We returned to 585 West 174th Street for the rest of the summer. Of my four friends, three were away. That left Joseph Stein, who, at eight years of age, well before the groundbreaking work which earned him worldwide fame, was an intellectual. He looked the part. Indeed, with his thick black-framed glasses and pants belted above the navel, Joseph seemed much more like a brilliant scientist than when he made his important discoveries. There were no pleated tailored pants; his cuffs hovered above the ankles, showing a pale skin, until black socks appeared below and completed his retired old man’s look. Joseph was careful not to reveal much about his past to the press and I am sorry to expose him in a way he would not like, but again, as will become clear, to explain the terrible events of this narrative requires the exposure of many secrets. (Besides, secrets are a psychiatrist’s deadly enemy.) Joseph was the only child of a couple who had survived the Holocaust. I should say he was the only living child. His mother’s firstborn died en route to Buchenwald, as did the father, her first husband. Another baby, the result of a rape by a German guard, also died there. Mr. Stein’s parents, his wife, and two little girls were killed by the Nazis. At the time, neither Joseph nor I were aware that his parents had previous loves and families. As a child, Joseph only knew that his mother and father met in a repatriation camp run by the Allies, emigrated to Washington Heights (as did many other survivors) and created Joseph.
They lived in our building, two floors below us. Mr. Stein worked in the diamond district as an assistant to a wealthy merchant. Mrs. Stein stayed home and took care of Joseph. Her surveillance of him was the closest of any mother in the neighborhood, and in Washington Heights, she had a lot of competition. But she was the clear winner. Joseph was not allowed to play at the apartments of his friends because of his wide range of allergies. If you had no pet, he was allergic to your rug. (Mrs. Stein’s carpeting had been especially treated by a mysterious process.) If—as was the case with us—you had no pet or rug, then he had to be in an air-conditioned room because of his asthma. (Joseph had never had an attack of asthma; Mrs. Stein claimed that their pediatrician declared Joseph’s lungs to be susceptible to developing the syndrome.) Requiring air-conditioning excluded our apartment, but I know from Joseph that those who did have air-conditioning and met the other conditions (no rug, no pet) were found wanting for some other reason. Joseph told me that on one occasion Mrs. Stein was confronted by a mother who appeared in person to guarantee she had no pet or rug, that all her rooms were air-conditioned, swore she was prepared to serve Kosher food (although Mrs. Stein didn’t keep a Kosher home), and had removed all the pillows from her son’s room because Mrs. Stein was on record that their down filling would cause Joseph to choke to death. Despite these assurances, Mrs. Stein refused to release her son on the basis that the accommodating mother’s perfume—Mrs. Stein sniffed it out on the spot—was considerably more dangerous to her son’s respiratory system than an apartment overrun with dogs and cats. The truth, it became obvious to the least observant person and the most naive child, was that Joseph had to stay home, always within his mother’s immediate physical realm.
This cost him a lot of friends. Not only did you have to play at his apartment, but you had to stay inside. Joseph was not allowed to go out unless the weather was perfect. The temperature had to be above seventy and yet below eighty. The sky could not have a single cloud or a hazy look; only the kind of clear blue that one sees on postcards from the Caribbean. Such a day is quite rare in any locale. Besides, many of the other mothers—including fellow Holocaust victims—felt that such a crazy woman could not help but raise a strange child, a child who would not be a good influence on their, if less delicate, no less precious progeny.
They were right. Joseph was a strange child. He was also a sweet and lonely soul. For the remainder of that sad summer, my mother, who had once allowed me free rein to play in Fort Washington Park, or on the sidewalk in front of our building, didn’t want me wandering outside unescorted. Anyway, with my arm in a cast, I couldn’t have played most outdoor games. Sending me two flights down to Joseph’s air-conditioned cage, something she used to discourage, had become attractive.
