Memoir From Antproof Case (28 page)

I thought to lock myself in, but what if, at the moment upon which all my life was about to divide, the door rattled because Maise wanted to extract her egg salad sandwich from the refrigerator?

Constance was taking an oxygen treatment for her hair, and the house smelled fresh and sweet. She had been told by Lawrence of Arabia—not T. E. Lawrence, but her hairdresser—that, to be beautiful, hair required oxygen and cold temperatures. Sparing no expense, Constance arranged for a box-car-sized installation to be placed in the garbage yard. At the end of a long pipe from this chemical works was something that looked remarkably like what we would know much later as an astronaut's helmet. Placing the helmet on her head and pushing a green button on what looked like an overhead winch director brought Constance's hair a stream of chilled high pressure oxygen. Stenciled in red letters on the front, sides, and top of the helmet were the words
NO SMOKING
, to which I had added, in black china marker,
AND NO COFFEE DRINKING!

I left the house, and I wandered. It was August, so I went toward the Bronx. I have heard that the Bronx is dangerous now, but at that time the most perilous thing about it was the Jewish grandmothers who zoomed up and down the Grand Concourse like bumper cars. These women had what we knew in the AAF as tricycle landing gear, and their tail wheels were shopping carts. My first sight of them after the war reminded me of hundreds of B-29's taxiing in a windstorm.

I didn't know where I was going. I could hardly see in a straight line. I walked to put off the moment, hoping that I could make the same sort of arrangement with the facts of life that a donkey has with the carrot suspended from the stick tied to his harness. I wanted my moment of reckoning to be bright, immediate, and always receding.

Though we had visited some of Constance's distant relatives in Riverdale and Fieldston, and I had worked one summer as an orderly in the fecal analysis hut of Montefiore Hospital, I did not really know the Bronx. Near Yankee Stadium, I hailed a taxi. "Take me to the interior," I commanded.

"The interior of what?" the driver asked.

"The Bronx. Deep inside the Bronx. Drop me into the dark well of infinity."

He drove for twenty minutes and let me off at the intersection of two lines of elevated track. In the summer shadows of steel platforms that held speeding trains were neon signs blazing at midday, phalanxes of jelly donuts on frosted glass, and lines of middle-aged women in beauty parlors having their hair lacquered lady-bug close to their skulls as if their dream were to return to the wombs of their husbands' bowling-ball bags. Then there was the meat delicatessen, where hot cuts of boiled beef sweated in a jungle of sauerkraut, and penile knockwursts revolved eternally on rollers of stainless steel. You could get coffee there, but I forswore it in such a circumstance. To drink the stuff was bad enough, but to do so surrounded by calves' feet, beef tongues, livers....

Nor did I dare go into the bakery, fearing that the coffee would make me crazy and cause me to eat three dozen jelly donuts. Even without coffee I was good for at least a dozen, as they had been invented in my town. I used to try to bring a bag of them home from time to time, from the bakery where they had originated, but the walk was four miles and, especially when it was cold and the moon was full, I would arrive with an empty white bag, my loden coat dusted with powdered sugar. Even these days I can eat ten or twelve of those pastries that, at the bakery in Niterói, the children call
pusatas,
and that have a prune filling shaped to resemble the Crown of Thorns.

I walked for several hours on the residential streets, always returning to the shady nexus of subway platforms—only in New York does the 'subway' run mainly above ground. It grew darker and darker, hotter and hotter. Though it was only the middle of the afternoon, the world seemed black, and the red neon signs flashed like little wriggly eels at the bottom of the ocean. I was in the fog of combat that, in combat, my rage had always dispelled. I knew I could do it again, for just beyond the walls of fear is a blue sky where heart and mind are one.

"Take hold of yourself," I said gently. A few minutes later, I saw a pizza bakery tucked into a corner deep in the August shadows of the El. There was coffee there. Getting inside, closing in on the target, was like racing to Berlin through flak and wind. The closer you get to your objective, the more scared, the more focused, the more elated, and the less afraid you become. It's a paradox. As the world sharpens and gleams so intensely that even fighting at the greatest speed seems like slow motion, the growth of fear becomes the lessening of fear.

