DUST OF NEW YORK
BY KONRAD BERCOVICI
BONI & LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK 1919
Copyright, 1919,
BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
_Printed in the United States of America_
_Acknowledgment is hereby made to
the New York World, for permission
to reprint a number of the stories
included in this volume._
TO
JOHN O'HARA COSGRAVE
[Illustration]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
THERESA THE VAMP 3
THE TROUBLES OF A PERFECT TYPE 13
HOW THE IBANEZES LOVE 22
THE LITTLE MAN OF TWENTY-EIGHTH STREET 31
THE NEWLY-RICH GOLDSTEINS 40
ALL IN ONE WILD ROUMANIAN SONG 52
EXPENSIVE POVERTY 60
WHY HER NAME IS MARGUERITE V. L. F. CLEMENT 68
LULEIKA, THE RICH WIDOW 77
BECAUSE COHEN COULD NEITHER READ NOR WRITE 87
THE MARRIAGE BROKER'S DAUGHTER 94
THE NEW SECRETARY OF THE PRETZEL-PAINTER'S UNION 107
THE GYPSY BLOOD THAT TELLS 116
WHEN STARK'S CAFÉ WAS CLOSED 124
BECAUSE OF BOOKKEEPING 134
THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK 146
SOCIALISTS! BEWARE OF MRS. ROSENBERG 155
A CONFLICT OF IDEALS 162
THE HOLY HEALER FROM OMSK 174
HIRSH ROTH'S THEORY 186
THE TRAGEDY OF AFGHIAN'S LIVING RUG 197
BABETA'S DOG 208
THE PROFESSOR 224
THE PURE MOTIVE 233
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece
When Ferenczy entered the café there were
two different camps 8
Luleika and old Kurguz walked in Washington
Street 82
"Little Father, your pulse is wonderful to-day" 182
DUST OF NEW YORK
THERESA THE VAMP
New York is an orchestra playing a symphony. If you hear the part of
only one instrument--first violin or oboe, 'cello or French horn--it is
incongruous. To understand the symphony you must hear all the
instruments playing together, each its own part, to the invisible baton
of that great conductor, Father Time.
But the symphony is heard only very rarely. Most of the time New York is
tuning up. Each voice is practising its part of the score--the little
solos for the violins to please the superficial sentimentalists, and the
twenty bars for the horn to satisfy the martial spirit in men.
But don't, oh sightseers, don't think you know New York because you have
sauntered through a few streets and eaten hot tamales in a Mexican
restaurant, or burnt your tongue with goulash in some "celebrated
Hungarian palace." Only to very few privileged ones is it given to hear
the symphony--and they have to pay dearly for it. But it is worth the
price.
* * * * *
They called her the Vampire, or Vamp for short. Her name was Theresa,
and she was born somewhere on Hungarian soil in Tokai, where flows the
dark blue water of the Tisza, not far from the Herpad Mountains on which
grows the grape for the luxurious Tokai wine.
Now, when and why Theresa came to New York nobody knew. But all were
glad she was here ... here, at a little table in a corner of the
"Imperial" on Second Avenue. When one met a friend on the street and
asked: "Anybody at the 'Imperial?'" and the answer was "Nobody there
to-night," it simply meant that the Vamp was not there. The other two
hundred or more guests did not count.
She spoke very little. She smoked all the time, and her fiery dark eyes
hid behind the thin smoke curtain from her cigarette. Young men had no
chance at her table. They seldom came near her at all. They were afraid
of her. Only married men dared approach her, relying on their experience
to extricate themselves when in danger.
And yet there was no danger! At some hour after midnight Theresa brushed
the ashes off her waist from the "last" cigarette, arranged her hair a
bit, and announced to the company "I am going."
It always was irrevocable. A newcomer was known by the fact that he
offered to see her home. The habitués would then answer in chorus, "I
can find my way alone," and laugh and tease the unfortunate who did not
know that Theresa went home alone.
After Theresa's departure her friends would scatter to different tables
and take up cudgels for this or that or the other, always with the
conscience that on the street the question would be: "Anybody there?"
and the answer would be the inevitable "Nobody there." So most of them
would leave the place soon after Theresa--dispersing over the city, each
to his home, bringing there the secret emptiness that was in him.
* * * * *
"Ferenczy is here," a friend greeted me one day.
"Ferenczy who?" I asked.
"Ferenczy, the great painter, man!"
I did not know much about the great Hungarian artist, but my friend
knew, and urged me to come and see him. I found him at the "Imperial."
Tall, thin, dark, passionate, the picture of the painter as portrayed in
novels. He spoke about art like a true artist. Some of the ladies,
usually placidly sipping their coffee, became very self-conscious as he
declaimed a bit too loudly about beauty of line and harmony of color.
Even the two fighting musical critics, old Newman and Dr. Feldys,
forgot the nightly squabble over the merits of modern music, when
Ferenczy talked.
In the midst of all appeared Theresa. She went straight to her table.
From different sections of the café men rose, and after making their
apologies to the other guests, walked up to where the Vamp was waiting
for some one to help her take off her coat.
Ferenczy turned about to see who caused such a stir. A few minutes later
he was sitting opposite her, the two oblivious of everybody else. He was
her fellow countryman, was born at the foot of the same mountains, the
Herpads.
