I knew the feeling. I agreed to stick around. She thanked me and retreated upstairs to her bedroom where I could hear her close the large oak double doors that separated the upper half of the house from the lower half. The house was loaded with modern conveniences. Everything was either reconditioned antique or high tech.
Behind a set of panel doors in the living room, I opened up the RCA Entertainment Center—that was what the label read—that included a widescreened color TV, at least twenty-five inches in length and a VCR. In an old bookshelf that had been built right into the wall and that probably once supported a classics library, VCR tapes were aligned. I picked out two films that never became too popular: Cutter’s Way and Wise Blood.
It was just after five o’clock and while I was trying to get the VCR to work, I lost the sound on the TV Both the VCR and the TV had separate remotes and while trying to make them cooperate, I watched a mechanical woman soundlessly broadcast the news.
Flashing across the TV for only an instant on a screen behind the Newsreadette was an old college yearbook photograph of Helmsley. By the time I cranked up the volume, I heard the Newsreadette say, “…was identified by a relative.”
NINE
As I dashed out of the front door, I figured that I had a thirty-minute run ahead of me. Turning back before the front door swung shut, I raced downstairs to the garage on the ground floor. The Mercedes started right up. I zoomed out and down Court Street zipping through lights and cutting off other cars until I screeched to a stop at Helmsleys front door on President Street. I dashed up his steps and banged on the door. I heard some rustling inside, and then the peephole was filled with an eye, “Can I help you?”
“I’m a friend of Helmsley, please open up.”
The door opened and a decrepit old lady appeared, her face was all droopy and crinkled, “Poor boy, mixing with trash.”
“They killed him?”
“Well, I certainly believe so.”
“How…what happened?”
“A Brody, he done. Right off the bridge. That’s what they say, anyhow.”
“When? Did they find who threw his body off the bridge?”
“I only know it was the Brooklyn Bridge,” she mumbled as she disappeared into Helmsley’s bedroom.
Looking about, I couldn’t believe it. His books were thrown in stacks around the house. I arbitrarily picked up a cloth book yanked from its spine; Das Kapital, one of the earliest editions, in a three-volume set; it had been invaluable. I let it drop back to the floor. I remember him showing me one book that was singed brown. It was printed in Cyrillic. He explained that it had survived the 1812 torching of Moscow. So many of his books that had survived brutal tests of ages and centuries had finally met their end here. When I finally composed myself, I asked, “Did the police see this? Do they know who killed him?”
“Police?” squawked the old lady.
“’Course,” I replied. “They should see this.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “That’s plain crazy talk.”
“What do you mean crazy talk?” And then pointing to the floor I screamed, “Look at what those fucking wops did!”
“Wops!” she replied. “Who are you calling wops? His family’s Polish.”
“What?”
She explained that when the gang of relatives heard of Helmsley’s demise, they came quickly to life. They descended upon his meager belongings. Their beaks tore into his body. As this pinhead standing before me, an old and straggling member of the herd, described the occurrence, I fought an urge to bang her over the head with a shovel. I walked from room to room, staring at the floor.
Greed has no patience, and there are no claims from beyond the grave. Apparently the landlord was eager to repossess Helmsley’s rent-controlled hovel and had generously given entrance to anybody claiming relations to the deceased.
But I had the last laugh, these mindless insects were more attuned to consumption than taste; they thoughtlessly loaded up their shopping bags with shiny trinkets and tinsels. To them books were things to prop up air conditioners and hold open doors. They didn’t know that the closest thing that Brooklyn could ever compare to a privately owned library of Alexandria was what they had been walking on. I discovered that when the many kin and cousins first rampaged earlier that day, a frenzy had occurred. The books had been shoddily cast into small miscellaneous heaps; the jackals had stripped the books from the shelves checking for any penny-ante treasure that might be stashed behind them. They didn’t know that when Helmsley wanted to read a book, he would go to the library because the books he owned were treasures.
“Has anybody taken any of the books?” I asked the old lady.
“Naw,” she replied, fishing through old pots and pans. “Super said his son’s throwing them out tonight.”
“May I take some?”
“Whatever,” she replied.
For a moment my heart, my arms, everything opened and unfolded and rapture engulfed all; these books are mine! But as soon as I dashed into his bedroom—only then did it hit me. Helmsley: My mentor, that athlete of the mind whose passion was rivalled only by his logic, a minor twentieth century New York philosopher who had unfailingly caught me whenever I dropped from my tightrope. He was dead.
I didn’t have energy in me commensurate to the loss. I sat on his bed and carefully labored to conjure, summon, recollect, and synthesize all the nuances toward the identity of Helmsley Micinski; to address his distinctions, and why in a world of five billion he was indispensable, and how mankind somehow would never solidly complete its final purpose—whatever that might be—because of his robbed life. But most of all, I tried appraising how much of me was Helmsley: how much of my own thought syntax and spiritual matrix was traceable to him, was him? All of this stewed in that greasy pot of agony.
When I escaped to the city trying to shake free the stalking grief and heartache of my father’s death, I learned that loss was life. Tears were inexperience. The shock was gradually absorbed, all emotional bodies eventually regained their proper orbit. The closest thing to relief was when I eventually perceived my father had always been dead. But now there was Helmsley and once again life was for mourning.
Once, as a teenager, I had believed that people could change themselves. Finally I realized that all one could ever hope was understanding one’s filthy self better. I felt cleaner by realizing that more than anything in the world, I desired Helmsley’s books. And far more than missing my friend, I felt sorry that I had lost my insurance of continued existence. Also, I had been closer to him than to any of these strangers. With all this in mind, I started making piles of books, first selecting the most valuable, such as a Shakespeare & Company signed edition of Ulysses that was still in mint condition. I wrapped most of his precious books in his old clothes and stacked them on the bed. I had nowhere near Helmsley’s vast data bank of knowledge, and I sensed that I was ignorantly discarding volumes of priceless books, but I had neither the time nor the space. The super’s son would execute his duty in a short couple of hours; I could only save as many as would fit in the car.
Once I had them sorted out, I ran downstairs and jumped in the car. I drove around the corner to a liquor store. Giving the owner five bucks, he gave me as many boxes as I could stuff into the back seat. I sped back to Helmsley’s, raced up and down the stairs, up with the empties, and down with them filled. I ballasted that old Mercedes down like a freighter. The old lady watched in amazement as I ran by with the boxes. Finally she hollered, “If you want, I got a whole basement full of them Readers Digest books.”