Plexus Read online

  “That’s a terrible way to treat a person,” said Mona.

  “It is, but he seems to invite it,” I replied.

  “You shouldn’t have egged him on—it was cruel.”

  “I admit it, but he’s a pest. It would have happened anyway.” Thereupon I began to narrate my experience with Olinski. I explained how I had humored him by transferring him from one office to another. Everywhere it was the same story. He was always being abused and mistreated—“for no reason at all,” as he always put it. “They don’t like me there,” he would say.

  “You don’t seem to be liked anywhere,” I finally told him one day. “Just what is it that’s eating you up?” I remember well the look he gave me when I fired that at him. “Come on,” I said, “tell me, because this is your last chance.”

  To my amazement, here is what he said: “Mr. Miller, I have too much ambition to make a good messenger. I should have a more responsible position. With my education I would make a good manager. I could save the company money. I could bring in more business, make things more efficient.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Don’t you know that you haven’t a chance in the world to become a manager of a branch office? You’re crazy. You don’t even know how to speak English, let alone those eight other languages you’re always talking about. You don’t know how to get along with your neighbor. You’re a nuisance, don’t you understand that? Don’t tell me about your grand ideas for the future… tell me just one thing… how did you happen to become what you are… such a damned unholy pest, I mean.”

  Olinski blinked like an owl at this… “Mr. Miller,” he began, “you must know that I am a good person, that I try hard to…”

  “Horseshit!” I exclaimed. “Now tell me honestly, why did you ever leave Tel Aviv?”

  “Because I wanted to make something of myself, that’s the truth.”

  “And you couldn’t do that in Tel Aviv—or Boulognesur-Mer?”

  He gave a wry smile. Before he could put in a word I continued: “Did you get along with your parents? Did you have any close friends there? Wait a minute”—I held up my hand to head off his answer—“did anybody in the whole world ever tell you that he liked you? Answer me that!”

  He was silent. Not crushed, just baffled.

  “You know what you should be?” I went on. “A stool pigeon.”

  He didn’t know what the word meant. “Look,” I explained, “a stool pigeon makes his money by spying on other people, by informing on them—do you understand that?”

  “And I should be a stool pigeon?” he shrieked, drawing himself up and trying to look dignified.

  “Exactly,” I said, not batting an eyelash. “And if not that, then a hangman. You know”—and I made a grim circular motion with my hand—“the man who strings them up.”

  Olinski put on his hat and made a few steps towards the door. Suddenly he wheeled around, walked calmly back to my desk. He took off his hat and held it with his two hands. “Excuse me,” he said, “but could I have another chance—in Harlem?” This in a tone of voice as if nothing untoward had occurred.

  “Why certainly,” I replied briskly, “of course I’ll give you another chance, but it’s the last one, remember that. I’m beginning to like you, do you know that?”

  This baffled him more than anything I had said before. I was surprised that he didn’t ask me why.

  “Listen, Dave,” I said, leaning towards him as if I had something very confidential to propose, “I’m putting you in the worst office we have. If you can get along up there you will be able to get along anywhere. There’s one thing I have to warn you about… don’t start any trouble in that office or else”—and here I drew my hand across my throat—“you understand?”

  “Are the tips good up there, Mr. Miller?” he asked, pretending not to be affected by my last remark.

  “No one gives a tip in that neighborhood, my good friend. And don’t try to extract one either. Thank God each night when you go home that you’re still alive. We’ve lost eight messengers in that office in the last three years. Figure it out for yourself.”

  Here I got up, grasped him by the arm and escorted him to the stairs. “Listen, Dave,” I said, as I shook hands with him, “maybe I’m a friend of yours and you don’t know it. Maybe you’ll thank me one day for putting you in the worst office in New York. You’ve got so much to learn that I don’t know what to tell you first. Above all, try to keep your mouth shut. Smile once in a while, even if it’s painful. Say thank you even if you don’t get a tip. Speak just one language and as little of that as possible. Forget about becoming a manager. Be a good messenger. And don’t tell people that you came from Tel Aviv because they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You were born in the Bronx, do you understand? If you can’t act decently, be a dope, a schlemihl, savvy? Here’s something to go to the movies with. See a funny picture for a change. And don’t let me hear from you again!”

