Elkan Lubliner

“ Elkan had been about to disclose the conversation between himself and Scheikowitz at Wasserbauer's that afternoon, but Marcus, at the appearance of his partner, turned abruptly and walked into the cutting room; and thus, when Elkan accompanied Max Kapfer uptown that evening, his manner was so preoccupied by reason of his dilemma that Kapfer was constrained to comment on it.
"What's worrying you, Lubliner?" he asked as they seated themselves in the café of the Prince Clarence. "You look like you was figuring out the interest on the money you owe." ”

“ As he spoke he hastily buttoned on his collar and left the cutting room, while Elkan could not forego a delighted grin. After all, he reflected, he had worked steadily for over a year and a half with only such holidays as the orthodox ritual ordained; and he was so busy making plans for his first afternoon of freedom that he nearly forgot to groan again when Redman came back with Marcus Polatkin at his heels.
"Nu, Elkan!" Marcus said. "What's the matter? Don't you feel good?" ”

“ Lubliner," Max declared—"only I got a friend by the name Boris Volkovisk, and believe me or not, Mr. [Pg 173] Lubliner, in some respects Tschaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff could learn from that feller, because, you could take it from me, Mr. Lubliner, there's some passages in the Fifth Symphony, understand me, which I hate to say it you could call rotten!"
Elkan stirred uneasily in his chair.
"I don't know what you are talking about at all," he said. ”

“ CHAPTER THREE A MATCH FOR ELKAN LUBLINER MADE IN HEAVEN, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF MAX KAPFER "I WOULDN'T care if Elkan Lubliner was only eighteen even," declared Morris Rashkind emphatically; "he ain't too young to marry B. Maslik's a Tochter. There's a feller which he has got in improved property alone, understand me, an equity of a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and if you would count second mortgages and Bronix lots, Mr. Polatkin, the feller is worth easy his quarter of a million dollars." ”

“ Elkan wheeled round and glared viciously at the Shadchen.
"You'll do nothing of the kind!" he roared. "You get right down them subway steps or I wouldn't come up with you Friday night."
"But what harm——" Rashkind began, when Elkan seized him by the shoulder and led him firmly downstairs to the ticket office. There Elkan bought a ticket and, dropping it in the chopper's box, he pushed Rashkind on to the platform. A few minutes later a downtown express bore the Shadchen away and Elkan ascended the stairs in three tremendous bounds. ”

“ Elkan cried.
"You can believe it oder not, Mr. Lubliner," Max continued; "but Ringentaub got in his store a couple Jacobean chairs, which they are two hundred and fifty years old already. And them chairs you could buy at a big sacrifice yet."
Elkan and Yetta exchanged puzzled glances, and Elkan even tapped his forehead significantly.
"They was part of a whole set," Max went on, not noticing his employer's gesture; "the others Ringentaub sold to a collector."
Elkan flipped his right hand.
"A collector is something else again," he said; "but me I ain't no collector, Max, Gott sei Dank! ”

“ The most that a poor girl expects is that she marries a poor man, y'understand, and then they work their way up together."
Elkan nodded. Unconsciously he was indorsing not so much the matter as the manner of her conversation, for she spoke with the low voice that distinguishes the Rumanian from the Pole or Lithuanian.
"You are coming from Rumania, ain't it?" Elkan asked.
"Pretty near there," the maid replied. "Right on the border. I am coming here an orphan five years ago; and——"
"Nu, Lubliner," cried a rasping voice from the doorway, "we got our appointment for nothing—Miss Maslik is sick." ”

“ Elkan lit a cigar and puffed away reflectively before speaking.
"Nu," he said at last; "so that is what you wanted to talk to me about?"
[Pg 174] Max nodded.
"Well, then, all I could say is," Elkan went on, "you are coming to the wrong shop. A business proposition like that is for a banker, which he is got so much money he don't know what to do with it, Merech."
Max' face fell and he turned disconsolately away.
"At the same time, Max," Elkan added, "I ain't feeling sore that you come to me with the proposition, understand me. The trouble ain't with you that you got such an idee, Max ”

