The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

“Look, kid,” he said softly into Willie’s ear, “no hard feelings. There’ll be things for you to do. We can’t all be soldiers. There’ll be lotsa jobs you can fill in on.”

  It turned out that the sergeant was right. While he couldn’t do the kind of war work his mother landed for herself out on Long Island—because it was essential when building airplane motors that one have an index finger on each hand—Willie quit his job as an usher in the fleabag Avalon third-run house, took a bath, got a haircut, put on fresh clothes and shined shoes, and presented himself to the manager of the Loew’s Paradise.

  His mother was making good money, living in a rooming house on the Island with a bunch of other working women. Willie took a three-room, fifth-floor apartment for Mischa and himself on Creston Avenue and 184th Street, right around the corner from the movie palace. Mischa would always be small and simpleminded, but he was always smiling. He loved any movies with singing and dancing. He tapped his feet madly through the apartment, convinced he was tap dancing. His mother agreed to send along enough money to pay an old lady, Mrs. Kelleher, on the first floor, to look after the kid. He really was a good companion to her; her own children and grandchildren lived in Chicago and she was lonely. At first she was a little put off by Mischa, but gradually she came to like him, and she could use the extra few bucks a week. Willie didn’t give her all the money his mother sent, but held back some to help him with the rent.

  Mr. Felnick, the manager of Loew’s Paradise, glanced at Willie Paycek, dressed in his best, with a sinking sensation. He was the make-do wartime 4-F version, a direct opposite of the tall, slender, Irish-handsome, personable young men who had always represented the elegance of the Loew’s Paradise. There was no uniform small enough for Willie, who claimed this was not a problem. He had a good neighborhood tailor. Mr. Wagner was indeed good with needle and thread and scissors, and in spite of Mr. Felnick’s hope that hemming and not cutting would do the job, Willie showed up with a tailored, neatly pressed usher’s uniform.

  Mr. Felnick hoped the war would be over quickly and that all his wonderful tall young ushers would return.

  Loew’s Paradise became Willie Paycek’s university, his magic place, his real world. He watched a movie over and over again, caught things he’d missed, picked up on moviemaking techniques. He felt envious that anyone could ever know enough to put so many things together, so many bits and pieces fusing finally into one smooth, finished movie. He carried scenes home in his mind, reworked them, tried different angles, different arrangements, jotted down his ideas, then checked them against what he saw on the screen.

  He also began to revise his own memories, until reality and fantasy became difficult to separate.

  The night on Snake Hill turned, in his mind, into a great battle, involving spontaneous brutality. Then he tried it another way—another take—as a carefully staged, premeditated killing, designed with only one end in mind: not the death of Stachiew but the eventual death of his father.

  The scene in his father’s cell changed from a moment of terror into a brave, heroic denunciation. The boy washing his hands of the evil tormentor. Having his revenge as the brute turned coward groveled, begged forgiveness. His was the ultimate patricide: killing both corrupt fathers at one time.

  One Saturday night, Willie had to fill in for old Mr. Reuben, the ticket taker, who had developed a fever along with his hacking cough. He scarcely looked up, just took each proffered ticket, tore it in half, one piece into the tall glass receptacle, the other half back to the patron. Just hands, feet, men’s shoes, girl’s shoes waiting off to the side.

  “Willie.” The deep voice was familiar. He looked directly from the shining black shoes into the strong, handsome face of Dante D’Angelo. He seemed to have grown a few inches, or maybe it was just the way the naval uniform added to his stature. He was an ensign or something, home maybe for the last time.

  “Danny, hey, how ya doin’?”

  He kept on tearing tickets automatically, handing stubs back to outstretched hands. He wanted Dante to move on, to enter the theater. To disappear with the tall, slim, gorgeous girl who waited by his side. But Dante stood there, smiling, greeting so many people who knew him, the neighbors out for the big Saturday night at the Paradise with ice cream at Krum’s later on.

