Coney (10 page)

When turning a page, Zadeh would bid it good-bye with an exasperated “Enough already.” This habit had alerted Harry, at age ten, to his family's general failure to draw distinctions between the animate and inanimate. His father, reading Freud, would mumble, “Thank you.” His mother praised or cursed her mascara brush. Bama's intimacy with the evil eye empowered her to chase it from the room by brandishing a straw broom and cursing.

His father explained that Zadeh and Bama and perhaps to a lesser extent, his mother, were victims of Polish romanticism, an aberration which drew no distinction between fantasy and reality. The results could be as relatively benign as electing of the concert pianist Paderewski Poland's first president, or as life-threatening as centuries of insistence that Poland could subdue Russia.

The explanation had shed sense on some of Zadeh's eccentricities: when he came across a picture of Stalin in a newspaper, he would obliterate him with a punch that put a hole in the paper, then brush his right palm over his left to bid good riddance to the Russian tyrant. Or the time in a local candy store when Harry, age twelve, had been drawn to a large group surrounding the pinball machine and egging on the player with: “Go get 'em, Pop.” On tiptoes, Harry had watched Zadeh barking commands in English and Yiddish to the silver balls as they collided with the bumpers.

Playing pinball was a sop to Zadeh's passion for gambling. Lacking funds, he usually was relegated to kibitzing. More than one black eye had confirmed the stupidity of some who resented his advice.

Eventually he had been picked up in a raid on a gambling casino. Bailed out and brought home by Bama and Harry's parents, he ignored their questions, fuming over the duplicity of the number 16, which had lied to him.

“Sixteen,” his mother repeated, adding with a derisive laugh. “Wasn't that the age you said I was too young to go out with boys? Some lucky number.”

“Leah,” Bama shouted, “you must not speak to Mr. Fishman that way.”

“Mr. Fishman, Mr. Fishman, can't you call him anything else? He's your husband, my father, for Christ's sake.”

“In Warsaw …” Bama began, but deferred to her husband, who abandoned the number 16 and pointed a stiff finger at Harry's mother, arcing it through the air like a pendulum.

“You must never say that name. How do you know who is listening?”

“Say something to him!” his mother yelled at Harry's father. “You're a big mind, a writer, maybe he'll listen to you.”

Harry's father long ago had certified his in-laws as insane. He avoided them whenever possible, cautioning Harry: “If you listen to a madman long enough, he starts to sound sane.”

“Velia,” he pleaded, moving toward his coat, “I must go to the paper. Europe is about to blow up.”

“Oh no you don't! Europe can blow up tomorrow. Say something. The next time he'll go to jail for God knows what.”

“That's better,” Zadeh complimented his daughter.

“Listen, Fishman”—his father's overly sweet voice had reminded Harry of a Coney Island barker buttering up a mark—“do you think it is wise for a Talmudist like yourself to be in the company of people who go to such places?”

“Catzker, don't be too quick to judge. There are Kabbalists among them.”

“Of course,” his father agreed, pursing his lips at received valuable information, “there are Kabbalists everywhere. But the others … it is not right for a man like you.”

“Catzker, you call yourself a writer and you know so little. There are not Kabbalists everywhere. If there were, the world would be on the verge of heaven. Is that what you are telling me?”

“Surely not. Let us forget the Kabbala. Let us speak of the police. If they do not want these games to go on, don't you think you should obey them?”

“Obey the police? You are crazy. They are goyim. Do you ask me to agree with goyim!”

“But many of those who were arrested with you were goyim.”

Zadeh found this a telling point. He stroked his chin, analyzing. His father claimed triumph by grabbing his coat.

“Aha,” Zadeh shouted, “spies!”

“Papa,” his mother said, “they are going to put you away one day. Where, I don't know.”

“In the cemetery, of course.”

Bama chased the evil eye with her fists.

And there was chess, which was not exactly relevant evidence. Or was it?

Zadeh had taught chess to four-year-old Harry, who had picked up the game in a couple of sessions. Bama had proclaimed him a prodigy, feeding him candy as he sat on two telephone books across from Zadeh, who was oblivious to everything except plotting a winning strategy.

