Listen Ruben Fontanez (4 page)

TWO

A
HUSBAND
, I tell myself, is entitled to his wife's extra years. The train moves out of Times Square, rocking through its dark tunnel, and in the lap of the old woman who sits next to me, I read the item in her newspaper. The average life expectancy of the American woman is now seventy-four years and seven months, of the American man, sixty-seven years and five months. I try to remember what it was then, on that walk in the Botanic Gardens when I told Sarah that if she died before she reached the average, I expected her to will me her extra years. It was only fair. According to the current United States census, she would have had twenty-two extra years to give me. It was less then. Times change, you see. “Nineteen years and seven months—I want them, Sarah. Will them to me.” That was not so much to ask of a wife, of a woman who said, even at the end, even after such cruel requests, that she loved you.

Sarah, Sarah. I am sorry. I assure you I do not need nineteen years and seven months now. Two years will be enough. It is not such a foolish request, believe me. I hear a rustling sound. The woman closes her newspaper and glares at me. My lips have been moving, I realize. I smile at the woman. You predicted I would be married again within a year, Sarah, though you said it more to plague me with guilt, I suspect, than out of concern for my happiness. But that is all right also. It is difficult to intimidate Harry Meyers. I think of Danny's suggestion. Perhaps the time has come to consider such things.

At the Delancey-Essex station I get up to change for the BMT Myrtle Avenue Local. With the others, I walk past the hot pretzel stand and up the stairs. The train comes at once. In a minute we are outside. It is snowing again this morning and there will be many absences. That is just as well.

From the Williamsburg Bridge the outlines of the Brooklyn shoreline are blurred. Smoke from shipyard stacks trails through the white air. I am more tired than I wish to admit. My body aches. Tonight, I tell myself, I will leave the phone off the hook. It is the only thing I can do, unless I am prepared to talk to the police, or to endure another dinner with Danny. Three nights in a row, at four in the morning, the telephone calls have come. The voice is young, the words are the same. “I got my eye on you, Meyers—gonna doom you, man. Gonna doom you.” And then the usual, the repetition of what all the notes and letters have said about my slit gizzard, the intercourse with my mother, the revenge.

“Who is this?” I ask each time, and when he tells me that I know, he is, of course, correct. It will not be long now, he promises. The notes have held little mystery. At the time of the trial, though, the brother was a mere child. I could suspect anybody, you see. If I were to begin, where would it end? So I suspect no one.

We have crossed the river. The train is pulling into the Marcy Avenue station and I hum to myself. The boards are covered with ice and the wooden platform trembles from the train's vibrations. The cold snaps at my cheeks. I see other teachers step from the train and hurry to the exits, but they do not know that I sing to myself. They do not try to talk to me and that is all right, also. Along the streets I trudge past my own students, some, I see, walking through the snow in slippers or sneakers, their bare legs exposed to the cold edges of the air. Well. It is their problem. They should have stayed home and banged on the radiators. I hum. I remember the students who sang the song years ago, in our schoolyard, an endless chain of them holding hands, weaving in and out, the words I sing to myself:
Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini is a meanie, Tojo is a jerk
… Two young women teachers nod to me as I cross the street. In front of the Dime Savings Bank the Chassidic Jews are already lined up, huddled in their black coats, their schoolboy's briefcases swinging at their sides, their beards warming their necks, their cheeks and ears red from the cold. I do not need to look into their eyes this morning, to have them say hello to me. Later. There will be time. I will be reimbursed properly then.

I have been walking too quickly. I breathe heavily. At the corner of Roebling and South Third, I stop. My school is before me. Junior High School Number 50, of Williamsburg. John D. Wells Junior High School, built in 1915 by the Board of Education of the City of New York, John P. Mitchell, Mayor, where, from nine to three, Monday through Friday, September through June, Harry Meyers is a teacher of the Hebrew language. It is insane, believe me. I cross the street. I see Rafael Quinones with his
Rayshis Das
tucked under his arm and I am strangely excited. It has been this way for almost twenty years, ever since the war, yet the sight still fascinates me: monkeys in motorcycle jackets, jabbering away in bastard Spanish, pinching the behinds of their girl friends, and carrying Hebrew books under their arms.

