The Pawnbroker. Edward Lewis Wallant
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 merci less 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.”
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,