Read Online Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground by Steve Stern - Free Book Online Page A

to tell myself that she looked very nice considering, but I was skewered by her open eye. As militantly disapproving in death as it had been in life, it seemed to demand to know why all of this was being done to her. Why could she not have been left to carry on sitting in her unscented stiffness by the apartment window, where she had never really been in anyone’s way? This was the point where I had to renew my efforts to believe that, for a change, my father knew what he was doing.
    â€œThat’s my mamele in there,” explained Papa, completing his admonition to Oboy despite the fait accompli. The puller grunted like he was pleased to meet her, though his place was seemingly not to question why; scruples, so far as I could tell, were not a part of his makeup. Then, closing the lid quickly lest she create a public nuisance, Oboy resumed tugging at the casket. This was how he always moved on those occasions when he was disposed to move: like he was in a hurry. As if he were one of those golems out of my grandfather’s antiquated books who must take swift advantage of their quickened bones before they were turned back into inanimate clay.
    Mr. Gruber came padding forward to lend his tacit assistance. He was joined by a couple of loiterers with jaws like blue charcoal, with vests displaying old war medals and torn hobnail shoes showing the toes of union suits. I’d seen this before, how these down-on-their-luck characters would appear as if from the steam vents at the least chance of earning a handout. I was left, as usual, with nothing to do.
    After unlocking the lattice, my father turned around and began, somewhat uncertainly, to orchestrate the entrance of Grandma Zippe into Kaplan’s Loans. As you could tell by the way he was beckoning the pallbearers, with his left hand contradicting his right, the role of director did not come to him naturally. But once he’d backed through the shop door, sweeping aside the show racks that had yet to be hauled outside, my papa was another man. He was competent, even cheerful, a regular impresario leaving no question as to who was in charge. Behind him the pallbearers—who had veered drunkenly at first, grumbling under their burden as they stooped to compensate for Oboy’s dwarfish size—followed faithfully where he led. Gingerly Papa steered them down the aisle between the narrow straits of the display cases. Having thus conducted their safe passage, he left them a moment to fend for themselves. He unlatched the little gate that led through his tiny office to the storage area, then strode on ahead to the chicken-wire cage where he kept his so-called valuables.
    This was my papa’s holy of holies, the cache in which the really vintage rubbish had been culled from the garden-variety—a fine distinction that required a more discerning eye than my own. A little too fastidiously, under the circumstances, Papa cleared a space among the lady-shaped mood lamps and the fractured Victrolas, the model locomotives and the dumbbells endorsed by Eugene Sandow, the alleged papyrus scrolls. He posed a dressmaker’s manikin, outfitted like a headless Marie Antoinette, as a sentry beside the open door of his bauble- and gadget-filled vault. He dumped a brace of dueling pistols and some rubber Walt Disney rodents into a nest of fancy crinoline gowns. He shoved aside the colonnaded ant plantation, the plaster of Paris saints, the clutch of prosthetic limbs, and the taxidermed beaver with a windup mechanism that caused it to spank a bare-bottomed baby doll with the flat of its tail—arranging them all like witnesses at a nativity. He dragged in a couple of sticker-covered steamer trunks to use as a makeshift catafalque; then “Chop-chop,” Papa clapped his hands and summoned the pallbearers to lumber in with the casket.
    The two volunteers especially seemed to be overstating the effort of carrying what was, after all, just an old lady. This was