We used to call him Rhubarb, by reason of his long russet beard, which
we imagined trailing in the prescriptions as he compounded them,
imparting a special potency. He was a little German druggist--_Deutsche
Apotheker_--and his real name was Friedrich Wilhelm Maximilian Schulz.
The village of Kings is tucked away in Long Island, in the Debatable
Land where the generous boundary of New York City zigzags in a sporting
way just to permit horse racing at Belmont Park. It is the most rustic
corner of the City. To most New Yorkers it is as remote as Helgoland and
as little known. It has no movie theatre, no news-stand, no cigar store,
no village atheist. The railroad station, where one hundred and fifty
trains a day do not stop, might well be mistaken for a Buddhist shrine,
so steeped in discreet melancholy is it. The Fire Department consists of
an old hose wagon first used to extinguish fires kindled by the
Republicans when Rutherford B. Hayes was elected. In the weather-beaten
Kings Lyceum "East Lynne" is still performed once a year. People who
find Quoguc and Cohasset too exciting, move to Kings to cool off. The
only way one can keep servants out there is by having the works of
Harold Bell Wright in the kitchen for the cook to read.
Stout-hearted Mr. Schulz came to Kings long ago. There is quite a little
German colony there. With a delicatessen store on one side of him and a
man who played the flute on the other, he felt hardly at all
expatriated. The public house on the corner serves excellent
_Rheingold_, and on winter evenings Friedrich and Minna would sit by the
stove at the back of the drugstore with a jug of amber on the table and
dream of Stuttgart.
It did not take me long to find out that apothecary Schulz was an
educated man. At the rear of the store hung two diplomas of which he was
very proud. One was a certificate from the Stuttgart Oberrealschule; the
other his license to practise homicidal pharmacy in the German Empire,
dated 1880. He had read the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft", and found it
more interesting than Henry James, he told me. Julia and I used to drop
into his shop of an evening for a mug of hot chocolate, and always fell
into talk. His Minna, a frail little woman with a shawl round her
shoulders, would come out into the store and talk to us, too, and their
pet dachshund would frolic at our feet. They were a quaint couple, she
so white and shy and fragile; he ruddy, sturdy, and positive.
It was not till I told him of my years spent at a German University that
he really showed me the life that lay behind his shopman activity. We
sometimes talked German together, and he took me into their little
sitting room to see his photographs of home scenes at Stuttgart. It was
over thirty years since he had seen German soil, but still his eyes
would sparkle at the thought. He and Minna, being childless, dreamed of
a return to the Fatherland as their great end in life.
What an alluring place the little drugstore was! I was fascinated by the
rows and rows of gleaming bottles labelled with mysterious Latin
abbreviations. There were cases of patent remedies--Mexican Mustang
Liniment, Swamp Root, Danderine, Conway's Cobalt Pills, Father Finch's
Febrifuge, Spencer's Spanish Specific. Soap, talcum, cold cream,
marshmallows, tobacco, jars of rock candy, what a medley of
paternostrums! And old Rhubarb himself, in his enormous baggy
trousers--infinite breeches in a little room, as Julia used to say.
I wish I could set him down in all his rich human flavour. The first
impression he gave was one of cleanness and good humour. He was always
in shirtsleeves, with suspenders forming an X across his broad back;
his shirt was fresh laundered, his glowing beard served as cravat. He
had a slow, rather ponderous speech, with deep gurgling gutturals and a
decrescendo laugh, slipping farther and farther down into his larynx.
Once, when we got to know each other fairly well, I ventured some
harmless jest about Barbarossa. He chuckled; then his face grew grave.
"I wish Minna could have the beard," he said. "Her chest is not strong.
It would be a fine breast-protector for her. But me, because I am strong
like a horse, I have it all!" He thumped his chest ruefully with his
broad, thick hand.
Despite his thirty years in America, good Schulz was still the Deutsche
Apotheker and not at all the American druggist. He had installed a soda
fountain as a concession, but it puzzled him sorely, and if he was asked
for anything more complex than chocolate ice cream soda he would shake
his head solemnly and say: "That I have not got." Motorists sometimes
turned off the Jericho turnpike and stopped at his shop asking for
banana splits or grape juice highballs, or frosted pineapple fizz. But
they had to take chocolate ice cream soda or nothing. Sometimes in a fit
of absent-mindedness he would turn his taps too hard and the charged
water would spout across the imitation marble counter. He would wag his
beard deprecatingly and mutter a shamefaced apology, smiling again when
the little black dachshund came trotting to sniff at the spilt soda and
rasp the wet floor with her bright tongue.
At the end of September he shut up the soda fountain gladly, piling it
high with bars of castile soap or cartons of cod liver oil. Then Minna
entered into her glory as the dispenser of hot chocolate which seethed
and sang in a tall silvery tank with a blue gas burner underneath. This
she served in thick china mugs with a clot of whipped cream swimming on
top. Julia would buy a box of the cheese crackers that Schulz kept in
stock specially for her, and give several to the sleek little black
bitch that stood pleading with her quaint turned-out fore-feet placed on
Julia's slippers. Schulz, beaming serenely behind a pyramid of "intense
carnation" bottles on his perfume counter, would chuckle at the antics
of his pet. "Ah, he is a wise little dog!" he would exclaim with naïve
pride. "He knows who is friendly!" He always called the little dog "he,"
which amused us.
