The Pawnbroker

by Edward Lewis Wallant

  "My credentials, you want to see my credentials? All right, I'll show, I'll show." He plunked down the brief case, which made a wet soft sound, like the body of an animal. Then he tore off his coat and rolled up his sleeves muttering, "Credentials, credentials, I'll show credentials." On his left arm were the familiar blue numbers framed in a border of white tape like some weird sampler on the hairless surface. "Inside my heart is more credentials, too. Go get a knife from the kitchen and open me up. I'll show you the stab wounds, the burnt pieces from the murders of my wife, my five children, my mother, my sister. Go, get the knife; I'll show you credentials, printed in red, in blood! You want more? Chop open my brain, see there the pictures of the walking dead, the raped, the disemboweled." His breath came in shuddery gasps, his eyes threatened to fall out and roll down his face. He stood crouched and threatening, exuding a violence of smell and fury, his shirt pulled half out of his pants, his neck beating a wild rhythm. "Is that credentials, tell me, is that?"

  "All right, Goberman, I'll give, I'll give," Tessie wailed. "Is there any need to go on like that. I try; you have no reason to curse me. I feel for the Jews, I do, I do!"

  Goberman slid the coat back onto his shoulders with a smug, righteous expression. He looked at Sol. "And you, can you refuse the slaves, the suffering Yiddlach?"

  "I have been looking at you, Goberman," Sol said in a soft, thoughtful voice. "And I have been trying to recall where I know you from. And now, suddenly, it occurs to me. You were there, yes you were. About 1941, in Dachau ... no, no, Bergen-Belsen. Yess-ss, I remember you very well."

  "What, what?" Goberman said a little nervously. "You couldn't have remembered me. I was..."

  "Yes, yes, I'm certain now. You were even a little fatter then. You had a method for getting more food. There was some talk—I don't know for sure how true—but there was some talk of co-operation with a certain..."

  "It was a he, a complete he!" Goberman shouted, beating on his brief case. "No one could accuse..."

  "If I am not mistaken there was someone who claimed that you even informed on members of your own family...."

  "That is the greatest lie in the world, the most abominable piece of filth anyone could say about a man," Goberman screamed, his voice leaping the decibels to a sort of shattered alto.

  Sol shrugged, obviously just repeating what he had heard.

  "Not my own family, never my own family. What kind of a person would say a thing like that? Here, look at me, see how I collect money for the Jews, how I bleed for them all over the world. Day and night I try to get money for their salvation. I scream, I threaten, I sacrifice my self-respect to do for them. And this, this is my reward! No one can say to my face that I... never in a million years would I have done a thing like that to my immediate family. Do you think I could sleep at night, do you think I could sit still for a minute if...? Would I run around like a madman, day and night, if I...? Wouldn't I sit still and try to have some peace and quiet...? How could anyone...? It is beyond imagining that such a person could walk the face of the earth...." His mouth sagged like a too-wet formation of clay. "I NEVER ... SOLD ... MY ... OWN ... FAMILY ... NEVERNEVERNEVERNEVER!"

  "What do you do with all the money?" Sol asked in an icy voice, his face and body motionless, remorseless. "Do you sew it into your mattress or are you enlightened enough to put it into a three-and-a-half-per-cent account? What are you saving for?"

  "I save for the Jewish People," Goberman wailed, his face soaking wet and pulpy. "The Jewish People."

  "You save for Goberman. You are a crook, a fake, Goberman. I could have the police on you. Or better still," he said, thinking of Murillio, "I could have you beaten to a pulp with just one phone call."

  "You don't understand, you just don't understand what I have been through." Goberman was weeping like a woman by then, hugging the sloppy brief case to his chest and sobbing.

  "I understand you very well, Goberman. You are a common type. A professional sufferer, a practicing refugee. You are an opportunist who can put anything to profit. But you feel guilty about some of your crimes, you cannot sleep too well. So you run around with that brief case and try to make everyone else feel as guilty as you, meantime turning a pretty penny. Now I do not judge you, understand, it does not matter to me what you do. Only you must know that you are naked to me. You do not impress me." Sol took off his glasses and began wiping them, staring meanwhile at Goberman with the flat, nearsighted gaze which looked so remote and beyond appeal.

