ALL IN ONE WILD ROUMANIAN SONG
Some day some one should chart New York—some one who does not know a thing about statistics, who will study every section just for the love of it, without even thinking of selling the story to a newspaper. To this some one I will give some valuable points of which very few are aware.
In the hope that I may tempt such a one, I will give out the points one by one. Here is the first one:
The map of Europe is reproduced in New York by the different nationalities living here; each nationality having as neighbor the same that it has in Europe. Thus, the Greeks, Turks, Syrians and Italians are close neighbors in Europe, and also here. The same thing applies to the Russians, who are neighbors with the Roumanians, the Poles, the Austrians and the Germans. And one must not think that love attracts them. They hate one another as whole-heartedly as only neighbors can hate one another. Perhaps this mutual hatred attracts them: Hatred is not as bad as we have been taught to think. One can, and generally does, love lower than himself, but no one hates lower than himself. Hence:
The Roumanian quarter of New York is perhaps the most interesting one. It really starts at Delancey Street and the Bowery, and is bounded by Houston Street, north of which is Hungary and east of which are Bulgaria, Serbia and a group of other Balkanic peoples.
What distinguishes the Roumanian quarter is the people's carefree way of living. Cafés, amusement places, pastry shops, everywhere. And you can hear music streaming out from every window. The sound from a grand piano on which some one is essaying Beethoven's "Appassionata," or Sarasate's undying and hackneyed "Gypsy Airs," played on a violin to a very inadequate accompaniment. Song, music and color, whichever way you turn.
But you only get the fringe of it, until you come down to Moskowitz's cellar on Rivington Street. And though the wine there is not as good as the music, the place is always full—to the glory of the Roumanians who know that no wine could be so good as to surpass the quality of the music one hears there.
The place is literally filled every night. You see, the real difference between the Russians and the Roumanians is—the Russians talk politics, literature and philosophy when they come together, while the Roumanians like to hear good music and drink wine in company. So they come, whole parties, whole families, children and all, to Moskowitz's.
And Moskowitz himself presides over his instrument, the cimbalon, and striking the tense wires with two little wooden sticks he draws out from them the weirdest sounds, the saddest chords, dissolving into the wildest dances. Of course Moskowitz plays regular stuff also; hits and misses of the popular repertoire of the vaudeville, etc., but he does this only when his guests are eating—orders from Mrs. Moskowitz, you know, who does not want food compared with her husband's Roumanian music.
Marco, the young Roumanian painter, was in love with Fay Roberts, a gifted American girl from up-State, who had made Greenwich Village her abode. She was so gifted in many directions that she was a failure at everything—except being loved. In this she had succeeded very well. A dozen artists and two dozen business men were in love with this possessor of a beautiful head from which brains mirrored through two blue eyes.