Listen Ruben Fontanez (8 page)

“No me olvides…porque lo quiero…no me olvides….”

“This my block,” Ruben says. He seems sad now. I remark on the music, the spirit of his neighborhood, but my remarks, I know, are feeble. He shrugs. “It not so nice to be poor,” he says. “What you said before.” He points to the third story of an old tenement. There are flowerpots on the fire escape, a candle in the window. I see the shape of a heavy woman, silhouetted, rocking a child in her arms. “That's where I live,” he says.

“Ah, Ruben, Ruben,” I say. “I must go.”

“Thank you for the food, Mister Meyers,” he says.

“Thank you, Ruben—” I begin, and, impulsively, I lean down, and not without tenderness, kiss him on the forehead.

He smiles up at me in the dim light, and suddenly his eyes are on fire again. He laughs and leaps away from me.
“¡Maricón!”
he shouts.
“¡Viejo!”
He dances around me, screaming. Windows above us open. His eyes are the eyes that were in the classroom when he held the doll. People call from the windows. I hear music. “Ruben—?” I ask. “Why—?” He laughs again.
“¡Anciano!”
a woman shouts down at me. “Go home. For shame. Go home!” “Ruben?” I plead. He dances around me, making mysterious motions. He runs at me, then retreats.
“¡Pato! ¡Pato!”
I hear.
“¡Maricón! ¡Maricón!”
Ruben charges at me and snatches my briefcase. “He kiss me and hold my hand!” he shouts to the open windows. They hurl down abuse. I look up at the faces of monkeys, on both sides of the street now, leaning over fire escape railings. Ruben comes at me again, holding the doll in his hand, outstretched. “Give it to me,” I say. “Please—” He jumps up and down, his feet moving with miraculous speed. I hear drums beating. From the entrance to Ruben's building, a crowd moves toward me. One man has a belt wrapped around his fist. His shirt is open, revealing a massive chest. I shudder. I see the doll. The drums are louder. Then Ruben is standing next to me. He puts the doll back into the briefcase and hands it to me. “Run!” he whispers. “I see you soon. Where you live.” I look at him. “Run!” I try to touch him, to question him. “Run!” he says. “Run!”

I turn and do as he says. The shouts follow me down the street, Ruben's voice above them all, laughing.
“¡Maricón!… Maricón
…” I race down dark streets, the screams behind me, and I do not stop until I am on the platform of the elevated subway. I stand in the shadows. My heart pounds heavily and I fear for my life. On each side of my chest there is a sharp pain. I see the lights of the train, as it curls toward me from the open sky. I board it. Nobody follows me. The train goes over the Williamsburg Bridge and I do not look out the windows. At Delancey Street I change for the uptown IND. In the next car I see a boy who looks like Manuel, leaning forward and puffing on a cigarette. A policeman comes through, but I do not look at his face.

At 72nd Street I get out. I pass Verdi Square and the Dori Donut Shop without raising my eyes. On my own street, outside the Park West Hospital, there is another policeman. Someday, I think, someday the police will guard all the hospitals, they will be assigned to the waiting rooms of doctors, the corridors of laboratories. It is coming. Believe me. In my building I hear Carlos and Nydia screaming at one another. I hurry by their apartment, and up the stairs. A telephone is ringing. I unlock my door but I do not answer the phone. I put my briefcase down on my desk and undress quickly. Tomorrow. What will I do tomorrow, I wonder. I lie on my back in the darkness and I think about next year. Tomorrow I will telephone Mrs. Davies and tell her to get a substitute teacher. I get up and drink some water, but it does not help. The pains in my chest are worse. Warm milk would be good. There is no milk in the refrigerator, though. Perhaps Morris is right. Perhaps it would be best. I feel Ruben's eyes upon me. I see the doll, smiling. My phone rings again. I count. It rings eleven times, then stops. When the Muslims governed Spain they were good to the Jews. That is no small thing. I should let my cowboys know. I remember the party my father made every year to celebrate the Emperor Franz Joseph's birthday. All the neighbors and relatives came. I drank wine until I fell asleep. I will telephone Mrs. Davies. It is settled. I will stay at home and read, in Spanish. It has been a long time since I read
Don Quixote de la Mancha
. The pains spread through me. It is no use. I pull the covers around me and turn onto my side, then to my stomach. My nose drips onto my pillow. The telephone begins ringing again. I draw the pillow closer to me. My toes are cold. Ruben, Ruben. Listen to me, Ruben Fontanez.

