One of the
bad things about depression is that you do a remarkably poor job of seeing the
world. You’re internally absorbed—lost in your misery of defeat and despair, so
you’re barely able to peer out anyway. And if you do—what do you see? Right:
it’s not pretty.
And so when
I came to New York all those many years as a depressed person, the city
overwhelmed me, and I retreated by going deeper within. Completely unnecessary,
of course, since the city bore me no grudge and certainly wasn’t hostile. It
may, in fact, have been doing its best to beguile, and I was churlishly
refusing its efforts to engage me.
Which is to
say that simple things came hard—hailing a cab, engaging in conversation,
dealing with a doorman. Absurd to the non-depressed; real to the others.
And
yesterday I flew in to Manhattan, since Erica, one of my nieces, is celebrating
her 40th birthday. So there I was, mostly decaffeinated and walking
through what had to be the longest airport terminal I have ever paced,
searching for the AirTrain—the little tram that carries you around to different
terminals, and then finally to the subway. OK—at this point the subway has lost
its “sub” and is now just a “way:” it’s running on land, not under it. And of
course I got confused, went the wrong way, and instead of going into Manhattan,
I was heading for the last, outer limits to the city, across a long stretch of
an inlet of the Atlantic, water mixed with marshes with russet and gold reeds
with feathery white plumes. Ducks and geese were circling above, and the fall
colors were spectacular against a grey, sullen sky. It was New York as the
Indians must have seen it, and it was magical.
“Why are
you taking the subway in?” asked John, when I called to tell him of the
adventure. I was now waiting as I would for a half hour for the train back into
the city.
John takes
a cab, which takes forty minutes and 80 bucks. But the subway costs six bucks.
Do I need to say anything further?
Well, I can
also tell you—it takes two hours, especially if you go the wrong way at first.
And then you land—if like me you have absentmindedly gotten on to the Eighth
Avenue Express—at 125 Street. You get out, and are immediately behind a black
guy who is muttering, “and the fucker raped a fucking two-year old.” This
information—jarring as it is—is made more jarring by hearing him repeat
it ceaselessly as he walks behind you down the platform. ‘Right,’ you think,
‘it may be better to be behind this gentleman’ and so you stop, pretend
to fish something out of your pocket, and proceed out to the heart of Harlem.
Not a
problem, since Harlem is considerably more upscale than it was—still, you’re
one of the few non-brothers on the street. Right, so you call Jeanne, and then
hail a cab. Oh, not before getting completely drenched in a sudden
thunderstorm.
Life on the
Upper West Side—very nice. It’s a neighborhood that pushes affluence to the
border of opulence. What keeps it from going over the border? It’s
understatedness—everybody is a corporate lawyer or has just written the
definitive text on the expulsion of the Moors from Andalucía or has returned
from a sabbatical in Oxford researching…. You get the picture.
And the
apartment where John and Jeanne live is very much their creation—filled with
books, crammed with interesting food, and spacious: a pre-war, the hallway into
the dining room is almost the exact length of a bowling alley. And on entering
the apartment, I saw that every light was on, and that the black extension cord
led to a vacuum. And Ángela, from Guatemala, was there cleaning.
We’ve met,
we’ve chatted, and so we greeted each other. So I went to do my thing—which was
to rent a cello. I’ve just gotten back my calluses, and I didn’t want to lose
them. (Think about it, Reader—you spend three hours a day pressing your fingers
rapidly on steel strings: what do you think your fingers feel like at the
beginning?)
So I google
“rent a cello New York City” and there it is: a place ten blocks away. And
started four years ago by a nice guy named Elliot, when his daughter wanted to
learn the violin, and he realized there were no acceptable, reasonably priced
instruments to be rented. So I call him up, and tell him I want a cello for the
week, and the answer?
No. He only
rents for three months.
And here is
where I know—I am not the depressed, mousey character who is trying to slip by,
hoping the city won’t bite me. Because I want a cello, and he has a cello, and
I have a credit card so…?
“Do you
have a cello,” I ask.
“Is anybody
using the cello?”
“Are you
getting any money out of the cello?”
“Well, you are
in business, aren’t you?”
And so I go
to see Elliot, who has agreed to rent me for 100$ the very best cello China can
mass-produce. Expensive, but this is New York.
And so I
get the cello and am practicing and playing with the sonorities and thinking,
‘wow, am I lucky to have the cello I have,’ and Ángela comes to say goodbye.
She pauses, unsure of what to say, and then says, “I don’t understand the
music, but I like…”
“If you
like it, you understand it,” I said. I was playing Bach cello suites, and the
movements are based on dances. And dance is integral in every culture, so
what’s the big deal? It’s not dissimilar to the folk dances of Guatemala—just
dressed up.
She left, I
put down the cello and thought. And here’s where I am, this day after meeting
the city on its own.
I’ve just
wandered through John and Jeanne’s apartment—the one Ángela cleaned,
yesterday—wondering how to say this and here it is: the class lines are
invisibly but rigorously defined. When I traveled through Brooklyn, I was one
of two whites in the subway car. Then, magically, there were two stops when the
blacks all got off and the whites all got in. What had happened? The black
people were getting off to do their jobs in the stores and the cafes and the
homes of the white people. Then, at Columbus Circle, all the white people got
off—because the next stop was Harlem.
Elliot—the
cello guy—lived in an apartment very similar to the one that Ángela was
cleaning. And he had checked me out, and must have known that, well…I was one
of his kind.
“Where are
you from,” he had wanted to know.
“Oh, we
have an apartment in Old San Juan,” I said. Notice—the “have” implies
ownership, and I’m not saying that I’m from Puerto Rico, which has many a slum.
“And what
do you do down there?”
“Oh, I’ve
just finished writing a book….”
“Could you
fill out the contact information and send it to me?”
We had been
doing over the phone what dogs do when they meet—sniffing each other’s behinds.
And now he would do it electronically, via Google. Fair enough—I had done it to
him.
And the
doorman, when I got to Elliot’s building, had no terror for me, and turned out
to be a pleasant chap.
I’m lucky
to live in the world of books and space and cleaned-by-somebody else and cellos.
But I wonder—are Ángela’s kids going to be able to get into my world? Because
none of the black people on the subway—getting on in Brooklyn—looked as it they
had had much chance. And if that’s true?
We’re
fucked.
