“Jokes, always jokes,” his mother said.
“Velia,” his father said, “we must—”
She cut him off.
“We must, we must, we must do this and we must do that. So do it! No, we must means me, while you sit on East Broadway with the rest of the geniuses and say we must.”
“Now, Leah …”
“The name is Velia.”
“So. And what am I today, still Maurice or maybe we are back to Mike?”
She offered him a derisive smile.
“The Mikes of this country make a living.”
His father feigned adjusting a monocle. He picked up a napkin and read:
“Mike Catzker, American tycoon, also odd jobs.”
“A regular Eddie Cantor, without his fortune.”
“Ah, Eddie does not know the nobility of failure. I have observed the heavy burden a successful father places on the life of his children. I am making sure that this does not happen to Heshele.”
“Well, we must …” his mother said, shrugging her shoulders to indicate helplessness, “we must get going. We are meeting them for brunch before the theater. Harry, you will clean up.”
After washing the cups and saucers, he sat on the couch in the living room and covered his face with an open volume of Freud. As his parents entered, he lowered the book slowly, revealing awestruck eyes. His father laughed. His mother sighed and adjusted a black seal fur hat, then smoothed the collar of a matching coat. His father’s gray slouch hat was circled by a blue band that held a small red feather, The brim was snapped down, front and back. Under a tweed overcoat, a red wool tie lay on a gray corduroy shirt. She chose his clothes.
Harry walked toward them. His mother turned her cheek toward his lips, retrieving it at first touch. His father lightly scratched Harry’s scalp.
“See you, Heshele,” he said.
It might be as long as a week before Harry saw either of them, unless he got up before seven when his mother left for work or his father awakened before Harry left for school at eight-thirty. His parents spent their nights at the Cafe Royal on Second Avenue in Manhattan, where Yiddish writers and actors ate and argued. For Harry, there were notes and coins.
“’Bye,” Harry said.
His father snapped his fingers.
“I almost forgot. Your friend Aba is coming back tomorrow from his great triumph in Philadelphia where he read his poetry to more people than greeted Charles Lindbergh in Paris.”
They turned and walked to the door. She, unsteady on three-inch heels, slid her arm under his and said:
“Always jokes … what’s so funny?”
CHAPTER
5
AFTER SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY, HARRY TURNED DOWN FRED KRAUSE’S offer of joint Joe Baker stalking. Fred was Harry’s only regular friend at school and that was less friendship than a shared interest in the mystery of Joe Baker.
Joe was the most amazing human machine in the penny arcade. He could add, divide or multiply any amount of numbers as quickly as they were thrown at him. Once Harry, answer in hand, had fired at Joe fifty numbers ranging from billions to fractions. The correct answer immediately had tumbled out of Joe’s almost toothless mouth. Since then, Harry had conceded that Joe was never wrong and had been content to fill the void between Joe’s gums with spur-of-the-moment random numbers.
When not mashing numbers, Joe spoke scatology, parroting for the most part statements taught him by the whores at Rosie’s. He introduced himself to all passersby with never-varying words:
“My name is Joe Baker. My prick is a faker. My balls weigh a thousand pounds.”
The revelation oozed spittle, while his right hand performed masturbatory motions on the dangling end of a clothesline rope holding up his patched trousers. Women, new to the neighborhood or visiting, shrieked or swung heavy pocketbooks to ward him off, while Joe’s widening eyes beheld mad assailants.
Once Fred had reported a Joe statement: “No eat, no shit. No cat, no fuck.” Harry had tailed Joe for a week to see if he really did. Eventually Fred’s older brother had pointed out that Joe’s cat was a synonym of his own making that did not serve.
Although Harry had no close friends, he did not consider himself a loner. He simply preferred the company of adults, who understood things such as his discovery that if he unplugged a playing radio, for a moment afterward the disconnection, sound continued. Fred had pleaded for the secret to this magic trick. Aba had put a name to it: limbo.
