Her grandfather put a hand over his eyes, coming to a stop and leaning on his cane. He sighed. “All right, boy.”
Christmas came over to her bed. “Ruth, I’m Christmas,” he said softly.
The girl turned her head. Her jaw had been wired shut. She opened her eyes slightly — and again Christmas saw they were green, like flawless emeralds — and when she recognized her visitor she seemed paralyzed. Then she began to be agitated, trembling, shaking her head. And her eyes opened as wide as her swollen lids — by now completely bruised and empurpled — allowed. Fear, as if she weren’t seeing just Christmas, but her nightmare in its entirety.
Christmas was afraid, and took a step backward. “But I’m Christmas,” he said. “Christmas …”
But Ruth shook her head to the right and to the left, and kept on trembling. The bolt that blocked her jaw kept her from speaking but she kept on repeating: “O … o … o …” meaning “No, no, no.” In her agitation she pulled her bandaged hand, bloodstained where the amputated finger had been, out from under the blankets and put it over her eyes, which were beginning to drip tears.
Christmas was petrified. He didn’t know what to do.
“Grandpa Saul’s here now,” said the old man, taking her hand and kissing it, embracing her tenderly. “Ruth, I’m here, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. Calm down, darling, calm down …” then he turned to Christmas. “Out. Now, boy!” he ordered. “Doctor Goldsmith! Doctor Goldsmith!”
The doctor came into the room. The nurse had already prepared a syringe. Dr. Goldsmith took it from her, came over to Ruth and injected the morphine into her arm.
In the confusion, Christmas backed away slowly. Chased away by Ruth’s eyes, by the emerald eyes of the girl who belonged to him, like a treasure. He came out of the room, met Mr. Isaacson’s vacuous stare, then turned and began to walk slowly down the corridor that was separating him definitively from the girl he’d thought he could love.
“You, boy. Stop.”
Christmas turned.
The old man with the cane strode up to him firmly, despite his age. “What’s your name?” he asked, thrusting his chin out.
“Christmas.”
“So what is it? First name or last name?” said the old man in his aggressive way, without preamble.
He’s got piercing eyes, thought Christmas. Not like his son’s. And he’s strong. Energy that age hadn’t diminished. Everything his son had never had.
“It’s a first name,” Christmas answered.
The old man looked at him, not speaking. As if he were judging him. But Christmas knew he’d already been judged. Otherwise he’d never have let him go into Ruth’s room.
“Christmas Luminita,” he added.
Saul Isaacson nodded. “Did my son reward you adequately?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Christmas, pulling the tightly rolled bill out of his pocket and showing it to the old man.
“Ten dollars? What is my grandchild, chopped liver? Schmuck!” the old man grumbled. He slipped a hand into an inner pocket and took out a crocodile billfold. He slid out a fifty-dollar bill. “Forgive him,” he said, indicating his son with a jerk of his head.
“I didn’t do it for money,” said Christmas, not taking the bill.
“I know,” said the old man, continuing to stare at him intensely, as if he wanted to pierce through his eyes. “But we’re people who don’t have any other way of thanking you,” he said with a wink. “So take it.” He stretched out his wrinkled hand and almost rudely stuffed the banknote into Christmas’ pocket.
Christmas bore the old man’s gaze. He didn’t say anything.
“Fred,” the old man spoke to his chauffeur, “drive Mr. Luminita home.” He looked at Christmas again. “Accept this, too, boy. You’ve been a mensch, a gentleman.”
When the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost stopped in Monroe Street, Christmas was deep in his own thoughts. Ruth’s reaction had disturbed him at least as much as seeing him had apparently troubled her. He’d thought that she would smile at him, the way she’d tried to do when he’d left her at the hospital. He’d thought that they would stay there, side by side, forgotten by the world around them. He’d thought she wouldn’t take her deep emerald eyes off his for a single moment. And with that endless look they would say all the things that two adolescents couldn’t manage to say in words; through that look that fate had given them, they would have crossed the ocean that separated a rich girl from a piss-poor boy. He had thought about all these things during the drive from the hospital to his house, after telling Fred, the driver, where he lived. He had sunk back into the soft leather seat in that interior that smelled faintly of good cigars and cognac, and he looked into himself, with an adult attention. He forgot about everything else.
