The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Page 19
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Then one morning the great man himself, Moses Levy, came down with a cup of tea and some bread and cheese. Even before I thanked him, I begged to be his apprentice.
“You don’t think your father will miss you?” he asked when I told him of how we had left the Ukraine, a village not far from his own, and how we had worked at factories until our fingers bled, and how I had left without saying good-bye. I omitted the more questionable section of my life as one of Hochman’s boys, for in that profession I felt less like a detective than a rat and a snitch.
“He doesn’t know me, how can he miss me? I have my own life,” I insisted, exactly as I’d insisted to Hochman when I first stepped away from my original life and changed my fate. I wolfed down the food that had been offered me. “I make my own decisions,” I assured Levy.
Although I had not said the bar mitzvah prayers that brought a boy into his adult life, I thought of myself as a man. I had worked as a man, and I’d lived as one, too, outside my father’s view. The direction of my life would have shocked my father had he known anything of my actions on those nights when I slipped out of our room. I’d done as I pleased when working for Hochman. That was what I’d thought I wanted, a sinful and thoughtless existence. After the day when my father leapt from the dock, as if his life was so worthless he was willing to cast it away, I made a vow to look for pleasure in my own life. But despite the rules I broke, the women who’d raised their skirts for me, the money I’d made working for Hochman, nothing had made me happy until I’d stood in the locust grove and watched Levy with his camera. I couldn’t see the beauty of the world until I saw the trees looming in the moonlight.
MARCH 1911
THE AIR was pale, as gray as smoke. March meant good fishing in the Hudson, with schools of shad running beneath the silver mist that settled over the water in the early hours of the day. Eddie Cohen could see the river from the domed window in his studio, and in his opinion it was one of the wonders of the world. Light moved through the water in bands, changing the color of the depths from violet to pewter to copper, and then, as spring approached, a heavenly blue. Eddie had inherited his quarters in a shabby neighborhood of storehouses and stables near the docks. The loft where he lived had been used for storing hay in a previous incarnation, and the stink of horseflesh still arose from the stable below, where a liveryman quartered a team of old nags. Eddie’s mentor had bequeathed his student all his worldly goods. Upon his death, everything the photographer Moses Levy had once owned, every cooking pot and blanket, every camera and print, came to belong to his protégé. Eddie was tall and often awkward, unaware of his good looks. He was agitated, a hothead with too much of a temper to enter into the conversations of most civilized men. Women were drawn to him, but he rarely noticed their attraction, not unless light fell upon their faces to illuminate their features. Then he did approach, his camera ready for use. These women might hope for his interest, but all he wanted was their image. The women he’d known sexually, he’d felt nothing for other than lust. He had never believed in a world where love was possible.
His address was in the westernmost point of the city, beyond Tenth Avenue, the gritty edge of an outer sphere that became more and more fashionable as one headed eastward, reaching a glamorous zenith at Fifth Avenue. All of the land in the area had once belonged to Clement Moore, the author of The Night Before Christmas, a scholar of Hebrew and Greek who had called his estate Chelsea after the district in London known for its opulent Georgian town houses. When the grid of Manhattan streets was created, in 1811, a grand project that would forever change the city, filling in streams, ridding the map of meandering roads, Ninth Avenue cut through the center of Moore’s estate. The scholar was so appalled at the way the future had swooped in to claim the farm he so loved that he donated much of his land to the General Theological Seminary and St. Peter’s Church. He left open sixty lots of orchards, assuming this gift would ensure that Chelsea would never be completely overtaken by mortar and stone. But after Moore’s death the lots were sold, with most of the trees hurriedly chopped down. Only the churchyard and garden remained the same, and there it was still possible to find remnants of the old orchard. Neighborhood women often stood near the walls of the churchyard, holding out their skirts to form baskets into which the apples might drop. Seeds scattered, and stray saplings appeared in yards and beside shops and warehouses, flowering pink in the summer, reminding residents that the fruit that had tempted Adam and Eve, which many believed had not stood a chance against the builders of Manhattan, could still bloom within the confines of the city.
