The Street Sweeper

  In truth, he remembered the student as somewhat older than the usual undergrad. But he had never seen her made up like this and he now found his mind toggling between a half-remembered image and the woman now in front of him, this alluring, suggestively dressed maker of Mojitos. No student had ever looked like this, at least not on campus, not that he had seen.

  ‘I was a student in your “What is History?” class. My name is Mehrzad Yazdi.’

  ‘Right! Mehrzad, of course!’ He had never known her name. ‘You dropped the course.’

  ‘I dropped every course. I had to leave college.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘I hope everything’s okay,’ he said tentatively, trying to get right the balance between concern and prying.

  ‘Well, I guess it is now … sort of. Look, I’m not really supposed to be talking now –’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said, looking around at all the other customers milling around the bar impatiently, waiting to be served, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Look at you!’ she smiled. ‘I don’t mean you to apologise but if you could come back some other time.’

  ‘Some other time? I only just got here.’

  ‘No, listen. What I mean is … I’d like to tell you what happened. I kind of wanted to explain ‘cause … yours was my favourite class.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes and I just thought if you live around here –’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Professor Zignelik, you’re not making this any easier, are you?’

  ‘Mehrzad, I won’t … embarrass you but if you want me to act like I don’t even know you … Are you trying to ask me … to leave?’

  ‘No, I’m trying to ask if you’d like to meet me for a drink … one night when I’m not working.’

  ‘You mean here?’

  ‘Sure, unless you don’t like your Mojito.’

  On the night he was to meet Mehrzad Yazdi for a drink Adam stepped out of the shower and began to dry himself with a towel that hung on a hook at the back of the bathroom door.

  ‘The towel dries faster now there’s only one of them hanging on the back of the door,’ he heard Diana’s voice say in his head. Adam ignored the voice but she went right on talking. ‘You already shaved today,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, so? I’m not shaving again.’

  ‘You’re putting on aftershave.’

  Mehrzad Yazdi was dressed less provocatively than she had been when she was working. She’d arrived first and got them a table of the kind, Adam realised, tended to be reserved for well-connected people. Standing up to greet him, she put her hand on his arm just below the shoulder and offered him her cheek, which he half met with his lips but mostly with the slightly percussive sound he thought was meant to accompany the gesture. Halfway now between bartender and student, she appeared so unexpectedly attractive that it made him nervous. He didn’t know what he was doing there. He looked around the bar. He had for a while been focusing on his work to pull him out of his hole. He was making progress. He now had more strands to follow than he had ever had when researching any other topic thus far in his career. There might well be more than one person could handle. He didn’t need any other distractions and there was a part of him that recognised this. But now here he was, nonetheless, sitting in this bar in Hell’s Kitchen with Mehrzad, the ‘Gandhi’ girl. This was Diana’s neighbourhood now. Surely she wouldn’t walk into this bar. But what if she did? Was he ever going to feel comfortable again anywhere other than in the stacks of the Galvin Library at IIT or else interviewing someone in Chicago? Mehrzad was very comfortable there. She knew what to order, how to order, where to sit, how to dress, even how to modulate her voice. She was ‘in the know’. He wasn’t. Despite this, it didn’t feel too bad to be there with her. Would Diana understand that? For all that Mehrzad Yazdi was alluring both in appearance and in manner, and for all that Adam had what amounted to a historian’s treasure trove to unpack, in the ongoing, never-ending, private, almost hallucinatory conversation he was in with Diana, it still mattered to him that Diana could understand what he was doing there. He needed her approval and wondered if that was ever going to change.

  ‘My parents felt this was the best way to exercise their control over me.’

  ‘To refuse to pay your tuition?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But didn’t they want you to finish college?’

  ‘Yes, but they wanted even more to be able to influence all these other areas of my life.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘Him, yes … Actually, they were right about him although for totally different reasons … but even the way I dress, for God’s sake! Like it’s their business at my age! They might have left Iran but they sure took a lot of it with them. They might appear to have adapted to life here but they’re still very traditional people with very traditional values when it comes down to it. That’s their default position: tradition. This is where they go in moments of peril.’

  ‘Peril?’

  ‘Perceived peril. Immigrants smell peril where others smell roses. Especially those coming from the Middle East. Everyone here either thinks you’re a terrorist or else they’re liberals who fetishise “orientalism” and suck up to you because of it. That was part of the problem with my ex-boyfriend. Edward Said was right on the money with that. You’re English, sorry, Australian, I know the accent. So perhaps it’s different with you. You’re a different kind of migrant, less alien. My parents will always feel very alien here. They have a different standard when it comes to my brother, which doesn’t always help things between us. I mean, it’s not his fault but … Not that I’m saying you’re like my parents’ generation. Am I talking too much? Do you want another drink?’

  They got another drink and another after that.

  ‘Mehrzad, have you talked to Columbia about financial aid? There are all sorts of options if you –’

  ‘Believe me, Professor, I’ve –’

  ‘You really gotta call me Adam.’

  ‘Adam,’ she smiled, ‘I looked into everything, talked to everyone. I will go back. I really want to but right now I’ve got rent to cover and … but I will go back. I promise. I don’t want to spend my life mixing Mojitos. Will you be there?’

