by Marge Piercy
He felt at home in the Reformed Church in Brooklyn Heights, for its straight and narrow approach resembled the churches of his upbringing in rural Connecticut. None of that loose and anything-goes smarminess of pastors like Beecher over at the Plymouth, that should be named the Wide Mouth, for wide and spacious was the road to hell. He went not only to services on Sundays, a half-day affair, but also to prayers two nights a week. In his childhood, his family had gone to church twice on Sundays and his saintly mother had conducted prayers every morning. In his loneliness and isolation, he needed the church. At least there he was visible. People greeted him by name. The pastor took an interest. “You should marry, young Anthony. A man is only half a man until he has a wife of his own. And children.”
He was making twenty-five dollars a week from commissions. He was saving what he could, but he doubted he could afford marriage. A wife was an expensive proposition. Still, he needed one. Living in boardinghouses offered too much temptation, bad food and too little in the way of virtue and seemliness. His boardinghouse keeper was a respectable widow, Mrs. Hanley, who took in only male boarders, but many of them were loose in their morals and spent their evenings in what they called “the sporting life”—as Edward had.
He felt a pang of guilt when he realized he had completely forgotten Edward. Edward had not been ready to pay attention to his warnings, but perhaps by now he would be more open. Anthony had a duty to look up his friend and see if he could yet be saved. On one of his excursions to lower Manhattan, he stopped by their old boardinghouse. “Is Edward Lor-rilard still living here?”
The woman shook her head. “Not that one. You won’t find him here or anyplace else.”
“Did he leave the city?” That would be a good sign. Edward, like himself, came from a small town, in his case in upstate New York.
The woman heaved a great sigh, as if she cared, although Anthony knew her to be a hard case who cared about nothing but her oaf of a daughter and money. “He’s left the city, all right, Mr. Comstock. He’s left this earth.”
Anthony grasped the woman’s hand. “He’s departed? What happened to him? He was only twenty-five.”
“Got into a drunken fight over a tart, he did, and her pimp stabbed him. It was a scandal, but they never caught the tart or her pimp—they got clean away and nobody would point the finger at them. Poor Mr. Lorri-lard. Cut down in his youth and for what?”
“For what, indeed… Thanks for the information, although it’s not what I was hoping for.” He went home, stricken with a mixture of guilt and a kind of queer satisfaction in having been so right in the warnings he had given Edward.
On the way to the dry goods firm the next day, he passed the establishment he had noticed in the old days in the basement of a building on Warren Street. CONROY SPECIALTY BOOKS. BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN. ADVENTURE, COWBOYS, LIFE ON THE OPEN ROAD, FRENCH BOOKS, SAILORS’ STORIES, EXPLORERS, LIFE IN A TURKISH HAREM, CONVENT LIFE REVEALED. Dirty books like those in yellow wrappers that Edward used to carry around and read when he could sneak the time, when work was slow. Anthony stood before the door clenching his fists in anger. This demon sold hell to young men.
Every day he glared at the store as he passed. This man Conroy could openly advertise, corrupting the souls of young clerks. Conroy had seduced Edward away from respectability and the desire for the love of a good Christian woman, all the values he had been raised in, as had Anthony, back in the moral societies of rural and small-town America. Conroy had seduced Edward to his death. Something had to be done. Anthony owed it to Edward’s memory, dear Edward who was so like his dead brother Samuel, and now untimely dead himself. Dead and forgotten by almost everyone, but not by him. He would avenge Edward. He would put Conroy out of business.
Finally, after two weeks of brooding and fuming, he went to see George Graves, chairman of the Y on Varick Street, where Anthony spent many happy and fruitful evenings. There he had attended lectures on avoiding obscenity, and the most recent speaker had mentioned some kind of legal remedy. He had to wait for an hour for Graves to see him. He used the time reciting speeches in his head. He had come to respect Mr. Graves for his piety and his good works. He would confess to Graves his desire to find justice for his murdered friend. He would never know who the pimp was who had stabbed him, but he could punish the man responsible for Edward having been in that vile place in the company of a prostitute. No doubt that degraded woman was much like the ones who had swarmed their table the one night he had been persuaded to accompany Edward to that concert saloon.
