Chapter 18

He sits smoking, his eyes fastened on the scene outside the window. His eyes seem to be searching as if for meanings that withhold themselves. Yet obviously there is no thought in his head. A mood has wormed its way through the columns of figures, columns of reports, and taken possession of him. This is bad for a financier. It is obvious that the umbrellas outside are for the moment something other than ripples; that the great play of life outside is something other than an inarticulate Greek chorus mumbled as an obbligato for him alone.

The great financier is aware of something. Of what? He shakes his head, as if to question himself. Of nothing he can tell. Of the fact that a great financier is an atom like other atoms dancing in a chaos of atoms. Of the fact that each of the umbrellas crawling past under his window is as important as himself. The great financier's ego is taking a rest and dreams naked of words crowd in to distract him.

"We have in Europe a peculiar situation," he says. "England and France, although hitched to the same wagon, pull in different directions. England must build up her trade. France must build up her morale. These involve different efforts. To build up her trade England must re-establish Germany. To build up her morale France must see that Germany is not re-established and that it remains forever a beaten enemy."

The great financier looks at his watch suddenly. "By Jove!" he says. "By Jove!" He has to go. He is sorry the interview was a failure. But a rotten day for thinking. Back into his raincoat. A limousine has drawn up. A servant helps him to dress. In a moment another umbrella has joined the crawl of umbrellas over the pavement.

It rains. And a great financier is riding home to dinner.

PITZELA'S SON

"His name?" said Feodor Mishkin. "Hm! Always you want names. Is life a matter of names and addresses or is it something else?"

"But the story would be better, Feodor, with names in it."

The rotund and omniscient journalist from the west side muttered to himself in Russian.

"Better!" he repeated. "And why better? If I tell you his name is Yankel or Berella or Chaim Duvit do you know any more than if I tell you his name is Pitzela?"

"No. We will drop the matter. I will call him Chaim Yankel."

"You will call him Chaim Yankel! And what for? His name is Pitzela and not Chaim Yankel."

"Thanks."

"You can go anywhere on Maxwell Street and ask anybody you meet do they know Pitzela and they will say: 'Do we know Pitzela? We know Pitzela all right.' So what is there to be gained by calling him Chaim Yankel?"

"Nothing, Feodor. It was a mistake even to think of it."

"It was. Well, as I was telling you before you began this interruption about names, he is exactly 110 years old. Can you imagine a man 110 years old? A man 110 years old is an unusual thing, isn't it?"

"It is, Feodor. But I once knew a man 113 years old."

"Ha! And what kind of a man was he? Did he dance jigs? Did he crack nuts with his teeth? Did he drink like a fish?"

"No, he was an old man and very sad."

"You see! He was sad. So what has he to do with Pitzela? Nothing. Pitzela laughs all day long. And he dances jigs. And he cracks nuts with his teeth. Mind you, a man 110 years old cracks nuts with his teeth! Can you imagine such a thing?"

"No Feodor. It is amazing."

"Amazing? Why amazing? Everything that happens different from what you know is amazing to you! You are very naïve. You know what naïve means? It is French."

"I know what naïve means, Feodor. Go on about Pitzela."

"Naïve means to be childish late in life. In a way you are like Pitzela, despite the difference in your ages. He is naïve. You know what he wants?"

"What?"

"This Pitzela wants to show everybody how young he is. That's his central ambition. He don't talk English much, but when you ask him, 'Pitzela, how do you feel today?' he says to you right back, 'Oi, me? I'm full o' pep.' Then if you ask him, 'How old are you, Pitzela?' he says: 'Old? What does it matter how old I am? I am just beginning to enjoy myself. And when you talk about my dying don't laugh too much. Because, you know, I will attend all your funerals. When I am 300 years old I will be burying your grandchildren.' And he will laugh. Do you like the story?"

"Yes, Feodor. But it isn't long enough. I will have to go out and see Pitzela and describe him and that will make the story long enough."

"It isn't long enough? What do you mean? I just begun. The story ain't about Pitzela at all. So why should you go see Pitzela?"

