Call Me Brooklyn Page 12
At that moment, a light flashed briefly. Somebody came into the Oakland through the revolving doors in the back, cut across the dark dance floor, and on reaching the archway that separated it from the rest of the bar, paused. It was you. You exchanged a silent greeting with Manuel el Cubano and walked toward me. You put a notebook on top of the table. Nélida brought a bottle of vodka and a glass without your having to order it.
Do you know him? you asked, signaling to the albino.
No.
Looking at him, no one would suspect, but before he was twenty-five years old, he was the chief mate of a Danish merchant ship, you said. You made a face, poured yourself some vodka, and downed it in one gulp. I owe him a strange debt. His story was the origin of the Death Notebook. You passed your hand over the notebook. Claussen first came to the Oakland long before me. But I noticed him from the moment I arrived. He was always in the same spot, that one corner, like another piece of furniture, but we never said a single word to each other over the years—at most a simple nod of the head. One afternoon, unexpectedly, he came up to my table. With a voice that didn’t make sense coming out of his desiccated face, he asked for permission to sit down. I was flabbergasted. The official story was that he had lost his mind. For me he had always been some lifeless thing, nothing more. So all this was like watching him being reborn from his own ashes.
You’re a writer, right? he asked.
I looked him over, having trouble believing he was actually capable of speech. It was the first time that I had dealt with him as a human being, the first time I had taken note of his features, his eyes, the tone of his voice; the first time I could confirm that he did in fact have a face, eyes, a voice of his own. I imagine I responded that I was a writer, the truth is I don’t remember. What I do remember is what he did afterward. He put his hand in the inside pocket of his blue jacket and pulled out a newspaper clipping. I must have spent a long time looking at his dirty fingernails and the wrinkled and greasy piece of paper before I finally grabbed it. He asked for permission to sit down again, but I still couldn’t get used to his presence, to the fact that he was able to express himself almost normally. I read what he had given me. That clipping and what he told me during those few minutes he had use of his reason led me to begin this.
You touched the notebook again. It was black, a good size, with a hard cover and yellow edges. A band held it shut vertically. You poured yourself a second shot of vodka and emptied it as vehemently as you had the first. I was frightened by how you were looking at me; it made me feel an indefinable giddiness, as if I were trespassing into what had been a forbidden part of your world.
I can understand someone leaving everything behind for a woman that he’s only just met. But I don’t understand why you have to pay so dearly for it. Always. There’s something in that that I’m not sure I grasp yet, Chapman . . .
(Were you thinking about Nadia?)
You took a deep breath, pushed away the empty glass, and said:
I’ll show you what he gave me later; but let me tell you the story first.
Some ten or fifteen years before the Oakland opened, Otero owned a bar by the piers. It was called Frankie’s and was in an area where Danish ships used to dock. (By chance, I imagine, since I know of no regulation that says that ships of a certain nationality all need to dock in a particular place.) So when he closed that bar to open the new location on Atlantic Avenue, the Danes all stuck together and followed him there. That was in 1957. One of those Danes was Knut Jansson, the captain of a mid-sized cargo ship. His first officer, Niels Claussen, was that old man who just turned up the volume on the jukebox. Come here, I want to show you something.
He pointed to the word AALVAND, neatly inscribed on the ring of a life preserver hanging on the wall. In the space circled by the floating device, Frank had placed a picture of the ship’s crew posing in full uniform. Captain Jansson, you said, pointing to a figure with your index finger, although his rank was perfectly recognizable by his uniform. It wasn’t necessary to point out who Niels Claussen was either. His albino head stood out a mile, as though a drop of acid had fallen on the surface of the picture there. You studied the photograph silently for a few moments, then came back to our table.
The Aalvand docked in Brooklyn twice a year on average. The photograph was taken around the time the Oakland opened. Jansson and his men arrived at port on the night before Labor Day. The neighborhood was partying. The Caribbeans were putting on a music festival. Parade floats crowded with bands playing reggae and calypso rolled down Eastern Parkway. The partying spilled over to the adjoining neighborhoods and the sailors celebrated as sailors do. Don’t ask me where they took Claussen. In theory, he went to see the parade with a few other sailors; but when they got together at the Oakland before curfew time, someone reported that the first officer had met a green-eyed brunette who had relieved him of his senses.
Must have relieved him of something else too, we heard Frank say. We had been so engaged in our conversation that we hadn’t even noticed when he arrived. Good afternoon, gentlemen. You poured yourself another vodka. Nélida approached the table to tell her boss that his son Raúl was in the office going over the numbers. I’m sorry, Frank said, conscious of how brusquely he had interrupted us.
So, the story about the albino and the mulatta, he said, uncomfortably. He stole a glance at the old albino who at that moment was heading to the poolroom with Manuel el Cubano. How come?
From the bar, Nélida tried to get Frank’s attention, letting him know that his son was asking for him.
Excuse me one second, I’ll be right back.
It gets Frankie’s goat whenever Niels’s story comes up. He never said a word about it until the day the Dane approached me. After that, he saw it fit to provide me with further details. I understand his initial reservations. Anyone would have trouble taking in the story of that poor sailor.
