29. FIFTY-THIRD AND LEX

On hot Lexington Avenue the subway pipes belched steam, moist and grey. In America he was hesitant, uncertain. He kept forgetting what side of the road cars drove on, couldn’t understand what people said half the time, had trouble telling nickels from dimes, got a cold drink when he asked for tea. They were crazy for lemonade and ice, wore bright clothing, drove cars with fins, ate hamburgers and milkshakes. New York, New York. People everywhere, skin, sweat gleaming on bare arms and legs, women in short skirts and sunglasses, men in short-sleeved shirts. How the West Was Won was playing at the Marquis. Tall black letters across an illuminated white strip. His big hollow heart.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone horribly wrong, that he was in the wrong place, adrift, floating farther and farther away from everything he held dear. He had not talked to Sarah, hadn’t spoken to anyone from home. He couldn’t phone, couldn’t risk endangering anyone. The spy out in the cold. Only, there was no going home. Only, it was stinking hot. A humid heat that made your arse sweat and produced a second skin, a film of moisture that clung to your body. Thank God for air-conditioning, another thing Americans loved.

The euphoria of escape. He was alive, was not going to be arrested or beaten or killed. He had slipped through their hands, outfoxed the South African police. But behind it lurked the loneliness of arrival, the escapee far from home. All the things he couldn’t fix, the broken pieces, the broken past that he could neither reconcile nor rebuild—his life and Sarah’s, Glenn’s, Nellie’s. Marooned in America, he was unable to make amends.

He ate in a luncheonette on Broadway, then walked back to the hotel. On Forty-Second Street music spilled out of the bars. High above him the skyscrapers presided, luminous in the afternoon sunlight.

All through the war he’d waited, imagining that one day he’d hear the doorbell and Uncle Isaac would be standing there, smelling of the lavender water he always splashed on his chest after their swims. His mother had promised him, explained that Uncle Isaac had returned to Lithuania, and assured Henry that she’d invited him to stay with them in Port Elizabeth, begged him, implored him. Weeks and months went by, and still Henry waited. Sometimes he thought he saw him crossing the street, or sitting in a tea room, but when the man turned round it wasn’t Isaac but a younger man, a stranger with a scrunched-up face and beady eyes.

Back in his room, he turned on the television. The presenters read the news in agitated tones. TV was a new experience for him; he liked their slick American accents, the big maps and graphics behind them. From his hotel aerie he could see across the avenue—people working in their offices, a building under construction, workers in hard hats riding up and down in a caged lift.

After a while, he switched off the TV and listened to some music. Other than some clothes and food, the battery-powered Philips cassette player and three cassettes (Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Donovan) were the only purchases he’d made. House Of the Risin’ Sun. Alone Together. Belated Forgiveness Plea.

He’d put his photographs on the dresser, and now stood looking at them, holding each one in turn, studying it, then putting it back. Sarah leaning over Glenn in the garden, Glenn’s little hand on her wrist. The three of them at the Vaal River. There was one other photograph he kept with his papers, small, unframed, and he took it out now as well. Nellie smiling her shy smile, cut out of a larger photo, probably one that included Zeke. It was all so long ago, so far away—the photographs, his past. Here and there. Now and then. History was what happened in between.

AFTERWARDS, AFTER the police had left and she’d gone inside and made tea, holding onto the kitchen counter to steady her shaking hands, Sarah thought that everything would be different, but it wasn’t. Except that the adrenaline made the light brighter and the hissing of the electric kettle louder, the world seemed, oddly, just about the same. The tea tasted exactly like tea; the little ridge inside the handle of the teacup was still there, and the sound of Glenn playing in his room upstairs was the same as it always was. It was only when she felt an itch along her nose and a tightness in her eyes that she realised she was crying. A tear plopped into her teacup, and she wiped her eyes with a dishcloth and sat down. It struck her that everything was, in fact, inexorably different, and a loud sob erupted from deep inside her. She sat there, crying and looking at the teacup and the clean bright kitchen and hoping Glenn wouldn’t come downstairs. After a while she stood up, patted her cheeks and straightened her skirt, and went upstairs and hugged her child. She kissed his pineapple-scented hair. He let her hold him tight for a minute before he pulled away, frowning slightly. He pointed at the model plane on the cardboard box in front of him.

“Ma, I finished the Spitfire.”

“I see that. It’s lovely.”

“I just have to put the stickers on the wings.”

