A Sudden Stillness

A Sudden Stillness

by Harry Buschman

Frank and Mary DaSilva sat side by side in the living room on a chilly autumn morning with their feet on the window sill. Mary wore gray house slippers. Frank was barefoot. At their side stood a thriving potted palm, now thirty years of age – a gift from the boys on the cutting room floor on the occasion of their wedding.

Outside their third story apartment, the silver rails of the Third Avenue elevated railway glistened brightly in the clear morning sun. It was their habit to sit quietly every weekday morning and watch the trains go by. It was 8:20 am, and at this time of day a train clattered by every 90 seconds, then as rush hour drew to a close, the intervals between trains grew longer. At this point, Frank would yawn, swing his feet down from the window sill, get up and go to bed.

While they sat there, they would comment on every passing train. Their eyesight was trained to catch the face of the engineer as it flashed by, and Frank would say, “There goes four-eyes,” or Mary might say, “There’s the walrus.” From their vantage point they would occasionally lock eyes with a passenger staring dully out the window of the train, and there would be an electrical, momentary connection, almost an epiphany, unspoken and unacknowledged, but riveting nonetheless. The passenger would carry an image of Frank, Mary and the potted palm in his sub-conscious mind all day.

Frank and Mary could have moved from Third Avenue to the silence of the suburbs years ago. All their friends and relatives moved away from Third Avenue during the building boom in the fifties, but Frank and Mary DaSilva preferred to stay on the lower East Side. They had no visitors and even the few relatives who still came to visit them, couldn’t leave for home fast enough. “How can they stand that infernal racket?” “How can they sleep.” “They must be crazy – I’d go out of my mind.”

Frank was on the night shift in a bed frame factory. He didn’t get home until six in the morning. His wife, Mary, adjusted her routine of housekeeping and cooking to conform with her husband’s work-day schedule. She did her chores at night and started supper at five every morning. They would both sleep the day through lulled by the clashing and clanging of steel wheels on the steel rails of the Third Avenue elevator outside their living room window.

They also slept through the bustling scenes of life in the street outside. On sunny days the street under the elevated train was streaked in sun and shade. It created a dizzying chiaroscuro. Common street horses were changed magically into zebras. Trucks and storefronts were camouflaged in stripes of black and white. Looking up at the bright sky above, one could see a latticework of steel beams, cross ties and rails, that in the imagination of many recent citizens, resembled an enormous caged enclosure built to imprison a city of immigrants.

For people who love elevated railways, Frank and Mary’s apartment could not have been chosen more wisely. If they were one floor lower the trains would have been above their line of sight and much of the excitement of seeing them flash by at eye level would have been lost. If they were on the fourth floor the trains would have been below them and their living room view would have been compromised by the sordid passage of life in the apartment windows across the street.

As luck would have it, there was a rail splice just outside their living room window. It was an old splice, well worn, and the uptown train wheels, would pound it with every passing. The building would tremble slightly, there would be ripples in standing water in the kitchen sink, and the potted palm in the living room window would tremble with excitement. Frank and Mary would drop off to sleep in the early morning light counting the wheels as they pounded the splice ever deeper on their way uptown. “That’s an eight-car train,” Frank might say. Mary might agree, or she might not. Combined with the screech of steel wheels on rusty switches, the clangor and pounding lent a rhythm and a purpose to their daily lives.

They were not alone in their love for the elevated railway. Their canary, “Warbles” would fill his throat with song as the train left the Division Street station a block away and sing to it as it roared by. Warbles did not live in the living room, he hung from a peg on the kitchen wall and although he could not see the train, it vibrated the wire harp strings of his cage and he knew something wonderful was happening in the living room.

Frank’s brother lived in Plainview, Long Island and Mary had a sister in New Dorp. On summer weekends they would reluctantly go to visit one or the other, but the utter silence of the suburbs would set them on edge and they would leave for home as quickly as possible.

Frank would say, “I don’t know how they can stand it, all you hear is birds and lawn mowers.”

And Mary would agree, “I know, I know – and they eat outdoors ... ugh! Like animals!”

Quietude was synonymous with the grave; whereas the pounding, grinding, regularity of the Third Avenue El was a symbol of life to the DaSilvas, it set a tempo to the placidity of their lives, and when Danny O’Hara of the Transit Union announced the entire membership would strike the city transit system for the first time ever, Frank and Mary looked at each other in dismay.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Mary ventured.

“Oh wouldn’t he though,” Frank answered nervously. “You know how the Irish are.”

The newspapers talked of nothing but the possibility of a general transit strike. The Mayor warned of injunctions and court orders. “It would raise the cost of a token to 25 cents,” he said. Danny O’Hara shook his fist and countered, “The subways should be free!”

The possibility of conciliation faded as the strike deadline approached. Both sides had strutted and postured to the point where neither could back down.

