“And he’s sleeping in my bed,” I said.
I was aware that I sounded like the dopey member of the Three Little Bears who pulled it all together, but I was also aware of something else: my mother was pleased. She was not a woman whose life had been dotted with many good moments. I could see this night had given her pleasure. So I reaped the dividend. It gave me pleasure. And for the moment I stopped worrying about my relationship to her. For the moment I liked her.
“What else could I do?” my mother said. “When we finished the ‘turning’ it was already after eleven.”
“The turning,” I said. “Did he tell you how he knows about jazz bows?”
“Sure he told me,” my mother said. “In this place where he was born. What’s the name?”
“Blackpool,” I said.
“That’s the place,” my mother said. “It’s a terrible name to give a place.”
“Why?” I said.
“It sounds so dark,” my mother said.
I hadn’t thought of that
“It’s like Coney Island,” I said. “There’s sun and sand and fresh air.”
“Maybe,” my mother said. “But Seymour told me about this Blackpool, and to me it sounds like East Fourth Street. His father was a butcher, but he died. So his mother had to do something to put the bread on the table. What she did, she did like the other women did. She started to take in turning for a man he manufactured jazz bows. Look.” My mother touched the neatly stacked rectangles of colored silk. “You ever saw such beautiful work?”
Not on Tiffany Street.
“He’s good,” I said.
It was not really what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say what I did want to say. I was jealous.
“He’s a wonderful boy,” my mother said.
Oh, come on, now, I thought. You’ve just met him. But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t spoil her pleasure.
“He’s not bad,” I said. Holding down the grudging tone.
“So when he finished with the ‘turning,’” my mother said, “I looked at the clock. It’s late. Why don’t you sleep over here by us?”
“And he said yes,” I said.
I couldn’t think of any dialogue for myself. So I filled in with his.
My mother nodded. “I put him in your room,” she said. “And for you I made a bed on the floor in the front room.”
It was not exactly a bed. My mother had pushed the round fake mahogany dining room table to one side and, on the floor, had spread one of the perrinas, or feather beds, she had brought from Hungary when she came to America as a girl. It may well be the perfect sleeping accommodation. If you are young, that is. And have just taken in the midnight show with Hannah Halpern at Loew’s 180th Street. The next thing I knew it was six o’clock and my mother was shaking me awake.
“I’m cooking for you an egg,” she said.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had said she was hatching it. My staying-power breakfast was heavy on things like oatmeal, farina, and chunks of rye bread. I had never in my life had an egg for breakfast
“An egg?” I said.
My mother’s voice was sharp. “What’s wrong with an egg?”
Six o’clock in the morning. After two and a half hours’ sleep. The offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company on West 34th Street waiting for my ministrations. And your mother asks you what’s wrong with an egg.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just I’m not hungry.”
“Since when are you in the morning not hungry?” she said.
Since I ate two Gabilla’s knishes the night before. They had more than staying power. They had a tendency to take up permanent residence. I could still taste them.
“Just a piece of bread and a glass of milk,” I said. “That’s all I want, Ma.”
“So what should I do with the egg?” she said.
I refrained from the traditional reply. She was, after all, my mother.
“Save it for Sebastian,” I said.
“Who?” my mother said.
So I knew I had a right to be jealous. He had won her heart.
“Seymour,” I said.
My mother smiled. She was then, as I work out the arithmetic, in her mid-thirties. She was then also, as she had always been, a Hungarian. Need I say more? My mother did not smile often. Her life had not been anything Lehár would have chosen as the libretto for an operetta. But when my mother did smile you believed all those movies in which Jeanette MacDonald sang her heart out to Nelson Eddy as they leaped from Schloss to Schloss. My mother was a Gabor sister before the Gabors were invented.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll save it for him.”
While she was saving it, I was on the subway. I arrived in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company on time. Mr. Bern had told me, when I was hired, that he expected me to have the office “ready” at eight sharp. He had made it sound as though he expected me to have a regiment fed, equipped with ammunition, and checked out for possible weapon failure by the time he was ready to step in and give the order to go over the top. This was pretty much the basic situation every morning in the M.S.&Co. office, so I made it a point to arrive on 34th Street, and let myself into the office with my key, at 7:45. The moment I pulled that key out of the lock, and the door slammed shut behind me, I went into action.
Reception room: remove inverted five-gallon empty jug of Western Spring Water from cooler near Mr. Saltzman’s green stagskin. I grab the fat paper sack of cracked ice from the brown marble floor outside the reception room where it was dumped by the Seventh Avenue Ice Delivery Corporation while I was on the subway. I pour the cracked ice into the circular trough on top of the water cooler. I pack the ice into place. Packing ice in 1930 meant whacking the stuff down with hard sharp slaps of the open palm. I have the scars to prove it.
I dump the empty ice bag and the empty Western Spring Water jug outside in the hall. From the file room I drag a fresh jug of Western Spring Water. Water in bulk is heavy. I jockey the jug into the reception room, hoist it up onto the cooler, neck down, and pant as I watch the big greenish-white bubbles come exploding up. Glug, glug, glug. There is something satisfying about a five-gallon jug of Western Spring Water settling into place in a cooler. What can it be? A sense of accomplishment, probably. Well, that’s done. Now the cigarette butts.
