Yes, it was beautiful coming away from Town Hall of a snowy night, after hearing the Little Symphony perform. So civilized in there, such discreet applause, such knowing comments. And now the light touch of snow, cabs pulling up and darting away, the lights sparkling, splintering like icicles, and Monsieur Barrere and his little group sneaking out the back entrance to give a private recital at the home of some wealthy denizen of Park Avenue. A thousand paths leading away from the concert hall and in each one a tragic figure silently pursues his destiny. Paths criss-crossing everywhere: the low and the mighty, the meek and the tyrannical, the haves and the have nots.
Yes, many’s the night I attended a recital in one of these hallowed musical morgues and each time I walked out I thought not of the music I had heard but of one of my foundlings, one of the bleeding cosmococcic crew I had hired or fired that day and the memory of whom neither Haydn, Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven, Beelzebub, Schubert, Paganini or any of the wind, string, horn or cymbal clan of murikers could dispel. I could see him, poor devil, leaving the office with his messenger suit wrapped in a brown parcel, heading for the elevated line at the Brooklyn Bridge, where he would board a train for Freshpond Road or Pitkin Avenue, or maybe Kosciusko Street, there to descend into the swarm, grab a sour pickle, dodge a kick in the ass, peel the potatoes, clean the lice out of the bedding and say a prayer for his great grandfather who had died at the hand of a drunken Pole because the sight of a beard floating in the wind was anathema to him. I could also see myself walking along Pitkin Avenue, or Kosciusko Street, searching for a certain hovel, or was it a kennel, and thinking to myself how lucky to be born a Gentile and speak English so well. (Is this still Brooklyn? Where am I?) Sometimes I could smell the clams in the bay, or perhaps it was the sewer water. And wherever I went, searching for the lost and the damned, there were always fire escapes loaded with bedding, and from the bedding there fell like wounded cherubim an assortment of lice, bedbugs, brown beetles, cockroaches and the scaly rinds of yesterday’s salami. Now and then I would treat myself to a succulent sour pickle or a smoked herring wrapped in newspaper. Those big fat pretzels, how good they were! The women all had red hands and blue fingers—from the cold, from scrubbing and washing and rinsing. But the son, a genius already, would have long, tapering lingers with calloused tips. Soon he would be playing at Carnegie Hall.) Nowhere in the upholstered Gentile world I hailed from had I ever run into a genius, or even a near genius. Even a book shop was hard to find. Calendars, yes, oodles of them, supplied by the butcher or grocer. Never a Holbein, a Carpaccio, a Hiroshige, a Giotto, nor even a Rembrandt. Whistler, possibly but only his mother, that placid looking creature all in black with hands folded in her lap, so resigned, so eminently respectable. No, never anything among us dreary Christians that smelled of art. But luscious pork stores with tripe and gizzards of every variety. And of course linoleums, brooms, flower pots. Everything from the animal and vegetable kingdom, plus hardware, German cheese cake, knackwurst and sauerkraut. A church on every block, a sad looking affair, such as only Lutherans and Presbyterians can bring forth from the depths of their sterilized faith. And Christ was a carpenter! He had built a church, but not of sticks and stones.
15
Things continued to move along on greased cogs. It was almost like those early days of the Japanese love nest. If I went for a walk even the dead trees inspired me; if I visited Reb at his store I came back loaded with ideas as well as shirts, ties, gloves and handkerchieves. When I ran into the landlady I no longer had to worry about back rent. We were paid up everywhere now and had we wanted credit we could have had it galore. Even the Jewish holidays passed pleasantly, with a feast at this house and another at that. We were deep into the Fall, but it no longer oppressed me as it used to. The only thing I missed perhaps was a bike.
I had now had a few more lessons at the wheel and could apply for a driver’s license any time. When I had that I would take Mona for a spin, as Reb had urged. Meanwhile I had made the acquaintance of the Negro tenants. Good people, as Reb had said. Every time we collected the rents we came home pie-eyed and slap happy. One of the tenants, who worked as a Customs inspector, offered to lend me books. He had an amazing library of erotica, all filched at the docks in the course of duty. Never had I seen so many filthy books, so many dirty photographs. It matte me wonder what the famous Vatican Library contained in the way of forbidden fruit.
Now and then we went to the theatre, usually to see a foreign play—Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller, Wedekind, Werfel, Sudermann, Chekov, Andreyev … The Irish players had arrived, bringing with them Juno and the Peacock and the Plough and the Stars. What a playwright, Sean O’Casey! Nothing like him since Ibsen.
On a sunny day I’d sit in Fort Greene Park and read a book—Idle Days Patagonia, Haunch, Paunch and Jowl, of The Tragic Sense of Life (Unamuno). If there was a record I wanted to hear which we didn’t have I could borrow from Reb’s collection or from the landlady’ s. When we felt like doing nothing we played chess, Mona and I. She wasn’t much of a player, but then neither was I. It was more exciting, I found, to study the games given in chess books—Paul Morphy’s above all. Or even to read about the evolution of the game, or the interest in it displayed by the Icelanders or the Malayans.
Not when the thought of seeing the folks—for Thanksgiving—could get me down. Now I could tell them—it would be only half a lie—that I had been commissioned to write a book. That I was getting paid for my labors. How that would tickle them! I was full of nothing but kind thoughts now. All the good things that had happened, to me were coming to the surface. I felt like sitting down to write this one and that, thanking him or her for all that had been done for me. Why not? And there were places, too, I would have to render thanks to—for yielding me blissful moments. I was that silly about it all that I made a special trip one day to Madison Square Garden and offered up silent thanks to the walls for the glorious moments I had experienced in the past, watching Buffalo Bill and his Pawnee Indians whooping it up, for the privilege of watching Jim Londos, the little Hercules, toss a giant of a Pole over his head, for the six day bike races and the unbelievable feats of endurance which I had witnessed.
In these breezy moods, all open to the sky as I was, was it any wonder that, bumping into Mrs. Skolsky on my way in or out, she would stop to look at me with great round eyes as I paused to pass the time of day? A pause of half or three-quarters of an hour sometimes, during which I unloaded titles of books, outlandish streets, dreams, homing pigeons, tug boats, anything at all, whatever came to mind, and it all came at once, it seemed, because I was happy, relaxed, carefree and in the best of health. Though I never made a false move, I knew and she knew that what I ought to do was to put my arms around her, kiss her, hug her, make her feel like a woman, not a landlady. Yes, she would say, but with her breasts. Yes, with her soft, warm belly. Yes. Always yes. If I had said—Lift your skirt and show me your pussy! it would have been yes too. But I had the sense to avoid such nonsense. I was content to remain what I appeared to be—a polite, talkative, and somewhat unusual (for a Goy) lodger. She could have appeared naked before me, with a platter of Kartoffelklose smothered in black gravy and I wouldn’t have laid a paw on her.
No, I was far too happy, far too content, to be thinking about chance fucks. As I say, the only thing I truly missed was the bike. Reb’s car, which he wanted me to consider as my own, meant nothing. Any more than would a limousine with a chauffeur to tote me around. Not even a passage to Europe meant much to me now. For the moment I had no need of Europe. Nice to dream about it, talk about,
