"Nominations for treasurer are now in order. Nominations!"
"Moishe Goldberg"—"Moishe Goldberg"—"Moishe Goldberg," called out every one present at the yearly election of the Roumanian Sick Benefit Society.
"Any other nominations?" the Secretary asked.
"No, no, go ahead; it's Moishe Goldberg again, Mr. Secretary."
"He's good enough, good enough, Mr. Secretary."
And so Moishe Goldberg was elected Treasurer of the Society by acclamation. It was a yearly performance—since the last twenty years.
And this was not the only society for which Moishe Goldberg was Treasurer—there were a dozen. Every Jewish-Roumanian Society of New York wanted to have him act as Treasurer. Once he promised to accept the nomination, no other man would care to run against him, and the yearly election was merely a formality turned into flattery as far as he was concerned. His probity and financial responsibility were above par. His charity was proverbial.
At thirty he came from Roumania with his wife and two little girls. With the few dollars he had brought with him he opened a little grocery store on Clinton Street which prospered and developed into a bigger store on Rivington Street. Of a religious, old-fashioned turn of mind, he followed old Jewish traditions. His store closed Friday night, it remained so over Saturday; he also kept closed every Jewish holiday. He let his beard grow, and went regularly to the synagogue near Forsythe Street.
When he heard that some one chided him about his religious punctiliousness, he said: "I came here because I wanted religious freedom—what I have I want to use."
"Moishe Goldberg, money is needed for a new scroll."
"Put me down for a third of what it costs to get one."
When a woman bought less food than usual, Goldberg would ask, "What's the matter?"
"Husband is out of work."
"Well, do you want to starve him he should have no strength to look for work? Foolish woman! Take what you need; when he will work you will pay me up." And he would accept no thanks, Moishe Goldberg.
In spite of all he gave, his business grew. In a few years he had four stores, branched out in some leather finding business, and sold wholesale to smaller groceries in East New York and Brownsville.
His promptitude made the wholesalers vie with each other as to who should sell him most. His good nature attracted customers from everywhere. He signed no notes and demanded none. Every one trusted him and he trusted everybody. He had a little note book in which he wrote down what was necessary. For the rest he had an excellent memory.
Thus the business went on for years, and as the Jewish-Roumanian population grew on the east side his fame spread. By accident he became the owner of a few tenement houses. Rents were never due. People generally paid, and when they did not, because a husband was on strike or a child sick, it was soon forgotten.
Each evening he would take together all the moneys and checks of the day and put them in a leather handbag. The next morning the whole was deposited in the bank.
If a bill was due the same or the next day and there was not enough money in the bank, all he had to do was to 'phone up to one of his hundred wealthy friends and ask a check of two or three thousand dollars for a few days. On occasion it was reciprocated.
His home life was an ideal one. He lived in the district. His wife was as good and old-fashioned as her husband, and though the girls went through high school, all they had modernized themselves was to use a little cold cream, against which the father protested.
At twenty the older girl married a well-to-do furrier, to whom Moishe Goldberg gave a check of ten thousand dollars, after having promised only five, as dowry.
The whole affair was carried along old-fashioned lines, through a marriage broker. The wedding was an event. Members from twenty societies brought wedding gifts worth into the thousands.
But right at the wedding, Sofia, the younger daughter, fell in love with a cousin of her sister's husband, a young bookkeeper.
There was nothing against the young man. He came from a good family, was well educated in Hebrew. Of course he shaved. But Moishe Goldberg was tolerant enough to understand. To his wife's objections he answered, "It's better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew."
There was only one serious objection. The young man was making very little money—twenty a week. But Sofia loved him. She was the only one now.
"And after all," Moishe Goldberg said to his wife, "maybe it's better so. I will take him into the business. Why should my son-in-law work elsewhere? Sofia will continue to live with us. There is plenty room in the house."
And Sofia agreed, and the young man agreed. The wedding of the first daughter took place in the spring, and that of the second daughter late in the fall.
In three different synagogues dinners for the poor were served at Moishe Goldberg's expense for a full week.
And because he gave no dowry, he sent checks to every charitable institution. He agreed to forget the monthly rent due from a dozen tenants. Many an old account was torn out. All the people working for him got a raise in their wages.
After the wedding the young couple went on a honeymoon to Chicago, where the first daughter now lived.
When they returned Moishe Goldberg took his son-in-law down to the store and showed him the new sign, "Goldberg & Waldman, Wholesale and Retail Grocers."
There was not much to be said. The two men kissed each other in sight of all the people on the street. The young man entered the store.
