Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

by Mark Kurlansky

  "Hey, Nathan," he had whispered, "she's a saxophone player! Alto. Have you ever made it with a saxophone player?"

  Nathan had to admit that the best he had ever done was a violinist.

  "Cellist would be better."

  "I guess," said Nathan. "You mean the leg thing."

  Mordy laughed and sauntered over to the saxophonist.

  "He never saw my play," said Sonia.

  "No. He was excited about it," Nathan said. "We've never had anyone in the family who actually did anything before. He told everyone about his daughter-in-law's play."

  "Yeah. He always added, 'She's Mexican, you know' "

  "He could never get over that. Jewish, but she's Mexican."

  "I should have made him enchiladas."

  "Yeah."

  "How do you make them?"

  "Don't know. They have to be better than this brisket, though," said Nathan, looking at an untouched platter of gray brown meat.

  Chow Mein Vega came over with the tall and lean Palo, and they helped themselves to large platefuls. Nathan thought of warning them, but then he heard Palo say, "This is good carne, bro'."

  Chow Mein agreed, scraping his plate with a fork. "I wonder if it's kosher. Jews make good carne."

  "It reminds me of my mother's ropa vieja."

  "Better."

  "When did you have my mother's ropa vieja?"

  "Your mother made it every Sunday and everyone in the barrio used to hide."

  Palo smiled. "Me too. It was terrible. I forgot about that. I used to try to eat over at Ramito Sanchez's so that I could get out of the ropa vieja. It was like ropa vieja, like somebody's old clothes. But this stuff is good," he said as he refilled his plate.

  When Chaim Litvak and Yankel Fink came, they were careful not to eat anything. Fink brought another aluminum foil platter of knishes—spinach, mushroom, kasha—all mostly potato, of course, and no one ate them but Chow Mein and Palo. Then Saul Grossman came over with his celebrated pasteles.

  "Now that's a knish," said Palo.

  Ruth explained to Leo Sussman, their lawyer, who liked the herring and the knishes, that she was trying to sort out Harry's papers. "I think we are broke," she said with a distracted smile.

  "How can you be broke?"

  "I don't know. I can't find any bank accounts with money in them. We have lots of property, but no money I think we will have to sell something. But it's hard to sort out the property, too."

  She had tried. In the room she had rarely entered, she sat in his worn wooden office chair, which he had proudly carried home after finding it on Tenth Street with "only one broken arm" that he had repaired with glue. She ran an index finger over the crack. "It will hold," Harry had correctly predicted thirty years earlier. She fondled a small brass bust of Irving Berlin that she had given him, half in jest, on their twenty-third wedding anniversary. Or twenty-fourth? She opened up the first gray metal filing cabinet. On top was a Time magazine from 1962 and a theater program, a not very funny Yiddish comedy by Korn-blith that they had seen on her birthday one year. There were other playbills, other magazines. Some deeds, some bills. A Giants program from the Polo Grounds with the scorecard filled out in pencil. Had he taken the boys? She tried to remember. She tried not to remember. There were tax records and crayon drawings by Mordy and Nathan. No signature required. Nathan was a realist, with demanding detail in a young but skilled hand. Mordy had stubbornly remained abstract, with wild strokes and an almost sophisticated sense of color.

  Old copies of the Forvitz and menus from restaurants and flyers from forgotten concerts, some of which had never happened. In time, Ruth could recognize the financial folders so that she could separate them. She wanted to have a pile to hand to her lawyer. Why did he keep so many magazines? She filled an entire large black plastic garbage bag with old magazines. Should she save the program from the Broadway Concert for Peace in January 1968, where they had seen Leonard Bernstein and Barbra Streisand? "And Harry Belafonte," she could hear Harry's voice over her shoulder, sounding so real that it made her jump.

  Sal A arrived with a tray of freshly baked sfogliatella, whose warm ri-cotta fragrance seemed to chase away years of brisket and herring. But now Nathan felt guilty about sfogliatellas, maybe because he had eaten one instead of mourning at that first moment, or was it that he was not feeling good about pastry anymore? Oh, Karoline, are you in Bermuda doing the same wondrous bad things with Dickie? Dickie.

  "I don't know what to do," Nathan confided to Chow Mein. "I didn't want to sell the shop. My father told me not to sell. But now we really need the money."