The word had dazzled Harry. The sound was as mysterious as the phenomenon it described. Onomatopoetic words had excited him since he was six, when, at Hebrew school, the formless void that was the world before the Creation was described in Genesis as Sohoo V’Vohoo. Harry had seen and heard Sohoo V’Vohoo in the dark, shapeless anger of the Atlantic. Limbo was also at hand since Coney was a gigantic radio plugged in every spring and unplugged each fall, yet the sound went on. When, in the cherry tree, he had told Aba that they lived in limbo surrounded by Sohoo V’Vohoo, the poet had hugged him, almost causing both to topple from the thick branch.
“You are five thousand years old,” Aba had exulted, “you have inherited the sad history of your people.”
Harry scuffed at yesterday’s snow. It was not packed tight enough for belly flopping on his sled. He decided to check at Woody’s on the condition of his bike.
A tingling bell attached to the door announced his entrance, but no one appeared. At the spot at which Soldier had materialized, he found a door and knocked. There was no answer. He tried the knob and beheld a graveyard of dismembered bikes. Handlebars, fenders, chains, wheels and seats lay scattered like debris following an explosion. The only light in the windowless room was cast by a small, bare bulb hanging from a knotted wire.
Something moved. On a cot in the corner farthest away from him, Soldier, lying prone, slowly rose from the waist to a seated position.
“Hello Soldier, “ Harry said.
Soldier did not acknowledge him. He swung off the cot, walked stiff-legged to the wall opposite and pounded his forehead against it. After some thirty seconds of violent collisions and soft cries, he placed his right leg behind his left, executed a smart military about-face, marched back to the cot and lay down. Blood streaked his forehead.
The bulb suddenly flashed brightly, crackled and went dark. Harry jumped backward, brushing against something.
“Hey, kind o’ goosey, ain’t ya?”
Harry looked down at Woody.
“No, it’s just that …”
“Soldier have one of his spells?”
“I guess.”
“Has to do with the war. Pay it no mind. No one else does.”
“Doesn’t he hurt himself.”
“Soldier? Nothin’ hurts him anymore. Hey, I’m glad you come by. Got some business to talk over with you.”
They picked their way among haphazardly stacked bikes. Woody stopped in front of a green racer.
“Kid, I’m sorry to tell ya that your bike is kaput. I know that’s terrible for ya’ and since I seen how it wasn’t your fault that it happened, I figured out a deal. I’ll let you have this one, even up for yours. I can get some dough for your good parts, and if I don’t break even … hell, what are friends for?”
Harry stared at the bike of his dreams. Inside his forehead he was hunched over, squeezing the curled-back handlebars and pumping the slender wheels, while Captain Ziegenbaum spit apoplectic German curses.
“Hey kid, you look like Soldier. Whaddya say?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Good. You can ride it outta here.”
Harry grabbed the handlebars.
“Hey, wait. Remember, we got a deal. You’re on the payroll now. A nickel an hour. Let’s go in the back and talk it over.”
As they neared the door to Woody’s room, it opened and a dwarf emerged. Neither dwarf spoke, avoiding eye contact. Woody lay down on the unmade bed and spoke to the ceiling.
“That was my brother, Teddy. He’s a
shit. Still works as a Moon Man at Luna. Sucks up to anyone who pats him on the head. Even tries to look like a midget so he can hook on with that Call for Philip Morris crap.”
Woody anticipated the questions racing through Harry’s mind.
“I know, I know. No, my parents weren’t dwarfs. My father was close to six foot.”
“Are you twins?” Harry blurted out.
Woody sighed.
“I’m thirty-three. Teddy’s a year younger.”
“Does he live near here?
“He lives right here. We don’t speak to each other, but we sleep in the same bed. Plenty of room for the two of us. But I don’t talk to that ass-kisser.”
Harry sensed that further questions were unnecessary. Answers would be given, as when Aba gulped a water glass of vodka, looked at him, but spoke to himself.
