by Howard Fast
It did make a difference, Sally realised, as she stood with Max next to the projection booth, looking over the packed rows toward the screen. ‘Only, there’s something missing,’ she whispered to Max.
‘What’s missing?’
‘It’s too quiet.’
‘Quiet? Listen to them laughing.’
‘I don’t mean that. Max, you should have a piano, and the pianist can match the music to the pictures.’
He drew her outside, thinking to himself, She’s crazy. Still and all, it was Sally, and Sally was smart. He gave her credit as the single person he knew who might be smarter than himself, for if there was one thing Max never doubted, it was his own intelligence. Outside, there was a line in front of the ticket window. Max didn’t want anyone standing. As the day had worn on, he improvised his method of operation, instituting Ruby as the usher, instructing him to check for empty seats and report to Freida. Freida complained that she was tired. ‘I been here all day, Max. I don’t even get a chance to pee.’
‘She peed,’ Ruby said. ‘I brought her a sandwich and coffee.’
‘I paid for it myself,’ Freida said.
‘Take it out of the ticket money. We’ll work it out,’ Max said. ‘It’s the first day.’
Freida and Ruby were looking at Sally. So this was Max’s school-teacher. ‘What’s so great about her?’ Freida asked Ruby afterward. ‘She’s skinny if you like skinny.’
Max steered Sally away, walking down the street. ‘Let’s have a cup of a coffee.’
‘That’s your sister, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, well –’
‘She’s so pretty. Why didn’t you introduce me, Max? The boy is your brother, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Sally said. ‘Why won’t you have me meet anyone in your family?’
‘You’ll meet them. When I’m ready, you’ll meet them.’ He changed the subject. ‘Here’s a place where we can have coffee. I’m freezing. You know, I forgot my coat. I been walking around in a jacket all day.’
‘You haven’t answered me.’
He busied himself with the waiter, explaining to Sally that sudenly he was hungry. He had forgotten to eat lunch. He ordered ham and eggs and a side order of pork and beans. When he was euphoric and defiant, he ate ham. Sarah kept a kosher kitchen. All the annoyance and bitterness Max felt about his mother, denied, suppressed, was momentarily put to rest when he ate ham. In terms of Sarah, it was his act of independence and defiance, although he explained it to himself as proof to Sally that he was as indifferent as she to the rules of Orthodox Judaism. ‘You see,’ he said to Sally, ‘what you said about it being too quiet, I keep thinking about that. What do you mean, a piano player could match the music to the pictures?’
‘Well, for example, with the children he could play light, lovely music like Debussy’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair. With The Magician, perhaps something from The Hall of the Mountain King.’
‘What’s the Girl with the Flaxen Hair?’
‘It’s just a sweet, lovely piece of music. But there’s so much music, so many piano pieces and songs, that a facile pianist could find something to match any kind of a motion picture. But all this doesn’t make me forget about your family. I want to meet them, and you must meet my family.’
‘All right, sure. Just give it time.’
‘Is it because of where you live, in that terrible flat on Henry Street? Are you ashamed of that place, Max? But you told me all about it. I know.’
‘You don’t know,’ Max said. ‘You just don’t know.’
The next day, Max went over to the Bijou and spoke to Isadore Lubel, who was a fill-in pianist. ‘What do you get paid here?’ Max asked him.
‘Four dollars a day – when I work.’
‘I’ll give you five dollars, steady work, no layoffs.’
‘You got me. For that kind of steady money, Max, I kiss your ass every day.’
‘Never mind the ass-kissing. Just play good. I got to go rent a piano now, so meet me in two hours at the picture place, and I’ll explain to you what kind of thing I expect you to do.’
Five weeks after the opening of Britsky’s Orpheum, Max opened his second store on First Avenue, just north of Houston Street. It was a corner two-story building that had been constructed on an empty lot occupied by Hungarian squatters, who lived in tarpaper shacks and grew vegetables in small truck gardens. They gave way to progress, and Max rented two stores, removing the wall that divided them. His experience with Britsky’s Orpheum paid off. Sam Snyder enticed two of Mr Edison’s employees to join what was already becoming the Britsky organisation. Snyder himself was more valuable as a film scout, hunting down bits and pieces of moving pictures to feed the insatiable appetite of two moving picture theatres.
