Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (28 page)

I said, ‘That’s right.’

‘Are you interested in the deaf?’ he asked.

I told him that I planned to write an article about the club.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the Union League is a wonderful organization, but it isn’t the only deaf club in the city by any means. It’s the biggest, but there are dozens of others. If you’re interested, I could tell you about some of them.’ I suggested that we go somewhere and have a drink, and he said, ‘Downstairs in this building there’s a place called Larry’s Café. We could go there.’

We went downstairs to Larry’s, which was a typical Eighth Avenue saloon, stood at the bar, and ordered Tom Collinses.

‘My name is Jack Fitzsimmons,’ said the red-haired man. ‘I’m a proofreader. I work in a big job-printing plant in Brooklyn. I have a lot of deaf friends and I’m a sign-language interpreter. That’s my hobby. My parents were deaf and I learned the signs from them.
Practically
all deaf clubs have honorary hearing members who know the signs and act as interpreters. I hold honorary membership in a small deaf club in Brooklyn, but I’ll tell you about that later. If a deaf person has to go to court, or is called to the income-tax bureau, or wants to take out citizenship papers or a marriage license, or the like of that, he usually asks his organization’s interpreter to go along and help him out. Like myself, most of these interpreters picked up the signs from their parents. The children of deaf parents are an interesting group in themselves. Helen Menken, the actress, is one. I don’t know if she can sign, but I do know she does a lot of good propaganda work for the National Association of the Deaf, which has a chapter in the city. It isn’t a social organization. It fights laws which interfere with the rights of the deaf to drive automobiles, and it has an impostor bureau, which investigates beggars who claim to be deaf and often aren’t, and it has a nomenclature committee, which writes to newspapers when they use unpleasant phrases like “deaf and dumb,” and it acquaints employers with the special capabilities of deaf workers, and it does a lot of things like that. By the way, how do you like this saloon?’

I said that I liked it all right.

‘Nothing unusual about it,’ he said, ‘except that it’s a hangout for the deaf. Gets more deaf trade than any other saloon in the city. On Union League meeting nights it’s crowded. The owner is a fellow named Laurence Blau. He takes an interest in the deaf. He has a son named Sheldon, who tends bar at night. Sheldon knows finger spelling. I guess he’s the only bartender in town who does. When you were upstairs in the club, did you happen to notice a shoeshine man?’

‘Yes, I saw him,’ I said.

‘Well, his name is Hughie Schmidt. To amuse himself, Hughie teaches hearing people how to converse with the deaf. He taught Sheldon. He also taught one of the cops on the beat, Henry O’Connor of the West Fifty-fourth Street station. When the Union League runs a big affair, the arrangements committee always gets in touch with the station house and asks that O’Connor be detailed to keep order. Not that they really need a cop. The deaf are very
orderly
and there aren’t many drunks among them. It’s just a custom. O’Connor is a patient man, and Hughie was able to teach him quite a little sign language, as well as finger spelling.’

‘What is the difference?’ I asked.

‘In the manual alphabet,’ Fitzsimmons said, ‘the letters are represented by the positions of the fingers of the hand, and talking with it is called finger spelling. It’s tedious. The sign language is a great body of gestures which has been passed down from one generation to the next, each adding to it. If I put my right hand to my chin and pretend to pull an imaginary beard, which is a sign for “old,” and then point my index finger at a deaf person a couple of times, he will understand that I’m asking “How old are you?” Many deaf signs are used by the general public, and thousands of them are exactly like the signs used by the Plains Indians. An example is the sign for “crazy.” You touch the forehead with the index finger and then move the finger in a circle over the forehead two or three times. In many conversations both signs and finger spelling are used. Unfamiliar names, for example, are always finger-spelled. Some signs require great skill in pantomime. No one person knows all the signs. Some are expert, others know just enough for simple conversations.’

‘How many deaf persons are there in the city?’ I asked.

‘In the five boroughs,’ Fitzsimmons said, ‘there are between five and six thousand so-called deaf-mutes. By and large, they live in a restricted world, a world of their own. They prefer their own company because most hearing people have a tendency to look upon them as peculiar, or mysterious, or unnatural. When they converse with each other in sign language out in public, they are stared at as if they had escaped from the zoo. On the street or in subways, no one takes them for granted; they are always stared at. Because of this, they like to go about in groups. Even the phrases used to describe them, particularly “deaf and dumb,” show a lack of understanding. There is nothing wrong with the vocal organs or the intelligence of the average deaf person. One learns to speak by imitation, and the deaf child can’t speak, simply because he can’t hear. He doesn’t know what speech is. It’s like expecting a blind child to visualize a color.

