Burning the Days Read Free Page B

the side street but who owned something unthinkable, a huge dog, a German shepherd.
    We had neither dog, cat, nor family gatherings. My father had friends, usually one or two at a time, and I remember them, the homely, bald-headed builder with steel-rimmed glasses, the city judge, and others, large, jovial men with crushing handshakes and a confident air. Some owned cars. Usually when I saw them they were on their way to or coming back from playing golf.
    My mother had friends, as well, Ann, Harriet, Eileen, Rose. Afternoon women. Perhaps they went to lunch. All of them were married, but their husbands, with one or two exceptions, I rarely saw. The women were warm and easy, pleasant to be around. They were still in their twenties, with silken legs and bright smiles. Perhaps they went dancing in the evening. My parents never did and seldom went to parties.
    I knew nothing, really, of the lives of these women. I was a little boy, a kind of pet. I did not even know, in most cases, where they lived. I was sometimes put together with their children, but friendships did not result.
    In New York in those days, the endless days, you were shaved each morning in a barbershop; suits and shoes came from De Pinna, and mistresses from women who worked in the office or the garment district. At least this was how my father and his closest, lifelong friend, a cousin, Berry, lived. Handsome though completely bald, Berry was a bachelor who had been a boxer in the navy. He lived in a residential hotel near the corner of the park andunselfconsciously wore a beret. Seated at my father’s funeral, expressionless and faithful, he had unexpectedly burst into tears as the coffin was lowered, crying my father’s name. “George,” he sobbed, “George …”
    My father was rising in the world. He was usually in a good mood, singing a song as he dressed —“Otche Chornia” was one he particularly liked, “Dark Eyes.” He made up words of his own, knowing only the first few, “Otche chornia, I prekrasnia  …” Often he was gone in the evening, on business. There were arguments. With me he was friendly, affectionate, but not in any true sense intimate. Childish things were beneath him, and he was indifferent to athletics. I never felt the absence of love, only of his interest. My mother may have felt the same.
    As long as I can remember he was self-involved. Even as he walked down the street he was seeing only occasional things while thinking. One thing he was certain of: he would succeed. Pieces were already falling into place, he was gaining a reputation and meeting important men. He introduced me once to Jack Dempsey, the dark-jawed champion who in those days was the image for the sport, stalking, lean. My father had arranged a lease for him and they were on good terms. Dempsey must have been in his early forties when I met him and more popular even than he had been in the ring when, humming a deathsong to himself and punching powerfully to its rhythm, he had brought down giants, Willard and Firpo, in fights that became legend. He was big, with the cheekbones of an Indian. His hands were enormous and strong. I was ten or eleven years old and remember him towering above me. I would be bigger than Dempsey, my father told me when we walked away. I would have a left like his. Pal, he used to call me. Then his mind went off to other things, various prospects and dreams.
    He had dealings with someone named Lignante, a charming man with European manners who had married a judge’s daughter. Lignante was building Hampshire House, a gleaming edifice onCentral Park South, and my father lent him a large amount of money, seventy-five thousand dollars, with no collateral but against a promised share in the completed building. This was in 1929. The crash ruined Lignante, who eventually died in Italy. The money, a huge sum at the time, was never repaid. There were to be other calamities but none of such proportion.
    In my father’s papers when he died