Harpo Speaks! (3 page)

A Relative was anybody who was named Schoenberg or Marx or who spoke Plattdeutsch who turned up in our flat at dinnertime and caused the portions on our plates to diminish. A lot of suspicious-looking strangers became Relatives, but nobody was ever turned away.

Most welcome of all was Uncle Al. A few years back, Uncle Al had been a pants-presser who couldn’t hold a job because he kept organizing quartets and singing on company time. Now, thanks to Minnie, his loving sister, personal manager, booking agent and publicist, Al Shean was a headliner in vaudeville. He was our Celebrity, and he played the part to the hilt.

Once a month, Uncle Al came to visit, decked out in expensive flannels and broadcloth, matching fedora and spats, and ten-dollar shoes. He sparkled with rings and stickpins and glowed with the scent of cologne. Frenchie would appraise the materials in Uncle Al’s suit and shirt, clucking a bit critically over the tailoring job, while Uncle Al talked with Grandpa in German.

Then Minnie would switch the language to English and the subject to bookings and billings. After a while, Uncle Al would give in to Groucho, who’d been pestering him without letup, and sing for us. This was what Groucho had been waiting a month for. At last, as he got ready to go, Uncle Al would give each of us boys a brand new dime. This was what Chico had been waiting a month for.

By the time Uncle Al had made his last good-bye, in the hallway, Chico would be two blocks away in the poolroom.

As Al Shean got more famous he raised his monthly bonus to two dimes instead of one, and then went up to an incredible two bits apiece. A whole quarter! Five shows at the nickelodeon! A complete set of second-hand wagon wheels and axles! Twenty-five games of pool!

When I earned or hustled a quarter on my own, I felt guilty if I didn’t kick part of it into the family kitty, but not with Uncle Al money. Uncle Al money was pure spending money, whether the soup pot was empty or not.

While the Schoenbergs outnumbered and outtalked the Marxes in the Relative department, Frenchie’s side of the family had its share of big shots. Cousin Sam, for example. Sam Marx ran an auction house on 58th Street, in the fashionable area near the Grand Army Plaza, and he was a wheel in Tammany Hall.

Sam’s younger brother, Cousin Max, I didn’t know so well. He was a theatrical tailor and a good one, so Frenchie was leery of talking shop with him and preferred to remain aloof. I thought “Max Marx” was about the dandiest name a man could have, with the main exception of “James J. Jeffries.”

Near the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, in New York, there is-or was, last I knew-an alleyway called “Marx Place.” It’s commonly believed to have been named after Socialist Karl. This is not true. It was named after Cousin Sam. Cousin Sam died while Tammany still controlled city government, street-naming, and other such businesses.

The odd-ball relatives on Frenchie’s side seemed to come in pairs. My father used to talk with a mysterious kind of reverence about two great-aunts named Fratschie and Frietschie. To me, any two dames named Fratschie and Frietschie had to be a high-wire act or a dancing team. But no. Their act was being the oldest twins in the history of Alsace-Lorraine and dying on the same day at the age of 102.

Oddest of all were two little women, vaguely related to Frenchie, who came to call once or twice a year. They were the only visitors I can remember who never joined us for dinner. They stayed in the kitchen, where they talked to Frenchie in Plattdeutsch, keeping their voices down so nobody else could hear what they were saying. Both of the women wore black skirts down to the floor, and white gloves which they never took off. When the stove wasn’t turned on they sat on the stove. When the stove was on, they stood up during their visit. They would leave shaking their heads. Whenever I asked Frenchie who they were, he would only shake his head. I think they came to report who had died that he should know about. I never saw him so desperate to get to a pinochle game as he was after the two little women came to call. Pinochle was liquor and opium to Frenchie, his only way of escape.

So anyhow, at the age of eight, I was through with school and at liberty. I didn’t know what to do with myself. One thing was certain: I’d never go near P.S. 86 or come within range of Miss Flatto’s wagging finger again. School was okay for Chico, who was in the fifth grade and a whiz at arithmetic, and Groucho, who was knocking off 100’s in the first grade, but not for me. I was good only at daydreaming, a subject they didn’t give credit for in the New York City school system.

