You either own this city or you don’t, he thought. There were days, golden days in a bottomless past, when he had walked this magnificent street and felt as though the city were his, he was the sole property owner and this crowd of people rushing past was only leasing the sidewalks from him, the buildings, the very air. On those days, he had wanted to embrace the entire Parisian hulk of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, wanted to kiss Cartier’s glittering windows, run his hand over the sleek thighs of the Tishman Building. You possess this city completely or you don’t possess it at all, he thought. You either know who you are, or you don’t. And when you don’t, they all rush past you like a great ant army intent on their own ant business, and you catch the vibrations of their antennae, but the signals mean nothing. He suddenly realized that De Pinna’s was across the street — had he been heading there all along? The end of doubt, the end of anonymity, was across the street. He would inquire about his hand-tailored suit, and learn his name, and come out again knowing who he was, owning the city.
The light turned from red to green, the DONT WALK changed to WALK. He started across the street. When he was a boy, there were only lights without written directions, and even then the lights were ignored, and you ran across the street whenever there was a break in the traffic. He could remember walking up 120th Street to First Avenue, and then racing across the wide cobblestones and gaining the opposite curb. The coal station with its big green wooden doors would be on his left, and trolley cars would be running along the avenue, the sound of their gongs sharp and strident, sparks flying from the overhead cable. He could remember especially the dead cold winter days of Harlem and all the anticipatory joy that came with the first brisk warning flutter of autumn. He could still recall the sudden appearance each fall of jellied apples and charlotte russes. He could remember Halloween, the chalked sticks and the stockings full of flour, chasing schoolgirls down the narrow gray canyon of a city street 120th Street between First and Second Avenue, that was the scene of his infancy and his childhood, not Central Park. He could remember this all, his knickers falling down over his knees to his ankles, and all of it was somehow intertwined with the image of the tall man with white hair and thick eyeglasses who was his grandfather. There was always steam coming from the pressing machine in the back room, Uncle Freddie grinning at him — “Hey there, how are you?” — and pulling down the padded top of the machine, and then depressing the stick lever, the steam hissing up from beneath the pads and hiding Uncle Freddie in a thick white cloud. He could remember election night in New York when he was a boy, the enormous bonfires in the street, the older boys running into the gutter to feed wood to the flames, the stickers for Alf Landon, which his father had got from the Republican Club and which he and Eric had stuck to parked automobiles all up and down First Avenue. He had worn the maroon plaid mackinaw his grandfather had made for him, and a fleece-lined aviator’s helmet with goggles. Eric, of course, had been the first kid on the block to wear the aviator’s helmet and goggles, and then every kid in the world had them. They were very good for election night when the bonfires threw smoke and sparks into the air.
Quiet, how quiet it was on a winter’s afternoon, walking from the school to the tailorshop near 117th Street — his mother worked in those days, she had a job somewhere in a mailing room, his Aunt Martha would give him lunch — feeling the cold on his cheeks, his cheeks a flaming red, the aviator’s helmet strapped under his chin, and the celluloid goggles pulled down over his eyes, one hand in the pocket of his maroon mackinaw, the other gloved and holding his strapped books, the cobblestones on First Avenue shining and gray. The tailorshop always seemed to beckon intimately. Grandpa would put the light on in the window early in the afternoon, and as the gray of Harlem’s winter turned to dusk, the storefront would glow with warmth. There was a little bell over the door of the shop, and Buddwing would reach up to grab the handle, and the bell would tinkle, and Grandpa would look up from behind the counter, and Grandma would turn from the sewing machine, which was near the front window, and Grandpa would always say, without changing a syllable, “Come in, you must be frozen. Annie, make him some nice hot chocolate.” And then he would follow Grandma behind the counter, Grandpa would ruffle his hair as he went past and into the back room where Uncle Freddie would be running the pressing machine — “Hey there, how are you?” — and he would stand with Grandma near the hot plate while she made him his chocolate. There was a telephone on a shelf over the long cutting table opposite the pressing machine. Grandpa always had orders for Salvation Army uniforms, and the white S’s and A’s he would later sew onto the collars were always scattered on the cutting table. There was so much warmth in that shop. He would stand near the hot plate while the steam of the pressing machine filled the air, and then he would take his chocolate and go behind the counter with Grandpa and tell him what had happened in school that day. Grandpa would always listen very intently, his head cocked to one side. His hair was white even then. Buddwing supposed his hair had been white for as long as he had known him. And Grandpa would cluck his tongue, or say this or that about one or another of the teachers, or nod his head in approval, or ask Buddwing to repeat all the exciting details of a new project, all the while taking care of customers who came into the shop, and gently warning Buddwing not to spill chocolate on any of the clothes.
He knew suddenly why he had taken the job in Di Palermo’s grocery store the summer he was sixteen.
He had taken the job because he owed his mother twenty-five dollars.
Well, that, he thought.
Well, I remember the shop. And I knew who I was then, by God; I knew it every morning and every afternoon, winter and summer, too, the summer I showed Eric how to make a ring from a peach pit, rubbing it on the sidewalk until it was thin and flat, and then scooping out the center with a knife until it fit his finger. Grandpa taught me how to do that; he learned it in the old country. He was a very nice guy, was fifty dollars enough?
Well.
He walked into the men’s department of the store and thought, Well, I was only a kid, I was only sixteen, it was enough, and immediately saw the suits and coats and jackets and trousers hanging in orderly rows on the racks and remembered his grandfather’s rack, with the long hooked pole, and his grandfather stretching up to take down a garment for a customer. He felt intuitively that he was very close to gaining an important piece of knowledge about himself, and he looked around immediately for someone to help him. There were several salesmen on the floor, and one customer, an old gentleman in a tattersall topcoat who kept poking his cane at the sports jackets hanging on one of the racks, as though testing their durability. Buddwing walked to the nearest salesman, a young man in his late twenties who was sporting a brand-new mustache, which he kept twisting in an attempt to train it up and away from his lip. The salesman dropped his hand and said, “Yes, sir, can I help you?”
Buddwing hesitated, He felt again the same queasy uncertainty he had known in the lobby of Gloria’s building, the same dread he had experienced before entering Di Palermo’s grocery store. He wanted desperately to know who he was, but something equally desperate pulled him back from the imminent knowledge; something warned him to tread with care lest he destroy himself.
“Yes, sir?” the salesman said.
Buddwing wet his lips. “This... suit,” he said.