Coney Page 6

  A short, thick man, his broad-boned face dotted with brown age spots expressed a perpetual pout, as if sagging under a backlog of disappointment. He moved on tiny, shuffling steps, not entrusting equilibrium to one leg.

  Aba accepted his extended hand, surprised by the weakness of the grip. Aba, who was anticipating the crushing fingers of their first meeting, realized that wishful memory had created a powerful Druckman, a superman who met his needs.

  “Good to see you, Aba.” Druckman mumbled, chin down.

  “A pleasure, Ben.”

  They sat on the couch. Neither spoke. Druckman shrugged.

  “I read Nick Kenney in the Mirror, he’s a helluva poet.”

  “I don’t know how …” Aba cut himself off. Ignorant of the protocol of this strange land, he feared a disastrous misstep.

  “I don’t drink, but if you want a schnapps,” Druckman said, nodding to confirm knowledge of Aba’s weakness.

  “Plain vodka, please.”

  “James,” Druckman called.

  The Negro appeared.

  “A shot … a glass of vodka.”

  Aba gulped. Warmth passed through his throat, igniting a welcome flame in his stomach. He had written a poem about interior scourging with alcohol. He hiccupped. He floated on pleasant dizziness. He smiled.

  “You really like the stuff,” Druckman said.

  “Yes. It lifts a lot of weight off the brain.”

  “Givin’ guys like you your medicine made me a rich man.”

  Druckman held out a silver cigarette case. Sucking the flame of Druckman’s matching lighter, Aba inhaled deeply, increasing his lightheadedness. He laughed.

  “You offer all sorts of poisons,” he said, holding out the glass and cigarette, but take none yourself. Is that how you gang … Sorry.”

  Druckman laughed.

  “Don’t be so pussyfoot. I did what I had to do in my life. No regrets. But, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a gangster …”

  “Of course not,” Aba interrupted.

  Druckman overrode his words.

  “I’m a retired gangster.”

  Druckman brushed a gentle fist past Aba’s jaw. A stroke of friendship or a warning touch, Aba wondered.

  “Now, let’s stop the bullshit,” Druckman said, settling back into the softness of the couch. “Shit me easy, I’m a white man.”

  Aba looked into blank eyes, thinking: I am putting my life in the hands of a gangster. What a disciple of Benya Krik! What a schmuck! If he screws me I blame you, friend Babel.

  “As I told you at our previous meeting, I thought you could be helpful to me. The fact is this: I am in this country illegally.” Aba gulped more vodka. “With what is going on in Europe, the FBI is cracking down on all aliens. I’m afraid they will find me out and deport me to Poland.”

  “And you think I can put the kibosh on the FBI?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought … since you were so friendly to me … didn’t you say you would like to hear me recite … I could do a poem now.”

  “Don’t,” Druckman said, crinkling his nose in displeasure. “I ain’t got a gun to your head.”

  “I don’t have any money. I offer what I can. Dog-eat-dog is no less true for being a cliché. Although I feel dog-eat-cat would shed more truth.”

  “You got trouble with animals too?”

  “No. it was a figure of speech …”

  “You remind me of my father,” Druckman interrupted.

  “I’m glad.”

  “Don’t be so glad. He was a putz. He gave money to poor people in Russia when we didn’t have what to eat. My mother was different. Never asked what I did. If I made dough, it was OK.”

  “You remind me of a poem by Halpern: My mother is still crying in me.

  “I didn’t say she was bawlin’ …” Druckman put his left hand over his mouth, creased his brow and closed his eyes.

  “Halpern, Halpern,” he whispered like a medium calling up a spirit, “I remember her readin’ that name in that newspaper …”

  “Der Freiheit.”

  “Yeah Fry … whatever you said. She really liked him. Could you set up a meet with him and me?”

  “Unfortunately, he is dead.”

  “Maybe me too, soon.”

  Druckman laughed at Aba’s undisguised disappointment.

  “At least I got one guy prayin’ for me. What I got is circulation problems. My doctor says there’s new medicines comin’.”

  “Permanent cats have need of friendly dogs.”

  “What is it with you and animals?”

  “Sorry.”

  “The doc says the new medicines, it could help my memory too.”

  “Your memory?”

