The Pawnbroker (26 page)

Jesus thought the Pawnbroker would die where he stood, and he felt a sense of panic at the idea; he realized that all his own plans would collapse with him.

Without a word, he ran out of the store and came back with a paper container of strong, black coffee, which he put down against the Pawnbroker's hand.

"I brung some coffee," he said, studying the gray, staring face, which seemed somehow smaller and less puffy. "Go ahead, drink it while it's hot, Sol. You don't look too good; better drink it."

Sol looked down at the coffee, then back up at his enigmatic rescuer. He nodded stiffly. He picked it up, put it to his lips, and grunted as his mouth sent a message of pain to him. "It is hot ... good...." He passed his hand over his eyes, then covered them with the same hand as he began to sip. It was as though he thought the coffee might expose his eyes to an unbearable light.

For a couple of minutes, Jesus watched him drink. Then an odd rage hit him, and he curved his lips savagely and turned away. He would earn what he got from the Jew. All this crap got to end, he snarled silently, I had enough of him. Filled with a melancholy fury, he applied himself to writing up the transactions he had undertaken in the past hour.

When the phone rang, Sol caught it on the first ring.

"Yes?" he said.

"Sol, this is Marilyn Birchfield. How are you?"

"I am fine," he said from memory.

"I hope you're still feeling rested from Sunday. I can tell you it did
me
a world of good."

"I see," he said. Then, after a moment's silence, "What was it you wanted?"

The icy sound of termination in his voice chilled her, and she felt all her overhearty friendliness fall back on her like water thrown into the wind.

"Well now, that's fine ... I'm glad ... why I called was..."

His silence indicated indifference as to why she had called, and she forced herself to go on speaking.

"I just thought you might want to have dinner at my apartment," she said in a rush of words. "I think I'm a good cook, although mostly I just cook for myself and ... and
all
food tastes just marvelous to me." She waited again, listened for breathing or the dial tone; hearing neither, she realized she would have to say something that demanded answer. "Will you come to dinner, Sol?"

"No-thank-you," he said, like someone who knew just those three words of a foreign language.

And she, incurable good sport, perennial pitier who was renewed by the abuse that kept her from enjoying her pity, made something bearably courteous from his indifferent rudeness.

"Oh, you're busy then. Well, perhaps later in the week, maybe Friday? How would that suit you?"

"There is no point to it."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand," he echoed. "Let me be clearer then. There is no point to any relationship between us,
no point at all.
"

"I see," she said, her voice soft and admitting of the fact that she had understood right from the first word. "I don't know just what is troubling you, Sol. I wish I did; I wish I could help you. Apparently I can't. So I won't pester you. I realize how pushy and tiresome I can be sometimes. But I believe there
could
be a point to our relationship, at least for me. I like you and I enjoy being with you and talking with you. I enjoyed our excursion Sunday more than I can tell you."

"Look," he said in a dry, aching voice, "how can I say ... You try, yes. You are goodhearted. Only do not think of becoming intimate with me. For your own good I say this." He paused for a moment, and then his voice became brutal. "You would be guilty of necrophilia—it is obscene to love the dead."

Marilyn made a funny little choking sound, like someone whose nostrils are filled with water.

"All right, Sol, all right. Call me when you think you can. If there is ever anything..."

For a minute or two, he stood fussing with the telephone dial, putting his forefinger into each of the little holes.

If there is ever anything! It was growing, spreading. The surface of him was filling with a sharp-angled network of cracks. He felt his body to be a dry, deteriorating husk flooded with a malignant life that could dwarf all his past suffering.

He began to move around the store more quickly, performing little chores with a jerky speed that made it appear he had to accomplish as much of even that pitiful and shabby work before he was destroyed. He rushed about, he shouted at Jesus, he wrote up tickets in a frenzy and wriggled his fingers at slow-moving customers. His ponderous body moved swiftly as a penned elephant behind the counter. And as he charged on a deserted battlefield, everyone saw his dementia with a curiosity bordering on envy; they looked at him and it was as though they speculated on the terrible, private visions of an opium eater.

Ortiz just stepped back nimbly from his employer's mad rushes, flattening himself against the shelves like a matador while his cool, lovely eyes filled with the matador's same murderous pity.

He going, he going fast, Jesus mused. Soon he going to fly in a thousand pieces and there be nothing left. Crazy, he going crazy. But even as he phrased that scornful thought, he knew it was more than that; the Pawnbroker was headed for something stranger and more terrible. And since he could fathom nothing worse than death, he thought, That man going to die! And he closed himself to the thought of his own implication in the Pawnbroker's destiny.

