A twitch in the man’s face like he’s been carrying something and just let it drop, and then picked it up again and there again, someone’s lived in that face a long hard time, I can recognize, that, and what is it I can do for you, young man, though he is not young at all, maybe forty, fifty, who can tell anymore?
No more than three steps away and something indeed has got the man’s goose or his gander or his goat or whatever they call it. Hat pulled down just a little bit farther and I can’t even see the shape of his eyes anymore. Mouth in a snarl, but something gentle, too, about that face, a chub to it — is that Tony? — it looks like Tony, off the door, what in the world did I do wrong with Tony, my stupidities, my Kan, my Kant — what is wrong with you, Tony? — did something happen to Sally perchance, has she sent you out in the snow to rescue me, Saint Bernard, where’s your brandy, I thought about that just a moment ago, and why in the world are you striding up to me so fast, Tony, without your doorman clothes, without your gloves even, and your knuckles shiny brown, I have never seen you in your street clothes, did I not tip you enough at holiday time, did I say something errant a little while ago, one of my silly phrases, there are many, my head is an avalanche, and still he keeps coming, his shoulders rolling around in his dark jacket, he’s small and he’s boxy, an odd look for Tony—
Once, long ago, I skated on a frozen lake with knifeblades attached to the bottom of my shoes—
A single step away, but maybe that’s not Tony at all, is it, not enough of the chub, and a bit on the short side, muttering something in Spanish now about my father, or his father, or someone’s father, what in the world has gotten into the man, someone help me, now, what’s he saying, the snow blowing hard around us, a cyclorama, and it’s impossible to hear what the man is shouting, spittle coming from his mouth, his own little snowstorm, rapidfire, how many words do they have for it, leaning forward, oh the hat on my head shifting, but what is that you’re saying, man, I can’t hear a word in the thunderous roar, calm yourself down, hold on one second, you don’t look a bit like Tony at all, who are you, where are you from, where have I seen you before, and oh the leftovers are shifting that’s my son’s name you’re shouting my treacherous son you are unaproned and oh all over the street that white coming down not even the snow can stand up straight and oh—
The canal was easily the best place to cannonball.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
If it had been another day — without the snow, the wind, the early dark — they would have seen him fall like a character out of an old epic, all hat and history.
It would have been captured from the traffic-cam atop the ornate limbs of the lightpole on Eighty-sixth Street. Even in a low-definition download, he would have emerged from the restaurant, his scarf looped around his neck, and the hat perched rakishly. He would have stopped to adjust his overcoat and then he would have stepped forward on his walking stick. In the picture he would have accepted the punch and he would have stood stockstill a moment, as if registering its seismic quality. The blow would have landed in the middle of his chest. The knees of his trousers would have started to accordion, his legs would have pleated and the lower scaffold of his body would have begun to totter as if on delay. It would have taken a second or two for the puppetry to achieve full motion: the swoon, the dip, the crumble. His body would resign and he would keel over, all eighty-two years of him, disintegrating downward. They would see the ancient Homburg staying on his head for most of the fall, defying physics, the bag of leftovers from his lunch leaving his grip almost immediately, opening with a thump against the ground, the same time as his head cracks off the pavement. It would capture, too, the shape of the assailant standing on the street having just delivered the punch, momentarily frozen in place, unsure of what has happened in front of his eyes, looking down at his fist, then stuffing his hand into the pocket of his puffy jacket, walking quickly ten steps north, confused, then furtive, pulling the brim of his hat down farther, stepping into a shadowed entrance, opening the heavy metal door. A slice of anonymity dissolving into a further anonymity. The street would be quiet for just a moment, and then the busboy and the manager and the waitress would appear over the prone body on the street, and baby carriages would move along the avenue — more of them of course, if there had been no snow, no wind, no dark — and there could, then, have been eyewitnesses from the neighboring shops or from passersby to attest to the man stepping in and out of the entrance.
As it was, it was like being set down in the best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.
It could have been, too, that had the camera angles in the restaurant been tilted in another direction, they might have seen Pedro Jiménez come in through the door, with sprinkles of snow on his shoulders, his hat whisked off and folded into his pocket, the jacket hung on a metal hook near the door. In that instance they might have seen Pedro return to the jacket just seconds later and tuck it under several dry coats in order to hide the wetness of his own. He could also have been seen shoving the baseball cap farther into the pocket. It might have been possible to catch him, just before he turned the corner toward the bathroom, stopping and putting the heels of his hands to his anguished face and pulling his skin tight, shaking his head quickly from side to side, as if to disperse the past few minutes from his life before he went back to his dishwashing station. Another angle might have shown the terror on his face, later in the afternoon, as specifics emerged from the chef, the manager, the waitresses, and the cops together huddled in the kitchen while he washed the pan that had grilled Mendelssohn’s salmon. It might have shown the glances that went between him and Dandinho when the cops pulled Pedro aside for questioning, or the look on Dandinho’s face by the front door, or the backglances both men gave when they left the restaurant late in the evening, checking out the angles of the camera by the front foyer at a time when the cops had already downloaded the footage for examination.
None of this was yet apparent: the homicide, like the poem, had to open itself to whatever might still be discovered.
The cops could have downloaded the footage from the subway station that night where the two men stood, sullen, waiting for the 4 train to take them home to Brooklyn. But who could have intuited what their silence meant? Who could have foretold what Dandinho might say to Pedro? Who could have guessed that they might have struck a pact together? Who could have interpreted Pedro’s face as he got off the F train in Coney Island almost two hours later and pushed his way through the silver turnstile? Who could have understood his terror as he passed by the bodega on Tenth Street? Who could have known what thoughts rifled through him as he paused on the corner of Coney Island Avenue, then turned south toward the water? Even if we had access to the cameras that are peppered along the boardwalk, who could properly say that the man stuffing the puffy jacket and baseball cap in the garbage can was truly guilty? What can be seen from the manner in which he looks at the discarded clothes that nobody will ever find? What can be learned from the manner he walks away? What can be intuited from the way he gazes out to sea? What country lies out there? What past? Who is to know how much failure is still trembling through his fist?