The Pawnbroker Read Online Free PDF

too, ain't we?
Gyp artists!
" The dehumanized, mirthless chuckle sounded again. "Okay, okay, partner, I'll talk to you in a day or so. You take care of that little matter then. And keep your nose clean, hah?"
    He looked up from the phone to see Ortiz studying the engraved plaque under Daniel Webster's bust. The store was dim even with the fights on, so it seemed the quality of fight was at fault, not the intensity. Outside, the evening sun made the street shimmer in a golden bath through which the passers-by moved like dark swimmers in no hurry to get anywhere. He breathed, with his assistant, the dust of the much-handled merchandise, the imaginable odors of sweat and pride and weeping; and it was an indefinable yet powerful atmosphere, which gave them an intimacy neither desired.
    "All this junk," Ortiz said musingly. "Still an' all, it's business. A solid thing, oh a real solid thing—business. You got records an' books an' papers, everythin' down in black an' white. Take like you people, how it carry you along no matter what."
    "What people?" Sol asked, numbly admiring the almost poreless skin over his assistant's delicate features.
    "Jews, all the Jews."
    "Yes, yes, certainly, you have it all figured out," Sol said dryly, as he drew his eyes from the young man's face to fish for more substantial catches among the brass tubas, the cameras and radios and silver trays.
    "Niggers suffer like animals. They ain't caught on. Oh yeah, Jews suffer. But they do it big, they shake up the worl' with they sufferin'."
    "You tell them, Ortiz, go spread the word. You have it all figured out, a regular professor is what you are."
    "I know, don't worry, I know," Ortiz said smugly. "I know the way things is."
    "You know nothing, absolutely nothing."
    "That's all right, jus' don't worry about what
I
know."
    "Nothing, nothing, nothing."
    "You go around with that poker face, think you the only one what know. Don't fool yourself. I got eyes and ears, I figure, I know."
    "Nothing," the Pawnbroker hollowed out of himself in a sigh.
    "An' what I don't know, I find out."
    Sol turned cold, denying eyes on his assistant. "You're a pisher, that's all you are," he said. "It's after seven; why don't you go home now?"
    "All right, sure,
boss,
" he said sourly. He put Daniel Webster down regretfully, a calm anger on his dark, ivory face. "Good night,
boss,
a very good night to you."
    "
Gay in draird!
"
    Ortiz bowed himself out with a mocking smile, his shiny black hair bobbing over his forehead with each bow.
    "Good night, good night, good night..."
    Sol hissed at the empty store. What is it, what is it? He was shaken with a minute trembling, like an aspen in an almost invisible breeze. A fever, could I have perhaps a fever? Oy, the season; every year it gets like this. Some people have hay fever, I have my
anniversary!
What, it's about two weeks away, the twenty-eighth. I'll get through it like always. Maybe I'll go to Tessie tonight? No, too tired. I'll go home and read in my bed. Oh yes, I have a
wonderful
two weeks ahead of me. Oh what nonsense, what nonsense this all is!
    After a while he began readying the store for the night. He closed the safe and twirled the dial a few times. He turned on the one light in the little glassed-in office and flicked off the fluorescents one by one. Then he put up the heavy screens over the windows and switched on the two burglar alarms. Finally, with a brief look around at all the conglomerated stock, lying submerged in the dimness he had brought about, like some ancient remains half buried in the muck of an ocean bottom, he closed the door and locked it.
    His mouth widened in a grimace that a passing man took for a smile and returned. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned against the coarse metal screen that covered the window. The warm evening air played over his blinded face and the mingled homely smells of a poor neighborhood assaulted his nose. He stood there as though dead while the world continued its