IIn the heart of Times Square, amid the Monday morning chaos, a man with haunted eyes and a sledgehammer reduced a brand-new Volkswagen to smithereens. Was it rage or grief that fuelled his fury?

Early Monday morning, as heavy traffic and tangled knots of jostling crowds crisscrossed the gird of New York City's streets, those in the vicinity of Times Square were greeted by a scene that attracted even the most jaded eye. It was a weird sight even for Times Square, the seedy and gritty home of hustlers, grifters and drifters, porno shops, dilapidated hotels, alkies, drug users and drug deals, prostitutes and pimps, and porn flicks.

Schmerz, a middle aged man- lanky and bony, all sharp angles with a gaunt face and fierce blue eyes- with a sledge hammer in hand, was slamming and pounding and smashing and utterly destroying a brand new Volkswagen Bug that was parked on a diamond shaped section of cement directly below the large clock that marked the heart of Times Square.

Within minutes a large and unruly crowd had gathered around the car. Strangers, who, generally, would have hardly acknowledged one another’s existences, murmured back and forth about what they were witnessing. 

While some were spellbound by the intensity of the man who was mumbling to himself in a strange and angry guttural mix of a foreign language and English, others greeted the scene with a strange glee. As the crowd grew in size so did the ferocity of the reactions to the man’s actions. Indeed, it wasn’t long before inane comments, bizarre speculations, derisive asides and rude and threatening jeers erupted.  Several onlookers voiced their dismay that a perfectly functional automobile was being destroyed without any discernible reason.

"Tisha B'av on...umschlagplatz!" the man muttered in strange intonations and words in a scorched voice, gibberish to the ears of those surrounding him. 

"What's the nut saying?" a male voice shouted, smart-assedly to no one in particular.

The question did not elicit a response.

Someone else surmised aloud that the bony man was out of his mind. Another suggested he was drunk. Still another suggested he might be going through a divorce and was destroying the car so that his wife wouldn’t get it.

“Give me a shot at it, fella,” someone yelled.

“Yeah, me too,” another male voice shouted.

“Hey, maybe the thing’s a ‘lemon’!”

“Huh, yeah!”

“I bet your right!”

“Smash it harder!”

A decade later, when performance art had come into its own, some may have speculated that what they were witnessing was simply another performance artist practicing his craft. But that was not the case that day in Times Square. Far from it.

With each smash of his long-handled sledgehammer, the man, ostensibly oblivious to the hundred or more people in the crowd now surrounding him, spit out what sounded like strange curses. The more he cursed, the more enraged he became. And the more enraged he became, the harder he swung the hammer. And the harder he swung the hammer, the greater damage the vehicle incurred.

"It doesn't go away. Never! Never!" he mumbled in a guttural English.

With each smash of a fender, the shattering of a window, the caving in of a door, the explosion of a taillight, the brutal heckling of the crowd grew in intensity.

“Whattya nuts, man?”

“Go back to Bellevue[1]!”

“Hey, ya supposed to drive da thing, not to beat it da death, ya jamook!”

Laughter exploded from the assembled crowd.

"Mein mutter! Mein vater! Mein brooders!" the man muttered in an agonizing tone. "Blown awa…machine gunn...graves."

He then began repeatedly murmuring a single word-one that sounded like "cottage" to the uninitiated ear-as he wind-milled the hammer with all his might.

"What's that he’s grumbling about?" someone asked.

“Ah who knows? And who cares? The guy outta be locked up!”

Tossing the sledgehammer aside, the man, his face distorted and ashen, his wiry frame contorted, began pounding the side of the tan V.W. with his fists. As he pummeled the metal with frightening ferocity, an eerie screech emanated from deep in his throat with each thunderous hit.

Taken aback, the crowd largely went silent. 

The man, his face aflame, smashed his fist through the window, shattering it, and ripped his fist back out, leaving his fist and arm covered in blood.

A collective groan erupted from the crowd.

A few egged him on. 

"Someone, stop him," a woman's voice rang out. "He's going to bleed to death."

The only other voice that was heard, other than the man's guttural groans, was a young punk's curt, "Let him!"

Tattooing his fists against the car, the crazed man began to cry uncontrollably, and as he did, his attempts at English evaporated like steam rising from the manholes along Manhattan’s streets, and the guttural tongue of the foreign language he spoke took on a life of its own.

Each smash of his fists against the car left behind a long smear of blood.

His countenance, though contorted, showed no pain, just raw, abject fury.

Suddenly, after veering backwards, the man quickly reversed his path and ran headfirst towards the VW, smashing his head into the driver’s window. As if he were hearing voices in his head urging him on to complete the job as quickly as possible, he jerked himself backwards three or four feet before bursting towards the automobile again, ramming the top of his head full on against the window, this time cracking it.

"Stop him, please," another woman's voice called out. "He's going to kill himself."

“Who cares?” a young male gruffly shouted.

“Yeah, let him,” another young male voice screamed. 

"Police! Move aside! Now!" a hefty New York City Police officer shouted as he pushed his way through the crowd.

"C’mon people, now, not tomorrow, for Christ’s sake! Let us in!" another burly officer said, his duty hat pulled low over his forehead.

Once both policemen had shoved their way through the crowd, they each quickly grabbed the man as he stumbled backwards, readying himself for another run at the car with his head, and took him to the ground.

The older of the two officers, glanced up at the crowd and shouted, “OK, the show’s over, let’s get movin’!” 

“Yeah, today, not tomorrow,” the other officer added.

The crazed man squirmed around in an effort to free himself from the officers’ grip, but they had him under control and simply pressed down harder on his head and lower back.

Once the man quit resisting, the officers helped the man to his feet and slowly pushed him through the small knot of people who still remained in the area. The crazed man’s mouth opened and closed without uttering a sound. 

Those still standing around continued to speculate aloud as to what drove the man to destroy the new vehicle.

“He’s out there, man! I mean, really out there!”

“I think he’s high on somethin’.”

“It can’t be booze! Gotta be drugs!”

“I dunno, but it was one helleva show!”

What none of them had seemed to notice, or if they did, it didn't seem to register, were the series of dark, smudgy blue numbers on the man's bony, pale left forearm.

[1] The first psychiatric hospital in New York City.