Last Respects Read online

  “I’ll be right back!” I yelled to old Mrs. Lebenbaum in Yiddish. “Don’t go away! I’ll be back in just a few minutes!”

  “Benny!” she called after me. “Benny, are you crazy?”

  For forty years, whenever this scene invades my mind, I have found it helpful to assure myself that Mrs. Lebenbaum’s question was rhetorical. After all, Mrs. Lebenbaum was not really interested in my answer. Suppose I had called back across my shoulder, “You bet I am! Nutty as a fruit cake!”

  For one thing, I would not have known how to say that in Yiddish. And what other language did Mrs. Lebenbaum understand? For another, what would have been accomplished if she had understood? Benny is crazy? My poor son Abe, he pays a boy five dollars a week because Abe has a good heart, and the boy turns out to be crazy! And finally, I didn’t quite understand the situation myself. My emotions were not exactly orthodox.

  I was tense and nervous about whether I would have enough time to carry out my part of the plan Walter Sinclair and my mother had cooked up. But I was also excited. I’d had a one-bottle setback from Rabbi Goldfarb, true. But I’d made it with ease past the hill of that louse Mr. Velvelschmidt. And while I’d slipped back another bottle at the hands of Mr. Heizerick, the stone-faced drunk had handed over two ten-spots. Never in my life had I held such a sum in my hands.

  Any man, and that’s how I thought of myself at the time, any man who had twenty dollars to work with, and couldn’t fashion the course of history, didn’t deserve to be trusted by people like my mother and Walter Sinclair. Racing up Avenue D, dragging the wagon behind me, I realized for the first time how much I wanted their approval. Approval? What was I talking about? I wanted their admiration. And I knew how to earn it, too.

  If it is possible, while dragging a wagon that contains four quarts of Old Southwick, to race up six flights of tenement stairs, then I raced up to the top-floor door behind which the Zabriskie sisters lived and plied their trade. Here, with my hand raised to knock, I didn’t. I was suddenly assailed by my lack of knowledge of the terrain I was invading.

  I knew Abe Lebenbaum was behind that door, being entertained by Lya. But who else was there? I stood motionless in the smelly hall, closed my eyes, and forced myself to summon into my mind the appointment book clipped under the shelf in the candy store telephone booth. Who was booked for tonight? More accurately, who had been booked for six-thirty?

  The Zabriskie sisters usually worked half-hour shifts. It was now shortly after seven. Whoever was in that flat getting his ashes hauled had started the treatment at six-thirty. But who was he? He? Christ, it could be they. There were three Zabriskie sisters. It was rumored that some elements of their treatment were so unique that some of the biggest spenders uptown had never heard of them. And they were reputed to have customers who paid handsomely for treatments so unique that they could not be described. Except, perhaps, by George Weitz, and he was notoriously unreliable because, while he claimed he got his information from his father’s medical library, I suspected he made it all up, like his jokes. Once, when he was telling me there was a form of hauling ashes that involved three women and one man, and I refused to believe him, George drew me some diagrams to prove it. I was not exactly convinced. There is something about a diagram, especially of a woman, that lacks verisimilitude. Especially when you’re fourteen.

  I concentrated on the appointment book inside my head. I had made no entries in the book tonight, of course. Tonight I had not yet taken up my post in the candy store. But the night before had been peppy. I recalled that the phone had not stopped ringing from the moment I came on duty. I retraced in my head the entries I had made in the book. Two or three had been the usual replacements for dates scheduled for the night before. That happened all the time. Men got excited, picked up the phone, made a date, then found out when they got home that the little woman had also made a date. Aunt Tillie was coming from Bensonhurst. Aunt Tillie and the Zabriskie sisters were mutually exclusive. Result: another phone call. Most of those I had taken had been, as always, for the weekend. Those weekends. God. I still wonder how those three poor girls ever got through their Saturdays and Sundays. Group therapy, no doubt.

