Call Me Brooklyn Read online

  Pietri spoke to me from the other side of death, Lewis said. He told me the memory of his actions had rotted inside him, had become a pus seeping into his soul for more than thirty years, more powerful and repugnant than the claws of the cancer now devouring his insides, he said. It’s not that I have a good memory, Ackerman, it’s that these words are difficult to forget. It all came down to a monstrous sort of paradox. Now that he had no way to avoid death, Umberto Pietri had at last been able to gather the courage he had always lacked in life.

  I could barely make out Abraham Lewis’s features, only the brilliance of his eyes, a feverish, diseased glow that compelled him to keep talking. That was the most unsettling thing—although, for me, Umberto Pietri had no face, his voice was there inside Lewis’s, hidden in his monotone, repetitive diction, listing these atrocities dispassionately, an agonizing and endless litany. The words I was hearing hurt me, but I still clung to them. I was afraid, I guess, that Abe would stop talking. Let the world end, but in the meantime, let his deadpan voice go on tearing me to pieces. But only this once, so that afterward I could transcribe it all, as I’m doing now. I know that I will never go back over what I’m writing at this moment. Pietri’s words will remain here, trapped in this notebook. After that, my memory will be clean. What I heard at the bar of the Hotel Florida must have been a hallucination, just a malignant dream that I need to set down exactly as it was, while it’s still fresh. Trying to anchor myself in reality, I looked out those large windows with a view of the Madrid night. The gaslights of the Gran Vía floated outside, tempting me to flee, but I pulled my eyes away from them and looked at Abe, who was saying:

  You can imagine the hell I’ve been living in, Lewis, the Italian told me. There’s been no room in my life for anything else. It’s a debt that cannot be repaid. When someone commits such an atrocity, no punishment is sufficient. But this is not the time for rhetoric. You’re an intelligent man and you know that I don’t expect your compassion or anyone else’s. It’s enough that you’ve listened to me. And he repeated that I was the only one he’d ever told, Lewis continued. He thanked me again for having come to see him. Now I really have nothing more to add, he said. You’d better go. And that was it—Pietri stopped talking. Another wave of nausea came over him but this time he was able to vomit.

  He didn’t last as long as he thought he would. Only three weeks later, the telegram he had said would come arrived in Sarzana. The text in faded blue ink, with capital letters printed on a narrow strip of white paper, said succinctly, in Italian: UMBERTO PIETRI DIED AUGUST 3 RIP. The signature was the initials C.P., which I imagined belonged to his wife. That very night I began to write to Ben Ackerman the letter you are now carrying in your pocket.

  [The text continues on several folded pages that seem to have been ripped out of another notebook. Blots of ink make a good part of the first page illegible as well as a number of phrases throughout the remainder of the text. I’ve reconstructed the first paragraph as best I can.]

  Abe Lewis insisted on calling me a cab, but I told him that I wanted to walk back to the boarding house. It was late and it was very cold but I was yearning to breathe the chilly air, to feel the coolness of a night after snowfall. I’d already fallen for this city to which, I was sure now, I would never return.

  [After this the text is perfectly legible.]

  We stood up at the same time. Lewis was much taller and stronger than I was. He opened his arms as wide as he could and hugged me tightly. He gave off a powerful smell, but I was glad of the affection he was offering. Putting his hands on my shoulder, he said in his low baritone voice:

  There. Mission accomplished.

  I told him that I needed to be alone for a moment and went out to one of the balconies overlooking the Gran Vía. I needed silence, no voices, no more stories; I needed to lose myself in my own head, to forget for a while who I was and why I was there. At eye level, I noted the idiosyncratic architecture, the fanciful cornices on which stood the statues of goddesses and warriors riding chariots drawn by mythological creatures. The veil of clouds had begun to tear, giving way to numerous clear patches. I looked up at the sky that had been continuously overcast since I arrived and witnessed a beautiful atmospheric effect: a gigantic halo behind the Telefónica Tower. A few minutes later, the only remaining traces of the storm were the dry cold air and the gusts of wind hissing through the Madrid fog, grazing an incomparable landscape of terraces and tiled roofs. The globe of the moon, clean and round, rose over an oriental-looking dome on the other side of the Gran Vía, spreading its rays over the skylights, the tiles, the spires and statues crowning the buildings of this strangely beautiful city. I closed my eyes, to see farther out, and I imagined the sierra under the canopy of night and, more distant still, the fields of Castile. I remembered what Ben’s books said about that city founded by the Arabs: Magerit. I saw stories of palace intrigue and revolution. I don’t think I can explain myself. Everything, not just this landscape of ghostly and aristocratic garrets, began to seem unreal.

  I waited to calm down before I went back inside. Lewis was standing next to the dead chimney.

  You all right? he asked when I returned to him.

  I nodded.

  Now that we’ve gotten all that behind us, I heard him say, we can concentrate on lighter things. Tomorrow we’ll go to the Prado. It’s Ben’s idea. You said you’re staying near Atocha? Give me the exact address and I’ll drop by to pick you up at eleven. Is that okay?

