WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal
to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it, but it is
almost sure to reassert itself later on. I scarcely ever think of it
during the first two, three, or four days, but then, all of a sudden,
it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession,
humming itself and nagging me like a living thing.
This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs.
Margolis. During the first two days after I left her house I never
gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly
loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black,
serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white,
strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere
blur in my memory
I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I was so
low-spirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate
or of the streets through which I passed, yet her manner of darting
embarrassed glances out of the corner of her eye and her
complexion were never absent from my mind. I felt like seeing
her once more. However, the prospect of calling at her house was
now anything but alluring. I could almost see the annoyed air with
which her husband would receive me
I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the
loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security
than the bare story or my venture. I made other efforts to raise the
money. I approached several people, including the proprietor of
the little music-store. All to no purpose
One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises',
when I came to my "factory" I found under the door a closed
envelope bearing the name of that Western firm. It contained a
typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill. Also a
circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty
of capital, and naming as one of its new directors a man who,
from the tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the
financial world
My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of
my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I
looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally
staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale
I rushed over to Nodelman's office, but found him gone for the
day. The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to
the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with
my partner. But Chaikin never came home before 7. So I first
dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Max's face and,
incidentally, to see his wife
I found him playing with his fat boy
"Hello, Max! I have good news!" I shouted, excitedly. Which
actually meant: "Don't be uneasy, Max. I am not going to ask you
for a loan again."
When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: "Now you
are all right. Why, something told me all along that you would get
it." His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She returned
my "Good evening" with free and easy amiability, without any
shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. I felt annoyed. I
was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good
look at her
"Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust you for
the four hundred dollars," Max said. "May I have four hundred
days of distress if I have a cent. What few dollars I do have is
buried in the business. So help me, God! Let a few of my
customers stop paying and I would have to go begging. It's the real
truth I am telling you. Honest."
"I know, I know," I said, awkwardly. "Well, it was as if the check
had dropped from heaven. Thank God! Now I can begin to do
things."
I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with a touch of
bluster.
And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine
interest than he had done on the previous occasion. We discussed
my plans and my prospects.
At one point, when I referred to the Western check, he asked to see
it again, just for curiosity's sake, and as I watched him look it over
I could almost see the change that it was producing in his attitude
toward me. I do not know to what extent he had previously
believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check
now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of
paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a
manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable
ragamuffin."
Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my great check
and she returned some trivialities. As we thus chatted, I made a
mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh
He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. As though to
make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his
door, Max overwhelmed me with attention
We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old Ghetto way,
with cream, bits of boiled egg, cucumber, and scallions
"How do you like it?" he asked
"Delicious! And the genuine article, too."
"'The genuine article'!" he mocked me. "What's the use praising it
when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you
bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep
quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not
like a bird?"
"Maybe he doesn't care for my cooking," she jested, demurely
"Why, why," I replied. "The sorrel soup is fit for a king."
"You mean for a president," Max corrected me. "We are in
America, not in Europe."
"How do you know the President of the United States would care
for a plate of cold sorrel soup?"
"And how do you know a king would?" "If you care for it, I am
satisfied," the hostess said to me
"I certainly do. I haven't eaten anything like it since I left home," I
replied
"Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will soon be a
millionaire, don't you know. Then he won't bother about calling
on poor people like us."
"But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a king has
many millions," I rejoined. "I shall always be glad to come,
provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection." "You remember
their names, don't you?" Mrs. Margolis said, beamingly. "You
certainly have a good memory."
"Who else should have one?" her husband chimed in. "I have told
you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. Lucy, did
you hear what uncle said? If you let him in he will come to see us
even when he is worth a million. What do you say? Will you let
him in?"
Lucy grinned childishly
Max did most of the talking. He entertained me with stories of
some curious weddings which he said had recently been
celebrated in his dance-halls, and, as usual, it was not easy to
draw a line of demarkation between fact and fiction. Of one
bridegroom, who had agreed to the marriage under threats of
violence from the girl's father, he said: "You should have seen the
fellow! He looked like a man going to the electric chair. They
were afraid he might bolt, so the bride's father and brother, big,
strapping fellows both, stuck to him like two detectives. 'You had
better not make monkey business,' they said to him. 'If you don't
want a wedding, you'll have a funeral.' That's exactly what they
said to him. I was standing close to them and I heard it with my
own ears. May I not live till to-morrow if I did not." Mrs.