The prodigy's chess game, however, had a chronic failing. When Zadeh captured Harry's first piece, a pawn, he proudly placed it along the edge of the board on his side of the table. The isolated warrior appeared so lonely and forlorn that Harry was impelled to provide it with company. As quickly as possible, he would position another piece in fatal jeopardy. The bizarre moves raised Zadeh's suspicion that a subtle trap was in progress. He would study the board for as long as ten minutes, searching for the intent of the bold sacrifice, until deciding that it was just an idiotic blunder, and pouncing.

After being beaten in every contest during his fourth year, Harry began to cry in defeat. Three years later, cured of his lonely-pawn syndrome, but still having experienced only hot tears over a chessboard, Harry won his first chess game, not against Zadeh but
a schoolmate, who succumbed to a four-move checkmate. Much to Harry's disappointment, his victim did not cry, but merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

“You're too good for me. Wanna try box ball?”

By age eight Harry was bored with chess; however, his frenzy to defeat Zadeh never subsided, though he had learned to hold back the tears until he had locked himself in the bathroom. It was still so.

Eight almost had been the last year of Harry's life. Zadeh had tried to cure him of an acute stomachache with the all-purpose high colonic. Harry had fled the greased nozzle which had been introduced into him many times. When pulled from under a bed by his father and Dr. Bluestone, the immediate diagnosis had been a burst appendix. The operation was performed just in time. Zadeh pooh-poohed the idea that had he caught up with Harry, he would have killed him, and further maintained that Bluestone was a quack who had ordered surgery when a good bowel movement was all that was needed.

The random bin of facts housed two competing considerations as to hereditary insanity: On the corroborative side was Zadeh's father, who one evening had left his house in Warsaw to buy a newspaper and disappeared for fifteen years. During that time, it was fairly well documented, he had established families in South Africa and elsewhere. Returning to Warsaw, he entered his house, sat down at the table from which he had risen fifteen years previously, and demanded supper. His wife complied wordlessly,

On the nay side of the madness ledger was Harry's own relationship with inanimate objects. Treasured jazz records spoke words that were not imbedded in the grooves. Each school-day morning he said good-bye to his father's hat. He even spoke to God, but only to secure a pennant for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Certainly there was nothing abnormal in all that.

No, neither his grandfather nor he nor anyone in his family was crazy.

As Harry's father said: “A Jew needs all the friends he can get.”

S
OMEONE TUGGED AT
H
ARRY'S KNICKERS
. S
OLDIER, STOOPED OVER
him, was wiping sand from the bike.

“Damn, you shouldn't let sand get in, it's like … Damn, especially this brand new one.” His fingertips glided along the handlebars, as if rimming fine crystal.

“What are you doing on the beach, Soldier?”

Soldier slid his hands inside his torn-at-the-elbows army field jacket to hitch up grease-stained khaki pants. The wind lifted and let fall the threads of his unraveling wool cap. He shrugged.

“Damn,
I
got a room on West Sixth for when
I
don't stay at Woody's and
I
like to walk along the beach to Woody's. You headed that way?”

“Yes.”

“Damn, wanna walk together? You can roll the bike in the hard sand, not to clog up the chain.”

“Sure, Soldier, I'd like that.”

“Damn, you like the beach, Harry?”

An automatic shrug prefaced all Soldier's speech, triggering the
damn
which hung by itself, unconnected.

“Yes,
I
do. It makes me feel clean.”

“Damn,
I
coulda said that. There weren't no beach where
I
was brung up. The first one
I
seen was in France, at the hospital they sent me to. It was a town called Deauville, but we called it Doughboy.”

Soldier laughed, provoking a tic in his right cheek. He slapped it.

“Does it hurt?” Harry asked.

“Damn, no. My grandpa had it. Said it weren't no different from a yawn, except you done it with your cheek instead of your mouth. In church he'd point to folk yawnin' and say, ‘If they done like me, it'd be more polite.'”

