by T E. D Klein
His room, at the moment, was empty, but a radio whispered softly in the corner, tuned to some news station, and I saw my wife’s handiwork in the freshly painted nightstand and armoire. I was admiring the job she’d done on the molding round the window when the two of them walked in, looking somewhat out of sorts. I asked them what was the matter.
“It’s that laundry room,” said Karen. “Only three of the washers are working, and we had a few slowpokes ahead of us. And of course your gallant old grandfather insisted that some women behind us go first, and we ended up waiting till everybody else was done. We just got the clothes in the dryer five minutes ago.”
“Now, now,” said Grandfather, “it’ll just be a few minutes more, and then we can get this show on the road.” He turned up the radio, an ancient white plastic Motorola, and for the next half hour we listened to reports of Mrs. Carter’s South American tour, South Moluccan terrorists in Holland, and increasingly hot weather in New York. Soon he stretched and began fiddling sleepily with his pipe, which, as long as I’d known him, he’d never been able to keep lit. My wife saw some spots she’d missed beneath the window. I picked up the laundry bag and headed down the hall, attempting to look useful. When the elevator arrived I pressed the lowest button, marked by a “B” as big as my thumb.
Minutes later, when the door slid open once again, I felt momentarily disoriented. Outside the world still lay in daylight; down here, now that the machines were not in use, the corridor was gloomy and silent. It reminded me of a hospital at midnight, tiled walls receding into the distance while, down the middle of the ceiling, a line of dim, caged safety-bulbs made spots of illumination separated by areas of shadow.
The door to the laundry room would normally have stood within the light, but the bulb just above it was missing, leaving that section of the hall somewhat darker than the rest. Opening the door, I reached inside and groped for the light switch while my face was bathed by waves of steamy air. The superintendent’s office must have been just beyond the farther wall, because I could hear, very faintly, the drumbeat of some mambo music. Then the fluorescent lights winked on, one after the other, with a loud, insect-like buzzing, but beneath it I could still make out the beat.
I recognized the broken washer at once. It was the unit in the corner at the back, the one that had been out of order weeks ago. Its electrical wire, coiled beside it, had been messily severed near the end, while another length still dangled from the socket in the wall. Evidently Frito had already attempted some repairs, for the unit had been pushed out of line, nearly two feet toward the center of the room. Beneath it, now exposed to view, lay a wide, semicircular drainage hole that extended, from the look of it, hundreds of feet down to some place Coleridge might have dreamed of, where waters flowed in everlasting night. No doubt the machines emptied into an underground spring, or one of those rivers that are said to run beneath Manhattan; only last winter the Times had written up a Mercer Street man who fished through a hole in his basement, pulling up eyeless white eels from a subterranean stream.
Leaning over, I caught a whiff of sewage, and could see, very dimly, the swirl of blackish current down below. Within it, outlined against the overhead lights, floated the reflection of my own familiar face, distorted by the movement of the water. It brought back memories of my honeymoon at a Catskill resort where, near the woods, an abandoned well lay covered by a moss-grown granite slab. When workmen lifted it aside my wife and I had peered into the hole, and for an instant had seen, there in the water, a pair of enormous frogs staring back at us, their pale bodies bloated like balloons. Suddenly they’d blinked, turned their bottoms up, and disappeared into the inky depths.
The dryer regarded me silently with its great cyclopean eye. The fluorescent lights buzzed louder. On the wall someone had scratched a crude five-pointed shape halfway between a holly leaf and a hand. I stuffed Grandfather’s laundry into the bag and hurried from the room, happy to get out of there. Before closing the door, I switched the lights off. In the darkness, more clearly now, I heard the drumming. Where was Frito, anyway? He should have been spending less time on the mambo and more on the machines.
Grandfather appeared to be dozing when I got back to his room, but as soon as I stepped inside he looked up, seized the laundry bag, and dumped it on his bed. “Got to have my lucky socks!” he said, searching through a collection of the rattiest looking underwear I’d ever seen.
“Where’s my skirt?” asked Karen, peering over his shoulder.
“You’re wearing it,” I said.
