The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  Lazily Cetta put on the clothes that Andrew had almost ripped off her.

  Andrew stayed sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her. And now he was holding his head in hands, weeping. “Forgive me,” he said, in a voice choked with sobs. “I feel like an animal,” he went on through his sobs. “An animal, like all those men I’ve always despised. I — it’s never happened to me — I’ve never been with a …”

  “With a whore,” said Cetta in a cool voice.

  “Cetta, please believe me," said Andrew, suddenly turning to her. His face was streaked with tears.

  She looked into his eyes; good eyes, she thought. Honest eyes.

  “I’m an animal,” he said again softly. “Can you ever forgive me? I wanted you so much, from the very first moment I saw you and now … now … I disgust myself.”

  Cetta sat by him in silence. She pulled his head against her breast. She stroked his blond hair, looking at nothing. And they stayed like that, without speaking.

  “Time’s up,” Cetta said finally.

  Andrew stood up. The tears had dried on his cheeks. Cetta didn’t watch him leave. She heard the door close quietly. She lay down on the bed and didn’t move. After a while the door opened and closed again. “Pretend to be asleep,” said a rough voice she didn’t know. “Don’t move.” The client tossed five dollars on the nightstand, next to the money Andrew had left. He pulled up her skirt and thrust into her from behind, hastily.

  Cetta didn’t have the courage to visit Sal that week. She sent him a cake she had bought in a bakery.

  Andrew came back to the whorehouse early in January.

  “I don’t want to make love,” he told her. “I just want to be with you,” and he laid a crisp five-dollar bill on the little table.

  Cetta looked at him. He’d come back. She stroked his clean-shaven cheeks. The man who was fighting for seventy-three thousand workers had come back. For her. She brought her lips close to Andrew’s and kissed him. For a long time, with her eyes closed. Then she undressed him and drew him inside her. And finally she held him tightly in her arms, in the rumpled sheets, when Andrew had filled her up with his pleasure.

  “You mustn’t pay me anymore. I don’t want to take money from you,” she said. “We can see each other at your place.”

  He looked at her with his clear blue eyes. “We can’t,” he told her. “I’m married.”

  20

  Orange-Richmond-Manhattan-Hackensack, 1923

  After he had left the New Jersey welcome center bearing his new name and documents, and after he’d changed the young Irishman’s savings into dollars — three hundred seventy-two of them, Bill made his way inland and found work in a sawmill in Orange, near a brewery closed down by Prohibition. Its signs, faded and dangling, said “Winter Brothers’ Brewery.” The work was exhausting and badly paid. The huge logs, barely smoothed and stripped of their bark, had to be hoisted onto long moving belts and sliced into thick planks. Despite the gloves he’d had to pay for out of his first week’s wages, his hands were full of splinters. By nightfall every bone in his body ached. He ate a plate of soup with a lump of salt pork and fell into bed. The old woman who gave him bed and board — the evening meal, a breakfast of porridge and two slices of rye bread, an onion and a piece of dried beef for lunch — overcharged him. “Take it or leave it,” she’d told him, with greedy eyes, planting her bony fists on her hips when he first came to the door. Bill took it, because he had to wait for things to calm down before he could go back to the tree in Battery Park where he’d hidden the money and gemstones. He shared a room with two other boarders. Young like himself, new arrivals like himself. One was a little Italian with gall-yellowed eyes. As soon as Bill saw him, he was sure he could see “Traitor” written across his forehead. The other roommate was a flabby giant of a man who spoke incomprehensibly and rarely; he was blond and ruddy, from some country in Europe Bill had never heard of. He was so big and tall that his feet stuck out from the bed, dangling in air; and his shoulders hung over the mattress on either side, so that one of his arms was always scraping the floor. By himself he could lift whole tree trunks that otherwise required the strength of three men. But Bill never talked with either one of them. He didn’t trust the wop, and the giant was so stupid he’d end up getting Bill in trouble without even knowing it.

