Coney (7 page)

“Come if you want. But no jokes. It is not funny.”

His mother's pounding brought Soldier to the door. Harry wheeled in the bike, as she demanded:

“Is that your bike?”

Soldier, fulfilling an informational request, examined the bike.

“Damn, yes, Ma'am, that's one of mine all right.”

“It's a piece of junk.”

“Damn, no Ma'am.”

“It's all crooked!”

Soldier slid his palms over the handlebars.

“Damn, you see, Ma'am, once something is broken you can never make it like it was. Even if you take a piece of wood and saw it perfectly into two pieces and then glue it together, it looks perfect, but it ain't. There's the sawdust you lost. Things never mend back to the way they was.”

“What do I care for two pieces of wood!”

Harry's dread was diverted by his mother playing Margaret Dumont to Soldier's earnest Chico Marx.

His mother was now demanding to see the owner, a bill of sale, which in any case would be invalid because Harry was a minor, and the establishment's license to do business. Soldier, in the presence of a lady, sincerely apologized for the owner's absence and his ignorance as to the answers to the other questions. He suggested two possible actions: return tomorrow during the day or walk over to the Half-Moon Hotel and look for Woody, who couldn't be missed because he was a dwarf.

“A dwarf!” his mother screamed. “Leave it to my genius to get me mixed up with an evil eye. How could you get mixed up with a dwarf!”

“What's wrong with …” Harry's answer tailed off, as he spotted a black Packard stopping in front of the store. Woody and a chauffeur pushing a man a wheel chair entered.

“Hi, kid,” Woody said.

“Hi.”

“What's going on?” Woody asked.

“Did you sell him this piece of junk!” his mother demanded.

Before Woody could answer, Menter pointed his finger at Aba and said:

“I know you. Weren't you at Druckman's house in Sea Gate?”

“Yes. And I recall you too.”

Menter smirked.

“Out of the ten other cripples in wheelchairs who were there.”

“I meant no offense.”

Harry never had heard Aba speak so softly.

“Ain't you some kind of Jew poet?”

“Yes.”

“I can talk Jew.”

He bent forward, stared as Harry's mother's backside and smacked his lips.

“
Tookas
,” he said.

His mother looked to Aba for defense. Aba smiled at Menter.

“Your Yiddish pronunciation is very good.”

“Yeah. Well tell me: how do you say ‘whore' in Jew?”

“How dare …” his mother began.

Aba hooked his mother's arm with his and crushed it against his body. He spoke over her.

“Kurveh.
”

“Yeah. Well, you recite me a Jew poem.”

Aba, in the cadence of a poem, intoned, in Yiddish:

“Be very calm. Do not make a fuss. These are very bad, dangerous people.”

Menter screwed a cigarette in his holder and lit it.

“That was very good monkey talk. What does it mean?”

“Oh, it speaks of the flowers and the birds, as do all poems.”

“Hear that, Vince”—he poked the chauffeur—“birds and flowers. Sounds like a cemetery.”

Vince nodded.

“Now, Vince here deals with all complaints. You got a complaint lady?”

Soldier spoke: “Damn, it's this, Vic. I fixed this bike, but it can't never be the way it was. Lady, I did my best.”

Menter glanced at the bike.

“Looks perfect to me. How about you, Vince?”

Vince nodded.

“What about you, poet?”

“As you say. I think we should go now. Harry, take the bike.”

Harry grasped the handlebars. Aba, pulling his mother, took small steps toward the door. Soldier rushed past them to hold it open.

“Some
tookas
, huh Vince,” Menter said, outlining buttocks with his palms.

His mother's sobs were the only sound in the cold-afflicted streets. At home, she plunged facedown onto the living room couch. Between gulps of breath, she screamed:

“A curse, that's what that boy is, a curse.”

“Now Velia,” Aba said, “you don't mean that.”

“Why is it,” she shouted, “why is it men always feel obliged to tell me what I mean?”

Harry wanted to escape to his room, but couldn't. He watched his mother, thinking: If I look at her with love, it will be better.

“Why are you staring at me like an idiot?” she shouted at him. “Are you admiring the state you put me in!”

