success he'd had earlier in the day, and thought his nap had done him good, so he took another swig of cheap wine and decided to try sounding out some new words, some more familiar-sounding ones. He laboriously shifted his attention from the bookstore poster with the colorful knight to a city sign and began chanting aloud, over and over: "Bus Terminal, Two Blocks." He liked the sound . m