Part 7 (1/2)
”This?” Saed hie to take a deserved bow He reached up to grab a handful of the kid's hair and gave it a tug, just kind of rocking his head fro at hiht almost have been inclined to think that Sammy eet on her ”This is my partner” partner”
4
Sahty Molecule, ca, a victiement, bad weather, shoddy talent, philistinises and furies whose nae, in the course of the long walks they took together that suned blaic, to bankers, unions, bosses, Clark Gable, Catholics, Protestants, theater owners, sister acts, poodle acts, lish Canadians, French Canadians, and Mr Hugo Wertz himself
”hell with 'eesture that, in the dusk of a Brooklyn July, was liar ”The Molecule one day says 'fuck you' to the all of thears, the lyrical rage, the fondness for explosive gestures, the bad gra to himself in the third person onderful to Sammy; until that summer of 1935, he had possessed few memories or distinct impressions of his father And any of the above qualities (aht, have given his h to banish the Molecule froreatest reluctance and the direct intervention of Rabbi Baitz that she had agreed to let the man back in the house And yet Sammy understood, from the moment of his father's reappearance, that only dire necessity could ever have induced the Genius of Physical Culture to return to his wife and child For the last dozen years he had wandered, ”free as a Godda the usta, Maine, to Vancouver, British Coluical antsiness, co that filled the Molecule's sient, when he spoke of his time on the road, made it clear to his son that as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he would be on his way again
Professor Alphonse von Clay, the Mighty Molecule (born Alter Klaye in the countryside east of Minsk), had abandoned his wife and son soon after Sah every week thereafter he sent a money order in the amount of twenty-five dollars Sammy came to know him only from the embittered narratives of Ethel Klay or newspaper photo the Molecule would send along, torn froe of the Helena Tribune, Tribune, or the Kenosha or the Kenosha Gazelle, Gazelle, or the Calgary or the Calgary Bulletin, Bulletin, and stuffed, with a sprinkling of cigar ash, into an envelope elass and the na hotel Sa that he placed under his pillow before he went to sleep each night He dreamed often and intensely of the tiny, thick-ondolier mustachios who could lift a bank safe over his head and beat a draft horse in a tug-of-war The plaudits and honors described by the clippings, and the names of the monarchs of Europe and the Near East who had supposedly bestowed theed over the years, but the essential false facts of the Mighty Molecule's biography re ancient Greek texts in the dusty libraries of the Old World; hours of painful exercises perfor only of fresh legumes, seafoods, and fruits, all eaten raw; a lifetime devoted to the careful cultivation of pure, healthy, lahts and to total abstention from insalubrious and iar ash, into an envelope elass and the na hotel Sa that he placed under his pillow before he went to sleep each night He dreamed often and intensely of the tiny, thick-ondolier mustachios who could lift a bank safe over his head and beat a draft horse in a tug-of-war The plaudits and honors described by the clippings, and the names of the monarchs of Europe and the Near East who had supposedly bestowed theed over the years, but the essential false facts of the Mighty Molecule's biography re ancient Greek texts in the dusty libraries of the Old World; hours of painful exercises perfor only of fresh legumes, seafoods, and fruits, all eaten raw; a lifetime devoted to the careful cultivation of pure, healthy, lahts and to total abstention from insalubrious and i from his mother scant, priceless drops of factual information about his father He knew that the Molecule, who derived his stage naold lame buskins, just under five feet two inches tall, had been imprisoned by the Czar in 1911, in the sa ht Train Belz Sammy knew that it was Belz, an anarcho-syndicalist, and not the ancient sages of Greece, who had schooled his father's body and taught hi, if not pussy and cigars And he knew that it was in Kurtzburg's Saloon on the Lower East Side in 1919 that his mother had fallen in love with Alter Klay as an iceman and freelance mover of pianos
Miss Kavalier was almost thirty when she married She was four inches shorter than her diray of rainwater pooled in a dish left on theledge She wore her black hair pulled into an unrelenting bun It was iine his irl upended and borne aloft on a sudden erotic gust, transfixed by the vein-rippled ar hundred-pound blocks of ice into the gloo's saloon on Ludlow Street Not that Ethel was unfeeling-on the contrary; she could be, in her way, a passionate woed, sunk by bad news, hard luck, or doctor's bills into deep, black crevasses of despair
