“Only half a day today?” The dignified, white-haired clerk in the wing-collar inquired from his station behind the tobacco counter.
“Huh? I’m still workin’. I got this, this basket I gotta deliver.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. Where to?”
“Here in Harlem. 124th Street.”
“Mr. Klein let you off early?”
Ira looked at the large store clock on the wall above the shelves of obviously select tobacco in jars and cans. The time was twenty minutes to six. “I don’t know.”
“He’s a good fellow that way, Mr. Klein. And sharp. You two ought to get along fine.”
“I gotta go.”
“That’s right. You’ve got to go there still. Is the basket heavy?”
By now, Ira sensed something ulterior in the stately old clerk’s queries, ulterior and unkind, quizzical. Meant to delay him? Make sport of him? You two ought to get along fine. Crafty ascendancy had to have its butt, especially if it was a Jewish one. “No, sir. It’s not heavy.” He made for the door.
“It’s just a feather.”
A smarting laugh followed him as he opened it. Fuckin’ old bastard, what’d I do to him? He merged with the home-going crowd on Lenox Avenue, heaved into the street from the darkly crammed subway kiosk at 125th Street. His first day on the job — elation took the sting out of resentment: He did that dirty, lousy work, cleaned out under the elevator — what’d he call it? Sump. Some sump. And wait’ll Mom saw his blue knee-pants. Ooh, ooh, pants from his nearly new Bar Mitzvah suit. Oy, yoy, yoy. Wait till he told her he weighed out sugar. Like gold, she’ll say. And Mr. Klein, gee, lucky he was Jewish. You two ought to get along fine, the old bastard — but Mom would say, Azoy? She’d say, Tockin gliklikh. Lucky. Tockin. And this basket. Wait till he told her about that. What fruits and jellies. You should see. More than Mr. Klein’s wages.
Ira waited for the cop on his high pedestal at the intersection of 125th and Lenox to pivot his Stop and Go signal-vanes, wave white-gloved hands and whistle. “I’m big now,” Ira told himself. . crossed to the south side of 125th.
They are all dead, they are all dead—the thought cleaved to him as he was about to press the “escape” key and “save” what he had done for the day. You hear, Ecclesias, they are all dead. If I was thirteen at the time, and the year was 1919, and am now seventy-nine, it is sixty-six years later. Surely, not one was less than five years older than I was — who can be alive? Not that pompous old roué of an ex-wine and fine liquor clerk, dust and skeleton. Not Mr. Stiles, not Mr. MacAlaney — oh, perhaps the youngest of them: Tommy perhaps, Quinn’s helper on the delivery truck. Still, there are some World War I veterans alive, quavering, ailing, feeble. Who knew them as World War I veterans then? They were just World War veterans, or Great War veterans. There would be no other, Woodrow Wilson promised, no other, no second Great War.
— And you?
Yes, and I. My stint is soon over, Ecclesias.
“It’s four o’clock,” says the dear and matter-of-fact voice of M, who has borne with me and sustained me these many years. “Want me to ring the curfew?”
“I’ll have to think of that. Is that the right term? Curfew? Or knell?”
VIII
With basket still delicately perched on hip, he walked along Lenox Avenue to the next block, and turned east into 124th Street. Night and new responsibility altered the appearance of the otherwise familiar route. Halfway toward Fifth Avenue, the rows of brownstones on either side of the dark, quiet street faced each other. But not after the short avenue called Mt. Morris Park West; that was the west boundary of Mt. Morris Park. After that, there was only a single row of brownstone houses, and instead of facing other brownstones, they faced the lamp-lit park. The library’s gray front still lay ahead. Anxiously he kept his eyes on the decreasing numbers above the transoms — what would he do if the number were wrong, if he couldn’t find the place? That was the thing he dreaded most, dreaded above all else, that dogged him all the time: his bungling of errands. “A hundert un taiteent Street,” the owner of the button shop had sent him to, and Ira had gone to 118th Street. And that time he waited for Pop on the wrong corner with his tuxedo-package for a banquet — never, never would he forget his joy at seeing a man approaching: Pop, at last! In every way it was Pop — Ira ran to meet him — and it wasn’t! And waiting for the Madison Avenue trolley car with Pop’s meal. . and daydreaming, until Pop yelled at him from the trolley platform.
Oh, no! He’d have to hurry back to the store if he were wrong. Would it still be open? What a disgrace! Or horrible alternative: He’d have to carry the basket home to 119th Street — the beautiful basket through ugly 119th Street — and up the ugly stairs. And Mom saying, Vus i’ dis? and Pop saying, Uhuh! Er hut shoyn ufgeteen. He did it again. And of course, the manager would fire him. The first day. No, maybe he could run back in the morning before school. Even if he was late: “I’ll go, I’ll go, Mr. Klein. Please tell me where.” But maybe all the fruit wouldn’t be fresh anymore — Ah! here it was: 27 in shining gold numbers, and with automobiles in front of it.
He climbed the outer flight of stairs — prayerfully. And just as he pressed the doorbell button, he felt a strong misgiving. Was he supposed to go upstairs? Wasn’t he was supposed to go downstairs, where the steel door was? He turned to skip down, but too late: The front door was already opening, and the courtly gentleman, smiling cordially and expectantly, with head lifted to greet an adult guest, looked down—
“I made a mistake,” Ira pleaded. “I–It’s—” He pointed downstairs, “It’s from Park and Tilford.”
“Oh? Really? Is it for Merrill?” The gentleman inquired urbanely.
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Merrill. 27 West.”
“Raymond, do let him in,” a woman’s voice called from the interior.
“Certainly, dear. Come in.” The courtly man laughed delightedly as Ira entered the hall, and in utter confusion, was guided to a spacious drawing room, where someone said, a seated lady said: “Not a Prohibition agent, thank Heavens!” And the laughter of everyone rolled over him like a billow.
And now he saw what he had done: Under the brilliant facets of the chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, ladies, displaying long ropes of pearls and beads and wearing small, clinging hats, sat on contoured velvety chairs smoking cigarettes in long cigarette holders. And attending them stood gentlemen in dark suits and narrow trousers, with small neckties knotted in high, starched collars and gold watch-chains suspended before their vests. Two women in small aprons and frilly caps, bearing trays laden with curiously shaped morsels of food, moved about among the gathering, offering the delicacies, more often declined than accepted. And a man in striped trousers and a swallow-tail jacket replenished the shallow bowls of long-stemmed glasses out of a bottle with a napkin around it. A bubbly wine winked at the rim of the glass, and there was a scent of wine even through the cigarette smoke. He had butted into a party.