The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (17 page)

“You’re an engineer, right?”

“An electrical engineer,” he said, engrossed in an article about the new state of Israel.

“Let’s see … where is that?” She carefully surveyed the various job headings.

“I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to secure something,” he muttered absently. “Robert has built a blockade around me.”

“Robert, your brother?”

Paul had worked hard not to repeat the same mistake he had made with Teresa. He had been trying to avoid even mentioning Robert.

“How exactly has he blockaded you?”

“He kept me from getting a state position in Water, Gas, and Electricity, and I’m pretty sure he blocked me from getting a city commissionership as well.”

“Have you talked to him directly about this?”

“I tried,” Paul said, then put his newspaper down. He stole my inheritance right out from under me.”

Lucretia sat perplexed, wondering what to say or do. She knew that Paul no longer had access to the vast wealth that once made him master and her mother servant, but his chronic unemployment was going to complicate things considerably. Even Leon, who she thought of as little more than a glorified garbage collector, had a job.

Several days passed and Root was still missing. Although the miners slowly returned to their digs, Uli was reluctant to lead the zombielike laborers out of their caves. That had been Root’s job, and he feared mimicking her movements too closely. With their daily routines interrupted, the laborers were growing increasingly anxious. Uli tried looking after them, but feeding, watering, and cleaning that many was difficult, not to mention dangerous. The more energetic ones started walking aimlessly, and a few actually wandered back into the Mkultra.

After a week, a couple of the sickliest workers died. Then one morning Uli entered the silo to see a fresh chubby body dangling from the heights of the desk tower. It wasn’t until Uli found the large head, which had been cleanly circumcised and tossed in a corner, that he confirmed it was Manny. They had violently twisted his feet backwards—he was the latest offering to their bullshit death guide.

29

W
hen Paul entered the kitchen, Lucretia and her friend May went silent.

“Paul,” May began, “I was just telling Lucretia that you’d make a great high school teacher.”

“Why in the world would you say that?” he asked, thinking she might be kidding him.

“Cause you’re smart and patient. You’re a natural teacher.”

“What are the qualifications to teach in this city?” he asked.

“Just a bachelor’s degree, and then you have to take some courses to get your license. But you can do substitute teaching until you get one.”

Paul could see his beautiful fiancée watching him apprehensively. In that instant he grasped that he had walked into an ambush: Lucretia had been dropping continuous hints about him getting a job; now she had enlisted a neighbor. All he could do was smile.

“That doesn’t sound half bad,” he relented. “What’s the pay and benefits?”

“Salary starts at thirteen thousand a year. There’s health insurance and a pension plan, and they’re always looking for people.”

“So where do I sign up?”

Lucretia’s face lit up.

“In Brooklyn Heights at 110 Livingston Street. Once you finish the certification, they put you on an availability list. But don’t take any jobs—Jimmy will hire you right here in East Tremont so you can be within walking distance of your house. Plus, you get summers and holidays off.”

Paul poured himself a glass of cold water and took a long sip. In a strange way, this simple plan could be the headstone for a much greater goal: Instead of recapturing a success he never really had and trying to shove it in his brother’s face, he could focus on the more tangible targets of supporting his young wife and their offspring to come.

30

M
emories of Paul were the only bright spot in his life now. Uli imagined he was sitting in the back row of a small, sweet wedding ceremony at the local Temple Emmanuel. Afterwards they held a buffet-style reception at El Sombrero, a Spanish restaurant on East Tremont Avenue. One by one, over the course of the evening, the entire neighborhood seemed to stop by to congratulate the lucky bride and groom. They left wrapped wedding gifts or envelopes of cash, which were greatly appreciated. No one from Paul’s side of the family showed up—nor had they been notified.

In July of 1948, at the age of sixty, he finished his eight required courses at Hunter College while teaching several classes.

The day he received his teaching license from Albany was also the last day for that season’s registration at the local high school. Lucretia called May Kearne because Paul was too embarrassed to contact her directly. Jimmy Kearne was head of the science department and juggled some assignments to free a schedule of classes for Paul.

