by Kluge, P. F.
“Well, I got me some more Jewish athletes,” Kenny said. “Munich, 1972. That turned everything around for me. Being a citizen of New Jersey wasn’t so important anymore.”
“Israel?”
“Israel,” he confirmed. “Or, as our classmate Mr. Cerrutti puts it, ‘fuckin’ Israel.’” He leaned over towards me, pushing plates aside, as though we had to clear the table for some further transaction, playing cards maybe, or arm wrestling. “Remember he used to show dirty movies on a sheet in his father’s rec room? Remember?”
Of course I remembered. A knotty-pine paneled den, a six pack of beer and Candy Barr—or so we were told—serving the man in black socks. She really knew how to throw one, Gooker said, commenting expertly, as though he had the experience to tell. What he had was the experience of watching the film before.
“He was a sleazy kid and now he’s a sleazy adult,” Kenny said. “Puts a move on Joan as soon as we split up. You’d think he’d be careful, moving on his wife’s best friend. A little discreet, at least, so close to home.”
“I think he’s better than that. Sometimes …”
“Is he? When?”
“He’s alive …”
“He’s a fat, restless, hypocrite … if that’s what you mean by being alive, you’ve gotten softer than your column, which is plenty soft already. God, George, what ever happened to you? What’s it like spending your life writing about what people should do on vacation?”
“I’m gathering material,” I said, with a partial irony that made me feel foolish. “Seeing the world.”
“Like the guys who join the Navy, huh?” he asked, eyebrows lifted.
“I saw one of your television shows,” I said. “Some panel thing about the West Bank.”
“What do you think of that?” he asked. “That’s what I want to know. I’ve been wondering … how it all looks to you.”
“What do I think of … what?”
“Oh, come on George,” He leaned back, shaking his head. “Don’t make me do all the work. You know the stuff. The special relationship. The military aid, the lobbying, the begging, the borrowing, the stealing …”
“Stealing?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. Fissionable material out of a place in Pennsylvania. Patents. Nuclear fuses. The Pollard case. The political affairs committees, the letters to the editor of the ‘Jew York Times,’ Ed Koch, Ivan Boesky. Nine hour holocaust movies. It’s no secret. We’ve all been keeping lists on this one. Want me to say it for you? You wonder about Israel. Hey, is it the sixth borough of New York? Is it the 51st state? What goes on here, right?”
“Alright, it’s occurred to me …”
“And that’s not all I bet,” he continued, relishing the role. It was fun almost, it was … delectable … succulent as pork, sustaining as dumplings, quenching as beer. “It’s not so much Israel, you say to yourself. It’s Jews. Or rather check me if I’m wrong, George, but I don’t think I am, it’s people like me. Are we Jewish Americans or American Jews? Dual citizens? Double agents? What? And then you ask yourself, what am I? An anti-Semite? Perish the thought! Just wondering. That dual citizen charge is hoary, ancient. But why not call it venerable? Recurrent? Archetypal? Okay … I won’t put all this on you. I’ll put it on me.”
He paused, setting me up the way he used to set up debate judges, back when we had argued for and against world government. “This is between us. In public, I’ll talk the usual talk. Only friend in the Middle East, only democracy, loyal ally, what’s good for them is good for us. New York Times stuff. But my heart is there, not here. I wanted you to know that. That’s the difference between us, George. You traveled everywhere and nowhere. I went … and I stayed.”
“But you’re here,” I said. “Right across the river from Jersey. Twenty miles from where you grew up … where we grew up … together. Remember?”
“Because this is where my work is. The speeches, the fundraising, the arm bending. I’m not so good at picking oranges. Or driving a tank. I’m not on the first team, George, and I know it. I do cable TV shtick, tricks we learned in debate club. I’m outrageous, provocative. Expendable. I know. It’s alright with me. I’m an opening act. I warm up the crowd. Plus I’m cheap. I work for nothing. I do it for love.”
