CHAPTER I
"HOW about it?" Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously.
"About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use playing the fool and trying to make a fool of me."
The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon.
The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, and the pressing-table looked desolate.
She spoke in an undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of her husband"s relations with me should leak out and reach his employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, but now, that our undertaking had apparently collapsed, she was particularly uneasy about it
"I don"t believe that store in the West has failed at all. In fact, I know it has not. Somebody told me all about it."
This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as she could not read it herself, she only sneered. I reasoned with her, I pleaded, I swore; but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully
"I don"t believe you. I don"t believe you," she finally said, shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion. "Do I believe a dog when it barks? Neither do I believe you. I curse the day when I first met you. It was the black year that brought you to us." She fell to wringing her hands and moaning: "Woe is me! Woe is me!"
Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself. I thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self-made man and one who had begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself, he seemed to be just the man I needed. A thought glimmered through my mind, "And who knows but he may come to my rescue I was going to call at his warehouse, but upon second thought I realized that the seat of his cold self-interest would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere of his mother"s home for the purpose
The next time I saw him at his mother"s I took him up to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him. I told him the whole story, almost without embellishments, omitting nothing but Chaikin"s name
"Is it all true?" he interrupted me at one point
I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered to prove it all to his satisfaction
"You don"t need to prove it to me," he replied. "What do I care?"
Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he blurted out: "Look here, young fellow! If you think I am going to lend you money you are only wasting time, for I am not." "And why not?" I asked, boldly, with studied dignity
"Why not! You better tell me why yes," he chuckled. "You have a lot of s.p.u.n.k. That you certainly have, and you ought to make a good business man, but I won"t loan you money, for all that."
"Weren"t you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? You have made a success of it, and now it would only be right that you should help another fellow get up in the world. You won"t lose a cent by it, either. I take an oath on it."
"You can"t have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?"
"Why did that commission merchant take a chance? If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had never seen before, you should not hesitate, either."
"Well, there is no use talking about it," was his final decision
The following day I received a letter from him, inviting me to his office
His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway.
Arrived there, I had to pa.s.s several men, all in their shirt-sleeves, who were attacking mountains of cloth with long, narrow knives.
One of these directed me to a remote window, in front of which I presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tape-measure around his neck
Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a scat, a good half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, yet he looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before. It was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made another man of him
Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and silently led me into his little private office, a narrow strip of part.i.tioned-off s.p.a.ce at the other end of the loft
When we were seated and the part.i.tion door was shut he said, with grave mien, "Well," and fell silent again
I gazed at him patiently
"Well," he repeated, "I have thought it over." And again he paused.
At last he burst out: "I do want to help you, young fellow. You didn"t expect it, did you? I do want to help you. And do you know why? Because otherwise you won"t pay that Gentile and I don"t want a good-hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot.
That"s number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer Nodelman is a hog, you don"t know Meyer Nodelman. Number three: I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. I said to myself, said I: "An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right.
He ought to be given a lift, for most educated people are d.a.m.n fools." Well, I"ll tell you what I am willing to do for you. I"ll get you the goods for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for sixty. What do you think of that? Now is Nodelman a hog or is he not? But that"s as far as I am willing to go. I can only get you the goods for that Third Avenue order. See? But that won"t be enough to help you out of your sc.r.a.pe, not enough for you to pay that good Gentile on time." He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an additional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an ultimatum: he would not furnish me the goods until I had produced that amount
"Look here, young fellow," he added; "since you were smart enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out, it ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an interest in you. Do you remember what I told you about those credit faces? I think you have got one."
"I have an honest heart, too," I said, with a smile
"Your heart I can"t get into, so I don"t know. See? Maybe there is a rogue hiding there and maybe there isn"t. But your face and your talk certainly are all right. They ought to be able to get you some more cash. And if they don"t, then they don"t deserve that I should help you out, either. See?" He chuckled in appreciation of his own syllogism
"It"s a nice piece of Talmud reasoning," I complimented him, with an enthusiastic laugh. "But, seriously, Mr. Nodelman, I shall pay you every cent. You run absolutely no risk."
I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation unconditionally. I tried to convince him that I should contrive to do without the additional cash. But he was obdurate, and at last I took my leave
"Wait a moment! What"s your hurry? Are you afraid you"ll be a couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? There is something I want to ask you."
"What is it, Mr. Nodelman?"
"How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?" he asked, archly
"Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for books, too,"
I answered
I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony of despair at once. On the whole, however, my spirits were greatly buoyed up.
Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence, I decided to try a similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis, better known to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some money.
I had seen very little of him in the past two years, having stumbled upon him in the street but two or three times. But upon each of these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs with genuine interest. He was fond of me. I had no doubt about it.
And he was so good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated my new venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to have any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad to hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and I was determined to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how
As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to overwhelm him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at any rate
After some seeking and inquiring, I found him in a Bowery furniture-store, one of the several places from which he supplied his instalment customers.
It was about 10 o"clock in the morning
"There is something I want to consult you about, Max," I said.
"Something awfully important to me. You"re the only man I know who could advise me and in whom I can confide," I added, with an implication of great intimacy and affection. "It"s a business scheme, Max. I have a chance to make lots of money."
The conversation was held in a dusky pa.s.sage of the labyrinthine store, a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture
"What is that? A business scheme?" he asked, in a preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. "You are dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, aren"t you?"