Fourth Street East

by Jerome Weidman

  “Listen,” he said. “How about another tomato?”

  I could scarcely believe my luck. I had never in my life had more than one at a time.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We went back to the Avenue C corner. Holding my hand, Monroe bought another tomato for me, and another pickle for himself. Then he took me around the corner, into Avenue C, and he said, “You know something about that picture, kid. It’s got no fighting.”

  Fighting meant fist fighting. On East Fourth Street it was the sole yardstick of cinema excellence. When a new bio arrived at the American, the first boy or girl who saw it was eagerly asked, “Zit gotnee fighting?” If the answer was yes, everybody schemed to go. If the answer was no, everybody lost interest.

  “No fighting?” I said.

  I had not meant to sound dubious. It was simply that I had heard a couple of my classmates say the new movie at the American had a lot of fighting. I was disappointed to learn I had been misinformed. Monroe apparently interpreted the disappointment in my voice as criticism.

  “You calling me a liar?”

  Years later I could still hear the cold, metallic, menacing sound in his voice, and I understood more clearly why Monroe Klein had been known on East Fourth Street as The Knife with Hair on It. I was suddenly frightened.

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s just I heard—”

  “Never mind what you heard,” Monroe said. “The picture stinks.” Then his face changed. “Anyway, it’s too hot for the movies. Y’ever been on the Floating Coney?”

  My heart leaped. I forgot all about the movies. Unfortunately, I also forgot my mother’s stern injunction.

  “No,” I said.

  “Come on,” Monroe said.

  He led me down Third Street to the Roof Garden on the dock. The Floating Coney rose and fell gently at its mooring. We went up the gangplank to the deck, where an attendant stood guard over a turnstile.

  “Lockers on the left,” he said.

  Monroe pushed me through, and came through behind me. We emerged on a wet boardwalk that ran around the four sides of the wooden pool. It was full of boys and men, splashing, yelling, and laughing. I followed Monroe along the boardwalk until he found an empty locker. We took off our clothes and hung them on pegs.

  “You know how to swim?” Monroe said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then let’s go down the low end.”

  Here, in the shallow water, I had my first swimming lesson. Monroe must have been a good teacher, because by the time he said we’d better get dressed, I was able to stay afloat for a few moments, and I could even take several strokes before I went under. I had been having such a good time that I did not notice, until we started to get dressed, that both of us were streaked with oil slick.

  “Don’t tell your mother where we were,” Monroe said when we were out on the dock, heading for home.

  “She’ll smell me,” I said.

  Monroe walked in silence for a while, then said, “Tell her there was a leak from the ceiling in the movies. Tell her a lot of people got it. Me, too.”

  My mother had a suspicious nature, but when I made this explanation, she accepted it without question. From this I guessed that in my absence her negotiations with Mr. Klein for our winter coal supply had gone well. It was the last rational deduction I was to make for some time.

  The process of learning to swim has undoubtedly always involved swallowing a certain amount of the water in which the lessons are given. I had been aware, as I thrashed around on the Floating Coney, that what I was swallowing tasted unpleasant, but I was too excited to make any effort to swallow less. During our evening meal, I began to taste the oil slick through my mother’s noodle soup. It was not a good combination. I was sick all night.

  By morning my mother decided I had a fever. We did not, of course, own a thermometer. Even if we had, nobody in the family would have known how to read it. By poking at my forehead, however, my mother knew that the time had come to spend a half dollar. She wrapped the coin in a piece of paper, pinned it to my shirt, and sent me off to sit in Dr. Gropple’s waiting room. I remember getting as far as the sidewalk in front of our tenement, and that’s all I do remember. I apparently collapsed.

  My next recollections are confused. I recall that my joints ached. My eyes could not seem to focus properly. My bed was suffocatingly hot, then freezing cold. I could not keep down the food my mother brought in from the kitchen. And then suddenly Dr. Gropple was bending over the bed.

