Up From Jericho Tel Read online

  “Im-pet-EYE-go,” I corrected.

  “I tell you, these foreigners have no sense of responsibility. They come into this country and take, take, take. They take jobs and welfare and what do they give us in return? Impelliago! It’s a disgrace.”

  I felt that little knot between my eyes snap, and I said, “It’s a shame that Malcolm Soo never told you how he got the disease.”

  “I’m sure he got it from the filthy conditions they live in.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “Every weekend he and his father Tyrone volunteer to be infected with a different disease so that researchers can test different medicines to see what could cure it.”

  “Well, that is nice of them saving all those poor dogs and unfortunate mice from having to get infected.” She stopped, squinted at me and asked, “Or do they get paid for doing it? I have no use for people who give blood for money.”

  “No, they don’t get paid. He and Tyrone are part of the Infect an Immigrant Program. When the whole study is finished, they are getting a trip to Washington, D.C., where they’re going to get the Dr. Maceo E. Patterson Award for their contribution to scientific medicine. Usually, the disease disappears before he has to return to school, but this weekend it didn’t. Malcolm has suffered the pains of Hell on weekends.”

  “Don’t you say ‘Hell’ to me, young lady.”

  “Can I have a pass to go to the infirmary?”

  “I’d advise against it, if you want my opinion.”

  “I don’t know how he’ll get the key to his house if I don’t give it to him.” I dangled the key right up close to her face.

  She leaned far back from it and wrote out the pass. She stood back as I lifted the barrier to enter the inner office and then beyond that into the room just to the side of the principal’s office that they called the infirmary.

  Malcolm was lying on the cot, holding a book in the space over his face, reading.

  I collapsed onto the cot. “I can’t believe what I just did,” I said. I told him what I had told the secretary. “I wasn’t scared at all. It was as if the invisible part of me made it up. I wasn’t scared for a single minute.”

  As he listened, Malcolm laid his opened book across his chest and put his hands behind his head. “The good news is that I picked impetigo, and it’s so rotten that they didn’t even want to peek inside my glove. The bad news is that I picked impetigo, and it’s so rotten that they want me to have a doctor’s certificate before I come back. How am I supposed to get that?”

  “If we don’t get a call to Jericho Tel, and you have to miss school tomorrow, I’ll bring you your assignments.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Jeanmarie. How am I supposed to get a doctor’s certificate?”

  “Let’s just hope we get a call back to Jericho Tel.”

  Malcolm sat up. Slowly, slowly, one finger at a time, he pulled the glove from his right hand. Then making a menacing face, and lifting his arms in batwing fashion, he grabbed my throat with his invisible hand. “You see, my dear, there are many advantages to being slight of hand.”

  Tallulah says, “A star should demand three things in her contract: her name above the title, a limousine to take her to and from the theater and fresh Belgian chocolates in her dressing room. If she doesn’t want the chocolates, then she should demand free hospitalization, for it’s certain that she’s crazy.”

  six

  AS SOON as we got off the bus, we dumped our books, picked up our shovels and headed for Jericho Tel. We peered anxiously through the trees, and to our great joy and relief saw Spot, wagging his tail just inside the opening to Jericho Tel.

  One, two, three, and we were through the Epigene and standing in Rahab Station. Tallulah looked up lazily when we arrived.

  The first thing I said was, “Malcolm needs a hand.”

  “Of course, darling!” Tallulah said. She clamped her cigarette holder between her teeth and started clapping. “Tallulah knows that getting a hand is not always easy.”

  “Not that! Not a hand. His hand. He left it in his pocket in the Orgone, and it remained invisible Topside.”

  “Oh, darling,” Tallulah said. “That kind of hand is so much easier for Tallulah to get for you. Don’t worry about it, darling. Show it to Tallulah.” Malcolm extended his gloved hand. “Take that tacky glove off, darling. What kind of glove is that?” Malcolm told her that it was a gardener’s glove. “A gardeners glove?” she asked.

  “It keeps dirt from getting under your fingernails when you work in the garden.” Malcolm explained.