  Then the electric light bulb inside my head went boing! The guy who had called the day my mother had mysteriously appeared in Rabbi Goldfarb’s cheder to make sure I got home for supper on time. The night my mother had refused to let my father go to his Erste Neustadter Krank und Unterstitzing Verein meeting. The night she had led me to the dock to meet Walter Sinclair. The night this slob had called from a phone booth on Fourteenth Street for a date with Pauline, refused Marie, and settled for Lya. The slob named Ted Werner. He had apparently been satisfied with Lya’s treatment. He had called back the night before, to make another date for tonight. At six-thirty. How Lya was handling both Abe Lebenbaum and Ted Werner was none of my business. George Weitz and his diagrams might have brought it closer to my business, but now there was no time for that. I had to get to the Shumansky wedding, and I had two more stops to make before I even pointed myself in the direction of Lenox Assembly Rooms. Knocking on the door of the Zabriskie sisters’ flat would be a mistake. There were at least two men in there. I didn’t want company or witnesses. I wanted my two bottles of Old South-wick.

  I turned and ran toward the skylight steps. Then my brain started functioning and I turned again, ran back, and grabbed the hike wagon. I couldn’t leave that outside the door of the Zabriskie sisters’ flat.

  I dragged the wagon up the skylight steps and pushed my way through the iron door to the roof. The fact that there was still plenty of daylight was refreshing. It was as though I had been given the present of having the clocks turned back to assure me I would accomplish every step of my assignment and not be late for the meeting with my mother.

  I dragged the wagon across the buckling tar-paper roof to the fire-escape ladder on the side of the tenement where the Zabriskie sisters lived. Luckily, their flat faced the courtyard. Nobody would see me from the street. As I eased the wagon over the edge of the roof, I paused for a quick look around. To the east I could see the back of our tenement on the Lewis Street corner. Beyond it, I could see the Fourth Street dock jutting out into the river. To the west and north I could see the two bulging spires of Lenox Assembly rooms, like great big fat onions stuck on the tops of flagpoles. I climbed over the edge, got a good grip on the wooden crossbar of the wagon, and started down the black iron ladder. It wasn’t much of a climb, but I had to do it holding the wagon away from the ladder with one hand so the banging of the box against the metal would not announce my arrival. I got down to the fire escape outside the Zabriskie flat without a single bang. I leaned the wagon gently against the dirty brick wall, knelt down on the iron slats of the fire escape, and peered into the window.

  To begin with, I had never before in my life seen a completely naked woman. Parts of naked women, yes. But a whole naked woman, no. Mr. O’Hare had twice taken the troop to Coney Island on hot August Sundays when a hike to the Palisades had seemed too difficult and potentially unpleasant. These trips to Coney Island proved to be eyeopeners.

  In the men’s locker room of the Birnbaum Baths on Surf Avenue, where I changed into my bathing suit with the entire Raven Patrol, George Weitz and I had discovered a couple of knotholes in the cheesily hammered together wooden wall that separated us from what proved to be the women’s locker room. In those days, of course, my life was run more or less by the elevated standards of the Scout Law. Just the same, when I found a knothole I forgot all this nonsense about a scout is courteous, and share and share alike. When I found a knothole I hung onto it.

  As a result, by the time I found myself on the fire escape outside the Zabriskie sisters’ bedroom, I had seen my share of female blubber. Maybe more than my share. Who could possibly have parceled out equitably the women who in my youth changed bathing suits in the locker room of the Birnbaum Baths at Coney Island?

  Only Rubens could have done them justice. I refer, of course, to Itzick
Rubens, the house painter on Avenue C, who used brushes ten inches wide. Or maybe the ministers of Catherine the Great, who were accustomed to partitioning things like Poland. What I am getting at is that until that night on the fire escape, outside the Zabriskie sisters’ bedroom, the naked women of whom I had seen parts had not been small.

  What I saw now turned my knees to Jell-O. What it did to my mind I still don’t know. All I remember is a wild sort of churning. As though I were being given the third degree. Questions hurled at me from all directions. Answers flung back at me in the form of flashed snapshots. Like arrows whamming into the huddled nest of covered wagons behind which the ambushed forty-niners were trying to hold off the encircling Indians.