"This is your new boss," Goldberg said to his employees. "I will begin to sleep a little longer every morning from now on."
Waldman greeted the men, shook hands with some. His father-in-law showed him the back of the store, packed with boxes and barrels and bags. He brought him down the cellar where the herring barrels were deposited.
"Ephraim, my son, I will tell Sofia to make you an apron. I will make a regular grocer out of you."
The next day the young man saw merchandise come and go, checks come and checks go, with no order, no billing, Moishe Goldberg only noting down in his book an item here and there.
"And where are your books, father?"
"What books; who needs books, who?"
"Why, father, how can you carry on such a business without books?"
"You are as silly as all the other young chaps. I am twenty years in business and never saw the need of books. What I am afraid I won't remember I note down here—that's good enough for me. Have a look at my check book and see."
Ephraim Waldman went home a worried man that evening. It was Friday night, and the best fish ever cooked, for which Mrs. Goldberg was so famous, was not good enough to relieve his mind. Even Sofia's kisses were thrown away.
"What's the matter with Ephraim?" the mother asked.
"He wants books." Moishe Goldberg laughed aloud as he patted his daughter. "You can see he is a bookkeeper; without books he can't even eat fish."
Waldman wanted to expostulate, but his father-in-law cut him short.
"At home, and especially on Saturday, I don't allow business talk. If you can't be merry, go to your rooms with your wife."
"No use being so cross with him," Goldberg's wife said after the young people had retired.
"I don't want him to spoil my holiday, the young smut-nose-know-everything. Goes two years to school and thinks that even God owes him an accounting. He must remember that he is in Moishe Goldberg's house."
Saturday passed quietly. Sofia's eyes were a little red, but her husband seemed to want to make up for past misdeeds, and was very merry. At the synagogue he comported himself beautifully. Moishe Goldberg was especially proud of his son-in-law's reading from the scroll.
"Well, what do you say to my American? He reads from the Holy Scroll like a charm." And everybody complimented him.
Sunday was a half holiday, but on Monday when the business started agoing, Waldman could not stand it.
"Father," he said in the evening, "it can't go on that way. We must have some books. No business is carried on that way."
"Books! bosh; don't bother about books. Attend to business."
"But how can you know anything, father?"
"Not being a bookkeeper, I know my business. The best proof that bookkeepers are not business men is that they are working for somebody else."
The next day, and the next, and the next, Sofia's eyes were red from crying.
"What should be the matter with her?" Mrs. Goldberg asked her husband.
"The Talmud says, that a young couple are like a new wagon and a new horse. They must adjust themselves," was his answer.
But the mother was not satisfied with the answer, and she got her daughter's confidence.
"Ephraim wants to look for a position. He says he can't understand a business which has no bookkeeping. No modern business is carried on that way."
The long and short of the story was that Moishe Goldberg was browbeaten by the two women. He gave his little notebook to his son-in-law who undertook to make an inventory of all the assets of Goldberg & Waldman.
The old merchant had the fun of his life to watch the young man enter everything in his books. But the laughter died on his lips when this same young man told him that the assets were some sixty thousand dollars less than the liabilities.
"It's a stupid lie! Only a silly fellow with a bookkeeping mania could say such a foolish thing."
But the old man could not sleep that night. A few days later he was short of a couple of thousand dollars to pay a bill. He lacked the old-time courage to ring up one of his business friends. He could have gotten the money from his bank, but there too his courage failed him.
Little by little, yet rapidly enough, it was whispered about that the wealthy grocer was not as solid as had been thought. Six months after the wedding of his second daughter the red flag of the auctioneer hung in front of the store for the benefit of the creditors.
"But how did it all happen?" asked his first son-in-law, the furrier when he arrived from Chicago, at the news of the calamity.
Broken down, old, worn, sick, Moishe Goldberg moaned:
"Because my daughter married a bookkeeper."
The Mastodon has disappeared but we are still pestered by flies.
The whole story could be told in one paragraph, nay, in one statement contradicting bluntly a biological law, the survival of the fittest. But these laws are so pliable one is as much afraid to contradict as the promulgators were afraid to establish them. So I am to tell the story as gently and as objectively as the matter on hand will permit.
Many, many years ago Hans Burgmiller, a plumber, came over here from Germany and established himself in business on what is now St. Mark's Place. You can still see the name "Burgmiller, Plumber," over the door of the old place. The original black letters stick out from underneath a dozen coats of paint, as though the old man would from his grave cry out and fight against effacement.