”Takeafter dinner, as they were strolling down Pitkin Avenue, on their way out to New Lots or Canarsie or wherever the Molecule's vagabond urges inclined hiht Like a horse, Sammy had noticed, the Molecule al first up and down, then back and forth, checking behind the curtains, probing the corners with his gaze or the toe of a shoe, testing out the cushi+ons in the chair or sofa with aback onto his feet If compelled to stand in one place for any reason, he would rock back and forth like so the diht, and even then, according to Sa and crying out in his sleep And he seeer than an hour or two at a tied and hu lower Manhattan and Tients and circuit h On the days when he stayed in Brooklyn and hung around the apart and rocking and hourly trips to the store for cigars, pens, a Racing For In the course of their post-prandial wanderings, father and son ranged far and sat little They explored the eastern boroughs as far as Kew Gardens and East New York They took the ferry from the Bush Tere to Todt Hill, returning well after ht a train, they would stand, even if the car was empty; on the Staten Island Ferry, the Molecule prowled the decks like a character out of Conrad, uneasily watching the horizon Froht pause in a cigar shop or at a drugstore, where the Molecule would order a celery tonic for hi the chroahyde seat, would down his Cel-Ray standing up And once, on Flatbush Avenue, they had gone into aIn the course of their post-prandial wanderings, father and son ranged far and sat little They explored the eastern boroughs as far as Kew Gardens and East New York They took the ferry from the Bush Tere to Todt Hill, returning well after ht a train, they would stand, even if the car was empty; on the Staten Island Ferry, the Molecule prowled the decks like a character out of Conrad, uneasily watching the horizon Froht pause in a cigar shop or at a drugstore, where the Molecule would order a celery tonic for hi the chroahyde seat, would down his Cel-Ray standing up And once, on Flatbush Avenue, they had gone into a al Lancer The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was playing, but they stayed only for the newsreel before heading back out to the street The only directions the Molecule disliked to venture were to Coney Island, in whose o suffered unspecified tor the day, he said, and as more, the presence on that island of the Palace Theatre, the pinnacle and holy shrine of Vaudeville, was viewed as a reproach by the touchy and grudge-cherishi+ng Molecule, who never had, and never would, tread its storied boards was playing, but they stayed only for the newsreel before heading back out to the street The only directions the Molecule disliked to venture were to Coney Island, in whose o suffered unspecified tor the day, he said, and as more, the presence on that island of the Palace Theatre, the pinnacle and holy shrine of Vaudeville, was viewed as a reproach by the touchy and grudge-cherishi+ng Molecule, who never had, and never would, tread its storied boards
”You can't leave e to be with a woman like that”
The Molecule stopped and turned to face his son He was dressed, as always, in one of the three black suits that he owned, pressed and shi+ny ear at the elbows Though, like the others, it had been tailored to fit him, it nonetheless strained to encompass his physique His back and shoulders were as broad as the grille of a truck, his arhs, when pressed together, rivaled his chest in girth His waist looked oddly fragile, like the throat of an egg timer He wore his hair cropped close and an anachronistic handlebar raphs, where he often posed shi+rtless or in a skintight leotard, he appeared sot, but in street clothes he had an unwieldy, co out at his cuffs and collar, he looked like nothing sosome all too human vanity
”Listen to me, Sam” The Molecule seeh it dovetailed with his own thinking or, the thought crossed Sa town ”Nothing makes me happier than I take you with rammar permitted He sain, Jesus, what a crazy fucking idea”
Saue, but his father raised a hand There was more to be said, and in the balance of his speech Salimmer of hope He knew that he had chosen a particularly auspicious night to make his plea That afternoon, his parents had quarreled over dinner-literally Ethel scorned the Molecule's dietary regietables had none of the positive effects her husband attributed to it but also that, every chance theoff around the corner to dine in secret on steak and veal chops and french-fried potatoes That afternoon, Sammy's father had returned to the apartment on Sackman Street (this was in the days before thefull of Italian squash He durin onto the kitchen table, like a haul of stolen goods Saetables They were cool and sainst one another with a rubbery squeak You could see right where they had been cut froonal, ile that see with their faint scent of dirt The Molecule snapped one of the squashes in two and held its bright pale flesh up to Sammy's nose Then he popped one in hisat Sas,” he had said, walking out of the kitchen to shoay the failures of the day
Saray strings
When the Molecule sahat she had done, there were sharp and bitter words Then the Molecule had grabbed brusquely for his son, like a ed Sa They had been walking since six The sun had long since gone down, and the sky to the as a hazy ray-blue They alking along Avenue Z, dangerously close to the forbidden precincts of the Molecule's early sideshow disasters
”I don't think you got the picture what's it like out there for”You think it's like a circus in the pictures All the clowns and the dwarf and the fat lady sitting around a nice big fire eating goulash and singing songs with an accordion”
”I don't think that,” Sa accuracy in this assess now if-you will have to work very hard,” the Molecule said ”They will only accept you if you can work”
”I can work,” Sa out an arm toward his father ”Look at that”
”Yeh,” the Molecule said He felt very carefully up and down the stout arered the zucchini squash that afternoon ”You have arood”
”Well, jeez, I mean, I had polio, Pop, what do you want?”
