was a steady client. “Genuine Duchess pattern, solid silver-plate silver. I’ll settle for ten dollars the pair.” She had really been fond of the candlesticks; they made a table look like a table. But she was the type of woman who could have cut off her own snake-bitten finger with great equanimity, for she believed mightily in salvaging what you could.
“I can only give you two dollars,” Sol said, flipping over the pages of his ledger, looking for nothing in particular. “You’ve left an awful lot of things lately, haven’t redeemed anything.”
“Aw I know, but Mistuh Nazerman! Why, my goodness, these candlesticks is very high quality, costed twenny-five dollars new.” She chuckled indignantly, shook her head at his offer. “Why I could get fifteen dollars easy down to Triboro Pawn.”
“Take them to Triboro, Mrs. Harmon,” he said quietly.
Mrs. Harmon sighed, still shaking her great smiling face as though in reminiscence of an atrocious but funny joke. She clucked through her teeth, shifted heavily from one foot to the other. Her dignity, that much-abused yet resilient thing, suffered behind her rueful smile as the Pawnbroker kept his face of gray Asian stone averted indifferently from her. Like a child forced to choose between two unpleasant alternatives, she stared thoughtfully through the window, furrowed her brow, tried on a few uneasy smiles. Finally she muttered, “Ah well,” and leaned her plump brown face close to the barred wicket behind which Sol worked on all the papers.
“Les jus’ say five dollars the pair and forget it, Mistuh Nazerman,” she said, breathing hopefully on him.
“Two dollars,” he repeated tonelessly, frowning over a name in the ledger which suddenly intrigued him.
She laughed her indignation, a bellowing wahh-hh that struck the glass cases like the flat of a hand. “You a merci less man for sure. Now you don’t think I is reduce to being insulted by that measly offer. Two dollars! Why, my goodness, Mistuh Nazerman, you cain’t even buy a sinful woman for that nowadays.” She grabbed up her candlesticks and looked craftily to see what response that drew from the cold, gray face. But there was nothing; the man truly was made of stone. She sighed a sad but good-natured defeat. “All right, I jus’ too pooped to haggle.” She plunked the candlesticks down and exhaled noisily. “Make it foah dollars.”
Sol took a deep breath and looked up with an expression of mild suprise, as though he hadn’t expected her to still be there.
“The devil, Mrs. Harmon, I’ll give you three dollars just to get this over with.”
“Three fifty?” she tried timidly.
He just looked at her without expression.
“Sold,” she said tiredly. Then she giggled her fat woman’s laugh and cocked her head to one side. “You a hard man, Mistuh Nazerman, no two ways about it. Well, God pity you . . . he d’ony judge after all.” She took the silently proffered money and tucked it delicately into her huge, cracking plastic pocketbook, shaking her head and with a pensive grin on her wide lips. “Ohh my, hard times, always hard times. Well . . .” She brightened her smile for farewell. “I see you again, Mistuh Nazerman, that for sure. Take care now, hear?”
“Goodby, Mrs. Harmon,” he said, tying a ticket to the candlesticks and sliding them under the counter next to Daniel Webster. After she was gone, he stole a furtive look at the clock nearest him. “Ten forty-five,” he murmured in irritated surprise; it disturbed him to be so tired that early in the day.
Several customers came and went, but they remained anonymous to him because they were disposed of quickly and easily.
He began studying some of the more recent additions to his stock. There was an old Kodak Autographic, a zither of ancient make, an almost new electric traveling iron. The things people lived by! But it was no use trying to recall the owners by the shapes of the things they had pawned. The objects were dead and characterless, had been unique and part of life only while they were in use. Oh, he was so tired, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock. Forty-five wasn’t old . . . but he was old.
The young Negro wore gaudy clothes whose vividness was obscured by the grime and grease that made it look as though he had been wearing them without letup for years. He had the terrified, twitching face of a jackal, with pupils like tiny periods in his ocherous eyes. Under his arm was a small white table radio.
“Whatta you gimme, Unc, how much? Hey, dis worth plenty rubles. Dis a hot li’l ol’ radio, plenty juice. Got short wave, police call, boats from d’sea. Even get outer space on a clear night. Yeah, space, real-far space like from satlites an’ all. C’mon, Unc, make a offer. Hey, dis a hundred-dollar radio. How much you gimme? C’mon, dis powaful, clear tone, clear like a . . . a mother-f—n ol’ bell.” The saliva flew from his mouth as from a leaky old steam engine, and he kept snuffling through his nose and making queer jig steps for emphasis.
Sol took the radio and plugged it into the socket under the counter. He watched the light glow brighter as it warmed up, his face impassive while the young Negro in his filthy Ivy League cap twitched and muttered encouragement, as though the radio could redeem him.
“C’mon, baby, show d’man you power . . . blast him . . . Give him dat tone! Man, dat radio . . . O, dat mother . . .”
There came a few whistles, a loud electrical gibberish, and then the nerve-racking sound as of stiff cellophane being steadily crumpled by many hands. The youth stopped twitching and aimed his pin-point gaze at the radio. His mouth dropped open at the sound of his betrayal.
“Give you four dollars,” Sol said. Ah, our youth, the progenitor of our future. Maybe the earth will be lucky, maybe they will all be sterile.
“Hey, dat dere radio always play better dan dat,” he accused. “It mus’ be ’count of d’weather. Make it eight bucks. I mean, man, dat my mother’s radio!”
“Four dollars, take it or leave it.”
“Oh say, you tryin’ to bleed me, you suckin’ a man’s guts. I takin’ a awful chance hockin’ my mother’s radio. She sell me when she fin’ out.”
She ought to sell you. Sol massaged the bridge of his nose as he fumbled in his mind for the profit to all this.
“Six bucks?”
“Four.”
“C’mon, at least five skins, you bloodsuckin’ Sheeny!”
Sol felt a dangerous blue flicker behind his eyes. He began to move menacingly toward the little gate that led from behind the counter. “All right, animal, get out of here! Come on, out! Go peddle your junk in the street!”
“Okay, okay, mister, don’ go gettin’ all hot like. Gimme the four rubles, I take the four,” he said, his hands trembling and flying around with his need. “Hurry, hurry up, man, please.” His face showed the agony of some inner burning, an unbearable expression that filled the Pawnbroker with rage.
“Go on now,” Sol said, pushing the money at him. “And don’t go bothering me with your foul mouth any more. This is a place of business. I don’t have to have human rubbish in here.”
“Yes, man, O yes,” the youth said, not even hearing the Pawnbroker’s words. He took the money and gave it a quick kiss before stuffing it into his pocket. Then he cool-stepped out of the store with a beatific, lost smile on his writhing
