The Prince of West End Avenue Page 11

  a nurse, a cook, and a bottle-washer. Of the bedpans she would say nothing, save that hauling him onto them and rolling him off had brought a return of her old back problems. Now, even to pick up a piece of paper—here she demonstrated, picking up the list of solo-ambulants: "oy!"—was agony. Now Bernie was talking of retirement; he liked the easy life. "Who ever heard of a C.P.A. retiring?" Well, if he thought she was going to hang about catering to his whims, he had better think again. It was a relief to be out of the house.

  Meanwhile, she had already caught up on the gossip of our little community. There really was nothing of interest I could tell her, but that did not stop her from telling me the latest tidbits, among them two stunning items whose significance she was as ill equipped to recognize as I was almost afraid to contemplate. Nahum Lipschitz is in the infirmary with a broken hip, a severely sprained wrist, and numerous cuts and abrasions! It seems that just before lunchtime he fell down a flight of steps in the fire stairwell. What he was doing in the stairwell, when the elevator was at his disposal, he refuses to say, but he claims that the "accident" was engineered, that he was pushed. By whom? "By person or persons unknown." These are serious charges, and the Kommandant has been summoned home from Jerusalem, where he has been attending the annual International Conference of Jewish Old-Age Home Directors. The last thing he wanted, said Selma, hinting at certain "irregularities" that she was not at liberty to divulge, was to have the police and (worse!) the newspapers sniffing around. As for her, she did not believe that Lipschitz had been pushed. A momentary dizziness, and voild! The man was eighty-one; at his age, such episodes were not unheard-of. And when had Nahum Lipschitz ever accepted the blame for anything? Meanwhile, he was lucky to be alive. His condition was grave: brittle bones, she explained.

  The second item Selma had no reason to connect to the

  first, and in fact she retailed it independently, while chatting about the warm reception she had received from residents and staff alike upon her return. It had done her heart good. Say what you like, there was still some good in the world. At any rate, shortly after one o'clock Benno Hamburger and Her-mione Perlmutter had passed her window on their way to the front door, without even turning in her direction or pausing to check out. They had looked grim as death; he was holding her firmly by the upper arm, and they were walking at a determined clip. Selma had rapped on the glass, but they had ignored her. The nerve of some people. They knew the rules. She had tried to run after them, but what with her poor back and all, by the time she got to the front door, they were gone, and a long gray limousine was just pulling away from the curb. Imagine that, she sniffed. They didn't even know she was back.

  An attempt on Lipschitz's life! Hamburger and his moll on the run!

  O Jumbo, what have you done!

  The WORLD IS STILL FULL of surprises. The old analogies yet hold: "I am a little world made cunningly," said an English poet. Just so. And between the macrocosm and the microcosm stands the Emma Lazarus, racked by the same passions as heave the ocean on the shore, divide nations, and cause conflicts in the human soul. But surprise is merely the failure of perception, the myopia of a creature who, like Oedipus, runs from disaster only to encounter it, who sees his good turned to evil, his evil to good. In this sense, the figure for Purpose is less a ramifying tree than a spider's web of infinite complexity and total harmony, and in it we are caught, blinded from a vision of the whole by entanglement in a part. And the spider?

  That, I suppose, is Time, which first traps us and then at length devours us.

  These and such as these were my lugubrious thoughts during a sleepless night, with my foe struck down by my friend, and my friend fleeing the savage talons of the avenging Furies.

  This morning the rains fell in torrents. On the bulletin board in the lobby was a terse notice: "Rehearsals canceled until further notice." When I entered the dining room for breakfast, it seemed to me that the voices hushed momentarily. I felt myself the cynosure of all eyes. La Dawidowicz ostentatiously cut me, turning her back. But soon the twittering resumed; the talk was all of Lipschitz and of the endangered play. At my table sat only Seiiora Krauskopf y Guzman. "Buenos dias, Dona Isabella," I said. She turned her magnificent, her passionate, black eyes up to me. "Twat twat twat," she said. "Jog jog jog, jog

  j°g jog."

