by Tom Hanks
That was when he thought of the man who had been shouting into a telephone, the man who made the chief laugh, the man in the window with the Greek flag. Where was that again? He looked at the palm of his hand, at the map there, and remembered the chief saying Twenty-Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, and Assan knew he could find it again.
No one was in the window at Twenty-Sixth and Seventh when Assan looked up, but the Greek flag was there. Assan found an entryway nearby that had a small sign with another small Greek flag on it and words in Greek: THE HELLENIC INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY. Assan went through the door and up the stairs.
The day was already hot and the office was sweltering, even with the door ajar and the windows cracked open. Assan heard music playing—a slow tune with a voice repeating words. Ay…ay…ay…space…es…es…es…space. A clacking typewriter noise came with each word. Dee…clack…dee…clack…dee…clack. At the office door, Assan saw only a messy desk and some easy chairs.
Eff…clack…eff…clack…eff…clack…space…thunk. Assan stepped inside. A girl was in the small inner office, sitting in front of a small green typewriter on a tiny table. She was concentrating on the fingers of her left hand, pressing the keys that matched the instructions on the record. Assan stayed quiet, not wanting to disturb the typing lesson.
“Tikanis.”
Assan turned. The man who had been yelling into the telephone yesterday was walking in, carrying a small paper bag. “Who are you?” the man asked in Greek.
“Assan Chepik.”
“Not Greek?”
“No, Bulgarian. But I come from Greece. I saw the flag.”
The man pulled a cardboard cup filled with what smelled like coffee from the paper bag, along with a round cake with a hole in the middle. “You did not tell me you were coming today, Assan, or I would have brought you breakfast!” The man laughed out loud. “Dorothy! We need another coffee for Assan, here.”
Ell…ell…ell…space. “I just started a lesson!”
“Pick up the needle. When Bulgarians are hungry they get nutsy.” The man turned to Assan. “Dorothy will get you a coffee. At least it’s what they say is coffee here.”
—
Assan sipped a hot drink, mostly milk and sugar with something of a coffee taste. Dorothy was back at her typewriter, clacking along with the record. You…you…you…space…eye…eye…eye…space. Demetri Bakas, which was the man’s name, asked questions of Assan. Assan told of his job on the Berengaria and that just yesterday he had left the ship, but said nothing of Ibrahim hiding between the decking or getting off in the city called Philadelphia.
Assan also said nothing of the four years since the war ended, nothing about all his attempts at crossing the border between Bulgaria and Greece. He did not tell of the early morning when his brother made the mistake of starting a fire to heat some water. They were in the mountains, had slept between two rocks, and were planning to move along quickly, but Assan had some coffee in his pocket. His brother wanted just one cup, for energy he said, but he really wanted the taste of hot coffee on a cold morning. The Communist bounty hunters had been trailing after them and saw the smoke from the fire. Assan had been taking a shit on the other side of a copse of trees. Unseen, he watched his brother put up a fight and a Communist shoot him in the head. He didn’t tell Demetri about the man he’d had to kill, either. Assan was drinking from a stream that ran alongside a path when a local man almost stumbled upon him. The man wore a Party pin on his threadbare jacket, and the look in his eyes said all Assan needed to know. The man was running back to whatever village was nearby to report seeing a traitor making for the border, but Assan chased him down, hit him with a rock, then threw his body down into a gully. And Assan was silent about the time he finally arrived in Athens and made a friend who told him to go to a certain house where refugees like him lived together. When Assan went to the house, he was beaten up, thrown into an unmarked truck, and taken back across the border into Bulgaria, handcuffed to others who had fallen for the traitor’s trick. Assan said nothing of the Communist captain who chained him to a chair, then yelled questions at him and, not liking the answers, used his fists and then special tools as he yelled the questions again and again. Assan said nothing of the camp, of the prisoners he saw shot in the camp, of the prisoners he saw hanged in the camp.