  The crowd thinned out; the rush was over. He looked Dante over carefully. His own uniform—the short, custom-tailored red jacket, the smart black pants with the red stripe along the outside seams, even the stiffly starched white shirt and neat black bow tie—suddenly felt uncomfortable. Willie felt like a clown standing next to Dante D’Angelo, who was the real thing. With a real beautiful girl. They fit together, both tall and movie-pretty. Making Willie feel short and ugly, as though everything about him was wrong.

  Dante introduced his girl—a blonde named Diana—and she smiled, showing beautiful straight white teeth, and told Dante she would meet him at the candy counter. She left them together.

  Willie did what he always did when he was nervous and felt that awful feeling. He started to talk, too much, too fast, saying whatever popped into his head. Jesus, he knew he was doing it, but couldn’t stop himself. It was Dante’s fault; he should have just said hiya and kept going.

  “Ya know, this job, it’s nice and all, I mean, the Paradise, wow, it’s the best. But I got plans, ya know, about the movie business. Now don’t think I’m talking about acting, but you wouldn’t believe all the other jobs, the really important jobs there are in making a movie. See, what I’m planning is … oh, this isn’t my regular job, I’m filling in for old man Reuben …”

  Dante grinned. “He still around, old man Reuben? He used to give the guys a hard time Saturday mornings when we’d all rush in and …”

  Willie hadn’t been one of the guys on those Saturday mornings. He’d never been one of the guys.

  He found himself babbling about his plans, his ambitions. Told Dante about his mother working for the war effort; gave her credentials; talked and talked. Dante smiled and nodded. Politely.

  “Well, you’re looking good, Willie. It’s great that you get to see all the movies at the Paradise. I’m sure you’re learning a lot that’ll come in handy someday.”

  Yeah. Sure. Great. Dante was standing there in his officer’s uniform, in his navy blue dress uniform and Willie was dressed like some organ grinder’s monkey. Suddenly he realized how ridiculous he was. Fuck you, Dante. Why’d you have to come here tonight and spoil everything? Maybe he’d get killed and come home in a box.

  Dante turned when someone called his name. He shook hands with some old couple from Valentine Avenue; then some girls coming in late handed Willie their tickets—without even glancing at him. They kept staring at Dante; turned back, grinned at him. With his luck, the bastard, his ship would sink and he’d swim away from it. Like John Wayne.

  The show was starting. Dante’s girl stood at the doorway, shrugged politely, smiled.

  Dante acknowledged her with a nod. Right with you.

  “Say, listen, Willie. I was with my uncles, the Ruccis, Victor and Joseph, this morning, over on Bathgate Avenue. They got a meat and fruit and vegetable business. Do you have a driver’s license?”

  Willie tensed. Maybe something was coming his way. Those uncles over to Bathgate, they always had something going. Willie heard things; they were big money.

  “I could get one, I know how to drive. Why?”

  “Well, with the draft, my uncles are losing all their drivers. You work nights here? They need a coupla drivers early in the morning, going out to the markets at College

  Point, down to Fulton Street, for pickups and distribution. They pay good money and it isn’t all that hard. They got handlers to load and unload. You interested?”

  Willie’s heart lurched. Was he interested?

  “Well, I’ll think about it.” Don’t do me no favors.

  “Okay, I’ll give my Uncle Joseph a call. He’s the one to see. It’s really good money, kid. Listen, I better get going. Really good
to see you, Willie. You take care now.”

  Yeah. Take care now. Fuckin’ guinea bastard. Take good care.

  Joseph Rucci hired him within two minutes of his arrival. Don’t worry, the license will be taken care of; Dante said you was a good boy, that’s all I need to know.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SERGEANT CHARLEY O’BRIEN’S COLD WAS worse. His nose was raw and running, his throat scratchy, his ears clogged, and his eyes watery. But he’d seen Jacobs, a tall, rangy man with a mild manner, continue on duty and work his way through flu and a 104-degree temperature. It wasn’t that Charley was trying to measure up to the old man—the captain was twenty-seven if he was a day—it was just that he didn’t want to let Jacobs down. But it would be really stupid to die of pneumonia when the war in Germany was over.

