The Pawnbroker (24 page)

George moved his slight, hairless body on the bed, smiling, thinking of the great subtleties of philosophy and literature, of all the avenues for exploring them, opened to the Pawnbroker and himself.

Unconsciously, his hand crept down his body to his groin and moved lightly over that part of him while his eyes stared musingly at the dim ceiling. But then the excitement of sensation confused the excitement in his head. The terrible, beautiful images began to make him tremble as he caressed himself. A child laughed in another room, and he closed his eyes in a sick ecstasy. His body began to writhe as he sank into his lust and began drowning in it.

The book fell to the floor, and he opened his eyes, startled. He reached down to the floor and seized the book with both hands. The Pawnbroker's face appeared in his mind, quiet and wise behind the thick glasses, but also sorrowful, as though pained at the filthy habits of his friend and intellectual companion, George Smith.

"No. No more. Can't think about those things. Ruin everything. And what would
he
think if he heard I got in some kind of trouble again? Oh, he wouldn't condemn, too big for that. But still, it would ruin everything."

He raised himself up on the pillow and began thumbing through the pages of the book. Finally something caught his attention and he started to read. Gradually he relaxed and after a while he felt drowsy. He slid lower down on the pillow, careful not to disturb the pleasant torpor.

He was almost asleep when he heard the child's voice again and the torturous desire hit him like a charge of electricity. His body arched on the bed and he gasped aloud. His hand started its sly, evil descent down his leg again. He whimpered a little. But then his fingers touched the crisp vellum of the book. He clasped it to his chest and held it there rigidly, beseeching peace and safety from it, like a child with a Teddy bear.

 

Robinson took off his ash-gray jacket and hung it carefully on the one wooden hanger. His room was narrow and small as a cell, and a window at the end took up almost half of one tiny wall. A dull neon glow flickered slowly on and off against the thin shade.

He took off his clean, starched shirt and hung it neatly over the jacket. He folded his pants and caught them by the cuffs in the top drawer of the bureau. Then he slipped his shoes off, brushed them briefly, and lined them in perfect parallel with the hanging jacket above. At the sink, a tiny, doll-like bowl in a slight alcove to the left of the door, he turned the water on and looked into the small mirror above it. He contemplated the death's-head without expression. The strange blue eyes made it like a view into nothingness. He lived almost entirely in moments. What had ground him down to that skull-like appearance was not just buried, but burned out beyond resurrection. Vaguely, he knew it was a fortunate thing that this was so; he would have gone howling through the streets otherwise. He remembered the physical facts of a horrible life but had no sense of his past feelings. He knew the names and dates of the times of beatings and humiliations, of betrayals and obscene violadons; he could recall every day he had spent in prisons and hospitals. Yet he had no emodonal recall of any of it. This moment, this need.

He was dirty now. So he soaped the stiff scrub brush and began to scour all his upper body, which was bone-thin and resembled a washboard or some odd drying-rack. He did the same thing to his face and, later, after removing his undershorts, to his legs and genitals. And when he burned like fire all over his body, he dried himself and put on clean underwear.

Then he went to his bureau drawer and took a small hypodermic out. He filled it from one of the boxes of ampules kept in the tiny icebox in the corner, and injected himself in the arm, which was stippled with many tiny marks. He smiled his bleak smile as he contemplated the latest needle hole.

"My kicks," he said sardonically. He was a diabetic and the ampules contained insulin.

He took a small, inexpensive harmonica from the drawer. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and began to play a medley of waltzes. The thin music wailed through the room, seemed to ricochet from one wall to another so there was an eerie and confusing echo which confounded the familiar tunes. After a while, his face sagged and became weary; it had seemed of indeterminate age, but now it began to appear quite old. And then the shocking gleam of tears appeared in the corners of his eyes. His face twisted fiercely, as though at the poor quality of tone from the cheap harmonica. He thought of the wonderful instrument he had hocked to the Pawnbroker.