  At once I knew I was dangerously ill. My mother would not have spent a dollar on a house call unless my life was in danger. With this realization, which terrified me, the clarity of the outside world vanished. Again everything became confused. I don’t know how long I remained in this state, but I see now that it couldn’t have been very long, because when I next became aware of what was going on around me, Mr. Diener, the Republican captain, was standing with my mother at my bedside.

  “You know who did this?” he said.

  “Who?” my mother said.

  “The Knife with Hair on It,” Mr. Diener said in Yiddish. “Mr. Klein was here by you on Saturday, no?”

  “So suppose he was?” my mother said.

  “And he sent Monroe to take him to the movies, no?” Mr. Diener said, nodding toward me.

  “So suppose he did?” my mother said.

  “So they didn’t go to the movies,” Mr. Diener said. “Monroe spent the money for pickles by Mr. Meyerson’s pickle stand on Avenue C, and then when there was no more money to go in the movies, he took your son swimming on the Floating Coney. That’s why he’s sick. That dirty water, it could kill a horse.”

  “How do you know this?” my mother said.

  “A dozen people saw them first eating the pickles on Avenue C, and then swimming in that dirty water, that’s how I know it,” Mr. Diener said. “A man like that, his son makes your son so sick he could maybe die, for such a man you’ll give your two votes in November?”

  “I didn’t say I’m giving Mr. Klein my votes,” my mother said. “He only came to talk. Like you just came.”

  “So I’ll talk, too,” Mr. Diener said. “I’ll do like this. Whatever Mr. Klein promised you for your two votes, I’ll give you the same, but also I’ll pay for a specialist from uptown.”

  “Who needs a specialist?” my mother said.

  “Your son,” Mr. Diener said. “With your own eyes you can see how sick he is. For a sickness like this, Gropple is not good enough. He doesn’t know. He was here already two days, no? And the boy is better? Better, I’m saying? I must be crazy. He’s sicker, that’s what he is. He could maybe die. What he needs, he needs a specialist from uptown. You say you’ll give me the two votes in November, and I’ll give you also the coal, but first I’ll go fast bring the specialist. So say yes or no.”

  “All right,” my mother said.

  Later that day, or perhaps it was the next day, a strange man appeared at my bedside. He wore what was known on East Fourth Street as an uptown suit. It was double-breasted. In his tie there was a small golden horseshoe set with tiny diamonds. I trusted him at once. He made soothing noises, some of which may actually have been words, but they made no sense to me. I don’t remember how long he remained or when he left. I remember clearly, however, that when I next became aware of my surroundings, my mother and Mr. Diener were staring anxiously down at me.

  “He’ll get better,” Mr. Diener said. “He’s got to. From a specialist, people always get better.”

  He did not sound very convincing. I think it was at this moment that the concept of death invaded my mind. Most people, I have noticed, believe until well into their forties that they are going to live forever. Illness, death of contemporaries, the appearance of more and more familiar names on the obituary page, these all contribute to the slow realization that the phrase “nobody lives forever” also includes you. I am the only person I have ever known to whom this realization came at such a tender age. I recall my reactions: terro
r and resignation. I didn’t want to die, but I knew I was going to. If that man in the uptown suit with the diamond horseshoe could not save me, nobody could. I clearly remember doing something I have since read about many times but have never actually seen: I literally turned my face to the wall.

  What caused me to turn back were the sounds of an argument out in the kitchen. I listened in astonishment. Never before had Mr. Diener and Mr. Klein appeared in our house at the same time.

  “You with your specialists!” Mr. Klein shouted. “What good did he do?”

  “You with your son!” Mr. Diener shouted back. “If it wasn’t for your Monroe, the boy wouldn’t now be dying!”

  “Who says he’s dying?” Mr. Klein said. “I’ll save him! The Republicans, what good are they? To send specialists that can’t help, that’s what good they are! But you wait and see! By the Democrats he’ll be saved!”

