Elkan Lubliner, American

"You've got six weeks before you," Yetta assured him, "and you shouldn't worry. Something is bound to turn up, ain't it?"

She gave his arm another little caress and they proceeded immediately to the dining room, where the string orchestra and the small talk of two hundred and fifty guests strove vainly for the ascendency in one maddening cacophony. It was nearly eight o'clock before Elkan and Yetta arose from the table and repaired to the veranda whose rockers were filled with a chattering throng.

"Let's get out of this," Elkan said, and they descended the veranda steps to the sidewalk. Five minutes later they were seated on a remote bench of the boardwalk, and until nine o'clock they watched the beauty of the moon and sea, which is constant even at Egremont Beach. When they rose to go Yetta noticed for the first time a shawl-clad figure on the adjacent bench, and immediately a pair of keen eyes flashed from a face whose plump contentment was framed in a jet black wig of an early Victorian design.

"Why, if it ain't Mrs. Lesengeld," Yetta exclaimed and the next moment she enfolded the little woman in a cordial embrace.

"You grown a bisschen fat, Yetta," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "I wouldn't knew you at all, if you ain't speaking to me first."

"This is my husband, Mrs. Lesengeld – Mr. Lubliner," Yetta went on. "He heard me talk often from you, Mrs. Lesengeld, and what a time you got it learning me I should speak English yet."

Elkan beamed at Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And not only that," he said, "but also how good to her you was when she was sick already. There ain't many boarding-house ladies like you, Mrs. Lesengeld."

"And there ain't so many boarders like Yetta, neither," Mrs. Lesengeld retorted.

"And do you got a boarding-house down here, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked.

"I've gone out of the boarding-house business," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, "which you know what a trouble I got it mit that lowlife Lesengeld, olav hasholom, after he failed in the pants business, how I am working my fingers to the bones already keeping up his insurings in the I. O. M. A. and a couple thousand dollars in a company already."

Yetta nodded.

"Which I got my reward at last," Mrs. Lesengeld concluded. "Quick diabetes, Yetta, and so I bought for ten thousand dollars a mortgage, understand me, and my son-in-law allows me also four dollars a week which I got it a whole lot easier nowadays."

"And are you staying down here?" Elkan asked.

"Me, I got for twenty dollars a month a little house mit two rooms only, right on the sea, which they call it there Bognor Park. You must come over and see us, Yetta. Such a gemütlich little house we got it you wouldn't believe at all, and every Sunday my daughter Fannie and my son-in-law comes down and stays with us."

"And are you going all the way home alone?" Elkan asked anxiously.

"Fannie is staying down with me to-night. She meets me on the corner of the Boulevard, where the car stops, at ten o'clock already," Mrs. Lesengeld replied.

"Then you must got to come right along with us," Elkan said, "and we'll see you would get there on time."

"Where are you going?" Mrs. Lesengeld asked.

"Over to the Salisbury," Elkan answered, and Mrs. Lesengeld sank back on to the bench.

"Geh weg, Mr. Lubliner," she cried. "I am now fifty years old and I was never in such a place in my life, especially which under this shawl I got only a plain cotton dress yet."

Elkan flapped his hand reassuringly.

"A fine-looking lady like you, Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, as he seized her hands and drew her gently to her feet, "looks well in anything."

"And you'll have a water ice in the Hanging Gardens with us," Yetta persisted as she slipped a hand under Mrs. Lesengeld's shawl and pressed her arm affectionately. Ten minutes later they arrived at the stoop of the New Salisbury, to the scandalization and horror of the three score A to F first credit manufacturers and their wives. Moreover, approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an accompaniment of titters.

At the next table Sol Klinger plied with liquors and cigars the surviving guests of his dinner, and when Elkan nodded to him, he ignored the salutation with a blank stare. He raged inwardly, not so much at Elkan's invasion of that fashionable precinct as at the circumstance that his guest of honour had departed with Miss Feldman for a stroll on the boardwalk some ten minutes previously, and he was therefore unable to profit by Elkan's faux pas.

"The feller ain't got no manners at all," he said to Max Koblin, who nodded gloomily.

"It's getting terrible mixed down here, Sol," Max commented as he hiccoughed away a slight flatulency. "Honestly if you want to be in striking distance of your business, Sol, so's you could come in and out every day, you got to rub shoulders with everybody, ain't it?"

