by Trevanian
A month later Italy annexed Albania and I asked Mr Kane if this meant there was going to be a war. He sniffed and lifted his shoulders and palms. “Going to be a war? The war has already begun, but France and England cling to the belief that if they sit very still and whistle softly, the danger might pass over. But it won’t pass over. Poland will be next. And after Poland—” Then, seeing in my troubled eyes how much the thought of a war distressed me, he waved a dismissive hand and said, “But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. God knows I’ve been wrong before. Maybe Hitler’s too worried about Russia to attack Poland.”
Half the block came down with the chicken pox that damp, sunless April. The worst part was lying in bed recovering, my bones sore, my eyes stiff, my fingers yearning to scratch. Mother let me listen to the radio to distract me from the itching. I heard war correspondents broadcasting from Europe, their voices drenched with doom, and I felt helpless and vulnerable. What would happen to us if there was a war? Would war prevent our ship from coming in? Would it be torpedoed in the harbor?
Mrs McGivney’s Nickel
PANTING, MY lungs grasping for air after a desperate zigzag run down our back alley, I pressed back against the weathered siding of a disused stable dating from the horse-and-wagon era, and slowly...slowly...eased my eye around the corner to locate the snipers concealed in their bunkers at the far end of—Oh-oh! They’ve spotted me! Two near misses ripped slivers of wood from the stable just inches from my face! I drew back and hissed at my followers, “We’ll make a dash for the shed. It’s our only chance to stop the anschluss!”
I passed most of the summer vacation of 1939 incognito. It made me smile deep inside to realize that people seeing me walk down the street in last year’s school knickers patched at knee and butt, worn-out sneakers with many-knotted laces, and no socks to cover my bruised shins, probably mistook me for just an ordinary kid, little suspecting that I was, in fact, the daring and resourceful leader of a team of battle-hardened mercenaries.
It was our assignment to defend North Pearl Street from the Germans who, having gobbled up Czechoslovakia, now set their sights on Albany, which they planned to infiltrate by way of North Pearl. The U.S. Army and Navy Executive High Commander in Chief of Everything had called me to his secret underground office down in our basement coal bunker to explain that if North Pearl fell, Albany was doomed, and if Albany fell, what hope was there for America? So the fate of the Free World was in my hands and those of my loyal followers. Ranged against us were several thousand heartless, highly trained Nazi Strong Troopers dug in at the end of the alley.
My band of intrepid fighters were hand-picked from radio programs, except for Gabby Hayes, the toothless, bearded sidekick in innumerable grade-Z cowboy movies. They included Uncle Jim from the week-day radio adventure Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy!, which also supplied my admiring tomboy of a cousin, Gail, who mostly said, ‘Wow!’ or ‘Whatever you say, chief.’ Then there were Jack, Doc, and Reggie from I Love a Mystery. Since Reggie was British, I had to use my ‘English accent’ so he could understand my instructions. Finally there was Kato, my faithful valet, whom I borrowed from The Green Hornet without being exactly sure what a valet was, but if Kato was Britt Reid’s ‘faithful Japanese valet’, he’d do for me.18
Each of my seven followers had a distinct personality and role: Gail was always astonished and admiring, Gabby was full of folksy wisdom and given to long strings of colorful curses, Reggie knew the correct way to do things, Jack and Doc were brave but headstrong and rash, Kato was faithful, and Uncle Jim always worried that I was taking on tasks harder than any one man could hope to accomplish. This mixed bag of disciples might fret about the risks I ran and occasionally let their hot heads carry them too far, but they were courageous and, what was more important, obedient, although they constantly got into trouble that called for quick reactions on my part. I was fond of them, God knows, but sometimes they tried my patience.
“Let’s get to that shed!” I said. “It’s our only chance to stop the anschluss!”