  The snarling voices became confused as my mother’s voice rose in an effort to quiet them down. She may have succeeded, or perhaps she merely led the combatants out of the kitchen into the front room to keep the noise from disturbing me. In any case, the sounds had sunk to a distant murmur when Monroe Klein came into the room. He paused to look back toward the kitchen, clearly making sure he was not being observed, then he tiptoed to the bed.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he said to me in a low voice. “My father is getting the Democratic Club to put up the dough for a Siem ha Seifer.”

  At that time I had never heard the phrase. I had no idea what it meant. I learned later that it was the name for a ceremony in which a new Torah is presented to the synagogue. The presentation is either an expression of gratitude to God for something good that has happened to the donor of the Torah, or an appeal to God to prevent something bad from happening. The Siem ha Seifer arranged by Mr. Klein and paid for by the Democratic Club of the Sixth Assembly District fell, naturally, into the second category.

  I don’t know how long it takes, or used to take, to prepare a Siem ha Seifer. Ordinarily, I have been told, it is a lengthy process, since the rolled parchment of the Torah must be hand-lettered. My mother’s own recollections are not totally reliable since she was in a state of terror about my imminent death. She told me later, however, that she believes Mr. Klein arranged to have the Democratic Club acquire, for a bonus payment, of course, a Torah that was almost completed for somebody else’s Siem ha Seifer. It was a celebration of gratitude that could, without injury to the grateful donor, be postponed. I was very sick. My Siem ha Seifer could not be postponed. It wasn’t.

  On Saturday night, soon after sundown, Mr. Klein and his son Monroe appeared in my bedroom with my mother and father. I was too sick to realize that the mere fact that my father had remained at home after one of the district’s political leaders had come in was in itself an indication that something unusual was afoot. My mother wrapped me in a blanket.

  “All right,” Mr. Klein said to his son. “Pick him up.”

  Monroe took me in his arms and carried me through the apartment to the front room. My parents and Mr. Klein followed. My mother pulled a chair to the window that looked out on Fourth Street. Monroe sat down, still holding me in his arms, and arranged me in his lap so I could look out the window.

  “Okay, everybody,” Monroe said. “You all go ahead.”

  My mother and father seemed uneasy and hesitant.

  “It’s all right,” Mr. Klein said. “My two votes in November they should be in such good hands like your son is.”

  After a few more awkward moments, the Democratic captain led my parents out of the room.

  “They’re going to get the Torah,” Monroe said. “You and I, we’re gonna watch from here.”

  I did not know what to watch. The synagogue was across the street and to my left. Pollack’s livery stable faced our tenement slightly to the right. The street in between was empty. Suddenly a group of men, I think there were ten, came racing up the block on horseback. Several were carrying lighted kerosene-soaked torches that shed sprays of fiery sparks behind them. All were dressed in the uniforms Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders had worn on San Juan Hill. The clatter of the horses’ hooves brought people to the windows of the tenements facing us. When the riders reached the synagogue, they reined in their horses, shouted a few unintelligible words from a brucha, or prayer, and then kicked their horses into a fresh gallop.

  By the time the horsemen turned the corner into Avenue D and disappeared, an ice wagon loaded with Indians in full headdress had come into Fourth Street around the Lewis Street corner. As the wagon plodded up the street toward the synagogue, the Indians released wild war whoops and shot arrows tipped with flaming cotton up into the air. Boys and girls from the crowded sidewalks screamed and laughed as they chased the falling arrows. The wagon did not stop at the synagogue, although the Indians stopped the war whoops long enough to shout a brucha, because they were being hard-pressed by a group of mounted hussars, with shakos topped by ostrich plumes, who had come prancing into Fourth Street behind the Indians. They were singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and waving sabers over their heads.

