Place in the City Read online

  BEFORE he reached the United States Senate, before Congress, even before the Assembly, Timy Dolan was a big man. He had the ward under his hand, under his finger, like a cockroach. If he wanted to, he could press down, and then the cockroach would spraddle out and die. Or he could watch the cockroach and smile at it. Timy wore a chesterfield and a black derby, and when he walked through the ward, where everyone knew him, you could see just by the way he walked that he was a big man. He had his finger in everything.

  He knew all the pimps personally, and they heeled him personally. Then vice wasn’t the organized racket it is now. But it was big enough just in the district to give Timy five or six hundred dollars a week. And when Timy wanted a woman he knew where to go.

  He came to Shutzey this day, when the regular club held its monthly stag over Kraus’ Saloon, just across and around the corner from Meyer’s cigar store.

  He went into Meyer’s with Shutzey, and picked himself a twenty-five cent cigar. “Have one,” he said to Shutzey, who was only a pimp and smoked no better than a tencent brand.

  “Hullo, Timy, and how is it?” Meyer said; but he didn’t say anything to Shutzey, except to think that it was a dirty shame to waste a good brand on a bum. All his life, Meyer had been longing to say one thing to Shutzey, “Get out and stay out, you rotten bum!” But what was the use, when Shutzey was six feet and strong as an ox?

  Shutzey sprawled over the counter, bit his cigar. “How’s business, Meyer?” he smiled.

  “Should it be good when you make my place into a whorehouse?”

  “Now, Meyer,” Timy said gently, “there ain’t no whorehouses in my district.”

  “All right, Timy. With you I ain’t got a grievance. But this one with his whores—is it a thing for my wife to see, for my daughters? When I got three daughters, should I have whores outside my door, day and night? Does he got to come to me? Ain’t there nobody else, that I got to go to the synagogue and I can’t look nobody in the face? Is it right?”

  “G’wan, Meyer, I bring yu all yer business,” Shutzey said, still smiling.

  “Such business I don’t want.”

  “Lay off,” Timy told them. “I got a stag to go on.”

  “Whaddyu want?”

  “Something new.”

  “Well—take yu pick.”

  “Listen, Shutzey, I want one broad for a stag party.”

  “Geesus Christ,” Shutzey whispered. “You ain’t serious. What d’yu want sumpen like that fur, when I can give yu a lineup? You got a crack on, Timy.”

  “Yu got it or no? You heard me the first time.”

  “Lemme think.” Shutzey looked at him, squinting and screwing up his broad, impassive face. “Suppose sumpen happens to her?”

  “Ain’t I big enough for yu? Maybe yu gotta kick coming, Shutzey? Maybe I don’t treat yu right. Ain’t there going tu be a judge there—an’ a magistrate?”

  “Awright.”

  They went out. Meyer stared after them; he stared fascinated at the flakes of snow that swirled in and melted on the floor. Then he began to arrange the cigar boxes. What was the use of thinking? It went on. Nothing struck Shutzey dead; nothing struck Timy dead. They prospered; their wealth piled up. Where was justice then? He, who was an honest man—as honest as any man—slaved all his life, and in the end, what did he have? Then what was the use of anything at all, when he was an honest man?

  He picked up the New York Times, and turned to the stocks. He put on his glasses and read eagerly. Then he calculated with a pencil on the inside of an empty cigar box. And all the time he chewed nervously on his tongue.

  IT IS hard to say what Meyer would have done if he had seen Jessica behind the curtain. He would not believe anyway that Jessica had been there all the time, shivering and listening. The Meyers lived above the store, four rooms, managing this way: the two older girls in a bedroom, Jessica in the living room, which they also used as a dining room, and Meyer and his wife in a room. Then the kitchen. It was not so big, but nevertheless, Meyer gave his girls the best. They had clothes and education, and a good many other things that most girls don’t have. They were all of them handsome girls, and to Meyer they were like figures out of the Song of Songs.

  From the apartment, a staircase led down to the store; a green plush curtain hid the staircase.