Each day, I arrived so early Mrs. Stein would offer breakfast. I always refused. Her bland lunches were enough of a discouragement. Thanking her, I walked on the plastic runner that guided you from room to room, careful not to step off onto the deep green carpet, and proceeded through their petrified forest of a living room into Joseph’s cooled cell. I would hurry through the spooky living room; Mrs. Stein kept the drapes drawn day and night and protected the furniture with fitted plastic covers. At least Joseph’s room was well-lit by a standing lamp, a desk lamp, and a red tensor lamp next to his bed. Those lights had to be on all the time since the windows had blackout shades and Venetian blinds. There was more of the deep green rug, although here we were allowed to walk on it—not with shoes but our stocking feet. Everything was kept clean and neat. No object lacked its special place. A hardware chest, consisting of small drawers, was converted to a multi-level garage for his Matchbox cars. There were several boxes to organize different shapes of his wooden blocks, and coffee cans separated the colors of his Legos. In his clothes closet, an arrangement of shelves on the inner door provided room for Monopoly, Risk, and other board games, including, of course, Joseph’s impressive chess set. Not the plastic pieces and flimsy folded board that belonged to most kids. Joseph owned an expensive Staunton design: classic black and white weighted wood and a thick maple board.
Usually the chessmen were set up, waiting for my arrival in the morning. A folding table and chairs for playing board games (this seemed to me the most remarkable of his room’s organizations) was under the standing lamp. So that we could continue our competitions while eating, his mother would bring into his room a metal tray with adjustable legs and there serve us our late morning snack of fruit, our lunch and our afternoon milk and Oreos. “Want to play?” Joseph would say instead of a greeting, and incline his head seductively at the chess pieces.
I didn’t, because I was going to lose. And I did, because I wanted to improve and beat him. Once or twice, I insisted we do something else. No matter how satisfying the other choice, however, Joseph would tempt me to play at least one chess game a day.
The contests followed a distinct pattern. Within the first few moves I would unaccountably find myself in trouble: due to the outright loss of a piece; or a congestion of pawns that choked my position; or defending an awkward configuration surrounding my King. No matter what I tried, at the start I always suffered a disadvantage. The first few times we played I lost quickly. But I am willful, if nothing else (sometimes I think that’s the only talent I possess) and I struggled hard, refusing to concede.
We settled into a new pattern. I learned to avoid the more disastrous moves and stave off quick defeat, thereby forcing Joseph to prove his advantage was a winning one. Half the time he would give back his early gains, or I would liberate myself from the confusion of my pieces. But then, seemingly exhausted by my long struggle up the hill to equality, I would blunder again in what is called the endgame of chess—positions with only a few pieces on board. Joseph’s confidence, high at the beginning, strained in the middle, would soar at the end. His quick decisions about what and where to move—typical of his play at the beginning—would return and he would smash me. Our games became marathons with thrilling reversals of superiority, although the final result was always the same. We played every day until school started and I never won, although I came closer—it seemed—each time.
My arm healed by the beginning of school and that interrupted our new intimacy. I preferred, with my arm working again, to play handball against the side of our apartment building with my other friends or to go with them and their fathers (mine had still not returned from Cuba) to Fort Washington Park to play touch football or softball. I invite Joseph to join us; unfortunately the neighborhood lacked a domed stadium to protect him from the elements.
I didn’t
reject Joseph because of this impediment. I tried to continue our friendship at P.S. 173. It is a measure of Mrs. Stein’s belief in education that she allowed her boy to wander its halls. True, he brought his own lunches and there was no carpeting. But even I believed the school’s atmosphere was poisonous; at once dusty and scented by ammonia, the rarely ventilated air could choke healthy lungs. I remember well Mrs. Fleisher’s daily struggle with the painted-shut windows; the metal-reinforced glass cast prison shadows of gloomy webs across her face as she worked to force them open.
When I was elected captain of the class softball team, after making the obvious selections, I called Joseph’s name to be on the team. One of the better players groaned. Joseph looked pleased, but he refused. I assumed he had been discouraged by the groan. I stopped by his apartment after dinner to urge him privately. I was convinced he could be at least a competent player. Certainly I knew from chess that he was a determined competitor. Besides, I wanted to free him from his airless green prison.