  "Are you any better than I am? Don't tell me you didn't leave your dead there and run out as fast as a rabbit, saying good riddance to all this, to all the smelly dead. Don't tell me," Goberman whined, his finger accusatorily pointed at Sol's face, his eyes like jellyfish in the welter of his teary features. "Can you stand there, Tessie Rubin, can you let him say this to a representative ... to a rep ... Is it human to stand there like a rock and tear a person to pieces, to throw up his griefs to a man, to a victim!"

  Sol began to laugh, a harsh metal-on-metal sound which made the listeners wince. It set the teeth in Goberman's mouth in a mold of rubber. Tessie stared in horror at Sol; she had never heard him laugh before, and it was as though he revealed a monstrosity in the unprecedented sound. The old man whimpered and withdrew into the kitchen, and even the noise of the surrounding building seemed to observe a shocked silence for a few seconds.

  "Oh, he is priceless, this Goberman," he said to Tessie. "Why did you not tell me he was so amusing? You have no sense of humor, Tessie. The man is rare, absolutely rare. Goberman, my friend," he said, turning suddenly, "do you realize how you are wasting your time? You should be on television or the radio. You are one of the funniest things I have ever seen. With that brief case, that face, and your dialogue..." He began to laugh again. Tessie covered her ears, but Goberman just stared and trembled, the fat tears running into his doughy mouth. "Talk ... talk some more ... Gober ... man," Sol wheezed. "Entertain us. Laughter is said to be healthful. Make me laugh some more." And then, suddenly, he had the glasses back on, and his face turned to inhuman stone. "Make me laugh some more!" the Pawnbroker snarled.

  "What do you want from me?" Goberman wailed. "I'll go, I'll go. You are worse than all the Nazis, you are worse than my nightmares."

  "Much worse," the Pawnbroker agreed from his great height. "I could break you in a million pieces."

  "I never sold my family."

  "You are dreck, Goberman; you should be washed away."

  Goberman stood transfixed by the thick-lensed gaze over him, his body seeming to come apart under the sloppy clothes, so it was as though only the grip on the pulpy brief case held him in one piece.

  "Now go, SHVEINHUNDT!"

  Goberman leaped into the air as though the word had electrocuted him. He gave one whimper, bumped softly into the wall with a cry of pain, and then ran clumsily but very swiftly out the door. The racket of his heels on the tiles of the hallway was like a machine gun.

  Tessie held her cheek. The old man moaned terribly in the kitchen. And all the noise of the building descended on them again.

  Later, Sol took her on the couch with a cold fury, and she sobbed and pleaded for something she could not name. Yet in spite of her crying and her inchoate begging, it was for Sol as though he made love to a dead woman and the act was a horrid travesty. When it was over, he threw himself to his feet and stood reeling, his heart pounding the blood through the constrictions of his veins.

  "What are you sniveling about? Did I eliminate him for you? Do you have what to complain about? You are a miserable creature yourself." He bent over her, still panting and furious. "What do you require of me; that I bring you the Garden of Eden, Ganaydeml"

  She held her hands over her face, and her voice came muffled and distorted through them. "No, no, nothing. You give me nothing. Only go away now; I can take no more from you."

  So he dressed and straightened himself and went out of there without farewell; and before he closed the door, he stuck some money under
the samovar, enough to last her and the old man until he came again.

  His long journey by subway and car was quite uneventful. But he had this terrific ache all over his body. He decided it amused him. While he drove, he said aloud, "If I were Selig, I would think I was having a heart attack."

  Otherwise, he thought of nothing.

  TWELVE

  "Come, Solly dear," Bertha said to him affectionately. "We're just now having coffee and dessert." She waved at the man and the two women at the table with Selig. "You know Doctor Kogan, his wife, Martha. And this is Dorothy she said, implying all the nice things they had said about the masculine-faced, fashionably dressed woman. "The Doctor's sister..."

  Sol nodded and murmured a hello.

  "Hello, Sol," the white-haired, sleek-faced man said. "How's the gift business?"

  Sol glanced distastefully at his sister, and Bertha pleaded with her eyes for him not to expose her affectation.

  "My business is fine, thank you. And yours, you have no slack seasons, do you?"