I don’t know, Frank said when he returned, scratching his ear without making a move to sit down. I see you guys are so deep into it, I’m not sure if I should get involved.
His words gave you pause, apparently. You pulled out a chair, offered it to him, and said:
You’re at your table, captain.
Frank sat down.
So why are you talking about Niels?
Because it’s the first time Néstor’s seen him.
Ah, that’s right. Well, he’s been sick. And Manolito took him to spend a couple of months with him and his mother in Florida when he was recovering. Takes care of him as if he were an only son, even though the Dane is more than twenty years his senior. You know Manuel el Cubano, right?
Yeah, in passing.
(Another one of the regulars. Gay, a real chatterbox, always dressed to the nines, with his guayaberas, his linen pants, his white shoes, and sunglasses, which he never takes off, so no one notices his glass eye.)
It was difficult for you to pick up the thread of the story again. In spite of his apologies, Frank was in a good mood, but the story took on much darker overtones after you nodded and got it back in hand:
Her name was Jaclyn Fox and she was Jamaican. I’ve never seen a picture of her, so I can’t describe her physically.
I saw her in person, Ness—nothing to write home about, Frank interrupted. I’m not talking about her face, body—that’s a taste thing. I just didn’t like the way she looked at people, didn’t like the way she presented herself, so accommodating, submissive. I didn’t trust her, and she realized it right away. Since she knew she wasn’t going to get one over on me, she did her best to treat me like dirt. I felt bad for Niels. He didn’t have much experience with women and went bounding into her jaws like a lamb.
The important thing, you pointed out, as far as our story goes, is that after being with her, Niels couldn’t get her out of his head. It was as if he’d come down with a contagious disease, as if she had poisoned him and he’d become dependent on the poison that only she could administer. He was obsessed. The very thought of being apar
t from her tormented him. And his mates from the Aalvand needled him about it. They laughed in his face, telling him that all women had what the Jamaican had. Claussen didn’t care. For him, the only thing that mattered was knowing that, once the Aalvand departed, it would be six months before he saw her again, and six months is simply too long to ask a woman like that to wait—especially since he knew that, even if it worked, he’d just have to shove off again sooner or later and wind up in the same predicament.
I’m sorry, Gal—this was Frank—but aren’t you romanticizing it just a bit? These stories of sailors with doomed loves, aside from being boring and repetitious, are just not true. The truth is that they get married like everyone else, and their wives are faithful or they aren’t, it’s all down to chance. As for the men, the vast majority of them head right for a brothel the minute they set foot on land. And that’s no secret; all you have to do is make the rounds of the joints near the port. Or around the Oakland. And that’s what happened to Claussen—he got hitched to a whore.
She wasn’t a whore, you protested. She had a decent job and . . .
If she wasn’t one by trade, she behaved like one. Anyway, go ahead.
The Aalvand docked in Brooklyn again in March . . .
February—sorry. I know because it was cold as hell. There was a few weeks’ worth of snow accumulated on the streets. Mountains of dirty ice.
So February. Five months, then, not six. Five months is a long time, but in this case not enough to erase memory of the toxic desire inspired by Jaclyn Fox. The Aalvand returned and with it Claussen. They’d be here a week, same as always, and every night the Danish seamen came to the Oakland to see Frank. The day before their departure, Niels came to the bar with his captain. Their ship would sail first thing in the morning.
It was a while before you said anything else. You needed some time to recapture the sense of intimacy that we’d shared at the beginning of our conversation, before Frank showed up. When you were ready, you again brought your glass to your lips.
And that’s why, Frank said, abruptly jumping in, I almost lost it when the following day in the middle of the afternoon I see Niels Claussen walk into my bar.
He went silent, expecting you to go on.
He was carrying a knapsack and dressed like a civilian, you said, eventually; his ship had sailed some hours before. You didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what had happened. The first officer of the Aalvand had deserted. The first thing that Frank asked him was where he had left the Jamaican woman. Claussen replied that she was waiting outside. He put the canvas bag with all his belongings on a chair and asked Frank if any of the rooms that he rented on the floor above were available.
The question annoyed the shit out of me, more than you can imagine. I told him I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about; and who had told him that I had anything to do with any fucking motel? He looked so shocked by my outburst that I reined myself in and told him that it had nothing to do with him, he was always welcome at the Oakland. But he didn’t come back, and we never did find out how they managed to live, the two of them—except for the fact that they hardly had time to enjoy their little love nest. The only thing that was known for sure was that they had gotten married and lived in Fort Greene.
On the other hand, you continued, Captain Jansson remained faithful to his custom of coming to see his friend Frankie Otero every time the ship docked in the port, and when the Aalvand returned to Brooklyn a few months later, it wasn’t long before her skipper showed up at the Oakland. He wasn’t coming to ask questions. It wasn’t necessary for Frank or anyone else to tell him what had happened—he knew that Claussen had left it all behind for a woman.