“ Max asked. "I ain't said nothing at all about a raise. I am coming to see you about something entirely different already."
[Pg 172] Elkan looked ostentatiously at his watch.
"I ain't got too much time, Merech," he said.
"Nobody's got too much time when it comes to fellers asking for raises, Mr. Lubliner," Max retorted; "aber this here is something else again, as I told you."
"Well, don't beat no bushes round, Merech!" Elkan cried impatiently. "What is it you want from me?"
"I want from you this," Max began huskily: "Might you know Tschaikovsky maybe oder Rimsky-Korsakoff." ”

“ Elkan went on, "I don't like this here Shadchen business. We are living in America, not Russland; and in America if a feller gets married he don't need no help from a Shadchen, Mr. Kapfer."
"No," Kapfer said, "he don't need no help, Lubliner; but, just the same, if some one would come to me any time these five years and says to me, [Pg 102] here is something a nice girl, understand me, with five thousand dollars, y'understand, I would have been married schon long since already." He cleared his throat judicially and sat back in his chair until it rested against the wall. ”

“ On his arm there drooped a lady no longer in her twenties, and from the V-shaped opening in the rear of her dinner gown a medical student could have distinguished with more or less certainty the bones of the cervical vertebræ, the right and left scapula and the articulation of each with the humerus and clavicle.
"That's Miss Feldman," Mrs. Gans whispered. "She's refined like anything, Yetta, and she talks French better as a waiter already."
At this juncture the dinner gong sounded and Yetta rejoined Elkan in the social hall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scheikowitz made an impatient gesture with both hands, suggestive of a dog swimming.
"That's neither here or there, Polatkin," he said. "The point is Elkan should go right uptown and geschwind pack his grip and be down at the Salisbury this afternoon yet, if Yetta would be ready oder not. We couldn't afford to let the ground grow under our feet and that's all there is to it." ”

“ Volkovisk cried; and Kammerman placed his hand affectionately on his protégé's shoulder.
"There's a special Providence that looks after artists," he said as they reëntered the theatre, "whether they paint, write, compose, or design garments."
[Pg 196] CHAPTER FIVE ONE OF ESAU'S FABLES THE MOUSE SCRATCHES THE LION'S BACK; THE LION SCRATCHES THE MOUSE'S BACK "NO, ELKAN," said Louis Stout, of Flugel & Stout. "When you are coming to compare Johnsonhurst mit Burgess Park it's already a molehill to a mountain."
"Burgess Park ain't such high ground neither," Elkan Lubliner retorted. ”

“ Kapfer replied; "and Miss Maslik's a fine, lovely girl. The old man ain't so bad either. He treated me elegant and Fischko thinks I made quite a hit there."
"I ain't asking you about Miss Maslik at all," Elkan said. "I mean Miss Silbermacher"—he hesitated and blushed—"Yetta," he continued, and buried his confusion in the foaming glass of "Phospho-Nervino."
"That's just what I want to talk to you about," Kapfer went on. "Did I understand you are telling Polatkin that you never seen Fischko the Shadchen and he never seen you neither?" ”

“ Elkan said fervently.
"You should get into the air more often," Flaxberg went on. "A feller could get all sorts of things the matter with him staying in a hole like that."
"Gott sei dank I got, anyhow, my health," Elkan commented.
"Sure, I know," Flaxberg said as they reached the street; "but you must got to take care of it too. A feller which he don't get no exercise should ought to eat well, Lubliner. For instance, I bet yer you are taking every day your lunch in a bakery—ain't it?" ”

“ Kapfer explained, "is because, in the first place, it looks pretty schlecht that a feller should meet a girl only once and, without the help of a Shadchen, gets right away engaged to her; and so, with Fischko the Shadchen there, it looks better for you both. Furthermore, in the second place, a girl which is doing housework, Elkan, must got to have an excuse, understand me; otherwise she couldn't get away from her work at all." ”