  First question. What were three naked women doing in that bedroom? Up like a lantern slide, first fragmentary but graphic reply. Oh, no! Another shot. Oh, yes! Jesus Christ, it’s not possible. Take another look, Benny. I did. Not easy to do because there was a lot of movement, but I managed. Jesus Christ again. That’s what they were doing, all right. But to whom? Keep watching, kid. What was that? A naked man? No, only part of him. What part? Hard to tell. More movement. A face appeared somewhere in the middle of the three Zabriskie sisters. Could it be? Of course it was. But what about the rest of Abe Lebenbaum? I’d never seen my boss except in his blue denim shirt and his sharkskin pants. The rest of Abe now came into view. Incredible. That’s all those pants concealed? Abe, what have you done to yourself? Wait, there were two of them. Two men, I mean. This one seemed to emerge from under the bed. He moved to the closet near the door. When he turned, and I saw what he had in his hand, my mind came clear. The dirty rotten bastard was holding one of the two bottles of Old Southwick I had paid Pauline Zabriskie a quarter to hide for me.

  “Put that down!” I screamed.

  The scream was inside my head. I couldn’t let those wrestlers know I was there. I also had to stop them from drinking my Old Southwick. How? The scout motto came to my assistance : Be Prepared! I was sorry Mr. O’Hare couldn’t see me as I crawled to the wagon and worked the hasp loose. I had removed and placed in the stone cave on the steps down to Old Man Tzoddick’s cellar the Morse signal flags, the iron cooking grill, the two big soup and bean pots, and the troop first-aid kit. I had not bothered with the smaller items.

  Now I rummaged around under the bottles of Old Southwick I had picked up thus far. I found the piece of flint. I rummaged faster and came up with the envelope full of charred gauze. The one thing I could not find was the six-inch length of steel file. It must have dropped out while I was emptying the wagon on Old Man Tzoddick’s cellar steps.

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  You can’t make fire with flint and charred gauze. You’ve got to have a piece of steel. I took a fast look through the window. Lya was coming into the bedroom carrying glasses. Or maybe she was Pauline? Or Marie? I had never been able to tell them apart on the street, or when they answered the door in their flowered kimonas. How was I going to tell them apart now? I dismissed the question from my mind. Telling the Zabriskie sisters apart was not my problem. My problem was to stop them and Abe Lebenbaum and the other man from drinking the Old Southwick I had promised my mother and Walter Sinclair I would deliver to the Shumansky wedding.

  How? Come on, Benny, think. How? The metal slats of the fire escape seemed to say: What about us, you dope? I pulled a wad of charred gauze from the envelope, cupped it in my palm under one of the slats, and hacked at the iron slat with the piece of flint. Sparks flew. Unfortunately, they flew in the wrong direction. I came in closer, shifted the lump of flint to get a vertical stroke, and hacked again. The shower of sparks hit the wad of charred gauze.

  I dropped the flint, cupped the gauze in both hands, raised it to my lips, and blew. I did it the way Mr. O’Hare had taught me. As though I were cooling a spoonful of soup. The tiny glow in the middle of the gauze caught and spread. I looked around desperately. I had no paper. Yes, I had. I had the envelope in which the gauze had been packed. With my teeth I tore the envelope sideways and dipped the ragged edge into the glow in the middle of the gauze. It caught. The flame started to creep up. Now I needed something that would really burn. I looked around fast. Like everybody else on East Fourth Street the Zabriskie sisters used their fire escape as an auxiliary refrigerator.

  The window sill had strung out on it half a bottle of milk, two paper bags, and four tomatoes. I tore open the paper bags. One contained potatoes. The other was wrapped around a Moxie bottle with a cork in it. I sniffed. It did not contain Moxie now. It smelled like the stuff my mother poured into the empty Heinz pickle jars. It occurred to me that girls who made their livings in bed could not afford to turn their backs, or indeed anything else, on this problem.

  I pulled the cork with my teeth, poured some of the benzine on the paper bag, and touched the burning gauze to the paper. The poof of flame that went up almost cost me my eyebrows. I took the Moxie bottle in one hand and banged it against the bedroom window. The glass shattered into the room. I shoved the blazing paper bag through the hole. The curtains caught.

  “Fire!” I yelled through the hole. “Fire! Fire!”

