Just Before the War with the Fascist

I was startled into consciousness by a great banging at the door. It was fierce banging. Loud enough to shake everyone in the apartment building out of a deep sleep, except probably Josef and Naritza, the deaf couple in apartment 26 from Yugoslavia.

My new 19 inch color Toshiba was still blaring. Jack Lalanne, sleek in dark tights, was hawking health and longevity. As I stumbled past him to the exploding barricade, faintly firing synapses retraced the last scene of the Cinemax movie I had fallen asleep watching the night before. Peering through cerebral cobwebs I recollected gray uniformed SS troopers in jackboots pounding a battering ram at the door of some poor cowering physicist who was attempting to scurry into his Parisian attic.

Nearly tripping over an ottoman, I opened the door and looked down onto the top of her head, a slip of a woman in penny loafers and a black cashmere cardigan. Her hair was slicked back like Popeye’s girl. She was wearing designer glasses with black rims over rectangle-shaped lenses, the style which was probably meant to portray avant-garde. But on her face they spoke, “no-nonsense” and “I’m smarter than you.” I recognized her as Nancy Schifner who had lived in number 13 for years, taking advantage of L.A. County’s rent control laws. Someone said she was a writer for one of the late night comedy shows.

She returned neither my feigned smile nor reciprocated my offer of an outstretched hand. Her hands were white and small, almost delicate, like a little girl’s. I wondered how such a small woman could have banged the door so soundly—and not injure herself. Were these the hands that just shook the building? “She must have had a lot of practice,” entered my mind.

“You’ve got quite a set of bangers there,” and I knew that was probably a mistake as it came out of my mouth. Her eyes magnified me with dark sarcasm for a few moments before speaking. In those interminable beats I noticed just how dark and large were those windows to her world. Her head was fixed and unmovable and she didn't blink. I felt she was minutely examining every cell in my body like a giant fly. And that she saw me as something petty and reprehensible; that she was calculating how she might destroy me. Even looming over her I felt small and ashamed in her presence. Why, I didn’t know.

Before she spoke I sensed a pent up anger. But it wasn’t her visage that bespoke it; that was perfectly serene—and deceptive. It was, after all, that Mona Lisa half-smile that had lulled me into proffering a handshake.

Nor was it her voice. She didn’t speak in a loud or shrill manner. She clearly meant business but spoke evenly, almost without emotion. But she was angry at something, someone. I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

In her right hand she held a stack of glossy circulars with advertisements and clippable coupons from giant electronics stores and pizza delivery places down on La Brea. She kept this sizeable stack steady, balancing it between the heel of her right hand and the tips of her fingers. It was suspended above the level of her shoulder like a waiter might hold a tray. And her hip was slightly twisted in relation to her torso like Venus de Milo.

“See these?”

“Huh? Umm…yeah?”

“As manager it is your job to keep people out of this building who deliver these”—she slammed the entire stack at my feet with a thud that echoed across the courtyard and then paused a few beats for effect—“because it constitutes a breach of tenant privacy. And rest assured that I will be watching.”

She then straightened her cardigan and backed off the stoop of my apartment extending the index and middle fingers of her right hand into a V-shape. And pointed them alternately at her own eyes and then in the general direction of my face. It was like watching the enforcer thug in so many bad mobster movies. She possessed total confidence, never a flinch.

Embarrassed, I scanned the doors and windows around the courtyard for signs that the tenants had been aware of the ruckus. There was the sound of more than a few metallic Venetian blind panels being dropped back into place. I restrained the sudden impulse to run into the bathroom and look in the mirror and see whether my ears were red. They felt burning, hot. It was sucker punch, a set up, planned this way. She probably even leaked news of her upcoming TKO of the naïve new apartment manager to a few friends and allies. And she was nearly back to her apartment and I hadn’t even thought of a retort. At least one that I wouldn't regret.

Pretending not to be aware of the dozens of ensconced eyes that watched from behind blinds and peepholes, I hefted the stack of circulars and was about to turn back into my apartment when I heard a tapping noise. In my peripheral vision I saw a fleeting smear of movement coming from behind the window of number twelve. The sound was faint at first, then louder, a coin against glass, tap, tap, tapping on a fragile windowpane.

Focusing on the window, I recognized the old Russian babushka. I had seen her amble around the building in a loose fitting bathrobe with old Soviet military medals fastened to the lapel. She looked like a confused escapee from some asylum. Her gray hair was raked back in a loose bob and she was standing behind the half opened, dusty louvered panes.

She didn't speak but as she cranked the window open but I realized she was trying to signal me. Non-verbal communication was second nature to her, I suspected. Perhaps it was her limited English but in my mind’s eye there was something more intriguing. Perhaps she had perfected this stealthy code as a means of circumventing snooping party precinct bosses back in her old flat in Moscow with its communal bathroom. Or maybe she had been a comrade commando, carrying coded messages to the front lines deemed too sensitive for the radio airwaves. I envisioned her defending the Fatherland during the War with the Fascists.

Through the glass she waved a crooked index finger to get my attention,

[S.O.S.]

then placed it on the owlish dark ring under her right eye. Somewhat over dramatically she bobbed her head and stretched the wrinkled old skin below her yellowed eye. I could just make out the pink tissue underneath her eyeball.

[WATCH OUT!!]

With the other hand she made a left-handed hitchhiker's motion, and in three slow swoops pointed her fist with its outstretched thumb in the direction of Nancy’s apartment.

[FOR THAT ONE!!]

Then she moved her index finger from below her right eye up to the bare skin on her right temple. And with that crooked finger she made a few slow deliberate half-turns, like a make-believe screwdriver.

[SHE’S CRAZY!!!]

I blinked, almost unbelieving. The embarrassment dissipated. A sudden cathartic surge of joy filled my soul like a child alone in a massive Toys R Us store. Tingles came over me head to toe like when I went to the Super-Cuts up on Hollywood Blvd. and they massaged my neck with that vibrator thing.

Entertaining, that’s how this new little war was going to be. Sure, it might only last a few days or weeks from the outset. But it had the potential to make my life pleasurable and entertaining while it lasted. And perhaps the old babushka and I had other allies lurking around the apartment building, ready to come out of the woodwork like an enemy sleeper cell.

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