Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (12 page)

'Do you have an SUV?'

'No.'

'Good. Do you have a gas-electric hybrid car?'

'No.'

'Bad.'

While we were in the car I told him all about how I was going to meet everyone in New York with the last name Black. He said, 'I can relate, in my own way, because I had a dog run away once. She was the best dog in the world. I couldn't have loved her more or treated her better. She didn't want to run away. She just got confused, and followed one thing and then another.'

'But my dad didn't run away,' I said. 'He was killed in a terrorist attack.' Abe said, 'I was thinking of you.' He went up with me to the door of Ada Black's apartment, even though I told him I could do it myself. 'I'll feel better knowing you made it here safely,' he said, which sounded like Mom.

Ada Black owned two Picasso paintings. She didn't know anything about the key, so the paintings meant nothing to me, even if I knew they were famous. She said I could have a seat on the couch if I wanted to, but I told her I didn't believe in leather, so I stood. Her apartment was the most amazing apartment I'd ever been in. The floors were like marble chessboards, and the ceilings were like cakes. Everything seemed like it belonged in a museum, so I took some pictures with Grandpa's camera. 'This might be a rude question, but are you the richest person in the world?' She touched a lampshade and said, 'I'm the 467th-richest person in the world.'

I asked her how it made her feel to know that there were homeless people and millionaires living in the same city. She said, 'I give a lot to charity, if that's what you're getting at.' I told her that I wasn't getting at anything, and that I just wanted to know how she felt. 'I feel fine,' she said, and she asked me if I wanted something to drink. I asked her for a coffee, and she asked someone in another room for a coffee, and then I asked her if she thought that maybe no one should have more than a certain amount of money until everyone had that amount of money. That was an idea Dad had once suggested to me. She said, 'The Upper West Side isn't free, you know.' I asked her how she knew that I lived on the Upper West Side. 'Do you have things that you don't need?'

'Not really.'

'You collect coins?'

'How did you know I collect coins?'

'Lots of young people collect coins.' I told her, 'I need them.'

'Do you need them as much as a homeless person needs food?' The conversation was beginning to make me feel self-conscious. She said, 'Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?' I said, 'It depends on what it means to need.'

She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.'

'You don't do that anymore?'

'There are questions I don't ask anymore.' An African-American woman brought me coffee on a silver tray. I told her, 'Your uniform is incredibly beautiful.' She looked at Ada. 'Really,' I said. 'I think light blue is a very, very beautiful color on you.' She was still looking at Ada, who said, 'Thanks, Gail.' As she walked back to the kitchen I told her, 'Gail is a beautiful name.'

When it was just the two of us again, Ada told me, 'Oskar, I think you made Gail feel quite uncomfortable.'

'What do you mean?'

'I could tell that she felt embarrassed.'

'I was just trying to be nice.'

'You might have tried too hard.'

'How can you try too hard to be nice?'

'You were being condescending.'

'What's that?'

'You were talking to her like she was a child.'

'No I wasn't.'

'There's no shame in being a maid. She does a serious job, and I pay her well.' I said, 'I was just trying to be nice.' And then I wondered,
Did I tell her my name was Oskar?

We sat there for a while. She stared out the window, like she was waiting for something to happen in Central Park. I asked, 'Would it be OK if I snooped around your apartment?' She laughed and said, 'Finally someone says what he's thinking.' I looked around a bit, and there were so many rooms that I wondered if the apartment's inside was bigger than its outside. But I didn't find any clues. When I came back she asked if I wanted a finger sandwich, which freaked me out, but I was very polite and just said, 'Jose.'

'Pardon?'

'Jose.'

'I'm sorry. I don't understand what that means.'

'Jose. As in, 'No way…' She said, 'I know what I am.' I nodded my head, even though I didn't know what she was talking about or what it had to do with anything. 'Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.'

'What are the options again?' She cracked up and said, 'I like you.'

I showed her the key, but she had never seen it, and couldn't tell me anything about it.

Even though I told her I didn't need any help, she made the doorman promise to put me in a cab. I told her I couldn't afford a cab. She said, 'I can.' I gave her my card. She said, 'Good luck,' and put her hands on my cheeks, and kissed the top of my head.

That was Saturday, and it was depressing.

This might be hard to believe, but the next Black lived in our building, just one floor above us. If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it. I went to the lobby and asked Stan what he knew about the person who lived in 6A. He said, 'Never seen anyone go in or come out. Just a lot of deliveries and a lot of trash.'

'
Cool
.' He leaned down and whispered, 'Haunted.' I whispered back, 'I don't believe in the paranormal.' He said, 'Ghosts don't care if you believe in them,' and even though I was an atheist, I knew he wasn't right.

I walked back up the steps, this time past our floor and to the sixth. There was a mat in front of the door which said Welcome in twelve different languages. That didn't seem like something a ghost would put in front of his apartment. I tried the key in the lock, but it didn't work, so I rang the buzzer, which was exactly where our buzzer was. I heard some noise inside, and maybe even some creepy music, but I was brave and just stood there.

