High life | 7 April 2016

 New York

Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And it’s always the old reliables that stand out: the silvery arcs of the Chrysler Building, the wide avenues, the filigree of Central Park, that limestone monument to power, the Rockefeller Center. Curiously, the recent trend for tall, slender and glassy housing among money-laundering Russians and Chinese does not mix with the city’s motto of ever bigger and grander. It’s as if the transparency of the glass structure is teasing the authorities about the origins of the owners’ wealth. Come in and take a look, we have nothing to hide.

Last week I sat in Central Park reading the newspapers at a comfortable 70 degrees. The cherry blossoms were out, the sun was shining, and I was enjoying a moment of quiet lyricism when I heard a voice that crackled like a BBC programme being jammed by the Nazis circa 1944. The voice belonged to one half of a couple of Napoleonic stature: two tiny people dressed in 1950s style — fedora for him, a veil for her, and so on. The effect was more shabby than elegant, but it was their voices that singled them out. They were pure Brooklynese circa when Brooklyn still had the Dodgers and youngsters played stickball on every corner. This was the Hebraic working class in retirement, he probably a tailor or a small jewellery shop owner, she definitely a ball-breaker.

I am not an eavesdropper by nature, but this was the best ever. It seems that the gentleman in question had three apartments to his name, but had installed her — obviously his mistress — in a fourth one, whose owner could evict her at a moment’s notice.