“Christ, Kenny!” I looked at him, embarrassed, maybe touched by a confession I wasn’t entitled to. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything,” he countered. “You don’t have to agree or disagree. I just wanted you to know.”
“Why? It’s not as if we were close anymore.”
“We used to be …” he said. “So say it’s for old times’ sake. For Joan’s sake. And yours.”
He pushed back his chair, ready to leave. The audience was over but I wasn’t ready to let go of him. It was our old story, Kenny whipping through the exam, ready to turn in his paper, and me just starting out on the essay section.
“Don’t go yet,” I said.
“I’m late,” he said. “I can’t get shit-faced with you, George.”
“Just one question. Are you happy?”
“Of course I’m not happy.” He sat back, waiting for me to follow up, next question please. It was pure oneupmanship.
“Come on,” I said. “Give.”
“Well, let’s face it, George, we’re neither of us exactly first rate, are we? Your column, my TV appearances and letters to the editor, it’s not what we pictured when we started out. So no, hell no, I’m not happy. I look in the mirror in the morning and I say this is not what I had in mind. But here’s the difference between us, George. I’m part of something larger. There’s a war on.”
“You needed that war,” I said. It slipped out and I regretted it, even though it was true. “I can’t imagine what you’d do without it. And I don’t think you can either.”
“I’m out of here.” I could tell he was angry. Controlled anger but anger nonetheless.
“No. Not yet. There’s another question. It’s not about me or Joan or you. It’s about … America.”
“America, huh?”
“How it’s turning out.”
“Let’s see,” he said. He was enjoying himself again. “A broad topic, that’s for sure. Let’s see if I know what you’re thinking. That’s to say, let’s see if I still know you. I bet I do.” He sat still a moment, the way someone does when they’re about to recite or sing, getting back to a place we used to share, enjoying the challenge of it. Of reading my mind.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s try this on for size. You travel around this country and, though it doesn’t show in your work, you think about this place. You probably even describe yourself as an American writer since you are an American and you do write. You find yourself wondering what’s become of America and I don’t doubt that your recent contacts with the home of Walt Whitman and Joyce Kilmer have raised the stakes. Quo vadis? All of us kids, different backgrounds, all those hopeful parents. What’s become of it? Is that it?”
I nodded. “Right on the mark.”
“You’re the writer. But from where I stand it looks … I’ll put this in language you can understand … it looks kaput. Loss of momentum, fall out of orbit, settling of foundations. I don’t know. Entropy? That’s how it looks to me. But I’ve got to go.” He stood up and offered his hand. “Good to see you.”
“I liked seeing you,” I told him. But I couldn’t suggest we meet again: our old friendship got us only so far. “You’re going to the reunion?”
“Hah!” He picked up his briefcase. “Hey! I just remembered. How’s your dad?”
“Hanging in there.”
“Tell him I said hello. I always liked your old man. Don’t know if he knew it. But anyway … say hello for me.”
“He wants to sell the house,” I blurted out. “Or says he does.”
“He’s not the first. My parents are in Florida now. A place near Boca Raton.”
“The thing is, it’s as though he’s rubbing my nose in it. He’s referring all c
allers to me. If you don’t want the house, son, you be the one to sell it. It’s on you.”
“So sell it. What’s the issue here? It’s only a house.”
“The issue is continuity. He’s got this vision of the house passing from generation to generation. Me growing old in the house he built. You and me growing old. And not just you and me but a whole community that stays put and hangs in there and grows up and grows old and passes on and leaves something behind that people remember. It’s community. It’s continuity.”
“In New Jersey? He must be kidding. He wants continuity, tell him to visit Jerusalem.”
“No. He wants it in New Jersey.”
“Well, that’s sad.” Kenny arose. “Continuity in New Jersey? That’s a joke. That’s a sign at McDonald’s, says five billion served.”
IV.
