‘Enri the Useful Idiot’

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Enri the Useful Idiot

When his parents named him, they thought they might infuse him with intrigue, because Enri was pretty much a French word, and they were pretty much English speaking. Enri after all was the first name of Matisse, and there were some paintings, and a church or two his parents had visited and been impressed by. They hoped some of that inspiration would be passed onto their son via cosmic affiliation with nomenclature. If such things could be like Ouija, astrology, Tarot and tea leaves, if the Universe could help, they said, defer. After all, a son belonged not only to themselves.

Grade school saw for him a chance to meet a lot of girls, because girls like French things too.

One year, his sister MerChant bought him a beret for his birthday. It was really expensive and had come from a professional hat shop that supplied all the local celebs in the medium sized city where he came from. Some of these people even spoke French fluently, and so Enri decided he would learn. To this day there are those who insist he spoke French like a Frenchman.

The intrigue of his friendships was also quite noticeable. He started various things with them, his friends, parties and whatnot. He shared jobs with them sometimes. Enri always did his part, occasionally dramatically ringing the halls of his workspace with his powerful singing voice, entertaining his compatriots. Enri was a great friend to have, and he had no enemies. He was simply too nice of a person for anyone to dislike him. 

Once, in his Twenties, instead of making love to a girl, he stared into her eyes until she fell asleep. He was confused when she awoke and expected something more, and even more confused when she declined a third date with him. It was the time in history when moral obligations were kind of fuzzy, amorphous, and had an aroma to them that some people found peculiar, others hated, and still others were obsessed with. Enri decided at that moment he would never judge another human being, only himself in comparison.

The next day, he went to his closet, sought out the French clothing he’d been meaning to wear, put them on, and left his apartment in search of an identity. Within a week, he was singing for a Rock band, writing songs that portended doom. He filled up his schedule so much those who knew him at that point always made excuses when he didn’t show up for having double booked. “Honest mistakes,” his contingency said, “when you live such eventful days.” There was absolutely nothing wrong with being such a workhorse. When people understood you, indeed, they made room for you. Your spot at the table was all the more revered when by chance you actually sat there, and bantered with the other guests.

It was at this point, the intersection of duty and self-reliance, that he came upon a deep understanding: Other people in the world had often thought of him. Some shared a viewpoint of him. Some even relied on him for certain opinions, outbursts, fabulations maybe; in the end for being Enri. There could never be another Enri, just as there could never be another of any of his friends, so long as you knew well enough, if you saw inside well and perceived how each individual had a soul. It was Enri’s goal then to understand, as well as any French-speaking man in the world, the interior of those he met as interpreted from what he saw.

Enri took to seeking small details he’d overlooked. He understood almost instantly he’d overlooked an awful lot. He looked in between flames as they licked at a dry log. He looked at the symmetry of a fly. He looked interestedly how each individual fingerprint of his own hand differed from each other. He became, in his own mind, a scientist of things outside. With each new discovery, he incorporated into himself the wonders of creation, but at this point he still hesitated to fix that Capital C on them. When he called things created, he didn’t imply. Just the word for it seemed so appropriate. He wondered, “If they had been, who?”

Absolution was another word that struck him. By this time, Middle Age forming about his entity, he tried to see a cosmic unity of things. He imbibed everything he looked upon with a specific fatherliness. He wanted to be Dad because those younger than himself often sought his advice, and those older than himself were often too weak to physically tackle things they had to do. So Dad he was, even genetically. He had found a wife after all. What would they be now, if not a family?

One day, he walked into a bar and pulled out his pack of smokes. The person seated next to him objected and sought the bartender. The bartender explained to Enri the state had passed a law that went into effect that very night: He must never again smoke in a public place. He must never expose to others danger, and the smoke he exhaled had been determined not to be exempt from the category of dangerousness. He was, if he lit up, a pariah! Therefore, he must pocket his Zippo immediately, and never again reveal from the dark depths of his inseam the ornate carving, the sterling shininess of the thing that sustained his lung function. If he showed it at all, it had to be as an artifact. His habit must be by law forever abandoned in an air space that is shared.

This cut deeply to Enri’s personhood.