‘Only about thirty-five per cent of the deaf were born that way, and they are called the congenitally deaf. The bulk of the others lost their hearing during babyhood or childhood after having the measles, influenza, diphtheria, scarlet fever, meningitis, or some such disease, and they are called the adventitiously deaf. The vocal organs of practically all the people in both groups are normal, and it is possible to teach many of them to speak intelligibly, but it takes almost superhuman patience. This effort is made in most of the deaf schools in New York State. Finger spelling and the signs aren’t permitted in classrooms in these schools. Instead, the pupils are taught to speak and lip-read. Some become proficient, particularly those who had talking experience before they went deaf, but others manage to learn only a few phrases. However, the speech of just about all deaf persons sounds queer to those unaccustomed to it. Hearing people complain that it is too guttural, or that it lacks modulations, or that it sounds animal-like. In any case, for one reason or another, it seems to make most of them ill at ease. If they don’t understand a deaf person right off the bat, they motion to him to write out what he has to say. And they always stare. You see how it is. If the deaf use signs, they are stared at. If they speak, they are stared at. Upstairs a while ago you jumped when my friend asked you for a cigarette. Was his speech that unpleasant?’

‘I’m very sorry. It wasn’t that his speech was unpleasant,’ I said. ‘Mr Frankenheim spoke to both of you in sign language when we came into the room, and I took it for granted all of you were deaf. When your friend suddenly spoke, I was startled.’

Fitzsimmons shrugged his shoulders.

‘The chief characteristic of the deaf is their clannishness,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject. ‘I don’t mean to imply that they are embittered. Most of them are happy enough as humans go, but for understanding and companionship they have to depend almost entirely on each other. For this reason there is a slew of clubs, societies, leagues, lodges, federations, and associations exclusively for them. The majority are little informal groups or cliques. The club in which I hold honorary membership is one of these. It has fourteen members. They all come from Brooklyn. Our members are above the average in intelligence. They are great
readers
. One has an A.B. from Gallaudet College, the old National Deaf-Mute College, which is the only one of its kind in the world. It’s in Washington. During the winter we meet above a cafeteria near Borough Hall. The cafeteria is owned by a relative of a member and he lets us use a vacant room on the second floor. We sit around and talk and smoke and drink beer until late at night. The deaf prefer cafeterias, by the way, particularly Automats. I know a deaf woman who has eaten in an Automat regularly for twelve years without ever uttering a single word. Every Sunday during the summer our club goes down to Coney. We always meet at the Brighton Beach Baths, which for some reason is popular with the deaf. Several clubs go there. On winter Sundays the club often goes in a body to the Metropolitan Museum, which has free lectures for lip readers. The deaf are great for museums. We have a couple of members who damned near live in the Metropolitan. We had a wedding in the club not long ago – a girl from our club and a fellow who belongs to the Union League. The deaf almost always marry the deaf. Look here, I’m tired of standing. Let’s get a seat somewhere.’

We ordered another round of drinks and sat down in a booth in the back room.

‘Our group is quite informal,’ Fitzsimmons continued. ‘We have officers and dues and we call ourselves the Borough Hall Ephphatha Society. “Ephphatha” is a word that Jesus spoke when he healed a deaf man. You’ll find it in St Mark. It means “Be opened.” It has been picked for a name by many Protestant and Catholic deaf clubs. We seldom use it. Usually we just say ‘“the crowd” or “the gang.” Once in a while we have a regular meeting with parliamentary order and everything, but mostly we just sit around and talk. That’s the way it is with most of the small clubs. Then there are larger, better-organized groups who have religious affiliations and hold their meetings in churches. Four or five of these groups meet in the parish house of St Ann’s Church for Deaf-Mutes at 511 West 148th Street. This little church was the first of its kind in the world. The pastor is deaf, of course, and all services – sermons, weddings, funerals, christenings, everything – are conducted in sign
language
. During services the front of the chapel is flooded with light so the congregation won’t have any trouble seeing the pastor’s hands. It has a choir and the people in it sing hymns with their hands. St Ann’s is old. It was founded in 1852, and the building they’re in now was put up in 1898.

