Three Balconies (15 page)

Then Harry took hold of himself and decided it was too early to worry about the three balconies. The building was still under construction. All they had built was the lobby and the health club. It would take a year to get to his floor. (To “pour” his floor is the way they put it.) So there was plenty of time. And when he absolutely had to, he would deal with the balconies one at a time. Wasn't that what life was all about – taking it one balcony at a time?

If that wasn't a philosophy, he didn't know what was.

Harry would have to remember it, the next time someone suggested that he wasn't a serious man.

ONCE MORE, into the country came Siegel, this time to a far-flung village in the Pacific Northwest, one he had flirted with as a vacationing youngster, wondering what it would be like to live there on a year-round basis. He was older, of course, but perhaps more formidable, accompanied as he was by Victoria St. John, who adored him when she could find the time. They rented a cheerful little cottage that may have been a shade too close to the lone Chinese restaurant in the area. Comforting to Siegel, the smell of hot prawns and garlic sauce was less of a treat for Victoria who enjoyed only one or two items on the menu, primarily the Dim Sum Parade. Each day, Siegel sent her out to inspect homes he had no thought of buying; it was his intention to spend a year in the area – playing a little tennis, also wading through dusty volumes in an effort to shore up his knowledge of history, finally bringing such figures as Talleyrand and Clemenceau into focus. He planned to plug up holes in his understanding of young America as well; he had no idea, to his shame, of why Shays – of Shays' Rebellion – had rebelled or, for that matter, why poor Bleeding Kansas bled.

But instead of practicing his ground strokes and sailing through Cotton Mather biographies, he found himself distracted by yet another favorite activity – looking for evidence of hostility to the Jews. Thus far, he hadn't come up with much, a pinched look here, a sidelong glance there. Nonetheless, he pressed on, convinced it was worth the effort.

After a week, the dry cleaner invited him to a pig roast at the dock. Siegel was about to take offense, then decided it was a friendly gesture, perhaps a tribute to the tremendous bill he and Victoria had racked up in such a short time, truly impressive for
only two people. The grateful dry cleaner had asked Siegel to sit around and partake of a little pig with him. What was wrong with that? And what was Siegel all of a sudden, kosher, with all the spare ribs he had packed away in his time? So he let it pass. Shortly thereafter, a toothless fisherman at the supermarket announced to the checkout line that Walter Winchell had changed his name from Louis Lipschitz.

“I don't blame him, do you?” he asked, then narrowed his eyes and scanned the line, as if waiting for a show of hands.

Siegel prepared to lash out at the man, but held back. Though it had come out of the blue, the question may well have been a legitimate one. Who knows, perhaps it had nagged at the old-timer on the rough seas, while he waited for marlin.

Should the great columnist, given the time and his choice of profession, have stuck with Lipschitz?

Siegel, of course, had remained Siegel. He had achievements in bulletproof sportswear. Why credit them to Atkinson or Seville, two of the names he had flirted with? Nonetheless, he felt that Winchell's choice was defensible. Had there been a vote among the customers, he would have said so boldly. As it was, there was only a generalized chuckling. Siegel fell in with it, an act of mild cowardice, since he didn't feel that jocular. Then he paid for his chicken breasts and left. Once again, he had found nothing he could hang his hat on.

Still, he pressed on in his search for behavior that was offensive to the Jews. If he couldn't find a little, what was the point of being a Jew. Somewhere out there, they didn't like his people. All he had to do was keep looking and he would be able to prove it.

In the city, Siegel never thought much about being a Jew. If there was trouble, he could call other Jews. He certainly didn't make this an issue when it came to dating. A woman could wave a mezuzah in his face and he wouldn't notice it. It was a woman. That was enough. Beyond the safety of the city's borders, it was different. Years before, on Maine's craggy coast, Siegel had lived in another community, shorn of his people. He recalled that in his
isolation he felt like a Jew the second he got up in the morning. This was true in bars and restaurants and when he took a leak. In his car he was a Jew. On occasion, he'd affected a folksy exterior; in actuality, he tiptoed along, ready at all times to be unmasked – forced to trade punches in the dirt with the person who had just caught him. He approached strangers with a bluff caution. Nor did he relax when he made friends. Israel might come up, provoking mixed emotions. God forbid, he'd have to take a stand. On several occasions, he'd made a study of the country's origins and legal right to exist. But the codicils and the Balfour Declaration kept fading on him. He'd read somewhere that London was a swamp when the Jews were in Palestine.

