Uncommon Type: Some Stories

Go See Costas

Ibrahim had been true to his word. For the price of one bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, he had provided Assan with two, most certainly stolen but that didn’t matter to either of them. In those days, American liquor was more valuable than gold, even more valuable than American cigarettes.

With both bottles clanking in his knapsack, Assan, dressed in his nearly new blue pin-striped suit, searched the many tavernas of the port city of Piraeus, looking for the chief of the Berengaria. It was known that the chief savored the taste and effects of Johnnie Walker Red Label. It was also known that the Berengaria was taking cargo to America.

Assan found the chief at the Taverna Antholis, trying to enjoy his morning coffee. “I don’t need another fireman,” he told Assan.

“But I know ships. I speak many languages. I am good with my hands. And I never brag.” Assan smiled at his little joke. The chief did not. “Ask anyone on the Despotiko.”

The chief waved to the waiter boy for another coffee.

“You are not Greek,” he said to Assan.

“Bulgarian,” Assan told him.

“What is this accent of yours?” During the war, the chief had done a lot of business with Bulgarians, but this one talked in an odd cadence.

“I’m from the mountains.”

“A Pomak?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

The chief shook his head. “No. Pomaks are quiet and tough. The war was hard on the Pomaks.”

“The war was hard on everyone,” Assan said.

The boy brought the chief his other coffee. “How long have you been on the Despotiko?” the chief asked.

“Six months, now.”

“You want me to hire you so you can jump ship in America.” The chief was no idiot.

“I want you to hire me because you have the oil fuel. A fireman checks the bubble in the tube is all. He doesn’t shovel the coal. Too long with a shovel and it becomes all a man knows.”

The chief lit a cigarette without offering one to Assan. “I don’t need another fireman.”

Assan reached into the knapsack between his feet, pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label in each fist, and set them on the table beside the chief’s morning coffee. “Here. I am tired of carrying these around.”

Three days out, some of the crew began giving the chief troubles. The Cypriot steward had a bad leg and didn’t clean up after meals fast enough. The seaman Sorianos was a liar, saying he had checked the scuppers when he had not checked the scuppers. Iasson Kalimeris’s wife had left him—again—so his hot head was even faster to flare. Every conversation with him turned into an argument, even over dominoes. Assan, though, caused no worries. He was never idle with a smoke in his lips, but was always wiping down valves or taking a wire brush to the rust. He played cards and dominoes quietly. And perhaps best of all he stayed away from the eyes of the captain. The captain noticed everything, the chief knew. But he did not notice Assan.

Past Gibraltar the ship met the heavy seas of the Atlantic. At sea, the chief rose early every morning, to wander the Berengaria, looking for possible headaches. This day, as usual, he climbed up to the bridge for the coffee that was always there, then worked his way down. He found all was well until he came to the fuel station and heard Bulgarian being spoken.

Assan was on his knees, rubbing the legs of a man leaning on the bulkhead, a man black with oily grime, his damp clothes sticking to his skin.

“I can walk now, let me stretch,” said the filthy man, taking wobbly steps back and forth on the steel deck. He, too, spoke Bulgarian. “Ah. Feels good.” The man drank deep from a bottle of water, then wolfed down a thick slice of bread from a wrapped bandanna.

“We are in the ocean now,” Assan said.

“I could feel it. The ship, rocking.” The man finished the bread and drank more water. “How much longer?’

“Ten days, maybe.”

“I hope it’s less.”

“You better go back in,” said Assan. “Here, your can.”

Assan handed him an empty tin that once held biscuits, taking from the filthy man a can that was once for coffee but was now, the chief could smell, filled with sewage. Assan covered the tin with the bandanna and then handed over a corked bottle of water, and the filthy man crawled back into a hole, a narrow gap in the decking from where a plate had been lifted. With some struggle the filthy man squeezed through and was gone. Assan used a bar to lift and slide the steel plate back into place, like a puzzle piece.

The chief did not report what he saw to the captain. Instead he went back to his cabin and looked at the Johnnie Walker Red Label, two bottles, one for Assan, the other for his friend hiding in the half meter of space between the steel decking. On ships heading to America stowaways were not uncommon, and life was easier if eyes saw nothing and questions were not asked. Of course, sometimes a full coffin was off-loaded as a result.

Ah, the world was a mess. But it seemed a little less messy after a drink from the first open bottle. If someone else discovered the filthy man crawling around in the black space between decks, there would be hell to pay, plus all the paperwork for the captain. It was up to Assan. If the captain never found out, well, he would never find out.

Two storms at sea slowed down the Berengaria, then the ship had to wait two days at anchor until a harbor pilot finally came out in the little boat, climbed up the pilot ladder, and made his way to the bridge to guide the ship into the port. It was night by the time she was tied up at the dock, one ship of so many. The chief saw Assan at the rail, looking at the skyline of a city in the distance.

“That is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. America.”

“Where is Chee-ca-go?” asked the Bulgarian.

“Farther from Philadelphia than Cairo is from Athens.”

