The Pawnbroker (2 page)

Several months before, he had seized on the idea of "business." He had visualized solidity and immense strength in it and had even, in his wilder moments, begun to daydream a mercantile dynasty, some great store with
his
name emblazoned in gold on its sign. And so he had answered Sol's ad for a "bright, willing-to-learn young man to assist in pawnshop. Opportunity to learn the business." Once there, in the presence of the big, inscrutable Jew, he had become even more obsessed with the magic potential of "business," for there had seemed to be some great mystery about the Pawnbroker, some secret which, if he could learn it, would enrich Jesus Ortiz immeasurably.

"Meanwhile, I see you still standing there," Sol said. "You who are going to work so hard."

But Ortiz wasn't listening; he was staring raptly at the papers spread out before the Pawnbroker.

"You pay all your bills by check, do you?" he asked. "I mean that's the most businesslike way, ain't it? What do you do, just fill out how much and to who on that little stub like and then..."

Sol exhaled a deep breath of exasperation.

"Well Christ, man, I s'pose to be learnin' the business, too, ain't I? You ain't done much learnin' of me, far as I could see."

"All right, all right, tomorrow, remind me tomorrow. When it gets quiet, late tomorrow afternoon, maybe we'll go over a few things," Sol said dully.

"
Okay,
" Ortiz said, flashing that sudden, almost shockingly irrelevant smile that sometimes affected Sol like a quick painful scratch against his skin. "I gonna rearrange them suits upstairs
efficient!
I been thinkin' to break 'em down into type of suit an' by price. They's a shitload of summer suits.... You waste a good hour just gettin' to the type suit somebody wants. I got me a bunch of cards an' I'm gonna label..."

"You have a lot of plans. So how come you are still standing with your nose in what I'm doing?"

Ortiz dazed him with the peculiar beauty of his smile again. There was something dangerous and wild on his smooth face, a look of guile and unpredictable curiosity; and yet, oddly, there was an unnerving quality of volatile innocence there, too. He seemed to have some ... what—a cleanness of spirit? Oh sure, the boy had sold marijuana, according to old John Rider, the janitor, and had probably stolen and pandered and God knew what else. And yet ... somehow Sol had the vague feeling that there were certain horrors this boy would not commit. In Sol Nazerman's eyes, this was a great deal; there were very few people to whom he attributed even that limitation of evil.

"Go already with your big plans, with your
labeling/
"

"You right, Sol, no question, you got my number. Take me time to get me a start on. But here I go, watch me move, I'm atom-power, shh-ht." And with that he was around the corner and on the steps leading up to the loft, moving with the amazing litheness that so startled Sol. For a moment, as he heard the footsteps ascending and then on the floor over his head, he stared at the last point at which he had seen the boy, his eyes faintly bemused, his face seemingly caught on a shelf of ease. Briefly, he tried to recall the distant sensation of youth. With his head tilted a little, his expression became vapid, loose, and vulnerable looking. All the clocks ticked or buzzed an anonymous time. But then he suddenly wiped at his face as though at some unseen perspiration. A jagged darkness closed around his casting back, and he began frowning over the bills again.

There were only a few business bills; most of them were the personal expenses incurred by his sister's family. Here was a staggering telephone bill, an electric bill twice the size of the store's, and a bill for a new rug bought by Bertha. There were, in addition, several clothing bills incurred by his niece, Joan, a dermatologist's bill and an internist's bill for Selig, and a bill from the art school his nephew, Morton, attended. His lips hardened as he began making out the checks.

He heard a heavy jingling and looked up to see Leventhal, the policeman, standing and rocking on the balls of his feet.

"What d'ya say, Solly? How's business?"

"You could be my first customer of the day. You want to hock the badge, or maybe the gun?"

"Can't do that, Solly; need them to protect you."

"Oh yes, to protect me," Sol said sarcastically. Leventhal had been making it increasingly evident that he imagined Sol had something to hide, that he, Leventhal, might be in a position to expect some kind of favors from Sol.

"Speaking of protection, what the hell time were you here till last night?" Leventhal asked, with an expression of affectionate admonishment on his tough, blue-jawed face.

"Why do you ask?"

