Blue Eyes (13 page)

“Moisés,” he shouted, in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, so that the Guzmann boys wouldn't fully understand, “are we going to your
judería
?”

Papa laughed. He told Mordeckay that the
judería
(Jewish quarter) of the Bronx lasted from one end of the borough to the other.

Mordeckay was hit with a definite wonder. He had never heard of a
judería
so big that it could swallow whole boroughs; not even the great
judería
of Lisbon (before the expulsion of the Jews) could have rivaled the Bronx. He remained in a stupor until he was pushed from the Chrysler to the candy store with five swaying Guzmanns. They introduced him as “Primo Mordeckay,” their Mexican cousin. He had no bed of his own, migrating from bed to bed at the rear of the store, sleeping with Jerónimo one day, and with Topal the next. He was given sets of long underwear, a wormy toothbrush (formerly Alejandro's), and a pot to defecate in should the toilet be stuffed (Jerónimo had his best dreams on the Guzmanns' communal chair).

The calendars of Mordeckay and Papa weren't strictly the same, and when Mordeckay announced that he had to bake his
pão santo
(holy bread) in midwinter, Papa stormed. “Cousin, this isn't the time for,
Pascua.
Wait for us. We bake bread in July.”

Primo Mordeckay refused, and Papa had to relinquish his oven for the brittle sheets of
pão santo
(sheets that wouldn't rise), which were bitter on his tongue and gave him heartburn. Nevertheless he forced his sons to digest Mordeckay's bread. But he wouldn't allow Mordeckay to bully him into observing Saint Esther Day.

“Cousin, we don't worship women here.”

“Moisés,” the cousin said, his face flushed with heavy red marks of shame, “not even the limpios”—Christians of the purest blood—“would insult the virtues of Santa Esther. I cannot sit in your house.”

And Papa, who could squash a man's nose between any two of his knuckles, decided to be gentle with Primo Mordeckay. He didn't want this cousin of his to disappear into the black dust of Belisario Dominquez without a taste of the Bronx. So he held his piss in on Esther's day until the blood beat thick in his head and he suffered double vision (the Guzmanns usually peed every hour because of the number of sodas they swallowed). He denied pork to his boys and fed them spinach at Mordeckay's command. This was how he honored his cousin, the primo who recited longish prayers to Adonai and trafficked with female saints (a horrific act in Papa's eyes).

Mordeckay, in turn, paid his respect to
los negocios de Moisés
(Papa's occupations). He became part of the Guzmann machine, a conspiracy of runners, collectors, and bankmen who handled small denominations. Mordeckay didn't see North American paper money larger than
cinco dolares
(five) in his time with Papa;
chuetas
from Bogotá, Lima, and Palestine, mental deficients, disgraced policemen, and homeless
portorriqueños
ran for Papa, dropping and picking up silver pieces, scratching words on toilet paper, in a game Mordeckay couldn't quite understand. He fell into companionship with one of Papa's runners, a cousin from Palestine. (The
chuetas
, who passed their lives in various stages of dispersal, who could only breathe in an alien culture, who were as much Muslim and Christian as Jew, wouldn't accept the sovereignty of a temporal Jewish state, and thus they avoided the mention of modern Israel, their “Israel” being a condition of the head, a drowsy place with no fixed boundaries, a place Santa Esther might have concocted in the bed of her Persian king.) This
palestino
had gone from Bogotá to Tel Aviv because he wanted a short vacation from the rigors of dispersal and was curious to know a city governed by Jews, but he fled
La Palestina
to avoid a chief rabbi who hoped to have him circumcised and bring him into the synagogues. The
chuetas
couldn't enter a synagogue; they prayed at home or in a proper church.

Mordeckay made a shawl for the
palestino
from the linen of a barber on Boston Road; they crept under the striped shawl around noontime and wouldn't come out until after six, when they finished celebrating Santa Esther, Santa Teresa of Spain, the Christian and Marrano martyrs, the Turks who once loved the Jews, each of Moisés' sons, and the angels of Adonai. In addition to his holiness, the
palestino
was a thief. Papa might have overlooked slow, dwindling revenues, but the
palestino
(his name was Raphael) robbed Papa with both fists. Before planning the
palestino's
gravesite, Papa consulted Mordeckay.

“Cousin, this Raphael injures me. If I don't fight back, others will learn from him. Mordeckay, he'll have to go. I could bury him in Queens with the católicos, or on my farm. You make the choice. Don't worry, I'll put crosses on his stone.”