The combination of rage, hurt, and disdain with which he spoke to me about the man who had been his best friend surprised me, Frank said. Of course, such vehemence made clear how much that betrayal had hurt him. According to him, the Jamaican woman had dragged Jansson through the sexual mud, so to speak—as if he were a bitch in heat. For his own good, he said, referring to Niels, I hope not to see him here.
Some months went by, about six or seven—no, Frankie? The next thing we knew about Niels, he was no longer living with the Jamaican.
She’d gotten bored to death with the albino and had taken off with another man. That’s what my regulars told me. According to the rumors, she was living with an Irishman. Obviously she had a thing for white men, although this one wasn’t as white as the Dane, of course. Poor fuck. He was already losing her the very day he stripped himself of his uniform.
What did he do then? I asked.
Jaclyn and her Irishman, Frank responded, lived near Prospect Park. Trying to put some distance between them, Niels went to live in Bedford-Stuyvesant. As Manolito says, he must have been the only white man in the neighborhood.
Then, one day, completely out of the blue, Niels gave signs of life, you began to say, but Frank interrupted you.
I was in the office when my wife Carolyn came in with a very serious look on her face and told me some strange man was asking for me. She couldn’t tell me exactly who it was. I went to see and found the albino. He was skinnier and more haggard than ever. He wanted to know if Janssen still came by the bar when the ship docked in Brooklyn. Yes. Why? What do you want with him? I asked. His desertion must have been weighing on his conscience. He had betrayed not only his captain, but his best friend. But my attitude toward the albino changed completely after what happened.
We haven’t gotten there yet, Frank.
What the hell are you two talking about? I asked.
About the newspaper clipping that Niels Claussen showed me on the day of his resurrection. Now that you know the background of the story, you replied, I can show you.
Pulling off the rubber band that sealed your black notebook, you opened it to the first page, slowly enough that I could read:
DEATH NOTEBOOK
You leafed through a few pages, pulled out a very worn clipping, and gave it to me.
BODY OF WOMAN BRUTALLY MURDERED
FOUND IN PROSPECT PARK
The Brooklyn Eagle, September 23, 1958.
At 5:27 A.M. on Friday, a 911 call alerted the authorities to a body in Prospect Park. In the reported place, the police found the remains of woman around 20 years old. The body showed . . .
You grabbed it from my hand without letting me finish.
This is what Claussen gave me the day he came up to my table to talk. As you can imagine, I read it with the same confusion you’re probably feeling right now. I thought my head was going to pop when he told me in that otherworldly voice:
The victim was my wife.
I looked at Frank and then back at you.
Are you saying that . . . ?
Just that his wife was found brutally murdered in the park, Frank interrupted. The woman was Jaclyn Fox, obviously.
But . . . who did it?
The Irishman. See, she tried to pull the same stunt on him that she had on Niels, but this time she’d picked the wrong guy. You couldn’t fuck with the Irishman. The news spread like wildfire through all the bars near the port and the joints frequented by seamen. The ships sailing from here carried the news to other places. When Jansson returned to Brooklyn, he already knew what had happened to the woman for whom Claussen had turned his life upside down.
You needed another shot of vodka before you could go on. You asked Frank and me if we wanted to join you, and turned to Nélida to ask her for two more glasses, but we both said no.
You emptied your glass in one gulp and said: Stunned by the old man’s revelation, I stared at him like an idiot.
His complexion looked like cracked quicklime. His white hair stuck to his forehead and cheekbones. His eyes were translucent, vacant, the pupils almost invisible. I tried to give the newspaper clipping back to him, but he raised his hand, and asked again:
You’re a writer, right?
This time, I’m sure I didn’t give him an answer. The question didn’t require on
e.
I saw how darkness had descended upon his reason. And before leaving me to take up his usual spot in the corner, he’d once again become the living corpse that he’d been since Frank rescued him and brought him here. He had only been a real person during the fifteen or twenty minutes that we’d talked. I kept the clipping and put it in a folder, not knowing what to do with it.
You were on edge. Pausing to pick up the vodka, you filled your glass to the brim and emptied it again. When you next tried to speak, you were having trouble articulating, as though you couldn’t breathe.
You turned to Frank and asked him to take over.
So there was that poor bastard, the gallego said, right in front of me, in my territory, helpless, not telling me what was going on. I invited him to sit down, asked him if he wanted anything, if he needed help. In response, he produced the newspaper clipping. He carried it with him everywhere, showing it to everyone, like someone who likes to flash around pictures of his kids—until he gave it to Gal, that is. No doubt, it was the first sign of madness.
Have you seen this, Frankie? he asked me.
Making sure I didn’t hurt his feelings, I told him that he shouldn’t carry the clipping around like a trophy. With a contrite air, he put it away and told me that this was how he had found out about it himself, from the newspaper. That was the beginning of the most ludicrous part of the story. It was then that he told me that he had written Jansson a letter and that he wanted me to give it to him when the Aalvand docked in Brooklyn again—something that, according to his calculations, should happen soon. I told him that it wouldn’t be a problem at all, that I would give him the letter the moment he came in. Niels handed it over, thanked me profusely, and left. And I have to leave you as well, Frank added, apropos of nothing, as though looking for an excuse to get out of our way. My son Raúl needs me.