Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  The two brothers stood in the shadowy hallway. ‘This is goodbye, then,’ said Joel.

  ‘You’re not going to touch the mezuzah?’ asked Barney.

  Joel smiled, and shook his head. ‘It was never anything more than superstition, as far as I was concerned. I only did it because Father did it. And, remember, this isn’t my home any more.’

  They embraced tightly. ‘I love you,’ said Joel. ‘I’m sorry I’ve left you with everything, the whole burden.’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Barney told him.

  ‘I guess you will,’ said Joel. ‘But you wait – one day, when I’m rich, I’ll come back. That’s a promise. And I’ll make you rich, too.’

  Barney held his injured hand close against his chest. The tablecloth bandage was already dark crimson.

  ‘Goodbye, Joel,’ he said. ‘God bless you.’ Then he walked off quickly along the landing, and down the stiars.

  They had snow early that year, in the third week of October. Barney was walking back from a long sales meeting with the men’s-wear buyer of B. Meyberg & Co., on Broadway, and the afternoon streets were suddenly furious with white flakes. He tugged up the collar of his black wool coat, and straightened his hat, and hurried along Hester Street with his hands deep in his pockets. The snow did not settle. It was soon trodden into slush by the horsedrawn cabs and streetcars, and swept up by the rascally, emaciated men who had appeared with brooms at every intersection, tipping their caps and holding out their grimy mittens for nickels. But, as Barney trudged up the staircase of Blitz, Tailors, brushing the snow from his shoulders, and knocking it off the top of his hat, he felt as if the year which had only just begun was already half over, and he wondered how many more times he would climb this narrow wooden flight, brushing the snow from his coat, growing older and greyer with each successive climb.

  He stopped on the landing and looked back towards the street, where the soft snow still pattered on to the sidewalk. He frowned.

  In the little glazed cubicle by the tailor’s shop door, David was warming his feet by a smoky oil fire, and sewing a silk braid edging to a detached sleeve. Barney opened the door, stepped in, and hung up his hat on the bentwood stand.

  ‘Is Moishe back yet?’ he asked.

  David nodded. ‘Ten minutes. Is it snowing? Itzik said it might snow.’

  ‘It’s snowing. Did you sweep up yet? It’s getting late. I don’t want this place looking like a rubbish-dump all through Shabbes.’

  ‘Moishe asked me to finish the braid. It’s the Military Academy order.’

  Barney, picking up a sheaf of bills and invoices from the upright desk in the corner, said, ‘Okay. If Moishe says so.’

  David went on sewing. He started to hum, a monotonous tune without a beginning and without an end. Barney glanced at him in irritation as he read through the bills, but he did not say anything. David was a simpleton, a golem, and if Barney had told him to shut up he would not have understood. He might even have burst into tears.

  It had been Barney’s father who had taken David into the business, as a favour to one of the kuzinehs. Tall, big-nosed, with a pear-shaped body and soft dangling hands, David was the third child of Rivke’s eminent and illustrious stepbrother, Dr Abraham Stein, the gynaecologist. Dr Stein, who lived on Fifth Avenue, albeit in one of the more modest mansions, had fathered three big-nosed daughters, and eventually David. For all his parents’ early pride, David’s mind had suddenly stopped developing at the age of thirteen, and after three grotesque incidents of exposing himself to the downstairs maids, and to one of Dr Stein’s most genteel lady patients, Dr Stein had uncomfortably asked Rivke to persuade Barney’s father to find the boy a place at Blitz’s. To keep him out of harm’s way, you understand? To keep his mind off – well, things.

  That Rivke woman, with her barbed-wire hair and her ostentatious garnets – that Rivke woman could talk anyone into doing anything. Barney’s father used to say that she could crawl into your bones. ‘She crawls into my bones,’ he used to say, gritting his teeth, and crunching up his face.

  So David went on humming, with his simple future assured; and Barney, tired, tugged at the curls around his ears and tried to work out whether today’s mail had brought him a profit or a loss. Usually, these days, it was a small profit, but it was hard, running the business without Joel. Moishe was a help when it came to rushing out orders, or to estimating how much broadcloth to buy; but Moishe did not want responsibility. He did not want to worry himself with cash flows, with profit margins, with rates of interest. He thought – and maybe quite rightly – that only the Lord had control over such things, and who was he to interfere in the works of the Lord?

