NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN

by Harvey Swados

  “Do they have dancing courses?” Peter asked dubiously.

  “They offer a broad schedule of progressive classes. For a dancer it is essential to grasp the Marxist approach to the arts.”

  So Peter became a student at the Revere School. It struck him at once as odd that the dance class should be known as The People’s Dance Group.

  “After all,” he asked at the first session, “how can you dance without people? I took it for granted that dancing was for people.”

  This statement created consternation. Almost immediately Peter was characterized as a cynic and a confused aesthete. By the time the class broke up, Peter, who had not even slept one night in New York City, was beginning to think that perhaps he might have done better to stay in the empty lot in Elyria.

  “I never would have thought,” he said to Angus as they walked home, “that you have to have opinions about the atom bomb. I only want to dance to make myself happy.”

  “And what about the rest of humanity?” Angus asked severely, escorting him up the steps of Mrs. Blight’s house.

  “Well, them too,” replied Peter, abashed.

  The first thing that struck Peter’s eye in Angus’s room was a charcoal portrait of Joseph Stalin with a pipe parting his mustache in the middle. Below it on the bureau lay an incredible collection of pipes: narghiles, chibouks, meerschaums, skull pipes, South African gourds. On the desk was a jumble of reamers, after-pipe mints, bushy-tail pipe cleaners, moistening pellets, initialed pouches, and back issues of Pipe Lore.

  Peter looked up at a framed letter that hung above the bed. It was on official United States stationery, and it read: Dear Mr. Mondschein, While I agree with you on the virtues of pipe-smoking, as one pipe smoker to another I must dissociate myself from your unique interpretation of recent history. I have instructed my secretary to send you under separate cover the Department of Agriculture pamphlet on The Care of Pipes. Very truly yours, I. Angelo Sanes.

  “I received that epistle,” Angus stated modestly, “in response to a missive that I dispatched to the Senator containing my views on why we should press for closer relations with our former Russian ally.”

  “You certainly have a wonderful pipe collection.”

  “I am in correspondence with myriads of individuals in connection with my collection. And I would not hesitate to asseverate, as I did to Senator Sanes, that Prime Minister Stalin’s statesmanship, and his military genius, could be attributed to his choice of a curved-shank pipe.”

  “I promised my father I wouldn’t smoke until I was twenty-one,” Peter said apologetically, and added, “I certainly appreciate your thoughtfulness, Angus. If you’ll excuse me now, I think I’ll turn in, because I want to make an early start tomorrow.”

  At the door, as if it were an afterthought, Angus reached out to his bookcase and pulled out a handful of pamphlets. “You may find it worthwhile to peruse this literature at your leisure, especially if you are addicted to reading nocturnally in the bedchamber.”

  “Thank you.” Peter was about to cross the hall into his own room when a group of young men came bounding along the hallway, giggling and chattering among themselves as they mounted the steps to the floor above.

  “They certainly look like they’re having fun,” Peter said.

  “Parties, parties.” Angus pursed his lips. “They’re very shallow, Piotr, very shallow indeed. If progressives had to rely on people of their ilk …”

  Just then one of the young men looked back from the head of the stairs, raised his fist merrily in a mock salute, turned, and disappeared.

  “Well,” Peter said, “good night, Angus.”

  “Good night, Piotr.”

  When Peter was comfortably settled in bed at last, he picked up one of Angus’s pamphlets. Peace, Plenty, Progress, and Prosperity, written by somebody named Joe Worker, was a dialogue between a very uneducated man and another man who was completely illiterate. Peter read one paragraph, turned out the light, and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

  The next morning Peter arose early and made his way directly to the Veterans Administration office, where he explained his problem to the Vocational Counselor. The office was enormous. It was a nearly bare loft in which several dozen young men milled about, smoking, swearing, arguing, or merely reading the morning papers listlessly and sleepily, as though they were still resentful at their mothers for having routed them out of bed at such an hour. The floor was littered with hundreds of ground-out cigarette butts, and the walls were placarded every few feet with large red and white NO SMOKING signs.

