Martin pranced on stage with his traveling microphone, while Odile brooded in the pit. The fiddlers scraped on their instruments. Spit from the trumpets flew into Odile’s eye. The little goya began to sob. She was stuck with the Follies girls, pinned to their bellies and their crinkled behinds. She couldn’t run home to The Dwarf.
The girls mounted the Greenwich stairs, smiling, one by one. None of them fell. Martin shouted their names to the audience. “Here she is, lovely Monica, the pride of Kips Bay. A hundred and three pounds in the flesh. Good people, what do you say to Monica?”
Odile had to guess the audience’s mind from her station in the pit. She heard a lot of booing for Laura of Washington Heights, Tina of Hudson Street, Monica of Kips Bay. Monica never returned to the pit. Did Martin hide a girl after the boos and the stamping of feet that could swallow the noise of his fiddlers? The girls in the pit were moaning now. Ushers had to hoist them up the stairs when their names were called (the audience was surly in the lull between the presentation of girls).
“Odile of Jane Street,” Martin said. No usher had to drag her out. She grew dizzy on the stairs. She saw the fiddlers’ brains. She stepped out of her nightgown and continued to climb. The stage lights turned her body raisin blue. “Also known as Odette,” Martin cried into the microphone, his powdered neck deep inside the dinner jacket. No one hissed at him. The audience mooed for Odile. She didn’t have to jiggle her parts. The natural sway of her bosoms in the raisin-colored light could stun an auditorium.
There was whimpering in the front row. Handkerchiefs sailed off the balconies. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Martin crouched behind Odile. He had her by the ankles. “Girlie, don’t leave. The theatre’s in love with you.”
Odile prayed for her deliverance. It would take a whole contingent of girlfriends from The Dwarf to get her out of the Greenwich Art Theatre. Sweeney didn’t come. Odile stayed frozen in the light, with Martin on her ankles. Only Zorro could have saved her. The Fox would have gone from seat to seat slitting men’s throats until the auditorium emptied out. But Zorro wasn’t in the United States.
The little goya heard a bellowing over the chorus of moos. There had to be a rhinoceros in the house. “Put on your clothes.” She saw a hand grab Martin Light and bowl him across the stage. The hand belonged to Patrick Silver. Men were clinging to his back. The giant shook them off with a twirl of his neck. He had blood in his ears. “Jesus,” he said. St. Patrick didn’t want to fight an army of lovesick men. He was grieving for Jerónimo.
The giant would recite the mourner’s prayers on a little bench at the Kings of Munster. But he couldn’t say kaddish all day long. He was lonely for Odile. He prowled the streets with Guinness bottles in his pants. Then he read the marquee at the Greenwich. Nude Miss. His head wasn’t right. American Follies. His brains were pissed over with Irish beer. He stumbled into the theatre without buying a ticket. Ushers whacked him with their flashlights while Patrick squinted at the stage. He saw precious ugly women shake their hips under a wrinkle of blue-black light. “It must be market day at Kilkenny.” People told him to get quiet.
He crossed his elbows and leaned against the wall, weary of so much shivering flesh, until Martin Light announced Odile. St. Patrick cleared the aisle. He dumped men and boys over the backs of chairs. A rabbit bit him on the ass. Patrick howled. “Jesus, I’m through.” Fingernails scraped his nose. His ear was on fire. He reached the pit with entire bodies clamped to his leg. He had to slap down two heads to raise his thigh. He tore into the fiddlers, climbed the treacherous stairs, dispatched Martin Light, and tunneled into the curtains with Odile.
The auditorium rose up against St. Patrick. Men from the orchestra and the lower balconies jumped onto the stage. They would have murdered the giant to hold on to Odile. They didn’t have sturdy weapons. They had to slap him with buckles, fists, and shoes. The shirt came off St. Patrick’s back. His trousers fell below his hips and stood clinging to his buttocks. Fists and shoes made squeaky noises on Patrick’s skull. The buckles stamped red dents into his shoulder blade. The giant was growing angry.
“Esau,” he muttered, “where’s your daddy now?”
Cradling Odile in one of his armpits, he began to fight. He pummeled noses and eyes, struck at Greenwich Avenue gentlemen with his elbows, chin, and knees. They were caught in a September whirlwind that none of them could describe. You couldn’t get close to Patrick Silver. The storm around him could fling a man over the lip of the stage. Patrick didn’t have to grovel in the memory of Brian Boru. The witch of Limerick was only a frizzled hag with all her hundred and ninety years. Patrick could have destroyed the Greenwich Art Theatre with the wind he produced on stage. He couldn’t restore Jerónimo, protect the Guzmanns in Barcelona, sing to Manfred Coen, but he could break out of Martin’s bullpen with the little goya.
