The Street Sweeper

by Elliot Perlman

  *

  Towards the end of the day at the time when afternoon and evening vied for ascendancy, Michelle McCray stood in her kitchen as her fourteen-year-old daughter Sonia, crunching into a carrot, made what Michelle considered the loudest sound she’d ever heard involving a vegetable, an almost ostentatiously loud sound.

  ‘No problem with your teeth, I see,’ Michelle said to her daughter.

  ‘What?’ she said, crunching.

  ‘No problem with your teeth …’

  ‘I can’t hear you when I’m eating this –’

  ‘That was my point … sort of … What are you reading?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sonia, having now swallowed the last of the carrot.

  ‘What’s the book?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not one I chose. It’s for school.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it has to be bad. What is it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s bad all right. It sucks … It’s boring and … unrealistic.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard of it. No one has. It’s old and …’

  ‘Sonia, what is it?’ Her daughter held up a copy of the book and Michelle read the title. It was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

  ‘Sonia, are you kidding? That’s a classic. The Jungle!’

  ‘Have you read it?’ Sonia asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact I have, a long long time ago, but I remember thinking it was fantastic; interesting, moving, enlightening. It certainly wasn’t boring. I didn’t think so. Thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of other people didn’t think so.’

  ‘My class thinks so.’

  ‘And why’d you say it was unrealistic?’

  ‘Well, I’m not very far into it but …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘’Cause it’s so boring.’

  ‘Yes, you said that. But why’d you say it’s unrealistic?’

  ‘Well … it’s set in Chicago, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s set in Chicago and there ain’t any ni …’ Sonia stopped herself from finishing the word. She froze, saw her mother’s eyes widen and knew she was in serious trouble.

  ‘Don’t … you … ever –’

  ‘What? I didn’t say anything!’

  ‘I know what you were about to say. Why would you say that? That word has hurt so many people, your people, your family. Don’t you ever say that word around Grandpa William.’

  ‘He’s deaf.’

  ‘Sonia, I’m deadly serious about this. I don’t know where to start. People gave their lives, I don’t just mean their careers, I mean they gave their lives so that you might have the kind of life that you have.’

  ‘Mom, I understand what you’re saying but a lot of African Americans use that word now. You know they do. Black people say it on TV, in the movies … Your clients use it and you know they do.’

  ‘My clients are mostly disadvantaged, disenfranchised, disillusioned and uneducated. That’s why they use it. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mom. It’s only a big deal if you make a big deal of it.’

  ‘Well, you listen to me ‘cause I’m making a big deal of it. I don’t want you ever using that word in this house. You understand … Sonia. I’m serious. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mom.’

  ‘I’m surprised at you, coming from this house, with all that you know.’

  ‘Mom, I’m sorry, okay! I didn’t even actually say it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t pursue that line of argument if I were you, miss. I’d go back to sorry if you want an easy life around here.’

  ‘They say it on the radio.’

  ‘Not the radio in this house.’

  ‘Yes, they do. I heard it on NPR.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yeah, that day I was home sick. They were talking about it on one of the morning shows. African American listeners called in and they said we can use it if it’s … if it’s … what is it? … ironic.’

  ‘Sonia, do you know what “ironic” means?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Ironic is … er … sort of funny … It’s when something’s funny in a kind of grown-up way.’

  ‘That’s not really what “irony” means. You look it up. You want me to get your dad or maybe Grandpa William to talk to you about the meaning of “ironic”?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘’Cause they’d want to know how we got started on the topic …’

  ‘Sorry, Mom.’

  ‘Let me say this without the slightest trace of irony. I don’t want you ever using that word in this house, Sonia. Ever. And you can drop those “ain’t’s” too. It ain’t “acting white” to speak your own language properly. People fought for you to get the best possible education. It would break your grandpa’s heart to hear you talk like nothing had changed.’

  ‘Sorry, Mom.’

  *

  ‘That’s it. That’s the last of them,’ the Hispanic man with the van said to Diana. ‘I’ve got room up front if you want to ride with me. Save you getting a cab.’

  ‘Sure. Thanks. I’ll just have one last look around. I … um … I’ll be right down.’ The man went down to wait in his van. Diana was alone in the apartment. All her possessions were in boxes in a van on the street. This was it. She was still holding the photo of Adam as a toddler in quilted overalls. Perhaps he would change his mind. But the plan was to not be in touch for a little while to give each of them time to adjust to life without the other. Neither of them asked for nor offered a definition of ‘a little while’. She took the photo with her as she walked through each room of the apartment. She was breathing quickly. They’d hugged when Adam had left in the morning. Neither of them had wanted to end the hug but Adam had a lecture to give that he’d already cancelled once.

