Listen Ruben Fontanez (24 page)

Behind the other doors, there are no sounds. On the staircase there is no trace of what Danny threw away. When he complained of pains in his chest, there was nothing for Harry Meyers to say to him. He laughed, of course, and said that he would have to take things more easily at night. There are ordinary explanations, I know. He spoke of his beer belly, of running with the police, of sleeping on his side in my easy chair, of working overtime at his factory, and, at some length, of a new woman friend of his. He winked at me many times. He was certain we understood one another. He assured me that what was happening had nothing to do with Jean, whom he loved dearly. She was the mother of little Gil, he reminded me. Still, as he had told me before, it was not natural for a man to lie in one bed with one woman for an entire lifetime.

I lay in my own bed and I listened to him. I said nothing. His descriptions of his new pleasures merged with his recounting of what had happened downstairs. It took three policemen to subdue Manuel, and Danny marveled at his strength. His new friend, he tells me, is demanding. He envies Manuel's energy. I stop in front of Nydia's door, but I hear nothing. Carlos is a good husband. It would be unfair to give his wife false hopes. There are rules and regulations in this world, and Harry Meyers is not about to start a campaign against the Board of Education. I am afraid you have lost your chance, Nydia. It is too late, you see. But you have your child, and a husband, and you live in a heated building. There are not many fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican girls in New York City who can say the same thing. Education is not everything. What I have said to my own monkey does not apply in all times and places.

I do not hesitate to pass through the downstairs hallway or the front lobby. There will be no more notes in my mailbox. It is cold outside. I glance to my right and see some men in front of the synagogue. They shake hands with each other. If they wish to put their hearts as well as their minds into their prayers, that is their business. If they mock the newcomers, that is all right also. It is nothing to me. I walk past the Park West Hospital. Behind the glass door a blond-haired nurse smiles at me. I nod to her. The doorman across the street blows into his hands to warm them. The sidewalks have all been salted. A wall of snow surrounds most of the cars, but the street itself is cleared for passage. I see no light on in the abandoned building. I do not look at the roofs. No limousines wait outside the Riverside Chapel. I continue straight to Broadway this morning. I can be a few minutes late. I do not wish to talk to all the teachers, to know if the story of my new adventure has circulated yet. Danny said there were photographers. If they wanted pictures of Harry Meyers this time, though, they would have to go into their back files to get them.

They were not the last pictures, Danny assured me. He waits patiently for the day of Jackson's release. So. You have helped me there also, my smallest monkey. When he marveled at what you had done I reminded him that I no longer needed protection. I gave him a choice, you see: if he wished to persist in his plan, Harry Meyers would no longer visit him. I am an old man, I said. He nodded, and once more he recalled for me what had happened so many years ago in the snow. He understood how I felt, he told me. It would be less than true to say I gave him the choice with the hope of sparing Jackson, but that had some small part in it. Still, I think I knew what his answer would be. I have been, it seems, only the second most important man in his life.

Across Broadway the men carry armfuls of fish into Citarella's. I can see the baked goods in the window of the Tiptoe Inn. I stop to admire the intricate shadows that rise upwards on the walls of the Ansonia Hotel. There was something in our parting which troubled me. I admit it. Though my feelings were short of tears, his were genuine. It was a choice he made with much pain, though with little difficulty, I suspect. And he understood that it was final, unless he changes his mind about Jackson. I have little to worry about. What he tells Jean is his business. If I understood him correctly, he may tell her nothing for a while. Harry Meyers can serve as an alibi for his other visits. Well. That is all right also. The important thing has been accomplished. It is too late for anything more.