My courage firmed up as I entered, heart beating in the presence of a coffee maker. A number of silver ovens were on full blast, and inside the shop the temperature was no less than 160 degrees Fahrenheit, worse than Mexico in July. A girl emerged from the back, the sole employee. She was a blonde, almost my height. The great heat showed on her body, which glistened with water. To stay alive, she had to drink gallons and gallons throughout the day, which made her sexually insatiable, hair-triggered. But this was not apparent to me even as she devoured me with her blue eyes, for I was concentrating upon my mission. I stared at the coffee maker. It had come to this, finally. The trains thundered above. My heart was wild and I dripped with sweat. I was going to do it.

"Is it better when it's hot?" I asked, thinking that iced coffee might be less horrible.

The pizza girl breathed like an expiring animal. "Yes," she said, her eyes going slightly out of focus.

"I want it now," I said slowly and deliberately. "Let's do it."

"Oh!" she said. She came around the counter, rushed for the door, locked it, and turned the sign so that to the outside world it said CLOSED. "Let's go in the back. On the flour sacks."

"Right here is fine," I told her.

"The window," she said, motioning with her eyes to the glass store front. "People will see."

"You're right," I agreed. "I don't want people to see. Let's go in the back."

She led the way, and I said, "What about the coffee?"

"Coffee?"

"I'm going to drink a cup of coffee."

"You're not hot enough?" she asked, pushing her hair behind her neck and holding it, with both hands, like a rope. "I'll give you lots of hot coffee," she said as she led the way to the back.

They kept sacks of flour in a small room that had no windows but only a fluorescent light and a ventilating fan above the door. I saw no coffee there, and turned to look at the percolator behind me. When I looked in again toward the sacks of flour, the pizza girl was half kneeling, half sitting upon them, disrobing musically, rhythmically, swaying as she untied the white strings of her apron.

 

As evening fell, after having been forced to betray Constance for the first time in our marriage, I walked aimlessly into the deepest Bronx. It was still light, and people were eating dinner or mowing their lawns. The remarkable thing about the climate of the Bronx is that in January you can put a thick steak on your porch and it will be frozen in two minutes, and in August you can place it on a grill in the very same place, without a fire, and it will cook all by itself. And though spring lasts for only ten days, fall is a paradise that seems never to end.

Walking put me in mind of my youth, and I stayed hungry. I am almost sure that I did not, in two or three hours, pass a single investment banker or a single holder of a single seat on a single stock exchange. No Yale pennants, Duesenbergs, Jaguars, plaid pants, or perfect teeth. I did notice, however, that people seemed hostile. I took this to be the kind of resentment that I, as a graduate of Harvard, a partner at Stillman and Chase, and, now, a billionaire, would engender no matter what my real character, no matter that I was still the beleaguered runner from the branch office, no matter that I, like everyone else, had been fully set into my "class"—that is, my emotional home—before the age of ten, and we had been rather poor.

I imagined that it was the way I dressed, or perhaps my haircut, or perhaps, God help me, my bearing and expression. When you are a member of the moneyed elite, you get used to a certain low-level hostility. But what I did not know was that children ran indoors as I passed, and women looked at me in fear, because my back, from heel to crown, was covered in flour, as were my hair, my face, and my neck. I looked like a mime, or the ghost of Christmas past.

As I was walking, I came up with a scheme. By luck and revulsion, I had never had a cup of coffee, and my recent efforts to accommodate to Constance, to surrender to what she referred to as normal life but which I feel is a serious addiction that wildly distorts the personality, had failed. Not only had I been unable to drink coffee, I had not been able to get within ten feet of it.

The only way for me to accomplish my normalization would be through force. Force is a remarkable instrument, and when it threatens survival it awakens capacities that have slept in the soul like giants. My idea was simple: I would bribe the police to force me to drink a cup of coffee. After all, they had guns and it was well known that they would do virtually anything for the right amount of money. The office manager at Stillman and Chase made monthly trips to see the captain at the precinct, and she always brought him several thousand dollars for the "fund."

