Jonah

by Louis Stone

  And suddenly, with a contraction at his heart, a fear and dread of Jonah swept through Paasch, the vague, primeval distrust and suspicion of the deformed that lurks in the normal man, a survival of the ancient hostility that in olden times consigned them to the stake as servants of the Evil One.

  He forgot where he was till the warning snort of a steam tram made him jump aside and miss the wheels of a bus from the opposite direction by the skin of his teeth.

  And the whole street smiled at the sight of the bewildered old man, with his silvery hair and leather apron, standing in the middle of the Road to stare at a dingy shop opposite.

  Paasch crossed the street and entered his door again with the air of a man who has been to a funeral. He had never made any friends, but, in his gruff, reserved way, he liked Jonah. He had taught him his trade, and here, with a sudden sinking in his heart, he remembered that the pupil had easily surpassed the master in dexterity. Then another fear assailed him. How would he get through his work? for most of it had passed through Jonah’s nimble fingers. Ah well, it was no matter! He was a lonely old man with nothing but his fiddle to bring back the memories of the Fatherland.

  The week ran to an end, and found Jonah out of pocket. He had planted himself like a footpad at the door of his old master to rob him of his trade and living; and day by day he counted the customers passing in and out of the old shop, but none came his way. As he stared across the street at his rival’s shop, his face changed; it was like a hawk’s, threatening and predatory, indifferent to the agony of the downy breast and fluttering wings that it is about to strike.

  It maddened him to see the stream of people pass his shop with indifference, as if it were none of their business whether he lived or starved. The memory of his boyish days returned to him, when every man’s hand was against him, and he took food and shelter with the craft of an old soldier in hostile country. Even the shop which he had furnished and laid out with such loving care, seemed a cunning trap to devour his precious sovereigns week by week.

  True, he had drawn some custom, but it was of the worst sort—that of the unprincipled rogues who fatten upon tradesmen till the back of their credit is broken, and then transfer their sinister custom to another. Jonah recognized them with a grim smile, but he had taken their work, glad of something to do, although he would never see the colour of their money.

  Meanwhile the weeks ran into a month, and Jonah had not paid expenses. He could hold out for three months according to his calculation, but he saw the end rapidly approaching, when he must retire covered with ignominious defeat. He would have thrown up the sponge there and then, but for the thought of the straight-limbed child in Cardigan Street, for whom he wanted money—money to feed and clothe him for the world to admire.

  One Saturday night, weary of waiting for the custom that never came, he closed the shop, and joined Ada, who was waiting on the footpath. They sauntered along, Ada stopping every minute to look into the shop windows, while Jonah, gloomy and taciturn, turned his back on the lighted windows with impatience. Presently Ada gave a cry of delight before the draper’s.

  “I say, Joe, that bonnet would suit the kid all to pieces. An’ look at the price! Only last week they was seven an’ a kick.”

  Jonah turned and looked at the window. The bonnet, fluffy and absurd, was marked with a ticket bearing an enormous figure 4 in red ink, and beside it, faintly marked in pencil, the number 11.

  “W’y don’t yer say five bob, an’ be done with it?” said Jonah.

  “But it ain’t five bob; it’s only four an’ eleven,” insisted Ada, annoyed at his stupidity.

  “An’ I suppose it ’ud be dear at five bob?” sneered Jonah.

  “Any fool could tell yer that,” snapped Ada.

  Jonah included the whole feminine world in a shrug of the shoulders, and turned impatiently on his heel. But Ada was not to be torn away. She ran her eye over the stock, marvelling at the cheapness of everything. Jonah, finding nothing better to do, lit a cigarette, and turned a contemptuous eye on the bales of calico, cheap prints, and flimsy lace displayed. Presently he began to study the tickets with extraordinary interest. They were all alike. The shillings in gigantic figures of red or black, and across the dividing line elevenpence three-farthings pencilled in strokes as modest as the shy violet. When Jonah reached Cardigan Street, he was preoccupied and silent, and sat on the veranda, smoking in the dark, long after Ada and her mother had gone to bed.