He resolved always to assert his rights whenever he frequented. He needed for others to understand no one infringes. Where there’s no evidence of wrongdoing, there’s no wrongdoing. That was the way laws had always been and that was how they must remain, else order, security, the very essence of being human, all these things fell before the commonality of being nothing. If Enri couldn’t smoke in his own favorite bar, what on earth could he possibly do? The very things that meant living went poof, like the card in a magician’s hand when it disappears up his sleeve. If Enri couldn’t live to enjoy the sweetness of tobacco in the company of his friends as they enjoyed themselves at the bar, then nothing of significance ever happened to anyone at any time in history. Everything, literally everything was determined by Enri’s ability to strike his Zippo into flame wherever he so choose. The law, after all, was a mandate. Proudly, he lifted the white tiny cylinder in his one hand, the Zippo in his other (he was ambidextrous that way) flicked into function with a spark, and applied the flame. The bartender said, “Get the fuck out of here!” and pointed doorward, front entryward. Enri held his burning signal flame aloft in imitation of the Statue of Liberty as he exited. For the rest of his life, he would promote audacity and the rightful expression of said freedoms as he observed them.

II.

In the country Enri lived there was a system of electing leaders. He took to choosing his intended leaders by the way they held their chests and said things. The stronger the voice, the stronger the man, Enri reasoned. His leaders often shouted, but at times they could be quiet as well. It was the difference between times, times of decibel and whisper, that made the essence of a leader. For Enri a leader had to know when to scream on his behalf, and when quietly to say and use his hands in an appropriate caress of the language itself. For Enri, a leader was all about personality, not the torch itself, not the Statue of Liberty herself, but the presentation thereof, the suit, the tie, the polished shoes, the buttons. Enri understood the inseverate link between the inside and outside. If the blast of a horn came, one after all inevitably thought how great must be its inside, like the horn of Gabriel that could knock down Jericho’s walls. The echo of this horn in a human voice was impressive indeed, and thus his leaders, far from being blowhards, became great bringers of the message. A man whose voice carried from one ocean to another: Certainly this man was a great man. Enri, who could never, due to self-knowledge, ever be a great man, became instead a follower, set about to know intimately, the contents of great men. Enri was like a statue in his own right, balanced on one knee, or like the painter who surrupticiously incorporates his own image among the many depicted great philosophers, thus to inspire his works. Enri thought, “In my own interpretation of their greatness, I too am great.” And so each year there was an election held, he cast his single vote.

Mercury Bainbridge, who was known as The Bugler or the Blowhard depending on who you supported, was the top vote getter among the people Enri wanted to vote for in the most meaningful election cycle of Enri’s life. Mercury had a raspy voice sort of like a metal train wheel when the brakes were applied, and Enri thought this signified great charisma, a word he loved to use when supporting those he favored. So when Enri cast his vote for Mercury in the primary, he did so very proudly, going even so far as to proclaim to everyone waiting in line he would be supporting MAYHEM, the group of loyal followers Bainbridge had amassed. Enri loved to hear the words, how they bellowed forth from Mercury, how the well dressed, tall and barrel-chested man made tremendous circles with his hands as he explained his vision for the country they shared. “We are overrun,” said Mercury, “with rapists and murderers! I’m the only one who can save you and your children from imminent death!” To this statement, those who dubbed him the Bugler praised his bravery, his great insight, his righteousness. The ones referring to him as Blowhard and a liar and a creep. Most of Enri’s friends were of the second category, but that did not deter him from voting emphatically for Mercury. He was the loudest, the best dressed, the most showy and shadowy of all the candidates, and when he won Enri felt justified and went to all his glowering friends telling them to amend their hypercritical ways.

After Mercury’s inauguration, Enri’s friends kept silent. He often caught them murmuring amongst each other, suggesting to each other they must “wait and see what might come next.” They murmured somewhat louder as Mercury restricted half of them from voting, but Enri said, “You need to prove you have a right. You can’t just say, just because you’re here, you belong here. Lots of people here, as Mr. Mercury says, only say they belong and really don’t.” Enri was proud of how he could refer to his leader as Mr. Mercury, because such affixation designated prowess. Enri was proud he backed a winner, and scoured the news for any indication he might see something or hear something he could repeat to let his friends know he was now a MAYHEM. Enri felt now he walked at a level somewhat higher than all those who surrounded him, and especially those who used the dirty word Blowhard. In several months despite that he remained short of a down payment on a first home that he and his wife and now his child could enjoy, he looked to the Bugler for inspiration, the Bugler a man who had everything and could tell him in detail how everything had been obtained. Enri became enamored of the tie, of the hair, of the voice, especially that raspy ear-splitting voice which Mercury seemed to push forward with his hands until it entered one’s very brain. “If you don’t love me,” said Mercury, “you are sick.” So Enri decided all his friends were to some extent delusional, to some extent sick.

