Steps
Page 9
The recruiter asked me to deliver an envelope to one of my fellow workers. The name and address were written in foreign characters. I didn’t know the language, but I knew its alphabet and could read single words. I went up on deck to call out the name, trying to pronounce it correctly.
A man came over to claim the envelope, speaking in a foreign language. I gestured that I did not understand. He spoke again. I did not know what he said. He left, returning a few minutes later with three men; speaking excitedly, they surrounded me. I tried to show them that I could not understand them, but they would not believe me. I realized that they thought I was one of them but ashamed of admitting it.
I was jostled by them. Although the coat protected my body from their blows, I was afraid I would be shoved overboard and that my heavy coat would drown me. I saw myself on the sea bed, my coat covering me like a shroud. As they continued pummeling me, the buttons popped, the coat split along the seams. At this moment the recruiter appeared and my attackers held back. I rose, clutching the tattered fur strips to myself. The recruiter called me a troublemaker: I had to leave the ship immediately and stay away.
I worked in a long, narrow parking lot and lived off the tips I received. One day a man returned for his luxurious foreign car. When I brought it up, he asked me about the country of my origin. Then he motioned me to get into the car next to him and inquired directly whether I would like to make some money. He showed me a roll of bills, saying that if I were smart, I could earn this kind of money, enough to buy a car like his and have enough left over to keep a girl for a week in the best hotel in the city.
After questioning me about my life, he said he too had once been a newcomer to this country. Most people here knew where the money was, but they didn’t know how to get their share. A few, like himself, had more than their share. He added that in today’s world it was hard to spend a lot of money unless you could account for its source to the tax people. There had to be a legitimate business, he emphasized, through which the money could be passed so it would look clean.
He pulled a banknote from his pocket; it was enough to support me for three months. He tore it in two and gave me one half, telling me I could have the other half if I delivered a message. He told me there was a restaurant near the parking lot, owned by an old man with two daughters. The place, though quite large, had very few customers. The old man had been approached several times by people, each of them interested either in acquiring his restaurant or in becoming his partner. But he wouldn’t accept any offers.
Since the old man had originally come from the same country as I had, my prospective employer was hoping that his offer would carry more weight if I conveyed it. He thought I looked very persuasive. The message was simply to ask the old man to enter into a partnership with a cousin of my new acquaintance. The old man, if he agreed, would get a comfortable cut of the profits. He had only to call the phone number I would give him and everything would be arranged. If he refused, I would tell him he had no choice—if he loved his daughters. I realized immediately that the purpose of such a partnership was to make the restaurant appear more profitable than it actually was, thus allowing illegally gained money to be passed through the books.
I went to see the old man. In the restaurant there was only a woman mopping the floor, and I told her I wished to see the owner. She called him. When I greeted him, he immediately recognized my accent and remarked that we must have come from the same region.
First I told him I had a message from someone trying to help him. He said he didn’t need any help from strangers. During the last war his paralyzed wife had been helped onto a train headed for a concentration camp. Those who helped her were young and willing and neatly uniformed, he said. He didn’t want any help from strangers, he repeated. Then, as instructed, I asked about his daughters. His lips grew white. “Why do you speak of my children?” he asked. “They have nothing to do with my business. How do you know about them?”
“The man who sent me doesn’t distinguish between your family and your business,” I said. “He told me about your daughters: your younger one walks to school every morning, and the older crosses the avenue for her piano lessons. He even knows who their dentist is.”
The old man stood up, trembling. “I’m going to call the police!” he shouted, but did not move from the table.
“You won’t,” I said. “The police are young and willing and neatly uniformed. Do you think they are going to walk your daughters to school, to the dentist, to the music teacher every day? Tell me,” I asked. He sat still, burying his face in his hands.
“The man who sent me here,” I said, “loves music too. He told me it would be a great pity if your daughter should hurt her hands and never become a concert pianist. The man who sent me also said that an old man who has lost all his relatives shouldn’t place a restaurant above his children.”
The old man was silent. As I waited I heard a piano upstairs. He noticed my attention. “She will become a great pianist one day,” he said. “To her, music means more than words.” He reflected: “Give me the man’s telephone number. I’ll call him. I have to have that partner.”
The next morning, as usual, I was at the parking lot. At noon my new employer drove up. “You did a good job,” he said. “One day you may become a lawyer or a restaurant owner yourself.” Between his fingers he held the remaining half of the banknote.
About a year later I went to see my favorite barber. He had recently arrived in this country, taken over a small shop, and started his own business. It was a bright, clean shop, and one could see right into it through the large street window. My barber seemed tense and upset; he didn’t want to shave me, he said, because he was too nervous. I suspected something must be seriously wrong and suggested we go to a café together and talk.
