Education of Patrick Silver

by Jerome Charyn

  The madness of his lust began to frighten him. “Jesus,” he said, “I’m going home.”

  Odile walked into the kitchen. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t unwind her robe. She didn’t put her hand in Silver’s pocket. He was dour with her, St. Patrick of the Bethune Street Shul.

  “Tell us how you got to be the Fox’s bride?”

  “Who says I’m a bride?”

  “Papa says. Is it a Guzmann fairy tale?”

  “No. But it was a rotten wedding. I had to marry six people. Papa and the five boys. It was Zorro’s idea.”

  “That’s a good Fox. Was he going to parcel you out like Jerónimo’s chocolate? Every Guzmann gets a slice. It’s a pity they didn’t spread you seven ways, so I could have had my share.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” she said. “The Guzmanns weren’t interested in a wife. Zorro was collecting marriage certificates. The preacher was a dingbat. He didn’t have a church. He had to marry us in the chapel of a Puerto Rican funeral parlor. Zorro figured they couldn’t throw Guzmanns out of the country if the whole family married an American girl. I signed the certificates with different names. The preacher didn’t care.”

  “Mrs. Guzmann,” Patrick said. “Congratulations.”

  She pouted at him as she loosened the bindings on her robe. “Don’t call me that. A girl can’t have six husbands. It’s illegal in New York. Besides, I’m underage. I was seventeen when the Guzmanns married me.”

  Patrick couldn’t fight the logic of her arguments, or get to the door. She trapped him in the wings of her robe. The weight of her bosoms on his soccer shirt hit him below the knees. He sank into Odile, numb from the neck down. He wanted nothing more than to hug the little goya, have her nipples in his chest, stand on rubbery stalks, for the rest of his miserable life.

  9.

  THERE was a history of bachelorhood in Patrick’s line. Over the past hundred and fifty years no Silver in Ireland or America had married under the age of forty-five. Murray Silver brought his closet out of Ireland in 1906, as a boy of twenty-two. He labored for his synagogue twenty-five years before he could choose a wife. He was the vicar of Bethune Street, and he despised miserly shuls. Congregation Limerick had to have a proper awning, red and blue glass, and a winter room for the unfortunates who lived around Abingdon Square.

  He married Enid Rose, an eighteen-year-old orphan who delivered bread to the shul, in 1931. She was a quietly sensual girl, with hips that broadened out of her many skirts (the vicar met Enid in the winter), and a tongue that could receive a vicar’s kiss. Murray was nearing fifty. He had a permanent stoop from climbing up and down the synagogue’s ladder to scrub ceilings and replace pieces of stained glass. His Irish brethren thought a young bride would murder him. They advised Murray to take her slow. The vicar said pish! to their advice. He drank black ale and spent himself on Enid.

  The elders of the shul were frightened by the signatures of Murray’s passion. The girl was pregnant very soon. These old men prayed to God she wouldn’t have to carry an orphan in her womb. The elders were wrong about Murray. He survived the birth of Patrick Silver. But Enid caught a cold. It spread to her lungs. She was buried before Patrick could be circumcised.

  The boy grew up on the steps of the synagogue. His pablum came in a dark bottle. He sucked Guinness at the Kings of Munster with his da. While Murray scrubbed ceilings, Patrick slept in the pews with a skullcap over his face. He had his soup in the winter room along with the beggars of Abingdon Square. He lived in the basement with Murray, who gave up his furniture and his apartment after Enid caught her cold. The synagogue was Patrick’s new mum. The elders became aunts and uncles to him. And he had the Kings of Munster for a nursery.

  Murray began to lose his vigor. He could no longer maintain the synagogue by himself. He would stand on the ladder dreaming of his bride. Patrick had to sweep the shul. He learned to remove splinters from a window, foraging in the cracked glass without cutting his fingers. He prepared a thick soup for surly beggars who considered it a blow to their dignity that a nine-year-old should feed them. Raised on Guinness, Patrick had the strength to overcome their mean looks. “Kind sirs, it’s piss or barley soup,” he would say. “Have your pick.”