  We took the elevator down to the lobby. Abe Lewis walked me to the entrance of the hotel and shook my hand without saying anything. I crossed to the other side of Montera Street and turned around. The black Brigade man was silhouetted against the canopy of the hotel. I swallowed him up with my eyes, trying to record his image forever.

  [On the plane, right after taking off.]

  I’d felt out of place, then, on the balcony of the Hotel Florida—banished from the coordinates of my own history, as if nothing of what I’d heard that night had anything to do with me. Madrid might as well have been the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights. I had arrived thanks to TWA, but I might as well have come in on a magic carpet. Who the hell was Umberto Pietri? What did he have to do with me? The people and places in Abraham Lewis’s story paraded before me, no less unreal than the nocturnal view of the city, than the reflection of the lights on either side of that cosmopolitan and elegant avenue in southern Europe. No, I didn’t feel bound to the history of that man who needed to get lost in a labyrinth of chapels beginning to atone for his disgrace. As for Abraham Lewis, I wasn’t sure what to think of him. Ben had said that he was “a good man, his only real loyalty is to doing the right thing.” But there was something strange, almost suspicious about him. Why had it been so necessary for him to tell me everything that Pietri had told him? But the question was moot; there was no turning the pages back. What he’d told me would always be with me.

  [After a dozen crossed out lines, the following is legible in thick and firm strokes.]

  I woke up very early because of the time difference. I had an appointment with Abraham Lewis, but from the moment he’d suggested it, I knew I wouldn’t be there. I picked up my luggage, paid the bill, and went out on the street. Near Atocha Station, I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to Barajas Airport without even knowing when the next flight to New York was scheduled.

  [. . .]

  What to tell Ben?

  The same thing I would tell Teresa, if she were alive—that is, anything but the truth. I will invent a heroic past for Umberto Pietri.

  Or perhaps there’s no point pretending, and I will tell him the truth.

  Ten

  DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD

  June 1, 1992

  I first confronted the raw pages of what would end up becoming Brooklyn on June 1st, a date with the greatest symbolic weight in Gal’s secret calendar. I was browsing through used books at a street market on Court Street when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  I greeted
him cheerfully, but his gloomy disposition made me change my attitude instantly.

  Is something wrong, Gal?

  I wanted to talk to you, and since it’s Wednesday, I thought that maybe you’d come by Fuad’s.

  Sure enough, the days the street market sets up there, I like to drop by. Fuad is from Beirut, around sixty. He spent years in Panama, so he can find his way around in Spanish. In his stall, among the most disparate objects imaginable, there’s always a box full of used books, and if you take the time to look through them, it’s not uncommon to find some real surprises, beginning with the fact that a lot of the books are in Spanish. Gal had told me about Fuad’s books soon after we met, and it wasn’t unusual that we would run into each other at the Lebanese’s stall. That day, I had just come across a Mexican edition of Valle-Inclán’s The Lamp of Marvels, so old that the yellowish pages seemed as if they would crack simply by being turned. I was going to show my find to Gal when he grabbed my sleeve and asked with unusual seriousness:

  You know what today is?

  I had to think about it for a second.

  June first, why?

  Don’t you get it?

  Get what?

  It’s Nadia’s birthday.

  Nadia’s birthday?

  Well, I guess there’s no reason you should have known that. The thing is, I’ve decided to surprise her by calling her to wish her happy birthday.

  I didn’t reply. It’d been four years since anyone had heard from Nadia. She had disappeared without a trace.

  I’m serious. I’m going to call her.

  Call her where?

  Vegas.

  Vegas, I repeated.

  Not knowing what else to say, I handed him the book and pretended to continue to explore the contents of the box.

  After her disappearance, Nadia had been silent for a few months, after which a letter arrived at the Oakland. Gal had thought it was a one-time thing, but a few weeks later a second letter arrived and others soon followed. At the beginning, she wrote sporadically, but after a year, she began to do it more regularly, once and even twice a month. There was never a return address, so Gal couldn’t respond to or send the letters back. But thanks to them at least he knew that Nadia was still alive and thinking of him, that she needed him, as he told me once. Toward the end of the second year, the time between letters began to grow longer, until they stopped coming altogether. The last time she had written was early in 1987, a letter accompanied by a postcard from Vegas. After that, there had been no news of her.

  How do you know she’s still in Vegas? I asked, my back still to Gal. I turned to face him when it became clear he wasn’t going to answer me.

  He was leafing through the Valle-Inclán. I saw that he didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t push it. Nadia’s silence had become an enigma that infected every inch of the Oakland, Frank had told me. He said that he had even gone so far as to hire a detective, not only because he’d never seen Gal so down, but also because he was rather intrigued by the situation himself. It was a futile gesture for which he was shaken down to the tune of three thousand dollars. I thought of Queensberry’s report when Gal had hired him. If he were to hire him now, Queensberry would just need four words to complete his report: erased from the map. But it wasn’t that it seemed out of the question to me that Nadia might have finally given Gal some sign of life after so many years. On the contrary, such sudden, crazy reverses suited her character. If I was certain that Gal hadn’t heard from her, it was because I knew that if he had, his reaction would have been markedly different from what I was seeing. So I didn’t know where all this was coming from. Obviously, it was all in his head.

