The Pawnbroker (10 page)

Sol's voice rolled on in the stillness, disdainful of this latter-day craft of his, echoing his vast bitterness for the things he had once considered important and which he now hated because in his loss of them he had been left deprived and ugly.

Yet, not knowing this (nor would he have cared if he had), the smooth-skinned youth with the sly, delicate face basked in his exposure to ancient, terrible wonders, things only faintly shaped by his scattered knowledge of the Pawnbroker's peculiar heritage, his strange survival of fantastic horrors. So he looked at the blue numbers on his employer's arm and tried to work back from that cryptic sum to the figures that had made it; and, more and more, he was involved in an odd current of emotions, softened and blinded and bound.

Until, finally, the Pawnbroker pushed at him almost gently and said, "Enough with the lessons. Get to work now, Ortiz."

And then, to make the severance complete, Mrs. Harmon came in with three suits; Jesus took them upstairs to the loft and went reluctantly back to his cross-indexing, which now must include Willy Harmon's two Sunday suits and the invalid younger Harmon's rare festive change. And Jesus Ortiz muttered about nothing, really cursing the elusiveness of the Nazerman spirit.

"Fee time at my Edith's secretary school," Mrs. Harmon said in her chuckling voice. Then she laughed out loud and shook her head in wonder at the precariousness of her life. "Man d'lifeboats again, another bill. Honest and true, it like bailin' out a leaky ol' boat fill with holes. Pawn somethin' to buy somethin' else, then pawn that. Each time it seem like the boat gettin' lower in d'water. Ain't it a
wonder
a body stay afloat long as it do?" She sighed at her ridiculous resignation. "But you do, somehow you do, one way or another. I declare, sometimes I don't know if the good Lord plan it all this way to test or if he jus' so busy he get to you again and again jus' in time to keep you from goin' under for the third time." And then her rich, imperishable laughter struck on all the objects in the place, stealing all their value by implying that nothing had value without human hands to coax life into it.

"Five dollars for the three suits," Sol said, feeling the buried pressure again. It sent a streak of apprehension through him; he recalled the power of a few blades of grass to grow through and split solid stone.

"I jus' ain't up to horse-tradin' today, Mistuh Nazerman. No use threatenin' to take my suits someplace else. Too tired to bother." She held out her hand for the money. As she buried the bills deep in the shabby purse, she muttered, "Jus' keep them ol' pawn tickets, these and the ones from the candlesticks, too. You an' me both know that what you bury might jus' as well stay dead." For a moment she looked at the gray, untouchable face of the Pawnbroker. "Ain't that right, Mistuh Nazerman?"

"I suppose it is," he answered, his face sightless and only coincidentally directed toward her.

Two women came in with wedding rings to pawn, apparently arrived at similar desperations at the same time. An old Orthodox Jew, wearing a long gabardine coat despite the heat, offered a tiny diamond stickpin; he argued feebly in Yiddish for a few minutes and then took the small loan with a little clucking noise. A Puerto Rican youth brought in a Spanish guitar and took the first price offered without a word; only he plucked a two-note farewell to the instrument on its own strings before abandoning it. A jet-black girl with the face of a fourteen-year-old and a pregnant body gave him her engagement "diamond," which was glass. The Pawnbroker sent her out with it in her hand, stunned and lost.

At noon a man with nut-colored skin and white hair came into the store. He walked over to the counter with an amiability that indicated he had nothing he wished to get a loan on.

"I'm Savarese," he said. He had black eyes and puffy, fighter's features. "I'm agonna giva you d'estimate."

"I expected you yesterday," Sol said.

"I wasa busy." He ran his eyes in mock appraisal over the store and grinned. "Well, after carefula study, I'ma estimate the complete redecoratin' gona costa you five G's."

"Who do I make the check out to?"

"Acame Contractin' Corporation," Savarese said, picking at his teeth with a toothpick.

"How do you spell it?"

"It'sa A C M E,
Acame!
"

As Sol began to write, Savarese looked furtively around for a moment, then silently took a thick envelope from his breast pocket and dropped it in front of the Pawnbroker. Sol pocketed it without looking up as he continued writing.

Savarese took the check from him with a parting chuckle.

"Give you a gooda job, Mr. Pawnabroker, paint the whole goddama place pink anda yellow."

