A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 38

"A good story! How do you know? I ain't come to the point yet. But never mind, if you like it so much you don't need any point."

"The point, Feodor. Excuse me."

"Well, the point is that Pitzela and the way he treats his son is a scandal. You know why? Because he uses his son as an advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Pitzela's son, mind you, is so weak and old that he can hardly walk and he carries a heavy cane and his hands shake like leaves. And Pitzela drags him around all over. To banquets. To political meetings. To the Yiddish theater. All over. He holds him by the arm and brings him into the hall and sits him down in a chair. And Pitzela's son sits so tired and almost dead he can't move. And then Pitzela jumps up and gets excited and says: 'Look at him. A fine son, for you! Look, he's almost dead. Tell me if you wouldn't think he was my father and I was his son? Instead of the other way around? I ask you.'"

"And what does Pitzela's son say, Feodor?"

"Say? What can he say? He looks up and shakes his head some more. He can hardly see. And when the banquet talking begins he falls asleep and Pitzela has to hold him up from falling out of the chair. And when the food is done and the dessert comes Pitzela leans over and says to his son: 'Listen. I got a treat for you. Here.' And he reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of hickory nuts. 'Crack them with your teeth,' he says, 'like your father.' And when his son looks at him and strokes his white beard and sighs, Pitzela jumps up and laughs so you can hear him all over the banquet hall. But the point of the story is that two weeks ago Pitzela went to his grandson's funeral. It was Pitzela's son's son and he was a man almost 70 years old. And it was a scandal at the funeral. Why?

Because Pitzela laughed and coming back from the grave he said: 'Look at me, my grandson dies and I go to his funeral and if he had a son I would go to his, too, and I would dance jigs both times.'"

PANDORA'S BOX

A dark afternoon with summer thunder in the sky. The fan-shaped skysc.r.a.pers spread a checkerboard of window lights through the gloom. It rains. People seem to grow vaguely elate on the dark wet pavements. They hurry along, their eyes saying to one another, "We have something in common. We are all getting wet in the rain." The crowd is no longer quite so enigmatic a stranger to itself. An errand boy from Market Street advances with leaps through the downpour, a high chant on his lips, "It's raining ... it's raining." The rain mutters and the pavements, like darkened mirrors, grow alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city.

Inside the Was.h.i.+ngton Street book store of Covici-McGee the electric lights gleam cozily. New books and old books--the high shelves stuffed with books vanish in the ceiling shadows. On a rainy day the dusty army of books peers coaxingly from the shelves. Old tales, old myths, old wars, old dreams begin to chatter softly in the shadows--or it may be the chatter of the rain on the pavement outside. The Great Philosophers unbend, the Bearded Cla.s.sics sigh, the Pontifical Critics of Life murmur "ahem." Yes, even the forbidding works of Standard Authors grow lonely on the high shelves on a rainy day. As for the rag-tag, ruffle-snuffle crowd in motley--the bulged, spavined, sniffling crew of mountebanks, troubadours, swashbucklers, bleary philosophers, phantasts and adventurers--they set up a veritable witches' chorus. Or it may be the rain again las.h.i.+ng against the streaming windows of the book store.

People come in out of the rain. A girl without an umbrella, her face wet.

Who? Perhaps a stenographer hunting a job and halted by the rain. And then a matron with an old-fas.h.i.+oned knitted shopping bag. And a spinster with a keen, kindly face. Others, too. They stand nervously idle, feeling that they are taking up valuable s.p.a.ce in an industrial establishment and should perhaps make a purchase. So they permit their eyes to drift politely toward the wares. And then the chatter of the books has them. Old books, new books, live books, dead books--but they move carelessly away and toward the bargain tables--"All Books 30 Cents." Broken down best sellers here--pausing in their gavotte toward oblivion. The next step is the junk man--$1 a hundred. Pembertons, Wrights, Farnols, Websters, Johnstones, Porters, Wards and a hundred other names reminiscent more of a page in the telephone book than a page out of a literary yesterday. The little gavotte is an old dance in the second-hand book store. The $2-shelf. The $1-rack. The 75-cent table. The 30-cent grab counter. And finis. New scribblings crowd for place, old scribblings exeunt.

The girl without an umbrella studies t.i.tles. A love story, of course, and only thirty cents. An opened page reads, "he took her in his arms...." Who would not buy such a book on a rainy day?

It rains and other people come in. A middle-aged man in a curious coat, a curious hat and a curious face. Slate-colored skin, slate-colored eyes behind silver spectacles. A scholar in caricature, an Old Clothes Dealer out of Alice in Wonderland. The rain runs from his stringy, slate-colored hair. He approaches the high shelves, thrusts the silver spectacles farther down on his nose. In front of him a curious row of literary gargoyles--"The Astral Light," "What and Where Is G.o.d?", "Man" by Dohony of Texas, "The Star of the Magi."

