by Frank Conroy
"You ready?"
Claude nodded.
Al pulled gently on the ropes and the boy ascended, looking down at Al's hands and arms until the wall of the shaft and darkness intervened. He could hear the faint creaking of wood and the whisper of the ropes sliding along the outside of the box. In the darkness he was very aware of his body, hearing his own breathing and the dull thump of his heart. The ascent was slow, almost silent, and magically smooth. He touched the rough plaster wall with his fingertip, feeling it slide by. Hairlines of light outlined the door of the first floor as it passed. At the second floor he could hear the murmur of voices. Although he knew his speed was constant, it seemed to take longer and longer to get from one floor to the next. Thin light again at four, creeping up to five, and an eternity until he stopped at last at six.
He held his breath, put his ear against the crack, and listened. Nothing. Breathing softly through his mouth, he listened for a long time before carefully inserting the tip of the screwdriver into the simple latch. The door fell open a quarter of an inch and Claude remained motionless in the dim light, listening. Finally satisfied, he slowly and carefully pushed the door open and stared into the kitchen, the white, still room suddenly right there. After another moment he climbed out and stood on the tiled floor.
Silence. Now he could feel the faint touch of air on the back of his neck, flowing from the dumbwaiter shaft behind him. He knew immediately that the apartment was indeed empty. The kitchen was enormous—larger than the whole apartment in which he lived with his mother—and very clean. He went to the cupboard, opened the door, and turned on the light inside, arrested by the blazing crystal that seemed to float in a haze of prismatic colors, by the high glaze of china teapots and platters, by the hard brightness of silver. Goblets, bowls, bottles, tureens, trays, cocktail shakers, dishes, cups, candlesticks, gravy boats, ice buckets, salt cellars, butter dishes, ladles, spoons, and there, in a back corner, stacks of various-sized silver ashtrays. He moved into the brightness, took two ashtrays, stepped back, turned off the light, and closed the door. They fit in his pockets.
Crossing back to the dumbwaiter, he noticed a large jar, in the shape of a fat man, standing on a counter next to the stove. Raised letters on the bottom of the fat man's apron spelled cookies. Claude opened the jar and put in his hand. To his surprise, he felt paper. He pulled out a wad of money—dollar bills, a few fives, a ten. He stared at it for a moment, put it back, closed the jar, and turned away.
As he climbed into the dumbwaiter, he looked down through the two-inch crack between the sill and the box itself. Way down, far away, he could see the glow of light at the bottom of the shaft, an impossibly small patch in the dimensionless blackness. He folded himself into the box, pulled the door shut behind him, tested it, and reaching around the corner of the box with his slim hand, found the two ropes and gave them a sharp pull. Almost immediately he began his slow descent, Al working carefully down below.
Two things happened simultaneously. First, the bell—loud, piercing—startling him so that he banged his head. He knew what it was: the signal people used to summon the dumbwaiter in the event they had missed the morning pickup. Second, there was light below him. He could see his knees and his hands and the wall slipping past. The light grew brighter and suddenly he was descending faster, almost as if in a free fall.
For a split second, as he passed the open door of the third floor, he was bathed in light. He saw a kitchen, similar to the one above. The refrigerator was different, but it was in the same place. The door to the cupboard was there too, except it was green instead of white. A black woman stood at the stove reaching for a pot of coffee. Her face began to turn toward Claude, and then all he could see was the blur of the shaft wall.
He landed with a bump. Gesturing rapidly with one hand and reaching in with the other, Al pulled him out.
"Al!" came a voice from above. "Is that you?"
Al tilted his head to call up the shaft. Claude sat down on the floor and rubbed the back of his head.
"Right here," Al yelled.
"She might have seen me," Claude said.
Al's eyes snapped down. "What?"
"She might—"
"Well did she or didn't she?" Al said. "Quick!"
"I don't know. It was too fast."
The woman called from above. "What's going on down there?"
Al stared upward and didn't say anything for a moment. Then he shouted, "What you mean, what's going on?"
"You hear me ring?"
Claude could see the relief on Al's face. "Sure I did."
"Well, didn't that thing just fly by here like a subway train?"
"It was the ropes. The ropes got messed up. Just hold on a minute, I'm coming." He began to pull, hand over hand. To Claude, he said softly, "That's Madge. She didn't see nothing."
"I don't want to do it anymore."
Al began to laugh. "We'll," he said, giving a little gasp, "I can see that."
He came home one day to find that a telephone had been installed. It stood next to the radio, and he felt both curiosity and excitement. The gleaming black instrument was provocatively modern in the dingy apartment, suggesting, in this dark room where everything for as long as he could remember had remained more or less the same, the possibility of change. A telephone! He examined it closely. The number printed on the round insert in the center of the dial was ATwater 9–6058. He picked up the receiver, listened to the dial tone, and replaced it in the cradle.
"Don't play with it," his mother said, coming in from her room. "Just leave it alone."
"But what's it for?" He noticed a thick telephone book on the floor. "I mean, who are you going to call?"
She paused, staring at him. He began to worry that he had inadvertently said something wrong, but then she turned away. "Just don't worry about it," she said.