THE TAXI DRIVER DOES A DOUBLE TAKE WHEN I climb in outside the Port Authority and give him the address: Seventh Avenue and 110th Street. What’s an old white man want up there, he wonders. That’s asking for it, he says. I used to live there, I tell him. How long ago was that, he asks? It was me and the Indians, I reply. It’s changed, he says. We drive uptown along the park. At a stoplight in the seventies, some women cross in front of us, black women pushing white babies and talking with a British accent. From Jamaica, I guess, and headed for a bench and I wonder whether some young fellow will be meeting them there, some greenhorn who’ll see his future in their eyes. Heading up Central Park West, I see myself stepping into the park in the spring of 1932. Riverside Park, it was. I knew where the nannies pointed their carriages and I could make it look like an accident, the Hofers’ greenhorn out for a walk, probably lost, but she’d be there with a bunch of others. I stopped in front of them, looking across the Hudson at New Jersey. I’d made my first trip there the week before, out to Summit, and I felt connected to the place, that first ridge of hills west of New York. Then I glanced around, I pretended to be surprised.
“I’m Heinz’s brother,” I said. Me in my one suit, my hat in hand, a fine fellow. The other brother. The little brother. Older but smaller.
“I know who you are,” she said. She always did. Looking back, it amazes me how wrong people were about us, how everyone, future travel writer included, got fooled. Because I was talkative, because I argued and teased, because I wanted dinner, six on the dot, and got it, because I slammed down cards at pinochle and won, because when I sat on the stoop after weeding the garden, I had my beer without asking, because I read the newspaper first and had opinions that no one contradicted, at least until college material hit his stride, they thought that I was the boss. But Mom was the one. She ran things, just with a look that said, let’s go, or stay a while, keep it up or cut it out, enough already. A look was all it took to handle me.
At the end of the park the taxi turns right. 110th Street is called Duke Ellington Drive, I notice, and when we get to Seventh Avenue, it’s called Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, just the way the streets got re-named after Germany got conquered, Adolph Hitler Platz became Adenauer Plaza. Now I see the building. It’s a ruin. They re-named the streets and lost the buildings. Go figure. Otto Hofer’s place looks like something you’d find in Hamburg after the bombings and fire storms of 1944. The lower windows are sealed up with concrete blocks, like a rush-job mausoleum. The windows on the upper stories are knocked out, empty as the openings to a cave. I walk into the foyer, through puddles of water, maybe pee, and broken glass crunches underfoot. The door is covered with metal sheets that someone has partially peeled back, the way you open a sardine can, room enough for someone to squeeze inside, God knows why. I look through the opening and I can see broken plaster, pieces of wood with nails sticking out, electrical wiring hanging from the ceiling, and I can just make out the door across from the elevator, where steps go down to the cellar where I spent my first night. No point in going further. It’s the difference between visiting a grave and climbing into it.
I cross the street and enter the park, the same route I took with Cleve and Billy. The park hasn’t changed much and if where I sit isn’t the same park bench, it’s close. One of the wooden pieces is missing, so it’s narrower than it ought to be, and not so comfortable, but I can still sit on it. I kick myself, I don’t know what became of those two guys. I never knew their last names, even. We were going to go fishing sometime, Billy said, and I was eager for it. Sheepshead Bay. We talked about it plenty. Maybe they were playing with me. Instead, they brought a bunch of fish—bluefish—in to work as if they were doing me a favor, saving me the trouble of spending a day with them. “All cleaned and ready to cook,” they said.
Okay. My first home in America is a ruin. My last home is for sale. What to make of that? Maybe nothing. Did I expect that this place across the street would be a historical landmark, like the birthplace of a President? Hell, if I look at it just in terms of myself, I did okay in America. I made it. I’m an immigrant success story. I was a greenhorn, I worked and saved, I built myself up, I married and had a family (if that’s what you call George) and now, I’ve got a $150,000 house for sale. And here’s what really gripes me. The realtor I talked to, he was polite, he had a line of talk. He loved the property, gawked at the garden, and the oversized lot. And of course he yammered about location, location, location. But when we’re in the house, he used words like cozy, quaint, tidy, charming and it was there between the lines. If the place sells, it’s for the land. The house is a tear down and up goes a lawyer’s mansion. That’s what happens to our home. Our stay here is erased, we were just keeping a place warm for a rich man and I get the feeling that something has gone wrong. Looking back, I see there was an argument being fought here years ago. I took a side and never looked back, until lately. And the battle was fought right across the street, between Heinz Greifinger and Otto Hofer, back in the thirties.
