The Pawnbroker (16 page)

"I am a buyer for a department store, so I guess we are colleagues," Dorothy said brightly.

Sol nodded and sat down to his coffee and chocolate cream pie. He had not eaten at Tessie's and the sweetness on his empty stomach nauseated him slightly. He poured himself another cup of coffee to wash the saccharine taste from his mouth.

"I don't know if you realize, Doc, but my brother-in-law here is a very educated man. Taught at a university in Poland at one time. Before the trouble, of course." Selig smiled over at Sol. "I've often said he should be a teacher."

"Teachers are paid poorly," Sol said. "I would have difficulty meeting my obligations on a teacher's salary," he added with a malicious twist to his mouth.

"Dorothy has an excellent job as a buyer," Bertha interceded quickly. "She even goes to Europe every year."

"Is that so." Sol nodded listlessly. "And how is Europe these days?"

"Oh I'm mad about Paris. Of course most of my business is there. But Rome and Berlin are my second loves. There is an atmosphere we don't have here, something mellow. You can almost smell the difference."

"Rather a stink, as I remember," Sol said, wanting to sever all the talk.

There was a white silence for almost a minute before Bertha leaped in like an alert lifeguard. "My brother just loves to shock people. Joanie calls him a character. You just have to understand his humor. Solly,
please,
" she chided smilingly, as for a slightly racy joke.

For a few minutes they talked carefully around him, and he sat like a stone in their chatter. The single woman glanced curiously at Sol from time to time, trying to establish her attitude. Finally she aimed her modish head at him.

"Where is your gift shop, Sol?" she asked.

"It is not a gift shop," Sol answered deliberately. Bertha turned with an expression of dismay for her relaxed vigilance. "It is a pawnshop. I am a pawnbroker." He gazed innocently at the looks of politely veneered shock. "True, some people may buy things as gifts. But mostly it is a hock shop, a place where poor people obtain ready cash on the collateral of anything and everything."

He got to his feet then and turned a pleasant smile all around. "Now if you will excuse me, I have had a hard day. It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Kogan...."

"Call her Dorothy," Bertha said weakly.

"Perhaps sometime when I am feeling better..."

Behind him, he heard Bertha's voice struggling to cover the unsightly hole he had left.

"Of course, Sol has had a difficult time," she said. "And then he is so bookish. But we are gradually drawing him out, getting him to join in the community a little...."

Upstairs, in the darkened bedroom, he put himself to sleep by calculating the compound interest of his savings; he made ones and fives and tens go jumping like green birds, which he added and multiplied and divided until his mind seemed filled with just that feathery rustle, and he slept.

 

He was flat on his back, staring at the glaring surgical lamp. Around him was the starched rustle of the surgeons' and nurses' white smocks. But he could see nothing except the purpling violence of the light. Some of them were laughing and making jokes as they worked just out of the periphery of his vision. He felt no pain. But he heard the sawing of bone, and he knew that it was his bone. There was such a cheery exchange between the doctors, though, as between men enjoying a mutuality of interest. It was hard to realize ... he felt no pain. Then there came the clunking sound of parts dropping into a bucket, the sounds of leakings and drippings.

"W
HAT ARE YOU TAKING OUT OF ME
?"
he screamed, seeing himself "boned" like some beast being prepared for someone's meal.
"Stop, stop,"
he shrilled, visualizing so clearly how he would be as a soft, collapsed carcass of flesh.

"
Shut up, Jew," a blue-eyed nurse snarled into his face. "Shut up or we'll take your prick, too.
"

So he lay still after that. However small a destruction they aimed at, it was far larger than they knew. But at least he felt no pain now and he could pretend he was dead.

"
All done," a doctor said. "It will be interesting to see how he functions now." A murmurous medley of voices sounded a cold glee.
"If
he functions, if he functions at all, if you know what I mean.
"

Someone laughed in gentle admonition.

"
Ah, Berger, Berger, you are a terror, you are," another voice said.

Sol howled in a fall of dizzying terror.