FOUR

I
HAVE BEEN SLEEPING
on my side, but I do not look behind. I can feel Sarah there, with me, her body pressing on the bed. My head is heavy, my sinuses are still clogged. I pull the blanket closer to my neck. The parts of the dream that I can remember are vivid. The cowboys were in it and they danced around me endlessly, chanting Chassidic melodies, their arms on one another's shoulders, hopping lightly, smiling. Their beards grew from the tops of their heads. Their chins were bare. I turned with them. You were with me, Sarah. Then we were outside the circle, watching them from the window of our apartment on Eastern Parkway as they danced over the lawns of the Botanic Gardens and made their way up the walls of the Brooklyn Museum. You told me not to worry, you stroked my cheeks, you whispered softly in my ears. You spoke to me in Spanish. It was my birthday present, you said. You had been studying at the library. You wanted to share my work with me. You promised you would never speak English again. The lights were coming on in the museum and the cowboys were dancing up the walls. Stay with me, Sarah. I am cold. You want me to speak in Spanish, but I will not. I am an American, Sarah, the accident of my father's old age. Do you hear me? You lead me to the bed and it is warm there. I smell bacon frying. You hold me close and the flesh between your thighs is loose and warm.
No me olvides, querido
Harry, you say.
Muy amado mío.
. Do not forget me. Sarah, Sarah. I think I hear the cowboys on the sides of our building, pecking at the windows, scaling the fire escapes with ropes. You tell me not to worry and I huddle close under the covers, warming my ears at your breasts.

I do not look behind. The room is ice-cold. I am, at least, sleeping on my side. It is something. Light enters, from under the window shades. I hear a car pass below. I know it is foolish, but I am afraid to turn over, afraid I will find you there, smiling at me, brushing your gray hair. You handed the pigeon to me and I remember holding its softness as it gurgled beneath my fingertips. Your thighs are as soft. I wonder if the pigeon was in the dream. Here on West 76th Street I have no fire escape. The cowboys are singing with great strength and the auditorium at the Brooklyn Museum is crowded with members of my family. Light shines on them from the dome overhead. I cannot see Simon. They are singing the song my father hummed on the couch. I move further under the covers and Sarah wraps her legs around mine. I am an old man, Sarah. Do you hear me? I ache for you. I admit it. Above your knees, I warm my hands. The cowboys are singing in the branches of the trees that line Eastern Parkway, stroking their naked chins. Sarah tells me I should shave, and she laughs softly. I keep my hands warm. I turn over and face her, her features distinct under the covers, and I move to the point where her thighs begin. The flesh is warm. I hear giggling, then more laughter. The light goes on under the covers and where my love would enter, I see the face of Ruben's doll, staring out between the hair of a cowboy's beard, laughing hideously.

Pains move through my chest. My mouth goes slack. Sarah's arms comfort me and I am a child again. It is only
a
doll, she tells me. I will not open my eyes again. I swear it, Sarah. I turn away and she presses against me from behind. Her body is still warm. The doll laughs. Outside, the cowboys swing in their branches. Across the street, the concert goes on. The room is black. Sarah, Sarah. It happens so soon. I am sorry. Believe me. I hear the cowboys singing my father's song. Their voices grow louder.

I reach my right hand from under the covers and scratch on the floor beside my bed. I find my shoe and lift my watch from inside. It is almost seven. I will have to call Mrs. Davies again this morning. Today I will tell her. There will be no more calls from Harry Meyers. He has enough sick leave accumulated to last him until his retirement. He is entitled. When he wants to return he will call you. I lay the watch on my night table and pull the blanket tight around my neck. I cough and bring up phlegm, then I swallow. The radiator knocks. There are footsteps outside my door. I hear the sound of the toilet flushing. My own bladder is full. If I tell Morris that I was able to sleep on my side he will say it is because I am staying away from the cowboys. He will be here after breakfast, with a sweet roll brought from the kitchen of his home. I will not refuse it, I can assure you. And he will not press me about buying the bed next to his. He sees my situation now. He knows when words are not needed.