  ‘Columbia?’

  ‘Yes, I really … I really do want to finish your course.’

  They stood on Ninth Avenue. It was late. He kissed her on the cheek properly this time. When their heads parted she smiled at him intriguingly and walked off down the street. As he stood there with people brushing past him, Adam wondered whether she had wanted more, and whether he had.

  *

  It seemed that there was never a good time for Michelle McCray to speak to her cousin Lamont even over the phone and offer him whatever advice she could. As often as her grandmother had asked her, had urged her, to speak to Lamont and as much as Michelle had always intended to speak to him in the near future, that future never arrived. At any given moment she found that she couldn’t bring herself to make contact with him to apologise for not having stayed in touch while he was in prison, and to undertake to see him, not only with her family but also professionally in order to help him wade through the mire that no doubt his search for his daughter presented. No task she could think of so filled her with guilt or laid her so open to inertia as counselling her cousin on the best way for him to find his daughter. Navigating between her guilt, her inertia and her grandmother’s pleading, she eventually gave her grandmother the name and the direct extension of one of her colleagues, a Ms Linh Tran, to whom she had explained her cousin’s situation.

  Accustomed to the problems he experienced in life invariably becoming somebody’s case, Lamont Williams now needed to call Linh Tran, the colleague his cousin had recommended, in the hope that his search for his daughter might become her next case. The call would need to be made during business hours, which would likely mean during his lunch break.

&nbsp
; Not being able to afford a mobile phone and not wanting to parade his past in front of his colleagues by phoning from the employee lunch room at Sloan-Kettering, he considered trying the payphone on 68th Street but abandoned the idea because of the traffic noise as soon as he’d left the building.

  With his pen and notepad in his hand Lamont walked slowly into the St Catherine of Siena Church, which was also on 68th Street. The church was dark, cavernous and seemed empty. He was beginning to panic. His lunch hour was being used up and he hadn’t begun to talk to Linh Tran. Eventually he found the priest who, after some explaining by Lamont, was very understanding and offered him the free use of his phone from his private office. Aware that he would soon need to go back to work, he managed to speak to Linh Tran and arrange with both her and the priest of St Catherine of Siena a time and date for a long phone call.

  At the agreed time the following week Lamont returned to the church, found the priest and made the call from the priest’s office with the priest intermittently standing there watching and listening to Lamont’s side of the conversation.

  Was Lamont already legally recognised as the father? He wasn’t sure. What exactly did that mean, ‘legally recognised’? Was he married to the mother when the child was born? No, he wasn’t. He’s never been married to the mother. Did he get his name on the child’s birth certificate? Lamont didn’t remember. Wasn’t it meant to contain his daughter’s name? The parents too, yes, of course. He couldn’t say. Has the mother ever applied for child support? No, she hasn’t.

  ‘I used to give her money but … you know, nobody made me. I just did it. She was my daughter and I was working then but … never … you know … like, official child support.’

  ‘Did you or your daughter’s mother ever sign a form and submit it to the Department of Vital Statistics?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘’Cause you could get on the birth certificate that way.’

  ‘I don’t know if I ever did sign a form for the Department … Vital Statistics. Let’s say I didn’t.’

  ‘So then you’re telling me you’re not sure you’ve established legal paternity?’

  ‘I mean … I’m the father. I know that. But I don’t know what’s been established like that.’

  ‘Would you say you had a close relationship with your daughter prior to going into a correctional facility?’

  ‘Yes. I did. Very close, definitely.’

  ‘Did you ever change her diaper?’

  ‘More times than I could count.’

  ‘Did she ever call you Daddy?

  ‘She always called me Daddy.’

  ‘If a court were to ask her if she ever visited her daddy in jail, what do you think she’d say?’

  ‘She did visit me but only at the beginning. She was about two and a half then. She’s eight now.’

  ‘You haven’t seen her at all since she was two and a half?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So I don’t know what she’d say. I mean, I don’t know what she’d remember.’

  ‘And you don’t know where the mother is?’

  ‘No, I tried to find out but … ain’t had no luck yet which is why I needed to speak to you.’

  ‘Mr Williams, I think you’re going to need to go to court and file a visitation petition.’

  ‘Okay, well, how’d I do that?’

  ‘Your sister said you’re working at the moment?’

  ‘You don’t mean my sister. You mean Michelle? She’s my cousin.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sorry, your cousin. Are you still in employment, Mr Williams?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘In the Bronx?’

  ‘No, I live in the Bronx but I work in Manhattan.’

  ‘Okay, ‘cause you’re going to need to go to court during business hours, say between nine and five to file the petition.’

  ‘See, Miss Linh Tran, how can I do that? I can’t leave work. I’m still on probation at my job. We get put on six months’ probation and I can’t just … you know, I can’t just leave. Where is the court?’

  ‘I think you’d need to go to the Family Court, which is down on Lafayette Street. Maybe you could get help from the Legal Aid Society, which is right by there on Church Street.’

  ‘I know a lot about the Legal Aid Society. Lot of time inside for the stories to get around ‘bout the work they do.’

