“No,” Freud conceded, “just that I was a wise-ass Jew.”
Smiling in victory, Catzker walked through the skinny trees of Roosevelt Park and onto Second Avenue.
On Fourth Street, a few people waited to buy tickets at the Public Theater. Actors, he thought, have a peculiar talent that requires no mind. Yet when they speak words, no matter how banal, they can temporarily fool you, like covering stink with strong perfume.
Two years ago the impresario of the Public Theater had called him and suggested that his serialized novel that had just concluded in The Morning Journal could, with a few alterations here and there, make a wonderful play. Catzker had been noncommittal because all his serialized novels were jellied in a common mold. He didn’t know which one ran yesterday or three years ago.
He had gone to the paper to read Fanneleh. It was sad: after much misery in Poland and America, upright Fanneleh had found an upright husband and given birth to perhaps the next president of the United States. But because of her dark secret—her seduction by a goy postman in Warsaw and her enjoyment of subsequent trysts—she had to pay the moral price. Therefore she died in childbirth. It had seemed to him that many of his heroines died in childbirth. It was a clean way to get rid of them and finally end the story.
Initially, he had wondered why anyone would want to verbalize a tour de force of clichés. Then he had considered the possibility of being too hard on himself. Not Chekhov of course, but under the dross some light did seep through.
He had done the adaptation, inventing an ambiguous ending which the impresario suggested to provoke the audience to argue as to whether it was a moral or immoral play. Controversy brought crowds.
The first rehearsal had stunned him. The once scribbled sentences became beautiful, important. Shrieks of anguish were launched from Dostoyevskian raw souls; joy was a purifying thunderstorm. His respect for the actor’s craft rose each day, especially when they congratulated him on providing them with beautiful prose.
Opening night revealed a flaw. The audience was not accustomed to ambiguity. At play’s end, they remained silent, waiting for the next scene. When the curtain parted, presenting the entire cast ready for applause and bows, the audience was confused, especially at seeing the dead or near-dead Fanneleh, erect and glowingly healthy. When they understood, the reception was tepid.
The ending was rewritten to the original tragedy. The audience booed. By the time a happy ending had been set in place, there was no audience.
The impresario had summed it up: “I guess you are too artistic for my audience.”
Catzker, now approaching the Cafe Royal, laughed out loud, remembering his vow that if he ever wrote another play, no matter what the subject, its title would be: Too Artistic for My Public.
He walked between the boxed hedges that in summer turned the Royal into a sidewalk cafe. The plate glass window was fogged. Catzker thought to identify by size and density whose unassailable theories had steamed each particular section.
He was about to enter when, like a cinder in his eye, the fifty-story Metropolitan Life Insurance Building on 23rd Street concentrated his consciousness on its flashing red lights and four clocks that, like a metaphysical lighthouse, warned New Yorkers, north, south, east or west, of the time, and of mortality by adding, every quarter hour, a chimed funereal measure by Handel. Presiding like a four-faced ogre over its troll neighbors, it paralleled the hegemony of the Half-Moon Hotel.
He turned and walked up 14th Street, passing Union Square Park where, despite the discouraging wind, euphoric orators on improvised platforms harangued bundles of clothes asleep or dead on the benches. He recalled another discarded poem, written while he was soaking himself in the new, bubbly bath of English and being flooded by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It was called Union Square. The only line he remembered was: “beards, bawds, blacks.”
“Why blacks?” Freud, a white-sheeted Klansman, asked.
“Why not?” Catzker answered in Yiddish.
At Sixth Avenue he descended to the subway and boarded an uptown train.
“And I recommend Negro whorehouses to all my friends,” he told a blushing Sigmund Freud.
CHAPTER
16
HARRY SAT ON THE FLOOR OF HIS GRANDPARENTS’ BEDROOM. BAMA had insisted that he sleep in her bed, while she, who would not sleep anyway, would lie on the couch in the living room. After she had tucked him in, he had jumped from between the comforter and sheet, where death touched, itched and bit, put on his clothes, and slumped to the floor. Still death rode him piggyback, choking him with a leg scissors.