His down the hall neighbor was the first who told Enri that Mercury was on the take. The neighbor said a foreign dictator whom nobody liked, especially those he ruled, had lent Mercury millions to pay debts. He said several of Mercury’s businesses had failed and the dictator supported him constantly with whitewashed foreign currency. He said now that Mercury was leader himself of all the free world, this dictator wanted these multiple favors returned to him tenfold. He said Mercury wasn’t a good businessman or even particularly bright, and that Enri believed a lie if he thought differently. Enri walked away from this conversation very upset. For weeks afterward, he would simple nod to the neighbor and not speak to him or his wife. He informed his family to do the same, saying the neighbor has succumbed to a disease Mercury had told all the MAYHEMs about, a disease where people became terrified of Mercury. This disease had only one cure: TIME. Mercury explained on his website that over time those who suffered from this disease would eventually understand how wonderful he himself was, and they would learn to love him just like all the MAYHEMs did. So Enri did as he was told and stayed away from this disillusioned neighbor, patiently waiting for the day when enlightenment and understanding might lift his soul.

Enri noted that his country was now divided between MAYHEM and those afflicted with illness. And outside of these individuals, there were also the dreaded enemies, the murderers and rapists. He began attending meetings of MAYHEM, told them of his experiences, and listened as others told similar tales of exploitation and treasonous descent. Soon Enri held anyone who was not MAYHEM in contempt. He would be secretly friendly with the people he identified as outsiders, but then among his own, he shared their names, addresses, phone numbers. He did not want those who had worked so hard to see Mercury elected to be stricken by lies and scandals. He did not want those who’d been identified as sick to infect his new friends and allies. Of course, to his old friends he would smile and remain as friendly as possible. He said they could agree to disagree. He trusted them because they shared a history. Such people weren’t sick, he decided, just undecided as he had been before MAYHEM had shown him the way.

A couple of years into the term of Mercury’s leadership, there was a scandal. Many of Mercury’s political opponents had plotted to overthrow him and had been rounded up and arrested. Enri’s old friends were frightened by this, claiming Mercury was exceeding his powers. However, Enri’s new friends told him this was a sign that Mercury’s new model of governance had been effective in routing out the corruption of the old ways. “Now surely we will prosper,” they told each other, “for we have sustained in our faith. We will be rewarded because our allegiance is known.” And they suddenly were almost privileged as they walked about their neighborhoods. Nobody outside their enclave spoke to them, and people often looked down and the other way as they walked past. Enri interpreted this as a sign of power. He now often smiled brazenly as he walked past someone if he saw them beginning to cower and look away. He took to walking as a regular part of his exercise. He walked every day over varying and expanding routes and watched his influence and territory expand before him. His health improved tremendously and he carried his confidence into grocery stores and shopping centers, used his newfound confidence to badger salesmen into granting him the best deals, and became the dean of the 4th floor of his apartment building. Everyone now was obliged to greet him and speak well of him, and their greeting of “Hail Mercury!” was shared throughout the neighborhood. Those who had cowered were seldom seen on the streets.

One day on his regular hike through the park a beautiful woman greeted him, shouting “Hail Mercury!” It turned out her name was Waverly, and she had heard of Enri and his wonderful name, his deanship and his stellar reputation. They met on Wednesdays, sitting on the same park bench and discussing all things having to do with their respective neighborhoods.

“Who was that fellow who lives a couple doors down from you? What was his name again?”

“It’s been so long since I’ve spoken to him, I don’t remember their names. But I can look on the mailbox in the lobby if you really want to know?”

“It would be really good. I want to be able to look out for this person so I don’t get sick from them myself.”

“That’s good thinking. We have to stick together, those of us who know the truth.”

