THE PHILANTHROPIST  

He replaced the first poster with another. This one was even more difficult to read. He studied it before continuing his presentation.

“So it behooves us as leaders in the vanguard of our field to develop products that help the unfortunates of our society.” He plopped on the bed out of breath as if he had run a mile and picked up the camera. “Allow me to collect my thoughts,” he said, followed by a deathly wheeze. What if I were caught in this ancient stranger’s room as he keeled over from a coughing fit? I didn’t know the first thing about CPR.

“Mr. Wentworth. I'm afraid I don’t understand the purpose of your presentation.”

“Very well, lad,” he said, struggling to clear his throat and head. “As Professor Emeritus of Columbia University's School of Engineering …”
“You taught at Columbia?”
“Nineteen nineteen to thirty-nine,” he answered staunchly, “until I decided to expend my energies full time in entrepreneurial enterprise.”
“You stopped teaching forty-five years ago?” I asked, astonished.
“Thirty years ago,” he corrected.
“Nineteen thirty-nine was forty-five years ago,” I said.
“Oh, I see,” he answered vaguely, gazing at the camera rocking in his hand.

I don’t think the old man knew where he was. He was living in a degenerate hotel in a state of senility without a reliable concept of time and place. How long was it that he last walked out on the street? I saw that the only window in the room was so filthy that no natural light was available to him.

“Mr. Wentworth, if you don’t mind my asking: how old are you?”

“September fifteenth, Eighteen ninety-two,” he said.

“How long have you been living here?”

“This is my home,” he said, unsure of the answer I was seeking. He rose again and lifted a few yellowed newspapers from the under the bed. The curled edges crumbled in his hands as he turned the pages. “See,” he said, pointing to a column on an inside page. “This is my weekly column.” From the few parts that remained readable, I saw that the column was titled “An Eye on Science” with a byline of Dr. Chester Wentworth. A photograph of a young Mr. Wentworth bore no resemblance to the feeble man sitting beside me, but the date blazoned on top of the page explained why it was unrecognizable: November 29, 1926.

“May I read this?”

“No need to,” croaked Mr. Wentworth. “Allow me to summarize. In it I successfully predict the advent of the portable camera and that family ownership of such would become commonplace.”
“Mr. Wentworth, haven’t you heard of VCRs?”
“Do you mean victrolas?”
“Why did you call my organization, Mr. Wentworth?”

“Well, I summoned several institutions such as yours because I realize the time has come to offer my legacy to those who would benefit from it. And here,” he said, handing me the camera, “is one of my many inventions. I have dubbed it the picture-taker-maker. It can self-develop a photograph within one hour.”

“You invented this?”

“Patent number two-five-eight-one-four-seven-zero-three-three-three, nineteen forty-one,” he said.
“But this thing has been on the market for years.”

“I’m looking to sell the patent rights to an organization such as yours,” he said, ignoring my last comment. The rat scampered frantically back into its hole. Abigail dashed into the room and leapt on the old man’s lap. “There you go, my lovely,” he sighed, stroking her into a delighted purring spell.
“What are you looking to sell it for?”
“Considering the significant capital outlay in research and development,” he started, then, without a shift in tone, “how much can your organization afford?”
“I don't think we'd be interested in buying it.”
“Very well. Then I'd be glad to give it to your organization gratis.”
“Mr. Wentworth, I don't think there's much need for this in our organization. Or in any organization, for that matter.”
“But don't you see the limitless potential it has as a training device for your unfortunate people?”
“We call them mentally retarded.”
“Very well,” he snapped with as much energy as his failing lungs could muster. “These mentally retarded individuals can be trained with the picture-maker-taker.”
“In what way?”
“Well, for instance, they can take and see pictures of themselves and learn from that.”
“How?”
“And then as they learn, they will achieve their cure more rapidly.”
“Cure? Mr. Wentworth, there is no cure for retardation. These people are born with irreparable brain damage. They don’t get cured of their disability. They learn to live with it.” Mr. Wentworth stared at me, agape, as if by comprehending my words he were swallowing a final, bitter medicine. After a long pause, he asked, “Then why does your organization exist?” “To help them become productive, to offer them guidance in living their lives. To accept their disability and learn to live full lives in spite of it.”
“There is no cure?”
“No sir.”
“Then we must find one.”
“Excuse me?”
“We must … find … the cure.”
“I don't think that’s possible,” I said handing back his old camera.

Miss Smith entered. “You trying to sell that boy your camera?” she asked. “You gotta case, old man!”
“Mr. Anderson, this is Miss Smith,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“Paul Almonte,” I corrected, shaking the singing cleaning lady’s hand.
“Wentworth’s a funny old man,” she said. “You know he keeps inventing the same things he played with fifty years ago? But that don't stop him. He been reading these same books a hundred times. Nothing gonna change him but the grave.”
“I was telling Mr. Anderson here that you sing like Bessie Smith.”
“That I do,” she said proudly.
“Why don’t you sing for us now, Miss Smith?” he asked.
“Now this boy don’t wanna hear me sing no blues. I told you I don’t know how many times to keep that cat locked in the bathroom.”
“Why don't you just keep your room door closed?” I asked the old man.