“So far? Son of a gun.”

“Philadelphia looks like paradise, eh? But when we dock in New York, New York, you will see a real American city.”

Assan lit a smoke, offering one to the chief.

“Better cigarettes in America.” The chief smoked, eyeing the Bulgarian, who had caused no problems for him. Not a single one. “Tomorrow they search the ship.”

“Who?”

“American big shots. They search the ship, high and low, looking for stowaways. Communists.”

At the mention of Communists, Assan spit over the rail.

“They count heads,” the chief continued. “If the numbers don’t match up, it’s trouble. If they find nothing, we off-load and then go to New York, New York. I will take you for a shave there. Better than the Turks can shave.”

Assan said nothing for a moment. “If there are Communists on this ship I hope they find them,” he said, spitting over the rail again.

Assan lay in his rack faking sleep as other crewmen came and went. At 4:00 a.m. he dressed quietly and slipped into the passageway, checking around each corner to make sure he was not seen. He made his way to the fuel station and used the iron bar to lift one plate of the steel decking and slide it open.

“It’s now,” Assan said.

Ibrahim crawled up from below, his elbows and knees rubbed raw and bleeding from living in the low, dark space between the deck and the ship’s inner hull. How long had he been down there? Eighteen days? Twenty? Did it matter? “Let me get my can,” Ibrahim whispered in a croak.

“Leave it. We go. Now.”

“A second, please, Assan. My legs.”

Assan massaged Ibrahim’s legs for as long as he dared, then helped his friend to stand. Ibrahim had been on his feet only a few minutes each day. His back ached horribly and his knees were actually shaking.

“We have to go,” Assan said. “Follow me by two meters. We wait at every corner. If you hear me speak to someone, hide where you can.”

Ibrahim nodded, taking small steps, following.

A ladder led to a hatch that led to a room that led to another hatch and another passageway and another ladder. At the top of it, another passageway and one more ladder, though this was more like a stairway. Assan pulled on a heavy steel door that opened inward and halted. Ibrahim smelled fresh air for the first time in twenty-one days, that’s how long it had been since the Berengaria had left Piraeus with Ibrahim hiding under the steel decking.

“It’s okay,” Assan whispered.

Ibrahim stepped through the doorway and was finally outside, the night a blessing, as his eyes tried to adjust. The air was warm, the air of summertime. They were at the portside rail, facing away from the dock, the water twelve meters below. Hours earlier, the ship’s Pomak fireman had tied a rope, anonymous as any on deck, to the lowest rung of the rail. “Climb down this. Swim around to the dock and find a way up.”

“I hope I can still swim,” Ibrahim said. He was laughing like it was a funny joke.

“There are bushes nearby. Hide in them until I come tomorrow.”

“What if there are dogs?”

“Make friends with them.” That made Ibrahim laugh again as he swung over the rail, the rope in his hands.

The chief was with the captain on the starboard wing of the pilothouse taking their morning coffee. The longshoremen had off-loaded most of the cargo, and the docks were busy with trucks and cranes and workers.

“We’ll go to the Waldorf Hotel,” the captain said just as the chief saw Assan walking down the gangway and off the ship, with his knapsack that once held bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label. He was carrying, too, a parcel under his arm. Crewmen returned to the ship with parcels, filled with goods they could buy only in America, under their arms. But here Assan was leaving with one.

“Big steaks, like this.” The captain held up his fingers showing the thickness of what his steak would be. “The Waldorf Astoria Hotel. They have the steaks.”

“That’s a good place,” the chief said as Assan disappeared into some bushes.

Assan found no sign of Ibrahim and was worried that American big shots had searched the bushes for Communists and uncounted heads with no papers. Not wanting to call out, he howled like a dog. He heard a dog howl back, but it was Ibrahim, who came out of the bushes, stripped to the waist and carrying his grease-caked shoes.

“Who’s a big dog?” he asked, smiling.

“Were you all right through the night?”

“I made a bed of reeds,” Ibrahim said. “Soft. And the night never got a chill.”

Assan opened the parcel, showing some clothes and soap and food and a shaving kit. There was also a folded newspaper bound in twine. Inside was Ibrahim’s share of the drachmas the two had saved from all the odd jobs they had worked in Greece. Ibrahim pocketed the bills without counting. “How much will a train cost to get to Chee-ca-go, Assan?”

“How much from Athens to Cairo? Find a money changer at the train station.”

After Ibrahim had eaten and washed, Assan sat him down on a rock and took the razor to his face, shaving his friend, as there was no mirror for him to do it himself.

From the bridge wing, the chief searched the bushes through a pair of glasses. In a gap between waving branches, he saw Assan shaving the face of a man he could not recognize. A problem had left the ship without bothering the captain. No need for a coffin, either. Assan was one smart Pomak.

As Ibrahim ran a comb through his wet hair, Assan tried to clean his friend’s shoes. “The best I can do,” he said, handing them over.

Ibrahim reached into his pocket and pulled out a single drachma and slapped it into Assan’s hand. “Here. A perfect shine on perfect shoes.” Assan took a bow and both men laughed.