Mr. Stein answered the door. He greeted me as if I were a delightful surprise. He was short, very thin and almost completely bald. Unlike his son and wife, he didn’t wear glasses and he had almost no eyebrows. In fact his left eyebrow didn’t exist; the right one consisted of a thin line of hair. Today, I assume that this was the result of some torture or calamity at the concentration camp. At the time it seemed merely an organic part of his overall appearance. He was like a friendly human mouse: white and small, he squeaked, “Hello!” when he saw me. He called back, also in a high semi-hysterical voice, to the interior of the apartment, “It’s Ralph!” as if that were great news and eagerly waved me in. (I didn’t react to his mistake: it was common.) “Come in. Come in. We’re having some cake. You want a piece?”
Gently, but insistently, he pushed me to their kitchen table. It happened to be the same model yellow Formica table, with a band of ridged metal around the edge, that I had hidden under in Tampa. I hadn’t noticed it before; all our meals were served in Joseph’s cage. Mr. Stein guided me into a chair. Mrs. Stein, beaming, approached with a mustard yellow plate. On it was an enormous slice of sponge cake whose color was almost the same hue as the china. Her glasses were fogged, her hair was covered by a scarf and she seemed, to my ignorant eyes, to be dressed for bed. What looked like a hideous pink nightgown to me was in fact a housecoat. Joseph sat directly across, wearing the same old man’s button-down white shirt he wore to school, and smiled at me proudly. Of his parents? Of himself? Of the sponge cake? I didn’t know. I was uneasy, however. I felt captured.
Mr. Stein told his wife to give me a glass of milk, told me to eat the cake, and asked me to explain about the softball tournament that Joseph had said I was in charge of. He delivered these orders in his squeaky voice, which somehow made them inoffensive.
With my mouth full of sponge cake, I told Mr. Stein I was merely captain of our class, not in charge of the tournament. I explained that each class was to play against the other classes in their grade until there were six school champions. (P.S. 173, typical of the city’s public schools then, bulged with baby boomers.) The winners were to go on and play representatives from other Manhattan schools. Eventually there would be a borough champ for each grade. All that was true. I said there would be a citywide championship, a state championship, and then a competition that would end with national champions. All that was invented. Why make it up? I wanted to persuade them to allow Joseph to play. When I noticed Mr. Stein widen his narrow eyes and raise his one eyebrow with the mention of each championship I naturally thought the more the better as far as he was concerned.
I was right. “Mimi,” he said to Mrs. Stein, “this is a very good thing.” He added a quick order, “Joseph, you should play.”
“Great!” I said, spewing crumbs. “Sorry,” I mumbled and took a sip of milk. It tasted awful. Mrs. Stein served skimmed milk.
“You don’t like milk?” Mrs. Stein said.
“Yes,” I said and forced myself to drink more.
“But Joey doesn’t know how to play baseball,” Mrs. Stein said.
“I can teach him!” I cried out.
“I know how!” Joseph complained. He blushed. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Probably to avoid looking at me. I knew he was lying: how could he know how to play baseball if he had hardly ever been outside?
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll learn,” Mr. Stein said.
“But where do you play?” Mrs. Stein asked. “You know, he’s allergic to grass.”
I told her Joseph would be safe from nature, playing in P.S. 173’s concrete yard, a yard he went into every day. Mrs. Stein was able to point out that if our team was successful and went on to compete against other schools, that Joseph would be dragged to strange locations, probably places with lots of grass.
All of the city games would be played on concrete yards in Manhattan, I assured her.
But what about this state championship and the national championship? she pointed out, shaking her head sorrowfully. “They have grass in Albany and Washington. And Joey can’t be going all over the country. He’ll get asthma.”
Joseph had left his glasses beside his half-finished plate of sponge cake. With them off, his eyes had an unfocused look. They trailed over the ceiling, as if he were searching for a way out.
Mr. Stein also nodded sorrowfully, in harmony with his wife. “That’s true. And I can’t get time off to travel with him.”
“I can’t go,” Mimi Stein said. “You know I can’t travel.”
