Train Tracks (5 page)

That was it. I was finished before round one.
Icarus, not reasonably talked from his foolishness bust, dashed instead to the
rocks below—no glue, no feathers, no sun.

Brown, by the way, trained for that fight all
winter and into the spring, only to splinter his forearm just weeks before the
big day. He was finished for good. Those kinds of breaks never heal.

Even if they weren't afraid of the little tyrant,
they would pretend, which was enough to satisfy him. They knew it was his
psychodrama. But they respected him anyway. In this sense, they respected his
life. They respected him enough to let him yell. No one else yelled at anyone,
see? In
The Call of the Wild
, he would've been lead
team dog. The other dogs would have stopped, listening to the chief dog when it
barked. They may have been feigning obedience, but that was enough—because
therefore he was the boss. You understand? They didn't really have to hear him.
He wasn't the wealthiest merchant, but he brought most of the good customers
into the market. There were big buyers who'd come in from the South and buy a
thousand, fifteen hundred dollars' worth of bronze from my father on a Sunday.
That was a lot of money in cash. They'd also buy from other people, but they
came primarily to see Benny.

Now let me bring in a few minor characters. There
was Murray, my dear uncle Murray, beloved Murray. He was a beautiful man. Murray
had a few character traits that were odd. He'd always repeat jingles that he
heard on TV; he'd sing them during the day while working: “To look sharp, and be
on the ball, to be sharp . . .” and so forth. He would always be
humming, but when he would hum, my father would yell out from behind his stand,
“Hey, Murray, you're chirpin' pretty good over there. You musta knocked in a
couple grand today.” And that would be the litany they would start off with,
then, “Ah, Benny, stop. Who can make as much as you do?” They would go on like
that. They knew Benny's weakness was to think he made the most, so they probably
all figured, let him think he makes the most. But Murray ended up with a lot
more money. Murray never sold as much, but he didn't spend as much, either. He
led a very low lifestyle. He owned a house, but they never ate in a restaurant;
they hated restaurants and things like that. They went home and that was it.
They went to the market like Chinese, for their life was at home; they lived for
their home and for their children.

OK, we've completed the main course. We're going to
hit a few of the subcharacters. There were a few hangers-on: Goldsand,
Morass—oh, the hangers-on were at least as interesting as the main
characters—and Louie, who eventually had a monkey who bit
him . . .

Goldsand is my very favorite adopted grandfather.
He was a hanger-on who collected tinfoil for some reason. God knows what he
thought he'd do with the tinfoil when the crash came. He must have had a
gigantic ball of tinfoil somewhere—how big could it have been?—after fifty years
of pulling tinfoil from inside cigarette wrappers and rolling them in a
ball.

Goldsand was still alive; collecting a disability
pension from World War I. What happened to him, he got mustard-gassed in France.
Not badly, however, and he collected all his life. He was smart. He lived in a
room for twelve dollars a month until they jacked his rent up to thirty-five;
that almost killed him. He lived in this room without heat and slept wrapped in
newspaper. Wrapped his feet in newspaper and slept under a dozen blankets, rags.
But he also bought a house. Where? The country. He was the only one who bought a
Catskill country property, which is quite valuable today. I'd go there in the
early spring when no one was there; he'd give me the key, for me to go open it
alone. Then I knew I was a man. And I'd come back to the city and he'd say,
“So—how was the countree?” and he'd look at me with that beautiful face; he'd
look up and ask, “How was the countree?” He always wanted to know how the
countree was.

Although Goldsand was seventy-two years old he
wasn't worried. He had forty-six more years to live.

How did he know?

Four years before, some very alarming symptoms
overtook him. He began to sweat heavily, had difficulty breathing, ran a fever,
the works. Sure that the end was near, Goldsand visited with Shapiro, the “king”
of old men on New York's Lower East Side. Shapiro, who was then ninety-eight
years old, asked his ailing friend, “What's the matter? . . . you
afraid you're going to die?” “Yes,” offered the ailing Goldsand. “How many more
years you want? Fifty? OK, so you got 'em. Fifty more years to live.”

That was four years earlier. Now Goldsand had at
least another forty-six years to go.

The illness?

Oh, that was cured . . . with a
piece of crusty Italian bread.

Goldsand, while enjoying what he thought was one of
his last meals, indulged himself in a piece of this crusty loaf, quite different
from the usual rye and pumpernickel. As he swallowed, he felt something tear off
in his throat and a slimy fluid oozing out. And that was it.

