Carnovsky's Retreat

by Larry Duberstein

  “Or else you are a good one.”

  Like old cohorts we gab, and my heart is perfectly safe. In fact, my heart is uplifted. The die is cast and I don’t mind—I cast my share of it. And I want her to have a boyfriend, providing he is worthy. I want her to have whatever there is in life, times three. I do not feel jealous or left in the dust, I feel the decision we made was absolutely correct.

  Talking of my days as a “steeplechase jockey” at Coney Island, I was amazed to find it was Dutch to her. She never went to Steeplechase Park in her life.

  “Then what gave you the idea?”

  “Of riding in the steeplechase? Someone told me they let women ride there, that was all. It’s the only place that does, really.”

  “If it does. Better check your facts before you ship out. It might be they run a few races for Ladies Only. Because that’s a rough circuit from what I hear. And so was Coney Island, a wild ride. You wouldn’t believe this ride—nothing like it in the world. My father was more impressed by this, as an engineering feat, than by the Brooklyn Bridge. The Bridge doesn’t move, he would say, but look at these horses. And they would go, Caddy, into the buildings, back outside, around the shooting galleries—everywhere, and fast.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “You want to go out and practice your steeplechase technique? I don’t know. They would be closed now, in any case, for the season.”

  “Take me in the summer?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. If you’re around next summer—and if it is still standing. I don’t know.”

  As with Jimmy Myers and Ebbets Field, I lacked the sense to say a simple No. It’s why they didn’t elect me mayor, because it’s okay to be stupid but you must at least learn something from experience. Why not be direct? The truth is easy and leaves no marks. (Or if it does, it leaves them on the other guy.)

  Yet it would seem silly to say at my age, No I can’t do it, I am a fugitive from my loved ones, and my friends on Ocean Parkway might see me, not to mention my enemies. Did Tanya settle up across the board? For all I know, I could owe money. But I kept this sour note to myself, and kept our exchanges on the high note.

  “I’m ready for your report,” she says, “about life in the red-light district.”

  “Nothing ventured. I finished with red lights when I gave up my Plymouth and took to my feet.”

  It was so nice of her to come visit me. In New York just four days and everyone wants a piece of her on the Island—school chums, relations, horses and dogs—and yet she journeys down here and even insists on greeting Jimmy.

  So she popped a bicep at him, he popped one back, and they asked me to be the Judge and Jury. A lot of fun, and I had no choice but to call it a draw.

  Still feeling elated with Caddy’s visit, and with her report on life at college. She has got what she wants there, a “work study” where she helps out at a sanitorium of some kind—old wackos like myself, I bet—and gets a course credit for it. On top of that she has been learning the Russian language, as she prefers the bumpy road.

  I doubt they will allow her to ride any horses in England, but she does not doubt it, so maybe she can convince them. For some reason everyone believes there is enlightenment in merry old England, and an English accent means you know it all. How can you have injustice or folly in such a civilized land?

  It’s bunk. An English accent means you’re English, that’s all, and they are just the same as us—a box of mixed biscuits. The Russkies too, I’m sure. Why not?

  “Is she your new blondie?”

  “Is who?”

  “The girl with the horse.”

  “The girl with the horse is closer to your age than mine. She is a friend of mine, that’s all. A friend of yours too.”

  “What happened to your other blondie?”

  “Nothing bad. She’s a friend of mine too. I just received a Christmas card from her yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

  “I thought Jews didn’t celebrate Christmas.”

  Straight from the shoulder, with this one too. Maybe he has been taking directness lessons from the girl with the horse.

  “That’s what she said, on the card. ‘I know Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, so I’ll just say happy holiday season from Linda.’”

  “I didn’t know her name was Linda. I knew she wasn’t a Jew, cause my ma says a blondie can’t be a Jew.”

  “Not usually. Sometimes, though—I do have cousins, blond.”

  “I like the new one a lot better. She’s pretty. And I bet she won’t send you a stupid card.”

  Freezing cold in the harbor, a fierce wind and zero sun. It looked like a wild ice-storm was about to break from the sky at any second, so we all felt a little apprehension out on the water. I huddled up behind the glass most of the way, holding onto my hat with one hand and a cup of ice coffee with the other.

