How it takes so much — headenergy, foot’s thought — to get used to it again, never, the land lying down for no one, less and less: all the customs, the rituals and traditions, B, what’s hot, who’s not and the indifference of the undifferentiated lumpenmass, thinking God you leave for one day, just one night, then you come back, bridge & tunnel yourself in, the Holland’s swallow, the Lincoln as if an escape back into bondage — and how everything’s different…new people, new rules. Lately, the whole city’s been rented out: now everything’s owned, every block, each slab of sidewalk, asphalt’s each twinkly grain. He’s walked through the particulars; explained to, talked down to, they give Him the business: you, I’m talking to you — shopkeeps, menschs leaning their drafty beards out the windows — you can’t walk there, that’s leased, don’t make a kasha, a drygoods, a delicatessen, what right do you have, what are you not understanding? Their language, for one, a mix from the guttery guttural, slumming, the slang slung of an easterly gust; which becomes slowly translated, though (it’s not too difficult, already halfknown, it feels, if not just felt and faked), then translated again — He’d rather not put forth the effort. Takes time, this targum. Have the pity of patience, wait for it, geduld. Another mensch sticks his head outside a storefront below a sign that says, He’s trying, He’s sounding it out:
Apparently, the whole town had been sold off, if not sold outright from under then at least from above it’s been rented, leased then sublet: this untrafficked stretch of Mitteltown pavement bought by a mensch off a mensch who rented from yet another who lived large across the river, Not So Short Island it’s going by now’s the line for a laugh; how some mensch owned the sidewalk (actually him the cement only, though, his halfbrother’d bought the rights to the concrete), another owned the street, yet another the avenue intersecting and yadda blah north by south, and so you have to know always where you walk on whose you’re walking, how much more it’ll run you and fast: alleys held by a business, owned by this dummy corporation don’t ask, we’re talking fake addresses, doors without handles or hinges, empty windows (the mullions, however, they’re still on the market, any interest, you know who to call, be in touch), it’s all strictly needtoknow, none of your business, bubkiss my tuchus lecker, who the hock mir are you, wanting, on the outs, skidded, stop right there, no room at the inn.
After being evicted from standing His loiter upon every corner in Mitteltown, B makes its upper limits, Times Square and keeps moving: keeping it in mind, that the more you keep moving the faster, the less chance they have to charge you for putting your feet up and staying a while. Billed by the hour, the square a roundless clock, He’s got nothing left by now, not much. After the tunnel’s toll and the tax on the toll, then the tax’s tax assessed to’ve been no more than a bribe, He’s broke, busted, inclusive of slavery severance: without money whether in bills or coins, He’ll take either even if His face is fading from them; they’re being phased out, converted into a currency newer, the metals and paper as fragile as yesterday, as precious, too, though the gems still as hard as tomorrow. Speculation, in every denomination. Foreign forage. Hofn oyf, forget it, meaning hope.
He heads for a pawnshop He finds advertised on a wall, peeling in promise from exposed brick blackened with smoke — ripped like a disreputable, deathinscribed name from the yellowpaged book sealed within the booth of a payphone…but it’s closed, we’ll be back at and locked and so B with klutzy fingers rings at the bell, wakes the onelunged, tiny like an insect beadle and when the sun’s still cresting high, waits for him to fall downstairs two flights, a spindle with a twinge of gray hair hung in green pajamas. Knock knock. Who’s there, who’s there? A wink that it’s worth your time — enough urgent assurance to justify suspicion, expectation lowered so much by now that it might on its own trip the alarm. Rachmones, you have to have pity, the pawnbroker’s saying as he opens, undoing the intricate locks of his door and shutters and grate, this I’m always telling my wife — keys and patience, patience, the life of the deadbolt, bound to who knows how many chains. B comes in quickly His hands in His pockets as if armed for a robbery — a lining giving shine, only a glint, an equatorial edging: His silverspoon — He’ll hock it, to afford an aliyah in any direction.
