Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

by Mark Kurlansky

  Chow Mein Vega was wide awake in his empty casita, working on his memoirs. On page 583, the boogaloo had still not been invented. Outside were tomatoes and snapdragons, and beyond the fence was the East Village with sirens, and rumbling cars, and people shouting, sometimes in Spanish, and in the distance—a popping noise that caught Chow Mein's attention. He heard it again. Knowing he would be asked, he looked at his watch: 11:53 P.M.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  No Going Back

  MIT LIGN KUMT MEN VAYT, OBER NIT TSURIK," Ruth would say with a pointed index finger and the other hand on her hip, which had gotten a little wide but not too wide for swinging to emphasize the point. With lies you can go far, but there is no going back. Nathan remembered these words as Pepe Le Moko stared at him, the two seated waiting for business in the Meshugaloo Copy Center.

  This day, in which Nathan traveled to the edge of madness, began quietly He walked to Tenth Street, and as he opened the loud metal gate of his shop, the little Fat Finkelstein of his generation scurried for the cover of his brownstone. Reasoning that Nathan would seek revenge for the wanton thrust of his tongue at Sarah, the round little boy always hid when he saw Nathan on the block.

  Sitting in his shop, Nathan checked the Times as the speakers were swooning. The voluptuous strings of the early movements of Beethoven's Ninth were gathering. Five obituaries had been published. All but one, a singer who was hit by a bus—that was what it said, he read it again—were older than him. Good to know.

  Nit tsurik, no going back. The lie was there. It needed no words. Karoline had offered a way back. They would end it and go back to their lives. But he knew that he would be in her bed again. There was no way back. How could this end?

  A health columnist in the Daily News said that birds carried diseases and that dead bird carcasses could be dangerous to children. Nathan kept Sarah in the neighborhood, which seemed free of bird carcasses, leaving the ancient question Where do birds go when they die? Not to the Lower East Side, in any event. The neighborhood was safe. Pepe rubbed against his ankle in agreement. He could sell out, turn his neighborhood over to some corporation, and get $500,000. Nathan gazed out his window on a busy summer day on Tenth Street. If it were not for his air conditioner allowing him to keep his windows shut, he would not have been able to hear Beethoven over the nervous vendors not only of "smoke," but of dubious watches and rings, a baby crying in fifteen-second blasts with barely a break between, men with carts sifting through trash cans in search of bottles and cans to sell at machines on Fourth Street, some looking for food. A small, bony man kept shouting as he sifted through garbage cans, "I pay my taxes! Goddamn it. I pay!" Even he was careful to stay out of certain garbage cans.

  "¡Paga! ¡No paga! Who needs you!" Carmela was shouting. "Good morning, Nathan," she added, as though she could see him looking through his closed windows. Nathan had to open his door, walk outside, and crane his neck to look up and see her, her fleshy base pushing through the spaces in the fire escape steel.

  "Buenos, Carmela."

  "Ay carajo, Nathan," she said, staring down. "What kind of trouble are you getting yourself into?" Nathan quickly retreated into his shop, as though to avoid getting caught at something. How did she do that?

  Nathan watched the way one dealer would signal Ruben on the corner of First or he would signal one of them. The way at a certain moment one might go to a certain trash can—the garbage can that all the drifters knew not to look for bottles in—or another would reach into the fender of a certain parked car. One even groped under the roots of a thin, struggling tree.

  Could he give all this up for half a million dollars? Oh, yes.

  Sal First's mother had made minni di virgini, which means "virgin breasts" in Sicilian and are little round almond cookies. Sal Eleven, to show that he made them better, also made his own minni di virgini and adorned his virgin breasts with candied cherries that made bright red nipples in the center of each cookie. Sal First sneered at this, pointing out that no one in Palermo did such a crude thing. "In Catania, maybe, but not in Palermo." Sal Eleven, who was from Palermo, was told what Sal First had said and, being from Palermo himself, understood the slight of being called Catanian. He dismissed the insult with a wave of his hand. "Can I help it if his virgins don't have nipples?" Sal A, who was from Catania and did not make virgin breasts but recalled that in Catania they did have cherry nipples, laughed at all of this.