‘You got to understand why I can’t pay you back that thousand dollars right now,’ Max told Sally.
‘I’m not asking you for the money, Max.’
‘Sure, I know that. But I want to pay you back. It means a lot to me to pay you back, but you know, every cent I make is going into the First Avenue place. It’s bigger, three hundred and forty seats.’
‘I don’t need the money, Max, but why are you rushing so? You’re so young.’
‘Young! I don’t know what the word means. But just give me time and stick with me, kid.’
‘Max, I want you to come out to Flatbush and meet my family. They’ll give me no peace until they meet you, and I want you to be sweet and charming, and I want them to like you.’
‘You don’t know how many things are coming up now, and on top of everything, I got trouble with Clancy.’
‘Max, you didn’t hear a word I said. Who is Clancy?’
‘A fat son of a bitch Irish cop from the Houston Street precinct.’
‘You have no respect for me!’ Sally exclaimed. ‘You use language fit for a saloon!’
‘I’m sorry. I swear – I’m sorry, Sally.’
‘I want you to meet my mother and father. How do I know you won’t use language like that?’
‘I won’t. I’m going a little crazy now. This Captain Clancy, he wants thirty bucks a week – just to have a cop stand around outside the place.’
‘Why do you need a policeman outside?’
‘I don’t. But if I don’t pay off, they’ll run me out of there. You can’t sneeze in this town without paying off the cops.’
More or less, it was true. ‘You’re asking for blood,’ Max had said to Captain Clancy.
‘Come on, Maxie, me lad, it’s a pittance. You’ll want to be opening other places in my territory, will you not?’
‘I got no plans now.’
‘But you will, laddie. There’s another Jewish lad like you, opened up a ladies’ dress place on Rivington Street, and he begrudged us the few lousy dollars for protection, with my lads risking their lives every day to keep the citizens safe. Poor boy. His shop was looted, he was beaten, and, indeed, he’ll never be quite the same again.’
‘So I got that, and I got twenty other things,’ Max said to Sally. ‘But I heard you. Sure I heard you. But how about you? Are you sure you want your mother and father to meet me?’
‘Of course I do.’
Max shrugged. ‘Good enough.’
‘When?’
‘Right after I open the First Avenue place.’
But with all the demands that the second moving picture place made on Max, he still could not evade his family. Now that they were at least in part working for him, they were ubiquitous; and Max’s relationship toward them had changed. Sarah had always demanded, but the others had accepted rather meekly. Now the meekness was gone. They all demanded, for Max had evolved into a true source. They wanted a picnic. Other families went on picnics; why not the Britskys? They kept after Max until he surrendered, and one Sunday morning the entire Britsky family set forth for Washington Heights. Since it was December, the unusually warm and sunny day was still quite chilly, and no one with the slightest
experience in picnicking would have chosen such a day; but as far as the Britskys were concerned, it would have been a wonderful occasion if snow had been falling.
Of all the Britskys, only Max had been north of Twenty-third Street; the world beyond that was as formless to the Britskys as darkest Africa. For two dollars, Max had hired Shecky Blum to drive them to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line in his old true Fiacre, a one-horse, four-wheel open coach into which all seven of the Britskys were able to squeeze themselves. They sat three on each facing seat, with Benny on the floor between them. Max had purchased reserved seats on the Pullman section of the Elevated, and there they sat and watched the wonders of Manhattan Island rush by, all oblivious to the cold and disapproving stares of the prissy folk who shared the Pullman and were unused to the presence of such loudly vocal creatures as the Britskys. Little did the Britskys care! They had eyes for nothing but the wonders outside as the train roared up Ninth Avenue and onto Columbus Avenue. Max took on the role of tour director, pointing out the green hills and woods of Central Park on the right and glimpses of the majestic Palisades towering over the Hudson River on their left. And then there were the new achievements of this incredible and mind-boggling city called New York – the great apartment houses, the already famous Dakota, and then that improbable building, the vast Museum of Natural History, which would, when completed, dwarf any other museum of its genre in the entire world. And then, to cap everything, the elevated structure soared around the north end of Central Park, so high in the air over the valley that the train appeared – at least to the Britsky children – to be flying with no support; and in response to this, they screamed and screamed in fear and delight.