They walked together to the end of the dockyards, able to mingle with others coming and going. They saw huge cars, trucks the size of houses grinding gears and pulling big loads, and more ships, some much larger and newer than the Berengaria, others rusted buckets. They saw men eating rolls with sausages in them at a kiosk with a sign Assan could spell out—he had been learning the American letters—H O T D O G S. Both Bulgarians were hungry but neither had American money. At the end of the dockyards there was a gate with a guard in an office, but every American walked past without so much as a pause.

“Assan. I will see you in Chee-ca-go one day,” Ibrahim said. Then in English he said, “Tenk choo berry mich.”

“All I did was carry your shit away,” Assan said, taking one cigarette, then giving the pack to Ibrahim. He smoked it while watching his friend walk to the gate, pass the guard with only a nod, and disappear down the road toward the skyline of Philadelphia.

Returning to the ship, Assan kept busy all morning, not getting to the galley until the first meal was nearly over and only a few of the crew were around. He collected what bread, vegetables, and soup was still available and sat at a table. The Cypriot with the limp brought him a coffee from the galley.

“America for the first time?” he asked Assan.

“Yeah.”

“America is the top, I tell you. New York, New York, has anything you want. Wait until you see.”

“The big shots. When do they come on board?” Assan asked.

“What big shots?”

“The Americans who search the ship. Looking for Reds. Making big trouble.”

“The fuck you talking about?”

“They make sure our heads match. The chief told me. Big shots come and search the whole ship.”

“Search for what?” The Cypriot went back to the galley for a coffee for himself.

“They check our papers, right? Line us up and check our papers?” Assan had lined up so many times to have his papers checked, it made sense that he’d do the same in America.

“The captain takes care of that shit.” The Cypriot downed half of his coffee. “Hey, I know a whorehouse in New York City. Bring money tomorrow and I’ll get us laid.”

Back in his village, Assan had seen black-and-white movies flickering on a white wall. Sometimes the movies were American, with cowboys on horses shooting pistols that threw out long plumes of smoke. He liked best a newsreel that showed factories and construction sites and a new building rising to the sky in a city called Chicago; Chicago had many tall buildings and streets jammed with black sedans.

But New York, New York, looked like a city with no end, a city that threw a haze into the night sky, making the low clouds golden and the water shimmer like colored smoke. A hot wind blew as the ship moved slowly up the wide river, the city passing like a brilliant jeweled curtain; a solid mass of a million lighted windows, bright towers shining like castles, and twin lights of cars, so many cars, buzzing every which way like insects. Assan stood at the rail, the wind rippling his clothes, his mouth open, and his eyes wide.

“Son of a gun,” he said to New York, New York.

In the morning, the chief found him at the fuel station. “Assan, put on that striped suit of yours. I want a shave.”

“I have duties, here.”

“I say you don’t, and I’m the chief. Let’s go. And leave your money here so you don’t get pickpocketed on your first day.”

Cars flew down the streets, many of them colored yellow with words printed on their sides, screeching to stops at corners as people got out and different people got in. Lights in boxes mounted on poles flashed red then green then orange again and again. Signs were everywhere, attached to poles, walls, and in windows; so many that Assan stopped trying to make out the letters. Rich-looking Americans walked fast. Americans who didn’t look rich hurried, too. Three black men, with muscles ripping at their sweat-stained shirts, were moving a large wooden crate up a stairway into a building. There was shouting and music and engines and radio voices coming from everywhere.

A young man rode a two-wheeled motor bicycle, roaring by so fast, almost hitting Assan and the chief as they crossed a broad street. Assan had seen a newsreel with policemen on big motored bicycles, but that young man was not a cop. Could anyone ride such a thing in America?

They passed a kiosk selling papers, candy, drinks, cigarettes, magazines, combs, pens, and lighters. Two minutes later they passed another, selling the same goods. It turned out the kiosks were everywhere. A river of moving cars, people, crowded buses, trucks, and even horses pulling wagons flowed along streets that stretched to the edge of sight.

The chief walked fast. “In New York, New York, you have to walk like you are late for an important meeting or thieves mark you.” They crossed street after street and rounded many corners. Assan had draped his blue pin-striped jacket over his arm. He was sweating and dizzy, his head too full of America.

The chief stopped at a corner. “Let me see. Where are we?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m just thinking of the best way to go from here.” The chief looked around and saw something that made him laugh. “Will you look at that?”

Assan tilted his head and looked, too, up at a window on an upper floor of a building. He saw a flag in the window, posted like a sign—the blue and white flag of Greece with the cross for the church and the stripes for the sea and sky. A man in shirtsleeves and a loosened tie stood in the window, shouting into a telephone and waving a cigar.

“We Greeks are everywhere, no?” The chief laughed again, then held up the palm of his hand. “Look. New York, New York, is a simple city to learn. It is shaped like your hand. The numbered avenues are long and run from your fingertips to your wrist. The numbered streets run across the palm. Broadway is the lifeline and curves the length around. The two middle fingers are the Central Park.”

