Read Drunken Angel (9781936740062) for Free Online Page B

with a doorman in a booth, I gasped, “Here for Singer!” and was waved right through. By the gloomy lobby lights I searched the mailboxes, and there, incredibly, affixed to the dented brass lid, was the name—IB SINGER—and his apartment number.
    He met me dressed in the white shirt, black tie, trousers, unsteady on his feet. “Come in,” he said, and led the way into his bedroom, where an open valise lay on the bed. “Alma, my wife, is already down in Miami. I’m flying tonight to join her.”
    â€œI shouldn’t be a pest,” I said. “I can come another time.”
    â€œAt my age, there is no other time,” he said without a hint of jest. “Have a seat.”

    I sat on the edge of the bed, as often in childhood I would perch on my mother’s bed.
    â€œAnd so, what is your trouble?” he asked. I hadn’t said anything about trouble, yet he knew. And so I told him about my obsession with the Holocaust. That I felt alone, not only as a writer but even among American Jews; like a ghost, separate, inhabiting a kingdom of the dead unseen by the living, one made up of the murdered Jewish communities of Europe. I said that in my prose I wrote more for the dead than for the living. He listened intently, while slowly folding and packing shirts.
    When I finished, he looked at me carefully and said: “You were born here, in America?”
    â€œYes, in New York. But how I ended up among the living, I don’t know. I really shouldn’t be alive.”
    He nodded. “This is because your mother was a survivor. She felt guilty and you took this on yourself from her. You might be right. Perhaps you are a ghost. I, too, believe in spirits. This is something we both share. But you should also know that in Jewish lore, when a funeral meets a wedding in the road, the wedding has the right of way. Life comes first. So, you brought me something to see that you wrote? Most young writers do.”
    Ashamed, I nodded and handed him a copy of my magazine containing what I considered my best work, a trilogy of short stories about Jewish American immigrants. After all, the only reason for a broke young student to publish a mag is to feature one’s favorite author: oneself.

14
    I CONTINUED TO WRITE AND ENTERED ONE OF THE immigrant stories for City College’s prestigious Samuel Goodman Short Story Award. It won second prize: fifty bucks.
    Emboldened by success, I audited a seminar with Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, who provoked my immediate outrage by publishing an essay in the Sunday New York Times Magazine in which he characterized his students, which included me, as a bunch of long-haired pot-smoking drunken bongo-playing ignoramuses.
    It was true enough, but my ire was provoked; he was rumored to have been paid two hundred thousand dollars for his services. Incensed by his lack of gratitude, I stormed into his office one day.
    â€œWhat the hell do you mean by this?” I demanded, tossing the magazine article onto his desk.
    He glanced down, recognized the piece. “What I mean is the work pays well, and the Times pays well. I’m in need of bucks. About your edification, or that of your cronies, I couldn’t care less.
I regard you all as utterly hopeless orangutans.”
    He reached down, jerked open a heavy iron desk drawer, removed a bottle of gin with two tumblers, poured us each an ample helping, and offered up a toast, which I, standing there outraged, declined to join.
    â€œHere’s to bongo jungle. And your loss, by the way. This is better stuff than any of the crap you can afford.” He belted it back, wiped his mouth. “But here’s the trick,” he said, gasping and pouring another while nudging my untouched tumbler closer to me. “If you stop protesting, start fugging writing, and if you stop worrying about what some old British arsehole thinks, you could someday afford to buy this kind of gin