  “I’m sure that if God had meant people to wear gloves while working in a garden, He would have made Adam and Eve a pair out of fig leaves.”

  “People who garden as a hobby and have to keep their fingernails clean for other things wear gardener’s gloves when they garden.”

  “You don’t say? I had a house with a garden once. Everyone kept telling me, ‘Tallulah, with a dog, you should have a garden. It’s not fair to keep a dog cooped up in a city apartment all the time.’ So my then Spot—I’ve always had a Dalmatian, and I’ve always called him Spot; it gives one a sense of continuity—and I moved to a place in Connecticut. I’ve been told the garden was beautiful. Tallulah can tell you if a diamond necklace is beautiful, and she has simply fabulous taste in clothing, but gardens, darling, are just not in Tallulah’s line.

  “Fiona, who was my housekeeper and cook, was delighted, and so was Widdup, her husband, who was my chauffeur and butler. Widdup loved to garden; the English have a passion for it. One day Widdup told me that he would like to plant a vegetable garden so that Fiona could have things fresh from the garden to cook. I told him that it was perfectly all right with me as long as I didn’t have to hire migrant labor; I had heard all these perfectly awful stories about the terrible houses that migrant labor lives in, and I didn’t want to have to put up any dilapidated houses for them. It would make the place look just too tacky. Widdup assured me that he would manage the whole thing all by himself, so he went out and bought all these precious little plants and dug around—it seemed to me that he was busy for days—and invited me out into the garden to look.

  “It was all very cute, I must say. He had put all these tiny plants into the ground in wonderful straight rows. There were little labels sticking out of the ground at the end of each row. I read the pictures on the labels and saw that there was a row of radishes and something yellow and something green. They all seemed to start out green, come to think of it. I complimented Widdup on his beautiful garden and didn’t pay any more attention until he came to me one day and told me he had to fertilize. I said, ‘Go right ahead, darling,’ but he said that he needed money for the fertilizer, that he wanted me to open an account at the local hardware store. I asked him what he was going to fertilize with, and when he told me manure, I told him that we wouldn’t have to buy any, that we could just let my then Spot loose in the garden, and he would take care of everything. Widdup said, ‘No, Madam, we need good cow manure.’ Well, there I was in the city, not able to give the stuff away, and there I was in the country, having to buy somebody else’s. I decided that gardening was just too complicated a pastime, so I sold the house and the garden, and we all moved back into the city.”

  I told Tallulah about the time when Mother and I had lived in Texas and had tried growing tomatoes outside our trailer and about the bugs that ooze green slime when you step on them; and Tallulah said, “So much of Nature is green; there must be a reason for it.”

  At that point Malcolm explained chlorophyll and photosynthesis. He started explaining energy cycles when Tallulah interrupted, “Now, now, Malcolm, let’s not get carried away. Good explanations are like bathing suits, darling; they are meant to reveal everything by covering only what is necessary.”

  “Do you have a new assignment for us?” I asked.

  Tallulah said, “It’s time I told you your quest.”

  “Not yet,” Malcolm said.

  “Why not yet?” Tallulah asked.
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br />   “Because we have had only two trials. There’s always three.”

  “Who says there’s always three?”

  “Everyone. There’s always three brothers who start out. There’s always three wishes. There’s always three. Even when people tell jokes, there’s always a minister, a priest and a rabbi.”

  Tallulah said, “Don’t be such a technician, darling. Why don’t you just rejoice that your trials are over and you are about to embark on your real mission.”

  “I’ve enjoyed the trials.”

  “Of course you did, darling, but Tallulah is convinced that you already know what you need to.” She held up her hands and pulled her little finger down with the forefinger of her other hand. “One, you’ve distinguished the real from the phony.” She gazed off into space. “Now let me see, what comes next.” She pulled down her next finger. “Oh, yes. Two. You’ve also decided that doing nothing is sometimes doing something. One. Two. You’re ready for your mission.”