Assan studied his own palm.

“Now those signs”—the chief pointed to two signs forming an X on a post—“tell us we are at Twenty-Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue. That puts us about right here, see?” The chief pointed to the map of his hand. “Twenty-Sixth and Seventh. Understand?”

“Like my hand. Son of a gun.” Assan felt as though he understood. They continued walking up the shaded side of Seventh Avenue, then turned a corner. The chief stopped at steps that led into a basement barbershop.

“Here’s the place,” he said and stepped down to the door.

The place was for men only, not unlike barbershops in the old country. Everyone looked over at the chief and Assan when they came in. A radio was playing, not music, but a man talking and talking over the sounds of a crowd in the background. Sometimes the crowd would roar or applaud. The shelves were lined with bottles of different-colored liquids. Cigarettes were smoked, so many that two standing ashtrays were overflowing with butts.

The chief spoke English to the older barber—there was another, younger barber, the son perhaps—then took a seat off to the side. Assan sat next to him, listening to the English and looking at the magazines with pictures of crooks with guns and women in tight skirts. Three Americans waited as well, until one of them took a place with the other barber, sitting in a big, comfortable chair made of leather and steel. After a customer paid and said something that made the men all laugh, he walked out the door and up the steps to the street. When another customer was done, he said something funny, too, gave the barber some coins, and was gone.

The chief took a seat in the big leather barber chair and spoke, pointing to Assan like he was explaining something. The barber looked at Assan and said “Yoo bet-cha.” He draped a white cloth over the chief, pinned it tight behind his neck, then gave the chief a shave. Three times with the hot towel, the lather, and the razor, as close a shave as the Turks give a man in Constantinople. Then he trimmed the chief’s hair, shaving around his ears and the back of his neck with the lather and razor. The men laughed and told stories, the chief using so much English he must be fluent, thought Assan. The Americans laughed and looked at Assan, as if he were in on the jokes.

When the chief was clean and smelled of spicy cologne, he paid the barber with paper money, said something in English, and pointed at Assan. The barber said “Yoo bet-cha” again and waved Assan into his chair.

As the barber draped his cloth around Assan, the chief spoke in Greek.

“A free shave. I paid already. And this is for you.” The chief handed Assan a wad of folded paper money. American money. “A smart man like you will do well in America. Good luck.” The last Assan saw of the chief was his shoes, climbing the steps back up to the street.

Assan walked, feeling his smooth face and smelling the cologne, as the late summer night fell on New York, New York, and the lights took on new warmth. He saw so many amazing things: a window filled with dozens of roasting chickens rotating on mechanical spits, a man selling windup toy cars on a box with a wooden rail nailed to the top to keep the toys from rolling off, and a restaurant with one wall all glass, where inside Americans sat at tables and on stools at a long counter. Waitresses swung around, carrying platters of complete meals and small dishes of cakes and pastries. Assan passed a long stairway that led down below the street, fenced in with decorated iron and crowded with people going up and others going down, all in a hurry and none of them easy marks for pocket pickers.

The buildings stopped and the sky opened up, and on the other side of a busy street there were thick trees. Assan figured he must be at his middle fingers, at the Central Park. He did not know how to cross the broad street but followed with others when they walked. By a low rounded wall a man with a cart was selling H O T D O G S, and Assan was suddenly very, very hungry. He pulled out the paper money the chief had given him, finding a bill with the number 1 on it. He handed the money to the man, who kept asking him questions that Assan had no answer for. The only word he could make out was Coca-Cola, the sum total of his English, really.

The man handed over a sausage sandwich that was dripping with sauces of red and yellow and stringy, wet onions and a bottle of the Coca-Cola. Then the man gave Assan a fistful of coins of three different sizes, which he pocketed with his free hand. Assan sat on a bench and ate a most delicious meal. With half the Coca-Cola left, he went back to the man. He held out the coins, the man took one of the thinnest, and made another richly burdened sausage sandwich.

The sun had gone down and the sky was dark and the lampposts were shining as Assan walked along the paths of the beautiful park, finishing the Coca-Cola. Assan saw fountains and statues. He saw men and women as couples, holding hands and laughing. A rich lady walked a tiny dog, the funniest dog Assan had ever seen. He almost howled at it as a joke, but Assan thought maybe the rich lady would complain to a cop, and the last thing he wanted was a cop asking for his papers.

At a side entrance to the park, a gate in a wall, Assan came to where the city began again. It was late now, and people were crossing the street, heading into the park with blankets and pillows. Assan could see these people were not like the rich lady with her dog, but families of white and black and brown people with giggling kids and men and women who looked tired from a day’s work. Assan suddenly felt so very tired, too. He followed a family back into the park, coming to a big field of grass, where others were laying out blankets and bedding to sleep outdoors in the hot, humid night. Some were already asleep. Others hushed their kids and made sleeping spots near the trees on the border of the field.