  Eulalia brought me my modest breakfast: a bowl of porridge, a slice of dry toast, and a glass of tea. Scarcely had I begun on the porridge when I sensed a presence behind me. I turned. It was Hamburger—yes, yes, Hamburger! He was white-faced and grim, perhaps even angry. He still wore his overcoat, which glistened with raindrops, and under his arm he carried a slim rectangular parcel, in a neat wrapping of heavy, water-splotched brown paper. The shock almost killed me. Automatically I spooned some porridge into my mouth.

  "Lets go," he said.

  How could I get up? "I can't. I'm weak, I haven't eaten." My heart was thumping in its cavity. Surely he must have heard it.

  He was pitiless. "Five minutes. Your room or mine?"

  "Yours. No, mine. No, what does it matter? Sit down. Where have you been? What have you done?"

  "My room. In five minutes." He turned on his heel and marched stiffly out.

  I watched him go, my legs turned to water. As best I could, I fought the rising hysteria, the nausea, and tried to take some nourishment. It was no use. Making my apologies to the sefiora, I tottered from the table. Several times I had to pause and lean on the wall on my way to the elevator.

  Hamburger's quarters are decorated in the manner of an English clubroom: polished wood, hunting prints, leather furniture, gleaming silver. He gestured impatiently to a chair, and I sat down. He went over to the window and stood for a moment with his back to me, looking down on West End Avenue. Suddenly he whirled.

  "Nahum Lipschitz is in the infirmary," he barked.

  "I know." I tried to keep the reproach out of my voice.

  "Shit, shit, shit!"

  To this triplicate of Hamburgeriana I could of course say nothing.

  "He is innocent, completely innocent!"

  "And what if he were guilty? Would that have justified violence?" I demanded.

  "What pains me most, what I cannot forgive, is that you gave me your word."

  I got up from the chair at this and stood before him. "He might have died; he might never recover. Do you know how serious this is? The Kommandant is on his way back from Jerusalem. 'Don't talk to him,' you said. I could have reasoned with him."

  "Your word of honor, Korner. We shook hands."

  "Ah, Benno, that you should think such an act would help me! Better I never saw the letter again."

  "Too late for that now," he said bitterly. "At best it's a botched job. At worst. . . ? But don't worry, I'll not turn you

  in." There were tears in his eyes. "As for me, I must prepare to shoulder my burden of guilt, an accomplice after the fact. You must deal with your own conscience."

  His words were beginning to penetrate my understanding. " You won't turn me in? But I thought it was you, you who pushed him."

  "Me? Are you mad? I knew he was innocent. I as good as told you so yesterday morning."

  "Then you didn't. . . ?"

  "No, and you, you didn't. . . ?"

  "No."

  The emotions of the moment were too great. We fell into one another's arms, thumping each other on the back, sobbing, swaying, holding each other up.

  "Hamburger, old fellow."

  "Korner, my friend."

  When at last we grew somewhat calmer, I said, "If it wasn't either of us, then who?"

  Mutual enlightenment; we answered as one: "The Red Dwarf!"

  Yes, had he not hinted to me over the weekend that he was up to something?

  "We must, of course, denounce him to the authorities, Otto."

  "Not so fast. Let me remind you of a great man's words: An accusation is no proof of guilt.' '

  "We'll talk to him first."

  There was more. Hamburger retriev
ed the parcel from his bureau and handed it to me. "This is yours."

  I unwrapped it. It was my letter, elegantly framed. I could not hold back my tears. Silently we read it together.

  "I Frutti" Lago Como, June 7, 1914

  Dear Mr. Korner,

  I have read with great pleasure Days of Darkness, Nights of Light and congratulate you on a nicely turned-out little volume. One stands back in admiration of so precocious a talent, for an early spring promises an abundant harvest: "the roots dig deep."

  With fraternal good wishes, Rainer Maria Rilke

  "In all these years, you've never told me about it," said Hamburger. "All right, you didn't want to talk about the past, that I could respect, I asked no questions. Some things it's better not to remember. But to say nothing about your poetry! Would it have hurt so much to tell an old friend about that, or to have shown him the letter?"