  It was then that I reminded Tallulah that I had believed Horace and Isobel, that I had really thought that she had a son named Jason, and, furthermore, I had not even realized that her diamond was not real, and how all that made me wonder if I really could distinguish the real from the phony. Tallulah told me to shush. “Darling, darling,” she said, “if you could distinguish the real from the phony and also distinguish the real from the magic, I would not think you were at all ready. Tallulah wants you to believe that magic is real. You’ve proven yourselves to my entire satisfaction, and Tallulah is anxious for you to find The Regina Stone. Really she is.”

  Malcolm looked unhappy, but if Tallulah noticed, she paid no attention. “Now Tallulah will tell you your quest,” she said.

  THE FOLLOWING is my account of Tallulah’s account of our mission.

  Three years before she died, Tallulah had gone to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As she was coming down the steps, she heard a lovely voice singing “Greensleeves.” The singer was a beautiful young woman quaintly dressed in a long-sleeved calico pinafore made with half a hundred hand-sewn tucks. She wore an amusing straw hat with a fresh carnation in its band and kept a small straw basket near her feet for people to drop money into. Tallulah listened until the girl finished her song and then dropped a twenty dollar bill into her hat, but not before she had written Brava! and her name and phone number on it.

  Two days later the girl called Tallulah and introduced herself. Her name was Emmagene Krebs. Tallulah suggested that they meet for lunch at the Plaza. The girl told Tallulah that she had come from Kokomo, Indiana, to make her name and find her fortune in New York. She said that she was eighteen years old and had eighteen thousand songs to sing. She showed Tallulah a big notebook where, at the end of each day, she listed the songs that she had sung that day and counted down from eighteen thousand. At the time they met, she had sixteen thousand eight hundred and twelve songs left. “Greensleeves” was one of her favorites. “Scarlet Ribbons” was another. She had six other favorites, and every day she allowed herself to sing one of those eight plus four or five other songs. She said that when she had only one hundred songs left to sing, she would sing only her eight favorites. What she wanted more than anything was to be discovered so that she could give concerts at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center so that more people could hear her songs before she had no more songs to sing.

  Tallulah found herself very interested in the young busker. Her New York apartment was not far from the Metropolitan Museum, and she took to walking her then Spot to the museum and waiting with him while Emmagene Krebs sang. Sometimes if she and Spot arrived close to the time that Emmagene was finishing her songs for that day, they would walk back to the apartment together, where Widdup would serve them a cup of tea. Tallulah always asked Emmagene if she wanted Fiona to put honey in her tea to save her voice. Emmagene always said no, that she knew she had eighteen thousand songs to sing, and she was counting down, and nothing, nothing at all, could make her have eighteen thousand and one, but what she wanted was a bigger audience so that more people could hear her songs.

  After a while Emmagene told Tallulah that she had a good friend who was a ventriloquist named Nicolai Ion Simonescu. She shyly told Tallulah that Nicolai was in love with her. He was also a street performer; his dummy’s name was Anna Karenina. Tallulah said that she would love to meet Nicolai and his Anna. Emmagene said that she would bring him by some Monday, the day when most of street performers did not work.

  The following Monday Emmagene did bring Nicolai, and Nicolai brought his dummy, Anna Karenina. Nicolai performed some of his routine for Tallulah, and Tallulah loved it, and she liked Anna Karenina very much, too, so they started joining Emmagene when she visited Tallulah at her apartment. Nicolai said that he would like to get on television. He worried that he would grow old and arthritic and unable to pull Anna Karenina’s strings before he was discovered.

  Soon Nicolai brought Patrick Henry Mermelstein to their Monday afternoon tea parties. Patrick Henry, whom most people called P.H., booked himself as Mermelstein the Magician. Mermelstein the Magician’s specialty was sleight-of-hand. It was supposed to be that: Mermelstein might be a magician, but Patrick Henry was a klutz. He dropped things. Coins that were meant to appear from behind some one’s ear would fall to the floor, and a long string of scarves that was to be pulled out of a hat would become tangled. P.H. managed to keep up a lighthearted patter as Mermelstein failed at one magical trick after another. He carried a tape player with him and played classical music as he went through his routine. He liked Mozart most of all.

