Hostage To The Devil

by Неизвестный

  In October 1929 the family moved to New York, taking with them some blankets, kitchen utensils, Ara's clarinet, and an old family icon of the Virgin that Ara's father had left him in his will. They first lived in a three-room walk-up in Penn Street. After a year they moved to a two-room apartment at Lexington Avenue and 28th Street. There they lived until Ara died in 1939.

  Lydia, once more living in a big metropolis, wrote out a memento of their arrival in large black letters and hung it beside the old icon on their living-room wall: “Today, our first day in New York, George Whitney bid 204 for U. S. Steel.” It hung there beside the icon for years; and these two objects were the center of Jamsie's earliest recollections.

  But the golden age of New York which had begun at the end of the Civil War was just coming to its close, although few guessed its imminent collapse. New York's strength and prestige as the source of funds and leadership for the nation had been established in that 64-year period: great New York fortunes were made; famous New York homes were built by a Brokaw, a Dodge, a Carnegie, a Stuyvesant, a Whitney, a Vanderbilt, a Frick, a Harkness, the city's big financial district was created to sell the country all kinds of services. After World War I, most of New York's energies were turned toward Europe. But the old leadership was gone, and New York's manufacturing declined. As one writer put it, the financial soul of New York “worked itself up into a lather of paper profits and then collapsed.” Ara and Lydia arrived just in time for that collapse.

  Nevertheless, their first seven years in New York were relatively happy ones. Ara did not immediately use his recommendation to the taxicab-fleet owner. Instead, he worked as a handyman and carpenter, first around his own neighborhood, and then venturing down around Washington Square and up as far as Yorkville. Lydia at first stayed at home with their young child. Then, as Jamsie started parochial school, Lydia took a daytime job in an Armenian laundry.

  In the opinion of the present writer, the New York which Jamsie knew from his earliest years had something rather intangible but definite to do with his later experience of attempted “familiarization.” Between 1820 and 1930, over 38 million people had immigrated to the United States, and a good one-sixth of these had stayed in New York. The doormat for those “ragged remnants” was the Lower East Side.

  New York was then a city of nearly seven million, with 25 foreign languages in daily use and 200 foreign-language newspapers and magazines to satisfy the needs of this heterogeneous population. “No one can become an American except by God's grace,” wrote I. A. R. Wylie in the early 19305. And, for the long-standing Yankee Protestant Establishment, New York, which was in the first third of the twentieth century five-sevenths Italian, Jewish, German, Irish, Hungarian, Armenian, Greek, Russian, Syrian, and otherwise foreign, was not American. The felt differences between the Establishment and the newly arrived was more than ethnic. The Establishment had adopted none of the ancient gods of the New World; they had imported their Christianity, which had no roots in pre-Columbian history. The millions of immigrants came from lands where their religion (mainly Christianity, with Jewish and Muslim minorities) had its roots deep in ancient pre-Christian cults. European and Middle Eastern pagan instincts were never rooted out; they were adopted, sublimated, purified, transmuted. In that mildewed baggage of morals, ritual practices, folk mores, social and familial traditions, the new Americans surely transported the seeds and traces of ancient, far-off powers and spirits which once had held sway over the Old World.

  Jamsie's childhood until he was nine passed without any serious disruption. Home life was orderly and secure. Mornings and evenings he ate with his parents. Most evenings, Ara would take out the clarinet and play for his wife and child. Every night, as a small child, Jamsie knelt with his mother in front of the ikon and said the night prayers she had taught him, while he looked into the wide eyes of the Virgin.

  His father took him to ball games and boxing matches. Some Sundays they went roller-skating down Wall Street; at other times to the zoo, or for nickel rides on the Staten Island ferry; and two or three times a year he took Jamsie for a swim in a hotel pool. In the summer months there were all-day outings to Coney Island.

  The three of them left New York only once. It was a week's vacation in San Francisco made possible by a gift of money from Lydia's parents. Jamsie never forgot the outings on that trip with his father, and their evening meals at Fisherman's Wharf, and the day's visit they made to Pinnacles National Monument.

