The Pawnbroker (3 page)

Sol took a deep breath and looked up with an expression of mild suprise, as though he hadn't expected her to still be there.

"The devil, Mrs. Harmon, I'll give you three dollars just to get this over with."

"Three fifty?" she tried timidly.

He just looked at her without expression.

"Sold," she said tiredly. Then she giggled her fat woman's laugh and cocked her head to one side. "You a hard man, Mistuh Nazerman, no two ways about it. Well, God pity you ... he d'ony judge after all." She took the silently proffered money and tucked it delicately into her huge, cracking plastic pocketbook, shaking her head and with a pensive grin on her wide lips. "Ohh my, hard times, always hard times. Well..." She brightened her smile for farewell. "I see you again, Mistuh Nazerman, that for sure. Take care now, hear?"

"Goodby, Mrs. Harmon," he said, tying a ticket to the candlesticks and sliding them under the counter next to Daniel Webster. After she was gone, he stole a furtive look at the clock nearest him. "Ten forty-five," he murmured in irritated surprise; it disturbed him to be so tired that early in the day.

Several customers came and went, but they remained anonymous to him because they were disposed of quickly and easily.

He began studying some of the more recent additions to his stock. There was an old Kodak Autographic, a zither of ancient make, an almost new electric traveling iron. The things people lived by! But it was no use trying to recall the owners by the shapes of the things they had pawned. The objects were dead and characterless, had been unique and part of life only while they were in use. Oh, he was so tired, and it wasn't even eleven o'clock. Forty-five wasn't old ... but he was old.

The young Negro wore gaudy clothes whose vividness was obscured by the grime and grease that made it look as though he had been wearing them without letup for years. He had the terrified, twitching face of a jackal, with pupils like tiny periods in his ocherous eyes. Under his arm was a small white table radio.

"Whatta you gimme, Unc, how much? Hey, dis worth plenty rubles. Dis a hot li'l ol' radio, plenty juice. Got short wave, police call, boats from d'sea. Even get outer space on a clear night. Yeah,
space,
real-far space like from satlites an' all. C'mon, Unc, make a offer. Hey, dis a hundred-dollar radio. How much you gimme? C'mon, dis powaful, clear tone, clear like a ... a mother-f—n ol' bell." The saliva flew from his mouth as from a leaky old steam engine, and he kept snuffling through his nose and making queer jig steps for emphasis.

Sol took the radio and plugged it into the socket under the counter. He watched the light glow brighter as it warmed up, his face impassive while the young Negro in his filthy Ivy League cap twitched and muttered encouragement, as though the radio could redeem
him.

"C'mon, baby, show d'man you
power
...blast him ... Give him dat
tone!
Man, dat radio ... O, dat mother..."

There came a few whistles, a loud electrical gibberish, and then the nerve-racking sound as of stiff cellophane being steadily crumpled by many hands. The youth stopped twitching and aimed his pin-point gaze at the radio. His mouth dropped open at the sound of his betrayal.

"Give you four dollars," Sol said. Ah, our youth, the progenitor of our future. Maybe the earth will be lucky, maybe they will all be sterile.

"Hey, dat dere radio always play better dan dat," he accused. "It mus' be 'count of d'weather. Make it eight bucks. I mean, man, dat my mother's radio!"

"Four dollars, take it or leave it."

"Oh say, you tryin' to bleed me, you suckin' a man's guts. I takin' a awful chance hockin' my mother's radio. She
sell
me when she fin' out."

She ought to sell you. Sol massaged the bridge of his nose as he fumbled in his mind for the profit to all this.

"Six bucks?"

"Four."

"C'mon, at least five skins, you bloodsuckin' Sheeny!"

Sol felt a dangerous blue flicker behind his eyes. He began to move menacingly toward the little gate that led from behind the counter. "All right, animal, get out of here! Come on, out! Go peddle your junk in the street!"

"Okay, okay, mister, don' go gettin' all hot like. Gimme the four rubles, I take the four," he said, his hands trembling and flying around with his need. "Hurry, hurry up, man, please." His face showed the agony of some inner burning, an unbearable expression that filled the Pawnbroker with rage.

"Go on now," Sol said, pushing the money at him. "And don't go bothering me with your foul mouth any more. This is a place of business. I don't have to have human rubbish in here."

"Yes, man, O yes," the youth said, not even hearing the Pawnbroker's words. He took the money and gave it a quick kiss before stuffing it into his pocket. Then he cool-stepped out of the store with a beatific, lost smile on his writhing face. He left the pawn ticket on the floor behind him.

