The American Shore - Samuel R. Delany

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gassed seven million Jews.”

      “Six million Jews,” Little Mister Kissy Lips corrected. “But it’s the same idea.124 Maybe the ones here got killed in a particular campaign.”

      “Then it would say so.”125 Tancred was adamant, and he even got them to admit at last that 4,800 was an impressive figure, especially with every name spelled out in stone letters.126

      One other amazing statistic was commemorated in the park: over a thirty-three-year period Castle Clinton had processed 7.7 million127 immigrants into the United States.128

      Little Mister Kissy Lips sat down and figured out that129 it would take 12,800 stone slabs the size of the ones listing the soldiers, sailors, and airmen in order to write out all the immigrants’ names,130 with country of origin,131 and an area of five square miles to set that many slabs up in, or all of Manhattan from here to 28th Street.132 But would it be worth the trouble, after all? Would it be that much different from the way things were already?133

      Alyona Ivanovna:134

      An archipelago of irregular brown islands were mapped on the tan sea of his bald head. The mainlands of his hair were marble outcroppings, especially his beard, white and crisp and coiling.135 The teeth were standard MODICUM issue; clothes, as clean as any fabric that old can be. Nor did he smell, particularly. And yet ….

      Had he bathed every morning you’d still have looked at him and thought he was filthy, the way floorboards in old brownstones seem to need cleaning moments after they’ve been scrubbed. The dirt had been bonded to the wrinkled flesh and the wrinkled clothes,136 and nothing less than surgery or burning would get it out.137

      His habits were as orderly as a polka dot napkin.138 He lived at a Chelsea dorm for the elderly, a discovery they owed to a rainstorm that had forced him to take the subway home one day instead of, as usual, walking.139 On the hottest nights he might sleep over in the park, nesting in one of the Castle windows.140 He bought his lunches from a Water Street specialty shop, Dumas Fils: cheeses, imported fruit, smoked fish, bottles of cream, food for the gods. Otherwise he did without, though his dorm must have supplied prosaic necessities like breakfast. It was a strange way for a panhandler to spend his quarters, drugs being the norm.141

      His professional approach was out-and-out aggression. For instance, his hand in your face and, “How about it, Jack?” Or, confidingly, “I need sixty cents to get home.” It was amazing how often he scored,142 but actually it wasn’t amazing. He had charisma.

      And someone who relies on charisma wouldn’t have a gun.143

      Agewise he might have been sixty, seventy, seventy-five, a bit more even, or much less. It all depended on the kind of life he’d led, and where.144 He had an accent none of them could identify. It was not ­English, not French, not Spanish, and probably not Russian.145

      Aside from his burrow in the Castle wall there were two distinct places he preferred.146 One, the wide-open stretch of pavement along the water. This was where he worked, walking up past the Castle and down as far as the concession stand.147 The passage of one of the great Navy cruisers, the USS Dana or the USS Melville, would bring him, and the whole Battery, to a standstill, as though a whole parade were going by, white, soundless, slow as a dream. It was a part of history, and even the Alexandrians were impressed,148 though three of them had taken the cruise down to Andros Island and back.149 Sometimes though, he’d stand by the guardrail for long stretches of time without any real reason, just looking at the Jersey sky and the Jersey shore. After a while he might start talking to himself, the barest whisper but very much in earnest to judge by the way his forehead wrinkled.150 They never once saw him sit on one of the benches.151

      The other place he liked was the aviary.152 On days when they’d been ignored he’d contribute peanuts or breadcrumbs to the cause of the birds’ existence.153 There were pigeons, parrots, a family of robins, and a proletarian swarm of what the sign declared to be chickadees, though Celeste, who’d gone to the library to make sure, said they were nothing more than a rather swank breed of sparrow.154 Here, too, naturally, the militant Miss Kraus stationed herself155 when she bore testimony.156 One of her peculiarities (and the reason, probably, she was never asked to move on)157 was that under no circumstances did she ever deign to argue. Even sympathizers pried no more out of her than a grim smile and a curt nod.158

      One Tuesday, a week before M-Day (it was the early A.M. and only three Alexandrians were on hand to witness this confrontation),159 Alyona so far put aside his own reticence as to try to start a conversation going with Miss Kraus.160

      He stood squarely in front of her and began by reading aloud, slowly, in that distressingly indefinite accent, from the text161 of STOP THE SLAUGHTER:162 “The Department of the Interior of the United States Government, under the secret direction of the Zionist Ford Foundation, is systematically poisoning the oceans of the World with so-called ‘food farms’. Is this “peaceful application of Nuclear Power”? Unquote, the New York Times, August 2, 2024. Or a new Moondoggle!! Nature World, Jan. Can we afford to remain indifferent any longer. Every day 15,000 seagulls die as a direct result of Systematic Genocides while elected Officials falsify and distort the evidence. Learn the facts. Write to the Congressmen. Make your voice heard!!”163

      As Alyona had droned on, Miss Kraus turned a deeper and deeper red. Tightening her fingers about the turquoise broomhandle to which the placard was stapled, she began to jerk the poster up and down rapidly,164 as though this man with his foreign accent were some bird of prey who’d perched on it.165

      “Is that what you think?” he asked, having read all the way down to the signature despite her jiggling tactic.166 He touched his bushy white beard and wrinkled his face into a philosophical expression.167 “I’d like to know more about it, yes, I would. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.”

      Horror had frozen up every motion of her limbs. Her eyes blinked shut but she forced them open again.168

      “Maybe,” he went on remorselessly, “we can discuss this whole thing. Some time when you feel more like talking. All right?”169

      She mustered her smile, and a minimal nod.170 He went away then.171 She was safe, temporarily, but even so she waited till he’d gone halfway to the other end of the sea-front promenade172 before she let the air collapse into her lungs. After a single deep breath the muscles of her hands thawed into trembling.173

      M-Day was an oil of summer, a catalog of everything painters are happiest painting—clouds, flags, leaves, sexy people, and in back of it all the flat empty baby-blue of the sky.174 Little Mister Kissy Lips was the first one there, and Tancred, in a kind of kimono (it hid the pilfered Luger), was the last.175 Celeste never came. (She’d just learned she’d been awarded the exchange scholarship to Sofia.) They decided they could do without Celeste,176 but the other nonappearance was more crucial. Their victim had neglected to be on hand for M-Day.177 Sniffles, whose voice was most like an adult’s over the phone, was delegated to go to the ­Citibank lobby and call the West 16th Street dorm.178

      The nurse who answered was a temporary.179 Sniffles, always an inspired liar, insisted that his mother—“Mrs. Anderson, of course she lives there, Mrs. Alma F. Anderson”—had to be called to the phone. This was 248 West 16th, wasn’t it? Where was she if she wasn’t there?180 The nurse, flustered, explained that the residents, all who were fit, had been driven off to a July 4th picnic at Lake Hopatcong as guests of a giant Jersey retirement condominium.181 If he called bright and early tomorrow they’d be back and he could talk to his mother then.182

      So

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