Monastery Page 8

  I ordered another beer and Yael brought us two Mozas and a plate of potato chips. She stood in front of us. I asked Tamara what her last name was. I remember it was Russian. Halfon is Lebanese, I said, but my mother’s maiden name, Tenenbaum, is from Poland, from Łódź, and they both shrieked. It turned out that Yael’s last name was also Tenenbaum, and as they were verifying the information on my driver’s license, I considered the remote possibility that we came from the same family, and envisioned an entire novel about two Polish siblings who believed their family had been exterminated and then, after not seeing each other for sixty years, were suddenly reunited thanks to two of their grandchildren, one a Guatemalan writer and one an Israeli hippie, who met accidentally at a Scottish bar that wasn’t really a Scottish bar, in Antigua, Guatemala.

  Yael took out a liter of cheap beer and filled three glasses. They handed me back my license and we toasted—to us, to them, to the Poles. We fell silent, listening to an old Bob Marley song and contemplating the never-ending brevity of the planet.

  Tamara lifted my lit cigarette from the ashtray, took a long drag, and asked me what I did for a living. I told her with a straight face that I was a pediatrician and a professional liar. She held up a hand, as if to say stop. I really liked her hand and I don’t know why I recalled the verse of an e.e. cummings poem that Woody Allen quotes in one of his movies about infidelity. Nobody, I said, trapping her hand like a pale, fragile butterfly, not even the rain, has such small hands. Tamara smiled, told me that her parents were doctors, that she sometimes wrote poems too, and I guessed she had attributed the cummings line to me, but I didn’t feel like setting her straight. And she didn’t let go of my hand.

  Yael filled our glasses and I smoked awkwardly with my left hand as they spoke in Hebrew. What’s wrong? I asked Tamara, and with a disconsolate pout she told me that someone had stolen her stuff the day before. She sighed. I spent all morning walking around the craft market, she said, through some ruins, all over the place, and when I sat down on a bench in the Central Park (that’s what people in Antigua call it, even though it’s really a plaza), I realized that someone had slashed my bag open with a knife. She explained that she’d lost a little money and some papers. Yael said something in Hebrew and they both laughed. What? I asked, curious, but they kept laughing and speaking in Hebrew. I squeezed her hand and Tamara remembered I was there and told me that the money didn’t matter as much as the papers. I asked what papers. She smiled enigmatically, like a Dutch girl selling tulips. Four hits of acid, she whispered in bad Spanish. I took a sip of beer. Do you like acid? she asked, and I said I didn’t know, that I’d never tried it. Tamara spoke euphorically for ten or twenty minutes about how essential acid was as a way to open our minds and turn us into more tolerant, peaceful people, and all I could think about while she blathered on was of tearing her clothes off right there in front of Yael and the Germans and any other Scottish voyeur who might care to watch. To get her to stop talking, and to calm myself down, I suppose, I lit a cigarette and passed it to her. The first time I tried acid, with my friends in Tel Aviv, she said as we passed the cigarette back and forth, I got really drowsy, very, very relaxed, and I think I saw God. I seem to recall she used the Spanish word Dios, although she might have used Hashem or God or Adonai or YHVH, the unpronounceable all-consonant tetragrammaton. I didn’t know if I should laugh, so instead all I did was ask her what it looked like, the face of God. He didn’t have a face, she told me. So what did you see? I asked. She said it was hard to explain and then closed her eyes and took on a mystic air and awaited some divine revelation. I don’t believe in God, I said, wakening her from her trance, though I do speak to Him every day, or just about. She turned serious. You don’t consider yourself a Jew and you don’t believe in God? she asked reproachfully, and I just shrugged and asked what for and went to the bathroom before there was any chance to start on such a pointless topic.