  I was unable to make out exactly what the five people in the bedroom did next. None of it, of course, bore any resemblance to what they had been doing when I caught my first glimpse of them. Now I caught a new glimpse of different parts of the Zabriskie sisters. Or so I thought, anyway. It is possible that what I saw were several parts of only one Zabriskie sister. Anyway, the parts were heaving around like a newsreel shot of lava bubbling away in the crater of a volcano. The same was true of the other man, or, as I had logged him into the date book down in the candy store, Ted Werner. About Abe Lebenbaum all I can honestly report is that I saw his face for a moment. The smoke had started to grow and billow like foaming soapsuds. Then Abe dove headfirst into the suds, moving in the general direction of the door that led to the kitchen. From then on all I remember about the Zabriskie sisters and their two customers was one great big confused screaming contest. I guess it was all that undraped flesh coming into contact with the mushrooming fire. I let them scream. I had work to do.

  I started by banging the rest of the window out of the frame with the Moxie bottle. This made it possible for me not only to climb into the bedroom. It also spread the rest of the benzine across the bed in great wide squirting sprays. As a result, what happened to the room was probably not unlike what happened to Chicago when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern. It was clear that I didn’t have much time.

  I went through the window, circled the flaming bed, and reached the closet. On the floor, just inside the door, my foot kicked the bottle of Old Southwick that Lya—Pauline? Marie?—had been about to open when the scout motto came to my rescue. I scooped it up. The burlap wrapper was beginning to smoke but the cork had not been touched. I slapped the smoke out of the burlap by banging the bottle against my khaki breeches, and dove into the closet. My second bottle was exactly where Pauline—Marie? Lya?—had stashed it three days ago. I grabbed it, turned, and tripped. The closet door, swinging shut behind me, had caught my shoulder.

  I kicked the door back and caught my foot in one of the pink wrappers the girls wore when they were not working. As I sagged, the wrapper tore with my weight. When I hit the closet wall and pushed myself up straight on my feet, I saw what was behind the wrapper: a shelf with what looked like a dozen bottles of Old Southwick.

  They were not wrapped in burlap. They were just standing there, neat and naked. I looked at them, blinked, coughed away some smoke, and tried to think of the appropriate Scout Law. I couldn’t. The men who had decided that a scout was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, and so on, had clearly never contemplated the dilemma of a scout who had to meet his mother at the Lenox Assembly Rooms with a specified number of bottles of Old Southwick and was two bottles short.

  I didn’t have time to think it through. I grabbed two of those bottles. I belted my way out of the closet, across the bedroom, through the broken
window, and out onto the fire escape. I shoved the four bottles of Old Southwick into the wagon, fastened the hasp, and started down the fire escape, dragging the wagon behind me. I made it to the yard before I heard the fire engines. Hearing them settled one thing. Back out into Avenue D meant back out into the hands of the cops. Not for Benny.

  I turned and cut across the yard, through the open back door of the tenement facing Third Street. I scuttled across the ground-floor hall and made it to the sidewalk. I was halfway down Third Street, heading for Lewis, when I was struck by an assessment of my position.

  I had caught up on the number of bottles of Old Southwick my mother was expecting. I had done it without using the two ten-spots Mr. Heizerick had given me in the back of the candy store. Nobody except Mr. Heizerick and I knew about those two ten-spots. Mr. Heizerick, feeding nickels into the slot machine in the back of the candy store, was undoubtedly too drunk to remember he had given me the money. Conclusion: I was not only in my mother’s good graces. I was also in possession of twenty bucks that nobody knew anything about.

  Next question: Was it necessary for anybody to know about it? The answer was obvious, of course, but as I hustled around the Third Street corner, dragging the wagon into Lewis Street, it seemed only right to subject the question to the rigorous scrutiny of the Scout Law.

  A scout is trustworthy? Of course. Loyal? Why not? Helpful? Certainly. Friendly? What else? Courteous? By the time I got to a scout is reverent I had also reached the Fourth Street corner. Dusk was closing in. Moral issues would have to wait. I forgot the two ten-spots in my pocket and dragged the wagon down Fourth Street into the dock area.

  As usual, when night was about to come down on East Fourth Street, the dock was deserted. I moved down toward the uptown side. It was lined with barges. They had obviously arrived during the day. All were piled high with coal.