“Well, so far, outside of my good ole city Chicago, pal, I haven’t found much understanding and I don’t expect to find too much humanity. But I’ll fight the good fight against all those who assail me.”
An almighty sadness overcame me as Max’s muted words of defiance to this city were uttered, that perhaps things were even worse than he had described. And it was strange how the comraderie one had in the navy where you would trust your life, and had to, to a buddy, once back out in the civilian world it was erased. Every man for himself. Disheartening despair appearing on old Max’s face, his chin falling forward on his chest. Sudden look of fear flashing across his eyes. My own fears, deeper sown. And always lurking. In the navy, it was the terrible loneliness going ashore on ole liberty and getting drunk in some god-awful place like Norfolk, Virginia, with nothing, as Max said, but sailors everywhere. And with no ship heaving under your feet and feeling homesick and thirsty and just looking for a meaningful way to waste one’s time, you could end up getting so desperate that you’d go to the local library, pretending you were literary, to try and proposition the librarian behind a stack of books.
As we left the Plaza there was a little group of admirers around the Bentley as Max made a sidewalk ceremony of donning his helmet and goggles and the heavily tipped doorman opened the Bentley door and saluted. There were more than a couple of cheers as we circled around the Pulitzer Fountain and drove off down Fifth Avenue. Past the great glass display windows of women’s jewels, gowns, leathers, and fashion goods. Farther downtown came darker buildings. A man stretched prostrate asleep on the steps of the New York Public Library, its massive elevation looming into the sky. Then the Empire State Building from which a suicide had jumped the day before. Max signaling with a jerk of his thumb.
“Always look upward here, pal, in case someone is coming down.”
Back in the Village we went into a basement where they were playing jazz. Sloshing back unidentifiable brandy and dancing with two girls, one of them trying to get Max to take her to Bermuda. The other one accusing us of sounding ritzy and that we were there slumming, until I explained we were two deep-sea divers ashore recovering from the bends. And that Max had dived much deeper than me.
“Hey gee, is it dark down there under the ocean.”
“You betcha.”
Although the quality of brandy was poor, the music was of a quality of serious musicians. And while the girl danced off with someone else, telling me with her first captivating words that if I wouldn’t buy her another drink, she couldn’t see any long-term future in my company, I passed my alcoholically influenced compliments to the musicians and was invited to sit at the piano to knock out a few jitterbug beats of my own. Perceiving I had an appreciative clientele, I played a passage accelerando from my minuet and could sense the cascading notes reaching deep into my listeners’ guts. My fingers producing fifty lightning notes a second, I knew I might turn the entire nightclub audience into jibbering emotional wrecks as I did once drunkenly sitting at the piano in a previous nightclub while in an animated alcoholic state. And now came a voice over my shoulder.
“Holy Christ, fella, where did you learn to play like that. It sounds like it’s a full orchestra.”
On the spot I was offered a job by the management playing jazz piano five nights a week at twenty dollars a night and thirty dollars on Saturdays. Nobody wastes time in this city hiring you at a low salary if you’re really good at something. But I was turned down when I offered a Saturday evening of Scarlatti.
“Well fella, thank you very much. We don’t know this guy Scarlatti, but you think about it, twenty bucks, and call us tomorrow.”
But Max was both shouting and clapping, euphoric and unstinting in his applause, his cravat now wound around his head to make him look like a pirate. And it was balm to my ears to hear the previous voice over my shoulder again.
“Hey maestro, I’d sure like to hear the two Scarlatti slow F Minor sonatas, but boy, what was that before you were playing. Beautiful, but wasted on the people frequenting this joint.”
It was reassuring to be reminded yet once again that there was always someone somewhere in this city who out of its vast sea of chosen ignorance, would emerge with fine sensibilities to let his intelligent, appreciative voice be heard. And I tinkled the ivories up and down the octaves a couple of more times till the joint closed up at four and it wouldn’t be too long before the coming dawn would have the sun blazing up out of the Atlantic Ocean. Max with one of the two girls in tow, at last depositing me on the nonritzy foot pavement in Pell Street. And I somehow had a strange premonition that something terrible could happen to Max in his generous and friendly pursuit of pleasure in this town. The girl’s arms hanging around his neck as he shouted, “Hey, here’s the scuttlebutt, pal. Next weekend, Sagaponack, out on Long Island. Nude-bathing party in this cute girl’s swimming pool. I know her parents who have this kind of nice estate on the ocean. On the way maybe we’ll stop off again at the old Oak Room for another bottle or two of Krug.”
“Well Max, thanks. I’d like to respond affirmatively to such a distinctive stimulus and high spirits but I may attend upon the prophet and preacher Father Devine’s memorial parade up in Harlem.”
“There you go pal, eccentric exotic, as always.”
“Well, people of an African origin are naturally possessed with a beautiful sense of music sadly missing in the white man.”
“Well, we’ll talk more about that later, old pal. And hey old pal, hasn’t it been some great night. And you were great. And hey what about the naturally possessed sense of philosophy the Chinese have. Hear any good proverbs lately. You’re practically living right in Chinatown.”
A smell of rancid cheese in the hall increasing as I climbed the stairs. The lock broken on the door. Papers and music sheets strewn on the floor. Chairs knocked over and crockery smashed. Someone in the apartment while I was out. Fear and sadness. Depending upon who it was. Too tired to stay awake to find out or to clean up the mess. Chain the door. Take the carving knife and go fall asleep in the broken bed. Close eyes to the despicable of the world and another vision of discontentment awakes somewhere else in the brain. That Sylvia was having a nightmare next to me as she usually did. Her teeth grinding as they would in her sleep every night. Asking her, Annie, “get me out of hell.” Her voice mumbling in the darkness, “Annie,” the name of the mother she craved to find. And I woke in a sweat, wiping tears from my eyes, having dreamt the words she said when once, packing to leave on one of her searches and wanting to know when she would be back, she suddenly screamed, “How the hell should I know when. When I want to find my fucking mother. To know what her face is like when she’s crying. To know what her face is like when she’s smiling. I want to be able to thank someone for telling me where my mother is. So that I can know that I had a mother. And it’s none of your flicking business when I’m coming back. Especially to this dump, when you know more people are bitten by other people than they are by rats in this city. Good-bye.”
That was one of the doors Sylvia slammed closed between us. Resenting that I knew my mother and had watched her work peeling potatoes in our kitchen for her large family. And in my dream, Dru came. She seemed to be approaching me down the center aisle of St. Bartholomew’s Church which suddenly changed to a great lawned vista where now we walked hand in hand toward a glowing marble temple in the distance, choral voices humming to the tune of the taps one had so often gone to sleep by in the navy. Her slender figure swathed in flowing white veils. Small beads of diamonds in bracelets she wore around her wrists and in a many-stranded necklace crisscrossed upon her throat. She said, “Let us two lie down.” Her blond shining hair coifed back from her brow. And in my dream, rolling, groaning and grasping at her body. It was a rude awakening from such a dream. For she had just huskily whispered in my ear words that sounded like some hackneyed song. But worthy enough to hear for those extremely hard up.