cab would go into that part of Brooklyn and pod service, of course, does not reach places like that. I borrowed an unmarked car from the municipal pool and drove it myself, not having the gall to risk a chauffeur’s life out there. Like most New Yorkers, I drive infrequently and poorly, and the ride had perils of its own. But in time I came, undented if not undaunted, to Carvajal’s street. Filth I had expected, yes, and rotting mounds of garbage in the street, and the rubble-strewn sites of demolished buildings looking like the gaps left by knocked-out teeth; but not the dry blackened corpses of beasts in the streets—dogs, goats, pigs?—and not the woody-stemmed weeds cracking through the pavement as if this were some ghost town, and not the reek of human dung and urine, and not the ankle-deep swirls of sand. A blast of oven heat hit me when I emerged, timidly and with misgivings, from the coolness of my car. Though this was only early June, a terrible late-August heat baked these miserable ruins. This is New York City? This might have been an outpost in the Mexican desert a century ago.
I left the car set on full alarm. Myself, I was carrying a top-strength anti-personnel baton and wearing a hip- hugging security cone warranted to knock any malefactor a dozen meters. Still I felt hideously exposed as I crossed the dreary pavement, knowing I had no defense against a casual sniper pot-shotting from above. But though a few sallow-faced inhabitants of this horrendous village eyed me sourly from the darkness behind their cracked and Jagged windows, though a few lean-hipped street cowboys gave me long bleak glances, no one approached me, no one spoke to me, there were no fourth-floor fusillades. Entering the sagging building where Carvajal lived, I felt almost relaxed: maybe the neighborhood had been much maligned, maybe its dark reputation was a product of middle-class paranoia. Later I learned I would never have lasted sixty seconds outside my automobile if Carvajal hadn’t given orders insuring my safety. In this parched jungle he had immense authority; to his fierce neighbors he was a sort of warlock, a sacred totem, a holy fool, respected and feared and obeyed. His gift of vision, no doubt, used judiciously and with overwhelming impact, had made him invulnerable here—in the jungle no one trifles with a shaman—and today he had spread his mantle over me.
His apartment was on the fifth floor. There was no elevator. Each flight of stairs was a grim adventure. I heard the scurrying of giant rats, I choked and retched at foul unfamiliar odors, I imagined seven-year-old murderers lurking in every pool of shadow. Without incident I reached his door. He opened before I could find the bell. Even in this heat he wore a white shirt with buttoned collar, a gray tweed jacket, a brown necktie. He looked like a schoolmaster waiting to hear me recite my Latin conjugations and declensions. “You see?” he said. “Safe and sound. I knew. No harm.”
Carvajal lived in three rooms: a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. The-ceilings were low, the plaster was cracking, the faded green walls looked as if they had last been painted in the days of Tricky Dick Nixon. The furniture was even older, with a Truman-era look to it, floppy and overstuffed, floral slipcovers and sturdy rhinocerous legs. The air was unconditioned and stifling; the illumination was incandescent and dim; the TV was an archaic table model; the kitchen sink had running water, not ultrasonics. When I was growing up in the mid-1970s, one of my closest friends was a boy whose father had died in Vietnam. He lived with his grandparents, and their place looked exactly like this one. Carvajal’s apartment eerily recaptured the texture of mid-century America; it was like a movie set, or a period room at the Smithsonian.
With remote, absentminded hospitality he settled me on the battered living-room sofa and apologized for having neither drink nor drug to offer me. He was
I left the car set on full alarm. Myself, I was carrying a top-strength anti-personnel baton and wearing a hip- hugging security cone warranted to knock any malefactor a dozen meters. Still I felt hideously exposed as I crossed the dreary pavement, knowing I had no defense against a casual sniper pot-shotting from above. But though a few sallow-faced inhabitants of this horrendous village eyed me sourly from the darkness behind their cracked and Jagged windows, though a few lean-hipped street cowboys gave me long bleak glances, no one approached me, no one spoke to me, there were no fourth-floor fusillades. Entering the sagging building where Carvajal lived, I felt almost relaxed: maybe the neighborhood had been much maligned, maybe its dark reputation was a product of middle-class paranoia. Later I learned I would never have lasted sixty seconds outside my automobile if Carvajal hadn’t given orders insuring my safety. In this parched jungle he had immense authority; to his fierce neighbors he was a sort of warlock, a sacred totem, a holy fool, respected and feared and obeyed. His gift of vision, no doubt, used judiciously and with overwhelming impact, had made him invulnerable here—in the jungle no one trifles with a shaman—and today he had spread his mantle over me.
His apartment was on the fifth floor. There was no elevator. Each flight of stairs was a grim adventure. I heard the scurrying of giant rats, I choked and retched at foul unfamiliar odors, I imagined seven-year-old murderers lurking in every pool of shadow. Without incident I reached his door. He opened before I could find the bell. Even in this heat he wore a white shirt with buttoned collar, a gray tweed jacket, a brown necktie. He looked like a schoolmaster waiting to hear me recite my Latin conjugations and declensions. “You see?” he said. “Safe and sound. I knew. No harm.”
Carvajal lived in three rooms: a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. The-ceilings were low, the plaster was cracking, the faded green walls looked as if they had last been painted in the days of Tricky Dick Nixon. The furniture was even older, with a Truman-era look to it, floppy and overstuffed, floral slipcovers and sturdy rhinocerous legs. The air was unconditioned and stifling; the illumination was incandescent and dim; the TV was an archaic table model; the kitchen sink had running water, not ultrasonics. When I was growing up in the mid-1970s, one of my closest friends was a boy whose father had died in Vietnam. He lived with his grandparents, and their place looked exactly like this one. Carvajal’s apartment eerily recaptured the texture of mid-century America; it was like a movie set, or a period room at the Smithsonian.
With remote, absentminded hospitality he settled me on the battered living-room sofa and apologized for having neither drink nor drug to offer me. He was
Similar Books