After an incredibly long time the door opened. 'Can I help you!' an old man asked, but he asked it extremely loudly, so it was more like a scream. 'Yes, hello,' I said. 'I live downstairs in 5A. May I please ask you a few questions?'

'Hello, young man!' he said, and he was kind of weird-looking, because he had on a red beret, like a French person, and an eye patch, like a pirate. He said, 'I'm Mr. Black!' I said, 'I know.' He turned around and started walking into his apartment. I guessed I was supposed to follow him, so I did.

Another thing that was weird was that his apartment looked exactly like our apartment. The floors were the same, the windowsills were the same, even the tiles on the fireplace were the same color green. But his apartment was also incredibly different, because it was filled with different stuff. Tons of stuff. Stuff everywhere. Also, there was a huge column right in the middle of the dining room. It was as big as two refrigerators, and it made it impossible for the room to have a table or anything else in it, like ours did. 'What's that for?' I asked, but he didn't hear me. There were a bunch of dolls and other things on the mantel, and the floors were filled with little rugs. 'I got those in Iceland!' he said, pointing at the seashells on the windowsill. He pointed at a sword on the wall and said, 'I got that in Japan!' I asked him if it was a samurai sword. He said, 'It's a replica!' I said, 'Cool.'

He led me to the kitchen table, which was where our kitchen table was, and he sat down and slapped his hand against his knee. 'Well!' he said, so loudly that I wanted to cover my ears. 'I've had a pretty amazing life!' I thought it was weird that he said that, because I didn't ask him about his life. I didn't even tell him why I was there. 'I was born on January 1, 1900! I lived every day of the twentieth century!'

'Really?'

'My mother altered my birth certificate so I could fight in the First World War! That was the only lie she ever told! I was engaged to Fitzgerald's sister!'

'Who's Fitzgerald?'

'Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, my boy! A Great Author! A Great Author!'

'Oops.'

'I used to sit on her porch and talk to her father while she powdered her nose upstairs! Her father and I had the most lively conversations! He was a Great Man, like Winston Churchill was a Great Man!' I decided that it would be better to Google Winston Churchill when I got home, instead of mentioning that I didn't know who he was. 'One day, she came downstairs and was ready to go! I told her to hold on for a minute, because her father and I were right smack in the middle of a terrific conversation, and you can't interrupt a terrific conversation, right!'

'I don't know.'

'Later that night, as I was dropping her off on that same porch, she said, 'Sometimes I wonder if you like my father more than me!' I inherited that damn honesty from my mother, and it caught up with me again! I told her, 'I do!' Well, that was the last time I told her 'I do,' if you know what I mean!'

'I don't.'

'I blew it! Boy, did I blow it!' He started cracking up extremely loudly, and he slapped his knee. I said, 'That's hilarious,' because it must have been for him to crack up so much. 'Hilarious!' he said. 'It is! I never heard from her again! Oh, well! So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!'

He put a teakettle on the stove.

'You're wise,' I told him. 'I've had enough time to get wise! See this!' he hollered, and he flipped up his eye patch. 'That's from Nazi shrapnel! I was a war correspondent and ended up attaching myself to a British tank corps going up the Rhine! We were ambushed one afternoon, toward the end of '44! I bled my eye all over the page I was writing on, but those sons of bitches couldn't stop me! I finished my sentence!'

'What was the sentence?'

'Ah, who can remember! The point is I wasn't going to let those bastard Krauts stop my pen! It's mightier than the sword, you know! And the MG34!'

'Could you please put the patch back?'

'See that!' he said, pointing at the kitchen floor, but I couldn't stop thinking about his eye. 'There's oak under those rugs! Quarter-sawn oak! I should know, I laid it myself!'

'Jose,' I said, and I wasn't just saying it to be nice. I was keeping a list in my head of things I could do to be more like him. 'My wife and I renovated this kitchen ourselves! With these hands!' He showed me his hands. They looked like the hands on the skeleton in the Rainier Scientific catalogue that Ron offered to buy for me, except they had skin, blotchy skin, and I didn't want gifts from Ron. 'Where's your wife now?' The teakettle started to whistle.

'Oh,' he said, 'she died twenty-four years ago! Long time ago! Yesterday, in my life!'

'Oops.'

'It's OK!'

'You don't feel bad that I asked about her? You can tell me if you do.'

'No!' he said. 'Thinking about her is the next best thing!' He poured two cups of tea. 'Do you have any coffee?' I asked. 'Coffee!'

'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.' He slapped the table and said, 'My boy, I have some coffee from Honduras that's got your name on it!'

'But you don't even know my name.'

We sat around for a while and he told me more about his amazing life. As far as he knew, which seemed pretty far, he was the only person still alive who had fought in both of the world wars. He'd been to Australia, and Kenya, and Pakistan, and Panama. I asked him, 'If you had to guess, how many countries would you guess you've been to?' He said, 'I wouldn't have to guess! One hundred twelve!'

