Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn Page A

tell what magic Dermott owned in Dublin. But Moses had the rottenest luck. A man latched on to him in the lobby. It was Marshall Berkowitz, the dean of freshmen at Columbia College and vice-president of the James Joyce Society. Marshall had been Isaac’s English prof during his one semester at college. He made a pilgrimage to Dublin every year to walk the streets of Leopold Bloom. How was Isaac supposed to know that Marshall always stopped at the Shelbourne? He had a new, young wife. She had bangs over her eyes, this Sylvia Berkowitz, powerful calves, and a thin, rabbity smile. Something wasn’t right with her. Had she taken a graduate course with Marsh, fallen in love with him while they plowed through Finnegans Wake ? It must have been a devastating courtship. Marshall could capture any man or woman with that purity he had for Joyce. He’d converted Isaac after the first day of class. That was thirty years ago. Isaac had wept at the opening of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . Moocows coming down the road. Molly Byrnes and her lemon platt. He was a barbarian from Manhattan and the Bronx. He hadn’t known such language could exist. He followed Marshall everywhere, begged him to explain the meaning of this page or that. Isaac walked the campus with a fever in his eye. It couldn’t last. Isaac’s father deserted his family during Christmas, stole off to Paris in middle age to teach himself how to paint, a fur manufacturer with a craze in his head to become the new Matisse. Isaac had to leave school and help support the family.
    He didn’t read Joyce after that. He married an Irish woman who worked in real estate, four years older than himself. He became a cop. It was Kathleen who introduced him to First Deputy Commissioner O’Roarke, Kathleen who connected him to all the Irish rabbis who ran the Police Department of New York. It was her Irishness that made him a big cop. Now he had Marshall and Marshall’s wife, both of whom had unmasked him on his first day in Dublin.
    â€œIsaac,” the dean said. “For God’s sake. What’s a commissioner like you doing here?”
    Isaac had an “agreement” with Marshall Berkowitz. From time to time he would recommend young boys for Columbia College, lads who were the sons or nephews of some cop. Isaac would interview them, and pass on his feelings to Marsh. He had an instinct for who would survive at Columbia and who would not. Marsh always went by Isaac’s word.
    â€œIsaac, how the hell are you?”
    The First Dep had to shut him up in the Shelbourne lounge. “Marsh, I’m on a caper, please … you’ll have to call me Moses.”
    The dean’s wife began to laugh. She took those bangs away from her eyes. There were blackish lines around them. Sylvia Berkowitz couldn’t have slept a lot.
    â€œGoddamn,” Marshall said. “Moses, come with us. You’ll do your cop stuff later.”
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    Berkowitz smiled. “To Number Seven Eccles Street.”
    Thirty years couldn’t wipe away Ulysses . Isaac knew that book. Number 7 Eccles Street was where Joyce had dropped Leopold Bloom.
    â€œMoses, the Irish are a miserable people. A landmark, a literary property that’s impossible to duplicate, and they molest the place. It’s a shell of a house … but it still exists.”
    So Isaac borrowed a sweater from the dean, and they went about the city. Moses had his jet lag. He couldn’t remember buildings, monuments, and stores except a McDonald’s hamburger joint. Trinity College was Only an old wall that bent around a street. They crossed the Liffey at O’Connell Bridge. Joyce could have his river and his quays. The currents seemed pissy to Isaac. Then it was O’Connell Street and the Gresham Hotel. “The Gresham’s gone down,” Marshall said. “They frisked us the last time we went in for tea.”
    These