Solomon Paprinski
the tightrope walker
stretched his wire
this morning
from lamppost to lamppost
straight
taut
then jumped up
and when he began to walk
almost lost his balance
shook
stationary in the air
then recovered.
His son Mordechai
a kid with green eyes
future tightrope walker
is always there watching his father
below the wire.
This morning
when Solomon almost fell
his son moved forward
as if to save him
but Solomon glared
from up there:
a tightrope walker
who hasn’t fallen in thirty years
has no need
no sir
not for kids
nor for shots of cognac.
Just as well
because
a small bottle costs a fortune:
contraband alcohol
—according to the Wall Street Journal—
is pulling the underworld apart.
It’s a greedy business:
fought over
by Italian gangs
—deft with knives
good at threats
formidable corrupters of police—
Irish gangs
—perfect with explosives
quick to vanish
masters at getting past customs—
and most of all
Jewish gangs
—close-knit
owners of distilleries
extraordinary at working their way in.
America
is now ablaze.
Great department stores
go up in flames
those of Sears, Roebuck & Company
those of Woolworth
all financed by Lehman.
America
is now a battlefield
torn to pieces
far and wide
by fire sirens
and flaming wrecks of vehicles.
Yes, vehicles.
Who knows
what Grandpa Emanuel would have thought
if rather than going
up there
to join his brothers
he had seen the United States
now streaked with railroad tracks
and crazy
no longer about trains
but about these motor cars
that at first belonged to the wealthiest
but are now sold to anyone
even to bakers.
Streets chock-full
of great hulks
all smoke and noise
with headlamps like eyes
and bulging with gasoline;
so that oil has gone sky-high.
Philip always thinks about it
each time he reads and rereads
the Public Purchase Offer
for Studebaker
which Lehman Brothers
is launching on the stock market:
a wide range of shares
for any bidder
from financier to barber
from millionaire to schnorrer:
BUY STOCKS AT A GOOD PRICE
and you too
in your own small way
will be
part-owners of an automobile company!
The aim is close, within easy reach:
to fill
American streets
within ten years at most
with exhaust fumes
and the spin of distributors.
Full speed ahead
no one
can be without a car,
there’s business to be done:
drive
drive
drive
grip the steering wheel
of these splendid bodies
all iron
full of oil
and drunk on gasoline.
For them, drunkenness is allowed, for sure.
No confiscation of fuel tanks, hurrah!
Even though no one
drinks fuel oil
to celebrate.
Arthur Lehman
turns up each morning
driving his own car:
arrives at great speed (S)
to the new office
at One William Street (OWS).
As he darts through the streets of New York
Arthur cannot stop thinking that
in the end
every human being (H) he sees passing
—on the trams or sitting in a park—
is nothing more than a debtor to Lehman Brothers (LB).
It’s an obsession, certainly.
But gratifying.
If you put together all Lehman investments in industry
and those on new patents
plus bank loans
as well as charitable works,
Arthur Lehman is sure
that every American
owes his bank
a lump sum figure
of somewhere around 7 dollars and 21 cents.
It seems incredible
but along the streets
Arthur no longer sees pedestrians
but walking numbers.
Those 7 dollars and 21 cents are everywhere:
they fill the theaters, the restaurants
they swarm onto ships and trains.
Those 7.21s also go to church
and pray to a God (J) who in moral terms
is comparable to
—or, at most, one step above—
Lehman Brothers:
He’s the creator of 7.21s, but we are their financiers.
He’s the inventor of the race, of course.
But if it were not for the bank
who would give 7.21s any scrap of existential meaning?
Arthur
as a partner alongside Philip
feels appointed therefore
with a supreme anthropological mission:
7.21s
plead through the look in their eye
not to be abandoned.
Lehman is, after all, a magnanimous divinity:
7.21s wanted cloth, and we gave them cotton.
They wanted to drink, and we gave them coffee.
They asked to travel, and we gave them trains.
And when they said “Faster!,” we created motor cars.
Speaking of which
Bobbie will be getting his own automobile
on his next birthday:
it will be a present from his father
since the future genius of Wall Street
cannot go on foot.
This decision is one of a series of measures
decided by Philip perfectly independently
in the personal confines of his diary:
THE BANK WANTS BOBBIE.
It was entirely irrelevant
that the notion was not reciprocal.
Now, it is well known that sometimes
between a father and a son
strange understandings can be created
based on the unsaid.
Ever since Philip had asked his son
in no uncertain terms
about his professional intentions
no further word
had been spoken on the matter
between the two of them:
all seemed perfectly clear
with no further need for explanation.
And so
an abstract contentment had settled on the two Lehmans.
Philip, for his part,
was necessarily convinced
that his son,
after his resistance that day,
would naturally give in.
And his smile was borne on this certainty:
the idea that the blood of his blood
could refuse to run the bank
seemed to him so inconceivable
that he had slowly dismissed it as the whim of a twenty-year-old
destined to be reabsorbed
—through natural more than filial law—
in the more prosaic ambition of an adult Bobbie.
In short, Philip had decided
—like any good banker—
to invest in his future
overlooking current risks:
Bobbie in his eyes
had become
the imperfect prototype of a perfect future son
in whose name
he had to excuse every passing defect.
It was, in the end,
a simple process of rapprochement.
To be encouraged
with the certainty of success.
Bobbie, for his part,
was unaware of all this.
And not because he dreamed
of any sort of idle life.
On the contrary
he was truly convinced
that his father had promoted him to “Lehman family representative.”
The difference was substantial:
having decided he was unfit
to wear a banker’s hat
Bobbie felt he was the natural candidate
for the role of warrior, yes, but in society.
Who better than he
to advertise the new face
of a bank that appreciated art,
that was a generous benefactor
and diplomatic in the game of respect?
“After all,” Bobbie thought,
“for all the rest, there’s always Arthur . . .”
and not surprisingly he gave a satisfied smile
each time his father
publicly lauded his cousin’s equations.
The new office at One William Street
would therefore be
—in a still-distant future—
the scene for a new structuring of the family’s bank:
Arthur Lehman seated like a monarch on the throne
and Bobbie immediately below
happily content to play the chamberlain
or even the master of ceremonies.
Oh, the dangers of silence:
it wasn’t just Bobbie who was firmly convinced
that this—and this alone—
was his father’s hope,
but even Arthur
felt quite reassured
through certain attitudes of his cousin (B)
that he was destined to hold the scepter (S).
And with this mutual certainty
peace reigned:
Philip smiled
Bobbie smiled
Arthur smiled.
May God bless that postwar moment.
Which, as we know,
can also be the precursor of another war.
Indeed it can be, without a doubt.
The only difference is in how it is viewed.