Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

They passed the newsreel theater where the ragged shoeshine kids called after them. The same old bearded man with his bandaged beggar face and his tiny ragged feet and the old press clipping on his fiddle case to prove he had once been a concert violinist, pointed his bow at Wilhelm, saying, “You!” Wilhelm went by with worried eyes, bent on crossing Seventy-second Street. In full tumult the great afternoon current raced for Columbus Circle, where the mouth of midtown stood open and the skyscrapers gave back the yellow fire of the sun.

As they approached the polished stone front of the new office building, Dr. Tamkin said, “Well, isn’t that old Rappaport by the door? I think he should carry a white cane, but he will never admit there’s a single thing the matter with his eyes.”

Mr. Rappaport did not stand well; his knees were sunk, while his pelvis only half filled his trousers. His suspenders held them, gaping.

He stopped Wilhelm with an extended hand, having somehow recognized him. In his deep voice he commanded him, “Take me to the cigar store.”

“You want me–? Tamkin!” Wilhelm whispered, “You take him.”

Tamkin shook his head. “He wants you. Don’t refuse the old gentleman.” Significantly he said in a lower voice, “This minute is another instance of the ‘here-and-now.’ You have to live in this very minute, and you don’t want to. A man asks you for help. Don’t think of the market. It won’t run away. Show your respect to the old boy. Go ahead. That may be more valuable.”

“Take me,” said the old chicken merchant again.

Greatly annoyed, Wilhelm wrinkled his face at Tamkin. He took the old man’s big but light elbow at the bone. “Well, let’s step on it,” he said. “Or wait — I want to have a look at the board first to see how we’re doing.”

But Tamkin had already started Mr. Rappaport forward. He was walking, and he scolded Wilhelm, saying, “Don’t leave me standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I’m afraid to get knocked over.”

“Let’s get a move on. Come.” Wilhelm urged him as Tamkin went into the broker’s.

The traffic seemed to come down Broadway out of the sky, where the hot spokes of the sun rolled from the south. Hot, stony odors rose from the subway grating in the street.

“These teen-age hoodlums worry me. I’m ascared of these Puerto Rican kids, and these young characters who take dope,” said Mr. Rappaport. “They go around all hopped up.”

“Hoodlums?” said Wilhelm. “I went to the cemetery and my mother’s stone bench was split. I could have broken somebody’s neck for that. Which store do you go to?”

“Across Broadway. That La Magnita sign next door to the Automat.”

“What’s the matter with this store here on this side?”

“They don’t carry my brand, that’s what’s the matter.”

Wilhelm cursed, but checked the words.

“What are you talking?”

“Those damn taxis,” said Wilhelm. “They want everybody down.”

They entered the cool, odorous shop. Mr. Rappaport put away his large cigars with great care in various pockets while Wilhelm muttered, “Come on, you old creeper. What a poky old character! The whole world waits on him.” Rappaport did not offer Wilhelm a cigar, but, holding one up, he asked, “What do you say at the size of these, huh? They’re Churchill-type cigars.”

He barely crawls along, thought Wilhelm. His pants are dropping off because he hasn’t got enough flesh for them to stick to. He’s almost blind, and covered with spots, but this old man still makes money in the market. Is loaded with dough, probably. And I bet he doesn’t give his children any. Some of them must be in their fifties. This is what keeps middle-aged men as children. He’s master over the dough. Think — just think! Who controls everything? Old men of this type. Without needs. They don’t need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don’t have. That would be too easy.

“I’m older even than Churchill,” said Rappaport.

Now he wanted to talk! But if you asked him a question in the market, he couldn’t be bothered to answer.

“I bet you are,” said Wilhelm. “Come, let’s get going.”

“I was a fighter, too, like Churchill,” said the old man. “When we licked Spain I went into the Navy. Yes, I was a gob that time. What did I have to lose? Nothing. A the battle of San Juan Hill, Teddy Roosevelt kicked me off the beach.”

“Come, watch the curb,” said Wilhelm.

“I was curious and wanted to see what went on. I didn’t have no business there, but I took a boat and rowed myself to the beach. Two of our guys was dead, layin’ under the American flag to keep the flies off. So I says to the guy on duty, there, who was the sentry, ‘Let’s have a look at these guys. I want to see what went on here,’ and he says, ‘Naw,’ but I talked him into it. So he took off the flag and there were these two tall guys, both gentlemen, lying in their boots. They was very tall. The two of them had long mustaches. They were high-society boys. I think one of them was called Fish, from up the Hudson, a big-shot family. When I looked up, there was Teddy Roosevelt, with his hat off, and he was looking at these fellows, the only ones who got killed there. Then he says to me, ‘What’s the Navy want here? Have you got orders?’ ‘No, sir,’ I says to him. ‘Well, get the hell off the beach, then.’

Old Rappaport was very proud of this memory. “Everything he said had such snap, such class. Man! I love that Teddy Roosevelt,” he said, “I love him!”

Ah, what people are! He is almost not with us, and his life is nearly gone, but T. R. once yelled at him, so he loves him. I guess it is love, too. Wilhelm smiled. So maybe the rest of Tamkin’s story was true, about the ten children and the wives and the telephone directory.

He said, “Come on, come on, Mr. Rappaport,” and hurried the old man back by the large hollow elbow; he gripped it through the thin cotton cloth. Re-entering the brokerage office where under the lights the tumblers were speeding with the clack of drumsticks upon wooden blocks, more than ever resembling a Chinese theater, Wilhelm strained his eyes to see the board.

The lard figures were unfamiliar. That amount couldn’t be lard! They must have put the figures in the wrong slot. He traced the line back to the margin. It was down to .19, and had dropped twenty points since noon. And what about the contract of rye? It had sunk back to its earlier position, and they had lost their chance to sell.

Old Mr. Rappaport said to Wilhelm, “Read me my wheat figure.”

“Oh, leave me alone for a minute,” he said, and positively hid his face from the old man behind one hand. He looked for Tamkin, Tamkin’s bald head, or Tamkin with his gray straw and the cocoa-colored band. He couldn’t see him. Where was he? The seats next to Rowland were taken by strangers. He thrust himself over the one on the aisle, Mr. Rappaport’s former place, and pushed at the back of the chair until the new occupant, a redheaded man with a thin, determined face, leaned forward to get out of his way but would not surrender the seat. “Where’s Tamkin?” Wilhelm asked Rowland.

“Gee, I don’t know. Is anything wrong?”

“You must have seen him. He came in a while back.”

“No, but I didn’t.”

Wilhelm fumbled out a pencil from the top pocket of his coat and began to make calculations. His very fingers were numb, and in his agitation he was afraid he made mistakes with the decimal points and went over the subtraction and multiplication like a schoolboy at an exam. His heart, accustomed to many sorts of crisis, was now in a new panic. And, as he had dreaded, he was wiped out. It was unnecessary to ask the German manager. He could see for himself that the electronic bookkeeping device must have closed him out. The manager probably had known that Tamkin wasn’t to be trusted, and on that first day he might have warned him. But you couldn’t expect him to interfere.