"But I thought it was about Pitzela."

"You thought! Hm! Well, you see what good it does you to think. For according to your thinking the story is already finished. Whereas according to me the story is only just beginning."

"But you said it was about Pitzela, Feodor. So I believed you."

"I said nothing of the sort. I merely asked you if you knew Pitzela. The story is entirely about Pitzela's son."

"Aha! This Pitzela has a son. That's interesting."

"Of course it is. Pitzela's son is a man 87 years old. Ask anybody on Maxwell street do they know Pitzela's son and they will tell you: 'Do we know Pitzela's son? Hm! It's a scandal."

"The editor, Feodor, forbids me to write about scandals. So be careful."

"This scandal is one you can write about. This Pitzela's son is such a poor old man that he can hardly walk. He has a long white beard and wears a yamulka and he has no teeth and one foot is already deep in the grave. If you saw Pitzela's son you would say: 'Why don't this dying man go home and sit down instead of running around like this?'

"And why don't he?"

"Why don't he? Such a question! He don't because Pitzela don't let him. Pitzela is his father and he has to mind his father. And Pitzela says: 'What! You want to hang around the house like you were an old man? You are crazy. Look at me, I'm your father. And you a young man, my son, act like you were my father. It's a scandal. Come, we will go to the banquet.'

"What banquet, Feodor?"

"Oh, any banquet. He drags him. He don't let him rest. And he says: 'You must shave off your beard. For fifteen years you been letting it grow and now it's altogether too long. How does it look for me to go around with a son who not only can't walk, but has a beard that makes him look like Father Abraham himself?'"

"And what does Pitzela's son say?"

"What can he say? Nothing. The doctor comes and tells him: 'You got to stay in the house. You are going out too much. How old are you?' And Pitzela's son shakes his tired head and says: 'Eighty-seven years old, doctor.' And the doctor gives strict orders. But Pitzela comes in and laughs. Imagine."

"Yes, it's a good story, Feodor."

"A good story! How do you know? I ain't come to the point yet. But never mind, if you like it so much you don't need any point."

"The point, Feodor. Excuse me."

"Well, the point is that Pitzela and the way he treats his son is a scandal. You know why? Because he uses his son as an advertisement. Pitzela's son, mind you, is so weak and old that he can hardly walk and he carries a heavy cane and his hands shake like leaves. And Pitzela drags him around all over. To banquets. To political meetings. To the Yiddish theater. All over. He holds him by the arm and brings him into the hall and sits him down in a chair. And Pitzela's son sits so tired and almost dead he can't move. And then Pitzela jumps up and gets excited and says: 'Look at him. A fine son, for you! Look, he's almost dead. Tell me if you wouldn't think he was my father and I was his son? Instead of the other way around? I ask you.'"

"And what does Pitzela's son say, Feodor?"

"Say? What can he say? He looks up and shakes his head some more. He can hardly see. And when the banquet talking begins he falls asleep and Pitzela has to hold him up from falling out of the chair. And when the food is done and the dessert comes Pitzela leans over and says to his son: 'Listen. I got a treat for you. Here.' And he reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of hickory nuts. 'Crack them with your teeth,' he says, 'like your father.' And when his son looks at him and strokes his white beard and sighs, Pitzela jumps up and laughs so you can hear him all over the banquet hall. But the point of the story is that two weeks ago Pitzela went to his grandson's funeral. It was Pitzela's son's son and he was a man almost 70 years old. And it was a scandal at the funeral. Why? Because Pitzela laughed and coming back from the grave he said: 'Look at me, my grandson dies and I go to his funeral and if he had a son I would go to his, too, and I would dance jigs both times.'"

PANDORA'S BOX

A dark afternoon with summer thunder in the sky. The fan-shaped skyscrapers spread a checkerboard of window lights through the gloom. It rains. People seem to grow vaguely elate on the dark wet pavements. They hurry along, their eyes saying to one another, "We have something in common. We are all getting wet in the rain." The crowd is no longer quite so enigmatic a stranger to itself. An errand boy from Market Street advances with leaps through the downpour, a high chant on his lips, "It's raining ... it's raining." The rain mutters and the pavements, like darkened mirrors, grow alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city.