Sol waved him away with the offhand gesture he would have used to brush a bug off the counter.

He opened the envelope, and the inside was greasy-green with money. Fifty hundred-dollar bills bulged out. As he stared dully at it, the steps behind him creaked. He turned quickly to see his assistant gazing innocently at the money.

"I guess Thursdays are paydays," Jesus said flatly.

"Mind your own business," Sol said. He took the money back to the huge safe and, hiding the combination with his body, locked it in. Later, as was his custom, he would take it to the night depository of the bank down the street.

A well-dressed woman, white with mortification, brought in a diamond watch. He loaned her ninety dollars on it, and she took the money with a little wince before hurrying out with the pawn ticket clutched in her hand.

"Now she not a virgin any more," Jesus said. "She been in to a pawnshop, sell her soul to the devil."

"I can do without your jokes," Sol said, involved with that peculiar kernel inside him. What was the matter with him, worrying invisible aches like his fearful brother-in-law, Selig? "You have time to be funny? Go instead to the cafeteria and get me some coffee."

Jesus raised his eyes in mocking surprise at his employer's unusual self-indulgence. "Next thing you be takin' afternoons off to go to the track."

"You must be patient with me," Sol answered sourly. "I am getting on in years." He flipped a coin to Jesus.

The youth snapped it out of the air with a dart of his hand and then winked at Sol for his own prowess. "Black, no sugar?"

Sol nodded impatiently.

While Jesus was gone, Mabel Wheatly came in.

"This here a expensive locket," she said challengingly. "No sense foolin' around, I
know
it's gold."

It
was
gold, heavy and pure. Obligatorily, he scratched and tested, but he knew all the time by the very feel of it.

"Fifty dollars," he said.

"Gimme the locket."

"Seventy-five," he revised, offering the figure she would get from anyone else.

"That worth a hundred easy," she said, taking up her property with an assaying glance at his face, emboldened by his one retreat.

"Not to me," he said, looking into her face as though it were a hollow well.

She saw finality in his expression. For a moment she rubbed the gold with her thumb, massaging prodigious value into it. Then she nodded and dropped it on the counter before him.

As he wrote up the article and made out the pawn ticket, she talked her relief like a man who, after a hard day's work, takes satisfaction in his pay, in the money he thinks will advance him along the road to a particular aspiration.

"Ah, you know all about
me,
Pawnbroker," she said in an easy, confiding voice. "You know what I'm in. I don't have to tell you how hard I work for my money."

"It is peculiar work," he agreed without judgment.

"Oh brother, peculiar is right." She lit a cigarette and looked back with comfortable melancholy at those hardships already behind her. "Like a woman could go right out of her mind if she thinks on it too much."

"Then I suppose you should not think about it," he said with a little serrated edge to his voice.

"I suppose," she said. She watched her exhaled smoke as it was caught suddenly by the fan and torn to pieces. "Got me a hard boss there, too."

"The woman in charge?" he inquired politely as he finished the little bit of paper work.

"Oh no, she all right. No, I mean the big boss, the owner. He one hard man. Not that he do anything I know of. Only the way he look at us girls, talk in a quiet weird voice. Like you just
know
what he threatenin', if you mess around. Big man, too, got lots of irons in the fire, you know."

Sol looked up for a few seconds to stare at the slow-moving cigarette smoke between them. He was teased with an almost imperceptible sense of recognition, of connection. But the smoke caught in the fan's arc and was wafted away, so he found himself looking at the girl's ordinary brown features, and whatever it was ducked down in his consciousness.

That night, before he left, Jesus asked Sol if he wanted him to accompany him to the bank. "I take one of them duelin' pistols and guard you, huh?"

"If you would only do those things I ask you to, I would be satisfied. Never mind volunteering; I do not appreciate it. Just go on home, I will ask you for what I want."

"You gonna smother my initiative," Jesus said with his wild smile.

"Good night already," Sol said, raising his hand and turning his head away in exasperation. And when he looked back, Ortiz was gone.

He went to the safe and took the money out. For the first time he found himself apprehensive over that half-block walk. Formerly, he had always had the policeman on the beat escort him the short way. But in recent weeks, since Leventhal had become so annoying, he had gone alone.

