“For this I have davened every day, so that something like that should become of you? A dandy, a bon vivant, a fashion fop and aesthetnik, instead of a regular, decent hardworking honest man! For you to lounge around the ball fields instead of standing on the shop floor like your father and your mother and your little sister and working! For you to sit watching the ballerinas”—Solly was standing right in front of Herr Tarangolian—“the little children twelve and thirteen years old in their tricots …”
“That’s fine, Solly!” said Herr Tarangolian, wiping his eyes and so delighted he was incapable of laughing. “You’re a genius. But stick to your father and Bubi.”
“Deal!” Solly said and jumped, with the dancer’s agility he owed to Madame Aritonovich’s instruction, to the place he had designated for Bubi. “Now I’ll be Bubi.”
He took on an expression of bored superiority and at once Solly disappeared and in his place we saw the snooty upstart Bubi Brill, wearing tennis shorts, quarreling with his hoarsely rasping father, who vented his spleen in rage — no, not just them: with a single gesture he also conjured his fat mother on her throne behind the cash register, unmoving as a sphinx, his sister Riffke lurking in the background, and the blasé, condescending salesmen of Brill’s large department store, leaning over tables covered with samples and receipt ledgers. The scene took place in the atmosphere of relaxed and unstinting openness Jews create with one another — the intimacy of an Oriental people deeply acquainted with life.
Bubi (bored and supercilious): “All right, Papa. We know this record by heart. Please, give me part of the business so I have something to do.”
Old Man Brilclass="underline" “Here is where I do my business, here on the shop floor, bokher, and if you want to do business, then get to it! It’s nine o’clock. Customers will be walking in at any moment. Get out of your foppish rags, and hop to it!
Bubi (haughtily): “Excuse me, Papa, but this is a nebekhdike way to do business, with aprons and garter straps. Forgive me if I laugh.”
Old Brill (his voice cracking): “Ja, in this shop that’s exactly how we do business, with aprons and garter straps! He can’t sell half a garter, the scab, but he wants to make big deals, ten wagonloads of hazelnuts from Constantinople to Lemberg, perhaps — or hustle jewels! A lazy lounging nobody who gets drunk with officers and whores like a goy, with women and furs and champagne and Paris in his head. Mass-man in an automobile. He lets his old father with a hernia sell garter straps, while he wants to do big business. The swastika-louts that paint up on my shutters, this is how I live, they know why I have worked myself to the bone my whole life long, they know. For the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—that’s what they say. For domination over the earth, that’s what they believe. But I know the real reason why I’ve slaved away—dos iz emmes—I know. For a cavalryman, a playboy with film stars in his head. A man for whom the shop floor isn’t good enough, and the city isn’t big enough, not elegant enough, and the business isn’t profitable enough, and the whores don’t cost enough. That’s why I’m standing today on the floor here with my rheumatism, so that the swastika-men just need to wait for him to take over, the fop, for that the business should go bankrupt, and for me I should wind up a poor man and in debt. And for that I–I, Usher Brill, an old man with a bad diabetes — for that I’m supposed to put up an entire fortune and risk my neck? For the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and for domination over the earth, when the young gentlemen will no longer be around — that’s what for.”
Bubi: “Excuse me, Papa, what’s all this about investing? All I hear about is investing. What investments, may I ask? As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to invest a thing with this deal.”
Old Brilclass="underline" “You think I’m going to tell it to you, bokher! Your little sister is a good girl, you understand. If she wants to get married, I’ll tell it to her, you understand, but not you. You can go look for your deals somewhere else, that’s what you can do.”
Bubi: “God knows, you don’t have to get so worked up, Papa. Anyway, Mama told me everything already. So I’m asking you: What investments are you talking about? First of all, isn’t old Paşcanu good for the few million? Permit me to say that the way I see it it’s purely a matter of brokering a deal. The profit is enough, at least for me. I leave it up to you. If you don’t want to do it, then I will. Or don’t you think Paşcanu is good for the money?”
Old Brill (with mock cheerfulness): “Listen to him ask the questions, the freeloader. He’ll broker a deal! He’ll leave it up to me! Look here, old Paşcanu’s fortune is in lumber, you meshuggener. Here — do you ever look at a newspaper? You studied abroad. Figure it out. Old Paşcanu is as broke as — as broke as a goy can possibly be. That’s what old Paşcanu is, you understand. I spend good money to send you abroad so that you can ask questions like a simple peasant? Old Paşcanu, I tell you, is finished, that’s what old Paşcanu is.”
Bubi: “Why are you getting so upset, Papa? In terms of psychology, that’s very interesting. If old Paşcanu is broke, then you don’t need to do the deal, right? I leave it to you.”
Old Brilclass="underline" “Deal! What kind of deal is that, I’d like to know? It’s a better deal to go caca in the Volodiak, you understand, you goylem? That would be a better deal.”
Bubi: “Why are you getting so riled up over nothing, Papa? In terms of psychology, that’s very interesting, so why is nobody supposed to know anything if it’s already dead in the cradle? By the way, there’s something I want to tell you: I, too, have my information, you’ll permit me — you understand. I, too, have my information, and I, too, glance at the papers now and then. Old Paşcanu isn’t standing in his smock and selling garter straps — not him. Old Paşcanu is a businessman of class. He doesn’t need to perform any schemes for credit or any other shmontses. But, as I said, I leave it to you. If you don’t want to, then I will.”
Old Brilclass="underline" “With my money, you think? You scoundrel! I am supposed to stand here and sell garter straps, with my ailing heart, while you go do business with old Paşcanu …”
Bubi: “As I said, it’s no more than brokering a deal. Pure and simple. Again: I leave it to you. By the way, with your permission, I have to go to the club. Anyway, I find it psychologically extremely interesting that you are getting so worked up over this.”
Bubi — or, rather, little Solly, because he was once more himself — took his leave with an inimitably nonchalant wave. We were entranced and delighted, and, sparked by Madame Aritonovich’s example, we applauded enthusiastically.
Solly went up to Herr Tarangolian. “The show is over. Curtain. That’s all for this season.” Turning to us, he said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the theater is closed.”
Madame Aritonovich shooed us to work. “Allons! Go back to your work! To the barre!”
Herr Tarangolian gave Solly a ten-leo coin. Solly looked it over carefully.
“I’ll bet you know what deal your brother Bubi was talking about, don’t you? Or didn’t your Mama mention anything about it?”
Solly blinked at him through his carrot-colored eyelids: “Not for just a tenner, Herr Coco.”
Years later, when we paid Madame Aritonovich a friendly visit, we tried to compliment her by saying that the most beautiful thing that we had learned at her school, in the woefully short time we were there, was candor. Then we attempted to double the effect of this acknowledgment by explaining what we meant — an approach that is always prone to backfire — and added that she masterfully understood how to remove the sting and thus the embarrassment from any type of indiscretion, intended as well as unintended, by taking the matter in hand and immediately making it everybody’s business, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.