  "How did you get it back? How long have you known it was stolen?"

  "I knew nothing before yesterday morning, when you showed me the charades." Hamburger sighed and took a folded piece of paper from his wallet. "Look at this."

  My first for some's forbidden food, And, too, a ranting actor rude. My second will in town be found, With golden chain on belly round. My whole's imbued with passion's heat, In many senses good to eat.

  "That's me," he said sheepishly. "Ham, burgher. Hamburger."

  "Then you've been getting them, too?"

  "No, just this one. And there was no mystery. It was handed to me." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "The truth will out. I might as well tell you everything."

  And so I learned about Hamburger's weekend in the Hamptons. It had been an idyllic time: a considerate hostess, cultured and congenial company, a sumptuous home, Edenic surroundings. Subsequent events, of course, had cast a retrospective pall, but at the time he had thought himself in heaven. At one point La Perlmutter had shown him her daughter's study. The wall above the couch was adorned with framed autographs: Kipling, Hemingway, James, Sartre, Weill, among others. His eye happened to catch Rilke's signature. "But I thought nothing of that. Why should I? Certainly I didn't stop to read the letter." They had gone into the study to enjoy a moment of privacy. "Hermione stood close; I drank in her perfume. My mind, I assure you, was on topics other than literary."

  On Saturday evening, after dinner, La Perlmutter amused the company with charades. She had an extraordinary aptitude, creating them on the spot, viva voce. Each of the guests was gently mocked—"Tastefully, you understand. It was all done in the spirit of fun." Hamburger's name, she pretended, was particularly difficult. She would need time to think about it. The conversation in the drawing room moved on to other sprightly topics.

  That night he achieved his heart's desire, reached an ecstasy beyond the power of words to describe. The next morning, at breakfast, she handed him the charade, the one he had just shown me. "For private consumption only," she had said demurely, at once alluding to and redoubling the risque double entendre of the last line.

  In the afternoon, during a walk on the grounds, with the brilliant foliage bathed in that extraordinary light I had

  observed from my windows at the Emma Lazarus, he had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted.

  Hamburger held his head in his hands and rocked from side to side. He made a strong effort to pull himself together. "So now you know," he said, his voice trembling. "She stole your letter, and she sent you the charades."

  "Your fiancee?"

  "Not anymore. That's all over."

  He had gone back with Hermione to the Hamptons to retrieve the letter. This morning he had returned alone.

  "But why did she do it?"

  "She wouldn't tell me. She cried and cried. "He knows,' she said. My heart was breaking, Otto. 'He knows.' Do you?"

  Did I? When a recent widower, I had rejected her advances. Since then our relationship, if that is the proper word, had been—what? cool? inimical? Was that it? A woman scorned? But who could have guessed that my slighting of her would have such calamitous consequences? Obviously I could say none of this to my poor friend. "I know nothing," I said. "Perhaps when she returns—"

  "She'll never return."

  "Never mind against me, what did she have against Lip-schitz?"

  "Who hasn't got something against Lipschitz?"

  "Oh, Benno, I'm so sorry."

  "It's finished, over and done with, all for the best."

  What can one say in the face of such nobility, such grandeur of soul? Witness Hamburger, torn between loyalties, tumbled from felicity to misery, a Hercules at the Crossroads, and like Hercules choosing the heroic path!

  The Red Dwarf claims innocence.

  Hamburger and I confronted him this afternoon at two

  o'clock, the beginning of the siesta hour, a time when the noisy engine of the Emma Lazarus idles at a gentle hum. He opened his door a crack and peered up at us suspiciously. Recognition dawned, and he flung the door wide. "Come in, comrades, come in!" We had got him up from bed: he wore only boxer shorts, voluminous, with blue polka dots on a dingy off-white background. What a hairy little fellow he is! The shades were drawn; the bed was rumpled. His room is appropriately Spartan: an iron bedstead, a small table, hard wooden chairs; on the walls, giant photographs of Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe. "Sit down, sit down," he said. The only object of interest in the place is a copper samovar gleaming on a small chest of drawers.