Uncle Jim exchanged a worried glance with Gabby Hayes who spluttered, “Goshdarn those dang-nabbed, lop-eared, low-down, pigeon-toed, no-’count..!” His outrage decayed into snarls and sniffs of impotent indignation. Gail looked at me, her eyes glowing with admiration, and Reggie nodded crisply in his stiff-upper-lip British way. I kept up a spitty covering fire with my Thompson submachine-gun stick as, one by one, my band dashed across the alley and dove for the shelter of the shed. Both Reggie and Doc got hit on their way across, and Kato, my faithful Japanese valet, had to drag them the rest of the way. Then it was my turn. After emptying my five-hundred-round magazine into the German trench-bunker-wall-fortification-thing, I scrabbled across the alley on all fours, getting a slug in one shoulder, another in my leg, another in my other shoulder, one in the stomach, and a scratch on my knee from a shard of broken bottle as I skidded into the shelter of the doorway—that one really hurt. I gathered my team around me. Clenching my teeth to conceal the pain, I drew a situation map on the ground with the map pointer, a stick that also served as a gun with an inexhaustible clip, a telescope that could read the enemy’s plans at half a block, a radio that translated German into American, and dynamite that you lit with your snapped-up-thumb cigarette lighter and threw at the enemy, or rather, at the base of a huge rock outcropping that overhung the enemy’s position and came crashing down on them, crushing them to a pulpy mass that your eyes flinched away from. I reminded my followers that sometimes war wasn’t a pretty sight, but a soldier had to do what he had to do and that was that. Throwing your dynamite was a desperate last resort, considering the huge expenditure of war materiel the loss of this versatile stick constituted, but you usually had the remarkable good luck to find another such stick lying close to the body of a fallen—or crushed—Strong Trooper. (All right, so I misheard ‘Storm Troopers’ when Mr Kane was telling me about what was happening in Germany. Is that a crime? Jeez!)
I muttered continuously during my story games, because I had to play all the characters and do the sound effects as well. These games were always tense and emotional, so the volume of my muttering and the vigor of my gestures increased until, as sometimes happened, I would glance up and blanch to find someone looking at me. I would quickly convert the dramatic monologue into a song (with gestures) because, although talking to yourself is a sure sign that you’re a nut, there is no shame attached to singing to yourself. But I never felt the ploy really worked, so I would wander away, furious with the eavesdropper for spoiling my game.
That summer afternoon in our back alley of derelict stables where people seldom went because there was no through passage, I was muttering in two voices as I questioned a snide German officer I’d managed to capture. Having ordered Doc to blindfold the German officer so he couldn’t see the map I was scratching on the ground, I explained our desperate situation to my followers, muttering hard and gesturing passionately to convince them, but my attention was distracted by a sharp tapping sound. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anybody, so I returned to explaining to my team that we had to stop those Germans from advancing another inch, even if it meant laying down our lives for our—
Again I was interrupted by the tap-tap-tap of metal against glass. I looked up and down the alley. Nothing. I was concentrating hard to keep my story game from dissolving when a movement at the edge of my peripheral vision caused me to lift my eyes, and there looking down at me was Mrs McGivney, one of our block’s crazyladies, smiling in that vague way of hers. Immediately, my followers vanished, as did the four or five thousand Nazi Strong Troopers dug in at the far end of the alley, and I was left all alone: a leader of men suddenly shriveled into a skinny kid caught talking to himself.
