few, be credit to all, and not be found wanting when weighed in the scales, so help me God!
ZANGLER You may jump the counter.
Christopher jumps.
That’s that. I will inform you of changes in your duties should any occur to me—except of course that you have to buy your own clothes.
CHRISTOPHER Thank you, Chief!
ZANGLER And remember, always give people their change between finger and thumb. Nothing lets down the tone of a place so much as change from the fist.
CHRISTOPHER Right, Chief.
WEINBERL Excuse me, Chief. Am I your chief sales assistant or am I not?
ZANGLER You are not. I have decided to make you my partner. To take effect from the day of my marriage.
WEINBERL (stunned) Me? Your partner?
ZANGLER Yes. As a married man who has come into possession of a couture establishment I will be spending more time away from here. It’s only right that you should have an interest in the prosperity of the business, and probably cheaper.
WEINBERL Partner …
ZANGLER Yes, yes, as soon as my bride has consummated my expansion into her turnover you will be my partner. If you strive and abide you may find yourself in my old uniform. Now—what shall I do? Shall I go or what?
WEINBERL What …?
ZANGLER No, I’ll go.
CHRISTOPHER Good luck, Chief!
ZANGLER I’m going to join the parade and call on my fiancée—It’s her birthday. I’m hoping to have a little sextet outside her hat shop before I take her to dinner.
CHRISTOPHER Outside? In the street?
ZANGLER Yes. I can’t help it. I’m a fool to myself when I’m in love. If I’m not back by morning you’ll know where I’ll be.
CHRISTOPHER In jail?
ZANGLER In the milliner’s arms.
CHRISTOPHER Have one for me, Chief!
ZANGLER What?—No. I will go and plait my truss—no—
CHRISTOPHER Plight your—
ZANGLER That’s the boy! (He goes.)
WEINBERL (in a daze) Partner … partner … I’m a partner. One moment a put-upon counter-clerk, the next a pillar of the continental trading community.
CHRISTOPHER Chief sales assistant … I’ve always been at the bottom of the ladder and now … (A thought strikes him.) Who’s going to be under me, then?
WEINBERL Book-keeper—that was the Himalaya of my aspirations, but from the vantage point of partnership I look tolerantly down upon the book-keeper’s place as if from a throne of clouds.
CHRISTOPHER He’s a partner and I’m the entire staff. I’ll have two masters instead of one, three counting the widow, and the weight of my authority will be felt by the housekeeper’s cat.
WEINBERL And yet—strangely enough—now, now of all times, when fortune has smiled upon me like a lunatic upon a worm in an apple, I feel a sense of … (Pause.) grief.
CHRISTOPHER That cat is going to wish it had never been born.
WEINBERL What is happening to me? I feel a loosening of obscure restraints … Desires stir in my breast like shifting crates on a badly loaded barrow.
CHRISTOPHER (breaks out) Oh, Mother, what is the wherefore of it all?!—Whither the striving and how the abiding for a poor boy in the grocery trade? I’m glad she’s dead and doesn’t see me chained to this counter like a dog to a kennel, knowing nothing of the world except what happens to get wrapped around the next pound of groceries. Seeing the sunrise only from an attic window, and the sunset reflected in a row of spice jars, agog at travellers’ tales of paved streets! Oh, Mr Weinberl, I have come into my kingdom and I see that it is the locked room from which you celebrate your escape! And if I have to wait until I am as old as you, that’s longer than I’ve been alive!
WEINBERL (soberly) Beyond the door is another room. The servant is the slave of his master and the master is the slave of his business.
CHRISTOPHER (regarding Zangler’s old uniform left in the room) Try it on.
WEINBERL What?
CHRISTOPHER Try it on.
WEINBERL No—
CHRISTOPHER Go on!
WEINBERL Gertrud might come in—I mustn’t!
CHRISTOPHER All right.
WEINBERL I daren’t!
CHRISTOPHER All right.
WEINBERL Dare I? (He starts to don the uniform.) If only I could look back on a day when I was fancy free, a real razzle of a day packed with adventure and high jinks, a day to remember when I am a grand-grocer jingling through Vienna in my boots and spurs and the livery of the Grocers’ Company or passing the grog and spinning the yarn with the merchant princes of the retail trade, when I could say, ‘Oh, I was a gay dog in my day, a real rapscallion—why, I remember once …’ but I have nothing to remember. (desperately) I’ve got to acquire a past before it’s too late!
CHRISTOPHER Can I come with you, Mr Weinberl?
WEINBERL Come with me where?
CHRISTOPHER I want it now!
WEINBERL Now?
CHRISTOPHER This very minute!
WEINBERL (appalled) What? Lock up the shop?
CHRISTOPHER It’s already locked.
WEINBERL While he’s at the parade …?
CHRISTOPHER And dinner in town. It’s only us two. Marie is confined to quarters. He’ll never know.
WEINBERL Wait … (He paces about feverishly and then embraces Christopher.) What about the books?
CHRISTOPHER