  On the street the man waited for Diana to come down. He’d thought this job was going to be easy. He’d only had to come from Inwood and the final destination was Hell’s Kitchen. There were not too many boxes and all of them seemed to be well made. What could be simpler than this? But the woman was taking a long time to come down. He couldn’t hurry her. He almost never hurried them. This woman looked like she might cry. Then what would he do? All he could do now was wait. He got into the driver’s seat and and inserted a cassette of a compilation tape of some music someone had once made for his late father.

  Diana held what she could in her arms and stood on the outside of what had been her front door. It was a quirk of the door that even once it was closed you had to pull it closed a second time for the deadlock to align properly in order for the lock to work and secure the apartment. She felt sick. She was holding the photograph. She was going to take it. Would he blame her? She closed the door once. Could Adam just come home and stop this? Now the door was closed. But it was still possible to get in. She still had to give it one more pull. She could hear her own heart beat. What was she waiting for? There was no one in the hallway. What did she think was going to happen now? No one was coming. There it was. She heard the click. The door was locked and she couldn’t get back in.

  *

  Adam continued his lecture. ‘As a member of the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer was given permission and the necessary documentation to travel outside Germany, ostensibly to spy for the Nazis. In reality he was a doubleagent working for the resistance through the Abwehr.

  ‘It seems unlikely now and hard for us to understand given all that was to come, but, at the time Warsaw surrendered on 27 September 1939, the conspirators in the Abwehr felt they had cause for hope. I know it’s hard, almost impossible, to believe in hindsight. Why did they think this? They thought this because news of SS atrocities in Poland had begun to make their way back to Germany. The conspirators hoped that neither the public nor the generals would put up with this barbaric cruelty which, in addition, flouted international law. General Blaskowitz, the senior German military commander in Poland, for instance, appalled by the atrocities, made it
known to other generals that “What the foreign radio stations have broadcast up to now is only a tiny fraction of what has actually happened”.

  ‘Following a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in March 1943, the Gestapo raided the headquarters of the Abwehr on 5 April. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his brother, his sister and her husband, and another brother-in-law were arrested. Their interrogation included torture.

  ‘On 24 July 1944 one last attempt was made by the resistance to assassinate Hitler. Claiming that his hearing had been impaired in the North African campaign, Col. Klaus Von Stauffenberg asked to be seated as close as possible to Hitler shortly before a military strategy meeting was to start. The briefcase he carried contained a bomb. In the eventual explosion the bunker was damaged and some officers were killed but Hitler was only wounded. There were arrests and interrogations.

  ‘At 3 am on 16 April 1945, the Soviet’s Marshal Zhukov began his assault on the German line on the Oder, their defensive line before Berlin, with a massive artillery barrage. After the artillery came the tanks and then the infantry. The German Ninth Army there was massively outnumbered. Zhukov had 3,000 tanks against the Germans’ 500. It took three days for the Russians to break through. In the battle for the Seelow Heights the Germans lost 12,000 troops. But such was the strength of the German fortifications on the slopes that the Soviets lost 33,000 troops. Nevertheless, by 29 April the Soviets had won the battle of the Oder. Eight years earlier there had been singing on the Oder. “Swing low sweet chariot. Comin’ for to carry me home.”

  ‘With the forces of Marshal Zhukov meeting those of Marshal Konev, the German Ninth Army was encircled. Forty kilometres away were the suburbs of Berlin. Although it had lost 120,000 men captive to the Soviets, Hitler still deluded himself into thinking the Ninth Army could regroup under the youngest of his generals, General Walter Wenck, of the Twelfth Army, to defend Berlin. But with US forces reaching the Elbe on 25 April and Zhukov at the outskirts of Berlin, it was all over. Hitler commited suicide on 30 April and on 7 May Germany surrendered unconditionally.

  ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the many tens of millions of people for whom this was too late. The previous month, Hitler had ordered the execution of all remaining conspirators. On 9 April Dietrich Bonhoeffer was marched naked to the gallows. “Swing low sweet chariot. Comin’ for to carry me home.”‘

  *

  ‘Okay. Now you were saying The Jungle is set in Chicago and is unrealistic. Why is it unrealistic?’ Michelle McCray asked her daughter.

  ‘Well, I’m not very far into it, I admit, but it’s about these foreign-born meat-workers and I don’t think one of them – or maybe just one of them – is African American. Now that’s just not realistic, not in Chicago. Right? And then you find out the book’s written by some white dude –’

  ‘Sonia, this white dude, Upton Sinclair, when did he set the book?’

  ‘I don’t know … twentieth century some time.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. Does it say?’

  ‘Have a look at the front of the book and see when it was published. Unless it’s fantasy or science fiction it’s not likely to have been set after it was published. Do you see the date there?’

  ‘Yeah. “The Jungle was first published in 1906”.’

  ‘Okay, so it’s likely to have been set in Chicago during or before

  1906.’