  Walking to the subway that night with Nahoum Yood brought back vivid memories of my midnight explorations with O’Rourke. It was to the East Side I always came when I wanted to be stirred to the roots. It was like coming home. Everything was familiar in a way beyond all knowing. It was almost as if I had known the world of the ghetto in a previous incarnation. The quality that got me most of all was the pullulation. Everything was struggling towards the light in glorious profusion. Everything burgeoned and gleamed, just as in the murky canvases of Rembrandt. One was constantly being surprised, often by the homeliest trifles. It was the world of my childhood wherein common everyday objects acquired a sacred character. These poor despised aliens were living with the discarded objects of a world which had moved on. For me they were living out a past which had been abruptly stifled. Their bread was still a good bread which one could eat without butter or jam. Their kerosene lamps gave their rooms a holy glow. The bed always loomed large and inviting, the furniture was old but comfortable. It was a constant source of wonder to me how clean and orderly were the interiors of these hideous edifices which seemed to be crumbling to bits. Nothing can be more elegant than a bare poverty-stricken home which is clean and full of peace. I saw hundreds of such homes in my search for vagrant boys. Many of these unexpected scenes we came upon in the dead of night were like illustrated pages from the Old Testament. We entered, looking for a delinquent boy or a petty thief, and we left feeling that we had broken bread with the sons of Israel. The parents had no knowledge whatever, usually, of the world which their children had penetrated in joining the messenger force. Hardly any of them had ever set foot in an office building. They had been transferred from one ghetto to another without even glimpsing the world in between. The desire sometimes seized me to escort one of these parents to the floor of an Exchange where he could observe his son running back and forth like a fire engine amid the wild pandemonium created by the crazy stockbrokers, an exciting and lucrative game which sometimes permitted the boy to make seventy-five dollars in a single week. Some of these “boys” still remained boys though they had reached the age of thirty or forty and were the possessors, some of them, of blocks of real estate, farms, tenement houses or packs of gilt-edge bonds. Many of them had bank accounts running above ten thousand dollars. Yet they remained messenger boys, would remain messenger boys until they died.… What an incongruous world for an immigrant to be plunged into! I could scarcely make head or tail of it myself. With all the advantages of an American upbringing had I not (in my twenty-eighth year) been obliged to seek this lowest of all occupations? And was it not with extreme difficulty that I succeeded in earning sixteen or seventeen dollars a week? Soon I would be leaving this world to make my way as a writer, and as such I would become even more helpless than the lowliest of these immigrants. Soon I would be begging furtively in the streets at night, in the very purlieus of my own home. Soon I would be standing in front of restaurant windows, looking enviously and desperately at the good things to eat. Soon I would be thanking newsboys for handing me a
nickel or a dime to get a cup of coffee and a cruller.

  Yes, long before it came to pass I was thinking of just such eventualities. Perhaps the reason I loved the new love nest so much was because I knew it could not last for long. Our “Japanese” love nest, I called it. Because it was bare, immaculate, the low divan placed in the very center of the room, the lights just right, not one object too many, the walls glowing with a subdued velvety fire, the floor gleaming as if it had been scraped and polished every morning. Unconsciously we did everything in ritualistic fashion. The place impelled one to behave thus. Made for a rich man, it was tenanted by two devotees who had only an inner wealth. Every book on the shelves had been acquired with a struggle, devoured with gusto, and had enriched our lives. Even the tattered Bible had a history behind it.…

  One day, feeling the need for a Bible, I had sent Mona out to search for one. I cautioned her not to buy one. “Ask some one to make you a present of his copy. Try the Salvation Army or go to one of the Rescue Missions.” She had done as I asked and been refused everywhere. (Damned strange! I thought to myself.) Then, as if in answer to a prayer, who pops up out of a clear sky but Crazy George! There he is, waiting for me, when I arrive home one Saturday afternoon. And Mona serving him tea and cake. I thought I was looking at an apparition.

  Mona of course didn’t know that it was Crazy George, a figure out of my childhood. She had seen a man with a vegetable wagon standing on the dashboard preaching the Word of God. The children were jeering at him, throwing things in his face, and he was blessing them (with whip in hand), saying: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.… Blessed are the meek and lowly.…”

  “George,” I said, “don’t you remember me? You used to bring us coal and wood. I’m from Driggs Avenue—the 14th Ward.”

  “I remember all God’s children,” said George. “Even unto the third and fourth generation. Bless you, my son, may the Holy Spirit abide with you forever.”

  Before I could say another word George had begun to pontificate in the old fashion. “I am one that bears witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.… Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”

  I got up and put my arms around George. He had become an old man, a cracked, peaceful, lovable old man, the last man in the world I expected to see seated in my own home. He had been a terrifying figure to us boys, always cracking that long whip in our faces, and threatening eternal damnation, fire and brimstone. Lashing his horse furiously when it slipped on the icy pavement, raising his fist to heaven and imploring God to punish us for our wickedness. What misery we inflicted on him in those days! “Crazy George! Crazy George!” we shouted until we were blue in the face. Then we would fling snowballs at him, icy, packed snowballs, which sometimes struck him between the eyes and made him dance with rage. And while he chased one of us like a demon another would steal his vegetables or fruit, or dump a sack of potatoes into the gutter. Nobody knew how he had become that way. He had been preaching the Word of God from his wagon ever since he was born, it seemed. He was like one of the prophets of old, and as filthy as some of the great Biblical prophets.