From then on he breathed easier. His countenance
was restored. No fever. Nothing. Rudetsky, the doctor to these men, later
speculated that a small bone had become lodged in the old man's throat. A cyst
enveloped this bone and began to grow. This is what the high fever was about,
white corpuscles fighting off the invading growth.

And then we have Morass. Morass was a famed bum who
used to come in and out of the cold to get the warm heat of the market, but he
had to pay. His payment would be ridicule. See, he'd come in and they'd start
with, “Hey, Morass, come on over here, I need a cup of coffee, you'll go out to
the galley for me.” He'd walk over—he shuffled over from side to side, with his
overcoat and his red, runny nose—and he'd say, “My name isn't Morass. It's
Morris.” “Yeah, yeah sure, Morass—oh, I mean, Morris—I mean Morass.” “My name
isn't Morass, it's Morris.” And the interesting thing is: Did they say “More
Ass” or “he is in a morass” because he was a bum? Or did they just play games
with his name? Were they Shakespearean? I mean, did they know that a bum was in
a morass? Another act would be this: “Hey, Charlie,” my father would yell, “did
you hear, someone saw Morass sitting in the galley eating beans and whipped
cream?” And Morris would yell out, “That's not true. I never eat whipped cream
with beans. No one eats whipped cream with beans.” And then Charlie would laugh;
a laugh of ridicule would ring out, and then he'd say, “It's true, Benny, I
heard it from so and so. You know, the guy who owns the dry goods store on
Rivington.” “It's not true. I don't care what the dry foods guy said. No one
eats beans and whipped cream.” All right, now if it happened once, you could
accept it. But this was going on for ten years, the beans-and-whipped-cream
version.

And then there was Louie, another side character—to
me the most fascinating, the one I loved most. Louie had long hair down to his
shoulders. Louie was skinny; he didn't eat. Louie was brilliant. Louie was a bum
poet. He got a monkey, but he didn't get the kind of monkey that everyone else
got. You know, most get squirrel monkeys, those skinny, pathetic, stupid monkeys
with skinny tails. Louie got some gargantuan woolly monkey with sharp teeth.
Woolly monkeys are built like bears. Anyway, Louie used to clean bronzes for my
father, whistling while he worked in “the pit.” No one knew Louie was smart.
When Louie painted our house, he taught me geometry. I was doing geometry
homework and Louie would help me with it. Louie also did tricks for me in the
dining room of the house. He'd bend a nail; he showed me different gimmicks. He
could take a nail and bend it, and he was the one that taught me. He warmed it
with his hand; he didn't put it over the fire. He said you take the thing, you
put your thumbs on it, and you just keep the pressure up as tight as you can,
never stopping for an instant—the nail will bend because of the heat. He taught
me the psychology of bending a nail rather than the physical stupidity of
it.

Louie lived with some woman over in Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, and he spent every cent he made at the bar, at Hammel & Korn. He'd
go right from my father's market. At dinner, my father would say, “Louie, why
don't you go buy yourself a pair of shoes?” “I don't need shoes, I got a pair.”
And he'd go get loaded in Hammel & Korn; he'd buy everybody drinks, the
whole bar. I mean, when he had money he bought everyone drinks, and he'd do
nothing but play the jukebox, smoke a cigarette, drink, and tap his foot next to
the jukebox, whistling.

Well, as time would have it, Louie's lust was
tested. Louie acquired twenty thousand dollars. How? He was walking, drunk,
stumbled into a car that had a fender that was ripped off, a rusty thing, and he
tore his leg open. He got some Hebe ambulance chaser, a brilliant lawyer, who
won him forty thousand. Louie got twenty of it. Guess what Louie did with his
twenty grand? That's right, he spent it in six months at Hammel & Korn. He
didn't change his apartment. He didn't buy a pair of shoes. He did not buy an
overcoat. Instead he got three girlfriends from Harlem and moved them into his
house, and every night he appeared at Hammel & Korn and bought everyone
drinks, and put money in the jukebox. SO, with his money, nothing changed; he
just had more of what he did. And after the money was gone—ah, wait a minute! He
did buy a few things with some of it. You know what he bought? Bronzes from my
father. The bronzes that he cleaned in the basement with cyanide. He came into
my father's market, and he bought bronzes from the boss. “All right, Benny, how
much is that?” Whatever my father would say, Louie's answer was—“I'll take it.”
He bought bronzes. And then of course when his money ran out, he sold them back
to my father. My father didn't beat him on them; he bought them back for about
the same price, which is what he always did because they were always increasing
in value. But, there was the cleaning man buying bronzes from his boss. Now, of
course, I bought a bronze from my father as a result of that, I think. Because
the first money I made, I spent on bronzes from my father, to show him that
that's what I wanted; and the one bronze I still own is a copy of Rodin's
Thinker
. It's a powerful signed bronze, done in 1880.
Louie collected twenty G's and went down the tube anyway. Last I heard, he was
alive, and had had a heart attack also; he was living in Greenpoint, alone, with
an empty cage.

