February 4, 2006--Saturday Story: "Mr. Perly"
Mr. Perly
Considering the daily mayhem on the streets of East Flatbush, it was essential, in all weather, for a glazier to be available to fix the plague of broken windows. Both in homes and stores. The former, the result of wayward rocks, baseballs, hockey pucks, and, in season, snow and ice balls; the latter caused by criminals-in-training who saw breaking into the corner Candy Store (Bob's) to be the ideal prerequisite for later-in-life felonies.
And since the foremost perpetrator of these misdemeanors was, of course, Heshy Perlmutter, it was appropriate that the neighborhood glazier was his father, Mr. Perly. This, in truth, was not as ideal a situation as it might at first seem. You might imagine that the father would show family contrition to the violated, the skills of which his son had not as yet acquired. Or he would make extra haste to repair what his only son had wrought. Especially when it was cold or otherwise inclement. That is what one would have expected. But Mr. Perly lived in a world so much of his own, what else was new in a neighborhood like ours, that, if anything, the victims all would probably have been better served if they had thought to import a glazier from far-away Manhattan.
Mr. Perly always appeared to be preoccupied with higher thoughts and complex issues since he was frequently seen to be in frantic motion, wandering the streets in passionate discourse, with himself. Slashing the air, to punctuate his best locutions, with rolled-up copies of either the Jewish Daily Forward, PM, or the Daily Worker. This baton, pointer, or weapon, depending on the subject at hand.
His perpetual argument, because that is what it was, was conducted in at least four languages—German, Yiddish, Russian, and his own unique version of English. And there were at least four participants, with Mr. Perly playing all the parts. One time when I was trailing him, in the manner of Sam Spade Private Eye, trying to listen in, I think I heard him fighting with someone called Leon Trotsky.
I was fascinated by him and spent considerable time attempting to become a part of his polyglot universe of languages and glass. After a while I came to understand that the reason he had no “real” interlocutors was not so much because he was crazy but that he had concluded the ideas he was grappling with were beyond the grasp of his neighbors or peers. In fact, though disheveled and living on the edge of poverty, he felt that he did not have any peers because he practiced the art of glazing, which was an ancient and hermetic craft. While everyone else either worked at a gas station or behind the counter in an appetizing store, slicing Lox.
Most thought that Mr. Perly’s work involved just fixing broken windows; when in fact, in the dark inner recesses of his shop, he engaged in his true calling—silver-glazing sheets of glass to turn them, alchemically, into mirrors. It was really that world of mirrors I wanted to know about, and enter. But knew I would first have to approach it through Trotsky.
And since I had no idea who he was I needed to find out. So I asked Heshy who told me that he didn’t know much about Trotsky except that he was some kind of a Russian, was somehow involved in the Communist Revolution, and that his father talked about him all the time. If you could call it talking. Even in his sleep when he would cry out about what Heshy thought sounded like “Bonaparte. Bonaparte.” Or maybe, stranger still, Bonapartism. Heshy said it was if he were fighting in his sleep with Napoleon Bonaparte who had betrayed the Revolution or something like that. But Heshy was a good enough student to know that Napoleon had died way before the Russian Revolution, and so I quickly realized that he would be no help in my learning about Trotsky. And since it was clear in that era that it was not a good idea to wander in the neighborhood public library and ask about a Communist like Trotsky, for these reasons I figured out that I would have to take an even more indirect approach to Mr. Perly. Here Heshy was more helpful; he suggested if I wanting to learn about the mysteries of glazing, turning plain glass into mirrors, I should probably forget about Trotsky and the Russian Revolution and Communism and just hang around his father’s shop, to see if I could make myself useful by offering to keep him supplied with an endless supply of coffee and pack after pack of Old Golds.