Inside the Washington Street book store of Covici-McGee the electric lights gleam cozily. New books and old books--the high shelves stuffed with books vanish in the ceiling shadows. On a rainy day the dusty army of books peers coaxingly from the shelves. Old tales, old myths, old wars, old dreams begin to chatter softly in the shadows--or it may be the chatter of the rain on the pavement outside. The Great Philosophers unbend, the Bearded Classics sigh, the Pontifical Critics of Life murmur "ahem." Yes, even the forbidding works of Standard Authors grow lonely on the high shelves on a rainy day. As for the rag-tag, ruffle-snuffle crowd in motley--the bulged, spavined, sniffling crew of mountebanks, troubadours, swashbucklers, bleary philosophers, phantasts and adventurers--they set up a veritable witches' chorus. Or it may be the rain again lashing against the streaming windows of the book store.

* * * * *

People come in out of the rain. A girl without an umbrella, her face wet. Who? Perhaps a stenographer hunting a job and halted by the rain. And then a matron with an old-fashioned knitted shopping bag. And a spinster with a keen, kindly face. Others, too. They stand nervously idle, feeling that they are taking up valuable space in an industrial establishment and should perhaps make a purchase. So they permit their eyes to drift politely toward the wares. And then the chatter of the books has them. Old books, new books, live books, dead books--but they move carelessly away and toward the bargain tables--"All Books 30 Cents." Broken down best sellers here--pausing in their gavotte toward oblivion. The next step is the junk man--$1 a hundred. Pembertons, Wrights, Farnols, Websters, Johnstones, Porters, Wards and a hundred other names reminiscent more of a page in the telephone book than a page out of a literary yesterday. The little gavotte is an old dance in the second-hand book store. The $2-shelf. The $1-rack. The 75-cent table. The 30-cent grab counter. And finis. New scribblings crowd for place, old scribblings exeunt.

The girl without an umbrella studies titles. A love story, of course, and only thirty cents. An opened page reads, "he took her in his arms...." Who would not buy such a book on a rainy day?

* * * * *

It rains and other people come in. A middle-aged man in a curious coat, a curious hat and a curious face. Slate-colored skin, slate-colored eyes behind silver spectacles. A scholar in caricature, an Old Clothes Dealer out of Alice in Wonderland. The rain runs from his stringy, slate-colored hair. He approaches the high shelves, thrusts the silver spectacles farther down on his nose. In front of him a curious row of literary gargoyles--"The Astral Light," "What and Where Is God?", "Man" by Dohony of Texas, "The Star of the Magi."

Thin slate-colored fingers fumble nervously over the title backs. A second man, figure short, squat, red-faced, crowds the erratic scholar. A third. The rain is bringing them in in numbers. These are the basement students of the gargoyle philosophies, the gargoyle sciences, the gargoyle religions. Perpetual motion machine inventors, alchemists with staring, nervous-eyed medieval faces, fourth dimensionists, sun worshippers, cabalistic researchers, voodoo authorities--the old-book store is suddenly alive with them. They move about furtively with no word for one another, lost in their grotesque dreamings.

* * * * *

On a rainy day the city gives them up and they come puttering excitedly into the loop on a quest. The world is a garish unreality to them. The streets and the crowds of automatic-faced men and women, the upward rush of buildings and the horizontal rush of traffic are no more than vague grimacings. Life is something of which the streets are oblivious. But here on the gargoyle shelves, the high, shadowed shelves of the old book store--truth stands in all its terrible reality, wrapped in its authentic habiliments. Dr. Hickson of the psychopathic laboratory would give these curious rainy day phantasts identities as weird as the volumes they caress. But the old book store clerk is more kind. He lets them rummage. Before the rain ends they will buy "The Cradle of the Giants," "The Key to Satanism," Cornelius Agrippa's "Natural Magic," "The Astral Chord," "Occultism and Its Usages." They will buy books by Jacob Boehme, William Law, Sadler, Hyslop, Ramachaska. And they will go hurrying home with their treasures pressed close to them. Stuffy bedrooms lined with hints of Sabbatical horror, strewn with bizarre refuse; musty smelling books out of whose pages fantastic shapes rear themselves against the gaslights, macabre worlds in which unreason rides like a headless D'Artagnan; evenings in the park arguing suddenly with startled strangers on the existence of the philosophers' stone or the astrological causes of influenza--these form a background for the curious men whom the rain has drifted into the old book store and who stand with their eyes haunting the gargoyle titles.

