Tiffany Street (15 page)

“How—did—Seymour—tell—me—all—this.”

She shifted her glance. My mother had an impressive glance. When she narrowed it she could split the electric beam guarding the main vault at Fort Knox. I felt nailed to the wall.

“You mean how did we talk?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “What language?”

“Yiddish,” my mother said. “How else could we talk?”

How else indeed? And why not? Being a Jew is an endlessly rewarding thing to be. You start from way back, especially if you are a ghetto or East Fourth Street Jew. No lessons needed in cringing. Or crouching away from blows. Or pretending you have not heard insults. They all come with the package. Including the necessity to learn slowly how to straighten up and close your hands into fists and give as good and better than you are forced to take. This is the exhilarating period of the awakening. Then reason takes over. Reason leads to pride. Pride leads to incredulity. What in God’s name was I afraid of? These pigheaded fools? These savage idiots? The questions answer themselves, and then the fun begins. The dividends of emancipation start rolling in. Tearing away curtains. You meet someone you like. Someone you are drawn to. But you are afraid to be drawn. Or you were, and you can’t forget it. Not yet. You are a Jew from East Fourth Street, functioning uptown, being circumspect. In blunt words, pretending not to be a Jew. There are so many ways to act out the pretense without having to speak the lie, that what you are doing does not seem reprehensible. After all, you’ve made it to Tiffany Street. Let’s not rock any boats at this intermediate stage. You’re not going to remain on Tiffany Street forever, are you? You’ve got to keep your nose clean for the next move. Which will naturally be in the general direction of up. And this guy is an Englishman named Sebastian Roon. Sebastian Roon? Even Dickens wouldn’t dare. Chuzzlewit? Okay. Nicholas Nickleby? Well, all right. Barnaby Rudge? Let it pass. But Sebastian Roon? Jesus Christ on a raft! What’s going on here? Answer: a Jew discovering the pleasure of discovering another Jew.

“And he’s sleeping in my bed,” I said.

I was aware that I sounded like the dopey member of the Three Little Bears who pulled it all together, but I was also aware of something else: my mother was pleased. She was not a woman whose life had been dotted with many good moments. I could see this night had given her pleasure. So I reaped the dividend. It gave me pleasure. And for the moment I stopped worrying about my relationship to her. For the moment I liked her.

“What else could I do?” my mother said. “When we finished the ‘turning’ it was already after eleven.”

“The turning,” I said. “Did he tell you how he knows about jazz bows?”

“Sure he told me,” my mother said. “In this place where he was born. What’s the name?”

“Blackpool,” I said.

“That’s the place,” my mother said. “It’s a terrible name to give a place.”

“Why?” I said.

“It sounds so dark,” my mother said.

I hadn’t thought of that

“It’s like Coney Island,” I said. “There’s sun and sand and fresh air.”

“Maybe,” my mother said. “But Seymour told me about this Blackpool, and to me it sounds like East Fourth Street. His father was a butcher, but he died. So his mother had to do something to put the bread on the table. What she did, she did like the other women did. She started to take in turning for a man he manufactured jazz bows. Look.” My mother touched the neatly stacked rectangles of colored silk. “You ever saw such beautiful work?”

Not on Tiffany Street.

“He’s good,” I said.

It was not really what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say what I did want to say. I was jealous.

“He’s a wonderful boy,” my mother said.

Oh, come on, now, I thought. You’ve just met him. But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t spoil her pleasure.

“He’s not bad,” I said. Holding down the grudging tone.

“So when he finished with the ‘turning,’” my mother said, “I looked at the clock. It’s late. Why don’t you sleep over here by us?”

“And he said yes,” I said.

I couldn’t think of any dialogue for myself. So I filled in with his.

My mother nodded. “I put him in your room,” she said. “And for you I made a bed on the floor in the front room.”

It was not exactly a bed. My mother had pushed the round fake mahogany dining room table to one side and, on the floor, had spread one of the
perrinas,
or feather beds, she had brought from Hungary when she came to America as a girl. It may well be the perfect sleeping accommodation. If you are young, that is. And have just taken in the midnight show with Hannah Halpern at Loew’s 180th Street. The next thing I knew it was six o’clock and my mother was shaking me awake.

“I’m cooking for you an egg,” she said.

I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had said she was hatching it. My staying-power breakfast was heavy on things like oatmeal, farina, and chunks of rye bread. I had never in my life had an egg for breakfast

“An egg?” I said.