  As Jamsie grew up, he gradually moved around the East Side and got to know and like its ethnic mix, its smells, sounds, and sights. In the early morning he picked his way to school past windows stuffed with bedding and fire escapes where people were still sleeping. As he wandered home, his ears were filled with the medley of dialects used by pushcart peddlers and shopkeepers-Tuscan, Serbian, Yiddish, Ruthenian, Sicilian, Croatian, Cretan, Macedonian.

  Jamsie was in his tenth year when his parents began to notice a strange trouble that seized him from time to time. Sometimes, among the clutter of plaster saints, brass pots, secondhand garments, Balkan stogies, mezuzahs, and other bric-a-brac that filled the shop windows, Jamsie caught sight of what he called a “funny-lookin' face” or “a face with a funny look.” Then he was seized with a violent fright and literally fled home in a blind panic. He used to arrive white-faced and trembling at Lydia's side. She always knew what had happened—or so Jamsie thought—and she was able to calm him down and still his fears.

  As he grew older, the “funny face” incidents became rarer, but they never totally disappeared. As a child, he was never able to describe that “face” to his parents. They, wisely, never insisted on details. But from what they could understand, it seemed the child's terror was caused, not by any particular ugliness in the “face,” but chiefly because of the curious conviction Jamsie had that the “face” knew him personally. “It looks at me and it knows me. It does!” he used to sob to his mother.

  Gradually Jamsie worked out a sort of home geography for himself. He made many friends among the Hungarians living between 82nd and 73rd Streets. His father had distant relatives living there; and once a month or _so, Jamsie visited them and was fed on goose-liver paste, stuffed cabbage, and chicken paprika. He skipped the neighborhood of the Bohunks (Czechs and Slovaks), who lived just below the Hungarians.

  For it was lower down on Lexington Avenue, between 3Oth and 22nd Streets among the Armenians, and with the Greeks in the West 305 and 405 that he felt at home. He spoke a little of both languages. His boyhood friends were there, and he was never frightened when with Greeks and Armenians. He never saw his “funny face” among them.

  In the late spring of 1937, when Jamsie was fourteen years old, Ara made an important decision that ended forever the happy days of Jamsie's childhood. Ara was not earning enough money as a handyman-carpenter, so he utilized that old but carefully guarded recommendation to a taxicab-fleet owner. Very shortly afterwards, he became one of approximately 25,000 licensed hacks in the city. He drove a two-year-old Y-model Checker for Burmalee System, Inc. Jamsie was very proud at first of his father's cab with its silver roof and the black-and-white checker band running around the middle of its yellow body.

  Ara worked a 12-hour shift, driving approximately 50 miles a day to service 12 to 15 calls. On a good day he might bring home $3.00 from the meter and $1.25 in tips. It was no good. The constant sitting at the wheel, the endless war with the New York policemen, who were out to eliminate cruising cabs, the weariness at the end of each grueling day, the small earnings brought in by this labor, all produced a change in Ara which alienated him from Lydia and frightened Jamsie.

  He no longer played the clarinet for them in the evenings; he locked his “old stick,” as he called it, in a drawer of the living-room bureau. There were no more family outings. Instead of the occasional game of pinochle and hearts with some friends, he stayed out late drinking with other cabbies. He developed ulcers, spent two weeks in the hospital with kidney trouble in November 1938, and h
ad a back condition before the end of the year.

  For a while, only his language grew coarser for Jamsie—“palooka” (a cheap fare), “high booker” (a big fare), “rips” (fares over $2), and so on were his father's new expressions. But matters got worse. At the beginning, Jamsie and Lydia took turns keeping Ara company as he cruised long hours in his cab. When Lydia found out that Ara had fallen into the easy money of occasional pimping, steering out-of-town clients to hotels and parlor houses for a percentage of the “take,” she forbade Jamsie to go with Ara at night. But Jamsie, by now a boy of very strong will, disobeyed.