And we were all surprised when she did not say "I can find my way
alone," two hours after midnight, and allowed Ferenczy to see her home.
When Ferenczy entered the café the next evening there were two different
camps. One hated him because he took the Vamp home, and one admired him
because he had succeeded where everybody else had failed.
[Illustration: When Ferenczy entered the café there were two different
camps.]
He went straight to Theresa's table, which was usually vacant until she
came, and ordered something from the astonished waiter. They had not
realized before how boisterous a mustache can be, and not one guest felt
comfortable in his workaday garb facing the immaculately black and white
Ferenczy.
The other guests broke precedent that evening and came to sit at the
Vamp's table before she had arrived. Every time the door opened all the
heads turned in its direction, still maintaining or arguing about
something. And thus guests, perfect strangers, felt the weight of words
hurled at them as from a cannon's mouth.
And the door was never still. The Imperial was the home of all the
disappointed, disabused men of the East Side; men and women from the
four corners of the earth. Former poets who studied dentistry to earn a
living, and who are now completely swallowed up by their profession,
came nightly, to hear themselves mock the former music composer who is
now a physician, and over the ears in real estate transactions. This
physician once gave to a patient a prescription as follows: "60 pounds
of nails, fourteen window panes, 3×4, 12 pounds of putty and 80 pounds
of lime."
Former sculptors, former painters, former dancers, former men, former
women, all gather in the café of the might-have-beens, and all invite
every newcomer to witness in them his own doom. Some go to concerts to
hear music which they might have composed, others read poetry which they
might have written, criticise a play the thought of which had lingered
in their own minds for years without coming to utterance. Disabused
socialists now owning factories, and great, great chemists now clerking
in some drug store of the vicinity, assemble there.
* * * * *
Theresa came that night. Ferenczy helped her with the coat, and lit her
cigarette and ordered her coffee, and they talked earnestly in their
mother tongue the rest of the evening. One by one the other guests left
the table until the two were alone. It was after 2 A. M. when they left
the place. They were almost the last guests. He saw her home.
The following evening Theresa's former friends discussed Ferenczy. His
work, while having a certain charm which appealed to the uninitiated,
was worthless as art, they decreed.
He never did anything worth while. He was just good enough for America;
to make magazine covers. And Andrasky, the journalist, remembered that
an art critic in the Budapest Hirlap called Ferenczy "Muncaczy's
Monkey."
* * * * *
A few days later one of the Magyar papers had a derogatory article about
Ferenczy, in which the "Budapester" critic was cited.
The painter himself was not seen at the Imperial for a few evenings,
neither was Theresa. Scouts went out to find them. It was inconceivable
that the Vamp should not be out every evening!
At the café they began to accuse one another with writing the article,
which was anonymous. That vacant table near the wall stood like the
altar of a deserted shrine.
* * * * *
One day Fuller, the musician, met Andrasky around Tenth Street, going in
the opposite direction from the Imperial.
"Whereto, Andrasky?"
"Just for a walk."
And because he did not ask "Anybody there?" Fuller suspected that he
knew. He followed the journalist at a distance and discovered them, the
three of them, in a little Russian restaurant on Tenth Street.
* * * * *
In a week all the Imperial guests had gone over to the Tenth Street
café. Neither service nor food was as good as in the old place, but they
all professed to like the new one. They did not know whether it was
because of Ferenczy or because of Theresa. She paid no attention at all
to them.
In the following few months some of the might-have-beens tried to
resurrect themselves. One of the former poets wrote a long poem. Another
had a play accepted. The composer tried his fingers again on the
keyboard.
The tables at the Imperial were vacant. The waiters were asleep on their
feet. It lasted throughout the winter. In the spring the proprietor went
into bankruptcy.
* * * * *
"Anybody there?" is still a question on Second Avenue after midnight.
Only the "there" is somewhere else, and nobody knows who the "Anybody"
is--not even Theresa, because in the new place her former admirers read
their poetry and plays, try their songs and hang their pictures on the
walls. Even her table is not exclusively HER table any longer.
THE TROUBLES OF A PERFECT TYPE
Walk through Grand Street from Third Avenue to Clinton Street, which is
not a long distance, and you have the types of the whole world before
you. They are not in concentrated form; they are diluted. But if you
analyze, even hurriedly, you will soon be able to know the components of
each one of them.
A remote Tartar ancestor of one of the pushcart peddlers is plainly seen
in the small sunken black eyes. In another the straight line of the back
of the head tells you that his mother, or his grandmother, had lived
once in Hungary. In another one the Slav type, the flat fleshy nose, is
mixed with the Wallachian strong chin. Some Teuton blood calls out
through the heavy cast of an otherwise typical Austrian Jew. A Spanish
grandee, as if come out from a page of Cervantes, is selling shoe laces
and cuff buttons. And a Moroccan prince, ill at ease in his European
garb, is offering to the passer-by some new Burbankian fig-plum-orange
combination.
The vendors call out their wares in what seems at first a tongue all
their own. But a trained ear soon discovers that it is English, or
rather that English is the essential component of the chemistry of their
language; the rest being words of their own creation, or scraps from a
dozen other languages which stuck to the people of woe in their two
thousand years peregrination from land to land.