He said nothing of the girl he met after his release, of their short romance, or of how hungry they always were. He didn’t say her name was Nadezhda or tell of her becoming pregnant, or of their marriage just months before a boy was born, his son, named Petar. He said nothing about his young wife struggling during the birth and the midwife not knowing how to stop the bleeding. Without his mother’s milk, the boy lived only a month. Demetri did not hear of Assan’s son, Petar.
Assan said nothing of his arrest for stealing empty bottles, even though he had not stolen any empty bottles. His name was on a list, so he was again sent to prison. Assan said nothing of his fourth attempt at escape, his arrest, his year in the work camp, of meeting Ibrahim there and the night the train came by and separated them from the guards on the other side of the track and how they threw down their shovels and jumped into the river. He said nothing of the farmer who found them miles away, wet and freezing, who could have turned them in to the Party official in the village, but instead gave them hot food as their uniforms dried. He gave them some money, too—twenty levs each.
Assan and Ibrahim bought tickets for the bus to the mountains near the border with Greece. When the police came on board to check papers, they had none. But their prison uniforms happened to be the same as the ones for privates in the army, just with no patches or insignia. When Assan told the cop that they were reporting to the Army Hospital because they were carriers of typhus, the cop’s eyes went huge at the word typhus and he nearly ran off the bus.
They crossed the border high in the mountains. In Athens they earned drachmas with picks and shovels, with their hands and their backs for most of that year until Assan got the fireman job on the Despotiko, shoveling coal into the boiler as the ferry made its way between Piraeus and the many Hellenic islands.
Assan said nothing of all that, but only of being a fireman on the Berengaria with the oil bubble in the tube, and now here he was in America having jumped ship.
Demetri knew there was much more to Assan’s story but didn’t care. “Do you know what I can do for you, out of this office?”
“Teach me to type?” Dorothy was now pecking out Cap…thunk…Cue…clack…space…thunk…Cap…thunk…Double-You…clack…space…thunk.
Demetri laughed loudly. “We have good people who will help us help you. It will take time. But let me tell you right now, if you get into any problem with the law—any problem with the police—everything becomes trouble. Understand?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Okay. Now. You are going to learn to speak English. Here is an address of a free school. It meets nights. Just walk in, sign up, and pay attention.”
Assan took the address.
“You have anything of value you can sell? Anything gold or fancy from the old country?”
“Nothing. I left everything on the ship.”
“My old man did the same thing. In 1910.” Demetri pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket. “Come back in a few days and we’ll have some spare clothes for you. Dorothy! Size up Assan for a couple pairs of pants. Some shirts, too!”
“When I’m done!” Dorothy never looked away from her keyboard. Cap. Tee. Space. Cap. Gee. Space. Thunk-clack-thunk-clack…
“You have any lines on a job, Assan?” Demetri lit his cigar in a ball of fire that came from a huge match.
Assan had no lines on a job.
“Go here. It’s downtown.” Demetri wrote something on another piece of paper and handed it to Assan. “Ask for Costas.”
“Costas. Okay.” Assan was leaving the office just as the typing record stopped and Dorothy turned it over for lesson two.
—
The address wa
s very low on Assan’s palm, down where streets had no numbers and went every which way. He spent most of the day tramping the odd-shaped blocks, going round and round and passing the same points more than once. He finally found the place, a little restaurant, with a sign that said OLYMPIC GRILL surrounded by a Greek key border. There were all of four little tables connected to the wall with leather benches and eight of the pole stools at a counter. Every seat was taken and the cafe was hot. A woman was behind the counter, too busy to look at Assan until he stood in one place a bit too long. She barked at him in Greek: “Wait outside for a seat, fool!”
“I am here to see Costas,” Assan said.
“What?” the woman shouted.
“I am here to see Costas!” Assan shouted back.
“Honey!” the woman hollered, turning her back on Assan. “Some fool is asking for you!”
Costas was a short man with a brush for a mustache. He had no time to speak to Assan but did anyway.