  The Red Dwarf executed a little jig. "So, comrades, we've won the revolution without striking a single blow."

  "Lipschitz says he was pushed," said Hamburger.

  "Typical Zionist mystification. First they make the boo-boo, then they look around for someone to blame."

  "A broken hip is more than a boo-boo," I said.

  "Better a broken hip than a broken head."

  "He may die, Poliakov," said Hamburger.

  The Red Dwarf shrugged and held his hands apart in the manner of Michelangelo's Pieta. "And the rest of us?" he said.

  The interrogation was not going the way we had expected. I tried another tack. "What was it you meant the other day? You told me it would be better if we weren't seen together for a while?"

  He grinned, his gold tooth winking. From the pocket of a denim jacket hanging on the door, he took a key and held it triumphantly aloft. "The key to the costume closet! Poliakov reporting to the Central Committee: mission accomplished! But in the light of later developments, Comrade Director, it seems we had no need to liberate it." I suppose I blushed. "No need for modesty. You're the people's candidate."

  "We'll see," I said dismissively.

  "But what was Lipschitz doing in the stairwell?" Hamburger was not yet satisfied.

  "That's easy," said the Red Dwarf. "He goes out there to pass wind. On this floor we all know it. Believe me, with that stink, no one could get near him. He must've blown himself off the landing, a self-propelled rocket."

  Hamburger laughed. Such talk was, so to speak, right up his alley.

  "Fundamentally," said the Red Dwarf, "he couldn't help himself."

  "Not bad, Poliakov," said Hamburger. "Not bad. In such matters there is no motive: it was a case of fart for fart's sake."

  I MUST SAY I miss Goldstein's. The brouhaha last week has rendered us all personae non gratae. One focus of the day has blurred. Hamburger agrees with me. It's not just a matter of the food, the denial of which is bad enough, it's also the absence of the total ambience, which offered some indefinable something that has all but disappeared from the Upper West Side. The smells, the sights, the very faces and accents were all deeply familiar, a goodfellowship that cannot be replaced. And Goldstein himself, his sensitive, florid mien, his portly, impeccably clad exterior, even his wretched jokes—all these I miss. Who sought this feud? Not I, not any of us. This morning, on my walk down Broadway, I happened to see through the glass Goldstein scratching his back against the central pillar in his customary fashion and Joe shuffling past on his poor bunions, a cup of coffee in hi
s hand. Without even thinking, I waved. Goldstein turned away; Joe shrugged and shook his head.

  Is there nothing to be done? Hamburger thinks not. "There you have an essential fact of life," he said. "Didn't you know? Can you have forgotten it? Good things come to an end, that's all there is to it. Best forget about it. Shit stinks; flush it away."

  "After more than twenty years?"

  "For me, longer."

  Probably he's right. Even if we were admitted once again as customers, something would be different. What's happened has happened. Who knows better than I that the past cannot be changed?

  "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures?" offered Hamburger.

  Could that be it? "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . ," I went on, marveling.

  Tosca Dawidowicz let out an anguished wail. Lipschitz licked his lips.

  "Better take her out of here," Hamburger suggested to La Grabscheidt. "She's going to upset him."

  "Come, Tosca, come, there's nothing more we can do. You'll make yourself—God forbid—ill!" And she helped her to her feet.

  At the door La Dawidowicz flung aside Lottie's supportive arm, turned to face the bed, and struck that attitude from act 3, scene 1, that I well remember poor Sinsheimer coaching her in, her right leg bent, left leg trailing, the back of her left hand lightly touching the forehead of her upturned face:

  "And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."

  She flung a kiss at the recumbent form, murmured "Good night, sweet prince!" then turned, distraught, and made her exit, followed by La Grabscheidt.

  Hamburger, in spite of himself, applauded.

  We turned back to the bed.

  Lipschitz opened his eyes. "Are they gone?" he hissed.

  I nodded.

  "Thank God!" He was grinning.

  The transformation was remarkable. But for the traction apparatus that kept his legs immobile, he was his former self. We congratulated him on his recovery.