Читать книгу The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York - Peter Godwin - Страница 32

Someone has stuffed a flyer under our door advertising a playreading this evening at the local West Beth Community Centre. The reading has been arranged hurriedly by local actors and writers as ‘the community’s reply’ to a rape in Horatio Street, which ended with a desperate girl flinging herself out of the bedroom window of her fourth-storey apartment. After the reading local police have agreed to address us about neighbourhood safety and how to protect ourselves.

By the time I arrive there are sixty or so women gathered in the hall and about a dozen rather reluctant-looking men. (Peter has refused to accompany me on the grounds that he is on deadline for a Newsweek column on Winnie Mandela, though I suspect the real reason is to do with ‘Must See TV’ night on NBC: Seinfeld followed by ER).

I take my seat towards the back of the audience and a large gentleman, apparently in charge of proceedings, steps up to the dais.

‘Welcome,’ he says. ‘We’re just waiting for our leader, who is upstairs chanting.’

‘How very Greenwich Village,’ mutters my neighbour, a blonde, bobbed woman with a complicated briefcase and tan legs which disappear into clumpy trainers.

The large man addresses us again. ‘We realize we have had a terrible tragedy occur in our midst and this evening we want to bring a focus to this kind of violence.’ He eyes us steadily as if one of us might be harbouring the suspect.

‘You know,’ he says slowly, ‘there are people walking around who have done these things.’ Several of the women nod knowingly, as Paul Benjamin, the playwright whose work is to be performed tonight, emerges from a side door, his chanting now apparently finished.

It is an adequate drama, notable mostly for the overwhelming earnestness with which it is read. The real drama, however, begins afterwards when the police officers address us.

Ronald Haas, a huge and rather comforting detective from the Special Crimes Squad, goes first. ‘Obviously a heinous crime has taken place,’ he begins. ‘An individual was raped …’

‘A WOMAN was raped!’ shouts a furious girl in dungarees from somewhere on the third row. ‘A WOMAN was raped.’

‘A woman was raped,’ the officer corrects himself. ‘Obviously I can’t give you specific details …’

‘We don’t want specific details,’ calls another woman. She is gnawing a raw carrot. ‘Just tell us what time it happened.’

‘About eight-thirty,’ says Officer Haas.

‘Holy shit!’ exclaims someone.

‘The only other thing I can tell you’, Haas continues uneasily, ‘is that the assailant was a six-foot tall, two hundred and ten pound, black male with stubble.’

‘Why have no police approached me to tell me to take care?’ shouts another girl, this one in a denim smock.

‘Because that’s not their job,’ cries a frail man from across the hall.

‘Look,’ says Haas, ‘I care deeply about this community and I’m offended by this crime.’

‘Well, what can you do about it?’ demands an elderly woman, stroking a dachshund. ‘Every time I walk down the street and see a black guy I’m gonna be scared now.’

At this point another detective, Merri Pearsall, who says she has coincidentally just rented an apartment in the neighbourhood, takes over. ‘My thought is, I might have prevented this,’ she says wistfully, before running through some tips which might prevent us from being attacked ourselves.

‘Get used to noticing details,’ she says. ‘Height, clothing, weight, hair colour.’

‘How tall IS six foot anyway,’ shouts the first dungaree’d girl. ‘How can you tell for sure?’

‘I have a dog and I always carry a can of Mace,’ interrupts the carrot chewer, brandishing her carrot stick. ‘Which is better? Dog? Or Mace?’

‘I’d take a dog over Mace any day,’ says Detective Pear-sail. ‘You can’t use Mace if there’s any wind and I’ve seen a room full of cops overcome by it in seconds. Definitely a dog.’

Dog over Mace, writes carrot woman on her notepad, firmly underlining each word three times.

As I gather up my things, preparing to walk home, I try to imagine a fear so intense that you would throw yourself out of a fourth-floor window. ‘Is she OK?’ I ask another woman, who seems involved in the evening.

She pulls a face. ‘She landed on the second-floor fire escape and lost a kidney,’ she says. ‘But she’s still alive, if that’s what you mean.’