‘St Ann’s is Episcopal, but people of all religions go to it. The Catholics have many deaf organizations. The principal ones are the Knights and Ladies of De L’Epee Sick and Disability Association and the Ephphatha Society for the Catholic Deaf. Both are combined social and insurance organizations. They pay sick benefits, hold card parties and socials, and sponsor athletic teams. The De L’Epee Association meets in an office building in Brooklyn. It was named after an eighteenth-century French priest who founded what was probably the first deaf school. The Ephphatha Society meets at St Francis Xavier’s on West Sixteenth Street. Deaf athletic teams use the gym at this church for tournaments. Services in the sign language are held there the first Sunday of every month by an old Jesuit named Father Michael A. Purtell. He is a hearing man, now in his seventies, who has been working for the deaf since he was a young priest. He puts out a paper full of social notes about the deaf from all over the country, and it is widely read. It used to be called the
Catholic Deaf-Mute
, but not long ago he changed the name to
Ephphatha
. As a matter of fact, in the last ten or fifteen years almost every title with “deaf and dumb” or “deaf-mute” in it has been changed. Used to be that every school for the deaf had “deaf and dumb” in its title.’

‘How do deaf Catholics confess?’ I asked.

‘There are a number of priests who know the signs, and they hear confession in sign language,’ Fitzsimmons said. ‘In Brooklyn, for example, you’ll find them at St Brigid’s, St Michael’s, Transfiguration, St Monica’s, and Fourteen Holy Martyrs. Some of these priests had deaf parents. In membership, the Jewish organizations are next in size to the Catholic ones. The largest of these is the Society for the Welfare of Jewish Deaf, which rents space in a hall on West Eighty-fifth Street in Manhattan. It’s a lively outfit. It gives classes in sign language. It has a dramatics group, which
puts
on plays and vaudeville in signs, a gym group, and several athletic teams. It has Friday-night religious services, in which an interpreter stands beside the rabbi and translates, and it has teas, lectures, movies, and Bingo parties. It even has a plot of its own in New Mount Carmel Cemetery in Brooklyn. Every so often, a delegation goes out and puts flowers on the graves of departed members. Also, this society has an employment service.’

‘I wanted to ask about that,’ I said. ‘How do the deaf go about finding jobs?’

‘They have the devil of a time,’ Fitzsimmons said. ‘It is the thorniest problem they have to meet. There is one employment agency specifically for them. It is operated by an energetic young woman named Margarette Helmle, who used to be a personnel manager for General Motors, and it has office space in the New York State Employment Service building down on East Twentyeighth Street. Miss Helmle is an expert signer. Her salary is paid by the three schools in which most of the deaf in the city are educated – the Lexington in Manhattan, St Joseph’s in the Bronx, and the New York School in White Plains. She tries to find jobs for all applicants, whether they come from these schools or not. She goes out and calls on the personnel managers of big corporations and talks up the deaf, and she averages twenty-two placements a month. The deaf are strongest in the printing trades. There are four in the job plant where I work, and you’ll find two or three in most big newspaper plants. They can do any kind of work that doesn’t absolutely require hearing. Employers usually write out orders to them. They make particularly good welders, power-machine operators, carpenters, and electricians.’

We had long since finished our drinks. Fitzsimmons appeared to be tired of talking and I suggested another round, but he refused. He said he thought he would go back upstairs to the Union League and play some pinochle. I left Larry’s Café with him.

‘This may interest you,’ he said, just before he started up the stairs. ‘The deaf, particularly lip readers, are suspicious of hearing people who begin sympathizing with them. They’ve learned that sooner or later these people will ask questions that are rather
embarrassing
. There is the type who right away wants to know exactly how it feels to live in a soundless world. One of the members of my club, the graduate of Gallaudet I told you about, has an answer. He got it out of some book or other, and all of our members have memorized it. It goes, “The deaf live in a world of deadly silence. The singing of the birds, the inflections of the human voice, beautiful music, and the confusion of noises that proclaim life are lacking. Many things are in motion, but there is no sound.”