Fall and Rise (32 page)

I open the book to his introduction. “…But no matter what I say about these stories, some readers are still going to think, ‘Of course you're saying that, praising the work up and down, it's in your interest to, being the translator/introducer/anthologist, so what else could you say: “The stories stink, the writers are no good, this was the best short fiction, bad as it is, I could find written in Japanese in the last thirty years”? Because not only do you stand to gain financially from it, you'll in all probability land a good teaching job or be elevated in the one you have, if you're up for renewed contract or tenure and your department chairman or the school's ad hoc committee thinks you need one more book.' But not so. If this book nets me $1000 for the year's work I put into it, I'll feel lucky. As for a university position? Sure, I'd love one, as long as I didn't have to teach bonehead Japanese four times a week, but I don't expect to get one from this or a half-dozen books like it. No, I translated and put together this anthology because, and please don't think I'm trying to hoodwink you into buying or reading or thinking more seriously about either of those by first coming on in such a strong nonintroductory way and then compiling a list of negative rhetorical reasons why I might have anthologized this…” No, call. Only decent thing. If only to say I'm sleepy and have nothing more to say and I'm very sorry what happened to him tonight and concerned for his head and because of the wound his future well-being, but I barely know him—I don't know him—and there have to be several other people he hasn't thought to call who could help him, even if he has no more dimes, which really, isn't my responsibility, but if he wants to call me some other day at a much earlier time, fine.

I go into the bedroom and pick up Leonard's paper and dial the number without the numbers in parentheses. Phone rings seven times and I'm about to hang up, thinking “Great, one down, few more to go and maybe the most likely one down also, though if he did leave, after waiting for my call, he has a right to be ticked off,” when the receiver's picked up and a man says “For godsake's what?”

“Daniel Krin?”

“You want to speak to someone, on this floor, now?”

“Is this a public pay phone?”

“Yes. In a public hallway. You didn't know when you called?”

“Is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”

“It's a senior citizen home, lady; you almost now made me break a leg answering this. I thought it was an emergency the way you rang.”

“I'm very sorry. Someone gave me this number for a Daniel Krin.”

“Maybe on another floor. Because I know all the first and last names on this one and Daniel and Krin aren't it. This is the fifth.”

“Really, sir, I'm sorry for waking you up—”

“You didn't. I was out walking; I couldn't sleep.”

“I'm still sorry, but please answer me so I won't have to call back and possibly disturb you again: is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”

“I'll say this much to you. You call that number again and I'm not in as good a position to answer it then, you'll wake up everyone but the deaf and almost dead ones on this floor. The walls and doors are that thin, even if they were supposed to be built as, catch this, self-contained soundproof apartment like units. I know because I was one of the original tenants to move in to this papier-mâché house, but you can be sure the owners never thought I'd live this long to tell it.”

“Thank you. Goodnight and sleep well,” and I hang up.

I write on Leonard's page, under the original phone number: “326-1098, 328-1098, 328-1088.” Only four? Thought there'd be more. I write all four numbers this time, original one first, which I cross out. Only four. Which should I dial next? Start with the second and if no answer or the wrong number, go down one more. I dial. Phone's picked up on the first ring.

“Helene Winiker?”

“Hi. What took me so long was I dialed two of the other possible numbers—”

“Which one it turn out to be?”

“Twenty-six, ten ninety-eight.”

“That would've been the second number I called. But everyone's got his own system. Yours next time might work on the first shot while mine would hit it on the fourth. Not that I'm complaining, now that you're here.”

“The first number was always busy.”

“Then I would've gone right to the next one—and this is also no complaint—because the busy number never would've been mine.”

“I thought you might have found another dime in your pocket or borrowed one and were calling me or someone else. Anyway, I called the second number, but it didn't answer, so I thought the second one not answering might be because you stepped away from the phone. So I called the busy one again and when it was still busy, called the one I thought you might have stepped away from—”

“Why would I have? I was waiting for your call.”

“I thought
for something;
I didn't know for what. Hot coffee because you were cold.”

“I have no money.”

“I forgot. And it shouldn't be me apologizing. Not you either—
maybe
—if you're really in a hole. But still, when someone you don't know calls you at two o'clock—”

“I know. I apologize. I didn't mean to have you explain—I thought I was doing my best not to—”

“Anyway, the person who didn't answer the first time, now answered, so I was right calling that number back. But he kept talking. It was a nursing home and I'd waked him and now he wouldn't let me go, nor would he tell me if you were at this place—in the lobby, not in one of the living units upstairs—so that's what also kept me so long. He was such a sad old man that I didn't have the heart to hang up on him.”

“You were right. And I shouldn't expect anything and I didn't, but do appreciate that you called back. And you mentioned something about my being cold? Here comes my next big pitch for sympathy.”

“You are cold.”

“I'm freezing my life off out here, or the last two-fifths of it. It's an enclosed booth, thank God—a relic of a distant civilization that still works, which won't stop it from being torn out and made obsolete and maybe with me in it—but it's still very cold. It'd be very very if the policemen hadn't given me an old sweater they kept a few of in their car for such occasions. If it were up to me—if there were no disturbed souls out here—but I shouldn't go on so holier-than-sanctimonious-thou about it. I won't.”

“No—what about the disturbed souls?”

“If there were none out here, or homeless, myself excluded, I'd heat them—all these booths. Even if there are these people here—hell, let a disturbed homeless man sleep standing up or huddled on the floor of one, and even provided with a night's food rations and a tissue packet with a space blanket in it and a Wash and Dry for an extra bit of cleanness and warmth.”