  Through the dusty glass of the cubicle where he was standing, Barney could see part of the cluttered, low-ceilinged workroom, lit with so many gas jets that it looked almost like a holy place during Chanukah, the Festival of Light, illuminated with dozens of menorahs. Under the lights, their heads bent over their work, his cutters and basters and seamstresses toiled away at the last few military coats for the academy; and although the sky outside their window was as dark as corroded copper, and still whirling with snow, they never raised their eyes once. They had an order to finish before the Sabbath.

  Barney glanced back at David. ‘Are you going back to your parents’ house for Shabbes?’ he asked him. ‘Back to Fifth Avenue?’

  David, still humming, shrugged.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to come spend Shabbes with me, and my mother?’ suggested Barney.

  He didn’t try to sound too encouraging. In fact, to his own restless shame, he was praying that David had already promised to spend the Sabbath with his own family. He tried not to think how often his father had brought home an oyrech auf Shabbes, even a filthy street musician once, with an oboe; and, one Shabbes, an extraordinary and eccentric prize-fighter, who had insisted on bending spoons and straightening them out again. ‘At least he straightened them out again,’ Barney’s father had told his mother. But somehow, because of his own sparkling character, Barney’s father had always been able to transform awkwardness into joy, embarrassment into laughter, and every one of those Sabbath days had been glowing with family love, and devotion, and affection for their guests. At least, they had always seemed that way.

  Barney knew that he was different from his father. Warier, quicker to lose his temper, and more critical of weakness. Maybe it was New York that had made him harder, and less tolerant of those whining shlemiels who lived off their friends. More likely, he had been soured by the difficulty of running Blitz, Tailors, all by himself, and the violently changeable moods of his mother. Since Joel had left, Mrs Blitz’s mind seemed to have tilted even further askew, and one morning last week he had caught her ripping at Joel’s mattress with a knife, panting, convinced that Joel was hiding inside it just to tease her, just to play a malicious joke on his dear mad mother.

  David finished sewing his braid, bit the thread between the teeth, and then looked up at Barney almost primly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Barney, unenthusiastically, in his most American voice. ‘I just have to talk to Moishe, find out what’s going on, and then we can go.’

  He stepped out of the cubicle into the workroom, and walked along between the benches to the far end. Usually, the loft was noisy with laughter and conversation. Blitz’s was not a sweatshop. But this afternoon, with only two hours to go to sundown, and the room still heaped with work, it was almost silent, except for the crisp cutting of scissors through cloth, and the hiss of gas.

  Over in the corner, where dozens of bolts of worsted and tweed and broadcloth were stacked, Irving and Hyman were cutting out the last of the uniform pockets; and beside them, on a stool, thin and studious, young Benjamin was busy threading needles. Irving and Hyman, both silver-haired, were Blitz’s two best cutters. ‘Cut!’ Barney’s father used to say. ‘Those two could cut tarpaper, and make you a coat to be proud of.’ They looked like brothers, Irving and Hyman, althou
gh they were not. Irving, with magnifying spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and a concentrated expression like a barn-owl, had immigrated from Munich. Hyman, whose black vest was always forested with glittering needles, had brought his family to New York from Zamosc, in Poland. But they were inseparable. They spent feast days together, and went fishing together off the Stanton Street pier, and shared a ridiculous sense of humour which had Barney laughing for hours at a time.

  ‘You sold Meyberg’s those overcoats?’ called Irving, without looking up, as Barney approached them.

  ‘They’re taking half a dozen on trial.’

  ‘On trial?’ put in Hyman. ‘The cloth we used for those, a shmatte! They should know those coats are guilty, without a trial.’

  Barney grinned. One of his seamstresses glanced up, the soft and docile Sarah Feinberg, and he touched her on the shoulder as he passed.