The students shiver in the cold. The girls wait in line at the entrance, restrained by the school patrol guard. Inside, they will get free heat and soup. Across from the school, in a narrow parking lot, boys and girls shuffle in a circle. Ruben Fontanez, I know, is within. I look their way. They see me and draw their circle tighter, but this is not the time to see if they are shielding their leader. I open the iron door and feel the warm air. The tiled floor is slippery. Perhaps, I think, perhaps it has been Ruben Fontanez, my wild-eyed monkey, who has been disturbing my sleep.

In the main office the teachers complain to one another. They all agree that those who stayed home were wisest. I punch my time card and Miss Teitlebaum does so also, smiling at me. Her loose-fitting plastic raincoat cannot hide the contours of enormous breasts. She is the envy of her thirteen-year-old students. She wears a black rainhat pulled down over her hair and she looks, I realize, like a larger Mary Santini. I cannot speak. A helpless-looking young man wanders our way and Miss Teitlebaum introduces him to Mrs. Davies, the secretary in charge of assigning substitute teachers. I escape from the office. I see more unfamiliar faces walking nervously from the entrance. The monkeys will have easy prey today and, in truth, I envy them.

Let me explain: years ago things were reversed. In those days Junior High School Number 50 was Public School Number 50 and Williamsburg contained only Jews and gypsies and the Italians who lived on the other side of Broadway. Then I taught Spanish to Jewish boys and girls. Teaching was a pleasure, students were bright, I was useful. A portrait of Luis Torres hung above the blackboard: Luis Torres, a Spanish Jew, companion to Columbus, the discoverer of tobacco, the first Western man to set foot on American soil. Like the Jews of ancient Spain, my students spoke a proud Castilian dialect. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain on August 2nd, 1492. The very next day they sent Columbus on his mad journey. This was not mere coincidence, I would suggest to my students.

But the Jews of Williamsburg had their revenge. In 1934 the parents drove the language of the Inquisition from the school. They attacked the Board of Education with petitions, demanding that Hebrew—a useful and traditional language, they said—be placed in the curriculum. The outcome was never in doubt. Harry Meyers surrendered with the Board of Education. When the expulsion from the Spanish classes took place, he became a teacher of Hebrew. It was not such a difficult thing to do. I knew the language. There were emergency examinations at Livingston Street. Sarah and I did not have to disrupt our lives. It was no small thing at the time, believe me.

I have remained here since then, through all transitions. For just as the Moors had followed the Jews from Africa to Spain, so the colored followed them to Williamsburg. The war came, Jews prospered, and those who could afford it left the area. The city built projects for the black newcomers, and when, in time, they too began to leave the neighborhood, the monkeys climbed into the evacuated buildings. Hebrew remained in the curriculum. Who was left to organize petitions, after all. Not monkeys, I can assure you. As for Harry Meyers, his chance to get out had passed long before. He does not fool himself about such things.

Along the hallways, I see signs which promise a life without poverty. Above the students' cafeteria is a huge poster:
“Los últimos serán los primeros.”
Nobody is fooled. Here students do not look at pictures and posters. Remove all signs and replace them with mirrors. Then the children will pay attention. I walk back up the stairs and lock my galoshes and overcoat in the closet of my official room. I sip the tea I have purchased in the teacher's cafeteria and look out over the empty rows of desks and chairs, engraved with the names and obscenities of generations of students, Spanish carvings obscuring Jewish and Negro curses.

I will tell you something: it will be as quiet when they are in their seats as it is now. When Harry Meyers enters a classroom there is silence. When I ask a question, hands go up. When I assign homework, it is done. The other teachers marvel at me. Their tales of fights, of knifings, of foul language, of ignorance: they are nothing to me. “In my classes,” I tell them, “the Inquisition reigns.” They do not understand, though. They try still to love their children, to help them, to offer futures. They get nowhere.

