A Play for the End of the World

by Jai Chakrabarti

  One Wednesday evening, she left the archives as he did and followed him to the Columbus Circle station. Down by the tracks, she felt safer sidling close to him as if they knew each other. The trains were running slow, and all the ills of the city were out on display. Astronauts had walked on the moon, but it hadn’t helped New York much. A man with thickly gelled hair and glassy eyes was carrying around a jar of some dark liquid, yelling a refrain she couldn’t understand. A panhandling saxophonist was trying to drown him out by playing some of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Coltrane—go figure! It wasn’t so bad a rendition.

  “What kind of music do you listen to?” was how she’d introduced herself. She had the feeling that if she hadn’t gone first, he would’ve stood by and said nothing. At first she wasn’t sure if he’d even recognize her, but when he spoke there was an intimacy there, maybe earned from all their hours together listening a few feet apart.

  “I like the Romantics,” he said. “Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Brahms. I found this little orchestra who used to play in the fifties. They were based in Iowa, so I doubt many people would know them. I ask for their recordings most nights.”

  When he said that, he stopped being a stranger. “There’s this intermezzo Brahms wrote when he was around sixty, in E-flat minor. They called that part of his life autumnal. When I play it, I can see the November storm that’s coming up from the fields. Maybe I’ll play it for you sometime. If only I knew your name?” She didn’t know why she’d said all that; she’d no idea if she’d ever see him again.

  “My name is Jaryk. It’s spelled a little like Jared but the j is pronounced like a y. Most people get it wrong.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jaryk with a y.”

  They got on the downtown D and sat next to each other. En route to Broadway-Lafayette, the train jerked to a stop. Still uneasy with this subterranean world of transportation, Lucy said a prayer under her breath. Jaryk sat next to her, unperturbed. His long legs were curled into his body, as if he were afraid of taking up more than his share of space, and when the train started up again, only to crawl a few feet until it sputtered back to a stop, leaving several passengers springing forward, he sighed, but softly, and for some strange reason—perhaps because sadness comforted her—this eased her anxiety and she began, again, to breathe.

  But the train did not move. A minute turned into two, and when she saw the panhandler, who the stop before had been upping the ante—“a dime, a nickel, two pennies, I just got back from your war, so give me anythin’ you got”—peer through the windows nervously, she too became worried. She turned to Jaryk, his dependable face. “Do you know what’s happening?”

  “Might be traffic,” he said. “Too many trains for too little space.”

  She heard a hint of a foreign accent in his voice, but it was a few layers below the surface and if someone had asked her where this man was from, she wouldn’t have known what to say, other than “Not here, I guess.”

  She kept going because she felt lighter when she talked. He said he lived on the Lower East Side, a walkup at Orchard and Broome.

  “I have some nice neighbors,” he said, “and there’s the sunset every night, right from my fire escape.”

  She’d come up against a lot of sarcasm in the city—because she supposed people liked to live in their shells and give only when they felt absolutely sure a stranger wasn’t strange—but his voice didn’t have the first note of irony and he wasn’t unkind. “I’m on First Avenue and Seventh Street,” she said. The address made her a real and true New Yorker, but there wasn’t much to say after that. They sat quietly and waited for the train to move.

  The usually garbled announcement came out clear a few minutes later, when everyone was sweating, because the air-conditioning had stopped blowing air. “Ladies and gentlemen, there has been an incident. This train has got a problem. We’re going to be handling this car by car. Please be patient.”

  Her father had warned her about the city. “It’s going to explode any moment,” he had said. “All that sin can’t keep going on.” A small piece of her had always suspected he was right, and now that piece grew bigger, large enough that she had trouble breathing. With no AC in the compartment, all the covered smells were uncovered, heightened, with the odors of a homeless man’s shoe and expensive French perfume and fresh Gristedes fish competing for space in her nostrils. “I have to get out of here,” she said. She turned to him and said it again, “I want out,” as if he controlled the doors.

  He nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I want out too.”

  He laid his hand on hers. His was a pleasing mix of soft and firm; what’s more, she liked his smell and found herself shifting closer to him, to his scent of old books, which helped mitigate the other fumes around her, so that when the workers came to evacuate their car, she stood awfully close to him. When an MTA man pried open the doors, she followed Jaryk onto the tracks.

  The dark of the tracks was a mystery she didn’t care for. Jaryk shuffled forward and she followed. At one point, she asked him, “What about the third rail?”He said he didn’t know, but he didn’t think it was their destiny to die here.

  They walked a hundred paces and into the sallow light of the Broadway-Lafayette station, where men with large bellies in beige suits hoisted them up. She supposed they were the managers and not the angels of this place. Several of the passengers were taken to the station superintendent’s office and told the power had gone out from the rails and wouldn’t be restored till morning. They were offered little pins that read “MTA Works!”

  Afterwards, Jaryk and Lucy walked to the nearest diner, and he paid for a couple of cherry Cokes. She was still shaken up and was talking too fast about her father’s time at Fort Worth as an army mechanic when he took his last sip. “But I’m only halfway through mine,” she said, as he rose to leave. It was nearly midnight.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I don’t get home now, I won’t make it in time for work. Maybe I could get your number? Maybe I could ring you, sometime?”