For days it simply sat there. It never rang, and in the evenings she never used it. Browsing in the yellow pages, Claude stumbled upon the Music Store section, his eye caught by the illustrations of various instruments. It was thrilling to find a listing for Weisfeld's, and after a few false tries, he got through.
"Hello."
"This is Claude."
"Claude!" Mr. Weisfeld said. "What a pleasant surprise."
"We got a telephone." He looked down and touched the base with his fingers. "It's right here next to the radio."
"Good. I'm glad to hear it."
A long pause. "I like boogie-woogie."
"I thought you would. No more than half an hour at a time, though. It can be bad for your left hand."
"Okay." Claude listened to the hum of the line. He didn't know what to say, and it felt odd. "Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Claude. I'll see you tomorrow."
And then one night, in the middle of the night, it rang. He sat up on the cot and heard his mother come out of her room to answer it. She said a few words and put the phone down as Claude peeked through his door. She got pencil and paper and returned to the phone. "Okay, ready," he heard her say quietly, and then she wrote. When she hung up he ran back to the cot and pulled up the covers.
Suddenly the lights went on. She stood at his door, naked, her great white body startling him into full wakefulness.
"Get dressed," she said. "We're going out."
"Now?"
"Quick." She turned away. "And bring a blanket."
He obeyed, and found himself following her up the iron stairs into the dark and silent night. As they approached the parked cab he asked, "What's going on?"
She opened the rear door. "Just get in. You can go back to sleep. I can't drive around with the flag up at this hour of the night, that's all." He stepped up into the cab, and she went around and got behind the wheel.
As they pulled away from the curb and moved toward Third Avenue he stared out at the scene—familiar and yet transformed by the dark stillness, oddly ominous. She drove downtown, and after a while he lost track of where they were. He dozed off, his head resting lightly o
n the back of the seat.
He woke up as she parked, on a crosstown street at the corner of an avenue. She turned off the headlights and the engine, but left the meter running.
"Where are we?"
"Downtown," she said. "I've got a couple of special pickups. We'll wait. We're early. When he comes I want you to get up front here with me." He could sense a subtle tension in her voice, a controlled excitement.
Every few minutes the meter would click as the cylinder rolled up, five cents at a time. A dollar ten. A dollar fifteen. His mind wandered. A dollar sixty-five. A dollar seventy. They sat in silence.
"Oh, shit," she said, and he sat up straight.
From the avenue, three people were approaching the cab. Two young men in tuxedos and open black topcoats, and a woman in a long dress and fur stole. The taller of the young men waved in an exaggerated manner, his coat flapping.
"Just sit tight and keep quiet," his mother said, rolling down her window. "The cab's taken," she said as the young man reached for the rear door.
"I don't see..." Claude saw the flushed face, the sandy hair falling over the forehead, as the man bent over to look inside. "Oh. Yes."
"Sorry," she said, and began to roll up the window.
"It's taken," the man said, turning back to his companions while at the same time putting his hand on the rising window, stopping it. "A woman driver! How extraordinary. Perhaps you could just take us along to Sixty-ninth Street. Plenty of room back there. Ten dollars?"
The woman in the stole was laughing at something with the shorter man, who stumbled against the front fender.
"Sorry," Claude's mother said, her right hand clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. "The Hack Bureau. Rules."
The tall man still held the window. "I offered ten dollars," he said to his friends, his tone aggrieved.
The short man lurched forward, putting his face in the window. "Twenty! Twenty bucks and let's go." His wet lips shone in the dim streetlight. The tall man had removed his hand and now she rolled the window shut with a violent motion of her arm.
The tall man and the woman drifted back toward the avenue, but the shorter man remained, standing now by the front fender, staring through the windshield. Claude's mother kept both hands on the wheel. The man took one step backward, opened his fly, and began to piss on the front tire.
Claude heard a kind of oof sound from somewhere deep in his mother's throat, as if she'd been punched. "Stop him," he said, "stop him."
"I can't get into anything," she whispered.
The man finished, shook his penis—all the while staring into the cab—and smiled as he zipped up and turned away.
There was a sharp snapping sound, like the crack of a whip.
"What? What was that?" Claude asked.
"Jesus," she said. "I broke the wheel." She bent over and examined it, running her fingers over the hairline fracture. "It's okay. I can still drive."
"Why did he do that?"
"Ah, Christ." She slumped back in her seat, the whole cab jolting slightly.
Fifteen minutes later the meter read two dollars and thirty cents. A small, stocky figure in a navy pea jacket came around the corner, and Claude felt his mother's sudden alertness. He came directly to the cab and she rolled down the window.
"The cab's taken," she said.
"May first?" he said. He wore odd-looking glasses, perfectly round with steel rims.
"Get in, please. Claude, come up front."
Claude took his blanket and got in the front seat. The man sat in back. She pulled away from the curb and turned uptown on the avenue. Claude noticed the man twisting his body to look out the back window.
"It's okay, sir," she said. "I'll know." She glanced at her side mirror and then the rearview. "I'll know."
"Of course," the man said.
Claude was surprised to hear her call him sir. He could not remember hearing her call anybody sir.