Thus, every day, after school was out, I went to Mr. Perly’s store on Church Avenue, initially just sitting there in the back near him, saying nothing, offering nothing. Just afternoon after afternoon spending from 3:30 to 5:30 there, silently sitting on a battered work bench that was pushed back against one wall among the half-empty five gallon cans of putty that he used when fixing broken windows, to secure the new glass in the window frame with a fine a bead of this semi-soft clay-like substance after fixing them in place with a series of tiny triangular nails. I would watch him out of averted eyes.
At that time of day he fabricated Venetian Blinds, hanging two slotted fabric tapes from hooks on the ceiling into which he inserted the slats and then the cords that were used to raise and lower the blinds as well as open and close them against the light. It was repetitive but rhythmic work and at times, though he didn’t speak or acknowledge me, he did emit sounds that reminded me of davening or praying. In spite of Heshy having told me that his father was a passionate atheist.
After about ten days of this, unexpectedly, he growled, “Coffee.”
I popped up from my half-reverie and said back at him, “Sure Mr. Perly. Do you want milk and sugar?”
“Black.”
“Right away. I’ll run right over to the candy store on the corner.”
“Cigarettes.”
“Old Golds, right?”
He continued to thread slats into the hanging tapes, saying nothing more, not looking over at me. But I was thrilled and hopped off the bench and raced across the street to Bob’s to fill his order. They knew it was for him and didn’t ask me for money, adding it to his tab.
This then went on for another two weeks—Mr. Perly humming and threading his slats, me tucked away waiting on the work bench, until he would bark “Coffee” or “Cigarettes” or at times both. I would jump right to it and be back in a flash with whatever he needed.
Things began to chance when one day he muttered the Worker as well as Coffee. I thought I knew what he meant but thought I would take a chance and ask, “The Worker?”
“The paper mit the coffee.”
I brought both back to his workshop. He got down off the small stool on which he stood to insert the topmost slats, he was less than five feet tall himself, and came over to a paint-splattered chair near where I was settled. He slumped onto it, sipping at his coffee, sputtering and spitting as he always did after his first gulp, “Ach, zehr heis.”
“Sorry Mr. Perly.”
He opened the paper and smoothed it out on the bench, smoothing the pages with his work-battered hands, talking to himself in the same agitated mix of languages that were familiar to me from the times I had tailed him through the neighborhood.
“Dat Truman. Est ein dog. Und his cronies. Schwein, all of them.”
I decided to take a chance, “You mean the president? But didn’t he stand up to Stalin?”
At that, Mr. Perly hurled his steaming cup across the shop where it smashed against the wall and sprang off the chair with the coiled energy of someone half his age. I remained where I was, transfixed with excitement, and fear. He stomped around the room, spewing a stream of, to me, incoherent curses. But among them I thought I did hear him talking about Bonaparte or, actually, Bonapartism.”
So I took a further chance, “Who, Mr. Perly,” I whispered, “is Bonaparte?”
“Nicht Fascism!”
“I don’t understand. Won’t you . . . . ”
“What do they teach you? Nothing. Mein son Harold, he knows nothing except baseball and girls. Ach, America.”
“But Bonaparte?”
“A fascist like the rest of them.”
“Do you mean Napoleon?” That much I knew from World History, at least his name and that he was French and tried to conquer Russia.
“Yah, him. But Trotsky, you know, he was really Bronstein, a Jew? He knew. He knew fascism. So they killed him. Ramon Mercader. In Mexico, mit an axe in his kopf.” He dropped his head and sighed deeply. I waited.
He resumed, “But der Nazis were not Bonaparte.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you read in school about Trotsky, his last letter in 1940 before they killed him?”
“No. What did it say?”
“That fascism is not the same as Bonapartism.”
There was that word from his sleep. Heshy was right. It was what he was crying out from his dreams.
“That . . . ?”
