The Pawnbroker. Edward Lewis Wallant
the one I want, quick as a flash.” He stood grinning before Sol’s little cage, triumphant and pleased with himself, his teeth whitely perfect in the smooth tawny face, his own medal of accomplishment, perfect and delicate, like something carved by a dreamer.
“All right,” the Pawnbroker said, his voice rough and old. “If it’s quiet, you can fool with that. Just don’t make too big a project. There are other things besides that, you know.” He was huge and ugly, and he wished his ugliness to pierce the smallest of dreams. And there were other things besides that lovely ordering and tabulating, that creating; there were grubbier, more joyless things, which his business depended on. “I want you to go over the junk in the cellar, too; see what we have for auction next month. There’s all kinds of filth down there. I want you to get to that when you finish with your playing upstairs.”
For a moment Ortiz’s face hardened. But his plans had deep roots, could survive mere words. “Oh, that cross-index going to increase efficiency. You gonna thank me. You get busy, don’t hesitate to call on your-friend-and-mine, Jesus Ortiz. I’m available.” He smiled again, and Sol couldn’t look at his smile.
“In d’sweet bye an bye,” John Rider crooned, following the dirt out to the sidewalk behind his wide push-broom, “We will meet on dat beautiful shore.”
Sol had an idea it would be quiet that day. Clairvoyance? Well, not to dignify it with scientific jargon, but there were things you anticipated with illogical confidence. Never important things, useful things, just little moods and colors. You walked down a certain road and as you approached a farmhouse you knew there would be a smooth-skinned beech tree heavy with leaves. Things like that, never things that saved you any pain. Ah, he didn’t know whether he preferred it quiet or busy. His customers oppressed him, but then, he oppressed himself, too. “The menopause,” he said, shaking his head with sour humor.
Half the clocks read ten when the woman came in. He looked up, and his impassiveness showed a few cracks. She didn’t look like his kind of customer. Still, you got all kinds; he had had them in here with mink coats on, too. She had shiny sandy hair, an immaculate full face, the clear, forward blue eyes of a woman at home in her own country; an American face.
“Madam?” he queried with stony courtesy. She had nothing with her to pawn. Perhaps she had seen something in the window she wished to buy. Someplace, buried in the New York ordinances, there was something forbidding you to sell retail in a store where things were taken for pawn; no one observed it. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“How do you do. My name is Marilyn Birchfield.” She seemed to flaunt her health in her even smile, and held her hand out like a man. “I’m introducing myself around among the merchants. In a sense, I’m a new neighbor.”
Sol touched her hand uneasily; he could never get used to the aggressive confidence of some American women. What were they trying to prove, that they were as good as men? Well, that was no great accomplishment. “You are in business around here?” he asked.
“You might say that.” She was a heavy-set woman, in her early thirties, he guessed, yet she moved her rather thick body with an adolescent awkwardness, a sort of touching, coltish animation quite different from the movements of a stout matron. “Actually, I’m with the new Youth Center down the block. I thought I’d just make myself known to the local merchants and perhaps get some kind of help, support, you might say, in certain activities. Some of the merchants have become sponsors of the children’s teams, contributed both money and time to the Center.”
“I see,” he said, not seeing at all, fascinated, rather, by the fantastic shine and color of her. Where did they get skin like that, so pink and gold, so healthy? You couldn’t imagine anyone who looked like that ever dying.
“I’ll tell you, quite frankly, your business provokes my curiosity more than any of the others. Actually, I don’t know a thing about pawnbroking. I’m sure there must be several pawnshops in my own home town, but until I came to New York I never even noticed them. It’s just that I’m so interested in my children’s environment, and the pawnbroker is apparently an integral part of their landscape and . . . Oh, here I go again, talking like a house on fire as usual. I suppose I shouldn’t have burst in on you like this.”
He nodded, slightly stunned by her.
“To get down to it, Mister . . .”
“Wha . . . Oh, Nazerman, Sol Nazerman.”
“Mr. Nazerman,” she said, with a wide smile. “What I would like is your permission to put you down as a tentative sponsor. Later on we can decide just what you would be willing and able to give or do. Oh, you might see your way clear to backing one of the teams, supplying uniforms and the like. Or perhaps you would be interested in devoting your time, perhaps an evening a week at the Center, directing some activity. Have you had any experience with basketball, or possibly one of the crafts?”
For a moment he was only able to shake his head in confusion. She was such a medley of sunlight and tawny pink skin. But then he was reminded of himself again.
“Look here, Miss . . .”
“Birchfield,” she supplied. “Now you don’t have to make up your mind right away. Perhaps you’d like to think about it. I just thought I’d introduce myself around, like a neighbor.” She smiled into his surliness; it was part of her self-discipline. “That’s always the hardest part for me. I find myself getting very tense when I have to solicit people. Oh, I would have made a miserable saleswoman.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said sourly.
“But then, we all have to do things alien to our nature sometimes,” she went on. “Anyhow, I think it’s important for me to know all about the climate my children live in.”
“Wait a minute, Miss Birchfield, hold on. This is a lot of talk. Forgive me if I try to simplify it according to my experience. If you are looking for some kind of handout, all well and good. I am solicited every day in the week; I am used to it. Tell me how much and I will answer you straight out. Otherwise, all the other, I have no time or inclination for it.”
Her smile faded. She looked oddly like a child in spite of her full, matronly body and the little lines around her eyes; as an old woman, she would have that look, he guessed, an expression of credulity and unmanageable innocence.
“I don’t think of these contributions as handouts, Mr. Nazerman. I’m sorry you do. I think what people can do for these children is, in a sense, for themselves, too—an investment in their own future.”
“I am not concerned with the future.”
She looked at him questioningly. “I don’t understand. . . .”
“There is no sense talking about it. Let us deal on my terms, if you please. You are soliciting me. You have a job with the city, you work with the children, collect money for them, whatever. Fine, you do your job, let me tend to mine. I am willing to, how they say, ‘kick in.’ I am used to it, as I have said. Just tell me how much.”
Her mouth tightened a little and there was a barely perceptible whitening under her scrubbed, bright skin. A Yankee, brave and stubborn and stupid, he thought with a scorn that held a bare trace of admiration.
“Let me say this then, Mr. Nazerman; I’ll take any amount you’re willing to give, regardless of the spirit in which it is given. I’m quite willing to sacrifice my personal feelings, because I know the money will be well spent.” She took out a little pad of receipts with the imprint of the Youth Center on top, made a great show of impersonal efficiency about taking out a ball-point pen and ejecting the little nib. But then her demeanor failed her. “I’m still new at this. Perhaps you can tell me if I will meet such heedlessness often. You, for example, do you think the worst of every one?”
“See here, Miss Birchfield,” Sol said heatedly, “I resent having to explain to you. I do not wish to get involved in a philosophic argument first thing in the morning. But I will be as gracious as I can. I will explain. They are always coming around to me, collecting;