At last Graves opened his office door and waved him in. “It’s good to see you, Anthony. But why the long face? Is your job going badly?”
“Not at all. I have a choice route. But I am in a quandary.” He pulled up a chair that Graves pointed to and spilled out the story of Edward Lorrilard.
“So you want to cause trouble for this Conroy. You say he’s a purveyor of pornography?”
“Openly so.”
“You want to close him down? You’re determined?”
“I am, sir.”
“If you’re serious, you have a good shot at it. We finally got an obscenity bill with teeth through the legislature this year.”
That was what the lecturer had meant. “Can we put him in jail?”
“You can try. It’s a law for the suppression of the trade in obscene materials—illustrations, ads, articles of indecent or immoral use. We’ve been working on this for years, Anthony, years. Officers can seize obscene books and indecent objects. If an indictment is forthcoming against Conroy, all his stock will be destroyed.”
“That’s thrilling, Mr. Graves. The power is there to be used.”
“You’re determined to proceed?” The man looked skeptical.
“I am.”
“Well, this is how you might go about getting him. It may be a bit distasteful, but it should work—providing the police cooperate. They don’t like to arrest these fellows. But I know a captain who will act—if you go through with it.”
Anthony could tell Graves thought he was made of words and not deeds. He would show him. Still, his work kept him from confronting Conroy for nearly three weeks. It was a busy season for women’s notions—moving into warm weather when different styles of attire were worn by ladies. He was kept hopping, and although when he retired for the night he thought of Edward and vowed to bring Conroy to justice, he could not pry the time from his schedule. It was a profitable time for him and his commissions, but he had to admit, when he studied his bankbook with the long columns of very small amounts, that at this rate it would be years before he could acquire a wife. He saved a nickel here, a quarter there. He was a successful salesman, but his commissions did not amount to enough to set him up as he wished to live.
In spite of his good relationship with his boss, he was going to look for something that paid more. It came down to that. Move on or atrophy. He saw clerks in the offices of the dry goods firm who had withered at their desks, never married, never had children—husks of men. He looked too at the older salesmen, always on the road. Sometimes they took to drink or women. Being away from home so much, either they had never taken the time and trouble to court a good woman and marry or they had some poor drudge at home but enjoyed the company of more exciting women in hotels across the country. He did not want their lives. Although he was good at sales and knew a great deal by now about women’s notions—more than most women could boast—he could not say he found his work satisfying. If he failed to sell his notions, would it make a bit of difference to anyone except himself and his sad little bank account? It was trivial work that accomplished no higher moral good, did not improve men’s souls or the society in which they lived.
One night he woke from a nightmare, or was it a vision? Edward was standing hip deep in flames shaking his finger at him. Edward was burning and cursing him for not seeking revenge, for not keeping other young men from his fate. Anthony was covered in cold sweat and shaken. He had been sent that dream as a prod. He was su
re he could smell burning flesh, like scorched bacon.
Finally the day came when he could get back to Warren Street. He checked his wallet and marched down the block. The place next door to Conroy was just as bad—purveyors of rubber goods. Everybody knew what that meant. Filthy business, all of it. But he had a special grudge against Conroy.
He felt queasy as he paused outside Conroy’s establishment. LATEST PAUL DE KOCK, 100 NIGHTS IN A GIRLS’ SCHOOL. He forced himself down the steps and inside. It looked like any other bookstore, just racks and racks of books. The first ones he saw as he veered to the left were books about fishing and the out-of-doors. He stared at drawings of trout until he regained his nerve. Then he came upon anatomy books. Drawings of the inner organs, the digestive system, the circulation of the blood, and yes, here was a cutaway of the male reproductive system. He did not doubt that the female reproductive system would be likely sliced asunder and laid out on the page to tempt impure thoughts in the heedless young.