“What do you want?”
“Are you Costas?” Assan asked.
“What do you want?”
“A job,” Assan said with a laugh.
“Oh, Jesus,” Costas said, turning away.
“Demetri Bakas sent me to see you.”
“Who?” Costas was clearing dishes and taking money from a customer.
“Demetri Bakas. He told me you would have a job for me.”
Costa stopped what he was doing and looked Assan in the eye; he was so short he had to lean back to glare at the Bulgarian.
“Get the fuck out of here!” The customers who spoke Greek looked up from their meals. The ones who only spoke American kept on eating. “And don’t come back!”
Assan turned and got the fuck out of there.
—
The walk back to the two middle fingers of the Central Park took a very long time. The air was so hot and thick—Assan’s shirt became wet against his back and didn’t dry. He walked and walked along one avenue, until bright flashing lights shone down on a place where nine streets seemed to collide in a storm of people, buses, yellow cars, and even soldiers on horses, or maybe they were cops. Assan had never been in the middle of so many people, with everyone going everywhere.
In a huge cafeteria, he spent coins on another sausage H O T D O G and a paper cup filled with sweet juice, ice cold, and as delicious as any drink he’d ever had—even Coca-Cola. He stood as he ate, like most of the people in the place, though he wanted to take off his shoes more than anything in the world. Across the triangle of streets and humanity, he recognized what was a cinema, with a chain of lights chasing each other around and around. Assan saw the price—forty-five cents. That was four of the smallest coins in his pocket and a larger, thicker coin that had a humpbacked cow printed on one side. Assan suddenly wanted to sit in a nice seat, take off his shoes, and see a movie. He hoped it would be about Chicago.
The cinema was like a cathedral, with uniformed men and women directing a stream of people to seats, chattering couples, and young men in groups, everyone talking loud and barking in laughter. The columns were like those in the Parthenon in Athens, modern angels were etched in gold on the wall, and a deep red curtain stood thirty meters tall.
Assan took off his shoes just as the curtain opened and a short movie appeared on a screen as big as the hull of the Berengaria. Music played as fancy words flipped and spun on the screen, appearing and disappearing so fast Assan couldn’t sound out a single letter. The movie showed ladies dancing and men arguing. Then another short movie played, with more music and flying words. This movie had boxers in it and skies full of airplanes. A third short movie showed a very serious woman saying very serious things, then weeping, then running down a street calling out a name, then that movie was over. A moment later the screen burst into vivid colors as a funny-looking man dressed like a cowboy, but not a real cowboy, and a gorgeous woman with black hair and the reddest of lips sang songs and said things that made the cathedral echo with laughter. Despite that, Assan soon fell asleep hard and deep.
—
The next day there was no one at the Hellenic Society. The whole city seemed quiet, with fewer people coming up out of the stairways that led to tunnels and many of the buildings empty. Assan found the address for the English lessons, a building on Forty-Third Street, but there was no one around the place to speak English with.
When Assan returned to the park, though, it seemed like all the buildings surrounding the two middle fingers had emptied into the trees, the paths, the playgrounds, and the broad green fields. Kids and families were everywhere—in a zoo, in rowboats, sliding around on shoes with wheels attached, at a concert of music, with dogs playing, and kids throwing, catching, and kicking all kinds of balls. Assan liked the dogs the most and watched them for the longest time.
When clouds darkened the sky late in the afternoon, the families packed up, the games of ball stopped, and the park emptied. Rain came soon after, so Assan found a covered archway and ended up spending the night there, sharing the spot with a few other men who slept on boxes and covered themselves with only their jackets. None of them spoke any of the languages Assan knew. None of the others seemed happy at all, but Assan had been stuck in the rain before and was not at all miserable. He had hidden under bridges, been in wet clothes, walked for days, even run from men in the old country who had the same faces of misery as these guys. This? This was nothing.
In the morning, Assan woke with a cough in his throat.
