Immediate upon death in this city is theft. And her hand reaching as if to cling to that she most cherished, and not till my last-uttered violent words did this bastard put the ring back. Belonging to this girl who in her wandering of this world carried within her little cloth bag of pretty colors all her tiny treasures. Said “Excuse me, sir. Could you please tell me, sir.” And she must have been asking how she could ever go from sadness and despair to joy again. And all I could tell her was that wrong information is being given out at Princeton. Which maybe she didn’t know was also the other side of the deeply flowing Hudson River, in the same direction as Suffern. Turn away now with my own sigh and heave of sorrow. Filled with tears. More broken strings. There was music in her voice. Magic in her brief words. Their sweet apple sound. As if I had known her all my life. Childhood sweethearts. And we loved each other. Born and grown up in the same valley. By a river. Near the same hill. Or on the next street in the same town. “Excuse me, sir. Could you please tell me, sir. Do you know when the next bus is to Suffern.” And not needing anymore to know. And perhaps had I known, she wouldn’t now lie so still, pale blue eyes staring nowhere. Surrounded by this swarm of loveless strangers. With only their curiosity. And now police come. One with his gun drawn, pushing back the insistent crowd. His partner picking up the shell and taking her pistol. Asking questions. Who saw this. And pressed as I had been to get to the Yiddish Theatre, I couldn’t, couldn’t leave her. Not like this, all dead and all alone. She was someone I’d met and knew, even if only for seconds. Wait the minutes away until the stretcher bearers come. And they came. Gently lifting her form. Placing her lifeless arms across her chest. A shoe off. Her couple of trinkets and cloth bag beside her. Her face half-covered with strands of her long brown hair. And carry her out of sight, leaving only a darkened red stain over which feet pass now. At just after three o’clock in the afternoon, this terrible occurence. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in all its somberness flooding through my mind. The high screams of the violins ringing in the ears, announcing this tragedy. And I went to see. The bus she wanted had already left before she spoke to me. And I could have saved her life.
Stephen O’Kelly’O standing in the crowded front of the bus station. The figures moving around him. Amid the arriving and departing in this shouting and screaming city. Where it seems I’ve walked this day the longest of miles. Taxis pulling up. People with their luggage getting out. People with their luggage piling in. Destinations. Take me to the Taft Hotel. To the Dixie. To the Edison. Park Central. Algonquin. To the St. Moritz, where old Max stayed overlooking Central Park when briefly in from Chicago. And take me, too. To escape from death and hell.
“Where to, buddy.”
“Seventh and Fifty-eighth, please.”
Sit stopping, starting, speeding and honking through all this tawdriness as tears fall from my eyes. Slow to a halt for a red light. Taxi driver glancing in his mirror. Turns to speak over his shoulder.
“Hey, are you all right, buddy.”
“Yes I am, thank you.”
“Well you ask when you know in a city as big as Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan tragedy is happening every second around the clock. And things are happening out on Staten Island, too. You kind of keep your eye out for somebody who might be in trouble. I was four years in the war. Eighth Army. You ain’t wearing a Ruptured Duck, but I know by just looking, guys who’ve been in the war.”
Stephen O’Kelly’O alighting from the taxi in front of the Yiddish Theatre. Taxi driver, the side of his face covered in a scar, handing back the change one told him to keep.
“It’s okay, buddy. My policy. I don’t take a tip from veterans or when I carry what I think is sorrow in my cab. Had a guy yesterday, no hands, just hooks like the ends of wire coat hangers coming out of his sleeves. Iwo Jima. Sorry about the little accident. I’ll say something else, too. Not many of my passengers ever say please, or thank you.”
Stephen O’Kelly’O under the canopy of the Yiddish Theatre. Late. Twenty minutes. In this city never predictable. While my good friend the taxi driver from the Eighth Army was turning around to tell me of his considerateness, he nearly killed us driving up on the back of another taxi stopping for a red light. The driver in front, getting out to view the damage, dismissed it and forgave him with a disdainful wave of the hand. A rakishly stylish-looking gentleman on the sidewalk pausing to watch. And, in Max’s brokerish way, announcing to the two taxi drivers, “I say there, you two. Assert your mannish instincts. Find fault and fight. Go ahead, hit him. Ask him if he wants to be an advert for a casket company. And I agree to referee.”
As always in this city, the next moment is invariably an unexpected surprise, never giving you a chance to learn about the metropolis. Just when tragedy submerges the spirit and the harshness one encounters seems to overwhelm, a thoughtful kindness erupting seems to beget another. Or a savant joker to intervene. And benevolence emerges. As might, in the midst of mournful cello chords, come the cheer of grand orchestral blasts. Just as, after all the violence and death of the war, camaraderie is still to be found. Together with maybe an eternal world-weary sadness left in the eyes. Such a young girl couldn’t have been in the war. And yet what whirlpool of despair could have sucked her spirit down enough to make her want to die. To be swept up and taken away with the human debris of this city as are the pieces of bodies taken up piece by piece out of the subway tracks. Glittery-eyed thousands come aspiring from the corn-growing plains, from Kentucky gulches and gullies, and out of the potato fields of Idaho and westward all the way to the California shore of the Pacific Ocean. To dare their lives here on this deep stone emplacement of Manhattan Island where the drills and dynamite dig to send the tall spires up into the sky. Where stardom awaits in so many dreams. To then be crushed by the endless friendless indifference. Smothered under the doom of loneliness. And here I have rushed and wait outside a venue for the language of an ancient world to be heard. For a Dru who may have already been. Found me not here, and now is gone and will never come back because I am late. Stare up at the soaring gray edifice of Max’s athletic club across the street. Three giant windows where inside Max said they had a swimming pool. A palace dedicated to the manly sports. Frequented by many prominent social and political figures who could afford the membership fees. How ya doin’. I’m doin’ fine. In this city where I was born. Grew up. Was early indoctrinated. Knowing girls like the pock-marked girl, and the desperate effort she made giving the potbellied blow jobs so that it enabled her to take groceries back to her hungry father and brother. She finally admitted she had her nose busted when she spat the sperm of the Irish Roman Catholic man who wouldn’t pay her right back into his face.
And here I am, Stephen O’Kelly’O outside the Yiddish Art Theatre and across from Max’s athletic club, whose gray elevations go soaring into the sky and only with a quarter left in change that the taxi driver wouldn’t take as a tip. Asked the pocked-marked girl what would happen if she raised her price to two dollars and fifty cents. She said she thought business would suffer. When she first started out, she took what anyone would give her which she was glad to get. And the demand grew so she named a price. Took her customers up to the roofs of buildings. And blew them too in elevators before they reached the top. Where she held out her hand ready to say thanks. And here I wait for someone who can buy and pay for anything she wants. And knowing she’s not going to come makes the minutes passing terrible. But wait just in case she does come. Walk to the corner and back. And take one last look at the Yiddish Theatre program. At least these are a people by whom music is seriously regarded and from whose race great composers and instrumentalists come.