So Enri checked to make sure he had the right apartment, then went to the mailbox to record the name of the gentleman and his family. This he reported to Waverly so she might know to avoid him and not get sick herself. It wasn’t a week later when he saw this person and their family were moving out of the apartment building. He saw the moving van parked out front, the door to their apartment propped open and thick looking men marching in and out carrying lamps, tables, dressers, a bed, etc. Enri thought, “What a coincidence!” but at the same time he felt he had somehow been empowered. It felt good to know he might never ever again have to plant himself next to someone who was ill. He might never again have to offer space to this man as they passed each other in the hallway. He might never grumble and think to himself, and know this delusional man who lived in such close proximity to his own family might inadvertently threaten them with disease. The person who moved in after this man and his family departed was a registered member of MAYHEM, and Enri felt almost as if he’d played a part in the improving quality of his neighborhood. 

After that, he grew close to Waverly. Once he’d even had her over for coffee with his wife conveniently out for the afternoon, and she, Waverly, had hinted. He considered very carefully after she had left. “Was this a hint? Was this possibly a hint?” He consulted some of his newest friends from MAYHEM and they confirmed, indeed it was! The following Wednesday, he met with her at their favorite park bench and they had a long conversation, exchanging personal information, friends and family, former friends, high school acquaintances, relatives both close and distant. He was rejoicing this beautiful woman, aside from his devoted but relatively ordinary wife, had taken to him. He was beginning to think of ways he might bring Waverly within his close proximity without his wife becoming aware.

He received a phone call that night from his sister. Her husband had disappeared. He had not come home from work and nobody seemed to know where he was. When she called the police, they chuckled before they suggested there was nothing they could do. Had Enri seen his brother-in-law? He responded, “No I haven’t.” But what a coincidence, he thought. He had just spoken the day before to Waverly about his sister and her family. It had been months, really, since he’d thought of them. They had argued over holiday dinner about how great a man Mr. Mercury was. Jimbo, the missing man in question, had proclaimed Mr. Mercury was a crook! “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I don’t have any idea where Jimbo might be. Perhaps he went fishing. You know he loves to fish.”

“You idiot!” said his sister, MerChant, “he always tells me when he goes somewhere. He wouldn’t just off and go fishing without telling me.”

Enri didn’t like being called an idiot by hjs own sister. That night his sleep was troubled. He looked across the room at his wife who was sleeping in her twin bed. He got up and walked into the living room, switched on the light and sat down, and soon she was there with him. “Can’t you sleep?” she asked.  He explained.

“She’s obviously worried,” said his wife. “Perhaps you can help her. You can call around. Maybe someone in the family has heard something.” 

When Enri called around, he heard a terrible rumor. Jimbo had been a member of the underground in opposition to the government. He had been taken away and killed. “This can’t be,” said Enri. “Jimbo is my sister’s husband.” When he spoke again to Waverly, she inquired about this rumor. Who had told him? “Well, just everyone!” he said in general. He was beginning now to feel quite uncomfortable, remembering previous conversations. And suddenly now Waverly was quite direct with him. “I mean specifically,” she said, “you must know who mentioned this to you. What else they said to you.”

“I don’t think I want to talk about this,” said Enri.

“There is no need,” said Waverly. “I can simply mention the people you know, the ones we spoke of before, and you can either nod or shake your head no. If you nod, I will know this is a person who has mentioned this abduction to you. If you shake your head no, I will know this is not one such individual. And let me say before we begin, we have some mutual friends. Some of my friends have told me you’ve been asking about me. I think your wife might be interested in what they have to say.” This and perhaps just another gentle arm twist was everything required, and so she reached out and touched his elbow with the tip of her index finger. And so a list of names was read, almost everyone Enri knew from both past and present. About half the list had been run through when Enri realized he had a certain power, both nodding and shaking his head no. So yes or no, in a way, he had almost the strength of Mr. Mercury himself! He could decide! It was Enri’s decision, and all he had to do was nod or shake.

Indirectly, over a period of months, riff raff was cleared out of the neighborhood. Enri felt a gentle tug of inspiration when he saw a family packing up their things to leave, and realized they had been a nod. When he saw this correlation playing out, he felt protected. Perhaps some good would come of this. Everyone now would at least agree with him. He spoke to his mother one day not long thereafter. “You fool!” she screamed at him after his own father had disappeared, “Waverly! You say her name was Waverly! There is no such person! His name is Hunter and he’s a man!” He didn’t remember when he had ever said anything about his own father. In fact, he felt he had kept pretty much his own immediate family completely out of it. Now he had to go over everything he’d said to Waverly, and try to reconcile whether or not it had led to some disaster for his family. His regular meeting with her would be the following day, but lately they had said absolutely nothing to each other. She had just told him to be sure every Wednesday he show up and they spend together always the exact amount of time they had always spent. He was afraid now. Should he go or should he not go? What would happen if he didn’t go?