  About one o’clock Mrs Yabsley, who was peacefully ironing shirts in her sleep, was awakened by a loud hammering on the door. She woke up, and instantly recognized what had happened. Ada had left the candle burning and had set the house on fire, as her mother had daily predicted for the last ten years. Then the hammering ceased.

  “Are yez awake, Mum?” cried Jonah’s voice.

  “No,” said Mrs Yabsley firmly. “’Ow did it ’appen?”

  “’Appen wot?” cried Jonah roughly.

  “’Ow did the ’ouse ketch fire?” said Mrs Yabsley, listening for the crackling.

  “The ’ouse ain’t a-fire, an’ ye’re talkin’ in yer sleep.”

  “Wot!” cried Mrs Yabsley, furiously, “yer wake me up out o’ me sleep to tell me the ’ouse ain’t a-fire. I’ll land yer on the ’ead wi’ me slipper, if yer don’t go to bed.”

  “I say, Mum,” entreated Jonah, “will yer gimme five quid on Monday, an’ ask no questions?”

  Mrs Yabsley’s only answer was a snore.

  But a week later the morning procession that trudged along Botany Road towards the city was astonished at the sight of a small shop, covered with huge calico signs displaying in staring red letters on a white ground the legend:

  WHILE U WAIT.

  Boots and Shoes Soled and Heeled.

  GENTS, 2/11; LADIES, 1/11; CHILDS, 1/6.

  The huge red letters, thrown out like a defiance and a challenge, caused a sensation in the Road. The pedestrians stopped to read the signs, looked curiously at the shop, and went on their way. The passengers in the trams and buses craned their necks, anxious to read the gigantic advertisement before they were carried out of sight. A group of urchins, stationed at the door, distributed handbills to the curious, containing the same announcement in bold type.

  Across the street hung Paasch’s dingy sign from which the paint was peeling:

  Repairs neatly executed

  GENTS, 3/6; LADIES, 2/6; CHILDS, 1/9

  —the old prices sanctioned by usage, unchangeable and immovable as the laws of nature to Paasch and the trade on Botany Road.

  The shop itself was transformed. On one side were half a dozen new chairs standing in a row on a strip of bright red carpet. Gay festoons of coloured tissue paper, the work of Mrs Yabsley’s hands, stretched in ropes across the ceiling. The window had been cleared and at a bench facing the street Jonah and an assistant pegged and hammered as if for dear life. Another, who bore a curious likeness to Chook, with his back to the street and a last on his knees, hammered with enthusiasm. A tremendous heap of old boots, waiting to be repaired, was thrown carelessly in front of the workers, who seemed too busy to notice the sensation they were creating.

  The excitement increased when a customer, Waxy Collins by name, entered the shop, and, taking off his boots, sat down while they were repaired, reading the morning paper as coolly as if he were taking his turn at the barber’s. The thing spread like the news of a murder, and through the day a group of idlers gathered, watching with intense relish the rapid movements of the workmen. Jonah had declared war.

  Six weeks after he had opened the shop, Jonah found twelve of Mrs Yabsley’s sovereigns between him and ignominious defeat. Then the tickets in the draper’s window had given him an idea, and, like a general who throws his last battalion at the enemy, he had resolved to stake the remaining coins on the hazard. The calico signs, then a novelty, the fittings of the shop, and the wages for a skilful assistant, had swallowed six of his precious twelve pounds. With the remaining six he hoped to hold o
ut for a fortnight. Then, unless the tide turned, he would throw up the sponge. Chook, amazed and delighted with the idea, had volunteered to disguise himself as a snob, and help to give the shop a busy look; and Waxy Collins jumped at the chance of getting his boots mended for the bare trouble of walking in and pretending to read the newspaper.

