Streets of Gold (42 page)

I was sitting at the bar. We had just finished a set, and Madeleine was arguing in French with one of her countrymen who kept insisting it was time we forgave the German people. (This was May of 1946; the war in Germany had ended only a year ago!) The voice on my left said, “Hello, Iggie, long time no see.”

There are very few accidental meetings in the city of New York. Yes, sometimes you will run into an old classmate, and you will babble on unenthusiastically about old times long forgotten — do you ever see Charlie Hobbs, who used to throw scum bags filled with water from the elevated IRT, whatever happend to Jennie Whatshername, who used to be so good in math, and golly, you’ve got fourteen kids now, huh, wow, amazing, yes, I’m with Amalgamated Life over in Newark, and gee, great to see you again, give my regards home, huh, got to run. That happens rarely; it’s a big city. The girl on my left sounded a lot like Rebecca with the green eyes, and she was in Auntie’s on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village, and I had not spoken to her since that Thursday night in July, ten months ago, and I turned to face her, and I held my breath and thought This can’t be an accident; if it’s her, it can’t be an accident. Aloud, I said, “Is it you?”

“Who?” she asked.

“Rebecca.”

“Is it Iggie? Or is it Ike?”

“It’s Ike, but it’s Iggie. Is it you?”

“It’s me,” she said.

“Where’s Marvin?” I asked quickly.

“Marvin? Who’s Marvin? Oh, Marvin. Marvin is married.”

“Not to you, I hope.”

“Not to me. He married a singer. Would you believe it? I think he kept taking me to all those jazz joints only so he could meet a singer.”

“Listen,” I said, “you didn’t happen to pick me up in a taxicab last Christmas, did you?”

“No,” she said.
“What?”

“Outside a
pasticceria
on First Avenue?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I was in Miami last Christmas.”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“So am I.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Baumgarten. What’s yours?”

“Di Palermo. How’d you know I was here?”

“I saw an ad in the paper. I figured Blind Ike? Had to be.”

“So here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“So what are you doing Monday night? I’m off Mondays.”

“Take it easy,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well...”

“What is it?”

“Well... you see, my father has trouble with Italian names.”

“Huh?”

“In fact, he has trouble with
any
names that aren’t Jewish.”

“Huh?”

“He’s what you might call a raging bigot.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“Am I? My father’s got two specialties — selling Oldsmobiles and hating the goyim.”

“What’s that?”

“Goyim? That’s you. Do you know what a pogrom is?”

“Yes.”

“A pogrom is what’ll happen if my father ever finds out I came here to see you. He’ll come riding down from the north Bronx with his tallis thrown over his shoulder...”

“His
what
?”

“That’s a prayer shawl.”

“Of course it’s a prayer shawl,” I said. “But your father’s got some tallis, too, if he can throw it over his shoulder.”

Rebecca burst out laughing, and then sobered immediately. “Listen,” she said, “I’m a nice Jewish girl, and... and not whatever you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“I mean... you know. I don’t make a habit of following piano players all over the city.”

“I should hope not.”

“In fact, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “look... uh... why don’t you... would you like a drink or something? I mean, Jesus, what
ever
you do, don’t go running off again, okay?”

“Why’d you call me that time? You didn’t even know what I looked like.”

“I still don’t. What do you look like, Rebecca?”

“I’m gorgeous, what do you think?”

“That’s what I think,” I said.

“You don’t look Italian at all,” she said.

“What do Italians look like?”

“Oh, you know, short and dark and... not like you.”

“I’m really Jewish,” I said. “I got kidnapped from my very religious Jewish parents by a band of Sicilian...”

“I only wish,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because... listen, do you want to know something? I got Marvin to take me back to Staten Island two weeks later. But you were gone. There was another band there. I’ll tell you the truth, I was relieved. I once went out with an Irish boy, and my father chased him down the stairs.”

“Rebecca, you’ve got to be...”

“Michael, his name was. Michael Sullivan.”

“Rebecca, let’s worry about your father later, okay?”

“No, let’s worry about him now.”

