Thirteen Ways of Looking

by Colum McCann

  It is then they must pause and change the tempo—not a good idea to walk out of the room and leave Pedro alone, in case he decides to clam up further, or engage a lawyer, but it is time to shift the territory a little, so Carla rises from her chair, leaving Pedro alone with Rick, the big damp white loaf, making the room so very male and somehow even more cramped. And it is here that Rick employs the direct gaze, the lean forward, the half-menace, and asks Pedro if he can explain again where he was at the time of the assault, and why did he move from his dishwashing station, and what was the earlier argument he had with Dandinho, and when he went to the bathroom is it possible that he took the employee exit to the street—can you answer me that, Pedro?—and is it possible perhaps he even ducked back in the same door just seconds later, is any of that viable at all, because it’s understandable, man, it’s his son, it’s your daughter, you know what I mean? We’re here to help, frankly I’d like to put that Elliot asshole behind bars, he’s the one who should take the rap, know what I’m saying?

  When Carla returns she has one glass of water and three orange sodas in glass bottles, and she slides the Jarritos across the table, and it is as if they are in a distant cantina together, somewhere safe and warm, somewhere they can trust one another, but Pedro leaves the soda sitting in front of him. Carla leans forward and asks again about Maria, what she was like growing up, if she had any problems, if she ever mentioned any difficulties at work, if she got upset, if she said anything about going to Connecticut. Pedro takes the water, but leaves the soda untouched.

  The time slips away from them, the clockhands on the wall turn, the fluorescent light in the office remains constant. The detectives ready themselves for their last-line flurry.

  So, Pedro, did she tell you? Tell me what? About her thing with Elliot Mendelssohn? Her what? Her liaison, you know, her monkey business. Don’t know what you’re talking about. How do I say it delicately for you, Pedro? Say what? She was fucking this guy, Pedro, now calm down, Papi, calm down, cálmese. I’m calm, don’t talk about my girl that way. Okay, okay, what do you know about their re-la-tion-ship? I don’t know nothing about that. Because the way I see it, she was living a good life, wasn’t she, Pedro, at one stage, she was happy, right? I got nothing to say. She was a good girl, doing a good job, went to secretarial school, got a good husband, he was a nice guy, second generation, she’s making you proud, you like your son-in-law, you like your grandkids, life is good, she’s happy, she’s got herself a little place in Rockaway, picket fence, you know what I mean, the American dream, are you there, Pedro, we gotta play knock-knock again? I’m listening. Working for an investment firm, wearing nice clothes, making some good money, assistant to the CEO, and here she is, now, she’s working in Midtown, an office on Lexington Avenue, big glass tower, and then one day, poof, it’s all gone, in a flash of smoke, her boss turns out to be the asshole he always threatened to be, and he flat-out fires her. I don’t know nothing about that. And then you hear that he’s in the restaurant? I didn’t hear nothing. Maybe Dandinho tells you? Dandinho didn’t tell me nothing. You’re just talking fútbol? That’s it. Dandinho, he’s your best friend, right? What’s Dandinho got to do with this? And you’ve confided in him maybe, about how your little girl lost this job at the Barner Funds, and he puts two-and-two together, says the old man is out there right now—Pedro, is that what happened?—because it’s perfectly forgivable, man, I can see it plain as day, by the time Dandinho tells you that Elliot Mendelssohn is in the restaurant, he’s gone, and you, you been washing his dishes. We were arguing about fútbol. But it’s not just fútbol, is it, Pedro? Huh? Are you a baseball fan, Pedro? Sí, claro. What’s your team? Don’t really have one. So, how much do you get paid again, Pedro? Eight bucks an hour, ten-fifty for overtime. Not a great job, dishwashing, is it? It’s okay, I do some other things too. Like what, Pedro? Some vending, you know. Is that right? Yeah. You push the peanuts then, do you, Pedro? I don’t know what you mean. Where do you do your vending? At the Cyclones. You mean the Brooklyn Cyclones? Yeah, the Brooklyn Cyclones, what’s the problem? And by any chance do they give you a uniform to wear, Pedro, a hat maybe? Sure, I wear a hat sometimes, everyone wears a hat, in the kitchen anyway, you got to wear a hat. But you wear a Brooklyn Cyclones hat? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mami.

