Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Aaron

A few weeks ago I had come home from a bike ride and I was chaining my bike to the street sign outside my building. An old man approached. He was wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and a plaid shirt that clashed, not that I'm the fashion police. He had white athletic socks pulled up almost to his knees and black dress slippers.

Before I continue, let me just say that I've edited the man's words because he had a very foul mouth, dropping F bombs right and left.

He came up to me and said, "I used to have a bike in Miami. I would ride it to the beach every day. I couldn't ride it here with all these hills but in Miami I could still ride even now but someone stole my bike." He had a slight accent that I couldn't place. Then he shrugged and said, "C'est la vie!" He said, "That means 'That's life' in French. Do you speak French?"

I told him that I spoke a little.

He said, "I lived in Paris for many years but now I live between here and Miami."

Then he said, "You don't leave your bike out here on the street do you?" I told him that I only put it out during the day when I was going to be using it again but I took it in at night. I also told him that once I forgot to bring it in the day before I was going to be away for two weeks. So it stayed out there for two weeks. The only thing that happened was that the handle bar grips were stolen.

He told me (again) that he had a bike in Miami but that it was stolen.

I asked him where he was from originally. "Poland," he said, "But I escaped from Poland when the Germans came. I am Jewish. My brothers were in the Polish army but I was only 17. So I heard two boys talking about escaping to Russia. I told them to take me. The one boy said, 'no, I will not take you!' but I said to him, 'You will take me or I will tell the police what you are going to do.' So he said okay I will take you.

"I went home to say goodbye to my mother. She was such a good, smart woman. My father had been dead since I was a child and my mother did everything. She cried and I cried but she told me to go. Of course, I never saw her again. She died in the camps.

"So I went to Russia. The Russians accused all Polish refugees of being spies and they sentenced me to 25 years hard labor in the gulags. You know the gulags? So I stayed in the gulags all through the war and it saved my life but after the war, the Americans helped get the Poles released and I went back to Poland. I came from a city of 5,000 people, 3,000 Jews. Only 3 Jews came back alive, my cousin, me and another man who still lives there today. My cousin came to America. I went to Paris.

"In Paris I worked as a tailor in haute couture. Very nice job. But it was the Cold War. My wife and I didn't want to live in Europe through another war so we came to New York. We stayed for a few years but we liked Paris more so we went back. But it was better for our children here so we came back to New York. And I bought an apartment in Miami.

Then the man changes course a little. I was just listening.

"I know this rabbi who says 'god this and god that' and that is fine for him but you know what I say, 'Where was god in Poland? Where was god when they killed my mother and my brothers? And so, I say, that is fine for you rabbi, but I don't believe. If you want to believe, fine, but I don't.

Then the man realized that his fly was down. He looked down, zipped up and said, "Well, I like to be ready at all times." (This was obviously a sexual reference.)

Then he went on, "I like New York but I can't take it in the winter. I can't take the cold. My cousin told me, 'Come to Miami.' And I said, 'What do I want with Miami but I went for a visit and I bought an apartment the first week. I had sciatica. When I escaped from Poland, for a week I stayed in the swamps on the frontier. A week sleeping in the swamps and then five years in the gulags. I got sciatica. Then I moved to Miami and swam in the sea every day and no more sciatica. I mean I can f#@% all night now. If you have sciatica, swim in the sea.

I had to go. So I asked him his name. "Aaron," he said. I said, "The brother of Moses."

"Yes," my father's name was Moses. My brother, Abraham. My other brother, Yaakov."

"I'm Martin," I said.

"Oh, I know another Martin who lives here. Two Martins."

I told him I'd see him again and if he ever wanted to borrow the bike, he could. He said, "I can just steal it from here!"

I hope to see Aaron again. By calculations he's about 87 years old.