Characters

By Rouben Cholakian

These mini-portraits aim to invite the reader to fill the temporal spaces, backwards and forwards. In a sense then, these short readings can be looked upon as an exercise in collaborative invention, one in which writer and reader work as partners. Thus not all the spaces will be filled in the same way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469155074

Rouben Cholakian

The author, whose specialty is early French Literature, has devoted much of his writing to this important sixteenth-century writer. The literary biography, “Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance” (Columbia University Press, 2006) has received enthusiastic reviews, variously called “gripping. . . well-written. . . engrossing. . . and a welcome addition.” See too as companion pieces: “Marguerite de Navarre: Selected Writings (2008),” and “Marguerite de Navarre: A Literary Queen” (2016).

Book preview

Characters

Rouben Cholakian

Copyright © 2012 by Rouben Cholakian.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4691-5506-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-5507-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Margaret

Dr David Tchilingarian

The Morales

Harold

Mr. Rostow

My Very Best Boy

Uncle Fred

Peter

Barbara

Janet

Mrs. Watson

George

Annette

Arthur

Alec

Gertrude

Jacob

Malika

Langston

Tammy

Cecilia

Mrs. Hopkins

Fritz

Mary Jane

Dorothy

Robert

Martha And Frank

THANK YOU M.B

Every man carries within him the entire form of the human condition. (Montaigne)

These mini-portraits aim to invite the reader to fill the temporal spaces, backwards and forwards. In a sense then, these short readings can be looked upon as an exercise in collaborative invention, one in which writer and reader work as partners. Thus not all the spaces will be filled in the same way.

MARGARET

My friendship with Maggie can be divided into three parts: astonishment, horror and reconciliation.

Like the scene in Annie Hall, we met in a movie line and began conversing about that very scene, at which point, she proclaimed having spent an evening with Woody Allen at a party in his honor.

I expressed predictable amazement and admiration. When we bumped into each other later after the film, she invited me to a near-by café for coffee and an exchange of views on the movie we had seen.

It is not strange that I have hobnobbed with so many famous film people, she explained, since my father was a Hollywood producer and throughout most of my growing up years I had breakfast with this one, and dinner with that one. Eventually you get used to it, and they seem like ordinary people, just like you and me.

I wanted to reach across the table and touch this person who had mingled with stars. I was almost tempted to get her autograph as a kind of vicarious thrill.

And that was the start of our friendship and the beginning of other tales of wonder, the most extraordinary of which was her revelation that she had been the inspiration for the heroine in an Updike novel.

Oh, yes, and I suppose I could have taken advantage of his obvious strong feelings for me.

I often ask myself now why it never once occurred to me that perhaps these narratives were, if not altogether fabricated, at least much enhanced in order to win over the flattering approbation of a naïf and hopelessly gullible listener. It was not until I met a mutual friend, who enlightened me and removed the veil before my eyes that I began to see the truth.

Good Heaven’s, Jeannie, Maggie was notorious in school for imagining the most incredible tales in which she mixed with the great and the mighty. And as friends caught on, they took pity on her because she came from very humble roots and this was clearly her awkward way of compensating.

But, I interjected, it is rank deception, it’s just down right lying.

Well, you can surely look at it that way.

That indeed is the way I look at it, and I cannot spend time with someone who refuses to distinguish between fact and fiction. How can I ever tell whether she’s making things up or telling the truth? I do not want to be a part of her fantasy world.

For weeks thereafter I made excuses when Maggie called to make a date to do this or that together. I felt as if I were taking a shower to cleanse the dirt that had accumulated on my befouled body. Eventually she stopped calling and I was greatly relieved. But was I?

Time and distance allowed me to examine my own motivations. Was I not being too judgmental? Was Maggie’s make-believe world in anyway a danger to others? Was her tendency to build castles in the air harmful to anyone except perhaps to herself? I convinced myself that what was important was that this woman needed this idiosyncratic strategy to survive and I myself needed to learn to accept the good with the bad in my relationship with her.

Thus persuaded, I called Maggie and we made a date for lunch. As she began to make up one of her tall tales, she looked at me in a way that suggested that she knew that I knew; this in turn put a damper on her creative energies. She did not have to win over my approbation; she understood that she had already earned it and we were both greatly relieved.

DR DAVID TCHILINGARIAN

It wasn’t exactly the Montagues and the Capulets; they weren’t sword fighting in the streets. But there was a definite political divide between the two neighbors, which in nowise impacted on the comradeship between their children, Jenny and Albert.

From the earliest days, they played together with little or no conflict. If Jenny suggested dolls, Albert acquiesced without a murmur. If he in turn suggested catch, Jenny went along cheerfully. As the years passed, the friendship inexorably took on a more mature, not to say romantic hue.

They never spoke of their outings as dates. They went to a film, took a walk in the nearby park, or attended school events side by side. And that was all there was to it. Everyone else saw them as partners. They rather looked upon their camaraderie as the pleasant outcome of being old buddies and long time neighbors, and little else. At least that is what each told himself and herself.

And so it continued until it came time to separate in order to attend their respectively chosen colleges. It was the Vietnam era and somehow, like an egg that had been waiting to hatch, Albert got in with kids who were of his family’s persuasion, liberal and strongly opposed to this expensive and pointless war!

Jenny, herself the product of her own environment, saw it all quite differently. It was a war against the communist devil and America’s moral duty to fight the monster wherever it could.

Well, Jenny began with a forced smile, I hear you’ve been spending time with the enemy."

Enemy, what enemy? Albert replied half apologetically.

My mother hears from friends that you’ve been in anti-war marches at your university. You had better be careful or they will come and get you.

Jenny was eager to hide her genuine dismay in a comic tone.

Oh, well, what else is there to do besides study, study, study.

Nothing more for the moment was said on that explosive topic, and the two fell into exchanging campus gossip: courses, teachers, new friends.

"How about a walk to the park for old time’s sake.

Sure, Jenny agreed placing her arm into his.

Do you miss being on Weston Street, surrounded by all the familiar places? he asked, searching for