I don't know what plumbing there was to be done at that time in the district. But Hans Burgmiller prospered in his own way. A few years after his establishment he surrendered himself to the joys of fatherhood and little Anton Burgmiller became the idol of the Burgmiller household in the back of the shop. When Anton was twelve he was his father's helper. A little square-headed, square-shouldered, blue-eyed boy in his father's old overalls went along wherever plumbing was to be done and carried a heavy bag of tools, fittings and pipes on his back.
When little Anton was sixteen he was a full-fledger plumber. Though Hans Burgmiller never acknowledged anybody to know the trade better than he did he accepted the superiority of his son when modern plumbing methods first appeared in the district.
Water was piped up to every apartment on every floor, and baths and other modern conveniences were installed. That was a bit too complicated for Hans Burgmiller but Anton took to it like a duck to water. Soon after that the household was removed from back of the shop to the first floor, to make place for the extension of business, and over the letters of the firm were painted other letters in red that made the whole thing read "Burgmiller & Burgmiller, Plumbers." In due time, perhaps a little prematurely because of hard work, old man Hans died and was buried. But Anton had meanwhile married and a little son was soon born to him. He named him Hans in memory of his father and as he expected him to continue in the business his grandfather had established he left the lettering over the door.
What was the use taking it off when he will have to letter it again in a few years? Perhaps this item of economy entered into the christening of the little boy, because the mother wanted the boy christened after her father. But she was overruled.
Hans went to school with a lot of Irish boys. They teased him about his Dutch name and twisted it so until it became a horror to the little boy. The result was that when the time came to have a little say of his own in the business the last two syllables from the name were smeared over with yellow paint and the firm's name became "Burg & Burg." When such an expense as stationery became necessary Hans was proud that it read so beautifully "Burg & Burg, Plumbers and Fitters."
The building trade was very active. The upper floor was transformed into a sort of office in which Hans's young sister presided behind a desk on which stood letter files reserved for bills and receipts. The clinkety clink of the typewriter helped the song of the hammer a floor below. On the shelves, nuts and bolts and shiny faucets. On the floor-space, leaning on the walls, white enameled bath tubs and grey slab wash tubs. And hanging from the ceiling, a multitude of chandeliers in brass and oxidized tin.
The firm of Burg & Burg now owned a horse and wagon. Several workingmen expected and obtained regularly a pay envelope every Saturday afternoon.
At twenty-five Hans figured that he was entitled to a family of his own. Especially so because his sister had married a year before one of his workingmen who set up for himself in another district and needed her help. The firm needed a capable office woman. His mother helped him look around for a capable wife. They were successful. Ana Hirtenmayer pledged her troth to Hans Burg. The wedding took place in the spring and on the first of January a little boy was born and they named him Anton. But notwithstanding her household duties the billing and the books of the firm was kept in order by Mrs. Burg even if she had to work until after midnight.
It seemed for a while that the Burgmiller race was to rotate eternally around the two Christian names, Hans and Anton, but on the third year another son was born to them. They christened him Peter; because he came to life on St. Peter's Day.
Years passed. The family received several additions one after another at a year's interval, all girls, and then again a boy whom they christened Louis. Women folks never counted at all in the Burgmiller family. They were regarded as reproducing animals only, in spite of all other services they rendered.
Anton and Peter grew rapidly and were in overalls before they had reached their fourteenth year. The girls, strong and fleshy, helped keep the house in order and prepare the meals for the whole family. Hans Burg was proud of them.
But little Louis, the youngest of the brood, did not develop like his brothers and sisters. His chest was narrow. His muscles flabby. His legs thin. He could not lift any weight to speak of. A change of weather threw him in bed. After he was doctored by the mother with roots and herbs the medicus was called in. It happened at least twice a week. His bills were even larger than a plumber's. There never was a week in which Louis did not cause a large extra expense. As little and small as he was, he was the dead weight that dragged them all down. They had to economize for his sake. Leberwurst became a luxury instead of a staple article on the table of the Burg family. And just because Louis was so puny and weak the mother and the father loved him more than any of the other children. It was as if the whole family lived for nothing else than to expiate the sin of Louis's ailments.
When Louis was fourteen years old, he did not don overalls. He continued school. He had the best of clothes and the best of foods. In summer time he was sent to the mountains with his mother to take care of him. Louis entered High School. Anton, his oldest brother, married but remained with the firm, drawing a weekly salary—a smaller one than he could have gotten elsewhere. Then Peter married and began to draw a weekly salary. But neither Anton nor Peter were as husky and strong as they might have been. They had worked a little harder and fed a little less well than it was good for them. They had started work too soon and endured too many privations because of Louis's continual expensive existence.
