ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

"Yes."

"You take the side of that- that Nazi against your own flesh and blood?" the old man shrieked at him, his face flushing angrily.

David stared at the old man. "I don't have to take sides, Uncle Bernie," he said quietly. "You yourself have admitted it's not your company any more."

"But you're running the company."

"That's right." David nodded. "I’m running the company. Not you."

"Then you're keeping everything for yourself?" the old man said accusingly.

David turned his back on his uncle, without speaking. For a moment, there was silence, then his uncle's voice. "You're even worse than him," Bernie said bitterly. "At least, he wasn't stealing from his own flesh and blood."

"Leave me alone, Uncle Bernie," David said without turning around. "I'm tired. I want to get some sleep."

He heard the old man's footsteps cross the room and the door slam angrily behind him. He leaned his head wearily against the side of the window. So that was why the old man hadn't gone back to California right after the meeting. He felt a lump come into his throat. He didn't know why but suddenly he felt like crying.

The faint sound of a clanging bell came floating up to him from the street. He moved his head slightly, looking out of the window. The clanging grew louder as an ambulance turned west on to Fifty-ninth from Fifth Avenue. He turned and walked slowly from the window back into the room, the clanging growing fainter in his ears. All his life it had been like that, somehow.

When he rode up front on the junk wagon, with his father sitting next to him on the hard wooden seat, it had seemed that was the only sound he'd ever heard. The clanging of a bell.

The cowbells suspended across the wagon behind him clanged lazily as the weary horse inched along through the pushcarts that lined both sides of Rivington Street. The oppressive summer heat beat down on his head. He let the reins lay idle in his fingers. There wasn't much you could do to guide the horse. It would pick its own way through the crowded street, moving automatically each time a space opened up.

"Aiyee caash clothes!" His father's singsong call penetrated the sounds of the market street, lifting its message high to the windows of the tenements, naked, blind eyes staring out unseeing into the hungry world.

"Aiyee caash clothes!"

He looked down from the wagon to where his father was striding along the crowded sidewalk, his beard waving wildly as his eyes searched the windows for signs of business. There was a certain dignity about the old man – the broad-brimmed black beaver hat that had come from the old country; the long black coat that flapped around his ankles; the shirt with its heavily starched but slightly wilted wing collar; and the tie with the big knot resting just below his prominent Adam's apple. The face was pale and cool, not even a faint sign of perspiration dampened the brow, while David's was dripping with sweat. It seemed almost as if the heavy black clothing provided insulation against the heat.

"Hey, Mister Junkman!"

His father moved out into the gutter to get a better look. But it was David who saw her first – an old woman waving from the fifth-floor window. "It's Mrs. Saperstein, Pop."

"You think I can't see?" his father asked, grumbling. "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Saperstein!"

"Is that you, Mr. Woolf?" the woman called down.

"Yes," the old man shouted. "What you got?"

"Come up, I’ll show to you."

"I don't want winter clothes," the old man shouted. "Who's to buy?"

"Who said about winter clothes? Come up, you'll see!"

"Tie the horse over there," his father said, pointing to an open space between two pushcarts. "Then come to carry down the stuff."

David nodded as his father crossed the street and disappeared into the entrance of a house. He nudged the horse over and tied it to a fire hydrant. Then he slipped a feed bag over its weary muzzle and started after his father.

He felt his way up through the dark, unlit hallway and staircase and stopped outside the door. He knocked. The door opened immediately. Mrs. Saperstein stood there, her long gray hair folded in coils on top of her head. "Come in, come in."

David came into the kitchen and saw his father sitting at the table. In front of him was a plate filled with cookies. "A gluz tay , David?" the old woman asked, going to the stove.

"No, thanks, Mrs. Saperstein," he answered politely.

She took a small red can from the shelf over the stove, then carefully measured two teaspoonfuls of tea into the boiling water. The tea leaves immediately burst open and spun around madly on the surface. When she finally poured the tea into a glass through a strainer and set it in front of his father, it was almost as black as coffee.

His father picked up a lump of sugar from the bowl and placed it between his lips, then sipped the tea. After he swallowed the first scalding mouthful, he opened his mouth and said, "Ah!"

"Good, isn't it?" Mrs. Saperstein was smiling. "That's real tea. Swee-Touch-Nee. Like in the old country. Not like the chazerai they try to sell you here."

His father nodded and lifted the glass again. When he put it back on the table, it was empty and the polite formalities were over. Now it was time to attend to business. " Nu , Mrs. Saperstein?"

But Mrs. Saperstein wasn't quite ready to talk business yet. She looked over at David. "Such a nice boy, your David," she said conversationally. "He reminds me of my Howard at his age." She picked up the plate of cookies and held it toward him. "Take one," she urged. "I baked myself."

David took a cooky and put it in his mouth. It was hard and dry and crumbled into little pieces. "Take another," she urged. "You look thin, you should eat."

David shook his head.

"Mrs. Saperstein," his father said. "I’m a busy man, it's late. You got something for me?"

The old woman nodded. " Kim shayn ."

They followed her through the narrow railroad flat. Inside one room, on the bed, were a number of men's suits, some dresses, shirts, one overcoat and, in paper bags, several pairs of shoes.

David's father walked over and picked up some of the clothing. "Winter clothing," he said accusingly. "For this I came up four flights of stairs?"

"Like new, Mr. Woolf," the old woman said. "My son Howard and his wife. Only one season. They were going to give to the Salvation Army but I made them send to me."

David's father didn't answer. He was sorting out the clothing rapidly.

"My son Howard lives in the Bronx," she said proudly. "In a new house on Grand Concourse. A doctor."

"Two dollars for the ganse gesheft ," his father announced.

"Mr. Woolf," she exclaimed. "At least twenty dollars this is worth."

He shrugged. "The only reason I’m buying is to give to HIAS. Better the Salvation Army don't get."

David listened to their bargaining with only half a mind. HIAS was the abbreviation that stood for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His father's statement didn't impress him one bit. He knew the clothing would never find its way there. Instead, after it was carefully brushed and cleaned by his mother, it would turn up in the windows of the secondhand clothing stores along the lower Bowery and East Broadway.

"Ten dollars," Mrs. Saperstein was saying. The pretense was gone now; she was bargaining in earnest. "Less I wouldn't take. Otherwise, it wouldn't pay my son Howard to bring it down. It costs him gas from the Bronx."

"Five dollars. Not one penny more."

"Six," the old woman said, looking at him shrewdly. "At least, the gasoline money he should get."

"The subways are still running," David's father said. "I should pay because your son is a big shot with an automobile?"