Donning a crisp white shirt and a thin black tie for his first day of school, Paul stopped in the kitchen for coffee and hid his dread of babysitting a bunch of working-class brats. He loved Lucretia and didn’t want to disappoint her.

Paul arrived early to the school’s science department and Jimmy gave him a curriculum, the various chemistry textbooks to hand out, his homeroom assignment, and a class schedule.

“It’s all about advance preparation. Make sure you have a box of chalk, an eraser, and if you need to go to the bathroom, do it on the breaks. Also, you’ve got to be on top of all the paperwork or it’ll drown you: Grading papers, producing lesson plans, homework—all have to be done regularly. It’s not like college, don’t let the kids teach
you
. Other than that, don’t take no guff from no one, but be fair and you’ll do fine.” Only one other brand-new teacher reported for work that day, a smart-alecky war veteran who was less than half Paul’s age.

The task of teaching matched Paul’s skills surprisingly well. The authority of his age worked greatly to his advantage. Within a matter of months, the gratitude in the community was visible. People in the street frequently greeted him with a cheerful, “Hey, Mr. Moses!”

Lucretia saw it clearly. His hollow form seemed to fill out. His bitterness diminished. Even Paul’s stooped posture seemed to rectify itself as he took pride in his work.

At the end of the semester, Jimmy Kearne wrote in his teacher’s evaluation:
Paul Moses is a gifted teacher, gently correcting students almost unconsciously. Fluent not just in the sciences and humanities, but in language skills as well. Relaxed, focused, firm, yet gentle, he is able to use his sense of humor as a motivational tool …

At dinner one evening in January 1949, Lucretia announced that she was pregnant.

“Oh my God!” Paul exclaimed, then hugged her, gave her a long kiss, and said, “I just had the thought that in 2009 the baby you’re carrying will be the age I am now.”

Beatrice Moses was born on September 3, 1949. Lucretia wanted her baptized, and her old friend Lori who lived in the house behind theirs agreed to be godmother.

Paul had never thought he’d have a child, but as soon as he held the bundle that was his new daughter, he felt a swooning joy that seemed to pardon his many failures. He loved Lucretia and Bea more than he had ever loved anyone in his life.

After a close call, Uli admitted to himself that it was just a matter of time before one of the miners deduced that he was part of Root’s team. They’d kill him immediately.

He had finally lost faith that any of them would find a way to some miracle staircase out of there. The key reason he remained was the faint hope that Root might return.

To protect himself, Uli started assembling supplies. He had already found a small hand truck, rope, even a box of medicine. Stashing the supplies behind the mountain of stock in the storage depot, he glanced at the narrow metal door near the sealed freight elevator. Lighting a match, Uli made out a small rectangular hole in the rear wall. Old cables dangling from the gap were attached to the large fuse box that had collapsed to the ground.

Through the rectangle, Uli could see about five feet up the black hole. Then he felt a cool, soft breeze. He quickly located one of the discarded metal rods that the diggers had used to carve their tunnels. Using a large monkey wrench as a hammer, he began chipping down the sides of the small rectangular hole so he could look further inside, but the stone was difficult to break. After three hours, he was barely able to fit his forehead through the small slot.

31

I
nasmuch as the price of comfort is the quick passage of time, the next two years of Paul’s life seemed to finally be moving happily along. Doing his utmost to raise little Bea well, he would get up with her early in the morning and look after her until he had to go off to work. Lucre-tia would take Bea during the days. Frequently she’d cut across the backyard and drop Bea off with Lori, whose daughter Charity was only two months older. The two would play nonstop. When Paul came home in the afternoons, he could hardly wait to hold and kiss his little girl. He’d watch her while Lucretia went out on afternoon business appointments. She’d usually come home around 6 or 7, then they’d have dinner together.

Though Paul realized he would have no grand impact on civilization, nor marry the most dazzling society girl, life really couldn’t be any better.

Some habits were a little difficult to break. Paul couldn’t stop scanning the newspapers to keep track of his fascist brother. One project in particular caught his attention, like a tiny blip on his radar: the Cross Bronx Expressway, which had broken ground at one end of the borough and was slowly moving across it. He figured it would probably pass near them, along the northern edge of Crotona Park.