On this side of Verdi Square a middle-aged man sleeps on his side, stretched out under the
New York Times
. There is a bluish tint to his unshaven face. At the subway station, the deaf news deliverers wait in silence for the next truck. I have no need to purchase tokens this morning. I took care of that the other night. The platform is crowded and I take my place near the front, trying not to look into anyone's face. Without my subway three, these trips will be an ordeal, I know. It will be best to let them pass without noticing things. The hot air from blowers makes my stomach turn. Two old women, their faces black, lean against one another. They spend their days cleaning other people's homes. From their workshoes I see the white cotton socks, the tops stretched. A Puerto Rican woman, a few years older than Nydia, tries to stop her baby from crying while four other children crowd around her skirt. They all suck their thumbs. A subway man moves sluggishly between us, emptying the trash tins under the candy machines. As the train fills the well in front of us, I notice the stream of water that flows between the tracks. I sit across from the five children and wonder who will tell Manuel the story of the sewer babies now. The train slams from side to side and I have slight trouble balancing myself. I do not look at the headlines of the newspapers around me. I can smell liver sausage. I think I hear the sound of Old York's cat, its throat rumbling softly under my fingertips. I close my eyes.

At the Delancey Street station I get out and walk past the pretzel man and the doughnut counter to the BMT line. My timing has been perfect. No other teachers are waiting. I board the train. We leave Manhattan island. From the Williamsburg Bridge I see the river moving coldly beneath me. The train is only half full but I stand by the middle door. Smoke rises above the snow, from the shoreline. No barges move on the water. In the distance I see the dome of the Williamsburg Savings Bank. The swift crisscrossing of steel girders on either side of our subway car makes me dizzy and I look down. My shoes do not pinch today. I will be able to teach standing up. No doubt there will already be a substitute teacher to take my place, but they can find other things for him to do. Let them arrange the records however they want. It is nothing to me. With such weather, though, I can count on a shortage.

There is a thin coat of ice above the planks of the Marcy Street platform. Well. I am here again. I wonder if the remaining few months will equal in length all the years that have preceded them. I will tell you this: Harry Meyers will try to teach his students something. It has nothing to do with you, Sarah, I can assure you. I step down from the green exit onto the slush-filled sidewalk. My galoshes give me sure footing. My briefcase is not very heavy. Two young men, their eyes ringed with sleeplessness, stand behind the counter deep-frying the food that reminds them of their origins. The Rancho Luna Luncheonette has been here for many years, and the help has changed with the seasons. From my appearance they would not suspect that I can understand their words. The windows are half steamed. I will not go inside. Do you know what I can remember—? The times Morris and I would watch the old cowboy movies and catch the moments when the actors who portrayed the Indians would ad lib in Yiddish. I smile. It is a pleasant memory. The Chassidim are already engaged in their daily commerce. They go in and out of banks and real estate offices, but they do not look at me. They carry briefcases also, and the bottoms of their black kaftans are wet from the snow. I could tell Morris that he is right: they will be invading the West Side soon. They stay away from the warmer climates. It would make a convincing argument.

Harry, Harry, I tell myself. Forget it. There is no time for such adventures. What you do, do by yourself. The games are over. I cross the street, toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I do not read the scribbling on the bricks of the underpass. I step on clean snow and I hear the skin of ice crystals crack under my galoshes. The shadow I see does not disturb me.

“Mister Meyers—” It is my own monkey, whispering, and he has been waiting on the other side of the underpass. I stop. My heart beats more quickly. Light glints from his misshapen forehead. His sneakers tread through the puddles of melting snow. Under his jacket there is only a T-shirt. But his eyes, I see, his eyes are still the eyes of a cowboy. “I knew you be coming back today!” he says, and I know at once that I am happy to see him again, glad that I have not disappointed him. I can find no words, but I think my smile tells him what I am feeling. He beckons with his finger and I follow him into a corner, where it is darker. “I got to watch out for the cops—they really after us now,” he says. “But I want to see you one more time before I go. To tell you—”

“I am glad,” I say. I put my briefcase down in a spot that has stayed dry.

Ruben's eyes move from side to side. “Listen: I want you to know I didn't run out on you then—”

“I know,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. “Listen: I want you to know that we not going to let Manuel stay where he is forever. We gone to spring him someday, Mister Meyers, if it the last thing we do!” He twists his head toward me and his eyes are not the eyes of a boy any longer. I was right about that also, you see. He could not work in the subways many more months. He grows too quickly. He will need new clothes. “He give his life for us—”

I nod. My hands stay in my pockets. “Okay,” Ruben says. “Now listen: I want you to know you don't got to worry about me. I watch out for myself. They not gone to get me, Mister Meyers. We got some good places to hole out in now—and soon they stop looking for us.” He shakes his head sideways. “There one bad thing, though.” I look into his eyes. “Manuel's sister.”

