A Morning Snow — Hudson River, 1910
(Oil on canvas, 14.5 x 160.5 cm)
BY George Wesley Bellows
Brooklyn Museum

It was December, 1968. The cold had already arrived in New York. One late afternoon around 4 p.m. I was taking one of my most important rides to Manhattan. I boarded the RR (then double R) in Bay Ridge, Manhattan bound. The level of noise on the train was unbearable. This was my third ride there, and it was as annoying as the first. I never experienced something as noisy in my whole life back in Europe. My ears were hurting from the brutal onslaught pushing against my ears. My hands were coming up on their own to cover and protect them. How could New Yorkers take the train noise on a daily basis and not flip out of their minds? A forty minute ride from Bay Ridge to Manhattan seemed an eternity. When my hands weren’t covering my ears, they were searching for a piece of paper in one of my pockets. In doing that, I arrived at Times Square. Once above ground I felt the pressure in my ears easing. That made me feel somewhat better. Gradually, my other senses numbed by the noise came back to life as I walked on 42nd Street towards the East Side of Manhattan. The smell of food from a street vendor teased me… my hands were still fishing for that piece of paper. I was alone at that moment (having arrived in America only three weeks ago) and that paper was like my friend helping me out in a strange city filled with aggression every step of the way. Besides, the address for my first official job in America was written down on it! Without it I would have been completely lost. My whole life in those moments depended on it. I was broke. My wallet had already forgotten the smell of money. It felt uncomfortable, too. If it could speak, it would probably criticize me for failing to help it to maintain its purpose and dignity safeguarding the money I was supposed to supply. I found the piece of paper, and pulled it out: 390 Park Avenue/Lever Brothers. According to the employment agency, my job was going to be in Building Maintenance Service.

Without the paper I would had been completely lost. My whole life in those moments depended on it. I was broke. My wallet had already forgotten the smell of money.

A long walk awaited me on my way to the Lever Brothers Building, between 53rd and 54th Street, but I did not know it. I had to fight the Manhattan crowds. Everybody was rushing to catch the train back home. People were heading in the opposite direction, building human resistance and creating more obstacles. It was funny, too — in retrospect. People were returning home from work. I was leaving home to work. Something was telling me right there and then that something was different and very unusual about my situation. And it was! Only the immigrants were walking my way. (They’re always easy to spot!) Natives were going their own way home to rest. Their way seemed more natural, judging by the numbers of them, and also judging by the watchful hands of the wall clocks in lobbies along the way. Who works at 5 p.m.? I thought. Remembering the work force back home, that seemed even more awkward. The majority would already be at their jobs at 7 a.m. At, or around 4 p.m., they would be enjoying themselves drinking Turkish coffee, fortunetelling using the empty coffee cups — afterwards, strolling around, or visiting “kafics” (Croatian bars), and discussing trivial things as if they held such importance for humankind, like what a dog thinks when he/she wags its tail, or whether “Hajduk” (the Croatian pride — soccer team) was going to beat the Serbian “Red Star” in Belgrade.

All the Manhattan lobbies were mausoleums for special people who died naturally, and who resurrected a short while afterwards — with their own sheer willpower.

Entering the Lever Brothers Building through its marbled lobby, I thought of that place as a first class hotel. When the uniformed security guard at the front desk asked me where I was going, I just handed the paper to him. “Aha, another one! Welcome to the immigrants’ paradise!” He greeted me in a rough American English. His voice sounded sarcastic. Next to his feet, under the reception desk, a brand new whisk broom stared at me like a souvenir which wanted to be lifted and examined, as if to tell me that it wanted to change its spot… This security guard was looking at this broom when he spoke to me. His face was pale, almost wax-like. He looked as though he had been resurrected just one hour before I walked in. His appearance stirred anxiety and fear deep in my stomach.