The block’s belief that Mrs McGivney was crazy was based on her peculiar shopping habits, her extreme shyness, and the long, old-fashioned dresses she always wore. She was never seen on the street except for quick trips across to Kane’s cornerstor
e, always near to closing time. Even if other people were ahead of her, Mr Kane would serve her as soon as she came in, because she would slip away and not come back until the next evening rather than risk being noticed or, worse yet, spoken to. Respecting her timidity, Mr Kane never spoke to her. He would just smile and raise his eyebrows above his thick glasses, and she would quickly mutter off her shopping list, which he would fill, toppling cans from their high stacks with his can-grabber gizmo and catching them in his apron, or slicing cheese off the block with his hand-cranked machine, or scooping macaroni or rice from one of his tip-out bins and hissing it into a little paper sack on his scales, always bringing the weight up to just a bit more than he charged for. After filling her order, Mr Kane would tell Mrs McGivney the total cost as he marked it down in the dog-eared slate he kept under the counter. Mrs McGivney would take her sack and scurry back across the street to her apartment, never looking up for fear of catching someone’s eye. Once a month, she came in with a check, which he cashed for her, subtracting the cost of her groceries. Everyone knew that Mrs McGivney received a small monthly government check for ‘disability’, which the street understood to mean because she was a nut, but Mr Kane once told me that in his opinion she was just painfully shy. Her reputation for insanity was, however, an element of received street-tradition and therefore impervious to evidence or reasoning. Even the modest check she got from the government was taken as proof, if any were needed, that she was insane. How else could a crazylady stay alive? She could hardly get a job—except maybe at a nut factory! And there was the suspicious way she would appear from time to time at her window giving onto the back alley, just looking down at the kids playing there, not bawling them out for making noise like any sane person would, or shouting at them for throwing stones that might put somebody’s eye out. No, Mrs McGivney just smiled down on us sweetly—exactly like a crazylady would do.
And now there she was, standing at her window, smiling down at me after having scattered both my followers and my enemies to the distant recesses of my imagination.
She beckoned to me. Oh-oh. She’d never done that to any of the kids before. Although I was the only person in the alley, I made a broad mime of looking around to see who she could possibly mean before pointing at my chest, my eyebrows arched in operatic disbelief. She smiled and nodded. I lifted my palms and drew my head into my shoulders to say, but what did I do? She tapped the window again with a nickel—so that’s how she’d made that sharp noise. She pointed to the coin, then to me, clearly meaning that she intended to give the nickel to me.19 She beckoned again and made a big round gesture, which directed me to go to the end of the alley, around to our street, and to her apartment building. I really didn’t want to go; my worst nightmares were about being pursued by crazy people. But I was a polite kid, so I went. Even the wildest and toughest of the kids on our block, several of whom ended up in prison and one on death row, would be accounted polite by today’s standards. Then too, if there was a chance to earn a little money, I could hardly let it pass me by, considering that my mother regularly risked her health for just a few extra bucks. Resentful of losing my game and dreading my encounter with a crazylady, I left the alley...but not before rubbing out the map with my heel, so the Nazis couldn’t discover my plans.
The staircase of 232 was dark because the hall windows meant to illuminate the stairs had been blocked up when the slum landlord divided the building into apartments and put a narrow bathroom into the front of each hall. Despite its darkness, I ascended the staircase with a sure step because 232 was in the same row as 238, where I lived, and therefore identical to it.
I tiptoed up to the fourth-floor landing and stood in the dark, uncertain. Maybe it would be best to sneak back down and out into the light and bustle of the street, but as I turned to go, the door to the back apartment opened and Mrs McGivney stood there, smiling.
“Would you mind going over to Mr Kane’s for me?” she asked in a tiny, little-girl voice. “I’ll give you a nickel.” Her tone went up on the first syllable of ‘nickel’ in a kind of sing-song temptation.
“Well, I don’t— All right, sure, I’ll go.” I was relieved that she only wanted me to do a chore for her, and not something...crazy.
She had a list already written out, and she said Mr Kane would put it on his slate.
When I returned with the small bag of groceries she was waiting at the head of the stairs and she gave me the nickel she had tapped the window with.
“Thanks.” I put the nickel in my pocket and patted it to make sure it was there. The year before, I had lost a quarter. It must have fallen out of my pocket on my way to the Bond Bread bakery outlet to buy a week’s worth of what was euphemistically called ‘day old’ bread. I retraced my steps again and again, hoping to find the quarter. But no luck. A whole quarter. Enough to buy five ‘day old’ loaves at the bakery.
“Just bring the bag in, would you please?”