  It was a thirty-mile trip to the southeast, a cool day for April. The captain consulted his road map, gave directions, sat quietly. Very quietly. He was never what you’d call a great talker, but he had a dry sense of humor and a sharp wit. Sometimes it took Charley a little while to get the joke or decide if there was a joke. He wondered if maybe he was a little slow. Or if it was just that Jacobs was so damn smart. But then, if he was so damn smart, how come he pulled all the hazardous assignments—with Charley, of course, as his driver? They had been in too many precarious situations, with Jacobs, hunched over his notebook, calculating which army was where, trying to figure out who the fuck was shooting at them as they raced along unaccounted-for roads. British fire? German? American? It wouldn’t matter, of course, if they got blown to hell, which side got them. But Charley sat tight, glancing from time to time at Jacobs as the captain consulted his maps and papers and made reports on the radio, telling the brass whether or not it was safe to send the troops along. Or to ask who, exactly, was shooting at their asses at the moment.

  Abe Jacobs was probably the bravest man Charley had ever seen, and he had seen many heroes. Some cowards, too, along the way—but who knew how the hell you’d react in certain situations? What Charley did was to pattern himself on Jacobs. If Jacobs sat up straight, took a deep breath, and kept his eyes straight ahead, so did Charley. If Jacobs’s voice went low and he jerked his head, said “Hit the dirt, Charley,” they moved as though synchronized, leaping from the jeep, rolling into a ditch, hands over heads, waiting out whatever incoming seemed directed at them. Actually, Charley felt safe around Jacobs, as though he had some kind of magic powers. He was Charley’s totem, his shield.

  They had all heard about Ohrdruf, that it had been some kind of work camp, and all of the workers, prisoners, were dead. The locals had been recruited to deal with the dead.

  The air was so heavy with the stench of death that it seemed solid. It permeated the area a good five miles from the camp, and as they drove closer the smell was cut with the sharpness of lime. All along the road, they passed Allied prisoner-of-war camps: hundreds of German soldiers standing behind quickly thrown-together enclosures of barbed wire nailed to wooden posts. As they drove closer to Ohrdruf, groups of German soldiers, arms in the air, shuffled under the guidance of a couple of GIs who looked exhausted with the work of rounding up the surrendering enemy.

  The town itself seemed strangely untouched by war. The houses were neat; they even seemed freshly painted. Flowers bloomed brightly along clean brick walks. Curtains blew inward from gusts of spring air. The sparkling windows were evidence of good hausfraus hard at work.

  Some civilians, neatly dressed—the men clean-shaven, the women well groomed—stood along the road, waving at them. Some people called out, clasping their hands together, to the officer and the sergeant as their jeep slowed down for a moment.

  “What are they saying, Captain?”

  “They’re saying, ‘Thank God for the Americans. No Russians, please God.’”

  As they drove closer to the camp, there were no more welcoming, waving civilians. They encountered surrendering soldiers in groups and singly, a couple of buddies together, hands in the air, calling out listlessly.

  “They want to surrender to us.” Jacobs jerked his thumb over his shoulder, shouting to the Germans in their own language, telling them to continue straight through Ohrdruf. There were detention pens waiting. The soldiers nodded, heads bobbing, smiles. The enemy.

  They came upon the trucks that were left behind, manned by no more than five or six GIs. Their assignment, right outside of the camp, was to collect the weapons being surrendered by the German army. They supervised the loading of the weapons, which were carefully handled by German soldiers who looked barely teenaged.

  One of the two MPs approached as Charley brought the jeep to a halt. Jacobs identified himself and Charley. The MP escorted them on foot to the entrance of the camp, where they were immediately greeted by a short, stout German in what appeared to be a dinner suit, complete with crisp white shirt and black bow tie. He bowed several times, as though he was to be their host. Then he stood up straight, clicked his heels together, and saluted.

  Jacobs ignored him. Charley nodded at the man, some petty town official, and followed Jacobs into the camp.

  Inside the compound was a scene that brought to mind all that Charley had been taught about hell. Minus the fire.

  He clenched his teeth and breathed in shallow gasps, trying hard not to swallow the taste of death and rot, which went deeper than anything he had ever experienced. It would permeate his clothing; it would adhere to his exposed face, his hair, his hands; it would be with him forever, this death smell.