  The sawmill was full of people. Lots of blacks, especially ones who’d be working there for the rest of their lives, and immigrants who might find some other work someday. But even at work Bill didn’t socialize. He kept to himself. When the siren shrieked for the noon break, he took out the bandana with his lunch and went away. He found an isolated place to sit down and slowly chew his onion, his bread and his chipped beef. He would think. At the beginning, he thought about the future, he made plans. But after a couple of weeks, his thoughts were linked to the dreams he was having. And after another couple of weeks, the dreams were full-blown nightmares. Almost every night Bill woke up screaming, sweating and terrified. “You make-a me crazy, Cochrann,” grumbled the Italian. The giant, however, never noticed a thing, continuing to snore blissfully. When the Italian lost half an arm in a buzz saw, the mill fired him. In his place they hired an old geezer who spent almost his whole pay on booze and snored all night as loudly as the giant, leaving Bill alone with his nightmares.

  They were always different, but always the same. Whatever situation he was dreaming about, no matter how beautiful, the same thing always happened. No doubt about it. He died. He died because Ruth killed him. Ruth, the little Jew bitch. The first time, he was dreaming that he was in a classy restaurant. The waiter brought him a plate under a sparkling silver cover. He knew it was going to be roast chicken and potatoes. But when Bill lifted off the cover, there was nothing on the plate but a woman’s amputated finger. The waiter, holding his carving knife, stuck it in Bill’s throat. And all at once he saw the waiter was the Jew bitch. Another time he was flying, gliding through the air like a bird. And then Ruth, dressed for skeet shooting, cried “Pull!” and they shot him down. Or she drowned him, or smothered him, or set fire to him, or hung him from a tree by the neck; or sent electrical current through the rocking chair where he was lounging, suddenly turning it into an electric chair.

  Ruth obsessed him. And while he sat by himself, chewing his lunch, he couldn’t set himself free of the images that had haunted him the night before. He’d even tried to knock himself out with the geezer’s contraband whiskey, and that night he dreamed she’d poisoned him. As his muscles became paralyzed and grew stiff, Ruth laughed at him, showing him her hand with its missing finger spurting blood.

  At the end of seven months Bill’s eyes had sunk deeply into their sockets, and there was a haunted look about him. He tried not to sleep, to stay awake all night. But the hard work soon forced his eyes shut, and then Ruth came back to find him. During those weeks, Bill thought he was going crazy. And so, one evening, after cashing his weekly paycheck, he came back to the boarding house, packed up his few things without saying a word to anyone, rummaged through the old woman’s kitchen until he found some money, took it and left. It was time to go back to Battery Park, to retrieve what was his and to do something to get rid of some of his accumulated hate. His hair and beard had grown long and tangled. Nobody was going to recognize him. Maybe he’d let a barber give him a trim so that he wouldn’t look like a bum, but nobody was going to recognize him, he was sure about that. He was also sure that they’d forgotten about him after all these months. Death didn’t leave much of a trace in his part of town. And in case anything came up, he had a knife in his pants. Protection.

  The next day, on the road that was leading him home, he stopped in Richmond and went into a stationery store. “I want to write a letter to a gal,” he told the salesgirl. “You got a nice envelope, colored, maybe with a pitcher on it? Somethin’ pretty.”

  The salesgirl showed him a pale pink envelope with flowers printed on it.

  “Can you write her name on it?” he asked. “I g
ot a lousy handwritin’, an’ I want it should look nice.”

  The saleswoman smiled, perhaps she was sympathetic. She picked up a fountain pen and waited.

  “Miss Ruth Isaacson,” said Bill, pronouncing the name he loathed so much with such sweetness that anyone would have sworn he felt true love.

  “Should I write her address, too?” asked the woman.

  “Naw,” said Bill. “I think I’ll deliver it in person.” He paid and, after he’d dumped the filthy clothes he’d worn at the sawmill, he put on a wool overcoat, a clerk’s gray suit and a blue shirt with bone buttons. He went to a barber and got a haircut; had his beard trimmed. Then he continued on his path, getting closer.