I do not smoke. So I don’t really feel I have the right to comment on this addiction. But I think it is a matter of simple honesty to record that in 1930, on West 34th Street, I hated every son of a bitch who touched flame to tobacco in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company.
I dump the contents of all the ashtrays into a brown tin wastebasket. Phew! I run the wastebasket into one of the pots and flush it. Then I run the wastebasket back into the office, collect the empty ashtrays, and take them out to the file room.
The file room has a basin with running water. I rinse the ashtrays. Phew again. I give each ashtray a fast swipe with a wad of damp toilet paper, distribute the trays around the office, and tackle Mr. Saltzman’s green stagskin. He brought it back from the premises of a bankrupt leather goods firm on Leonard Street where we were doing an audit for the Irving Trust Company, and he had spread it on the table in our reception room. Mr. Saltzman was crazy about that green stagskin. I had to polish it every morning.
I was buffing away at the stag’s rump when he came out into the reception room. This was a surprise. Mr. Saltzman was the senior member of the firm. He rarely arrived in the office before nine-thirty, after Ira Bern had assigned the members of the staff and sent them off on their tasks for the day. Yet here it was not quite eight-thirty, and here was Mr. Saltzman.
“Benny,” he said,
“Yes, sir?”
“Come in a minute in Mr. Bern’s office, Benny.”
Mr. Saltzman turned. His eye caught the rump of his beloved green stagskin. He stopped moving. His eyes spread wide. He went to the table. He stroked the green leather. He turned to me. Mr. Saltzman was beaming.
“Benny!” he said. “You did it!”
“What?” I said.
“You brought up the lights!”
I turned to take a look of my own. By God, I had! I smiled shyly and scuffed the toe of my shoe across the carpet.
“Oh, well, Mr. Saltzman,” I said. “They were always there, I guess. It was just a matter of giving it the old elbow grease.”
Mr. Saltzman put his arm across my shoulders. “You’re a good boy, Benny,” he said. “Come into Mr. Bern’s office.”
I followed him. Seated beside Mr. Bern’s desk was Mr. I. G. Roon.
“You look better than you did Friday,” he said.
His voice was not friendly. But it had not been friendly on Friday at the lunch table in Shane’s on 23rd Street. I remembered that I had not liked him on Friday. Then I remembered a number of other things. They did not help me like him on Sunday.
“I wasn’t feeling good on Friday,” I said.
“You can say that again,” said I. G. Roon.
Like most people, I don’t like to be disliked. When I learn that I am, my first reaction is dismay. Here I am, a first-class charmer, stepping forward at my most charming, and what happens? I walk into a wall of wet cement.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
It was no moment for repartee.
“So you know Benny?” Mr. Saltzman said.
“Maurice, yes, Isaac knows Benny,” Ira Bern said. “I told you about the lunch Friday at Shane’s.”
“Oh, yes,” Maurice Saltzman said, and he must have had a vision of his green stagskin out in the reception room, because again he put his arm across my shoulders. “Benny is a good boy,” Maurice Saltzman said.
“He’s a lousy drinker,” L G. Roon said.
“At his age,” Maurice Saltzman said, “who is a good one?”
Mr. Roon grunted. It occurred to me that he looked terrible. In Shane’s on Friday he had been no prize package but he had looked trim. He did not look trim now. In fact, he looked seedy. I noticed he was wearing the same suit in which he had walked into Shane’s on Friday.
“Let’s get going,” he said. He looked at his watch. “We don’t have too much time to waste.”
“You’re right,” Mr. Bern said. He pulled out his wallet and set it on top of some papers on the desk. “Benny, here’s a ten.” He drew a ten-dollar bill from the wallet. “Go over to Lou G. Siegel’s and bring back three hot pastrami sandwiches.”
“Corned beef for me,” I. G. Roon said.
“Two hot pastrami, Benny,” Mr. Bern said. “And one corned beef.”
“You mind, Ira, I have tongue?” Mr. Saltzman said.
“Mind?” Ira Bern said. “Why should I mind?” He held the ten-dollar bill out to me. I took it “Benny, make it one hot pastrami, one corned beef, and one tongue.”
I took the ten-dollar bill and hesitated. “Mr. Bern,” I said. “It’s half past eight in the morning.”
Mr. Bern tapped the tiny mustache under his nose. My remark seemed to have confused him. I knew the next step. I had lived through it many times. He was about to get sore at me.
“What difference does the time make?” he said.
Not sore. Not yet, anyway. But not friendly.
“The kid’s right,” I. G. Roon said. “Lou G. Siegel, this hour of the morning, they’re probably still closed.”
“You mean not yet open, Isaac,” Maurice Saltzman said. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “What we want, Benny, we want three sandwiches, and we want them fast. Lou G. Siegel’s is closed, or not yet open? Go in any place and get three sandwiches, but get them fast, Benny.”
“Yes, sir,” I said I started for the door.
“Coffee, too,” Ira Bern called.
“No, tea,” I. G. Roon said.