Suddenly he stood up and heaved the harmonica against the wall, his face writhing. He went to the drawer again and took a blunt-barreled revolver out. He carried it back to the bed with him. He propped the pillow and settled himself comfortably on it. Then he rested the hand with the gun on one bent knee and began pulling the trigger on the empty chamber. He sighted it on the colorless wall, which pulsed softly with the diffused reflections of the neons outside.

Click, click, click.

It was amazing how loud that hammer was in the tiny room.

 

Jesus Ortiz was apparently talking to his mother. But he expected no answers from her, used her instead as a sounding board, because he would have been repelled by the idea of talking to himself.

"I mean who I learn better from than a Jew? Besides, there one thing about him—he no bull-shitter. He don't jangle my nerves like, you know. Like I
rest
there in the store. Oh, not that he don't work my
cojones.
You know Jews, they get full value. But it like I feel ... I don't know
...easy.
I got the feelin' he ain't never gonna do me no evil like...."

There was a brighter dart of light against the windows of the Ortiz apartment. A faint, distant rumble sounded above the low din of the nighttime traffic.

"But I don't owe that Sheeny nothin' really. What is he to me?"

 

Marilyn Birchfield saw lightning from her apartment window. She looked up to a sky that reflected the city's lights but showed nothing of itself, and she wondered if it would rain.

 

Sol Nazerman came out of his early sleep all drenched with sweat and dry mouthed from gasping in dreams. He saw the sudden flash and heard the rumble of thunder and he yearned for the cooling sound and feel of rain. But he had no hope for it. He lay for many hours without hearing any more thunder, and he was still awake when daylight came, clear and hot and dry.

Sol got out of the house without waking any of his sister's family. He was so intent on eluding them all in the Sunday quiet that he let the car roll down the driveway to the street before he started the motor. Then he was off with a roar.

Mount Vernon was peaceful in the heat of early morning. The bundles of Sunday newspapers were still tied and waiting before the closed stores. The houses slept behind their wide, awninged porches, and here and there were children's tricycles and toy trucks, abandoned suddenly the day before, as though because of a play air raid or some other child-sized disaster. The wires and tracks and signal towers of the railroad glinted in the sunshine. Already the cicadas had set up an intense and threatening buzz, which reached up to the hot blue sky.

He drove with both hands tight on the wheel, as though he had just learned to drive. All the bright light threatened him like a single massive flame. And he was filled with mysterious dread for the unusual emotion he now seemed to recognize—a sudden and unbearable loneliness. He saw himself as the last living creature on a burning orb. He had known many solitudes before, but the sense of isolation he had now made all that had come before seem only like a bad dream there had been hope of waking from.

The car motor hummed, the uncared-for body of the vehicle creaked and squeaked over each bump. He yearned to cry but knew he was not capable of crying. He pulled off the road near the entrance to the highway and sat with his mouth open. The heat collected around him as he stared at the parched grass that edged the road. Nothing, nothing. His hands fluttered over his body. He adjusted his spectacles. He put his hands on the dashboard, on the windows, into the glove compartment. There was a flashlight in there. He took it out and flicked the switch on; he could just about see the pallid glow of the tiny bulb's filament. Then he aimed that infinitesimal illumination at the immense cauldron of white sunlight; it made him shake his head, and once he had begun it, he found he could not stop. The heat rose to the temperature of an oven, and he sat breathing heavily through his mouth, a gray figure in the motionless car, on the desolate landscape.

Idly, his hands began to rifle his pockets, played with tiny crumbs of lint, with keys and coins. His fingers pondered the thin, dog-eared edge of a card. He took it out and held it before his eyes for several minutes before he was able to read it. "Marilyn Birchfield, 210 West 75th Street, New York City, PLaza 6-3109."

For a few minutes more he moved his eyes from the card to the brilliant landscape. He was parked on a mild slope, facing the highway and the sky. Off to one side, where there was a widening of the road's shoulder, an aluminum phone booth was silhouetted against the blue.

He got out of the car and trudged up the slope over the dry, crackly August grass. The smell of the baking concrete road came to him. There was a humid sweetness from the ground. He went into the booth and, leaving the folding doors open, dialed the number on the card.

"Hello?" She appeared to be startled and drowsy. Her voice sounded rich and lovely to him.