“Okay,” I said, and fell silent.

“Are you worrying?” she asked.

“I’m worrying,” I said.

“Where shall I meet you Monday night?” she asked.

It had been a suffocatingly humid week, and the stifling heat in the Mosholu Parkway apartment staggered me as we came through the front door. (There was a mezuzah on the doorjamb, similar to the one my grandfather’s “Kasha” had touched her fingers to in the year 1901. I did not see it.) I had been dating Rebecca for close to three months, but I had not yet met her parents. Rebecca had prepared both of them for our impending visit, and Honest Abe Baumgarten had said, predictably, “If you bring a blind
shaygets
up here, I’ll shoot him on the spot.” The apartment was strange to me, the lingering cooking smells alien. There were voices, men talking and laughing. Rebecca led me into the kitchen. I recognized the sounds of a poker game in progress and suddenly thought of my Uncle Luke. “Daddy,” Rebecca said, and the voices stopped.

“Daddy, I’d like you to meet Ike Di Palermo,” she said. Her voice had a frightened quaver in it. She was clinging to my left hand, and her own hand was sweating.

“How do you do?” I said, and extended my right hand.

I stood there for several minutes with my hand extended, and suddenly realized no one was going to take it. I pulled it back.

“Who deals?” somebody asked. I later learned this burning question had been put by none other than the Mad Oldsmobile Dealer.

“Ike is a piano player,” Rebecca said. “Do you know ‘Far, Far Away’?” someone at the table asked.

I had been playing piano since the time I was six, but I swear to God I had never heard this old saw before. Innocently, I said, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“We don’t want you to
play
it,” the man said. “We want you to
go
it.”

“Far,
far
away,” someone else said, and everyone burst out laughing.

“Who’s shy in the kitty?” Abe asked. “I don’t want to be in the kitty,” someone said. “The kitty is for Ratner’s,” Abe said. “September fifth, we’re going to Ratner’s. Get up a nickel.”

“I don’t want to go to Ratner’s,” the man said. “Go without me, I don’t want to be in no kitty.”

“We need a cup for the
fecahkteh
kitty,” someone said.

“Anybody got a tin cup?” Abe said.

“Excuse me,” I said, and turned to go, and knocked something off the cabinet close to the table. I stooped to pick it up.

“I’ll get it,” Rebecca said.

“I can find it,” I said, and got down on my knees, and scrambled around on the floor for whatever it was, something metallic, an ashtray, a small pot, something; I didn’t know
what
the hell it was, and I couldn’t
find
it, either. Rebecca said, “Leave it, Ike. I want you to meet my mother.”

She took my hand and led me into what I supposed was the living room. The ladies were seated there silently. They had heard the exchange in the kitchen, and were now awaiting my approach.

“Mom, this is Ike,” Rebecca said.

“How do you do?” Sophie Baumgarten said. She had risen from the couch or wherever she’d been sitting, and was approaching, I felt her approach. “Won’t you shake hands?” she said, and I realized her hand was extended, and I put out my own hand, and she took it.
Her
hand was trembling. This was costing her a lot. “Sit down, why don’t you? We were just talking about how hot it’s been this week. A
record
, in fact, I heard on the radio last night. Would you like something cool to drink?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“And this is my sister Davina,” Rebecca said.

“How do you do?” I said, and extended my hand again.

“Nice to meet you,” Davina said. Her voice was pitched a trifle lower than Rebecca’s; her handshake was cool, and dry, and firm.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to drink?” Sophie asked.

“Thank you,” I said, “but Rebecca and I have to be going. Thank you, Mrs. Baumgarten,” I said. “Come on, Rebecca,” I said.

As she led me past the kitchen, someone at the table said, “Leaving so soon?”

“Shut
up
, Seymour!” Rebecca snapped. I had recognized the voice. Seymour was the man who’d made the request for “Far, Far Away.”

“I like your boyfriend,” Seymour said. “He seems like a very
Gentile
fellow.” He slurred the word “Gentile” so that it sounded almost like “gentle” — but not quite.

