9:41 (2 page)

“Oh, thank you”.

She was about 65, a nice wrinkled, grandmother type, with full, smiling teeth. She grimaced as she started the crutches going again. She reached the center of the lobby, looking around. The nurse in her small office off the lobby, could not see the old woman.

“I'll call her for you. You want the nurse?” Glenn asked.

“Would you please”. She smiled gratefully. Glenn walked to the admitting office.

“Can you come out here, nurse. A woman's here. She can hardly walk”, he whispered.

The nurse, a newspaper spread open on her desk, was annoyed. She was about to tell him to have her come to the office.

“She's bleeding”.

The nurse grimaced, relented. She went into the lobby.

The old woman was propped up on her crutches like a straw man on a stick. One of her legs dangled uselessly under her.

“Can I help you, madam?” The nurse scrutinized the bleeding, then peered into the old woman's face for an answer.

“Yes … Doctor Chaves. She told me she'd meet me here”.

The nurse winced a smile and nodded. “If you'll have a seat. I'll call her”.

The old woman grimaced again and swung her left leg forward, moving toward a chair. She stopped with her back to the chair, balanced on the crutches, looking at the chair over her shoulder. She swung her right shoulder back, her weight starting to carry her backwards. Her left arm pivoted her on the crutch and she fell onto the chair. The chair slid back about a foot. The old woman gripped the armrests, then smiled a bit satisfied as the chair stopped sliding. She smiled toward Glenn.

“Thank you”, she smiled toward Glenn momentarily. She turned anxiously toward the nurse's room. Fresh blood appeared on her leg. Glenn wondered what horror of a leg was under the bandage. He forced himself to smile back as if he didn't notice her legs.

The nurse's phone rang again. “Admitting office”.

A nurse came into the lobby and smiled a little. The old woman looked up anxiously.

“Mister Alexander?”

“Yes?”

She nodded and walked back to the office.

“Yes. Doctor, he's here”. She rehung the phone and returned. “Doctor Moore wants you to meet her by the elevator”.

Glenn walked toward the elevators. The second hand swung lazily, slowly around the wall clock. It was ten o'clock. The elevator doors slid open. Doctor Moore stepped out. She smiled.

“Your wife had a very difficult time … very painful. She suffered a great deal … but she's alright”. She smiled her smile again. “You have a daughter … at 9:41 a.m.”.

A strange, cold, empty, hollow feeling flashed through Glenn's body. A tingle slipped up his neck to the back of his ears. He thanked the Doctor and walked back toward the lobby. The woman with the legs was still looking toward the nurse's office anxiously. It begins, for someone new, Glenn thought. He knew he should be happy, jubilant, elated, but somehow there was a gnawing, an ache, for sorrows envisioned, imposed.

CHRIS

The night was aglow with a warmth that makes the world seem to live suddenly and call forth all its elements to awaken; winter is finally defeated. Overhead, in the still sky the stars shone and twinkled with a luminance that was overwhelming and yet frightening. Each little spot of light in the heavens millions and millions of miles away hung silently watching the quiet sleeping world. My footsteps echoed soundly on the hard pavement as I made my way home along the route I took every night, 17th to Irving, Irving to 18th, 18th to 3rd, and 3rd, home. I lived on Third Avenue, always have, I lived there when the “El” cut its way through the teeming, screaming street, and when it was being torn down, and now when it is looked to as the fashion lane to come.

People are strange, and the evolution of a city even stranger. The swank sections give way to newer swank sections, and the lesser rich take over the deserted place, and round and round, never ending until the swank section is the slum of today and is torn down to make way for a new swank section. I like 3rd Avenue, I like it for its rawness, its realities; it is life in all its hardship and degeneracy, and all its sublimity.