The cold marble in the lobby of 390 Park Avenue was actually proving my thought that the security guard (and others, too) were being “resurrected.” It also roused my imagination further… All the Manhattan lobbies were mausoleums for special people who died naturally, and who resurrected a short while afterwards — with their own sheer willpower. They put on their uniforms and took their positions at the front desks of all those magnificent skyscrapers. They were allowed to have a little hobby on the side, for being special. The hobby was to make fun of immigrants with half-smart remarks: “How’re things on the other planet? Did you just get here? Did you ride a donkey all the way here? Or did you jump the ship?” Sometimes they would overdo it and scare those foreign job hunters out of their shiny lobbies. The (un)fortunate ones had to look for a job in Manhattan restaurants, instead. I speculated on that thought seeing a group of four immigrants leaving the building with unhappy faces, after talking to this guard.

The main job of any security guard was to safeguard mighty business secrets from evil spirits. And to those shallow-minded guards, all the immigrants entering their buildings were potential evil spirits: communist conspirators, voodoo priests, bohemian poets (cynics), polygamists, KGB agents, Castro’s men, street girls from Havana, ship jumpers from the Hellenic Line, anarchists, sexual intimidators, true-blue adventurers, atheists…

Leaving the lobby and proceeding towards the elevators, according to the guard’s instructions, I dropped that thought. I was happy that he let me in (I did not wish to look for a restaurant job at that point). Still, I was alone, running a few minutes late for my first job. I was anxious to reach the basement and minimize my lateness. Once on the elevator, I forgot to press B and ended up on the 21st Floor. When the doors opened, a mahogany hallway from some forgotten American movie I had watched back home exposed itself in its materialistic beauty. Then it hit me: “THIS IS AMERICA!” I knew right away that this was the wrong floor, and couldn’t be the destination for an immigrant whose clothes still smelled of European corn fields. The paper which read See Bob at the Allied Maintenance Office in the basement was another indication of the wrong place for the wrong person. The elevator was in agreement, too. Oops! Wrong floor! — the cables squealed. The elevator doors got the message, also, producing a gentle closing sound by forcing their rubber strips into a hot, long — all the way to the basement — kiss! It descended with me, the only passenger.

I thought: This is it! This is that biblical Tower of Babel which was started and never finished in Babylonia. It continued to be built right here in America, in Manhattan, at 390 Park Avenue — in the twentieth century…

As I exited, the sign Allied Maintenance Corporation, Bob K., Supervisor was ready to “reprimand” me for being late. Something deep in me reminded me that I was a stranger in a strange land. The arrow next to the sign “took” me to the office where the office cleaners were supposed to report for work. A throng of immigrants were speaking different languages. I thought: This is it! This is that biblical Tower of Babel which was started and never finished in Babylonia. It continued to be built right here in America, in Manhattan, at 390 Park Avenue — in the twentieth century, after so many centuries proving the impossible task of completion. I felt like the lost spirit who accidentally forgot his body and was now floating in a strange land. All around me I saw a human bazaar: Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Argentineans, Cubans, Polish, Italians, a few Russian escapees, South Slavs and their neighbors, Greeks and Albanians, Haitians… Everybody was engaged in some linguistic murmur, at the same time grabbing their cleaning tools and supplies, getting ready to go to their designated floors.

My attention was sinking in anticipation of taking my first work assignment and training from a short, white man in his late fifties, with a thick cigar squeezed between his dark yellow teeth. It looked as if it were trying to escape from his mouth. He looked mean and fast, like a cotton plantation manager from an outdated book. Seeing him, I felt a bowling ball strapped to my feet. Though I wanted to run back to the elevators and forget all about this “nonsense” of cleaning the office buildings in America, my feet couldn’t move. I stayed.

Finally my turn came to speak to this capitalist boss, who was about to put his own imprint on my American destiny. This was much different than my job situation back home. There, when I worked summers as a parking lot attendant at the hotel “Beograd” in Zadar, my boss was one of my own. It was easy to relate to him, a short, calm guy with nice manners. He studied Economics at the University of Zagreb. After finishing his studies, he found the job running the hotel in Zadar.

