Fiddler’s Neck Los Angeles: 1962 The city was dark and wet, its streets slick like the hair of so many boys he knew in school. Occasional streetlamps cast an eerie glow that reflected off the wet blacktop. Banished by the ground, the light was rendered again skyward. When he looked in that direction, it did not look like any other night he remembered. Though it grew steadily darker, clouds glimmered from center to edge, unfurling in a jaundiced hue, a sulfuric yellow haze across the sky. For pocket change, you could ride the bus for hours, the whole day. He did this each weekend, starting the previous October, not long after classes began. This was also not long after it was clear he was unlikely to make many friends. When he woke on Saturday mornings, he made breakfast of a piece of fruit or a hard-boiled egg. Then he picked some part of the city to explore yet unmapped to him. Disembarking at any stop whose architecture caught his attention, he wandered up and down streets, noting distinctions between neighborhoods. Skid Row was burdened by the sweet, fetid smell of decomposing trash left rotting on street corners. Standing water with no obvious origin loitered near sewer grates. The F line skirted parts of downtown and extended into Boyle Heights, a neighborhood his father referred to as the Jewish ghetto. From what he could see, the neighborhood bore only external traces of a Jewish presence. It smelled of onions, garlic, and unnamable spices, of hot frying oil, and of Jacarandas, whose petals were unavoidable in autumn. Littering sidewalks and driveways, they plastered themselves to car hoods, trunks, and windshields. Their cloying scent once nearly made him sick to his stomach. Every weekend except the two he had been home over the winter holidays, he perused far corners of this city he grew up in but increasingly found he did not know. Searching for somewhere he felt at home, Saul arrived in South Central, having left it close to last. His father did not often refer to Negroes, but when he did, he rarely had complimentary things to say. Maybe his father’s prejudice left him fearful. Maybe he had not wanted to know his father was wrong about this as he was about so many other things. Anxious for what awaited, he alit from the bus. Saul was a tall young man, even in boyhood, standing at least a head higher than his father by the time he turned fourteen. Now eighteen, and in his first year at university, Saul’s hair, which was always dark but not thick, receded, running backwards from his forehead, in search of sanctuary at the pate of his head. By no means a clotheshorse, Saul’s parents had little spare income for new or fashionable togs, so Saul owned a single pair of pants suitable for cold weather. He was wearing them; walnut-brown wool slacks. Not well-lined, they itched, making him scratch at his upper 154
legs or adjust the pants so they fell against his skin in a less irritating way. Unsuccessful, this only served to draw attention to his behavior, which others judged as fidgety or lewd. Over a plain white t-shirt, he donned his warmest sweater; white, with bisecting cardinal stripes. Though ill-fitting, Saul let his mother pack his only coat following the holiday break, but he did not wear it. His scuffed, brown leather shoes shuffled down the street. It was a bad habit not to lift his feet all the way off the ground when he walked, a habit that gave birth to one of his high school nicknames, ‘Shufflin’ Saul.’ Often it was said with a lisp, like the animated cat. Sometimes they even called him Saulvester. Kicking a pebble, it echoed as it skipped ahead, the neighborhood seeming deserted. Perhaps the abnormally frigid weather kept everyone indoors. Coming to Central Avenue, which at least looked the part of a major thoroughfare, Saul turned left. Apartment buildings, shops selling ice, and some small and modest to moderately-sized homes lined the street in varying states of disrepair. Some had fences running the length of their front lawns. Some had comfortable porches that extended from their front doors, but some had broken windows that looked out onto the avenue like the bruised eye of a prizefighter, patched with the flat of a cardboard box and sturdy tape. Saul imagined the winter chill that rushed in past this weak seal, settling on main floors, and then stalking upstairs. Given the enveloping darkness, Saul decided to find the nearest bus stop and head back to campus when he heard music on the air. It came from an anonymous point ahead. With arms crossed and hands folded under his armpits for warmth, Saul lifted his head into the wind and inhaled, as though sound was something he could smell. Whatever music smelled like to him, it was linked in memory to his mother. He thought of her fiercely black hair which grew darker even as his father’s grayed, the ability of her chin and dimples to communicate with her son from across the room when her mouth could not. Especially, he thought of the fingers of her left hand, calloused from years of playing and teaching music. Before starting school, when he was three or four, Saul sat on her lap while she instructed from the kitchen table or living room couch. One afternoon, he noticed, for the first time, a blemish on the left side of her neck, under her jaw. Reaching to touch it, she brushed his hand away. It was not harsh or angry; she was always gentle, but the motion was firm. After the lesson concluded and the pupil departed, she pointed to the spot.