  ‘Yeah … well, they do have a horrible caseload. Come to think of it I’m not even sure they do this kind of work.’

  ‘What are my options if they don’t?’

  ‘Well, you could always see a lawyer in private practice who specialises in this sort of thing but it costs.’

  ‘What does it cost?’

  ‘I couldn’t say exactly.’

  ‘Well … Miss Linh Tran, could you maybe give me a ballpark figure?’

  ‘You could probably find someone who would do it for between $150 and $350.’

  ‘So if I could come up with $350 I could get someone to take care of it for me? I don’t know how long it would take me to find that kind of money.’

  ‘No, I mean between $150 and $350 an hour.’

  ‘An hour?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Well, how many hours it gonna take to file these documents?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. You could probably find a lawyer who’d do the whole thing for between about … let’s see … maybe $3000 to $5000.’

  ‘Miss Linh Tran, my daughter’s gonna be twenty-one before I get that kind of money. Do I have any other options?’

  ‘Well, like I was saying, you could go to the Family Court and do it yourself.’

  ‘So if I took a day off of work to do that, what would I have to do?’

  ‘Well, it shouldn’t take a whole day. You’d just go down there and file a visitation petition. You’ll be told to come back about six weeks later and then they’ll give you the relevant paperwork –’

  ‘So that’s like another day off of work?’

  ‘Well, you’d have to go there for some time; again it shouldn’t take the whole day. They’ll give you the relevant paperwork and explain the correct procedure for effecting service on your daughter’s mother.’

  ‘Effecting what?’

  ‘Effecting service; that just means there’s certain specified ways she’s to take delivery of the documents.’

  ‘But I don’t know where she lives.’

  ‘Well, see, that’s a problem. You don’t seem to have what a court would call “standing” with respect to your daughter so that’s why you need to file the petition in the first place.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t know where Chantal is in the first place and in the second place … I mean I can’t be takin’ all these days off of work, not while I’m still on probation. I got to get through probation before I can even think about cuttin’ any corners.’

  ‘And you’re not in a position to engage a private lawyer?’

  ‘No, I’m not currently in that position.’

  ‘Mr Williams, I don’t know what else to say. Do you think you can wait till after your probation period with your employer is done?’

  ‘I can’t see no other way, Miss Linh Tran. But even then if I could get down to the court on those days, that still won’t mean I know where Chantal is livin’.’

  ‘I know this might seem hard but if you could wait till you’re finished your probation … you could call me again then.’

  ‘Well, I thank you, really I do, but even then … What if I still don’t know then where Chantal is livin’?’

  ‘Won’t you be in a better position to find out?’

  ‘I guess so but …’

  ‘You don’t have any evidence of your daughter being in any kind of danger, do you?’

  ‘No. I mean I don’t have any evidence of her at all.’

  ‘Well, if she’s not in danger … I don’t mean to sound harsh because I know how much you want to re-establish contact wi
th your daughter but maybe your best bet is to wait until your employment situation is more secure. Don’t you think? You’ve already waited so long. I don’t know what else to advise. Maybe you’ll need to hire a private detective to track down the mother but I really don’t know what they’d charge. Mr Williams, I really think it might serve you and your daughter best if you can secure your employment beyond the probation period. It will look good to a judge and it will help you or at least make it easier for you to get any time off you may need. It will probably help you in lots of ways.’

  The priest who had been listening, initially coming and going on the pretext of needing things from his office, eventually gave up pretending and just stood at the doorway watching Lamont, listening as hard as he could. When Lamont got off the phone he put down the receiver and said, automatically with his mind far away, ‘Thank you, Father,’ and began walking out in a hurry to avoid being late back to work.

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Lamont, walking quickly through the darkened church towards the exit on 68th Street. The priest was trailing behind him. Lamont had to get back to work. That seemed to be what Linh Tran was saying. Just get through the probation period. Everything starts from there. Hope starts from there. The soles of his shoes made quick sharp noises on the stone floor of the church. The priest hurried to catch up to him.

  ‘I said “good news?”‘

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘Glad you got some. I gotta get back to work, Father.’

  *

  In Poland, in the years between the war to end all wars and the war after that, one in three inhabitants of Warsaw was Jewish and at least one of the other two felt it was much more than that. So persistent and widespread was this feeling, particularly among the intelligentsia, that the universities instituted what was known as a numerus clausus or closed number, a quota on the number of Jews permitted to study at university. At some universities those Jewish students who came within the quota were made to sit in special ‘Jewish’ seats in the classroom. At certain universities right-wing student activists instituted ‘Jew-free days’ and sometimes ‘Jew-free weeks’. A Jewish student caught on campus during those times was more than usually likely to be assaulted by the student activists or else by thugs from outside who would go looking for them. Those Jewish students who wanted to undertake postgraduate studies or to study medicine, engineering or law were forced either to study abroad or to consider other ways of earning a living. The Polish civil service was similarly closed to them and an increasing number of intellectual Polish Jews sought the modest but economically secure path of teaching school children. Some felt fulfilled by teaching while for others it represented a painful compromise. Many of them dreamed of something beyond their schools and some of them even worked in their chosen fields in the hours their school obligations allowed.