From High School Louis, still nurtured and doctored, entered college. He was still too weak to work. His older sisters, rosy, carnate Gretchens, withered away working hard and living loveless lives because of the expense of Louis's upkeep.
Louis, as a college man, began to look down upon all of them. In natty suit and clean linen, supplied with money, as much as he wanted because they dared not contradict the "poor sick boy," he associated only with the gentlemen of the college. His brothers were just ordinary workingmen; ill mannered and ignorant. The time came when father Hans was called to his Maker. The Burgmillers were not of a long-living stock. And when the will was opened, everything belonged to the "poor weak Louis, who was not able to work like his strong brothers."
"Poor weak Louis" became the owner of the Burg & Burg establishment founded on the sweat of four generations. And because he was too weak to work himself, his broad shouldered brothers had sunken cheeks, bent backs, while Louis, the prosperous Louis Burg, exhibits his flashy clothes and his learning.
A mistaken idea floats about that the whole east side is socialistic. I made a special investigation to find out how it stood. I found some men who were still Socialists, some who had been, some who still pretended to be, some still clinging to it as a profession.
But nowhere did I find any one hating the doctrine so profoundly as on Third Street and Second Avenue, where lives Mrs. Rachael Rosenberg. She rents out furnished rooms. The first thing she asked me when I applied for a room was:
"Are you a Socialist? If you are, I don't want you. If you are not, we will talk business."
"I am not a Socialist," I told her. "Still, I never heard of people refusing them as boarders!"
"I suppose you know all about Socialism from books," Mrs. Rosenberg put in sneeringly. "But I tell you one never knows anybody or anything until you come in close contact with 'em. I will only go and see that the stew does not burn, and after I will tell you what I know."
And this is the story as she told it to me:
"My husband's name is Moritz Rosenberg. We came here in President Cleveland's time—which is more than you and many others could say. At home he was—what's the use to tell you what! Here he became a cloak operator. After the Cleveland financial crisis, when men died of starvation, I decided to help out my Moritz. We lived on Catharine Street, near the river, in two rooms only. I put out a shingle 'Boarders Wanted,' and got two the same day. I bought a double bed for them. Each one paid four dollars a month, so my whole rent cost me two dollars. And that was not all. I gave them breakfast and supper for two dollars a week. Things were cheap then. I actually earned our food.
"Why shouldn't a woman help her husband especially if God has not given her any children? Well, after a while we moved out to a bigger apartment on Monroe Street, four rooms with bath and all other conveniences. So I rented two more rooms to four more people. It gave me a lot of work, but we saved all my Moritz earned and more.
"He had a steady job at Kuntzman's and worked there year in, year out. He had started with Kuntzman's and worked there—yes, strike or no strike, good season, slack season, fourteen dollars a week every week.
"I treat my boarders well, so that once moved in no one moves out, unless his wife comes from Europe or he marries, if he is a single man. I shall live many years for each dollar I made as a marriage broker—and every couple as happy as could be.
"Well, one day I lost a boarder. He had his foot caught in a machine. They took him to the hospital at noon, and in the evening he was dead.
"It was too bad. He was a nice fellow. But I, who was I to mourn him? I paid sixteen dollars rent. So I put out a shingle the same day 'Boarders wanted.' On the next day I got a new boarder. I was not particular then. Especially when I saw a nice clean young man, with teeth as white as grains of polished rice; and a voice he had like silk, like pure silk, so soft and nice. He did not bargain, he did not talk. Five dollars a month, five dollars. I asked him what time he had to get up in the morning, because if he had to get up later than the other bedfellow, he should sleep near the wall, not to be disturbed, or if he had to get up earlier the other will sleep near the wall. He did not care. It was all fixed up and in the evening he brought his trunk. It was as heavy as stone—full of books.
"After supper my other boarders used to sit at a game of cards. Not that they were gamblers, but what else should they have done? They drank tea, soda water, a can of beer sometimes. Sometimes my Moritz sat with them for a while—just to make them feel at home. Believe me, I did not lose at them. They paid for tea and sugar. Why shouldn't they? Was I their mother? In America one has to pay for everything.
"But that new boarder I got, he wouldn't play cards and wouldn't drink beer. He sat in a corner and read books till late at night.
"Then after a few weeks the others, too, stopped playing cards. They all sat up late in the night and talked. The new boarder was explaining all the time how their bosses got richer every day. Every night the same thing. He was a Socialist.