The phone rang. Harry answered it.

“Hello.”

“Hey, kid.” It was Woody. Harry said nothing.

“Hey, kid. I'm sorry. It was all a mistake. You took the wrong bike. There was a brand new racer, the same color, right next to it, and I didn't see you take the other one. Hey, kid.”

Harry looked at the receiver.

“Listen, kid, come by tomorrow and pick up the new one. OK? Hey, kid, OK?”

Harry hung up. He wished he could tell his mother how much she had done for him. But it would be of no use. Once born, disasters were eternal, immune to change.

The next morning Harry was drinking a glass of milk when Aba appeared clad in his poetry-reading outfit: a gray ascot, brocaded formal shirt and black trousers. A gray blazer and black beret would complete the ensemble. Harry could not remember Aba in uniform in the morning. The poet yawned the odor of liquor.

“Good morning American boy, drinking American milk, in this healthiest of all
medinahs
.”

“Good morning.”

Last night hung over them. Harry studied the white latticework film coating the empty half of his glass, wondering why some things disappeared without leaving a clue as to their former presence, while others were reluctant to entrust themselves only to memory. Aba cleared his throat.

“You see,” he said, as if summing up a lengthy discourse, “there are situations where there is physical danger just below the surface that must be avoided, almost at any cost.”

“Even in wonderful, free America.”

“Unfortunately this is so. Beasts are in the majority everywhere. In Germany their claws are the law. In America the law is on your side, but you may not be in a position to enjoy the privilege.”

“Were you afraid, Aba?”

“Heshele, American boy, fear is always my first reaction. No, more than that. Fear is an essential part of my personality, as integral as laughter. You, American boy, cannot understand that because your free land has freed you of this Jewish sickness.”

It was not true. But Harry was ashamed to tell even Aba.

“Have you ever hit anyone, Aba?”

Aba's head twitched, as if suddenly afflicted with a tic. He closed his eyes and nodded.

“Tell me about it,” Harry asked.

Aba faced the window, hands locked behind him. He rocked back and forth, bending at the knees and pushing his pelvis forward, like in the newsreel he had seen of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall.

“It was a long time ago. And perhaps one day I will tell you how it came about … how it came about.” His voice slid softly inward..

“Well, I have to go to school.”

Aba draped his arm around Harry's shoulder and walked him to the door.

“Study hard,” he said. “I expect you to be the first Jewish president.”

As Harry walked down 36th Street to the Norton's Point trolley, on which he would sneak a ride to school by flattening himself against the rear end, he was surprised to see Aba at the entrance to Sea Gate, the private community that bordered the southern end of Coney. It was not uncommon for Aba to give poetry readings there, but these recitations had always taken place at night or on Sunday afternoons. He would ask Aba if he had inaugurated a cheap early morning show, like the one for a quarter at the Paramount on Broadway.

A
BROAD, WHITE WOODEN SLAT BARRED UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES AND
pedestrians from entering Sea Gate, which held off Coney with a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence. Aba informed a private guard that he was visiting Ben Druckman. After confirmation by phone, he was admitted.

The borderlike separation was appropriate. A different country unfolded. Coney's shacks and bungalows disappeared, replaced by rows of neat two-family houses, set back from the sidewalk by generous lawns. Neatly clipped hedges and enormous hydrangeas marked property boundaries.

No littered, concession-smothered boardwalk blocked the wide, immaculate beach, accessible only to holders of resident cards and their guests.

Sea Gate was America's Land's End. The ocean curled around its tip to a bay which led into the Narrows, a seventeen-mile stretch past the Statue of Liberty to the piers of New York Harbor. In summer its crowded marina boasted oceangoing yachts and majestic three-masters. Once a commuter ferry had run year-round between the marina and the Battery, the southern end of Manhattan Island. Three-year-old Harry had established, in his father's eyes, credentials as a poet by saying of the ferry: “The
Belle Island
is coming back from going away.”

Private police, rarely hesitant to mark interlopers with a memento of a billy club, cruised day and night, stopping any unfamiliar face.