From the bedside table he lifted gingerly his grandfather’s fat black Waterman fountain pen, and, gripping it as lightly as possible, wrote in Yiddish on the back of an unredeemed ticket for shirts from a Chinese laundry:
Dear Bama,
I remembered homework I had to do for tomorrow. Very important. I went out the window not to bother you. I will come after school tomorrow.
Love,
Heshele
He opened a window and eased himself into a narrow alley. His heavy corduroy jacket hung in the hallway. He wore only a light sweater. Yet, the exhilaration of disengaging from death broke sweat on his forehead. Halfway home he remembered that his house keys were in his jacket pocket.
The windows of his house he knew were securely locked against gangsters from every walk of crime who, his mother was certain, coveted entrance to the Catzker residence. He headed for the Surf movie theater, hoping to arrive at break time, when it was possible to sneak in through the side exit door. On 33rd Street, he passed the Royal Pool Emporium, announced in one-foot-high black letters painted on a green background that covered a glass storefront. Through an unpainted chink at the top, he glimpsed Woody standing on a platform, similar to those used in performing dog acts, bent over a pool table and manipulating a cue stick. The residents of the freak house watched a match between Woody and Jo-Jo. All except Fifi.
Fifi had been on his mind, starring one night in a wet dream. Her uniqueness matched the promised uniqueness of “it.” Because she was French (all the French thought about was screwing), her enormity was a hot bath of flesh. She had boldly invited him to enjoy her (what else would a Frenchwoman do?), and he remembered also the sweetness of her voice. Now he knew that she was alone.
He ran to the trolley and flattened himself at the back. The grinding friction of frequent braking became foreplay. He sprinted the six blocks from the terminus to the house and rang the bell.
“Entrez.”
Fifi, wearing a blue dress dotted with pink shapes resembling flower petals, sat on a sofa, dragging strongly on a cigarette. Harry stopped in the middle of the room.
“Ah, it is ’Arry, le gentil gosse, but I have not any slips.”
His face was hot. He knew he was blushing. The bulge in his knickers throbbed.
“Ah,” Fifi said, nodding and smiling, “it is peut-être not ze slips zat bring you?”
Harry wanted to nod but could only stare.
“What can it be? Is puzzle to solve.”
She motioned him beside her. She patted his head and ran her hand over his burning cheek.
“It gives plaisir zat I touch?”
He nodded.
“Perhaps we are solved. Ze little man wish become ze big man, hein?”
“Yes,” Harry blurted out, dropping his face on her breast.
“But you must regard me. To make amour, must see each other.” Harry looked up. He tried to imagine her without the fat that framed and subjugated her features and made of her body an example of logically extended human growth. Ugly or beautiful did not apply. She was described by other terms: consuming, enveloping, protecting, housing.
“Is good you choose me ’Arry. Is good to have woman of experience.”
Age also did not apply. Her bulk was beyond time. He squeezed her breast.
“What you think you want, ’Arry?”
He squeezed harder.
“To stick you in m
e. Like hammer with nail.”
Did it hurt women? It hurt cats. They cried.
“No, Fifi, I don’t want to hurt you.”
Fifi’s finger traced the bulge.
“Is not hurt I talk of. Is ze feeling. A hammer and nail not have feeling.”
“I have feeling for you, Fifi,” he gasped, cursing her for delaying.
“Bien, gosse. We see.” She extended her arms in front of her. “You must help.”
He rose and gripped her hands. She rocked back and forth, almost pulling him on top of her, until, with a strenuous heave, she stood upright.
“Now let us see, what is what,” she said.
She pulled his sweater over his head, unbuttoned his flannel shirt, undid the belt and buttons of his knickers, which fell to his ankles. She dropped his jockey shorts. His penis pointed at her, straining its root, threatening to detach from his body.
“Bon. You are, how we say, well prepared. Now, remove ze shoes and ze rest.”
He pulled the wrong strands of his laces, knotting them. He sat on the floor, tugging angrily.
Fifi laughed.
“Doucement, we go nowhere. Now …” She undid the top button of her dress, and spread her arms.
