Jurgen fumbled for the light switch and pushed it with a loud click. A single bulb glowed dimly, suspended from a long wire in the center of the room. He thought that was par for the course. At these rates, he could not have expected much more. Setting down his valise, he thought he would be in better lodgings uptown, as soon as he found work. He laid his viola case reverently across the raw, wooden arms of the room's single chair. In the far left corner was a single bed. It had no sheets, but a few worn blankets folded neatly at the foot of the mattress. Along the opposite wall stood a sink with a cracked mirror hanging above it, a flush toilet with a broken ceramic handle, and a closet door—again with a broken handle. No towels. Putting his valise upon the bed, Jurgen went back down the stairs to see about sheets and towels.
"This is a residence hotel," the proprietor told him, pushing back the few hairs on his head with one hand. "Sheets in the hall closet at the far end—towels too. Maid comes once a week. Toss your sheets and towels down the chute on Tuesday morning. Don't use too many."
"Thank you," Jurgen replied, making a sincere effort at politeness. He went back up and got a set of sheets and a towel, then made his bed.
Afterwards, he sat on the edge of the bed and opened his valise. It contained underwear, a well-used black suit with tails, a silk shirt, a silk hat, soap and shaving kit, and sheaf after sheaf of printed music. Everything else he had sold as necessary; his cash was securely fastened around his waist in a money-belt. He wondered if there were a trustworthy bank in the neighborhood. Tomorrow, he decided, he would have to go look.
Jurgen surveyed the room carefully before turning in. On the back of the door a relatively new calendar was posted with two thumb tacks. It featured a blonde woman with exquisite, long legs and a coquettish smile—advertising a well-known brand of chewing tobacco. It was the fourteenth of November, he noted. Fifty-seven years ago to the day, his grandmother had arrived in New York harbor from Hungary, dragging two young children behind her—with less money in her pocket than he had. He pondered her memory for a moment—she had been his first musical mentor—then went to switch off the light. He laid down on the bed beneath fresh cotton sheets and listened to the far-off sounds of the city—automobiles and trains, mostly—until he fell asleep.
Early in the morning, just after sunrise, Jurgen practiced the viola quietly for an hour or so. He had no clock, but when he judged, by the sounds in the street that the time was past ten, he left the hotel with his viola case under his arm. He spent the day wandering from street-corner to street-corner in a nearby business district along the river-front and by late afternoon had earned enough money for two full meals. He played mostly Stephen Foster songs—everyone knew them and they never failed to bring smiles. Occasionally a nice old lady would stop, and blushing, ask whether he knew one or another of the favorite tunes of some prior season. As often as not, he had never heard of the tune, but when he did know it, he laid into the instrument with such vigor that they always left a good fistful of coins in his open case.
At a nearby hash-slinging café where the cook had anchors tattooed on both arms, Jurgen ate breakfast. The waitress wore silk stockings beneath a soiled uniform with pink and white stripes—and kept a pencil behind each ear, both of them dull with their ends chewed. Jurgen reflected with some amusement that his description could fit the people as well as the pencils.
The next several days passed in much the same manner. Each evening, rather than hastily becoming a regular at any one café, Jurgen preferred to try all of the nearby places in the hope of finding the most comfortable of the lot. On Thursday evening he saw a small sign he had never noticed before, though he had walked down the same street several times. Neatly lettered by hand in blue upon a white ground—it said simply "Calcutta", with a downward pointing arrow. Jurgen descended the dark stairwell, passed one steel door tightly closed with a padlock, and found the next door unlocked. The same name was painted on the door at eye level. He pushed it open and walked in, thinking he might have found a restaurant a bit more exotic than the typical run of cafés in the neighborhood. The lighting was dim, the decor dark and spare. The place was lined with booths near the door, but opened into a space taken over by a checkerboard tiled floor.
He could see there were only a few customers—not more than five or six people, all told. He looked around slowly, holding his viola case under one arm, the other hand laid across the top of it. He was the only white person in the establishment.
Nobody turned to look at him, but kept right on with what they were doing—drinking and smoking, talking quietly. It seemed comfortable enough—and he saw some things of interest at the far end of the room. There were four tables at that end, under dim spotlights.