Assan found a spot with soft grass. He removed his shoes and used his jacket as a pillow. He fell asleep to the sounds of distant traffic and quiet conversations between husbands and wives.

Assan washed his face in a public restroom in a stone building. Flicking his fingers, he brushed his pants and suit jacket and shook out his nice shirt, then put his clothes back on, wondering where he would walk today.

That was when he thought of the man who had been shouting into a telephone, the man who made the chief laugh, the man in the window with the Greek flag. Where was that again? He looked at the palm of his hand, at the map there, and remembered the chief saying Twenty-Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, and Assan knew he could find it again.

No one was in the window at Twenty-Sixth and Seventh when Assan looked up, but the Greek flag was there. Assan found an entryway nearby that had a small sign with another small Greek flag on it and words in Greek: THE HELLENIC INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY. Assan went through the door and up the stairs.

The day was already hot and the office was sweltering, even with the door ajar and the windows cracked open. Assan heard music playing—a slow tune with a voice repeating words. Ay…ay…ay…space…es…es…es…space. A clacking typewriter noise came with each word. Dee…clack…dee…clack…dee…clack. At the office door, Assan saw only a messy desk and some easy chairs.

Eff…clack…eff…clack…eff…clack…space…thunk. Assan stepped inside. A girl was in the small inner office, sitting in front of a small green typewriter on a tiny table. She was concentrating on the fingers of her left hand, pressing the keys that matched the instructions on the record. Assan stayed quiet, not wanting to disturb the typing lesson.

“Tikanis.”

Assan turned. The man who had been yelling into the telephone yesterday was walking in, carrying a small paper bag. “Who are you?” the man asked in Greek.

“Assan Chepik.”

“Not Greek?”

“No, Bulgarian. But I come from Greece. I saw the flag.”

The man pulled a cardboard cup filled with what smelled like coffee from the paper bag, along with a round cake with a hole in the middle. “You did not tell me you were coming today, Assan, or I would have brought you breakfast!” The man laughed out loud. “Dorothy! We need another coffee for Assan, here.”

Ell…ell…ell…space. “I just started a lesson!”

“Pick up the needle. When Bulgarians are hungry they get nutsy.” The man turned to Assan. “Dorothy will get you a coffee. At least it’s what they say is coffee here.”

Assan sipped a hot drink, mostly milk and sugar with something of a coffee taste. Dorothy was back at her typewriter, clacking along with the record. You…you…you…space…eye…eye…eye…space. Demetri Bakas, which was the man’s name, asked questions of Assan. Assan told of his job on the Berengaria and that just yesterday he had left the ship, but said nothing of Ibrahim hiding between the decking or getting off in the city called Philadelphia.

Assan also said nothing of the four years since the war ended, nothing about all his attempts at crossing the border between Bulgaria and Greece. He did not tell of the early morning when his brother made the mistake of starting a fire to heat some water. They were in the mountains, had slept between two rocks, and were planning to move along quickly, but Assan had some coffee in his pocket. His brother wanted just one cup, for energy he said, but he really wanted the taste of hot coffee on a cold morning. The Communist bounty hunters had been trailing after them and saw the smoke from the fire. Assan had been taking a shit on the other side of a copse of trees. Unseen, he watched his brother put up a fight and a Communist shoot him in the head. He didn’t tell Demetri about the man he’d had to kill, either. Assan was drinking from a stream that ran alongside a path when a local man almost stumbled upon him. The man wore a Party pin on his threadbare jacket, and the look in his eyes said all Assan needed to know. The man was running back to whatever village was nearby to report seeing a traitor making for the border, but Assan chased him down, hit him with a rock, then threw his body down into a gully. And Assan was silent about the time he finally arrived in Athens and made a friend who told him to go to a certain house where refugees like him lived together. When Assan went to the house, he was beaten up, thrown into an unmarked truck, and taken back across the border into Bulgaria, handcuffed to others who had fallen for the traitor’s trick. Assan said nothing of the Communist captain who chained him to a chair, then yelled questions at him and, not liking the answers, used his fists and then special tools as he yelled the questions again and again. Assan said nothing of the camp, of the prisoners he saw shot in the camp, of the prisoners he saw hanged in the camp.

He said nothing of the girl he met after his release, of their short romance, or of how hungry they always were. He didn’t say her name was Nadezhda or tell of her becoming pregnant, or of their marriage just months before a boy was born, his son, named Petar. He said nothing about his young wife struggling during the birth and the midwife not knowing how to stop the bleeding. Without his mother’s milk, the boy lived only a month. Demetri did not hear of Assan’s son, Petar.

Assan said nothing of his arrest for stealing empty bottles, even though he had not stolen any empty bottles. His name was on a list, so he was again sent to prison. Assan said nothing of his fourth attempt at escape, his arrest, his year in the work camp, of meeting Ibrahim there and the night the train came by and separated them from the guards on the other side of the track and how they threw down their shovels and jumped into the river. He said nothing of the farmer who found them miles away, wet and freezing, who could have turned them in to the Party official in the village, but instead gave them hot food as their uniforms dried. He gave them some money, too—twenty levs each.