Mordeckay shivered for the
palestino
, and his cheeks mottled blue and red at Moisés' barbarism. “Reprimand him, yes. Moisés, I don't ask kindnesses for a thief … but take blood from your own family? He's your cousin, Moisés. God forbid.” In the teeth of Papa's stubbornness, Mordeckay turned to prayer. He crossed himself, kneeled under Moisés' leg, and summoned his favorite saint. “Queen Esther, intercede. Protect your sons, the chuetas. Show my cousin the harm he will do if he hurts one of your own.”

The fates were on Papa's side. The
palestino
, who had been seducing the wives of Papa's runners, was murdered by an angry husband. Papa had the body shipped to a Puerto Rican funeral parlor at his own expense. Then he summoned Mordeckay and his five boys.

“Children, the norteamericanos will mock us if I don't move fast. Moisés Guzmann does not allow cuckolds to do his work. If I couldn't slap Raphael while he was alive, we'll slap him dead.”

Mordeckay mumbled something about the differences between holy and unholy revenge, but he had to go along; to resist the family that was housing him would have been an unconscionable act. At any rate he was swept up to the doors of the funeral parlor by the strength of Jorge and Alejandro's shoulders. Mordeckay removed his earmuffs and his hat. Guzmanns poked everywhere; finding the correct chapel, they interrupted services for Raphael. There was only a smattering of people in this particular room; a
chueta
here and there, the wife of the angry husband, the janitor of the chapel, and a priestlike man in cassock and wool sweater. Papa approached the coffin. He raised the
palestino's
head (it had been painted and waxed by a shrewd undertaker so that Raphael could hold half of a smile), kissed the eyes, mourned the loss of a cousin with two ear-splitting wails, and slapped both cheeks. Jorge, Alejandro, Topal, César, and Jerónimo followed the same procedure, their wails as loud as Papa's. Mordeckay was crying when he reached the bier; the
palestino's
face was discolored from all the slaps, and one cheek had already dropped. “Adonai, forgive me for desecrating one of your angels. I promise to learn your laws. I will pray harder and longer at the next Queen Esther.”

He slapped.

Mordeckay's fingers came up powdered blue; the cheek (the undropped one) wobbled from the force of his hand. He ran out of the chapel.

“Papa,” Alejandro whispered, “should I bring him back?”

“Leave him alone,” Papa growled.

By the time Papa and the boys returned to the candy store, Mordeckay was in his madras shirt.“ He begged Papa to release him from his obligations to the Bronx. Papa couldn't force a cousin to stay; such a prayerful man was unsuited for Boston Road. He kissed Mordeckay on the forehead. Mordeckay thanked the boys for tolerating him in their beds, and he got on a Mexican freighter with earmuffs in his pocket.

Part 2

9
The occasionals, the once-a-weekers at Schiller's ping-pong club were amused by the cop who wore his badge and his gun to play. They enjoyed the sight of a holster on blue shorts. And they took bets among themselves, gentlemen's bets, nothing over a penny or half a cigarette, that the cop couldn't smash the ball in his artillery. Schiller disapproved of these bets. He didn't want his club to deteriorate into a circus. So he kept the once-a-weekers away from Coen. But be wasn't a hypocrite. Not even Schiller could ignore the peculiar bite to Coen's uniform: the yellow headband, the wriststraps, the Police Special, the blue jersey and shorts, the gold shield, and the Moroccan sneakers gave Coen the aura of a man with formidable concentration, a craziness for ping-pong.

It was Chino who forced the gun on Coen. With the Chinaman on the loose, marauding taxicabs, abusing Coen's name in the Second Detective District, shadowing him later in a red wig, he couldn't afford to walk into Schiller's without a gun. First Schiller himself or Spanish Arnold held the holster, and Coen played at the end table, where he commanded a view of all the exits. But it upset him to have Schiller and Arnold become his watchdogs. Why should they be burdened with sticking his gun in the Chinaman's face? So Coen put the holster on. And because he was self-conscious in gym shorts, and he wanted to be sure no newcomer mistook him for a Columbus Avenue hood, he also wore the shield. Schiller seemed to have two minds about the whole thing. Although he hated the idea of firearms in his club (he was a pacifist vegetarian Austrian Jew), he felt much safer with Coen inside. None of the punks from middle Broadway would dare come down and disturb his benches, his tables, and his coffee pot.

After Mexico Coen stopped worrying about Chino Reyes but he forgot to change his uniform. The gun became a habit. He needed the weight at his hip to make his best shots. And he would rub the badge whenever he missed an easy return or couldn't cross over to his forehand fast enough. He was playing regularly again, six times a week. He had imposed a vacation on himself. He delivered the girl to Pimloe's chauffeur instead of Child (Isaac taught him years ago how to stroke the egos of his superiors), but Coen hadn't reported to his division yet. He was tired of poking around in the field. So he washed his headband periodically and hit the balls at Schiller's with his Mark V.