My parents accepted my being at liberty like they accepted every other setback in their lives-no remorse, no regrets. Minnie was too busy engineering Uncle Al’s career to have much time for me. She felt she had done her duty anyway, by sending Polly’s herring-peddler boy friend around to the school. Frenchie took the news of my quitting with a shrug and a nodding smile. The shrug indicated his disappointment. The smile indicated his pleasure; now I could be his assistant on his next “sales trip” to New Jersey.

I never knew for sure, but I suppose the truant officer must have come around to our flat looking for me. If he did, I know what happened. When he knocked we assumed it was the landlord’s agent, come to collect the rent, and we all ran to our hiding places and kept quiet until we heard the footsteps go back down the stairs outside.

As for myself, I never doubted I had done the right thing when I walked away from the open window of P.S. 86, never to return. School was all wrong. It didn’t teach anybody how to exist from day to day, which was how the poor had to live. School prepared you for Life-that thing in the far-off future-but not for the World, the thing you had to face today, tonight, and when you woke up in the morning with no idea of what the new day would bring.

When I was a kid there really was no Future. Struggling through one twenty-four-hour span was rough enough without brooding about the next one. You could laugh about the Past, because you’d been lucky enough to survive it. But mainly there was only a Present to worry about.

Another complaint I had was that school taught you about holidays you could never afford to celebrate, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. It didn’t teach you about the real holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, when you could watch a parade for free, or Election Day, when you could make a giant bonfire in the middle of the street and the cops wouldn’t stop you. School didn’t teach you what to do when you were stopped by an enemy gang-when to run, when to stand your ground. School didn’t teach you how to collect tennis balls, build a scooter, ride the El trains and trolleys, hitch onto delivery wagons, own a dog, go for a swim, get a chunk of ice or a piece of fruit-all without paying a cent.

School didn’t teach you which hockshops would give you dough without asking where you got your merchandise, or how to shoot pool or bet on a poker hand or where to sell junk or how to find sleeping room in a bed with four other brothers.

School simply didn’t teach you how to be poor and live from day to day. This I had to learn for myself, the best way I could. In the streets I was, according to present-day standards, a juvenile delinquent. But by the East Side standards of 1902, I was an honor student.

Somehow, between home and out (”out” being any place in the city except our flat), I learned to read. While Groucho sweated over copybook phrases like “This is a Cat-O, See the Cat!” and “A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned,” I was mastering alphabet and vocabulary through phrases like “This water for horses only,” “Excelsior Pool Parlor, One Cent a Cue,” “Saloon and Free Lunch -No Minors Admitted,” “Keep Off the Grass,” and words printed on walls and sidewalks by older kids which may not be printed here.

I learned to tell time by the only timepiece available to our family, the clock on the tower of Ehret’s Brewery at 93rd Street and Second Avenue, which we could see from the front window, if Grandpa hadn’t pulled the shade. Grandpa, who was the last stronghold of orthodox religion in the family, often used the front room to say his prayers and study the Torah. When he did, and the shade was drawn, we had to do without the brewery clock, and time ceased to exist.

I’ve had, ever since then, the feeling that when the shades are pulled, or the sun goes down, or houselights dim, time stops. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never had any trouble sleeping, and why I’ve always been an early riser. When the sun is out and the shade is up, the brewery clock is back in business. Time is in again, and something might be going on that I’d hate to miss.

Weekdays, when Minnie was out hustling bookings for Uncle Al, Frenchie was busy over his cutting table, Chico and Groucho were in school, and Gummo and Zeppo were down playing on the stoop, Grandpa and I spent a lot of time together.

Sometimes he’d tell me stories from the Haggadah, lecture me from the Torah, or try to teach me prayers. But his religious instruction, I’m afraid, was too close to schoolwork to interest me, and he didn’t accomplish any more with me than Miss Flatto did. Still, without realizing it, I completed a course. From Grandpa I learned to speak German. (I tried to teach Grandpa English, but gave up on it.)