  Carefully, he closed the copy of The Lamp of Marvels and studied the cover.

  Not bad.

  You like it? I’ll buy it for you.

  You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m delirious or something. He put the book back in the box. Well, you’re wrong. You’re absolutely wrong. All of you are wrong. You think it’s been ages since I last heard from her, but you’re mistaken. I have an infallible way of communicating with her, not that I expect for you or anyone else to know it. That’s right . . . an infallible means of communication . . . with Nadia and with . . . the others, with all the rest of them. You don’t know a thing about it, none of you.

  I noticed a hardness in the depths of his eyes; it was new to me, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

  Gal, I wish I could stay and chat, but Dylan called a staff meeting today and I can’t be late. I can meet you later at the Oakland, if you’re planning to be there.

  That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I can’t be there this afternoon, but if you’re going, I want to ask you a favor.

  Of course, what?

  He pulled out a green folder.

  Will you give this to Frank, or to whoever is working there today? I’ll pick it up when I get back.

  Fine.

  Ness . . .

  Yeah?

  If you want . . . Well, that’s some of my writing there . . . You understand, being a writer yourself.

  Don’t you worry, it’s in good hands.

  He just stood there. He wasn’t done yet.

  It’s not that. I just wanted to tell you that . . . Well, only if you want to, of course, but perhaps you could take a look at it? If you want to understand—to understand me, anyway—that’s probably the best way.

  I stared him down, trying to catch sight of any ulterior motive, but if it was there, I missed it.

  When I had the folder in my hands, he thanked me and headed toward Montague Street.

  I was dazed. What did it mean? What was Gal Ackerman after, trusting his writing to me? Was this a test? Or maybe . . . I had the feeling that he’d given me something more than just a bunch of papers. I pushed those thoughts away, reached into the box of books, and rescued the catch of the day. When I went up to Fuad, he put his hand on his heart and greeted me warmly in Spanish.

  So good, habibi, he said, casting a fleeting glance at the book. What happen to our good old Gal? Where he go in such a hurry?

  I shrugged and asked him how much he wanted for The Lamp of Marvels.

  Good stuff, very ancient, he said caressing the cover. For you, only a dollar, habibi.

  I didn’t think about Gal’s papers again for a few hours. The meeting Dylan Taylor had called was rather short. I went back to my cubicle and began to type out a rather long article I had written in longhand. When I do this kind of work, I’m on automatic pilot, and I let my imagination go wherever it wants. I was just about finished when the midday light flooded through the skylight above my desk. I reread the closing paragraphs quickly and turned in the article. As if he’d somehow been spying on me from his office, the minute I finished, Dylan opened the glass door and peeked in.

  What now? How about some lunch?

  I glanced at the green folder on my desk.

  I’ll stay in today. I need to have a look at something. Would you mind bringing me a sandwich, any type?

  I gave him a five-dollar bill.

  Okay, doc, Dylan said, taking the money and heading out.

  The light that had been coming in from above began to move away. I pulled off the rubber bands, opened the folder, and exclaimed:

  All right, Gal, let’s see if I can understand you!

  Inside were three thin plastic folders of different colors. I smiled. Although most likely there was no logic whatsoever behind it, it seemed to me that Gal was using some secret, personal code, a system of color variations, using pencils and different kinds of ink to make corrections, just as there seemed to be some sort of meaning behind the colors of the notebooks and folders. I spread out the three folders. One was blue, the other yellow, and the third transparent. On the first one, there was a label that read:

  DEATH NOTEBOOK

  I began to read.

  April 29, 1991

  Grand Army Plaza

  So many things happen in New York on a single day that it�
��s impossible to register even an infinitesimal part of it in these notebooks. Should I play Todd Andrews and transform the floating opera of life into a sheaf of pages, adrift? There’s no need to force the imagination, it’s enough to flip through a newspaper. I’ve spent the morning at the public library in Grand Army Plaza, looking through the day’s papers. I found the piece of news first in the Post, then I read it in the others. They all stick to relating the events with the same rigor. The only thing that changes is the style. After careful consideration, I chose the Times.

  Right after that, a note says “based on an article by G.J.” followed by a version in ballpoint pen of a newspaper article:

  IN TRASH, A BRIEF LIFE

  AND A NOTE OF LOVE

  At 1:30 P.M. on Monday, April 29, a phone call came into the 83rd precinct in Brooklyn reporting the body of a newborn found in a garbage dump in Bushwick. The call came in from a phone booth in front of 12 Cornelia Street, a three-story building. Lt. Nicholas J. Deluise, the chief detective in the precinct, immediately sent Officers Kenneth Payumo and Maureen Smith to the scene. The officers reported finding a yellow plastic bag containing the remains of a newborn baby girl wearing flower-print pajamas and a diaper, and wrapped in white cloth, to which a note was pinned. “The baby was neatly wrapped, very neatly wrapped,” Officer Payumo said. “It was immaculate as a matter of fact.”