The Pawnbroker

by Edward Lewis Wallant

  Sol studied him as he talked, amazed that the voice benefited not the least from being heard in person. It wasn't just the remoteness of the telephone conversations; the man's voice seemed to have nothing to do with his face. Murillio had powdery-white skin and the sleek blue shadow of carefully shaved, very dense beard. You were aware of how perfectly all his hair was groomed; the beard shaved fantastically close at least twice a day, the hair trimmed to perfection, the hands peculiarly hairless, as though they, too, were shaved or denuded by some strong depilatory, although the wrists erupted a few strong hairs from under the starched white cuffs, the eyebrows faultlessly curbed, the nostrils neat. Sol had the feeling that only the most careful attention kept Murillio from a hairy collapse into apishness. The shadow of beard came up to within an inch of his eyes. But there the simian quality ended. For his eyes were the pale-gray color of slush, the mixture of rain and snow before the snow has been soiled, a translucent, light-conducting texture rather than a color.

  "...but sometimes all that stuff seems just a hair beyond me. Like I read a thing ... Some college kid touted me on this Crime and Punishment. So I read it and I understand it—it's a good story, you know, with the kid murdering the old woman. I finish it. I could tell you the thing from beginning to end. But I got this feeling, kind of irritated, like there's something I missed. The same thing happens with music. I like good music, opera particular. I got a good ear, too. But I get that same feeling like it's leaving me out of something. I get mad really."

  Suddenly he was aware of the Pawnbroker staring flatly at him.

  "Well, it takes a lot of thinking," he said sullenly. "Hey, if you wanted to come here to just stare at me, I could of send you a picture. Okay, what's the beef, Uncle?"

  "There is something on my mind. It has been bothering me. You will find it strange but please be patient," Sol said, staring down at his hands. "It is just that..." He looked up to engage the slushy eyes. "Tell me, do you own the brothel down the street from me? You do, don't you?"

  "Now wait a minute, what is this?"

  "The house of prostitution behind the massage place, it is yours, isn't it?"

  "Just a second, let's get straight before we go any farther. Are you just trying to get your nose where it don't belong or have you got something special you want to say?"

  "Yes, something special," Sol said. "I will try to be clear ... even though it is perhaps not too clear to me myself. You see I have not been too well lately, tension, what have you," he said with a shrug, as though it were really of no importance. "The point is that I would try to cut down my tensions, regardless how foolish they seem even to me. They exist, they burden me. There are things in my past, never mind what, I prefer to forget about them. But they make certain things difficult for..." Some vacillation in him seemed to firm then. His face got cold and strong. "I do not want your money if it comes from the whorehouse," he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  "What's that? You got me ... what?" Murillio leaned forward, his fearsome face momentarily comical. He had the slanted expression of a half-deaf man; you would almost have expected him to cup his hand to his ear.

  "We can make some other arrangement ... I do not know exactly what. Maybe I will buy you out or you will buy me out. Any way. Only I do not want the money from the whorehouse."

  Murillio regained his hearing, and he began to laugh, although his mouth was shaped to just a mild smile. It was as if the laughter were something from earlier in the evening and Murillio played it over now for Sol to hear, gave vent to it from behind his stiff smile.

  "Oh, you're a hot one, Uncle, I got to say that. There's nothing typical about you. It's all right, it's all right, I get a kick out of it. No, really. All these other assholes I deal with—Christ, I can tell when they're gonna fart, when they're gonna smile, when they're gonna moan. They get on my nerves. I get sluggish, you know. I mean with you I keep my wits active, like in training. I can never anticipate." He was still smiling, and now his humor seemed quite real. The expression of his cold eyes was different enough from the usual to indicate some emotion approaching affection. "Okay, I'll bite; why don't you want the money from the cathouse—assuming if I did own a cathouse?" he asked good-naturedly.

  "What difference does it make why?" Sol asked wearily.

  The smile drifted off Murillio's purplish lips as easily as a casually wiped food stain. His eyes darkened, and the irritated cougar showed from under the neat, human face.

  "I like you, Uncle, otherwise I would of lost patience with you long time already. But now it's getting past a joke. I'm getting a little bored. It makes a difference when you come up here and waste my time. You drop a nutty statement like that on top of my lap and I'm suppose to say, fine, fine, write the whole thing off. Don't tell me, 'What difference does it make?' It makes a difference!"