* * * * *
They needed a Jewish type in producing a screen drama. Not one of the
actors, semi-actors or hanger-ons of the company fitted the demands of
the omniscient director; so he set out to find the type himself. Seated
in a large touring car, he traversed every street of lower Manhattan,
carefully scanning the faces of men. For a full week he thus busied
himself without much success, unable to discover what he wanted.
The beginning of the second week found the director roaming through the
east side on foot. He stocked up more cigarettes than his pockets could
hold, visiting the innumerable little shops on every street, and drank
tea in a dozen obscure cafés without locating his man, the counterpart
of his imagination. But on the fourth day of the second week his
patience and perseverance were rewarded.
As he was sipping a glass of tea in a little coffee house the door
opened and a tall, lanky fellow appeared as if drawn by the magic power
of the director's desire.
He sat down at the first table and ordered something to eat. The
director could not take his eyes off him. That spare, long, black beard,
undulating to midway between chin and belt, those side locks, the
drooping mustache that hardly covered the long thin upper lip, that
misty something over the whole countenance, and the garb in which the
man was wrapped up! It was as he wanted, and better. It was the ideal
type for which he had searched the whole city in vain, and now,
suddenly, when least expected, the man had come by himself.
* * * * *
Mr. Cord was too anxious to realize his plans to be bold and direct.
After deliberating with himself as to the best method, he did what he
had seen done in the movies years ago. He called the waiter, tipped him
liberally and asked information about the man sitting at the corner
table.
"That fellow there? It's Samuelson, from the candy store on the corner."
"Is he making much money?"
"Him?" the waiter sighed. "Selling four sticks of gum and three packages
of cigarettes a day."
Mr. Cord began to see his line of action.
"Is he a clever fellow?"
"He plays chess with the boss and beats him every time."
Meanwhile the bearded fellow got through with what was before him, wiped
his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and was ready to go, when the
director called out:
"I say, Mr. Samuelson, can I see you for a few minutes?"
"What do you want to see me for?" the man asked, hesitatingly
approaching Mr. Cord's table.
"Would you not sit down and have a glass of tea with me? Waiter! two
more teas and some cake, please."
A few minutes later the two men were engaged in earnest conversation.
The director wanted to draw him out and did not know how to do it, while
Samuelson scented that the other one needed him, and decided to be on
his guard until he should know more definitely what it all was about.
* * * * *
Has he ever gone to the theatre? Sure enough. He has seen every play in
the Jewish theatres, and Libin the playwright, bought his cigarettes
from him every day.
Has he seen the movies? Sure enough. When it was very cold in the store,
and on Saturdays. What warmer place was there than the movie theatre on
the street! And cheap too, five cents, including war tax.
Does he like them? Of course! What a question!
How would he like to be seen in the movies? Well, that was a different
question. He could not do any of the stunts the movie actors do. Leaping
from a galloping horse, falling down a precipice, or walking over from
one side of the street to the other on a telephone wire a hundred feet
from the ground, was not exactly his profession or to his liking. But
what a director wants cannot be denied. This one talked long and
convincingly, ordered tea after tea and cigar after cigar, and got
Samuelson so excited that at the end of their conversation the candy
store keeper was convinced a greater actor than himself had never yet
trod the earth. To clinch the bargain the director gave Samuelson
twenty dollars on account of a promised fifty dollars a week contract,
and it was agreed that the store keeper was to present himself ready for
duty a week later.
And now, to preserve the flavor of what happened, I will tell the story
in Samuelson's own words--or rather, I will use as many of Samuelson's
own words as possible.
* * * * *
"And when that feller Cord, or what's his name, when he walked away and
I remain alone with twenty dollars in my fist--like that--what do I do
but sit and think what a great country this is.
"In Russia I have been a tailor twenty years, and nobody saw that I was
a great actor, not even myself. I met thousands of people. They saw me
at work and at prayer. They saw me every week day and every Sabbath. My
own wife in Russia has never seen that I was a great actor. And here
comes a man I have never seen and who never saw me before and offers me
tea and cake and gives me twenty dollars and a contract for fifty
dollars a week, and who tells me I am a great actor! So of course I am a
great actor.
"So this is a great country, I said to myself! And now that I am such a
great actor, why should I have such a little store that don't even pay
for coals in the winter? Why should I? Why? So I goes out to Mendel the
waiter and he calls by the telephone a jobber and I sell him the whole
store, and the shelves, and the show case, and the sign over the door,
and even sell him the big lamp I bought on payments. He gives me two
hundred dollars for everything. I know he cheats me, but what do I care!
Am I not a great actor?
"And I go out and watch the great actor, Adler, come out of the theatre,
and I see how he goes dressed up and with a high hat. So I say to
myself, this is how you have to be dressed up. And I go in a store and
buy a what you call, a full dress suit and a high hat and white shirts
and collars and neckties and patent leather shoes. And I go to a barber
and tell him: This is a great country and I am a great actor. And when I
got up from his chair I looked almost like Adler. The hairs cut nicely
and no beard, no moustache, no sidelocks.
"When I am through I go to the office of the movie company.
"When Mr. Cord sees me all dressed up and with no beard he gets terribly
excited and throws me out of the office.
"What have you done with your beard and side locks?" he yelled, and he
nearly wanted to murder me.
"And now I have to sit and wait until my beard and mustache will grow
back. I am ashamed to go to the café house. The boss will laugh, the
waiter and everybody will laugh, and with a high hat how can I go to
look for work at my trade? And my hairs grow so slowly!
