2. The Siamese Connection

Walking along the street I keep seeing signs on columns at the bottom of buildings saying “Siamese connection on the other side” or words to that effect. I have worked out this is something to do with water hydrants, but it could have been the Far Eastern mafia. New York is after all a city of immigrants, as I am constantly reminded.

We had the painters in the flat the other day. A knock at the door and in came three well dressed people – one from the flat agency and two I soon took to be painters and decorators wanting to have a look at the bathroom ceiling where there had apparently been a leak before we arrived, not that I had noticed anything. They arranged for the painting to be done the next morning.

Sure enough, at 9.30am another knock and a big guy in dirty white overalls, obviously Hispanic, declared: “You ha’ some work.” Seeing the size of him I was disinclined to argue, but since he was not one of the people who had come the previous day, I asked what kind of work? His English turned out not to be good enough to give me an intelligible response, so I prompted him: “You mean painting?” “Yea, pain’in’. You show me.” I showed him. “I come back.” I asked for some details. “in haf a’ ‘our”. The work would take two hours, I gathered.”

Two hour an’ a haf later, he turns up again with several buckets of paint, some steps and a brush, scrapes off various bits of plaster on the ceiling and puts a coat of chemical on it, complains about the smell. He is from Colombia, built like an ex- heavyweight boxer gone to seed and who has gained an impressive paunch. He takes a phone call and all I can understand are his words: “I buy, I buy” – drugs, shares in Google, pastrami sandwiches? and disappears and a’ ‘our later returns with more paint, complaining about the prices in Ma’ha’ [Manhattan]. He asks if I have a broo’. Having no tea in the kitchen, I offer him a dustpan and brush, with a long handle, which he proceeds to unscrew from the broom head and affix to his paint roller. Hey presto, he soon has an undercoat on the ceiling and disappears again for a’ ‘our.

Hardly has he started on another coat than there is another knock at the door. A tall be-turbaned and similarly overalled Sikh, more by sign language than English, gives me to understand he is a colleague of the painter. They have a chat in very broken English. The Colombian asks for a bi’ fave’ and the Sikh agrees to take over. He has the long fingers and wrist of a concert pianist and reminds me of a Heath Robinson drawing. He is as thin and artistic as the Colombian is slapdash (slapping on the paint and dashing off before it can drip on him - the bath is somewhat besmirched). Having finished in the bathroom, the Sikh points to the ceiling outside the bathroom. He asks me something about the “light”. Do I want it painting? Do I want it taking down before he paints? At least that is what I guess he means – it turns out, after he realises my answers makes less sense than his questions, that he wants to know if I want it white? I had understood enough of his colleague’s instructions to him to know there is a tin of off-peach to match the dull colour of the rest of the flat. He is soon finished and cleans up.

The problems of communication engendered by the mixture of foreign languages and pidgin American in which the service sector seems to operate must be legion. A week later I have another knock at the door – a tall Malian says he is from the building owner, Mr Sam (?) and is here about the leak – he is as puzzled that the painters have been as I am puzzled that he wants to test the bathroom and adjoining ceiling for damp. I let him in. He hardly needs a chair to prod the ceiling with a two-pronged electronic device. Can I open the closet door? After the briefest of hesitations I open the wardrobe. His damp tester shows a fierce red – a bad sign. I gather the roof has not been fixed yet and it has been raining on and off for the last few days. They are going to wait for it to stop before going up to fix it.

There are so many different nationalities I bump into every day. I speak French with a Moroccan girl serving in the bread shop in her Muslim headscarf. Her parents would be horrified, she says, if they knew she had an hour’s commute on her own every day from Brooklyn. There’s the Hungarian girl serving in the French bistrot near Central Park; and the Russian cab driver. The Englishman whose cut-glass accent must give communication problems to local customers in the Lexington Avenue Liquor Store where he specialises in French wines, must also impress with his suave, ex-public schoolboy confidence.

Last Saturday there was a Turkish American Day parade – Turkish and American flags, marching bands, floats, local worthies. We just missed the Irish St Patrick’s Day parade. The Irish have been in New York from the earliest days.

In Chinatown, you hear a lot of Chinese spoken, and see a lot of Chinese language signs, but then the Chinese have been in New York so long there is a Confucius Plaza and a statue of the great man. But only the youngest of the Chinese in the 24/7 deli around the corner appear to speak English.

The number of pizza parlours around recalls how much a part of New York the Italians are. Lombardi’s, reputedly the first one, must still be one of the best if our visit last Sunday is anything to go by. We hadn’t realised you make up your own topping and get one big pizza per table, pre-sliced (more or less). The pizzas were 12 or 15 dollars depending on size, with 7-8 dollars to personalize it with toppings. When it came we realized we had obviously picked too big a one. The house wine, a 2003 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, cost 20 dollars. Add a side salad and two espressos, and tax and tip and the bill comes to 65 dollars. There must be restaurants of every nation within walking distance: we have already seen Greek, Indian, Japanese, French (lots), Afghan (really) and more …

Hispanics are now all over the city - like the bus driver yesterday announcing the stops: “Sisty sis stree’ ”, and Hispanic TV stations, including a Spanish-speaking variant of the main New York local news station, NY1.

We must get the ferry to Ellis and Liberty islands, or see them from the Staten Island Ferry. Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty must be so much more impressive than the one I am used to seeing clusters of Japanese tourists around in the Luxembourg Gardens. The real one faced the European immigrants as they sailed in across the Atlantic to be accepted or sent back in the immigration sheds of Ellis Island. There is an immigration museum on one or the other, Ellis, I think.

One Guide Book suggests that the Statue of Liberty must have been a more inspiring sight to newcomers than the long lines waiting to pass the customs check in JFK airport nowadays. We had got (or should I say 'gotten') through immigration fairly quickly and unproblematically, but then we had visas from the UN. We discovered later we should have gone through the Diplomatic Channel which hardly has a line at all. Not that the UN is in good odour in US government circles these days. There is no lack of further would-be immigrants– witness the knots of people always waiting outside the Ukrainian and Peruvian Consulates just down the street from where we live. The American myth remains strong. And I’ll bet that they, as we did, still craned their necks as their plane banked to come into land at JFK to catch a glimpse of Liberty as the symbol of all that awaits.