”I know you had polio” The Molecule stopped again He frowned, and in his face Sa else that looked alar end, and stretched, and shook hi nets that his wife and son had thrown across his back ”What a fucking day I have Holy shi+t”
”What?” Sa?”
”I need to think,” his father said ”I need to think about what you are askingagain, taking a right on Nostrand Avenue, striding along on his thick little legs with Sa to keep up, until he ca, Arabic in style, or maybe it was supposed to look Moroccan It stood in the middle of the block, between a locksmith's stall and a weedy yard stacked with blank headstones Two skinny towers, topped with pointy dollops of peeling plaster, reached into the Brooklyn sky at either corner of the roof It less, and its broad expanse was clad, eary elaboration, in a ray that once , chipped, or picked or tumbled loose The dooras a wide, blue-tiled arch In spite of its forlorn appearance and hoku captivating about it It reminded Saet a gli on the front of a pack of Chesterfields Alongside the arched doorway, in letters of white tile bordered in blue, ritten brighton grand hammam
”What's a ham-mam?” Sammy said as they went in His nose was ient odor of pine, by the s deeper underneath it all, a human smell, salty and foul
”It's a shvitz,” the Molecule said ”You knohat a shvitz is?”
Sa,” said the Molecule, ”I like to have a shvitz”
”Oh”
”I hate thinking”
”Yeah,” said Sam room, in a tall black iron locker that creaked and fastened shut with the loud clang of a torture instru tiled corridor into the hton hammae room It was painfully hot, and Sas with sufficient air He wanted to run back out to the relative cool of the Brooklyn evening, but he crept along, feeling his way through the billowing garments of steam, a hand on his father's bare back They climbed onto a low tiled bench and sat back, and Saainst his skin It was very hard to see, but froaries of the invisible, wheezing, stea machinery, would produce a break in the cover, and he could see that they were indeed inside a grand space, ribbed with porcelain groins, set hite and blue faience that was cracked in places, sweating and yelloith age As far as he could see, there were no other men or boys in the room with them, but he couldn't be sure, and he felt obscurely afraid of an unknown face or naked li ti, and at so veritable torrents of sith an abandon it had never before in his life displayed, and, second, that all along he had been i an ar dark corridor of the Royal Theatre in Racine, Wisconsin, past a practice roo van on a Saturday in asoline and roses, the smell of the costuirls who had just vacated the all this with the vividness of a dreah he was, as far as he could tell, wide-awake
Then his father said, ”I know you had polio” Sary, as though asha there all this ti hie ”I was there I finded you on the steps of the building You were pass out”
”You were there? When I got polio?”
”I was there”
”I don't remember that”
”You were a baby”
”I was four”
”So, you were four You don't remember”
”I would remember that”
”I was there I carried you into the room we had”
”In Brownsville, this was” Sammy could not keep the skepticism out of his tone
”I was there, God daer, the curtain of stea between Sammy and his father parted suddenly, and he saw, for the first tireat brown spectacle of his naked father None of the carefully posed studio photographs had prepared hiely furred The muscles in his arms and shoulders were like dents and wheel ruts in an expanse of packed brown earth The root systems of an ancient tree seehs, and where his skin was not covered in dark hair, it was strangely rippled ebs of some kind of tissue just beneath the skin His penis lay in the shadow of his thighs like a short length of thick twisted rope Sa He looked away, and his heart ju, a yelloel across his lap, on the other side of the roo eyebrow and a perfectly smooth chest His eyes met Sammy's for a moment, then slid away, then back It was as if a tunnel of clear air had opened between them Sammy looked back at his father, his stomach awash in an acid of embarrassnificence of him was too much So he just looked down at the towel draped across his oo broos
”You were so heavy to carry,” his father said, ”I thought you have to be dead Only also you were so hot against the hand The doctor came and we put ice on you and when you woke up you couldn't walk anymore And then when you co you and I took you around, I carried you and I dragged you and I made you walk Until your knees were scraped and bruised, Ion to me, then on to the crutches, then not with crutches All by yourself”
”Jeez,” Sammy said ”I mean, huh Mom never told me any of this”