A Castle in Brooklyn(6)
Jacob took one sip of coffee, which had now begun to grow cold, folded up the paper in case he needed it for coverage later, and placed it under his arm. He walked into the brisk air, joining the wave of workers seeking an evening refuge. After walking for a block and a half, Jacob began to feel a couple of drops. He unfolded the paper, placed it over his head, and quickened his pace. By the time he reached the school, the light rain had subsided, and he threw the paper, photo of the Mick and all, into the nearest garbage can.
The classroom was on the third floor of a building that housed a high school by day. Still feeling the rush of air as the front door shut behind him, Jacob turned right for the marble staircase and took the steps two at a time. When he reached the classroom at the end of the hall, he was disappointed to see he was not the first one there. Rick Tanaka, one of the Japanese students, who struggled with a new language and an alphabet that was even more foreign to him, was already seated. Ron Kransky, the skinny Pole no older than Jacob, was arranging his books, pencils, and pen neatly on his desk, sitting a respectable distance away from Rick. Again, the door flew open as Sophie Jenick, arms filled with books, an umbrella, and a bag of apples, rushed into the room, settling herself into a corner seat in the back. Sophie, a woman in her early twenties, short and round, her face framed by red ringlets, always looked as if she were late for an appointment, perpetually out of breath. Besides the fact that she knew just the basics of English, Jacob had learned from her essays that she was newly married and came from a town not too far from where Jacob had been born, and as a result of what they shared, she would sometimes smile shyly at Jacob whenever she saw him looking her way.
Jacob wondered about his fellow students. What were their true names before they were Americanized? He was glad that his own name wasn’t too changed from the one he was known by back home.
Jacob flipped on the light, casting a bluish tone to the faces of his fellow students, who nodded at him in greeting. He removed a black-and-silver Parker fountain pen from his coat pocket along with a jar of jet-black ink that he fit snugly into a hole at the corner of his desk. He opened his notebook and began moving his lips quietly, for the third time, to read the page filled with meticulous lettering. By the time he looked up, the class was almost filled with students, and the teacher, a gentleman in his fifties wearing a chestnut-color tweed jacket and sporting a full beard of tight gray curls, was at the desk opening his attendance book. Jacob folded his hands on the graffiti-filled wooden desk where he sat in the first row, directly in front of the teacher’s desk. He waited patiently, as always, as the teacher pronounced the list of names, but halfway through he realized there was a new name: Esther. He couldn’t quite make out the last name, but he was sure that from the sound of it, it was Polish. Not wanting to appear too conspicuous, he allowed his eyes to remain on the open notebook before him. And shortly after, his hand was the first to shoot up when the call for readers was made.
He cleared his throat and began. “My Job” had been the topic for last week’s assignment, and even though filling and stacking seltzer bottles wasn’t the most stimulating profession, if it even could be called that, Jacob had managed to fill a page and a half with the tasks of his day. Setting the bottles in place under the machines, stacking them side by side in boxes, getting ready for the next morning’s delivery. He didn’t trip over any of the words, and he didn’t hesitate in the reading. When he finished, in the interim between his last word and the anticipated teacher’s praise, his ear caught something unusual. Clapping. It stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. Nonetheless, someone had applauded his essay, something never done before in class. He turned to where the sound came from, one row behind him, diagonally to his left. She lowered her head and her cheeks flushed, but not before he could see the color of her eyes. They were blue. The new girl had blue eyes.
The teacher, Mr. Rutherford, commended Jacob’s mastery of the language and, scratching his scraggly beard, even offered a few comments on how interesting the job must be. Jacob smiled. It was an occupation about as bland as the taste of seltzer. The rest of the class proceeded with a grammar lesson on verbs, the conditional perfect tense. “If I had enough money, then I would buy a steak dinner.” “If you had enough money, then you would buy a steak dinner.” “If he had enough . . .” He copied the list of phrases from the blackboard, then, joining his voice with the others, recited the conjugations. Afterward, they reinforced the lesson by writing their own lists of “ifs” and “thens.” “If I had a car, then I would not have to take the subway to work,” he wrote. When they were finished, a few of the others, a heavyset Frenchman with a thick accent, and a fast-speaking typist from Holland who wore a black wig in a pageboy style (Jacob guessed she was probably a pious Jew), read their drills.
Instead of taking the usual break after an hour of instruction, since the slaps of rain against the windowpanes were becoming stronger, Mr. Rutherford dismissed the class fifteen minutes early. The next assignment involved writing an essay on their personal goals in life, making sure to use “If I . . . then.”
Usually Jacob couldn’t wait to get back to his apartment in Borough Park to begin writing. But this evening he wasn’t so sure. It was one thing to write about what a person did for a living, and another to confess one’s private hopes and dreams. He had to ponder the subject further on his way home. For now, though, Jacob had one goal: to catch up with the new student, who was already standing next to the classroom door, buttoning her coat.