Chicago by Brian Doyle Read Free Book Online

counted them one day, measuring in four blocks in every direction from our apartment, and including our building, in which there were five languages, basically one per floor: Polish on the first floor, where we lived, Russian on two, Gaelic on three, Greek on four, and Scandinavian in general on the fifth floor, from Swedish and Finnish to an Icelandic family, the Peturssons, lovely people who made an extraordinary cured salmon dish that I can taste even now on particularly cold days. And there were hats and caps everywhere when I was a boy, and cars became more common. There were the years of great poverty, of course, during which people indeed did sell apples on corners, and line up by the hundreds in hopes of a single job, and line up for charitable soup, and families doubled up or even tripled up in apartments, as they lost their lodgings. I saw all that, yes, and I well remember walking in a crowd of thousands of children to the house of the city’s school chief to ask for food, although I was just along for the fun of it—a friend ran by as Paul and I were on our front stoop and he called to us and we ran after him. But in general our childhoods were pleasant, if pinched, Paul and me; mostly, when I put my mind to it, I remember voices, and angles of sunshine and rain, and animals—the fishmonger had a mule I was especially fond of, as he was not at all recalcitrant or sour-tempered, as so many of his brethren seem to be.”
    Thus spake Mr Pawlowsky at eloquent length, and by the time I stirred myself from my chair and rose to make my own small dinner it was full dark. Not until late that night, as I was falling asleep, did I realize that Mr Pawlowsky had never mentioned anything about his family other than his brother Paul, nor had he gotten the story of himself even into his teenage years. For a moment I was disgruntled, feeling as I did when I was outplayed at chess, but then I resolved to keep asking questions; even then, in the first flush of my career as a journalist, I sensed the irresistible lure of inquiry, the power of an invitation to fill an ear, the open arms of silence welcoming story. I fell asleep in the sure knowledge that there would be many moments to come in which I could tease Mr Pawlowsky’s story out from behind his dignified reserve; and I could also, if necessary, resort to Edward, who knew much and forgot nothing.

 
    6.
    I WENT ALL THE WAY HOME to New York City for Christmas, taking the Hoosier State train through Cincinnati and Indianapolis (I was crazy for trains then, and at one time or another took the Zephyr to Denver, and the Ethan Allen Express to Vermont, and the Hiawatha to Milwaukee), and it was a wonderful time, crammed with laughter and chaffing and intense basketball games with my many brothers, but when I got back to my apartment I was washed with loneliness for the first time since I had come to Chicago.
    I tried to run it off, dribbling my smooth shining basketball ever farther and faster along the lake, along the slippery paths cleared through the snow, and extending my brisk alley explorations much deeper into the west side of the city, which seemed to stretch all the way to Iowa; I tried to walk it off, twice walking home the four miles from Madison Street to the apartment building; I tried, one night, to drink it away, getting all the way to a fourth whiskey at the pub around the corner until Raymond the barman stopped pouring and asked me what was wrong and sent me home with an off-duty policeman who told me jokes in Gaelic and smelled vaguely of rain.
    I even, for once, accepted a social invitation, to a weekend barbecue on the Iowa border, but once there I found the desperately witty banter too much to bear, and drifted off into the cornfields, where I got so helplessly lost that I finally hitched a ride back to Chicago from a carload of burly muddy football players on their way back to school from a pig roast.
    It was Edward finally who rousted me