Read Online Bitter Bronx by Jerome Charyn - Free Book Online Page B

five espressos served in little glasses. They were never boisterous, and they never asked for the bill. They would bow to the waiter and hand him an envelope stuffed with cash.
    Angela knew the Albanians were taking their own time. They would swallow up Arthur Avenue in ten or twenty years, imprison the Neapolitans inside their own club without ever declaring a state of war. She recognized how shrewd their chieftain was, Lekë with his long nose, his brutal blond looks, his thick hands, and the winter cape he wore no matter what the season. He’d seen Angela across the dining room with its row after row of communal tables, had sent her a flower and a glass of coffee, which she realized must have been some kind of Albanian ritual. But she wouldn’t respond. She never did, no matter how many times the coffees came in their little glasses. And now she had to prevent her bald knight from being beaten to death.
    The Albanians of Bathgate Avenue had no church. They were agnostics who might have preserved a few Muslim, Christian, and Jewish signs. Albanian farmers and bandits had protected the Jews during the German occupation of their country. Not one Jew was delivered to the Gestapo or the SS. Some of the bandits began wearing skullcaps as a mark of respect; they never violated Jewish women. Stars of David and Jewish candelabra remained in Albanian homes long after the war.
    And that’s what Angela found in the windows of Bathgate Avenue; Jewish stars and candelabra mingled with crosses and paintings of Jesus. She didn’t waver for a minute. She walked into Lekë’s social club, even though the door had been painted black and there was a sign that said CATS AND STRANGERS NOT ALLOWED . She’d entered a cavern where money flew like feathers; she’d never seen such an enterprise. Men wagered over bundles of sticks, threw chess pieces into the air like lucky coins, and mutilated deck after deck as they tore up cards they didn’t happen to like. There were women at the tables wearing head scarves; they gambled with the men. They were obedient and insolent in the same breath, bowing to Lekë and his lieutenants, who sat on enormous pillows, and taunting them with their eyes.
    They seemed frightened of Angela, who wore no scarf and did not bow to any of the gamblers. Lekë stared at her from his pasha’s pillow—a blue-eyed Albanian. Angela navigated among the horde of gamblers, propelled by her love for that balding knight at St. Barnabas, and paused near the pasha’s cowboy boots. The social club was silent as a mouse.
    â€œLord Lekë, we have things to discuss.”
    He laughed. “Have you come to seek employment, my little cashier?”
    The Albanians chortled and clapped their hands. “Lord,” one of his lieutenants shouted, “put her to work on her back.”
    And the women laughed louder than the men, causing their head scarves to ripple.
    â€œQuiet,” Lekë said. “Show the lady some respect. . . . I have no secrets from my men, Miss Angela. We are a family—Michael, make her some tea!”
    Lekë’s minions served Angela tea in a glass that was much too hot to hold, but she held it anyhow, drank the bittersweet water. They served her little cakes—almond tarts with raspberry cream at the bottom. But no one asked her to sit, and all of a sudden she was the only one in this dark den who was still standing. It was a cave in the middle of the Bronx, with images of some medieval prince on the wall. He had a handlebar mustache, bushy eyebrows, and long curly hair; he wore a kind of skullcap, an embroidered jacket, and sticking out of his cummerbund was a knife encrusted with jewels. He was, she would learn, Lekë Dukagjini, a fifteenth-century mountain prince who fought against the Turks and instituted his own highland code, which governed tribal warfare; in this code women could govern as well as men, and there were many