I followed her in, and she took the bag and brought it into the kitchen, leaving me standing in the parlor, where there was a little round table with two glasses of milk on it, and four homemade sugar cookies on a decorated plate. The furniture was frilly and old-fashioned, and the room smelled of floor wax and recently baked sugar cookies. In the corner an old man sat facing the window and looking out through lace curtains that were filled with the setting sun. Actually, he wasn’t looking out. His eyes were pointed towards the buildings across the alley, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing anything. I said he was old, but the only old thing about him was a soft halo of fine white hair that held the sunlight filtering in through lace curtains. His face was unlined, his skin was tight, and he sat straight-backed in his chair, staring through the curtains out across the alley with an infinite calm in his unblinking pale blue eyes. Spooky.
Mrs McGivney returned from the kitchen and stood beside the little table, holding the back of her chair, waiting for me to sit down.
“Gee, thanks a lot, but I think maybe I’d better not—” But she smiled sadly at me, so I sat down. What else could I do?
There was a heavy linen napkin on each plate. Mrs McGivney took hers and put it on her lap, so I did the same, only mine slipped onto the floor. She smiled again and pointed her nose towards the plate of cookies, indicating that I should take one. I did. She took a tiny bite out of hers, and I tried to do the same, but two bits broke off, one falling onto the floor and the other getting stuck in the corner of my mouth so that I had to push it in with my finger, and I wished I were somewhere else—anywhere.
She smiled a little pursed smile that didn’t show her teeth. “You live three doors up, don’t you.”
I nodded.
“And you’re Mrs LaPointe’s boy.”
I nodded again, wondering how she knew, considering that she never talked to anyone.
“What’s your name?”
“Luke. Well, it’s really Jean-Luc, but only my mother calls me that. I like to be called just Luke.”
“John-Luke. That’s foreign, isn’t it?”
“My mother’s family is French Canadian. And part Indian.”
“John-Luke’s a nice name.”
“Only my mother calls me Jean-Luc. Other people call me just Luke.”
“I’ve noticed that you always play alone.”
“Mostly, yeah.”
“Why is that?”
“Why do I play alone?” I glanced past her towards the old man, wondering if we were supposed to pretend he wasn’t there. “Well, I make up my own games, and other kids don’t know the rules or the names of the people or...anything.”
“And you read an awful lot, don’t you.”
How did she know that I read—? Then it hit me: I always cut through the alley on my way home from the library, not because it was the shortest way, but to avoid the little kids who, whenever they saw me with an armful of books, would chant ‘pro-fes-sor, pro-fes-sor, pro-fes-sor’, whi
ch was one of my street names. My other street name was ‘Frenchy’ because my name was even more French-sounding since my mother had reverted to her maiden name, LaPointe, but with a Mrs, so as to justify us kids I suppose.
“That’s right, ma’am. I do read a lot. I get some of my games from books.”
“Games?”
“Like Foreign Legion. Or Three Musketeers. But mostly I get them from radio programs.”
“We don’t have a radio,” she said with neither complaint nor apology.
I had noticed this on my first glance around the room, and I wondered how anyone could live without a radio. So totally was my understanding of life linked to our old Emerson that I couldn’t imagine not having The Lone Ranger or The Whistler or I Love a Mystery for excitement, or Jack Benny and Fred Allen and Amos ’n’ Andy for laughter, or advice from Mr Anthony and The Court of Last Resort for insights into the human condition. My favorite moment of the day was turning on the radio when I got back from school, and feeling the delicious anticipation of those five or so seconds of hum while the tubes warmed up, then there was the deep satisfaction of a familiar voice announcing one of the kids’ adventure programs that my mother let me listen to for an hour every afternoon before homework. Standing on one leg before the radio, my head down, eyes defocused, I was totally mesmerized by what I was hearing and seeing. Seeing, because for me the actions and settings that radio evoked were real and tangible. Splendid and enthralling, but somehow less real, were the worlds I glimpsed in books and movies. The life I lived on North Pearl Street was certainly not splendid, but neither was it real; just a grim limbo I would escape from someday. Until then, I found solace in radio, and in my story games.