“London was a swamp,” he'd say in argument, “when the Jews were in Palestine.”

But that's all he knew. His lawyer, Brookline, was wise in the details of ancient Judea. But what was Siegel going to do, call the overworked attorney in the middle of the night when he was in a tight rhetorical spot? Just his luck, he'd get a bill.

Years had passed since Siegel had stood before a rural school board and in a strangulated voice asked: “Do you teach democratic values?”

A short, dark woman reprimanded him. “You're not the first one of your people we've had here.” Again, his people.

Obviously, in the years that followed, the culture had changed. Jews were all over the place – high up in the Defense Department. There were laws that said you couldn't insult a Jew, except in the privacy of your home. Otherwise, you'd have to pay a fine. All of this enforced by tough assistant D.A.s of what else, the Jewish faith. Nobody even knew what a Jew looked like anymore. A case in point was Siegel himself, whose hair had become blond and flaxen over the years, though still revealingly kinky at the sides. This in contrast to the dark and sensuous Victoria St. John, from a distinguished WASP family, yet with a voluptuous body that had played no small part in their courtship, though of course he admired other qualities of hers as well. No longer did
Jews live through Koufax's arm or the achievements of Henny Youngman. General Ariel Sharon, arguably a
bullvun,
had thundered through the Middle East, demonstrating that you couldn't push Jews around anymore. They would come to your home and find you, even living under an assumed name in Terre Haute. Jews, when you could find them, stood tall, all, that is, except Siegel who hadn‘t lost a single relative to the camps but had been insulted once at a tennis club in Connecticut. Before leaving the lush grass courts, he'd raised a fist and vowed: “We don't forget.”

So he continued his search, unable to relax unless he felt unwelcome. Could life be comfortable when there was no enemy at the gates? Siegel wasn't sure. Were there other Jews like him, still another lost tribe? He didn't know that many Jews and besides, he'd never asked.

 

Though Siegel tried to ferret out a little intolerance, the village held firm. The people were reserved, but was that grounds for an accusation? Should he call them together in Town Hall and say: “I'm sorry, but you've been a little reserved.” When they'd lived among themselves for several hundred years? What were they supposed to do, run over and wash his feet? Because he'd decided to rent a cottage next to their only Chinese restaurant?

Then one night, in a local bar, just as he was about to throw in the towel, Siegel felt he'd struck paydirt. He could tell by the invitational curve of the fat man's arm that he was onto something.

Men with billowing volunteer ambulance jackets were bunched at the bar. Good-naturedly, they called each other asshole, forming their mouths into one. Waitresses, built low to the ground, smirked by. The special was sauerbraten. The stage was set. Siegel practically ran into the fat man's arms, and accepted a drink, so anxious was he to get underway. The man said he was Moon from the bait business. Siegel, of course, was Siegel; he was in defensive clothing. There was no need to tell the man he had made a killing in armored playsuits and that he was taking a year off to catch up on history, an old love. He could tell him that later. Quickly, it was
established that both men grew up on Eastern Parkway, Moon insisting that his experience as a German-American in the early'40s was unique.

“You have no idea what it was like, being chased through the streets, not able to emerge from your apartment . . . and that song . . .”

Siegel, of course, was aware of the offending ballad, “In Der Fuhrer's Face.” Sung with interspersed farting sounds, it satirized broadly the unthinking allegiance of Hitler's followers and seemed harmless enough at the time. Admittedly, he had never calculated its effect on a German-American fat boy at a formative stage of his life. Still, now that he had, what was he supposed to do, forget about that little matter with the Jews in Germany, call it a wash?

“It must have been rough,” said Siegel.

