Carnovsky's Retreat Page 5

  And said yes to one, as though he knew the first thing about it. He went to his cousin, a handyman, for a few pointers and showed up with some shingles the next day. Did the work, got paid for it, the roof didn’t leak, and one thing led to another. He never did get around to painting out the two words. You can see them, plus a few others, on the nice new carry-all he bought himself year before last.

  For twenty years he made his living on the roof, for twenty years did nothing else, and then one day woke up to the realization that he hated this work more than anything. He never liked it, it wasn’t his idea in the first place, and by now he hated it so much he had a block. Climbing around with the bundles of shingles, buckets of tar, rolls of sheet metal—these things he had done thousands of times without a second thought were now unbearable to him, so he hid out.

  How could he tell his wife (a worrier) that he had not worked a single day in what were usually his busiest months? How could he tell her he would never do it again, when it was all he knew how to do, his only way to turn a buck? So Billy was living and dying all summer at the racetrack. A good day and his secret was safe awhile, a bad day and he had the shakes.

  And now he wants my advice. Which naturally I didn’t have any. This is the price of hearing someone else’s life-story. Of course out here I am neither Carnovsky nor Fish, I am just Oscar, because you don’t have a surname among the sports. Or if you have a last name, then you don’t get a first, like Hearn. Either way it’s one to a customer. Out here you have friends but they don’t come to your home for dinner. The same way I knew Billy was happy in his bungalow in Queens, he knows I am happy in my bungalow in Brooklyn—no one visits back and forth. However we are all solid citizens out here, so Billy would like to have my advice.

  It occurs to me he knows I am in the booze business, that he used to be, and that maybe he is asking me for a job. This breaks the code, it’s like coming to your home for dinner, but the real problem is I’m not hiring today. I’m unemployed myself. I tell him,

  “Billy I hate to tell you the truth, you know I do, but I am out of business too. I finished with it.”

  “You’re kidding. You sold out?”

  “Well, ended. So we are in the same boat.”

  “And it’s sinking fast. Oscar, we should have swapped—I sell the beer and you nail up the shingles. What about that?”

  “Too late for that, thank God. I don’t like to stand on a roof that isn’t flat.”

  “So what will you do? Have you got something lined up?”

  “Nothing.”

  And that’s that. I almost wished I could say to him, here, take the keys, you drive with Ramsey. But Ramsey left anyway, he retired on me, and if he hadn’t I might still be stuck there. The young guys didn’t need me or my job—they don’t care what they do nine to five, only what they do after hours matters to them at this point in life.

  But imagine this man going to work every day for twenty years and not even knowing if he likes his job (and he doesn’t) and all because of two words written on a truck he bought. Locked in and they swallowed the key. Well, I never wished for myself as strongly as I wished for Billy this afternoon, and though he didn’t hit the Double he came out okay on the day.

  Another thing. A 39-year-old man with kids of his own should not be called Billy. William, or Bill maybe, but Billy is a kid’s name you outgrow. The name was locked in too, however, because he is “Billy the Roofer, Serving Queens for Two Decades.” He can’t dodge the bullet.

  Like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, the name is what you trade on. Label her the Green Girl instead and suddenly nobody rides the boat out to see her, nobody wants to buy a souvenir.

  As a lesson in humility as well as in the perils of handicapping, the match race is a gemstone. So easy to forget that a two-horse race is always a different proposition. There is room to run and the psychology is easy—you want it or you don’t.

  And another lesson too, you can toss out the Derby. It comes up too early for the real horses, and a speed freak can steal it on a sunny day. Which is not to say that Swaps wasn’t game. He stuck a long time at a breakneck pace. But Nashua was on the muscle for this one, too much horse. He ran the red colt down and left him gasping for air seven lengths back. Nashua would have run through a wall of fire to get the California horse this time—I had the feeling he read all the papers and didn’t care for what he saw.