 

He stared at the quiet, moon-made shadows on the American wall. There was the sound of the family's minor alarm, the footsteps of Selig and Bertha taking advantage of their brief wakefulness to go to the bathroom. And then the silence, which Sol wouldn't allow to claim him. He lay awake with bulging eyes until the sun came into his room like a trustworthy guard. And he slept a little while then.

Another of the whores came in first thing in the morning. She was a tall, very dark Negress in her late thirties. Her face was welted and swollen with the marks of old and recent beatings, and her eyes sparkled like black stones. She had a gold cigarette case to pawn and she spoke with a cigarette in her mouth, her head tilted back against the smoke, one eye almost closed.

"Come on, Dad, what this worth? Got to have eatin' money. Yeah, of Rose fired from d'house. Got to go in business for myself. Got to have a place to park it, you know. Hey, but dis gold, Pops, worth big money, ain't it?"

She watched him examine it, muttering all the while so her cigarette rode up and down in her mouth.

"Got to pay the ol' doctuh fo' mah sickness an' get me a pad to lay mah bones. Got to have a little somethin' for a beverage to still mah nerves. Cause mah nerves is real bad, let me tell you. So, Dad, you tell me, you tell me." She wore a red satin dress and her bare chest was turtle-skinned, her breasts stiffly delineated like those of an old woman wearing a steel-ribbed brassière.

"Ten dollars," he said, breathing through his mouth to avoid the overwhelming stench of her perfume.

"Oh, Daddy-o, Ah got to
live,
" she whined, her swollen black face further contorted by the cigarette smoke.

"Why?" he muttered through his teeth.

"Make it fifteen, Dad," she said, hearing only her own plea. "Ah could make it wid fifteen."

"Ten, ten, that is all," he said, raising his voice.

"Okay, okay, Mistuh, sure, sure," she said placatingly, too marked up by men to argue. "Ah take it. Thank you, thank you, fine." And she made deep nods of agreement, like a child accepting the firmness of punishment.

A man came in with a couple of suits, and Ortiz took him upstairs to try some newer ones on.

An old, white-haired man with a snowy mustache edged into the store. He was dressed in a neat but worn-looking suit and a slightly frayed blue shirt, buttoned up to the neck but without a tie. Under his arm was a neatly wrapped package, which he clung to as he hovered near the doorway. For a few minutes he looked wistfully out at the street. Then he took a firm breath and marched over to Sol.

"I would like to raise some money on this, young man," he said, shouting a little. "A temporary loan. I want the transaction carefully recorded. I plan to return for my property in the very near future, so don't try to sell it." As he talked with his eyes admonishingly on the Pawnbroker, his arthritic fingers fumbled with the knot.

"We keep merchandise for a prescribed period; it is the law," Sol said with a tiny smile. He watched the misshapen fingers struggling with the knot for a minute.

Then he took a razor blade and slashed quickly at the cord. The old man stepped back at the pop of the severed string, dismayed at its being taken out of his hands so quickly.

"Mind you, now, I know how much this is worth," he warned weakly, glancing down at the hands that had failed him.

It was a beautifully carved chess set of rich hardwood, and a chessboard of inlaid teak and walnut. Each piece was carved in the likeness of an ancient figure; the rooks were elephants with howdahs on their backs, the pawns were foot soldiers, the knights proud horsemen, the bishops sly clerics with oriental features, the kings and queens lordly, towering majesties.

"It is a lovely set," Sol said in a musing, tender voice. His father's brother had owned a set similar to this, a million years ago. "They are obviously carved by hand." He picked up the white king gently and smiled down at the miniature sternness of the features.

"You have an eye for these things, I see," the old man said happily. "Oh yes, it's very old. My father bought it ... oh, it must be over eighty years ago now. I've had it for over forty years myself. I wouldn't part with it for a minute only ... temporary reverse. Act of God, so to speak. There's been some confusion about a pension check. Even at my age a man must eat." He chuckled and touched his mustache in a lordly gesture, obviously a man above haggling.

"I can only loan you fifteen dollars on it," the Pawnbroker said in a flat voice.

The old man looked up in surprise; it was as though another person had taken the place of the man who had admired the beauty of the carving. He looked at the gray, expressionless face and said to himself, no, no, this is a pawnbroker, take what you can. So he nodded without deigning to watch the formalities of the transaction, and after it was done, he went out with the money buried in his pocket, all his frayed, starched dignity intact.