  Much too cold and windy to read the paper, as a proper commuter should do. Of course I ain’t a proper commuter. It’s just a short snort of a workday for me—the time it takes to turn the boat around, load a few, and shove off for the mainland.

  We passed close up to the garbage scow on our way in, and I got a good look at the captain’s face, up front in his look-out house on the tug-boat. A real sea dog, puffing on his pipe and staring out over the water in one of those black-billed hats with the gold insignia.

  You could say he is nothing but a garbage-man, although for all I know he is First High Admiral complete with power to wage war on the high seas and marry the willing. What I saw was a contented fellow who wouldn’t change places with anyone. Past retirement age already I would guess, but they will have to shanghai this guy to drag him down from his outpost.

  Record the new tenant. A man about thirty, possibly less, who works at the Aquarium. Quiet, pleasant fellow, and a bachelor. Jimmy didn’t like it at first because he and his gang had gotten their mitts on a key and were using the empty place as a clubhouse after school. Also during, at least once. They would sit in there telling jokes and flexing their muscles, I’m sure, and God knows what else.

  Then the new man, Hansen, invited the whole bunch to come in free and see the fishes, so now they forgave him for living and are all budding aficionados. Jimmy wants a little tank of his own, with a few goldfish to feed. Time for a career change maybe—after months of flexing he registers a gain of one pound on his good days and sometimes not even that, as he fluctuates. He is stronger I’m sure, but may have a tapeworm inside.

  I experienced a wonderful dream—full of wonder, like a masterpiece of painting. Only a picture (a still life), of Caddy on the track with Mandan, in soft sunlight at Jamaica Park.

  It was snowing past my window when I awoke and the snow did not seem real. Real was the summer stillness at Jamaica, blue sky on a green crop of trees, and of course the girl. I heated up last night’s coffee and took my cup back to bed, and watched the snow dropping down to the street—thin paper flakes like a white ash. I am someone who loves to gaze. Someone who loves the pictures in life.

  My next career I’ll be a camera. But I do love the pictures I walk past, faces I see, even in the a.m. when nobody smiles and you would guess that all joy was banished from the world. Caddy on a horse, the captain of the garbage barge, the fire-boat geysers—they stay with me in such a nice way. It’s why I have come to enjoy walking around. For years I went everyplace in the car, and saw nothing under the sun except concrete and my fellow cars. Now I don’t mind an ugly picture either, as long as there are no cars in it.

  Life goes along and it doesn’t matter, not for the likes of me. The likes of me can stay in bed drinking coffee. Because in this country a few get more and a few get less but most people get the same deal. An education if they want it, a job, and then you must locate a woman. And enjoy the time to the best of your ability. Life can be exciting, exceptional, for the select few. Caddy for example might make it to England, or the French Riviera, and she might marry the King of Siam and write her memoirs. But most of us are not speci
al that way. I was never going to marry with Grace Kelly or win an Olympic medal, not even in the turkey walk. I am the kind of citizen who must take life as it comes, one day after another, just as I feared. Except it’s not so bad.

  What you miss out on isn’t much. Big bucks, fame, glamor—that’s all sad stuff, sets you up for a fall. The little things are what give you grace. The pictures, that anyone walking past can appreciate, like the beautiful child, harbor seas, the hobo in summertime. You are alive and so is everything around you and all you need now is the right cigar to go with it.

  I don’t mean to say that luxury isn’t nice to have. I mean this: your house might cost you thirty thousand dollars and your new sofa three hundred, the suit you wear can run a hundred dollars and the maid fifteen per diem. But the cigar is less than one dollar and the cigar is the luxury.

  The rest you toss out, like the eight nags who are fated to lose a horse race. The last horse is the cigar and that’s the one you want to have.

  Life is a fountain, or so I said last time I scribbled. The Great High Lama knew his stuff after all. But reading it back it sounds like sour grapes, like something an envious man might say to conceal his envy. Whatever it sounds like, it is the truth—I begrudge no one nothing, and least of all Caddy, who is my personal entry in life’s sweepstakes. Yes she is the kind who could have it all and may she own it.