  "It is personal, an idiosyncrasy, if you will. Call it an allergy, say I am allergic to brothels. Say what you want. Only I say this—I insist, I insist ... something must be done. I will sell out to you or you will sell out to me. It has been bothering me, and now I must do something about it."

  Sol took a deep breath in the silence he had invoked. He exhaled it slowly, imagining he felt relief now, that he had gotten something accomplished. He made himself ignore the black-and-white beast planted motionlessly in the far corner of his eye. Slowly, casually, he scanned the soft buff walls. You must make no sudden moves with certain wild things; sharks were said to strike if you made a commotion in the water. He looked intently at the several oil paintings. They were of some insignificantly saccharine school of Italian painting; late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Girls with pitchers on their heads, homely street scenes; one was labeled "The Barber" and showed a rosy-cheeked man cutting a small boy's hair while a doting mother stood watching, the inevitable pitcher on her head. Each painting had a little lamp over it, such as are found in certain academic galleries. It suggested that the air in the room, for all its air conditioning, was dry and dusty and unlived in.

  "I see you admiring my art collection. You like it?" Murillio asked in a soft, speculative voice. "Cost me a small fortune, believe me. But I like to surround myself with beauty. Maybe sometime I become a patron, hah! Sometime maybe..." He turned an enameled smile on, and his face seemed to become depthless; you imagined the mouth opened to no more than a fraction of an inch of polished granite, that the eyes began in the rounded surface. Like some half-convincing bas-relief, he aimed himself at Sol. "But not yet, Uncle. Okay, let's make ourselfs clear, hah. For some reason you got it in your head, or your conscience or something, that you don't want to be connect with money from a whorehouse. You got a allergy. Okay! So set your mind at ease, Uncle. See how patient I am. You can tell I'm a reasonable man, can't you?" He waited for Sol's stiff, wary nod. "All right, from now on I'm gonna make a special arrangement just for you."

  Sol listened intently, eagerly, for a moment imagining that some incomprehensible ray of salvation might come from the lips of this man.

  "From now on I'm gonna send you different money, see! The dough from the cathouse I'm gonna send to another associate. You I'll send only clean money, money from legitimate, blue-chip investments. How's that, fair or not?"

  Sol's face registered the slow descent from bewilderment to anger. He opened and closed his mouth on his indignation a few times like a fish not sure of its atmosphere.

  Murillio howled with laughter. It was a terrifying thing to see that barely amused face and realize that the monstrous noise of glee came from it. Sol turned his head from one side to another, as though trying to figure out where the sound really came from. He saw the linen-jacketed servant standing in the doorway, expressionless and vigilant, his swarthy, crushed fighter's face like the surface of a mirror aimed at the fog.

  "You think I am a fool?" Sol cried out furiously. "I will not have this. No more, I say. I want to terminate our agreement. There will be no further association between us. Do not toy with me!"

  The laught
er stopped abruptly.

  "Shut up, Uncle," Murillio said with a softness that struck the ear like a shot. He walked over to stand above Sol. His fids were lowered so his eyes seemed heavy and toxic. "Yes, I do think you're a fool. Who you think you're dealing with, Uncle, some little Jew merchant, some half-ass little 'businessman' with a vest full of pencils and scraps of paper in every pocket to write down the big deals?" Though he was a much shorter man than Sol, he now seemed very big, hung over the Pawnbroker like some dangerous weight. His eyes were so close that Sol could see the icy lacing of his irises. "What you want don't interest me one bit. I am a little concern about what you say and do though. So listen to me, Uncle, listen careful because it is very important to you." Now he leaned over and rested his hands on his knees as though he were talking to a child. "You can't get out on your terms. I want things just like they are. The very best you could hope for is that I let you out without a penny, with nothing to show for your work there except a few wrinkles. My money start you in that store; you're a partner only because it's convenient for me to have your name on the papers. Now you want to be smart, keep going like before, okay. You draw yourself a nice buck over the years, save enough for your old age maybe."

  "You have no right to..."

  "Let's not talk silly, hah, Uncle? I just told you the best you could do if you upset me. You know what else could happen?" He studied Sol's face with inhuman curiosity, like a great cat watching with unblinking interest the reactions of its prey when it cuffs with covered claws.