  The Doctor laughed. "You know better than that," he said.

  "So you are in the gift business," the unmarried sister said eagerly, not at all impressed by the big, unkempt man with the strange eyeglasses and the unhealthy, puffy face; but she responded by instinct to his eligibility. "I am in the retail business myself, Mr. Nazerman...."

  "Call him Sol," Bertha insisted, tilting her head mischievously.

  "I am a buyer for a department store, so I guess we are colleagues," Dorothy said brightly.

  Sol nodded and sat down to his coffee and chocolate cream pie. He had not eaten at Tessie's and the sweetness on his empty stomach nauseated him slightly. He poured himself another cup of coffee to wash the saccharine taste from his mouth.

  "I don't know if you realize, Doc, but my brother-in-law here is a very educated man. Taught at a university in Poland at one time. Before the trouble, of course." Selig smiled over at Sol. "I've often said he should be a teacher."

  "Teachers are paid poorly," Sol said. "I would have difficulty meeting my obligations on a teacher's salary," he added with a malicious twist to his mouth.

  "Dorothy has an excellent job as a buyer," Bertha interceded quickly. "She even goes to Europe every year."

  "Is that so." Sol nodded listlessly. "And how is Europe these days?"

  "Oh I'm mad about Paris. Of course most of my business is there. But Rome and Berlin are my second loves. There is an atmosphere we don't have here, something mellow. You can almost smell the difference."

  "Rather a stink, as I remember," Sol said, wanting to sever all the talk.

  There was a white silence for almost a minute before Bertha leaped in like an alert lifeguard. "My brother just loves to shock people. Joanie calls him a character. You just have to understand his humor. Solly, please," she chided smilingly, as for a slightly racy joke.

  For a few minutes they talked carefully around him, and he sat like a stone in their chatter. The single woman glanced curiously at Sol from time to time, trying to establish her attitude. Finally she aimed her modish head at him.

  "Where is your gift shop, Sol?" she asked.

  "It is not a gift shop," Sol answered deliberately. Bertha turned with an expression of dismay for her relaxed vigilance. "It is a pawnshop. I am a pawnbroker." He gazed innocently at the looks of politely veneered shock. "True, some people may buy things as gifts. But mostly it is a hock shop, a place where poor people obtain ready cash on the collateral of anything and everything."

  He got to his feet then and turned a pleasant smile all around. "Now if you will excuse me, I have had a hard day. It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Kogan...."

  "Call her Dorothy," Bertha said weakly.

  "Perhaps sometime when I am feeling better..."

  Behind him, he heard Bertha's voice struggling to cover the unsightly hole he had left.

  "Of course, Sol has had a difficult time," she said. "And then he is so bookish. But we are gradually drawing him out, getting him to join in the community a little...."

  Upstairs, in the darkened bedroom, he put himself to sleep by calculating the compound interest of his savings; he made ones and fives and tens go jumping like green birds, which he added and multiplied and divided until his mind seemed filled with just that feathery rustle, and he slept.

  He was flat on his back, staring at the glaring surgical lamp. Around him was the starched rustle of the surgeons' and nurses' white smocks. But he could see nothing except the purpling violence of the light. Some of them were laughing and making jokes as they worked just out of the periphery of his vision. He felt no pain. But he heard the sawing of bone, and he knew that it was his bone. There was such a cheery exchange between the doctors, though, as between men enjoying a mutuality of interest. It was hard to realize ... he felt no pain. Then there came the clunking sound of parts dropping into a bucket, the sounds of leakings and drippings.

  "WHAT ARE YOU TAKING OUT OF ME?" he screamed, seeing himself "boned" like some beast being prepared for someone's meal. "Stop, stop," he shrilled, visualizing so clearly how he would be as a soft, collapsed carcass of flesh.

  "Shut up, Jew," a blue-eyed nurse snarled into his face. "Shut up or we'll take your prick, too."

  So he lay still after that. However small a destruction they aimed at, it was far larger than they knew. But at least he felt no pain now and he could pretend he was dead.

  "All done," a doctor said. "It will be interesting to see how he functions now." A murmurous medley of voices sounded a cold glee. "If he functions, if he functions at all, if you know what I mean."

