A New York City subway station is a dirtier, darker (in both light and energy), warmer (in temperature only), and smaller microcosm of the street above. There are shops, cops, riders, beggars, thieves, con men and women, preachers, schoolchildren, roaches, rats, performers, and lost pigeons. It is both an overwhelming and a numbing country, where all interactions explode against a soundtrack of rattling trains and a melody banged out by some musician praying for a few dollars dropped in a case, box, or hat.
Most humans do not linger in a subway station unless they hope to be saved, need to be saved, or are trying to do the saving. Andy was none of these today. His short blond hair, lanky frame, smooth face, high-top sneakers, and bulky backpack could have put him in high school, but something about his vaguely feral demeanor, piercing green eyes, and assured gait made him seem older.
Andy was about to exit the station with five hundred other self-absorbed riders when something familiar but wrong caught his eye.
The beggar with the one leg who often sat on a mat near the stairs had a new addition—a sickly-looking dog with a narrow face and dirty-blond coat from its Doberman/yellow Lab ancestors. A soiled rope that served as both leash and collar secured the dog to a railing while a sign on its neck completed the humiliation: “Help feed my dog! Please!!!”
The dog was panting hard, but not from thirst—the beggar had at least thought to provide the animal with a plastic dish of water.
“Your dog’s sick,” Andy said.
“Nah, man, just hungry.”
Andy shook his head. He knew the dog was ill as surely as he knew his own name.
“C’mon, kid. Help feed him and a Vietnam vet. I fought for your freedom.”
“I know you, don’t you remember?” Andy said. “The closest you’ve been to Vietnam is the noodle shop on the corner.”
“Leave me alone, kid… not bothering anyone.”
“Where’d you get the dog?”
“A guy I know couldn’t take care of it anymore. So he gave it to me.”
“Him, not it,” Andy corrected.
“What?”
“Never mind. You’re only keeping him because he helps bring in the cash, right?” The beggar shrugged and looked away. “Well, now he’s sick. I need to take him.”
“But it’s mine. We… we care for each other.”
“Right. So what’s the name of this dog that you care for so much?”
The beggar hesitated for a moment. “I call it Brutus, and if you lay a finger on it, I’ll start screaming.”
“And assuming I don’t put my foot down your throat first, what do you think that’s gonna accomplish?”
“The cops’ll come.”
“Yeah…”
“And when you can’t prove you own it, they’ll take Brutus away.”
“Then you won’t get to keep him either. So nobody wins.”
The beggar shook his head in mock sadness. “’Cept we both know that in the pound they’ll kill Brutus. And I think that might weigh heavily on a nice young man like you.”
Andy wouldn’t be put off. “I know people. I could get him saved before that happened.”
“Go ahead then. Take the chance.”
Andy didn’t need to do the math. Although good and caring people worked at the regular city shelters, it was a question of overwhelming numbers. Once the dog went into the central system, he would be lost for days or longer in a river of creatures flowing downhill to the garbage chute. Andy knew about that too well from his own journey down a parallel course. He leaned into the beggar close enough to smell his urine. “You know I can end you right now and no one would even care.”
“Oh, I know you could. But I know you wouldn’t. You got the smell of the system all over you. You don’t wanna go back, do you?”
At the beggar’s words, Andy heard the clang of cold steel doors locking for the night. He saw himself shivering on a mattress so thin he could name each bedspring. He smelled the slightly sour odor of overcooked vegetables and undercooked meat. He felt hard and unforgiving hands on tender skin.
Andy had a problem with memory. His entire personal history since the age of eleven was a constant physical presence in his life. He could recall specific memories with photographic clarity at any moment—what he’d worn to school on November 12, 2009, where he’d had lunch on June 5, 2010, and what he’d eaten, the combination of every lock he had ever used, and the number of stairs in every foster home that had swallowed him. He “saw” his past the way other people watched old movies. And because each memory connected to another, he often became lost in the theater of his history, like some musician trapped in an infinite loop of a twisted version of “And the Green Grass Grew All Around.” When that happened, it required all of Andy’s emotional and physical strength to return to the present.