  There it was again, that hint of a faraway accent. “Where are you from? Paris?”

  “Far east of Paris,” he said.

  She gave him her number. She’d never dated a guy who wasn’t from North Carolina. Far east of Paris was about as exotic as it could come.

  * * *

  ………………

  Their first date was at Coney Island. She was late, so she rushed to the intersection of Stillwell and Surf Avenues to find him waiting on the other side of the street, overdressed in a beige blazer, perfectly ironed pants, and a plaid cap that looked like it belonged to an older man. Watching him, she became conscious of her sundress; it was a pretty hand-me-down from Mama, but she’d felt herself sweating through the cotton as soon as she stepped off the train. She figured she would have a cigarette to compose herself, when he noticed her and waved shyly.

  “You look handsome,” she yelled, across the street.

  He took off his cap and waited to cross till the light turned red. He walked like someone who knew his body, from the muscles to the bones: languid, but full of a deeper confidence. She forgave his sense of fashion. That could be changed.

  They did everything she’d wanted to do at Coney Island, and then some. They rode the carousel, even though he complained that he was the only man riding; on the beach, they watched Russian ladies in impossibly tight stockings barbecue scallops on a clay pot grill; they helped a boy wearing a Superman cape find his mother, who was at the Nathan’s stand just a few feet away, ordering a tray of hot dogs, of which she offered two to Jaryk and Lucy; they shot at toy targets and, with a sharpshooter’s aim, Jaryk won a giant stuffed moose; they got prints from the photo booth, chins and noses wonderfully out of proportion; they walked to the sideshows and shook hands with the alligator man and left a quarter for the three-legged girl, who seemed lonely with her condition. They watched old men c
rab in the sea, schools of horseshoes rising up in their nets.

  She looked at him gazing into the water. Oh, the old soul was there, but she could also imagine the little boy with a bowl of dark hair falling over his eyes. She didn’t know him well enough, but the vision came anyway, an unexpected tenderness.

  As sunset was coming around, they got on the slow side of the Wonder Wheel. When they reached the apex, Lucy could see the whole of the New York shoreline, and beyond, she could see into the dark mass of water, where the last of the seagulls dove with the hope of dinner. The Wonder Wheel was a soothing rise and circle, and for the first time that day, she didn’t feel like talking. She’d already told him about Mebane and a couple of anecdotes about Mama. He seemed to hang on her every word, and she loved this about him, how deeply he listened. It made her feel beautiful.

  Afterwards, when they were sitting on the beach, he said, “Lucy Gardner, I like you.”

  She blushed, but there was only a slice of moon, so he couldn’t see. “That’s a relief.”

  He reached out to hold her hand. “But I have to be honest with you. I haven’t dated much. I’ve tried and gotten set up a few times, but it never goes anywhere.”

  “Oh,” she said. He’d told her he was thirty-nine, but he could’ve been younger. He had one of those faces that held together neatly, but in all that time, he hadn’t been in a serious relationship? Back in Mebane, she’d loved her high-school sweetheart and stuck it out with a few others after that ended.

  “Let me try again,” Jaryk said. “What I want is to find someone real. Misha told me to. He said, ‘Go out more.’ Misha’s my brother. I mean, he’s like my brother. Lately, he’s been pushing me to look for someone. I am. I did go out with a few girls before you, but none of them worked. One date, that was all. But you—the way we met, that was special. Something there. Do you feel it?”

  She did feel something. Butterflies was what people said. But it could simply have been nervousness, a strange man sitting next to her on a strange beach. Still, when he leaned forward, she allowed him a kiss on the cheek.

  On the train ride home, she said, “Funny, I think I talked too much. We didn’t get to talk about you. I don’t even know what you do. All I know,” she said, gesturing toward the giant stuffed moose he was holding, “is you’ve got really good aim.”

  “I’m a boring guy,” he said. “Books and records at a synagogue. Hey, what about football? You were going to teach me about American football.”

  “How long have you been in this country?”

  “Thirty years, give or take.”

  “Oh, Lord.” She didn’t understand how a man could live in this country and not know the rules of football. Where she came from, pigskin was king. You went to games, whether you played or cheered. Still, there was something sweet about his ignorance, so she explained the nature of the four downs, noting, as she did so, how he looked relieved not to be talking about himself. Books and records at a synagogue, she told herself—that didn’t sound so bad.

  When his stop came, he said, “Could I see you again?”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she flashed him a yes smile. She liked how he turned to look at her again after he’d walked off the train just as the doors were closing.

  Their second date was at Veselka in the East Village. This time, he was late, and she smoked alone at the bar and got chatted up by a sailor named Manny with two missing front teeth. When Jaryk rushed in after fifteen minutes, she was happy to see how he dwarfed Manny, how he towered over everyone in the restaurant. “Sorry,” he said. “It took me a while to get the best ones.” He produced a bouquet of pansies from behind his back.