  “Yeah, it’s funny, Sometimes I even forget where I am. Jerome has to tell me.”

  “Jerome?”

  “Yeah, the nigger.”

  “You called him James.”

  “See what I mean. But what the hell’s the difference, he’d answer if I called him Alice. Now, what were we talkin’ about?”

  Oy, Aba thought, yes, oy, he repeated to the poet accusing him of banality. Oy, and all it entails.

  “Let’s see …,” Aba said.

  “Never mind, I remember,” Druckman interrupted. “I wanted to test you, and you flunked. You didn’t come clean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yeah, you’re in the U.S. not legal. If that was the only problem, I could fix it with a phone call.”

  “But …”

  Druckman shook his head..

  “Come on, I know it all. Your name ain’t Stolz and you’re wanted for murder in Poland.”

  “How …”

  “After you talked to me last time, I had a friend of mine, an expert, dig up stuff on you. When you got friends in the right spots it’s easy. Get me?”

  Stolz drained the vodka.

  “Right. If I know the invented Raskolnikov, you know the real one.”

  I don’t know no Raskolnikov, but I got the police report. Wanna see it?”

  “From Poland!”

  “No, from Hoboken.”

  Druckman held out a sheet of paper, saying:

  “I got it translated by a professor at my grandson’s Columbia College.”

  The black symbols lay on the white paper like a cover of filth. Stolz reached out. Druckman released his hold, but Stolz’s fingers turned rigid, unbendable. The sheet fluttered like a child’s paper airplane onto the couch.

  “You got arthritis. You should wear a copper bracelet like me.” Druckman displayed the cure.

  Stolz retrieved the paper He wondered: Will I remember it as it was or will it be the dream? He preferred the nightmare which compressed time and ended in screaming relief. He closed his eyes.

  Cries of anguish in the street had warned of their coming. Hoofbeats confirmed it. He had slammed into place the wood bolt. His mother tugged at him, shouting, “Under the bed, under the bed! They will kill you, not me.” He had resisted, screaming, “No, I must be with you!” But the fear in his stomach, gnawing, threatening to devour his entrails, had weakened him. He had allowed himself to be pushed to the floor, where he lay motionless until his mother had placed her hands on his shoulders and shoved him under the bed, like a stored thing.

  The door splintered. A drunken phlegm soaked voice shouted: “Ha, a Jewess, will I rape her or kill her?” His mother fell to the floor. He could see her.

  As in the nightmare, his eyes opened. Druckman stared at him.

  “Don’t you wanna read it?”

  Stolz read:

  On April 7, 1935, in a house on Parysow Street in the town of Miasto, the body of Pavel Sienkewicz, age 22, was found. Cause of death was a bread knife that punctured his heart. Testimony of witnesses, including the Jew known as Beryl, the blacksmith, whose place of business is next door to the scene of the murder, has established conclusively that Sienkewicz was murdered by the Jew, Avram Stein, age 24, who resided in the house with his mother, Malkah
Stein, exact age undetermined. Malkah Stein was also found dead, apparently of natural causes. The murderer has fled. There are reports that he has entered the United States illegally.

  Stolz looked up and spoke to the universe:

  “In Poland a crushed skull inflicted by a pogromchik is rightfully identified as natural causes.”

  “You a lawyer, too,” Druckman said, taking back the paper. “My grandson goes to the Columbia College. He might be a lawyer. He’s the star football player, even though he’s the only Jew on the team. I could get you tickets to see him.” He pointed to an eight-by-ten glass-framed photo of a young man wearing a football helmet that rested on a white grand piano.

  “Will you help me?”

  Druckman nodded.

  “I’ll try.”

  “I have no money.”

  “Christ, I don’t need no money.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing. Nothing like money. It’s tough to explain. My wife’s dead. My son got his own family. I think about dyin’. I want to be Jewish.

  “But you are …”

  “No. No. No. I mean real Jewish.”

  “You want to become an Orthodox Jew!”

  “Who said that? I don’t wanna be alone. I wanna be attached. Especially when I don’t know where I am. Am I gettin’ through to you?”

  “Yes,” Aba said. “Jews as they become older become more Jewish. It is as if a dormant gene activates a racial wisdom tooth.”