Little Bea was growing fast, and by her second birthday she was walking and talking more than all the other children in the playground. She was speaking in full sentences, grasping fairly abstract concepts. Even her sense of compassion—reflected in her treatment of little Toto—was exceptional. Paul told his wife that he wanted to get her IQ tested, believing that she might very well be a genius.

“Maybe it’d be a good time for Bea to have a little brother,” Lucretia replied.

Paul nodded silently, wondering how all this would end up.

In the middle of his excavation of the elevator shaft, Uli heard loud scuttling. He figured the rats had finally gotten across the great divide and into the storage depot. He pushed a large crate aside and was startled to discover the upper half of a small child, who was holding a long dagger in his right palm; his lower half, however, seemed to be absorbed into the earth.

“There’s no need for that,” he told the boy. “Put the knife down.”

“Where’s Root?”

“She was chased off,” he said. Then it struck him:
This must be the missing leader’s handicapped son
.

“Is your father Plato?”

“Yeah, he was the leader.”

“Where is he?”

“He disappeared awhile ago.”

“I heard he was very smart.”

“He used to collect papers and read all the time—
read, read, read
. Used to say stuff over and over.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Used to talk about the projects.”

“What projects?”

“Don’t know. A bunch.”

“Do you remember any?”

“All began with M-K. Artichoke, Leviticus—a lot about M-K Leviticus.”

“What’s M-K Leviticus?”

“Don’t know. He used to say we’re all in Langley.
Langley, Langley, Langley
.”

“Langley, Virginia?”

“Don’t know.”

“What happened to him?”

“He would go farther and farther down in the Mkultra.”

“Why?”

“First he found all this paint you could see in the dark.”

Uli remembered the glowing lines leading nowhere. “Then what?”

“He was looking for some kind of chemical, either flammable or inflammable, I can’t remember. Then one day he just didn’t come back.” Changing the subject, the kid said, “The lady told me I can always get supplies here. We’re low.”

“Sure, help yourself, just be careful of the miners.”

“Do you know anything about helping sick people? Cause my ma and brother, they’re sick people.” The kid set down the short sword. Using his hands, he pulled himself forward into the light, where Uli finally got a chance to look him over. In place of legs was some kind of scorpion-like tail that curled under and peaked out of his long dirty shirt.

“Exactly how sick is your family?”

“They’re both really hot, and my brother won’t stop pooping. He’s covered with red spots.” It sounded like chicken pox. All things considered, it was astounding that anyone down there could stay alive.

“They both have fevers?”

“Don’t know. Can you come take a look at them?”

“I’m no doctor, but I have some medicine.”

Uli led him to the utility closet, where he had a pile of boxes filled with tins of pills. Some were identified as vitamins. Others were antibiotics, but didn’t state dosage.

When Uli lit a candle, the kid saw the narrow rectangle that once held the fuse box and asked what it led to.

“I don’t know. I’m too big to climb in, but I’ve been shaving down the sides.”

“Want me to try?” It hadn’t even occured to Uli to ask.

“That’d be great.”

“I’ll do it if you come and look at my sick family.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do. Like I said, I’m not a doctor.”

“Please. I need help.”

Uli realized that the child with his congenitally malformed body might be the only ticket out of this place—he couldn’t refuse the kid’s request. “You have my word that if you climb in there and tell me what you see, I’ll help you.”

The kid stared at Uli for a moment, then said, “All right, but could I rest first? I haven’t eaten in a while and I’ve walked a long ways.”

Uli gave him some crackers and water, led him to a small square of cardboard, and let him sleep.

32

A
t 1:38 on the afternoon of December 4, 1951, ten minutes before fifth period ended, some kid knocked on Paul Moses’s classroom door with a note saying that he should call home as soon as possible. His first panicked thought was that something had happened to Beatrice. Why else would he get this message in the middle of the school day? He asked Sal Berg in the adjacent class to keep an eye on his students and dashed off. When he reached Lucretia on the phone, she told him that she had just received some kind of legal notice stating that all the residents on their block had to move.