  The Vocational Counselor, who had one piercing eye and one wandering eye, sat with his fists clenched angrily on the glass top of his desk, as though he could barely restrain himself from punching Peter in the nose.

  “The tests,” he said, in a hard, quiet voice, “will take two or three days. Then we will know definitely whether you have terpsichorean talent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Whether you have the ability to become a dancer. If you don’t, we’ll recommend another line of work.”

  “But what good will that do?” Peter asked. “I know that I’m a dancer.”

  “You may be wrong.” The Counselor smiled bleakly, fixing Peter with his good eye, while his wandering eye gazed wearily about the room.

  “Supposing I am wrong? Then you won’t even let me dance at all, even though that’s what I want to do most. Is that fair?”

  “I’m here to help you,” the Counselor replied threateningly. “If you persist in being willful, you’ll only cut your own throat.”

  “That’s cruel!” Peter burst out, so loudly that one fellow nearby started nervously and broke the point of the pencil with which he was doing a crossword puzzle. “That’s like killing a baby before it has a chance to learn to walk!”

  “You’re being a little harsh, Cheaply. Remember that you’re talking to a representative of your Uncle Sammy.”

  “What’s that got to do with my dancing?”

  The Counselor unclenched his fist and snapped his fingers smartly as though he were calling for a bouncer. Peter took this for a signal that the interview was over, and left the office hastily.

  He returned home, and was about to enter his room when he was once again greeted by the young men whom he had seen the night before. There were actually only two of them this time, but their high-pitched noisy chattering made them sound like a larger company.

  “Hul-lo there,” said the first, who was exceedingly tall and fair, with two spots of color high on his cheekbones.

  His bald-headed companion was plump and moist. He made Peter think of a peeled peach.

  “So you’re Mama Blight’s new boy,” said the tall one brightly. “Bert and I thought you were one of the comrades.”

  “I’m Bert,” his moist friend added, “and this is Freddy. We’re your upstairs neighbors. If we’d known that you’d moved in, we would have been down for a chat, but we assumed that you were a buddy of Moonshine’s.”

  “Of who?”

  Freddy tilted his head at Angus Mondschein’s door. “Anxious Moonshine. He tried to convert us at first—just imagine!—and he keeps his hand in by propagandizing everyone who moves in.”

  “He’s been very nice to me.”

  “That’s a sure sign he wants to convert you. Has he given you any reading material?”

  “Well…”

  “Oh, let’s not stand out here discussing Anxious,” Freddy murmured, passing his hand over his pale yellow hair. “We’ve just come from a fatiguing session at the Unemployment Insurance office. Won’t you come up to our digs and have a glass of wine?”

  “Thank you, but I’ve never tasted wine.”

  “We’ll brew some lovely Lapsang tea. Do come!”

  “All right then.”

  Peter stepped gingerly forward at Freddy’s insistence onto a worn oriental rug, and found himself sitting presently on a studio couch, half-smothered in little pillows and a fur throw of some s
ort which Freddy tossed across his lap.

  “Now Bert,” Freddy said, “do hurry and brew the tea, that’s a dear. I’m sure that Mr.—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Peter struggled to sit erect in the midst of the little pillows. “My name is Peter Chifley. It’s just an ordinary name, but everybody seems to get it mixed up.”

  “That’s probably because you’re an extraordinary person. I’m going to call you Pierre, if I may,” said Freddy. “As for us, Bert is a very promising young poet. His grandfather was a merchant prince of San Diego, and No Quarter magazine has already printed one of his poems. And I—” he paused to light an Egyptian cigarette, “—I’m trying for a career on the Broadway stage.”

  “Are you an actor?”

  Freddy ran through his yellow hair rhythmically with a small gold comb. “I’ve done one or two small things at the Cherry Lane Theater in summer stock, but I’ve been forced to clerk from time to time in one of the Doubleday Book Shops. At present Bert and I have to get along on our unemployment checks, plus what Bert receives from his filthy rich aunt in San Diego.”