Thin slate-colored fingers fumble nervously over the t.i.tle backs. A second man, figure short, squat, red-faced, crowds the erratic scholar. A third.

The rain is bringing them in in numbers. These are the bas.e.m.e.nt students of the gargoyle philosophies, the gargoyle sciences, the gargoyle religions. Perpetual motion machine inventors, alchemists with staring, nervous-eyed medieval faces, fourth dimensionists, sun wors.h.i.+ppers, cabalistic researchers, voodoo authorities--the old-book store is suddenly alive with them. They move about furtively with no word for one another, lost in their grotesque dreamings.

On a rainy day the city gives them up and they come puttering excitedly into the loop on a quest. The world is a garish unreality to them. The streets and the crowds of automatic-faced men and women, the upward rush of buildings and the horizontal rush of traffic are no more than vague grimacings. Life is something of which the streets are oblivious. But here on the gargoyle shelves, the high, shadowed shelves of the old book store--truth stands in all its terrible reality, wrapped in its authentic habiliments. Dr. Hickson of the psychopathic laboratory would give these curious rainy day phantasts ident.i.ties as weird as the volumes they caress. But the old book store clerk is more kind. He lets them rummage.

Before the rain ends they will buy "The Cradle of the Giants," "The Key to Satanism," Cornelius Agrippa's "Natural Magic," "The Astral Chord,"

"Occultism and Its Usages." They will buy books by Jacob Boehme, William Law, Sadler, Hyslop, Ramachaska. And they will go hurrying home with their treasures pressed close to them. Stuffy bedrooms lined with hints of Sabbatical horror, strewn with bizarre refuse; musty smelling books out of whose pages fantastic shapes rear themselves against the gaslights, macabre worlds in which unreason rides like a headless D'Artagnan; evenings in the park arguing suddenly with startled strangers on the existence of the philosophers' stone or the astrological causes of influenza--these form a background for the curious men whom the rain has drifted into the old book store and who stand with their eyes haunting the gargoyle t.i.tles.

The rain brings in another tribesman--a famed though somewhat ragged bibliomaniac. His casual gestures hide the sudden fever old books kindle in his thought. Old books--old books, a magical phrase to him. His eyes travel like a lover's back and forth, up and down. He knows them all--the sets, the first editions, the bargains, the riff-raff. A democratic lover is here. But the clerk watches him. For this lover is an antagonist. Yes, this somewhat ragged, gleaming-eyed gentleman with the casual manner is a terrible person to have around in a second-hand book store on a rainy day.

Only six months ago one of his horrible tribe pounced upon Sander's "Indian Wars," price 30 cents; value, alas, $150.00. Only two months ago another of his kidney fell upon a copy of Jean Jacques Rosseau's "Emile"

with Jean's own dedication on the t.i.tle page to "His Majesty, the King of France." Price 75 cents; value, gadzooks, $200.

There will be nothing today, however. Merely an hour's caress of old friends on the high shelves while the rain beats outside. Unless--unless this Stevenson happens by any chance to be a "first." A furtive glance at the t.i.tle page. No. The clerk sighs with relief as the Stevenson goes back on the shelf. It might have been something overlooked.

The rain ends. The old book store slowly empties. A troop of men and women saunter out, pausing to say farewell to the gaudily ragged tomes in the old book store. The sky has grown lighter. The buildings shake the last drops of rain from their spatula tops. There is a different-looking, well-linened gentleman thrusts his head into the old book store and inquires, "Have you a copy of 'The Investors' Guide'?"

ILL-HUMORESQUE

The beggar in the street, sitting on the pavement against the building with his pleading face raised and his arm outstretched--I don't like him.

I don't like the way he tucks his one good leg under him in order to convey the impression that he is entirely legless. I don't like the way he thrusts his arm stump at me, the way his eyes plead his weakness and sorrow.

He is a presumptuous and calculating scoundrel, this beggar. He is a diabolical psychologist. Why will people drop coins into his hat? Ah, because when they look at him and his misfortunes, by a common mental ruse they see themselves in his place, and they hurriedly fling a coin to this fugitive image of themselves. And because in back of this beggar has grown up an insidious propaganda that power is wrong, that strength is evil, that riches are vile. A strong, rich and powerful man cannot get into heaven. Thus this beggar becomes for an instant an intimidating symbol of perfections. One feels that one should apologize for the fact that one has two legs, money in one's pocket and hope in one's heart. One flings him a coin, thus buying momentary absolution for not being an unfortunate--i.e., as n.o.ble and non-predatory--as the beggar.

