Herzog Read Online Free PDF

sporty caps. Undoubtedly Valentine Gersbach, who had beat him out with Madeleine, surmounting the handicap of a wooden leg, could wear those handsome brilliant candy stripes. Valentine was a dandy. He had a thick face and heavy jaws; Moses thought he somewhat resembled Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler's own pianist. But Gersbach had a pair of extraordinary eyes for a red-haired man, brown, deep, hot eyes, full of life. The lashes, too, were vital, ruddy-dark, long and childlike.
        And that hair was bearishly thick. Valentine, furthermore, was exquisitely confident of his appearance. You could see it. He knew he was a terribly handsome man. He expected women-all women-to be mad about him. And many were, weren't they? Including the second Mrs. Herzog.
        "Wear that? Me?" said Herzog to the salesman in a Fifth Avenue shop. But he bought a coat of crimson and white stripes. Then he said over his shoulder to the salesman that in the Old Country his family had worn black gabardines down to the ground.
        From a youthful case of acne, the salesman had a rough skin. His face was red as a carnation, and he had a meat-flavored breath, a dog's breath. He was a trifle rude to Moses, for when he asked his waist size and Moses answered, "Thirty-four," the salesman said, "Don't boast." That had slipped out, and Moses was too gentlemanly to hold it against him. His heart worked somewhat with the painful satisfaction of restraint.
        Eyes lowered, he trod the gray carpet to the fitting room, and there, disrobing and working the new pants up over his shoes, he wrote the fellow a note.
        Dear Mack. Dealing with poor jerks every day.
        Male pride. Effrontery. Conceit. Yourself obliged to be agreeable and winsome. Hard job if you happen to be a grudging, angry fellow. The candor of people in New York! Bless you, you are not nice.
        But in a false situation, as we all are. Must manage some civility. A true situation might well prove unendurable to us all. From civility I now have some pain in my belly. As for gabardines, I realize there are plenty of beards and gabardines just around the corner, in the diamond district. O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
        Dressed in Italian pants, furled at the bottom, and a blazer with slender lapels, red and white, he avoided full exposure in the triple, lighted mirror. His body seemed unaffected by his troubles, survived all blasts.
        It was his face that was devastated, especially about the eyes, so that it made him pale to see himself.
        Preoccupied, the salesman among silent clothes racks did not hear Herzog's footfalls. He was brooding. Slow business. Another small recession. Only Moses was spending today. Money he intended to borrow from his money-making brother.
        Shura was not tight-fisted. Nor was brother Willie, for that matter.
        But Moses found it easier to take it from Shura, also something of a sinner, than from Willie, who was more respectable.
        "The back fit all right?" Herzog turned.
        "Like tailor-made," the salesman said.
        He couldn't have cared less. It was perfectly plain. I can't get his interest, Herzog recognized. Then I'll do without, and screw him, too! I'll decide for myself. It's my move.
        Thus strengthened, he stepped between the mirrors, looking only at the coat. It was satisfactory.
        "Wrap it up," he said. "I'll take the pants, too, but I want them today. Now."
        "Can't do it. The tailor's busy."
        "Today, or it's no dice," said Herzog. "I have to leave town."
        Two can play this hard-nosed game.
        "I'll see if I can get a rush on it," the salesman said.
        He went, and Herzog undid the chased buttons.
        They had used the head of some Roman emperor to adorn the jacket of a pleasure-seeker, he noted. Alone, he put his tongue out at himself and then withdrew from the triple mirror. He