Read Online The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant - Free Book Online

damned fool with all his talk—crazy
Shwartsa
bastard! What does he want from me?" And all of it was no more than a whisper, so that Jesus Ortiz only turned curiously toward the sibilance for a moment on his way out to get their lunches.
    In the evening, Ortiz took his pay from Sol's hand and then stood blowing dreamily over the edges of the bills.
    "I got a uncle lives out in Detroit," he said, staring now at the sleeve that covered Sol's tattoo. "He been in business for forty years—clothes he sell. My old lady tell me that man solid as the Rock of Gibraltar in that town. All the time he plow the profit back in, get better capitalize all the time. They have race riots, depressions out there, but that business of my uncle get stronger and stronger all the time, no matter what. The cops even call him Mister. He belong to merchant organizations and all. He got him a son 'bout my age, and that kid in the store gonna get it all when my uncle kick off. See, that business make him
solid.
Hey, like a king a little, pass his crown on down to the kids. My mother tell me we was out there to visit when I was around four years old. I
think
I remember him; it's hard to tell. I seen pictures of him so I don't know if I remember seein'
him
or just
seem
like I do from all the times I look at his picture." He snatched his eyes from the empty space and took a deep, resolute breath. "I'm gonna get me a business, I got that in mind for sure," he said almost fiercely to Sol. "All I need is the money, the goddam loot!" He flicked contemptuously at the little sheaf of bills and then put it into his pocket.
    "Save your pennies," Sol said with all the warmth of a carnival shill.
    "I gonna do that, Sol," he said with a level, ruthless stare. Then his face performed that mimelike change to smile. "Anyhow I learnin' something about business from a master, meantime." His eyes were flat with his undeniable curiosity, and there was something reminiscent of Tangee's dissecting gaze as he looked at Sol. "Tell me one thing," he demanded in a voice shaded by whispering intensity. "How come you Jews come to business so natural?"
    Sol looked at him with harsh amusement.
    "How come, how come. You want to steal my secret of success, hah. Well,
Jesus,
" he said ironically, "I will do you a favor; it is part of my obligation to you as an apprentice. Really it is very simple. Pay attention, though, or you may miss something."
    Jesus held out against the stinging humor for whatever might slip from his employer's scornful monologue, his eyes as clear and receptive as those of a cat searching the dusk for nourishment.
    "You begin with several thousand years during which you have nothing except a great, bearded legend, nothing else. You have no land to grow food on, no land on which to hunt, not enough time in one place to have a geography or an army or a land-myth. Only you have a little brain in your head and this bearded legend to sustain you and convince you that there
is
something special about you, even in your poverty. But this little brain, that is the real key. With it you obtain a small piece of cloth—wool, silk, cotton—it doesn't matter. You take this cloth and you cut it in two and sell the two pieces for a penny or two more than you paid for the one. With this money, then, you buy a slightly larger piece of cloth, which perhaps may be cut into three pieces and sold for
three
pennies' profit. You must never succumb to buying an extra piece of bread at this point, a luxury like a toy for your child. Immediately you must go out and buy a still-larger cloth, or two large cloths, and repeat the process. And so you continue until there is no longer any temptation to dig in the earth and grow food, no longer any desire to gaze at limitless land which is in your name. You repeat this process over and over and over for approximately twenty centuries. And then,
voilà
—you have a mercantile heritage, you are known as a merchant, a man with