"My husband was very busy, worked overtime, Sundays, whole nights. It was already fourteen years that he worked for Kuntzman, and we had put aside a nice little sum of money.
"One evening my Moritz came home very angry. Kuntzman had engaged a new foreman, an Italian fellow, and the two of them, my husband and he, couldn't agree. After supper, I told him to go to sleep, but he did not want to. He went in to talk with the boarders. I went to bed. Late at night Moritz came in.
"'You sleep,' he said.
"'What is it?'
"'You know, that new boarder is perfectly right in what he says about bosses!' Moritz said to me.
"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'Them bosses are making piles of money,' he explained to me as clear as day; 'they make on the men at least fifty per cent. Look at Kuntzman,' he said. 'He started out with two machines, now he has four hundred. That Socialist is right; the bosses are getting rich.'
"I told him to go to sleep and not bother about other people's fortune, but my Moritz could not sleep the whole night.
"The next evening he went again in the boarders' room to hear the Socialist talk. When he came in to sleep he told me:
"'That Socialist is absolutely right. He proved by his books. Peshe! do you know what I will do?'
"'What?' I asked.
"'Since bosses are getting rich, I will become a boss. The Socialists are right.'
"With the money we had both worked so hard to save, Moritz Rosenberg opened a shop with a partner, also one of our boarders who put in his money. And in one year we lost all we had.
"He had to go and beg Mr. Kuntzman to take him on again. I am again taking boarders.
"But no Socialist liar will ever cross my threshold, and if I lay my hands on that one—if ever I see him, with his flowing necktie and book under his arm, going around to poor people to tell them such lies! Fourteen years of our work gone on account of him—fourteen years."
A sharp chocky odor of burning meat, her stew on the stove, drove her to the kitchen. I tiptoed out of the room, ran down the stairs and kept on running for blocks and blocks, for fear of Mrs. Rosenberg.
In matters musical Silvio Romano is the authority of Mulberry Street. His two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh add weight to his opinion. When there are no customers in his shop, when he is not busy honing or stropping his razors, he is sitting on two chairs, guitar in hand, playing and singing to his heart's content.
Mulberry Street, "Little Italy" of the down town east side, is a very busy street—so busy, indeed, it makes one suspicious. Young men walk up and down the sidewalk, calling to each other; the pastry shops, wine shops and cafés are always full of people talking about everything, and the "barbieri" are, as they have always been, the centers of art, literature and politics.
After Angelo, Silvio Romano's son, was drafted into the army, the father felt the loss threefold—the son, the helper, and the flutist. Angelo was all these to him. As a son, there was none more dutiful than the boy. As a barber, people came from uptown to have their hair cut by Angelo Romano; he was a real artist in his line. But as a flutist he surpassed himself in all other qualities. All musical disputes were quickly settled by Romano's calling upon his son to illustrate the particular passages in dispute, of "Lucia de Lammermoor" or "Il Barbiere de Sevilla." And Angelo would leave the half-shaved customer in the chair to do his filial duty—to uphold the older Romano's authority.
The duos father and son played together were the joy of the neighborhood, ten blocks around. The select ones—Luigi the banker, Marino the olive oil dealer, and other "notabiles"—sat inside the shop smoking their cigars, while ordinary folk stood outside near the window. Young couples sat on the door sill, holding hands and humming softly the tunes played inside. The duo finished, Mulberry Street applauded generously. And when Mulberry Street applauds, even the Manhattan Bridge shakes from the concussion.
Angelo gone, Romano suffered tremendously. But he had to engage help. There was none to be found, so he inserted the following advertisement in an Italian daily newspaper:
"Artist barber wanted in a first-class tonsorial parlor. One with musical talents preferred."
A week later, Salvatore Gonfarone, disliking to return to his former shop because he was exempted from military service on account of an infirmity of which he had not previously been aware, applied for the job.
The place made no impression on him. It was not like the one he had abandoned. He would not have accepted it; but while he was talking with his prospective employer, Rosita, Silvio's daughter, entered the shop. Salvatore's heart was struck. Thumb and forefinger of the left hand rose to curl his little black mustache, while the right palm met the open hand of Romano. "Sta bene, signore!" And there and then he donned the newly laundered white jacket which Angelo used to wear.
Rosita only came to see whether any mail had arrived. She disappeared as quickly as she came. Romano sat in the chair to give Salvatore a trial. It was a dream! or, as Romano himself said to his wife about the new helper's razor hand, "as light as a gentle breeze." Indeed, he was so pleased with the young man's work that he forgot to inquire about his musical abilities.