Living in a heated armpit, with Patrick’s blood pounding in her face, Odile had gotten used to the giant. She wouldn’t let go of his chest.
Patrick shouted into her ear. “Jesus, will you marry me?”
The little goya thought she would die. The whistling in her head attacked the insides of her cheek. But the deafness was only temporary. The whistling went away. She laughed and nibbled his armpit.
16.
MOSES was a tradesman again. He acquired fourteen parrots. Sleepy birds with bald shoulders and hairlines in their beaks, they were without a particular pedigree. Papa couldn’t have told you whether he had macaws, Amazon birds, or cockatoos. The parrots seemed reluctant to move their heavy brains. But Papa could cure them of their sluggishness for a price. If the turistas dropped a few Barcelona pennies on the counter of his stall, Moses would whisper to the birds, prod their bellies with a piece of wire, grin at them, until they showed a bit of liveliness. They would break walnuts with their stunted bills, scoop berries out of Papa’s fist, do somersaults inside their cages, sing raucous one-word songs.
These were English birds. They could scream “Piss” at you, or mention Isaac the Brave. The parrots’ exotic coats had been given to them by Moses, who painted their feathers every other week. He allowed the birds to dry in the outhouse that belonged to the Guzmann flat on the Calle Reina Amalia, in the Barrio Chino. Topal and Alejandro had to squat down with parrots over their ears.
Zorro snickered at Papa’s outhouse. He wasn’t going to drop his pants in the vicinity of birds that told you when to piss. The Fox couldn’t get Manhattan plumbing out of his head. He would relieve himself in the mirrored toilet at the Hotel Presidente, throwing ten pesetas to the concierge. He always wore an orange suit inside the Presidente; he wouldn’t buy any of his furnishings at a men’s shop on the Paseo de Gracia. Zorro’s handkerchiefs, cuff links, shoelaces, socks, and ties came from Boston Road.
The Fox had his morning chore. He would bring Jorge to Moses’ stall on the Ramblas, while his father and brothers carried the birds. Moses and the boys would sit on their bench dreaming of Jerónimo. Absorbed in themselves, they forgot to swipe pocketbooks from the German tourists. They would have starved without Zorro’s thumbs. Even the parrots were at his mercy.
It was childish work for the Fox. With an American handkerchief covering half his chest, he walked up and down the Ramblas, brushing against turistas who crowded the stalls. He avoided the pillbox hats of the guardia civil as he moved away from the stalls with a wallet under his handkerchief. Sometimes he took a parrot along. The bird would nest on his shoulder, with its claws in Zorro’s summer wool, its beak inside his hair.
Zorro didn’t endure birdshit on his clothes for the sake of companionship. The parrot helped him steal. The turistas would marvel at the plumage on a sleepy bird, while Zorro went in and out of their pockets. He could earn nine hundred pesetas in an hour.
The bird dug into his shoulder today. Zorro could smell the paint on its wing. He stopped at the Calle del Hospital for a café tinto and mocha ice cream. The bird woke long enough to peck at Zorro’s mocha. “Cocksucker,” Zorro
said.
The bird sprayed ice cream on the Fox. Zorro would have banged its head into the stones of the Barrio Chino, or slapped its damaged bill, but he had stolen goods in his pocket and he didn’t want to bring attention to himself.
The Barcelinos mistook him for a pimp. You couldn’t have found another orange suit in all of Catalan (it had been put together by a Polish tailor in the Bronx). Zorro gave up pimping when his brother died. He was barely a thief. He wouldn’t have plagued the turistas if his father and the birds were able to feed themselves. He would have strolled under the statue of Columbus in the harbor, lunched on fisherman’s soup near the Calle del Paradis. He would have posed for Germans, Italians, and Swedish tourists, with the parrot on his shoulder, and wheedled pesetas out of them. Then he could pee at the Presidente or the Ritz, go to Barcelonita, and sit on the Muelle de Pescadores, at the edge of the city, and throw one of his shoelaces in the Mediterranean. The scum would buoy it up. A shoelace never drowns in Barcelonita.
“Jerónimo.”
Zorro turned his cheek. The parrot was nibbling on his brains. He stared into its left eye. The eye was smudged with yellow paint.
“Don’t you mention my brother,” Zorro said. “I’ll tear your neck off, you bald piece of shit.”
The Barcelinos stared at man and bird.
Zorro finished his café tinto. The parrot nudged Zorro’s ear. He fed it the last of his ice cream. The mocha began to fill the splinters in its beak. Zorro swabbed the bird with his handkerchief. They left the Calle del Hospital and continued down to the sea.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1976 by Jerome Charyn
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part Two
7
8
9
10
Part Three
11
12
13
Part Four
14
15
16
Copyright Page
Education of Patrick Silver Page 14