At five o'clock, George Smith came in with money and a fistful of pawn tickets. His face was as gay and expansive as a drunkard's when he steps into a cozy barroom filled with convivial-looking people.

"Hel-lo there, Sol," he called out in a voice edged with laughter. "Got a handful of business here." He held up the pawn tickets as he walked confidently over to the counter. He leaned on it and settled himself comfortably for a long stay. It was quiet in the store, perfect. He had gauged the hour after a long study of the pattern of the store's business. Hardly anyone came in between five and six-thirty. With a little luck, he might have a full hour. He might even broach his idea of their spending a few hours together some evening. Well, he'd see how things developed; discretion was important. If not this time, then another time.

"You remember I mentioned I was reading the Spanish writers," he said, handing the tickets, one at a time, to Sol. "Well, I read Baroja and then Iglesias. You familiar with them, Sol?" The Pawnbroker seemed a little too concerned with the pawn tickets, and George frowned uneasily at how quickly Sol seemed to add up the figures. "Or Unamuno or Gasset?"

"Forty-three dollars," Sol said, fluttering his fingers impatiently.

"Oh, yes, certainly," George answered, maintaining a smile. Probably tonight wasn't the ideal time to bring up the evening together. The Pawnbroker seemed nervous, distracted. He counted out the money and gave it to Sol with a conspiratorial wink; it was a secret between them; they both knew the real purpose of his frequent visits.

"And then I got to Spinoza. Not that he can be categorized with the others. He is strictly a philosopher, not a literary figure."

"What are you saying?" Sol asked. He had all the items George Smith had pawned during the past several weeks arrayed on the counter and he waited for the little man to take them up. There was the hurricane lamp, the gold money clip, a silver railroad watch, a cigarette lighter faced with mother-of-pearl.

"Here are your things," Sol said. "What else do you want?" He held the money in his hand, and his vision was once more afflicted, so he saw only the bone-tight surface of George's skin, die myriad fine lines around the eyes, the parched scoring of the lips which trembled in time with his strange rhythm of breathing.

"Spinoza," George said weakly, his smile only a monument to the pleasure he had felt a few minutes before. "I was talking about Spinoza. I was going to say..."

"Spinoza, Spinoza," Sol said dazedly. "But you
have
your things here."

"Where he proves the existence of God by saying..."

"Why are you banging my head with your talk?"

"No, no, I wanted to say that ... that..."

"Go, go away. Come on, come on now. This is a place of business. I cannot be bothered with all you crazy ... Go, go peddle it someplace else. All you animals with your insane talk, your filth. Go on, I have no time." And he stood there, squinting and swaying with impatience to get on with all the invisible chores that needed attending to.

George Smith gathered up the items. He put the small things in his pockets and took the hurricane lamp in his hand. His smile vibrated as he turned it slowly around the store, as he took in all the wild variety of things on the shelves and in the cases, the distant, serene face of the Negro youth behind the other counter. And it was as though he took an agonized farewell of something he had struggled hard to deserve.

"Yes, certainly, very well," he said. He walked out of the store with a furtive air, as though he had been surprised in a place where he had no right to be.

Sol continued with his great rush at nothing. No one else came in, and Jesus allowed himself to lounge in a corner of the store, watching with a sort of morbid fascination as his employer rampaged blindly in the narrow confines of the space behind the counter.

But about an hour after George Smith had gone, the Pawnbroker suddenly stopped in the midst of mauling the pages of his ledger. He stood perfectly still for the first time in hours and, as he peered at the doorway with a puzzled frown, he asked in a clear, calm voice, "Who was that in here?"

"No one in here for almost an hour," Jesus answered.

"Who was the last one?"

"That George Smith always come in here talking about books he read."

"Oh yes, him," Sol said, his face suddenly twisted in profound distaste.

When the long shadows of evening led or trailed all the passers-by at a great distance, Sol called, "Ortiz?"

But there was no answer; his voice sounded abandoned as an echo.

"He must have gone," he said aloud. He felt he moved at the bottom of an infinitely deep well and his hands groped for the dark sides. He reached for the phone and dialed the familiar number.