  But Joey Parma, who was a Neapolitano and did not care about these differences, had noticed that Sal First's mother made a better minni di virgini because it was filled with candied squash from Sicily, the long and twisted cucuzzata that had been soaked in jasmine petals and water, whereas Sal Eleven had used American yellow summer squash and soaked it in rose petals and water. Later, after he sampled both virgin breasts, Mrs. Moellen at the Edelweiss offered Officer Parma another almond cookie, this time an Ischler krapferln, from the Austrian town of Ischl, which was two round, sweet almond cookies filled with raspberry jam and covered with chocolate. Joey thought that while not Italian, this was not bad, either. "Thanks for the krapferln," Officer Parma shouted back to the kitchen as he left.

  A police car came down Tenth Street announcing that they were looking for anybody who had seen anything about midnight near Fifth Street.

  According to Sal Eleven, a tourist had been shot. "Tourist" meant someone who was not from the neighborhood. Someone had shot him in the head as he left the automatic teller and taken his money. "Just blew up his head and left a mess on the sidewalk. You can still see it!" Sal was telling every customer all day each time with the same shudder of disgust. It was enough of a mess so that it took weeks of summer rain to remove the stain where what was left of Tom Rosen's head had landed on the sidewalk. Everyone in the neighborhood sooner or later found an excuse to walk by Fifth Street and look at the spot.

  They all knew that this could have been their blood. The automatic teller, the blown-up head, could anyone doubt that this had been done by the same man who had killed Eli Rabbinowitz? Did he have a motive? Whose head would be shattered next? Without any evidence, most neighborhood people blamed the killing on the drug dealers and were demanding that the police do something. Why was it that drug dealers were never arrested?

  Sal First, who saw most things philosophically, explained to Joey Parma, while the officer was crunching his mother's nippleless virgin breasts, "The problem with New Yorkers is that they don't know how to defend themselves anymore. They let themselves get talked out of the right to bore arms. Boring arms is constitutional. I am keeping my handgun. They come, they get it. I'm not prejudiced, you understand. To me it don't make a difference your race, the figmentation of your skin, your credence or religious indoctrination—whatever, I'll blow your fucking head off." Twenty minutes later, he repeated his philosophy almost word for word to Nathan. Nathan gave an ambiguous nod that might pass for agreement. He realized that he had memorized Karoline's phone number and was repeating it in his mind: 674 . . .

  The neighborhood committee was meeting with the police at the Boys Club. Who would represent the police? Joey Parma? "Officer Parma," Nathan would say in midmeeting, "do you want to tell us about the wine?" He didn't trust this cop with his wine collection. He did not completely believe Karoline's story. Like Nusan's stories, it seemed to have missing parts.

  Nathan could not see from the angle of his shop that Joey Parma at that moment was across the street talking to Felix in his shop. Joey wanted a name. "You've got to give up someone."

  "This is an honest store. I sell vegetables," said Felix, methodically massaging a hard-boiled egg with the fingers of his right hand.

  "Really?" said Joey, sadistically biting into one of his best tomatoes. But a look of surprise came over his face. "Where do you get these tomatoes?"

  "I grow them."

  "You're kidding. These are really good. My wife makes bolognese this time of year. How many of these tomatoes can you get me?"

  "I don't have much. You've
got to pay"

  "These tomatoes are so good, I'd even pay for them."

  "Okay. I can get you some."

  "Aw, shit!" Tomato seeds on the linen lapel. Felix started to rub it off with a wet cloth.

  "Don't touch! I'm going to use talcum powder. You have any talcum powder?"

  "Talcum powder," said Felix. "That's for grease. Cold water for tomatoes."

  "You sure?"

  "Trust me, it's my business."

  Joey tugged the lapel in Felix's direction, and Felix scrubbed it with the cloth. "I must be nuts. Okay. After the holiday I'll come for the tomatoes. And a name. Come on. Give up somebody. Just one name. And all the tomatoes you've got." He started for the door and then stopped and picked up another tomato and left with it.

  It was a customer, a steady client. Felix could see that his store would succeed. And he could show Rosita that it would succeed. Rosita, who would not go out with him because she thought he was a drug dealer—Rosita, who in her purple dress set the whole neighborhood aflame on a summer afternoon, the most beautiful woman in the Loisaida—a competitive title to hold.

