The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx

by Arthur Nersesian

  “Mom, don’t worry about her dress not being expensive enough. This isn’t a social.”

  “If it were up to you, we’d all be in rags,” Bella accused feverishly. Her face was ashen.

  “Not everyone inherited a fortune.”

  “You don’t need a million dollars to dress well!” she rasped, and started coughing.

  Maria waved for Paul to calm down. While the little girl sat with Bella, Maria took Paul outside and said, “Go have a cigarette and cool down.”

  “She’s so annoying!”

  “She’s dying, Paul. There’s no need to fight anymore.”

  The next shift of nurses arrived and helped Bella use the bathroom. As they prepared to give her a sponge bath, Lucretia, Maria, and Paul said goodnight and headed out. When Paul realized the maid and her daughter were walking to the subway, he offered them a lift.

  “We’re all the way up in the Bronx,” Maria said.

  “I don’t mind. In fact, I insist,” he replied. So the three got into his car and drove up to East Tremont in the Bronx. Once there, Paul commented on how nice the houses were. He had imagined them living in more of a shack.

  “The place is great, but it needs work.”

  “What kind of work?” Paul asked.

  “That’s the thing, I don’t really know.”

  Paul, who had accumulated a wealth of knowledge about construction during his engineering career, offered to take a quick look.

  Maria and Lucretia made dinner for him as he changed into dungarees and an old shirt that he dug out of his trunk and crawled under the house. Next he went up to the attic, inspecting the load-bearing walls and integrity of the building.

  “Well, the good news is, you have a nice old place that looks fairly sound,” he explained half an hour later. “The bad news is it can use a lot of little repairs.” When Maria expressed a look of concern, Paul said, “Maybe I can come by and help.”

  “No, Paul, you’ve been kind enough.”

  “You’ve helped me so much with my mother and I’d really like to repay the favor.”

  She thanked him politely and he left. Over the next few months, when Paul would bump into Maria at the hospital, she had a calming effect on him. When Bella would make a nasty remark, she’d step in before things could escalate, giving him a chance to cool off. By the end of 1929, just months after the stock-market crash, Paul’s relationship with his mother had improved to such a state that Bella began consulting him about her business affairs.

  Uli knew this would be the beginning of the end for Paul. The Depression of the 1930s was just waiting for him. He wished he could find some way to impart this information—Dump all your stocks and make peace with your dying mother!—but it was as if he were picking up a radio transmission from fifty years before; all this was long behind him.

  Just as he had been told by the blind beard, the first floor of the Mkultra—the Lethe—seemed to be made up of nothing more than large rows of desks extending on and on, secretarial pools occasionally interrupted by waiting areas or conference rooms. As Uli traveled further outward, he encountered large executive suites lining the edges of the massive floor. Warped and buckled parquet wood covered everything. He didn’t see any staircases, but from time to time he’d come across gaping holes smashed through the ceiling into an upper floor. He’d shout up, but hear nothing back. When he found something that resembled a rope dangling out of one hole, he grabbed it and started climbing. Before he could make it very far, however, he heard a frantic whispering above him. Fearing an ambush, he slipped back down and stayed on the Lethe level.

  Uli periodically called out, “Play Dough!” in hopes of finding this mysterious leader. As his ears adjusted, he began hearing a variety of little clicking and scuttling noises. Some of the sounds were from the leaks, as people had strategically positioned trash baskets to catch the drips. But it wasn’t until he saw the first rat with its bright white hair and beady pink eyes that he realized what accounted for the constant scampering he was hearing. Soon, he started spotting them all over—the Lethe was infested.

  After an hour or so he saw his first human, a form moving about in the distance. Uli watched as the dark figure picked up one of the many drip-catching buckets and drank from it.

  “Play Dough?” he called.

  When the figure dashed behind a pillar, Uli remembered that he was in a hostile environment.