He met with Waverly the next day, but instead of silence, he was determined to have an answer. “What have you done with my father?” he insisted.

“Your father,” said Waverly, “I’ve never met your father.”

And that was the end of it. No names were ever spoken again between himself and Waverly. After four more such completely silent meetings, she said his Wednesdays were now free and he could do with them as he wished. All his MAYHEM friends didn’t seem to notice any difference in him at all. His wife always smiled when she joined him in the middle of the night when he suffered from insomnia. One day he answered the door and it was someone who had come for him. He said, “Yes, absolutely. I am the person you are seeking,” and he went with them. They led him to a car, opened the passenger side rear door. When he got inside, they closed the door after him, and he noticed the door handle had been removed and he couldn’t open the door from the inside. And this was right, he decided. Mr. Mercury was always right. Enri had committed a sin against humanity, and his redemption lay with the men who were driving the car. These included the driver, his sidekick and the man sitting next to Enri.

And then, quite suddenly all these men started singing simultaneously:

To the gulag we will go…

To the gulag we will go…

Come skippity skat, come skippity skat

To the gulag we will go.

And the fellow sitting next to Enri, a very handsome young fellow indeed and almost merry as it seemed, tapped Enri on the shoulder so he could say to him. “You know G-U-L-A-G gulag, that’s a Russian word, but I guess you already knew that.” Then he lit a cigarette and offered one to Enri. All three of the men were smoking, but when they offered again to Enri, uncharacteristically, he refused. So the three of them smoked together and laughed and refused themselves to roll a window down. They told him he would share with them a smoke whether he wanted to or not.

Yet, as it turned out, they never reached the gulag. Enri had been contemplating and imagining, and suddenly they arrived to the place where they were destined. Enri’d been here before, a high overlook, and he’d gone many times with his wife (and even without, but by himself, for this was a place he had reserved in his soul for both of them, and he shared it with no one). In the dark, he knew it by a single tree, a pine, stuffed precariously right along the edge of the crag. He and his wife had waited, parked just off the road, but still well back of this pine. They had been frightened the entire cliff might give way should they bring themselves even a foot closer. Only now, the men opened the car door from outside, and crowded him until he leaned against the pine tree. He noted how sturdy it was, despite standing on the edge of a precipitous fall.  He failed to take note of the roughness of the tree bark against his hand, but sensed the sticky gum line. He begged, “Can we wait a few minutes?”

“But why, comrade?” answered one of them.

He thought of his father, of the brother-in-law with whom he had quarreled. He considered the possibility he might find them at the bottom of this ledge. “I want to see the sunrise. You see…” However, he trailed off. He did not want to explain to these men it was the beautiful sunrise he and his wife had come here seeking every time they traveled here. And despite this, it never occurred to Enri, or perhaps he would not allow it to occur, this had not been a coincidence, their presence here just now. “Sure,” they said, and they waited, but as they did so, they began to laugh, and sing once more of the gulag.

The gulag…Oh, the gulag,

Such a magical place to fall on your face…

Oh Oh Oh,

Oh, the gulag.

The G-U-L-A-G…

And they slapped each other on their backs and on their sides, and Enri could see that all three of them were young and healthy beneath their thick and unusual frock coats. Then they grew silent until one of them said, “Yes, my dear comrade. We grant your wish. We shall all wait here for the sunrise.” A few minutes later, after he had ceased crying, Enri’s patience wore thin. He threw himself at the young man standing most distant from him. This man had seemed a little shorter, perhaps more vulnerable. Enri reached with his thumbs, attempting to penetrate the man’s eyes. So it happened the driver and both his two compatriots witnessed the sunrise, but Enri did not. He had missed his chance, apparently. It was indeed a most gorgeous sunrise.    

Mark Putzi received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee in 1990. He has published fiction and poetry, both in print and online, in the US and in many other countries. His work can be found in Rougarou, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Griffel and Meniscus among others. He lives in Milwaukee.