Moon waved a disgusted arm. “It was awful,” he said, his voice rising an octave.

Moon said he owned a house inland. Siegel was temporarily renting while he looked around.

“I live with my girlfriend, Victoria St. John.”

As he said her name, he caught himself leaning forward as if waiting to be congratulated.

Moon ignored this. “Fuckin' Jews from Brooklyn,” he said. “That's all they do is rent.”

And there it was, out on the table, the fruits of a month-long search. Siegel congratulated himself on his diligence and the sensitivity of his antennae. Then he sat back, almost smug, prepared to savour his triumph. Yet oddly enough, the release he felt was vague and unsatisfactory. Perhaps there hadn't been enough foreplay. The “fuckin” was useful, of course, but the balance of the insult was hard to work with. What was he supposed to do, throw the man on the ground and spit in his face for suggesting that Jews rented? Of course they rented. That wasn't all they did. They also bought, as a man in a volunteers jacket was quick to testify.

“C'mon, Moon, they're grabbin' up the whole area.”

“There you are,” said Siegel, nodding his appreciation to the man, although not too vigorously, since, after all, he could hardly be considered a soulmate.

A Christ-like man at a table looked up from a slim volume and said: “You can't get published unless you're a Jew.”

“What about Updike?” Siegel shot back and was prepared to buttress his argument with other examples if the ascetic-looking fellow persisted in the absurd argument.

“Jewish themes,” said the fellow dismissively.

“What Jewish themes?” said Siegel, conveniently ignoring the excellent character, Bech.

Maddeningly, he felt he was being drawn into an argument in his old neighborhood. They might have been bickering over the Phillies' pennant chances. And the bar did have some characteristics of Eastern Parkway, an irony since for decades he hadn't been able to find one in the city, filled as it was now with rich Brazilians, another reason he had cleared out.

Surprisingly, the bartender, a tall slender fellow with a head of curls, responded well to the proceedings.

He beckoned Siegel to a back room and opened a safe. Expecting drugs or porn, Siegel instead got a look at Brad Van Pelt's helmet, on loan from a cousin in the area. Siegel asked if he could touch it, with sincerity, as it happened, since he had always admired the great linebacker who'd labored so heroically in a losing cause, only to be denied a Super Bowl triumph. When Siegel was finished playing with the helmet, the bartender leaned in close to him, shooting his eyes from side to side as if he were passing along a racing tip. In an overview of the evening, he said, “Hey-y-y, new bar . . . new guy . . . earn them spurs.” Then, with several shakes of his tiny tush, he led Siegel back to the bar, immediately topping off Moon's drink in a show of impartiality.

“Anyone comes in here is lonely,” said Moon, in a remark clearly directed at Siegel, although refusing to give him the courtesy of turning in his direction.

“Not necessarily,” said Siegel, who took this as a personal
attack on his romance with Victoria, even though, disappointingly, she was back at Cavanaugh's Cottages, enjoying a sitcom lineup.

“Yes, necessarily,” said Moon.

“Get your arm up here,” said Siegel, theatrically clenching his teeth and pounding the bar.

“You'd lose,” said Moon, with a sad wave of his hand.

“You're probably right,” said Siegel, enclosed suddenly in the other man's gloom, as if it were a cologne.

Overtipping shamelessly, Siegel got up to leave.

Moon erupted in the style of a building superintendent, perhaps mimicking one who had chased him as a German fat boy.

“And don't you ever let me catch you bringing no book into a bar.”

The new attack puzzled Siegel. Was this a reference to what he perceived to be Siegel's scholarly demeanor? He was in body armor. Where was the scholar? Did Moon know Jews who studied in bars? Siegel had cartons of books back at the cottage, but it was inconceivable that someone had phoned this information in to Moon. Be on the alert, Siegel's coming with books.

Nonetheless, the attack had to be answered: Siegel put a hand to his mouth, fell back in horror and, using a falsetto voice, said: “The people of the Book?” Then he did an Ali shuffle, threw some punches in the air and waltzed out of the bar in an absurd burst of conviviality.