  AS I STOOD OVER THE TOILET, I saw that despite being slightly drunk I had a limp erection. There was a dark puddle at my feet. An old lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The wall in front of me, behind the only toilet, was full of colorful graffiti—words and sayings and names and drawings and even poems. My eyes immediately searched for anything crossed out, anything forbidden, and I recalled the canvasses of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who wrote words on them and then crossed some out, so you’d see them more, he said—the very fact that they were obscured, he said, made you want to read them. I washed my hands, thinking about my grandfather, about Auschwitz, about the five green numbers tattooed on his forearm that throughout my entire childhood I’d believed were there, as he himself had told me, so that he wouldn’t forget his phone number—his way of crossing them out, I suppose, of forbidding them. And I thought about Łódź, about his apartment in Łódź on the first floor of a building on the corner of Zeromskiego Street and Persego Maja Street, number 16, near the Zielony Rynek market, near Poniatowskiego Park, in which he and his girlfriend Mina and their friends were playing a game of dominoes when the German or Polish soldiers captured them all one afternoon in November of 1939. And I thought about the way my grandfather’s face looked both cynical and disappointed every time I told him that I wanted to visit Poland, Łódź, the Zielony Rynek market, his apartment on the corner of Zeromskiego Street and Persego Maja Street, where that afternoon he saw his siblings and his parents for the last time, and where, in November of 1939, after that game of dominoes was interrupted, he’d never returned. What do you want to go to Poland for? he used to say. You shouldn’t go to Poland. The Polish betrayed us.

  FAMILIJNY MLECZNY BAR. That’s what I saw in another city, outside another bar, painted in gold letters on the glass of the front door. Milk bar, I remembered having read someplace before traveling to Warsaw. Classic Polish cafeterias. Very communal. Very cheap. Vestiges of another time, a time more austere and less globalized. I was standing on Nowy Swiat Street—which means New World in Polish, I later learned—freezing in pink in the premature night, watching diners through the enormous front window: them too mostly vestiges from another time. The last bastion, I thought. The last refuge of the old world, I thought, right here in the middle of this strange new world. Everything inside was glowing in the night. Everything looked warm, and comfortable, and delicious. I could see that the menu, written on one wall, was only in Polish. Suddenly, a young couple walked in. I acted on impulse and walked in with them.

  The line moved quickly—first to the window where a redheaded woman, void of any expression whatsoever, was taking orders and payment; and then to a second window, which opened directly onto the kitchen, and through which customers took their plates. I tried to read the enormous menu written on the wall, but I couldn’t decipher or even recognize the name of anything. We kept moving. In front of me, the two young people were taking off their gloves and scarves and caps and preparing to order. I turned to the tables and noted that everyone was eating quickly, in silence, with near-mechanical movements and expressions. Maybe they were enjoying their dinner, but they seemed determined not to let it show. Briefly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pink ghost in the glass, and it took me a moment to realize that I was that ghost, still wearing the pink coat. The young couple finally reached the first window. They ordered their meals and paid the woman. Now it was my turn. I didn’t know what to do, or what to order, or what to say. I leaned over to the couple and asked them if they spoke English. A bit, said the man, and I felt less nervous. I asked him if he could order for me. He stood staring at my huge pink coat, perhaps thrown by my huge pink coat, and I sensed the increasing anxiety of the old people behind me waiting their turn and found myself on the verge of shouting to the man that I was hungry, that my damn suitcase had gotten lost. But luckily all I said was that I didn’t speak Polish. He consulted with his partner. They both had shaved heads, were dressed in black, had tattoos on their arms and necks and rings in their lower lips. What do you want? I told him that it didn’t matter, that he should decide, that I’
d have the typical. Soup? Yes, of course, soup. And maybe a kielbasa? Yes, that too, a kielbasa. And black tea? Yes, thank you, black tea, and I listened to him order it all from the redhead at the first window. I also ordered you some dessert, he said. You’ll like it, he added. Naleśniki z serem, that’s what it’s called, and he smiled. I thanked him again and they moved up a few steps toward the second window. The redheaded woman said something to me that I didn’t understand but took to be the grand total of what I owed her for my dinner. I gave her a few bills, a few złotys, and she, still tight-lipped, and still wearing no expression whatsoever, and as stiff and automatic as her old cash register, handed me my change.

  I sat down between two old Poles, without taking off my pink coat. I thought they both looked a bit like my grandfather. I tried not to see them as traitors, not to judge them, not to condemn all old Poles. I made a futile attempt to forget my grandfather’s words. And warming up as I ate dish after dish (the best one: that dessert, which turned out to be a Polish version of crepes or blintzes), I finally realized that my entire dinner had cost a little less than two dollars. The great mathematics of socialism.

  BOB DYLAN’S VOICE WHINED in the background. Tamara was singing. Yael had filled my glass again and was now flirting with a guy who looked Scottish and who quite likely was the owner of the bar. I kept looking at Yael. She had a silver belly-button ring. I pictured her in military uniform, toting a huge machine gun. I turned and looked back, and Tamara was smiling at me as she sang. Her, I could only picture naked.