My mother’s voice was sharp. “What’s wrong with an egg?”

Six o’clock in the morning. After two and a half hours’ sleep. The offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company on West 34th Street waiting for my ministrations. And your mother asks you what’s wrong with an egg.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just I’m not hungry.”

“Since when are you in the morning not hungry?” she said.

Since I ate two Gabilla’s knishes the night before. They had more than staying power. They had a tendency to take up permanent residence. I could still taste them.

“Just a piece of bread and a glass of milk,” I said. “That’s all I want, Ma.”

“So what should I do with the egg?” she said.

I refrained from the traditional reply. She was, after all, my mother.

“Save it for Sebastian,” I said.

“Who?” my mother said.

So I knew I had a right to be jealous. He had won her heart.

“Seymour,” I said.

My mother smiled. She was then, as I work out the arithmetic, in her mid-thirties. She was then also, as she had always been, a Hungarian. Need I say more? My mother did not smile often. Her life had not been anything Lehár would have chosen as the libretto for an operetta. But when my mother did smile you believed all those movies in which Jeanette MacDonald sang her heart out to Nelson Eddy as they leaped from
Schloss
to
Schloss.
My mother was a Gabor sister before the Gabors were invented.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll save it for him.”

While she was saving it, I was on the subway. I arrived in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company on time. Mr. Bern had told me, when I was hired, that he expected me to have the office “ready” at eight sharp. He had made it sound as though he expected me to have a regiment fed, equipped with ammunition, and checked out for possible weapon failure by the time he was ready to step in and give the order to go over the top. This was pretty much the basic situation every morning in the M.S.&Co. office, so I made it a point to arrive on 34th Street, and let myself into the office with my key, at 7:45. The moment I pulled that key out of the lock, and the door slammed shut behind me, I went into action.

Reception room: remove inverted five-gallon empty jug of Western Spring Water from cooler near Mr. Saltzman’s green stagskin. I grab the fat paper sack of cracked ice from the brown marble floor outside the reception room where it was dumped by the Seventh Avenue Ice Delivery Corporation while I was on the subway. I pour the cracked ice into the circular trough on top of the water cooler. I pack the ice into place. Packing ice in 1930 meant whacking the stuff down with hard sharp slaps of the open palm. I have the scars to prove it.

I dump the empty ice bag and the empty Western Spring Water jug outside in the hall. From the file room I drag a fresh jug of Western Spring Water. Water in bulk is heavy. I jockey the jug into the reception room, hoist it up onto the cooler, neck down, and pant as I watch the big greenish-white bubbles come exploding up. Glug, glug, glug. There is something satisfying about a five-gallon jug of Western Spring Water settling into place in a cooler. What can it be? A sense of accomplishment, probably. Well, that’s done. Now the cigarette butts.

I do not smoke. So I don’t really feel I have the right to comment on this addiction. But I think it is a matter of simple honesty to record that in 1930, on West 34th Street, I hated every son of a bitch who touched flame to tobacco in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company.

I dump the contents of all the ashtrays into a brown tin wastebasket. Phew! I run the wastebasket into one of the pots and flush it. Then I run the wastebasket back into the office, collect the empty ashtrays, and take them out to the file room.

The file room has a basin with running water. I rinse the ashtrays. Phew again. I give each ashtray a fast swipe with a wad of damp toilet paper, distribute the trays around the office, and tackle Mr. Saltzman’s green stagskin. He brought it back from the premises of a bankrupt leather goods firm on Leonard Street where we were doing an audit for the Irving Trust Company, and he had spread it on the table in our reception room. Mr. Saltzman was crazy about that green stagskin. I had to polish it every morning.

I was buffing away at the stag’s rump when he came out into the reception room. This was a surprise. Mr. Saltzman was the senior member of the firm. He rarely arrived in the office before nine-thirty, after Ira Bern had assigned the members of the staff and sent them off on their tasks for the day. Yet here it was not quite eight-thirty, and here was Mr. Saltzman.

“Benny,” he said,

“Yes, sir?”

“Come in a minute in Mr. Bern’s office, Benny.”

Mr. Saltzman turned. His eye caught the rump of his beloved green stagskin. He stopped moving. His eyes spread wide. He went to the table. He stroked the green leather. He turned to me. Mr. Saltzman was beaming.