"What kind of a country is this?"
HOW THE IBANEZES LOVE
If you ever find yourself on Thirty-fourth Street near Seventh Avenue,
don't fail to hunt up a certain Spanish table d'hote restaurant. This
section of New York is like a border town on the lower Pyrenees in
France. People speak French with the Spanish accent and Spanish with the
singsong of Southern France.
Sitting on the broad steps of the fine old massive brown stone houses of
the district, children of old Catalonia, Dons and Donas from Madrid and
Barcelona, using a latinized English all their own, exchange stories and
opinions with their French neighbors.
Chords struck on a guitar, to accompany a subdued voice, high colors on
the window curtains, a mixed odor of garlic, incense and heavy-scented
perfumes, suggest something indefinably Moorish, Alhambresque; slow yet
passionate, like cold fire.
And lo! the mirage vanishes! You are out of the district. The modest
warm curve of the Orient has disappeared, the arrogant cold straight
line of the Occident stares at you. You are in the heart of busy old New
York.
* * * * *
But if you are hungry, hungry for good, hunt up the Ibanez place. Four
two-seat tables, two three-seat ones, and two big tables of elastic
capacity in the centre. The wall paper is red, the shade on the lamps
brown, the ceiling is golden, the lady is fair, the food is good, and
the wine....
The Ibanezes have a daughter, Juanita. She was twenty when I last saw
her. Her hair fell over the forehead like foam from an overful glass of
liquid amber. Altogether she reminded one of molten gold and fire and
honey.
Pablo Cortez, the Cuban poet, was in love with Juanita at that time. She
was not indifferent to his attentions; yet like a real Spanish dona she
allowed him to woo her in his own fashion.
* * * * *
The last clients had departed. Cortez, myself and Madame Ibanez were
drinking coffee. Juanita was not well. Pablo had brought some of his
latest poems which he wanted to read to all of us. Madame Ibanez thought
them beautiful, but she became very serious when the poet told her they
were dedicated to her daughter.
Her smile vanished, the face and body became taut, and her eyes, like
two big search-lights, seared through to the man's heart. After a while
she relaxed, lit a cigarette, brought some more coffee and seating
herself between us two she said:
"You two have been talking the whole evening. I too, want to tell a
story.
* * * * *
"There was a young couple I knew twenty-five years ago. They were both
artists. She was a pianist and he was a singer. He had the most
beautiful voice I ever heard--and I have heard a lot of good voices. Her
father was a rich merchant and had planned differently for his daughter,
but she fell in love with Pedro and eloped with him.
"At Boulogne they took a steamer for Havana and landed there penniless,
absolutely penniless. Another piece of sugar, Don Pablo? non? Well, they
landed penniless. But he had some friends there who bestirred
themselves, and in ten days they had arranged the first concert in the
largest hall of Havana. It was more than a success, it was a triumph.
She acted as his accompanist.
"That night they vowed one to another that he would never sing with
another accompanist, and she would never play the accompaniments to
another singer.
"His voice and her playing pleased the Cubans so much the couple had to
appear in concert several times a week. Money flowed in from all sides.
The young wife sometimes longed for home and hers, she loved her people
very much. But Pedro kissed away her worries--sang away her longings.
They were very happy.
"A manager got hold of them and pretty soon they had engagements from
San Francisco all the way to New York.
"When they arrived in San Francisco it was spring. Pedro had a slight
cold, and went to see the doctor his manager recommended to him. It was
the first time he had ever been out alone since they eloped from Madrid.
She was too tired to accompany him. He had to return the next day, and
the next, for treatment.
"On the fourth day was the concert. A phenomenal success. Pedro sang
better than ever. His wife sitting at the piano felt the envy of a
thousand women. And she was proud of her Pedro. His voice rose and fell
and rippled, and between the folds of sound were jewels of all colors.
"Still, on the next day he went to see the doctor. When he returned he
was irritable, quarrelsome, and refused to even go out with her.
"She cried. What else can a woman do? He quieted her soon, and made her
beg forgiveness. The reason for his irritability was, he said, the
condition of his throat, as the doctor had explained it to him. It made
her sit up the whole night. What if her Pedro should lose his golden
voice?
"The next morning she made herself ready to go with him to the doctor.
It was an Italian who knew French well. She would try to get him to tell
her the truth about her husband's voice. But Pedro insisted that she
must remain home. She did not have proper street wear to conceal her
state. He talked and talked until she gave in and remained home.
"No sooner was he gone and she regretted to have let him go alone. Why!
in a taxi she could be there without being much seen by any one!
"She dressed hurriedly and was soon at the medical man's door. She heard
Pedro's voice. He sang to a piano's accompaniment. The voice was as
clear as a bell, the 'tessatura' as firm as rich velvet.
"She rang the bell. A servant came out. 'No, the doctor was not in
town.'
"'He has not been in town the last two days. He was always away on
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of every week.'
"'Who's playing? who's singing?'
"'The great tenor and the doctor's wife'----
"And the door closed with a bang.
"Pedro came home a few hours later.
"'Pedro, what did the doctor say?'
"'He said I must see him at least three times a week--on Wednesdays,
Thursdays and Fridays--all the time we shall be here.'