He soothed his outraged sensibilities with a great cloud of smoke that drifted over Elkan's table, and Mrs. Lesengeld broke into a fit of coughing which caused a repetition of the titters.

"And do you still make that brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked by way of putting the old lady at her ease.

"Make it!" Mrs. Lesengeld answered. "I should say I do. Why you wouldn't believe the way my son-in-law is crazy about it. We got it every Sunday regular, and I tell you what I would do, Yetta."

She laid her hand on Yetta's arm and her face broke into a thousand tiny wrinkles of hospitality.

"You should come Friday to lunch sure," she declared, "and we would got some brown stewed fish sweet and sour and a good plate of Bortch to begin with."

Sol Klinger had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not forego the pleasure of visiting Marcus Polatkin's table and relating it to Polatkin himself.

Polatkin heard him through without a smile and when at its conclusion Klinger broke into a hysterical appreciation of his own humour, Polatkin shrugged.

"I suppose, Klinger," he said, "your poor mother, olav hasholom, didn't wear a sheitel neither, ain't it?"

"My mother, olav hasholom, would got more sense as to butt in to a place like that," Klinger retorted.

"Even if you wouldn't of been ashamed to have taken her there, Klinger," he added.

Klinger flushed angrily.

"That ain't here or there, Polatkin," he said. "You should ought to put your partner wise, Polatkin, that he shouldn't go dragging in an old Bubé into a place like the Salisbury and talking such nonsense like brown stewed fish sweet and sour."

He broke into another laugh at the recollection of it – a laugh that was louder but hardly as unforced as the first one.

"What's the matter mit brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Klinger?" Polatkin asked. "I eat already a lot of a-la's and en cazzerolls in a whole lot of places just so grossartig as the Salisbury, understand me, and I would schenck you a million of 'em for one plate of brown stewed fish sweet and sour like your mother made it from zu Hause yet."

"But what for an interest does a merchant like Scharley got to hear such things," Klinger protested lamely. "Honestly, I was ashamed for your partner's sake to hear such a talk going on there."

"Did Scharley got any objections?" Polatkin asked.

"Fortunately the feller had gone away from the table," Klinger replied, "so he didn't hear it at all."

"Well," Polatkin declared, taking up his knife and fork as a signal that the matter was closed, "ask him and see if he wouldn't a whole lot sooner eat some good brown stewed fish sweet and sour as a Chinese Lantern Dinner – whatever for a bunch of poison that might be, Klinger – and don't you forget it."

Nevertheless when Polatkin returned to his place of business he proceeded at once to Elkan's office.

"Say, lookyhere Elkan," he demanded, "what is all this I hear about you and Yetta taking an old Bubé into the Hanging Gardens already, and making from her laughing stocks out of the whole place."

Elkan looked up calmly.

"It's a free country, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "and so long as I pay my board mit U. S. money, already I would take in there any of my friends I would please."

"Sure, I know," Polatkin expostulated, "but I seen Klinger around at Hammersmith's and he says – "

"Klinger!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you could say to Klinger for me, Mr. Polatkin, that if he don't like the way I am acting around there, understand me, he should just got the nerve to tell it me to my face yet."

Polatkin flapped the air with his right hand.

"Never mind Klinger, Elkan," he said. "You got to consider you shouldn't make a fool of yourself before Scharley and all them people. How do you expect you should get such a merchant as Scharley he should accept from you entertainment like a Chinese Lantern Dinner, if you are acting that way?"

"Chinese Lantern Dinner be damned!" Elkan retorted. "When we got the right goods at the right price, Mr. Polatkin, why should we got to give a merchant dinners yet to convince him of it?"

"Dinners is nothing, Elkan," Polatkin interrupted with a wave of his hand. "You got to give him dyspepsha even, the way business is nowadays."

"Aber I was talking to the room clerk last night," Elkan went on, "and he tells me so sure as you are standing there, Mr. Polatkin, a Chinese Lantern Dinner would stand us in twenty dollars a head."

"Twenty dollars a head!" Polatkin exclaimed and indulged himself in a low whistle.

"So even if I would be staying at the Salisbury, understand me," Elkan said, "I ain't going to throw away our money out of the window exactly."