“You don’t think your father will miss you?” he asked when I told him of how we had left the Ukraine, a village not far from his own, and how we had worked at factories until our fingers bled, and how I had left without saying good-bye. I omitted the more questionable section of my life as one of Hochman’s boys, for in that profession I felt less like a detective than a rat and a snitch.
“He doesn’t know me, how can he miss me? I have my own life,” I insisted, exactly as I’d insisted to Hochman when I first stepped away from my original life and changed my fate. I wolfed down the food that had been offered me. “I make my own decisions,” I assured Levy.
Although I had not said the bar mitzvah prayers that brought a boy into his adult life, I thought of myself as a man. I had worked as a man, and I’d lived as one, too, outside my father’s view. The direction of my life would have shocked my father had he known anything of my actions on those nights when I slipped out of our room. I’d done as I pleased when working for Hochman. That was what I’d thought I wanted, a sinful and thoughtless existence. After the day when my father leapt from the dock, as if his life was so worthless he was willing to cast it away, I made a vow to look for pleasure in my own life. But despite the rules I broke, the women who’d raised their skirts for me, the money I’d made working for Hochman, nothing had made me happy until I’d stood in the locust grove and watched Levy with his camera. I couldn’t see the beauty of the world until I saw the trees looming in the moonlight.
MARCH 1911
THE AIR was pale, as gray as smoke. March meant good fishing in the Hudson, with schools of shad running beneath the silver mist that settled over the water in the early hours of the day. Eddie Cohen could see the river from the domed window in his studio, and in his opinion it was one of the wonders of the world. Light moved through the water in bands, changing the color of the depths from violet to pewter to copper, and then, as spring approached, a heavenly blue. Eddie had inherited his quarters in a shabby neighborhood of storehouses and stables near the docks. The loft where he lived had been used for storing hay in a previous incarnation, and the stink of horseflesh still arose from the stable below, where a liveryman quartered a team of old nags. Eddie’s mentor had bequeathed his student all his worldly goods. Upon his death, everything the photographer Moses Levy had once owned, every cooking pot and blanket, every camera and print, came to belong to his protégé. Eddie was tall and often awkward, unaware of his good looks. He was agitated, a hothead with too much of a temper to enter into the conversations of most civilized men. Women were drawn to him, but he rarely noticed their attraction, not unless light fell upon their faces to illuminate their features. Then he did approach, his camera ready for use. These women might hope for his interest, but all he wanted was their image. The women he’d known sexually, he’d felt nothing for other than lust. He had never believed in a world where love was possible.
His address was in the westernmost point of the city, beyond Tenth Avenue, the gritty edge of an outer sphere that became more and more fashionable as one headed eastward, reaching a glamorous zenith at Fifth Avenue. All of the land in the area had once belonged to Clement Moore, the author of The Night Before Christmas, a scholar of Hebrew and Greek who had called his estate Chelsea after the district in London known for its opulent Georgian town houses. When the grid of Manhattan streets was created, in 1811, a grand project that would forever change the city, filling in streams, ridding the map of meandering roads, Ninth Avenue cut through the center of Moore’s estate. The scholar was so appalled at the way the future had swooped in to claim the farm he so loved that he donated much of his land to the General Theological Seminary and St. Peter’s Church. He left open sixty lots of orchards, assuming this gift would ensure that Chelsea would never be completely overtaken by mortar and stone. But after Moore’s death the lots were sold, with most of the trees hurriedly chopped down. Only the churchyard and garden remained the same, and there it was still possible to find remnants of the old orchard. Neighborhood women often stood near the walls of the churchyard, holding out their skirts to form baskets into which the apples might drop. Seeds scattered, and stray saplings appeared in yards and beside shops and warehouses, flowering pink in the summer, reminding residents that the fruit that had tempted Adam and Eve, which many believed had not stood a chance against the builders of Manhattan, could still bloom within the confines of the city.