As I walked under the street light, the glare made the stars fade from view, and as I passed from under the direct rays of the light the little worlds so far away became visible again. I turned into 19th Street, and found the air filled with the strumming of a guitar. Spanish music filled the air, and the small street was alive with the air of a Spanish Village. The Spanish people, as always, were out on the stoops and sidewalks in front of their buildings, singing and playing their native songs. Across the street, silently sitting, outlined in his window frame was Chris, watching silently, as always, the joys and sorrows of 19th Street. He seemed never to breathe, nor did he stir from his position in front of the window. Chris was as old man, a stern looking old man, who had a countenance that resembled a rock, imperturbable, impervious, ever the same. Chris would sit in front of his window until the very early hours of the morning, just sitting and staring at the people, the music players, and listening to their serenades. Winter would come and give way to the cool breezes of Spring, and thence to the thermal blasts of Summer, thence to the harsh winds that foretell the coming of Fall, but faithful Chris was ever there, grey bearded, and white haired, with a nose that jutted from the middle of his face like an afterthought to a sentence. His skin was white, with a slight hint of color at the cheek bone. It was a very rough skin, wrinkled and aged like fine leather, smoothed through use, and cracking from age. His eyes were steel grey and sparkled like the sun reflected off water. They were the most frightening of all his aspects, and fearsome were they all. They could sear through the most adamant of persons and boil them down to the core of their very being.

I'd known Chris for years; he had been at that window before I was born, so I've heard, and as I grew older Chris was an integral part of my life. Not that I would be with him too often, but he was always near during the early years of my youth, sitting in front of his window to witness the games that we played, the fellows of my youth and myself. He watched us all sprout and grow older and perhaps wiser. He himself was very wise, I knew, for every so often, I, being the most intrepid of my fellows, was friendly with him; a feat which was not unheralded in the gossip of my neighborhood. For Chris was not the most gregarious of human beings, and people feared him as much as they respected him. This friendliness with Chris brought no end of inquiries from all of the people of the neighborhood from time to time. What was he like? Why did he always sit in the window? Who was he? Was he an artist or an exile? Was he insane? Or, as it finally would boil down, just what was this Chris that everyone feared unknowingly.

During my few visits to Chris's home, I was treated most cordially, treatment which at first surprised me emanating from the ogre that lived all by himself and stared out at people that passed by. He lived in a small apartment, inexpensively but neatly furnished. As you entered you saw a couch in the corner, well worn, and covered in a rust colored slip cover that Chris had probably made. The couch was the most prominent feature of the entire room, and upon entering it captured your attention immediately. It lay hung in an almost exotic space, emitting a strange, luxurious aroma, that seemed to permeate the entire room. It was shrouded in shadow, and surrounded by shelves and bookcases filled with books, so dusty as not to have been used in a hundred years. It was the focal point of the room, for nowhere was there a space from which the couch was not completely visible. There were no lights near the couch, and yet it was worn so, that one could almost see the outline of Chris's body lying on it hour after hour. It was a low couch, without arm rests, just a slab, tilted up on one end so that when one was supine on it, his head was raised. Chris would lie on the couch when I went to see him, and I would be granted the special privilege of resting my humble body in that grand exalted place, the place from which so much terror had been hurtled, the chair in front of the window. The sun would stream in the window directly, brightly, and would cut a rectangular spot of white out of the dark, brownish rug, I, sitting with my back to the window would gaze fixedly at this spot of whiteness, with my shadow outlined in the middle of it. Chris would rest in his dark mysterious spot, almost invisible to the sun struck eye gazing at him from across the room. His voice was strong, and vibrant, and deep, and would float and dance around the room until its resonance made the sun spot lift from the floor with me on top of it and soar into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, only to suddenly descend, rest on water, whereupon, I would alight on the shores of some southern isle, with the water cuddling my feet, and the footprints that I left being washed away by the succeeding waves.

Chris was a marvelous story teller, and I would sit entranced for hours on end. His stories were glorious and fascinating, and brave and bold, and teaching. He told me of many things, and of people, and of things far beyond my imagination. He told me of his youth—in the very cold wastes of a foreign country, where it was necessary for him to sleep fully dressed so as not to freeze. When it would be time for me to go, he would get up slowly, and make his way to the door. He would send me off with a “Goodbye sonny, be a good little fellow now, won't you.