Assan and Ibrahim bought tickets for the bus to the mountains near the border with Greece. When the police came on board to check papers, they had none. But their prison uniforms happened to be the same as the ones for privates in the army, just with no patches or insignia. When Assan told the cop that they were reporting to the Army Hospital because they were carriers of typhus, the cop’s eyes went huge at the word typhus and he nearly ran off the bus.

They crossed the border high in the mountains. In Athens they earned drachmas with picks and shovels, with their hands and their backs for most of that year until Assan got the fireman job on the Despotiko, shoveling coal into the boiler as the ferry made its way between Piraeus and the many Hellenic islands.

Assan said nothing of all that, but only of being a fireman on the Berengaria with the oil bubble in the tube, and now here he was in America having jumped ship.

Demetri knew there was much more to Assan’s story but didn’t care. “Do you know what I can do for you, out of this office?”

“Teach me to type?” Dorothy was now pecking out Cap…thunk…Cue…clack…space…thunk…Cap…thunk…Double-You…clack…space…thunk.

Demetri laughed loudly. “We have good people who will help us help you. It will take time. But let me tell you right now, if you get into any problem with the law—any problem with the police—everything becomes trouble. Understand?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Okay. Now. You are going to learn to speak English. Here is an address of a free school. It meets nights. Just walk in, sign up, and pay attention.”

Assan took the address.

“You have anything of value you can sell? Anything gold or fancy from the old country?”

“Nothing. I left everything on the ship.”

“My old man did the same thing. In 1910.” Demetri pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket. “Come back in a few days and we’ll have some spare clothes for you. Dorothy! Size up Assan for a couple pairs of pants. Some shirts, too!”

“When I’m done!” Dorothy never looked away from her keyboard. Cap. Tee. Space. Cap. Gee. Space. Thunk-clack-thunk-clack…

“You have any lines on a job, Assan?” Demetri lit his cigar in a ball of fire that came from a huge match.

Assan had no lines on a job.

“Go here. It’s downtown.” Demetri wrote something on another piece of paper and handed it to Assan. “Ask for Costas.”

“Costas. Okay.” Assan was leaving the office just as the typing record stopped and Dorothy turned it over for lesson two.

The address was very low on Assan’s palm, down where streets had no numbers and went every which way. He spent most of the day tramping the odd-shaped blocks, going round and round and passing the same points more than once. He finally found the place, a little restaurant, with a sign that said OLYMPIC GRILL surrounded by a Greek key border. There were all of four little tables connected to the wall with leather benches and eight of the pole stools at a counter. Every seat was taken and the cafe was hot. A woman was behind the counter, too busy to look at Assan until he stood in one place a bit too long. She barked at him in Greek: “Wait outside for a seat, fool!”

“I am here to see Costas,” Assan said.

“What?” the woman shouted.

“I am here to see Costas!” Assan shouted back.

“Honey!” the woman hollered, turning her back on Assan. “Some fool is asking for you!”

Costas was a short man with a brush for a mustache. He had no time to speak to Assan but did anyway.

“What do you want?”

“Are you Costas?” Assan asked.

“What do you want?”

“A job,” Assan said with a laugh.

“Oh, Jesus,” Costas said, turning away.

“Demetri Bakas sent me to see you.”

“Who?” Costas was clearing dishes and taking money from a customer.

“Demetri Bakas. He told me you would have a job for me.”

Costa stopped what he was doing and looked Assan in the eye; he was so short he had to lean back to glare at the Bulgarian.

“Get the fuck out of here!” The customers who spoke Greek looked up from their meals. The ones who only spoke American kept on eating. “And don’t come back!”

Assan turned and got the fuck out of there.

The walk back to the two middle fingers of the Central Park took a very long time. The air was so hot and thick—Assan’s shirt became wet against his back and didn’t dry. He walked and walked along one avenue, until bright flashing lights shone down on a place where nine streets seemed to collide in a storm of people, buses, yellow cars, and even soldiers on horses, or maybe they were cops. Assan had never been in the middle of so many people, with everyone going everywhere.

In a huge cafeteria, he spent coins on another sausage H O T D O G and a paper cup filled with sweet juice, ice cold, and as delicious as any drink he’d ever had—even Coca-Cola. He stood as he ate, like most of the people in the place, though he wanted to take off his shoes more than anything in the world. Across the triangle of streets and humanity, he recognized what was a cinema, with a chain of lights chasing each other around and around. Assan saw the price—forty-five cents. That was four of the smallest coins in his pocket and a larger, thicker coin that had a humpbacked cow printed on one side. Assan suddenly wanted to sit in a nice seat, take off his shoes, and see a movie. He hoped it would be about Chicago.

The cinema was like a cathedral, with uniformed men and women directing a stream of people to seats, chattering couples, and young men in groups, everyone talking loud and barking in laughter. The columns were like those in the Parthenon in Athens, modern angels were etched in gold on the wall, and a deep red curtain stood thirty meters tall.