“Of course not!” her husband squeaked, outraged. He smiled at me and pressed the table once with his index finger, as if making a selection on a vending machine. “Well, I’m sorry,” is what slid out of him. “Best of luck. I’m sure you’ll win.”
“I lied,” I called out, tossing the truth onto the table. I wanted it back when I saw how they reacted. The mouse face lost its humorous grin; Mr. Stein’s small mouth pursed as he tasted the bitter flavor of my betrayal. Mrs. Stein leaned back, retracted her chin, and studied me as if I had just entered the room. I rushed on, hoping to soften their reaction. “There aren’t any other tournaments. There’s just a borough champion. We’ll never leave Manhattan. We probably won’t even win the class tournament. Everybody thinks 4-6 will cream us.”
“Joseph,” Mrs. Stein said in a deep tone, almost a man’s register. “Go to your room.”
“No,” he moaned. Not so much as a protest, but as a pained recognition of the approach of disaster.
“You know you get too upset,” she added. “We have to have this out with Rafael.” She pronounced it the way I disliked—RAY-FEE-EL.
I was terrified. He gets too upset about what? Have what out? What were they going to do to me? Run, I urged myself. But I was paralyzed.
“This is very serious,” Mr. Stein said, also having lowered his voice at least one scale.
Mrs. Stein stood up and touched Joseph’s arm. “Go to your room.”
Joseph pushed his chair back abruptly, its feet squealing on the linoleum. To my ears the sound was a shriek. Don’t leave me alone with them, I pleaded. But no words came out. (I’m not sure I ever truly forgave Joseph for leaving, silly as that sounds.) He grabbed his glasses and rushed out.
Run! I begged myself. But I couldn’t move.
“Liars can’t be trusted,” Mr. Stein said. He opened his hands to me, as if he were helpless. “Isn’t that so? How can you trust a person who lies?”
“Leave him alone,” Joseph wailed from the distance of his room. It was a ghostly cry. I felt doomed by the futile tone of his plea.
“I didn’t mean anything!” My throat closed on the words, sounding shame and fear, not protest. “I just wanted you to allow Joseph—”
“You didn’t mean anything?” Mr. Stein said in an utterly cold tone. His small eyes, the once bright twinkling eyes of a cartoon mouse, were unreflective now. They had the black color of disdain. “I wonder what you did mean? What else are you lying about? What did you really p
lan to be doing when these games were supposedly played?”
“Nothing! I only lied about the championships!”
Mr. Stein frowned with disgust. He waved a hand at me. “When are these games supposed to happen?” he asked as if this were my last chance.
“We play right after school.” I looked at them and felt sure I was going to be killed. Literally. There was no voice of reason, under my fright, assuring me I was perfectly safe from harm. I was convinced I had to plead for my life. “In the north yard!” I added this detail, hoping it would help.
“Why hasn’t the teacher written us a note about this?” Mrs. Stein asked her husband. She was still on her feet. In that puffy pink housecoat she was too enormous a blockade to circumvent. “She always writes notes. I’m sick of her notes. But about this? Staying after school, who knows how late, she writes nothing?”
“Maybe there is no tournament.” Mr. Stein grabbed hold of my wrist. His fingers felt as if they were made of steel. I had to struggle not to cry out. He didn’t appear to strain. His eyebrow—malignant and solitary—lifted, but otherwise he was expressionless while increasing the pressure on my arm, the same arm that had been broken. “Tell me what you were really up to. What did you plan to do with Joseph?”
I tried to pull away. I couldn’t answer. My panic left no air in my lungs to power the words. Anyway, I didn’t believe it would help to say anything. Unless I could get free and run home, I was doomed.
“You have nothing to say!” Mr. Stein demanded and squeezed harder. My bone felt ready to collapse.
“Where is your father really?” Mrs. Stein said. Her voice came from an unidentified location. She was probably behind me. I had been drawn closer to the mouse’s face. I was fully occupied by Mr. Stein’s small black eyes and hovering half of a brow. “He’s somewhere in South America, Joseph tells me,” Mrs. Stein’s interrogation continued. “For this long? And what does he do down there?”
Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil Page 8