And before Sol could draw a breath of quiet, two women came in with a small electric sewing machine between them. His mind recoiled in idiotic humor and he thought of Solomon offering to cut the baby in half for the two warring mothers.

"Whose is it?" he asked wearily.

The two women looked at each other speculatively, suddenly sly and greedy for ownership.

Sol looked fiercely at the tuba on the ceiling.

Ortiz was hungry. As he headed out the door, he called to the Pawnbroker, "Be back soon." But Sol maintained his heavenward stare while the two women bickered in whispers.

In the cafeteria, Ortiz took the pea soup, pork and beans, coffee, and a piece of gingerbread. Then he threaded his way among the tables, looking for one that was empty. He sat down and salted the soup.

"Hey man, sit here with us," Tangee called. Buck White and the bony-faced Robinson sat watching him sleepily.

"Maybe it better if we talk like this ... separate," Ortiz said, turning back to his food.

"Why, what for?"

"If I think I know what you want to talk about, it might be smart to...."

Tangee widened his eyes appreciatively. "Yess-s man, that's smart," he agreed. He aimed his eyes in elaborate attention on the two men he was with as he spoke. "Do I understand you interested in something then?"

"It might be," Jesus said, chewing deliberately on his gingerbread.

The Pawnbroker had said money was next to the speed of light.
The Speed-of-Light!
There was something terrible and exciting in the thought. The Pawnbroker himself had chosen, and Ortiz didn't dare examine himself to see if he regretted that conclusion. He was tiring of masturbatory dreaming.

"You know what we got in mind?" Tangee asked, his mouth wooden and stiff, trying to talk the way experienced cons talked when they wished to disguise their conversations from the guards. Robinson smiled scornfully.

"I don't need a picture."

"Okay. Now the thing is, to do it right we need you."

"I know you do." Ortiz put down his spoon and sat rigidly in his chair, staring at the center of his table. "So hear me, man. I ain't say nothing definite yet, see. I got to think it out a little more, got to plan and see if they a way to make it work."

"We know, man. It work all right, don't worry about that!"

"You don't know nothin'. You just get a good idea, guess you gonna walk into a place and that all there is to it. I don't want nothin' to do with a guy that dumb, hear!"

"Okay, okay, relax," Tangee said placatingly, forgetting to keep his lips still.

All around them was the innocent clatter of people eating in a public place; the sounds of feet on the tile floors, the clatter of dishes, the tinny jingle of cutlery, the great uneven and howling softness of conversation. Ortiz stopped eating again to stare at the big plate-glass window. People walked by, their dark skins more reflection than color in the hot light. The stores across the street were a discord of faded and garish colors, an idiotic anagram of message; Firbish, Ye Style Shoppe, 24 Hour Service, Weeny Hut, Tabernacle of Jesus Our Lord, White Rose Sal ... Just out of sight, the three gold balls would be shining in the sulphurous sunlight. Beauty.

"
I
got to be the one that calls the moves.
If
I decides to go ahead with it," Jesus said in a burning low whisper.

"Well sure, man. We figured you for that," Tangee said with his hand over his mouth. Buck agreed with a nod, but Robinson just sat in a rigid silence.

"And if this thing goes, there be no shootin', see. You need a piece, okay, just for show."

Tangee and Buck nodded solemnly, and Robinson watched them superciliously, as though they were children involved in a nonsensical game.

"Because shootin' is trouble, it stupid. We do without, no matter what, understand!" He risked a look at them and saw Tangee and Buck still nodding agreeably. Robinson compromised with a bend of his lipless mouth. Ortiz toyed with his food, no longer hungry, his appetite not appeased but mutilated beyond recognition. "
If
I decide to go ahead with it...
if.
I say when and how,
if.
"

Finally he stood up and fit a cigarette, staring through a cloud of smoke at the three men, making a sort of contract with his gaze but also telling them that it was not signed yet and that they must wait.

"Take it cool, man," Tangee said with a smile.

"That the only way I take it," Ortiz answered, suddenly furious before the sleepy, hidden opinion of the flashily dressed man.