  Someone laughed in gentle admonition.

  "Ah, Berger, Berger, you are a terror, you are," another voice said.

  Sol howled in a fall of dizzying terror.

  He stared at the quiet, moon-made shadows on the American wall. There was the sound of the family's minor alarm, the footsteps of Selig and Bertha taking advantage of their brief wakefulness to go to the bathroom. And then the silence, which Sol wouldn't allow to claim him. He lay awake with bulging eyes until the sun came into his room like a trustworthy guard. And he slept a little while then.

  THIRTEEN

  Another of the whores came in first thing in the morning. She was a tall, very dark Negress in her late thirties. Her face was welted and swollen with the marks of old and recent beatings, and her eyes sparkled like black stones. She had a gold cigarette case to pawn and she spoke with a cigarette in her mouth, her head tilted back against the smoke, one eye almost closed.

  "Come on, Dad, what this worth? Got to have eatin' money. Yeah, of Rose fired from d'house. Got to go in business for myself. Got to have a place to park it, you know. Hey, but dis gold, Pops, worth big money, ain't it?"

  She watched him examine it, muttering all the while so her cigarette rode up and down in her mouth.

  "Got to pay the ol' doctuh fo' mah sickness an' get me a pad to lay mah bones. Got to have a little somethin' for a beverage to still mah nerves. Cause mah nerves is real bad, let me tell you. So, Dad, you tell me, you tell me." She wore a red satin dress and her bare chest was turtle-skinned, her breasts stiffly delineated like those of an old woman wearing a steel-ribbed brassière.

  "Ten dollars," he said, breathing through his mouth to avoid the overwhelming stench of her perfume.

  "Oh, Daddy-o, Ah got to live," she whined, her swollen black face further contorted by the cigarette smoke.

  "Why?" he muttered through his teeth.

  "Make it fifteen, Dad," she said, hearing only her own plea. "Ah could make it wid fifteen."

  "Ten, ten, that is all," he said, raising his voice.

  "Okay, okay, Mistuh, sure, sure," she said placatingly, too marked up by men to argue. "Ah take it. Thank you, thank you, fine." And she made deep nods of agreement, like a child accepting the firmness of punishment.

  A man came in with a couple of suits, and Ortiz took him upstairs to try some newer ones on.

  An old, white-haired man with a s
nowy mustache edged into the store. He was dressed in a neat but worn-looking suit and a slightly frayed blue shirt, buttoned up to the neck but without a tie. Under his arm was a neatly wrapped package, which he clung to as he hovered near the doorway. For a few minutes he looked wistfully out at the street. Then he took a firm breath and marched over to Sol.

  "I would like to raise some money on this, young man," he said, shouting a little. "A temporary loan. I want the transaction carefully recorded. I plan to return for my property in the very near future, so don't try to sell it." As he talked with his eyes admonishingly on the Pawnbroker, his arthritic fingers fumbled with the knot.

  "We keep merchandise for a prescribed period; it is the law," Sol said with a tiny smile. He watched the misshapen fingers struggling with the knot for a minute.

  Then he took a razor blade and slashed quickly at the cord. The old man stepped back at the pop of the severed string, dismayed at its being taken out of his hands so quickly.

  "Mind you, now, I know how much this is worth," he warned weakly, glancing down at the hands that had failed him.

  It was a beautifully carved chess set of rich hardwood, and a chessboard of inlaid teak and walnut. Each piece was carved in the likeness of an ancient figure; the rooks were elephants with howdahs on their backs, the pawns were foot soldiers, the knights proud horsemen, the bishops sly clerics with oriental features, the kings and queens lordly, towering majesties.

  "It is a lovely set," Sol said in a musing, tender voice. His father's brother had owned a set similar to this, a million years ago. "They are obviously carved by hand." He picked up the white king gently and smiled down at the miniature sternness of the features.

  "You have an eye for these things, I see," the old man said happily. "Oh yes, it's very old. My father bought it ... oh, it must be over eighty years ago now. I've had it for over forty years myself. I wouldn't part with it for a minute only ... temporary reverse. Act of God, so to speak. There's been some confusion about a pension check. Even at my age a man must eat." He chuckled and touched his mustache in a lordly gesture, obviously a man above haggling.