  But Felix was also worried. He couldn't give anybody up to the police and still stay in the neighborhood. And he had a store now.

  Nathan saw Linda Kaplan, mother of Maya. Why wasn't she in Punim County? She was working for Dukakis on Tenth Street. She carried a sign that said DUKAKIS FOR PRESIDENT and was passing out buttons that said DUKAKIS. After she left the block, every drug dealer on Tenth Street was sporting, on tank tops, on blue jeans, a DUKAKIS button. Was this good for the campaign? Nathan wondered.

  Sal Eleven, staring at his TV and not looking at Nathan, told him to try one. "It's called virgin titty." Looking at the bright red cherry more a stripper's pastie than a virgin's nipple, Nathan would have agreed with the bakers of Palermo. While Nathan sampled, Sal told him about the meeting with the police in the Boys Club. "If you want to know what I think"—there was never a pause after this phrase for a response—"it's bullshit. It's that German guy. I don't know what he's up to."

  That was what caught Nathan's interest. What was the German guy up to? In his heart, he agreed with Sal Eleven that the pushers kept away the people who would really destroy the neighborhood, such as the ones who wanted to buy his business. Though to Sal, it was always "the fucking Japanese." Of course, not all the Japanese were Japanese. Some were French and wanted to open little pastry shops. Some, like Ira Katz, were Jewish. They all wanted to buy the neighborhood, to own it, which would destroy everything about it worth having. If the pushers were gone, they would all come in. Only the pushers were stopping them.

  But it wasn't going to be Nathan's problem. He was selling. One of them had to leave, him or Karoline.

  Nathan had made an appointment with a financial adviser in mid-town, someone who was eager to tell him how to invest $500,000. He could have taken a bus. But he had to know if this disease was still with him, this curse that sucked the breath out of him. He felt confident that it had been only a single claustrophobic incident and was not a permanent condition. But he had to know.

  He walked to Astor Place and descended a recently restored subway entrance with its steel-and-glass hood resembling the mouth of a dragon. As he stared down into the darkness, he could feel a vague nervousness, a warning, the early stages of an attack.

  He went back up the stairs and walked to Cristofina's botanica.

  "I see. A sense of being trapped. Of no way back."

  "Yes," said Nathan, "no way back. Nit tsurik." Was that it, then? No. The attack had happened before the lie.

  "This is psychological," said Cristofina. "It is not a curse. I can't cure it with a powder. I have to give you a sense of a way out. As long as you think there is no way back, no escape, you will feel doomed."

  The logic of Cristofina always surprised Nathan. She would be able to solve this.

  "¡Siéntete!" She ordered him to sit on a stool, which she first dusted off with the smack of a newspaper, producing a choking cloud of tan dust. "Yes, I can do it!" she declared.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, sin duda. Es obvio, mi amor."

  Nathan started feeling better just knowing that there were solutions to problems. He would sell, get money, move uptown where they cleaned the streets and even removed snow in the winter instead of waiting for it to melt—uptown, where bony women looked as though they thought about nothing but clothing, while tired men in careful haircuts thought only about the equation converting energy to money. Nathan's optimism had lasted only an instant.

  "What should I do?"

  Cristofina stroked her square jaw with her thick fingers as she ex amined the figures and bottles on her shelves. "First, you must get a tattoo."

  "A tattoo!"

  "Sí, a little tattolita."

  "Where? I hate tattoos." He thought of Karoline's buttock and realized that this was no longer completely true.

  "Escucha', mi amor, I can only help those who want to be helped. This is very important. A tattoo of an open doorway on your body. You put it somewhere where you can find it when you need it. It will be your doorway."

  "No, I can't do that. I don't believe in tattoos."

  "Don't believe in them? This isn't about belief This is about practical solutions."

  "I'm opposed to them. I don't like them, and they are against my religion."

  "Because you are Hebrew."

  "I'm a Jew."

  "A Jew with a tattoo is better than a tattoo with no Jew."

  "Where did you learn that?!"

  "It's logic. It is the way the orisha teach."

  "Them and my mother."

  "Has your mother been cut?"

  "Cut?"

  "Is she a santera?"

  "Just Ashkenazi."