“Mine with lemon,” Maurice Saltzman called.
“For me cream,” I. G. Roon called.
“Yes, sir,” I said. And I got out of there.
I did not get very far out before I realized it was foolish to go all the way up to Lou G. Siegel’s delicatessen on 39th Street. At eight-thirty in the morning, on a Sunday, the only place that can possibly be less dead than Seventh Avenue in the heart of the garment center is the north bank of the river Styx.
Out on the street, trying to think what course of action to take, I saw the sign over the Automat, winking on and off briskly next to Macy’s. I couldn’t help wondering. Electricity costs money. To whom were the owners of that sign winking? There was not a living movement visible as far north as Times Square and as far south as the eyes of Benny Kramer could see. But that sign kept banging away. I decided to take the hint. I ran across the street and slapped down my ten-dollar bill on the marble counter in front of the cashier’s booth.
“Nickels, please,” I said.
“A dollar?” the cashier-said. “Two?”
I took a chance. There was something about those three men up in Mr. Bern’s office at eight-thirty in the morning that sounded a note I was to catch years later, over and over again, as my work caused me to examine the expense accounts of other men, and the tax structure forced me to compose my own: if it’s a deduction, always choose the higher figure.
“Two dollars, please,” I said.
The girl spilled out the nickels. I swept the coins across the marble into my left hand, shoved into my pants pocket the paper money she had given in change, and realized I was in trouble. At Lou G. Siegel’s, when you bellied up to the “to go” counter, whatever you bought was wrapped in wax paper and placed in brown bags so you could go with it. In the Automat the food that came popping out of the small boxes in the wall sat on plates, ready to be eaten on the spot. The “Take-out” Automat had not yet been invented.
I stood there, in that huge white, white, blindingly white chamber, weighing my future. As avoirdupois, I must confess it didn’t seem to come to much. The tension when I was hustled out of Mr. Bern’s office had been unmistakable. What the tension was about I did not know. But the sight of those three men, Mr. Bern, Mr. Saltzman, and I. G. Roon, crowded around a desk in an office at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning was not something a boy from East Fourth Street could accept as normal. I felt like a seismograph recording the distant tremors of a disaster, the nature of which was still unclear. The food I had been ordered to bring, and bring fast, was obviously part of an attempt to keep the disaster from reaching the door of Maurice Saltzman & Company. My fate depended on doing my part. Whatever my part was.
“Benny.”
I turned. Miss Bienstock had appeared beside me. She was carrying a tray.
“Good morning,” I said.
She received this greeting in the Automat as she received it every morning in the Maurice Saltzman & Company office: with that perplexed scowl which somehow added rather than detracted from her basic comeliness.
“Benny,” she said. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you downstairs in the building lobby getting Mr. Bern’s shoes shined?”
“Because he sent me to get three sandwiches,” I said.
“Three?” Miss Bienstock said. “Eight-thirty in the morning?”
“Plus coffee for one,” I said. “And two teas, one with lemon and one with cream.”
“Oh, my God,” Miss Bienstock said.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“You’re sure one of those teas is with cream?” Miss Bienstock said.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“That means Mr. I. G. Roon is in the office,” she said.
“He is,” I said. “With Mr. Bern and Mr. Saltzman.”
“Mr. Saltzman, too?” Miss Bienstock said. “At eight-thirty in the morning?”
“Yes,” I said. “They were all sitting around Mr. Bern’s desk. He wants with lemon. Mr. Saltzman.”
“Oh, my God,” Miss Bienstock said again.
There was in her voice the feel of lights burning late in embassy offices, the smell of midnight fires hurriedly burning secret papers in chancellery compounds.
“A
re you okay?” I said.
“Me?” Miss Bienstock said. “It’s not me.”
She turned and set down her tray on the nearest table. It rocked back and forth because of the bumps in the aluminum. The coffee splashed out of her cup. So did the orange juice out of the glass beside the cup. Both slopped onto the plate of toast. Miss Bienstock had obviously been about to have breakfast.
“You get the sandwiches,” she said. “I’ll get the coffee and tea.”
She raced away toward the wall of beverage spigots.
“The other tea is with lemon!” I called after her. “One with cream! One with lemon!”
She came back as I was working my stack of sandwiches onto an empty tray.
“You carry,” Miss Bienstock said.
I picked up the tray. The top sandwich, unsupported, fell off the stack.
“Never mind,” Miss Bienstock said. She grabbed the sandwich. “Follow me.”
Holding the ham sandwich aloft—a banner with a device strange indeed—as though under it she was leading her troops into battle, Miss Bienstock charged the revolving door. Before I could follow, a busboy grabbed my arm.
“Where you going with that tray?”
Fortunately, the hard shove with which Miss Bienstock had entered the revolving door kept it spinning. A fast backward glance gave her the picture. She did not allow the door to spill her out into Seventh Avenue. Miss Bienstock remained in transit. Completing the circle, she erupted back into the Automat with considerable thrust. It taught me an important lesson. Always trust centrifugal force. It carried Miss Bienstock up to the busboy and, without pause, she shoved the ham sandwich into his face.
Tiffany Street Page 12