  He found Moishe by the window, folding up tunics and inspecting them closely for uneven stitching or loose buttons. He was short, Moishe, and hugely fat, with hanging jowls, and a bald pate that lay in the chaotic nest of his gingery hair like a speckled roc’s egg. His belly, swollen by years of gorging himself with matzo dumplings and bread pudding, had a bouncing animated life of its own; and on several occasions, Irving had peered down the front of Moishe’s bottle-green vest, and called, ‘How are you doing in there, bubeleh?’

  ‘Well, Barney,’ said Moishe, spreading a fresh sheet of tissue-paper over another folded tunic. He wiped a finger under his left eye, a sign of tiredness.

  ‘You’re almost through?’ asked Barney. ‘I want to close up in twenty minutes.’

  ‘An hour maybe should do it,’ Moishe told him, reaching past him to take another completed tunic from Benjamin.

  Barney looked beyond Moishe, out of the window, where the snow had suddenly dwindled into thin, spiralling flakes, and the clouds that had banked themselves over the Jersey shore were dramatically brightening up, like the Ecstasy of St Theresa, by Bernini. Sunlight glistened briefly on the rooftops across the street, and the rattling of horse-drawn carriages began to grow busier and louder.

  ‘Listen, you don’t have to finish this order today,’ Barney said, looking around at all the uncompleted tunics. ‘Monday morning’s going to be fine. You can send the uniforms out by carrier.’

  Moishe, almost imperceptibly, shook his head, and folded the tunic’s sleeve.

  ‘Moishe,’ insisted Barney, ‘it won’t matter. By the time you’ve packed up this order, everybody at the Military Academy will have gone home for the weekend anyway. They may be goyim, but they’ve got families, just like us. You think they’re going to wait around, biting their nails, for tunics?’

  ‘We told them we’d deliver,’ said Moishe, dogmatically. He fixed Barney with tiny, uncompromising eyes, beady as raisins in a loaf. ‘At Blitz’s, when we say today, we mean today. Not tomorrow, nor the seventeenth day of Tammuz next year. Today!’

  Barney, suppressing a smile, watched with proprietorial interest as Moishe folded one more sleeve, and brushed away a speck of lint with an exaggerated sweep of his podgy hand. Then he said, ‘I seem to remember, Moishe, that your name is Teitelbaum, not Blitz. I’m Blitz, and what we say at Blitz’s, that’s my medina, not yours. Now, in twenty minutes, we close, whether you’ve finished this order, or not.’

  Moishe reared his head up, like a surfacing walrus. ‘You think your father would have let a two-hundred-dollar order go out two days late?’ he demanded. ‘Your father would have taken off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves, and helped me to pack – not stood there like a fonfer and told me to finish up! We have pride here, at Blitz’s! A reputation! Even your brother Joel would have helped, and what Joel knew from tailoring you could have written on the head of a pin!’

  Barney grinned, and appreciatively threw his arm around Moishe’s fat shoulders. ‘Just wrap it up for the day, Moishe. I appreciate your loyalty to Blitz’s. I love your hard work. I love you. But it really won’t make any difference at all, whether you finish this today, or Monday. Come on, Moishe, it’s almost Shabbes.’

  Moishe dragged a handkerchief from his pants pocket, and dabbed at his jowls. ‘Your father should have seen you,’ he said. ‘You’re an American now, you know that? All talk, all big ideas, and no work. A shlepper.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Barney. ‘So much of a shlepper I’ve persuaded Meyberg’s to take six of those tweed overcoats on approval, and give me ten firm orders for shooting-jackets. You know the ones with the leather patches?’

  Moishe looked down at the tunic he had been folding, and then at Barney. ‘Ten, huh? Well, they could have taken fifteen.’

  Barney raised his hands in mock-surrender. ‘Moishe, with you, I’ll never win. But meanwhile, we’re not doing so bad, are we? Turnover’s good, profits are steady. Maybe in a month or two we can think about paying everybody a little more.’

  Moishe sniffed. ‘We’re doing all right, I suppose. I guess I remember the old days too clearly, when your father was here.’

  ‘Well, of course you do. How can I blame you for that? I’m young, and I’m different. But I’m not too young to understand how you feel.’

