Cohn - The Heart of the World

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Copyright Nik Cohn 1992
Afterword copyright Nik Cohn 2017

Nik Cohn has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus in 1992
Published by Vintage in 1993

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Donald Baechler/ Ajax Press: Excerpt from pamphlet Wasted Time and Money by Donald Baechler (Ajax Press, New York, 1989). Reprinted by permission.

Def Jam Recordings: Excerpt from Miuzi Weighs a Ton by Carlton Ridenhour and Hank Shocklee. Copyright 1987 by Def American Songs. Reprinted by permission.

New American Library: Excerpt from The Fabulous Showman by Irving Wallace. Copyright 1959 by Irving Wallace. Reprinted by permission of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA.

Street News: Excerpt from How to Make Pigeon Stew by Cleveland Blakemore. Copyright 1990 by Street News. Reprinted by permission.

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781473571709

Nik Cohn was brought up in Derry, Northern Ireland. His books include Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo, Ball the Wall, The Heart of the World and Need. He also wrote the story that gave rise to Saturday Night Fever and collaborated on Rock Dreams with the artist Guy Peellaert. He lives in New York.

ALSO BY NIK COHN

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom

I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo

Market

Today There are No Gentlemen

Arfur

King Death

Rock Dreams (with Guy Peellaert)

Ball the Wall: Nik Cohn in the Age of Rock

Need

God Given Months

Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other England

Twentieth Century Dreams (with Guy Peellaert)

Soljas

Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap

This book is the partial record of a walk I made up Broadway, starting at the Battery and aiming for the Bronx. Originally, I had planned a voyage round the world, but my friend Jon Bradshaw talked me out of it, turned my face to the Great White Way. It is the world within itself, he said. So I started walking. Then Bradshaw died. But I kept on walking still, his spirit crouched on my shoulder.

At the corner of Broadway and Canal, a sheet of stray paper snagged my trouser leg and would not let go. On it I read a life history, neatly typed in single spacing: Well this is the story of a young girl by the name of Carmen Venus Colon, shes 8 years old, very pretty living with her mother her name is Felicidad, brother his name is Hector, and mothers boyfriend Charlie.

This is the year of 1981, this young girl is very trouble. This is a real life story, this is very emotional, this may have been your own life story, but this is an ordeal for a young girl that wants to be the best that she can be, but she had to go through all the obsticles that got in her way.

So please enjoy the book.

It was early January. The morning was bright but bitter cold, far too cold to stand reading life stories on Broadway street corners. So I tucked the page into my overcoat pocket, took shelter inside the Plum Blossom, and called for duck soup.

While I waited, I locked myself in the bathroom and took out Carmens story, spread it flat across my knees. This all started in the Bronx, NY. Well I guess I use to be a good student but after I was seperated from my big brother Hector I was always in my own little world. Well I guess you can always say every kid was in their own little world but I was different, I was the real weird one. I loved my mother alot and also her boyfriend Charlie, the best friend and boyfriend in the world, but I was constantly beat on. I didnt know what I did wrong, it seemed to make no differents. Then by the age of 9 also I was sex molested by Charlie. This really had me in the dumps. But after awhile I got use to it. I mean love comes in all shapes and sizes, you just take it as it comes.

There the manuscript ended.

When I came out into the restaurant again, my soup was waiting on the table but some other man was drinking it, and this man was Sasha Zim.

Alexei Alexandrovich had sent him. If I meant to walk all the way up Broadway and live to tell the tale, hed said, I would need a guide and minder, and Sasha Zim was the very man. He drove a Checker cab by day, played drums at night, and he was in love with streets, all streets, but Broadway above all streets. So where do I find him? Id asked.

In my bath. With his drums, said Alexei. Theyve been sleeping there for weeks.

Neck-deep in my soup, he looked about twenty, a loose-limbed and gangling sort, big-boned and reddish blond, with a tangled mop of hair spilling out from under a cheese-cutter cap. I am sorry abusing your duck but I am tired, very starving, he said. In my taxi, crazyman goes crazy, declaims he is Trebitsch Lincoln, Abbot of Shanghai, master spy, second coming of John Baptist, and I have to take him to Turkish bath, steam away sins for all mankind. Oh, brudder. Turkish bath is closing during AIDS, so now I have to take him to bar, drink away sins for all mankind. Bar he is in Passaic, New Jersey. He wiped his lips; he shook himself. So when do we Broadway? he asked.

Any time youre ready.

Oh, said Sasha Zim, how good is this duck soup.

High on his right cheekbone was a small strawberry birthmark shaped like a tattooed scimitar. In repose, it was so faint, it might have been just a bruise. But as the heat of the soup rolled through him and his blood rose, so did the mark. Now it glowed like a flaming brand: Broadway, he intoned, reciting by rote, is mother of Broadways all over world, mother of lights of Piccadilly Circus and of Place Pigalle and Teatralny Ploschtchad. Great White Way is greatest white way.

Been here long?

Six years, ten months.