"Then they went down to the restaurant to dine. He was very gay, very
well disposed when they returned to their apartments. They sat down to
drink Spanish lemonade which only she knew how to prepare exactly to his
taste.
"There was only one cry--the rest was only guttural noise. A few drops
in the drink and his vocal chords were destroyed forever--he never sang
again to another woman's accompaniments."
* * * * *
"And the woman, Madame Ibanez? What happened to the woman?"
"She kept her vow. She never played accompaniments to another man's
singing. She opened a restaurant, Don Pablo; her man became the cook.
And now a poet thinks he loves their daughter."
Like silver crystals detaching themselves from onyx flames, two tears
rolled down the parched cheeks of the woman.
"Pablo Cortez must know how the Ibanezes take love, and think twice
before he dedicates his poems."
* * * * *
Some gruntlings were heard from the other side of the partition. Madame
Ibanez stood up.
"It's best you gentlemen leave now. Poor Pedro must be very tired."
Pablo Cortez returned to Cuba on the next steamer.
If you ever are hungry while in the neighborhood of Thirty-fourth Street
and Seventh Avenue, look up the Ibanezes place. Juanita serves the new
guests.
THE LITTLE MAN OF 28TH STREET
Some people call him Signor, but he is better known as "Unique" and many
more people call him "Signor Unique." He is a bent little man in a long
green Prince Albert coat that was once black. A short gray beard frames
a pale face in squashed folds on which squats a flat nose. Bushy,
low-arched eyebrows shade two little eyes which move rapidly up and down
and in and out of their orbs as move scared little mice in their hole.
Such is the appearance of Signor when you meet him in his musty shop
littered with bric-a-brac.
On the street his gait is so irregular it suggests that he is
vociferating with his legs; that the two limbs are quarreling with the
jerking arms and that the four limbs argue each separately with the
pavement and the curb stones about things we simple mortals will never
understand.
From where and when he came here nobody knows. But all the antiquarians
on 28th Street swear--and some of these gentlemen are much older than
the antiques they sell--that Signor was there before any of them was
born, that his shop is the oldest on the street.
They also assure you that he can "smell" a fake antique from a distance.
In fact, they maintain, this sixth sense of Signor has been his undoing.
He could not "guarantee" the genuineness of an article. He knew too
much.
Most of the others guaranteed in good faith and ignorance thousands of
pieces, and made fortunes, where Signor only shook his head derisively.
They have sold "genuine" Memlings to collecting millionaires, swords of
Gaspard Olivares and statues of Osiris as well as Chinese porcelains and
Buddhas, the origin of which they refused to know, while Signor
maintained that the real things still on the market would not fill a
good sized shoe.
On the dusty shelves in Signor's store are pieces in brass, pewter,
glass and iron of no particular artistic value, but the origin of each
thing is guaranteed by the dusty old man.
He will tell you the whole history of every bit of metal in his shop.
And if you think him stark mad when he announces the price of the iron
hinge on which once hung the principal door of the Amiens Cathedral, or
of the brass lantern which once adorned the nuptial chambers of the Moor
King Mambrin of Don Quixote fame--if you are stunned by Signor's prices
he will tell you that all these things are "unique."
Signor never owned or sold a thing which was not unique. He has
investigated that Cathedral door hinge and convinced himself that the
upper hinge on which now hangs the door is a new one. As to the brass
lantern, he has a hundred authorities to strengthen his allegation.
One must know that Signor does not deal in things that have their
counterpart somewhere on this planet.
But above all, Signor has always been proud of his collection of stamps.
Among the philatelists the world over he is listed as the owner of the
most searched for stamps.
There are standing offers of thousands of dollars for some of the little
colored squares of paper Signor is tucking safely away in his heavy safe
every sundown. Bent over his little desk in a corner of his darkened
shop, the old man is daily examining his stamp collection.
He looks them over again and again; treats them, where there is
suspicion of decay, nurses them back to health, using medicines from
labelled bottles or by exposing them to the air after mid-day, when the
rays of the sun no longer affect color and tissue.
No living thing ever had his care. To these square pieces of paper he
has devoted all his life. To obtain them he has schemed and worried and
worked and lived.
* * * * *
Of all the stamps in his collection, Signor had one which had given him
the greatest trouble and which he had nursed for years. It was the only
postage stamp left of a first emission of one of the Bahama Islands.
For some reason or other this stamp was perforated and the edge around
the holes in the paper was thinning away with a rapidity which
frightened the old philatelist.
He loved that stamp as a father loves a sick child of genius. There was
not another one like it in the world. Not another bit of carmine paper
with a five-cornered crown and a small cross a little off centre.
There was a standing offer for the stamp by a philatelist of London who
had tried for years to induce Signor to part with it, but the bent
little man prized and loved the stamp even more, when he knew how much
the other man across the waters wanted to have it.
Out of sheer perversity, he occasionally wrote to London to find out
whether James Bolton would not offer a bigger price. With each increase
the other offered, he grew in Signor's estimation. But to part with the
"Bahama" was another question!
* * * * *
And suddenly, through some other philatelist, Signor learned that there
existed in Mexico City another "Bahama," just like his own. At first he
pretended that he did not believe the report. He was so sure that the
one he had was unique!
But little by little the suspicion of such possibility wormed itself
into him and undermined his confidence. He looked at the stamp,
questioningly, as one would at the corpse of a dead woman, whose
faithfulness was just impugned, but there was no answer.
