a shiver of sympathetic disgust constricting my throat. There were so many of them, scores passing to and fro, that I focused on one individual just to stave off a rush of dizziness. I lit on a still-sleepy peasant youth of about thirteen in trousers worn through the knees, entirely shoeless but wearing blue stockings, who stumbled past me into a corner grocery store. He bypassed the pale putrid cabbages set for show outside the entrance and headed straight for the whiskey bar. His posture matched the building he was patronizing. The Sixth Ward was built over the top of a swamp called the Collect Pond, but if you didn’t know that, you’d wonder why the buildings lean at lunatic angles, seemingly stitched onto the sky in crazy-quilt seams.
I stepped over the fresh corpse of a dog felled by traffic and carried on, edging through the crowd. All the men walked with a purpose into groceries that didn’t sell edible vegetables, the women’s hands blazed redder than their hair from hard labor, and the children … the children seemed by turns harrowed and merely hungry. I saw one respectable fellow as I passed. A priest with a perfectly round head, faintly blue eyes, and a tight white dog collar. But he was ministering to the most wretched of the occupants, or so I hoped.
No, there were no shortcuts for an American on Mulberry. And my face simmered in the heat, rendering fat into the already greasy bandaging. Or something else, possibly. Frankly, I didn’t want to dwell on it.
My face hadn’t been a Michelangelo exactly, but it hadn’t ever served me wrong either. Oval tending toward youthful roundness, and near enough identical to my brother’s. Broad and high brow, deeply arcing hairline, hair indifferently blond. Straight nose, small mouth, with a little upside-down crescent where lips turn to chin. Fair skin despite our merciless summers. I’d never spent overmuchtime mulling over my mazzard previously, though, because when I’d wanted a friendly hour or two with an idle shopkeeper’s daughter or a hotel maid with appetites, I’d always gotten it. So it was a good enough face—it didn’t cost me money when I needed a tumble, and I’ve been told my smile is very reluctant, which apparently makes people want to tell you their life histories and then pass you two bits for your patience.
Now I had absolutely no notion of what I looked like. The physical pain was already bad enough to make me steal a little of my brother’s laudanum without added aesthetic horror.
“You’re spooney,” my brother had announced, shaking his head as he studiously roasted coffee beans. “Don’t come over all squeamish on me
now
, for God’s sake. Have a keek at yourself and be done.”
“Sod off, Valentine.”
“Listen, Tim, I can understand perfectly why you’d keep shady at first, in light of when you were just a squeaker and all, but—”
“By tomorrow at the latest I’ll be clear of this house,” I’d replied on my way out, effectively ending the conversation.
Cutting across Walker Street, I turned up Elizabeth and then all at once shoved my fists in my still-sooty pockets in shock.
The structure directly before me was a miracle. A carefully printed wish list of shortcuts.
Thresholds and shutters on this block weren’t quite gleaming, but they’d been scrubbed with vinegar and glinted respectably. The laundry strung along the hemp lines between buildings, fickly fluttering in the sun, was mended instead of lagging in limp shreds, giving me a settled feeling. And neat and humble and right before my very eyes stood a two-story brick row house wearing a rooms TO LET BY DAY OR MONTH sign. On the first floor, attractively lettered on a small awning, MRS. BOEHM’S FINE BAKED GOODS heldcourt. Not ten feet away from the entrance stood a pump ready to gush out clean Croton water.
That was potentially four shortcuts, if you’re counting.
First, the pump meant pure Westchester river water and not the filthy stew
I stepped over the fresh corpse of a dog felled by traffic and carried on, edging through the crowd. All the men walked with a purpose into groceries that didn’t sell edible vegetables, the women’s hands blazed redder than their hair from hard labor, and the children … the children seemed by turns harrowed and merely hungry. I saw one respectable fellow as I passed. A priest with a perfectly round head, faintly blue eyes, and a tight white dog collar. But he was ministering to the most wretched of the occupants, or so I hoped.
No, there were no shortcuts for an American on Mulberry. And my face simmered in the heat, rendering fat into the already greasy bandaging. Or something else, possibly. Frankly, I didn’t want to dwell on it.
My face hadn’t been a Michelangelo exactly, but it hadn’t ever served me wrong either. Oval tending toward youthful roundness, and near enough identical to my brother’s. Broad and high brow, deeply arcing hairline, hair indifferently blond. Straight nose, small mouth, with a little upside-down crescent where lips turn to chin. Fair skin despite our merciless summers. I’d never spent overmuchtime mulling over my mazzard previously, though, because when I’d wanted a friendly hour or two with an idle shopkeeper’s daughter or a hotel maid with appetites, I’d always gotten it. So it was a good enough face—it didn’t cost me money when I needed a tumble, and I’ve been told my smile is very reluctant, which apparently makes people want to tell you their life histories and then pass you two bits for your patience.
Now I had absolutely no notion of what I looked like. The physical pain was already bad enough to make me steal a little of my brother’s laudanum without added aesthetic horror.
“You’re spooney,” my brother had announced, shaking his head as he studiously roasted coffee beans. “Don’t come over all squeamish on me
now
, for God’s sake. Have a keek at yourself and be done.”
“Sod off, Valentine.”
“Listen, Tim, I can understand perfectly why you’d keep shady at first, in light of when you were just a squeaker and all, but—”
“By tomorrow at the latest I’ll be clear of this house,” I’d replied on my way out, effectively ending the conversation.
Cutting across Walker Street, I turned up Elizabeth and then all at once shoved my fists in my still-sooty pockets in shock.
The structure directly before me was a miracle. A carefully printed wish list of shortcuts.
Thresholds and shutters on this block weren’t quite gleaming, but they’d been scrubbed with vinegar and glinted respectably. The laundry strung along the hemp lines between buildings, fickly fluttering in the sun, was mended instead of lagging in limp shreds, giving me a settled feeling. And neat and humble and right before my very eyes stood a two-story brick row house wearing a rooms TO LET BY DAY OR MONTH sign. On the first floor, attractively lettered on a small awning, MRS. BOEHM’S FINE BAKED GOODS heldcourt. Not ten feet away from the entrance stood a pump ready to gush out clean Croton water.
That was potentially four shortcuts, if you’re counting.
First, the pump meant pure Westchester river water and not the filthy stew
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