26
Paul’s marathon renovation job inspired Uli in his work with Root. The man’s repressed feelings for Lucretia catalyzed Uli’s growing attraction to his new friend.
One day, when Paul found some wilted flowers on the porch, he asked what was up. Lucretia casually answered, “Oh, it’s just Leon.”
“Who’s Leon?”
“Leon Timmons Skacrowski.” She explained that the man’s mom and Maria had been the only two Jamaicans living in the area thirty years before; both had married half-Jewish men, so he and Lucretia had become childhood friends and then teenage sweethearts.
Leon’s father had died about ten years before, leaving him an old scrap-metal yard on the south side of Crotona Park in Morrisania, commonly referred to by East Trem-onters as the “slum.”
“You should go to a game with him,” Lucretia said. “He loves baseball.”
“That’s the one thing the Bronx has over anywhere else—the Yankees.”
“When the Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson, Leon switched allegiances.”
“The Brooklyn Dodgers?” Paul replied. “Last time I went to Ebbets Field, I fell through one of the damn seats.”
“Leon will be happy to show you all the new ones.”
For the next five days all went well. The laborers were moving an impressive amount of rubble. One of the diggers even commented to Root, “We’ll be out soon, no thanks to you.”
“That one doesn’t like you much,” Uli observed.
“He’s really paranoid,” Root explained. “He keeps telling the others I’m some kind of CIA agent.”
At one point Uli noticed a fat young miner ending his shift who looked strangely familiar. Since another miner, the only black one, was due back momentarily, Uli quickly switched wires and pulled out the younger fellow’s possessions, replacing them with the black man’s items. Moments later, the black miner and the young, bespectacled man converged simultaneously at the mouth of the same tunnel. Uli heard a quick squabble break out, then saw the young man crawl out to the large silo and say, “Something screwy’s going on here.”
“What are you talking about?” Root asked.
“For starters, someone changed the path of my wire and I don’t know where my things are!”
When Uli approached, the younger miner seized a rod from the ground as if he was being attacked.
“Just relax,” Root intervened. Turning to the young miner, she spoke quietly: “Look, we redirected the wires, but we did it for a reason.
“What reason?”
“You seem fairly lucid, so I’m trusting you with this. I have a diagram I can show you.”
“What diagram?”
“There are six tunnels going in six different directions that offer the best chance of getting out of here. Do you understand?”
Uli was now able to see the fat young miner’s face up close. Suddenly identifying the man, Uli lurched over and shoved him to the ground. “You’re Manny Lewis,” he snapped, then turned to Root. “He killed my friend Oric outside Cooper Union in Rescue City!”
“I didn’t kill anyone!”
Uli had his knees on the fat boy’s arms so he couldn’t budge.
“Hold it!” Root shrieked.
“He was a Pigger spy.”
“I should have killed you then!” Manny started to squirm.
“You’ll never have the opportunity,” Uli spat.
“Root, if you let me go, I’ll work with you …” the young miner appealed as Uli started strangling him.
“Wait a sec!” Root cried out. “We’re here now and we need people on our side.”
“Can’t you see he’s lying? He’s just trying to save himself!”
“That’s not true!” Manny said in a high, constricted voice. “I only went after you because of who you are.”
“Who is he?” Root asked, as she tried to pull Uli off.
“Former FBI,” Manny said, gasping for breath.
“You’re FBI?”
“You’re nuts!” Uli shot back at Manny.
“He worked for COINTELPRO in the ’60s. Hoover’s right-hand boy.”
“I suppose the Piggers told you that,” Uli said.
“No, I recognized you from your photo. So did others who were content to just let it go—but I said no. This guy did everything from planting false evidence to illegal wiretappings.”
Uli slowly climbed off the kid and tried to think whether any of this made sense. Then he said what he remembered most clearly. “My name is Paul Moses.”
“That’s a total lie,” Manny replied.
“I was born in New Haven, my siblings were Robert and Edna, my parents were Bella and Emanuel, and I attended Princeton and fought in the Mexican Revolution.”
“The Mexican Revolution was something like seventy years ago!” Manny countered. “You’d have to be a century old.”
“Then it was a different Mexican Revolution, cause I remember being there,” Uli said.
“Look, we’re all buried alive, living like rats in some massive underground crypt. We could die here,” Root reasoned. “Our only chance of getting out of is by working together.”
Manny said he was willing to accept a truce. Uli didn’t respond—he was still wondering if what the boy had said was really true. Either way, it didn’t matter; Root was right: They were all stuck down here and they needed the kid’s help.
They decided to alter their plan accordingly. Manny quit digging and began helping Root to redirect the miners into the selected tunnels. Meanwhile, Uli stayed alone at the top end of the Sticks to feed and tend to the laborers. Though all seemed to be going well over the next few days, Uli felt a growing anxiety that it was just a matter of time before the other miners discovered they were all being duped.
27
Paul came downstairs around dinnertime one evening to find Lucretia sitting with her childhood friend Leon Skacrowski over a cup of coffee. The shaggy-haired half-Jamaican youth was rocking back and forth slightly as Lucretia chatted about old times. She introduced them.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you had a visitor,” Paul said.
