“No, Daddy. No, thanks.”
A redhaired sailor passed, looking in all directions, freckled, his canvas ditty bag in his hand, obviously lost. And an old man with a faded felt hat that came down over his ears was led by a young woman who looked like him, the same damp eyes and high cheekbones, the same pointed trembling nose. She stopped and tried to straighten the black band of his hat and in so doing exposed felt that was not faded. The old man paid no attention and she led him off toward the platform for Baltimore. Two girls leaned against an iron railing and played with joined hands, swinging their hands without looking at each other but sometimes looking down at their red socks and patent-leather shoes, and then they began to giggle nervously and then to laugh and finally they were silent again, one of them raising a hand to her mouth, the other covering her face with both hands. They joined arms and leaned against the iron railing without looking at anything. Boys in white shirts, some short-sleeved with a school emblem, others sleeveless and tattered, crowded around the magazine kiosk and turned the pages of cowboy novels and muscle magazines full of pictures of strongmen wearing leopard-skin loincloths. Some of the boys took turns swelling out their biceps. Others laughed and rubbed the fuzz on their chests and in their armpits. The old man led by the woman passed again. They seemed as lost as the redheaded sailor, who was no longer in sight. He had found his train. But the old man and the woman had not found theirs. She supported him by the elbow as he stumbled. She looked through the window into the coffee shop, she looked at you. You closed your eyes again and again smelled the smells of coffee and grease and fermenting sugar and smoke from the trains and farther away, far away, the concrete sidewalks and the macadam streets and sweat-drenched clothing, sweat-darkened collars of this month of July.
Becky moaned and you hugged her around the waist. You felt her trembling sweaty hands and both of you shut your eyes and hid a little more, moved back a little more toward the farthest corner in this brown room illuminated by light that came from the gas pilots and from outside, the street lamps and store windows, and fell upon you like light in a theater, outlining Becky’s profile, forming a faint aura around her hair so severely and cleanly drawn back with only a few loose hairs straggling and catching the light, the faint light that showed the flower vases dimly, the crocheted doilies pinned to the back of the velvet sofa, the vague swaying of the bead curtain between the living room and the kitchen-dining room.
“Mother, I tell you it is only the cat.”
“The cat or a cat? Which are you saying?”
“It’s the cat from next door. Joseph’s cat.”
“Hug me, Betele. Hug me tight.”
“But, Mother, it’s only the cat.”
“You’ve said that already and you didn’t say it right. You did not say the truth. A cat isn’t here and it isn’t ours. Either there is cats or there is a cat, but the cat is not here.”
“Mama, I don’t know.”
“Hug me tight. Can’t you notice that I’m…”
“Please put on a light.”
“Come and hug me. Tell me…”
“Yes, Mama. I’m afraid. I’m scared and I’m glad to be with you, the two of us together…”
“You’re scared?”
“Yes, I’m very scared.”
“You are sure it’s a cat?”
“Yes. Don’t you hear it miaowing?”
“And it stinks, Betele, doesn’t it stink? Oh, hug me. It stinks from wetting. Don’t say it doesn’t. You smell it too, don’t you smell it?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“They’re going to find us, Betele!”
“Please, Mama. Put on a light and don’t be afraid.”
“It is eleven o’clock in the evening. And your father hasn’t come back yet. So why should I put on a light? Tell me, who puts on a light at eleven o’clock in the evening if the father is at home? And tell me, who would be afraid at eleven o’clock in the evening if…”
“Look, Mama! See, I was right, it’s Joseph’s cat!”
“Shameless! Chutzpah! Out, out with you, out of my house!”
And sometimes Gershon would take you down to the street without telling Becky. He would take your hand and you would go down the stairs with him and he would lift you to his shoulders with a smile and you would make yourself comfortable there and look up at the black iron fire escapes like webs down the black sides of the brick buildings, as black as if fire had already happened and the fire escapes had served for nothing.
“Superstitio et perfidia.”
You put your penny in the slot and out came a hard candy round like a marble and you sucked it.
“Mitzvah. A good deed every day.”
“Gershon! Salt and buy some herring for dinner!”
You sucked the sugar-covered ball and clung to your father’s head and left behind the fire escapes. You smelled cheeses and garlic. Then a better smell, oranges and apples. Dogs barked and canaries chirruped. Vegetable shops. Hat shops. Tobacco shops. Delicatessens. Furriers. Shops where capes and silk and colored chintz were sold. The fluttering breasts of pigeons. And dogs, dogs that barked and barked and barked.
“They have destroyed the beautiful forests of New York and built the ugliest neighborhoods in the world. Thank you, our leaders.”
The light, Elizabeth. The light in the dark living room where you could not see but had to imagine the bead curtain, the crocheted cushions, the flower vases, and light came in cross beams from the street and filled the room with false auras. And when the light ran away you had to go looking for it, or, better, looking, with an unconscious gratitude, for its origins: to a place on the Hudson where the river was silver, to the stained fog and green of the Palisades, to the yellow wind that came from where the worn gold sky, a gaseous gold, floated over lower Manhattan. Sometimes you would go down that way with a feeling of adventure. As far as the fish markets of Fulton Street. As far as South Street, Peck Slip, Chinatown, where the river is full of sound and the barges of freight cars pass and the tugboats that are towing no barge whistle and whistle because they are idle and free, and the cars passing over the bridge make a swift music, and the rumble of the elevated, a sound so repetitious, regular, so different.
You see, Dragoness, it is also my city of sun and fog.
“We are going to go to America. We are going to be men.”
You and your brother Jake sat on Gershon’s knees and Gershon slowly turned the thick yellowed pages of the old album and did not have to point at things. Look, just look at that already! Oh, no, not that! You and your brother Jake laughed and laughed. The streets without pavement, deep with mud, lined with wooden houses. In the distance towers crowned by bulbous cupolas. A man with a long beard and high boots and a long black gaberdine coat. On his chest a yellow wheel.
“Yellow.”
“Yid. Hey, Yid. Hep, hep.”
“Ein Jude und ein Schwein dürfen hier nicht herein.”
“Is it you?”
“It’s you!”
You and Jake laughed and Gershon turned the pages and you could not believe that the man with sideburns and beard and the gaberdine coat and the young man in a vest and derby with a pearl in his tie were the same person. Then you turned to him and saw the other Gershon smiling and touching his tongue to the gap in his teeth. Wearing a striped shirt without a collar and checked trousers and loosed suspenders. Barefoot. The cuffs of his shirts too long but raised by Becky’s needle and thread.
“Even his back is straighter. Look, even his face changed!”
“Haven’t you been struck by the restraint of human gesture and expression in the Greek stelae?”
* * *