At lunch the barber told me what had happened. A few days before, a visitor had brought him a message—his shop window needed protection. If he refused to pay, it would be smashed up by neighborhood hoodlums. The barber said that he had been in business for over a year and that there had never been any trouble—why would they want to break his window now? In any case, he had insurance which would pay for the breakage. But the visitor insisted he knew some young men who rode around at night on motorcycles heaving bricks through the windows of certain establishments; of course, even the most generous insurance company wouldn’t keep on paying for smashed windows; besides, repairing the damage slowed up business. Therefore, the barber’s visitor suggested he should subscribe to the unofficial neighborhood protection service, as many other small businesses had already done. The monthly fee was based on the assessment of the business turnover. His protection would cost more than half his net income. He had a week to make up his mind.
“What do you intend to do?” I asked.
“I can’t pay. I’ve got a pregnant wife. I know the police can’t protect me for long. I’m bound to lose. Ill have to sell my shop.”
I saw at once that the barber didn’t know how to fight. I told him that I could settle the matter if he made me his partner. At first he didn’t believe me, but I explained further. Then I took him to the bank and to a lawyer’s office to have the partnership deeds drawn up. By the end of the day I was his legal partner. At the end of the week my partner referred the protection man to me.
He introduced himself on the telephone.
When I asked where he was calling from, he said he was in his car in front of my apartment building. I looked out the window: a man with a telephone receiver in one hand waved to me from a sports car. I returned to the phone and invited him up. He came.
“Do you like my car?” he asked. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”
I told him I admired the car.
“It gives you a great feeling of power,” he said. “You get in with a beautiful woman alongside you and start the engine; when you let out the clutch the car moves forward so rapidly that if you have your hand on the girl’s knee, she will feel you way up inside her.”
I answered that barbering was only a recent hobby of mine, just as sports cars was probably a new one of his. I asked what he wanted, and he repeated what he had told the barber the week before. I informed him that I had no intention of paying for protection and expected the window of my barber shop to remain intact
With my visitor still present, I rang up the man who had used my services in the matter of the restaurant I recognized his voice at once when he answered the phone, but I had to remind him when and how we had met. I told him I was now in business, that I had not become a lawyer or even a restaurant owner, as he had once suggested, but simply a partner in a small barber shop that was being threatened. I asked him to help me as I had once helped him. I didn’t know whether he was in touch with those who forced protection on barber shops, I said, but I had great trust in his power and connections. If he did not wish to help me, I added, and if my shop window should be smashed, I would do to him, or his cousin, or their families, what he had once planned to do to the daughters of the old restaurant keeper. I had no children or family myself, I continued, but I had been a sniper in the army. I knew the city well, and though I might eventually lose out, I intended to be a very costly victim.
I did not wait for his comment but motioned my visitor to the phone. Somewhat confused, he took the receiver. The two men talked for a while in a foreign language. I don’t know what they said, but the man left a minute later without a word.
I saw my partner the next day and told him what had happened. He was still upset and frightened. Weeks passed. Some store windows nearby were smashed, but ours remained untouched. After a while we quietly dissolved our partnership.
He played drums in the small band which was the neighborhood restaurant’s chief attraction. I went there often, and he must have noticed me sitting alone, because one evening, in the interval between sets, he came over and asked if he could talk to me. He said he had heard I was looking for a job, and he had something to offer me. He explained that playing the drums was only a hobby and that during the day he worked as a truck driver. After playing the drums all night, he went on, he was too tired to drive the truck alertly. He did not want to lose his well-paying steady job as a driver, but he also wanted to remain in the band. He asked me if I would occasionally drive for him. He said he would pay me well.
He picked me up early the next morning to teach me to drive the truck. It was enormous, with a six-wheel cabin detached from a trailer riding on four sets of wheels. When I swung the truck into a turn, the trailer resisted as if with a life of its own, holding relentlessly to its own path like the stiffened body of a huge snake. Learning to drive the truck took up the entire weekend.
Monday I was on my own. The truck depot was on the outskirts of the city. It had its own shifting population of mechanics, loaders, dispatchers, and drivers. I went directly to the truck, checked the tires and brakes, warmed up the engine, and after looking over my route maps, drove from the depot into the streets.
I was to transport hats from a factory to shops spread throughout the city. I was terrified not only by the size of the vehicle but by avenues which were suddenly off-limits to commercial traffic, streets that became too narrow or too congested for me to pass through, temporarily closed squares, children, construction sites, everything.
Each time I stopped to check my map or ask directions, the traffic behind me also stopped; any attempt to back up could stall traffic for miles and bring a police patrol.
I drove the truck through the dense streets, my attention shifting from what lay ahead to what was happening in the rear. I had to assess distances in advance and compute the space available for the turn of the cabin and the wide arc of the trailer. I could trust no one—certainly not the foreshortened views of strollers I had in the side mirrors, not the passers-by who crossed the streets or stepped down from the sidewalks directly in front of my truck.
Of necessity the truck and I became one. I began to feel with my body the space between the rear tires and the edge of the sidewalk and the space between the truck and precariously parked bicycles. I knew which wheel would flatten an empty beer can, and I could gauge the inch left between the clearance batons on the front fender and the uniform of a policeman directing traffic. I discovered that driving the truck had something in common with what I had experienced on skis. I had to project myself beyond my body into a motion that had not yet begun but was imminent and irreversible.