"Why! I'll tell you why. Because you're asking for trouble staying open so late in this neighborhood, all by yourself. All the other Uncles close up at six o'clock. What are you trying to do, get rich fast or what? Maybe you think you're like a doctor, hah? Gotta be on call in case some nigger suddenly runs out of booze money or needs dough for a quick fix. I mean you got to wise up, Solly. You get some kind of trouble here and pretty soon the department starts poking their nose in your business and..." He shrugged suggestively.

"I appreciate your concern. I know what I am doing. Just do not trouble yourself worrying about me," Sol said coldly, lowering his attention pointedly to the checks again.

"Aw now, don't take that attitude. That's my business to worry about you. Where would you be without law and order?"

"Oh yes, law and order."

"I mean you ought to be more co-operative, Solly. Take my advice in the spirit it's given. Look, we're landsmen, got to stick together against all these crooked goys," Leventhal said with a loose smile.

"Is that a fact?" He stared at the policeman with an icy, inscrutable expression. "Well thank you then. Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do." A landsman indeed! And where was the heritage of a Jew in a black uniform, carrying a club and a revolver? Sol had no friends, but his enemies were clearly marked for him.

"Okay, Solly, we'll leave it at that ... for now." Leventhal shrugged, looked slowly around with the pompous, constabulary warning, and walked slowly, insolently out, trailing a toneless whistle behind him.

And then, at ten o'clock, the traffic began.

A white man in his early twenties walked stiffly up to the grille. He had wild soft hair that rose up and was in constant motion from the tiniest drafts and crosscurrents of air, so that, with his drowned-looking face, he seemed to float under water. His clothing was threadbare but showed the conservative taste of some sensible, middle-class shopper. He held a paper bag before him under crossed arms, and he stared with cautious intensity at the Pawnbroker before even entrusting his burden to the edge of the counter.

"How much will you give me?" he asked in a low, breathless voice.

"For what?" Sol twisted his mouth impatiently.

"For this," the man answered, his black eyes gleaming above the big blade of nose. There was something histrionic and a little mad in his manner, and he clutched at the bag as though against Sol's attempt to steal it.

"This, this ... what in hell is
this?
All I am able to see is a paper bag. What are you selling? I am no mind reader." Sol's voice was harsh but his face was professionally bland behind the round, black-framed glasses.

"It is an award for oratory," said the wild-haired young man. "I won it in a city-wide oratorical contest nine years ago."

Sol took the bag, which was greasy-soft and made up of a million shallow wrinkles. He wondered where they got those bags or what they did to ordinary bags to make them feel like thin, aged skin. He opened it with an attitude of distaste. Inside was a bust of shiny yellow metal on a black-lacquered wooden base. A plaque in the same yellow metal was inscribed:

 

DANIEL WEBSTER AWARD

New York Public School Oratorical Contest for 1949
LEOPOLD S. SCHNEIDER

 

"It's gold," Leopold Schneider said.

"Plate," the Pawnbroker corrected, tapping Daniel Webster's shiny skull. "Look, I'll loan you a dollar on it. The devil what I could do with it if you didn't come back for it."

"A dollar!" Leopold Schneider pressed his starved face against the bars like a maddened bird. "This is an important award. Why, do you know there were two thousand quarter-finalists out of twenty thousand, only fifty semifinalists. And I won! I recited 'The Raven,' and I won, from twenty thousand. I was the best of twenty thousand."

"Good, good, you are one in twenty thousand, Leopold, maybe one in a million. That's why I will loan you a dollar ... because I'm so impressed."

"But one in
twenty thousand.
You don't think I would part with that glory for a miserable dollar, do you!"

"There is a very small market for oratory awards with your name engraved on them. One dollar," Sol said, lowering his eyes to the checks again.

"Look, I'm hungry. I'm busy writing a great, great play. I just need
a.
few dollars to carry me. I'll redeem it, I swear it. It's worth more than money..."

"Not to me, Leopold."

"I'll give you triple interest...."

"One dollar," the Pawnbroker said without looking up. He had added one column of numbers three times now.

"What's the matter with you?" Leopold Schneider shrilled suddenly in the quiet store. Upstairs, Ortiz' footsteps stopped for a moment at the sound, as though he might be considering coming down to see what was happening. "Haven't you got a heart?"