“ Marcus Polatkin joined in. "A feller shouldn't make a god from his stomach, Elkan, especially when money don't figure at all, so if you would be going down to Egremont Beach, understand me, there's only one place you should stay, y'understand, and that's the New Salisbury." ”

“ For a brief interval Elkan hesitated, but at length he surrendered, and five minutes later he found himself seated opposite Harry Flaxberg in the rear of Wasserbauer's café.
"Yes, Mr. Flaxberg," he said as he commenced the fourth of a series of dill pickles, "compared with a salesman, a cutter is a dawg's life—ain't it?"
[Pg 41] "Well," Flaxberg commented, "he is and he isn't. There's no reason why a cutter shouldn't enjoy life too, Lubliner. A cutter could make money on the side just so good as a salesman. ”

“ Nor was he impeded by a too eager audience, for Markulies and Feinermann had abruptly fled to the farthermost corner of the cutting room, while Marcus and Philip had ducked behind a sample rack; so that he had a clear field for the rush he made at Elkan. He yelled with rage as he dashed wildly across the floor, but the yell terminated with an inarticulate grunt when Elkan stopped the rush with a drive straight from the shoulder. It found a target on Flaxberg's nose, and he crumpled up on the showroom floor. ”

“ Yetta sniffed contemptuously with the impatience of youth at the foibles of senility, as exemplified by the doddering Philip Scheikowitz, aged forty-five, and the valetudinarian Marcus Polatkin, whose hair, albeit unfrosted, had been blighted and in part swept away by the vicissitudes of forty-two winters.
"You can't learn an old dawg young tricks," Elkan declared, "and we might just as well make up our minds to it, Yetta, we would never compete [Pg 153] with such highgrade concerns like B. Gans oder Schwefel & Zucker." ”

“ Polatkin said.
"Sure; why not? A nice girl like Miss—whatever her name is—ain't too good for me, Mr. Polatkin. I got a good business there in Bridgetown, and——"
"But I don't know what for a girl she is at all," Polatkin protested.
"She's got anyhow five thousand dollars," Kapfer retorted, "and when a girl's got five thousand dollars, Mr. Polatkin, beauty ain't even skin-deep."
"Sure, I know," Polatkin agreed; "but so soon as you see Fischko and tell him you ain't Elkan Lubliner he would refuse to take you round to see the girl at all." ”

“ Kapfer said gleefully.
"Once is plenty," Elkan replied.
"No, it ain't," Kapfer rejoined. "You should got to be congradulated more as you think, because this morning I am talking to a feller in the clothing business here and he says B. Maslik is richer as most people believe. ”

“ Moreover, [Pg 48] she was distantly related to Elkan's father; and owing to this kinship her husband, Marx Feinermann, foreman for Kupferberg Brothers, was of the impression that she charged Elkan only three dollars and fifty cents a week. The underestimate more than paid Mrs. Feinermann's millinery bill, and she was consequently under the necessity of buying Elkan's silence with small items of laundry work and an occasional egg for breakfast. This arrangement suited Elkan very well indeed ”

“ A smile spread slowly over Elkan's face as he looked significantly at Louis Stout.
"I don't want your two hundred dollars, Max," he said. "You can have the house and welcome; and you should use the two hundred to pay your painting and plumbing bills."
"That's all right," Louis Stout said; "there is people which will see to it that he does. Also, gentlemen, I want everybody to understand that I claim full commission here from Glaubmann as the only broker in the transaction!" ”

“ Yetta assured [Pg 297] 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. ”

“ Elkan said. "Meshugganeh Max Merech they call him."
"Meshugga he may be," Scheikowitz replied, "but just the same he's got a couple of good idees also, Elkan. Only this morning he makes Redman the designer pretty near crazy when he says that the blue soutache on that new style 2060 kills the blue in the yoke, y'understand; and he was right too, Elkan. Polatkin and me made Redman change it over."
Elkan shrugged again as he put on his hat and coat preparatory to going home.
"A lot our class of trade worries about such things!" he exclaimed. ”