At the end of the line, at One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, they trudged up the hill to the public picnic grounds, deserted in this month of December. It hardly mattered that they were half frozen. There they were finally, out in the country, looking over the great estates sprawled through Harlem Valley and running down to the East River, many of them with their own docks and yachts, the yachts lifted out of the water now for the winter; and on the river, tugs pulling barges into the ship canal, and across the river, the spreading lawns, hedges, trees, and fields of farms and country houses in the Bronx. It was certainly a day to remember.
Another day to remember was the day Max finally allowed himself to be persuaded by Sally into a journey to Flatbush. When he confessed to Sally that he had never been to Brooklyn before, she said to him, ‘Max, how could you be so insular? There’s that glorious, wonderful bridge that’s like no other bridge in all the world. Do you know that travelers come here from England and France and other places just to look at the bridge and walk across it, and you live a few blocks away from it and you’ve never taken the trouble to go across it.’
‘It’s a question of time –’
‘Time, time, time – you do nothing but talk about time and not having any. You’re twenty years old, and you’re going to let your life slip by without ever being young.’
Whereupon Max surrendered another Sunday and went home with Sally. Sally was so pleased and delighted that she could not help being didactic, and she explained carefully to Max, as they rode along in Shecky Blum’s Fiacre, hired for the day, that Flatbush had been an independent township, with an eloquent history of its own, until it was annexed to Brooklyn only a year before. For generations it had been a quiet Dutch town. Indeed, the name, Sally explained, came from the Dutch words vlacke bos, which meant wooded flats, and in time, the origin of the name being forgotten, it was corrupted to Flatbush. And it was there, she said, that General Sullivan stood fast with his brave Continentals and prevented the total destruction of the American army over a hundred years before. Max had not the slightest notion who General Sullivan was and only the vaguest sense of what had happened there a hundred years ago. History was hardly his strong point, but he was pleased as punch with the manner in which Shecky Blum hung onto every word of Sally’s – to a point where he allowed his horse to fall into a slow walk.
‘Come on, Shecky!’ Max snapped. ‘This ain’t exactly a schoolroom.’
‘That’s a smart lady,’ Shecky said.
Flatbush was prettier than anything Max had expected. Even though it was winter, the great trees, the neat, comfortable houses, the occasional farm that still survived, the dry leaves picked up and swirled by the wind, the delicious scent of wood smoke instead of the stink of the ghetto, and all of this only two hours’ drive from Henry Street, combined to give him a dreamlike sense of unreality. He tried to imagine what his life and childhood might have been had he grown up in a bucolic place like this, and he said to Sally, ‘You’re a lucky girl.’
He had worn his good blue serge suit, and when they came to the little frame house, painted yellow with white trim, where Sally had been born and had lived most of her life, Max leaped out of the Fiacre and helped Sally down. He was sure he was being watched from a window, and he did not desire the Levines to regard him as an uncouth lout, unworthy of their daughter. He felt out of place, subdued. The small frame house was the most elegant home he had ever set foot in – indeed, the first one-family house he had ever entered. He had to reassess Sally, separate her from the tiny furnished room and place her in this new setting. Her mother and father were very ordinary people, shopkeepers; but their substantial lower-middle-class respectability placed them well above Max’s own chaotic background. His manner was low key, softly polite. Max possessed not only sensitivity but, as Sally had noted, a chameleon-like ability to adapt. The Levines had been prepared for some kind of ghetto savage; instead, they found themselves playing host to a slender, good-looking young man who praised Mrs Levine’s cooking and the cigar that Mr Levine offered him. Max was not a serious smoker. He never bought cigars, but he savored them, and when they were offered to him, he puffed away with professional competence. The smoking took place in the chill of the back porch, since Mrs Levine would not have her house polluted with cigar fumes, and sitting there, both of them wrapped in overcoats, Mr Levine explored Max’s potential while Sally helped her mother with the dishes. Max explained his position fully: two moving picture places functioning, a third location ready for leasing, and an overwhelming acceptance by the public.