A few days later, unable to live in doubt, Signor was en route to Mexico
City.
* * * * *
After manoeuvering for a week he found out that Don Garaye had once
possessed such a stamp, but had sold it to a house in Lisbon, Portugal.
There was no more impatient man on the boat than the Signor.
The expanse of water and sky was nothing to him. The thousands of horse
power of the big engines harnessed did not work fast enough and the
possible quest of every one on the boat dwindled to meaninglessness
before the importance of his own.
Without a night's rest he hurried from Havre to Paris and fumed and
fretted the few hours he had to wait for the Madrid express. After three
days travel in the train, crossing France and Spain, Signor reached the
city of Lisbon. But lo, the stamp, exchanged for a collection of other
things, was now in Italy. The old Raspiegli of Rome, Italy's oldest
philatelist, had acquired the much sought for unique "Bahama."
* * * * *
News of sudden inquiries travels fast among antiquarians and
philatelists and the frequency of such inquiries raises the value of the
thing inquired for.
Giuseppe Raspiegli of Rome knew all about Signor's travels ere that
gentleman crossed the frontier of Italy. When an old man in a Prince
Albert coat, casually visited his shop and inquired about a perforated
Bahama stamp the Rome philatelist just as casually answered that the
little thing was somewhere in Italy and that he could procure it if--if
Signor was serious enough. Signor answered that he wanted to see it, but
when he heard the price Raspiegli asked, he threw his hands up. It was
double the amount he ever dared to ask for his Bahama.
* * * * *
For weeks at a stretch Signor secluded himself in his little attic room
overlooking the Tiber. For hours and hours he looked at his own Bahama,
he had believed so many years to be unique.
Raspiegli demanded such an enormous sum for his stamp! It was in much
better condition than the one Signor owned. Time had been kindlier to
its color and tissue. But the price was an enormous one. It was almost
all he possessed. It meant ruin.
The old philatelist could neither eat nor sleep. His limbs grew even
more quarrelsome with one another and his bent shoulders now frequently
entered the argument.
Raspiegli was made of adamant. He had fixed his price and would not
relent.
He had sized up his customer and knew that sooner or later the little
man would open his wallet and pay.
Meanwhile Signor starved himself to death. When he had finally decided
to pay the price to Raspiegli he had just enough left to carry him home
on the next boat.
That last night in the attic room overlooking the Tiber was one of great
suffering. He cried. He tore his hair. He bit his nails.
But early morning found him at the door of Raspiegli, money in hand.
"It is all I possess Maestro Raspiegli," he muttered.
"Which shows you are a real philatelist," the Italian answered suavely
as he counted the money.
From the deepest recess of the safe he brought out the little square of
carmine paper. Signor looked at it again. No doubt it was in a better
state of preservation than his own, but he felt no warmth, no intimacy,
no kinship with it.
"You will probably yet make a profit on it," Raspiegli disturbed the old
man's contemplation.
"A profit! A profit! I did not buy it to make a profit. I only wanted
that my own Bahama should be the only one of its kind."
As he spoke he lit a match and before Raspiegli had time to interfere
the ashes of the other "Bahama" mixed with the dust on the floor.
For Signor things had to be unique to be worth keeping.
THE NEWLY-RICH GOLDSTEINS
The Goldsteins were destined for light work and comfort. "Middle Class"
was stamped on their faces and radiated from their speech and movements.
Every stitch of clothing proclaimed that they belonged to the happy,
contended-with-what-God-gives middle class.
"H. Goldstein & Co., Embroidery," occupied the first floor of a
dilapidated building on St. Mark's Place near Third Avenue. The two
daughters, Sophy and Leah, were the working force of the firm. H.
Goldstein himself was the salesman, bookkeeper, deliverer, collector and
buyer. Four sewing machines near the rear windows, a table, an
assortment of cardboard boxes and a few shelves in a corner were all the
machinery of the factory.
But the Goldsteins were a contented lot. They lived in a five-room
apartment on Tenth Street, had good old soft chairs to sit on; Mrs.
Goldstein prepared fine meals, and on Saturday as the factory was closed
each one of the family had his own private joys. H. Goldstein went to
the synagogue to meet his old friends and discuss the Talmud. Mrs.
Goldstein visited all her relatives on the Sabbath. Sophy was out with
her beau, Joseph Katz; and Leah strolled on Second Avenue on the arm of
Maurice Feldman.
The factory just covered house expenses and a small dollar or two for a
rainy day saved by Mrs. Goldstein from table money. But they were
independent, in business for themselves, as befits the Goldsteins the
whole world over, and not hired workers. At the synagogue, Hirsh
Goldstein was respected for his learning and piety; and though his
contributions were not very large, still they were never beggarly.
* * * * *
When America entered the war the embroidery business took a jump. The
Goldsteins obtained orders for shoulder straps, epaulets, chevrons, hat
bands and a lot of other paraphernalia absolutely necessary to soldiers
and officers to go over the top. The Goldsteins added four more machines
and hired half a dozen Italian girls for the work. Soon even this
enlarged force could not cope with the orders. Another floor was hired,
six more machines fixed up, and Joseph Katz, Sophy's beau, became the
bookkeeper. Three months later the factory moved to a Bond Street loft
and sixty machines, power driven and of the latest model, were
installed. Little by little the Sabbath was neglected. The rush orders
forced them to work seven days a week, seven days and seven nights.