  As he waited for it to get dark again, Bill stopped just outside of Manhattan. He turned the envelope over in his hand, very pleased with his plan. Nobody would suspect him, with an envelope like that. Nobody would open it before Ruth did. She’d be the first one to read it. It was an innocent pink envelope. Happy. Anybody’d think it was from a girlfriend. Maybe a party invite. Bill laughed, and after months he heard the echo of his crystalline laughter in the air. He’d kept it silent for too long. Now he felt alive again. He thought over and over about what he was going to write, and when he’d decided on every word, he laughed again. The more he laughed, the more he enjoyed the sound of his old laugh again.

  When it was night, Bill came into Battery Park, climbed the tree, reached his hand into the hollow. And pulled out the oilcloth packet he’d hidden. He opened it carefully and inside he found his twenty-two dollars and ninety cents, and the stones from the ring — the big emerald and the diamonds. He calculated that now he had four hundred and fifty-four dollars and change. A fortune. Especially since he hadn’t sold the gems yet. He stuck everything into his pocket and started walking confidently towards Park Avenue.

  As he approached Ruth’s apartment building, Bill felt his excitement growing, along with the tension of all those months of nightmares. He was afraid they might come true at that moment: that Ruth was pointing him out to a cop right now. He could see himself fleeing, then feel the bullet in his back, he saw himself getting fried in the hot seat. “Bitch!” he snarled furiously, slipping the letter into the building’s mail slot. All of a sudden he felt that the letter was nothing, meaningless, that he should have hidden himself and waited for her. Grabbed her on the way to school and cut her throat, there, with all her rich friends around her, letting the blood soak through her cashmere coat. “Bitch!” he said again, going away, instinctively heading towards his old neighborhood, towards home. As if that place could protect him. Or at least offer him the possibility of becoming the Bill he’d always been. As if the wretched street where he’d killed his German father and his Jewish mother could give him back his laugh, which had been silenced again.

  On the way — where Third and Fourth turn into Bowery — he saw the lights of a shady-looking, rundown club. He needed a drink. And a whore. He went inside.

  He noticed her right away. She led clients to their tables or booths. She was smiling. She was around thirty. She had to be Italian; they were all wops in there. He could tell by their flashy suits, brightly colored, vulgar. He could also tell by their coarse voices, their thuggish look. She must be Italian, too, with that dark hair. Wops and Jews: same thing, thought Bill. Something about that woman excited him. She dragged her left leg slightly. After she’d greeted two clients and come back to the counter, she made a little fist and struck her left thigh, then — thinking no one could see her, she had stretched her back, bending it to the left, and the leg moved again. So then the woman straightened up and walked normally. “You’re gimpy, cunt,” thought Bill as he came up to the bar, excited by that flaw.

  “Gimme a whiskey,” he told the barkeeper.

  “We can’t serve alcohol, mister,” said the bartender.

  Bill shook his head, looked around. Then pointed to a client further along the bar. “So what’s he drinkin’?” he asked.

  “Iced tea,” said the barman.

  “Then gimme a iced tea,” said Bill. “An’ it better be good,” he added, pulling out his money.

  “Ice or soda?”

  “Straight. A double.”

  “It’s the best tea in town,” said the bartender, pouring him a double dose of contraband whiskey.

  “An’ how much for that hoor over there, pal?” asked Bill, leaning across the bar and indicating the woman who excited him because she was lame.

  “Miss Cetta is not a whore, sir,” said the bartender, he too leaning across the bar at Bill. “But if you’re in the market, there are some fine girls upstairs.”

  Bill didn’t respond. He knocked back his whiskey, made a face, and banged the glass on the bar. “Gimme another double tea,” he said.

  The barkeep filled his glass to the brim; Bill downed it and paid. He walked through the club, keeping his eye on Cetta. When he saw her going towards the back door with a case of empty bottles, he followed her.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, emerging into the alley, “how ‘bout I give that leg a little rub?”

  Cetta whirled to face him. She set the bottles on a pile of other cases and started back inside.

  But Bill blocked her way. “What? Don’t you like me?” he asked her with a smirk.

  “Out of my way,” said Cetta.

  “Hey, I ain’t askin’ you to fall in love, gimpy,” said Bill, grabbing her arm.

  “All I had in mind was a fuck, maybe you didn’t get my meanin’.”

  “Let go of me.”