  I took a long swallow and emptied my glass. An old indigenous man had walked into the bar and was trying to sell machetes and huipiles. I told Tamara that I was running late but that we could meet the following day. Can you come back here from the capital? she asked. Sure, I’d love to, it’s only thirty minutes by car (I’d parked the Saab out on the street). All right, she said, I get out of class at six. Should we meet here? Ken, I said, which means yes in Hebrew, and I gave her a half smile. I love your mouth, it’s shaped like a heart, she said, and then she stroked my lips with her finger. I said thank you, and told her that I really liked my lips stroked with a finger. I do too, Tamara whispered in her bad Spanish, and then, still in Spanish and baring all her teeth like a hungry lioness, she added: But what I like even more is having my nipples bitten, and hard. I wasn’t sure if she really understood what she was saying or if she’d said it as a joke. She leaned into me and made me shiver with a kiss on my neck. I wondered what her nipples looked like, if they were round or pointy, pink or vermilion or maybe translucent violet, and standing up to leave, I said in Spanish that it was a shame, because when I bite them, I bite them soft.

  I paid for all the beers and we agreed to meet right there, at six o’clock. I gave her a tight hug, feeling something that has no name but is as loud and clear as the white smoke from the Vatican on a dark winter night, and knowing full well that I wouldn’t be back the next day.

  Surviving Sundays

  It was raining in Harlem. I was standing on the corner of 162nd and Amsterdam, my coat already damp, my old umbrella barely holding out against the sudden gusts of wind. It was almost four in the afternoon, and already starting to get dark. I didn’t know Harlem. I didn’t know which way to walk. I didn’t know which direction would take me to Edgecombe Avenue, in Washington Heights. I just stood there looking up the street as if I might be able to recognize something in the rain and the wind and the premature December dusk. I hunched under the umbrella. With some difficulty, I managed to light a limp, rain-specked cigarette.

  Heading to Marjorie’s, I presume.

  Her presence beside me, all stoic, gave me a start. She seemed not to mind the rain. Or not to know it was raining.

  You’re heading to Marjorie’s, I presume, she said again, taking a pair of thin black woolen gloves out of her bag. But you don’t know how to get there, she added, and took a long black woolen scarf out of her bag. I could tell by looking at you.

  Her English sounded faintly accented. Caribbean, perhaps. African, perhaps. The skin on her face was deep black and flawless and probably still silky smooth. The whites of her eyes shone in the gloom. Only the slight gray in her hair—a short Afro—gave away her age.

  Is it that obvious? I asked, and she did up the buttons on her black raincoat and folded her arms and said she could tell by the day, by the time, by the subway station on the corner of 162nd and Amsterdam, by the expression on my face, by the fact that there was always one to be found standing there, on that corner. She took out of her bag a black felt cloche hat, bell-shaped, 1920s style. You always find someone looking lost in the middle of Harlem? I asked her. Or you always find someone with an expression on his face that says he’s desperately searching for the way to Marjorie’s? And I smiled with a mixture of shame and solace. Something like that, she said. Come on. It’s this way, child. She had already started to walk. I hurried and took a final drag on my cigarette and, crushing it out on the ground, discovered with pleasant surprise that under the thick folds of her black raincoat, splashing indifferently through the puddles, was a pair of bloodred cowboy boots.

  SO IT’S YOUR FIRST TIME, THEN?

  I was surprised at how slowly and gracefully she walked. As if following a rhythm. As if she were a model on a catwalk: elegant, exotic, aware of being watched. As if she were in no hurry to arrive and get out of the rain. Several times I offered her my umbrella—flimsy and fragile in the wind—but she didn’t notice, or didn’t care, or didn’t want to get too close to a stranger. Rain was dripping from the brim of her cloche hat. I was still entranced by her bloodred boots. Perhaps because of the bloodred color. Perhaps because I’d never myself owned cowboy boots. Too spineless.

