One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping (14 page)

Uncle Martin and I were in the elevator yesterday when Mr. Allen got on. Uncle Martin told Mr. Esposito a joke. (Mr. Esposito
loves
Uncle Martin’s jokes.)

Mr. Allen had to hold his hand over his mouth because he was about to laugh and expose his toothless grin.

He looks like a turtle when he does that. He draws his head back into his body like a real turtle.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1938

There must have been more than two hundred clocks in Mrs. Lowenstein’s apartment, and just as I

walked in they all started to chime twelve. I felt like I was in some kind of fantastic church.

There was so much food, I thought for sure others would be joining us, but no one did.

The dining room table was covered with bowls and platters of shrimp, celery, olives, radishes, creamed potatoes, and two roast chickens, one for each of us. Mrs. Lowenstein ate hers with her fingers, devour-ing each piece until there was just a plate of bones lying in front of her.

I tried not to stare, but it was hard not to. She didn’t speak at all during lunch because she was concentrat-ing so hard on eating her chicken.

Then she put one of her cigarettes into her long cigarette holder and she asked me if I was going to eat any more of my chicken. When I said no, she snatched it away from me, cut all the meat off the bones, divided it equally onto three plates, and put the plates on the floor for the three dogs, who gobbled it up greedily. Now I know how they stay so nice and plump.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1938

I went to dinner with Aunt Clara and Uncle Martin for the first time tonight. I just didn’t want to say no to them anymore.

Aunt Clara had to go to a cocktail party given by Mr. Garfinkel, who is producing
Peter Pan,
so we were to meet her at the restaurant.

Uncle Martin had Patrick, the chauffeur, pick her up at the party. We walked. Uncle Martin doesn’t like to take the limousine that much.

The restaurant was called Tavern on the Green, and it’s right in the middle of Central Park. (That’s the on-the-green part, I think.) I was greatly relieved that we didn’t have to go near the zoo.

It was very fancy — all the ladies wore their furs and diamonds. Uncle Martin said the meal was so ex-pensive, he was thinking of bringing an armored car with gold bullion the next time.

Aunt Clara and Uncle Martin don’t drink wine; they drink “martinis straight up, very dry.” I asked Uncle Martin what “straight up” meant and he said without ice, and I asked him why he didn’t just say without ice and he laughed, although I’m not sure why.

I wanted to ask him what “dry” meant, because they looked pretty wet to me, but decided not to.

He’s going to teach me how to mix martinis, which, according to Uncle Martin, is one of the ten most important things you can know in life.

I asked him what the other nine were, and he said he didn’t want to tell me because then I wouldn’t have any reason to stick around.

He reluctantly agreed to tell me one, which was: Never have a business lunch. Business lunches, Uncle Martin says, will kill you faster than almost anything. Uncle Martin takes his lunch with him in the morning. Mrs. Parrish makes him a sandwich, which he

stuffs into his briefcase along with a banana.

Rehearsals are not going well. Aunt Clara is angry at Mr. Buttinger (who plays Mr. Darling) and at Mr. Robie (who is the director) because they speak French when they don’t want her to hear.

What’s even worse is that the girl who is playing Wendy keeps fluffing her lines, and Aunt Clara thinks she is too “temperamental.” Every time Mr. Robie crit-icizes her, she starts crying and her mother takes her home. It’s disrupting the entire cast, and the play is scheduled to open on October 15.

Aunt Clara saw Mrs. Lowenstein at the Algonquin Hotel, which is Aunt Clara’s favorite place to have lunch. She was leaving just as Aunt Clara was coming in and apparently had had a bit too much to drink.

She stumbled into the lobby and miraculously landed safely on the seat in the telephone booth. Then, looking bewildered, she shouted so that everyone in the dining room could hear her, “Where has that damned elevator boy gone to now?”

Uncle Martin said that reminded him of the two brothers who owned a fish market in a small town. One day they had a very bad argument and the younger brother left and opened another fish market right across the street from the original one.

Since the small town could not support two fish markets, both suffered.

The older brother was very, very angry because his younger brother was ruining his business. Each night he prayed on his knees for God to help him. One night, much to his amazement, God actually spoke to him. He would grant him one wish, but there was a condition: Whatever wish he granted would go double for his younger brother. The older brother thought and thought and finally said, “I want to be blind in one eye.”

I must admit it was one of Uncle Martin’s best stories, and I
almost
laughed but forced myself not to.