  But Bill tightened his hold on her arm, twisting it behind her back and pulling her against him. “I’ll even pay for it, bitch.”

  “Let go of me, fucker.”

  “Well, I guess you ain’t understood …”

  “She understood you just fine,” came a deep rough voice.

  Bill saw a large ugly man with black hands at the club’s back door. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, releasing Cetta and reaching for the knife in his pocket.

  The man with grimy hands pulled his pistol out of its holster with unexpected speed, and stuck it into his face, pressing it against Bill’s forehead. “Beat it, shithead,” he said in his deep dead voice.

  Slowly Bill took his hand out of his pocket. He held both arms in the air and tried to smile. “Hey pal, I was just jokin’. Don’t nobody never kid around in this joint?”

  The man didn’t say a word, he only kept pressing the gun against Bill’s brow.

  Bill took two steps backwards. Then he turned and walked away, slowly, fearing a shot. Sweating with fear. When he reached the corner, before he turned, he glanced back down the alley and saw the woman embracing the ugly man. “Bitch!” he said to all the women in the world.

  He walked fast for three blocks. He was furious. He wanted to escape from his fear, from his humiliation, from his frustration.

  “How about a little dip and sip?” said a voice from the darkness of an alley. The prostitute was old. Dyed hair, straw-colored, coarse. Her low-cut dress exposed dark wilted nipples. She took out her dentures: “I’ve got a velvet mouth, dearie.”

  Bill looked around, shoved her into a corner, unbuttoned his pants and forced her to her knees.

  “You gotta pay first,” she tried to protest.

  Bill pulled out his knife. “Suck, bitch,” he told her. “If ya say one word I’m gonna cut ya.” And as the woman took his member, hard with rage, into her mouth, Bill never stopped pressing the knife against her throat. “Swallow it, ya Jew cunt,” he said, expelling all his bile. He stepped back, re-buttoned his pants, looked at the kneeling woman, and kicked her in the face. He grabbed her and again made sure she felt the knife at her throat. He reached into her dress and ripped it open. Her flaccid breasts fell out, liberating a few dollars. Bill pocketed them. Then he stood up.

  “Don’t kill me,” the old whore whimpered.

  Bill looked at her with disgust. He stamped his foot on her denture, shattering it. “Jew bitch!” he scr
eamed, running away from her, fleeing Manhattan.

  He managed to board a freight train going north, but it stopped after an hour, before Bill had decided where to go. He climbed down and, still shaking, jaw clenched, read the station sign aloud: “Hackensack.” He came to the highway and began walking north. None of the few trucks that came by stopped for him. After a couple of miles, however, unexpectedly a black car pulled to the side of the road.

  “Where you headed, kid?” asked the driver, leaning out the window. “Care for a ride?”

  Bill jumped in. The man was about fifty, jovial, with a traveling salesman’s patter and a two-bit wig that wouldn’t stay on straight. He kept adjusting it. “Talking helps me stay awake,” he told Bill, and from that moment he never stopped talking.

  At the first pause Bill said, “Nice car.”

  “She’s my Tin Lizzie,” the man said proudly. “She’ll never leave me stranded on the side of the road. She’s a Ford.”

  “Ford,” said Bill, enraptured. And for the first time that night, he felt relaxed. He liked cars. And this one was a beauty.

  “A Model T,” the man went on, stroking the dashboard as if it were a thoroughbred horse. “Son, if you’re a real American, you want to get you a Model T.”

  “Right, a Model T.”

  “Yessirree,” chuckled the traveling salesman. “This here’s the Runabout, the deluxe model, with ignition and a spare tire too. I paid 430 dollars for her.”

  “She’s a beaut, all right.”

  “Say it good and loud,” said the man, swelling his chest. “What’s yer name, kid?”

  “Cochrann. But you can call me Bill.”

  “Okay, Bill. Where you headed?”

  “Where do they make Fords?”

  “Huh? Where do they make Fords? Why, in Detroit, Michigan, that’s where.”

  Bill looked at the road in front of him, illuminated by the car’s tremulous headlights. His ears were full of the sound of the engine with its regular bursts. And suddenly his old laugh returned.