His fingers slipped and fumbled with the remaining buttons. He wanted to rip the dress away. The dress parted. She motioned him behind her. He pulled off the dress. Her buttocks stunned him. Each was as large as the enormous globe in the Planetarium. He ran his fingers along the flesh, suddenly realizing that he was tracing a map of the United States. He felt giddy. He told Mrs. Gaitskill, his geography teacher: “I have done my homework.”
Fifi sank to her knees and leaned forward, shifting her weight to the palms of her hands.
“Now, come in.”
He had no idea of the interior of a woman’s anatomy. All the dirty pictures he had seen were of a man on top of a woman. Somewhere in the tuft of hair between the woman’s legs was where the penis went. In the cunt. But where was the cunt? His masturbatory visions had been short on precision.
He pressed his penis into the fissure between the mountains. The friction hurt.
“No, gosse, no.” Fifi was breathing hard, snorting.
She tilted to one side, put a free hand between her legs, and guided his penis into flameless fire. He exploded lava.
The flow spent, he began to straighten. “No, no, ’Arry, “ she gasped. Move in and out in me.”
He rocked, surprised at his penis’s numbness. Had he caught a disease? Suddenly, she filled the room with the sound of a speeding, mufflerless car, collapsed and lay prone on the floor.
“’Arry, please”
It took twenty minutes to raise and dress her. He sat beside her, embarrassed, as if they shared a disturbing secret. He wanted to leave.
“Well …,” he said, raising himself slightly.
She laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Zis is ze feeling for me,” she said.
“I’ll stay,” he said.
“To be kind to ze freak.”
“No, no, Fifi.”
She dabbed her eyes with a gardenia-scented handkerchief, then reached into her purse and lifted delicately, between the tips of her thumb and forefinger, a small photograph. She handed it to him.
It had been bent and straightened, leaving lines. Age had yellowed the white and faded the black. A girl of about eight posed in front of a windmill. A row of domed trees formed the background. The girl was slight. She wore a dark jumper, same color knee socks, black shoes and a round light-colored brimmed hat. A dark ribbon circled the crown. Her hair hung down her back. Its length was not visible in the photo. Her hands held either side of the brim. It must have been a windy day.
“You like ze petite?”
“Yes. Is she an old friend of yours?”
She sighed. “A very close amie.”
Fifi took the photo from him. She traced the outline of the girl with her finger and gave it back.
“Look at ze face, ’Arry. Perhaps you know her?”
Harry studied. The photographer had been more interested in capturing the entire windmill than in the girl.
“No,” he said.
“’Arry … zat little girl is me.”
Harry hoped surprise was not on his face. He kept his eyes on the photo to hide any expression and to confirm that the child was as skinny as he had thought. Yes. Bama would have force-fed her. He looked up at Fifi, who again was dabbing at her eyes.
“You will pardon me, ’Arry. Is time when ze memory make me sad.”
Harry put his hand on hers. She sandwiched it.
“You see ’Arry, until I have twelve years, I like any child. I sing. I dance. I play piano. I good student at l’école. I have many friends. Zen when is my first bleeding, I begin to grow fat. Like ze balloon zat never break, no matter how much air. My mère take me to doctor in Paris. He say stopping eat much. I say I do not eat much. Zey do not believe me. Zey stick needles in me. It make me sick, but still I blow up. My Papa say I make on purpose. Zat I can stop if I want.
“I love my Papa. At night in ze bed, I talk to God: ‘Le Bon Dieu, help me stop. Tell me what must do.’ Nozing help. My parents must buy for me new clothes all ze time. At l’école, zey make fun on me. Zey stick zere fingers in my flesh. I tell my Mama and Papa I no go school. Zey say I must. Finalement, when I have zirteen, zey say not go.”
She blew out a sustained chunk of air which unrounded her cheeks a bit. It was as if even now she was trying one more remedy.
“I miss l’école. I like read. Zat not stop. People say I full fat. No, ’Arry, I full books. You must read ze good books ’Arry.”
He nodded.
“When I have sixteen, I am like today. I not go out house. I must eat so much my Papa say he has not ze money. My Mama cry all ze time. I hear my Papa say: ‘What we do wiz her? How to feed her all her life? How we live? God curse us.’ Zen zey both cry.