“Yah. Fascism comes after, after the vanguard fails to lead the masses. Look, it’s right here.” He pounded his hand on the Daily Worker still spread out on the work bench, which launched the can of triangular nails into the air, and resumed his pacing and mix of oaths
Considering the daily mayhem on the streets of East Flatbush, it was essential, in all weather, for a glazier to be available to fix the plague of broken windows. Both in homes and stores. The former, the result of wayward rocks, baseballs, hockey pucks, and, in season, snow and ice balls; the latter caused by criminals-in-training who saw breaking into the corner Candy Store (Bob's) to be the ideal prerequisite for later-in-life felonies.
And since the foremost perpetrator of these misdemeanors was, of course, Heshy Perlmutter, it was appropriate that the neighborhood glazier was his father, Mr. Perly. This, in truth, was not as ideal a situation as it might at first seem. You might imagine that the father would show family contrition to the violated, the skills of which his son had not as yet acquired. Or he would make extra haste to repair what his only son had wrought. Especially when it was cold or otherwise inclement. That is what one would have expected. But Mr. Perly lived in a world so much of his own, what else was new in a neighborhood like ours, that, if anything, the victims all would probably have been better served if they had thought to import a glazier from far-away Manhattan.
Mr. Perly always appeared to be preoccupied with higher thoughts and complex issues since he was frequently seen to be in frantic motion, wandering the streets in passionate discourse, with himself. Slashing the air, to punctuate his best locutions, with rolled-up copies of either the Jewish Daily Forward, PM, or the Daily Worker. This baton, pointer, or weapon, depending on the subject at hand.
His perpetual argument, because that is what it was, was conducted in at least four languages—German, Yiddish, Russian, and his own unique version of English. And there were at least four participants, with Mr. Perly playing all the parts. One time when I was trailing him, in the manner of Sam Spade Private Eye, trying to listen in, I think I heard him fighting with someone called Leon Trotsky.
I was fascinated by him and spent considerable time attempting to become a part of his polyglot universe of languages and glass. After a while I came to understand that the reason he had no “real” interlocutors was not so much because he was crazy but that he had concluded the ideas he was grappling with were beyond the grasp of his neighbors or peers. In fact, though disheveled and living on the edge of poverty, he felt that he did not have any peers because he practiced the art of glazing, which was an ancient and hermetic craft. While everyone else either worked at a gas station or behind the counter in an appetizing store, slicing Lox.
Most thought that Mr. Perly’s work involved just fixing broken windows; when in fact, in the dark inner recesses of his shop, he engaged in his true calling—silver-glazing sheets of glass to turn them, alchemically, into mirrors. It was really that world of mirrors I wanted to know about, and enter. But knew I would first have to approach it through Trotsky.
And since I had no idea who he was I needed to find out. So I asked Heshy who told me that he didn’t know much about Trotsky except that he was some kind of a Russian, was somehow involved in the Communist Revolution, and that his father talked about him all the time. If you could call it talking. Even in his sleep when he would cry out about what Heshy thought sounded like “Bonaparte. Bonaparte.” Or maybe, stranger still, Bonapartism. Heshy said it was if he were fighting in his sleep with Napoleon Bonaparte who had betrayed the Revolution or something like that. But Heshy was a good enough student to know that Napoleon had died way before the Russian Revolution, and so I quickly realized that he would be no help in my learning about Trotsky. And since it was clear in that era that it was not a good idea to wander in the neighborhood public library and ask about a Communist like Trotsky, for these reasons I figured out that I would have to take an even more indirect approach to Mr. Perly. Here Heshy was more helpful; he suggested if I wanting to learn about the mysteries of glazing, turning plain glass into mirrors, I should probably forget about Trotsky and the Russian Revolution and Communism and just hang around his father’s shop, to see if I could make myself useful by offering to keep him supplied with an endless supply of coffee and pack after pack of Old Golds.
