“Pleased to meet you Mr. Zucher.”
They shook hands across the table between the bottles.
“A certified accountant makes big money,” said Mr. Zucher.
“Big money’s what I’ll have to have, for my little girl.”
“Kids, they eat money,” continued Mr. Zucher, in a deep voice.
“Wont you let me set you up to a bottle?” said Thatcher, figuring up how much he had in his pocket. “Poor Susie wouldn’t like me to be drinking in a saloon like this. But just this once, and I’m learning, learning about fatherhood.”
“The more the merrier,” said Mr. Zucher. “… But kids, they eat money. … Dont do nutten but eat and vear out clothes. Vonce I get my business on its feet. … Ach! Now vot mit hypothecations and the difficult borrowing of money and vot mit vages going up und these here crazy tradeunion socialists and bomsters …”
“Well here’s how, Mr. Zucher.” Mr. Zucher squeezed the foam out of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. “It aint every day ve pring into the voirld a papy poy, Mr. Thatcher.”
“Or a baby girl, Mr. Zucher.”
The barkeep wiped the spillings off the table when he brought the new bottles, and stood near listening, the rag dangling from his red hands.
“And I have the hope in mein heart that ven my poy drinks to his poy, it vill be in champagne vine. Ach, that is how things go in this great city.”
“I’d like my girl to be a quiet homey girl, not like these young women nowadays, all frills and furbelows and tight lacings. And I’ll have retired by that time and have a little place up the Hudson, work in the garden evenings. … I know fellers downtown who have retired with three thousand a year. It’s saving that does it.”
“Aint no good in savin,” said the barkeep. “I saved for ten years and the savings bank went broke and left me nutten but a bankbook for my trouble. Get a close tip and take a chance, that’s the only system.”
“That’s nothing but gambling,” snapped Thatcher.
“Well sir it’s a gamblin game,” said the barkeep as he walked back to the bar swinging the two empty bottles.
“A gamblin game. He aint so far out,” said Mr. Zucher, looking down into his beer with a glassy meditative eye. “A man vat is ambeetious must take chances. Ambeetions is vat I came here from Frankfort mit at the age of tvelf years, und now that I haf a son to vork for … Ach, his name shall be Vilhelm after the mighty Kaiser.”
“My little girl’s name will be Ellen after my mother.” Ed Thatcher’s eyes filled with tears.
Mr. Zucher got to his feet. “Vell goodpy Mr. Thatcher. Happy to have met you. I must go home to my little girls.”
Thatcher shook the chubby hand again, and thinking warm soft thoughts of motherhood and fatherhood and birthday cakes and Christmas watched through a sepia-tinged foamy haze Mr. Zucher waddle out through the swinging doors. After a while he stretched out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here. … Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.
“Hey there yous how about settlin?” bawled the barkeep after him when he reached the door.
“Didnt the other feller pay?”
“Like hell he did.”
“But he was t‑t‑treating me. …”
The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. “I guess that bloat believes in savin.”
A small bearded bandylegged man in a derby walked up Allen Street, up the sunstriped tunnel hung with skyblue and smokedsalmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands clasped over the tails of his frockcoat, picking his way among packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.
At a yellowpainted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was a highbrowed cleanshaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto No Stropping No Honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the dollarproud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists, threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.
His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water on the gasburner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving very carefully with the new nickelbright safety razor. He stood trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard a noise behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollarbland smile. The two little girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. “Mommer … it’s popper,” the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundrybag into the rocker and threw the apron over her head.
“Oyoy! Oyoy!” she moaned rocking back and forth.
“Vat’s a matter? Dontye like it?” He walked back and forth with the safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his smooth chin.
II
Metropolis
There were Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn … Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island