Margolis looked down shamefacedly. She certainly was not
unaware of her husband's failing, and she obviously took anything
but pride in it. As I glanced at her face at this moment it struck me
as a singularly truthful face. "Those eyes of hers do not express
anger, but integrity," I said to myself. And the more I looked at
her, watched her gestures, and listened to her voice, the stronger
grew my impression that she was a serious-minded, ingenuous
woman, incapable of playing a part. Her mannerisms were mostly
her version of manners, and those that were not were frankly
affected, as it were
The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis caused Lucy
to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud, Lucy or I
correcting her pronunciation where it was faulty. She was frankly
parading her intellectual achievements before me, and I could see
that she took them quite seriously.
She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made. She accepted
our corrections, Lucy's and mine, with great earnestness, often
with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her
memory
When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in English, "Call
again, Levinsky." And he added, in a mixture of English and
Yiddish, "Don't be a stranger, even if you are a manufacturer."
"Call again," his wife echoed, affably
"Call again!" shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice
I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two
in a house where I was sincerely welcome
"It's a good thing to have real friends," I soliloquized in a transport
of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated station. "Now I sha'n't
feel all alone in the world. There is at least one house where I can
call and feel at home."
I beheld Mrs. Margolis's face and her slender figure and I was
conscious of a remote desire to see her again
I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was carrying me
up-town I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a
spacious factory full of machines and men. I saw myself building
up a great business. An ugly thought flashed through my mind:
Why be saddled with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I
belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful
start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my
fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat. But I
instantly saw the other side of the situation: It was Chaikin's
models that had made the Manheimers what they were, and if I
clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my
partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my
factory. And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having
entertained that thought even for a single moment. My heart
warmed to Chaikin and his family. "I shall be faithful to them," I
vowed inwardly.
"They have been so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to
each other.
Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, it is so sweet to
have friends, real friends."
It was close upon 10 o'clock when I reached the Chaikins' flat in
Harlem. I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped
out the check, and, dangling it before Mrs. Chaikin, I said,
radiantly: "Good evening. Guess what it is!" "The check you
expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you.
Is it?" she conjectured
"No. It's something far better," I replied. "It's a check from the
Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I
was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of
genuine pity, "Oh, God has been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!"
I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make out. Then
her husband took a look at the check. He did know something
about figures, so he read the sum out aloud
Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, she said
to me, glumly: "And how do we know that you did not receive
more?"
"But that was the bill," her husband put in
"I am not asking you, am I?" she disciplined him
"But it is the amount on the bill," I said, with a smile
"And how do we know that it is?" she demanded. "It's you who
write the bills, and it's you who get the checks. What do we
know?"
"Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Chaikin!" I remonstrated. "Why should you be
so suspicious? Can't you see that I am the most devoted friend you
people ever had? God has blessed us; we are making a success of
our business so we must be devoted to one another, while here
you imagine all kinds of nonsense."
"A woman will be a woman," Chaikin muttered, with his sheepish
smile
The unfeigned ardor of my plea produced an impression on Mrs.
Chaikin.
Still, she insisted upon receiving her husband's share of the profits
at once in spot cash. I argued again
"Why, of course you are going to get your share of the profits," I
said, genially. "Of course you are. Only we must first pay for the
goods of those five hundred coats and for some other things.
Mustn't we? Then, too, there is that other order to fill. We need
more goods and cash for wages and rent and other expenses.
"But you said you were going to get it all yourself, and now you
want us to pay for it. You think you are smart, don't you?"
Her husband opened his mouth, but she waved it shut before she
had any idea what he wanted to say
"Anybody could fool you," she said. "'When a fool goes shopping
there is rejoicing among the shopkeepers.'"
With our joint efforts we finally managed to placate her, however,
and the next evening our shop was the scene of feverish activity.