  Twenty years had passed since I last saw George Denton. And here he was again, telling me about Jesus, the Light of the World. “And He that sent me,” said George, “is with me! The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him.… Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free. Amen, brother! May God’s grace abide in you and protect you!”

  There was little sense asking a man like George what had happened to him during all these years. His days had probably passed like a dream. It was plain to see that he took no thought for the morrow. He was still roaming about the city with his horse and wagon, quite as if the automobile did not exist. The whip was lying beside him on the floor—it was inseparable from him.

  I thought I would offer him a cigarette. Mona had a bottle of port in her hand.

  “The Kingdom of God,” said George, raising his hand in protest, “is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.… It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended or is made weak.”

  Pause whilst Mona and myself take a sip of port.

  Continuing as if he saw not nor heard not, George spouted: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. Amen! Amen!”

  Not derisively but softly and easily I began to laugh—out of intoxication with the Holy Writ. George didn’t mind. He went on babbling, just as of old. Never addressed us as persons but rather as vessels into which he was pouring the blessed milk of the Holy Virgin. Of the material objects which surrounded him his eyes saw nothing. One room was like another to him, and none any better than the stable to which he led his horses. (He probably slept with them.) No, he had a mission to fulfill and it brought him joy and forgetfulness. From morn to midnight he was busy spreading God’s word. Even in buying his produce he continued to spread the Gospel.

  What a beautiful, untrammeled existence, I thought to myself. Mad? Sure he was mad, mad as a bedbug. But in a good way. George never really hurt anyone with that whip. He loved to crack it, just to convince nasty little urchins that he was not altogether a helpless old idiot.

  “Resist the devil,” said George, “and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.… Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.”

  “George,” I said, quelling the bubble of laughter, “you make me feel good. It’s so long…”

  “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.… Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”

  “O.K.! Listen, George, do you remem.…”

  “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. The Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

  With this George took out a huge, filthy red polka dot kerchief and wiped his eyes, then blew his nose vigorously. “Amen! Praise God for His saving and keeping power!”

  He got up and went to the fireplace. On the mantel there was lying an unfinished manuscript weighted down by a figurine representing a dancing Hindu goddess. George veered round quickly and spake: “Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.… In the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God shall be finished, as He hath declared to His servants and the prophets.”

  Just then I thought I heard the horses stirring outside. I went to the window to see what was up. George had raised his voice. It was almost a shout now which went up from his throat. “Who shall not hear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy.”

  The horses were tugging the wagon off, the urchins screaming with delight and helping themselves as of yore to the fruit and vegetables. I beckoned to George to come to the window. He was still shouting.… “The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns…”

  “Better hurry, George, or they’ll get away from you!”

  Quick as a flash George ducked for his whip and dashed out into the street. “Whoa there, Jezebel,” I heard him shout. “Whoa there!”

  He was back in a jiffy offering us a basket of apples and some cauliflower. “Accept the blessings of the Lord,” he said. “Peace be with you! Amen, brother! Glory, sister! Glory to God in the Highest!” Then he made for his wagon, flicked the horses with his long whip, and waved blessings in all directions.

  It was only after he had
been gone some time that I discovered the worn-out Bible which he had forgotten. It was greasy, thumb-marked, fly-bitten; the covers were gone and pages were missing here and there. I had asked for the Bible and I had received it. “Seek and ye shall find. Ask and it shall be given unto you. Knock and it shall be opened.” I began spouting a bit myself. The Scriptures are headier than the strongest wines. I opened the Book at random and it fell open to one of my favorite passages:

  “And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

  “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

  “And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

  “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.”

  Listening to religious zealots always makes me hungry and thirsty—I mean for the so-called good things of life. A full spirit creates an appetite throughout all parts and members of the body. George had no sooner left than I began to wonder where in this bloody aristocratic quarter I could find a bakery that sold streusel küchen or jelly doughnuts (Pfann Küchen) or a good rich cinnamon cake which would melt in one’s mouth. After a few more glasses of port I began to think of more substantial comestibles, such as sauerbraten and potato dumplings with fried bread crumbs swimming in a rich spicy black gravy; I thought of a tender roast shoulder of pork with fried apples on the side, of scallops and bacon as an hors d’oeuvre, of crêpes Suzette, of Brazil nuts and pecans, of charlotte russe, such as they make only in Louisiana. I would have relished anything at that moment which was rich, succulent and savory. Sinful food, that was what I craved. Sinful food and wines that were aphrodisiac. And some excellent Kümmel to top it off.