Betrayed (1981)

When I arrived in America, with all my worldly goods tied up in a red handkerchief, I was betrayed. In 1980 I had met a man who had said I could stay with him indefinitely when I arrived. . . he did not even open the door of his apartment but made inaudible replies to my announcement of my presence, so I went to my only other friend in America, a man who had constituted himself my 'manager' while I tarried in Manhattan the previous year. So I lived in unaccustomed and uneasy splendour on 39th Street for the first six weeks of my life in America.

This man and his little friend were part-time saints because I slept in their living room, which curtailed their social life severly, but they never complained, never made me feel unwelcome. But it was a great relief to all concerned when one of my spies found me the room I now occupy on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is an ideal spot, though guests look round the place uneasily and say, 'Do you have to live here?' I reply, 'Yes' - but that is not the whole truth. If I knew that I would die sometime during the next two years, I could live in a palace riddled with standard of living, but unfortunately I don't.

I never dreamed that I would live as long as I have. . . but here I am, a somewhat grisly sight, tottering about the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the age of eighty-six. When I got to America I hoped I would die before my shoes wore out but now my entire wardrobe is threadbare and I am threadbare too.