Another subcharacter comes to mind; a simple guy.
It's the first time I learned about schizoids. This guy was a doctor. He came to
the market with Afghan hounds. He was the complete Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. All
I knew him as was “Doc.” OK, Doc would come in on occasion, most of the time
beautifully dressed, impeccable, with two Afghan hounds. Just a very
cultivated-looking gent. On the other hand, the same man would occasionally come
in rags, disheveled, needing a shave, looking half-crazed, snot coming from his
nose, and nobody dared to say to him that he looked fucked-up. They'd kibbitz
him a little. They'd say, “Hey, Doc,” Doc this, and Doc that. I remember once I
went up to him and said, “Hey, Doc,” and my father pulled me aside and said,
“You never call him that, you don't talk to him in the tone we do.” I said,
“Why? Everyone else does.” He said, “Because he understands when we do, he
wouldn't understand when you do.” Anyway, he was an alcoholic, and the only man
I ever saw go through a complete double personality.

Next door to the market was Neiberg's Funeral Home,
where I went downstairs at the age of eleven to see my first corpse embalming,
and watched the whole thing. Later, I wrote a beautiful poem about it, about the
woman's guts, blood running out, mixing with the garbage of the city in the
Narrows, somewhere, flowing, and mixing with the sea. Anyway, there was this old
woman being embalmed down there. I was eleven, standing and looking at her
bouncing like a piece of jelly on the embalmer's slab, and when I came upstairs,
there must've been a different look on my face. It was a hot summer's day. I was
standing outside the funeral parlor; my father came out of the market: “Hey,
Michael, where were you, Michael?” He said, “Were you downstairs?” I said,
“Ye-yes, I was.” He said, “Did you see?” I said, “Yeah, they showed me a
corpse.” And he got very upset, more upset than mad, my father, and he said to
me, “You shouldn't a seen that. You shouldn't have a seen that. You're too
young, you're too young.” Of course, he was deathly afraid of death.

Now, there was a beautiful little undertaker by the
name of Barney. He was a chauffeur, always neat. He'd hang out in the market.
But Barney was the only man who said to me later on in life, when he'd see a
pretty woman go by, “I had my share.” And I repeated this to my friend once, I
was about sixteen; and you know, later on in life that guy said to me, “I hope
that when I'm Barney's age I can look at a young girl go by and say, ‘I had my
share.'”

T
he
very earliest memory I have of the market is of being brought there at age three
or four, perhaps five, maybe on a Sunday, with my sister Sheila, who is older
than me by a few years, to sell our used comic books. For me it was a great
escape from the Milk Police, my mother and her tenement lieutenants. My father
taught us not to throw away old comic books. He told us, “If you want to make
some money, take the books you bought for ten cents, put them in a neat stack,
draw a line through the ten cents with a big black crayon, and mark them down so
you can get five, six cents.” And to us, this was simply a miracle. I mean, that
you could get any money back for something you had used was incredible. Sure
enough we tried it, and we were able to sell our joke books. So we'd go down on
the weekends, and of course this is how we were broken in to the concept of
merchandising. Very similarly, if you go to a Chinese grocery in San Francisco,
you might still see a young child learning to count on the abacus from a
grandmother or a grandfather, or learning how to give change. Training is very
early. We didn't need
Sesame Street
to teach us how
to add and how to subtract. We learned to add and subtract the minute we figured
out that it had some value to us. If we paid ten pennies for something and could
get five pennies for it, we knew we had five pennies more than the kid who threw
the comic book in the garbage. SO, that's basically how you learn to add and
subtract, and that's the basic value of mathematics. We didn't need any “New
Math,” no old math; it was called simple arithmetic.