1948

For perhaps the thirtieth time, Harry rubbed the nickel into the back of his forearm to make it “disappear,” then “reappear” in the fingers of the same hand, as if it had been forced magically into his body to emerge in a more appropriate place. He had been practicing the trick on and off all afternoon, afraid that having mastered it, he would suddenly forget what to do. He wished he had a mirror to judge how the trick would appear to a mark, but there was nothing of the kind in the store, and no one had been in since right after lunch. Irwin and Dorothy were still at school and wouldn’t be home till at least four o’clock. They would probably not stop at the store anyway. Irwin was worried about his application to City College, and Dorothy would want to get right to her homework. Harry’s sister, Anna, would be along soon, though. She stopped at the store every afternoon on her way home from the bakery.

Harry looked around, taking in the rack of comic books that Irwin put in order every Saturday. Customers, in a manner more appropriate for a library than a store, would look over the latest issues of Batman, Captain America, The Phantom, and Green Lantern and disorder the shelves with their rummaging. The counter Harry was leaning on gleamed – he had polished it that morning and wiped it again after the lunchtime rush. The store was located across the street from the Washington Heights post office and was the closest place to get something to eat, a cup of coffee, or an ice cream soda for the neighborhood mailmen. He had checked the cardboard boxes of candy and aligned them on the shelves. The Smarties, bubble gum cigars, candy cigarettes, Red Hots, and licorice laces had to be low down where the kids could reach them. Zagnut, Good & Plenty, Long Boys, Sugar Babies, and Chuckels took up the shelf above that. The Smith Bros cough drops, Walnettos, Necco Wafers, Pearson’s Salted Nut Rolls, and Goetze’s Caramel Creams went on the very top. The candy didn’t appeal to Harry, but it was very popular among his customers, so he kept what they liked in stock. In the morning, he had swept the floor and dusted the two small tables with their matching chairs where people could sit and eat their ice cream. Finally, before lunch, he had looked through the newspaper he kept for the men from the post office to read while eating.

The news didn’t interest Harry, and he didn’t read much. His mother had dutifully enrolled him in the local public school when he was six. When he was 10, he announced he would no longer be going to class. He liked the teachers, who were reasonably nice to him, and being with his friends, older and younger boys, many of whom had heavy Polish or Russian names like him. School itself held little attraction for him though. He had mastered the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic easily, but the drawing lessons, the only thing he really liked, were very few. They were unsatisfactory as well, in the teacher always insisted he draw simple line animals and buildings, not the scenes that unfolded in his imagination. So, even at 10, tall for his age and blond like a Viking, Harry got a job collecting the trays at a cafeteria and helping the cook with the cleaning and garbage. Perhaps his parents would have liked him to stay in school, at least through the 8th grade when he would have been entitled to a grammar school certificate, but, in America, they had to defer to the wishes of their children whose superior knowledge allowed them to understand how things worked. Anna, who had been 24 at the time and had already taken over much of the management of the household, and Sam, who was 26 and had been working in a garment factory since the day they arrived in America, just laughed and said let Harry do what he wants.

After several years, he had left the cafeteria and worked in the kitchen of one of city’s largest hotels. Once in a while, he would go out to the Paramount Studio in Astoria, hoping for small part in one of the silent movies. He was lucky more often than not; he was handsome and didn’t mind being made up and dressed to suit a part. He had played a number of distinguished roles, like man on a train, man in a bar, and restaurant patron. The extra money was important. It was the nickels, dimes, and quarters – like the coin he had been practicing magic with – that had bought the store and allowed Harry to improve on his father’s lot as a peddler.

He had inherited his father’s ability to talk himself into any place and out of every situation. From his father, he had also learned the importance of good humor, of never taking no for an answer, and never giving up. Where his father had insisted that each housewife buy a book of needles or some ribbon or a pair of scissors, Harry used his talents to urge customers to have another cup of coffee or try an egg cream, guaranteed fresh in chocolate or vanilla. Anna often teased him for having the soul of a salesman, but Harry just replied it was better than having the soul of a rabbi or no soul at all.

Anna was much older than Harry. She had been almost 16 when they came to America. Harry had been an infant, carried in his mother’s arms. Everything he knew about Russia came from Anna or Sam. His parents rarely talked about the old country, proud that he was an American boy like his younger brother, Phil, who had been born in New York. It was Anna, slipping into Yiddish mixed with Polish and Russian, who had explained to Harry about the snow that covered the roofs and dropped off the bare tree branches, about the ice churned to slush in the road by horses’ hoofs, and how a winter coat was the most important thing you could have. To Anna, it had always been winter in Russia, even though Harry knew spring must have come sometime. Besides, there was plenty of snow and slush in New York, although he had not seen a horse in streets of the city for decades now.