“No, I mean the one I had on first—that old summer thing I use for painting. It got filthy, so I stuck it in with Grandfather’s stuff.”
I knew the one she meant—a dowdy old green rag she’d had since college. “I must have left it in the dryer,” I said, and walked wearily back down the hall. The elevator hadn’t moved since I’d left it.
Yet someone had gotten to the laundry room ahead of me; I saw light streaming under the door, and heard the distant music and a stream of Spanish curses. Inside I found Frito, shoulders heaving as he strained to push the broken washer back against the wall. He looked very angry.
He turned when I came in, and nodded once in greeting. “You give me hand with this, yes? This thing, she weigh six hundred pound.”
“How’d you manage to move it out here in the first place?” I asked, eyeing the squat metal body. Six hundred seemed a conservative guess.
“Me?” he said. “I didn’t move it.” His eye narrowed. “Did you?”
“Of course not, I just thought—”
“Why I do this for, huh? Is no reason. Must have been los ninos. They do anything.”
I pointed to the severed wire. “And kids did that? Looks more like rats to me. I mean, look at it! It looks gnawed.”
“No,” he said, “I tell you once already, rats not gonna bother my machine. They try and eat through this stuff, they break their fuckin’ teeth. Same with the cement.” He stamped vehemently upon the floor; it sounded sturdy enough. “’Leven year I’m in this place, and never any trouble till a couple weeks ago. I want to buy a lock, but Calzone says—”
But my eye had just been caught by a blob of faded green lying crumpled in the shadow of the dryer by the wall. It was Karen’s skirt. Leaving the superintendent to his fulminations, I went to pick it up. I grasped the edge of the cloth—and dropped it with a cry of disgust. The thing was soaking wet, and, as I now saw, it had been lying in a puddle of milky white fluid whose origin seemed all too apparent. About it hung the sour odor I’d smelled before.
“Ugh!” I said. I made a face. I wasn’t going to take this back upstairs. Let Karen believe it was lost. Gingerly I prodded it across the floor with my foot and kicked it down the drainage hole. It flashed green for a moment, spreading as it fell, and then was lost from sight in the blackness. I thought I saw the oily waters stir.
Frito shook his head. “Los ninos,” he said. “They getting in here.”
My eye followed the glistening trail that led from the dryer to the hole. “That’s not kids,” I said. “That’s a grown man living in the building. Come on, let’s get this covered up before somebody falls through.” Bracing myself, I put my shoulder to the machine and pushed. Even when the superintendent joined me it was difficult to budge; it felt like it was bolted to the floor. At last, as metal scraped on concrete with an ugly grating sound, we got the thing back into line.
Just before leaving the room, I looked back to see Frito crouched by the coils of electric cord, glumly poking at the strands of wire that twisted like claws from the end. I sensed that there was something missing, but couldn’t decide what it was. With a final wave I stepped into the hall, my mind already on dinner. Behind me, aside from the buzzing of the lights, the place was absolutely silent.
Wednesday, June 15
My grandfather was long overdue for a haircut; he’d last had one in April, well before his stroke, and his hair was beginning to creep over the back of his collar, givi
ng him the appearance of an aged poet or, as he maintained, “an old bum.” I’d have thought that he’d be pleased to get it trimmed, and to idle away an afternoon at the barber’s, but when I arrived to pick him up in the lobby of the Manor he looked weary and morose.
“Everything’s slowing down,” he said. “I guess I must be feeling my age. I looked at my face in the mirror when I got up this morning, and it was the face of an old man.” He ran his fingers through his hair, which had long ago receded past the top of his head. “Even my hair’s slowing down,” he said. “Damned stuff doesn’t grow half as fast as it used to. I remember how my first wife—your grandmother—used to say I looked distinguished because my hair was prematurely grey.” He shook his head. “Well, it’s still grey, what’s left of it, but it sure as hell ain’t premature.”
