Carnovsky's Retreat Read online

  “No I don’t mind. It’s therapy for me too. That’s one smart doctor in my opinion, I only hope they don’t lock him up for this kind of stuff.”

  Today for some reason I recalled my late brother-in-law Louis Schecter, who is a long time gone, dead nineteen years. A sweet kid, gentle man, and not thirty years old when he went, an unbelievable thing to us all. Maybe it was going through the neighborhood this morning—Attorney Street, Seward Park—because Louis always took The Forward.

  He was helpless, and I recall going to his parents’ house many times, fixing water-pipes when they burst, putting a lock on the door after they got robbed. Louis and Florence were married only two years, give or take, but they were always a couple. When we were living on Avenue P. he would show up for her on his rollerskates and they would skate up Gravesend together, under the El, to the movie-house on Church Street. Childhood sweeties, like a brother and sister I thought, good buddies. Louis was like a brother of mine too—always around, and friendly, and in need of help. And I had none of my own, so an open spot on the roster.

  What a shame for both of them. I had a love for him and today felt his absence for the first time in how long, a decade? And it is odd how I can miss the dead and yet not miss the living. I was halfway to the land of the dead today, they were as real to me as anyone still breathing—Louis and also my late parents, of whom I thought. Maybe I really am a ghost, a dead man, a wisp with no fire inside.

  So long to the month of February. Jimmy brought the dead back to life this after—a head in the doorway can do it—came up to protest sister Beatrice getting top cut again. They give her what she wants while him they only scold. And of course he does not care that they love her and hate him (this he must insist) but merely prefers to see justice done.

  “What makes you think this?”

  “A million things. Everything.”

  “Give me one or two. Give me one good one.”

  “She’s a girl, that’s why.”

  “She’s a little shrimp and you are a big strong fellow who can take care of himself pretty well. So naturally they would worry less.”

  “My dad took her to work with him and he knows I wanted to. I ask all the time and he always says sure thing, real soon. Then he takes her instead. And he didn’t even tell me they were going.”

  “So what can I do to cure your hurt feelings?”

  “I don’t have any hurt feelings. I don’t care.”

  “Of course you don’t, I know that.”

  “Do you like my dad?”

  A sudden shift in the wind! I was hard at work on the first topic (and making very little headway) when bango he changes over to another toughie. Because what kind of answer would he like to hear?

  “You know, I never had a chance to talk with him much. I don’t know him well. But he must be a good father to have such a fine son.” And I give him a nudge, a friendly poke, and see he prefers to keep the glum face on. Did Myers say something nasty about me? I wonder. Then Jimmy is at me again.

  “Do you have any kids?”

  “You see any? You think I have a few underneath the bed? In the closet?”

  “You don’t.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Are you going to marry the blondie?”

  It’s the Spanish Inquisition now. Jimmy will ask these questions, one after another. He is not nosy especially, but let something pop into his mind and he says it, what the hell.

  “Do you like her?”

  “She’s probably okay,” he shrugs for me. “How should I know?”

  Nothing resolved, yet we both feel one hundred percent better nonetheless. Finished off the cocoa dust.

  I look in the classified without even knowing what I might be looking for. It’s a very discouraging list. Not that they don’t have jobs—they can cover two and a half pages with their jobs. But you read the information and suddenly the job isn’t there anymore, it’s gone, like smoke.

  Who’s going to pilot a baby-food truck through the Bronx? Or check-out groceries in mid-town like a pimply kid? They have nothing for a person like me, it’s either too big or too small, takes a Ph.D. or a certified moron.

  I’m not in the mood for these jobs, that’s sure. If I had a few more cookies in the cookie-jar I would not even bother opening this page. And doing so is not going to solve my problem in any event, so I have my nervous moments. What happens if I get down to the bottom of the barrel, and don’t have the cost of my daily bread, and still can’t budge off the mark? Is that who goes to the bank and borrows?

