in a green dress. The band was still playing.
“Not by my time!” Schillinger yelled. “Twelve! Eleven!”
A commotion rippled through the hall.
“Ten! Nine!”
It was not until “Eight!” that we agreed to abide by his chronology.
“Seven!” you answered.
“Six!” I yelled. I found I was so happy, shouting numbers.
“Five!
Four!
Three!
Two!
One!”
And then it was the new year. Bells rang, streamers flew, champagne popped, lovers veered toward each other. I looked at you and you were scrutinizing me with your forceful brown eyes. I felt a wisp of something rising up through my chest. I bent toward your face. In that instant someone hit me in theback of the head with a snowball. Our heads clonked together and the world humbly shattered and a laugh knocked from your lips. I wheeled. I was searching for the culprit. There was no culprit, just a party, a hall of thronging movement and a dozen whizzing snowballs that I had helped prepare.
When I turned back to you, you were smiling still, ear to ear, loosened.
“Happy New Year, Leon.”
“Happy New Year,” I said.
You looked over at where George Gershwin was pretending to cross-country ski.
“Which new year do you want?” I said.
“All of them,” you replied. “Why not?”
IF I PLOTTED A GRAPH with all the good news from my first two years in America, it would be a long, silver, upward-curving line.
But beginning in early 1930, it became a different picture. A graph of winter temperatures, perhaps. A downward slope. Decline.
“Things are not so good,” said RCA’s Mr Thorogood. Even the ink in his pens had faded.
The RCA Theremin had debuted at the Radio World’s Fair in September 1929. Over the next eight months, salesmen took the theremin on the road, demonstrating it to audiences in Illinois, Texas and California. They paid former pupils to perform as guest soloists, visiting virtuosos, ambassadors for the instrument’s ease of use. RCA paid the Marx Brothers to have a go, paid Ripley’s Believe It or Not to introduce a new act, launched a weekly theremin radio program, at 7:15 on Saturday nights, sending ether song across the country. There were ads innewspapers, ads in magazines, ads on the radio and in the polished windows of music stores.
But as the device cooed at Harpo, as families listened bewilderedly to the radio, RCA’s plan was failing. America was enamoured with my invention: it festooned small-town newspapers, drew crowds in places where priests and sluggers were the customary idols. Yet the people did not themselves wish to own theremins. They were too busy worrying about their wages, saving food stamps, clamouring for the repeal of Prohibition. This was too elaborate a contraption.
MEANWHILE, PASH HAD GONE MISSING .
I could not find him. Our customary relationship relied on his finding me. He had eagle’s eyes, bat’s ears, a bloodhound’s nose; I’d be sitting at the movies, at the zoo, trying a Flatbush Sacher torte—all at once his hand would clap my shoulder. “Comrade,” he’d say in his bootblack voice. He might have papers for me to sign, news from the motherland, instructions from his employers. He might simply be lonely and wish to talk—long monologues on Kuril scallops or Russia’s bandy league. I do not know if Pash had any friends. I do not know if I was his friend.
But he had been missing since Black Tuesday. That night he had had a look in his eyes: not the look of a man recalling something but the look of a man recalling he would recall something. The something was grim. He left without saying goodbye.
You, too, seemed to step away from my life in the weeks and months after we counted down to one. The next time I saw you, you were crossing the street near the opera. I called to you, waved with both hands. Beside me, men were using pitchforks to heft sacks onto a flatbed truck. I shouted again. You stopped and sawme. You
“Not by my time!” Schillinger yelled. “Twelve! Eleven!”
A commotion rippled through the hall.
“Ten! Nine!”
It was not until “Eight!” that we agreed to abide by his chronology.
“Seven!” you answered.
“Six!” I yelled. I found I was so happy, shouting numbers.
“Five!
Four!
Three!
Two!
One!”
And then it was the new year. Bells rang, streamers flew, champagne popped, lovers veered toward each other. I looked at you and you were scrutinizing me with your forceful brown eyes. I felt a wisp of something rising up through my chest. I bent toward your face. In that instant someone hit me in theback of the head with a snowball. Our heads clonked together and the world humbly shattered and a laugh knocked from your lips. I wheeled. I was searching for the culprit. There was no culprit, just a party, a hall of thronging movement and a dozen whizzing snowballs that I had helped prepare.
When I turned back to you, you were smiling still, ear to ear, loosened.
“Happy New Year, Leon.”
“Happy New Year,” I said.
You looked over at where George Gershwin was pretending to cross-country ski.
“Which new year do you want?” I said.
“All of them,” you replied. “Why not?”
IF I PLOTTED A GRAPH with all the good news from my first two years in America, it would be a long, silver, upward-curving line.
But beginning in early 1930, it became a different picture. A graph of winter temperatures, perhaps. A downward slope. Decline.
“Things are not so good,” said RCA’s Mr Thorogood. Even the ink in his pens had faded.
The RCA Theremin had debuted at the Radio World’s Fair in September 1929. Over the next eight months, salesmen took the theremin on the road, demonstrating it to audiences in Illinois, Texas and California. They paid former pupils to perform as guest soloists, visiting virtuosos, ambassadors for the instrument’s ease of use. RCA paid the Marx Brothers to have a go, paid Ripley’s Believe It or Not to introduce a new act, launched a weekly theremin radio program, at 7:15 on Saturday nights, sending ether song across the country. There were ads innewspapers, ads in magazines, ads on the radio and in the polished windows of music stores.
But as the device cooed at Harpo, as families listened bewilderedly to the radio, RCA’s plan was failing. America was enamoured with my invention: it festooned small-town newspapers, drew crowds in places where priests and sluggers were the customary idols. Yet the people did not themselves wish to own theremins. They were too busy worrying about their wages, saving food stamps, clamouring for the repeal of Prohibition. This was too elaborate a contraption.
MEANWHILE, PASH HAD GONE MISSING .
I could not find him. Our customary relationship relied on his finding me. He had eagle’s eyes, bat’s ears, a bloodhound’s nose; I’d be sitting at the movies, at the zoo, trying a Flatbush Sacher torte—all at once his hand would clap my shoulder. “Comrade,” he’d say in his bootblack voice. He might have papers for me to sign, news from the motherland, instructions from his employers. He might simply be lonely and wish to talk—long monologues on Kuril scallops or Russia’s bandy league. I do not know if Pash had any friends. I do not know if I was his friend.
But he had been missing since Black Tuesday. That night he had had a look in his eyes: not the look of a man recalling something but the look of a man recalling he would recall something. The something was grim. He left without saying goodbye.
You, too, seemed to step away from my life in the weeks and months after we counted down to one. The next time I saw you, you were crossing the street near the opera. I called to you, waved with both hands. Beside me, men were using pitchforks to heft sacks onto a flatbed truck. I shouted again. You stopped and sawme. You
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