  In a few years it didn’t matter how often the beggars outnumbered him. At twelve Patrick was a good six feet. He wore a black and red soccer shirt (Murray had swiped the colors of Cork College on his way out of Ireland). The beggars came to respect the skull on Patrick’s shirt. If they rioted in the winter room, blowing soup into a neighbor’s ear, the boy would pack them in bundles of two and three, roll them down the stairs, and leave them on the sidewalk. He would also protect his father from basement drafts, keeping the vicar in sweaters and double pairs of socks. Murray took to his bed, mumbling Enid, Enid Rose, and falling back into the days of 1931, when he undressed Enid and the Torah with a madman’s piety. He lingered for another ten years, dying in 1954, a vicar of seventy.

  Now it was Patrick’s turn to clutch for a wife. A boy of forty-two, he decided to come out of his bachelorhood sooner than his father did. But his courtship ran into the ground. The girl he wanted to marry was already a bride.

  He couldn’t go against his employers, the Guzmanns of Manhattan, Lima, and the Bronx, who had their names affixed to Odile’s wedding papers. But since he was expected to deliver Jerónimo, Topal, and Alejandro to Jane Street, he had his opportunities with the little goya. He would bring her a yellow rose with disgusting prickles, scarfs from Orchard Street, a charlotte russe, doilies that should have arrived on St. Valentine’s Day, chocolates filled with a medicinal sap that Jerónimo himself couldn’t swallow.

  The Irishman had to be crazy. Odile had never come upon such an assortment of gifts. Although she chided Patrick, stuffing the doilies into his soccer shirt, giving his charlotte russe away, the little goya was pleased. No one else had thought of wooing her in an old-fashioned way. She liked to get down with Patrick Silver on the kitchen floor while one of Papa’s babies slept in her bed.

  This morning it was Jerónimo. Lying next to Patrick, with her fan puttering in the window, she could hear Jerónimo breathe through his nose. She’d scattered some bedding on the linoleum so Patrick wouldn’t scratch his knees. The bedding grew damp in August weather. The gorgeous white hairs on Patrick’s chest had the slippery feel of seaweed.

  “Irish,” she said. “You fuck like Manfred Coen.”

  Patrick wouldn’t talk about a dead cop (Coen had been Isaac’s sweetheart, his angel boy). He knew Isaac loved to fish with Coen on the hook, sending his angel into forbidden territories, but Patrick couldn’t figure why Coen had to land in Odile’s bed. It didn’t make him suspicious of Odile. He understood all her avocations, her career with Zorro and other pimps. He intended to marry the whore child. He’d buy her from the Fox if he had to. Patrick wasn’t a bloody reformer. He wanted to take Odile off the street. That was it. There was nothing untoward about the little goya’s age. Nineteen? She could grow up in the basement of a synagogue, whoring for one man, Patrick Silver.

  His devotion began to frighten her. She’d cling to his chest, satisfy any of his Irish whims, bathe in Guinness if he liked, but she couldn’t bear his mumbling about synagogues and brides. The Guzmanns had soured her on the subject of marriage. Patrick wouldn’t give up his bride songs. To cool him out, she told him her escapades with Herbert Pimloe, Wiatt Stone (Odile had to lie a little), Zorro, her uncle Vander, and Coen.

  Patrick couldn’t listen. A series of whimpers came from the bedroom. Jerónimo was waking up. His noises didn’t seem like hunger pains. Patrick climbed into his pants. He assumed the baby was lonesome for the synagogue. He peeked in: Jerónimo lay on Odile’s bed with his knees in his face. Patrick couldn’t understand this tortured position. Jerónimo was shrieking now. Odile called from her swampy bedding. “Did he swallow his fist?”

  The baby had his own repertoire of noises. Patrick knew most of it. He could tell when Jerónimo was starving, sick, or sleepy. But th
e shrieks baffled him until he discovered their melody. Jerónimo was imitating the sound of a fire truck. He had incredible ears. He could isolate a noise from ten blocks away, sing to a fire truck on Houston Street. Patrick only moved when he heard the same shrieks outside the window. He put on his socks faster than Jerónimo could blink his eyes. He didn’t kiss Odile, or stick a finger in Jerónimo’s scalp. Patrick had no time for minor affections. He muttered, “Esau, stay with me,” and ran down the stairs.

  The shul was on fire. Smoke spilled from the roofs. The walls crackled. Splits appeared in the stained glass. Patrick shoved into the crowd that collected on Bethune Street to watch a synagogue burn. “Coming through, lads.” The two fire trucks parked on Patrick’s block were in a comatose state. A single fireman swung close to the shul on an aerial ladder and stabbed at the windows of the sanctuary with a long metal pick. Other firemen kept unwinding enormous bands of hose. The bands went nowhere. They snaked between the firemen’s legs and rubbed against the gutters. One of the firemen said something about the water pressure in July.