Maurice Feldman, Leah's beau, was engaged as assistant bookkeeper.
"Reb Goldstein, we missed you last Saturday," friends questioned him at
the synagogue.
"The Talmud says, 'The welfare of the country you live in stands higher
than your own rites,'" was all he answered.
Though people knew that his translation of the passage was a bit loose,
they did not interfere.
* * * * *
After the factory had moved over to Bond Street Sophy and Leah remained
at home. Their presence in the factory was no longer needed.
Mother Goldstein argued that it ill-befitted the daughters of so big a
manufacturer to be working. Goldstein was making money faster than he
could count it. The girls were flattered and adulated wherever they
went, and they began to think the Tenth Street apartment and the
district they lived in entirely out of keeping with their new station in
life. They had rich clothing now, and thought themselves too good for
their former friends.
A large contribution to a charitable undertaking brought the young
ladies an invitation to a party given by some wealthy people on
Riverside Drive. It was the first time they had seen such living
quarters. It sharpened their appetites to the pomps and vanities of the
world. It made them feel the people living downtown were dust or dross.
Maurice Feldman and Joseph Katz were the first to feel the changed
attitude. Sure enough! The young ladies were not going to marry their
father's bookkeepers!
Riverside Drive became the ideal of the two sisters. At first the father
refused even to hear of it. But when fortune had favored him and he made
a lump sum in some side speculation, he half gave his consent.
At the synagogue he was seldom seen, and if he happened to come once in
a while he was not as warmly greeted as formerly. He had offended
several members of the congregation, had humbled them, by giving a
donation of a hundred dollars when they had only given ten.
When the two sisters had won over their mother to the Riverside Drive
plan the father could no longer resist. Soon an interior decorator was
busy garnishing the nine-room two-bath apartment, with brand-new highly
polished furniture. Gold-tinted hangings and gold painted chairs,
bookcases filled with de luxe sets in red and blue, an Oriental room, a
Louis XV. piano, and "real" oil paintings. Sophy and Leah were all the
time buying new things. The visits to the great stores did not improve
taste, but it pricked ambition. When the bustle ended, the Goldsteins
had spent a young fortune on the Riverside apartment. The rooms were
well filled with whatever could be bought, with all the Goldsteins could
afford; and they could afford a good deal, because Hirsh Goldstein was
making more money than he had ever dared to dream.
The war had to be won, and it could not be done without the assistance
of "H. Goldstein & Co."
The first few days the Goldsteins enjoyed their acquisitions so much
they had no time to think of anything else. Then they joined a
fashionable temple. The daughters became members of charitable
societies, the membership of which was composed of older parvenues. The
downtown crowd and old associations were forgotten in the whirl. When
some of the relatives came to visit the Goldsteins, they felt so
outclassed and outdistanced that they never returned again.
But after the girls had wearied somewhat of their furniture and things,
they began to notice that the new acquaintances made no friendly
overtures. A feeling stole over them that their new friends laughed
behind their backs. Whenever they happened to be in the company of the
new aristocracy, the others spoke of things they knew nothing about. The
others, college bred most of them, mentioned names of authors and
artists the Goldsteins had never heard of before. The others had
tapering fine finger-nails, slender wrists, thin ankles, and wore the
simplest clothes with distinction.
Sophy and Leah felt that the young men of the new set avoided
them. They were always courteous, but cold--cold to the invaders.
But of course they could not think of marrying the firm's
bookkeepers--twenty-five-dollar-a-week men! Yet they despaired ever to
find mates from amongst those other people.
Once a collection was made to cover some minor expense of a children's
party. Sophy gave a hundred dollars. She surprised the others laughing,
and never knew whether she had given too much or too little. Hirsh
Goldstein did not fare any better. The German Jews he met at the
synagogue were nice and polite, but patronizing to an exasperating
degree. Though they accepted his gifts for the synagogue and other
charities, they looked down upon him. When he gave a small amount he was
criticized as a miser, when he gave a big sum he was a parvenu. He
missed his old cronies. He had no chance to exhibit learning to those
"new people."
Mrs. Goldstein wandered about the rooms, as if in a prison. It was
seldom that anybody ever visited the family now. They were reputed to be
so rich! Joseph and Maurice came once to Sophy's birthday party, but
they found there other guests, and felt lonesome. The Goldsteins had not
learned how to be idling busily.
The two sisters now lacked a certain freedom of movement, surety of
action. Sophy began to long for the firm grasp of Maurice's hand. Leah
longed to hear Joseph's simple songs. The house with all its new wealth
was not their home. It was too cold, too new, too clean. The men and
women they met were not of their kind. The Goldsteins felt daily that
they were only tolerated by them.
This situation lasted six months.
Then Hirsh Goldstein returned to his old synagogue on Hester Street. He
went there in his old coat. To make up with his old friends he gave only
five dollars when he was called to read from the holy book.
"Hirsh is down from his high horse," they whispered, when he returned
the next week bringing his wife also to the synagogue. She too came in
her second best wraps.
A few weeks later the news spread that the Goldsteins had lost most of
their fortune or all of it. Sophy and Leah came downtown to a party to
which former friends invited them, just to show that it mattered not.