But this American boss with a thick cigar I knew nothing about. He did not know anything about me either. I had an impression that he wasn’t overly curious about me. After all — why would he be? To him, I was just another immigrant addition to his cleaning crew. And he was ready to show his prestige and power. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Janko,” I said.

He continued: “How do you spell that?”

This question came as a big surprise to me. Back home I took classic Greek, Latin, French, German and nobody ever asked me how to spell. People there say words… nobody spells them. In Croatian you tell your name and everybody automatically understands it… thoughts came quickly to my mind for those few seconds of confusion which he generously allowed me. I had a solution to it (again!) on that piece of paper where my full name was written down. He glanced at it as if contained nothing important.

“What country are you from?” a question came from his, this time, cigar-free mouth. It made me think that the country I came from was more important to him than my individual name. I said Yugoslavia (when I really wanted to say Croatia), feeling some bitter aftertaste in my mouth, saying the word Yugoslavia, as if I swallowed a full spoon of spoiled yogurt.

It made me think that the country I came from was more important to him than my individual name. I said Yugoslavia (when I really wanted to say Croatia)…

His eyes widened up: “Aha, my friend Tito’s country!” He made a sweet friendly gesture with his short, fat hand through the air to stress his statement. I couldn’t tell him that Tito was a hardcore communist who probably wouldn’t shake his capitalist hand… (But, this “my friend Tito” reaction from Americans would happen to me often, making me believe that Tito was a very skillful global-relations politician, fooling even the sharp-minded Americans.)

Finally we got down to the business of cleaning. As my understanding (of English) led me to believe, he told his Puerto Rican assistant to take me upstairs where I was supposed to join a crew of three men working on stripping and re-waxing the hallways. He did remind him, looking at me, that he would check up on me, to see if I fit the job. Working on the hallways, it was revealed to me later, was the highest sophistication of the building cleaning business. Those who were in that category were the “PhDs” of the cleaning industry, as opposed to those “High School graduates” of less important cleaning aspects: toilet cleaning, low dusting, high dusting, Venetian blinds dusting etc. (This deep thought of job classifications was the American brain-child to individualize the work, giving it some importance.)

Once on the floor I was introduced to the three “PhD” floor-waxers. A burly black American with a shaved head, about 6’4’’ was the leader in the group. I remember the other two in the group referred to him as Mr. Slow. It took me a while to figure out correctly why; because, at first, it sounded as “Mr. Toe,” which I thought was more appropriate. He had an old pair of shoes, size 14, coated with a thick layer of wax. But, in retrospect, both names would fit him nicely, considering he was about 280 lbs., which he had to carry around. The second one in the group was a light-skinned Puerto Rican, happy “hombre” Jose. He struck me with his constant singing in Spanish, at the same time dancing (while floor mopping) cha-cha and meringue. He had a fascination with the Spanish word “cho…” which, at the time, I did not know its meaning. Only on the correct observation on my part of Jose’s behavior, when around the nice-looking cleaning girls, did the full meaning of it come to my mind. (One would be surprised how the office cleaners interacted relatively easily in those neon-lit hallways at times when five or six different groups would be working on those deserted floors).

The third member of this group was an Albanian. He was a chain smoker, a white man who looked tired as if coming from another full time job, where his work energy was drained already. He would rarely utter a word. When I was introduced to these guys, and when somebody in this group mentioned Yugoslavia, this Albanian guy let out a heavy sigh, out of some unpleasant deep-rooted feeling. He did not say much to me. He shook my hand as if it were a dead fish. Then, after a few puffs from his Marlboro, he forced a few Croatian words mixing them with Serbian. I translated them all into a question: “What brought you here?”