  “The bastard doesn’t know what month he’s in,” Patrick muttered to himself. He couldn’t locate a fire chief, but he found the Guzmanns and Rabbi Prince behind the second truck. Jorge was in his hospital bed.

  “What happened, for God’s sake?”

  Papa had a filthy nose. “Irish, who can tell? The fire didn’t come from our room. It started in the basement. Another few minutes and Jorge would have had smoke coming out of his ass. Where’s the baby?”

  “Safe, Moses. He’s playing with Odile.”

  Patrick turned to Rabbi Prince. “Hughie, what did you bring out?”

  “Nothing but Jorge Guzmann. And we had a heavy time accomplishing that.”

  “My father’s closet,” Patrick said, his eyes getting grim. “Did you leave it in the shul?”

  “I’ve got one pair of shoulders on me, Patrick Silver, and a crooked pair it is. There wasn’t enough room on my back for Jorge and the closet.”

  Why was he behind a fire truck quizzing Moses and Hughie when the closet was inside the shul? Hughie was able to interpret the mad thoughts under Patrick’s beetling eyebrows. “Jesus Christ, I’m a rabbi now and then. Wouldn’t I have saved the ark if I could?”

  But Murray had a stubborn boy. He grabbed an asbestos coat off the back of a fireman. Other firemen yelled at him. “Hey motherfucker, you can’t go in.” Patrick lifted them out of the way. Wearing the coat over his head like a prayer shawl with skirts and sleeves, he rushed into the shul, closing the door behind him. The heat smacked his nose and made him stagger. Patrick couldn’t see a bloody thing. Smoke bellied through the synagogue, hiding the stairs. It ate into Patrick’s lungs until his saliva turned a nasty color and he felt a squeeze in his ears. The baking floorboards attacked his dark socks. He had to ride on the nub of his toes. His chest ripped with every swing of his body. He hadn’t gone a foot from the door.

  Then, flapping the asbestos skirts around his arms, he walked through smoke. Patrick could swear he was losing his skin to the fire. He smelled his own cooked flesh. He’d gotten to the stairs. The bannisters were burning hard. He had to climb with low, hunkering moves, or ignite himself.

  Patrick couldn’t be far from the sanctuary. He heard the popping of glass. He had to be in the winter room. He sank into mattresses on the floor, his feet snarled in Guzmann blankets and pillowcases. Patrick kicked them off with swipes of his stockings. The saliva became a crust on his lips while he groped for the chapel door. He was in another room. Hughie’s study? The shul’s brittle toilet? Patrick had his bearings: his knees touched a pew. If he went to the top of the pews and took fifteen paces north, he would miss the prayer box and bang into the closet.

  But his calculations failed. He must have run athwart of the closet. He was grounded in the sanctuary, scraping woodwork. The smoke had robbed him of his senses. He searched for his father’s leaded windows, that thicket of glass in the north wall. His fireman’s coat had begun to crack. The sleeves were ruined. The asbestos near his skull gave off a mean roar. A foul, swollen gas was swimming in the dead air. It flooded Patrick’s eyes, nose, and lungs, and the lining of his coat. Bits of his hair were catching fire. He stumbled backwards and forwards, slapping his own head. He saw a tiny flame lick the ends of a gold rag. It was the Irish curtain that hung over the doors of the ark. Hopping like a madman, with his scalp on fire, Patrick found the Baghdad closet.

  Outside the shul Rabbi Prince was saying kaddish for Patrick Silver. He hadn’t met any flameproof Irishmen in America. There had to be a crazy angel squatting on the chapel wall, in Elijah’s chair, an angel who loved to burn down churches and shuls. Which of the angels in the Mishna and the Gemara was a firebug? That one had murdered Patrick Silver.

  The Guzmanns stood next to Hughie, mumbling their own prayers. They knew how to mourn for an employee. The Irish was Moses’ hired man. He had guarded Jerónimo, befriended Papa’s other boys, leading them straight to the little goya, and hid all the Guzmanns (except the Fox) in his shul. Even if Isaac should grab him off the street, Papa would smuggle candles into the Tombs and light them for Patrick. No jail could keep the Guzmanns from paying their respects. They would sing to their fellow prisoners (in English, Spanish, and Portuguese) how Patrick had fared in the war with Isaac the Shit. Papa wouldn’t enter the prison mess without screaming Patrick’s name. That way the Irish would never be forgotten.

