When he got to the corner of 35th and State streets he went through a narrow entrance to a place whose name he had been given over the telephone a few days earlier. Not only had he never been there before, he had also never been to any place remotely like it before, and on taking a few steps inside, he felt that he was on another planet.
A tall and solidly built black man stood between the end of the hallway and the entrance to the room proper and pointed at a sign advertising the cover charge. ‘Whoa! You gotta pay to hear the music.’
‘I’m not here for the music. I’m here to meet someone.’
‘Don’t matter why you here, Dr Goldberg. You still gotta pay if you want to come in.’
‘I am Dr Border.’
‘What?’
‘I am Dr Border, Henry Border.’
‘I don’t care who you are, mister.’
‘I’m not Dr Goldberg. How did you know I was a doctor?’
‘You either a doctor or the landlord and either way, mister, you gotta pay if you want to come in. Look behind you there! See, I got people waitin’ to come in.’
Henry Border paid the man as he was asked and walked tentatively into a rectangular room, which was, in all other respects, unlike any he had ever been in. Several of his senses were assaulted simultaneously but it was perhaps the sound of the music, its volume and its style, that most immediately confronted him. It seemed to him louder than traffic, as loud as a steam engine when one got too close to it but, unlike a steam train, it never moved on. Its very intensity, its very proximity to the audience, seemed to be the point. Then there was its style; it pulsated, throbbed from the rudimentary stage with flattened thirds and sevenths within its chords making for a dissonant gathering of tonalities, played in four four time and all of it amplified against an incessant back beat from a kick drum. Along with the drum were a bass and an electrified guitar, which took turns with a harmonica, also amplified through a microphone, to wail with a piercing brashness.
The smoke of tobacco and reefers made a wall that kept reconstituting itself as soon as anyone broke through it; and people did break through it, some to get near the pool table at one corner of the room and especially near the furthermost wall where young men and women danced, all of them black, at least as far as Dr Border could see, but for this one young white woman dancing. Already perspiring because of the effect on him of the heat of the crowded room, the heat from the rapidly moving bodies and from the fact that he was dressed in a suit and tie and an inappropriately thick coat that he wore buttoned up, he took the slip of paper out of his coat pocket and squinted in the dim light to read again the address he had written down. He thought that he could not possibly be in the right place despite the fact that the building’s address corresponded with that written on the paper in his own hand. He thought that the combined effect of the volume of the sound and the close atmosphere was going to lead him to pass out and he walked against the flow of ever more people coming in towards the entrance where the tall man he had paid in order to get in told him that he would have to pay again if he wanted to re-enter. Henry Border didn’t care and mumbled something about the doctor not being there. It was something the tall man would have ignored but for the fact that at the moment Border said it he started to buckle at the knees and the tall man was forced to prop him up if for no other reason than to prevent a blockage in the crowded narrow entrance hall.
‘Who ain’t here?’ he asked Henry Border.
‘I was coming to meet a colleague but he’s not here so I wish to leave,’ Border tried to say over the crowd noise and the music.
‘Who is it you want?’
‘Dr Cadden, Marvin Cadden.’
‘That’s Marvin right there,’ the tall man said, pointing at the white man on stage playing the harmonica. Henry Border turned around, squinted up at the stage against the far wall for a moment and then went right back in.
‘You are Dr Cadden?’ he said to the man when the musicians’ set was over.
‘Mister Cadden. I have a masters but I don’t have a doctorate.’ They shook hands and Marvin Cadden led Border to a seat at one of the few unoccupied tables.
‘Mr Cadden,’ Henry Border began, looking around him before continuing, ‘I hadn’t expected … this. It’s part of your work?’
‘This? No, it’s music. I play with these guys, sometimes anyway.’
‘Music?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Are you good with this … ?’
‘The harmonica?’
‘Yes, the harmonica.’
‘Good enough for them to let me sit in sometimes.’
‘Mr Cadden, I came to see you about something connected to my research. It’s about the wire recorder that you have made. You invented this?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it works like you told me over the phone?’
‘Yes. You want to know if it can record voices, interviews. Sure it can. Dr Border, I don’t understand why you needed to come here to discuss this.’
‘Have I offended you in some way, Mr Cadden?’
‘No, not at all. Please … Can I buy you a drink?’
‘No, no thank you.’
‘Please, you have to let me buy you a drink. You can’t come here and not have at least one drink. It’s rude. People here will think you won’t drink with them.’
‘It’s rude?’
‘Sure. Let me buy you one drink. Beer?’
‘Will you allow me to pay for it and to buy you one?’
‘No, the first one’s on me. What’ll it be?’
‘Do you think they might have vodka?’
‘They’ve got bourbon or gin or beer. Can I get you bourbon?’
‘Thank you, Mr Cadden. It’s kind of you. Can I just tell you first about my project and how I thought you might be able to assist me, before we drink?’