  No, that’s who they won’t loan. And they won’t loan me anyway if I’m Fish. They don’t hand money over to a ghost, you must have some collateral, plus all the paperwork. I don’t exist at a bank.

  Whoops, I don’t exist in bed anymore either.

  The problem I had once before came back. Linda was nice about it. Maybe you had too much to drink, she said. No that was you, I said. I understand, she said, you’re angry, frustrated. I don’t feel angry, frustrated, I said.

  What do you feel then? she said. Do you hate me for Wednesday? Not at all, I said, I figured we were better for Wednesday.

  What, then?

  And I don’t know what. Maybe it was worry, and trouble with sleep. I aired it all out, my situation, concluding with the present financial picture, and again she was very nice. Talked and was very sympathetic. We used the time and we stayed good friends. But we did not solve my problem, or hers.

  Monday. I asked around for work. Asked Bulkitis if he knew of anything, asked at the ferryboat exchange, person to person. The classified is like ether, it leaves you motionless. You might find something small, asking person to person, yet solid.

  Asked at the Wing Wang and received the same response as always from him: no problem. He hammers his head once (never twice) like he’s butting an imaginary insect a few inches in front of him, and spits out his favorite syllables—no prob lem. Terrific, glad to hear it I’m sure. Mr. Wing Wang has got The Oriental Advantage over everyone else—he knows what he thinks, but he’s the only one who does.

  Also asked Kramer, with slight embarrassment. A lot of embarrassment, to be truthful. I have been betting twelve or thirteen years in Kramer’s shop and if I ever had a problem in life he never felt it. I need his confidence and I need my privacy, so for me too it has sometimes been “No problem.” But Kramer knows a lot of people and he might know a situation.

  Certainly, Oscar, he says, I’ll look into it forthwith. He is a busy man, he reminds me, but he will shake the branches and see what tumbles down. I’ll hear from him on it. So I place my well-being in the hands of a bookmaker (salt of the earth he is not) and the fact is I’m cheered up. Because yesterday it was in my own hands, a far worse prospect!

  Kramer tells me they are going to remake Aqueduct, shut it down and shine it up to the tune of millions. I never liked the place myself and I’m sure I will like it less shined up. All racing dates will split between Belmont and Jamaica while the work goes on and then they are talking close Jamaica for good. That I would hate to see. I went there first, my father took me, and maybe that’s why I like it best. True it’s a shanty alongside Belmont Park, but some men a shanty might suit.

  Jimmy Myers ran away from home. Just as I say, all kids will do it. And he decided to do it alone because he couldn’t trust his sister. He could trust me, however, and stepped inside to say a goodbye.

  “I’ll miss you, Oscar.” (Sometimes acts like he’s in a movie.)

  In the getaway kit he had stowed a bottle of Hires Rootbeer, a waxpaper deck of Ritz crackers, the baseball cards and the Hopalong Cassidys all completely organized, and a few more items—all crumpled into the corners of an A & P bag with handles. Looked not unlike my own luggage when I went, as a matter of fact.

  “If you find yourself close by, you could drop in and visit.”

  “Under cover of night?”

  “Whenever.”

  “You keep an eye out for Bee-Bee, okay. She’s all
right.”

  “Listen, Jimmy—you have cash? For food and so forth?”

  “I can get it.”

  This he can. Takes in more than me, at present, about one dollar a day from empties in the park plus an occasional strike from his subway-fishing. He combs the gutters and grates, comes up with a dime, a quarter, it all adds up. I won’t put a figure on his income but he always has plenty. In fact I was going to offer him a modest loan and thought better to ask for one instead.

  I was very sad when he took off, though not because I ever dreamed he was really going. I knew he would be back in time for supper and his favorite television programs, and he was, no problem. It just hit me that way—I got a little emotional—when I saw his back.

  Prior to today I never got one word beyond Hello with Timothy Myers, the father, and so I was very surprised to find him at my door. And I thought if he’s here it’s for no good reason—maybe to nix my visits with his son. But I was wrong. A neighborly call, to thank me for being kind to Jimmy and furthermore invite me for spaghetti dinner next week.