“Actually, we’re about to go see a movie,” Lucretia replied.
“A movie?”
“Yeah, and if we don’t leave now we’re going to miss the beginning,” Leon added. Lucretia grabbed her jacket.
“Would you mind watching Toto?” she asked Paul. He said that was fine.
This day marked the beginning of Lucretia’s renewed romance with Leon. She seemed to be saying to Paul: If you don’t take me, this slow-witted man will. One morning several days later, when Paul came downstairs and found Leon sitting at the kitchen table reading the sports pages, he realized that she had done the unthinkable—Leon had spent the night.
“I tell you,” the young man said with pride, “now that the Dodgers have grabbed the pennant, there’s nothing stopping them.” After finishing his fourth heaping bowl of corn flakes, Leon thanked Lucretia for the wonderful night and left.
Paul exited the room in dismay. His renovation of Lu-cretia’s house was nearly complete, so he had begun working on her overgrown garden in back and along the sides of her house. He had already cut down three dead trees and spent the day uprooting half a dozen thornbushes to lay down a flower bed. Late that afternoon, Paul stormed into the kitchen, sweaty with cuts and scabs, and shouted, “Is this is your way at getting back at me? If so, that’s fine, but you’re only hurting yourself!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sleeping with that moron is what I’m talking about!”
“What business is—”
“You and I both know that you could date a thousand guys smarter and more handsome.”
“I’ve known Leon all my life. He’s a trustworthy man.” Lucretia stared blankly at the far wall.
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re dating a big dumb man just to spite me.”
“And how about you?” she cried out with uncharacteristic
fervor. “Why don’t you admit why you’re still here?”
“Twenty years ago I promised your mother I’d do some repairs and—”
“You finished weeks ago!”
Paul slumped down next to her and looked at the ground. “For me, the definition of love is … the supreme generosity of spirit beyond all selfish desires.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying a person who feels truly worthless has no right to love someone else. I mean, the most loving thing I can do is leave here now and never look back.”
Lucretia rose and gently wrapped her arms around Paul. Leaning forward, he delicately kissed her on the lips.
Uli could almost hear the quickening of Lucretia’s soft breaths as he washed and fed the laborers. It took him a moment to realize that there were faint screams coming from the direction of the distant silo. Then he heard feet racing by his cave. He hoped that one of the miners had actually broken through into a new shaft and scurried toward the silo. When he reached the high-ceilinged room he discovered five miners surrounding Manny, who was bleeding profusely and backing toward a dark corner. Before Uli could intervene, the Italian miner came up from behind and cracked the kid across the skull. The others rushed in and started beating him viciously. Root was nowhere to be seen. Uli ran back up to the storage area to look for her. Almost immediately, two other miners rushed in from the Mkultra.
“They got the kid!” Uli shouted, pretending to be among them. Two other miners hurried down, joining the mob. Uli recognized one of them, who he and Root had labeled “Dave.” Together they headed down into the silo.
“What happened?” Uli asked him.
“We found out that this bastard and that bitch were screwing with us.”
“How?”
“From that,” he replied, pointing up.
Uli glanced nervously at the corpse hanging from the wooden tower.
“I knew one of them had cut down Xolotl’s body and replaced it with some other body,” Dave said, motioning up to the suspended cadaver. “So I told everyone to be on the lookout and we discovered they were switching wires on us.”
“Why would they do that?” Uli asked.
“The same reason she killed the other woman,” said another miner who was listening in. “She’s CIA! She’s deliberately trying to make us waste our time here.”
“Where is the bitch anyhow?” Dave asked.
“One of the guys grabbed her, but she hit him with pepper spray and ran away,” the second miner replied. “He got a solid punch off. Broke her fucking nose. We raced after her, but she disappeared in the offices.”
Uli looked over to Manny Lewis’s bloody body, which had been unceremoniously dumped in a corner.
“There’s another guy too,” the Italian said, his vest also smeared with blood.
“Yeah, I remember a third guy,” Uli heard someone else chime in.
Eventually the miners simmered down and began milling around. Several crawled back down into the Convolution toward their caves.
28
Four months after their encounter across from Grand Central Station, Paul Moses finally broke down and asked for Lucretia’s hand in marriage. She wondered to herself how much longer it would take to get him to start producing children and money.
The first goal was easy. He initiated sex as soon as she woke up every morning and at night before bed—pregnancy was inevitable. Work, however, he rarely mentioned.
One Sunday after breakfast, as Paul flipped through the New York Times, Lucretia picked up a section of the paper he had tossed aside. It was the employment listings.
“You’re an engineer, right?”
“An electrical engineer,” he said, engrossed in an article about the new state of Israel.
“Let’s see … where is that?” She carefully surveyed the various job headings.
“I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to secure something,” he muttered absently. “Robert has built a blockade around me.”
“Robert, your brother?”
Paul had worked hard not to repeat the same mistake he had made with Teresa. He had been trying to avoid even mentioning Robert.
“How exactly has he blockaded you?”