One morning while driving through the business district, I noticed a car steadily following the trailer. I was afraid I was being tailed by the police or by a union official. As I slowed down, the car passed and the Negro driver signaled me to stop. When I parked, he came over and told me he liked the way I drove: he was impressed by my confidence, speed, and good control. He would like me, he said, to become his chauffeur and was willing to double my current wages. I looked at his guileless face and at the soft interior of his car.
All he wanted me to do, he continued, was to drive his car as fast and as skillfully as I drove my truck. But he had another reason for hiring me. He explained that it was not because I was white and he blade It was rather because he and his associates met regularly in the car to discuss important business. The car had to be kept in motion during these meetings to preclude others, whom he referred to as “the other guys,” from eavesdropping. He explained that his business was of a nature that no outsider should try to understand. Not only did he want me to keep the car moving during these meetings, but also to drive it at high speed and keep it very close to other cars, giving his associates the impression that a collision was imminent This, he hoped, would frighten them into paying far less attention to him than usual. It was certain, he argued, that their pride would not allow them to show their fear to a white man.
I accepted his offer. The car was beautifully responsive, and I quickly became accustomed to its power and comfort. As I drove around the city with my new employer, he would comment on my driving, encouraging me to drive faster and to take even more risks in passing the other cars.
After hours of practice, my speed and the closeness of my passing maneuver no longer drew criticism from my employer. Several times he even lost his composure, throwing up his hands as if to protect himself from a certain crash. He could not believe the car emerged unscathed.
One morning we collected his associates. After they had seated themselves in the rear, my employer gave me directions and the order to start
I drove off at high speed. The passengers braced themselves against the front seat and stared with incredulous horror through the windows. My employer sat next to me, relaxed and half facing the others, nonchalantly resting his arm on the dashboard. Then the discussion between them began. Judging by the sudden interruptions and the long pauses, his guests were too astonished by their predicament to concentrate on business. I expected to be asked to slow down or instructed to drive with greater care, but each time I looked into the rear-view mirror I caught grimaces of affected calm.
When the conference ended, my employer ordered me to stop the car. I got out and opened the door. The passengers emerged, perspiring and shaken. None of them looked at me.
He said he was sure I could win money, and went on to explain the sport involved. It was called “book-knock-off.” The requirements of the competition were simple: the drivers had to agree upon the course for the contest Usually a one-way street was selected, with cars parked either on one or on both sides. Referees would tape books selected for their weight to the sides of the cars parked on the appointed street They were about two or three inches thick, and fixed at bumper height; none of the drivers knew in advance on which cars the books were taped. Then the drivers, waiting in their cars two blocks from the course, would be waved in one by one by the referee. When signaled, a driver had to drive over the course at a minimum speed of fift
y miles an hour and keep close enough to the cars with books taped to them for the bumper of his own car to dislodge as many of them as possible.
The timekeeper clocked each driver, and the referee counted the dislodged books. The driver who knocked off the greatest number of books was declared the winner.
A cash prize was contributed by the owners of the competing cars. This, together with the sums collected from bets, was split between the winning driver and the owner of the car.
My employer told me that he had enough confidence in my skill to sponsor me as the driver of his new and costly car. He was certain that his car would attract heavier bets against it, since the driver would be expected to perform more cautiously in order to avoid damaging so high-priced a vehicle. He guaranteed me the usual one third of the stake, but warned that if I lost three times, he would no longer sponsor me.
The speed of the cars and the damage they caused made the races illegal. They took place surreptitiously at night on poorly lit streets that had little traffic and were rarely patrolled.
Arriving with my employer for our first competition, I found the street filled with spectators. The referee and his helpers had already taped books to cars parked bumper to bumper along the street
The assembled drivers were shaking hands with each other and with the referee. The spectators examined the cars we were about to drive and placed their final bets. The referee flipped a coin to decide on which side of the street each driver would make his run. It fell to me to drive on the right-hand side of the street, the side farthest from my line of vision.
The first driver took off; I could hear the screech of tires and the thud of the books as his car sent them careering onto the street The referee counted the books, and the helpers replaced them on different cars. Then my turn came.
My headlights were reflected in the shiny bumpers of the parked cars. I could not see the books from behind the steering wheel, but I knew they were there, waiting motionless to be prized off like limpets, their crumpled pages bound tightly between the stiff leather of the gilt bindings. I raced into the final stretch, bearing hard to the right, staring into the beam of my headlight to catch even the slightest glimpse of my targets, straining to hear the books falling, and bracing myself against the half-expected shriek of steel on steel. I was guided by instinct rather than sight Having completed my run, I was eager to learn the result, and walked over to the referee. My speed had been equal to that of the other competitors, but I had knocked off twice as many books. My employer ran over and embraced me excitedly. Together we collected the prize money; he paid me my share at once.