—
“These pants should fit you.” Dorothy was speaking Greek. “The boots, too. Try them on in the lavatory in the hall.”
“What is the lavatory?” Assan had never heard that word.
“The toilet. The men’s room.”
The pants fit well enough. The used boots not only fit his small feet but were already broken in. Dorothy gave him stockings, a few different shirts, two pairs of heavy pants—all felt good after so many days in his blue pin-striped suit, which Dorothy took from him for cleaning.
“What happened to that Bulgarian guy who was here Friday?” Demetri walked in with a bag of round cakes with holes in the middle and more sweet American coffee. “Assan? You look like you live in Jersey!”
Dorothy sat down at her typewriter again and put on another record. Music played in a faster tempo—Cap tee aitch eee space cue you eye see kay space—as Dorothy clattered at the keys.
“Did you see Costas?” Demetri asked.
Assan sipped his coffee and bit into a round cake, which hurt his throat but tasted good. “Yeah. He told me to get the fuck out.” Assan glanced through the door to Dorothy, who luckily did not hear his foul language.
“Hah! Costas must not have liked the way you looked. But now, you look like a guy from Hoboken, like Sinatra on a weekend.” Assan had no idea what that meant. “Costas owes me, so you go back and tell him I sent you. You did tell him I sent you, right?”
“He didn’t care who sent me.”
“Tell him I sent you.”
—
Assan again walked all the way downtown, arriving at the Olympic Grill when only half its seats were occupied. Costas sat on the stool farthest away from the door, reading a newspaper with a cup of coffee in front of him, so short he swung his legs back and forth, like a little boy. Assan approached, waiting for Costas to look up from his paper. But he didn’t.
“Demetri says you will give me a job.”
Costas kept reading. “Huh?” he said, writing a word on an open tablet with a pencil. There were many words on the page.
“Demetri Bakas. He sent me to see you.”
Costas didn’t move, but managed to change his focus from the newspaper and the list of words to Assan.
“What the hell? What is this?”
“Demetri Bakas. Said to see you for a job. Because you owe him.”
Costas turned back to his reading and writing. “I owe Demetri Bakas shit. Order something or get out of here.”
“He said to see you for a job.�
��
Costas was off the stool with fire in his dark eyes. “Where are you from?” he shouted.
“Bulgaria, but I come from Athens.”
“Go back to Athens! I can do nothing for you! You know where I was when you were jerking off in your shit-filled barn in Bulgaria? I was here! I was in America. And you know what I was doing? Getting my ass kicked for even thinking about this restaurant!”
“But Demetri said to go see Costas. So, I came.”
“He can kiss my ass and you can go piss in a hat! I feed cops here! They’ll crack your head open if I ask. Come back again and it’s the cops for you!”
Assan hurried out of the diner. What else could he do? He didn’t want trouble with any cops.
—
The day was as hot as ever. The roar of cars and buses was as loud as a storm wind. The chatter of so many people who all had jobs and money in their pockets and few worries clogged Assan’s ears. His throat was burning and his legs felt like bags of sand.
He was heading to Forty-Third Street and the English lessons, but stopped in a tiny, triangular patch of grass and trees as a wave of ache came over him. A new pain in his head knocked and knocked, right above his eyes. At a drinking fountain he cupped his hand to collect enough water to slurp but the fire in his throat would not go out. He saw two men sharing a bench in the shade, a bench large enough for four, and he wanted to sit down very quickly. Then a violent, invisible punch to his stomach bent him in two and sickness came out of his insides.
A man was asking him questions he could not understand as another led him by the shoulder to the shade of the bench and someone, a lady maybe, gave him a kerchief to wipe his mouth. Someone handed him a bottle of warm soda water, which Assan used to rinse and spit out. Someone yelled at him for doing that, but Assan said nothing. He leaned his head back on the bench and closed his eyes.
—
He thought he slept for a few minutes, but when he opened his eyes the shadows were longer and different people were in the tiny park. Americans who ignored a napping man on a bench.
