John Steinbeck - The Winter of Our Discontent

“That was fat and crust.”

“Okay if you weigh before you trim. You got to look after number one. You don’t look after number one, whose’ll do it? You got to learn, kid.” The gold teeth did not glitter now, for the lips were tight little traps.

Anger splashed up in Ethan before he knew it and he was surprised. “I’m not a chiseler, Marullo.”

“Who’s a chiseler? That’s good business, and good business is the only kind of business that stays in business. You think Mr. Baker is giving away free samples, kid?”

Ethan’s top blew off with a bang. “You listen to me,” he shouted. “Hawleys have been living here since the middle seventeen hundreds. You’re a foreigner. You wouldn’t know about that. We’ve been getting along with our neighbors and being decent all that time. If you think you can barge in from Sicily and change that, you’re wrong. If you want my job, you can have it—right here, right now. And don’t call me kid or I’ll punch you in the nose—”

All Marullo’s teeth gleamed now. “Okay, okay. Don’t get mad. I just try to do you a good turn.”

“Don’t call me kid. My family’s been here two hundred years.” In his own ears it sounded childish, and his rage petered out.

“I don’t talk very good English. You think Marullo is guinea name, wop name, dago name. My genitori, my name, is maybe two, three thousand years old. Marullus is from Rome, Valerius Maximus [10] Valerius Maximus: (ca. 20 B.C.E.-A.D. 50) Roman historian, moralist, and author of Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX (Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings), a popular collection of moralistic stories and anecdotes used by writers and rhetoricians. tells about it. What’s two hundred years?”

“You don’t come from here.”

“Two hundred years ago you don’t neither.”

Now Ethan, his rage all leaked away, saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. He saw the immigrant, guinea, fruit-peddler change under his eyes, saw the dome of forehead, the strong beak nose, deep-set fierce and fearless eyes, saw the head supported on pillared muscles, saw pride so deep and sure that it could play at humility. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder: If I’ve missed this, what else have I failed to see?

“You don’t have to talk dago talk,” he said softly.

“Good business. I teach you business. Sixty-eight years I got. Wife she’s died. Arthritis! I hurt. I try to show you business. Maybe you don’t learn. Most people they don’t learn. Go broke.”

“You don’t have to rub it in because I went broke.”

“No. You got wrong. I’m try to learn you good business so you don’t go broke no more.”

“Fat chance. I haven’t got a business.”

“You’re still a kid.”

Ethan said, “You look here, Marullo. I practically run this store for you. I keep the books, bank the money, order the supplies. Keep customers. They come back. Isn’t that good business?”

“Sure—you learned something. You’re not no kid no more. You get mad when I call you kid. What I’m going to call you? I call everybody kid.”

“Try using my name.”

“Don’t sound friendly. Kid is friendly.”

“It’s not dignified.”

“Dignified is not friendly.”

Ethan laughed. “If you’re a clerk in a guinea store, you’ve got to have dignity—for your wife, for your kids. You understand?”

“Is a fake.”

“Course it is. If I had any real dignity, I wouldn’t think about it. I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. He said the words ‘son of a bitch’ are only an insult to a man who isn’t quite sure of his mother, but how would you go about insulting Albert Einstein? He was alive then. So you go right on calling me kid if you want to.”

“You see, kid? More friendly.”

“All right then. What were you going to tell me about business that I’m not doing?”

“Business is money. Money is not friendly. Kid, maybe you too friendly—too nice. Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”

“That’s nonsense, Marullo. I know plenty of nice, friendly, honorable businessmen.”

“When not doing business, kid, yes. You going to find out. When you find out is too late. You keep store nice, kid, but if it’s your store you maybe go friendly broke. I’m teaching true lesson like school. Goo-by, kid.” Marullo flexed his arms and went quickly out the front door and snapped it after him, and Ethan felt darkness on the world.

A sharp metallic rapping came on the front door. Ethan pushed aside the curtain and called, “We’re closed till three.”

“Let me in. I want to talk to you.”

The stranger came in—a spare man, a perpetually young man who had never been young, a smart dresser, hair gleaming thinly against his scalp, eyes merry and restless.

“Sorry to bother you. Got to blow town. Wanted to see you alone. Thought the old man’d never go.”

“Marullo?”

“Yeah. I was across the street.”

Ethan glanced at the immaculate hands. On the third finger of the left hand he saw a big cat’s eye set in a gold ring.

The stranger saw the glance. “Not a stick-up,” he said. “I met a friend of yours last night.”

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Young-Hunt. Margie Young-Hunt.”

“Oh?”

Ethan could feel the restless sniffing of the stranger’s mind, searching for an opening, for a bond on which to build an association.

“Nice kid. She gave you a big build-up. That’s why I thought— My name’s Biggers. I cover this territory for B. B. D. and D.”

“We buy from Waylands.”

“I know you do. That’s why I’m here. Thought you might like to spread it out a little. We’re new in this district. Building up fast. Have to make some concessions to get a foot in the door. It would pay you to take advantage of that.”

“You’d have to see Mr. Marullo about that. He’s always had a deal with Waylands.”

The voice didn’t lower but its tone became confidential. “You do the ordering?”

“Well, yes. You see Marullo has arthritis, and besides he has other interests.”

“We could shave prices a little.”

“I guess Marullo’s got them shaved as close as they’ll shave. You’d better see him.”

“That’s what I didn’t want to do. I want the man that does the ordering, and that’s you.”

“I’m just a clerk.”

“You do the ordering, Mr. Hawley. I can cut you in for five per cent.”

“Marullo might go for a discount like that if the quality was the same.”

“You don’t get it. I don’t want Marullo. This five per cent would be in cash—no checks, no records, no trouble with the tax boys, just nice clean green cabbage from my hand to your hand and from your hand to your pocket.”

“Why can’t Marullo get the discount?”

“Price agreements.”

“All right. Suppose I took the five per cent and turned it over to Marullo?”

“I guess you don’t know them like I do. You turn it over to him, he’ll wonder how much more you aren’t turning over. That’s perfectly natural.”

Ethan lowered his voice. “You want me to double-cross the man I work for?”

“Who’s double-crossed? He don’t lose anything and you make a buck. Everybody’s got a right to make a buck. Margie said you were a smart cooky.”

“It’s a dark day,” Ethan said.

“No, it’s not. You got the shades pulled down.” The sniffing mind smelled danger—a mouse confused between the odor of trap wire and the aroma of cheese. “Tell you what,” Biggers said, “you think about it. See if you can throw some business our way. I’ll drop in to see you when I’m in the district. I make it every two weeks. Here’s my card.”