“The deadline is five o’clock Monday morning,” Frank said nervously.

“Supper time,” Mary said wistfully.

Frank took the elevator to work for the last time on Sunday night. He stood on the windy deserted platform and watched the flickering lights of the approaching train as it lumbered up the hill to the Division Street Station. It was a four-car train – nearly empty and it sounded hollow as it approached the platform. The doors rumbled open, Frank got on and sat down cradling his lunch box on his knees. Across the aisle an old man stared at him and flashed a timid smile on and off like a disconnected light bulb. Above the mounting rumble of the train he shouted, “Night worker, eh? How y’gettin’ home tomorra?”

Frank hadn’t thought about getting home in the morning. Somehow he felt that if he went about his life the usual way the strike would never materialize, and tomorrow morning at the stroke of six, he would punch the clock and the Third Avenue El would be waiting to take him home just as it always had. He would ride home on the silver rails to the Division Street Station and walk the half block to home. He stared at the old man and smiled uncertainly in return – “Guess I’ll have’ta walk,” he shouted.

But all through the night it haunted him. The men on the sleepy night shift in the bed frame factory reported they heard from the delivery men “On good authority.” “They’re still talkin’.” “Danny sez this.” “The Mayor sez that.” No one knew for sure, but everyone knew it was do or die. At four in the morning someone from the spring forging room said the strike was on. Trains, buses, trolley cars, everything – the union was solid behind Danny O’Hara.

Some of the crew lived in Brooklyn, some in Queens – two of the men on Frank’s team lived in far away New Jersey. Frank could walk home, it was only three miles straight down Third Avenue, but it was something he had never done. He loved the Third Avenue El and he wouldn’t walk a block if he could ride.

When the shift closed down at six, the men stood outside in the chilly quiet morning and stared up at the Third Avenue El.

“Well, they done it. The sonsabitches went and done it – now how we gettin’ home?” One of them grumbled. The two Jerseyites turned up their coat collars and headed west.

“Poor bastards,” Frank remarked. “They gotta walk all the way to Penn Station.”

“I gotta hitch a ride to the Bronx,” someone said. “How you gettin’ home, Frank?”

Frank looked up at the dark and quiet framework above him, and in a subdued voice, answered, “Guess I’ll hoof it.”

In pleasant weather and in happier circumstances the walk home under the Third Avenue El would ordinarily be an enjoyable one. There were stores of all description, their ethnic differences sharply defined by invisible borders separated them. It was as though the walker were a giant in a Lilliputian countryside passing through Italy, Germany, Poland, Greece and China. But on this particular day-one of the transit strike Frank’s mood was black and gloomy. He looked up from time to time at the dark, forbidding structure above him, quiet now in the weak morning light. Barricades blocked entrances to the stations and newspaper kiosks were shut tight.

The sight of fresh vegetables in the markets did not revive him, nor did the fat yellow chickens hanging by their feet in the butcher’s windows. Even the swinging doors of the open-all-night saloons did not cause him to break his slow and solemn stride.

“You’re late,” Mary said when Frank walked in and sat at the kitchen table with a resigned sigh.

“Had to walk.”

“I know,” Mary said sympathetically. “They stopped running at four a,m. ... it’s been dead quiet out there.”

“Supper ready?”

“Don’t’cha want to read the morning paper, Frank?”

“I can’t stand to look at the pitchers of Danny O’Hara.” Frank clenched his leathery fist and brought it down hard on the kitchen table. “Look what he’s done to us, Mary!”

They ate in the kitchen. They ate without enjoyment. The canary looked down from his cage on the wall, and sensing an air of melancholy in the room, ventured a plaintive peep. It, too, was aware of the silence, and looking from Frank to Mary and back again, decided it would be better to keep its mouth shut.

“We could listen to the radio,” Mary suggested.

Frank chewed mechanically with no appetite. It didn’t seem important to respond, but after swallowing laboriously he pointed out to Mary there was no sense turning on the radio at seven o’clock in the morning. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “There ain’t much use in stayin’ up in the first place ... think I’ll turn in after supper.”

“But it’s seven o’clock in the morning, Frank.”

“I’m tired, Mary. I had to walk home – besides, what’s t’stay up for?”

Mary stood up and looked into the living room, which only yesterday had been their vantage point from which to watch the passing trains. She sighed deeply and gathered up the supper dishes. “Guess I’ll turn in too, Frank. Soon as I get the dishes done. Ain’t much t’do without the trains is there?”

Frank helped her with the dishes as he always did under happier circumstances. They draped the cover carefully over the canary, and with a last melancholy look at the living room window, retired for the day. The canary, who lived on daylight time and confused by the sudden onslaught of darkness decided it would sing a tune or two.

“Shut up in there f’Christ’s sakes, how can we sleep in here with that noise.” Frank shouted from the bedroom. The canary settled himself in sullen silence for the duration of the day.