  If there was some pattern to the vast layout of the Lethe, Uli didn’t recognize it. Occasionally a barricade of desks and chairs forced him to create new paths. Several lines of phosphorescent paint ran along the floor in different directions. Uli followed one until it dead-ended at a wall. At another point, he thought he felt a breeze. Looking up, he glimpsed a hole in the ceiling with large metal rods bent downward as though a small meteor had crashed through. He decided to investigate. Pushing a desk below it, he was able to jump up and catch one of the rods. He pulled himself up through the hole to a cracked wooden floor, where he had to carefully avoid getting splinters.

  On this new level he found a series of laboratory counters. Broken glass littering the ground worried him since the old cardboard over his feet was not very thick. Inspecting the shards, he discovered they were shattered test tubes and beakers. They must’ve done animal testing here, he thought, noticing open cages of varying sizes scattered throughout. He wondered if there had been any germ-warfare testing, and if any pathogens were still airborne.

  17

  Uli covered his ears; for the first time, instead of resisting he tried to engage the Paul visions. They were the only distraction as he walked, the only place to hide from everything around him. He remembered Paul building a large empty space like the one before him. It was a dance hall. And if people were coming for romantic evenings, Paul thought, they should have a cocktail bar. “Go the whole way,” his girlfriend Teresa advised, encouraging him to add a restaurant, a nice place where a guy could drop a chunk of change on his gal. But while visiting one weekend and seeing so many blue-collar Joes eating sandwiches in their cars, Paul decided to add a diner. Then he figured a bowling alley would really tie the knot. He got in touch with a contractor, showed him the plans, and the construction soon began.

  At the end of the year, though, Paul was drained. Despite the fact that the swimming club had had a profitable summer and he was drawing a good paycheck from Con Ed, he still couldn’t cover the expansion. For the first time, due to the Depression, the income that had been consistently coming in since he bought the place started slackening. With bill collectors knocking, he broke down and asked his mother for an “advance” on his inheritance.

  “Your brother just asked me for a twenty-thousand-dollar loan to build some goddamn highway to his Jones Beach place and now you want my money to add more water to your swimming pool?”

  “Mom, the taxes from the people of New York should be paying for their highways. I’m building a family business that will soon be the most successful club in central Pennsylvania. Hell, I think it can attract people as far away as here in the city.”

  Lying in her hospital bed, Bella took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. “Are you a moron? Who the hell is going to drag their family three hours out to Pennsylvania to a swimming pool, when your brother has given them an ocean-front resort for free?”

  “For your sake, I hope there’s no hell, cause you aren’t long for this world!”

  A few days later, when he finally got up the strength to reconcile with his mother once again, she refused to take his calls. Over the course of the next two weeks, he’d listen to her phone just ring and ring. He didn’t understand why she was so angry. They had always fought. This time was no different. He couldn’t even remember what he had said to her. It didn’t matter, he needed to stay at Llenarch and do everything he could to try to bring it up to speed.

  He called Edna to seek her advice.

  “You should just go down and visit her. She’s not doing well.”

  “I’ll try,”
Paul replied. Then, as an afterthought, he asked how Robert was faring.

  “All last week, Robert kept talking about running for mayor on the reform ticket.”

  “Mayor?”

  “Yeah, but the plan quickly fell through when he realized he couldn’t get the support.”

  “I wish I had problems like that,” Paul said.

  “He just endorsed the new reform candidate.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Some little Italian guy, a congressman from Harlem. If the guy gets elected, Robert’s hoping to get in his cabinet.”

  “Maybe he’ll be the next chief of police,” Paul kidded.

  “No, he’s secured appointments on several commissions, so he can’t work full time.”

  “I guess there’s not much left after being secretary of state.” Paul was glad that his bastard brother had been taken down a couple notches.