‘You want to record interviews with DPs?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Europe?’
‘Yes, that’s the plan.’
‘How will you get into Europe?’
‘I am already under way with applications. It’s difficult but I don’t need to trouble you with that part of it.’
‘Okay, sure. Look, I’m going to help you if I can but I have to ask you something. Why did you feel the need to come down here in the middle of the night to talk to me about this when we could have discussed this on campus during the day? Forgive me but you’re clearly not comfortable here.’
‘Mr Cadden, I think I might be more comfortable discussing my project with you here than I would be on campus.’
‘Why?’
Henry Border shifted slightly on his chair from one side to the other and then leaned in over the table, causing Marvin Cadden to lean in as well in order to hear Border’s quiet voice above the surrounding din.
‘Mr Cadden, I am a psychologist and my interest here is to interview displaced persons to investigate their speech patterns, the way people use language when they have experienced trauma. But it’s not just any displaced persons I want to speak with. It’s Jews. These people were the most targeted victims of the Nazis.’
‘I see.’
‘Perhaps you have read something about what they have been through in Europe under the Nazis?’
‘Yes, I have. But I still don’t understand why you need to come down here at night to talk to me about it when you said you live uptown.’
‘Mr Cadden, I am a European Jew, born in Poland. In all my grant applications for this project and also in my attempts to get to Europe I have said that I wish to speak to displaced persons but I never specified in any of the paperwork that the displaced persons I wish to speak to are Jews.’
‘You thought it would count against you? This is not Europe, Dr Border. This is America.’
‘I know America is not Europe. I came here already qualified. I had studied at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and then in Germany, in Leipzig under Wilhelm Wundt, a man considered the father of experimental psyc
hology. I made this known when I applied twice to get into the doctoral program at the University of Chicago and was rejected. I made it known again when I tried once at Northwestern and was rejected. I tried again at Northwestern, only this time I made it a point on the application to tell them I was Episcopalian. Now I have a PhD from Northwestern University. Only one variable changed in the four applications. But this is not Europe, I know.’
‘Are you Episcopalian?’
‘Technically now I am. But I thought that if I were going to ask you for your help with the technology you have invented and if we were, at least for a time, going to work together just enough so you could teach me how to operate the equipment, if you are going to let me take one of your machines with me all the way to the DP camps – well, I thought you should know more precisely what are my intentions with this work.’
Marvin Cadden shook his head. ‘I would be surprised if your difficulties getting funding for the project would be increased if people knew the DPs you’re interested in are Jewish.’
‘Mr Cadden, three years ago a poll was conducted in this country. You may have heard something about this. A group of Americans were asked about a series of national or ethnic groups. They were asked about each group, are they “as good as we are in all important respects”, “not as good as we are” or “definitely inferior”? The category of Jewish immigrants came in tenth. Germans came in significantly higher and this country was at war with them. Germans had been fighting and killing the sons of the people being questioned. But this is not Europe, I know.’
‘What about these people?’ Marvin Cadden asked, gesturing to include the people around him.
‘The black Americans?’
‘Yeah, where were they ranked?’
‘They were not even an option. This is not Europe.’
‘Dr Border –’
‘Mr Cadden, I am a scientist, like you. But I am a psychologist; I do not work with machines. I work in a very new science, the science of the human mind. The mind, Mr Cadden, exists inside the brain but is not the brain. You could dissect an infinite number of human brains and still you would never find the mind, not one, not ever. This is psychology. People don’t know much about it. They are sceptical about it. Some are even fearful of it. Our progress within this science, it is slow and small. Now, with all this in mind, how would it be if I come along and tell them: hello, I am a Jew and I want your help to study Jews? Can you imagine? My project would have even less chance than it has now. With all due respect, Mr Cadden, this is perhaps something you might understand better if you were a Jew.’
‘Dr Border, how do you know I’m not?’ Marvin Cadden responded.
Taken aback for a moment, Border looked up to see the one white woman in the club, the one he’d seen earlier, dancing, come over to them. Sixty-two years later this woman spoke over the phone from Chicago to Adam Zignelik, who was back in New York.
‘That was where we met,’ the widow of Marvin Cadden told Adam over the phone from Chicago.
‘So he became an Episcopalian to improve his chances of getting into Northwestern?’
‘That’s what he told Marvin. Look, it worked. He got his PhD from Northwestern, right? Anyway, he thought that’s what had made the difference.’
‘Sure. It’s funny though. I mean, I understand why he might’ve thought he needed to do that and perhaps he did. But in going through his papers I found a receipt for a donation he made to a Baptist church, the Pilgrim Baptist Church.’
‘Oh, that’s a black church on the south side, near IIT,’ Marvin Cadden’s widow said.
‘Yes, I found that out.’
‘Well, that was probably ‘cause of Callie.’