"This is Sol Nazerman, the Pawnbroker," he said.

She was silent, breathed surprise.

"Oh yes, hello," she said finally. "Hello there," she emphasized in welcome. "I'm very glad you called. How are you, Mr. Nazerman? Is there anything wrong?"

"It is so very early," he said apologetically.

"Oh, I don't sleep late anyhow." Then she allowed a pause again, uncertain of his intentions and afraid to frighten him away.

"About your suggestion of the other day—the boat excursion. If you could still see your way clear?"

"Ohh, oh my, Mr. Nazerman, yes, yes certainly," she said, with an excessive enthusiasm that she knew sounded false.

Sol began to see how ridiculous his call was. "It was really presumptuous to call you like this. I am very sorry. Forgive me. I just happened on your card and it occurred to me that the boat excursion ... Ah, but to call you like this. Accept my apology. I am perhaps not quite awake myself. Perhaps another time..."

"No, no, really! I am delighted you called. I'd love to go. It's going to be a scorcher today. It will be ever so much cooler on the boat. Oh, I really am glad you called. I had no idea what to do with myself today. Do you think you can find your way here? Are you driving?"

"Yes I am driving. I believe I can find this address," Sol said, nodding as though she could see him, his glasses steamed in the heat of the booth; his smile twitched in relief. "I am near the highway now. I could be there in less than an hour."

"Oh, I'd better get busy then. I'll make some sandwiches and dress. I'll be ready by the time you get here. And, by the way, I have plenty of cheese," she said.

"Yes, good, good—our little joke, is it?" he said, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with his arm. "This is very good of you."

"Nonsense, Mr. Nazerman, I was hoping you'd call. It will be my pleasure, too."

He nodded, appreciative yet impatient of her kindness; he knew the truth of it. "Nevertheless, it is good of you."

She was silent for a moment. Then she spoke brightly. "You just get in your car and hurry along. The boat leaves at nine. I'll see you soon...."

 

This river was so different from the one he saw every day on his way to and from work. It was wide and generous, bordered by green hills and full of great sweeping turns. The steady hum and vibration of the boat filled him with a restful feeling, and he dared deep breaths of the persistent breeze.

"I guess you're glad you decided to come, after all, aren't you, Sol?" Marilyn said from the chair next to him. She was smiling, and her face seemed appropriate to the wide, sun-filled vista. She wore a yellow dress which cast up a buttery glow under her chin, and her eyes were soft with contentment or some other odd joy. "I know I am." She sighed peacefully. "I like my work and I'm glad I do what I do. But, well, I was brought up in a different kind of place, a happier place. There are times when that city makes me sad and tired. I find myself just yearning for a day like this." She tilted her head back and smiled softly. "How many times our family used to have picnics on a lake, spend the whole day in the sun and the air. People's voices sound so different in the country, happier, easier. My father used to say that people had to get off the concrete of sidewalks sometimes just to remember what the earth is like underneath. He liked to sound like a homespun, country philosopher. Of course, he was born in the heart of Boston, but he was a big weekend nature-lover. He'd take us for long walks, identifying birds and trees. 'Breathe deeply,' he'd say. 'Smell the air the way it's supposed to be, untarnished by soot and smoke and carbon monoxide.'" She laughed wistfully. "Un-tarnished, oh dear! As though our town were another Pittsburgh!"

And Sol, caught by the mood of the place and her voice, responded in kind.

"I seem to remember once," he said, waving his finger pedagogically, his eyes up in a dreaming corner, "that I also took a river trip. On the Vistula, it was. Now whether it was when I was very small and we went by river boat to see some relatives in another town ... Wyzgorod was their name.... But then it seems to me that I went with some students when I was at the university. There must have been two different times. There was much singing and playing of concertinas....I confuse the two trips. Oh, but yes, the time with my mother was a longer trip. We had a stateroom, and I woke in the morning filled with delight and amazement to see the world moving by the tiny porthole. Fantastic how that little detail comes to mind. It must be forty years ago. But I recall so clearly the sight of the river and the banks moving by and knowing that I had traveled all that way while I was sleeping...."