  One day Tallulah was walking her then Spot in Shubert Alley when she stopped to see Mermelstein the Magician doing card tricks. He was in the middle of asking someone in his audience to pick a card when he stopped, said, “Wait a minute now. Here comes the sound of real magic.” At that point he cocked his ear toward the tape recorder until the musical passage was over and then picked up his patter without missing a beat, but he did drop the deck of cards he was shuffling. Many people helped to pick them up, and Tallulah saw that even though most of his audience left without waiting for Mermelstein to finish his trick, a few had dropped coins and bills into his top hat. P.H. wanted to take his act to Las Vegas, where he hoped to become a headliner at some of the big casinos there. The money was terrific, and thousands of people would see him every night.

  Sometimes other buskers would show up at the Monday afternoon teas. Once P.H. brought The Tumbleweeds, three young men who could juggle anything you gave them including a kitchen chair; and once Nicolai brought Victor and Viv, two mimes who worked so closely together that even when they were sitting around Tallulah’s living room having tea, they crossed their legs at the same time. But the three who came every Monday, week in and week out, were Emmagene Krebs, Nicolai Ion Simonescu and Patrick Henry Mermelstein. And Anna Karenina if you wanted to count her.

  All of the street performers that Tallulah came to know shifted around from one part of the city to another, keeping track of each other and often guarding their corner of the park or what they considered their spot on the sidewalk. The classical musicians preferred uptown locations: the steps of the museum, the street in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or the area around the new Lincoln Center. The more acrobatic performers liked to be downtown at Washington Square. In between were people like Nicolai and Patrick Henry who could collect an audience almost anywhere, but who most preferred to be in Shubert Alley in the theater district.

  Besides having some locations that were better than others, the seasoned performers knew that there were some times that were more profitable than others. These were when movies and plays were starting or letting out. In Washington Square, the best times were on bright Saturday and Sunday afternoons when tourists flooded the streets to see the life of Greenwich Village. There was an unwritten code among the regulars that they take turns at the best times and places, though those who had been performing on the streets for years had the right to claim
the best times and the best places for themselves. They were sometimes as unfriendly to new street acts as the rich and famous entertainers were to them. A few of the established street performers had their own groupies.

  Tallulah and her then Spot made the rounds of the city, greeting the buskers she knew personally. She often stood still to watch a performance from beginning to end, after which she would drop something substantial into the hat and go on her way. And every Monday she looked forward to the visit of Emmagene, Nicolai, Mermelstein the Magician and Anna Karenina, if you wanted to count her. They had all become Tallulah’s darlings.

  Winter is a bad time for street performers. When the weather is very bad, they cannot work out of doors, for no one wants to stand around watching or listening when it is freezing. Emmagene, Nicolai and P.H. sometimes had weeks at a time when they could not work, and they became restless. Emmagene complained that she now had only fifteen thousand nine hundred and six songs left to sing, and there was no one hearing her songs.

  Nicolai hired himself out entertaining children at birthday parties. He said that he had to build another dummy. As much as he loved Anna Karenina, he could see that her appeal to children was very limited; that only very bright children found her funny. His new dummy would be a frog, a pig or a big bird because he thought one of them might be more popular. P.H. got a job helping his uncle with the Christmas rush at his music store in Forest Hills, Queens. The store was called The Magic Flute after one of Mozart’s operas. Everyone in P.H.’s family loved Mozart, music and magic, but not necessarily in that order. Emmagene got a part-time job as a waitress at Chock Full o’Nuts where she could save her voice for what was left of her eighteen thousand songs.

  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Tallulah seldom saw Nicolai or Patrick Henry. Since Emmagene kept more regular hours, she managed to drop by Tallulah’s apartment at least once a week. Tallulah was happy for Emmagene’s company, but she missed the others. It was the us of them that she missed. There was some magic when the four of them were together that was weakened when there was one less—or even when there was one more. Nicolai and P.H. loved performing so much that there were times during the Christmas season, when the stores were open late and the streets were full of shoppers at all hours, that they would rush out on the street after finishing their other jobs so that they could squeeze in a performance or two. On those days, Emmagene and Tallulah would go down to the streets to listen to their friends. Afterwards, they had an open invitation to tea at Tallulah’s.