  The German functionary walked ahead and to one side, almost backwards, as he began explaining. Finally, Jacobs said something harsh and abrupt and the German dropped his head, took a few steps back, and stared at the ground.

  The two Americans stood, transfixed, unable immediately to comprehend the horror. Bone-thin naked bodies with skulls that seemed too large to be supported by skinny necks lay stacked ten feet high. Charley could not associate the twisted feet, the frozen clutching hands, the glazed dead eyes with anything human.

  “Who were they?” he asked Jacobs, trying to find some humanity in all this. All he could see and sense was debris, nothing human, something so obscene that it could not be real.

  “He says”—Jacobs jerked his chin at the German—“they were captive workers. Prisoners from the east. All civilians, many criminals, some crazy people. He says they probably died from disease. He says there were no doctors or medicine, everything was for the army. He says they were very dirty and they spread the disease to each other. He says …”

  Jacobs’s mouth closed tightly as he bit his back teeth together. Not looking at Charley, or at anything, he continued. “He says, this fat pig here, he says they tried to share food with these people, but they wouldn’t accept it. They were very difficult people. Mostly Jews, they wouldn’t eat food that wasn’t kosher.”

  Charley turned and stared at the man who had appointed himself their guide and their host.

  The German shrugged, tried a smile: What could one do with such people?

  A young American sergeant came up to Jacobs, saluted casually. “We’ve got a work crew of locals over here, Captain. They’ve been drafted for burial detail.”

  “How many corpses?”

  “Hundreds. We got one group of thirty that got killed within the last forty-eight hours.” Jacobs stared at the GI, who pantomimed shooting a machine gun. “They apparently were the only ones still alive before the pullout, so they shot them. The locals are digging their graves. We’re having huge lime pits prepared—by them—for mass graves.”

  “Were there any guards left?”

  “Oh, yeah. We got two live ones. Put in place by the SS last week. So they had nothing to do with any of this, right?”

  “Right,” said Jacobs.

  They walked around, looking over the wooden barracks with neatly constructed, utilitarian bunks rising from floor to ceiling, each bunk built to accommodate eight people. Not more than a few inches away from each other, they lined both sides of th
e windowless room. The smell was unbearable: fetid human waste, the smell of indescribable agony.

  Jacobs strode quickly through the barracks, seeming to see without actually looking, his eyes glancing quickly, his brain storing it all. They walked around the camp, watched the burial activities, watched the locals, all well dressed, well nourished, as they carefully dug with the shovels provided for them. They nodded at him, an officer, they ducked their heads in deference, mopped their sweating brows, adjusted the handkerchiefs tied over their faces. Women worked along with the men, their faces stony and unrevealing.

  Jacobs had seen enough. He walked quickly back to the jeep, waited for Charley to take the wheel. He touched Charley’s arm, handed him his sidearm.

  “Hang on to this for me, kid, or the next German I see who wants to surrender is a dead man.”

  They traveled back to headquarters. Along the way, a very young, very blond, blue-eyed soldier approached the jeep, his hands in the air. He smiled, nodded, offered himself to them.

  “Stop,” Jacobs told Charley. He got down from the jeep, went to the boy soldier, spoke for a moment, then pointed back toward the camp. The boy’s face crumpled, turned red, tears streamed down his bright pink cheeks. He reached out, clutched Jacobs’s arm, pleading.

  Charley stiffened, waited. Jacobs took the boy by the shoulders, spun him around, shoved him, then got back in the jeep and told Charley to get going. Fast.

  “What’d you say to him, Captain?”

  Staring straight ahead, Jacobs said quietly, “I told him he had to find the Russians. The Americans have their quota of Germans. I told him the Russians will cut off his arms and then his legs, after they all rape him, and then they will leave him in a ditch somewhere.” He turned to Charley. “That’s what I told him. Do you have any questions?”

  “Absolutely none, sir.”

  “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Ohrdruf was just the beginning, the first camp they saw. Jacobs was assigned to inspect and report on camps called Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt. And finally he was assigned to Auschwitz, where both his reportorial skills and his facility with German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish would be of value to the U.S. Army.