‘And you’re serious about my daughter?’ Mr Levine asked pointedly. He was not one to mince words where his only child’s future was concerned.
‘Absolutely. But that don’t mean Sally is ready to marry me. She’s got a mind of her own.’
‘She certainly has,’ her father agreed. ‘How old are you, Max?’
‘I’ll be twenty-one in November.’
‘But since this is only January, you are really only twenty. Sally is already almost four years older. She’s a lovely, smart girl, our Sally, and it breaks our heart how she is missing chances. Already, practically all of her girl friends are married. If she remains a single girl waiting for a young fellow like you to make a living, he should be able to afford to care for a wife. But for that, you got to have a living wage. You should forgive me for being direct, Max, but when can you look forward to a living wage?’
‘I’ll be just as straight with you, Mr Levine. I love Sally. She is the only girl I ever cared for. But I got no hold on her and she knows that. I got my mother and five brothers and sisters to take care of, so a living wage is not what I need: I need a lot of money, and I’m going to make it.’
Which gave Mr Levine little enough comfort, but after they left that evening, Sally said that they both liked Max and that her mother thought he was a fine, responsible young man. But another matter impressed Max even more than the opinion of Sally’s parents, and a few days later he hired Shecky Blum’s carriage once again and drove out on the Flatbush Turnpike. He had seen, on his previous visit, a barn with a FOR SALE sign tacked onto it. The barn was in the main shopping area, set in a row of retail stores, an isolated reminder of the time not too long before when the whole area had been farmland. Max prowled through the barn, felt the soundness of
its timbers, measured it front to back and side to side, and decided that with a cleaning, a painting, and some modest carpentry, it would hold four hundred folding chairs. Flatbush was not the Lower East Side. Here the admission would be ten cents for adults, five cents for children. Even at less than capacity, Max estimated one hundred and fifty dollars a day and perhaps two hundred and fifty on weekends. He spent the best part of the day dickering with a Mr Hixby of Hixby and Collins, Real Estate in the New Brooklyn, and finally signed a contract for the barn. He took over an existing mortgage of thirteen hundred dollars and made a cash payment of three hundred and fifty dollars. Thus came into being Britsky’s Flatbush.
The Flatbush moving picture barn was successful almost from the very first day, but it ate into Max’s cash reserve. Then, when he had accumulated sufficient funds to clear the debt, Sam Snyder found a small company in Philadelphia that was making ten-minute films. They would choose a subject like trains and show a variety of trains in action from various angles – trains roaring toward the camera, away from the camera, trains on a trestle, engines in a roundhouse; or they would select a zoo and shoot film of many different animals; or they would take up a position in the city and photograph the action at one specific spot. Max joined Sam in Philadelphia and proceeded to option their entire library of seventeen films, with an exclusive first refusal on all additional films they intended to produce. In spite of the fact that Max could schedule the films for exhibition in three theatres, shuffling them in a number of combinations, his hunger for film was never satisfied.
In June, a fourth location was found near Tompkins Square, and thus it was not until October that Max was able to write out a check for one thousand dollars and present it to Sally. He took her to dinner that night wearing a tuxedo he had rented from Wormser’s Wedding Specialties on Orchard Street, and he bought her a corsage of pink and violet flowers. Sally wore a dress of mauve crêpe de Chine, her hair piled high on her head, a touch of rouge on her cheeks and lips. Not yet possessed of enough savoir-faire to assault Delmonico’s, Max nevertheless managed to reserve a table at the Holland House on Fifth Avenue, to which they drove in a hansom cab. Max ordered champagne and, as their main course, filet. He presented Sally with the check for a thousand dollars just before the dessert and proposed marriage at the same time.
