Ach, the pawnbroker moans, why, it’s a sin…don’t sell yourself short, and he slams his head on the bars of his cage, clatters between them the visor. Tell you what, he counters, I’ll give you three hundred and, hymn, a daughter of mine in marriage (you know how many I have — nu, I don’t either), you have maybe plans for tonight, my wife’s making break the fast, such a cook as you wouldn’t believe!
What’s this all about, B thinks with His face almost too knowingly…and then how the mensch suspects that this, too, might be a tactic, just another ruse, one of many — then why not, with eyes lit as if for effect and His mind going fiery…He’s a quick study, innocent but willing, preternaturally thorough, immediately expert, at ease. I don’t deal with thieves, He says to begin again, then commences with His walking away, the requisite display of disinterest. It’s so unexpected and yet so perfect, so right…wherefrom this instinctual guile, such inheritance heretofore subconscious, underknown, His respect for the deal, the old hand and its shake in its gloriously fallible humanity, its mouth sensuous and sad and yet humorous, too, below the pointiest and so most accusative of noses now put to the grind — and so with that dealhand, the stealhand, on the knob of the door and turning, He turns to the mensch to ask of him fifty, adding…more than fair — I’ll even sweep up around here, and throw in a shoeshine…or two.
I’ve underestimated, the pawnbroker says in a voice that says underneath in a muttering undertone (but that nothing’s ever tragic, or final), must be dealing with a real professional here…listen, tateleh, jokes I don’t pay for. Hahaha, a laugh won’t pay for the coffin, or my utilitybills. You have so much promise, don’t settle for less, I won’t stand for it, you hear me…let’s say five hundred, and meals for the week, a daughter of mine and a house out in Joysey (though only once you’re married — with kinder), three floors — tell you what, and another daughter, too, just to sweeten the pot: you have maybe a brother, an eligible cousin?
Ridiculous…B’s almost through the door, it’s insulting: eighteen’s my final offer, chai and chaver — I won’t go any lower, I can’t and you won’t…I’ll pay you eighteen, do the mopping, the sweeping, a shoeshine, I’ll even take in your laundry for a month and sit with your animals when you go and visit your mother. Water your plants, keep up the house, that sort of thing.
Nothing doing, the pawnbroker interrupts, points a filthy forefingernail up to the ceiling that would, that should, begin storming with God as his witness…understand me, I’m a generous mensch, and this is as far as I’m willing to go — you’ll take it or leave it, no hard feelings…I would’ve loved to have done business, but time is money and yet both are short patience’s even shorter, I’m sure: one thousand I’ll pay you, my daughter in marriage, and I mean my second daughter, the prettiest that one oy the head on her and the light of her face; meals for the month, a fivefloor house in Joysey once you’re married with kinder (he’s unshakable on this point, though he’s ready to shake on it now), and my first daughter for any relation that might be available, even a friend on your own recommendation, an acquaintance, maybe, even a goy you’ve heard word of who’s sober and solvent — twothirds of my estate after my death, and the blessing that I shouldn’t outlive you, Baruch ata spit spit poo.
You have yourself a deal…He swindles over to the broker, shakes his hands almost shattering the mensch’s wrists through the bars of the cage. He gives a geshray, B loosens His grip, the mensch steps back from his counter, shakes out his hands, then gathers the spoon finally slid through the slot…think how trusting, how very exposed: this mensch with a family, with daughters, and his security so wonderfully, though perhaps foolishly, lax: a human cage with its ribbing bars, him the fragile heart inside beating enormously — how there’s no partition or otherwise divide to get skeptical about, to kibbosh, to quash any deal, no plastic or glass separating transactions: bulletproofed, everythingproofed, impervious, and what’s worse tackily scratched. Without this fussy worry about it — distancing, hard of hearing, strange to speak, glad there’s not — you could really talk to this mensch, you know, get to know him, is he hiring, too…leaving the spoon to the side of his counter, him unrolling notes excavated from a breast of his pajamas, then handing them over, which B refuses to count.