'Are there even that many countries?' He told me, 'There are more places you haven't heard of than you've heard of!' I loved that. He had reported almost every war of the twentieth century, like the Spanish Civil War, and the genocide in East Timor, and bad stuff that happened in Africa. I hadn't heard of any of them, so I tried to remember them so I could Google them when I got home. The list in my head was getting incredibly long: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, powdering her nose, Churchill, Mustang convertible, Walter Cronkite, necking, the Bay of Pigs, LP, Datsun, Kent State, lard, Ayatollah Khomeini, Polaroid, apartheid, drive-in, favela, Trotsky, the Berlin Wall, Tito,
Gone With the Wind
, Frank Lloyd Wright, hula hoop, Technicolor, the Spanish Civil War, Grace Kelly, East Timor, slide rule, a bunch of places in Africa whose names I tried to remember but had already forgotten. It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me.

His apartment was filled with the stuff he'd collected during the wars of his life, and I took pictures of them with Grandpa's camera. There were books in foreign languages, and little statues, and scrolls with pretty paintings, and Coke cans from around the world, and a bunch of rocks on his fireplace mantel, although all of them were common. One fascinating thing was that each rock had a little piece of paper next to it that said where the rock came from, and when it came from, like, 'Normandy, 6/19/44,' 'Hwach'on Dam, 4/09/51,' and 'Dallas, 11/22/63.' That was so fascinating, but one weird thing was that there were lots of bullets on the mantel, too, and they didn't have little pieces of paper next to them. I asked him how he knew which was which. 'A bullet's a bullet's a bullet!' he said. 'But isn't a rock a rock?' I asked. He said, 'Of course not!' I thought I understood him, but I wasn't positive, so I pointed at the roses in the vase on the table. 'Is a rose a rose?'

'No! A rose is not a rose is not a rose!' And then for some reason I started thinking about 'Something in the Way She Moves,' so I asked, 'Is a love song a love song?' He said, 'Yes!' I thought for a second. 'Is love love?' He said, 'No!' He had a wall of masks from every country he'd been to, like Armenia and Chile and Ethiopia. 'It's not a horrible world,' he told me, putting a Cambodian mask on his face, 'but it's filled with a lot of horrible people!'

I had another cup of coffee, and then I knew it was time to get to the point, so I took the key off my neck and gave it to him. 'Do you know what this opens?'

'Don't think so!' he hollered. 'Maybe you knew my dad?'

'Who was your dad!'

'His name was Thomas Schell. He lived in 5A until he died.'

'No,' he said, 'that name doesn't ring a bell!' I asked if he was one-hundred-percent sure.' He said, 'I've lived long enough to know I'm not one-hundred-percent anything!' and he got up, walked past the column in the dining room, and went over to the coat closet, which was tucked under the stairs. That was when I had the revelation that his apartment wasn't just like ours, because his had an upstairs. He opened the closet, and there was a library card catalogue inside. '
Cool
.'

He said, 'This is my biographical index!'

'Your what?'

'I started it when I was just beginning to write! I'd create a card for everyone I thought I might need to reference one day! There's a card for everyone I ever wrote about! And cards for people I talked to in the course of writing my pieces! And cards for people I read books about! And cards for people in the footnotes of those books! In the mornings, when I'd read the papers, I would make cards for everyone that seemed biographically significant! I still do it!'

'Why don't you just use the Internet?'

'I don't have a computer!' That made me start to feel dizzy.

'How many cards do you have?'

'I've never counted! There must be tens of thousands by this point! Maybe hundreds of thousands!'

'What do you write on them?'

'I write the name of the person and a one-word biography!'

'Just one word?'

'Everyone gets boiled down to one word!'

'And that's helpful?'

'It's hugely helpful! I read an article about Latin American currencies this morning! It referred to the work of someone named Manuel Escobar! So I came and looked up Escobar! Sure enough, he was in here! Manuel Escobar: unionist!'

'But he's also probably a husband, or dad, or Beatles fan, or jogger, or who knows what else.'

'Sure! You could write a book about Manuel Escobar! And that would leave things out, too! You could write ten books! You could never stop writing!'

He slid out drawers from the cabinet and pulled cards from the drawers, one after another.

'Henry Kissinger: war!

'Ornette Coleman: music!

'Che Guevara: war!

'Jeff Bezos: money!

'Philip Guston: art!

'Mahatma Gandhi: war!'

'But he was a pacifist,' I said.

'Right! War!

'Arthur Ashe: tennis!

'Tom Cruise: money!

'Elie Wiesel: war!

'Arnold Schwarzenegger: war!

'Martha Stewart: money!

'Rem Koolhaas: architecture!

'Ariel Sharon: war!

'Mick Jagger: money!

'Yasir Arafat: war!

'Susan Sontag: thought!

'Wolfgang Puck: money!

'Pope John Paul II: war!'

I asked if he had a card for Stephen Hawking.

'Of course!' he said, and slid out a drawer, and pulled out a card.