Silvio Romano was due for a surprise; that same evening Salvatore sang in a most beautiful mellow baritone voice an aria from "Rigoletto." Romano's fingers struck the tense strings of his guitar with vigor. The old Italian was happy.
Banker and grocer and the other "notabili" came again, and the sidewalk was so crowded with people the policeman on the beat thought Mulberry Street feuds were aflame.
But the greatest triumph of Salvatore was yet to come. Rosita in her best blue silk dress, and Madame Romano herself, entered the shop. The young girl stood timidly in a corner, the Latin impulsiveness checked by her American training. The introduction was not slow to come, and in a few well-chosen words Salvatore paid his compliments to both mother and daughter.
In a few days the news of Romano's great find spread all over town. The two men got to be so busy there was no time to sing and play during the day. Rosita, red flower in her thick raven hair, visited the shop quite frequently. Her black eyes spoke quite distinctly, and once Salvatore even thought she mimicked a kiss to him. But there was no chance to say a word. Silvio Romano began to make plans for a third chair.
The evenings were gorgeous. Salvatore sang "like a god."
Springtime in Mulberry Street is like nowhere else. It finds there a most receptive mood, and there is no sweeter perfume in any flower than the odor wafted by human happiness—as though every inhabitant carried in his bosom the gardens of Tuscany. It is primavera—the primavera of the Italy of Parma violets and lush red roses.
Salvatore Gonfarone pined away in his desire to speak to Rosita. But youth, love and luck are on very friendly terms.
Silvio Romano took sick one day—nothing very serious, a toothache. Salvatore was not going to lose his chance. When Rosita came to the shop he kissed her.
"Oh, Salvatore!"
"Oh, Rosita mio!"
It was just two weeks after they had first seen each other. Rosita made it her business to come ten times that day. A few cuts on the faces of customers bore witness to the young man's distraction.
The next day Romano, feeling much better, was in the shop again.
Toward noon there was an idle hour, and the two men sat down to talk music. It soon developed into a quarrel. Romano was an admirer of the old Italian school of Rossini and Donizetti; Salvatore Gonfarone bowed at the shrine of Verdi and Puccini.
"Pah! Rossini was nothing but a——"
"Basta, Signor! Rossini was the greatest master. Your Puccinis are nothing but noise makers."
"And you love Rossini only because you can play his things on the guitar."
It was a very insolent remark! Silvio Romano checked himself with difficulty. To dispute his musical authority so sneeringly was the height of impudence. But Salvatore was such a good barber! Romano let go a cutting answer:
"And you love Puccini because he gives you the opportunity to shout stupid arias."
Some customers interrupted the dispute.
During the next few hours Salvatore thought how to evade a disaster with the father of Rosita. He loved the girl; yesterday's kisses were still on his lips. Yet he could not, on account of that, change his musical opinions! The idea of the old wire plucker! Let him stick to his Rossini and Donizetti as much as he wants to, but not impose such ideas on him, on Salvatore Gonfarone, who knew more about music than a hundred Romanos!
It was a hard battle between love and artistic ideals.
Silvio Romano was terribly incensed. Several times he made up his mind to tell the youth they had reached the parting point. To dare sneer at Rossini! Rossini, the greatest master of them all—the god of music! let alone Donizetti—it was nothing less than sacrilege.
After those thoughts had had their sway, more practical ones presented themselves. Romano thought of the difficulty to find another man. Salvatore was such a good barber!
A hard battle between business and artistic ideals, indeed!
There was no music that evening, because there was no harmony between the two.
The banker and the other "notabili" came, in vain.
Salvatore took his hat and cane, and saying very politely, "Buona sera," he left the shop.
"What's the trouble with Salvatore?" they all asked.
"He is crazy," Romano answered. They understood something had gone wrong between the two, so the talk was switched on the war.
Rosita came and turned pale when she did not see the young man. The absence of his hat and cane caused the girl despair.
Said the banker to Romano at parting:
"If it's a question of a few dollars more a week, I would advise you——"
"Nothing of the kind, banchiere. Money means nothing to me. I have ideals, high ideals, which this impudent——Think of that! To dare sneer at Rossini! Il grande maestro! The compositore of the 'Barbiere de Sevilla,' and many another capo d'opera. He will have to apologize, or I never want to see him again!"
"Yes, yes," the banker insisted—"youth is impudent, but Salvatore's razor hand and his voice bring business."