  “Now tell us all about yourself, starting with what brought you to Seventeenth Street,” said Bert, who had come in with a flowered tray and was pouring tea into three small Japanese cups.

  “I came to New York because I wanted to learn how to dance, but I haven’t got very far as yet.”

  “What kind of a dancer are you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “It strikes me,” Bert said nasally, “that you’re not beautiful enough.”

  “I didn’t know you have to be beautiful.”

  “It’s the soul that I’m thinking of. Your face is too pastoral. I think you lack the spirituel quality of our truly great mimes.”

  Peter did not know what a mime was, but he was too cast down by Bert’s words to inquire its meaning. Freddy said, with some asperity, “Sometimes you don’t know when to stop talking, Bert. Pierre is just on the threshold of a career. In fact I want him to meet the right people and possibly make a few contacts.”

  Bert leaped to his feet with a snort and began to prowl agitatedly about the room.

  “Oh do sit down, Bert!” cried Freddy. “Someone has to see that Pierre isn’t taken in by nuisances like Anxious Moonshine.” In the next breath he continued, “While you’re at work composing verse I’m going to take Pierre to meet our crowd, and to a few shows, and most important of all he must join a dance group in the Sevenfold School of Theatrical Arts.”

  Bert remarked coldly, “The only thing you’ve left out is that we should throw a party for Chipmunk.”

  “Chifley,” Peter said.

  “That’s a wonderful idea, Bert!” cried Freddy. “Do you have any money, Pierre?”

  “A little.”

  “That’s all we need. But we can talk about that later—we’ll need to buy wine, pretzels, apples, cigarettes, and soya sticks.”

  Peter looked up at a painting of a greenish girl seated on a yellow burro. The word Blight was lettered on the girl’s buttock, like a tattoo. “Isn’t that the landlady’s name on that girl?”

  “Didn’t you know?” muttered Bert. “Mama Blight is a painter. Imagine, she gave it to us for a Christmas present!”

  “It’s kind of funny looking, isn’t it?”

  “Ever since she read about Grandma Moses in a picture magazine,” said Freddy, “she made up her mind that she’s a great primitive. She makes everybody call her Mama Blight, and she paints only naked ladies with burros.”

  Peter answered suspiciously, “I never heard of a landlady before who was a painter too.”

  “Well, you have now,” remarked Bert.

  “You’ve been very hospitable,” Peter said, his hands sinking into several appliquéd pillows as he pushed himself erect, “and I hope you’ll come down to visit me in my room soon.”

  Bert looked at him with renewed belligerence. “Together or separately?”

  “Oh gosh,” Peter replied, “I don’t know. Whichever you want.”

  Freddy threw back his long fair head and laughed so that Peter could see nearly all his teeth. “Suppose I call for you early in the evening, Pierre, on my way to the Sevenfold School?”

  “That’ll be all right, I guess. And thanks again.”

  Peter took the steps two at a time going down to his room. He was restrained from leaping down the entire flight when he caught sight of Angus Mondschein and Mrs. Blight on the landing.

  “Hello, Angus,” he said. “Hello, Mrs. Blight.”

  “If it isn’t the prodigal!” said Angus, puffing furiously on a short stubby pipe. “Have you been killing a fatted calf with the girls upstairs?”

  “Did you happen to notice,” asked Mrs. Blight, “the painting that I gave Freddy and Bert?”

  “I couldn’t help but notice it, it’s so big.”

  Angus yanked his pipe out of his mouth and glared at Peter expectantly. “And what was your reaction?”

  “I thought it was kind of crazy.”

  Mama Blight was not put out at all by Peter’s judgment. “You’d better watch out,” she chuckled, “or I may not give you a primitive for your room!”

  “Fortunately,” said Angus acidly, “Mom won’t request you to pose, inasmuch as she only portrays naked femmes.”