  Slowly they draw back their words, form them into a fist, hold them in mid-air a moment, then propel them forward.

  Because we got a guy on camera wearing a Brooklyn Cyclones hat and he looks like a dead ringer for you.

  Where?

  Outside Chialli’s, leaning over the dead man.

  I don’t know nothing about it.

  On camera, Pedro. A dead ringer.

  For me?

  You and him, Pedro, dos gotas de agua.

  XII

  The river is moving.

  The blackbird must be flying.

  More to the point, the endless journey home. Let freedom ring, Sally, from the hilltops. Throw another log on the fire. Warm the pan, boil the milk, melt the chocolate, position the chair, unfold the blanket, hear the lumber hiss. Perhaps I should call her and let her know I’m on my way. Then again, she’ll probably rush out into the storm. What in the world are you doing, Mr. J.? I’m coming home, Sally. Jilted by my very own son. He left me high and dry. Not even dry, come to think of it. I could have done with some winter gear. He even let me pay the check. Still, we’ve a little salmon and a lot of steak to see us through the storm. Unwrapped for some reason. Dandinho didn’t do his job.

  Awkward this, having to hold the plastic bag and the walking stick at the same time. But here we go, onwards, upwards, away.

  Well, almost.

  He stands in the outer foyer and hears the restaurant door close behind him. Goodbye now, Mr. Mendelssohn. Her sweet Rhodesian Zimbabwean voice and the last strain of music from inside. Should hurry back in and order myself a hot brandy. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

  Good God, but it is curtaining down. Never seen anything quite like it. Slantways, broadside, edgeways. A theater, a blockbuster, an opera of snow. All the taxi drivers onstage, sliding left, right, sideways into the pit. An applause of windshield wipers. Trucks and vans, headlights blazing, and some poor idiot on a motorcycle. An actual biting snow. Like those little circular weapons, a million flying chakri aimed my way.

  Hardly a soul on the street. A tad early for the mommies and the nannies on their way down to PS 6. No flowerboys. No deliverymen. No one shoveling. No rock-salt rollers.

  Should hail a taxi, really, but he would have to take me past the synagogue, up to Eighty-eighth, down the block, back down Park Avenue, along Eighty-sixth again, and who knows what sort of trafficjam there might be in that direction. Car horns blaring everywhere. A terrible sound, really. Isn’t the snow supposed to deaden the sound? How is it that my hearing gets worse but the awful sounds get louder day after day? A cacophony. That’s the word. The pianist playing the contrabass. The saxman on the violin. The flautist on the horn, so to speak.

  Isn’t there supposed to be a fine for overuse? Listen up, Elliot. They have it for car horns, they’ll get you yet.

  What is it that happened to him? Why couldn’t he be the boy he promised he would be? He did well in his final exams, threw his graduation hat in the air, took his mother by the arm, walked her proudly around Cambridge. She was happy then, she laughed, we did, together. Moved back to the city. Lived in the Village. Found himself a little French girl. What was her name? So long ago now. Chantal. And she could. Sing, that is. Eileen was a big fan. A voice like a wren. At the holiday parties she was always there. And then she wasn’t. A ladle dipping down into the well of the mind. The strangest things appear and disappear. Who was it who gazed into the bottom of the well? Who was looking for their reflection in the dark?

  Dark it is too. For this time of day. But onwards, let’s go.

  A chill at the neck. Didn’t even button up my coat properly. Spent so long inside sliding
my arms into the sleeves, they must have felt they were getting me in a straitjacket. Still, they were happy, all of them. Left a ten-dollar bill for a sulky Dandinho, and gave Rosita thirty percent, why not, she deserves a thing or two beyond the blue mark on her wrist.

  A beauty.

  Reminded me somewhat.

  As all beauty does.

  He balances precariously against the wall of the foyer, shifts the collar and lifts the scarf out and over his mouth. An impromptu balaclava.

  Here, Eileen, come take my hand and step me out onto Madison. Many days we walked here together, though I remember you in sunshine, you wore a pale sundress and a simple pearl necklace, though the truth is we probably remember things as more beautiful than they actually were. The years put a few pounds on her in the end, and she walked with a bit of a lopsided limp. The folds and the creases and the humps at the hip. Cruel, the way God plays it. The more we know of time, the less we have of it. The less we have, the more we want. The scales of justice. If there is such a word. I was born in the middle of something or other.