  Jessica was going out, but when she heard Shutzey’s voice, she stopped just behind the curtain. She stood there listening and trembling, and all the while caressing her breasts and thighs. But she wasn’t frightened. A stag party—not all like Shutzey; but if they were all like Shutzey—Easily, he was the strongest man she had ever known; and she knew him. Didn’t he always look at her when she left the store?

  When they had left, she slipped back upstairs, into her sisters’ bedroom, and stayed there. She looked into the dresser mirror, cocking her head to one side and taking good stock of herself.

  She was very blond for a Jewess, with real yellow hair, and slim with narrow hips, but good up above anyway, the way a girl should be. She knew.

  She walked back and forth, swinging her hips, and craning her head to see herself in the mirror. When she finished training school, she’d be a teacher. But hitch your wagon to a star, and you’d go up. Already Timy had the ward under his finger, like a cockroach—just like that. Timy would go places; everybody said that: and Shutzey would go places, too. But Dolan had a belly already. Undressed he would look like a kewpi doll, while Shutzey was straight as an arrow and strong as an ox.

  Dropping to the bed, she chewed on knuckles, stared at the ceiling, and then she caressed her breasts again. She felt how her hair was drawn back in a tight bun. All over she was beautiful.

  What kind of a woman would they get, and then what would happen to her? What did a night’s work like that pay? The world was half men and half women. A woman had to know what to do with herself. Timy would look at her body and eat his heart out. Or maybe he liked fat. dark girls. She had to know.

  A little later, she went down and out of the store. Shutzey wasn’t outside, but she walked down the street hoping that she would meet him. But what she would do if she met him, she didn’t know.

  ON THE same street, across from Meyer’s cigar store, and two houses from the corner, Shutzey had his place; in a brownstone three-story house, which he owned. That will give you an idea about Shutzey—thirty-five thousand dollars of real estate, clear. Top to bottom, he furnished it himself. And you wouldn’t know it was a house, because on the outside it was just as quiet and respectable as any other place on the street.

  Shutzey treated his whores right. Inside the front door, just as you entered, was the parlor, and behind that two sitting rooms, one in blue and one in yellow. Some of the girls lived upstairs, but not all of them; some had their own homes, and some had families, like Mary White. And some had husbands.

  But Shutzey’s place was always clean. The girls liked to sit in their kimonos in the parlor, smoke and talk; and they didn’t have to walk the streets. Sometimes they stood on. the corner with Shutzey, but that wasn’t street-walking. And he never sent them out to Coney Island, or up on the Drive when the ships came in, the way some of the pimps did.

  There were four or five girls in the parlor; they were full of smiles for Timy.

  “Lay off,” he commanded.

  “It’s on the house, Timy.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t yu give us a break, Timy?”

  “It’s Park Avenue or nothin’ fur him.”

  “Lay off!”

  “Awright, girls—that’s enough,” Shutzey told them. He looked them over carefully, as if he had never seen any of them before, flicked the ashes from his cigar, and squinted; he called one over.

  “Minnie!”

  Timy shook his head. He slapped her buttocks; then he shook his head again.

  “Get Mary White,” Shutzey said, “an’ the rest of yu clear out.”

  When she walked in, she smiled, too. You had to, because Timy was a big man.
He could make anyone, or break them too.

  “She ain’t a chicken any more,” Timy whispered, “but she’s a hell of a woman, all right.”

  Mary stared at them. Something was up, and just on a day when she wanted to be home early, with the kids.

  “Yu can pick up forty bucks,” Shutzey told her. “You just go along with Timy. That ain’t bad fur a night, forty bucks.”

  “A stag?”

  “Yeah—but there ain’t nothin’ tu be afraid of. Timy’ll treat yu right.”

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  “Come on,” Timy said. Then they went out together. Shutzey chewed on his cigar, shook his head. Then he grinned. “Geesus,” he whispered.