  "So sell it if you need the money."

  "I don't like these guys. I don't want them taking over the neighborhood."

  "That's what everybody says. But they are taking over the neighborhood, because everybody is selling. They all say, 'I don't want to.' Then they sell. If you don't want them to take over, don't sell to them. Stand up, man. It's time to put your tokhessobre la mesa. Just say no."

  "What did you say?" asked Nathan.

  "Say no."

  "No. About tokhes sobre la mesa?"

  "Yeah. Put it on the table. Stand up and be counted. Put up or shut up."

  "That's what it means! Where's Mordy?" He looked around, but his brother and the saxophonist were both gone. "Where did you learn that?"

  "Put your tokhes on the table? I learned it in the Catskills."

  When Nathan noticed Mordy missing, an inappropriate thought slipped into his consciousness. Without his brother, there would not be a minyan for the evening kaddish. According to Jewish law, kaddish for your father was one of the primary obligations, but there were too many obligations. He gave his daughter swimming lessons. Genug, as Harry used to say when an argument went on too long. Enough. Harry had never been one for davening. Though he had gone to synagogue once a year to say kaddish on the anniversary of his own father's death. Standing with these men, repeating in rhythmic Hebrew the words about God's greatness, was not helping Nathan. And he could see that it didn't help his mother, either. It was for Nusan. Nathan too was doing it not so much for Harry as for Nusan. Or because he couldn't not say it in front of Nusan.

  The evening knock on the door. The greeting, "May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem." The parade of elderly men into the dining room. And Nathan waiting coyly for the discovery that a tenth man was missing. He looked around the room. At the moment, there were no other Jewish men there. And then Mordy walked in, looking dazed and slightly silly, the way he usually looked.

  "On time for the kaddish," he whispered to Nathan.

  "I thought you wouldn't make it," said Nathan.

  "That's what Harry would have thought. That's why I'm here," Mordy declared.

  After the last kaddish, Nathan walked Nusan home. "I have lost my only living relative," Nusan said on the way back to Rivington Street.

  Nathan never bothered to correct him. "Are you sleeping, Uncle Nusan? You look like you are not sleeping."

  "Sleep? I never sleep. Harry is sleeping."

  Nathan inhaled deeply—one last chance—blocked his nasal passages, and opened the door. Nusan took off his slashed jacket and hat and his glowing running shoes. His socks had holes also, but this was probably not for mourning.

  Stretching out on the couch in his shredded clothes, Nusan gently laid his head down where there should have been a pillow. Instead it was a brick—not even a new brick, a blackened used brick from the street.

  "What are you doing?" said Nathan.

  "It's supposed to be a rock. I couldn't find a rock... for mourning."

  "But you can't sleep like that."

  "How do you know? Have you ever tried to sleep like that? Don't say you can't until you have tried it!"

  Nathan didn't argue with Nusan. No one did. An hour after Nathan left, Nusan realized, rubbing his head where the brick had been, that he couldn't sleep once again, and he put on his jacket and hat and scarf and went for a walk in the su
mmer night.

  In the dark silence of Third Street, almost unconsciously, Nusan checked his jacket pocket on the left side to see that the two pieces of bread he had taken from his brother's shiva were still there, as though he had gotten away with the sleight of hand.

  From the corner, Cabezucha, in darkly soiled blue jeans and a new white T-shirt with a picture of Jamaican singer Bob Marley on the front, had seen the old man checking nervously on what was probably a wad of money in his pocket. He walked directly up to Nusan, pulled out his revolver, and lowered it two feet until it was pointed at Nusan's head. Nusan looked up at him with his ice cold dark eyes and began to laugh. "You want to kill me? Kill me! Do you think you are the first? Kill me! Here I am." He stretched out his arms and closed his eyes.

  Cabezucha held the pistol barrel to Nusan's white forehead and pulled back the hammer, but he did not fire.

  "What! You don't want to kill me? Why does nobody want to kill me?" Nusan, trying to clear his path, pushed upward at Cabezucha's chest with a stiff arm. The arm could barely reach the larger man's chest but still managed to deliver a hard thump. Cabezucha, caught off balance, clawed at Nusan and ended up grabbing on to his maroon scarf.