Coen had played ping-pong in Loch Sheldrake with the Guzmann boys at ten, eleven, and twelve. He was lord of the country tables, beating farmers, bread deliverers, bungalow colony men, Jorge, César, and Jerónimo with a borrowed sandpaper racket or César's fancier pimple rubber bat. Nobody could cope with his bullet serves and his awkward but deadly scrape shots off the sandpaper. An outdoor player he could push the ball into the breeze and make it the on your side of the net. The Guzmanns would grit their teeth and swear that Manfred was fucking with the wind. Jerónimo only played with him on the sunnier days. César learned to cash in. He taunted the farmers and bungalow men and offered them five to twelve points with Coen, depending on their ability and Coen's moods. Before Coen was thirteen his father stopped sending Sheb, his mother, and him to the Guzmanns' summer farm. He forgot ping-pong and concentrated on a portfolio for Music and Art, sketching Jerónimo in charcoal and also his father's eggs. During the following summer he minded the store with Sheb and thought about the Loch Sheldrake scarecrow. He was eight weeks into Music and Art when César came home from the farm. Estranged from the Guzmanns for half the year (Papa pulled César out of school in May and didn't return him until October), Coen walked Boston Road with an M&A decal (maroon and blue) on his shirt and stayed clear of Papa's store.

After his wife went to marry dentist Charles, Coen wandered into Schiller's. In his dark square coat and high trouser cuffs Coen was unmistakably a cop. But Schiller took him in. He respected the primitiveness of Coen's needs. Gold shield or no, nothing but a lonely man would gravitate toward a ping-pong club. Schiller had a theory. Ping-pong was a “heimische” game. It encouraged gentleness and other virtues. So he put a racket in Coen's hand, sponge and soft rubber, his best, a Mark V. And Coen played. With Schiller himself. He had never touched a bat like this one. The ball sank into the sponge and hopped off in crazy directions. He couldn't hear the familiar
pok
of hard rubber or the shriller sound of sandpaper. The ball seemed to moan against the sponge and make a squish. And soon he couldn't live without this noise. Playing indoors, without the benefit of wind or sun in your eyes, he had to give up his old sharpster's habits and learn to temper the racket's wicked pull. Schiller could fake him out with soft low cuts that Coen couldn't push over the net. Schiller refused to pamper him. Coen glowered for a week. Then he watched the flight of the ball. His lunges were helping Schiller, not him. By getting his racket under the ball without slapping or turning his wrist he could break Schiller's spin and lob the ball over the net. He developed a serious counterspin. He returned Schiller's forehand drives. Standing close to the table he took Schiller's balls right off the hop and fed them into the corners, sending poor Schiller on a dizzy run. “Emmanuel, where was all the sponge when I was a kid?” Coen said, swabbing the Mark V with a paper towel. “It wasn't fair to make me play with sandpaper. I could have been a phenomenon with the sponge, a five-star player.”

“Sure,” Schiller said, cutting into Coen's euphoria. “They didn't have soft bats then in the United States. We caught the habit from the Japanese. We gave them a taste of the atomic bomb, they gave us the sandwich bat. Which is the rottener weapon, I can't say.”

With Schiller exhausted and a little chagrined by a pupil who could outgun him so fast, Coen proceeded to the bottom layer of regulars at the club, those ping-pong freaks who had been suckled on hard rubber and were reluctant converts to sponge. Coen embarrassed them with his drop shots and the variety of his spins. He found his mettle among the middle range of freaks, winning, losing, discussing the properties of the various rubber sandwiches and wooden grips. But the ultimate players, the superfreaks who changed rubber the minute a splinter appeared, who used only balls from the China mainland, and practiced their strokes on empty tables, were in a different hemisphere from Coen. They were the ones who could loop the ball, slide it off the face of their bats with a pure upward thrust, so that it formed two perfect camel humps coming over the table and bounced into your fist or bobbled off your rubber. Schiller made his living off these superfreaks but he didn't enjoy their company. They were bitchy and aloof, condescending to weaker players, and jealous of one another's strokes. Schiller gave them the two front tables and wouldn't let them near his coffee pot. They were more familiar with Coen than with the other, lesser freaks on account of his detective shield but none of them showed him how to loop. And whenever three or four of them got together they sniggered privately at his uniform and they asked themselves where the detectives could be with Coen on board.