After dinner we walked down Fifth Avenue and looked in all the store windows. There are more stores on Fifth Avenue than even on the Kärtnerstrasse, and Fifth Avenue is almost as wide as the Ring.

Aunt Clara and I linked arms as we walked — we’re almost the same height.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1938

Weekdays, Uncle Martin is one person but on the weekends, he’s another. That’s when he likes to take his photographs. Uncle Martin is more interested in photography than almost anything else. Even more than listening to his favorite comedians on the radio. During the week his hair is always neatly combed, and he wears a different suit every day. But not on Saturday and Sunday. Then, he wears his white shirt with the torn pocket and frayed collar, and his baggy pants that are stained from the stuff he uses to make his pictures in the darkroom. He doesn’t even bother to shave. He looks like someone who was recently ship—

wrecked on a desert island.

Bright and early he packs his cameras (he never takes just one) in his equipment bag with all the pockets, and he doesn’t return until dark.
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“Light,” Uncle Martin says, “waits for no man.”

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1938

I took a walk by myself today and found a second-hand bookstore that reminded me of Mr. Heller’s.

There was a man smoking a pipe and reading a book at the front counter. He asked me if I wanted any as-sistance, but I didn’t say anything, as memories of Vienna overwhelmed me. I just shook my head no, turned, and walked out.

It looked like a nice bookstore. The kind Mr. Heller would have liked.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1938

It’s very frustrating playing “Sober Sue” with Uncle Martin. He has a great deal of self-control, so even when I make a very good face and he’s about to laugh, he just doesn’t.

I have two more words for my list that I got from Uncle Martin: “swell,” which doesn’t mean to get large, and “baloney,” which has something to do with lying.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1938

This morning Uncle Martin gave me, Aunt Clara, and Susie presents, even though it’s
his
birthday. He believes that on your birthday
you
should give everyone you love a gift rather than the other way around. He gave Susie a box of Mallomars, Aunt Clara a sil-ver necklace in a blue box that said
TIFFANY
&
CO
. on it,

and a yo-yo and roller skates for me.

Uncle Martin can make the yo-yo do all sorts of tricks. Each one has a name: rock the cradle; over the falls; around the world; walk the dog.

But I was most interested in trying out my roller skates. It was a cold but sunny day, and “Red Mike” helped me put them on.

At first I fell more than I skated, but after a while I got pretty good at it and skated all the way around the block without falling once.

When I got back and told Uncle Martin, he said that maybe I could skate down to Wall Street and have lunch with him. He said it’s downhill all the way.
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1938

Aunt Clara talked to me about school. I told her I didn’t want to go. I don’t want to be in a class with American girls who will make fun of me because I am a foreigner. I’ve seen the American girls in the park, and they don’t look so nice.

She said she would think it over and that perhaps we could hire a tutor. I hadn’t even thought of that. I would so much rather have a tutor than go to school.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1938

The only thing that Uncle Martin doesn’t like to do is sit still. If he isn’t doing something he drums his fingers on the table, smokes his Camel cigarettes, makes smoke rings, and then pokes his finger through the rings before they evaporate.

It was raining hard all morning, and on rainy days

Uncle Martin photographs things he finds around the kitchen: silverware, glasses, cups, saucers, eggs, bread, onions, apples, pears, anything.

He places them on the kitchen table or the window ledge and spends hours deciding the exact right arrange-ment and the exact right place to stand. Finding where to stand is a big part of being a good photographer, Un-cle Martin says.

He’s very patient, also. He says if you’re not patient, you shouldn’t be a photographer.

The hallways are covered with his photographs. When I first saw them, I thought they were pretty ordinary. But now I realize they aren’t. The way he photographs the ordinary things makes them seem extraordinary.

After he was finished in the kitchen he made me my first ice-cream soda. It’s called a Black and White because it’s made with chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream. It should really be called a Brown and White.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1938‌

Uncle Martin takes photographs of Aunt Clara without her knowing.

He takes one of his cameras, puts it on the big, low table in front of the living room couch, squats down on the floor, and pretends to be cleaning it.

Uncle Martin is forever cleaning his cameras, so there is nothing suspicious about this.

Then, when he calls Aunt Clara into the room and asks her some nonsensical questions, Aunt Clara gets this very sweet, quizzical look on her face, and Uncle Martin coughs while the camera clicks away.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1938

Mr. Allen invited me to visit.

As soon as I came, he insisted I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. I don’t like the way his soap smells. It’s called Ivory — I guess because of the color. It says
IVORY
right on the soap.