The scientific name for Andy’s rare condition is highly specific autobiographical memory or HSAM. Andy just called it “piking.” HSAM sounds like a remarkable gift… unless your life has sucked. Then, as Andy would have quickly acknowledged, it was like being trapped in a cage made out of razor wire.
Andy bit into the top of his own hand to bring himself back to the present. He left new teeth marks, but stopped before breaking the skin. These would quickly fade. Other marks he had previously posited on his hands and elsewhere would remain with him forever.
Andy’s eyes found the dog’s. He saw intelligence there, as well as pain and desperation. He was about to make a move for the dog that undoubtedly would end with yet another police interaction, when the beggar said, “Of course you can also buy it from me.”
“Right,” Andy answered. “Because he means so much to you.” The beggar smiled in response, showing his gray teeth. “How much then?”
“Fifty.”
Andy clenched his fists, but forced himself to remain still. He knew he couldn’t allow this to end in violence. Too many people were starting to slow as they passed him. A few had stopped, waiting to see what would happen. He dug his hands into his pockets and pulled out three five-dollar bills and four singles. “All I got is nineteen. You’re gonna take that.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. I’m not.” With one eye on the growing crowd, the beggar announced, “You can’t take my dog.” Then louder for the audience, “It’s all… he’s all I’ve got in the world.”
Andy knew the bastard had him. He was down to one choice. He shook off his backpack, pulled out an old, battered violin case, and removed his violin and bow. Then he yanked an almost clean paper bag from the nearest garbage can and propped it open at his feet. “Not the Mendelssohn,” Andy mumbled. “Please not the Mendelssohn.”
Andy lowered the bow to the strings and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the searing pain of recollection.
Many believe that the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Although perhaps not as technically challenging as the Bartók, it is more melodic, more layered, and more inward-looking. For Andy, for reasons having little to do with the piece itself, this particular composition was transporting; the music turned him into a tourist in his own ruins.
Memory blasted through the thin veil of Andy’s reality. Every note drew him away from the station with its petty cruelties and toward the edge of a large lake floating in the purple dusk of winter. Andy stopped resisting the pull of time and gave in to the power of remembrance.
Huge snowflakes drifted down and covered him, but they were oddly warming. She was beside him and soon covered too, laughing at how incredibly soft the snow felt in her hands. Then she wrapped her hands in his. Andy and the girl both held the bow. The notes belonged to the two of them, alone in the world, as the snow swirled about. She kissed him.
Those in the station heard those same notes and they found they couldn’t move away. They opened their purses and wallets and dug inside their pockets to offer coins, dollars, and even fives. People who had never given a dime they didn’t owe threw fistfuls of change into Andy’s paper bag.
In less than ten minutes, the strings stilled and Andy opened his eyes. The lake and snow were gone. The girl had returned to her home in his past and he was back at the station alone among the fetid odor of underground Manhattan and pressed bodies. He tasted blood; he had chewed his lip open again.
The crowd stared at him. He noticed the violin and bow in his hand and tried to remember how they’d gotten there. This temporary lapse in his immediate short-term memory often occurred after he played, sometimes even accompanied by a brief inability to form words. It was as if his mind could not simultaneously hold the embers of his past and the ashes of his present, forcing his most recent memories to give way.
An elderly man with round spectacles and a white beard approached him. “You cannot keep this gift to yourself,” he said, and gestured to the violin. “You owe it to him.”
“Who?”
“The One. He gave you this talent—Elohim. Adonai. The Creator.”
“Oh. Him,” Andy said dismissively as he returned the instrument to its case. “No, I don’t think I owe him anything anymore.”
Ignoring the stares of the old man and the others who had watched him play, Andy grabbed the bag of money, took out twenty for cab fare, and tossed the rest to the beggar. Andy waited, but the beggar didn’t try to count the money or even meet Andy’s stare.
Andy shoved the violin case back into his pack and untied the dog’s rope. “C’mon, Little Bro. I’m gonna take care of you,” he said.
The boy and his dog climbed the filthy stairs out of the subway and onto the trash-strewn street.