  Sol just sat there, ignorant for the moment of both his expression and his feelings. Only it seemed this had happened before, or almost happened or been dreamed of. He tried to focus on his needs, on the tangibles he was risking, the money, the privacy it bought him. But the colorless gray eyes demanded more from him.

  "Well I'll tell you in plain words, Uncle. I could "kill you." He nodded slowly to the gray face below him. "Kill you dead. Uh huh, that's what I said. It's no big thing to me. You don't want to live no more, Uncle?"

  Suddenly he patted Sol on the shoulder, and the touch made the Pawnbroker flinch. Murillio laughed merrily.

  "Hey, your nerves are really bad, Uncle. Well that puts a different light on it. Whyn't you take yourself a nice weekend vacation, hah? We could let that kid handle things for a day or two. I'd have someone keep an eye. I tell you what. You're tense? You could knock off a piece of ass at the 'house.' Anytime you want. No charge—I give you a credit card. Hah, how's that, Joe?" he said, turning swiftly toward the man in the doorway. "A credit card!" Joe obliged with a weary grin. Murillio turned back to Sol and aimed an affectionate punch at his jaw, just brushed it humorously. "Sure, it's just your nerves talking. I won't talk no more about it. Forgive and forget. You get the idea, hah?"

  "I am not a child, Murillio. This is no way to treat me. No, I am not satisfied. You threaten me but I am not ... Something must be done. Something...." He had been subtly made to feel like a dirty piece of flotsam in that vulgarly rich apartment. "You cannot shut me off like that. I am not..." He stood up, half maddened.

  And suddenly Murillio nodded, his eyes looking over Sol's shoulder. Sol felt the cold touch of metal against his cheek. When he swung his head to see what it was, something unbelievably hard crashed against his teeth; opening his mouth at the pain, he felt the cold metal thrust between his teeth and he tasted the bitterness of steel.

  "Now don't move, Uncle," Murillio said, his eyes on the man behind Sol. "Stand absolutely still and lick on that gun barrel for a while. That old Joe would pull the trigger if I just winked at him. He don't give a shit, do you, Joe? Nah, not Joe, he's a son of a bitch. Yeah, you just stand there like that a while, taste the bit. See, you're just like a horse. Get a little balky and we pull the reins. Get real wild ... well, you know what they do to horses. Just stand there and think things over, see things like they are, no bull shit, no nice talk, just that...."

  And Sol stood there gagging on the horrible curb in his mouth, his gaze swinging wildly over the trappings of the hideously sumptuous room: the oil paintings, the brocaded chairs, the polished hardwoods. It had been so long, so long since his nightmares were as real as taste and touch, since they came to him in waking hours. He should have remembered more faithfully that this was the real taste of life, that it was not confined to dreams.

  He sweated in spite of the air conditioning. He fluttered like a half-crushed bird, his heart pounding doom into him like a long iron nail. His stomach sickened, and he wondered what his fate would be if he vomited on the expensive, wine-colored carpeting. Downstairs, the gardens would be shining gorgeously in the floodlights and the white-uniformed doorman would be rocking contentedly on his heels, admiring his bailiwick. The city was dozing in hot weariness, and quiet got its brief handhold over the immense growth of stone. And Sol Nazerman stood in the center of an air-conditioned nightmare, wondering whether he might not be wiser, after all, to suck death from the gun in his mouth, to have done with all of it.

  But inexplicably, when Murillio said, "Then you will be a good boy, Uncle, you will keep your nose clean and not bother me with this foolishness no more?" Sol just nodded and looked at the gun as it came out of his mouth, all wet with his saliva. "Because I don't want to have no aggravation. We had a nice relationship, you know. Let's see if you can't get back in good standing in my books, hah?"

  And Sol just stood there nodding. After a while, he began edging toward the door, his head still going up and down.

  "So we all straightened out now, right, Uncle? Everything in good shape?" Murillio followed him to the foyer, and the linen-jacketed Joe stood attentively by the door. "You gonna go home and forget this all came up."

  "Yes ... all right ... I will ... try," Sol said, each word having to vault some hurdle in his throat. "I do not know what it is ... I mean I did not want trouble...."

  "Yeah, I know, Uncle," Murillio said solicitously as he gently pushed Sol out the door.

