The Street Sweeper (46 page)

‘So then you’re telling me you’re not sure you’ve established legal paternity?’

‘I mean … I’m the father. I know that. But I don’t know what’s been established like that.’

‘Would you say you had a close relationship with your daughter prior to going into a correctional facility?’

‘Yes. I did. Very close, definitely.’

‘Did you ever change her diaper?’

‘More times than I could count.’

‘Did she ever call you Daddy?

‘She always called me Daddy.’

‘If a court were to ask her if she ever visited her daddy in jail, what do you think she’d say?’

‘She did visit me but only at the beginning. She was about two and a half then. She’s eight now.’

‘You haven’t seen her at all since she was two and a half?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

‘So I don’t know what she’d say. I mean, I don’t know what she’d remember.’

‘And you don’t know where the mother is?’

‘No, I tried to find out but … ain’t had no luck yet which is why I needed to speak to you.’

‘Mr Williams, I think you’re going to need to go to court and file a visitation petition.’

‘Okay, well, how’d I do that?’

‘Your sister said you’re working at the moment?’

‘You don’t mean my sister. You mean Michelle? She’s my cousin.’

‘Oh yes, I’m sorry, your cousin. Are you still in employment, Mr Williams?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘In the Bronx?’

‘No, I
live
in the Bronx but I
work
in Manhattan.’

‘Okay, ‘cause you’re going to need to go to court during business hours, say between nine and five to file the petition.’

‘See, Miss Linh Tran, how can I do that? I can’t leave work. I’m still on probation at my job. We get put on six months’ probation and I can’t just … you know, I can’t just leave. Where is the court?’

‘I think you’d need to go to the Family Court, which is down on Lafayette Street. Maybe you could get help from the Legal Aid Society, which is right by there on Church Street.’

‘I know a lot about the Legal Aid Society. Lot of time inside for the stories to get around ‘bout the work they do.’

‘Yeah … well, they do have a horrible caseload. Come to think of it I’m not even sure they do this kind of work.’

‘What are my options if they don’t?’

‘Well, you could always see a lawyer in private practice who specialises in this sort of thing but it costs.’

‘What does it cost?’

‘I couldn’t say exactly.’

‘Well … Miss Linh Tran, could you maybe give me a ballpark figure?’

‘You could probably find someone who would do it for between $150 and $350.’

‘So if I could come up with $350 I could get someone to take care of it for me? I don’t know how long it would take me to find that kind of money.’

‘No, I mean between $150 and $350 an hour.’

‘An
hour
?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Well, how many hours it gonna take to file these documents?’

‘I really couldn’t say. You could probably find a lawyer who’d do the whole thing for between about … let’s see … maybe $3000 to $5000.’

‘Miss Linh Tran, my daughter’s gonna be twenty-one before I get that kind of money. Do I have any other options?’

‘Well, like I was saying, you could go to the Family Court and do it yourself.’

‘So if I took a day off of work to do that, what would I have to do?’

‘Well, it shouldn’t take a whole day. You’d just go down there and file a visitation petition. You’ll be told to come back about six weeks later and then they’ll give you the relevant paperwork –’

‘So that’s like another day off of work?’

‘Well, you’d have to go there for some time; again it shouldn’t take the whole day. They’ll give you the relevant paperwork and explain the correct procedure for effecting service on your daughter’s mother.’

‘Effecting what?’

‘Effecting service; that just means there’s certain specified ways she’s to take delivery of the documents.’

‘But I don’t know where she lives.’

‘Well, see, that’s a problem. You don’t seem to have what a court would call “standing” with respect to your daughter so that’s why you need to file the petition in the first place.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t know where Chantal is in the first place and in the second place … I mean I can’t be takin’ all these days off of work, not while I’m still on probation. I got to get through probation before I can even think about cuttin’ any corners.’

‘And you’re not in a position to engage a private lawyer?’

‘No, I’m not currently in that position.’

‘Mr Williams, I don’t know what else to say. Do you think you can wait till after your probation period with your employer is done?’