“I am sorry,” I say.

“She really flip her lid when she hear,” he says. “I wish I can do something, but—” He shrugs, helplessly. I tell him again that I am sorry. He tells me that she has been pouring gasoline on the dolls she has saved since childhood. Nobody can reason with her. Every day she burns another doll and Ruben does not know where it will end. Manuel was her brother. I tell my monkey that if he sees her he should tell her how grateful I am to Manuel. I realize that, in truth, Danny did not save me. I suppose that means that we are even at last. I smile. Remember: I am the man who did not save Danny's son. It is a curious thought and I do not dwell upon it. My own monkey, I see, is restless. I do not want to keep him. He vows again that he and Marty will free Manuel someday. They work together again, it seems, and I make no comment. Ruben does not ask for my approval and that is just as well.

“The boy that Manuel—” I begin. “He is still alive.”

“I glad on that,” Ruben says. “I telling you the truth, Mister Meyers.” Wind whips through the underpass suddenly and I turn my back against its force. Ruben covers his eyes. “Listen,” he says. “I bring something I want to show you.” He reaches under his jacket, to his waist, and takes out a brown grocery bag. “I bringing this to his sister now. I gone to meet her somewhere—I not stupid enough to go where she lives. They be waiting for us to come there. But we got a place to meet. She knows.” He opens the bag. Inside, I see, are hundreds of photographs, all of them the same size. “Every day Marty give him a quarter from what we make and he go into one of the booths in the subway to take four pictures of himself.” I look at several of the photographs. They are all alike. In each, Manuel faces straight into the camera, unsmiling, sleepy-eyed. “I got more bags filled,” Ruben says. “Where we hiding out. I give them all to Mara before we go.” He peers intently at one of the brownish photographs. “He really love to take these pictures, Mister Meyers. He save them all. You never see him so happy as when he go into the booths and then get the strip of pictures after—”

I look across the street, toward the school. I anticipate my monkey. “May I keep one?” I ask.

The smile reveals his beautiful yellow teeth. He gives me a strip of four, and, without looking at them, I unzip my briefcase and let them fall inside. “We got lots more. We gone to save them for when we get him out. Then—” he begins, but stops as the wind rushes through our tunnel again. He rubs furiously at his left eye. I tell him to pull the top eyelid down over the bottom one.

“I be okay,” he says. The air is still. “It just a piece of dirt. Only—” He hesitates. “Listen: I only scared on one thing, Mister Meyers, and I telling you the truth.” He rolls the top of the grocery bag closed and secures it under his jacket. “That someday I be blind.” He stops. “What you think, Mister Meyers?”

I shrug.

“If it happen, I kill myself. That the truth.”

“With your eyes,” I say, “you will not go blind.”

“In Puerto Rico I got two uncles that don't see. Maybe my father too, only we don't know for sure. My brother, Luis, who they got put away now—he got to wear thick glasses—”

“You will not go blind,” I say again, and I see him relax. If you cannot see, he says, what's the good? I nod. Though it is too late for other things, this much I can do for him. “You will not go blind.”

At once he is out of the shadows, looking from behind the edge of curved bricks, from where I have walked. “I tell you something else, Mister Meyers. With Marty—don't you worry none. After we spring Manuel, I split from him. But for now, I got—” He does not finish the sentence.
“¡La jora!”
he whispers, and retreats into the shadows. His sneakers, I see, are wet through. “Don't you worry none.”

His eyes tell me where to look and I see the policeman crossing the wide street. “He didn't see you,” I say.

“You got to get back to work,” he says. “I can't take no chances.” His hand is on mine. He presses it with his cold fingers. “Maybe when the heat is off—maybe I see you again someday, Mister Meyers—”