Sol felt the throbbing start of a bad headache. "It is getting hot," he said aloud, as though to excuse the pain. He began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt for the first time that summer, disturbed at this first concession to the heat.

Jesus Ortiz came downstairs with a pair of suits on hangers. All morning he had sorted and stacked and labeled. He had looked at the clothing stacked in dusty hundreds to the ceiling of the stifling loft and each suit had seemed a building block for some odd edifice he was erecting without conscious design. Now he had reached a point where he was obsessed with perfection, and two ordinary suits had seemed to mar the aesthetic daze he worked in.

"These here suits, Sol," he began, and then stared in puzzlement at the crudely tattooed numbers on his employer's thick, hairless arm. "Hey, what kind of tattoo you call that?" he asked.

"It's a secret society I belong to," Sol answered, with a scythelike curve to his mouth. "You could never belong. You have to be able to walk on the water."

"Okay, okay, mind my own business, hah," Ortiz said, his eyes still on the strange, codelike markings. How many secrets the big, pallid Jew had! "I mean, like these here suits is like brand new," he went on in an absent voice, no longer concerned with his mission. "They worth thirty-five, forty bucks easy. Got Hickey-Freeman labels inside."

"I leave it to you, Ortiz. Be creative, use your own intiative," the Pawnbroker said sardonically.

Ortiz just looked steadily at him for a minute before turning away with an equally secluded expression. He had secrets, too; secrets gave you a look of vast dignity, a feeling of power.

Just before twelve, as was his habit, Ortiz went out. He ate his own lunch in the cafeteria diagonally across the street and then bought Sol's never-varying cheese sandwich and coffee, and brought them back to the store. He handled the traffic alone for some fifteen minutes while Sol sat in the little windowed office eating and staring out sightlessly through the glass like some exhibited creature from another clime. And while Ortiz worked, treating the predominantly Negro customers with a show of better-humored hardness than his employer's, he was constantly aware of the odd, blind gaze on his back. He felt tense with a mysterious excitement, for the sense of his apprenticeship assumed an unfathomable importance then, seemed to possess the key to Sol's buried treasure.

At least half the clocks hovered near one when three men came in pushing a motorized lawn mower. Sol stared at it for a moment, reminded of how incredible and silly his atmosphere was. Then he nodded in mild disgust, as though bowing to some nasty omnipotence. "Oh yes, here's an item, fine, fine."

He had seen two of the men around the neighborhood; the gaudy little Tangee in a wide-shouldered, checked suit, and Buck White, with his majestic tribesman face of almost pure black, who appeared elemental in his dignity until you noticed the foolish, childish dreaminess of his eyes. But it was the third man who took Sol's attention. He was an oddly plain-clothed Negro in a shapeless, ash-gray suit and with a battered, styleless hat square on his head. With his clean white shirt and drab brown tie, he might have been some poor but discreet civil servant of decent education who was determined to avoid the Negro cliché in dress. Until you looked at his face, which was bony and gaunt and dominated by blue eyes filled with restless, darting menace. And in the presence of that face, the ridiculous transaction suddenly became oppressive out of all proportion.

"What's this here worth, Uncle?" Tangee asked with a smile that was all flash. "Brand new, never been use. S'pose to have a real strong engine. I mean what do they get for these?" As he talked, his eyes, like those of his companions, roved over the vast assortment of merchandise with an insolent and covetous look.

"Where'd you get it?" Sol asked, rubbing his cheek.

"What kind of question is that? Why, it was a gift, man, a gift! I woulda return it to the store my friend bought it, on'y I was embarrass to ask him where. Didn't want to let on I had no use for it, hurt his feelin's and all. Can't look a gift horse in the mouth." Tangee's tiny mustache twitched over the ivory display of smile. "Yeah, this here friend give it to me for housewarmin' present like."

"Amazing how stupid some people can be, isn't it?" Sol said. "I mean that he shouldn't have noticed that there wasn't a blade of grass within two miles of your house. Your friend, that is."

"Oh well, yeah," Tangee agreed, beginning to tire of the badinage, his eyes licking more hungrily at the great collection around him, darting occasionally toward his companions as though for some agreement. "You know how it is."

"Yes, I know very well," Sol said flatly. "Where did you get it?"

"Hey, man, I don't see where you come off askin' like that. I got it, that's all. I mean that there my business, ain't it?"