  Yes, my first time, I said. A friend sent me a postcard, I told her, with a photo of Marjorie in a long turquoise dress, or maybe a mint green dress, I said, and ebony hands, and the address of the apartment on Edgecombe Avenue, I said, but without telling me much more. I considered getting out the postcard and showing it to her, as evidence. You don’t know who Marjorie is, then? she asked. I said sort of, said that I knew a bit. We stopped on the corner of 161st and Amsterdam. Look, they’re heading over there, she said, pointing at a couple holding a folded map. And them too, pointing at another group of pedestrians. And him, she said, pointing at an older gentleman in jacket and tie and carrying a big black case. How do you know? I asked. She smiled or almost smiled in the darkness. Many a Sunday, child.

  The light changed and we began to cross the street.

  Marjorie Eliot, that’s her name, she said. For years she’s been opening her apartment on Sundays, every Sunday, without taking a break or a vacation, ever since one Sunday back in 1992, when her son died. She fell silent. A sharp gust of wind struck us head-on. Every Sunday a jazz concert, she continued. Parlor jazz. At four in the afternoon. In the living room of her own apartment. With different musicians. The musicians come and go. Novice musicians and famous musicians and musician friends of hers. And it’s always free. She always welcomes anyone who wants to come to her home and listen to a couple of hours of jazz, and that’s a lot of people. She paused, took a deep breath, and with a soothing, almost secretive voice, she whispered: And all that to honor the memory of her son, through music.

  We turned left. She asked me my name. Very pleased to meet you, Eduardo, she said. My name’s Shasta. There are some names that shimmer, it occurred to me then, or perhaps it occurs to me now. There are names you long to shout. She asked me where I was from and I told her Guatemala, that I was only in New York for a few days, just passing through. I considered telling her I was there, passing through, to receive some Guggenheim money—God love it, wrote Vonnegut, or Vonnegut’s narrator—that soon, if I ever got over my fears and demons, I would use to travel to Poland, to Łódź, my grandfather’s hometown. But I didn’t say any more. And she didn’t ask any more, accustomed, I’m sure, like all New Yorkers, to the fact that everybody there is just passing through, that everybody there
is on their own ridiculous pilgrimage, that the whole world is nothing but a handful of salt.

  We crossed St. Nicholas Avenue. That way, she said, signaling with a glance, is St. Nick’s Pub, Harlem’s legendary jazz club. Ah, the old Poospatuck, I said, and she, looking askance, almost complicit, threw me a half smile. I knew something about the history of St. Nick’s Pub. I knew that when it first opened, in the thirties, it was called the Poospatuck Club, after a tribe native to New York. Later, in the forties, it was named the Rendezvous, by its new owner, Charles Luckeyth Roberts, or Luckey Roberts, the great stride pianist, whose span on the keys was so wide and so quick, it’s been said, because he had the skin between his fingers surgically cut. Later, in the fifties, adding opera to the repertoire, the new owners called it the Pink Angel—because, it’s been said, it was a popular haunt for homosexual men. And lastly, since the sixties, St. Nick’s Pub.

  We came to Edgecombe Avenue. On the far side of the road was a small strip of trees. On the far side of the trees was a highway. From the far side of the highway, in the distance, we could perhaps hear the gentle flow of the Harlem River. We turned right. I didn’t say anything, hoping she would talk more, simultaneously eager to arrive and wanting never to arrive. Almost at once, she stopped at the black door of a huge classical building, and gave me a look. A look filled with something. Kindness, perhaps. Weariness, perhaps. The skin on her face, because of the humidity or because of the light coming from an ancient streetlight, seemed to burn in the night. She said: Marjorie Eliot says she started to host jazz concerts in her apartment, after the death of her son, as a way of surviving Sundays.

  NUMBER 555 EDGECOMBE AVENUE has many names. Some call it the Paul Robeson Residence. Others, the Roger Morris Building. Others, the Triple Nickel. Still others, Count Basie Place. Built in 1916, for its first twenty-five years it was a segregated residence: whites only. But around 1939, when Harlem’s character changed, so did the rules and restrictions at 555 Edgecombe Avenue, and it became the residence of distinguished and famous members of Harlem’s African-American community. Like musician Count Basie. Composer and pianist Duke Ellington. Sax player Coleman Hawkins. Writer Langston Hughes. Judge (and the first African-American on the Supreme Court) Thurgood Marshall. Baseball player (and the first African-American in the major leagues) Jackie Robinson. Boxer (and the first African-American on the pro golf circuit) Joe Louis. Singer Lena Horne. Writer Zora Neale Hurston. Actor and political activist Paul Robeson. Pianist Marjorie Eliot.