Thus, every day, after school was out, I went to Mr. Perly’s store on Church Avenue, initially just sitting there in the back near him, saying nothing, offering nothing. Just afternoon after afternoon spending from 3:30 to 5:30 there, silently sitting on a battered work bench that was pushed back against one wall among the half-empty five gallon cans of putty that he used when fixing broken windows, to secure the new glass in the window frame with a fine a bead of this semi-soft clay-like substance after fixing them in place with a series of tiny triangular nails. I would watch him out of averted eyes.
At that time of day he fabricated Venetian Blinds, hanging two slotted fabric tapes from hooks on the ceiling into which he inserted the slats and then the cords that were used to raise and lower the blinds as well as open and close them against the light. It was repetitive but rhythmic work and at times, though he didn’t speak or acknowledge me, he did emit sounds that reminded me of davening or praying. In spite of Heshy having told me that his father was a passionate atheist.
After about ten days of this, unexpectedly, he growled, “Coffee.”
I popped up from my half-reverie and said back at him, “Sure Mr. Perly. Do you want milk and sugar?”
“Black.”
“Right away. I’ll run right over to the candy store on the corner.”
“Cigarettes.”
“Old Golds, right?”
He continued to thread slats into the hanging tapes, saying nothing more, not looking over at me. But I was thrilled and hopped off the bench and raced across the street to Bob’s to fill his order. They knew it was for him and didn’t ask me for money, adding it to his tab.
This then went on for another two weeks—Mr. Perly humming and threading his slats, me tucked away waiting on the work bench, until he would bark “Coffee” or “Cigarettes” or at times both. I would jump right to it and be back in a flash with whatever he needed.
Things began to chance when one day he muttered the Worker as well as Coffee. I thought I knew what he meant but thought I would take a chance and ask, “The Worker?”
“The paper mit the coffee.”
I brought both back to his workshop. He got down off the small stool on which he stood to insert the topmost slats, he was less than five feet tall himself, and came over to a paint-splattered chair near where I was settled. He slumped onto it, sipping at his coffee, sputtering and spitting as he always did after his first gulp, “Ach, zehr heis.”
“Sorry Mr. Perly.”
He opened the paper and smoothed it out on the bench, smoothing the pages with his work-battered hands, talking to himself in the same agitated mix of languages that were familiar to me from the times I had tailed him through the neighborhood.
“Dat Truman. Est ein dog. Und his cronies. Schwein, all of them.”
I decided to take a chance, “You mean the president? But didn’t he stand up to Stalin?”
At that, Mr. Perly hurled his steaming cup across the shop where it smashed against the wall and sprang off the chair with the coiled energy of someone half his age. I remained where I was, transfixed with excitement, and fear. He stomped around the room, spewing a stream of, to me, incoherent curses. But among them I thought I did hear him talking about Bonaparte or, actually, Bonapartism.”
So I took a further chance, “Who, Mr. Perly,” I whispered, “is Bonaparte?”
“Nicht Fascism!”
“I don’t understand. Won’t you . . . . ”
“What do they teach you? Nothing. Mein son Harold, he knows nothing except baseball and girls. Ach, America.”
“But Bonaparte?”
“A fascist like the rest of them.”
“Do you mean Napoleon?” That much I knew from World History, at least his name and that he was French and tried to conquer Russia.
“Yah, him. But Trotsky, you know, he was really Bronstein, a Jew? He knew. He knew fascism. So they killed him. Ramon Mercader. In Mexico, mit an axe in his kopf.” He dropped his head and sighed deeply. I waited.
He resumed, “But der Nazis were not Bonaparte.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you read in school about Trotsky, his last letter in 1940 before they killed him?”
“No. What did it say?”
“That fascism is not the same as Bonapartism.”
There was that word from his sleep. Heshy was right. It was what he was crying out from his dreams.
“That . . . ?”
“Yah. Fascism comes after, after the vanguard fails to lead the masses. Look, it’s right here.” He pounded his hand on the Daily Worker still spread out on the work bench, which launched the can of triangular nails into the air, and resumed his pacing and mix of oaths
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:38 AM
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