  On now. Soldier forth.

  Sally too.

  Out into the hard bite of snow, one step, two. An immediate chill against the high of his cheeks. He closes his eyes and tries to shake the burn away. The shock of it. The wind and the storm wrapping itself around him. He stops to adjust the precarious leftovers. How quickly we step from one state to the other. Can’t be much beyond two o’clock and it’s already pitch-black. The dark rises from the ground and wings itself up.

  —Elliot Mendelssohn.

  Yes. No. Of course not. Question or statement? Who’s to hear a thing when the goddamn car horns are going and the wind is howling and your scarf is up around your ears and the city is in uproar and there’s still a symphony in your head from the restaurant, it’s simply impossible to hear anything at all, but was that my name? Am I my son? Surely not. Not in this lifetime at least. The voice seems to come from behind and he turns to look over his shoulder, his tongue flickering against the wool scarf. Am I the son of my son? A better question. Though not one I’d like to answer right now.

  Get me out of this storm, please. Good God, it’s cold, and the snow stings and I can hardly see a thing, but there’s no voice from behind at all, just the orange light of Chialli’s catching the snowflakes and the footprints of others who have gone on before me.

  Should have called Sally.

  He turns slowly and the tip of the walking stick crunches in the soft snow. He slides his right foot around and follows, inch by inch, with the left, careful now, no handles along Madison, more’s the pity, two glasses of Sancerre rolling through me, and who is this spectacle striding up to me now, deep brown eyes behind spectacles and a little spray of grayish hair from the baseball cap, who, leaning forward, a shade this side of homeless, maybe looking for a few shekels, though something vaguely familiar about him, who, and why in the world do his eyes have that shine, where is that coming from, how many faces have I seen like his, they were out there in Brooklyn for so many years, the hustlers the haters the barkers the bakers the shoeshine boys the two-bit conmen from every corner of the globe, but he knows my name, or my son’s name at least, and maybe something has happened to Elliot, he might have slipped in the snow, hurt his back, or landed soft on his wallet, who knows, he didn’t, after all, pay for lunch.

  A twitch in the man’s face like he’s been carrying something and just let it drop, and then picked it up again and there again, someone’s lived in that face a long hard time, I can recognize, that, and what is it I can do for you, young man, though he is not young at all, maybe forty, fifty, who can tell anymore?

  No more than three steps away and something indeed has got the man’s goose or his gander or his goat or whatever they call it. Hat pulled down just a little bit farther and I can’t even see the shape of his eyes anymore. Mouth in a snarl, but something gentle, too, about that face, a chub to it—is that Tony?—it looks like Tony, off the door, what in the world did I do wrong with Tony, my stupidities, my Kan, my Kant—what is wrong with you, Tony?—did something happen to Sally perchance, has she sent you out in the snow to rescue me, Saint Bernard, where’s your brandy, I thought about that just a moment ago, and why in the world are you striding up to me so fast, Tony, without your doorman clothes, without your gloves even, and your knuckles shiny brown, I have never seen you in your street clothes, did I not tip you enough at holiday time, did I say something errant a little while ago, one of my silly phrases, there are many, my head is an avalanche, and still he keeps coming, his shoulders rolling around in his dark jacket, he’s small and he’s boxy, an odd look for Tony—

  Once, long ago, I skated on a frozen lake with knifeblades attached to the bottom of my shoes—

  A single step away, but maybe that’s not Tony at all, is it, not enough of the chub, and a bit on the short side, muttering something in Spanish now about my father, or his father, or someone’s father, what in the world has gotten into the man, someone help me, now, what’s he saying, the snow blowing hard around us, a cyclorama, and it’s impossible to hear what the man is shouting, spittle coming from his mouth, his own little snowstorm, rapidfire, how many words do they have for it, leaning forward, oh the hat on my head shifting, but what is that you’re saying, man, I can’t hear a word in the thunderous roar, calm yourself down, hold on one second, you don’t look a bit like Tony at all, who are you, where are you from, where have I seen you before, and oh the leftovers are shifting that’s my son’s name you’re shouting my treacherous son you are unaproned and oh all over the street that white coming down not even the snow can stand up straight and oh—

  The canal was easily the best place to cannonball.