‘Who was Callie?’
‘Callie was his housekeeper. She was black. He met her through us, through Marvin, from people Marvin played with. You see, when Border did finally get permission to go to Europe he needed someone to take care of his daughter. He couldn’t leave her on her own. I don’t know exactly how old she was at the time but she was quite young. It wasn’t just the wire recorder Marvin helped him with. Marvin found him Callie through his contacts at the club where they’d first met. She needed the work, lived at the Mecca. She was probably trying to raise money for the church and that would be how Border came to make the donation. Of course I’m guessing. I don’t know this. It was such a long time ago. You see, Marvin might have been important to Henry Border but Border wasn’t important to Marvin’s career.’
‘Sure. What’s the Mecca?’
‘The Mecca Flats. Dr Zignelik, if the south side of Chicago is a world within Chicago, on the south side the Mecca was a whole other world again.’
The light was flashing on his answering machine when Adam Zignelik looked at it later and though he didn’t know who was calling him he didn’t want to listen to the message. He stood there for a moment just watching it blink.
‘Is this because you think it’s me or because you think it isn’t me?’ he heard Diana whisper.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Which would be harder?’ she asked him.
‘Depends what you’d say.’
‘Looks like you’ll never know,’ she said as the answering machine blinked on, oblivious to the anxiety it was capable of provoking. Finally after staring at it and hovering above it he let his finger press ‘play’. It was a woman’s voice, a familiar one, and it cut through him before he’d had a chance to listen to its words or even to place the voice. But the fourth word was her name.
‘Hey. Adam, it’s Michelle. How you doing? Hope it’s not too late but Charlie said that William said you might be in Chicago. Is that right? Gone to follow something up? Sounds interesting. Anyway, I wondered if you wanted to catch up some time soon. We haven’t seen you for a while. You could come for dinner but … also, I was kind of thinking … Am I going to run out of time? Better speak much faster. Okay. Let me know if you want to meet for coffee some time. As well as dinner I mean, not instead. Talk soon. Hope Chicago’s good. Call –.’ Then the machine whistled and then clicked to indicate that it had granted Michelle as much time as she was going to get.
‘She’s going to want to talk about you, about us. She’s going to tell me how you’re doing, isn’t she?’
‘How do you want me to be doing?’
‘Well, if she says you’re doing well I won’t believe her.’
‘And if she convinces you?’
‘I’ll feel terrible.’
‘And if I’m not doing well?’
‘I’ll feel worse.’
‘So coffee with Michelle has now become something you dread, one more example of collateral damage from the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your life?’
‘Why does she want to have coffee? We’ve never met for coffee before, not just the two of us.’
‘Well, Charlie’s probably working or taking care of Sonia or seeing his father so he can’t come and you banished me to a far better life, so I can’t come.’
‘At least see the logic in the decision.’
‘Adam, I never could. You’re trying to turn your fear of the future, your panic about parenthood and professional failure into something noble that you’ve done for me. I never bought it.’
‘Diana, it’s possible at the one time both to be afraid and to act nobly for another person. Come on! Look at where I’ve come from. You know what my father was like. You know what my childhood was like.’
‘I know exactly where you’ve come from. I rubbed your back and held you after nightmares. I’m the one who took the black-and-white photo of the little boy in quilted overalls. I took him with me even as you were kicking me out. You have to follow up this man Border and write on him and his work. It could be your salvation.’
‘Are you saying that if I had something to work on, to write on, if I had some hope of professional viability, we could get together again … try to have a child?’
‘No, I’ve always said that something to write about is not so
mething you should need for that, but if you do need it, I’m saying Henry Border’s just given it to you.’
‘But I can’t know that yet. Look, there’s incredible stuff there but it’s for someone else, experts in the area. I don’t know if I’ve really got anything that I should be following up with Border. I can’t tell you to come back just because I’ve got a hunch or rather because I have these moments where I imagine that you’ve got a hunch that I’ve found something to write about.’
‘Follow Border! Hang on to him and don’t let him go.’
‘And if he leads nowhere? What then?’
‘Then ask Michelle what to do with the raisins.’
*
It was the end of the day and Lamont Williams sat down in a chair, tired but ready.
‘How you doin’ today?’ he asked.
‘You got your grandmother a nice umbrella, yes?’ the old man asked in turn as his answer.
‘Yeah.’
‘A good one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Very nice. Is there any water left in that thing? If yes, give it here please. You want? No? Sure? All right. Now, where are we?’
‘You’d just got there.’
‘Got where?’
‘Auschwitz,’ Lamont Williams reminded him. ‘Most of the Jews got there by train but you didn’t get there by train.’
‘No, I didn’t. Almost everybody else did from all over Europe but I was on a truck. You remember!’ he said, impressed. ‘Good. You have to remember.’
The Street Sweeper Page 28