"Murillio," he said as he heard the phone picked up at the other end. Then, without waiting for confirmation that he was being heard, "It is no use. I do not care ... regardless. I cannot take any more. I am a very sick man. I have a legal right. Just give me some reasonable sum of money, some arrangement. Even if I must go to a lawyer, I have a legal right..."

"Wait a minute, calm down, Uncle. You're all excited. Something in particular got you upset? Okay, let's see we can't straighten it out. I'm getting very disappointed with you lately, running off half-cocked every few days, gassing to me all your crazy complaints. I'm a patient man, but the truth is, Uncle, you're trying my patience too far," the wiry voice said softly.

"It is no use talking. No more," Sol went on, staring out at the shadowy traffic of the street. "I have a legal right to do what I want. This cannot go on."

There was a moment's silence in the receiver. When the voice came again it was soft and full of insidious humor.

"Legal, hah. Don't be so silly, Uncle," Murillio said. "You got a legal right to your body but I'll burn it for you.
Legal!
Don't make me laugh. Hey, listen to me, Uncle. You want to be legal, better start making funeral arrangements. I'm tired talking to you. You startin' to give me a bad headache. I give you two days to call me back and say you're joking with all this...." There was silence for almost a minute, then, "After that, you're dead, Uncle—asleep with the worms."

The phone clicked in Sol's ear, and for a moment it seemed to him his consciousness might have been turned off, too.

But almost immediately his body revealed itself again. He felt the persistent sense of strain, of imminent eruption. His mind began conjuring movement out of every shadow. Suddenly he felt a terrific desire to get out of the store. It was as though he expected his mysterious fate to call on him very soon, and he did not wish it to find him there in all the shabbiness of old clothes and battered metal.

He flipped off the light switches, locked the windows and the door. But once outside, he looked back in and realized he had forgotten to leave the night light on. He groaned in frustration as he unlocked the door and went back inside. The darkness made the store seem like a vault. He sighed over and over again as he fumbled for the switch. Finally he turned it on and hurried frantically to escape once more. He stumbled over a corner of the case and moaned in terror. Then he was outside, and the strange store was locked and bolted. He stood on the sidewalk trying to breathe, and his face was covered with a chilly sweat.

When he got home, he went straight up to his room without eating, without even answering his relatives' greetings.

He half lay on his bed, one leg dangling toward the floor, as though to be ready to spring to his feet at some signal. Finally he picked up a book and read for a long time without really knowing what the book was about, examining the individual words and phrases. He took a long time over each page, because his mind continued to meander into formless places. Then his eyes got tired. He was afraid to sleep, though, so he moved himself higher until he was actually sitting upright against the head of the bed. For two hours he sat like that, the book down on his lap, his eyes desperately open as he listened to the smallest sounds of the universe.

Then, in spite of every effort, he began to doze.

Her naked, emaciated body, with the same frightful grin of all the other bodies. How ugly, what a mockery of their love! Why did she do this to him? He felt like tearing at her horrid nakedness.
His eyes ripped themselves open to stare at the moonlight on his bedroom wall. The trees whispered outside. A distant car motor receded still farther, drew its sound out finer and fainter, so he couldn't say when he ceased to hear it.
The booted feet moved up and down the row of bunks. He lay very still, his eyes squeezed shut. The boots stopped very close. He stopped breathing. They
moved on. "This one," the voice said. Gerstein sobbed, "I don't want to, I don't want to ... please, Momma, Momma..." Feet danced wildly between the steady tread of boot steps. "Momma, Momma
..." He pressed his face painfully against the wooden headboard. Upstairs, Morton moaned in his sleep. The sound of a back door closing was deafening in the quiet of the night. Some birds twittered bewilderedly as though they thought it a black morning.
The smell of burning flesh entered him, and it was as though he ate the most forbidden food. A great and eternal sickness began in him.
He sat up like a jack-in-the-box. The air was sweet and grassy and faintly cool. His eyeballs felt peeled and raw, and he stared very hard, as though to penetrate the darkness.
The smoke of their bodies was blowing north when this hideous hunger hit him. He lusted for rich meats and heavy pastries, had an insane yearning for wine and coffee. He dug his clawlike fingernails into his thighs to punish himself for not praying to that fleeting, greasy smoke. But all he felt was this great desire for food. And then this lust turned to a hunger of the loins, and he wondered at the monster he was, and pulled some of his hair out. None of it brought a tear to his eyes, and his eyes became burning hot balls in the flesh of his face.
"Oy, oy, oy, oy," he said in a parched voice to the leaf shadows on his wall.