“Glenn, Daddy can’t come and visit us yet, so we’ll go and visit him. How does that sound?”

“Good. Where?”

“New York, of course. Maybe you’ll go first. I have to take care of some things first.”

“But, Mom, I don’t want to fly all by myself. I’m too young.”

“No you’re not. You’re a big boy now.”

EVENING. HE’D been in America three whole days. He walked down Lexington, found his way to a bar, and ordered a whiskey. Drank it quickly and ordered another. The TV jabbered, high above the mirrored shelves of bottles. In Alabama, the police armed with dogs and cattle prods had quashed a civil rights march. It was familiar; it was not familiar. Here, it was on the news, on television, in the newspapers. President Kennedy declared civil rights a “moral issue.”

At the end of the bar, a drunk man flirted with two women. When Henry looked at the TV again, someone had changed the channel. A basketball game, blacks and whites playing together on the court. The sight of it made him inexplicably sad.

A while later, a man sat down beside him. Sinewy and tall, with a tanned face and bright white teeth.

“This seat taken?”

“No. Go ahead.”

The man ordered a beer, which arrived ice cold in a frosted mug.

“Galen.” He thrust out his hand.

“Henry. How do you do.”

“You’re not from around here.”

“No. I’m from South Africa.”

“Heard of it. Couldn’t find it on a map, though.” The man smiled, flashing his long teeth. “I’m not from around here either. Oklahoma.”

“Galen. That’s a funny name for an American.”

“Well, I’m a funny American. Just kidding, pal. My mother’s Greek, my dad’s Scottish.”

They clinked glasses, and the man looked up at the TV and surveyed the bar. He asked Henry how he liked New York, and Henry replied, somewhat automatically, that it was a wonderful city. He wanted to tell him his wife and son weren’t with him and he hadn’t spoken to friend or family in over a week. But he couldn’t say it, couldn’t explain. He couldn’t even say their names, or Nellie’s. He wanted to say them all out loud, to feel their names on his lips and speak his sprawling fears. But that was impossible. He was a fugitive, a secret person. So he said nothing, just smiled and sipped his drink. He’d become accustomed to not revealing the truth. Some part of him was still in flight. He had arrived nowhere. He thought about the word immigrant. It had a lost, flotsamy sound.

MEANWHILE, NEW YORK. Big, bustling, vertical, hot. It rushed at you, Checker cabs thudded over manholes, loud men walking fast, everyone in a rush. He liked the yawny, foghorn accents, the hats men wore, the hurrying legs of women on Fifth Avenue, the billboards and neon signs, the music, the looming skyscrapers that Glenn would have marvelled at. Henry slept, shaved, ate, watched television. He collected shiny quarters but made no phone calls, just stashed them in a drawer with his socks and underpants. They had agreed: don’t talk unless it was an emergency.

A yellow clown sold hamburgers on television. Teams called Tigers and Lions played American football in helmets and pads. He watched it all in his little hotel room, and pictured stuffed animals, fluffy bears with rub-me noses, and thought of Glenn, and he gulped quick draughts of air. A phantom scent of his son’s skin filled his nostrils, and he reeled, stranded on his hotel bed, too lost to weep. Lala ngenxeba, the Africans said. Lie on the wound.

HE RODE a commuter train to White Plains to visit Bob and Gail Gornick, the only South Africans he knew anywhere near New York. Bob was a lawyer, had told Henry long ago that America was the place to be. The economy was booming. Henry hadn’t moved halfway across the world to end up back in Liverpool—or even London—but now he wasn’t so sure. Dick was in London, and so were a lot of other people he knew. Bob poured him a drink and apologised that they wouldn’t be having a braai. In the garden, the Gornick boys were tossing around an American football—like a narrow rugby ball. Inside the house, the books and furniture, even the cups and saucers, reminded him of his own house, and all the houses he’d left behind.

“When will Sarah and Glenn join you?” Gail asked.

“Soon, I hope.”

They ate roast beef and potatoes, and then the boys went upstairs. Henry could tell his hosts wanted to hear his story, but he didn’t know what to tell them. “So much has happened, so fast,” he said, reminding them not to tell anyone of his whereabouts. No, of course not, they promised. And he could tell they were picturing it, their past lives, their families, but it was far away. For them.

They told him he could stay with them. But there wasn’t enough space in their ranch-style house—cluttered, two children, a cat.

Bob said, “We’ll put in a swimming pool next summer. You’ll bring Sarah and Glenn. He’ll play with our boys.”