"It means nothing to me. He will have to apologize if he wants to work in my shop."
The next day, Saturday, the two artists were too busy to talk music. Fire hung between them. Rosita came in early, all flushed, and sent Salvatore a meaning-full glance. Romano ordered her out very gruffly. Salvatore was mad with anger. How dare this Rossini fanatic speak to Rosita, to his beautiful Rosita, in such a way!
She did not return the whole day.
In the evening Salvatore again made ready to go. He had planned to leave definitely, and find some "sub rosa" way to speak to Rosita. Yet he changed his mind at the last minute. There was danger. He could not lose the girl. He decided to bide his time.
He had hardly started to take off the white jacket when Romano spoke to him.
"Young man, you will have to apologize or leave my shop for good. It is true you are a very good barber, an artist, and I was ready to increase your wages of my own good will. But I have ideals. You have insulted my masters—my great masters——"
Romano's voice quivered with emotion. His eyes were moist. He was deeply grieved. It touched Salvatore as nothing ever did. Throwing both arms around the old man's neck, he kissed him, crying:
"Silvio Romano, soul of an artist! amo d'artiste! I love you, I honor you. But I too have artistic ideals. I love Rosita—but you will not permit that I debase myself, that I lie to you for her sake?"
Both men cried.
They never again talked about the different masters; instead, they played their music nightly. And after a time, they occasionally bowed each at the other's shrine.
From Fourth Street to the confines of 14th Street below First Avenue and the East River is one of the Russian districts in New York. It is inhabited to a great extent by Russian laborers. The Russian "Inteligentsia" of New York is so busy talkingaboutthe people, the "narod," it has had no time to go and see and talkwiththe people.
The odor of cooked cabbage and burned fats dissolves into the stronger odors of the oiled high boots and the numerous Russian steam baths of the district. Ah, these steam baths! From the looks of them and the smell one comes to think of them more as sewers than baths. A hundred little "Cuchnias," restaurants with their vapored windows and sawdust floors proclaim the fact that most of the inhabitants of the district are here without their families and therefore thrown upon the ill-smelling and meanly-cooked foodstuffs of those eating places.
The whole week the streets and houses are very quiet; only the occasional quarrel between two restaurateurs and their wives disturbs the peace. The tired workers sleep. But on Saturday night the Russian temperament breaks loose. The windows of every front room are lit and from the street one sees plainly the decorations on the walls; red and blue serpentines cross the ceiling and are wrapped around the chandeliers; a few pictures in color, cut out from some illustrated paper or magazine; a few gayly colored hand embroidered towels are fixed with pins on the wall above the mantelpiece on which are a few pieces of cheap glassware in that milkish green held in so much affection by the Lithuanians. And inside the rooms, to the creaking sound of a concertina, the Russians dance and sing their national songs. Here and there some American song breaks loose, but this only happens early in the evening when things are yet on their surface. Later in the night when drink has sobered and deepened the children of the Volga they sing only dirges, linking one to another until the whole district is permeated in an undulating melancholy for which no God and no man could account.
In this district lived Stephan Ivanoff. Stephan came to New York with a reputation. People said he had escaped from Siberia by flight, and people also said that he was sent to Siberia because of the jealousy of a doctor. Stephan was not a doctor; he was a healer.
Stephan was a big, heavy dark bearded man with two shrewd little eyes in his head and a mouth which always looked as though it just finished eating some savory morsel. He kept to his Russian custom and went every Saturday night to the Russian bath. In the intimacy of the common bathroom he told stories and anecdotes which elicited broad laughter and made many friends to the newcomer from Siberia.
Incidentally Stephan Ivanoff gave some health hints to his friends. "First of all, don't eat eggs; don't eat any eggs," he said, "they are just poisoning your blood. If you have eaten even one egg in the last four, five years, it will come out some day in a swelling of the neck or in some other boil on the legs and arms."
And one day Vasilenko, the owner of one of the restaurants of the district, had such a swelling on the neck. His wife called a doctor, a regular M. D., who prescribed rest, hot water applications and other such truck. It did not help very much and Mrs. Vasilenko complained to a customer.
"A swelling on the neck?" the customer said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "why, poor Vasilenko is poisoned!"
Several other customers approached Serzei's table and Serzei explained with even greater details all he knew, all he had heard from the mouth of Stephan Ivanoff, that mysterious man who had escaped from Siberia where he had had the great fortune to meet a holy man from Omsk who taught him all about diseases and foods and their poisons.
