That’s a terrible way to treat a person, said Mona.
It is, but he seems to invite it, I replied.
You shouldn’t have egged him on—it was cruel.
I admit it, but he’s a pest. It would have happened anyway. Thereupon I began to narrate my experience with Olinski. I explained how I had humored him by transferring him from one office to another. Everywhere it was the same story. He was always being abused and mistreated—for no reason at all, as he always put it. They don’t like me there, he would say.
You don’t seem to be liked anywhere, I finally told him one day. Just what is it that’s eating you up? I remember well the look he gave me when I fired that at him. Come on, I said, tell me, because this is your last chance.
To my amazement, here is what he said: Mr. Miller, I have too much ambition to make a good messenger. I should have a more responsible position. With my education I would make a good manager. I could save the company money. I could bring in more business, make things more efficient.
Wait a minute, I interrupted. Don’t you know that you haven’t a chance in the world to become a manager of a branch office? You’re crazy. You don’t even know how to speak English, let alone those eight other languages you’re always talking about. You don’t know how to get along with your neighbor. You’re a nuisance, don’t you understand that? Don’t tell me about your grand ideas for the future … tell me just one thing … how did you happen to become what you are … such a damned unholy pest, I mean.
Olinski blinked like an owl at this … Mr. Miller, he began you must know that I am a good person, that I try hard to…
Horseshit! I exclaimed. Now tell me honestly, why did you ever leave Tel Aviv?
Because I wanted to make something of myself, that’s the truth.
And you couldn’t do that in Tel Aviv—or Boulogne-sur-Mer?
He gave a wry smile. Before he could put in a word I continued: Did you get along with your parents? Did you have any close friends there? Wait a minute—I held up my hand to head off his answer—did anybody in the whole world ever tell you that he liked you? Answer me that!
He was silent. Not crushed, just baffled.
You know what you should be? I went on. A stool pigeon.
He didn’t know what the word meant. Look, I explained, a stool pigeon makes his money by spying on other people, by informing on them—do you understand that?
And I should be a stool-pigeon? he shrieked, drawing himself up and trying to look dignified.
Exactly, I said, not batting an eyelash. And if not that, then a hangman. You know—and I made a grim circular motion with my hand—the man who strings them up.
Olinski put on his hat and made a few steps towards the door. Suddenly he wheeled around, walked calmly back to my desk. He took off his hat and held it with his two hands. Excuse me, he said, but could I have another chance—in Harlem? This in a tone of voice as if nothing untoward had occurred.
Why certainly, I replied briskly, of course I’ll give you another chance, but it’s the last one, remember that. I’m beginning to like you, do you know that?
This baffled him more than anything I had said before. I was surprised that he didn’t ask me why.
Listen, Dave, I said, leaning towards him as if I had something very confidential to propose, I’m putting you in the worst office we have. If you can get along up there you will be able to get along anywhere. There’s one thing I have to warn you about … don’t start any trouble in that office or else—and here I drew my hand across my throat—you understand?
Are the tips good up there, Mr. Miller? he asked, pretending not to be affected by my last remark.
No one gives a tip in that neighborhood, my good friend. And don’t try to extract one either. Thank God each night when you go home that you’re still alive. We’ve lost eight messengers in that office in the last three years. Figure it out for yourself.
Here I got up, grasped him by the arm and escorted him to the stairs. Listen, Dave, I said, as I shook hands with him, maybe I’m a friend of yours and you don’t know it. Maybe you’ll thank me one day for putting you in the worst office in New York. You’ve got so much to learn that I don’t know what to tell you first. Above all, try to keep your mouth shut. Smile once in a while, even if it’s painful. Say thank you even if you don’t get a tip. Speak just one language and as little of that as possible. Forget about becoming a manager. Be a good messenger. And don’t tell people that you came from Tel Aviv because they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You were born in the Bronx, do you understand? If you can’t act decently, be a dope, a Schlemiel, savvy?
Here’s something to go the movies with. See a funny picture for a change. And don’t let me hear from you again! Walking to the subway that night with Nahoum Yood brought back vivid memories of my midnight explorations with O’Rourke. It was to the East Side I always came when I wanted to be stirred to the roots. It was like coming home. Everything was familiar in a way beyond all knowing. It was almost as if I had known the world of the ghetto in a previous incarnation. The quality that got me most of all was the pullulation. Everything was struggling towards the light in glorious profusion. Everything burgeoned and gleamed, just as in the murky canvases of Rembrandt.
One was constantly being surprised, often by the homeliest trifles. It was the world of my childhood wherein common everyday objects acquired a sacred character. These poor despised aliens were living with the discarded objects of a world which had moved on. For me they were living out a past which had been abruptly stifled. Their bread was still a good bread which one could eat without butter or jam. Their kerosene lamps gave their rooms a holy glow. The bed always loomed large and inviting, the furniture was old but comfortable. It wag a constant source of wonder to me how clean and orderly were the interiors of these hideous edifices which seemed to be crumbling to bits. Nothing can be more elegant than a bare poverty-stricken home which is clean and fully of peace. I saw hundreds of such homes in my search for vagrant boys. Many of these unexpected scenes we came upon in the dead of night were like illustrated pages from the Old Testament. We entered, looking for a delinquent boy or a petty thief, and we left feeling that we had broken bread with the sons of Israel.
The parents had no knowledge whatever, usually, of the world which their children had penetrated ill joining the messenger force. Hardly any of them had ever set foot in an office building. They had been transferred from one ghetto to another without even glimpsing the world in between. The desire sometimes seized me to escort one of these parents to the floor of an Exchange where he could observe his son running back and forth like a fire engine amid the wild pandemonium created by the crazy stock brokers, an exciting and lucrative game which sometimes permitted the boy to make seventy-five dollars in a single week.
Some of these boys still remained boys though they had reached the age of thirty or forty and were the possessors, some of them, of blocks of real estate, farms, tenement houses or packs of gilt-edge bonds. Many of them had bank accounts running above ten thousand dollars. Yet they remained messenger boys, would remain messenger boys until they died … What an incongruous world for an immigrant to be plunged into! I could scarcely make head or tail of it myself. With all the advantages of an American upbringing had I not (in my twenty-eighth year) been obliged to seek this lowest of all occupations? And was it not with extreme difficulty that I succeeded in earning sixteen or seventeen dollars a week? Soon I would be leaving this world to make my way as a writer, and as such I would become even more helpless than the lowliest of these immigrants. Soon I would be begging furtively in the streets at night, in the very purlieus of my own home. Soon I would be standing in front of restaurant windows, looking enviously and desperately at the good things to eat. Soon I would be thanking newsboys for handing me a nickel or a dime to get a cup of coffee and a cruller.
Yes, long before it came to pass I was thinking of just such eventualities. Perhaps the reason I loved the