‘I can’t see no other way, Miss Linh Tran. But even then if I could get down to the court on those days, that still won’t mean I know where Chantal is livin’.’

‘I know this might seem hard but if you could wait till you’re finished your probation … you could call me again then.’

‘Well, I thank you, really I do, but even then … What if I still don’t know then where Chantal is livin’?’

‘Won’t you be in a better position to find out?’

‘I guess so but …’

‘You don’t have any evidence of your daughter being in any kind of danger, do you?’

‘No. I mean I don’t have any evidence of her at all.’

‘Well, if she’s not in danger … I don’t mean to sound harsh because I know how much you want to re-establish contact with your daughter but maybe your best bet is to wait until your employment situation is more secure. Don’t you think? You’ve already waited so long. I don’t know what else to advise. Maybe you’ll need to hire a private detective to track down the mother but I really don’t know what they’d charge. Mr Williams, I really think it might serve you and your daughter best if you can secure your employment beyond the probation period. It will look good to a judge and it will help you or at least make it easier for you to get any time off you may need. It will probably help you in lots of ways.’

The priest who had been listening, initially coming and going on the pretext of needing things from his office, eventually gave up pretending and just stood at the doorway watching Lamont, listening as hard as he could. When Lamont got off the phone he put down the receiver and said, automatically with his mind far away, ‘Thank you, Father,’ and began walking out in a hurry to avoid being late back to work.

‘Good news?’

‘Pardon me?’ said Lamont, walking quickly through the darkened church towards the exit on 68th Street. The priest was trailing behind him. Lamont had to get back to work. That seemed to be what Linh
Tran was saying. Just get through the probation period. Everything starts from there. Hope starts from there. The soles of his shoes made quick sharp noises on the stone floor of the church. The priest hurried to catch up to him.

‘I said “good news?”‘

‘Pardon me?’

‘Good news?’

‘Glad
you
got some. I gotta get back to work, Father.’

*

In Poland, in the years between the war to end all wars and the war after that, one in three inhabitants of Warsaw was Jewish and at least one of the other two felt it was much more than that. So persistent and widespread was this feeling, particularly among the intelligentsia, that the universities instituted what was known as a
numerus clausus
or
closed number
, a quota on the number of Jews permitted to study at university. At some universities those Jewish students who came within the quota were made to sit in special ‘Jewish’ seats in the classroom. At certain universities right-wing student activists instituted ‘Jew-free days’ and sometimes ‘Jew-free weeks’. A Jewish student caught on campus during those times was more than usually likely to be assaulted by the student activists or else by thugs from outside who would go looking for them. Those Jewish students who wanted to undertake postgraduate studies or to study medicine, engineering or law were forced either to study abroad or to consider other ways of earning a living. The Polish civil service was similarly closed to them and an increasing number of intellectual Polish Jews sought the modest but economically secure path of teaching school children. Some felt fulfilled by teaching while for others it represented a painful compromise. Many of them dreamed of something beyond their schools and some of them even worked in their chosen fields in the hours their school obligations allowed.

Two such Jews sat drinking coffee in a Warsaw café at the end of a day at school. One of them wanted more than anything else to earn his living as a historian, the other felt the same way about psychology.
This other was Chaim Broder, a man who had studied under Wilhelm Wundt, the pioneer of experimental psychology, what seemed like many years earlier.

‘Emanuel, you’re an inveterate optimist, you know that?’

‘I have to be,’ said the younger Emanuel Ringelblum.

‘You’re a historian who works on his own trying to learn all he can about this wretched history of ours. The Jews themselves don’t care to know even though it’s their history and the Poles definitely don’t want to know. You and your Jewish colleagues are afraid to give papers on Jewish history at professional conferences and –’

‘We’re not afraid. As a rule they won’t let us because they don’t consider us to be a “nation”. But sometimes they do. It’s not all as hopeless as you think.’

‘Sometimes they do!’ repeated Chaim Broder with gentle mockery. ‘And that’s why you’re an inveterate optimist?’

‘No,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum, ‘I told you, I
have
to be an optimist. You want to ask why?’