  "Not that!" shouted Nusan as he struggled furiously to wrest the scarf from Cabezucha's slow but powerful grip. With his other hand, Cabezucha fired the pistol point-blank at Nusan, slowly squeezing the trigger six times, firing six shots—all of which missed.

  Cabezucha released the scarf and ran down the street in the opposite direction from a police patrol car that suddenly lit up the buildings' dark windows, carnival-like, with flashing colored lights.

  Nusan roared with laughter as he straightened his scarf. The laughter exploded out of his mouth as tears ran down his cheeks. "Not me. Can't kill me. Can't be done." And he laughed some more as salt water flowed like a new rain from his eyes, a long-dammed flood. There Nusan stood on the littered Third Street sidewalk, bathed in the pleasure of at last releasing his tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Millionaires of the Loisaida

  RUTH FELT THE KICK. that intrusive stab, that was Harry's foot. She did not have to look at a clock. With eyes closed, she knew that it was between three-thirty and four, the time of night when Harry turned over. He didn't snore. Early in their marriage, that had surprised her. "You look like a snorer," she had said.

  "Close," Harry had quipped, and she knew he meant schnorrer, a con artist, which in reality he also wasn't, though he liked to think of himself that way—the slick operator, the impresario.

  She would not reach down and remove his leg, the way she always did, because she knew that Harry was gone. She would just go back to sleep, though in the morning he would still be gone. He would not show up on Houston Street. She could never again tell him anything. He no longer existed. And she had not even been able to say good-bye. What would she have said? Something. Something lovely Something funny. Then she realized that she did not want to say good-bye. She just wanted another chance to talk to him. She fell asleep, though she already knew what her first thought would be when she woke in the morning.

  For now, Harry was walking on Second Avenue, looking so real, so lifelike, how could he be gone? And he was singing. It was his voice, unmistakably Singing Irving Berlin.

  I'm going on a long vacation,

  Oh, you railroad station...

  After the arrest, everyone but Nusan imagined close calls. That large man they called Cabezucha, who was now suspected in eight neighborhood killings and had already confessed to shooting Eli Rab-binowitz, had gotten a massage from Sonia.

  "The most disturbing part to me," Sonia had said, "is my judgment. I thought I could tell who to trust. If you can't tell, this business is much too dangerous. But you know, he was really nice."

  "Really?" Nathan had always thought of him as a dangerous drug dealer.

  Sonia whispered, "He was nicer to me than Eli Rabbinowitz."

  Nathan smiled. "Really?"

  Most of the neighborhood was relieved when he was caught, though not Mrs. Skolnik, who came into Nathan's shop dressed in a red-and-white sundress with little scenes of Paris in the pattern, a large-brimmed straw hat with a red-and-white cloth band, and a string of beads, also red and white, around her neck. The beads gave her away Mrs. Skolnik was always color-coordinated, so only a few with experience like Nathan recognized Cristofina's beads. She may have gotten the entire outfit from her. Red and white were the colors of Changó, the powerful lightning orisha. So powerful, Nadian recalled, that Cristofina charged more for this spirit. Mrs. Skolnik's earrings, red lightning bolts, must have been sold to her by Cristofina as well. Nathan strained over the counter to see if she was wearing red-and-white shoes. She was—red-and-white patent-leather polka-dot high heels.

  Mrs. Skolnik stared urgently at Nathan through her pearl pixie glasses and fumbled with her beads, as though invoking extra protection as she spoke. "I need twenty copies. Could I post one of them here?"

  Nathan looked at the page while he heard the clicking of plastic beads. "Sure. Are you selling all of your furniture?"

  "I have to get out of here. That killer is out!"

  "No, they caught him."

  "They caught that one and they let out the other one. And he knows I identified him. He'll come after me."

  "Ruben Garcia?"

  "Yes," she whispered, shaking her beads nervously

  "But he never killed anyone."

  "Did you see his eyes?"

  Cristofina was like a lawyer. She won no matter how the case went. She earned money making sweet-faced Ruben scary, and now she earned more protecting Mrs. Skolnik from her best work, his scary eyes.

  Mrs. Skolnik, too, thought she was having narrow escapes. As she left, Nathan could hear Carmela above saying, "'A'ta 'uego, Changó." See you.