  More surprises in store. For the first time since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, Brooklyn wins the World Series. And what’s more, they beat the damn Yankees to do it. Having ached for such a moment since I was a little boy, I still never believed it could happen. I knew they could be the best team, by far, and still never win the Series. It was a skill they lacked.

  Now when I am barely looking, and hardly caring, they go out and just do it. I am tickled of course, though not so much for myself. For Tanya and for Walter (who must be bouncing off the walls) and for Reese and Robinson and Newk and the Duke, and long live Sandy Amoros I’m sure. Baseball is not on my mind, that’s all, I had stopped following the last month of the season.

  I was tempted to call up and congratulate, but again for her sake only. Unlike the temptations of early days at the Bedbug Hilton. I did think one night last week, What would it take to get me back? An operation might do it, Walter in the hospital with a concussion. Injuries might get me back, tragedies. The happy times can only tempt a little, they waken an instinct, because you’re connected.

  At the same time I can hear what Tanya is saying: Oscar must be dead. Could not be certain up to now, but if the Dodgers take the World Series and still he doesn’t show his face then he must be completely dead. What she means is she is disappointed. She thought when they won I might call or come by or drop a line in the mail, but I am very sorry my love I cannot do it.

  Stunned to find out today that Bulkitis was all for Brooklyn. “Who else?” he says. “The Yankees?”

  “Sure the Yankees. Anyone. How could a Giants fan go for Brooklyn? It’s unnatural, Bulkitis.”

  “I always go for them once they’re in the Series. You don’t mean you rooted for Cleveland last year?”

  “But desperately. The Giants killed us all year and I wanted to see them get theirs.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Funny to you, with Cleveland dropping four straight.”

  It takes all kinds to make a world. I’m one kind and Bulkitis is another. And I am afraid he is the better.

  I am a voyeur. I have avoided the subject but meanwhile looked it up in the dictionary and that’s what I am. Maybe Mrs. Kearney will be kind enough to find me the research materials in this area too. But fate has made me one as surely as fate made Billy a roofer. I didn’t put the girl in that window, I just sit here guilt-ridden, a criminal in my own room.

  And yet I am only normal. The world’s original normal boy, you can go to the Form, read it in the past performances. Carnovsky: not a winner, or a loser, runs his race in the middle of the pack. You could not find anywhere a man more average. He is not rich or poor, not black or white, no scholar and yet no dope (he has had a little schooling). Also not elderly nor youthful—go right down the line and I am right down the middle, Oscar Everyman.

  Here I can detect the voice of my late mother complaining. “You’re not this, you’re not that—all I hear is what you are not. Say what you are, Oscar, say you are a Jew.” I’m sure. But I never was. Never had a flicker of light in the area of religion, as dark to me as the first Thursday in December at Belmont Park. “Our people have a history, Oscar, a long important past.” Again I’m sure it is gospel, except I have never taken an interest in the comings and goings of Pharaohs, it’s Greek to me. I’m from the school of common sense.

  There was a gelding called The Pharaoh ran at Hialeah years back, and won twice or three times at a distance. That, to me, is history. That’s the past. The tote board is my Torah, mama forgive a good boy when fate takes a hand.

  But thi
s is important about normal and not normal. I am uncomfy on the subject of sex, yet still I am certain it is normal and correct. Look at an animal. Is an animal shy? Doesn’t even introduce himself, he just mounts you. I can imagine myself in consultation with Doctor.

  “Doc I got a problem.”

  “Yeah so what is this problem?”

  “It’s this. I like to look at the young lady next door, when she takes off her clothing.”

  “Yeah and so what is the problem? She won’t take it off?”

  Of course I try to see it that way—that it is good and natural like the doggies in the street—and I can believe in this point of view as easily as in my guilt. In which case why not join her over there, knock once on her door and mount her? Sex is not like a letter from Uncle at tax time, it doesn’t come looking for you, you go out and get it the way you get a bottle of milk, with a purpose. I should do it, knock on her door. To her it would be a piece of normal life too—a man asking—and I am not so horrible to look at. Not even balding on the top.