Maybe he was depressed because, after a lifetime of near-perfect health, he’d finally encountered something he couldn’t shake off; though the doctor considered him recovered, the stroke had left him weak, uncoordinated, and increasingly impatient with himself. Or maybe it was just the weather. It was one of those heavy, overcast spring days that threaten rain before nightfall and, in the coming weeks, a deadly summer. As we strolled outside the air was humid, the sky as dark as slate. Beneath it earthly objects—the tropical plants for sale outside a florist’s shop, an infant in red shorts and halter with her ears already pierced, the gaudy yellow signboard of La Concha Superette—stood out with unnatural clarity, as if imbued with a terrible significance.
“My legs feel like they’re ready for the junk heap,” said Grandfather. “My mind’ll probably go next, and then where will I be?”
He was, in fact, walking even more slowly than usual—he’d stumbled on the planks across the sewage ditch, and I’d had to shorten my steps in order to stay by his side—but I assured him that he had a few good decades left. “If worst comes to worst,” I said, “you’ve still got your looks.”
This brought a snort of derision, but I noticed that he stood a little straighter. Screwing up his face, he thrust his hands into his pockets like some actor in a 1930s Warner Brothers’ movie. “Nobody wants a man with a mug like mine,” he said, “except maybe somebody like Mrs. Rosenzweig.”
“Well, there you are.” I remembered the little old woman with the deaf roommate. “See? There’s someone for everyone.” He shook his head and muttered something about it’s not being right. “Not right?” I said. “What’s the matter? Saving yourself for some pretty little blonde?”
He laughed. “There aren’t any blondes where I live. They’re all old and grey like me.”
“So we’ll get you someone from the neighborhood.”
“Stop already with the dreaming! The closest thing you’ll find around here is some colored girl with dyed blonde hair.”
“Here’s one that looks white enough,” I said, tapping on the glass. We had reached the Barberia/Barbershop, where an advertising placard in the window, faded by the sun, showed a beefy Mark Spitz look-alike, hair aglisten with Vitalis, attempting to guess the identity of a sinuous young woman who had just crept up behind him. Covering his eyes with two pale, finely manicured hands, she was whispering, “Guess who?” That unwarranted question mark annoyed me.
The shop’s front door was open to let in a nonexistent breeze, and the smell of rose water, hair tonic, and sweat hung nostalgically in the doorway. There was only one barber inside, fluttering over a burly latino who sat glowering into the mirror, somehow retaining his dignity despite the clumps of shiny black hair that covered his shoulders like fur. Portraits of Kennedy, Pope John, and some unidentified salsa king beamed down at us through a talcum-powder haze. Seating himself by the magazine rack, my grandfather reached instinctively for the Daily News, realized he’d already seen it, and passed it on to me. Bored, I scanned the headlines—Spain holding its first free elections in forty-one years, two derelicts found dead and blinded in a men’s room at Grand Central Station, James Earl Ray returned to prison following an escape —while Grandfather stared doubtfully at a pile of Spanish-language magazines on the lower shelf. Moments later I saw him frown, lean forward, and extract from beneath the pile a tattered, thumb-stained Hustler, which he opened near the middle. His expression changed, more in shock than delight. “Mmmph,” he said, “they never had stuff like this back in Brooklyn.” Suddenly remembering himself, he shut the magazine. I could see he was embarrassed. “You know,” he said, “it’s silly for you to sit around here all afternoon. I’ll be okay on my own.”
“Fine,” I said. “We can meet later for coffee.” Karen wouldn’t be home till after her Wednesday-evening class, and I had plenty of errands to do.
Outside, the sky had grown even darker. As I started up Amsterdam, I could see shopkeepers rolling up their awnings. Davey’s Tavern, on the corner ahead, was already noisy with patrons, while soul music, drunks, and broken beer bottles spilled out upon the pavement in front. An overturned garbage can disgorged its contents into the gutter; a few feet past it the opening to a sewer was clogged with bread crusts, wormy lettuce leaves, and pools of curdled cream. “Peewee, huh?” a man on the sidewalk was shouting. He wore greasy overalls and a sleeveless T-shirt dark with perspiration. “Hey, nigger, why they callin’ you Peewee for? You needs some o’ what I got?” He began digging drunkenly at his fly while the small, goateed man he’d been shouting at hurried toward a nearby car, muttering threats to “get me somethin’ an’ bust that nigger’s ass.”