“They don’t say ‘costume’ here, they say ‘swimsuit,’” Gail said.

A lull, and then Bob said: “Waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup? Looks like the breaststroke to me, sir.”

Henry forced a laugh. But he felt lost, unravelled. He had the sense that it would all begin again, that at any moment, this house—the chair he was sitting on, the trees outside—would disappear, and he’d be running again, waiting, travelling incognito: the exile in flight.

The day long ago, after he’d rescued her, Sarah’s father and brother had dropped her off at the tea room in the King George Hotel. The waiter brought tea and scones, and Henry found himself talking easily, gazing into her green eyes, following the graceful movements of her hands. They lived in Johannesburg; her father was a silversmith, had his own shop on Jeppe Street. Sarah played the piano, her mother the violin, her sister Esther the flute and violin, and Meyer and Isadore were tenors in the shul choir. Of course she was a pianist, he’d thought, admiring her long fingers. Alert eyes, auburn hair, shiny as a farthing. Something about her made him feel at ease, made him want to smile. Her silk blouse reminded him of a flower, a lily perhaps. Elegant features, high cheekbones, a Barbara Stanwyck smile. She loved jazz. “Do you know Oscar Peterson?” she asked, and when Henry said he did her eyes lit up. He liked the passion that music, chocolate cake, a joke, stirred in her, liked the way she stared at him as they talked, not sombre but serious, the warmth in her eyes, and her easy smile.

Back in Johannesburg, they went dancing, talked a lot, laughed a lot. And when, one evening, he mustered the courage to kiss her while they were walking back to the car, she put a cool hand on his arm and kissed him back.

When he’d left Meyer and Aniela’s house after those long nights in their garage, Meyer had looked at him with unapologetic wrath, for putting their daughter in harm’s way, for doing whatever it was that forced him to flee like a common criminal. That’s how his own parents would view it, too; his anxious, protective mother would curse his arrogance and stupidity. How she must have hated not knowing where he was at the time—locked up in a jail, perhaps, like Rusty and the others. But now she knew he was safe, at least.

HE WALKED out of a matinee, The Thrill of it All, surrounded by teenagers blinking in the bright sun on Broadway. Strangers, heat. Back at the hotel, the lobby was crowded. Bellhops rushed in and out as tourists waited to check in. The anti-macassared armchairs were full of young men in grey suits engaged in urgent conversation, checking their watches or distractedly reading the afternoon papers. Everyone looked elegant, prosperous, rushed. Only Henry had nowhere to go.

He wandered the insouciant streets. New York didn’t seem to need the rest of the world, or even care much about its existence. And no one in the world knew where he was right now. As dusk fell, he walked slowly back to the hotel, a lone animal in the gathering gloom.

HE LAY on his bed that night, remembering his mother’s letters sent to friends and family in Lithuania and Liverpool, pleading for Isaac to join them or go to Palestine; all unanswered. The war was long over when a telegram arrived one day, followed by a man they’d known in Shadowa. He told them that Isaac had joined the resistance, that he and his comrades had stolen munitions and made bombs and blown up trains and bridges—until one day the Germans had arrived in trucks and armoured cars. They’d shot at beds and closets, fired at cupboards and floorboards, walls and ceilings, and then came the flame-throwers and then came the flames, and finally they’d hurled grenades until the buildings lay smouldering and ruined. There was no way Isaac could have survived, their visitor said.

Like Isaac, Henry and his comrades had seen only one version of the future, the better world, hadn’t permitted thoughts of failure, of lives sacrificed, lost, destroyed. Of course, he was one of the lucky ones. He wasn’t dead or in jail awaiting trial or hiding in a cellar. He was here, on the fourteenth floor of a hotel, looking down on a river of cars and people—free, but a long way from home, banished from his former life, a sort of human black hole, gravity pulling him into himself, even as he stood staring at the flux of the street below.

HIS ELEVENTH day in America, Henry broke the rule. He took the shiny quarters to a pay phone and dialled a Johannesburg number.

“Hello.”

“Sarah. My Sarah. I love you,” he said quickly. “I long to see you. Hurry.”

“Me too,” she said softly. And then, “Are you okay? Is anything the matter?”

“Fine. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Good. But we can’t talk like this. It’s not safe. Don’t worry about me, okay? I love you.” And then she put down the phone.

She was right to hang up. You never knew who might be listening. They couldn’t take any chances.

Crying, he walked back to the Hotel Dressler.