  Peter blushed. “I have to go in and clean up now.” As he closed the door behind him he heard Angus saying to the landlady, “You fail to recognize that the oppressed multitudes will look to your pictures for a clearer understanding …”

  Peter felt a thrill of excitement that evening when Freddy led him through the corridors of the Sevenfold School building to a gymnasium where many young men and women were leaning forward at strange angles from bars attached to the wall, and cavorting about like young animals. Peter began to tremble with anticipation; but it seemed to be one of the rules of the school that they register first for a classroom course in the Theater of Tomorrow.

  When Freddy and Peter entered the classroom, the students were just settling themselves to listen to a guest lecturer, a huge red-haired man with a voice like a foghorn. An enormous metal ring on his index finger glittered every time his fist flashed through the air. “That’s Gripping Rotheart, the big producer,” whispered Freddy. “He flirts with the avant-garde.”

  When the class was over Freddy took Peter by the hand and led him to the front of the room. “Gripping,” he said confidently, “I’d like you to meet a new friend of mine, Pierre Chiffon.”

  Peter was about to correct this when he felt his hand being grasped in a vise of steel. Rotheart squeezed Peter’s fingers in his powerful hand as though they were so many grapes. The band of his skull and crossbones ring cut into Peter’s flesh so cruelly that he felt the tears start to his eyes.

  “Ah, a non-professional,” Rotheart boomed, in a kindly tone. “I don’t meet many of them.”

  “We’re throwing a little party for Pierre next Friday,” smiled Freddy. “Could you drop in for a while—after the show, of course?”

  “Love to.”

  On the way home Freddy spoke excitedly to Peter. “You see? Grip is a force in the theater. Next time he casts a musical, he’ll remember you.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Freddy smiled down at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

  During the next week Peter was truly caught up in the whirlpool of New York theatrical life. It seemed to him at times that he would have drowned if not for the helping arms of Angus Mondschein and Freddy, for he was still not really dancing, and with every passing day he seemed to be further away from his goal. But to tell the truth Angus seemed to be losing interest in him, and indeed to be actually hostile.

  This came about as a result of Angus’s insistence that Peter invite a homely but progressive Negro girl to go to the Stanley Theater to see a Russian technicolor movie about spores and algae in the Soviet Arctic. “I’d ask her,” Peter assured his friend, “except that she doesn’t like me, and
besides she’s so homely. Couldn’t I take a nice-looking girl?” “Sometimes,” Angus said patiently, “I think that you simply aren’t interested in the fight for peace and civil rights.” Peter made the mistake of laughing heartily, and replying, “You think I ought to like colored people because they’re colored. But I like people because they’re people. Isn’t that more radical? You know, I think you’re not radical at all, Angus.” To his astonishment Angus was infuriated with this statement, and refused to argue calmly, as he had done on numerous occasions when he had explained that Peter was confused or backward. Peter tried to make amends, but Angus would not yield.

  As for Freddy, he took an immense pleasure in escorting Peter to those plays for which Peter could afford to buy them seats, and in introducing him to the members of his set—until the night of the party.

  The party was a staggering surprise to Peter, even though he was by now familiar with the habits of Freddy and Bert. When he entered their room, he was stunned by the babbling of voices (some of which were singing a kind of church music) and the thick gray fog of tobacco smoke. He felt quite forlorn, even after Freddy caught sight of him with a gay cry and proceeded to lead him about, introducing him to a collection of strange faces.

  In one corner of the room four people were gathered intently about an elderly drunken gentleman wearing suede shoes without stockings, seated in Freddy’s sling chair and reciting very rapidly in French with his eyes closed. A few feet away, a young lady with long black hair and a flowing velvet skirt, who looked like a witch, was sitting on the oriental rug, piping sadly on a little wooden recorder. Her knees were drawn up so close to her chin that Peter could see clear up to her crotch before he averted his eyes.

  Nearby, under Mama Blight’s painting, Bert was declaiming nasally, “Textual critics, textual critics,” to a knot of intensely angry young men.