Chris was wonderful, and I looked forward with great anticipation to every meeting. As time grew on, his talks became less fanciful and more full of poignance. He would recite from his memory passages of the great authors, Chris loved literature, and would explain the authors meaning, their method. He taught me truth as I had never known before. But soon I left and went away for school. When I would return on semester breaks there would be Chris, faithful guardian, and I would talk to him briefly, but time was so short and had to do so many things. I just never had an opportunity to go in and spend any time with Chris. The closeness that I had had with Chris as a boy was never recaptured, but none the less, I always saw him sitting in his spot, and would greet him. His face would beam as it very rarely did, and an indication of a smile would transmit itself through his full beard. “How are you, sonny”, he would say. “Fine Chris, how are you?” “Oh I'm quite well, thank you, what are you doing these days?” he'd ask. And I would tell him “I'm writing”. The smile in the beard would deepen. He really loved art and beauty, though much of my work couldn't be called that. He would always ask me to come to his place sometime and read one of my stories for him, and he would say how he knew I would be an author of worth, and how happy he was for me. I would tell him I'd come sometime, but as it happens I have never yet been able to see him. Well one of these days, I'd tell myself, I'll get a moment and then I'll bring one of my stories to Chris.

These thoughts were going through my head as I undressed for the night, and rested from the overtiring world of the outside. As I lay in bed, which was near a window left purposely uncovered so as to see the night above me, I kept thinking of my youth, and of Chris, and the things that he told me, and … suddenly a deafening sound had violated the quiet night air and was echoing from the buildings on the street. I bounded from the bed and rubbed a clean spot from the grimy window so I could see out. Below me was a scene of human carnage, a woman lay bleeding in the street, from her middle came blood in spurts, in gushes, in streams, being pumped out of her body with every beat of her heart. Life was slowly being pumped away, and she lay there writhing in a pool of her own blood—policemen came running down the street, and stopped in front of her, trying to make her more comfortable, and less in danger of dying. One of the policemen ran to a call-box on a lamppost near the corner to report to the station house. The other was looking at her, trying to make her more comfortable and, at the same time, was furtively glancing around for some sign of the actor of the act of violence. He was bent over her, now crouching over her, trying to comfort and yet talk to her, his eyes were darting back and forth over the faces of the buildings, now covered with little squares of white on the shadows, and re-shadowed with the forms of people. People swarmed to their windows to see what was the matter, what was down in the street, to see a scene so base and yet so profound taking place.

Ever searching the policeman's eye came to rest on a little black space of window, unlit by a curious square of light, and there in the window was Chris.

Never moving, Chris was still sitting there silently, and yet very aware of what was happening in front of him. The ambulance from Columbus Hospital, which was only down the street, droned its way to the spot on which the woman was dying. The attendants came to help the woman, and as they did, the policeman who had been staring at the little spot where the white beard showed forth from the reflection of the moon, rose and approached the window. Chris, unflinching, sat there to greet him. I opened my window to hear if I could what was going on.

The police were asking him the routine questions as to his name, and if he lived there, and had he seen anything happen outside. He said he hadn't. “Have you been sitting here all the while?”, the policeman said. He had, answered Chris. But then you must have seen what was happening, was the woman alone? Was she walking with any one? Chris reiterated that he had seen nothing.

The police were baffled by his insistence of innocence, and became very irate at the unreasonable resistance of this crazy old coot who sat at his window and minded everyone else's business, but didn't know a damn thing when he should. Another squad car came up as the ambulance with the woman inside pulled away. One of the policemen who was questioning Chris went over to talk to the police that were inside the car. After a short talk, the police in the car came out and walked over to Chris, they talked to him and then told him that he would have to come to the station house for more questioning. He agreed to go and to help out as much as he could.