A Sudden Stillness
By Harry Buschman
On a chilly autumn morning Frank and Mary DaSilva
sat at opposite sides of the living room with their feet on the window sill.
Mary wore her gray house slippers, Frank was barefoot. Between them stood a
thriving potted palm, now
thirty years old, a gift from the boys on the cutting room floor on the occasion
of Frank and Mary’s wedding
Outside their third story apartment, the rails
of the Third Avenue elevator
glistened brightly in the clear morning sun. It was their habit to sit quietly
every morning and watch the trains go by. At this time of the morning a train
went by every 90 seconds, then as rush hour drew to a close the intervals between
them grew longer. At that point, Frank would yawn, swing his feet down from
the window sill and go to bed.
While they sat they would comment on each passing
train. Their eyesight was
trained to catch the face of the engineer as he flashed by, and they would say,
“There goes four-eyes,” or “There’s the walrus.” From
their vantage point they would occasionally lock eyes with a passenger staring
out the window of the train, and there would be a magical momentary communication,
unspoken and unacknowledged, but riveting nonetheless.
They could have moved from Third Avenue to
the stillness of the suburbs years
ago, all their friends and relatives left during the building boom in the fifties,
but Frank and Mary DaSilva preferred to remain on the lower East Side. They
had no visitors and even the few relatives who still visited them couldn’t
leave for home fast enough. “How can they stand that infernal racket?”
“How can they sleep.” “They must be crazy -- I’d go out
of my mind.”
Frank was on the night shift in a bed frame factory, he didn’t get home ‘til six in the morning. Mary followed her mother’s advice and adjusted her routine to conform with her husband’s. She did her housework at night and started supper at five in the morning. They would both sleep the day through lulled by the clashing and clanging of steel wheels on the steel rails of the Third Avenue el outside their living room window. They slept through the bustling scene outside also. On sunny days the dappled shade created a dizzying chiaroscuro. Common street horses were changed magically into zebras. Trucks and storefronts were camouflaged in stripes of black and white. Looking up at the bright sky one could see a latticework of steel beams, cross ties and rails, that in the imagination of some people, resembled an enormous caged enclosure built to imprison a city of immigrants.
For people who love elevated railways, Frank and Mary’s apartment could not have been chosen more wisely. If they were one floor lower the trains would have been above their line of sight and much of the excitement of seeing them flash by at eye level would have been missed. If they were on the fourth floor the trains would have been below them and their living room view would have been compromised by stolen glances of life in the apartments across the street.
As luck would have it, there was a rail splice just outside their living room window. It was an old splice, well worn, and the train wheels, like a blacksmith’s hammer would pound it deeper with every passing. The building would tremble slightly, there would be ripples in standing water in the kitchen sink, and the potted palm in the living room window would tremble with excitement. Frank and Mary would fall asleep in the morning light counting the wheels as they pounded the splice ever deeper on their way uptown, combined with the screech of steel wheels on rusty rails, the clangor and pounding gave a rhythm and a purpose to their daily living.
They were not alone in their love for the elevated, their canary “warbles” would fill his throat with song as the train left the Division Street station and sing to it as it roared by. Warbles did not live in the living room, he hung on the kitchen wall and although he could not see it, the sound of the train vibrated the bars of his cage like harp strings and he knew something wonderful was happening in the world outside.
Frank’s brother lived in Plainview, Long
Island, and Mary had a sister in New
Dorp. On summer weekends they would go out and visit them reluctantly, but
the utter silence of the suburbs would set them on edge and they would leave
for home as quickly as possible.
Frank would say, “I don’t know how they can stand it, all you hear is birds and lawn mowers.”
And Mary would answer, “I know, I know
-- and eating outdoors ... ugh! Like
animals!”
Quietude was synonymous with the grave, whereas
the pounding, grinding
regularity of the Third Avenue El was a constant reminder of life to the DaSilvas,
it set a tempo to the placidity of their lives like a metronome, and when Danny
O’Hara of the Transit Union announced the entire membership would strike
the city transit system for the first time ever, Frank and Mary looked at each
other in dismay.
“He wouldn’t dare,” Mary ventured.
“Oh wouldn’t he though,” Frank
answered nervously. “You know how the Irish
are.”
The newspapers talked of nothing but the possibility of a general transit strike. The Mayor warned of injunctions and court orders. “It would raise the cost of a token to 25 cents,” he said. Danny O’Hara shook his fist and said, “The subways should be free!”
The possibility of conciliation faded as the strike day approached. Both sides had strutted and postured to the point that neither would concede.
“Five o’clock Monday morning,” Frank said nervously.
“Supper time,” Mary said wistfully.