  No way to slip the noose. He knows I’m here and puts it, Pick your best night, so stuck is stuck and I’ll go eat with them. And now he reassures me it will be all right, he will see to it “that Mary stays sober.” At this I might have fainted in his arms.

  For months now I had this man pegged as a drunkard. Not like Linda Stanley, taking a nip of Mother Courage now and then, but a guzzler, a falldown lush, and it’s true that he stands in the foyer bellowing “Let me in, let me in, it’s my house too!” And he skips in later than the average man. But in his version it is the mother who does the drinking for them—and he thought everyone knows it, that it’s obvious to all the world.

  I take his testimony at face value and I do not. She could march herself up here and tell a different story, I would not be taken aback a second time. I’m removing my judicial robes, finishing my stint as judge and jury. Let them be loud and let whoever is right, if any, be right. Fine by me. I’m a reformed character and won’t consign anyone down to hell unless they purchase their own tickets, and sign all appropriate papers.

  I told Myers, however, that if he ever finds himself locked out in the cold he can sleep on my rug. He said he might take me up on it too, so I was obliged to let him in on the rumor about my snoring, and we parted the greatest of friends.

  A definite losing streak in my love life and there is nothing funny about this even if you must treat it humorously. A situation like this one you can talk over once and have a nice time talking. But not twice.

  Maybe Linda was right, that her confession signals the end. I was positive it couldn’t make a difference, not to me at any rate, and yet it is to me the difference has occurred. It comes like a short-circuit, a buzzing in the head and then the power goes out. I know I am sound yet I am unsound at post-time, when we are ready to run.

  And like any losing streak it gets you down, gets worse before it gets better. Now we are both expecting it to happen, so that Linda has her troubles too. Because her body does not wish to commit and then be disappointed. There is a trick or two besides the usual that I would be happy to try, but these she wants no part of.

  “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept my mouth shut, Oscar. I know it wouldn’t.”

  “A good question,” I admit, this time around, because it makes no sense to me, yet coincides.

  Friday. Four consecutive days of this icy drizzle, in the midst of which I survived Mrs. Myers’ spaghetti, just barely. I would have put it into the record if not poisoned and confined to my bed all day. No desire to scribble this week in any case, and so I didn’t. The author’s prerogative. (sp.)*

  I can’t tell if it’s this weather, or my losing streak in the sheets, or my empty coffers that’s getting me down. With this many woes you are hard pressed to weigh them out separately and rank them. Jimmy hasn’t checked in all week himself—why visit the dead?

  Took a crack at the library yesterday a.m. and found even Mrs. K. with a cold in her nose. Plenty of my fellow scholars were in there tanning themselves by the radiator. They have to make it through the winter too—not needing a book, just needing a coat from the cold.

  You see all the magazines with ads to travel out, Get Away Today! Flee To The Sun! Like Giselle, let’s go Mexico, but I can’t see it. If I could see it, I still couldn’t pay for it. A trip like that might cost thousands and just to see a foreign church, some castle in the rain. I can’t talk French or Italian and we got plenty of nice buildings to look at right here—which of course no one looks at, unless they are from out of town.

  To please Mrs. K. I took along a couple of titles, both by Melville, a long and a short. I remember liking this guy in high school. He was a traveler too, she says—she surmised I was planning a trip from my attention to the ads—who ended up near here, in lower Manhattan, because he went to work at the Customs House. Truly, she assures me. The best writer in American History working for a paycheck around the block from here.

  That’s a story for you, I said, like the Queen of England going to work in a bank, or punching tickets at a mutuel window.

  And she says, what kind of window was that, Mr. Fish?

  Eating our pizza pie we both pretended not to be thinking about the main event later on. When it got later, both pretended not to be pessimists. All this pretending did nothing to alter the outcome—no action from Oscar, all bets off again.

  By then I didn’t even care. I wasn’t going to worry it to extremes so long as it went home and left me alone. I did not wish to be sympathized with further, or analyzed more deeply. Let me just take the loss.