I crumple the plastic cup and drop it into my wastebasket. I take out my Hebrew books. Monkeys are monkeys, you see. Anybody can tame them. Here Harry Meyers rules, it is true, but elsewhere things are different. In the back compartment of my briefcase are the other books. I leave them where they are and zip my briefcase closed. I place it on the floor, under the desk, and go to the window. I do not look at the students below. I do not look at the buildings across the street. I think only of my other students.

I am also, you see, still a teacher of Spanish. For almost thirteen years now, I have held the other job, and even Morris's arguments cannot persuade me to give it up. When Harry Meyers retires he will be able to take care of himself. There will be no nursing homes, no city hospitals, no charity. I will have money accumulated, I will account to nobody.

I hear the first buzzer, and I return to my desk. Beyond my classroom the noises begin. It is nothing. I think of three o'clock. That is when I will take my briefcase and walk away from the school, past the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, beyond Broadway, to Cuomo Street, where I am employed by a Chassidic Yeshiva to teach Spanish to their madmen. Well. Do not let their long black coats and their holy beards fool you. They are all madmen, especially the young ones. Look into their eyes sometime and you will see that it is true.

I hear my monkeys outside my room, running through the hallways. I hear the shouts of teachers and I rise from my desk and go to the door. I open it and look out. When they see Harry Meyers, students stop running. Their transistor radios are turned off. As they pass my classroom, their eyes scan the floor. My own students walk quietly to their seats. They take out their books. At once the monitors are at work: the blackboard is washed, the coat closet opened, the attendance taken. I close the door and walk the aisles. My students work.

There was another note in my mailbox this morning, I remember, but I think only of the end of the day, of the cowboys who lie in wait for me. All weekend long, Morris has been warning me. They terrify him. When we were boys it was different. Then we invented the term to mock them. We would wait outside the Chassidic Yeshiva and as they shuffled down the streets away from us, their long silken coats sweeping the gutters, their eyes fixed downward under their broad-brimmed black hats, we hurled our taunts at them. We were boys as they were, Jews as they were, but Americans as they were not.

The Chassidic Jews of the eastern European villages, my father told me, would greet their Rebbes by riding backwards on horses. The Belzer Chassidim, whose descendants were packed together in a corner of our neighborhood, wore their shirts unbuttoned even in winter. Their hearts were exposed to the Lord. They believed in the transmigration of souls, we discovered, and so we would yell after them that in their next incarnation they would not even be cowboys. They would be the rocks and the grass which receive the leavings of cows.

Now, though, Morris is frightened. Times change, you see. Every morning he prays for my safety. There is no reasoning with him anymore. He is an old man. He fears “the evil eye,” the somersaults they turn when they worship, the power of their Ba'al Shem Tov. As for me, I try to make light of his fears and, in truth, I think of only one thing now: the end of the year. Then I will retire, I will cease my ridiculous odyssey. I will leave my monkeys and cowboys.

My monkeys have stopped bothering me long ago. With my cowboys, though, there is something new every day—a dead bird in my desk, parts of animals in my locker, unsigned notes which predict gruesome future incarnations. I teach an evil language, they say. I am a victim of Satan's Chassidism. My own arguments prove useless. They submit only to serve the Lord with greater joy. Perhaps it is so. Years ago, when the position of Spanish teacher at their Yeshiva became available, the other Yeshivas accused them of being renegades. But my cowboys knew what they were doing. I had been hired to train their young men in the language needed to deal in rents, in loans, in the sale of jewels. To their clients they claim to be, not from the
shtetls
of Galicia, but from the cellars of the Marranos. They are the descendants of the Spanish Jews who, after 1492, took their religion underground. They too know of Luis Torres, though the knowledge has not passed to them from my lips.

In the aisle next to the window, the third seat from the front is deserted. Ruben Fontanez is somewhere else this morning. Well. There are other things to think about. Morris presses me to move in with him, to use my Board of Education pension to buy the bed next to his. Prices are rising. What will my savings be worth in a few years, he asks. Now I can afford the price of a lifetime bed. Later they will suck blood from me. The administrators of his home read newspapers also, I think. They depend on statistics. For every man who reaches seventy-five, seven men leave empty beds at sixty-six.