Aba rang the bell of a two-family red brick house. A Negro wearing a white cloth jacket and black trousers opened the door, took Aba's coat and led him to a large living room that forcefully proclaimed the decorator's preference for white objects. Ben Druckman rose from a white couch. He wore a white silk bathrobe over a white turtleneck sweater and green plaid trousers. Argyle socks breached open-toed bedroom slippers.

A short, thick man, his broad-boned face dotted with brown age spots expressed a perpetual pout, as if sagging under a backlog of disappointment. He moved on tiny, shuffling steps, not entrusting equilibrium to one leg.

Aba accepted his extended hand, surprised by the weakness of the grip. Aba, who was anticipating the crushing fingers of their first meeting, realized that wishful memory had created a powerful Druckman, a superman who met his needs.

“Good to see you, Aba.” Druckman mumbled, chin down.

“A pleasure, Ben.”

They sat on the couch. Neither spoke. Druckman shrugged.

“I read Nick Kenney in the
Mirror
, he's a helluva poet.”

“I don't know how …” Aba cut himself off. Ignorant of the protocol of this strange land, he feared a disastrous misstep.

“I don't drink, but if you want a schnapps,” Druckman said, nodding to confirm knowledge of Aba's weakness.

“Plain vodka, please.”

“James,” Druckman called.

The Negro appeared.

“A shot … a glass of vodka.”

Aba gulped. Warmth passed through his throat, igniting a welcome flame in his stomach. He had written a poem about interior scourging with alcohol. He hiccupped. He floated on pleasant dizziness. He smiled.

“You really like the stuff,” Druckman said.

“Yes. It lifts a lot of weight off the brain.”

“Givin' guys like you your medicine made me a rich man.”

Druckman held out a silver cigarette case. Sucking the flame of Druckman's matching lighter, Aba inhaled deeply, increasing his lightheadedness. He laughed.

“You offer all sorts of poisons,” he said, holding out the glass and cigarette, but take none yourself. Is that how you gang … Sorry.”

Druckman laughed.

“Don't be so pussyfoot. I did what I had to do in my life. No regrets. But, let's get one thing straight: I'm not a gangster …”

“Of course not,” Aba interrupted.

Druckman overrode his words.

“I'm a retired gangster.”

Druckman brushed a gentle fist past Aba's jaw. A stroke of friendship or a warning touch, Aba wondered.

“Now, let's stop the bullshit,” Druckman said, settling back into the softness of the couch. “Shit me easy, I'm a white man.”

Aba looked into blank eyes, thinking: I am putting my life in the hands of a gangster. What a disciple of Benya Krik! What a schmuck! If he screws me I blame you, friend Babel.

“As I told you at our previous meeting, I thought you could be helpful to me. The fact is this: I am in this country illegally.” Aba gulped more vodka. “With what is going on in Europe, the FBI is cracking down on all aliens. I'm afraid they will find me out and deport me to Poland.”

“And you think I can put the kibosh on the FBI?”

“I don't know. I just thought … since you were so friendly to me … didn't you say you would like to hear me recite … I could do a poem now.”

“Don't,” Druckman said, crinkling his nose in displeasure. “I ain't got a gun to your head.”

“I don't have any money. I offer what I can. Dog-eat-dog is no less true for being a cliché. Although I feel dog-eat-cat would shed more truth.”

“You got trouble with animals too?”

“No. it was a figure of speech …”

“You remind me of my father,” Druckman interrupted.

“I'm glad.”

“Don't be so glad. He was a
putz
. He gave money to poor people in Russia when we didn't have what to eat. My mother was different. Never asked what I did. If I made dough, it was OK.”

“You remind me of a poem by Halpern:
My mother is still crying in me.

“I didn't say she was bawlin' …” Druckman put his left hand over his mouth, creased his brow and closed his eyes.

“Halpern, Halpern,” he whispered like a medium calling up a spirit, “I remember her readin' that name in that newspaper …”

“Der Freiheit.
”

“Yeah Fry … whatever you said. She really liked him. Could you set up a meet with him and me?”

“Unfortunately, he is dead.”