I was just crossing the street to avoid the inevitable fight when I heard my name called. It was Father Pistachio, lounging calmly on his stoop just around the corner from the scene of action and grinning at me beneath his halo of white hair. In truth I’d been hoping to avoid him as well: I just didn’t have the time today for another history lesson. Resolving that our meeting would be brief, I waved and circled warily in his direction. He seemed to be alone.
“Where’s your friend?” I asked, declining his invitation to sit down.
“Coralette? She call me up this morning, all dolorosa, tell me she have trouble in the building where she live. Something about Last Rites. I tell her I am a priest, I can give the Last Rites, but she say is all right, she going to be asking her minister. Then someone else is having to use the telephone—Coralette, you know, she live in a hotel, is not a nice place at all—and so there is no more time for talking. She tell me she will come by later, though. Maybe you will still be here.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I really can’t stay. I’ve got to join my grandfather in a little while.”
“Ah, yes.” The old man smiled. “Herman, he say he gain twenty pound Saturday night at the restaurant. Say he have the best time of his life. And I am thinking to myself, Is good to know that some young people today still have respect for the old.”
I nodded uneasily, hoping he wasn’t leading up to another request to meet Karen. I hated to keep putting him off.
“Maybe soon you and your wife will be my guests for dinner,” he went on. “Real Costa Rican food. How you like that?”
I sighed and said I’d like it very much.
“Good, good.” He was visibly pleased. “I am just upstairs. And after I make the dinner, I show you what is to be in my book. Charts, maps, pictures—you understand? Las ilustraciones. Some I have already in the first edition, published in Paraiso. I bring it for you next time, yes?”
I said that would be fine.
All this time we had been hearing music from around the corner. Now, suddenly, came the sounds of a scuffle: a taunt, a scream, sporadic bursts of laughter from the crowd.
Pistachio shook his head. “Is a shame. Men, they just want to fight.”
“Some men,” I said. “But our great-great-granddaddies don’t seem to have gone in for it much, at least according to you. They sound pretty cowardly, in fact—pulling up stakes when another tribe showed up, running off like a bunch of kids, leaving the city behind… Sounds to me like they gave up without a fight.”
I suppose I was needling him a bit, but it didn’t seem to faze him.
“I think you do not understand,” he said. “I never say it is another tribe. Is another raza, maybe, another people. One cannot be sure. No one knows where they are from. No one knows their name. Maybe they are what God make before He make a man. Legend say that they are soft, like God’s first clay, but that they love to fight. Quick like the piranha, and impossible to kill. No use to hit them in the head.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“Is hard to say. Many different stories. In one the Chibcha tell, is because they have something on the face. Flat places, ridges, things like little hooks. Back of head, she is like the front; all look much the same. Me, I think this mean they wear a special thing to cover the head in war.” He made a kind of helmet with his hands. “See? This way you cannot hurt them, cannot keep them out. They go where they want, take what they want. Break into the city, steal the food, carry many captives to their king. The lucky ones they kill.”
“They don’t sound like very nice people.”
He gave a short, unmerry laugh. “Some Indians say that they are devils. Chibcha say they are the children of God, but children He make wrong. Is no pity inside them, no love for God or man. When God see that they will not change, He try to get rid of them. They are so strong He have to try one, two, three times! Chibcha call them Xo Tl’mi-go, ‘The Thrice Accursed.’”
I’m quoting here from memory and my spelling is approximate at best; whatever it was that he actually said, it was unpronounceable. My eyes were held by his plump little red-stained lips, which worked up and down when he talked and which continued to do so even now, as he paused to stuff another nut between them. The fight-sounds down the block had momentarily subsided, but then I heard the jangle of breaking glass—for me, even at a distance, the most unnerving and ugly of sounds—and I realized that the battle was still very much in progress. I’d swear that at one point I could hear the echoes of a faraway war cry; but maybe it was just the effect of the story.