  "Only, you see, I have felt myself to be in a great deal of pain ... nerves ... Some things bother me.... But I want only to be left in peace, to make the money I need and be left alone. I do not wish to lose the little I have, you understand, the store, the privacy. It was just that certain things have happened to me...."

  The sleek, carefully groomed head nodded understandingly. But the murderous eyes fixed on the Pawnbroker's mouth, growing a little bored even in menace. And then that womanly attention to his mouth made it appear like some stare of twisted love to Sol, and he was terrified more than before.

  "Good-by, Uncle, I will call you. Keep your nose clean, now...."

  Then Sol was out in the hallway and walking toward the elevator, moving stiffly, as though his partner's eyes were still on him. He was dreadfully tired. He had to think each forward attempt of his legs and direct his finger to the elevator button and command himself to step into the elevator when it came. In that paralyzing tiredness, the thought of his bed in the quiet of distant Mount Vernon seemed fantastically appealing.

  In the kitchen, he ate standing up, a clumsy, indefinably mutilated giant. He leaned against the counter chewing on a soapy piece of American cheese and sipping root beer from one of the old Yortzeit glasses. Bertha hustled around him with affected timidity, and Selig slipped in for an unreturned pleasantry. Their voices bounced off the hunched rebuttal of him.

  "You're not still angry about our little differences Sunday, are you, Solly?" Selig asked. "We're a family; these things..."

  "I am still here, am I not?" Sol answered. He stared out the kitchen window at the blackness and he tried to decide whether the mysterious assault came from within or from outside himself. Then he wondered if it might not be a two-pronged drive, and shuddered visibly.

  "What's wrong you're shaking?" his sister asked, her small eyes suddenly calculating behind his back. "Sit down so the food will do you some good, Solly. I always tell Morton he shouldn't wolf..."

  Sol just shoved the plate away and threw the remains of the
cheese onto it. "

  "Give me some coffee. I will take it up to my room and drink it in peace." He stood waiting impatiently, a gray, alien figure in all the gleaming chrome and formica, while Bertha poured his coffee. She slid a piece of coffeecake onto his saucer with elaborate coyness. Sol just shrugged and took the cup without the saucer.

  On the upstairs landing, he met his nephew. Morton had a large pad under his arm, and his untidy, vulpine face was smudged with charcoal.

  "Uncle Sol," he said.

  "Hello, Morton." Sol frowned for a grip on amenity. "What are you drawing? Show me. After all, I have an investment," he said with a little twist to his lips.

  Morton held up a charcoal sketch of the back yard. The scene sparkled, seemed to be in a crisp twilight, and the roofs and branches were sure, steady shapes in a subtle pattern that hid under the obvious one. In one corner of the picture was a shapeless figure in a garden chair, and all the twilight led to it, so there was a brightness of sky and a brightness around the man and great darkness between.

  "Could that be me?" Sol asked, pointing to the figure on the paper.

  Morton nodded, cautious of opinion.

  "I see. Well it seems to me to be very well drawn. What you have done with the light ... Good, good, my money is apparently not wasted." He gave as much smile as he had. Then he touched his nephew's shoulder. And though it was just a nudge to clear his way up the stairs, his nephew took it for a touch of acknowledgment and drew the warmth he desired from it. And when Sol brushed past, Morton stood on the landing for a moment, watching the huge waistless figure ascending, and there was a cherishing look on his face.

  Sol drank his coffee slowly, his head resting on the wooden headboard, the fights off so he could see the faint light from the moon casting a diluted illumination that resembled twilight. There were the roofs and the branches as Morton had drawn them, the angle only slightly lower than that observed from the boy's room upstairs. He finished the coffee and leaned over the window sill to look down at the yard. Looking for the shapeless figure of a man as his nephew had drawn it? But that man was himself and there was only one of him. Or was there? God forbid there should be ghosts! He would not have been able to bear that. If there were ghosts, he would be destroyed, or had been destroyed long ago and was now a ghost himself. But he felt pain, deep inside him, a growth slowly extending to pierce him, to meet the stabs from people outside himself, people who would raise their hands to him. So he couldn't be a ghost ... could a ghost suffer? Ah, leave me my brain at least, do not let me go mad. Like a litany, he enforced the rules of fife on himself: You live, you eat, you rest, you protect yourself.