“Can I help you?” It was a middle-aged man, completely bald with bright blue eyes and a big smile, perhaps six inches shorter than Anthony and slighter of frame.
He could not very well say, Sell me a piece of pornography, please. The sign came into his mind. “I’d like the new Paul de Kock.”
“You’ll find it a most satisfying read. He’s a very popular author.” The man was so depraved he might have been talking about the book on trout. “We can scarcely keep him in stock.” The man bustled behind the counter and slapped down a book in a yellow wrapper, much like the ones that Edward had insisted on reading.
Anthony paid him and asked for a receipt. The man seemed surprised—probably buyers of pornography did not usually want a written record of the transaction—but he obliged Anthony with a receipt that said what the book was and how much it cost, with the name of the bookstore printed at the top.
Before he proceeded, Anthony decided he must study what he had bought, to make sure it was evil and to understand his prey He took the book home, well hidden in the portmanteau in which he carried samples, and that night in his room he read it cover to cover, going without sleep to carry out his mission. A weaker man would have succumbed to the solitary vice, but he resisted. It was as vile as he had imagined. Young girls, supposedly innocent, tampered with each other and then were seduced by teachers, ministers, their own parents. Each scene was dirtier than the last, with couples leading to threesomes and then vast orgies. He finished it by dawn. That he had not touched himself made him feel strong. He had tested himself by fire and not been found wanting. He could enter the flames and not be burned.
Anthony marched to the relevant police station. He asked for a Captain Curtis, for Graves had told him he might receive satisfaction from this man as he might not from a run-of-the-mill policeman. Captain Curtis kept him waiting half an hour, but he was patient, reminding himself of his mission and the satisfaction it would bring him to see Conroy punished.
Finally Captain Curtis met with him. “What can I do for you? Has someone harmed you?” He was a burly man, as befitted a policeman, with muttonchop whiskers beginning to gray, a prominent square jaw and bushy brows.
“Someone has harmed the community in the eyes of God and man.” He drew the dirty book from its plain wrapper and slammed it down on Curtis’s desk. Beside it he placed the receipt. “I bought this piece of filth at Conroy’s Books on Warren. This violates the law passed this year against obscenity.”
“Right you are. Are you willing to swear out a complaint? I know about the law, but we haven’t had an opportunity to enforce it.”
Anthony held his tongue. After all, on any day they could easily have done what he had and coaxed the evil Conroy into selling an illicit book. That they had not bothered to do so made Anthony feel that he had a duty to fulfill because they were shirking theirs. “I’m ready. Will you accompany me?”
Curtis looked annoyed but rose at once. “I’ll get a constable and we’ll arrest him in his den.”
So the three men, Anthony and Captain Curtis side by side and the constable just behind them, marched the several blocks to Conroy’s establishment. When Conroy understood what was up, he responded with anger. “I’m not doing any harm. Look at the streets around here. There’s dozens selling racier books than mine.”
“The more shame to all of you. Aren’t you going to cuff him?”
“Not necessary,” the constable said. “He’s not a rough one. He’ll come along lamb-like. Just down to the station house.”
Curtis said he would send a couple of men with a wagon. Anthony sat on the stoop to wait. He was not going to take a chance that they’d let Conroy go with a cheap fine and he’d come right back and open up his den. He sat there for two hours until a dray pulled up drawn by a sway-backed piebald horse, with two policemen in uniform sitting on the box. From how often he was kept waiting, he felt how unimportant other men judged him to be. Anthony helped them load books. He made sure they took the anatomy books also, although one of the policemen said they were perfectly legal. “Well, they oughtn’t to be.”