"Why?" I asked her, and was told that it was to keep our runners safe and our operations smooth. The custom was for her to pay the captain a courtesy call, and give two hundred dollars to the benevolent fund. He would thank her, and leave the room to put the money in the precinct safe. Left alone at a little table with a single drawer, the office manager would stuff in thousands in tens and twenties, and slam it shut. At that sound, the captain would reappear, thank her for the contribution he had just put in the safe, and shake her hand. That he kept on finding huge amounts of money in the drawer was something he explained as a kind of Miracle of the Loaves.

In New York, when a, wealthy person dies with no relatives to take care of his affairs, the police seal the house, but only after they loot it. Sometimes they come back at night and break the seal to get something they forgot. They don't like to talk about things like this, though, because they feel that it is an insult to their dignity.

To my great surprise, a radio car came up even with me as I walked, and held itself to my pace.

"Are you going to get in the car, or do we have to chase you with a net?" I was asked from inside.

"I beg your pardon? Would you say that again?"

"Do you want the net and the straitjacket, or are you going to cooperate?"

"You read my mind," I said. "What I was thinking was so powerful that it brought you to me, but, before we've made the arrangement, don't get on your high horse. And, besides, I don't want to deal with anyone below the rank of captain."

I jumped into the car and laughed all the way to the precinct. There, as they handcuffed me, I asked that they leave my hands in front so I could drink the cup of coffee.

"
The
cup of coffee?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean, 'drink
the
cup of coffee?' Are you American?"

"Of course. Don't I look it?"

"No."

"What nationality do you take me for?"

The desk sergeant looked me over. "The moon," he said.

I was in trouble. They would not honor my request, and after I was booked for disturbing the peace they threw me into a holding cell. Its one other occupant was a bearded ancient with a pink stump where his right hand should have been. He looked very much like Santa Claus, but his eyes were filled with terror. You could tell that he never stopped being afraid, that somehow the fear switch in his brain had been permanently welded shut, and that this simple problem had been the cause of his downfall.

"Are you afraid of elephants?" I asked.

He nodded, fearfully.

"Are you afraid of meteorites?"

He nodded again.

"Paper boxes?"

He shuddered with fear.

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?"

He shook his head purposefully, vehemently.

"It doesn't matter that I won't hurt you, does it. You're afraid of me because I'm here. You're afraid of everything. As long as you're awake, you fear."

He made no assent. Then I understood. "You don't sleep, do you?"

"No," he whispered. He was too afraid to sleep. He was like a fish. Perhaps fish do sleep, but he didn't.

"But why are you afraid of
me?
" I asked.

He threw himself back against the cage, which was as good an answer as any.

At four o'clock the next morning I was taken to a different floor, where, in the middle of a group of wooden desks, a detective sat near a pool of light.

"Don't people like you normally wear a dress?" he asked.

"What?"

"Where's your dress?"

Perhaps he was insane. "Why would I wear a dress?"

"Why would you make up?"

"Why would I make up?" I repeated.

"Yeah."

I held out my hands in the posture of universal puzzlement. "I wouldn't."

"You live downtown," he said, "not here."

"That's right."

"So what are you doing here? There are no transvestite bars here."

"Transvestite bars!"

"Did somebody steal your dress? Did they hurt you? What?" I thought he was entirely mad, but what did that matter? He was a policeman. I leaned over and spoke like a conspirator. "Look," I said, "I'll pay you to shoot me if I don't drink the cup of coffee. Money is no object."

He was not exactly comprehending, but I had mentioned money. "
The
cup of coffee."

"
The
cup."

"What cup?"

"The first cup."

"What about the second cup?"

"Don't get greedy. If I drink the first cup I'll be able to handle the second cup on my own."

"Do you have a private doctor?"

"Yes."

"What's his name?"

"Dr. Gruffy."