The upshot of it all was that they went scurrying for Stephan Ivanoff and brought him to the bedside of Vasilenko. Stephan looked the sick man over, held his pulse for quite a while, then declared that Vasilenko was poisoned. He ordered all the bottles of medicine thrown away in his very presence before he would start anything.
"The case is a very serious one," he said, "but I will try to use whatever gifts I have," and he started immediately the old process of dry-cupping the patient. One after the other the little cupping glasses applied to the swollen part filled with the brown blue flesh they sucked in. The patient groaned but Ivanoff assured him it was better than death and tortured him the rest of the night. In the morning Stephan obtained a few particularly active and hungry leeches which he posed to suck out the "bad blood" from Vasilenko's arms and legs. After eight days and eight nights he restored Vasilenko to health and guaranteed that not a drop of poisoned blood had remained in the man's body.
The news spread that Ivanoff had saved Vasilenko's life, and the reputation of the quack grew daily. According to Ivanoff's theory, almost everybody's blood was poisoned. They were all sick people. He took the pulse of every one, listened carefully and then dropped the hand with a little eloquent gesture that set one despairing more than if the death penalty had been pronounced.
"Stephan Ivanoff, what is the matter with me?"
"Alexis Vasilewitch, your pulse tells me that you are a very sick man."
"It's true Stephan Ivanoff that I feel a little tired, but I thought that it was hard work."
Stephan never insisted. It was his trick never to insist. He knew human nature too well to insist. He just made a little gesture and passed on to pleasanter topics, but he was sure that Alexis Vasilewitch, or whoever it was, would come around at the end of the conversation at the dinner table at Vasilenko's and ask: "Stephan Ivanoff, what shall I do?"
And the next day, or on Saturday the man was dry-cupped, blood-sucked, massaged and given to drink strange-tasting mixtures brewed over an alcohol lamp. A few weeks' treatment and the man was healed.
Stephan Ivanoff had saved another life.
Things went on in such a way for years. The several doctors established in the district starved and Stephan Ivanoff became rich. From Vasilenko's restaurant spread tales of marvellous recoveries from all kinds of diseases which the healer discovered as soon as he felt the man's pulse. It was as if the holy man from Omsk had himself sent Stephan Ivanoff to New York to save all the poisoned men. And when a man was very severely ill Stephan spoke mysteriously of occult communications with the man "out there" and gave a brew of special herbs grown on the tombs of holy men and ordered Chinese leeches and dry-cupped in a special way until the man was saved.
Stephen Ivanoff furnished his apartment with all the Russian things he could get in order to impress the increasing number of his visitors.
The priest came to see him one day to admonish him about a little scandal with Vasilenko's wife.
Stephan Ivanoff kissed the hand of the old man and as he held it between the pointer and the thumb he exclaimed "Father, don't move!" Silently, attentive, with the hand of the priest limply between his fingers he said: "Father Anton Fevdoroff, you are a sick man."
"My son, I have come to speak to you about other things." The priest, essaying his unctuous voice, tried to set things right.
Vasilenko had gone to Russia to visit his parents, and his wife, the rumor spread, fell to the healer's spell. Stephan Ivanoff, the healer, listened to the priest's admonition to the end and as he did so his face radiated happiness; as though some wonderfully clear visions were descending from the heavens upon him.
"What have you to say, son?"
"That God's wisdom is seen in the ways of life; that he taketh care of man and worm, and that no action and no thought can come but that He had willed it," answered Stephan Ivanoff, in religious transport.
"But why does my son speak now about godliness, when I come to censure him about his immorality?"
"In Omsk, father, I met a holy man who taught me many things before I came here. In five years I have not met you once. And because you are also a holy man God willed that Vasilenko go to Russia and I be exposed to false accusations so that you should come to me. You are a sick man, Anton Fevdoroff—your pulse tells me you are a very sick man, that you have been poisoned."
Father Anton Fevdoroff maintained that he was not a sick man but the thumb and the forefinger of Stephan Ivanoff on the pulse of the man knew better. A few days later the priest sent word to the healer that he should come to see him. Father Fevdoroff was ill. The doctor had prescribed something which did not seem to help and the priest's wife was despairing. Brought up in a little village in Russia her confidence in leeches and cupping was much stronger than in the official medicine. Stephan's methods suited her and as the priest's health improved under his treatment, Mother Fevdoroff went into ecstasies over the holy man from Omsk:
On the fourth day Ivanoff said to the priest:
"Little father, your pulse is wonderful to-day. There is not a drop of bad blood left in your body."