The Education System

Reiteration

April 2nd, 1929

 

The rain, somehow, felt heavier than on any usual dim, darkened Tuesday afternoon. Each droplet was laden down with the weight of insecurity and John Reidworth Clack watched each silken bead scroll down his windowpane, his expression holding the features of morose solitude. It hadn’t been long – hours, minutes, it had stolen his perception of time – but for a period incalculable and heart-stopping, it had been gone.

The accounts, the money, his life.

It rained and the rain brought another world into Clack’s vision; a world framed with grey trees against a black sky. In this world he slept beneath a window-ledge and begged for coins to survive. The world was as vibrant in his vision as any world could ever be. It was tangible in its reality and bitter in its taste.

The other man in the room, a stocky bearded Italian investor who Clack could only remember as ‘Don’, looked upon his companion in distaste.

“Mera di vacca, Clacky, y’heard Mitchell’s announcement. Market’s safe as houses, capisce?”

But the market wasn’t safe as houses – behind his eyes Clack saw houses constructed of crumbling numbers. Clack put a hand over his fatigued eyes, pinching at the bridge of his nose to stop an invisible flow of blood. “Did you see how fast the prices dropped?”

“It’s nothin’! Hear me? I ain’t hearin’ ‘nother worda this cavallo cazza tradimento ‘til ya get that much through ya head, Clack!”

Don, too, trembled beneath his overcoat. Yet he hid it better.

“I’ll be in Reese’s,” the Italian grimaced. His hands shook. To compensate he forced them deep into the satin pockets of his trousers, ivory cuff-links rattling. Clack didn’t look up. “Come by later, yea?”

Don, with that, left the office. He opened the door and voices, anxious and terrified, rushed through the brief opening as a wave of fire. Snippets of conversations Clack shouldn’t have heard raped the openings of his er canals, speaking of debt, worry, dollar signs and newspaper headings, echoes of broadcasts and shadows of what was to come. Don closed the door behind him. The fire went out.

“It’s everything,” Clack murmured to an empty room.

His fingers beat a rhythm on the platinum edge of his desk.

 

 

April 2nd, 1919

 

 

The rain turned the ground to filth and Graven’s hopes and dreams turned with it. Every droplet tore another memory to pieces – faces, embraces, tobacco-scented spaces all became as dank and frightening as the trench he knelt in and Graven Thomas Goode had no way out. He’d been there… months now? At what point did ‘weeks’ become ‘months’? He was tongue-tied, terrified, every dropping shell leaving him vulnerable and horrified that his would be the next face gone, blown to smithereens.

His mind, his body, his dreams – they would evaporate.

It rained and he waited. It wasn’t going over the top, he told himself, fingers gripping his danger for something to hold. It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

The words were bitter even as he thought them.

The other man, a war-weary sergeant with a week’s stubble and a hunter’s eyes, tossed him a tired grin and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “’ey. Stop freakin’, Graven. Y’heard Marshall, aight? Just a run. Back an’ forth. Done it before.”

Graven shook his head. His helmet rattled with the movement. He’d seen men die – good men, honest men, men with families. “Did you see how the Scots went down?”

Celca, in response, laughed. Everybody looked up to Celca, Sgt. Anthony Celca who laughed at death and kept privates moving.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, heh?” Another loopy grin. Graven couldn’t calm down. He wouldn’t. It rained and he saw death. “We’lll be home by Christmas.”

 

 

October 29th, 1929

 

 

“It’s–” Don swore heavily in Italian, the object shock written across his pudgy, half-drunk face. Clack set down the newspaper. STOCK MARKET CRASHES ON WALL-STREET: ECONOMY IN RUINS. The bold black letters of the headline made his stomach clench; made his throat go dry; made his fingers itch with the need for a cigarette. “Me inculare morto, it’s gone, it’s all…”

Clack looked up briefly. The tears in Don’s round eyes had him looking down within a second.

“Don. Give it to me straight. How bad?”

All two-hundred and thirty-seven pounds of Don, the master shareholder from Italy, jiggled as the sobs began. This is a man broken, Clack thought in dread, this is a man with nothing left.

“Eighty-thousand,” Don strained out, wiping the prickling sweat from under his eyes. “Madre di dio, eighty-thousand in the red.”

Clack sniffed and nodded. Clack pushed out of his mahogany chair, his hundred-dollar shoes clacking against the fifty-six-a-tile porcelain squares and Clack was wordless.

There was nothing to say.

It was over, and they were done.

Numbers rolled through Clack’s head with every sullen step. Don shouted after him, cried, cursed, begged, screamed. Clack didn’t stop walking. Numbers descended, rolling down, lower. The voices roared. More screaming. Papers flying and Clack walked, kept walking.

It was over.

He was done.

He walked up stairs, fifteen fights of stairs. The roof of the Savoy-Plaza stretched across the sky, yes, but John Reidworth Clack wasn’t on top of the world, not any longer.

He stepped off the edge and his new world rushed up to meet him.

 

 

 

October 29th, 1919

 

 

“I–” Celca choked on his own blood, shock written in his eyes as he staggered forward. Graven grabbed the sergeant by the shoulders, staring into panicked eyes. Celca, afraid. It wasn’t right. “Jesus,” he spat, blood rushing out of his mouth.

“Jesus,” Graven echoed. He clamped his hands over Celca’s wound. The sergeant sank low to the mud. Red leaked between Graven’s fingers, trickling to mix with the black mire. “I– God, what do I–”

“Graven. Give it up. ‘stoo late.”

Graven cried. All at once his frame shuddered, tear-ducts leaking. What were they leaking? Blood or ash? “Celca, no, please.”

Celca’s eyes were already vacant.

Graven stared into them, kneeling in the red.

The entire ground was red to him. Claret, darkened, with bodies lying haphazard, tossed, into a black blanket of destructive wine. How many? Numbers rolled through his head. Celca’s blood dripped from his fingers. Numbers rolled in an answer to a question left unasked.

Graven whimpered.

Then he sobbed, and screamed, and pleaded, but Celca’s eyes remained cold and empty and the numbers only grew taller. The sergeant’s uniform torn open by a German bayonet. The mud moist with the lifeblood of the last good man Graven knew. There was nothing left.

He wouldn’t see another corpse. Not one more corpse to add to the numbers. He was done.

He snatched Celca’s revolver – six chambers, three bullets – pushed it under his chin and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Click.

Silence.