Harry imagined little Soldier in church with his grandfather. Everyone looked like Judge and Mrs. Hardy, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, except for a miniature Soldier, ragged in khaki. The congregation sang the favorite hymn of the Irish kids at school
: Onward Christian Soldiers and leave the Jews behind.

Soldier kicked at the sand.

“Damn, I did like that beach in Doughboy. They'd come and pull me off it, like I had got lost. I hadn't. I just wanted to feel the soft sand and look at the water that never ended. I like things that never end. Like sometimes just before you fall asleep you think it's forever. I don't mean die. Just sleep happy forever.”

A barefooted, bent-over beachcomber, scarred shoes dangling from laces tied around his neck, slowly approached.

“Hey, Soldier,” he said, “how's it go?”

“Damn, any luck, Robbie?” Soldier asked.

The man straightened, unfurling into a six-foot-nine-inch stick figure, covered from neck to ankle by a pepper-and-salt overcoat. Between the lapels of the upturned collar, his nose, like a turtle's head, tested danger. He took from his pocket a few pennies and nickels.

“Not much,” he said, offering examination of the oxidized booty, “but I think I got an Indian head nickel. If I can clean it proper, it should be worth something.”

He doubled over as if hinged at the stomach and fought his way against the wind. Soldier angrily kicked a divot of sand into the ocean.

“Damn, that was Robbie. He used to be
The Human Skeleton
'till
he got a rash all over him. Folk don't like to look at rashes. So now he looks for Indian heads. I hope he found one.”

Soldier began a dry, choking cough. His body shook like a pummeled rag doll. He bit for air. Harry feared that he could literally break apart. He sank to his knees. Tears squiggled crystalline worms on his cheeks. A high-pitched inhalation gradually subdued the cough.

“Soldier. Is there anything I can do?”

“Damn, it's past now. I once won a medal in a track meet. Now my lungs are full of … damn, sometimes I get mad.”

Grabbing Harry's offered hand, Soldier pulled himself up, then jumped to retrieve the bike that had fallen and was being decorated by blowing ocean foam.

“Damn, it ain't new no more. It'll never be new again.”

“You like new bikes, huh Soldier?”

“Damn, yeah. I never had one when I was a kid, but I can't say I really missed it. I loved puttin' bikes together from parts I got at the town dump. I was better at fixin' bikes then. Had more patience. Now it's sort of, if it don't fit perfect, it's the best I know how.”

“You do a good job, Soldier. Bikes aren't easy to fix.”

“Damn, thanks Harry, but I know better. You know when I got my first new bike?”

“When?”

“Damn, it was in Doughboy. I was walkin' in the town and I spot this bike store. I point to a black job, and hold out a fistful of
parley-vous
money. This old guy with a mustache who looked like a walrus goes bug-eyed, grabs most of the dough and shoves the bike at me.

“I went tearin' through that town like a bat outta hell. I recollect people pointin' at me and shoutin' somethin' like
‘ooh law lee.'
There was a lot of carriages pulled by horses with women with big hats in 'em. The horses whinnied when I went by and God help me if the drivers didn't sort of salute me by raisin' their whips over
their head and yellin' somethin' in
parley-vous
. Behind me I could feel my bathrobe flyin' and my slippers was almost comin' off. I guess I rode like that for fifteen minutes before the hospital folk caught up with me. They told the walrus to give me back my money. Oh, was he mad! And he was right. He sold me a new bike and now it would never be new again. They kept on askin' me if he gave back all my money. Now how was I supposed to know that? But I said yes, hopin' he had pocketed a few bucks for what he deserved.

“When we got back to the hospital they took all my money and put it where I couldn't get at it. But, whoa-eee that was a ride!”

“I'd like to go to France on the
Ile de France
. I see her out there, coming in and going, “Harry said.

Soldier followed Harry's eyes to an empty horizon cut short by a curtain of low black clouds.

“Damn, how can you tell it's this Frenchy ship? You got spyglasses that could read the name?”

“Nah, I got a book with pictures of all the ocean liners—front, sideways, how many stacks, their record time for crossing the Atlantic, how many passengers and crew. Once you read that, you can spot a ship easy.”