  Yet Linda stayed put, would not budge from my bed. So the two of us were in there with our pizza breath chained together side by side. And I really believed I would strangle to death when she says, Tell me a joke. It takes all kinds.

  “A joke! Nothing’s funny.” All right, some things are funny, even to me—but never a joke.

  “I’ll tell a joke, and then you tell one.”

  “I don’t know any joke, Linda.”

  “Okay here’s mine. Who is bigger? Mr. Bigger, or Mr. Bigger’s baby?”

  “Get serious.”

  “You have to guess.”

  Her face promised to add to my misery with a bucket of tears any second if I didn’t take a shot at it, so I replied,

  “Mr. Bigger is bigger, naturally.”

  “Nope. Mr. Bigger’s baby is a little Bigger. Get it?”

  “I’m sure in your line of work you hear a lot of jokes. I don’t hear any. I never cared for them anyway.”

  “Make one up, it’s your turn.”

  “Fat chance. The only one I remember is the same one everyone knows, the Great High Lama.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “You don’t want to, then. It can go on all day.”

  “Go ahead and start. I’m ready.”

  My Uncle Julius loved this story and would always begin it in the same way: “Would you like the one-hour version or the twenty-four?” He never told it the same way twice. And of course it really cannot be funny if you don’t make it long, endless, so I gave her at least twenty minutes of the fellow searching out the meaning of life uptown, downtown, way out west, to the North Pole, down into the basement of the Kremlin and so on, following a lot of crazy clues. It got him to Tibet in half an hour flat, out to the Himalaya Mountain Range, past the Low Lama and the Middle Lama and the High Lama’s mama and then I had him waiting—one day, two days, a week—for his first audience with the Great High Lama.

  And so on. Until on the third audience (because it was always the third one with Julius) the Lama finally opens both eyes and hears the man’s question, What is the Meaning of Life, and closes them for an hour, opens them again, first one and then the other, and in the end pronounces that “Life is a fountain.”

  By this time I was enjoying myself a little, nostalgic, and she was too because she really didn’t know the story and was eager to see how it
comes out. It was news to her, this ancient joke, that’s how it is with the goyim. So I put on the mustard and relish and gave it the works, where the truth-seeker is confused and disappointed having come all this way at such great personal expense to hear such a silly pronouncement, and asks incredulously “What? Life is a fountain?”

  And the Great High Lama replies at once in the voice of a Delancey Street tailor, “You mean it’s not a fountain?”

  Not a bad performance, if I don’t say so. You must get fully into the spirit of this terrible joke and I did my best, which was good enough to put Linda into hysterics. A tiny smile at first and then it sinks in and the laughter starts up. In the end she was rolling on the floor in a laughing fit. (I’m sure the red wine contributes to this result. Like that comic used to say, You don’t think I’m funny, then have another drink.)

  So she forgot herself. Forgot to be shy and forgot to be nervous and so did I therefore. And when we lost track of our problems our problems lost track of us too and we started up the engine with no difficulties and continued in like fashion. We took our therapy after all, because life is a fountain.

  “Tell the truth,” I said after. “Did Doctor What’s-It give you this solution? Swap jokes and forget your troubles?”

  “Nope, I thought of it myself. And it worked too.”

  “Yes it worked. But Linda, I’m serious—it really is the only joke I know.”

  One day cured by the Great High Lama and the very next day the sun takes up its spot in the sky. Officially it has been Spring but now the weather agrees, and the benches in Battery Park are warm and dry.

  A horseplayer knows best what everyone knows—when you’re hot you’re hot—so I was not surprised to also discover it is not my fate to starve. Kramer, the son of a bee, comes through. (And damn near neglected to mention the news to me!) I went in to bet a lousy five bucks, all I could risk, and I am on my way right back out the door when he wakes up and remembers—lifts his nose out of his book and plants the eyeglasses in his hair (such as it is) and remembers who the hell he’s talking to. “Oscar. By the way—”