“Why do I let him live here? Because he’s my brother. He’s Theodore Roosevelt Winston. He owes that moniker to me. I scared my folks so that they picked a name six months before he was born that couldn’t possibly fit a dwarf. I keep him around for another reason too: he’s a reminder that you can beat the odds. Figure the odds on my parents coming up with two dwarfs. They brought home a million-to-one shot. And now let me tell ya somethin’. It’s a relief to be a dwarf. Everybody’s got a dwarf inside o’ him waitin’ to come out and worried shitless that it will. But I’m out already. Nothin’ to worry about.”
In the thick silence, Harry visualized himself as a dwarf. Suddenly, Bama’s respect for the evil eye did not seem so crazy.
Woody jumped off the bed and sang while tapping a time step:
When you’re smilin’, when you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you. When you’re laughin’, when you’re laughin’, the sun comes smilin’ through. But when you’re cryin’ you bring on the rain. So stop your cryin’ and be happy again. Just keep on smilin’, cause when you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you.
The voice was naive and squeaky, like Betty Boop’s.
“Like it?”
“Sure.”
“Could have done it professionally. Got offers. We’ll bill you as The Dwarf Troubador or Wee Bonnie Woody. No thanks. No pats on the head. I ain’t no freak.”
Woody pointed his index finger at Harry.
“You’ll see what ass-kissin’ freaks are. Can you work tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“OK. We’ll start you off with the house of freaks on West Eighth. A bunch of them live together since about three years ago. Now everyone hates everyone else. Serves ’em right. Anyway you pick up their slips and you also tell ’em that Woody’s got a job for them and they’ll be hearin’ from me. Then you come here and drop off the slips. Got it?”
“Sure do.”
“OK. Grab your bike.”
Woody lay down and closed his eyes. He looked dead, his grotesque features the residue of a fatal disease.
Harry walked the green racer toward the boardwalk. He held its handlebars lightly, removing one finger at a time until only his thumbs controlled it. Its tires drew a slim, graceful line in the snow. He tilted the bike from thumb to thumb, enjoying its lightness before gripping the handlebars, setting his right foot on the pedal and, on the run, vaulting his left leg over the seat and landing on hard leather.
He pedaled toward the boardwalk, skidding on patches of snow and shifting his weight to right himself. The chain began to slip. On the incline of the boardwalk ramp, it disengaged completely.
He dismounted and for the first time examined the bike. It was a creature of Soldier’s junk: rims dented by hammer marks, different-size chain links, the seat stem too thin for its holder.
He sat down on a bench facing the ocean and tried to occupy his mind with piercing the horizon until he could see Europe. Behind him he heard the clatter of a rolling metal door shuttering a boardwalk concession. Moments later a hand gently touched on his shoulder.
“Hello Harry.”
He did not answer.
Fingers kneaded the flesh between his neck and shoulders He shivered like a puppy drying itself.
The probing fingers belonged to Schnozz, one of the few penny arcade owners who remained open the year round. His nickname did not derive from an unremarkable nose, but from his claim to have played the piano for Jimmy Durante at Coney beer gardens around 1910. Schnozz had no use for the current incarnation of the people’s playground, obliterating it with Proustian recall of Coney’s golden age.
A month ago Harry had sat on the same bench anticipating Schnozz’s next story. The wind, as now, had burrowed under the sand and the sun had made its first touch on the ocean, like a fat bather testing temperature with his big toe. Schnozz, seated beside him, had transported them to his beloved Dreamland Park.
“Can you picture it?” Schnozz had demanded, leaving no doubt that Harry could not fully imagine the required majesty. “A million electric lights. One million!”
In the smooth cadence of the sideshow spieler he had been, he daubed like a pointilist, dotting white buildings on expanses of grace and pleasure. A derisive hand dismissed the vulgarity of Luna Park’s Trip to the Moon, where one was greeted by midgets dressed as Moon Men. Dreamland, a place of taste, had offered three hundred midgets in a life-scale replica of Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput, augmented by a few giants from Brobdingnag.
Dreamland had opened in 1905 and burned to the ground in 1911. Schnozz’s words brought back to short life birds unable to escape the inferno with flightless singed wings and crazed lions and tigers shot to death by policemen suddenly on safari in Coney.