Anyhow, it was still quite light on the street. There were many people around and police were never more than a block or so away. He locked up the store and started down the street.

When he was almost to the bank, he noticed the three men on the far corner, recognized the ash-gray suit, Tangee, the great bulk of Buck White. He hurried the last few dozen feet, and his hands shook as he slipped the envelope into the brass, revolving chamber. But when he looked back at the men after the money was safely deposited, they appeared quite innocent, like any three men commenting idly on the passing scene. And he felt a growing rage at himself, as though his greatest enemy had invaded his body to leave him shaken and unknown to himself.

When he got home that night, everyone but Selig was out for the evening. His brother-in-law sat stiffly in the dim-lit living room. His usually ruddy face was sweaty and pale, and he looked pleadingly up at Sol.

"What is wrong, Selig?"

"I think I'm having a heart attack," Selig whispered in terror.

Sol sat down and took his brother-in-law's wrist to feel the pulse. Selig stared at him like a bewildered animal. The pulse was strong and steady, only a little fast.

"Why do you think you are having a heart attack?"

"I had these
stabbing
pains in my chest before. Then I got faint. No one was here. It seemed terrible that I might die alone. I'm afraid of dying, Sol. I was afraid to move." He spoke softly, without moving his lips, as though careful to avoid even that tiny strain. "I'm not like you, Solly. I haven't been through the things you have. Your life doesn't seem to interest you very much. Not like me, not like me. I must live! I
love
living—eating, talking.... Bertha and I still have ... love ... you know what I mean. I'm terrified, please Sol..."

"Does it hurt you now?"

"Noo-o," Selig said, his expression one of inward inspection. "I don't think so."

"And just how many
stabbing
pains did you have?"

"About three or four," Selig whispered, just turning his eyes.

"And that was all?"

"Yes, except that I got this
faint
feeling after that."

Sol smiled distastefully. "You will not die now, Selig; relax. You are a very healthy man." Surprisingly, there was a note of gentleness in his scorn.

"You think so?" Selig leaned very cautiously into hope. "What was it, then, the pains, the faintness?"

"The pains were nerves. You were perhaps thinking about the possibility of a heart attack for some reason?"

"A teacher in my school, just my age, fifty-four, keeled over today. Never had a sick day, and, boom, he keels over dead!"

"Aha."

"But the faintness?" Selig asked, not letting go of fear too easily, although a craven smile of relief was beginning.

"A natural reaction to fear. The blood leaves your head, you see things as through a smoked glass, sounds get distant and small."

"Yes, yes, that was it exactly." He breathed delightedly the sweet air of fife and began looking around him with great pleasure, like a child drinking in the familiarity of his room after a nightmare. "Oh, Solly, thank you. I wouldn't say this in front of anyone else but ... well, you are a comfort, a strange comfort to me. You're younger than I am ... but it's funny, this will sound foolish, I feel as protected with you here as I did when I was a kid still living with my father. Protected ... a strange thing to say, isn't it? Tomorrow I will want to forget all about this. But now ..."

"First of all, you are a hypochondriac, Selig. But most of all you are a fool." Sol stood up. "Relax now; your crisis is over. You must take care of
yourself.
I have nothing to do with you. I am not your protector, nor am I your father or your doctor or your rabbi. I give you the courtesy of exposing your own foolishness to you, that is all. I am nothing to you, Selig. Now I am going to bed."

"Yes, Sol, thank you Solly," Selig said, still beyond insult.

And that night, Sol Nazerman was ravaged by dreams again. But mercifully, perhaps, they were torn out of recognition, because he kept waking all through the night, waking up with a strange, nameless alarm.

Buck White sat in one corner, brooding in the sound of his wife's flirtatious laughter. When he had been younger, his great muscularity had been an impressive focus for women's attention, but now his laborer's body was just a hard, knotty joke. He had nothing else to offer. Words came out of him in careful couples or trios. When he tried to use more than he needed for request or simple answer, they came out in a garbled winding whose beginning and end were lost to him. Once, he had won seven hundred dollars in a crap game, and his winnings had adorned him in suits and an installment car; people had seemed to smile respectfully at the dazzle he made. He sat there yearning savagely for that affluence again, his huge Bantu face lowering and hard as he watched his wife, Billy, parade her face and body for Kopey, the numbers man.