The rain brings in another tribesman--a famed though somewhat ragged bibliomaniac. His casual gestures hide the sudden fever old books kindle in his thought. Old books--old books, a magical phrase to him. His eyes travel like a lover's back and forth, up and down. He knows them all--the sets, the first editions, the bargains, the riff-raff. A democratic lover is here. But the clerk watches him. For this lover is an antagonist. Yes, this somewhat ragged, gleaming-eyed gentleman with the casual manner is a terrible person to have around in a second-hand book store on a rainy day. Only six months ago one of his horrible tribe pounced upon Sander's "Indian Wars," price 30 cents; value, alas, $150.00. Only two months ago another of his kidney fell upon a copy of Jean Jacques Rosseau's "Emile" with Jean's own dedication on the title page to "His Majesty, the King of France." Price 75 cents; value, gadzooks, $200.

There will be nothing today, however. Merely an hour's caress of old friends on the high shelves while the rain beats outside. Unless--unless this Stevenson happens by any chance to be a "first." A furtive glance at the title page. No. The clerk sighs with relief as the Stevenson goes back on the shelf. It might have been something overlooked.

* * * * *

The rain ends. The old book store slowly empties. A troop of men and women saunter out, pausing to say farewell to the gaudily ragged tomes in the old book store. The sky has grown lighter. The buildings shake the last drops of rain from their spatula tops. There is a different-looking, well-linened gentleman thrusts his head into the old book store and inquires, "Have you a copy of 'The Investors' Guide'?"

ILL-HUMORESQUE

The beggar in the street, sitting on the pavement against the building with his pleading face raised and his arm outstretched--I don't like him. I don't like the way he tucks his one good leg under him in order to convey the impression that he is entirely legless. I don't like the way he thrusts his arm stump at me, the way his eyes plead his weakness and sorrow.

He is a presumptuous and calculating scoundrel, this beggar. He is a diabolical psychologist. Why will people drop coins into his hat? Ah, because when they look at him and his misfortunes, by a common mental ruse they see themselves in his place, and they hurriedly fling a coin to this fugitive image of themselves. And because in back of this beggar has grown up an insidious propaganda that power is wrong, that strength is evil, that riches are vile. A strong, rich and powerful man cannot get into heaven. Thus this beggar becomes for an instant an intimidating symbol of perfections. One feels that one should apologize for the fact that one has two legs, money in one's pocket and hope in one's heart. One flings him a coin, thus buying momentary absolution for not being an unfortunate--i.e., as noble and non-predatory--as the beggar.

* * * * *

I do not like the way this beggar pleads. And yet after I pass him and remember his calculating expression, his mountebank tricks, I grow fond of him--theoretically. My thought warms to him as a creature of intelligence, of straightforward and amusing cynicisms.

For this beggar is aware of me and the innumerable lies to which I lamely submit. I am the public to him--one of a herd of identical faces drifting by. And this beggar has perfected a technique of attack. It is his duty to sit on the pavement and lay for me and hit me with a slapstick labeled platitude and soak me over the head with a bladder labeled in stern white letters: "The Poor Shall Inherit the Kingdom of Heaven."

And this he does, the scoundrel, grinning to himself as the blows fall and slyly concealing his enthusiasm as the coins jingle into his hat. I am one of those who labor proudly at the immemorial task of idealizations. I am the public who passes laws proclaiming things wrong, immoral, contrary to my "best instincts." Thus I have after many centuries succeeded in creating a beautiful conception--a marvelous person. This marvelous person represents what I might be if I had neither ambition nor corpuscles, prejudices nor ecstasties, greeds, lusts, illusions or curiosity. This marvelous person is the beautiful image, the noble and flattering image of itself that the public rapturously beholds when it stares into the mirror of laws, conventions, adages, platitudes and constitutions that it has created.