  Now and then, as he sat beside Ara in the cab, Jamsie was struck by some trait in his father's face. Once, while he sat in the cab late at night and his father was chatting on the curb with a pimp and two of his girls, Jamsie thought he saw that trait on all four faces as they laughed together as at some joke.

  The “look” did not frighten him, but it repelled him. At the same time he was fascinated by it. As time went on, he deliberately looked for it. He found, however, that he only noticed it when he did not look for it. It was as elusive as ever; he could not pin it down.

  At times that “look” acquired a terrible intensity. Two related incidents that happened in 1938 stand out in Jamsie's memory.

  With his father and some friends he had gone to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play. It was at a moment toward the end of the game when all the fans were on their feet cheering Cincinnati's Johnny Vander Meer, who was making baseball history by pitching his second successive no-hit, no-run game. Shouting and cheering like everyone else, Jamsie looked around at the excited crowds. And from deep in the middle of the faces there leaped out at him that “funny-lookin' face.” It was looking at him. It knew him, he thought. He froze into silence and looked away in panic. Then he glanced back at the spot where he had seen it, but it was gone. All he could see were the fans shouting and gesticulating.

  Exactly one week later Jamsie was sitting with Ara in the cab late one night listening to the Louis-Schmelling fight. As the fight reached its climax, Ara's face became more and more contorted. In the last few moments leading up to Joe Louis' victory, Jamsie saw on his father's face a very intense look which was quickly developing into that “funny look.” There was, again, something unhuman about it; and he could not catch sight of any trait which he had always associated with his father's beloved face. With each of Louis' blows to Schmelling, and as the voice of the announcer got higher and more excited, the “look” became more apparent on Ara's face. With the gong and Louis' victory, the tension broke. The strange look passed quickly, and Ara became normal and composed again. But Jamsie could not forget the incident.

  As time passed, his fear of the “look” began to lessen, but his, curiosity was greater. What was that “look”? And how was it that he had seen it at the ball game and then again on his own father's face, blotting out the kindness and love Jamsie had known there all his life up to that point? And what connection was there between all that and the “look” or “funny-lookin' face” he used to see as a child?

  Around this time the family reached a low in its fortunes and well-being. Ara was developing a serious drinking problem, and the more he drank, the less money he brought home. Lydia, at first frantic about their needs, finally became morose and gathered into herself. Her young son was beginning to grow up. She began to feel alienated from him and Ara.

  Jamsie had already been hired as a pageboy by NEC. He left school to take the position, partly in order to bring in more money to his home, partly with the intention of pursuing a career in radio. In the early days of radio, NEC hired young men as pageboys for a two-year apprenticeship, then graduated them to guides, and afterward trained them in some branch of the flourishing radio business.

  Things went from bad to worse for the family. There was no longer enough food in the house. Lydia was always in arrears with the rent. And, unknown to Jamsie but with Ara's consent, Lydia made her decision. Jamsie found out about it late one night in March when he returned from work at about 11:00 P.M.

  At home, to his surprise, he found his mother dressed in her best clothes. Her face was heavily made up. She was sitting in the living room gazing silently out the window into the night. When he came in, she did not turn around or say a word to him. But he knew she had something to tell him. As he waited, his eye was drawn to the old icon hanging on the wall behind Lydia. She had draped a black cloth over it. He looked from the ikon to his mother and back again several times before he understood that she was going to become one of the prostitutes he had seen his father introducing to clients.

  Lydia stood up then, as if she had heard him thinking. She knew he had realized what was happening. “I'll be late, Jamsie. Don't wait up for me.” He said nothing.

  When she had gone, he sat down and remained there thinking for about two hours. He knew without a doubt what his mother had in mind. It was written all over her. But there was something else he now knew: although he was alone as far as his mother and father were concerned, he had the strangest feeling that he was in someone else's company. Finally he looked around the living room slowly and then through the window at the city. When he went to bed, he still felt deserted by his parents, but he was nursing some secret which he did not yet understand.

