Carnovsky's Retreat

by Larry Duberstein

  I don’t mind adopting a sense of humor about this thing either. Up to now I’m like a man with a disease. Not sick, just obsessed, like my old friend Hollenbeck the tailor with his arthritis. He used to discuss anything, the gamut of life from garment union to baseball to the two homely daughters who won’t leave his house. Since he started suffering from the arthritis, however, he has only one subject, one interest. All he wants now is the arthritis news.

  Naturally he is a tailor and he fears for the use of his hands, but he devours all the phony cures in the tabloids, samples all the latest pills, and bends his ear to every fellow sufferer. Oh yes? It’s sometimes in one elbow and not the other? Hollenbeck can talk joints inflamed for as long as you can sit still and listen. And his own attention never flags if you should happen to be a member of the club. That’s how I am too because when you suffer from a particular condition, only those who suffer it with you can see the wrinkles in the fabric.

  You hope to learn from a fellow sufferer’s experience—you study his case history to illuminate your own, that’s all, whether it is your wrists and elbows, like Hollenbeck, or your heart and soul, like some others.

  Stinking weather, sleet and slop. Nothing unexpected in this, it’s just the coming of winter. The time has raced past and now it is standing fast, time on my hands. With the racetrack shut down till April I have to try a few new pursuits.

  I tried reading. Not the papers or a magazine, but books, like The House of 7 Gables—Hawthorne. I dipped into a popular one concerning a pimply teenager who uses bad language in place of good sense. That one was no go, so Mrs. Kearney says Try the Classics and I say, Sure, just point me. And I took home The House.

  These Gables are as intriguing to me, however, as the bottoms of my feet. Try again, she says, and hands off The Last of the Mohicans. Again, nothing doing. These people don’t speak my language. So now Mrs. K. says maybe fiction is not your area of interest. Maybe not, I agree.

  Another thing I tried, a matinée movie. The usual sleet-slop afternoon (Thursday) so I ducked inside and found the sun shining in technicolor, palm trees swaying, clean wide streets of California. Plus one very pretty girl, Grace Kelly. This worked out all right, better than reading the Classics, although I had a problem with self-consciousness. I was afraid someone might spot me going into the theatre. Not someone who knows me either, not here—I mean someone who don’t know me.

  I paid my money, didn’t sneak in past the usher, but to me it is not moral entering a movie-house in the daytime. It’s okay for a bum or a bag-lady, the matinée, you sit on one seat and your shopping bag sits on the seat next to you and then you go home to fry a lamb chop for supper. But a man should be out working. I’m worried what the people behind me might think, strangers, who in any case went to the matinée themselves, but I can’t rest easy until the house-lights go down.

  As if they cared a goody goddamn. As if they are back there whispering “See the guy in front, healthy-looking man? You suppose he is a drinker, a rummy? Why ain’t he working? You think he could be an escaped convict or what?” I know they don’t notice me, or care who I am, and still I can feel them there. There is a trick I have yet to master: to be myself and leave myself be, without all the agony.

  I put in a solid day’s work on Adam Bede and that’s it for me and the Classics. Meanwhile I have noticed I get no mail here, not a single piece, so I took action to rectify this. Sent away for a few brochures (a folding boat) and subscribed to magazines, Look and one other. I almost went through with this joke: send a letter to Australia with insufficient postage, so that it comes right back like a boomerang.

  A man needs some mail. You don’t have to be like Johnson who needs a wheelbarrow to bring his inside, but it doesn’t look right never to get a single piece. I should be like the fat man—fixes his hat in the foyer, takes his letter from the box, and strolls away with a casual glance at the contents. The man-about-town.

  With time on my hands this a.m. I had one other crazy notion—to follow the fat man on his morning rounds, shadow him like a private eye. Where does the fat man go? And for that matter, how’s about my bare girl in the window? I could pick up her trail easy enough, I am familiar with her entire wardrobe. In fact I saw a young lady yesterday near the City Hall, on Newspaper Row there, who I had a strong feeling was her. Why not trail her back?