  Druckman shook his head vigorously.

  “There, that’s it! I don’t understand a word you said, but listenin’ to you made me feel Jewish.”

  “So what you want of me is …”

  “Just see me. Talk to me.”

  “A Jewish Scherherezade.”

  “Is that a Jewish word?”

  “No. An idiotic one. Please forget it.”

  “That ain’t hard for me.”

  Druckman’s face hardened. “Now, I gotta tell you somethin’. There’s a nigger in this woodpile.

  “A nigger?”

  “No, a white man. His name is Victor Menter …”

  “I have met him,” Aba interrupted. “First here in your house, then yesterday in a most unpleasant situation. I believe he is a virulent anti-Semite.”

  “You bet your sweet Jew ass he is. Before I retired, Menter worked for me.”

  “Why did you employ an anti-Semite?”

  “Christ, can you think of a sweeter way to screw a Jew hater than to make him take orders from a Jew? If I’d told him to get circumcised, he whips it out and starts slicin’. Sorry I didn’t.”

  “What has he to do with all this?”

  “I’m retired now and he’s got a lotta power. He’s well-connected by his goomba Italian mother’s family to very powerful people. By street talk he could find out what I’m tryin’ to do for you. If that happens, you and the people you live with, are up shit creek.”

  “The Catzkers! But why?”

  “The Catzkers harbored you, a criminal. That’s a crime. If Menter ratted on you, they go to prison, could be deported too. Their kid is in good shape because he was born here. He’d go to a orphan home.”

  Aba dug his fingernails into his scalp. The demons who mocked his attempts to expose them in poetry now laughed out loud, taking credit.

  “Well, then, let’s forget it.”

  “Too late.”

  “My God! Why? Does he know about me already?”

  “I don’t know. He likes to torture. He may be watchin’ you like a cat with a mouse. Hey, now you got me doin’ animals. But gettin’ that report took some doin’. Maybe he knows already. If he don’t by now, he probably won’t find about it when I make your record disappear from the Polish police files.”

  The demons smirked, discounting everything but doom.

  “I suppose … you will do your best … I mean to hide the report.”

  “I always do my best. Hey, I’d like it if you wrote a poem for me, even maybe about me.”

  “I don’t write poetry in English.”

  “Do it in Jewish.”

  “Do you understand Yiddish?”

  “Nah, but it don’t make no difference. I got a feelin’ I wouldn’t understand what you wrote in any language.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  BY NOON, HARRY COULD NO LONGER WAIT TO GRIP HIS NEW BIKE. He cut the rest of his classes and sprinted to the bike store. Woody greeted him warmly and handed him the racer, saying, “Ride over to the house of the freaks, pick up the slips and bring ’em back.”

  Doubled over, clutching the sleek, curved handlebars, Harry pedaled slowly along the boardwalk, admiring his reflection in glass storefronts. A midday sun had called to prayer the ancient sun worshippers who, in a state of sweating grace, were not the audience he desired. When school let out, there would be slit-eyed jealousy.

  At Stillwell Avenue he left the boardwalk and stopped at Nathan’s for a hot dog, French fries and an orange drink. He remained perched on his bike, a sultan on a throne, mashing the food and liquid into one magnificent taste. He flipped a quarter onto the counter.

  “Nice bike,” said the counterman, stretching out his arm to hand Harry a nickel change.

  Harry grudged a haughty nod, playing William Powell in My Man Godfrey.

  He slalomed through the traffic under the elevated train tracks, then turned right, moving past the arches and turrets of Luna Amusement Park. Beyond was the spot where, according to Schnozz, once stood a 150-foot-high hotel in the exact shape of an elephant. At night its eyes had glowed yellow.

  He turned onto West Eighth, a street of two-family wooden shacks, more peeled than painted. In the distance, soaring on the wings of Schnozz’s word pictures, the four hundred-foot white tower of Dreamland Amusement Park dazzled his eyes with a million light bulbs, illuminating The Creation, Pompeii, gondolas floating by The Doge’s Palace in Venice, and Captain Jack Bonavita, the bravest lion tamer ever, who lost two fingers and then his right arm, but always returned to the cage to stare down rogue beasts.