“We wuz robbed!” Heinz shouted. Sunday dinner from Hilde Hofer. Roast chicken, dumplings, spinach. Heinz didn’t come often—his relations with Otto were strained—but Hilde insisted on holding things together. Women are more forgiving. Also, more unforgiving. Anyway, there we sat, shortly after the Sharkey fight, sometime in the summer of 1932.
“We wuz robbed!” He repeated the line a second time. He was quoting what Max’s manager, Joe Jacobs, said about the fight—a colorful saying that’s become part of the language, though nobody who uses it knows where the expression came from. Heinz kept talking about the fight and I could see Otto Hofer was getting uncomfortable. He loved a quiet dinner; he was a slow, careful eater, not like Heinz and me, who cleaned our plates in no time. Otto took his time with a glass of wine he bought from some Italians. Heinz drank beer that he picked up someplace. And kept talking about the damn fight.
“What kind of a country is this?” he asked. This was all in German, except for we wuz robbed. No translating a man like Joe Jacobs. Then Heinz wondered about America, where corrupt judges robbed an honest sportsman, and so forth. He was winding down now, shaking his head, puzzled. But Otto had heard enough. He finished his coffee, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin which he neatly folded and restored to a corner of the table.
“Du,” Otto said. “Hör zu.” You … listen. It was unusually direct for him. Hofer was an old-world gentleman, stern-mannered and soft-spoken, more German than American, and more of the Kaiser’s Germany than what came later. A lot of Germans in America stayed German in a way that Germany itself did not: the manners, the recipes, the way of working. They carried in them a country that didn’t exist any more. They were the last generation of Germans who could go out into the world without apologizing.
“I’ll tell you something,” Otto said. There were things about America he didn’t like, he said. The way people worked— that left a lot to be desired. The way they ate, rushing their food. That meant Heinz and me. And the way they behaved during World War I, when they shut down schools and breweries and renamed streets. There was a lot to complain about in America, a lot more than a boxing match. Sti
ll, he had stayed. People saw him on the street and they said—he knew it—old man, old world. But he loved how the world kept coming to America and—hör zu—how the Germans kept coming too, after the war. He was bringing them, one at a time, year by year, because he wanted Germans to be here, to be part of this so that after he was gone, his people would be here. Then he got up and came around to the back of Heinz’s chair. He leaned forward, like a servant whispering a message to a king.
“Everyone who comes,” Otto said, “I say the same thing. I said it to you, the first day off of the boat. I said it to your brother. Hans …”
“Yes,” I said. I wanted to save Heinz, if I could. He sat rigid, red in the face, just the way he sat when he was in trouble with our father. “I remember.”
“What did I tell you?”
“You said, ‘I hope you like it. And I hope I like it.’”
“Now Heinz. You can be an American or a German. You can’t be both. If you don’t like it, the ship sails both ways.”
Heinz got out of his chair, stood in front of Otto. “Ich hab mich vergessen,” he said, nodding. I forgot myself. And then, he bowed to Hilde, thanked them both, and left the room. I walked him to the door, out through the lobby, onto the sidewalk. He nodded at me—not more than that—and headed home to Yorkville. He’d be walking fast, considering the money he put on Schmeling.
Otto was carrying dirty plates into the kitchen when I came back inside. He always cleared the table. Now he drew a leather case out of his pocket, a cigar out of the case. He went to his desk and found a cigar cutter. He clipped the end and examined it as he walked towards me. In a minute, he’d be out on the stoop, watching people come in and out of Central Park, fielding complaints from tenants, bidding people a fine good evening.