"It's ridiculous," the man said with a foreign accent. "Melodramatic. But we have to be careful."
"Yes."
"We are very grateful. We know you work hard and long hours."
"It's an honor, sir."
They drove through the dark city, the streets almost empty, going uptown two blocks, west one block, uptown two blocks, west one block, again and again in such a way as to catch all the lights.
"A good trick," the man said, and Claude recognized his accent as German, the kind he heard often in Yorkville. "I did not know this trick."
She pulled to the curb at the corner of Madison and Ninety-second. "We're on schedule," she said.
They waited in silence, the meter ticking near Claude's head. After some time a man in a light brown coat emerged from an apartment building and approached the cab.
"It's him," the German said, and opened his door for the newcomer, who slipped into the cab.
"Gerhardt."
"This is foolishness," the German said.
"Well, they were meeting anyway. I thought they should see you."
She made a U-turn on Madison and proceeded downtown.
"You know where to go?" the newcomer asked. He was an American.
"Yes." She glanced into the rearview.
"I don't see what you hope to accomplish," said the German.
"Money, for one thing," the American answered. "It's expensive to be on the run. The more you have, the better. And there are other reasons we don't have to go into."
The German sighed heavily.
"Just let me handle it," the American said. "These people are submarines, mostly. Completely undisciplined. They'll blather on all night about Browder, white chauvinism, and God knows what else if you let them. They're like children."
"I can imagine. I don't know how you put up with it."
"I have very little choice, obviously."
She parked near the East River. Claude watched the electric signs go on and off on the other side, floating in the darkness.
"The house should be two blocks down," she said.
The men got out and crossed the street.
She looked down at Claude. "Pull that blanket up and go to sleep. This will be a while."
He lay on his side, his hands folded under his head, and drifted off.
***
A bright, windy afternoon. Weisfeld had closed the shop early and now, after hot tea and donuts at the luncheonette on the corner of Third and Eighty-fourth, they walked to Park Avenue.
"It's a concert grand," Weisfeld said. "Nine feet. A Bechstein. Maestro Kimmel brought it with him on the boat years ago. A fabulous instrument. But he can't play anymore."
"Why not?" Claude asked.
"He's an old man, and he's got some kind of muscle disease. But he still writes." He tapped the manuscripts under his arm. "He writes incredible music."
"But how can he do that if he never comes out of his room? If he can't play it, how does he know what it'll sound like?"
Weisfeld laughed. "In his head, my boy. He hears it in his head. Strings, brass, tympani, everything. He doesn't write for piano anyway."
"And they play it on the radio?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, they do. The older stuff."
They turned south on Park Avenue. The wind whipped the stiff hedges in the islands running down the center of the street. In the distance, clouds sped behind Grand Central Station, creating the illusion that the building itself was in motion.
"Here we are."
Claude stopped in his tracks. It was Al's building.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Claude said.
"There's no need to be nervous. You won't even see the man."
For a moment it seemed to Claude that it was simply too great a coincidence, that Weisfeld had somehow found out about Al and the trips in the dumbwaiter, and that a reckoning was at hand. But a glance at Weisfeld's earnest, open face reassured him. The very idea that Weisfeld might find out made him feel slippery inside, as if a stone had rolled over in his chest.
; The doorman touched his cap as they went inside. The gleam of marble, dark wood, the smell of wax. The elevator car was mirrored and had a small padded bench. They entered and the attendant came after them, closing the doors and the safety gate. Claude watched the numbers through the small window as they ascended to the tenth floor. He felt relieved—he had never gone up that high for Al.
At the door to the apartment Weisfeld removed his beret and rang the bell. "You will wait for me at the piano. I won't be long."
After a moment the heavy, ornately carved door swung open. A thin elderly man with a pronounced stoop stared out at them from over his glasses. His Adam's apple was so large it looked like a bone stuck in his throat. Weisfeld urged Claude forward with a hand on his back.
"Franz," he said.
"Herr Weisfeld. So this is the wunderkind?"
"Just so. Shake hands with Franz, Claude. He will be looking after you."
Claude obeyed.
"How is the maestro?"
"Good. He worked all morning, so a little tired, but good."
"Wait in there, Claude." Weisfeld indicated the living room, behind a set of half-open sliding doors. "We won't be a minute."
Claude slipped into a large room. A thick oriental rug, heavy drapes, an entire wall of books, couches, a wing chair by the fireplace, footstools, hundreds of framed pictures and photographs everywhere on the walls and tables, and there, at the far end of the room, standing free in a large open space, an enormous black piano. As Claude approached silently he could see his reflection in its side. He sat at the bench, opened the lid, and stared at the keys. He didn't move until Franz entered and walked, stooping and with a slight limp, across the room to open a side door.
"A small bathroom here," he said, closed the door, and approached the boy. "Should you ever need to call me or Helga from the back, just pull this." He tugged a ribbon of heavy cloth hanging over the drapes. "Gently. Don't jerk it."
"Who is Helga?"
"Helga is my wife. She is the cook." He glanced back at the other end of the room. "The big doors will be kept shut while you practice."