A charming image to contemplate. Learned men wax full of stern joy when they gaze upon this image. Kind-hearted folk thrill with pride at the thought that life is at last a carefully policed force which flows politely and properly through the catalogued veins of this marvelous person.

But my beggar in the street--ah, my beggar in the street knows better. My beggar in the street, maimed and vicious, sits against the building and wields his bladder and his slapstick on me. Whang! A platitude on the rear. Bam! A bromide on the bean! And I shell out a dime and hurry on. I do not like this beggar.

* * * * *

But I grow warm with fellowship toward him after I have left him behind. There is something comradely about his amazing cynicism. People, thinks this beggar, are ashamed of themselves for being strong, for having two legs, for not being poor, brow-beaten, cheek-turning humble mendicants. People, thinks this beggar, are secretly ashamed of themselves for being part of success. And their shame is inspired by fear. When they see me they suddenly feel uncertain about themselves. When they see me they think that reverses and misfortunes and calamities might overtake them and reduce them to my condition. Thinking this, they grow indignant for an instant with a society that produces beggars. Not because it produced me. But perhaps it might produce them--as beggars. And then remembering that they are responsible for my plight--they being society--they beg my pardon by giving me money and a pleading look. Oho! You should see the pleading looks they give me. Men and women pass and plead with me not to hit them too hard with my slapstick and bladder. They plead with me to spare them, not to look at them. And when they give me a dime it is a gesture intended to annihilate me. The dime obliterates my misfortunes. It annihilates my poverty. For an instant, having annihilated poverty and misfortune with a dime, the man or woman is happy. An instant of security strengthens his wavering spirit.

* * * * *

Thus my beggar whom I have grown quite fond of as I write. I would write more of him and of the marvelous person in me whom he is continually belaboring with his slapstick and bladder. But I remember suddenly a man in a wheel chair. A pale man with drawn features and paralyzed legs. It was at night in North Clark Street. Lights streamed over the pavements. People moved in and out of doorways.

And this man sat in his wheel chair, a board on his lap. The board was laden with wares. Trinkets, pencils, shoestrings, candies, tacks, neckties, socks. And from the front of the board hung a sign reading, "Jim's Store--Stop and Shop."

I remember this creature with a sudden excitement. I passed by and bought nothing. But after five days his face has caught up with me. A sallow, drawn face, burning eyes, bloodless lips and skinny hands that fumbled among the wares on his board. He was young. Heroic sentences come to me. "Jim's Store--" Good hokum, effective advertising. And a strange pathos, a pathos that my beggar with one leg and a pleading face never had.

I do not like cynics. I like Jim better. I like Jim and his burning eyes, his skinny hands, his dying body--and his store. Fighting--with the lights going out. Sitting in a wheel chair with death at his back and despair crying from his eyes--"Come buy from me--a little while longer--I don't give up ... another week ... another month ... but I don't give up. I'm still on the turf.... Never mind my dying body ... business as usual ... business as usual.... Come buy from me ... little while longer ... a...."

But I never gave a nickel to Jim. I passed up his store. I took him at his word. He was selling wares and I didn't want any. But my beggar with the one leg and the inward grin was selling absolutions.... And I patronized him.

THE MAN WITH A QUESTION

Late afternoon. An hour more and the city will be emptying itself out of the high buildings. Now the shoppers are hurrying home to get dinner on the table.

A man stands on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. Unwittingly he invites attention. A poorly dressed man, with a work-heavy face and coarsened hands. But he stands motionless. More than that, he is not looking at anything. His deep-set eyes seem to withhold themselves from the active street.

In the sauve spectacle of the avenue his motionless figure is like an awkward faux pas in a parlor conversation. The newspaper man on his way to the I. C. station pauses to light his pipe and his eyes take in the figure of this motionless one.