And it was so nice and friendly! Everybody was so familiar and intimate.
"If you want any one to speak to you, leave all the junk here," Sophy
told Leah, who had put on the greater part of her jewelry for the
occasion.
The Goldsteins rented an apartment on Tenth Street, but this time the
old people furnished it. They bought good soft chairs, the kind they had
had before, and a multicolored carpet for the floor of the front room,
and a red settee which did not look severe and stylish, but inviting. It
was just one step ahead in point of comfort and luxury from the one
they had had before the adventure on the Drive. It was home again.
The Drive apartment was sublet, all furnished. Maurice came back to
Sophy, Joseph to Leah, and every time one of the family bought clothes
or jewelry great care was taken not to overdo--not to scare away old
friends, not to soar too high with the first wind. Every time some
expensive dress was suggested by some friends they exclaimed in chorus.
"We can't afford it. Times are hard."
But they were happy again.
ALL IN ONE WILD ROUMANIAN SONG
Some day some one should chart New York--some one who does not know a
thing about statistics, who will study every section just for the love
of it, without even thinking of selling the story to a newspaper. To
this some one I will give some valuable points of which very few are
aware.
In the hope that I may tempt such a one, I will give out the points one
by one. Here is the first one:
The map of Europe is reproduced in New York by the different
nationalities living here; each nationality having as neighbor the same
that it has in Europe. Thus, the Greeks, Turks, Syrians and Italians are
close neighbors in Europe, and also here. The same thing applies to the
Russians, who are neighbors with the Roumanians, the Poles, the
Austrians and the Germans. And one must not think that love attracts
them. They hate one another as whole-heartedly as only neighbors can
hate one another. Perhaps this mutual hatred attracts them: Hatred is
not as bad as we have been taught to think. One can, and generally does,
love lower than himself, but no one hates lower than himself. Hence:
The Roumanian quarter of New York is perhaps the most interesting one.
It really starts at Delancey Street and the Bowery, and is bounded by
Houston Street, north of which is Hungary and east of which are
Bulgaria, Serbia and a group of other Balkanic peoples.
What distinguishes the Roumanian quarter is the people's carefree way of
living. Cafés, amusement places, pastry shops, everywhere. And you can
hear music streaming out from every window. The sound from a grand piano
on which some one is essaying Beethoven's "Appassionata," or Sarasate's
undying and hackneyed "Gypsy Airs," played on a violin to a very
inadequate accompaniment. Song, music and color, whichever way you turn.
But you only get the fringe of it, until you come down to Moskowitz's
cellar on Rivington Street. And though the wine there is not as good as
the music, the place is always full--to the glory of the Roumanians who
know that no wine could be so good as to surpass the quality of the
music one hears there.
The place is literally filled every night. You see, the real difference
between the Russians and the Roumanians is--the Russians talk politics,
literature and philosophy when they come together, while the Roumanians
like to hear good music and drink wine in company. So they come, whole
parties, whole families, children and all, to Moskowitz's.
And Moskowitz himself presides over his instrument, the cimbalon, and
striking the tense wires with two little wooden sticks he draws out from
them the weirdest sounds, the saddest chords, dissolving into the
wildest dances. Of course Moskowitz plays regular stuff also; hits and
misses of the popular repertoire of the vaudeville, etc., but he does
this only when his guests are eating--orders from Mrs. Moskowitz, you
know, who does not want food compared with her husband's Roumanian
music.
Marco, the young Roumanian painter, was in love with Fay Roberts, a
gifted American girl from up-State, who had made Greenwich Village her
abode. She was so gifted in many directions that she was a failure at
everything--except being loved. In this she had succeeded very well. A
dozen artists and two dozen business men were in love with this
possessor of a beautiful head from which brains mirrored through two
blue eyes.
Of all the men Marco loved her best and most truly. She knew it. She
liked him. But he was dull. He cut no figure anywhere. He took no part
in discussions. He never cited Dostoiewsky. He never tiraded against the
lack of understanding of the people. He once angered everybody by saying
that the people, the plain common ordinary people, were the creators of
everything worth while. She hated him for saying that. He had a way of
his, of burying his bushy head in his pipe and looking from underneath
his eyebrows, that angered her very much.
He loved her, he adored her, and as time went by, he became more dull.
Some people's tongues are loosened by love as by wine, and others are
stricken dumb.
Marco lost speech whenever he faced Fay, lost it more and more as his
love for the girl grew.
"What's the matter with your Roumanian savage?" friends asked the girl.
"I don't know. He is getting duller every day," the girl answered.
Then, one day, as Fay and a party of friends planned a merry evening,
Marco flared up enthusiastically.
"Come with me, somewhere."
"Where?" they all asked.
"With me, to a place I know."
And thus it was that a dozen American young men and women descended the
stairs of Moskowitz's cellar.
It was too early; Moskowitz was not yet playing. Fay did not like the
food, and her grumbling became contagious. They all mocked and derided
Marco. Thompson and Carlisle, both in love with Fay, and Mary and Lucy,
both in love with the two men, never ceased for a moment to taunt poor
Marco. And though he ordered the best wine, Fay declared that "this
Roumanian monstrosity was the worst ever."
The painter's eyes became moist; he pleaded, but Fay's eyes were as cold
as steel.
"You are dull, you are stupid," she cried.