story tellers, the music of the street players, the wails and lamentations of the mourners. Through their eyes I saw the desolation wreaked upon a great people. But I saw also that there are qualities which survive the greatest desolation. In their faces, as they related their experiences, I saw reflected the gentleness, the humility, the reverence, the devotion, the faith, the truthfulness and the integrity of those millions whose destiny baffles and disturbs us. They die like flies and they are reborn; they increase and multiply; they offer up prayers and sacrifices, they resist not, and yet no foreign devil can extirpate. them from the soil which they nourish with their own impoverished carcasses. They are of all kinds, all conditions, all shades, all tongues, all cults; they shoot up like weeds and are trampled down like weeds. To lift the curtain upon even the tiniest segment of this seething life leaves the mind reeling with incertitude. Some are like hard-cut gems, some like rare flowers, some like monuments, some like blazing images of the divine, some like disembodied minds, some like rotting vegetables: side by side they move in an endless, confused throng.
In the midst of these reflections Kronski reminded me in a loud voice that he had run into Sheldon. «He wanted to pay you a visit, the blinking idiot, but I put him off... I think he wanted to lend you some money».
Crazy Sheldon! Curious that I should have thought of him on my way home. Money, yes... I had had a hunch Sheldon would be lending me money again. I had no idea what I owed him. I never expected to pay him back— neither did he. I took what he offered because it made him happy. He was as mad as a hare, but cunning and wily, practical withal. He had fastened himself to me like a leech, for some obscure reason of his own which I never even tried to fathom.
What fascinated me about Sheldon were the grimaces he made. And the way he gurgled when he spoke. It was as though an invisible hand were strangling him. To be sure, he had had some terrible experiences—in that murderous ghetto of Cracow where he was reared. There was one incident I would never forget: it had occurred during a pogrom just before his escape from Poland. He had rushed home in a panic during the butchering which was taking place in the street to find the room full of soldiers. His sister, who was pregnant, was lying on the floor, violated by one soldier after another. His mother and father, their arms trussed behind them, were compelled to watch this horrible performance. Sheldon completely beside himself, had thrown himself on the soldiers and was cut down with a sabre. When he came to his mother and father were dead: his sister's body was lying naked beside them, her belly ripped open and stuffed with straw.
We were walking through Tompkins Park the night he first related this story to me. (He repeated it a number of times subsequently, always in exactly the same way, even down to the words he used. And each time my hair stood on end and a cold shiver ran down my spine.) But that first evening, on concluding the story, I observed a queer change come over him. He was making those grimaces which I mentioned. It was as if he were trying to whistle and couldn't. His eyes, which were unusually small, sandy, inflamed, shrank to the size of two B.B. bullets. There was nothing to be seen between the lids but two burning pupils which bored clean through me. I had the most uncanny feeling when, grasping my arm and bringing his face close to mine, he began making a choking, gurgling sound which finally culminated in a noise very much like a peanut whistle. His emotions were so overpowering that for a few minutes, the while clutching me feverishly and pressing his face close to mine, there issued from his throat no recognizable human sound, nothing in the faintest resembling what we call speech. But what a language it was, this gurgling, hissing, choking, whistling frenzy! I couldn't turn my face away, even if I had wanted to; nor could I break his grip, because he had me in a vise. I wondered how long it would last, and would he throw a fit afterwards. But no!—when the emotion had subsided he began to talk in a calm, low voice, in a most matter of fact tone, indeed, quite as if nothing had occurred. We had resumed our stride and were making for the other end of the park. He was talking about the jewels which he had so cleverly swallowed, the value that had been put upon them, the way the emeralds and the rubies sparkled, how economically he lived, the insurance policies he sold in his spare time, and other seemingly unrelated facts and incidents.
He related these things, as I say, in an unnaturally subdued vein, in an almost monotonous tone of voice, except that, now and then, when he came to the end of a sentence, he would raise his voice and end unintentionally on an interrogation point Meanwhile, however, his manner was undergoing a drastic change. He was becoming, as best I can explain it, lynx-like. All that he was narrating seemed directed towards some invisible presence. He was only using me, as a listener, so it seemed, to make known in a sly, insinuating fashion things which this «other» person, present but invisible, might construe in his or her own way. «Sheldon is not a fool,» he was saying in this oblique, glancing language. «Sheldon has not forgotten certain little tricks which were played on him. Sheldon is behaving like a gentleman now, very
The money lending had come about quite naturally. It began that evening over a cup of coffee. As usual I had only five or ten cents in my pocket and was therefore obliged to let Sheldon take the check. The idea of the employment manager being without spending money was so inconceivable to Sheldon that for a moment I feared he would pawn all his jewels.
«Five dollars will be enough, Sheldon,» said I, «if you insist on lending me something.»
An expression of disgust came over Sheldon's face. «Oh no, oh no-O-O!» he exclaimed in a shrill, grating voice which rose almost to a whistle, «Sheldon will never give five dollars. No-oo, Mr. Miller, Sheldon will give
And by God, with that he did fish out fifty dollars, in fives and singles. Again he put on his lynx-like air, looking beyond me as he doled the money out, and mumbling something between his teeth about showing some one what sort of man he, Sheldon, was.
«But Sheldon, I'll be broke again tomorrow,» I said, pausing to see what effect this would produce.
Sheldon smiled—a cagey, cunning smile, as if he were sharing some great secret with me.
«Then Sheldon will give you another fifty dollars tomorrow,» he said, bringing the words out with a queer hissing effect.
«I have no idea when you will get the money back,» I then informed him.
In answer to this Sheldon produced three greasy bank books from his inside pocket. The deposits totalled over two thousand dollars. From his vest pockets he extracted a few rings whose stones glittered like the authentic thing.
«This is nothing,» he said. «Sheldon is not telling all.»
This was the beginning of our relationship, a rather strange one for the employment manager of a cosmococcic corporation. I wondered sometimes if other employment managers enjoyed these advantages. When I met with them occasionally at luncheons I felt more like a messenger boy than a personnel manager. I could never muster that dignity and self-importance in which they appeared to be perpetually enshrouded.
They never seemed to look me in the eye when I spoke, but always at my baggy trousers, my run-down shoes, my torn, soiled shirt or the holes in my hat. If I told them an innocent little story they made so much of it that I was embarrassed. They were tremendously impressed, for example, when I told them about a certain messenger in the Broad Street office who, while waiting for his calls, would read Dante, Homer and Thomas Aquinas in the original. They didn't wait to hear that he had been a professor once in a university in Bologna, that he had tried to commit suicide because he had lost his wife and three children in a railroad accident, that he had lost his memory and had arrived in America with another man's passport, and that only after he had been working as a messenger for six months had he recovered his identity. That he had found the work agreeable, that he preferred to remain a messenger, that he wished to remain unknown— these things would have sounded too fantastic for their ears. All they could seize and marvel at was the fact that a «messenger», in uniform, was able to read the classics in the original. Now and then I would borrow a ten spot from one of them, after relating one of these amusing incidents, never intending to repay of course. I felt compelled to extract some little token from them—for my services as entertainer. And what hemming and hawing they resorted to before coughing up these trivial sums! What a contrast to the easy touches I made among the «goofy» messengers!
Reflections of this order always excited me to the breaking point. Ten minutes of introspective reverie and I