“And the vandals? All you need is to make those booths more inviting than they are. Not that I don't sympathize with what you say, half serious as it was, and that we couldn't talk seriously about how there should always be free homes for the homeless and food for the foodless and so forth. But let's not. You're cold and keyless and I'm exhausted and maybe to you heartless. But why didn't you go inside to make your calls, if any places are open now?”

“Some are but I didn't think they'd appreciate my receiving calls there if I had to—especially when I was so unkempt and wasn't even buying a coffee from them. And the subway station here—Twenty-third and Sixth—you have to pay the fare to get to the coin phone on the platform, the token-booth clerk said. So I chose, over jumping the turnstile or walking back to Fourteenth Street or going to one of the other Twenty-third Street stations to see if there was a nonplatform phone there or to Penn Station where I know there are plenty, this outside phone on a well-lit though I think fairly dangerous corner, but in an enclosed booth. You see, I also lost my heavy sweater—”

“Wait—back up a bit. Also a sweater? What else?”

“My raincoat in the fight. And an umbrella in the wind in Washington Square Park, right after I left Diana's. The umbrella couldn't keep out the cold now, but it would have the rain before which, dry on me now, for a couple of hours kept me chilled.”

“I forgot about the raincoat. Shows how tired I am. But go on. You're cold, so I shouldn't interrupt further.”

“I left it on Diana's hallway rack, the sweater, when I left the park drunk. The party, but I also left the park drunk. But maybe all the alcohol I drank at the party is now keeping me warmer than I'd normally be without it, though without it I wouldn't have forgotten my sweater or gone into the park and lost the umbrella. Or even gone up to you at the party—no, I hadn't had much to drink at that time nor when I yelled to you from the unmentionable. It was only after, though I certainly wouldn't have called your answering service without the alcohol, because by then I was loaded. But the alcohol had nothing to do with my losing the raincoat and its contents. By that time I was sober.”

“About the alcohol, by the way, I heard differently.”

“About me?”

“Alcohol and the cold. That when you think it's warming you, it's really doing the opposite, but let's not waste any more time. If you come to my building—the vestibule, which you don't need a key to get into—I'll have the money in a special spot above the bellboard, plus some change and the name of a locksmith I've managed to find who will be expecting your call. Forty dollars should be enough. If I can't find a locksmith, use the money for a hotel. I'll add another ten for a cab ride here, and at this hour a cab's all you should take. That's about all the cash I have on me, which you can pay back when—”

“Listen, I'm not making this up and I appreciate to the utter utmost everything you've offered, but a locksmith you're not going to find. And the way I look—they're just scratches on my face and head, bumps you can't see under the hair, some dried blood, torn-to-expunged for clothing—no semi-decent hotel would let me in. And anything less than semi-decent I don't feel I can take going to tonight, nor waiting till morning with a bunch of madmen and bums in the waiting room at Penn Station or Grand Central. The train cops don't even let you do that anymore from midnight to seven. Incidentally, you mark which number you got me at? I already forgot it.”

“I know which one. And I called you, so we can't be cut off.”

“You're right. My head. Suddenly thought before was now. Not that. After? But—and I'm not talking like this or pretending to be confused for the sake—”

“Enough. Just come here. Money will be in a letter envelope in a metal well in the wall behind the bellboard. Reach up and finger around and you'll find it. Do what you want with the money and I don't care when you pay it back, but sometime would be nice.”

“Please, all I want's a floor. I'm safe. I'm good-natured. I'm very clean other than what came out of me or got stuck on me from tonight's knockdown. I'll only ask to wash up, maybe have something warm to drink—hot water, even, with a lemon slice in it if you got—and several aspirins and dabs of iodine. Nothing if you don't want or have and no washup if that's what you want also, and a blanket or coat over me on the floor and a towel or coat underneath me if it's just wood there with no carpet or rug, and that'll be it. Or just the bare floor and no body cover or anything under, and I promise, my word against anything, you'll never meet anyone more peaceful and quiet when I get there. Sure, maybe by now Diana's home or someone else from before, though we've been talking so long that it's probably really too late or too early to call anyone now. Even if it weren't, I don't have the energy and maybe not the memory nor another dime to make another call.”

“Okay. How would you get here if you came and stayed on the couch or floor?”

“No couch. The floor.”

“How would you? Cab?”

“I can't walk it. But I don't want you going downstairs alone or in any way to put you through anything more. I'll try to borrow the subway fare or jump over the turnstile.”

“Don't jump over anything. You'll get caught and then you'll be calling me to come to the police station to bail you out. Are you sufficiently presentable where a cab would—oh, this is silly.”

“No it's not. I'll do what you say. A cab. I'll spruce myself up enough so one will take me. Could you leave ten dollars in that envelope behind the bells? Or maybe, so you don't have to come downstairs alone, wait till I ring your bell.”

“I'll leave it behind the bellboard now. Ten dollars—one five and five singles—I know I have those—so you won't have to call me from downstairs for change or for more. But remember, I don't know you, but we've mutual friends and you're cultured and a scholar—”

“Scholar? Not me.”

“I have your Japanese story anthology, or one of them, and it lists—”

“How'd you get that prize? You weren't one of the approved three hundred something people and libraries who were licensed to buy it?—that would be too much.”

“However I got it, I'm doing you a favor beyond the call of mutual friendship and professional fellowship and at an hour way beyond my deliberative decision-making and common sense time, so you will be on your best behavior?”

“The absolute best, bar none, of that I double-swear.”

“You have the address?”

“From the phonebook.”

“Then at this hour, despite how you might look, cabbies will have to see something of the noncombatant on your face and they go hurting for fares, so I should expect to see you in about thirty minutes—try not to make it later. I'm dead to the world.”

“Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.”

“Please get on with it then. Apartment 9B. Just ring it and I'll buzz you in,” and I hang up.