In that instant I felt like all my dreams died right in the grip of the mop. I squeezed it to death… my ‘life’s vehicle’ started going the wrong way from a one-way street into two-way traffic…

When the Albanian asked me what had brought me here, I couldn’t tell him because I did not have a clear answer. I started telling him something about wanting to become a college professor, about the harsh communist system, about… then this black man said: “Let’s cut the bull… and let’s do the job!” He already had a grip on the large and round machine which (when operated) was turning in place, reminding me of my dog Lisco back home, playfully trying to catch his own tail. This machine was making some monotonous stripping sound, creating waves of dirty water on the floor while extracting the old wax. Mr. Slow was pushing it slightly with his left knee and “dancing” with it from the left to the right side of the hallway. Watching him, I thought of the creature trapped in American minds as Big Foot… yet I had a different name for him for cutting my chit-chat with the Albanian short. He decided to give me work orders. First he handed me a mop, and told me to help out. This was the lowest moment in my life. Officially I was forced to abandon my road to a professorship in that moment, and made a first step on another path with a mop in hand.

In that instant I felt like all my dreams died right in the grip of the mop. I squeezed it to death… my “life’s vehicle” started going the wrong way from a one-way street into two-way traffic… all the hard work I did back home was a waste now… nobody could hear my inner voice’s loud calls for help. With the mop in hand I was supposed to join in when the black man told me. I obeyed. This trio worked in unison as an experienced team of TV reporters: the camera man, the interviewer and the light man. The black man was on the stripping machine. The Puerto Rican was in front of him splashing the stripper and clean water with a mop. The Albanian was mopping the dirty water after the black man stripped the old wax in strings of dirt. At that point the floor resembled a farmer’s field after the flood. Everything seemed well coordinated. Mr. Slow would bark at me in his deep bass: “Take over!” pointing first at the Albanian, then the Puerto Rican. I would jump in, jump out. I tried to make the mop to work with me. But — that wasn’t easy. The mop would be overweight, lazy with the large amount of sucked-up water. It was hard to move it. It wouldn’t follow my orders. It made me pull-push, drag… The mop — in such a condition — was supposed to be squeezed of the excess water using the squeezer strapped on the bucket. In the process of doing it, somehow it would spill back on the floor, making me work harder. My way wasn’t their way! Those cleaning experts looked down on me. To them I was a sloppy beginner. But somehow, I was managing it. The “pros” did not complain much, but they were yelling instructions to me left and right, “Hold the mop the other way! Move quicker! Do not go into the wet area! Back off from the mop a little! Do not splash so heavily!”

I heard their voices, but understood very little of their intended instructions. To them it was fun ordering me around and watching me struggle with the mop.

I heard their voices, but understood very little of their intended instructions. To them it was fun ordering me around and watching me struggle with the mop. Even Jose stopped dancing just to watch me fight with that mop. He was commenting something to himself in Spanish. I wasn’t anxious to find out, either. Mr. Slow was puffing on his cigarette, watching me, motionless. Behind him through the large window I felt the American night peering in, curious as a newspaper reporter working on a documentary. Mr. Slow had a brilliant idea. He wanted me to try to operate his machine. Something was telling me that that was too premature on his part. On my first try I slipped and fell. They all giggled like a bunch of elementary school girls. I tried again. This time the disobedient machine swayed away from me. I tried to hang on to it. But — it was too late! The machine hit the wall making a hole in it. Now, they all cursed repeating the “f” word like the possessed, mixing it with Bob’s name as the one to blame for sending me to them. My attempt was to say something in my defense, but Mr. Slow gave me a look making me “feel” my body slamming against the wall. The Puerto Rican started singing again, and I thought that their anger was surpassing. And it was for a while… then Mr. “Thick Cigar” (Bob) came to the floor. He asked Mr. Slow how I was doing. The black man started a hysterical laugh “infecting” the other two. They couldn’t stop laughing an angry laugh! Bob’s eye caught that hole in the wall. He did not have to ask any more questions. He decided right there to transfer me. On the way out of the building at one o’clock that morning he gave me a piece of paper with “522 — Fifth Avenue” written down on it. It was going to be my job location for the next three and a half years. Needless to say: I fell from the “PhD” cleaning division to the “High School” division — all in one night, on my first official job in America.

— FROM The Blue Moon Across the Fence