  The other shopkeepers were staggered. They stared in helpless anger at the small shop, which had suddenly become the most important in their ken. Already they saw their families brought to the gutter by this hunchback ruffian, who hit them below the belt in the most ungentlemanly fashion in preference to starving. But the simple manoeuvre of cutting down the prices of his rivals was only a taste of the unerring instinct for business that was later to make him as much feared as respected in the trade. By a single stroke he had shown his ability to play on the weakness as well as the needs of the public, coupled with a pitiless disregard for other interests than his own, which constitutes business talent.

  The public looked on, surprised and curious, drawn by the novelty of the idea and the amazing prices, but hesitating like an animal that fears a tempting bait. The ceaseless activity of the shop reassured them. One by one the customers arrived. Numbers bred numbers, and in a week a rush had set in. It became the fashion on the Road to loll in the shop, carelessly reading the papers for all the world to see, while your boots were being mended. On Saturday for the first time Jonah turned a profit, and the battle was won.

  Among the later arrivals Jonah noticed with satisfaction some of Paasch’s best customers, and every week, with an apologetic smile, another handed in his boots for repair. Soon there was little for Paasch to do but stand at his door, staring with frightened, short-sighted eyes across the Road at the octopus that was slowly squeezing the life out of his shop. But he obstinately refused to lower his prices, though his customers carried the work from his counter across the street. It seemed to him that the prices were something fixed by natural laws, like the return of the seasons or the multiplication table.

  “I haf always charge tree an’ six for men’s, an’ it cannot be done cheaper without taking de bread out of mine mouth,” he repeated obstinately.

  In three months Jonah hired another workman, and the landlord came down to see if the shop could be enlarged to meet Jonah’s requirements. Then a traveller called with an armful of samples. He was travelling for his brother, he explained, who had a small factory. Jonah looked longingly, and confessed that he wanted to stock his shop, but had no money to buy. Then the traveller smiled, and explained to Jonah, alert and attentive, the credit system by which his firm would deliver fifty pounds’ worth of boots at three months. Jonah was quick to learn, but cautious.

  “D’ye mean yer’d gimme the boots, an’ not want the money for three months?”

  The traveller explained that was the usual practice.

  “An’ can I sell ’em at any price I like?”

  The man said he could give them away if he chose.

  Jonah spent a pound on brass rods and glass stands, and sold the lot in a month at sixpence a pair profit. His next order ran into a hundred pounds, and Jonah had established a cash retail trade. Meanwhile, he worked in a way to stagger the busy bee. Morning and night the sound of his hammer never ceased, except the three nights a week he spent at a night school, where he discovered a remarkable talent for mental arithmetic and figures. Jonah the hunchback had found his vocation.

  And in the still night, when he stopped to light a cigarette, Jonah could hear the mournful wail of a violin in Paasch’s bedroom across the street. In his distress the old man had turned to his beloved instrument as one turns to an old friend. But now the tunes were never merry, only scraps and fragments of songs of love and despair, the melancholy folk-songs of his native land, long since forgotten, and now returning to his memory as its hold on the present grew feebler.

  11

  THE COURTING OF PINKEY

  It was Monday morning, and, according to their habit, the Partridges were moving. Every stick of their furniture was piled on the van, and Pinkey, who was carrying the kerosene lamp for fear of breakage, watched the load anxiously as the cart lurched over a rut. A cracked mirror, swinging loosely in its frame, followed every movement of the cart, one minute reflecting Pinkey’s red hair and dingy skirt, the next swinging vacantly to the sky.

  The cart stopped outside a small weatherboard cottage, and the vanman backed the wheels against the kerbstone, cracking his whip and swearing at the horse, which remained calm and obstinate, refusing to move except of its own accord. The noise brought the neighbours to their doors. And they stood with prying eyes, ready to judge the social standing of the newcomers from their furniture.

  It was the old battered furniture of a poor family, dragged from the friendly shelter of dark corners into the naked light of day, the back, white and rough as a packing-case, betraying the front, varnished and stained to imitate walnut and cedar. Every scratch and stain showed plainly on the tables and chairs fastened to their companions in misery—odd, nameless contrivances made of boxes and cretonne, that took the place of the sofas, wardrobes, and toilet-tables of the rich. Every mark and every dint was noted with satisfaction by the furtive eyes. The new arrivals had nothing to boast about.