“He afraid he gonna die on that bed and no one gonna know it,” she answered for him. “I keep telling him he don’t need to worry about that once he gone. Now you lock up that cat so I can finish cleaning the hallway.” But she didn’t wait for him. She grabbed Abigail herself and headed for the bathroom, knocking down a stack of books on the way. I looked at the old man sitting on the bed: ninety-two years old, barely alive, helpless in this dark and dirty room where he dodged death every day by presenting his half-century old invention to an endless stream of unsuspecting gold diggers, spared from utter loneliness by the chiding's of a cleaning woman. Miss Smith walked past us and back into the hallway. She put the vacuum cleaner back on and began to sing the blues. Mr. Wentworth was right: this woman had a resonant voice so powerful it rose about the harsh, mechanical droning of the machine.

“Mr. Wentworth, don't you have a family?” I asked.

“Once,” he whispered, closing his eyes. He was about to answer more thoroughly, but his lips were unable to form the words. I wanted to leave but I didn’t know how. I just sat on the bed beside the old man and loosened my tie. Suddenly I felt his hand clutching mine. “We must,” he said, his teeth rattling and eyes watering. “We must.”
“We must what?”
“Don’t give up, son. There has to be a cure for these poor souls.”
“It can’t happen, Mr. Wentworth.”
“How can you say such a thing?” the old man stammered. “How would you know? I am a man of science.”
“And I am …”
“Young man, you are a fool!”

That was about all I would take for one day’s work. I could see what this feeble relic of a man must have been like bellowing at his students in a lecture hall a half century ago. Even now his stubbornness was overbearing. No doubt only ten years ago when he had his wits about him he was even uglier to his subordinates than Mr. Hershowitz was to me. No wonder his family deserted him reeking or stench in this fleabag hotel, where he had no choice but to make nice with this brutish Bessie Smith charwoman. A man of science, indeed. I looked pitilessly at his quaking countenance and was sure he would die with his next breath. Or the next one. Did he really think he would live forever? I could hear Miss Smith sing the words of her song with the fervor of a gospel singer:

If me and my baby fuss and fight
And the next day we all right
Ain’t nobody’s business if we do.
If I go to church all Sunday
And decide to cabaret on Monday
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.

“Anything can be,” the old man said, his voice growing hoarse, “anything.” He tightened his grip on my hand. It was surprisingly strong. As it grew tighter, I could feel warmth running through his fingers. It was my blood that was warming him. At that moment all I could think about was how I needed my job and how Mr. Hershkowitz was going to grill me about my visit to the home of Mr. Chester Wentworth, philanthropist. Mr. Hershkowitz had knocked on every door of every Manhattan building in his years of pavement pounding, but he didn’t know or remember that 229 West 27th Street was the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, a place for old, forgotten men and cleaning women singing the blues.

“We must,” the old man said again. I put my other hand over his, and slowly released myself from him. He just sat frozen for a moment and then lay on the bed. Miss Smith kept singing over the roar of the vacuum cleaner. I walked into the hallway and saw the elevator door open, but I felt that running down the dark staircase would more quickly bring me to daylight. Filled trashcans waiting for the garbage trucks now lined the sidewalk, so I had to step over the derelict who was still lying in the gutter.

On the way back to Children’s House, I pictured myself striding into Mr. Hershkowitz’s office without knocking and tell him that instead of pounding the pavement fundraising for the mentally retarded all those years, he should have been trying to find a cure for them. Surely, the fact that no one else found a cure should not stop us from trying. We needed faith, something that Mr. Hershkowitz had lost somewhere between his eighth and nine thousandth sales call. I wanted to tell him that if he had no faith, then Children’s House was nothing more than a scam of the worst sort. I wanted to tell him that he should wait to be on his deathbed before he’d realize that his contribution to the world just wasn’t worth the price of the dirt that would bury him. I wanted to tell him that I quit selling so that I could find a cure for derelicts lying on the urine-stained entrances of welfare hotels, and for ruthless security guards who hammer them with nightsticks, and for mindless clerks who stare at TV with their back s their patrons, and for Bessie Smiths who sing over the roar of their vacuum cleaners, and for senile men abandoned in furnished rooms. And I wanted to tell him, “Don’t call me Pablo, Izzy.” Instead I told Mr. Hershkowitz everything that had happened at the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, and that the philanthropist’s offer was indeed a generous one. We had just gotten there too late.

Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do by Everett Robbins and Porter Granger

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Philip Vassallo, Ed.D., a corporate communication consultant, is working on his first two books, "Like the Day I Was Born: Forty Poems of Forty Days" and "The Art of On-the-Job Writing." He dedicates this story to the memory of his dear friend Harry Kamish.

Contact Philip Vassallo at: vassallo@aol.com

December 6, 2001
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