When he was feeling chipper and the shade was up, Grandpa used to perform magic for me. He conjured pennies out of his beard, and out of my nose and ears, and made me practice the trick of palming coins. Then he would stoke up his pipe and tell me about the days when he and Grossmutter Fanny toured the German spas and music halls. Grandpa performed as a ventriloquist and a magician, in the old country, while Grandma played the harp for dancing after he did his act.

I hadn’t known Grandma too well before she died, but I felt she was never far away, for Grandma’s old harp stood always in a corner of Grandpa’s room. It was a half-size harp. Its strings were gone. Its frame was warped. All that remained of its old luster were a few flakes of golden dandruff. But to me it was a thing of beauty. I tried to imagine what it must have sounded like when Grandma played it, but I couldn’t. I had never heard anybody play a harp. My head was full of other kinds of music-the patter songs of Uncle Al, the bagpipes of St. Patrick’s Day, the drums and bugles of Election Day, the calliope on the Central Park carousel, zithers heard through the swinging doors of Yorkville beer gardens, the concertina the blind man played on the North Beach excursion boat. But I’d never heard a harp.

I could see Grandma with the shining instrument on her lap, but in my daydreams no sound came forth when her hands touched the strings.

I made a resolution, one of the few I can remember making. I was going to get a job and save my money and take the harp to a harp place and have it strung and find out at last what kind of music it made.

When I did earn my first wages, however, I found more urgent ways of spending the dough. It was to be nearly fifteen years before I plucked my first harp string. I was not disappointed. It was a thrill worth saving.

So at any rate, Grandpa, who taught me German and magic, was my first real teacher. My second teacher furthered my education in a much more practical way. This was my brother Chico. My brother Chico was only a year and a half older than me, but he was advanced far beyond his age in the ways of the world. He had great self-confidence, like Minnie, and like her he rushed in where Frenchie or I would fear to tread.

I was flattered when people said I was the image of Chico. I guess I was. We were both of us shrimps compared to the average galoots in the neighborhood. We were skinny, with peaked faces, big eyes, and mops of wavy, unruly hair. Pop was no better at cutting our hair than he was at cutting material for a suit.

But the resemblance ended with our haircuts. Chico was something of a mathematical genius, with an amazing mind for figures. (Later he developed a mind for nonmathematical figures too. That was how he came to be nicknamed “Chico”-which was meant to be “Chicko,” the way we always pronounced it.)

Chico was quick of tongue and he had a flair for mimicking accents. In a tight spot he could pass himself off as Italian, Irish, German, or first-generation Jewish, whichever was most useful in the scrape he happened to be in. I, on the other hand, being painfully conscious of my squeaky voice, was not much of a talker. Not to be totally outdone by Chico, I took to imitating faces and aping the way people walked.

The imitation that gave me the most trouble was Chico himself. He used to walk the streets at a steady trot, head and shoulders thrust ahead, unmistakably a young man who knew where he was going. I practiced walking like Chico for hours. But I never could master his look of total concentration. I just didn’t have it under the haircut.

When I quit P.S. 86 I still saw very little of Chico. He never came home directly from school. If he did show up for dinner, he would vanish as soon as he’d eaten. He was conducting some very important research, to extend his knowledge of arithmetic in useful ways. He was learning how to bet on horse races and prize fights and how to play poker, pinochle and klabiash, by kibitzing the action in the back room of a cigar store on Lexington Avenue. He was learning the laws of probability by observing the neighborhood floating crap game as it camped and decamped from cellar to roof and roof to cellar, one roll of the dice ahead of the cops. And he was learning the laws of physics by noting the action and reaction of spherical solids in motion at the Excelsior East Side Billiard Parlor.

When he turned twelve, Chico decided he knew all he had to know about these applied sciences, and he quit school too. He also quit doing research, kibitzing and observing, and got into the action. He has never been without a piece of some kind of action since then and never will for the rest of his days.

Chico was a good teacher, and for him I was a willing student. In a short time he taught me how to handle a pool cue, how to play cards and how to bet on the dice. I memorized the odds against rolling a ten or four the hard way, against filling a flush in pinochle or a straight in poker. I learned basic principles, like “Never go against the odds, at any price,” and “Never shoot dice on a blanket.” I learned how to spot pool sharks and crooked dealers, and how to detect loaded dice.