Anyway, I felt wonderful out by our dance pavilion, in the crush of young people – mainly delinquent young people, our neighborhood being what it was. In our neighborhood there were buildings where the entire male population was in prison. The fathers went, then the older brothers, then the younger brothers, my agemates. I might be able to recall the names of about a dozen guys sentenced in their time to execution, the firing squad. And the number sentenced to ten and fifteen years was absolutely drastic.
The young blacks and nonblacks on Forty-second Street reminded me of my neighborhood, my dance pavilion, my friends, hoodlums, gangsters, and thieves. I use these words with no nuance of condemnation, none. Besides, most of that Kharkov crowd by the dance pavilion and most of this Forty-second Street crowd consisted not of hoodlums and gangsters, of course, but of normal teenagers, boys and girls at a transitional age who wanted to fuck around showing off. In Russia they were called blatnye, toughs. They were not real criminals, but their manners, behavior, habits, and dress aped the manners, behavior, habits, and dress of real criminals. It was the same here.
A sadness, as I say, came over me. I could not be one of this crowd of busily scurrying, whispering boys and girls. Oh, this business of theirs! Whom to fuck tonight, and if there isn't anyone, then where to get a drink if you haven't a cent in your pocket, though you're wearing patent leather shoes and a wide black hat. You might hit Sam for a couple of bucks – he deals in marijuana. "Hi, Bob!" "Hi, Bill!" "Hello, Lizzy!"
Such, I think, were the thoughts and expressions that floated over this crowd. The kids perhaps found Johnny disgusting; filthy thirty-five-year-old punk Johnny, my friend, for whom I was waiting. Possibly they held their noses on his account. But I, my foolish brain, was thinking about everyone and for everyone, while they were merely making gestures and uttering words. I sat on my heels at the base of the wall, in my very wide trousers and the short white – no, not dead white, the off-white jacket that Alexander had given me, with pockets; I had tailored it to my figure, it fitted me as if I had been poured into it, at the moment it was completely unbuttoned, my chest was bare, with my cross exposed. That was all I had. I waited for Johnny.
Within me was the stubbornness of an all-forgiving love. I thought, "Of course he's a punk, a flunky. There's no one worse or less than he, even here. Everyone chases him away, and he's obviously begging for coins, but even he is ashamed of me, pretends that he doesn't know me, that I'm an outsider and he, Johnny, is on his own. Nevertheless, I must be here and wait for him, the lowest filth off New York's sidewalks, I must be with him."
No one asked this of me, of course. God did not ask, "Be with Johnny," no one asked it, but I was not waiting to be asked. Maybe it was nonsense, but something made me sit and wait for this bum and not go home to bed in the hotel. Something very powerful. I absolutely clung to him. Maybe I wanted to pity him, to give myself to him, this man chased away by all. Maybe this lofty idea had taken hold of me; it was in obedience to this idea, perhaps, that I waited for him by the wall, gazing sadly upon the garrulous elegant young people.
"You've found a shitass even worse off than you, and you're trying to build yourself up at his expense. Displaying your virtue," a voice said to me.
"He's not lower at all, he holds a more advantageous position in this world than you do. His ties with this world are much stronger and he doesn't look unhappy," said another voice.
"You just want to fuck, that's why you're sitting here," said a third.
"Why no, he's here to gather impressions – he's a writer, you know!" a fourth pronounced maliciously.
"He wants to glom onto Johnny and get to know the other punks," said a fifth.
"To practice his English!" a sixth voice shouted in utter idiocy.
"Fucking all-forgiver, he's playing the saint, he's come to save Johnny, bring him love!" a seventh voice screamed obscenely.
God knows what was happening within me, but my eyes were probably sad and almost weeping. No one wanted to take me into the game, into life. They were living, but I sat by the wall.
"Come on!" Johnny said, walking over. Perhaps he had been moved by my devotion and the fact that I'd been walking with him half the night, perhaps he had reached some decision about me. I followed him submissively. We started down Eighth Avenue. Forty-first, Fortieth, Thirty-ninth, Thirty-eighth.
At Thirty-eighth someone put a knife to my back. The sensation of a knife at my back was something I knew. They surrounded us and ordered us – me, and Johnny, too – to march. Forward.
I marched, and the knife and its owner marched with me as if glued to me. "Why is he trying so hard, the shithead, he's young," I thought with a giggle. I didn't have a fucking thing, not a fucking thing, just some change in my pocket. Pack of fools – they'd found the right guy to rob. They were young kids, beginners, three blacks and a light one. Four of them…
Oh, Lord, more memories. There had been four of the others, too, four of us counting me. We went at night to the outskirts of Kharkov to rob with homemade pistols. We were more afraid than our victims. In addition to one pistol that really fired, we had two wooden models that I had fashioned after my father's TT pistol, exactly like it, millimeter for millimeter, and painted a shiny black.
Our first victim was a fair-haired woman of about thirty. At the time she seemed like an old woman to us. We were seventeen and eighteen; one of us, Grishka, was only fifteen. We were so agonizingly clumsy about robbing her, so stupid, so ashamed, that I think even she realized it, despite her fright. She told us rather calmly, "Maybe you shouldn't, boys!" At which the youngest and meanest of us, Grishka, shaking with cowardice, shouted, "Shut up, bitch!" Had she only known, she could have quietly walked away from us and we wouldn't have done a thing.
Later we boasted to each other, sitting under the bridge. After taking 26 rubles and some kopecks from her purse, we threw the purse in the river and divided the money. We were very glad for the money, and probably even gladder that all this torture was over, thank God, and we could now go home, leaving the models and the homemade pistol hidden under the bridge. "We should have fucked her!" Grishka said. Indeed, we could have raped her, but for some reason we hadn't done it. In theory we could have. In practice, because of the fear we were suffering, we might not have been able to get our young pricks up. I at least couldn't have gotten mine up, I was too subtle a creature, and still am…
The kids took Johnny and me to a dark parking lot. "Holdup!" the eldest one said. I calmly folded my hands behind my head. The eldest, a rather sensible youth, pointed to my hands and said, "What's this?" "A professional habit," I lied, for some reason. "I was in prison in my homeland." My locked hands surprised him. This really is the way that old criminals who have been through the camps hold their hands when being frisked, so as not to get tired. It was a borrowed habit, I hadn't been in prison, fate had spared me. "Where's your homeland?" the eldest boy asked. He may not have been older than the others, but he gave the orders. "I'm from Russia," I replied.
Suddenly he burst out laughing. "And I've been in prison here!"
He patted my pockets, but the tension had already abated. Both they and I had relaxed. Aside from my notebook and a hotel key – without a name tag, however; our hotel had no such luxury – I had nothing in my pockets. Even the change had disappeared, I don't know where, maybe it had fallen out when I was sitting on my heels on Forty-second Street.
All of a sudden the eldest one reached for my cross. My eyes went dim. I could not hand this over. And God had nothing to do with it. To me, this rather large silver cross with chips here and there in its blue enamel was a keepsake of my homeland. "Only veeth my life!" I said quickly and softly in English. And covered the cross with my hand. "This is a symbol of my religion and my homeland," I added. The boy took his hand away.