Even when the Silver Ghost stopped in front of 320 Monroe Street, Christmas sat there, unmoving, in his ragged clothes and his shoes soiled with mud and horse manure, thinking about Ruth and her green eyes.
And this pause — while Fred turned off the engine, got out of the car and, with obsequious professionalism, opened the door for him — gave enough time for a throng of the curious to gather around the unimaginable car. Children, boys, women, men, all leaned toward the dimly lit interior, whispering among themselves, wondering who the mysterious person visiting the East Side ghetto could be. And since nobody emerged from the car, even with the implacable driver holding the door open for him, in their imaginations the person took on greater importance and weight with every passing second.
“We’re here, Mr. Luminita,” the chauffeur said at last.
Christmas awakened from his thoughts, suddenly, and when he looked out of the car he found himself in front of twenty astonished faces. He immediately forgot about Ruth, and got out of the car with the feigned nonchalance of the tough guy. He looked around with bored insolence, keeping one foot on the running board, as if to imprint that image of himself in everyone’s memory — and finally he put a hand into his pocket. He drew out the twenty-dollar bill — making sure that everyone saw it — folded it again, and with the flair of a consummate actor, he slipped into the pocket of the driver’s livery.
“Thanks, Fred, you can go now,” he said, and as he withdrew his hand from the pocket he retrieved the bill without anyone — except Fred — noticing.
“Thank you, Mr. Luminita,” said Fred with a complicit smile. “Very generous.” Then the driver returned to his place, started the engine and pulled away in a car that was worth than all their lives put together.
The gawkers surrounding Christmas were stupefied, speechless. They stared open-mouthed at the ragged boy that many of them remembered shouting headlines in the street, or coming back to his house with his shoes covered with tar after patching tenement roofs to keep the rain out. As Christmas took a first step towards the door of the shabby building where he lived with his mother, the crowd split into two wings. At the back of the group, Christmas saw Santo who had just come back from the police station, smiling foolishly. He was about to pull out his ten-dollar bill.
“Hey, there you are, Santo,” said Christmas preemptively, using the silence to be clearly heard. “You know who …” and he emphasized these three mysterious words, “liked what we did. He’s got another job for us Diamond Dogs,” and with fresh recourse to his art, he made sure that everyone could hear the name of his gang. “Come upstairs, Santo, I’ll explain everything,” and he took his arm, hurrying him towards the door. As soon as they’d climbed the filthy steps to the entrance, Christmas stopped, as if he’d just remembered something, plunged his hand into his pocket again and pulled out the fifty-dollar bill, making sure it was visible. He put it into Santo’s hand, saying, “Take it, here’s your share.”
This time the sensation-seekers on the sidewalk couldn’t hold back a murmur of amazement.
Christmas looked down at the crowd. “What’s the matter? Always stickin’ your noses in other people’s business. Come on. We gotta go,” he told Santo, whose eyes were as wide
as everyone else’s, “we can’t talk business out here,” and, followed by Santo — whom everyone outside now considered his lieutenant — he disappeared into the reeking hallway.
“Fifty bucks!” exclaimed Santo as they climbed the stairs. “So what kinda job did he give us?”
“Schmuck,” said Christmas, snatching the bill out of his hands and returning it to his own pocket.
12
Brooklyn Heights-Manhattan, 1922
Bill didn’t go home that night. He’d bought a case of beer and a bottle of twelve-year-old whiskey at the same speakeasy that had given him credit the night before. It was an illicit place where petty criminals hung out, people who demanded small payoffs to racketeers, or collected the rent on slot machines. They were all rat-faced, even if they were big guys. They came up out of the sewers, and the sewers were where they lived. But Bill felt important when he went to the speakeasy; it made him feel like one of them. A tough guy. He knew some other places that sold contraband booze, some of them cheaper than this one, but he liked standing next to some guy with a gun stuck in his waistband.