After the tale, Schnozz had suggested a walk on the beach. The strong wind had reddened Schnozz’s pockmarked face, lodging sand in the crevices. He had guided Harry under the boardwalk, where they could rest and talk.
They sat on the cold sand. Schnozz’s words slowed and fell to a whisper. His right hand smoothed Harry’s cheek, moved across his chest and found the buckle of his belt. His fly was parted, button by button. Schnozz dug for his penis which popped out like a released jack-in-the-box. Harry had watched Schnozz’s naked pate move over his penis and dip like the arcade game’s miniature crane that descended, metal jaws spread wide, to claim a prize. Soon Harry had filled Schnozz’s mouth. The old man swallowed and wiped his white-specked lips with the back of his hand. Harry, nauseated, had run to the ocean’s edge to submerge his face in the jarring cold. When he had turned around, Schnozz was gone.
Schnozz sat down beside Harry. Their knees touched under the bar of the bike. Harry slid out of contact. Schnozz mocked him by widening the gap with a shimmylike thrust of his buttocks. His knee hit a wheel.
“Where did you get this bike?” he asked.
“Woody.”
“What! You brought it from that lousy dwarf?”
“Sort of a trade.”
“For that beauty you had!”
“I had an accident and it was all busted. Woody took it for parts and gave me this one.”
Schnozz gripped Harry’s shoulder.
“He’s a crook and worse. Let’s you and me go over to that store and have it out with him right now.”
“No, Schnozz. I sort of like Woody, and with people you like …”
Schnozz squeezed Harry’s hand.
“Want to take a walk on the beach?” he said, smiling shyly, like an unsure child attempting to cajole an adult.
Harry returned the pressure to show friendship, but shook his head. They were even now. Harry had paid a fair price for permanent admission to Schnozz’s fabulous spiels.
CHAPTER
6
ABA STOLZ, NÉ AVRAM STEIN, WINNER OF PRESTIGIOUS PRIZES FOR Yiddish poetry, illegal alien, having entered the country three years ago on a two-month visa to cover the 1936 US presidential election for a defunct Polish publication, sighed and lowered himself onto the outside steps of the house on West 35th Street, where he boarded with the Catzkers.
He had just returned from an odyssey that had begun with a phone c
all from Samuel Modell, a wealthy Philadelphia textile manufacturer.
“Hello, is that Aba Stolz?”
“Yes.”
“Aba Stolz, the poet?”
“The same.”
“Good. I would like you to come to Philadelphia.”
“Why?”
“To read your poetry. Why else?”
“Indeed, why else?”
Train tickets were sent. On a Sunday evening, Stolz had arrived at the Modell home, where a group of affluent Philadelphia Jews were gathered for dessert, coffee and culture.
Modell, a man in his fifties who proudly displayed a paunch of affluence under a tight vest spanned by a gold chain, took him aside.
“All the people in the room have contributed funds for you.”
“Thank you.”
Modell’s bland brown eyes darted left and right. He whispered:
“You don’t write anything dirty, do you? Some of the people understand Yiddish.”
“I will keep it clean. You may be the judge.”
“I don’t understand Yiddish.”
“Then, why …?
“My mother …”
“Ah, she is here tonight?
“No, she died twenty-five years ago. She spoke Yiddish. Especially when she didn’t want me to understand what she was telling my father.”
Before the reading, he mingled and explained poetry.
“How do you know so many words that rhyme?”
“There is a secret way to use a dictionary. Kabbalistic.”
In the salon, amid couches and chairs upholstered in an explosion of foliage, Modell introduced him:
“We are proud to have with us tonight Aba Stolz, a Yiddish poet whose gifts have brought joy to millions of our coreligionists from coast to coast.”
While reciting the first poem, he scanned the faces for comprehension. Some twenty men and women somehow had managed to assume identical frozen expressions, as if staring at a tiny dot indicated by an optometrist. He wondered if there had been group practice. The only exception was Modell, who, from the first word, wept.
Following the last poem there was a long silence until the audience realized the recitation had concluded. He received discreetly muffled applause. Modell, red-eyed, waved a thick envelope.
Coney Page 4