Their life in Russia had impressed itself deeply on both Anna and Sam. Neither had married, although Harry as well as their younger brother and sister had and now had children of their own. Sam and Anna lived together in the apartment the whole family had occupied for many years and where their parents had lived, taken care of by their oldest son and daughter, until their deaths. Anna ran the house like their mother had, and there was always a place for any of the children or their children to come to. It was where Harry had gone when he arrived from work at the hotel one day years ago and found his own apartment quarantined because Dorothy had come home sick from school, and the doctor his wife had called said it was scarlet fever. His children spent as much time at Aunt Anna’s and Uncle Sam’s as they did at home, as did their cousins to get away from their own parents. Harry had rarely thought about this situation but he did recall hearing his parents whispering in the kitchen that Anna and Sam had become the victims of America and had sacrificed themselves for the rest of the family. Harry now knew that sacrifice had not been intentional. It was more that the sudden shift from what they had known in Russia and the need to relearn a life in America had shocked them, like the soldiers returning from the World War. They seemed fine but could no longer open themselves to others beyond their small circle of family.

Harry looked at his watch impatiently. Why did no one come into the store? He had a story to tell. Most days were ordinary, and it was hard for Harry to match Anna’s news or even the high school tales of his children. Today, however, he did have something to relate, but no one was around to hear it. Finally, he heard footsteps outside the store and caught a glimpse of Anna in her pink felt hat through the window, despite the glare of afternoon sun. A moment later, she burst in, flung down her purse and a paper bag from the bakery, and dropped onto one of the stools at the counter where Harry was leaning.

“What’s the matter, Little Boy?” she asked before Harry could open his mouth.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Wait till you hear what happened . . .” Harry replied, delighted to have someone to tell his news to at last.

“Me first,” said Anna excitedly. “You’ll never guess what I heard from one of the customers!”

“What?” Harry asked. He was impatient for his turn, but Anna was older and they all deferred to her.

“They’re saying Israel declared independence. There’s now a Jewish state in the Holy Land!”

Harry thought this over. He had seen something in the paper about the British mandate ending, but the news hadn’t interested him. Israel and its problems with the Arabs was as remote to him as Russia and the Cossacks. This was the type of news Irwin followed. He had kept clippings throughout the long years of war and had explained to all of them after dinner one Sunday how the city of Kremenitz, where the whole family down to Harry had been born, and which had changed hands repeatedly in the early part of the century, had ended up in the Russian territory of Ukraine. How does this affect us, Harry had asked his son. Irwin cheerfully admitted that it did not, in fact, affect any of them; it was just to know.

“So, how does this affect us?” Harry now asked Anna.

“I don’t know,” Anna admitted. “But everyone was all excited about it. They said it makes the whole difference to the Jews.”

“I don’t see it.” Harry said. “We’ve got our own problems right here!”

He waited a moment as Anna considered this. When she didn’t speak further, it was his chance.

“You’ll never guess who came in here before.”

“Who?” Anna asked. She was always interested in any gossip or intrigue that involved people they knew or even strangers.

“A couple of Australians!” Harry cried.

“Australians? What’re Australians doing here?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. They said they’re on a tour.”

“A tour of Washington Heights? No one wants to come here,” Anna said with authority.

“I think they meant the City, the whole country. They’re on a tour of America.”

“So what’d they want in here?” Anna asked, oblivious to how her brother might understand the question.

“It was right after lunch. The boys from the PO had just left. They wanted ice cream, and get this . . .” Harry was laughing already, unable to contain his mirth. “They asked for the ice cream in a little paper pail!”

“A little paper pail?!” Anna began to laugh. “You’re making that up!”

“I swear to God I am not! They wanted ice cream in a little paper pail.”

Anna and Harry began to laugh like they had not laughed in a long, long time. There were so many worries every day, both large and small, that they had to think about.

“So, what did you do?” Anna gasped.

“I gave them a Dixie Cup!” Harry said, wiping his eyes.

“Then what happened?” Anna asked. Her face was flushed with laughter. She opened the top button of her light spring coat and fanned her face.

“They said they wanted chocolate!” Harry collapsed on the counter. A little paper pail. It was unbearable and unbelievable and the funniest thing he could recall hearing in his whole life. Everything he knew about Australia – the sun, the desert, the strange animals – flooded into his mind in a rush, but that only seemed to make the elderly aged couple and their search for ice cream in the middle of New York even funnier.

He and Anna laughed for a long time. Their gaiety carried into the street as far as the other stores and the post office, a sign that spring had come, and the long years of war and the troubles of the city had not crushed them yet.