  It’s what Hearn does at the racetrack with his boy Mikey. They call it trailing, I call it a waste of time. But you pick up the scent of a trainer, sometimes even a swipe, and follow him from the paddock to the mutuel window, see what he thinks the score will be. (On the theory that they know something you don’t, of course.) But trailing is a lot of work for a little information—what Billy the Roof calls “Miss Information, that naughty girl we know so well.” Yet Hearn is not the only one who will contort himself like a pretzel to accomplish this dubious mission.

  I could hire Mikey Hearn to trail the fat man. Track him all the way up to the Horn and Hardart for a pie, down to the Water Street barber to upkeep his cheeks, and then over to Fanny Farmer for a mouthful of chocolates. I’ll get the inside scoop on this guy in no time.

  Knowing what to do with your time is a skill. Or maybe an instinct, since a kid will always have it where a grown man has more trouble. I was reminded of the vacation we took at Lake Hopatcong in Jersey, myself and a little circle of friends from downtown Brooklyn. Years ago, before Tanya. One fellow worked with me at Sid’s, the other two were employed at The Brooklyn Eagle, nearby, and we would generally take our lunch together in the delicatessen on Montague Street, talk things over. And once we got going on the subject of summers in the country. All of us had been upstate to summer camp as teenagers—in those days you worked your way—and we decided to pool our money and take a cottage on the lake.

  Now you think of Jersey and you forget how much of it is still farms and shore. Back then, in 1932, it was all cows and ponds, even just a few miles from the city. We went in Allen Gersten’s yellow Moon, I remember, and found ourselves with a charming cottage, white with blue shutters, a big screen porch with rockers and a soft couch, and we looked it over with great pleasure, parked our satchels and went to acquire a little ice for the harborside gin and gingerale we brought. A nice evening spent listening to the crickets and contemplating what a fine time we would be having, and then after that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves—we didn’t have the clue to enjoyment.

  Because at summer camp you worked. A ten-hour day, a sixty-hour week, nothing but dishes morning to night and if you got an afternoon swim and a Saturday night in the village it was enough to fill the time. Once or twice you might climb up on the back of a horse, or hit a tennis ball, but my idea of summer fun was the sixty-hour week.

  At Hopatcong we did not have to wash pots all day, or scrub cabin floors, we were free. So that each hour was an eternity. None of us was a fisherman. When we rented a leaky rowboat, the mosquitoes drove us back off the water in a hurry. Some bugs! No one wanted to sit in the sun and cook, no one was a birdwatcher like Widmer. We just waited for the opportunity to go back into the city and work again.

  How to live a vacation is no different from how to live your life. Whose fault is it if you can’t use the time God gave you to use? People complain frequently that they are working too hard, they need time off. But for what? They don’t know. A vacation can be scary, you have to cope with the time.

  Who holds the secret always is a kid. The secret of fun. A kid doesn’t require a schedule of events or a big stack of fancy equipment. Put him down in any corner of the world and he will make it rich enough. Put him down by the shores of Lake Hopatcong and it will be a big new world of magic for him, a realm of treasures. Even New York City. They say Mayor Wagner owns this town, you hear it all the time, but I beg to differ. Who owns this town is Jimmy Myers, age nine. He has got friends in low places.

  There was already plenty of trouble in Europe when I married my wife. Mussolini went waltzing into Ethiopia and not long aft
er his pal Hitler was taking over real estate in the Rhineland, Poland, everywhere. Tanya had a brother still in Poland, plus all the aunts and uncles. Right then she declared the world no fit place to raise a child, and who could disagree? I wasn’t even thinking about a child, what was a child to me? I expected her to want one.

  But she never did. In 1945 when I was nearly forty years old the U.S.A. exploded atoms on Japan and she said the world was more unfit than ever. By then I was thinking, and we had talked, maybe after the War—but that was it, we never again discussed the matter. If the world ever got safe enough, I knew it would also be too late, so I got us a puppy—named Igor after my father’s father and also short for Igor Beaver, but the poor creature died before he was even house-broke.