  THE PRIEST said to John Edwards: “—All in two things, right and wrong. It’s hard to be a priest in New York; maybe it’s wrong—I don’t know. But good against evil remains, over everything.”

  “The good doesn’t win. It’s chance.”

  “We try. We believe,” the priest said.

  “I know—I don’t doubt you. Look at me, all gone. But if I had one ounce of your faith, only one small part of your belief in the lasting right of things—But I don’t have it, and what’s the use of talking about it? I don’t even have the will to live.”

  “You have it.” The priest smiled. “Get out of here tonight. Walk in the snow and breath deeply. Start slowly, and learn to live—all over.”

  Then the priest went, and left alone, Edwards sank deeper into his chair. If he went out—Looking at the window, he saw the snowflakes tilting against the pane. Outside, New York was being purified. Snow would make the streets as white as a dove’s breast, and the traffic would move very, very slowly. Then, as the night went on, the traffic would almost stop. The city would sleep in the snow. Dreaming and thinking, he saw himself walking for many, many blocks. Out of one small street, but through a thousand others, windows etched in frost, the night-wind blowing. And behind every window life, and more and more life. He drank it in. He stopped on one lonely avenue, looked at the sky where the storm-clouds were blowing away….

  Anna brought him back. Almost noiselessly, she re-entered the room, came and bent over him, with her warm breath in his face. And that woke him from his dream.

  As simply as a child, Anna said to him: “I’m not afraid any more. No more, Johnny.” She sat down on the arm of his chair, placing one cool hand against his cheek, turning his face to her, and as he looked at her, he was bewildered as always by a child’s face. The eyes were set wonderfully far apart, and the gaze was clear and untroubled.

  Somewhere, two years ago, the music master had found her. Remember that this is a folk-tale. He gave her food and shelter, and she married him because she was afraid, not so much of him as of being alone. She always recalled the two nights before that the way you recall a dream.

  She had no place to sleep, so she sat in the subway. Two nights in the subway. Underground, and sometimes outside. Piles of girders, with the train roaring on and on into nowhere. Once she slept, with her head on a man’s shoulder. He woke her up, and said to her:

  “Now look, baby, come along with me, and I’ll fix you up for the night.”

  She ran from car to car, frightened at the way the tracks flashed underneath. Sometimes, she got out at a station. There is nothing in New York that is lonelier than a subway station in the early hours of the morning. The silence is heavy and real enough to carve with a knife, and the trains don’t come often. Maybe once in a half-hour; but you begin to think that there will be no more trains; like being in a tomb and forgotten.

  On an elevated track, the lights seemed to drop further and further beneath her. That meant the train was going up and up, like a bird taking wing. The whole train would soar into the sky; she laughed with anticipation, and then she fell asleep. On another station, a drunk slept beside her, and after a while she was glad, even for his company. But when he woke up, she ran away….

  The music master was as good as he was gentle, and he was gentle as a woman with her. That made it wrong, all she was going to do now; but what did right and wrong matter when you were with the man you loved?

  “Johnny—you hear me? I’m not afraid,” she said. “Not any more. I’m not wise, the way you are—except tonight. I know, tonight; I know about everything. If you die, then you’re born again, and that’s the way it is with me.”

  He looked at her, and thought of the snow. Tonight, the world was changing. He wanted to live. Deep snow, and the two of them walking through it together, arm in arm, walking with long, powerful steps, while fresh flakes splashed in their faces, laughing, too, and living with all there was in life.

  Upstairs the piano sounded. The tall, thin, stooped man was playing, striking ivory keys and turning his soul inside out.

  “I wish he wouldn’t play,” Anna said. “When he plays like that, I know that he’s thinking. He’s thinking that he might have been great. All the time, he’s thinking that. I don’t know anything about music. How does he play?”

  “As if he might have been great,” Edwards said. “As I write. If you love me—I’ll turn over the world.”

  “I love you,” she told him, “only you.”

  AT THE time of his ruin, Meyer thought of his daughters. No son to lean on, only daughters, who had nothing now.

