“It is a narrow slum street paved with muddy cobbles. On the East Side, New York. There is a smell of damp straw.”
“The sound of drays, too, and steel-ringing shovels.”
“Cats, ash cans, slush, and falling snow!”
“You all see it perfectly. Or almost. You see it in the abstract — not in the concrete. What you do not entirely see is the basement which my father used as his tailor shop — dark, damp, steamy, and incredibly dirty — where, as he ran his sewing machine, or peered nearsightedly into cardboard boxes for the one button which he couldn’t find, he taught me Yiddish, German, and English. He was always putting down lighted cigarettes — on the edges of the tables, on chairs, on boxes, on the ironing board; and then forgetting them. A smell of burning was always interrupting us, and we would jump up and search frantically for the cigarette. A good many yards of cloth must have been ruined, first and last — and once a customer’s raincoat caught on fire and had to be replaced. There was a terrible scene about it when the man came in for it … We ate and slept, and did our cooking, in the basement room behind this, from which yellow brick steps went up to a yard. My mother was dead — I don’t remember her. When I wasn’t at the public schools, I did the errands — delivered trousers that had been pressed, collected bills, and so forth. Naturally, I learned to cook, sew, and use the gas iron to press clothes, myself. But I also, at the public schools, and in the course of my running of errands, learned a great deal else. I knew the crowds at every saloon in the district, and the cops, and the buskers, and the leaders of the several ‘gangs.’ I knew all the brothels, and all the unattached prostitutes. I knew — as in fact all the boys of my age knew — which of the girls in the district (the girls of our own generation, I mean) had already gone the way of Sara More — the girls who were willing to be enticed into dark basements or unlighted back yards. Beryl Platt, Crystelle Fisher, Millicent Pike, Tunis (so-called, according to romantic legend, because she had been born in Tunis, and had an Arab father) Tunstall — before I was eleven I knew that there was something special about these girls; and when Crystelle one day dared me to come to her back yard after dark, I knew what was expected, and went. After that it was first one and then another. I had no feelings of sin about it — none whatever. It was natural, delightful, exciting, adventurous — it gave color to life. But I never fell in love. I liked these girls — I particularly liked the dashing swaggering Crystelle, whose hair was magnificently curled, and whose blue long eyes had an Oolong tilt, and who knew every smutty word in the language — but if they transferred their affections to other boys I didn’t mind, or if other boys forcibly ousted me I didn’t resent it. What did it matter? Life, I knew, was not exclusively composed of carnal love, and there was sure to be all of it that one needed. Why bother about it? Billiards was interesting, too, and so was tailoring, and I admired my father. I enjoyed reading with him, playing chess with him, and going with him to Coney Island or the Museum. When I was fourteen he took me to the Yiddish theater to see Pillars of Society. It made a tremendous impression on me. Why do I tell you this? Not because it’s especially interesting in itself; but because it’s exactly the sort of item which you wouldn’t precisely guess for yourselves — isn’t that it? Yes. You extract the keenest of pleasures from hearing of that, and seeing me in the gallery of the theater with my father, eating buttered popcorn. Just as you enjoy, also, hearing of Crystelle Fisher. These details enable you to bring your love of me, and of humanity, and the world, to a momentary sharp focus. Can one love in the abstract? No. It is not man or nature that we love, but the torn primrose, and young Mrs. Faubion, who is being sued by her husband for divorce on grounds of infidelity; Demarest, whose fear of his father has frozen him in the habit of inaction and immobility, as the hare freezes to escape attention; and Silberstein, who was seduced by arc light under a white lilac in a Bowery back yard … However, it was my intention, when I began this monologue, to light for you, if I could, the reasons for the fact that I cannot, like Demarest, fall in love with Faubion and Cynthia. Is it now indicated? The only time I ever came near falling in love was after we had moved to the country, when Mabel Smith, the schoolteacher, took possession of me. Mabel was sentimental and maternal. She did her best, therefore (as she was also something of a hypocrite), to arouse some sort of sentiment in me. And she almost succeeded, by sheer dint of attributing it to me. She tried to make me believe that I believed she was my guiding star, and all that sort of thing. Pathetic delusion, the delusion that one needs to be thus deluded! But this holiness never became real to me. How could it? I had been a placid realist since birth, calm as a Buddha. One has emotions, certainly; but one is not deceived by them, nor does one allow them to guide one’s course … How, then, can I respond to all the exquisite romantic Dresden china that Cynthia keeps — to pursue the figure — on her mental mantel? No no! It’s not for me; or only, as you see, intellectually and imaginatively. It delights me to recognize this so totally different mechanism of behavior — and I love Cynthia, therefore, exactly as I love that hurried moon, the snowflakes, or the blue-feathered corposant who gives us his angelic blessing. But if it is a question of erotic response, I would sooner respond to Crystelle, who is now a prostitute, and with whom I’ve often, since growing to manhood, had dinner at Coney Island. Much sooner!.. Much sooner!..”