He’d bought the case of beer and the bottle of whiskey and he’d hidden himself. All night and all day. He’d found an isolated place in Brooklyn Heights. From there he could see the great iron and steel bridges that seemed to be pulling the two earthen banks together. He’d grabbed the clippers and cut some boughs to cover the van. The Jew girl’s blood was still on the blades and it stained the bark as he cut. Bill laughed. Then he listened, attentively. As if he’d heard something. Not somebody, something. Something in his own laugh. It sounded different. He tried to laugh again, and again he heard that something. Something that was missing. And then, only then, did he feel afraid for what he’d done.
He drank the first beer, and a couple of gulps of whiskey. He wanted to light a fire to get warm, but also to have a little bit of light. Darkness made him uneasy. In the dark, when he was little kid, he never knew where his father might appear. Seeing him coming, watching him as he pulled his belt out of his pants, and wrapped it around his hand, was always less scary. It hurt just as much, but it wasn’t as scary. So he took out his lighter and snapped it, setting fire to a dry branch. Nobody would see that light, he told himself, uncapping another beer and laughing. He listened hard again. Trying to find whatever was missing. It seemed to him that it was coming back. Not all of it. But a little bit. It was if a part of him was returning. And then he laughed with more conviction, holding another lighted branch, burning his hand, lighting up the frightening dark that surrounded him.
It was daybreak when — after the fourth beer and half the bottle of whiskey — Bill’s laugh came back almost completely. It wasn’t dark any longer. He climbed into the van and lay down across the seats. When he rested his head he thought he could smell the Jew girl’s clean scent. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some money and the emerald ring. First he counted the money. Fourteen dollars and twenty cents, a fortune. Then he turned the ring around in front of his eyes: Encircling the big central emerald, a crown of little diamonds caught the light of the rising sun as it came through the branches that hid the van. Bill tried to put it on, but all his fingers were too large. Even the pinky. He couldn’t get it past the first phalange. Still, it was fun to see it there, solid enough even if it wouldn’t go all the way up. He laughed — rediscovering his own laugh, recognizing its completeness — and then he closed his eyes, with the Jew girl’s perfume in his nostrils and his knuckles kind of sore. He licked the excoriations. I must’ve hit her in the teeth, he thought, laughing softly, and then he fell asleep. The night was over. It wasn’t dark anymore. There was nothing to be afraid of.
It was evening again when he awoke. Dark again. Only the lights of the city beyond the East River. Bill looked at his little finger in its luminous ring: big emerald crowned with little diamonds. He felt like laughing, but he stopped himself. He was afraid something might be missing again. But now he knew how to fix it. He got out of the van and opened a beer. He drank half of it down in a single gulp. Then seized the bottle of whiskey, and tossed back a generous shot. He’d never had twelve-year-old whiskey before. This was what rich people drank. At last he finished his beer. He belched, and then laughed. Yeah, that was his laugh, all right. He gulped another mouthful of whiskey and laughed again, loudly and fully this time.
There were seven beers left. And not quite half a bottle of whiskey. He chugged two beers, one after the other, and threw the dead soldiers at the river, at the bridge, at the city full of colored lights.
“I’m comin’!” he shouted at the city. “I’m gonna getcha!”
He freed the van from its covering of boughs, turned the ignition key and left. The headlights of other cars illuminated the framework of the great bridge. And then the city showed itself in all its terrible beauty. The city of money, thought Bill, glancing at the green and rainbow reflections from the ring.
“I’m gonna getcha,” he said again, softly, like a threat, and amid all those lights, his eyes grew dark, somber, dull. He opened a beer. And then another one. And when he’d drunk all the beers, he finished the whiskey.