“Let’s go, Ike,” Rebecca said, and led me out of the apartment, slamming the door behind us.

“The lousy bastard,” she said.

To this day, I do not know whether she was referring to Seymour or her father.

Rebecca Baumgarten is four years old when her sister is born. Her mother names the new baby Davina, which in Hebrew means “the loved one.” Sophie intends no slight to her first-born daughter, whose name in the ancient tongue means “the captivator.” But in Rebecca’s four-year-old head, the
new
child is the loved one, isn’t that what they named her? She asks her grandfather about this.

“Zayde,”
she says, “why do they love Davina and not me?”

“They love you both together,” the old man says.

They are sitting outside his dry-goods store on the lower East Side. It is the summer of 1932. The old man is in a cane rocker he bought from the sidewalk stand of Shmuel two doors down. Rebecca sits at his feet on a stool she has dragged from inside the store. The old man wears a black pair of pants, and a white shirt, and a brown sweater with buttons up the front. He wears a black silk yarmulke. She has never seen him without the yarmulke. He has had a white beard for as long as she can remember, and wire-framed eyeglasses perched on his nose. His nose is like the Indian’s on the buffalo nickel. He is a very handsome man, her grandfather. His name is Itzik Galdek, and he is her mother’s father. He came to this country in 1890, from a city named Bialystok, on the Polish border some twenty-five miles from Russia. He explains now that Rebecca’s sister was named Davina not because she is any more loved than Rebecca herself, but only because she came second. They are Ashkenazic Jews, he explains, and the Ashkenazim will not name a child after a living relative. When Rebecca was born, in 1928, her grandmother of the same name was already dead, and so she was named after her, which was a great honor because her
bubbeh
was a fine and wonderful woman.

“Rivke, that is your name in Yiddish,” he tells her. “Rebecca is what that means, Rivke. Now... if your sister had been born first, she would most likely have been named Rivke, she would have been given
your
name, do you see? But your sister was born only last month, isn’t that so, and Rivke was all used up already, they had used up this fine and honorable name on
you
, my
bubeleh
, and so your mother had to search around for another name, and she picked one that had been my beloved sister’s, who is now dead, too, may she rest in peace, and that is why
she
is Davina and
you
are Rivke, Rebecca, eh? Now tell me what you are learning in Hebrew school.”

In Hebrew school, she is learning Biblical stories, prayers, and a smattering of language. Whenever they have dinner at her grandfather’s house, she gives the Hebrew blessing.
“Bo-ruch a-toh a-do-noy, e-lo-hay-noo melech ho-o-lom, ha-mo-tzee le-chem meen ho-o-retz”
and each time she has to try very hard not to say “
ha-mo-izee le-chem
Minnie Horowitz,” the way the boys do when they’re joking in the streets. She lives two doors away from the dry-goods store, on the third floor of a five-story tenement. The neighborhood is exclusively Jewish, but occasionally the goyim come in to make trouble; they are always making trouble. Her mother will not wear any jewelry if she is out at night, for fear she will be attacked by goyim and robbed of her treasures. This is what her mother calls her wedding and engagement rings, her pearl earrings, a garnet brooch that was Grandmother Rivke’s in the old country: her treasures.

“The goyim make trouble because they drink,” old Itzik tells her. He has been in this country for forty-two years now, coming to these shores when he was twenty-four. His name was Yitzchak then, the Hebrew for the Biblical Isaac. He is now known by its Yiddish equivalent, Itzik, and already everywhere around him he hears young men being called Isadore and Irving, anglicizations of the name he had proudly worn in Poland. “In Poland,” he tells her, “the goyim would drink all the time, and then they would come into the
shtetl
and do terrible things; I do not wish to befoul your young ears with stories of the terrible things they did. Sometimes, the Cossacks would ride in and take men away for the army, spirit them away from home and loved ones, never to be seen or heard from again. The Russians owned Poland then,
bubeleh
, they would come to take the young men, line them up in the square near the fountain, pick them out, you, you, you, you,
tsssst
, they would disappear from sight.