Toasted Bagels with Butter
Chapter 2: The Pedestrian
The city was another world by daylight. Before lunch, K. had given away all his free papers, the stack lightening in his arms until his hands felt empty, as if he had been holding nothing but air. He decided to continue walking up Second Avenue. It was a beautiful day in New York City, warm for October—a late summer that refused to yield to the coming Winter. The air smelled of roasted nuts and bus exhaust, a pleasant—and legal—high. It seemed everyone on the street was smiling—even friendly—ready with directions, while he was just having fun, window shopping and looking around.
Walking, walking, just walking and looking around. A good, sturdy pair of walking shoes are essential, K. thought, looking down at his sneakers. Maybe it's time for a new pair, he thought, searching the store windows. The avenue stretched before him like an endless ribbon. It reminded him of the story of the guy who always returned to the same spot—no matter how far he traveled. “Who wrote that? He panted; Where's the library?
Out of the corner of his eye, the storefronts winked invitingly. K. could see Saks Fifth Avenue in the distance, while here on 2nd, the commerce was more in his price range. A sign in a window read; SEASONAL CLEARANCE: 70% OFF. The numbers were painted in frantic red, like a circus barker screaming at the passersby. K. paused. The sale was an obvious come-on. He imagined himself inside, surrounded by racks of clothes that could make him look like someone well-heeled, someone who belonged. But he had no money for clothes—not yet—only a commission he might earn from the names he could not find.
He moved on, the crowd getting more crowded. A street performer, a mime trapped in an invisible box, was drawing a small circle of onlookers. K. watched for a moment, fascinated by the silence of the performance. It was a mirror of his own situation: trapped in a box of invisible rules, performing a job that required no one to watch. He nodded his head and walked past.
Further up, the aroma of toasted bagels and fresh coffee wafted from a corner deli. The smell was so potent it seemed to pull him in, but he resisted. He was on an assignment, or so he told himself. The assignment was to walk, to observe, to survey the lay of the land. But what was he surveying? The cracks in the sidewalk? The faces of the strangers? The way the sun set on Strand Book Store, making it glow like a smoldering fire? Literature. He was living a narrative.
He passed a clothing store where a mannequin wore a suit that looked too sharp, too new. K. felt the irony. The mannequin had no name, no history, no money—like himself. It just stood there, perfect and still. He wondered how he'd look in its place. Probably not. The mannequin was safe in its glass case, away from the chaos of the street.
The avenue went on and on, a hectic flow of traffic and pedestrians in both directions. K. let himself drift with the current, his determined pace carrying him forward. He passed a busker playing a saxophone, the notes both sour and sweet, rising above the roar of the traffic. The music seemed to say, I am here, I'm alive, but you are not; drop a tip in the hat. K. nodded to the woozy beat, dropping a coin in the case. The musician didn't look up. Cool.
As he reached the intersection, the tide began to turn. The buildings grew taller, casting longer shadows. K. stopped in front of a department store with a massive digital billboard above the entrance. The screen displayed a rotating advertisement for a new smartphone, the face of a smiling young woman glowing in digital radiance. The text read: CONNECT WITH THE WORLD. K. stared at the screen, a strange feeling rising in his chest. He was connected to the world, in a way. He had a phone, a job, a place to sleep. But he felt more disconnected than ever. The world on the display was bright and full of promise, but the world on the street was becoming dark and indifferent.
He turned to cross the street, his eyes fixed on the traffic light. The light was red. He waited. The cars roared past, a race of steel and glass. And then, he saw it.
A figure standing on the opposite corner, watching him.
He continued up 2nd Avenue, the sun now high enough to cast stark shadows, turning the city into a pattern of black and white. The cheerful hum of the morning seemed to strain as the avenue narrowed and the buildings grew older, more serious. The pleasant melody of the beautiful fall day began to break-up into an atonal medley of off-notes. The shadows lengthened, not with the gentle progression of a Fall afternoon, but with a sudden, oppressive foreboding, as if a decision was being made from a height that no one could fathom.
Ahead, the flow of pedestrians halted. A barrier of police tape and uniformed officers had been strung across the street, turning the thoroughfare into a bottleneck of frustration. A low murmur rose from the crowd, a sound of agitation that cut through the city's usual din. K. pushed forward, drawn by the sudden tension, a darkened passage seemingly over this specific block, casting a literal and figurative shadow over the previous hours of fun, bopping carelessly up the avenue.
A group of protesters stood behind the tape, their signs held high. They were not shouting, but chanting in a low, rhythmic drone that sounded like a funeral dirge. Their signs were simple, hand-painted: SAVE THE CASTLE, NO CONDO, STOP THE DIG.
K. stopped near the edge of the crowd, his heart beating faster. He turned to a man standing next to him, a bystander who looked weary, his hands deep in his pockets. It was the Pedestrian, the same figure K. had noticed earlier. He seemed to be observing everything with a detached, almost cynical, eye.
"What is the issue?" K. asked the man, his voice barely audible over the chanting. "Why are they protesting?"
The Pedestrian turned slowly, his face unreadable. He gestured toward the building behind the police tape, a structure that loomed over the street like a forgotten giant. It was a decrepit, towering edifice of brown brick and soot-stained stone, its windows dark and broken, its architecture a chaotic mix of styles that seemed to have been piled on top of one another over decades. It looked terrifying, yet strangely noble, like a monster that had been tamed only by neglect.
"They want to tear it down," The Pedestrian said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "The old building. The Castle."
"The Castle?" K. repeated, the word sticking in his throat. "But why? What was it famous for?"
"It was a landmark," The Pedestrian shrugged, as if the answer should be obvious. "Or so they say. Now, they say it's in the way of progress. They want to build private condominiums. High-rise glass towers. The height of the new structure will totally alter the character of the neighborhood. It will block out the sun, change the wind, erase the history."
K. looked at the building again. In the daylight, it looked even more like a fortress of the past, a relic of a time when things were built to last, not to be sold. He felt a strange kinship with it, a sense of shared obsolescence. "And the protesters?" he asked. "What do they want?"
The Pedestrian shrugged again, a gesture of profound indifference. "They want to save it. They want to keep it like it is, hold-on to the past. But the past is just a burden, now, isn't it? A burden that stands in the way of the future."
K. looked from the building to the man, then back to the building. The conflict was clear: the public interest of preserving a piece of history, of maintaining the soul of the neighborhood, versus the private interest of profit, of the sleek, impersonal towers that would soon rise in its place.
"But what was it famous for?" K. asked again, desperate for a reason, why he should care.
The Pedestrian turned away, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe it was famous for being a castle. Maybe it was famous for nothing at all. Maybe it was just a building. And now, it's just a problem to be solved. Say, you got a cigarette?"
K. demurred, saying he didn't smoke; and with that, the Pedestrian melted back into the crowd, leaving K. alone with the chanting, the police tape, and the looming specter of the old building, which seemed to watch through its black windows silently, accusingly.
The beautiful fall day was over, replaced by the cold, hard twilight of the city's endless, uncomprehending, march to oblivion.