  One Friday, after getting news that a businessman was interested in meeting with him on Monday to possibly buy a percentage of the club, Paul felt so exhilarated that he drove straight into New York to tell his mom the good news. Upon entering her room, he was surprised by what he saw. Nearly yellow from kidney failure, she looked awful. Flesh was just hanging off of her, and she was trembling with sweat. He gently woke her, but she was dosed with painkillers. Her eyes fluttered, she smiled a bit and muttered, “Hi, Paul.”

  “Hi, Mom.” He tried to keep from crying.

  She closed her eyes and resumed sleeping. The woman he had known all his life—opinionated, strong-willed, and intrusive—had shrunk down to this dying little old lady. He sat next to her bed for three hours, until the nurse came by to help her with a bedpan.

  “I’ll come back first thing on Tuesday,” he vowed, and gave her a kiss on her sweaty forehead. That afternoon he drove back to Llenarch through a rainstorm.

  On Monday morning he received a phone call from Edna at his Pennsylvania office. Their mother had just passed away in her sleep. “Why the hell didn’t you stay with her?”

  “My business is on the verge of going under. I had a crucial meeting with a potential investor this morning.”

  “We were all here except for you. Even Robert canceled his appointment with Governor Roosevelt.”

  A week later, gathered with his brother and sister in the office of their family lawyer, he listened as the will was read. Paul expected to hear that her estate, including what their father had left, would be divided evenly between the three children. Instead, the lawyer announced that it would essentially be split between Robert and Edna. Paul had been left the interest from a principal of one hundred thousand dollars—he had been cut!

  Upon hearing this, Paul looked over at his siblings, believing they would share in the indignity of it all, but neither of them returned his gaze. As the full magnitude of his mother’s cruelty hit him, he felt as if his fate were sealed. Despite their many fights, he had always believed she loved him. He knew he had never stopped loving her.

  “I can’t believe this,” Paul said, and asked the attorney if he could look at the will. Doing so, he immediately realized that the document had been rewritten in just the last few weeks. It was brand new, not the one he had seen when she first became ill.

  “Paul, we talked with Mom …” his sister began.

  “Edna, please let me handle this,” Robert said. “Paul, this isn’t about any of us. This is Mom’s will, both literally and legally, and we plan to honor it.”

  “I can’t believe she’d do this to me.”

  “What are you saying, Paul? That we did it?” Robert asked.

  “I’m saying that this is insane. And I can’t believe that you two—”

  “Goddamnit, Paul, I spent years, years telling you not to fight with her! I begged you—”

  “No one is going to tell me how to live my life!” Paul shot back.

  “Oh, give it a break,” his brother said. “No one’s ever told you what to do with your goddamn life and you know it! This is about you constantly riling Mom.”

  “When I get attacked, I respond!”

  “And this is what you get for it.”

  “This is unfair. Some of that money belonged to Dad and—”

  “Paul, she didn’t cut you out,” Edna countered, “she simply didn’t give you an even share.”

  “I can’t believe you two are going through with this.”

  “This is her last will and testament and, like it or not, we’ve agreed to stand by it,” Robert said.

  Even Uli hadn’t expected Paul to be cut out of his mother’s will—and though the two brothers weren’t close, he never suspected a doublecross. Uli’s thoughts were accompanied by the persistent scuttling and squeaking of rats.

  Large laboratory counters, chairs, and tables had been pulled apart and rearranged to section off areas of the vast wooden floor. It appeared almost as if organized battles had taken place here—but where would the bodies have gone?

  At one point he spotted the faint flickering of a small bonfire. Uli cautiously approached a small group huddled before the flame. As he got within a hundred feet, however, they noticed him and scattered.

  “I just want to talk!” he shouted, to no avail.

  Soon, he began spotting corpses. He inspected each one he came across, but the state of decomposition always made scavenging impossible. While carefully making his way beneath a massive obstacle course of broken desks, Uli reflected that the entire space felt like some giant skyscraper that had collapsed into just a few levels, spilling every which way.

  Whenever he passed an upright desk, he scrounged through its drawers for supplies. In one drawer, to his delight, he found a small working flashlight. In another were two mercury dimes. Besides these items, he found little else of use.

