Читать книгу For Love of the Dollar - J.M. Servin - Страница 12

CHAPTER TWO

In which...the Artist gets to know his neighborhood.

The dilapidated constructions in the Bronx, some of them occupied by the homeless, have the appearance of an inevitable catastrophe: fire, demolition. Bricked-up doors and windows enclose chapters of gloomy epics in the country of the easy buck.

To my sorrow, the Bronx revived unbearable memories. I had already educated myself via an abundance of myths extracted from movies, music, and literature that combined the sordidness of my origins with the opulent culture of the States. Something soothed me; I knew that while I was in the United States, I would never again wear shoes patched together with tape or clothing from the swap meet. In the United States I would be a first-class poor man.

The few whites who lived in the Bronx, like Rose and her other tenants, were like a rash on the dark skin of the neighborhood. Despite my few ventures into the city, I knew from first sight that I had in my grasp all the resources of a society where efficiency was the norm. From the subway that ran twenty-four hours, churches for every creed, schools, libraries, nightclubs, bars, and restaurants serving ethnic food, to alcohol, drugs, weapons, and well-equipped police, the Bronx confined us to territories defined by the fear of disturbing the general indifference.

$

The argument with Norma left me feeling restless and with a parched mouth. I went to the store and avoided making any noise to not get tangled up in a conversation with someone from the household. I crossed the street. I bought three thirty-two-ounce Colt 45s and two packs of cigarettes: I was thinking about Sandra. The store stayed open for sixteen hours every day of the week. Behind the counter there was always one of four Dominican brothers who had saved money for thirty-odd years to become the owners of the most important store for blocks around. They were thinking of investing their savings into remodeling the business into a supermarket. “Self-service is more relaxed, tú sabe,” the sour-faced youngest brother with horse teeth would say. He would pretend to reach for the automatic pistol hidden behind the counter when he caught some odd behavior in the convex mirror at the back of the store. Sometimes we would crack jokes, and I obligingly accepted whenever he called me “bro,” as I thought that that would eventually let me run a tab. No such thing.

By the corner on 138th Street, a group of old Puerto Ricans and Mexicans would gather. They would drink beer and slap down dominoes on a folding metal table. In the entryway of their building they had a tape recorder that played Javier Solís. I approached them to observe the game. They seemed to ignore my presence, and then with a know-it-all air they would hum the melody upon making a play. All of a sudden one of the Puerto Ricans addressed me without taking his eyes off the pieces.

“What the hell’s wrong? Too hot?”

“Somewhat.”

“Go ahead and grab a beer.”

They called him Papi. He pointed to the bag at his feet. I bent down to take out a can. I took the beer and pretended to be interested in the game. Papi had been the owner of a barbershop and a bazaar that sold trinkets, and he was one of the area’s patriarchs. He loved boxing and borrowing money; he’d often visit Rose to talk about his son, the high-class cultural functionary who hadn’t appeared on those streets since the divorce.

“You from Mexico?” one asked.

“That’s right.”

“Lots of Mexicans ’round here. Nice folk, ain’t that so?”

“Yep.”

The Mexican they were referring to coughed after answering, focusing on his dominoes.

“Take it slow, bro,” Papi said to me. “Savor the beer. The store’s nearby. And besides, if we run out, we’ll send you to get more.”

After the cackles, the slapping of dominoes on the table continued. I offered them a Colt and they all took a sip. When it got back to me, it was almost empty. I finished it off. I stayed for a long while, and nobody said another word to me. Belches. Suddenly, Papi looked at me from the corner of his eye. Neighbors walked by with an attitude as if they were the only ones on the street. Almost all of them were black. Some entered the store, others paused at the corners, looked around, while some others would run by or communicate shouting. Men and women glistened with sweat and aromatic creams. The women would wear short pants stretched tight across their asses and suggestive blouses without sleeves, braless; the men ambled about bare chested, some of them rubbing their bellies. The heat on that asphalt beach was a good enough motive to take out one’s bad mood on the kids and curse from one sidewalk to another. The Mexicans let fly insults in a well-rehearsed English learned from the reproaches of others. One of them asked me a question in a falsetto vernacular. He spoke with a hint of a ranchero’s nasality. He sported boots and a hat, which helped transform him into an imported urban cowboy who would never return to wearing huaraches and a straw hat.

“What part of Mexico you from?”

“From the capital.”

Two of my countrymen standing nearby groaned in unison while remaining focused on the game.

The game continued in silence. When it finished, I said good-bye, and everyone murmured a “see you later” without removing their gazes from the dominoes.

In the kitchen, I opened a beer and put the other one in the refrigerator. While going up to my room, I savored the coolness trapped in the staircase. The white walls and the high ceiling helped with the ventilation. I sat at my desk in order to go over my drafts. I wanted to have some fun by writing something that would contradict my sister’s accusations—that’s to say, something grandiloquent, something that could be passed off as committed and poetic. But I gave up, once again confronting my own notebooks filled with false starts. Yet another battle between duty and desire.

$

The streets at the start of the evening changed into a furious soundboard. Sirens. Noises and music wove links, at times imperceptible due to the enraged tirades of rappers. It all seemed like an invocation to tribal identities that responded with delight to the street’s schizophrenia adorned with graffiti. Tone and rhythm with resonations inspired by Lucky Cienfuegos and Miguel Piñero: those capos of the underworld’s poetry. Odors of fried food, sea, incense, and the immense farts from smokestacks browned the summer breeze. International flags fluttered from windows, entryways, and cable TV dishes that adorned immigrant hierarchies. The Bronx and its shouting. People posturing from fear. Jokesters. People warning you. Where the devil prowls at all hours is where the crime sheets publish the most-read epitaphs.

I would perceive a neighborhood that didn’t progress: it lurched. From one form of barbarism to another, it purified in its own special way an implacable, productive fundamentalism. The immigrant hordes surrendered themselves to it wholly, with customs from the old country and other stubborn habits. Living under the same law—eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—the interpretations of God’s word separated and singled out folks. If advanced societies organized themselves through exclusion, the Bronx was a tumor to dig out. Here, where one could see the distant skyscrapers, one had a free pass to the violence of machismo.

Back then, I had no idea how many months would pass by before I served my time as an immigrant.

$

I awoke at dawn, hungry and hungover. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. In two hours they would open the store. The hurried clacking of heels resounded from the street, and in the distance, dogs barking, electronic drum beats, and car alarms. I paused for a moment, wondering if Norma had returned to say good-bye to me but, upon seeing me sound asleep, had opted to not do so. She had saved enough during the year in order to go to Italy and visit her daughter. Norma worked as a nanny in a town next to the Bronx, up north, in the county of Westchester. It was a place that was immaculate, peaceful, and desolate—the area where wealthy white people lived. She believed that a brother who “wrote” would make her stay in the United States less lonely. She had read only a few music reviews that I wrote early on for a newspaper in the capital. It’s certain that she assumed I hung out with important people. Almost all of her information came from letters my other brothers had sent her, and they knew about as much as she did. She presumed that I was working on a highway that would get me far away from the slums and mediocrity. She never imagined that the majority of my writing was a result of all that. She also didn’t know that the majority of the material had been rejected for that reason, among others. Plus, she hadn’t seen my file with clippings and photos from the lurid crime pages. She believed what she tried best to believe and feared digging any deeper. Nothing but pure intuition. We never talked about me.