“Benny!” he said. “You did it!”

“What?” I said.

“You brought up the lights!”

I turned to take a look of my own. By God, I had! I smiled shyly and scuffed the toe of my shoe across the carpet.

“Oh, well, Mr. Saltzman,” I said. “They were always there, I guess. It was just a matter of giving it the old elbow grease.”

Mr. Saltzman put his arm across my shoulders. “You’re a good boy, Benny,” he said. “Come into Mr. Bern’s office.”

I followed him. Seated beside Mr. Bern’s desk was Mr. I. G. Roon.

“You look better than you did Friday,” he said.

His voice was not friendly. But it had not been friendly on Friday at the lunch table in Shane’s on 23rd Street. I remembered that I had not liked him on Friday. Then I remembered a number of other things. They did not help me like him on Sunday.

“I wasn’t feeling good on Friday,” I said.

“You can say that again,” said I. G. Roon.

Like most people, I don’t like to be disliked. When I learn that I am, my first reaction is dismay. Here I am, a first-class charmer, stepping forward at my most charming, and what happens? I walk into a wall of wet cement.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

It was no moment for repartee.

“So you know Benny?” Mr. Saltzman said.

“Maurice, yes, Isaac knows Benny,” Ira Bern said. “I told you about the lunch Friday at Shane’s.”

“Oh, yes,” Maurice Saltzman said, and he must have had a vision of his green stagskin out in the reception room, because again he put his arm across my shoulders. “Benny is a good boy,” Maurice Saltzman said.

“He’s a lousy drinker,” L G. Roon said.

“At his age,” Maurice Saltzman said, “who is a good one?”

Mr. Roon grunted. It occurred to me that he looked terrible. In Shane’s on Friday he had been no prize package but he had looked trim. He did not look trim now. In fact, he looked seedy. I noticed he was wearing the same suit in which he had walked into Shane’s on Friday.

“Let’s get going,” he said. He looked at his watch. “We don’t have too much time to waste.”

“You’re right,” Mr. Bern said. He pulled out his wallet and set it on top of some papers on the desk. “Benny, here’s a ten.” He drew a ten-dollar bill from the wallet. “Go over to Lou G. Siegel’s and bring back three hot pastrami sandwiches.”

“Corned beef for me,” I. G. Roon said.

“Two hot pastrami, Benny,” Mr. Bern said. “And one corned beef.”

“You mind, Ira, I have tongue?” Mr. Saltzman said.

“Mind?” Ira Bern said. “Why should I mind?” He held the ten-dollar bill out to me. I took it “Benny, make it one hot pastrami, one corned beef, and one tongue.”

I took the ten-dollar bill and hesitated. “Mr. Bern,” I said. “It’s half past eight in the morning.”

Mr. Bern tapped the tiny mustache under his nose. My remark seemed to have confused him. I knew the next step. I had lived through it many times. He was about to get sore at me.

“What difference does the time make?” he said.

Not sore. Not yet, anyway. But not friendly.

“The kid’s right,” I. G. Roon said. “Lou G. Siegel, this hour of the morning, they’re probably still closed.”

“You mean not yet open, Isaac,” Maurice Saltzman said. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “What we want, Benny, we want three sandwiches, and we want them fast. Lou G. Siegel’s is closed, or not yet open? Go in any place and get three sandwiches, but get them fast, Benny.”

“Yes, sir,” I said I started for the door.

“Coffee, too,” Ira Bern called.

“No, tea,” I. G. Roon said.

“Mine with lemon,” Maurice Saltzman called.

“For me cream,” I. G. Roon called.

“Yes, sir,” I said. And I got out of there.

I did not get very far out before I realized it was foolish to go all the way up to Lou G. Siegel’s delicatessen on 39th Street. At eight-thirty in the morning, on a Sunday, the only place that can possibly be less dead than Seventh Avenue in the heart of the garment center is the north bank of the river Styx.

Out on the street, trying to think what course of action to take, I saw the sign over the Automat, winking on and off briskly next to Macy’s. I couldn’t help wondering. Electricity costs money. To whom were the owners of that sign winking? There was not a living movement visible as far north as Times Square and as far south as the eyes of Benny Kramer could see. But that sign kept banging away. I decided to take the hint. I ran across the street and slapped down my ten-dollar bill on the marble counter in front of the cashier’s booth.