  The mass of men lead lives of public transportation, says the great sage Wiley, and he means the same as Thoreau meant with his pond in the woods back in tenth grade. Me too. I took no satisfaction until I walked away and I’m sure the ones who stay might suffer. A few will turn to drastic measures to rise above the mass.

  How does an everyman grab Page One? Simple. Jump from the top of the latest skyscraper, some hunk of showy architecture, and you might at least die famous. You could also try to get a little something accomplished—walk through a door and shoot an evil man to death. Shoot Hitler, shoot Mussolini, shoot Senator Joe McCarthy. That makes a noise.

  And such things will happen but it is a shame for all concerned. This desperation is not necessary, things are not so bad as they seem, and you have to figure it out for yourself. It’s a mood, that’s all. Yes, life goes along one day after another all the way down to the grave, but listen: it’s not the days going along that constitute a problem, it’s the grave. The days are fine.

  Wonderful to see my friend Wally Wiley. He brought along the others, nice men, knowledgeable, and we ate chops in Dempsey’s as planned. I drank a glass of beer, we lit cigars, and strolled to the Garden in fine high spirits. Yelled ourselves hoarse in a meaningless prelim, then settled in for the title fight. A sad event, however.

  Ray Robinson was the best ever. I never saw Jack Johnson or some of them, but I saw Dempsey, and Benny Leonard, and Joe Louis, I saw Henry Armstrong fight many times. None was the equal of this guy. A dancer with fast feet, fast hands, a picture boxer who could yet unload the concrete on you with either hand. An artist by reputation well deserved, but a very big hitter too, who kayoed a hundred good fighters, a list of big names, champions. And he was also much tougher than people give him credit. Excepting the night he collapsed from the heat while fighting light-heavy, no one ever stopped this man. Ever.

  And he loses his title to this bull by the name of Fullmer. It’s nothing against Fullmer. He’s got to use what God gave him and God didn’t give him much. He can’t box, he can’t punch, but he is very young and strong. He rushes, he pushes, lunges. He fights like a bread truck, coming at you in the street. After a while you get tired of dodging and hitting and you just get run over.

  Robinson never liked to fight this style, yet he always knew how to beat it. Speed. Throw a lot of very precise leather and skip away, like the LaMotta fights. It takes energy, however, and conditioning. You can’t get by on half a can.

  Sad to see the great man end like that, mauling with this clumsy force, pushing him away all night and trying to lift tired arms. It’s five years since he retired—five years ago he had enough. He was old then, or so he decided for himself, and a layoff never helps a fighter. It killed Louis the same way. Being a little old and then the layoff, you come back a lot old. Much older than if you never stopped.

  What the hell, we all said it. It’s only a prizefight and Robinson had his day no doubt. I wasn’t hit once the whole night, myself personally, it only feels that way.

  It was my intent to sound Wiley out last week, and I did, except he derailed me with his humor, as per usual.

  “Did you ever see a prostitute?” I asked him.

  “Yes I saw one,” he says. “As a matter of fact I saw two, standing together, in Times Square.”

  I let it go at that, as we had very little time apart from the others, and I figured let the whole idea go while you’re at it. But it wasn’t the idea which accosted me on my walk today, although the idea might have predisposed me. She was a plain girl I would say, an ordinary face under a hatbrim, who sold it to me like aluminum siding, and I bought it the same way. A tall girl with a very nice figure (you could never guess in her street clothes) and she recommends herself out of the blue, “I’ll show you a nice time.”

  “Oh yes?” I said these syllables and meant not a thing. When she spoke up in my direction, I didn’t suspect her in the least—I expected to answer left on 42nd Street and straight up Fifth Avenue.

  “Try me,” she says, with a sincere eye, like a girl from home, not a monster. It’s why I didn’t know what she was at first, even when she spoke her piece. I must have looked as though I was mulling it over, as she kept up, “Not everyone’s clean but I am. And I’ll give you my best price.”

