“Yeah.”
“You’re familiar?”
“Not really.” My ex-girlfriend, Mariam, had sewn an Emma Goldman patch on her messenger bag, but that was the extent of my knowledge. “Is your name Mendy?”
“Yeah. It is. So?”
“My name is Izzy. Izzy Edel. I’m Alojzy Edel’s son.”
“Oh, I see. Jesus.” He took off his glasses, and rubbed his palm over his eyes and face and beard. “Ally, Ally, Ally. I didn’t even know he had a son. A daughter he’d mentioned, a few times . . .”
“Yeah, that’s my sister. Becca.”
“Sure. Right. Hey. Listen.” He put his glasses back on and stuck out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you . . . Izzy, was it?” We shook hands. His grip was very strong.
“I heard that he died. I’m very sorry. For whatever that’s worth.”
“Thank you for your concern, but . . . I’m not sure if he’s dead or not. It’s not been confirmed yet.”
“Oh. I see. I’m not optimistic, but of course I hope you’re right. We could sit and talk a minute, if you’d like?” He led me across the wide sidewalk to a short stone ledge extended off the NYU library.
“Had you been in touch?” he asked me once we’d sat down. “With your father?”
“No. Not in a long time. Years.”
“I can’t say that surprises me. He never struck me as a family man. So how did you find your way here, then, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“We only found out about my father’s . . . disappearance because we got a note from a man named Goldov. I met him yesterday. He mentioned your name.”
“Goldov? Sure. Sure. Excuse me.” Mendy turned to shout to a potential customer holding up a volume of Greek myths. “The price is on the front page. No, that’s the cover. I said the front page. That’s right. There. What it says. Three dollars.” The customer came over with a ten-dollar bill, and Mendy made change from the fanny pack around his waist.
“When my own father died,” he said to me, “I felt him around. I kept thinking he was just in the next room. Which was sort of funny, because it was not like I was used to him being around, ever actually being in the next room. I mean, there were years, as an adult, where I hardly saw my parents at all. It was mostly like that, more years that were like that than not. I always would think of him, but in a distanced way. Then he died, and all of a sudden, and for months, I kept thinking of him, in a much closer way. Like death made him more present.” It was true that Alojzy felt more present to me recently, but I didn’t think that was because he was dead. I thought it was because he had reached out to me. If I sensed him in the world, it was because he was in the world. Mendy saw the skepticism on my face.
“That’s neither here nor there. You said you think Al is only missing, not dead?”
“Well, Goldov said Alojzy was missing and believed dead. And you said you heard he was. But I don’t know anything for sure. Do you know any details?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. He’d been away from the street for a week or so, which wasn’t so strange, but then I heard about his death. Maybe it was from Goldov, actually, that I heard it first? I think it was, though I wouldn’t swear to it.” This brought me back to the idea that the story of Alojzy’s death had been purposefully crafted, by either Goldov or Alojzy. “Then everyone was talking about it. But that was all anyone seemed to know, that he was dead.
“Let me be clear,” Mendy said. “I’m only telling you what I know. I can’t tell you for sure he’s dead. I can only tell you that he disappeared from the street. But my opinion is, to be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for him to come back. I’m sorry to say.”
“Excuse me!” A man in a jacket and tie jabbed a stack of books at us.
“No,” said Mendy. “Excuse me, I’m having a conversation here.”
“Sure, I just wanted to make a purchase, if you can imagine that.”
“Listen, I don’t care what you want to do. I told you I’m having a conversation.”
“Are you serious? Is this the way to run a business?”
“No, I don’t think this is any way to run a business. You’re right about that, pal.” The man started to say something else, but couldn’t think what and shook his head instead. He tossed the books onto the table and stomped off.
“My father,” I said. “What can you tell me for sure? You worked on this street together? What do you know about his life?”
“Your father. He sold down here, off and on, for years. Everybody down here knew him. He was, I don’t know, he brought something out in people. Women especially. There were always women looking for him.” Mendy smiled. I imagined my father and this man exchanging little jokes about women’s bodies, in a streetwise male language I’d never quite learned. “But he could talk to anyone. He would just as soon stay quiet, he wasn’t one to run his mouth for no reason, but he was capable of talking to anyone. The gift of gab, I guess they call it. He spoke like six languages.”
“Six? English and Polish and Hebrew . . .”
“Some Arabic. Some Russian.”
“That’s right.”
“A little Yiddish too, I found out. He had a girlfriend who was teaching him Spanish, for a while.” Mendy looked at his fingers. “Now we’re up to seven. He had all that up on me. I got English, scraps of high school German, and some house Yiddish. That’s about it, for me. It all adds up to just English, really. My parents never let me learn Yiddish proper, because they didn’t want I should have an accent. Better I should speak like an American. They came from Poland too. But before the war. When there were Jews in Poland, still. Lots of them. I talked to Al about that, sometimes.”
“About . . .?” I had lost the thread of what Mendy was saying.
“About Poland, and the Jews who lived there. The history of it.”
“Oh. Okay. Is there anything else you can tell me about him, though? I mean, him personally?” I needed clues.
“Personally? He is—was—a rough person. But kind. He had ziskeit. You know the word? There’s no other word for it. I know he did some things. I know he hurt Goldov. I know he hurt some girlfriends. I imagine he hurt others. Maybe he hurt you . . . if I might be so bold, as to interpret the look on your face. He was involved in I don’t know all what. But I always thought of him as kind.
“I remember—I had a van for a while—I told Al he could borrow it one time, when he needed to move some books. He was shocked. He said, ‘Mendy, you’re really trusting me with your van?’ I said, ‘Al, is there a reason I shouldn’t trust you?’”
“I see.” I remembered a van of his own that Al had owned when I was in high school. It was a white Astro van, and was always dirty and packed full of boxes. “Do