‘Would it make any difference if I didn’t?’

‘Of course not.’

‘All right then, so why?’

‘Because I have to see
you
every day. Anyone forced to see you every day needs to be an incorrigible optimist.’

‘I’m not a pessimist, Emanuel. Science is neither for nor against hope.’

‘I know. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times before. In Leipzig you studied under Wundt and now you’re a scientist of the mind.’

‘Well, I …’ Chaim Broder paused to sip his coffee before continuing, ‘and every day I go and teach little children. I teach children, Jewish children. What am I doing this for? Why?’

‘You need to earn a living like the rest of us and you teach children so they can grow up and –’

‘Emanuel, the best of them will be lucky if
they’ll
be allowed to teach little children.’

‘But Chaim, you’re preparing them. If it changes who will be –’

‘If it
changes?
If it
changes?’

‘Gentlemen, I see you’re sitting here arguing as usual,’ said a third man who had just arrived at their table. ‘Good to see, anything else would be a quite disconcerting change and, anyway, I have someone charming for you to meet. It would be wrong to give her an atypical impression. Better she should have an honest and unfavourable one.’

The man was Rafal Gutman, the head of the Jewish community education system for all of Warsaw, and with him stood a young woman.

‘This is Miss Rosa Rabinowicz, originally from Ciechanow. She will soon be a qualified teacher. And I thought part of her training really should include learning to put up with people like you two. May we join you?’

The two seated men stood up to greet Rafal Gutman and more particularly the slip of a girl passing as a woman, Rosa Rabinowicz.

‘Rafal, we must have done
something
right. I can’t remember the last time you introduced us to someone so charming,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum, briefly taking the young woman’s hand.

‘Never,’ said Rafal Gutman, ‘I have never introduced you to someone so charming. But the better question is, “What has Rosa done that is so wrong that she deserves to meet the likes of you two?”‘

‘And what
have
you done that is so wrong, Miss Rabinowicz?’ asked Emanuel Ringelblum.

‘Me? Well, nothing I’m sure,’ she said a little nervously to the two cosmopolitan intellectuals.

‘Rosa already knows a little about both of you.’

‘Well, only a little. I know one of you is also a historian and the other is … is it a psychologist? But I might as well confess that I don’t remember which of you is which. I’m sorry. And, at the risk of embarrassing myself further, I’m not really even all that sure what a psychologist is.’

‘No need to be embarrassed at all, Miss Rabinowicz,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum. ‘I am the historian and Chaim here … well, it really doesn’t matter what Chaim does. He’s such a pessimist about everything, even
he
doesn’t really think he matters much. And since there’s no one who thinks Chaim matters more than Chaim thinks he does, you can immediately see how much validity there is to his pessimism.’

Rafal Gutman and Emanuel Ringelblum had been flattering and amusing. But Chaim Broder had not uttered a word. It had taken him only one look at this young woman to begin to experience things he had not lately experienced; excitement, even hope. He must not allow this introduction to be all there was to this chance meeting with this girl, Rosa Rabinowicz. He had to see her again. But rendered too embarrassed and shy by grainy memories of past romantic disappointments to know what to say, he had not yet said anything.

‘Please forgive my ignorance, Mr Broder, but what exactly is psychology?’ Rosa Rabinowicz asked Chaim Broder while Rafal Gutman ordered coffee from a waiter for both Rosa and himself.

‘Miss Rabinowicz, there is nothing at all to be embarrassed about,’ Broder said, embarrassed at the quiver in his voice. He cleared his throat and, trying to steady himself, continued, ‘Admitting ignorance about something is a virtue, not a fault.’

‘Oh dear, had I known I was being virtuous I might not have asked.’ Rosa smiled.

‘It’s neither a virtue nor a fault to ask questions about the nature of psychology,’ interjected Emanuel Ringelblum. ‘But it is a folly if you’re asking a curmudgeonly pessimistic psychologist like Chaim.’

‘He makes fun of me, Miss Rabinowicz.’

‘He does,’ said Rosa. ‘But from the way you take it, I can see that it’s not at all true.’