“He kept me from getting a state position in Water, Gas, and Electricity, and I’m pretty sure he blocked me from getting a city commissionership as well.”
“Have you talked to him directly about this?”
“I tried,” Paul said, then put his newspaper down. He stole my inheritance right out from under me.”
Lucretia sat perplexed, wondering what to say or do. She knew that Paul no longer had access to the vast wealth that once made him master and her mother servant, but his chronic unemployment was going to complicate things considerably. Even Leon, who she thought of as little more than a glorified garbage collector, had a job.
Several days passed and Root was still missing. Although the miners slowly returned to their digs, Uli was reluctant to lead the zombielike laborers out of their caves. That had been Root’s job, and he feared mimicking her movements too closely. With their daily routines interrupted, the laborers were growing increasingly anxious. Uli tried looking after them, but feeding, watering, and cleaning that many was difficult, not to mention dangerous. The more energetic ones started walking aimlessly, and a few actually wandered back into the Mkultra.
After a week, a couple of the sickliest workers died. Then one morning Uli entered the silo to see a fresh chubby body dangling from the heights of the desk tower. It wasn’t until Uli found the large head, which had been cleanly circumcised and tossed in a corner, that he confirmed it was Manny. They had violently twisted his feet backwards—he was the latest offering to their bullshit death guide.
29
When Paul entered the kitchen, Lucretia and her friend May went silent.
“Paul,” May began, “I was just telling Lucretia that you’d make a great high school teacher.”
“Why in the world would you say that?” he asked, thinking she might be kidding him.
“Cause you’re smart and patient. You’re a natural teacher.”
“What are the qualifications to teach in this city?” he asked.
“Just a bachelor’s degree, and then you have to take some courses to get your license. But you can do substitute teaching until you get one.”
Paul could see his beautiful fiancée watching him apprehensively. In that instant he grasped that he had walked into an ambush: Lucretia had been dropping continuous hints about him getting a job; now she had enlisted a neighbor. All he could do was smile.
“That doesn’t sound half bad,” he relented. “What’s the pay and benefits?”
“Salary starts at thirteen thousand a year. There’s health insurance and a pension plan, and they’re always looking for people.”
“So where do I sign up?”
Lucretia’s face lit up.
“In Brooklyn Heights at 110 Livingston Street. Once you finish the certification, they put you on an availability list. But don’t take any jobs—Jimmy will hire you right here in East Tremont so you can be within walking distance of your house. Plus, you get summers and holidays off.”
Paul poured himself a glass of cold water and took a long sip. In a strange way, this simple plan could be the headstone for a much greater goal: Instead of recapturing a success he never really had and trying to shove it in his brother’s face, he could focus on the more tangible targets of supporting his young wife and their offspring to come.
30
Memories of Paul were the only bright spot in his life now. Uli imagined he was sitting in the back row of a small, sweet wedding ceremony at the local Temple Emmanuel. Afterwards they held a buffet-style reception at El Sombrero, a Spanish restaurant on East Tremont Avenue. One by one, over the course of the evening, the entire neighborhood seemed to stop by to congratulate the lucky bride and groom. They left wrapped wedding gifts or envelopes of cash, which were greatly appreciated
. No one from Paul’s side of the family showed up—nor had they been notified.
In July of 1948, at the age of sixty, he finished his eight required courses at Hunter College while teaching several classes.
The day he received his teaching license from Albany was also the last day for that season’s registration at the local high school. Lucretia called May Kearne because Paul was too embarrassed to contact her directly. Jimmy Kearne was head of the science department and juggled some assignments to free a schedule of classes for Paul.
Donning a crisp white shirt and a thin black tie for his first day of school, Paul stopped in the kitchen for coffee and hid his dread of babysitting a bunch of working-class brats. He loved Lucretia and didn’t want to disappoint her.
Paul arrived early to the school’s science department and Jimmy gave him a curriculum, the various chemistry textbooks to hand out, his homeroom assignment, and a class schedule.
“It’s all about advance preparation. Make sure you have a box of chalk, an eraser, and if you need to go to the bathroom, do it on the breaks. Also, you’ve got to be on top of all the paperwork or it’ll drown you: Grading papers, producing lesson plans, homework—all have to be done regularly. It’s not like college, don’t let the kids teach you. Other than that, don’t take no guff from no one, but be fair and you’ll do fine.” Only one other brand-new teacher reported for work that day, a smart-alecky war veteran who was less than half Paul’s age.
The task of teaching matched Paul’s skills surprisingly well. The authority of his age worked greatly to his advantage. Within a matter of months, the gratitude in the community was visible. People in the street frequently greeted him with a cheerful, “Hey, Mr. Moses!”
Lucretia saw it clearly. His hollow form seemed to fill out. His bitterness diminished. Even Paul’s stooped posture seemed to rectify itself as he took pride in his work.
At the end of the semester, Jimmy Kearne wrote in his teacher’s evaluation: Paul Moses is a gifted teacher, gently correcting students almost unconsciously. Fluent not just in the sciences and humanities, but in language skills as well. Relaxed, focused, firm, yet gentle, he is able to use his sense of humor as a motivational tool …
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx Page 13