  His ruin crept up on him. He read it in the New York Times for three years, while eleven thousand dollars dwindled away to nothing, and now, on a winter night, while the snow fell in large, damp flakes, he read the last. Stocks go down. He had eleven thousand, and now he had nothing.

  Money is the god. When your god dies, what is the use of going on? Twenty-two years on the corner of this single street with the cigar store, and then, all of a sudden, everything is gone. He sat behind the counter with his head in his hands. Shutzey sold bodies and accumulated a fortune. Meanwhile—

  His wife called from the staircase: “Meyer, come and eat your supper!”

  He stared at the Times.

  “Come and eat!”

  A picture is one thing, and the reality is another. All the time, from the day he set foot in this country, it had been money. For twelve years he saved to buy a cigar store. Dreams went, and he sat behind a counter until he knew nothing else. Well, a man is a man, and shouldn’t a man think? For twenty-two years more he saved carefully, no, he hoarded, and in the end there was eleven thousand dollars. But twenty-two years is too much, and when he tried the market, the market took it all away from him. What did he have now?

  Twenty-two years and twelve years, a lifetime. He was an old man.

  “Meyer!”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Meyer, what’s the matter?”

  “Leave me alone, I say. Shouldn’t I have any peace, even for a moment?”

  “Meyer, you’re in trouble,” she said, coming over to him. She was a stout woman with light hair. When she was young, she had looked like one of Meyer’s daughters.

  “Only leave me alone. There’s no trouble.”

  She glanced down at the paper he was reading, and then shook her head in quick disgust. “All the time stocks—is that something to bother your head with?”

  “Nagging again!”

  “Go and eat.”

  “For God’s sake, leave me alone.”

  “All right. I’ll go upstairs. But come and eat. Do you want everything should get cold?”

  When she went away, he put his head down on the paper and began to cry.

  IN THE darkness of the music master’s room, the city moved vaguely. You see, in this folk-tale, all things move and mingle in the hours of twilight. New York is in and out of a million homes. If the city has a soul, you see it now; if it has a voice, you hear it now. The twilight encroaches upon everything, and windows and walls are no bar to it. It comes from the outside, but it comes from the inside, too.

  The tall, thin man sat in the dark room and played. His fingers drifted over the keys, and his mind wandered, the way men’s minds will
at this hour of twilight. The music came soft and strong, according to his thoughts. And he was smiling, now and again. Whenever he thought of Anna, he smiled.

  Going back, his life lay behind him. He wasn’t young any more, old rather, twice as old as his wife, and an alien in a strange land. Always an alien, although he lived in a city of aliens, where all men dream of some place other than the island they are on.

  It was a strange mood he was in tonight. Germany lay in the background, a warm land before the war. In the old empire, a man gave his soul to music. Youth, beer, and singing in an open garden, and way off on the horizon a thin line of black mountains. Then dusk was coming, too. Clouds dimmed the sky and dimmed out the picture; and on the piano his fingers drummed out the exile.

  Until Anna came, he was all alone. And after Anna came it seemed that all the things that had been before her faded away. Even his dreams of fame.

  Fame had been the most bitter pill. Some men are made small men. Others are not. The best dreams had come during the war, when death was so close that dreams had no limits. He remembered how he had once crouched on a muddy parapet watching the star-shells burst, each sending a glorious silver radiance over the broken land. He would come like that, like one of those shells.

  (Then they heard him downstairs, and the poet, listening, realized that the music master was the greater of the two. His fingers were crashing into a wild, sobbing counterpoint.)

  But the light faded. Playing more evenly, he thought of Anna. All alone, he had wandered from place to place for God only knows how many years. Then he taught music in this alley. If it was New York’s Bohemia, why was he always alone? If there were artists here, why didn’t he know one of them—only one? But he didn’t. Until Anna came, he was as utterly alone as any human being could be.

  He made a composition once and took it to a publisher. After he played it, the man shook his head. “For that sort of thing, study Gershwin,” he said.