  XIII

  It was evening all afternoon.

  It was snowing

  And it was going to snow.

  The blackbird sat

  In the cedar-limbs.

  If it had been another day—without the snow, the wind, the early dark—they would have seen him fall like a character out of an old epic, all hat and history.

  It would have been captured from the traffic-cam atop the ornate limbs of the lightpole on Eighty-sixth Street. Even in a low-definition download, he would have emerged from the restaurant, his scarf looped around his neck, and the hat perched rakishly. He would have stopped to adjust his overcoat and then he would have stepped forward on his walking stick. In the picture he would have accepted the punch and he would have stood stockstill a moment, as if registering its seismic quality. The blow would have landed in the middle of his chest. The knees of his trousers would have started to accordion, his legs would have pleated and the lower scaffold of his body would have begun to totter as if on delay. It would have taken a second or two for the puppetry to achieve full motion: the swoon, the dip, the crumble. His body would resign and he would keel over, all eighty-two years of him, disintegrating downward. They would see the ancient Homburg staying on his head for most of the fall, defying physics, the bag of leftovers from his lunch leaving his grip almost immediately, opening with a thump against the ground, the same time as his head cracks off the pavement. It would capture, too, the shape of the assailant standing on the street having just delivered the punch, momentarily frozen in place, unsure of what has happened in front of his eyes, looking down at his fist, then stuffing his hand into the pocket of his puffy jacket, walking quickly ten steps north, confused, then furtive, pulling the brim of his hat down farther, stepping into a shadowed entrance, opening the heavy metal door. A slice of anonymity dissolving into a further anonymity. The street would be quiet for just a moment, and then the busboy and the manager and the waitress would appear over the prone body on the street, and baby carriages would move along the avenue—more of them of course, if there had been no snow, no wind, no dark—and there could, then, have been eyewitnesses from the neighboring shops or from passersby to attest to the man stepping in and out of the entrance.

  As it was, it was like being set dow
n in the best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.

  It could have been, too, that had the camera angles in the restaurant been tilted in another direction, they might have seen Pedro Jiménez come in through the door, with sprinkles of snow on his shoulders, his hat whisked off and folded into his pocket, the jacket hung on a metal hook near the door. In that instance they might have seen Pedro return to the jacket just seconds later and tuck it under several dry coats in order to hide the wetness of his own. He could also have been seen shoving the baseball cap farther into the pocket. It might have been possible to catch him, just before he turned the corner toward the bathroom, stopping and putting the heels of his hands to his anguished face and pulling his skin tight, shaking his head quickly from side to side, as if to disperse the past few minutes from his life before he went back to his dishwashing station. Another angle might have shown the terror on his face, later in the afternoon, as specifics emerged from the chef, the manager, the waitresses, and the cops together huddled in the kitchen while he washed the pan that had grilled Mendelssohn’s salmon. It might have shown the glances that went between him and Dandinho when the cops pulled Pedro aside for questioning, or the look on Dandinho’s face by the front door, or the backglances both men gave when they left the restaurant late in the evening, checking out the angles of the camera by the front foyer at a time when the cops had already downloaded the footage for examination.

  None of this was yet apparent: the homicide, like the poem, had to open itself to whatever might still be discovered.

  The cops could have downloaded the footage from the subway station that night where the two men stood, sullen, waiting for the 4 train to take them home to Brooklyn. But who could have intuited what their silence meant? Who could have foretold what Dandinho might say to Pedro? Who could have guessed that they might have struck a pact together? Who could have interpreted Pedro’s face as he got off the F train in Coney Island almost two hours later and pushed his way through the silver turnstile? Who could have understood his terror as he passed by the bodega on Tenth Street? Who could have known what thoughts rifled through him as he paused on the corner of Coney Island Avenue, then turned south toward the water? Even if we had access to the cameras that are peppered along the boardwalk, who could properly say that the man stuffing the puffy jacket and baseball cap in the garbage can was truly guilty? What can be seen from the manner in which he looks at the discarded clothes that nobody will ever find? What can be learned from the manner he walks away? What can be intuited from the way he gazes out to sea? What country lies out there? What past? Who is to know how much failure is still trembling through his fist?