“What do you mean?” He paced himself to Leona’s slowing gait,
“What do I want?”
“Everybody wants things,” she explained, “Except you. You don’t
seem to have any desires at all. You sit in Undergrounds every day
drinking tea and saying nothing. You keep to yourself. It’s hard to
imagine how you can be happy.” She stopped walking for a moment,
and looked at him. “I guess that’s what I want to know. Are you
happy? Because if you are, then tell me your secret.”
“My secret?” he said.
“I’ve tried everything under the sun: yoga, therapy, meditation,
hypnosis, reiki, chi-gong. It all seems to work, for a while anyway,
and then it doesn’t. Doesn’t make me happy, I mean.”
Yak squinted into the distance, like an old man trying to read a
paper right in front of his eyes.
“Ha-pee,” he said. He smiled a little.
“That!” she said, pointing at his teeth.
“Happy,” he repeated, “What an enormous word.”
Impulsively, he diverted his course at a right angle to where they
were heading. There was a man on the sidewalk prostrate on a
makeshift cardboard mattress. He wore one shoe and half a shirt and
was partially covered by a blanket of pornographic newspaper. Yak
inquired whether or not the man was sleeping and he mumbled that
he wasn’t. Then he asked him whether or not he was happy.
The man rolled over and sat up, shaking off the simulacrum of
thirty augmented and airbrushed breasts. He coughed and leveled,
“No, man. I’m sad. Really sad.” He hung his head mournfully, then
raised it. “Got a buck?” he said.
Yak gave him five. The man grinned toothlessly and said. “Now
I’m happier. You want a drink?” He fished out a dirty tin cup and a
half-bottle of rum and poured a shot. Leona had by now approached
and watched as Yak sniffed the filthy cup. To her surprise, he lifted it
to his lips and swallowed. “Thank you,” Yak said. He then handed the
man a flyer and told him to gather all his friends, that they were
having a party. Leona could not believe what she was seeing.
As they walked away, she thought she understood. Yak was crazy,
and that was the secret of his contentment.
“Maybe happiness is like the weather,” Yak said. “It just
happens.”
Leona wasn’t so sure. Yak had that impression on people. When
you were around him, you weren’t sure of anything.
ABYSSINIA
38
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