Assan took off his shoes just as the curtain opened and a short movie appeared on a screen as big as the hull of the Berengaria. Music played as fancy words flipped and spun on the screen, appearing and disappearing so fast Assan couldn’t sound out a single letter. The movie showed ladies dancing and men arguing. Then another short movie played, with more music and flying words. This movie had boxers in it and skies full of airplanes. A third short movie showed a very serious woman saying very serious things, then weeping, then running down a street calling out a name, then that movie was over. A moment later the screen burst into vivid colors as a funny-looking man dressed like a cowboy, but not a real cowboy, and a gorgeous woman with black hair and the reddest of lips sang songs and said things that made the cathedral echo with laughter. Despite that, Assan soon fell asleep hard and deep.

The next day there was no one at the Hellenic Society. The whole city seemed quiet, with fewer people coming up out of the stairways that led to tunnels and many of the buildings empty. Assan found the address for the English lessons, a building on Forty-Third Street, but there was no one around the place to speak English with.

When Assan returned to the park, though, it seemed like all the buildings surrounding the two middle fingers had emptied into the trees, the paths, the playgrounds, and the broad green fields. Kids and families were everywhere—in a zoo, in rowboats, sliding around on shoes with wheels attached, at a concert of music, with dogs playing, and kids throwing, catching, and kicking all kinds of balls. Assan liked the dogs the most and watched them for the longest time.

When clouds darkened the sky late in the afternoon, the families packed up, the games of ball stopped, and the park emptied. Rain came soon after, so Assan found a covered archway and ended up spending the night there, sharing the spot with a few other men who slept on boxes and covered themselves with only their jackets. None of them spoke any of the languages Assan knew. None of the others seemed happy at all, but Assan had been stuck in the rain before and was not at all miserable. He had hidden under bridges, been in wet clothes, walked for days, even run from men in the old country who had the same faces of misery as these guys. This? This was nothing.

In the morning, Assan woke with a cough in his throat.

“These pants should fit you.” Dorothy was speaking Greek. “The boots, too. Try them on in the lavatory in the hall.”

“What is the lavatory?” Assan had never heard that word.

“The toilet. The men’s room.”

The pants fit well enough. The used boots not only fit his small feet but were already broken in. Dorothy gave him stockings, a few different shirts, two pairs of heavy pants—all felt good after so many days in his blue pin-striped suit, which Dorothy took from him for cleaning.

“What happened to that Bulgarian guy who was here Friday?” Demetri walked in with a bag of round cakes with holes in the middle and more sweet American coffee. “Assan? You look like you live in Jersey!”

Dorothy sat down at her typewriter again and put on another record. Music played in a faster tempo—Cap tee aitch eee space cue you eye see kay space—as Dorothy clattered at the keys.

“Did you see Costas?” Demetri asked.

Assan sipped his coffee and bit into a round cake, which hurt his throat but tasted good. “Yeah. He told me to get the fuck out.” Assan glanced through the door to Dorothy, who luckily did not hear his foul language.

“Hah! Costas must not have liked the way you looked. But now, you look like a guy from Hoboken, like Sinatra on a weekend.” Assan had no idea what that meant. “Costas owes me, so you go back and tell him I sent you. You did tell him I sent you, right?”

“He didn’t care who sent me.”

“Tell him I sent you.”

Assan again walked all the way downtown, arriving at the Olympic Grill when only half its seats were occupied. Costas sat on the stool farthest away from the door, reading a newspaper with a cup of coffee in front of him, so short he swung his legs back and forth, like a little boy. Assan approached, waiting for Costas to look up from his paper. But he didn’t.

“Demetri says you will give me a job.”

Costas kept reading. “Huh?” he said, writing a word on an open tablet with a pencil. There were many words on the page.

“Demetri Bakas. He sent me to see you.”

Costas didn’t move, but managed to change his focus from the newspaper and the list of words to Assan.

“What the hell? What is this?”

“Demetri Bakas. Said to see you for a job. Because you owe him.”

Costas turned back to his reading and writing. “I owe Demetri Bakas shit. Order something or get out of here.”

“He said to see you for a job.”

Costas was off the stool with fire in his dark eyes. “Where are you from?” he shouted.

“Bulgaria, but I come from Athens.”

“Go back to Athens! I can do nothing for you! You know where I was when you were jerking off in your shit-filled barn in Bulgaria? I was here! I was in America. And you know what I was doing? Getting my ass kicked for even thinking about this restaurant!”

“But Demetri said to go see Costas. So, I came.”

“He can kiss my ass and you can go piss in a hat! I feed cops here! They’ll crack your head open if I ask. Come back again and it’s the cops for you!”

Assan hurried out of the diner. What else could he do? He didn’t want trouble with any cops.

The day was as hot as ever. The roar of cars and buses was as loud as a storm wind. The chatter of so many people who all had jobs and money in their pockets and few worries clogged Assan’s ears. His throat was burning and his legs felt like bags of sand.