"Look, my friend, the police have lists of stolen merchandise. I am obligated to list all the items taken for pawn. For myself, I don't give a care if you stole it from Macy's window. All I am concerned with is that I would be out my money if they appropriated it."

Three other customers came in while he struggled with Tangee and his silent companions. He pressed the little signal button that called Ortiz down from the second floor.

"I ain't stole it, man; you don't have to worry. Some guy give it to me, figure I make
some
use out of it."

"A lawn mower?" The Pawnbroker's sarcasm was a bland poison that acted only on himself. He had a faint sensation of suffocation as he watched the loose rubbery lips of Tangee and the nightmarishly blue eyes of the Negro in the ash-gray suit.

"Sure, a lawn mower! I hock the friggen thing and get money. That useful enough, ain't it?" Tangee said with a roving, marble-eyed study of the Pawnbroker's face, an expression of cold appraisal, as though he were figuring how to go about taking Sol's face apart.

Buck White stared at Sol's tattooed arm, and the blue-eyed Negro kept his gaze on the rear of the store, his face like a burned bone. There was, in their idle patience, the murderous quality of hunting dogs so sure of their prey that they rest, panting, in a confident circle around it. Sol held himself motionless, trying to be as patient and cool as they. Across the store, Ortiz was crowded with customers, moving busily, waiting on two or three at once, disposing of them quickly and efficiently. And he stood there before the three strange men, imprisoned in their mood of menace, the silly lawn mower in the middle of the floor like some grotesque totem they were urging on him.

"Even if it isn't stolen ... a
lawn mower!
No one comes in here for a lawn mower. Even at auction..."

"Take it, Pawnbroker, take the goddam thing," the blueeyed Negro said suddenly, his voice amazingly low, subterranean even, like an echo from a distant depth.

Sol looked at him bleakly for a moment, went on to the inhuman ox-glance of Buck White, the insolent appraisal of Tangee. Suddenly he just wanted them out of there; they were like bands around his chest. He nodded.

"I'll give you seven dollars," he mumbled. "Take it or leave it."

"Why sure, man,
sold!
See, I ain't no trouble ... pleasure to do business with, ain't I?" Tangee turned to his two companions like a performer. Buck White grinned, a shy expression forming as he shifted his huge, powerful body. The blue-eyed man just bent his mouth and took his eyes reluctantly from whatever they had been fixed on at the rear of the store.

Tangee took the money and then, his eyes mockingly on the Pawnbroker, crumpled up the pawn ticket and tossed it lightly against the Pawnbroker's hands.

"We be in again, Uncle. I like to do business with you," he said, and then walked out with his retinue like one of those strange little chieftains who are so impressive because they do not see anything ridiculous in their air of power.

All afternoon Sol's head pounded. It seemed very important for him to keep busy. Tangee's quiet, haggard wife came in like her vivid husband's drab shadow. She pawned some of her husband's castoff finery without attempting to bargain, took the money with the trace of a polite smile, and walked out stiffly, as though she feared she might be called back for some reason. Cecil Mapp's wife came in, covering her shame with righteous scorn for all men, Sol included. She offered a silver-plated tray. "You can be happy to know, Mr. Pawnbroker, that you is at least helpin'," she said sourly, waving the money he had just given her. "You're feedin' the children that Cecil Mapp's whisky is robbin' of food!" With that, she stalked out like a huge avenging angel, and Sol could see her take a small child's hand and move off like a liner with a tug; she wouldn't corrupt her child with the air of the pawnshop. One of the prostitutes from the masseur-fronted brothel down the street brought in a fancy sterling-backed brush and hand mirror. She was a handsome, light-skinned girl named Mabel Wheatly, and she had a surprisingly clean and unsullied look. But she wore boredom like armor and didn't look at Sol once during their brief transaction. A plumber with dented, cheerful features and battered ears came in to redeem the shiny nickle-plated Stillson wrench on which Sol had been loaning him money for almost three years; two dollars to him when he brought it in, something more than that to Sol when he redeemed it—a cycle as pointless as the following of the surface of a metal ring. A laborer, a schoolgirl, a sailor, a swarthy gypsy woman with shiny pots. An old man, a young man, a man with a hook for a hand. A dim-witted ex-fighter, a student, a deadpan mother. In and out, and back again in another guise. And all the while the Pawnbroker maintained that long-mastered yet precarious equilibrium of the senses. It was as though his nerves and his brain held on to the present and the immediate like some finely balanced instrument. If it ever broke down ... he murdered that thought at birth for the thousandth time. The shop creaked with the weight of other people's sorrows; he abided.