  Mrs Partridge, who collected gossip and scandal as some people collect stamps, generally tired of a neighbourhood in three months, after she had learned the principal facts—how much of the Browns’ money went in drink, how much the Joneses owed at the corner shop, and who was really the father of the child that the Smiths treated as a poor relation. When she had sucked the neighbourhood dry like an orange, she took a house in another street, and Pinkey lost a day at the factory to move the furniture.

  Pinkey’s father was a silent, characterless man, taking the lead from his wife with admirable docility, and asking nothing from fortune but regular work and time to read the newspaper. He had worked for the same firm since he was a boy, disliking change; but since his second marriage he had been dragged from one house to another. Sometimes he went home to the wrong place, forgetting that they had moved. Every week he planned another short cut to Grimshaw’s works, which landed him there half an hour late.

  Her mother had died of consumption when Pinkey was eleven, and two years later her father had married his housekeeper. She proved to be a shiftless slattern, never dressed, never tidy, and selfish to the core under the cloak of a good-natured smile. She was always resting from the fatigue of imaginary labours, and her house was a pigsty. Nothing was in its place, and nothing could be found when it was wanted. This, she always explained with a placid smile, was owing to the fact that they were busy looking for a house where they could settle down.

  The burden of moving fell on Pinkey, for her father had never lost a day at Grimshaw’s in his life; and after Mrs Partridge had hindered for half an hour by getting in the way and mislaying everything, Pinkey usually begged her in desperation to go and wait for the furniture in the new house.

  Meanwhile, lower down the street, Chook was slowly working his way from house to house, hawking a load of vegetables. In the distance he remarked the load of furniture, and resolved to call before a rival could step in and get their custom. As he praised the quality of the peas to a customer, he found time to observe that the unloading went on very slowly. The vanman stood on the cart and slid the articles on to the shoulders of a girl, who staggered across the pavement under a load twice her size. It looked like an ant carrying a beetle. Five minutes later Chook stood at the door and rapped with his knuckles.

  “Any vegetables today, lydy?” he inquired, in his nasal, professional sing-song.

  The answer to his question was Pinkey, dishevelled, sweating in beads, covered with dust, her sleeves tucked up to the elbows, showing two arms as thin as broomsticks. She flushed pink under the sweat and grime, feeling for her apron to wipe her face. They had not seen each other since the fight, for in a sudden revulsion of feeling Pinkey had decided that Chook was too handy with his f
ists to make a desirable bloke, and a change of address on the following Monday had enabled her to give him the slip easily. And after waiting at street corners till he was tired, Chook had returned to his old love, the two-up school. Pinkey broke the silence with a question that was furthest from her thoughts.

  “’Ow are yer sellin’ yer peas?”

  Chook dropped his basket and roared with laughter.

  “If yer only come ter poke borak, yer better go,” cried Pinkey, with an angry flush.

  Chook sobered instantly.

  “No ’arm meant,” he said, quite humbly, “but yer gimme the knockout every time I see yer. But wot are yer doin’?” he asked.

  “We’re movin’,” said Pinkey, with an important air.

  “Oh, are yer?” said Chook, looking round with interest. “Yous an’ old Jimmy there?” He nodded familiarly to the vanman, who was filling his pipe. “Well, yer must excuse me, but I’m on in this act.”

  “Wotcher mean?” said Pinkey, looking innocent, but she flushed with pleasure.

  “Nuthin’,” said Chook, seizing the leg of a table; “but wait till I put the nosebag on the moke.”

  “Whose cart is it?” inquired Pinkey.

  “Jack Ryan’s,” answered Chook; “’e’s bin shickered since last We’n’sday, an’ I’m takin’ it round fer ’is missis an’ the kids.”