  Proceeding through the darkness, he began hearing distant screams. He cautiously followed the cries for about five minutes until he saw what appeared to be a pool of light in the distance. Next to it, an older man was lying on his back. Flipping on the little flashlight, he saw that blood was running from fellow’s neck into a puddle of phosphorescent paint that had spilled from a bucket. The man had apparently been attacked while painting the lines that Uli noticed earlier. A small incision ran across the guy’s neck—he was still breathing.

  “What were you painting?”

  “Lines for Plato.”

  “Why? Where to?”

  The man winced in pain.

  When Uli confirmed that there was nothing he could do, he asked, “Who did this?”

  “Fucking miner,” the man sputtered. “Stole the vest Plato gave me. Had a stripe on it …”

  Uli remembered hearing about the miners in the Sticks. “Where’d he go?”

  The man pointed with his eyes toward his feet. A moment later he stopped breathing. Uli delicately undressed him—his ragged yellow tennis shoes, torn pants, and blood-soaked shirt, all probably recycled from earlier victims. He left the unfortunate man in his underwear. None of the clothes fit Uli but at least they stayed on.

  He headed in the indicated direction for about twenty minutes until, much to his surprise, he saw it: a small stripe bobbing in the darkness. It was the murderous miner wearing the stolen vest, walking about five hundred feet ahead of him. For the next hour or so, Uli followed at a generous distance—down holes, across vast spaces, and through other ruptures in the ceilings and wood floors—until he finally lost the killer.

  18

  The notion of dying in this place, with all the rotting corpses around him, terrified Uli. Even Paul had friends. Yet other than Teresa and her kids, the only people who consoled him at his mother’s funeral were Maria and her daughter Lucretia. Apparently, everyone believed he had neglected his mother during her final days. Mr. Robert and Edna stood near her coffin.

  As the oldest, Paul spoke first. He eulogized his mother respectfully, explaining that depite the endless spats between them, their love had only increased over the years. Robert then spoke eloquently about her zealous phil
anthropy and eternal wisdom. Edna said that Bella had been both her mother and her best friend. They made their moody parent sound like a regular Florence Nightingale. Afterwards, none of Paul’s aunts, cousins, or close family friends seemed to even notice him unless he approached them directly.

  Two weeks later, the family lawyer verified that Paul had been left with whatever interest could be generated from a hundred-thousand-dollar trust. Furthermore, that trust was to be administered by Mr. Robert and Wilfred Openhym, a cousin. The final humiliation was a clause stating that if Paul ever contested the will, he’d forfeit every cent. This had all the fingerprints of his dear brother.

  Around this time, Paul started noticing Robert’s name in the paper again. He had just been appointed as the first citywide Parks Commissioner of New York. Small articles began appearing, announcing ribbon-cutting ceremonies at small parks throughout the five boroughs. Soon the son of bitch seemed to be pulling playgrounds and swimming pools out of thin air. “Vest-pocket parks,” they were called, unused city property that Robert snatched up and converted into recreation space. Then it was announced that after years of neglect, Central Park was being extensively renovated. A new restaurant, Tavern on the Green, was being built in a former sheepfold near the Great Lawn, which was being re-sod and seeded.

  Paul called Robert at his office one day, and when the secretary asked his name, Paul facetiously explained that he was a reporter intending to write a puff piece on how Robert Moses tamed Central Park. He was surprised when the call actually went through. As soon as Robert picked up, Paul said that he was sorry about the way things had turned out between them and that he had made peace with their mother’s will.

  “All I hope,” Paul said, “is that maybe we can bury the hatchet and be brothers again.”

  Robert listened patiently. When Paul asked if he could secure a short loan for his business, Robert said that with his own mounting expenses, he simply couldn’t afford it. Paul had already asked Edna and she, too, had claimed that her money was tied up and that she couldn’t help him. The Depression was taking a toll on everyone.