Mosco Street

The Trouble With Apartment One — Chapter 24

Another favorite Manhattan street appears in this week’s installment of The Trouble With Apartment One…

Corner of Mosco & Mulberry Streets — 1990’s — B. Späth.

MOSCO STREET

Wholly consumed by my excoriations of the present moment and convinced that history had ground to a halt, I paused at the dizzying summit of Mosco Street and gazed down upon a pale Columbus Park and the chalk-white face of the courthouse wavering in the summer heat…
A vertiginous despair overcame me, as countless versions of Mosco quarreled with one another before finally settling upon an uneasy compromise—unsatisfying for all concerned…

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And though these avenues intrigue me, they cloak a mournful recognition—that each beckoning path unfolds, but spends itself in the nameless reaches of the city…

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Dragged down by an obscure compulsion, I descended the steep decline of Mosco Street, and at length arrived at the bottom of the hill on Mulberry, where I leaned against the railing and resigned myself to whatever might materialize in front of me…

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Out of the unbreathable ethers of the afternoon, there emerged a dour and dispirited Chinese marching band from the funeral home on Mulberry. Their somnambulistic bearing was so pronounced, in fact, that I feared it disrespectful towards the dead…

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But at length, they paused and struck a measure of dull and unassuming notes, an Automaton’s Lament of turning gears and levers. And yet they achieved a monumental sorrow, a funerary dirge that settled upon the avenues like ash—each despairing note suspended like a wreath along the length of Mulberry Street.
At once, I seized upon this brittle strand of music—as if a lifeline had been cast in my direction. What outlandish alchemy is this, I wondered?

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However, no sooner had they commenced to play than they suddenly desisted. The dead were dispatched with a brevity that must have ill-prepared them for their passage!
They’ve abandoned us, I concluded, as they fell back into the folds of the afternoon…

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They’re the mirror-image of the deadness at the core, I realized.
I was the conductor of this ensemble!
I was the funeral director!
I was the deceased!

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I’ve had my fill of paper dragons, Ibex horns, and disaffected funeral bands! I complained. The entire district stinks of fish! I said—as I passed the courthouse on my way to Foley Square…

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I am no one, I repeated—three times in quick succession.
And the city rushes in to fill the vacuum…