"Aber how are you going to get the feller down here, if you wouldn't entertain him or something?"

Elkan slapped his chest with a great show of confidence.

"Leave that to me, Mr. Polatkin," he said, and put on his hat preparatory to going out to lunch.

Nevertheless when he descended from his room at the New Salisbury that evening and prepared to take a turn on the boardwalk before dinner, his confidence evaporated at the coolness of his reception by the assembled guests of the hotel. Leon Sammet cut him dead, and even B. Gans greeted him with half jovial reproach.

"Well, Elkan," he said, "going to entertain any more fromme Leute in the Garden to-night?"

"Seemingly, Mr. Gans," Elkan said, "it was a big shock to everybody here to see for the first time an old lady wearing a sheitel. I suppose nobody here never seen it before, ain't it?"

B. Gans put a fatherly hand on Elkan's shoulder.

"I'll tell yer, Elkan," he said, "if I would be such a rosher, understand me, that I would hold it against you because you ain't forgetting an old friend, like this here lady must be, y'understand, I should never sell a dollar's worth more goods so long as I live, aber if Klinger and Sammet would start kidding you in front of Scharley, understand me, it would look bad."

"Why would it look bad, Mr. Gans?" Elkan broke in.

"Because it don't do nobody no good to have funny stories told about 'em, except an actor oder a politician, Elkan," Gans replied as the dinner gong began to sound, "which if a customer wouldn't take you seriously, he wouldn't take your goods seriously neither, Elkan, and that's all there is to it."

He smiled reassuringly as he walked toward the dining room and left Elkan a prey to most uncomfortable reflections, which did not abate when he overheard Klinger and Sammet hail Gans at the end of the veranda.

"Well, Mr. Gans," Klinger said with a sidelong glance at Elkan, "what are you going to eat to-night – brown stewed fish sweet und sour?"

Elkan could not distinguish B. Gans' reply, but he scowled fiercely at the trio as they entered the hotel lobby, and he still frowned as he sauntered stolidly after them to await Yetta in the social hall.

"What's the matter, Mr. Lubliner," the room clerk asked when Elkan passed the desk. "Aren't you feeling well to-day?"

"I feel all right, Mr. Williams," Elkan replied, "but this here place is getting on my nerves. It's too much like a big hotel out on the road somewheres. Everybody looks like they would got something to sell, understand me, and was doing their level best to sell it."

"You're quite right, Mr. Lubliner," the clerk commented, "and that's the reason why I came down here. In fact," he added with a guilty smile, "I made a date to show some of my lots to-morrow to a prospective customer."

At this juncture a porter appeared bearing a basket of champagne and followed by two waiters with ice buckets, and the room clerk jerked his head sideways in the direction toward which the little procession had disappeared.

"That's for Suite 27, the Feldmans' rooms," he explained. "Miss Feldman is giving a little chafing-dish dinner there to Mr. Scharley and a few friends."

He accepted with a graceful nod Elkan's proffered cigar.

"Which goes to show that it's as you say, Mr. Lubliner," he concluded. "If you have drygoods, real estate or marriageable relatives to dispose of, Mr. Lubliner, Egremont's the place to market them."

"Yes, Mr. Williams," said Jacob Scharley at two o'clock the following afternoon as they trudged along the sands of Bognor Park, one of Egremont Beach's new developments, "I was trying to figure out how these here Chinese Lantern Dinners stands in a sucker like Leon Sammet twenty dollars a head, when by the regular bill of fare it comes exactly to seven dollars and fifty cents including drinks."

"You can't figure on a special dinner according to the prices on the regular bill of fare," said Mr. Williams, the room clerk, who in his quality of real-estate operator was attempting to shift the conversation from hotel matters to the topic of seaside lots. "Why, ice cream is twenty-five cents on the bill of fare, but at one of those dinners it's served in imitation Chinese lanterns, which makes it worth double at least."

"For my part," Scharley broke in, "they could serve it in kerosene lamps, Mr. Williams, because I never touch the stuff."