  ‘Okay, so?’

  ‘So when was the Great Migration?’ Her daughter didn’t answer. ‘Okay, what was the Great Migration?’

  ‘I know, Mom,’ Sonia said with a hint of impatience for which any external observer might see little justification. ‘It’s when African Americans moved from the rural south to the urban north.’

  ‘Do you have any sense of the size of this migration?’ Again her daughter was silent. She looked at the back of the book either as though she might find the answer there or else in the hope that her apparent sudden interest in the book might end this lecture with its small humiliation. For all her adolescent affected nonchalance, she didn’t like wearing her mother’s disappointment. Growing up, she had always enjoyed her parents’ admiration for her intellect and her grades. Now she was trying to find a happy middle path between continuing to court this admiration and asserting her independence. Although her mother’s strictures annoyed her, a part of her almost always knew she wanted to be like her mother when she grew up, even if she didn’t want to start being like her now.

  ‘You’re not really thinking you’ll find the answer on the back of the book, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know! You’re going to ask me to look this up, aren’t you?’

  ‘I should but you’d probably go looking for the answer from a Facebook friend.’

  ‘That’s a good idea!’

  ‘Oh yeah, a great idea! I wouldn’t see you till dinner and they’d be wrong.’

  ‘I might come back for another carrot.’

  ‘The Great Migration didn’t get under way until World War I but it took World War II to really hit full swing. Five million African Americans moved north between 1940 and 1970, the largest mass movement of people in the history of the country. Do you know why they moved in such numbers then?’

  ‘Cotton?’

  ‘What do you mean, “cotton”? Is that really a serious answer?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s something to do with cotton, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, it does have a lot to do with cotton but that’s no answer. You can’t give a one-word answer. You really should look this up.’ Michelle thought for a moment before continuing. ‘Listen to me. The labour of southern black sharecroppers was always pretty inexpensive, but by the 1940s they’d been priced out of their jobs by machines that could do the work of fifty people per machine. So, looking for work and hope of a new and better life, southern blacks moved north to places like New York and Chicago. That’s a simplified version of it, anyway. But now you know that at the time The Jungle is set the Great Migration hadn’t happened yet. So the substantial African American community in the urban north that you’re thinking of – correctly – wasn’t there yet. You’re accusing The Jungle of a lack of realism when the fault lies with you for not knowing what’s real, not knowing your history.’

  ‘Oops!’

  ‘Oops indeed! Pass me that book. I remember it being magnificent, very powerful, very moving. Isn’t there … ? There’s a wonderful description of the first time they go to the slaughterhouse. They’re being shown where the hogs are killed and someone there says, “They use everything but the squeal.” Let me have a look at it.’

  *

  ‘What is history?’ Adam Zignelik asked rhetorically in winding up his lecture. ‘Barbara Tuchman addresses this question in a number of illuminating essays. In one she writes, quoting historian G. M. Trevelyan, “… ideally history should be the exposition of facts about the past, in their full emotional and intellectual value to a wide public by the difficult art of literature”. She and Trevelyan suggest that the best historians take a thorough knowledge of the evidence of their subject and combine it with a sharp intellect, the warmest understanding of people and the highest imaginative powers. Why imagination? Not because you should be making up your own evidence but to help you leap into the lives, into the skin of the people who came before us. The chronological narrative might be the spine of the body of knowledge we call history but psychological insight and a vigorous imagination will help us get not merely the “what” of history but also the intensely satisfying “why”.

  ‘Should you find some attractive school or philosophy of history and attach yourself to it? No. Why not? If you do, it will be tempting to manipulate, coerce, cajole your evidence to fit the interests of the school or philosophy when you should instead be concentrating on the questions of what happened and why it happened. You might see patterns emerging before you but it’s better to let the historical theory or grand generalisation emerge from the facts rather than contorting the facts to fit th
e theory. You’ll be busy enough doing all of this and simultaneously keeping your bias away. “Bias?” you say with alarm. If you’re human, you will have some. If you are not human, my congratulations to you for getting this far.’ Nobody laughed.

  ‘What do you do with your bias?’ Adam Zignelik continued. ‘Acknowledge it and fight it but have the intellectual honesty to admit that temporal distance is no guarantee of immunity from the bias that is woven into the fabric of our humanity, sometimes imperceptibly. To be as objective as we can be is not the same thing as being neutral. The passage of time can, however, confer perspective which a historian needs as much as oxygen. But even in the choice of what to tell, in the choice of the order in which to tell it, there is bias.’

  *

  ‘What about you? You live with your family, Mr Lamont?’

  ‘I can’t be … I really gotta –’

  ‘Why are you frightened?’

  ‘I really gotta go, Mr Mandelbrot.’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You saved me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘From the street. I remember. You were the one who brought me up from the street that day.’