I do not like the way this beggar pleads. And yet after I pa.s.s him and remember his calculating expression, his mountebank tricks, I grow fond of him--theoretically. My thought warms to him as a creature of intelligence, of straightforward and amusing cynicisms.

For this beggar is aware of me and the innumerable lies to which I lamely submit. I am the public to him--one of a herd of identical faces drifting by. And this beggar has perfected a technique of attack. It is his duty to sit on the pavement and lay for me and hit me with a slapstick labeled plat.i.tude and soak me over the head with a bladder labeled in stern white letters: "The Poor Shall Inherit the Kingdom of Heaven."

And this he does, the scoundrel, grinning to himself as the blows fall and slyly concealing his enthusiasm as the coins jingle into his hat. I am one of those who labor proudly at the immemorial task of idealizations. I am the public who pa.s.ses laws proclaiming things wrong, immoral, contrary to my "best instincts." Thus I have after many centuries succeeded in creating a beautiful conception--a marvelous person. This marvelous person represents what I might be if I had neither ambition nor corpuscles, prejudices nor ecstasties, greeds, l.u.s.ts, illusions or curiosity. This marvelous person is the beautiful image, the n.o.ble and flattering image of itself that the public rapturously beholds when it stares into the mirror of laws, conventions, adages, plat.i.tudes and const.i.tutions that it has created.

A charming image to contemplate. Learned men wax full of stern joy when they gaze upon this image. Kind-hearted folk thrill with pride at the thought that life is at last a carefully policed force which flows politely and properly through the catalogued veins of this marvelous person.

But my beggar in the street--ah, my beggar in the street knows better. My beggar in the street, maimed and vicious, sits against the building and wields his bladder and his slapstick on me. Whang! A plat.i.tude on the rear. Bam! A bromide on the bean! And I sh.e.l.l out a dime and hurry on. I do not like this beggar.

But I grow warm with fellows.h.i.+p toward him after I have left him behind.

There is something comradely about his amazing cynicism. People, thinks this beggar, are ashamed of themselves for being strong, for having two legs, for not being poor, brow-beaten, cheek-turning humble mendicants.

People, thinks this beggar, are secretly ashamed of themselves for being part of success. And their shame is inspired by fear. When they see me they suddenly feel uncertain about themselves. When they see me they think that reverses and misfortunes and calamities might overtake them and reduce them to my condition. Thinking this, they grow indignant for an instant with a society that produces beggars. Not because it produced me.

But perhaps it might produce them--as beggars. And then remembering that they are responsible for my plight--they being society--they beg my pardon by giving me money and a pleading look. Oho! You should see the pleading looks they give me. Men and women pa.s.s and plead with me not to hit them too hard with my slapstick and bladder. They plead with me to spare them, not to look at them. And when they give me a dime it is a gesture intended to annihilate me. The dime obliterates my misfortunes. It annihilates my poverty. For an instant, having annihilated poverty and misfortune with a dime, the man or woman is happy. An instant of security strengthens his wavering spirit.

Thus my beggar whom I have grown quite fond of as I write. I would write more of him and of the marvelous person in me whom he is continually belaboring with his slapstick and bladder. But I remember suddenly a man in a wheel chair. A pale man with drawn features and paralyzed legs. It was at night in North Clark Street. Lights streamed over the pavements.

People moved in and out of doorways.

And this man sat in his wheel chair, a board on his lap. The board was laden with wares. Trinkets, pencils, shoestrings, candies, tacks, neckties, socks. And from the front of the board hung a sign reading, "Jim's Store--Stop and Shop."

I remember this creature with a sudden excitement. I pa.s.sed by and bought nothing. But after five days his face has caught up with me. A sallow, drawn face, burning eyes, bloodless lips and skinny hands that fumbled among the wares on his board. He was young. Heroic sentences come to me.

"Jim's Store--" Good hok.u.m, effective advertising. And a strange pathos, a pathos that my beggar with one leg and a pleading face never had.

I do not like cynics. I like Jim better. I like Jim and his burning eyes, his skinny hands, his dying body--and his store. Fighting--with the lights going out. Sitting in a wheel chair with death at his back and despair crying from his eyes--"Come buy from me--a little while longer--I don't give up ... another week ... another month ... but I don't give up. I'm still on the turf.... Never mind my dying body ... business as usual ...

business as usual.... Come buy from me ... little while longer ... a...."

But I never gave a nickel to Jim. I pa.s.sed up his store. I took him at his word. He was selling wares and I didn't want any. But my beggar with the one leg and the inward grin was selling absolutions.... And I patronized him.

THE MAN WITH A QUESTION