  Veselka was his choice, hearty Ukrainian food. He ordered three kinds of pierogi to share, and borscht for himself. The first spoon of soup he took in with his eyes closed, and when he was done, it was like the bowl had been licked clean. She immediately loved this about him.

  When she went to light up her third smoke of the evening, he frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s not my place, I know, but I read so many bad things about that.”

  “You don’t really believe,” she said, taking a good pull and blowing smoke rings his way, “any of that talk! That’s to scare people.”

  “I do believe. That’s why I’m worried.”

  He seemed so serious it struck her as childish. Still, he was earnest about it, and it made her feel guilty enough to put the cigarette out. Later, when he was walking her home, he stopped to help an old lady cross the street. This woman had to be ninety plus. Jaryk helped her along, all the while speaking to her in some foreign language. When they were alone again, she said, “Seriously, you help old ladies cross the street? Who are you, and what was that you were speaking?”

  “It’s the language of the Old Country—half Polish and half Yiddish,” he said. “I was telling her she reminded me of someone I once knew.”

  She guessed he didn’t want to say more. When it came to his past, she’d noticed his jaw would tense and he would get quiet or change the subject. She didn’t push it. The Old Country. It had a ring to it. It was the kind of place, she imagined, where old ladies were taken care of and men showed up with bunches of pansies.

  By their fourth date, she had found out that he had no parents—or at least none that he could remember well. The closest he still had to family was this Misha. Sometimes he would talk about Misha like she already knew him.

  She would listen, eager for his every word. Often she hoped he would fold more of his life into hers and reveal things, as she had. Their balance of information was terrible. She had already shared how Connor, the first great love of her life, would curse in his sleep, and she’d told him about Connor’s moods—how he’d swing from joy to despair and back again and how she’d somehow felt as if it were her fault. Jaryk didn’t say much, but he knew how to hold her grief without judgment, accept her story as if it were his own.

  That was the night he gave her a book of poems. It was from Rabindranath Tagore, and he’d copied out the pages by hand into a leather-bound journal, his own copy being a tattered mess and new editions hard to find. She’d never been gifted a book of poems. For years, she’d remember a few lines from Tagore’s The Gardener, wondering whether it was for her sake or his that Jaryk had circled them in the text:

  Trust love even if it brings sorrow. Do not close up your heart…

  The heart is only for giving away…

  * * *

  ………………

  After they’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, they went to his apartment. It wasn’t much of a place. An antique bookshelf with room for more books, a table that straddled the slope of the floor, a bunch of wilting pansies in a plastic vase, and by the fire escape a thankfully soft bed. They sat on the frame and looked out into the night, the business and beauty of the city, and then they looked at nothing, because, where they were, the power went out. Then it was just the darkness and the swelter. It was just the two of them on the bed. She reached out and grazed his neck, and when he accepted this and touched the slow curve of her spine, she felt a gladness in the core of her belly. She liked the way she stuck to him, the rhythm of his breath on hers. He didn’t talk when they made love, and he was patient, removing her underclothes slowly, as if they were the most valuable artifacts, but his delicacy didn’t surprise her, though she also experienced the opposite feeling the first time they’d touched hands, that he could break her in his grasp.

  Afterwards, she didn’t think about Connor’s face—Connor, whom she’d loved with the certainty of becoming his wife—she thought instead of the little girl in her who’d climbed trees and collected sap in glass bowls.

  It went on like that for some time: a few more walks in the park, a few more nights in his studio. Except for their lovemaking, when she felt he was pouring into her an old, sad story, he managed to keep his guard
. At first, she’d understood. She’d understood some men had a hard time talking—after all, she’d grown up around army colonels and sergeants—but three months into their relationship, she took matters into her own hands.

  She told herself it had to do with his last name. He’d said he was from Poland, and could someone from that part of the world really have a last name like Smith? It was the smallest thing she could ascribe her doubt to. One night, after they’d made love and he’d fallen asleep, she went through his wallet. His ID confirmed his name. He hadn’t made Smith up after all. She kept going, though, looking for clues to his deeper history. In the billfold was a faded black-and-white photo of a matronly lady and a bespectacled, sharp-featured gentleman—whom she assumed were aunt and uncle, since he’d told her he had no parents (or did he mean he had no parents alive?), but certainly these were folks from the Old Country—and behind the picture, there was a business card that read, “Jaryk Smith, Associate of Records, Temple Beth Israel, 72nd Street and Amsterdam…” About his job he’d said with that shake of his head she’d come to know so well, “Oh, it’s just books and numbers. I’m a record keeper, that’s all.” So that part was true. She’d never suspected him of being a liar, just a coverer of secrets, and it was what he was covering that so drew her attention.

  At dinner at Sarge’s Deli earlier that night, she’d asked him, “Why don’t you tell me more about your life?”

  Between bites of his pastrami sandwich he said, “What more do you want to know?”

  “Oh, how you came to this country, what your childhood was like, who raised you, what you do every day at work. All we do when we see each other is eat and—” she lowered her voice—“fuck.”

  “Lucille!” he said. He liked to use this version of her name when she was cross.

  “We can’t have a relationship until you agree to share some things,” she said.