  But I won’t be knocking. I don’t want to. I have never seen her face and who knows, maybe she is the one going bald. I have suspected so once or twice when no boyfriend appears to worship the splendid figure. She could throw open the door and stand there looking like the Bride of Frankenstein. Surprise!

  Much easier with one of the prostitutes in the neighborhood. I see them, I know what it is they do. I can also talk, and I’ve got a five-dollar bill in my poke like anyone else. Why not pick up a piece of education on the street if I’m so normal?

  The truth: I am embarrassed. I don’t want anyone to know I am normal, human. It’s a big secret, safe with me. So I am a gelding too, like the Pharaoh.

  Last night I played the Professor. The intellect. Because there is food for thought in my bare girl’s methods. She shows herself and she does not. She must know the world is full of windows, she feels the breeze come in, so why not darken the room a little sooner? Why wait till she’s half undressed? Of course she can’t see in the dark, she is not a cat after all, so the light lets her see what she is doing.

  Still I see a psychology behind little patterns. To my bare girl the breasts are expendable, they are there for teasing and can be shared at times. Like Tanya who went to bed with me for the first time upon our wedding night, June 16, 1935, yet two years before was allowing me to touch her breasts. It is the rest that is sacred and so becomes an object of fear. We must darken the room before these other, lower extremities are unveiled. The brassiere my bare girl tosses off like she’s dealing cards, not so the little panties.

  She could get careless and just once forget, and if so I will be on the spot to record the data. Give! Let’s have a peek, young lady, be fair, since we are stuck here together anyway. Let’s brighten up these mysterious hind-quarters!

  Such dignity. May be just the temptation in the wilderness, as I have by this time missed more than a few of my Saturday nights with Tanya.

  Meanwhile it has turned cold. Not all at once—it was lovely but I wasn’t writing much down for a while. (I will improve.) Now though, my radiator came on for its maiden voyage like an old tug-boat getting underway, clanking and blowing off steam. Settled down after a while and gets warm to the touch but this ancient device will not be throwing a lot of heat into the corners in January.

  I wondered about the Plymouth. If Tanya left it sitting that will be one hell of a waste. The block will crack for sure with no anti-freeze and she will get neither the use of the car nor the money. Nothing I can do about this, however.

  My girl Friday is still on the case at the library. In fact I think she is having some fun with it. Today she handed me the autobiography of a poet (who is a doctor in his spare time!) with the following in it regarding a friend of his—

  Later she married him and went to Central America with him where he bought and rebuilt a seagoing craft of some sort. One evening, having triumphantly finished the job, he got into it to try it out in the bay before supper. He never returned. Pregnant on the shore, she watched the small ship move steadily away into the distance. For years she thought to see him again—that was, how long ago? What? Thirty-five years!

  I guess he took a notion on the ocean. Or maybe he didn’t know how to get the boat turned around. That can be tricky. And by the time he figured it out he was someplace else and took it from there. From the sound of it, these were people who lived this way—poets and painters, bohemians. The kind who have three wives at the same time, and pet lizards, and dance all night on the French Riviera.

  It takes all kinds to make a world. It also takes all kinds to fill up this building. Desperate characters inhabit these walls with me—my neighbors!

  On the first floor left side, coming in, are the Holy Rollers (two Johnsons) with a big flowery motto tacked on the door

  As you go past you can always hear them inside, picking up steam for their heavenly journey. I’m coming Jesus, they yell, as they fry up a little bacon. Lord I’m coming, they cry, as they carry out the trash. They can never shut up about it.

  Once in a while they drift off down the block to the Holy Roller Church for a little relief. They are two nice-looking old colored people, neat dressers, and very solemn as they get underway. Then they look at each other and they are suddenly overcome. “Praise the Lord! I’m coming Jesus! People get ready!”

