It’s three A.M. and I can hear that noise again. The sound that echoes from the ancient heating system in my building. Blips of dripping water combined with the atonal glockenspiel orchestra of twenty-some-odd ancient radiators. They used to keep me awake, but after a year here, I’m not sure I could fall asleep without them -- without them or without the perpetual, rhythmic creak that the tenement exhales every few minutes. “The place has neshama!” according to its owner, Mrs. Storch, a sweet, but jarringly judgemental old Slavic Jewish woman who wears too much makeup and hunches over a bit. Apparently she moved here after World War II. The building is falling apart.
“Falling apart?” she scoffed, in Yidd-tinged English. “A building, especially an apartment building, needs neshama, you know neshama?” she prodded, ruffling her pink, polka-dot, silk nightdress.
“No?”
“Soul, it needs soul, a building needs soul.” she clarified hastily . “A building, a home, needs for to be a -- a -- a -- what do you say as another world for living thing -- a being?”
“An entity?”
“A entity, it needs for to be its own entity. Its own entity with its own quirks and strengths and weaknesses and secrets, just like everybody else. These new steel and plastic towers they build? Nice with their beige carpets and their, and their life-less, pre-made walls and floors. Sure they go up in two months, but no character, no story, no neshama. This place, these floors, those walls, were built by hand and have seen generations, pain, happiness, sad times, Hanukkahs and Christmases, honeymoons, divorces, death, and more sex than any one person can imagine. Falling apart? this place is just maturing like anyone else.”