But I will fool him, you see. Harry Meyers will return to his monkeys and cowboys. It is merely a question of time. I will use up some of my sick leave, I will recover from my cold, I will regain my strength. I swallow and feel the glands move along my throat. If I have such dreams only to sleep on my side, I think, I have a good deal to look forward to when I reach my back. But that is all right also. Everything has its price in this world. There are rules and regulations.

The telephone rings again, but it does not bother me. I will settle that soon enough. If it rang after midnight last night Harry Meyers did not hear it. His sleep has been deep and heavy. I thank you for that, Sarah. From under the windows the radiator begins to send its heat across my room. I stay on my side now, the pillow beneath my shoulder, under my cheek. Perhaps I will shave this morning. I shift my weight and hear a mattress spring uncoil. My side of the bed goes down slightly. There is more light in the room, slipping through the window shades. I rub my eyes and laugh at myself, remembering the dream. Forget it, Harry, I say. But I do not fool myself. I was frightened. You are with me still, Sarah, and I do not forget the sensation, the feel of your warm flesh, the sight of the doll.

I close my eyes and think of the hours that lie in wait for me, until it is time to sleep again. In truth, I do not know what I will do with them. I have already read
Don Quixote
twice within the last ten days. I read it in Spanish, something I have not done since before the war, when I assigned it to the bright students in my honor classes. I will tell you something: here is a book. It is no accident that Cervantes died on the same day as Shakespeare, Harry Meyers would tell his classes. But you too were a fool, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, to have placed all your hopes on a post in the American colonies. What Morris says is true: a curse on Columbus that he ever discovered this land. It was not so terrible that you rested in the jails of Seville, that your government did not let you come here to redeem your failures. Still, I have had enough of your book. I will save it to give to my monkey. I will tell him that you called yourself the one-handed man
—“El Manco de Lepanto.”
That will please him, I know. He will stick pins in your other hand.

I open my eyes and glance at the mantel of the fireplace, where the doll rests now, smiling at me. In truth, I have grown fond of my likeness. I would not be without it. You are right, Sarah. It is only a doll. And a dream is only a dream.

I ease my feet out from under the covers and slide them along the floor until they find their slippers. They are the old Persian slippers, the birthday gift you gave me so many years ago. The radiator under the window groans, iron on iron. I let the covers fall from my back and I slip quickly into my bathrobe, pulling it tightly around me. I glance back at the bed, walk away, then look at it again. It is too narrow, of course. You sleep alone, Harry Meyers.

At the window, I raise the shade and warm my hands above the radiator. The window sash swings gently from side to side. Across from me, in the upper floors of the other brownstone buildings, shades are still down. It is all right, I think. They are entitled also. For block after block, you see, all along the west side of Manhattan island, the single rooms in the top floors of the brownstones and graystones are paid for from social security checks. Harry Meyers' situation is not so unusual. Perhaps he will get together with others and form a union. Next year, I think. When I retire.

Already, you see, they are trying to move us out. It is difficult to grow rich from other people's social security. Across the street, toward Amsterdam Avenue, numbers 171 and 173 have been boarded up. The wreckers have gutted the insides. The walls and floors are gone. Only the fronts and the roofs remain. I questioned the workmen one time, but they would give no information. I predict an apartment house, with no fourth or fifth floors for the members of our union. In truth, Morris's arguments gain strength each day.

Perhaps if we get more students to move onto the floors with us, we will be able to organize more effectively, to protest. On top of me, I know, is an Oriental, a graduate student at Columbia. But he never says hello to me. He carries brown grocery bags in and out of his room and lets wonderful odors trail through the stairwell. Well. If he does not wish to greet me, that is his business. Below me, I see the men walking to the synagogue, their prayer bags under their arms. It amazes me, to tell the truth, that they do not get bored, repeating their journeys every day, reciting the same prayers. I assure you, Simon, I would not have lasted more than two months, even if I had tried. Believe me.

I do not think about what I will do next year. What I will do for the next fourteen or fifteen hours seems more important. I have my two telephone calls to make. Morris will be here. Nydia will come upstairs with the baby and some food. I will watch the street below. I will cook meals over my gas burner. And I will consider: the first thirty years of my life as compared to the years sixty through ninety. When one makes such a comparison, it becomes clear that Harry Meyers may not, after all, be such a fool. One day past sixty-nine is all he asks for.