On Sunday afternoon the drugstore was closed from one to five, and
during those hours Schulz took his weekly walk, accompanied by the dog
which plodded desperately after him on her short legs. Sometimes we met
him swinging along the by-roads, flourishing a cudgel and humming to
himself. Whenever he saw a motor coming he halted, the little black
dachshund would look up at him, and he would stoop ponderously down,
pick her up and carry her in his arms until all danger was past.
As the time went on he and I used to talk a good deal about the war.
Minna, pale and weary, would stand behind her steaming urn, keeping the
shawl tight round her shoulders; Rhubarb and I would argue without heat
upon the latest news from the war zone. I had no zeal for converting the
old fellow from his views; I understood his sympathies and respected
them. Reports of atrocities troubled him as much as they did me; but the
spine of his contention was that the German army was unbeatable. He got
out his faded discharge ticket from the Würtemberger Landsturm to show
the perfect system of the Imperial military organization. In his desk at
the back of the shop he kept a war map cut from a Sunday supplement and
over this we would argue, Schulz breathing hard and holding his beard
aside in one hand as he bent over the paper. When other customers came
in, he would put the map away with a twinkle, and the topic was dropped.
But often the glass top of the perfume counter was requisitioned as a
large-scale battleground, and the pink bottle of rose water set to
represent Von Hindenburg while the green phial of smelling salts was
Joffre or Brussilov. We fought out the battle of the Marne pretty
completely on the perfume counter. "_Warte doch_!" he would cry. "Just
wait! You will see! All the world is against her, but Germany will win!"
Poor Minna was always afraid her husband and I would quarrel. She knew
well how opposite our sympathies were; she could not understand that our
arguments were wholly lacking in personal animus. When I told him of the
Allies' growing superiority in aircraft Rhubarb would retort by showing
me clippings about the German trench fortifications, the "pill boxes"
made of solid cement. I would speak of the deadly curtain fire of the
British; he would counter with mysterious allusions to Krupp. And his
conclusions were always the same. "Just wait! Germany will win!" And he
would stroke his beard placidly. "But, Fritz!" Minna used to cry in a
panic, "The gentleman might think differently!" Rhubarb and I would grin
at each other, I would buy a tin of tobacco, and we would say good
night.
How dear is the plain, unvarnished human being when one sees him in a
true light! Schulz's honest, kindly face seemed to me to typify all
that I knew of the finer qualities of the Germans; the frugal
simplicity, the tenderness, the proud, stiff rectitude. He and I felt
for each other, I think, something of the humorous friendliness of the
men in the opposing trenches. Chance had cast us on different sides of
the matter. But when I felt tempted to see red, to condemn the Germans
_en masse_, to chant litanies of hate, I used to go down to the
drugstore for tobacco or a mug of chocolate. Rhubarb and I would argue
it out.
But that was a hard winter for him. The growing anti-German sentiment in
the neighbourhood reduced his business considerably. Then he was worried
over Minna. Often she did not appear in the evenings, and he would
explain that she had gone to bed. I was all the more surprised to meet
her one very snowy Sunday afternoon, sloshing along the road in the
liquid mire, the little dog squattering sadly behind, her small black
paws sliding on the ice-crusted paving. "What on earth are you doing
outdoors on a day like this?" I said.
"Fritz had to go to Brooklyn, and I thought he would be angry if Lischen
didn't get her airing."
"You take my advice and go home and get into some dry clothes," I said
severely.
Soon after that I had to go away for three weeks. I was snowbound in
Massachusetts for several days; then I had to go to Montreal on urgent
business. Julia went to the city to visit her mother while I was away,
so we had no news from Kings.
We got back late one Sunday evening. The plumbing had frozen in our
absence; when I lit the furnace again, pipes began to thaw and for an
hour or so we had a lively time. In the course of a battle with a pipe
and a monkey wrench I sprained a thumb, and the next morning I stopped
at the drugstore on my way to the train to get some iodine.
Rhubarb was at his prescription counter weighing a little cone of white
powder in his apothecary's scales. He looked far from well. There were
great pouches under his eyes; his beard was unkempt; his waistcoat
spotted with food stains. The lady waiting received her package, and
went out. Rhubarb and I grasped hands.
"Well," I said, "what do you think now about the war? Did you see that
the Canadians took a mile of trenches five hundred yards deep last week?
Do you still think Germany will win?" To my surprise he turned on his
heel and began apparently rummaging along a row of glass jars. His gaze
seemed to be fastened upon a tall bottle containing ethyl alcohol. At
last he turned round. His broad, naïve face was quivering like
blanc-mange.
"What do I care who wins?" he said. "What does it matter to me any more?
Minna is dead. She died two weeks ago of pneumonia."
As I stood, not knowing what to say, there was a patter along the floor.
The little dachshund came scampering into the shop and frisked about my
feet.