  Dismounting, he carried the bike up the wooden steps of number 39, pressed the black tit bell and, hearing no ring, tried the door, which scraped the floor as it gave way. He wheeled the bike toward a smell of cooked cabbage and the murmur of conversation.

  “Merde,” a woman’s voice chastised, “you bring tires with ze shit of chien in ze house.”

  The speaker was Queen Fifi, the fat lady at a sideshow in Coney’s Bowery section. Her eyes, nose and lips were tiny islands in a rippling sea of flesh. Yet, rosy coloring on delicate white cheeks evoked Renaissance cherubs. A golden cardboard tiara indented her curly blond hair.

  The queen, overflowing a piano bench at the head of a long oblong table, presided over a court of freaks whom Harry recognized from the large posters that lined the Bowery:

  Jamie, the boy with two mouths, who, lacking makeup, presented a simple hole in his cheek. Olga, the world’s ugliest woman, whose thickened face and massive shoulders suggested a punch-drunk boxer. Lohu and Mohu, the Japanese Siamese twins, seated in one chair, eating with their outside hands. Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy, a dispirited beagle.

  Blue Man, skin glowing as if phosphorescent. Albert-Alberta, the half-man, half-woman, bereft of sweater bulges, and Otto, the strongman, whose shaved bullet head, bull neck, pendulous purplish lips and filed teeth were, in this company, havens of human familiarity.

  Otto strode toward Harry, arms extended, fingers curled to strangle.

  “You come see freaks? Ach, I show you.”

  Harry wheeled his bike between them.

  “Woody!” he shouted.

  Otto stopped.

  “Voody?”

  “The slips.”

  “ Ach, now a boy he sends. You hear Fifi, a boy.”

  “I like boys,” Fifi said, tilting her massive head at Harry. “I like them same like you, Otto.”

  The diners laughed. The Siamese twins turned toward each other. Harry wondered if
they used each other as a mirror. Schnozz said that some Siamese twins were fakes: regular twins yoked together in a tight corset. He scanned Lohu and Mohu, searching for a clue in their identical brown suits, white shirts and green plaid ties.

  “Nice’ boys not stare,” Fifi said. “How is your name?”

  “Harry.”

  “’Arry is most pleasurable name. Sit wiz us, ’Arry. We like nice visitor.”

  Otto placed a chair next to his.

  “No, Otto,” Fifi said, waggling her index finger, “no under-ze table dalliance. Between Albert-Alberta and me will be his place.”

  Seated, Harry fought a terrible urge to stare. He bowed his head as if partaking in a solemn ceremony.

  “Young boy,” Olga bass voice boomed, “ven I vass ah beauty I vass ballerina. Nijinsky loffed me. All Moskva and St. Petersburg vass at my feets. Ven is vite nights, I dance in streets. Tsar and tsarina chav see me, invite me to Vinter Palace. Den”—she punched her shoulder—“den dis.”

  Fifi lip-farted.

  “Nijinsky, tsar, hah. Ven you vass ah beauty,” Fifi mimicked, “you be a kootch dancer. You slide on ze fesse on ze stage and push out ping pong ball from ze trou, one after one. One is told zat at zat you ze best. Zoot! like from a cannon. Also lights in zere for ze shining con.”

  Olga wiped her lips delicately with a food-soiled paper napkin.

  “I not answer fot, degenerate peasant. Vonce I vass ah beauty. Vat vass you effer, but fot stink.”

  Blue Man stood up and crashed his fist onto the table, rattling plates.

  “I not understand,” he shouted. “In Prague circus we did not speak so terrible t’ings!”

  Fifi cupped one breast with both hands and jiggled it at him, saying:

  “But it is all family fight, monsieur sacre bleu. It not mean rien. We family. You envie?”

  “You vood drown him vit dose mountains,” Olga said and waited for laughs that did not arrive.

  Fifi dropped her chin over her right breast and kissed it loudly.

  “Mine are soft, full of life, where armies nurse to gloire. You seins give muscles and sweat. Ze odor of a man.”

  “And what, pray tell O rotund oracle, is wrong with the odor of a man?” Albert-Alberta said, cocking his head coquettishly. “It is a sign of manhood, just as shit and semen are the smells of a boy.”