New York. Spring. The five people walked in the darkness along Canal Street. In Fagan’s Drug Store the red, green, and yellow jars were brilliantly and poisonously lighted. Sally Finkelman came out, carrying a bottle of Sloan’s liniment, and a nickel in change. Red stains of a lollypop were round her mouth. She crossed the street obliquely, and paused beside Ugo’s copper peanut stand to warm her knuckles in the little whistling plume of steam. Ugo, standing in the garish doorway, held a bag of peanuts, red and green striped, by its two ears, and twirled it, over-and-over, three times. An elevated train went south along the Bowery. The five people crossed the muddy cobbles of the Bowery under the roar of the elevated, and passing Kelly’s saloon, and Sam’s Shoe Shine Parlor beside it on the sidewalk (where French Louise was having her white slippers cleaned) went slowly toward Essex Place. In the window of Levin’s Café were two glass dishes which contained éclairs and Moscovitz; one charlotte russe (dusty); and a sheet of Tanglefoot flypaper, on which heaved a Gravelotte of flies. An electric fan whirled rainbow-colored paper ribbons over the Moscovitz. Solomon Moses David Menelek Silberstein, aged twelve, came slowly out of Essex Place, with a pair of checkered trousers over his shoulder. At the corner, under the arc light, he stooped to pick up a long black carbon, discarded from the light. Uccelli, in the alley, was grinding slowly his old-fashioned carpet-covered one-legged organ. Bubble and squeak. The monkey took off his red velvet cap. Crystelle Fisher had given him a sticky penny, which he had put into his little green velvet pocket. Winking, he took off his cap again. The organ’s wooden leg had a brass ferrule, worn down on the inner side: a leather strap, attached to the two outer corners, passed round Uccelli’s neck. Bubble bubble squeak and bubble. Ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ayy. Crystelle danced a cakewalk, knees flinging her dimity high, a huge hole showing in the knee of her right stocking, a coarse lace petticoat flouncing. She snapped her fingers, jerking backward her shapely head of golden curls, her oolong eyes half shut. Coon — coon — coon — I wish that color was mine. Beryl Platt put her head out of a fourth-story window, between two black geraniums, and yodled. I can’t come out, she sang. I’ve got to wash the dishes. And mind the baby … At the corner, overtaking Silberstein, Crystelle touched his trousered shoulder — Would you like to know a secret, she said — I can turn a Catherine wheel — would you like to see me. Ha ha! Pork chops and gravy — I wish I was a baby … Are you coming round to the yard tonight?… Bubble bubble whine and bubble. Yes, I’ll be there, said Solomon, and sauntered toward the Bowery. Twenty-six Mott Street. A warm smell of benzine rose from the damp trousers. With the carbon he drew a black line along Kelly’s wall, just as French Louise was getting down from the high brass-studded shoe-shine throne. She gave Sam a nickel, and said — Where is that mutt? He said he’d only take five minutes … A train rattled north on the elevated; empty: a conductor reading a paper on the rear platform, his knees crossed … The five people, drifting slowly in the evening light under the few pale stars of New York, paused before a battered ash can on which the name Fisher had been red-leaded. Passing then through a door, which was ajar, they saw the white lilac in blossom under the arc light. Below it, on the hard bare ground, lay the bright skeleton of a fish, picked clean by the cat. There was also the sodden remains of a black stocking … Crystelle came running up the yellow brick stairs from the basement, and at the same moment Solomon reappeared at the door. Look! she said. She turned a series of swift Catherine wheels, hands to the ground, feet in the air, skirts falling about her head, her flushed face up again. Solomon, pulling a spike of lilac-whiteness toward his nose, surveyed her without expression. Pork chops and gravy, he said. You’ve got a big hole — in your stocking. I have not, she answered. You have, too, he said. Where! she answered. O Jesus, how the hell did I do that. Have you ever kissed Tunis?… Sure I have … Where?… In her cellar … Was it dark?… No, not very … Well, why don’t you kiss me?…