  So they make a little noise. I wouldn’t mind if they put their money where their mouth is on the Christianity bit, but it’s all noise. He’s got a mean streak, this Johnson, and picks on the children who live across the hall.

  These children are Myers and judging from what you hear up the airshaft their mama picks on them too. She likes to scream and swear at them. The father works late—or maybe works a regular shift and then meets his buddies at the bar—arrives home late in any case and then she screams at him too.

  In fact she won’t let him in. He stands in the hallway yelling “Let me in!” and she is on the other side of their door yelling “Get lost or I’ll call the cops on you. Get out of here, the kids are trying to sleep.”

  Fat chance anyone in lower Manhattan is sleeping. The kids I’m sure are hiding under the bed. I would do the same. Meanwhile these two heavyweights keep going, fifteen rounds every night, arguing over whose house it is.

  “It’s my home!”

  “It’s my home too!”

  The missus, however, has inside position. She is never stranded out in the hallway, so she is always the winner. Myers can kick his front door but not apparently open it.

  None of these people are shy when it comes to advertising their moods. They don’t care who watches or hears, nor do they mind filling the ears of their offspring with the foulest obscenities. The lady of the house has a voice to stop traffic in Times Square. A bull ape in captivity—incredible bedlam she turns on them—and yet the little ones don’t seem to notice. By now they should be basket-cases. Instead they go laughing down the block to play because you can get used to anything I guess.

  There’s more of this. Up in Number Three, above the Holy Rollers, lives a fat man and his mama. She does all the talking for them, cries poverty all day long. And it’s no wonder if they find themselves a little short since no one goes to work down there. He dresses up early, snap-brim hat and spiffed-up shoes, and strolls out to take the morning air. A boulevardier. Sharp as a fat tack he meanders the streets until it’s lunchtime and he’s home. This man has never missed a meal. A complete stranger to work, who yet has the cash to sit in the barber’s chair on Water Street and have somebody else shave his cheeks.

  Don’t ask me how he can walk so many miles and stay as fat as Happy Felton, although it may have something to do with eight meals a day plus snacks. And his mother is always at my door crying poverty and asking for a helping hand with her tougher chores, such as changing a light bulb. Last week she could not manage to open a can of coffee, so next thing I know she’ll have me down there flushing the toilet for her and the whole time I’m there she is
crying poverty while at the same time telling me in plain English she has got one thousand dollars in a stocking. Crazy? Of course this thousand cannot be touched, it’s her “burying money.” Oh, says Oscar the Good Neighbor, I see—your burying money.

  Craziest by far is when they interact. These players work out some comedy routines together. For example. The fat man likes to prowl around, and he keeps right on prowling in the flat after the witching hour. His feet come down like so many medicine-balls on the old floorboards—like an air raid on the Johnsons below—so Johnson wakes up angry and sends back a message with a baseball bat on the ceiling. So now it’s clump clump clump and then boom boom boom in the middle of the night, the whole building can hear, and does the fat man politely pipe down? Oh no, he takes offense, and turns up the volume of his big feet to CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP and Johnson must go looking for a sledge hammer so he can reply BOOM BOOM BOOM and they go on like this for an hour.

  All I have written is just the tip of the iceberg here at 10 Battersea, but it’s enough for now. I will just add, on the bright side, that the Myers boy has come in to visit a couple of times. Not counting Bulkitis and Kramer, he is my first friend in Manhattan.

  Still more material for the archives, a poem and a picture. Credit Mrs. K. with the poem—her contacts in mid-town turned it up. It’s light stuff, however. She is scraping bottom I’m afraid.

  There was a fine fellow from Greece

  Whose wife never granted him peace

  Till one night while she slumbered

  He left unencumbered

  Without by your leave or valise.

  Cute stuff but light. The old joke, a nagging wife and the husband who takes it just so long and then makes a run for it. Driven out. The picture is also a joke. I know, because it’s my own. I found this photo in a book The Sidewalks of Chicago and I’m the one who gave it a caption.