  There was a disturbance at the mouth of the shul. The door had swung open. Smoke escaped. The firemen didn’t cherish apparitions who danced out of a synagogue. “Crap,” they said. “That’s a miserable guy.” A spook tumbled onto the sidewalk with a closet on his back. He was nothing but a pair of eyes set in a blackened face. He wore a shredded jersey. His stockings were shriveled up. Smoke was coming from his forehead.

  The firemen were appalled. They tried to cover him with their asbestos coats. The spook didn’t want to be smothered by firemen. His lips parted. He had coaly teeth. His tongue was a disgusting yellow. “Get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got another chore to do.”

  Five detectives burst into Isaac’s sanctuary. Their neckties flew away from their collars. They had buttons off their shirts. Their holsters were awry.

  “Mad Patrick is here.…”

  “He’s dressed like a nigger, sir. In black rags.”

  “We thought he was a Rastafarian. He charges past Security. I almost shot the fuck.”

  “What’s he want from us? He bit Morris on the ass.”

  “Should we escort mad Patrick to the basement, sir? We could chain him to a filing cabinet and finish him off.”

  Isaac stared at his five detectives, who made their own little fury in his office. “Be gentle with St. Patrick. I invited him to tea.”

  There were shivers coming from Isaac’s door. You could hear the scratching of knees. Patrick hobbled into the office with two more detectives riding his ankles and his ribs. His famous soccer shirt had lost its sleeves. The crack of his buttocks showed through the top of his pants. His toes curled out of his stockings. He had blood and dark shit on his face, like soot from a fire storm.

  “Isaac,” he said, with somebody’s arm in his mouth. “Are these lads part of your fire patrol? Did they recite a prayer over the kerosine? You shouldn’t have touched my shul. If I can get past your fireflies, I’ll show you how things were done in Limerick. I’ll tear your pizzle off and slap it over your head.”

  Isaac emerged from the wooden enclaves of his commissioner’s desk. “You tin Irishman. The only Limerick you ever saw was your father’s pubic hair. You can’t fool a tit with your smelly Irish shirt. You were born near Hudson Street, like the rest of us. Only your father diapered you with leftover yarmulkes.”

  Patrick struggled against the detective who was sitting on his ribs. “Mention my father again, and you’ll be living with the worms, Mr. Sidel.”

  “Let him up,” Isaac said. “I’m sick of his blabber. Silver, I’m wai
ting for you. Push your legs and come to me.”

  The detectives riding Patrick loosened their hold. He sprang up and seized Isaac by the throat. The two of them started to whirl in the middle of the room. The cops in Isaac’s office couldn’t believe a common man like Patrick Silver, a refugee from the rubber-gun squad and the janitor of a shul, would dare wrestle with the Acting First Dep. They rushed Patrick Silver, pommeled him, and made grabs at his shirt; pieces of charred cotton came off Patrick Silver and stuck to their fingers. The First Dep shouted at them. “Lay off. Patrick’s all mine. I’ll fix any mother who interferes with me and him.”

  So they had to desist. They put their fingers in policeman’s handkerchiefs and watched Patrick and the First Dep roll on the floor. They were mystified. They no longer knew how to protect their Chief. They had leather points on their shoes that could penetrate the skull of any Irish giant. But Isaac wouldn’t give them the word. All they could do was shut the door and confine the wrestling match to a single room, or the whole of Headquarters would be privy to the news. The story of Isaac groveling with wisps of feathery material in his face would spread to the outer offices, arrive at the main hall, and every cop in Manhattan would know that Isaac had wrestled with a janitor.

  Isaac wasn’t concerned about issues of protocol; he had a thumb in his Adam’s apple. He didn’t panic, he didn’t squeal for help; he was used to ferocious men. He survived six months of standing next to Jorge Guzmann, hadn’t he? Isaac had his share of scars; dents in his forehead from a gang of hammer-throwing junkies, a button of flesh on his jaw that was given to him by a crazed thief with a pair of pliers in his hand. Isaac had fought the bandits of all five boroughs and come out alive. He wouldn’t succumb to an Irish giant who wore an empty holster like a fucking codpiece.