“One day I see in paper little words zat man look for, how you say, odd people, to be in show in America. I call ze number. ’Arry, you know ze one name Schnozz. It is he. I tell he of me. He come see me when Mama and Papa not home. He look on me all sides. He say good. You name Fifi and you come from famille Louis quatorze. I like zis Schnozz. He talk like book. He buy me ticket for ship to America. I no tell Mama, Papa. I leave note. I go America. I will write. I never do.
“Schnozz take me Coney. I sit in chair. People look, make fun, but is different. Zey pay to make foolish. I big hit. Newspapers ask how I am from Louis quatorze. I tell zem from books I read. Ze call me ‘Queen Fifi,’ who eat cake like say Marie Antoinette. I like zat.”
She smiled, then sighed. She took the photo from Harry and held it in front of her.
“What you know of world, ’Arry?”
He shrugged.
“Is cruel.”
He nodded.
“One time I walk sixteen street, where are ze Italians. Zey grab me, pull me into ze club down ze stairs, tear off ze clothes and say: Dance! Zen zey make pipi on me an’ push me into street naked. Would zey do zat to zis girl?” she asked, shaking the photo back and forth.
It was a horrible story, but Harry reacted with shivers of pleasure. It was the first time anyone had opened up their life to him, asked him to share pain or joy. With his parents, Aba, Bama, Zadeh, he felt joined by an accident of fate which commanded them to love him. He never felt loved for himself. Had someone else been born, he would have received the same automatic love. But Fifi had chosen him! Something about him had caused her to confide, to share her suffering, to seek his understanding. She was telling him things which, he sensed, she never had been able to tell anyone else. He knew very well the loneliness that attached to such secrets.
He kissed her on the lips, then took her hand and spoke for the first time of a shame which often overrode his will, and paid unwelcome visits, sometimes invading his dreams.
He was nine. At Hebrew school he was given a cardboard box stamped with a Jewish star and told to co
llect money so that Jews could plant trees in barren Palestine. His teacher dropped in two pennies through the metal slit so that he could shake a message of generosity. The first two passersby responded with coins. Success created the Harry Ephraim Catzker forest of Palestine, through which he skipped. A boy his size suddenly blocked his path. He raised a hammer above Harry’s head. Harry had visualized the claw marks it would make in his forehead, how it would splinter his teeth, enter his eye.
He fell to his knees and begged not to be ripped apart. The boy snatched the box from Harry’s offering hand and said:
“You sing good. You should join the Jew choir.”
Fifi smiled.
’Arry. Why feel shame? You do right. He have hammer. You have nozing. I do same zing.”
“No, Fifi, I should have fought him. I should have tried to hurt him, to show him Jews can fight.”
“’Arry, listen. When zose men push me down to cellar, I can scream for help. But I not, because if I do I have afraid zay stick me wiz knife or maybe worse. What sense?”
He nodded, but was unconvinced.
She smiled broadly. Her stretched lips dug deep dimples in her bloated cheeks. Her eyes caressed him. He hoped his eyes were as expressive.
“’Arry, you come see me again.”
“Yes, Fifi,”
“We talk, yes. Like two people. You like I teach to you le français?
“Yes.”
“Bon. A tout à l’heure. Zat is first leçon. It mean see you soon.”
“Toot a loore, Fifi.”
“You must kiss me on two cheeks. Zat is also France leçon.”
Outside, he jumped straight up and clicked his heels together. He had done it! And in a French cunt! By the time his feet touched the ground, he felt shame for thinking of Fifi in that way.
CHAPTER
17
AFTER LEAVING FIFI, HARRY WALKED TOWARD HOME ALONG THE boardwalk. The strong wind off the Atlantic budged and chilled him. He isolated a gust and imagined its history: it had discomfited Ziegenbaum on the Bremen, eased along notes in bottles launched from every continent, slackened while passing over a lifeboat escaping a shipwreck, boiled white foam to artistically decorate buoys and beaches. In thrall of its journey, he did not see coming towards him Albert-Alberta and Otto. He would have collided with them had not Otto thrown a stiff arm against his chest, stopping him abruptly.
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