  Fearless, Nathan took the F train to Delancey Street and felt no anguish even when the train slowed to a near stop in the tunnel. At Delancey he got out and walked to Rivington Street to see Nusan, once again the survivor.

  Nusan scoffed at the suggestion that he had narrowly escaped death. He had his own ideas about narrow escapes. "He tried. He shot at me six times. The police found all the bullet holes."

  Nathan and everyone else in the neighborhood had already heard this. "Why do you think he didn't hit you?"

  "Exactly. That shlemiel could hit nothing. It was the bystanders who barely survived. They are the survivors." They both laughed together, one of the few real laughs they had ever shared.

  "Really, Nusan, how did he miss so many times right up close?"

  The smile left Nusan. "I am not so easy to kill. You think this fellow was smarter than Hitler? Do you think he was tougher than the Gestapo? I have more to fear from your friend with the pastry." Then he grew silent and adjusted his scarf. "You know what?" he said in a quiet voice. "He probably would have killed me if it wasn't for the scarf." He pulled his maroon wool scarf tighter around his neck.

  "The scarf?"

  "Yes, this. He tried to take it and I went crazy, and that scared him. He didn't know what he had. Look, come here." Nusan beckoned Nathan with a conspiratorial gesture. "Feel this," he whispered, holding out his scarf.

  Nathan felt the scarf. It felt like wool. But there were some very small, hard bumps. Nusan whispered three inaudible syllables.

  "What?"

  Nusan tried again, not much louder. "Diamonds."

  "How many are in there?" Nathan whispered.

  "Twenty-seven." Nusan smiled and continued whispering. "I have been living off of this scarf since 1948.1 bought my trip to New York. I rented this apartment. This is how I live." Still whispering, he added with unconcealed glee, "Guess how many I have already used."

  "How many?"

  "Guess."

  "Twenty"

  "Only nine, since 1948. They are good stones."

  "Where did you get them?"

  Nusan laughed like someone who had just heard a very good joke, loudly, uncon
trollably He saw Nathan's surprise. Struggling to regain his voice, he said gravely, "This is really funny" Then he broke into a wheezy, shoulder-heaving laugh. Finally he managed to whisper, "I stole them—from a German—a Nazi. When I was in the DP camp waiting for my visa. He had hid them so carefully Just like his war record. But I found both. I'll get your pastry maker, too."

  "He's harmless. Leave him alone."

  "Oh? You really think he is innocent?"

  "Yes."

  "I can tell that you don't. You are keeping something from me."

  "I don't know a thing about him. Just that he is from Berlin and changed his name."

  "No, there must be something else. If you think he is innocent, tell me. We can clear him."

  "He is innocent. He is just a pastry maker who loves children."

  "Tell me, then."

  Nathan let the scarf drop on Nusan's belly.

  "Remember," Nusan said in sudden earnestness, "if something happens to me, get the scarf."

  "All right."

  Nusan grabbed Nathan's wrist with a surprisingly powerful grip, the grip that must have surprised Cabezucha. "It's important."

  "I'll remember."

  But Nusan was wrong. Bernhardt Moellen was not Obersturm-führer Reinhardt Müller. He was Schütze Bernhardt Müllen, Private Mullen, a draftee in the Wehrmacht, the German army, just as he had always said. He and his wife did go to Argentina before immigrating to the United States. When he entered the United States, he changed his name to Moellen because he thought the umlaut would be too difficult.

  Moellen had always tried to conceal his war record. But now he was forced to tell the truth. He had written it out years ago, so that if he ever had to tell the story, he would have all the facts before him. He used the third person so that it would sound like a document, not a confession— the truth in its proper absurdity.

  The Schütze Shoots Ein Geshütz

  Bernhardt Mullen had managed to stay in Berlin for most of the war, baking pastries for meetings of chubby mass murderers who plotted death with his powdered sugar still on their lips. He actually did once make a kugelhopf for Adolf Hitler, which was when he had learned that the cake was a favorite, though to his great relief, he did not have to actually meet the Führer. He never even heard if Hitler liked his kugelhopf, though he supposed it had gone reasonably well, since Mullen did not receive orders to report to the army for some time. And it was the Austrian cake, not at all the Alsatian brioche his daughter liked to make.