  Lydia became one of about 5,000 prostitutes in New York City. After a few weeks of lone-wolfing, she got herself put on the calling list of a parlor house in the West 405. Jamsie got to know her routine. She slept during the day, rising about 5:00 P.M. If by 10:00 P.M. there were no calls for her from her madam, she went out for the evening. She worked Fifth and Madison Avenues between 43rd and 6th Streets. She would stop at the better bars, do some over obvious window-shopping, always on the lookout for clients. Sometimes she would give one of her clients a call. She worked this way until dawn. Then she returned home to sleep.

  After a couple of months she became a member of Polly Adler's parlor house on Central Park West. By that time, too, she had established her own list of personal clients whom she called regularly. When Polly Adler got into trouble with the authorities, Lydia simply transferred her loyalties to another madam in the West 505.

  As Jamsie got up each morning and looked in at his mother before he left, he found that over the months the expression on her face was changing. Instead of the look he had always seen there, he might see various traits of that “funny-lookin' face” of his childhood terrors. But now there was no terror. Rather, he began to feel a strange kinship with the look.

  With the passage of time, Lydia noticed the difference in Jamsie's reaction to her, and they established a new respect for each other.

  Ara, in the meantime, still driving for Burmalee System, Inc., had tried to move in as a steerer for crap games in the 40th Street and Broadway area. But the territory was already controlled, and the incumbents let him know in no uncertain terms that there was no room for him. Then he went deep into the numbers racket and illegal horse betting. In those times, about one million illegal bets were placed each day in New York. There was money to be made. As a numbers agent, he got ten percent of the take on each bet handed over to the collector. In time he himself became a collector, delivering bets to the central “policy” bank.

  Finally Ara found a source of easy money in drug traffic. There were between 20,000 and 25,000 heroin addicts in New York of the 1930$; and opium dens flourished on Mott and Pell Streets, as well as in Harlem, Times Square, and San Juan Hill. Diluted heroin was sold at $16 to $20 an ounce. A “toy,” or small tin box of opium, sold for about $10 on the street. Reefers fetched 50$ each, or two for 25$ in Harlem. In the beginning Ara merely bought reefers in Harlem which he sold at a profit downtown. Then he became a runner, transporting the little packets strapped beneath his armpits. There were times during these months when Ara—and less frequently Lydia—were so changed in their faces and so “funny-looking” to Jamsie's eyes that some of his old fears returned momentarily.

  Ara had begun to build up a cliente
le and make some money in the traffic of narcotics when he seemed suddenly to go to pieces. He became gaunt and thin. His moods were unbearable in their rages and black depressions.

  One evening, a rainy Friday late in December 1939, Ara arrived home drenched to the skin. He had been up for three days and three nights. His teeth were chattering. He drank more than usual. He coughed up blood during the night. The next morning, Lydia had not come home, and Ara was in a high fever. All the strain of seven years suddenly broke him.

  Jamsie called old Dr. Schumbard finally. He said Ara was dying of tuberculosis. Ara refused to go into the hospital. There was nothing Jamsie could do.

  The next few days were a nightmare. Lydia did not come for the entire weekend. Ara's fever could not be reduced. He was frequently delirious and drank when he was not. Jamsie finally went out and scoured all his mother's haunts until he found her. Together, they watched over Ara, waiting for the end.

  While he was sitting one evening by himself at Ara's bedside after Lydia had gone out for a while, Jamsie had the feeling again of someone being near him. It was not unpleasant and not at all frightening. He recalls that his feeling was more or less pleasurable, as if a friend or confidant had come to be with him when he had no one else. The sensation did not last all the time, and it varied in intensity. About eight days after he had collapsed, Ara suddenly sat up in bed one morning and started to scream at the top of his voice: “I want my old stick! You hear! All of you! My old stick. Just a few more hot licks! I want my old stick!” His face was bathed in that “look.”