Frank took the elevator to work for the last time on Sunday night. He stood on the windy deserted platform and watched the flickering lights of the approaching train as it lumbered up the hill to the Division Street Station. It was a four-car train, nearly empty and it sounded hollow as it approached the station. The doors rumbled open and Frank sat cradling his lunch box on his knees. Across the aisle an old man sat staring at him, a timid smile kept flashing on and off like a disconnected light bulb. Above the mounting rumble of the train he shouted, “Night worker, eh? How y’gettin’ home tomorra?”
Frank hadn’t thought about getting home
in the morning. Somehow he felt that
if he went about his life in the usual way the strike would never happen, and
tomorrow morning at the stroke of six, he would punch the clock and the Third
Avenue El would be waiting for him just as it always had. He would ride home
on the silver rails to the Division Street Station and walk the half block to
home. He stared at the old man and smiled timidly in return -- “Guess I’ll
have’ta walk,” he shouted.
But all through the night it haunted him. The men on the sleepy night shift in the bed frame factory would report they heard from the delivery men “On good authority.” “They’re still talkin’.” “Danny sez this.” “The Mayor sez that.” No one knew for sure, but everyone knew it was do or die. At four in the morning someone from the spring forging room said the strike was on. Trains, buses, trolleys, everything -- the union was solid behind Danny O’Hara.
Some of the crew lived in Brooklyn and Queens,
two of the men on Frank’s team
lived in Jersey. Frank could walk home, it was only three miles straight down
Third Avenue but it was something he had never done. He loved the Third Avenue
El and he wouldn’t walk a block if he could ride.
When the shift closed down at six, the men stood outside in the cool quiet morning and stared up at the Third Avenue El.
“Well, they done it. The sonsabitches
went and done it -- now how d’we git home?” One of them grumbled.
The two Jerseyites turned up their coat collars
and headed west.
“Poor bastards,” Frank remarked.
“They gotta walk all the way to the PATH
tubes.”
“I gotta hitch a ride to the Bronx,” someone said. “How you gettin’ home, Frank?”
Frank looked up at the dark and quiet framework
above him, and in a subdued
voice, answered, “Guess I’ll hoof it.”
In pleasant weather and in happier times the
walk home under the Third Avenue
El could have been a fulfilling one. There are stores of all description, ethnic
differences sharply defined and friendly borders separating them. It is as though
the walker were a giant in a Lilliputian countryside passing through Italy,
Germany, Poland, Greece and China. But on this particular day-one of the transit
strike Frank’s mood was black and gloomy. He would look up from time to
time at the dark, forbidding structure above him - quiet now in the weak morning
light. Barricades blocked entrances to the stations and newspaper kiosks were
shut tight.
The sight of fresh vegetables in the markets did not revive him, nor did the fat yellow chickens hanging by their feet in the butcher’s windows. Even the open doors of the saloons did not cause him to break his slow and solemn stride.
“You’re late,” Mary said as Frank walked in and sat at the kitchen table with a resigned sigh.
“Had to walk.”
“I know,” Mary said sympathetically. “They stopped running at four am ... it’s been so quiet.”
“Supper ready?”
“Don’t’cha want to read the morning paper, Frank?”
“I can’t stand to look at the pitchers of Danny O’Hara.” Frank clenched his fist and brought it down hard on the table. “Look what he’s done to us, Mary!”
They ate in the kitchen. They ate without enjoyment.
The canary looked down
from his cage on the wall, and sensing the melancholy in the room ventured a
plaintive peep. It was also aware of the silence, and looking from Frank to
Mary and back again decided it would be better to shut up.
“We could listen to the radio,” Mary suggested.
Frank chewed mechanically and without enthusiasm.
It didn’t seem important to
respond, but after swallowing laboriously, he pointed out to Mary there was
no sense turning on the radio at seven o’clock in the morning. “As
a matter of fact,” he said, “There ain’t much use in stayin’
up anyways ... think I’ll turn in after supper.”
“But it’s seven o’clock in the morning, Frank.”
“I’m tired, Mary. I had to walk home -- besides, what’s t’stay up for?”
Mary stood up and looked into the living room
which had been their vantage
point to watch the passing trains only yesterday. She sighed deeply and gathered
up the supper dishes. “Guess I’ll turn in too, Frank. Soon as I get
the dishes done. Ain’t much t’do without the trains is there?”
Frank helped her with the dishes as he always did under happier circumstances. They put the cover over the canary, and with a last melancholy look at the living room window, retired for the day. The canary, who lived on daylight time and was confused by the sudden onslaught of darkness decided he would sing a song or two.
“Shut up, f’Christ’s sakes, we’re tryin’ t’sleep in here.” Frank shouted from the bedroom.
© Harry Buschman 2002
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