He must have sensed that we didn’t have enough to eat, for every time he came he brought food, usually the remnants of some Polish concoction his wife had made—soups, stews, puddings, jam. Good gruel, the sort we needed. In fact, we began to look forward to these visits.
There wasn’t much change in Stanley, I noticed, except that his nose was now pressed closer to the grindstone. He was working nights in a big printing establishment in lower New York, he told me. Now and then, standing up over the kitchen tubs, he would try to write. He found it almost impossible to concentrate—too many domestic worries. Usually they were broke before the week was up. Anyway, he was more interested in his children now than in writing. He wanted them to have a good life. Soon as they were old enough he would send them to college. And more of the same…
Though he found it impossible to write, he did read. Now and then he brought along one of the books which entranced him. It was always the work of a romantic writer, usually of the 19th century. Somehow, no matter what book we were discussing, no matter what the world situation, no matter even if a revolution were impending, our talks always ended on Joseph Conrad. Or if not Conrad, then Anatole France. I had long ceased to be interested in either of these writers. Conrad bored me. But when Stanley began to sing his praise I would become intrigued despite myself. Stanley was no critic, to be sure, but, just as in the old days when we used to sit by the glowing stove in the kitchen and while the hours away, so now Stanley had a way of talking about the men he adored which infected me. He was full of yarns, usually about trivial episodes. These yarns were always humorous and spiced with malice and irony. The undercurrent, however, was freighted with tenderness, an immense, throbbing tenderness, which was almost suffocating. This tenderness of his, which he always smothered, redeemed his rancor, his cruelty, his vindictiveness. It was an aspect of his nature, however, which he rarely betrayed to others. In general he was brusque, mordant, acidulous. With a few words and gestures he could destroy any ambiance. Even when silent there emanated from him a fluid which was corrosive.
In talking to me, however, he always melted. For some strange reason he saw in me an alter ego. Nothing gave him more delight, nothing could make him more charming and solicitous, than the fact I felt miserable or defeated. Then we were brothers. Then he could relax, expand, sun himself. He liked to think that we were accursed. Had he not prophesied time on end that all my efforts would be of no avail? Had he not predicted that I would never make a good husband, nor a father, nor ever become a writer? Why did I persist? Why didn’t I settle down, as he had, take some humdrum job and accept my lot? It was patent that it did his heart good to gloat thus. Ever and always he went out of his way to remind me that I was just a Brooklyn boy, a lad from the 14 th Ward—like himself, like Louis Pirossa, like Harry Martin, like Eddie Goeller, like Alfie Betcha. (All failures.) No, none of us would ever come to aught. We were condemned in advance. I ought to be grateful, he thought, that I wasn’t sitting in the penitentiary or that I hadn’t become a drug addict. Lucky for me that I came of a solid, respectable family.
Just the same, I was doomed.
As he continued to rant, however, his voice became more and more soothing. There was now a wistful quality in it, a nostalgic tinge. It was so very clear that, despite all he said, he could think of no better heritage than the life we once led, the companions we once had, in the good old 14th Ward. He spoke of our mutual friends of long ago as if he had made a life’s study of each separate one. They were all so diverse in character and temperament, yet each and every one had been circumscribed by his limitations, held in a vise of his own making. For Stanley there was no hope of egress, never had been, for any of them. Nor for us, to be sure. For other individuals there might be loopholes, but not for the men of the 14th Ward. We were in jeopardy, forever. It was this very fact, this deliciously ineluctable fact, which endeared the memory of our bygone friends. Most certainly, he admitted, they possessed as great talent as men elsewhere in the world. Undisputably they possessed all the qualities which made of other men poets, kings, diplomats, scholars. And they had proved themselves capable of revealing these qualities, each on his own level, each in his own unique way. Wast not Johnny Paul the very soul of a king? Was he not a potential Charlemagne? His chivalry, his magnanimity, his faith and tolerance, were they not the very attributes of a Saladin? Stanley could always wax most eloquent when it came to Johnny Paul whom neither of us had seen since we were nine or ten. What became of him, we used to ask each other. What? No one knew. By choice or by fate he had remained anonymous. He was there, somewhere, in the great mass of humanity, leavening it with the fervor of his truly regal spirit. That was sufficient for Stanley. For me too, indeed. Strange that the very mention of the name Johnny Paul could bring tears to our eyes. Was he really so near and dear to us—or had we magnified his importance with the passing years? In any case, there he stood—in the hall of memory—the incarnation of all that was good, all that was promising. One of the grand Untouchables. Whatever it was he possessed, whatever it was he purveyed, it was imperishable. We had been aware of it as boys, we were convinced of it now as men…
Mona, at first rather distrustful of Stanley, rather uneasy in his presence, warmed to him more and more with each succeeding visit. Our talk of the old neighborhood, of our wonderful playmates, our curious and brutal games, our fantastic notions (as children) of the world we inhabited, revealed to her a side of life she had never known. Occasionally she would remind Stanley of her Polish origin, or her Roumanian origin, or her Viennese origin, or telescope them all into the heart of the Carpathian mountains. To these overtures Stanley always gave a lame ear, or as the Greeks say—koutsaftis. In his mind the fact that she couldn’t speak a word of Polish was sufficient to put her in the same category as all the other outlanders of this world. Besides, for Stanley’s taste she was a little too glib. Out of deference to me he never contradicted her, but the devastating expressions which flitted over his features spoke volumes. Doubt and disdain were the expressions Stanley most easily summoned. More than anything else Stanley was disdainful. This disdain which never quite left his features, which at most he subdued or repressed, was concentrated in his nose. He had the rather long, fine nose with flaring nostrils which is often noticeable among the Poles. Whatever was suspect, whatever was distasteful or antipathetic, manifested itself at once through this organ. The mouth expressed bitterness, the eyes a steadfast cruelty. They were small eyes, the color of agate; they were set wide apart and the look they gave bored clean through one. When he was merely ironical they twinkled, like cold, remote stars; when he was angry they burned like arrows dipped in poison.
What made him particularly awkward and ill at ease in Mona’s presence was her fluency, her agility, her quick intelligence. They were not qualities he admired in the other sex. It was not altogether by accident that he had chosen for wife a dolt, a half-wit, who, to hide her ignorance or embarrassment, would grin fatuously or titter in a most disconcerting way. True to form, he treated her like an object. She was the vassal. Perhaps he did love her once, but if so it must have been in another incarnation. Nevertheless he felt at home with her. He knew how to cope with her faults and transgressions.
He was such a queer, queer fellow, Stanley. Such a mixture of rasping contradictions. But there was one thing he seldom did, queer gazabo that he was—he seldom asked questions. When he did, they were direct questions and they had to be answered directly. It was, of course, not tact but pride which made him act in this seemingly discreet way. He took it for granted that I would inform him of anything important which came to pass. He preferred to have me volunteer the information than to pump it out of me. Knowing him as I did, I regarded it as hopeless to explain to him our manner of life. Had I told him simply that I had taken to thieving he would have swallowed it unquestioningly. Had I told him I had become a counterfeiter he might have arched his eyebrows in quizzical approbation. But to tell him of the devious nature of our operations would have baffled and repelled him.
A rum bird, this Polski. The only trace of suavity he ever displayed was in