  Cristofina took a figure off the shelf, a dull, dark, cast-metal figure of a muscular man pounding an anvil with a hammer. It was a blacksmith, but in a defiant pose, as though he dared commit the outrage of being a blacksmith. Cristofina placed the heavy figure on the counter and began removing a thick layer of gray dust with a duster made of chicken feathers, which had a certain poignancy because Cristofina was known to have killed a considerable quantity of chickens. She looked at the duster. "I should come to your house and kill pigeons in your doorway. It will give you flight."

  "No. I don't think I can do that."

  She backed up to the rear of her store and motioned for him to follow. Knowing that she tattooed back there, he said, "No, let's stay here."

  "Come here!" she ordered in a voice that was both a whisper and a shout. He stepped carefully behind the counter and down the back hall lined with cone-shaped concrete heads, cowrie shells, palm trees, bolts of lightning...

  She was muttering about the Jews while shaking her head. "They are so smart, but so difficult. Argumentative." Then, jerking her head as though she just realized that a Jew was listening, she said in a full voice, "Mira, we could kill a..." Realizing the strength of her voice, she returned to a whisper: "Kill a dog."

  "Why?"

  "For Oggún. Oggún loves dogs."

  "Why kill the dog, then? Most dog lovers wouldn't like that."

  "Oggún is different."

  "How so?"

  "Why do you argue about everything? You do this and he is your or-isha. But it is dangerous and very expensive."

  "How expensive?"

  "I don't know. You would be better to get the tattoo."

  "I couldn't even explain to my daughter why I killed a mouse. What would I say about this?"

  Cristofina looked very agitated. "You can't ever tell anyone. Anyone, ever!"

  "How much for the statue?"

  "Forty dollars. It's Oggún."

  "Who is the orisha of discounts?"

  She did not answer but went to the front counter and wrapped the statue in newspaper. "Mira, he is a powerful orisha of war. Also of employment, if that helps. He also knows love. He has hopelessly fallen for Oshún. In Nigeria, Oggún is always placed
near the Oshún River to be near his love." Then, looking around her small, dark shop, she handed him a string of green and black beads. "Mint, wear this on your wrist. Oggún will protect you," she said. "It's only three dollars."

  After Nathan walked out, Cristofina looked up on the shelf and pointed an accusing finger at a small concrete dome with three cowrie shells forming eyes and a mouth. "It is you, Ellegguá, who sends me these Jews, to test me."

  Ellegguá was silent.

  Nathan had bought an attachée case—a whimsical purchase to put him in the proper frame of mind. It was one of those hard, cordovan leather-covered rectangular cases with brass fittings that, it seemed to him, a man investing half a million dollars ought to have. He put Oggún, still in his El Vocero newspaper wrapping, in the case, closed the latches, and left for his meeting about investments. Walking toward the subway stop at Astor Place, with his dark shaggy hair, his untrimmed mustache, blue jeans, knit shirt, and a string of beads on one wrist, he looked as if he had stolen the case.

  Armed with the fierce but hopelessly in love Oggún, he entered the mouth, descended to the subway platform as easily as the descent to hell. Hot air was rising up the stairs, and the platform below was twenty degrees hotter than the sweltering air on the streets. Waiting on the platform, he felt that he was cooking slowly, the way Karoline had explained to bake a meringue, the only relief being a rush of cooler air pushed out of the dark, underground tunnel by the oncoming number 6 train. Nathan's only thought was the relief of air-conditioning, and he rushed in the opened doors and took a seat, feeling that he would have enjoyed spending the rest of the day in this cool gray metal box. Then the doors closed.

  The train left the station, beating out its rhythm in little bumps as it slid into the dark tunnel where the oxygen got thinner and thinner and thinner. Maybe this was a mistake. There was no way back. The train slowed, was barely moving. Please, don't let it stop. Nathan, feeling panic surging up from his belly, opened his attache case. Just the physical task of unwrapping the statue would distract him. The train stopped. The lights dimmed. The air conditioner was cut off, along with the rest of the air. That was when Nathan realized that he was going to lose control, grab someone, break a window, and get out of this train. Suddenly, the lights and air-conditioning came back. But the train did not move. A voice was heard: "We are being temporarily delayed. We will be moving as soon as possible."