Ihave discovered that life begins with retirement.i

Transcription

1 Vibini at the bat Ihave discovered that life begins with retirement.i was a medical doctor for thirty-eight years and when I retired on January 3, 1995, at the age of sixty-five, I felt as if my life had begun all over again. I felt unburdened because I was no longer on call twenty-four hours a day. I no longer had to adjust my life to the schedules of the sick and dying. My family was gone, my wife having committed suicide in 1980 in Wuppertal, Germany, and my four children all committed for life in st. dympna s in Gheel, Belgium. I could finally and lazily indulge my interest in Italian military history. Because I was retired, I could loaf. I could go out and take walks at my leisure. That s how I met dallasandro vibini and discovered the beginning of my career as a writer. I first met vibini when I was walking down clifton avenue. I was out for a stroll. It was easter morning, april 16, 1995, a beautiful, wonderful spring day. I was trying to lose some of my 300 pounds by walking it off. I ve gained weight since retiring and that weight is an embarrassment because I m only five feet eight inches tall. I enjoyed my walk that day. The jonquils and daffodils were out. The cars whipped by. The mourning 9

2 doves called from the telephone wires. I was amazed that God would send his blessings so abundantly on the condemned. Just as I was passing our Lady of the denunciation church a man came running out of the front door. he was yelling and gesturing. I heard him yell, Father schlag, I will not kiss your aspergillum. No way. I don t care whether you like it or not. anathema or no anathema. excommunication or no excommunication. he was a thin man, about six feet tall and weighing about 150 pounds. his graying hair stuck out from under his green beret. he was wearing a red cape, black penny loafers and purple spats. as he came down the steps, I stopped and waited for him to pass. he stopped by me and said, can you imagine that? here I am a devout roman catholic. I go to confession each saturday and to mass on sunday morning. I can t afford a contribution, but I keep my religion up. Now Father schlag suddenly decides that I have to kiss his sprinkler. I won t do it even if it is easter. My first impression was that some kind of joke was going on, a joke not comprehensible within my German sense of humor. I hadn t the slightest idea what an aspergillum was. I couldn t even spell it then. so I said, hold it. What s all the fuss? The thin man looked at me and said, That priest has overstepped his commission. I won t kiss his aspergillum. I said, Take it easy. Why won t you kiss his aspergillum? I had the feeling I was being drawn into the kind of dialogue that I used to laugh at in the Marx Brothers movies. I know that roman catholics are 10

3 always kissing funny things. It s the way the priests humiliate them and keep them brainwashed. If they d stop kissing things there wouldn t be any parishioners. I m a Lutheran so I don t know about this kissing business; Lutherans don t even kiss their wives. The thin man looked at me and said, That aspergillum of Father schlag has, like all of them, a sponge in it to hold the water as he sprinkles it around. That sponge hasn t been changed in twenty years. It s covered with mold, fungus, rot. Like his pocket book. I smiled and said, Why don t you come over to my apartment just around the corner on vox Populi street and I ll make you a cup of coffee? The man agreed because, he said, he didn t get the wine or the wafer so he might as well drink some coffee. I took him into my kitchen, made some Folger s Instant coffee, got out some Pream and we sat down at my breakfast table. I introduced myself. I told him I was Gottlieb otto Liebgott and that my special study was Italian military history. I told him that I was beginning a new career, that of a writer, and that my first project was to write the biography of the Italian war hero Giovanni Battista salvatore. he said that his name was dallasandro vibini and that he was a private investigator and that he specialized in solving petty crimes. vibini said he made his living by doing what no one else would do. vibini s the name; petty crime s my game. Then he said, You re a writer? and I repeated that I was trying to start a new career as a writer. I told him that my father Gottlob Gerebernus Liebgott had been a famous German novelist. vibini laughed and said, I need an amanuensis. I need 11

4 someone to write down my investigations. I allowed as to how I could do that, but that at the moment I was involved in investigating sign language in the ethiopian army and how their lack of sign language determined the outcome of the siege of addis ababa. I was just beginning to tell him how important sign language was in the african campaign when the telephone rang. I picked up my phone and said, Why, yes. he s here. It s for you. I wondered how anyone might know that he was in my apartment. vibini wasn t the least surprised. Yes, he said. I ll be right there. It ll cost you $200. he hung up the phone and I said, how did anyone know that you were here? They must have contacted my brother culofaccia. he knows where I am at all times. he even knows what I m thinking. call a cab. I have a case to solve. When the Quo vadis cab arrived, I decided to go along and find out what this all was that had come to pass. I get my best ideas in cabs and I thought my time wouldn t be wasted. I asked vibini where we were going and he said that we were going to riverfront stadium because someone had stolen the fungo bat and that the reds couldn t warm up in the outfield until someone could hit them fly balls and that it couldn t be done without a fungo bat and that bat was missing and that he had to find it in one hour because the game was scheduled to start in two hours and the game couldn t start until the outfielders had warmed up by catching some fly balls hit off the fungo bat. When we arrived at riverfront stadium, we were taken into the clubhouse. Fungus schlag, the clubhouse 12

5 manager, brother to Father schlag I later learned, explained that the outfield coach Mold schlag, brother to Father schlag and Fungus schlag, needed his bat that Father schlag had sprinkled with holy water from his aspergillum or he, Mold schlag, couldn t hit fly balls to the outfield. I couldn t understand how Mold and Fungus could lose sight of a bat. It wasn t as if someone could hide it in a pocket. Unless, of course, the bat was in sections and could be disassembled and put down a pant leg and then carried out past rot schlag, the security guard at the door and brother to Father schlag, Fungus schlag and Mold schlag, all sons of Perfidy schlag, who swept the floors at our Lady of the denunciation church. vibini wasn t in the least distracted by the schlags, took off his green beret and his red cape and went right to work. First he demanded a complete description of the fungo bat. Maury schlag, son of Fungus schlag and the bat boy for the day, said the bat was about forty-eight inches long. It had a diameter of about two inches. It was made of wood and had a sponge stuck in the end and the sponge was soaked in water and covered with mold, fungus and rot. vibini asked when the bat was last seen. Maury said he last saw it when Mold schlag was kissing the wet end of it and waving it around and drops of water were flying through the rotten air of the clubhouse before the players arrived with their boxes of pepperoni pizzas with mushrooms, onions, sausage, green peppers, black olives, green olives, mozzarella cheese, swiss cheese, american cheese, cheddar cheese, provolone, anchovies, jalapeños and garlic on them. I wrote it all 13