  It was not meant to be, yet I like children and I admire them. It is true they have the secret of fun. Jimmy Myers comes into my house and makes himself comfortable, and meanwhile his father and I still just nod and touch our hats. He gets around, my little friend, covers a lot of territory. A runt, nine years old and a real toothpick too, yet so very sure of his own mind. Opinions!

  The roar of his parents can not distract him from his higher purposes in life, which are to acquire gum, chocolate, money, Hopalong Cassidy trading-cards (in particular a rare silver-colored kind he calls a Silver Hoppy), and cancelled stamps. Other purposes include to protect his little sister Beatrice from the person named Gerry who kicked her last month and still looms large, and to overrun the city with his buddies, exploring and pretending. Also to pitch stones at the cats who have taken over the alley behind the house. His control is very sharp, much better in fact than Branca or Billy Loes, God forbid Rex Barney. And still the cats are safe.

  He also likes to chat, so I told him come up anytime his folks say it’s all right. Next day he comes and I ask him,

  “Did your folks say you could visit?” (Because I do not wish to be the cause of any of that yelling that goes on.)

  “They don’t care.”

  “They do. They might at least—just to know your whereabouts.” And this runt advises me:

  “Don’t worry about them so much.”

  I make him cocoa and we look over the Hialeah Form together. Today I let him in on my latest system, which is back all Hartack’s mounts. Very sophisticated. It’s not like me but listen, he rode seven winners in nine trips on the weekend and has been doing it like this every day. Hartack is so hot he could win without a horse underneath him and I have made myself a bundle from the easy chair.

  “So why don’t they all bet on him?” says young Mr. Myers, smart as a whip and travels straight to the heart of the matter.

  “Slow learners. By the time they bet him he’ll be losing. He’ll go fifty races without a winner.”

  “How come you know?”

  “Because I know. What else?”

  Winter is really settling in now—ice in the sky, some ice chips in the harbor. Kramer is not accepting any more of my Hartack bets. “I’ve got a family to support!” he cries. Do I cry when he keeps my money?

  I’m making resolutions. One, I am going to take myself on a trip, though as yet I have not the faintest idea to where. But why not something along these lines? I’m a free agent. I could get married in the morning if I felt up to it, or sail for Constantinople, or maybe spend an evening on Old Cape Cod. Who’s to stop me? There is no need to justify and that’s good since I have no justifications, only the determination to do it.

  Next resolution, I will install a curtain on my window to give my bare girl back her privacy. Since she will not see to this matter, I will have to take it on. I gave it a try last night, banking on just self-discipline. Easy to stop looking, I figured, you simply close your eyes.

  But I discovered that it may require the hanging of a curtain to accomplish.

  I was in the Battery Park early today, stretching my legs when who should I see throwing stones but Jimmy Myers and a couple more his size. Ten o’clock on the morning of a school day this is, however, so he ducks his head and pretends not to spot me. I would never corner him when he was among his pals, and in any case he led the expedition out of there in a hurry. But in the afternoon, here, I gave him a little tickle on the issue.

  “You don’t like school?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Not enough to go there. What’s your favorite subject?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You like to read?”

  “Oh sure, I like all my subjects.”

  “That’s why you play hooky. Don’t you want to get smarter everyday?”

  “Like you, you mean. You can get rich just knowing which horse to bet on. You don’t need to know anything else.”

  I disabused him of this, and preached hard work and education over a hot cup of cocoa. Nevertheless I was feeling flattered that he looks up to me—Oscar the intellect, so rich and smart and makes the best cocoa too—and then I figured his angle. The little weasel flatters me to shut me up, so I don’t inform the parents where I saw him at ten a.m.

  I would never, he should know. I like him and I don’t like them, so where would my loyalties be? But I would also like him to take his schooling more seriously. He has got a lot of natural smarts, but that ain’t enough. Natural smarts I got, and so does Benny Herz. But if you don’t hang in there at school you won’t be President.