  Moishe laid his hand on Barney’s shoulder. ‘Barney, let me ask you something. Something personal, serious.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Barney. He turned his head around, and called, ‘Irving, Hyman – you want to clear up now? We’re closing the shop in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Moishe, gently. ‘I’m not being critical. Simply truthful. I’ve been watching you for six months, ever since Joel left, and working with you. You don’t like this business, do you? This tailoring. You’re doing your best – as far as profit’s concerned, you’re doing good. But your heart’s not in it, is it?’

  Barney frowned at Moishe warily. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Barney, I’m not a blind man. Look how you’ve changed everything here since Joel left. All this ready-to-wear stuff we’re making, for stores, and colleges, even for postal catalogues. Thirty tunics for the New York Military Academy? We never had an order like that in the whole of our fifteen years.’

  Barney did not say anything. While Moishe had been talking, Irving had come across the room, and now he was standing two or three feet behind them, listening.

  ‘Moishe’s right, Barney,’ Irving said. There was tenderness in his voice, understanding, but also regret. ‘Blitz’s was always bespoke before. High quality suits, made to measure. Some of the best in New York. We’ve still got the regulars, sure, the customers who know what they want, and won’t change their tailor for anything. But these days, when you say Blitz’s, most people think of ready-made. The trade does, for sure, and it won’t be long before the customers do, too.’

  ‘Another thing,’ put in Hyman. ‘David tells me you’ve been turning customers away.’

  Barney let out a breath, took out his pocket-watch, and checked the time. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t deny it.’

  ‘Deny what?’ asked Irving.

  ‘Any of it,’ said Barney. ‘I can’t deny that my heart isn’t really in tailoring. Nor can I deny that I’ve been trying to change Blitz’s from a gentleman’s personal tailors into a house with a good name for ready-mades. I can’t even deny that I’ve been turning personal customers away. The truth is, it’s a business, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s it. And how can it make any business sense at all for Irving to spend two days cutting out one suit, for which we’re going to change ten dollars forty-three cents the piece, when he could be cutting out six suits, for which we’re going to charge six dollars and twenty-two cents the piece? It seems like it’s to your advantage, and to my advantage, and especially to the advantage of the families and children who depend on us.’

  Moishe looked uncomfortable. ‘You’re right, Barney, in a kind of a fashion. But Irving here, and Hyman … they’re artists. They can make a suit like it’s magic, the way the coat hangs on the shoulders, the way th
e lapels roll over.’

  ‘I know,’ said Barney. ‘Moishe, I know. But that’s why the stores like their ready-mades so much. As far as ready-mades go, they’re superb.’

  ‘But, Barney. Understand me. You’re asking Michaelangelo to put up wallpaper.’

  Barney was about to snap back at Moishe, but then he stopped himself. These men were family, old friends of his father, and what was more, craftsmen. He was sensitive enough to know what Moishe was talking about and to know that if he didn’t check himself, he’d be liable to let his anger and his impatience go hurtling off like a pair of ill-trained dogs. Whatever his father had given him – humour, and warmth, and balance – he still had his mother’s hair-trigger temper. He lifted his hands, as if to show Moishe and Irving that he had understood them, as if he was suing them for peace.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, softly. ‘I know that I’ve been asking you to undertake work that’s way beneath your skills. But try to see it from my point of view, too. I’ve been building up some capital so that Blitz’s can grow, and strengthen itself. Maybe I’ve been overhasty. I’m young, I know that. Maybe I’ve been overdoing the profit motive, and not paying enough attention to the heart of the business. But, if the profits improve, everything’s going to change. When we’re solidly back into credit, we can set up a real quality tailoring department like you’ve never seen. Better than ever. All I’m asking you to realise is that we can’t go from peklech to Lord & Taylor in six days. Not even in six months.’

  Hyman slowly nodded. ‘Spoken like an American,’ he said, turning away, and his intonation was as bland as only a Yiddisher could make it – so bland that Barney could not tell if it was an insult or a compliment, or simply a resigned and accurate comment.

  Moishe went to find his coat, and everybody else began to pack up, folding bolts of fabric, sticking pins and needles back in their pin-cushions, clearing away paper patterns, sweeping up scraps of basting and snarls of thread. One by one, the gas jets were turned down low, until the twilit workroom was beaded with scores of tiny blue flames.