  $9.95 plus tax, I’m sure. Because that’s what it was, a sale going on, and furthermore she had a room on this very block in case I was rushing to an important appointment. That’s what did it. Oh sure, yes, an appointment mid-town—if I don’t make the board meeting by three it’ll be six million right down the drain. My only appointment was with the streets, same as her, so we teamed up then and there.

  It was not so bad and I’m not sorry I went, so long as there are no medical repercussions. I am not guilty. It was sex, as Caddy puts it—something people will do a certain amount, and we did it. If I want to do it some more, I have a special number I can dial any time. “I trust you with this number,” she says. Me and the men of the 69th Regiment Marching Band, I’m sure.

  Yes she knew her business and I’m glad she did. Helps you forget that it’s the strangest moment in your life, and you do forget it. But they should make you pay up front, before you even see the room. I liked least the paying. Not the money itself. But all was said and done and you suit up like intimate friends and then comes the invoice. So you may have thought you were people and now you know otherwise.

  I did what I did and lived to tell it. Will I tell it to Caddy, who says she wants the lowdown yet may turn seasick when she gets it? I almost believed this—that I did it for her, so as to bring back the inside story—but I was just making excuses in the aftermath.

  Counted up the months since Linda Stanley’s last stand and acknowledged the obvious: I built up a need. After all, I am used to a light schedule, but not the celibate life.

  Lazy. I don’t walk enough and I don’t scribble much these days. You go to put down your latest thought and find you do not necessarily have one. So I sit too much and eat too much and have only crazy ideas, like this one. Give Tanya a call on the phone and invite her over for a bowl of soup. As though she was twenty and we were just about to commence our courtship, and do it, all over again.

  Yellow roses from Baumgartner’s, a thermos of tea in Prospect Park, or a sitdown in Effie’s Tea Room. Talkies at the old Strand, roller-skate in Greenwood, chop suey and fireworks at Coney Island on a Tuesday. A million things we had fun doing, before we settled down.

  Let it be, a little nostalgia never killed anyone. And it’s no great secret why. Washington Lincoln had a birthday and so did I. Washington is about two hundred,
Lincoln one hundred, and I just hit fifty. I’m half-a-century around the oval and look at me: lazy.

  March 11. Wiley called with work uptown, his neighborhood on Riverside Drive. He has contacts everywhere, but I told him no thanks, I’ll stick. Another month and they will be running at Jamaica, and I can eat beans till then.

  “Don’t disturb me, Wiley, I’m on sabbatical.”

  “Suit yourself, professor,” he says.

  Sabbatical. A long long sabbath. Everyone should take one now and then, not only the professors of truth but the waiters and the jockeys, the cops and the robbers. And how come no sabbatical for the poor slobs who sit up in an office getting rich?* It takes a lot out of you, getting rich, more than will show.

  Not that I’ve ever been rich, but some things you can know anyway—things I learned out on sabbatical.

  March 19. Insert this funny note from Caddy—

  I really almost had a boyfriend this time. He looked all right and could count from one to ten backwards, but when I told him I wasn’t interested in going steady he couldn’t handle it.

  I explained it as well as I could. What if my friend Oscar changes his mind and demands his fifteen minutes in bed with me? What then? You see I must keep my options open.

  But Paul doesn’t understand about options, he wants to have me stuffed and put on his pillow like a teddy bear, so I said there were plenty of teddy bears around and sent him on his way with a letter of recommendation for his excellent backwards counting.

  Love,

  Caddy

  So I wrote her back at once complaining that my hour was reduced to a stingy quarter-hour, and generally attempting to match her high spirits. Although I think of her frequently and always fondly, I can honestly record that I never think in terms of a “sexual relationship” as she once called it.

  In fact I will also record the following oddity. That I do have the urge sometimes, quite naturally, and the one I picture in my mind is Tanya. Never Caddy or Linda Stanley, who was real, nor the tall one, who was both real and recent. Nor Marilyn Monroe on the merry month of May, or Miss Rhinegold who misplaced her underwear during luncheon. I can barely recall my bare girl, even if I am looking right at the blue and orange curtain across her old window. It’s Tanya, and that’s who it is.