  Uncovered yet another lunatic in this tenement, up on the fourth floor. The trash goes out Thursday morning on this block, they come and empty the cans in the alleyway. If you place your trash in the cans the night before, the cats will naturally empty them first. They roam the streets with a Sanitation Department schedule in their pockets and they know how to make a terrific mess. Whatever you ate, put it out early and it’s cat food. The gutters are lined with swill.

  So I am down there at the last possible moment putting my own contribution into the can, and picking up loose ends, when suddenly comes garbage flying past my head. From on high. Two shopping bags crash on the pavement, bottles breaking, and out spills the works—rotten tunafish, chicken bones, apple-core, you name it. Everywhere. You might as well flip this stuff out the window piece by piece and save on bags, because it comes to the same thing.

  And up there in the fourth floor window I spy a little man with a beard, leaning out, getting set to launch one more bag!

  “Keep it!” I shout, and start to explain the flaw in his method. Too late, it’s en route. Crash, rip, splat—the same results of course, and the little fellow is up there laughing. It’s a big joke, this sea of swill around me.

  “Are you crazy?” I ask and for an answer he laughs at me, as though we are sharing this joke together. It’s a nice friendly chuckle we are having. And who knows, maybe I am the crazy one. Maybe I should feel lucky the bags didn’t land a direct hit on me, because Jesus H. Johnson downstairs was not as lucky with the fat man’s bathwater.

  That was a while back, a month or more, although Johnson has yet to bestow his Christian forgiveness. The fat man took a bath one morning and his tub wasn’t draining properly. He can’t be bothered with such things, of course, so he snaps his brim and out the door he goes, leaving the old mother to bail it out with a rusty bucket.

  She loads one up, sets it on the windowsill, and gives it a tilt. Meantime, unbeknowst to her, Johnson is down there praising the Lord when the dirty bathwater descends right on the top of his shiny head. Bullseye.

  To this day Johnson swears she did it to him on purpose, not knowing that this was the first chore she attempted in her life without assistance. He grossly overestimates her abilities. The poor old girl could never do anything on purpose, it would never work out.

  I am signed up as of today for an excursion to the North. A travel agent’s package that includes a Rangers game up in the Montreal Forum (best seats in the house), two nights in a hotel with a continental breakfast, transport both ways, plus sundry features—tourist stuff. The cost is less than I won in a single day with Hartack at Hialeah, and pennies from h
eaven like those are pennies you should spend on a good time.

  Anyway I have to exercise my freedom—it’s like a muscle, goes slack if you don’t utilize it. I felt proud of myself signing on, pleased to be moving around in my new identity. I am finally convinced I did it, like the Brinks Boys up in Boston, I got off scot-free. But why shouldn’t I? Either you have a right or you don’t, and I believe you must.

  Take the case of Flitcraft. Maybe he is the slave of Mrs. Flit, a prisoner of the marriage contract with no rights at all. But if he has any rights at all—if he is a free man and not a slave—then he can do anything under the sun for the flimsiest of reasons. Why? Because he cannot justify what he does. It could be a falling beam or a fallen woman, or it could be nothing more than which way the wind was blowing, as in the case of the bohemian in the boat.

  One reason is as good as the next. If you give him the right to go, you relieve him of the need to explain. It could not matter less, the explanation, whatever it may be.

  I’m sure that Jimmy pitches stones at the alleycats because he is getting it all the time from his mama. Pass it on, you don’t have to wax philosophical to see this much. What I cannot figure is how to bring the subject up, or should I? Would it help him?

  May be best to let him keep pitching. He is building up his throwing arm, the cats seem all right, and it does help keep them off the trash barrels. And if he should stop, it won’t shut up the mother—that must come the other way around. If she did shut up (which she won’t or she would have already) he would likewise stop throwing (according to theory) so really the answer is I should not talk with Jimmy about this matter but talk with the mother instead. Yet you cannot just butt in and what if I did so and she started screaming at me? I can’t absorb it the way those little ones can.