He was sure that both men had slipped a book or two into their pockets, but he could not prove it and he did not have the right to search them. They were probably past vulnerability. He was here today to save the young clerks who frequented the neighborhood, not case-hardened police who might well be on the take. He was sure from their attitude of amusement that if he had gone to them with his complaint, they would have put him off. Anthony went home exhausted but satisfied. He had done his duty. He felt as if others should see in him as he passed a certain authority, a light of rectitude and strength. No one seemed to notice, but he felt the difference in himself.
When he reported back to Graves, the older man shook his hand warmly and clapped him on the back. “If we had more with your courage, Anthony, this city would be a far safer place for innocent young men who come here to make their fortune and too often lose their souls.”
“I would like to do more, sir.”
“There’s always more to do of the Lord’s work, Anthony. But you should marry. It’s the only way to avoid temptation in the long run.”
“I would like to, sir. But I’m only a salesman. Matrimony is expensive.”
“That it is, young man. You have no idea how expensive.” Graves sighed. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It never stops.”
“I would like for it to start, sir.”
“With your stalwart faith, how can you doubt?”
Nice words, but Anthony was left to return to his dismal boarding-house as impoverished and lonely as ever. He could imagine a blissful married love, but he wondered if he would ever reach that state. All he saw ahead of him were hardscrabble times in the dry goods trade and boardinghouse after boardinghouse into old age. He felt trapped in a path that led nowhere.
TEN
MRS. STONE HAD MOVED out. She said it was improper for Freydeh to manufacture such things. She would not even pronounce the word. She could not have her good name linked with such an enterprise, but Freydeh heard on the street that Mrs. Stone’s cousin had a room for her over in Little Germany where they ran a family beer parlor. She could help out and get her room and board free.
They needed the space now far more than they needed a boarder. Freydeh bought the pure rubber in sheets from a dealer, saying that she was manufacturing dress shields. Probably he didn’t believe her; certainly he didn’t care. They hung the sheets over a rack. Then they would take a sheet and spread out the rubber on a metal table they bought from the widow of a doctor. They cut the pieces to various sizes, then fitted them over forms they had made. Then they dipped the condoms into a vulcanization solution made from sulfur and white lead from the pharmacy so that the condoms would not be affected by temperature or become sticky. That was when they had to cook it on the stove.
She had learned lots of American words for condoms. Sometimes they were called capotes or baudruches or safes, French secrets, English letters, cundoms, cundrums
, rubbers, gents protectors, skins, sheaths or envelopes. Some men preferred caps that covered only the head of the penis, but they were more difficult to make and had to fit very tightly. What Sammy and she made were full-length sheaths. Condoms were still made of intestines, but those were mostly inferior to rubber—except for the goldbeaters, thin and fine as silk. That took skill neither of them had, and they had no access to slaughterhouse products. First they had to master the process of vulcanization, sizing, sealing the edges. Finally they succeeded in making some product. Sammy tried what they considered their first successful condom, pouring water in. “No leak. Look, Freydeh. Watertight.”
“So, Sammy, we done it. Now we only got to produce a whole lot of them and then we start trying to sell them.”
Then he began to snicker. “This would be one weird-looking gent who could wear this.”
Freydeh sighed. “We have to cut better. Yah, he’d lean far to the left and bulge in the middle. I think we need cutting guides. Like dress patterns.”
“It’s hot work.”
“So is working in a laundry, but if we can make a bunch of them and sell them, we’ll do a lot better than that…” She wiped her forehead with a cloth dampened in the water Sammy had poured back into the enamel basin. “Did you ever go down to the river and bathe? Mrs. Goetz was talking about that—how they have bathing piers set up in the East River.”
“Yeah, I done that. They only open them in the summer, and they don’t like you to hang around too long. But it feels good on a day like this.”
“They say it may rain tomorrow and cool things down a bit.…In my old village, we used to bathe in the river, us girls. There was a mikvah of course—a ritual bath. But I liked the river better. It wasn’t no big river like the ones you have here. It was twenty feet wide and ten feet deep. I never felt so free as when I was splashing around in that river.”