"No," Sol answered. "No heart."

"What a world this is!"

Sol ran his finger deliberately down the column of numbers again.

"Five dollars at least?" Leopold whined, breathing the sour breath of the chronically hungry on the Pawnbroker.

Sol finally totaled the first column, carried a seven to the second.

"All right, three dollars, at least three miserable dollars. What is it to you?"

Sol raised his gray, impervious face. All the clocks ticked around his unrelenting stare. "I am busy. Go away now if you please. I have no use for the damned thing anyhow."

"All right, all right, give me the dollar," Leopold said in a trembling half-whisper.

Sol reached into the money drawer and took out a bill as greasy and battered as Leopold's paper bag. He tore off a pawn ticket, wrote up the description of the award, and gave the claim ticket to Leopold Schneider. Then he continued his adding of the numbers. Leopold stood there for a full minute before he turned and went out of the store with the awkward tread of a huge, ungainly bird.

Only several minutes later did the Pawnbroker look up to stare at the empty doorway. He rubbed his eyes in a little gesture of weariness. Daniel Webster caught a tiny dart of sunlight, and it disturbed Sol's corner vision. He picked the award up and shoved it into a low, dark shelf where the light never reached.

Mrs. Harmon might have seemed a relief after Leopold Schneider. She was big and brown, and her face had long ago committed her to frequent smiling; even in repose it was a series of benevolently curving lines. Mrs. Harmon was convinced you could either laugh or cry, that there were no other alternatives; she had elected to go with the former.

"Come on, Mistuh Nazerman, smile! You got some more business comin' at you. Here I is with a load of pure profit for you." She held up two silver candlesticks, the latest of her diminishing, yet never quite depleted, store of heirlooms. Her husband, Willy Harmon, was a janitor in a department store and came home with occasional delights for her in the form of floor samples, remains of old window dressings, and various other fruits of his modest thievery. Still, their needs were greater than his timid supplying. They had constant medical bills for a crippled son and were trying to put their daughter through secretarial school, so Mrs. Harmon was a steady client. "Genuine Duchess pattern, solid silver-plate silver. I'll settle for ten dollars the pair." She had really been fond of the candlesticks; they made a table
look
like a table. But she was the type of woman who could have cut off her own snake-bitten finger with great equanimity, for she believed mightily in salvaging what you could.

"I can only give you two dollars," Sol said, flipping over the pages of his ledger, looking for nothing in particular. "You've left an awful lot of things lately, haven't redeemed anything."

"Aw I know, but Mistuh Nazerman! Why, my goodness, these candlesticks is very high quality, costed twenny-five dollars new." She chuckled indignantly, shook her head at his offer. "Why I could get fifteen dollars
easy
down to Triboro Pawn."

"Take them to Triboro, Mrs. Harmon," he said quietly.

Mrs. Harmon sighed, still shaking her great smiling face as though in reminiscence of an atrocious but funny joke. She clucked through her teeth, shifted heavily from one foot to the other. Her dignity, that much-abused yet resilient thing, suffered behind her rueful smile as the Pawnbroker kept his face of gray Asian stone averted indifferently from her. Like a child forced to choose between two unpleasant alternatives, she stared thoughtfully through the window, furrowed her brow, tried on a few uneasy smiles. Finally she muttered, "Ah well," and leaned her plump brown face close to the barred wicket behind which Sol worked on all the papers.

"Les jus' say five dollars the pair and forget it, Mistuh Nazerman," she said, breathing hopefully on him.

"Two dollars," he repeated tonelessly, frowning over a name in the ledger which suddenly intrigued him.

She laughed her indignation, a bellowing
wahh-hh
that struck the glass cases like the flat of a hand. "You a
merciless
man for sure. Now you don't think I is reduce to being insulted by that measly offer. Two dollars! Why, my goodness, Mistuh Nazerman, you cain't even buy a
sinful
woman for that nowadays." She grabbed up her candlesticks and looked craftily to see what response that drew from the cold, gray face. But there was nothing; the man truly was made of stone. She sighed a sad but good-natured defeat. "
All
right, I jus' too pooped to haggle." She plunked the candlesticks down and exhaled noisily. "Make it foah dollars."