"It's a parallel case to lots here and lots on Mizzentop Beach, which is the next beach below," Williams continued. "Here we have a boardwalk extending right down to our property, and we are getting seven hundred and fifty dollars a lot, while there, with practically the same transit facilities but no boardwalk or electric lights, they get only four hundred and – "

"Aber you take a piece of tenderloin steak a half an inch thick and about the size of a price ticket, understand me," Scharley interrupted, "and even if you would fix it up with half a cent's worth of peas and spill on it a bottle cough medicine and glue, verstehst du mich, how could you make it figure up more as a dollar and a quarter, Mr. Williams? Then the clams, Mr. Williams, must got to have inside of 'em at the very least a half a karat pink pearl in 'em, otherwise thirty-five cents would be big yet."

"Very likely," Mr. Williams agreed as a shade of annoyance passed over his well modelled features, "but just now, Mr. Scharley, I'm anxious to show you the advantage of these lots of ours, and you won't mind if I don't pursue the topic of Chinese Lantern Dinners any farther."

"I'm only too glad not to talk about it at all," Scharley agreed. "In fact if any one else tries to ring in another one of them dinners on me, Mr. Williams, I'll turn him down on the spot. Shaving-dish parties neither, which I assure you, Mr. Williams, even if Miss Feldman would be an elegant, refined young lady, understand me, she fixes something in that shaving dish of hers last night, understand me, which I thought I was poisoned already."

Williams deemed it best to ignore this observation and therefore made no comment.

"But anyhow," Scharley concluded as they approached a little wooden shack on the margin of the water, "I'm sick and tired of things to eat, so let's talk about something else."

Having delivered this ultimatum, his footsteps lagged and he stopped short as he began to sniff the air like a hunting dog.

"M-m-m-m!" he exclaimed. "What is that?"

"That's a two-room shed we rent for twenty dollars a month," Williams explained. "We have eight of them and they help considerably to pay our office rent over in New York."

"Sure I know," Scharley agreed, "aber, m-m-m-m!"

Once more he expanded his nostrils to catch a delicious fragrance that emanated from the little shack.

"Aber, who lives there?" he insisted, and Mr. Williams could not restrain a laugh.

"Why, it's that old lady with the wig that Lubliner brought over to the hotel the other night," he replied. "I thought I saw Sol Klinger telling you about it yesterday."

"He started to tell me something about it," Scharley said, "when Barney Gans butted in and wouldn't let him. What was it about this here old lady?"

"There isn't anything to it particularly," Williams replied, "excepting that it seemed a little strange to see an old lady in a shawl and one of those religious wigs in the Hanging Gardens, and there was something else Klinger told me about Mrs. Lubliner and the old lady talking about brown stewed fish sweet and – "

At this juncture Scharley snapped his fingers excitedly.

"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour!" he almost shouted. "I ain't smelled it since I was a boy already."

He wagged his head and again murmured, "M-m-m-m-m!"

Suddenly he received an inspiration.

"How much did you say them shanties rents for, Mr. Williams?" he said.

"Twenty dollars a month," Williams replied.

"You don't tell me!" Scharley exclaimed solemnly. "I wonder if I could give a look at the inside of one of 'em – this one here, for instance."

"I don't think there'd be any objection," Williams said, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Scharley started off on a half trot for the miniature veranda on the ocean side of the little house.

"Perhaps I'd better inquire first if it's convenient for them to let us in now," Williams said, as he bounded after his prospective customer and knocked gently on the doorjamb. There was a sound of scurrying feet within, and at length the door was opened a few inches and the bewigged head of Mrs. Lesengeld appeared in the crack.

"Nu," she said, "what is it?"

"I represent the Bognor Park Company," Williams replied, "and if it's perfectly convenient for you, Mrs. – "

"Lesengeld," she added.

"Used to was Lesengeld & Schein in the pants business?" Scharley asked, and Mrs. Lesengeld nodded.

"Why, Lesengeld and me was lodge brothers together in the I. O. M. A. before I went out to the Pacific Coast years ago already," Scharley declared. "I guess he's often spoken to you about Jake Scharley, ain't it?"

"Maybe he did, Mr. Scharley, aber he's dead schon two years since already," Mrs. Lesengeld said, and then added the pious hope, "olav hasholom."

"You don't say so," Scharley cried in shocked accents. "Why, he wasn't no older as me already."

"Fifty-three when he died," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "Quick diabetes, Mr. Scharley. Wouldn't you step inside?"