He parked in a dim street near South Seaport and started walking. He went down a narrow alley that stank of fish scraps from the nearby market. From there he climbed a wooden fence and dropped into a courtyard. From there, feeling his way along an old brick wall gnawed by years of frost, he came to metal fence. He climbed that and dropped to the other side. He fell, off balance from all the alcohol he’d drunk. He stood up, laughing softly, making sure he still had the ring on his finger and the cash in his pocket. Then he walked on top of a low wall, his arms out like a tightrope walker, and from there he leaped onto a fire escape. He opened a third-floor window and slipped inside the apartment without making a sound.
He crouched in a corner, catching his breath. He smiled. He hadn’t used that itinerary since he’d been a frightened little boy escaping from the house at night. But it felt as if he’d done it only yesterday.
“Who’s there?” said a hoarse voice, thick with booze.
Bill needed another drink.
From the next room he heard a clinking sound, like the neck of a bottle against the rim of a glass. He could find a drink in there, he thought; getting to his feet.
“I heard a noise in there,” said the hoarse hard voice, “go see what it is, ugly Jew slut!”
“No need, Pop,” said Bill, appearing in the room.
The man was slumped back in an armchair upholstered in green velvet, threadbare and shiny, with stains. He was grasping a glass half-full of liquor. The bottle was on the floor at the base of the chair, within easy reach. A bottle with no label. Not good bootleg whiskey, but Blue Ruin, the lowest and most vile of the distillates that circulated under the counters of the fish market. Another identical bottle lay on the floor, empty. The man stared at Bill. “Why you come here, scheisse?” he said and swallowed his drink.
“I felt like havin’ a drink,” said Bill.
“So? Besser you buy one.”
Bill laughed. He reached into his pocket; pulled out all the money he had and tossed it at his father. “O.K., now I bought it, how ‘bout that?” he said, bending to pick up the bottle of Blue Ruin.
The father slapped his face.
Bill didn’t flinch. He uncorked the bottle and took a long gulp. Then he rubbed his hand across his face, with a disgusted look. He took something transparent between his thumb and index finger and flicked it onto the floor. “Jesus, a fish scale,” he said. “You’re still droppin’ ’em all over the place.”
Just then a small, emaciated-looking woman came into the room. She had prominent cheekbones under her taut, olive skin, and huge eyes that were dark and sad. She was wearing a bathrobe that Bill had known for years, the only one she had. There was a fresh bruise on her jaw line.
“Hiya, Ma,” Bill said, holding the bottle in his hand.
“Bill,” sighed the woman, reaching out to embrace him.
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But Bill fended her off with his arm and the bottle of Blue Ruin at the end of it.
The woman put a hand to her mouth. Her huge eyes were full of worry and despair. The worry was something new, born that very day. The despair had been with her for years, so many years that Bill couldn’t remember ever seeing anything else in her look.
“Police, they come here,” she said softly, and then she caught sight of the ring on his little finger. “Bill, Bill … vot have you done?”
“Fucking Jew bitch,” shouted the father as he stood up from the chair, staggering. “See this?” and he threw Bill’s money in her face. “Shit for brains he got, same as you, same as all kikes!”
“That’s it, Pop,” said Bill. “Get over it.” He drank some more.
The father looked at him. He was taller and heavier than his son. He’d been beating Bill all his life. With his fists, with kicks, with his leather belt. “Ach, another fucking Jew, you too,” he said. “Ja, your mother a fucking Jew bitch, that make you a Jew too, you know that?” And he grinned, his eyes glowing darkly.
“Sure, Pop, you told me a million times already,” Bill swallowed more rotgut. “It ain’t funny no more.”
“Please stop, please,” moaned the mother.
The father turned towards her. He drew back his arm and struck her hard. “Jew bitch, did I say you could talk?”
Bill turned and walked into the kitchen.
“Come back here, piece of shit. Give back my bottle. And then I’ll stick your money right up your ass. Know what? Soon they snap your lying neck on the gallows, ja, dummkopf, you — a rope around your neck, while me, I do a little dance down below, laughing. But right now, is time to write letter on your Jew back.” He started to undo the belt that was holding his pants up. He pulled it loose and wound it around his fist with the buckle dangling. Staggering from side to side, he didn’t notice that his trousers had dropped to his ankles.
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 9