  By the time they reached the synagogue my eyes had been drawn to the brass band in circus uniforms that had entered Fourth Street and kept swaying left and right to make room for a couple of clowns who tumbled over each other and juggled great red and green balls as they danced up the block to the band’s ear-splitting rendition of “Tipperary.”

  I had never before seen a parade, and I was too young and too sick to do much thinking about it, but I knew at once as I squirmed with delight on Monroe Klein’s lap that I was having an experience to which I would always look forward with eagerness. I still do. Of all the parades I have seen since then, however, none contained the moment when, behind a group of Bedouin chieftains and in front of a somewhat erratic enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, a blue velvet canopy with golden tassels was carried into Fourth Street. The poles were held up by four yeshiva buchers, seminary students from uptown with long side-curls and broad-brimmed shtrahmels. Under the canopy, moving with slow, measured, pious grace, marched Mr. Klein. Tenderly, as though it were a delicate child, he carried in his arms the Torah the Democratic Party of the Sixth Assembly District was donating to the Fourth Street synagogue as an appeal to God for my recovery. Mr. Klein was flanked by my mother and father. Both looked grave. Both kept their eyes on the ground. Both were praying. I could see their lips move.

  “You’re gonna be all right, kid,” Monroe Klein said to me. “God’s gonna put that cross in the right box on your ballot.”

  That night my fever broke. Four days later I went back to school. For almost half a century I wanted to ask my mother how she cast her vote that November. I never had the courage to phrase the question.

  4

  A Correction

  ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES about growing older is the acquisition of self-knowledge. The slow but relentless realization that certain inadequacies of character and intellect will never be corrected. They can’t be. Time has run out. You’ll never live long enough.

  I, for example, have never been able to conquer a lifelong tendency to believe everything I read in print. Especially if it is printed in my morning newspaper. Until, of course, I read the next morning’s newspaper and come across those discreet little boxes, tucked away among the American cross-stretch brassiere ads and the Danish blue cheese recipes, captioned “A Correction.”

  I enjoy reading these corrections, indeed I seek them out, because for years I have kept alive a hope that some day I will read one about Srul Honig.

  Now that I have entered my fifties, however, it seems reasonable to assume that this hope is vain. For one thing, I don’t think that any New York newspaper is likely to provide itself with an opportunity to get any facts wrong about Srul Honig. He is no longer news. In fact, Srul has not been news for almost forty years. Secondly, even if a New York newspaper should print something about Srul Honig, and get any of it wrong, I think I am probably the only perso
n still around who would recognize the errors. I would not like to see anybody be unfair to Srul. On the other hand, I don’t think even he would want me to spend the rest of my life poised at the starting line, so to speak, waiting to break out in “A Correction” about the things that happened in the days when we were both much younger. The time has come to hang up my gloves in that particular fight.

  What I liked about Mr. Honig, and what still makes him so pleasant a memory of my youth, was that he brought a breath of fresh air into my life. This figure of speech may seem odd to anybody who has ever spent time in a blacksmith shop. It occupied the street level of a squat red brick building facing our tenement on the corner of East Fourth Street and Lewis Street.

  East Fourth Street in those days was, among many other things, a commercial route between the traffic of the East River, on the banks of which my life was centered, and the business world of uptown, which at that time I did not even know existed. The East Fourth Street dock was occupied by two commercial enterprises. Every square foot of the northern, or uptown, side was almost totally covered by the enormous drying stacks of the Forest Box & Lumber Company. The southern, or downtown, side of the dock was jam-packed with the derricks and mountainous black piles of the Burns Coal Company.

  The lumber and coal were shoved by tugs down-river to the docks in barges and were then fed out to different parts of the city in horse-drawn wagons. I don’t know how many wagons these two companies owned or how many horses drew them, but there must have been a great many. It seems to me, or to my usually not totally unreliable memory, that the wagons never stopped moving up and down our block, piled high with lumber and coal on the way west, empty on the way east back to the river barges. Every one of these horses was shod by Srul Honig.