Scharley and Williams passed into the front room, which was used as a living room and presented an appearance of remarkable neatness and order. In the corner stood an oil stove on which two saucepans bubbled and steamed, and as Mrs. Lesengeld turned to follow her visitors one of the saucepans boiled over.

"Oo-ee!" she exclaimed. "Mein fisch."

"Go ahead and tend to it," Scharley cried excitedly; "don't mind us. It might get burned already."

He watched her anxiously while she turned down the flame.

"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour, ain't it?" he asked, and Mrs. Lesengeld nodded as she lowered the flame to just the proper height.

"I thought it was," Scharley continued. "I ain't smelled it in forty years already. My poor mother, olav hasholom, used to fix it something elegant."

He heaved a sigh as he sat down on a nearby campstool.

"This smells just like it," he added. In front of the window a table had been placed, spread with a spotless white cloth and laid for two persons, and Scharley glanced at it hastily and turned his head away.

"Forty years ago come next Shevuos I ain't tasted it already," he concluded.

Mrs. Lesengeld coloured slightly and clutched at her apron in an agony of embarrassment.

"The fact is we only got three knives and forks," she said, "otherwise there is plenty fish for everybody."

"Why, we just had our lunch at the hotel before we started," Mr. Williams said.

"You did," Scharley corrected him reproachfully, "aber I ain't hardly touched a thing since last night. That shaving-dish party pretty near killed me, already."

"Well, then, we got just enough knives and forks," Mrs. Lesengeld cried. "Do you like maybe also Bortch, Mr. Scharley?"

"Bortch!" Mr. Scharley exclaimed, and his voice trembled with excitement. "Do you mean a sort of soup mit beets and – and – all that?"

"That's it," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, and Scharley nodded his head slowly.

"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "would you believe me, it's so long since I tasted that stuff I didn't remember such a thing exists even."

"And do you like it?" Mrs. Lesengeld repeated.

"Do I like it!" Scharley cried. "Um Gottes Willen, Mrs. Lesengeld, I love it."

"Then sit right down," she said heartily. "Everything is ready."

"If you don't mind, Mr. Scharley," Williams interrupted, "I'll wait for you at the office of the company. It's only a couple of hundred yards down the beach."

"Go as far as you like, Mr. Williams," Scharley said as he tucked a napkin between his collar and chin. "I'll be there when I get through."

After Mrs. Lesengeld had ushered out Mr. Williams, she proceeded to the door of the rear room and knocked vigorously.

"Don't be foolish, Yetta, and come on out," she called. "It ain't nobody but an old friend of my husband's."

A moment later Yetta entered the room, and Scharley scrambled to his feet, a knife grasped firmly in one hand, and bobbed his head cordially.

"Pleased to meetcher," he said.

"This is Mrs. Lubliner, Mr. Scharley," Mrs. Lesengeld said.

"Don't make no difference, Mrs. Lesengeld," Scharley assured her, "any friend of yours is a friend of mine, so you should sit right down, Mrs. Lubliner, on account we are all ready to begin."

Then followed a moment of breathless silence while Mrs. Lesengeld dished up the beetroot soup, and when she placed a steaming bowlful in front of Scharley he immediately plunged his spoon into it. A moment later he lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

"Oo-ee!" he exclaimed. "What an elegant soup!"

Mrs. Lesengeld blushed, and after the fashion of a cordon bleu the world over, she began to decry her own handiwork.

"It should ought to got just a Bisschen more pepper into it," she murmured.

"Oser a Stück," Scharley declared solemnly, as he consumed the contents of his bowl in great gurgling inhalations. "There's only one thing I got to say against it."

He scraped his bowl clean and handed it to Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And that is," he concluded, "that it makes me eat so much of it, understand me, I'm scared I wouldn't got no room for the brown stewed fish."

Again he emptied the bowl, and at last the moment arrived when the brown stewed fish smoked upon the table. Mrs. Lesengeld helped Scharley to a heaping plateful, and both she and Yetta watched him intently, as with the deftness of a Japanese juggler he balanced approximately a half pound of the succulent fish on the end of his fork. For nearly a minute he blew on it, and when it reached an edible temperature he opened wide his mouth and thrust the fork load home. Slowly and with great smacking of his moist lips he chewed away, and then his eyes closed and he laid down his knife and fork.