He was heading to Forty-Third Street and the English lessons, but stopped in a tiny, triangular patch of grass and trees as a wave of ache came over him. A new pain in his head knocked and knocked, right above his eyes. At a drinking fountain he cupped his hand to collect enough water to slurp but the fire in his throat would not go out. He saw two men sharing a bench in the shade, a bench large enough for four, and he wanted to sit down very quickly. Then a violent, invisible punch to his stomach bent him in two and sickness came out of his insides.

A man was asking him questions he could not understand as another led him by the shoulder to the shade of the bench and someone, a lady maybe, gave him a kerchief to wipe his mouth. Someone handed him a bottle of warm soda water, which Assan used to rinse and spit out. Someone yelled at him for doing that, but Assan said nothing. He leaned his head back on the bench and closed his eyes.

He thought he slept for a few minutes, but when he opened his eyes the shadows were longer and different people were in the tiny park. Americans who ignored a napping man on a bench.

Assan reached into his pocket. His American paper money was gone. Some coins remained, that was all. Just as the Chief had warned, he had stopped moving and a thief had pocket-picked him. His head ached as he sat for a very long time.

As the afternoon became early evening, he didn’t want to walk all the way up to the Central Park, but a cop came around and eyed him. So, he got moving. An hour or so later he was asleep under a park tree, his head on his rolled-up pair of extra pants.

There were other people in Demetri’s office, all wearing suits and carrying leather cases filled with papers. None of them were Greeks. Demetri was standing in the window, yelling into the telephone, in English, as he had the first day Assan saw this place. Two of the men in suits laughed at something Demetri said, others lit cigarettes. One man blew smoke rings. Assan could hear Dorothy typing, clack clack clack without the aid of the record playing music.

“Hold on,” Demetri said, seeing Assan, cupping his hand around the telephone. “Dorothy has your suit. Dorothy!”

Every eye in the office looked at Assan, his rumpled clothes, the growth of his beard, seeing another of the poor, ignorant bastards that were forever showing up in Demetri’s office. Dorothy came out with the suit on a wire hanger; the jacket and pants were crisp and fresh, his shirt folded into a square like a tablecloth. Assan took his clothes and backed out of the office, nodding his thanks. The eyes and faces of the men in the office had him feeling small, like in the old country when soldiers searched him, roughed him up, and checked his papers longer than necessary, like when the guards made him stand and answer questions over and over, or like when he and the other prisoners in the camps were lined up for the roll calls that took hours.

As he descended the steps to the street, he heard a burst of laughter from the men and Dorothy taking back up her typing: clack-clack clack. Clack.

As Costas was counting out his supply of change in the cash register, a man in a clean blue-striped suit took a stool at the counter. The lunch rush would be picking up soon, the regulars would come and go until after 3:00 p.m., and Costas would need to make change for paper money. After that, Costas would have time to read the paper and find his list of new words. English was not a hard language to learn as long as you studied the newspaper every day and had a lot of American customers to listen to talk and talk and talk.

His wife was wiping down the tables, so it was Costas who asked the man in the clean and pressed blue pin-striped suit, “What can I bring ya, pal?”

Assan laid his few coins on the counter, the last of the money in his pocket. “A coffee, please. American coffee, sweet, with milk.”

Costas recognized Assan and flushed with anger. “You some kind of joker?”

“I make no jokes.”

“Demetri send you back here? Again?”

“No. I just came for a coffee.”

“Bullshit you came for just a coffee!” Costas was so angry he slammed a mug down so hard in front of the coffee urn he cracked it. “Nico!” he yelled.

A boy, as short as Costas, popped out from the kitchen. “Huh?”

“More coffee mugs!”

Nico carried out a tray of heavy mugs for the American coffee. There was no way the boy was not Costas’s son. The only differences between them were twenty years and ten kilos.

Costas almost tossed the hot coffee into Assan’s lap. “That’s a nickel!” he said, taking one of the thick coins off the counter, the one with the humpbacked cow. Assan poured milk and sugar into the mug and stirred slowly.

“You walk into my place and think that because you made it to America a job is waiting for you.” Costas was leaning on the counter, so short his eyes were equal with Assan’s. “You go cry to that Corfu bastard and he says, ‘Go see Costas,’ and I’m supposed to pay you to work for me?”

Assan sipped his coffee.

“What the hell is your name?”

“Assan.”

“Assan? Not even Greek and here for a job!”

“Today I’m here for coffee.”

Costas was rocking on his heels, like a man so angry he could leap across the counter and start a fight. “I’m supposed to be so rich I must have jobs for anyone, eh? ‘Costas is a big shot! He has his own restaurant! He does so much business he has jobs coming out of his ass! You can come to America and work for him!’ Bullshit!”

Assan’s mug was almost emptied. “Can I have another, please?”

“No! No more coffee for you!” Costas stared Assan in his eyes for a long moment. “Bulgarian, huh?”

“That’s right.” Assan had finished the coffee, setting the mug on the counter.

“Okay then,” Costas said. “Now take off that nice jacket and hang it on a hook in the back. Nico will teach you how to scrub the pots.”