My second daughter’s named Rachel, the mensch says patting the emptied pocket, used to be Kristi; we eat at dusk; I’ll amend my will over strudel.
Nodding a promise to return, B leaves with that wad of money swelling under His robe: dirtyfingered, ripped then taped or glued back together again shekels bearing denominations of an image that’s been graven too known…Him gravely aware by now, also, as the deal here’s finally downed, that He’s been shylocked, slumlordedover — that this money, it’ll be worthless forthwith (inflated to paper, mere fibrous idea, leaking ink in every shade, to become as absorbent as any still and white cloud), with fresh gelt minting its way in any initiative: new notes bearing new guarantees, circulating their own brand of surety, yet another promise never to be broken inscribed within the signature of the Administration’s divinate X; their cash to feature a host of wizened and sagged, beardcraggy faces familiar only to future (what remonetized rabbi, I mean rebbe, what cantor — I’m sorry, chazzan), honoring what miracle or mazel, tendered to our spent every prayer; don’t you want your ticket? the pawnbroker whispers after Him, to the door slamming loudly shut in His haste, the coinlike tinkle of chimes.
No matter, what could be left in his will, the mensch’s? As there’s almost nothing left in his shop, which establishment is itself in hock, though to whom he forgets: indebted in its every drawer and window display; nothing — not even the books, though they once were his, too, presently being held by the super for study — save his own tallis, half a set of tefillin, the head (his cousin has custody of the phylactery’s arm), and the spoon just hocked that the broker buries deep in his mouth, which he maybe owns, not its words.
With this windfall though mind the scatter, B makes it to a hotel, so a motel to save money, face, economize humiliation and cut back however ennobling — Hanna’s dieting, Israel’s distinguished reserve; having had enough of this, having been toldoff and His place while they’re at it. It’s westside from Times Square and rivered further, Hell’s kitchen with its bedroom unkempt, its bathrooms shared filthy, maintained to ruinous stain far along the highway opposite Joysey. A falling to flophouse B’ll bury Himself in on this night of our mourning: splitleveled over a parkinglot, the accommodation itself accommodated triapsidal three wings off the central office roomed with a view, if only potential; an ashpit alleyed below off the trash access of the city’s lone surviving peepshow slash sexual raree agora, lately combined with a clinic for hypodermic needles, dropin; ostraca of glass islanded amid oases of frozen urine, bags tenting over the rise of discarded syringes, surrounded by the scurried smeared droppings of dogs…He could’ve gazed clear across the Hudson then far past the low Palisades, if only He’d incline His head through the window that doesn’t open, that’s not there at all and so is only the wall’s plaster wet and then, hurt, wounded, stare, by then toward the stars, invisible by the lights of blocks east then those of the Turnpike’s transept, too, the skyway sprawls of condemned cogeneration plants, remember, those dusky stretches of storage and transit that lie just over the river, toxically gray. This motel the sort of hourly rated nowhere forsaken everywhere you don’t want to be and yet usually are, anywhere outside of Joysey, that is — the true wilting Garden; its units replete with inroom, onechannel televisions that operate on dimes no one uses anymore, and with whirlpools that are actually bathtubs in the hall that can always be churned up or unclogged with a plunger provided at cost, advertised upon the 10th Avenue marquee in promises smirking gaptoothed: in r (oom) (mov) i (es) and w (h) i (r) l (poo) l…in room numbered numinous, you’re going to want to go up ten flights, no elevator tonight, then hang a right down the hall, says the mensch at the bookshelf crashed into a frontdesk: he’s pale, inkyhaired, wrapped in a forelock and perpetually shuckling, he’s davening day and night it’s mincha then ma’ariv, always keep going keep going — there, in the drawer of the nightstand, in the volume and beyond the Law, amid the pages, the words, of the Psalm: by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down to weep