O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 28

"No--no--no!" This from young Leon, beating at his mother's skirts.

Again the upraised but never quite descending hand of his father.

"By golly, I'll 'no--no' you!"

"Abrahm--go way! Baby, what did papa do?"

Then Mr. Kantor broke into an actual tarantella of rage, his hands palms up and dancing.

"'What did papa do?' she asks. She's got easy asking. 'What did papa do?' The whole shop, I tell you. A sheep with a baa inside when you squeeze on him--games--a horn so he can holler my head off--such a knife like Izzy's with a scissors in it! 'Leon,' I said, ashamed for Naftel, 'that's a fine knife like Izzy's so you can cut up with.' 'All right then'--when I see how he hollers--'such a box full of soldiers to have war with.' 'Dollar seventy-five,' says Naftel. 'All right then,' I says--when I seen how he keeps hollering--'give you a dollar fifteen for 'em.' I should make myself small for fifteen cents more. 'Dollar fifteen,' I says--anything so he should shut up with his hollering for what he seen in the window."

"He seen something in the window he wanted, Abrahm?"

"Didn't I tell you? A feedle! A four-dollar feedle! A moosiker, so we should have another feedler in the family for some thirty-cents lessons."

"Abrahm--you mean--he--our Leon--wanted a violin?"

"'Wanted,' she says. I could potch him again this minute for how he wanted it! _Du_--you little b.u.m you--_Chammer_--_Momser_--I'll feedle you!"

Across Mrs. Kantor's face as she knelt there in the shapeless cotton-stuff uniform of poverty, through the very tenement of her body, a light had flashed up into her eyes. She drew her son closer, crushing his puny cheek up against hers, cupping his bristly little head in her by no means immaculate palms.

"He wanted a violin--it's come, Abrahm! The dream of all my life--it's come! I knew it must be one of my children if I waited long enough--and prayed enough. A musician! He wants a violin. He cried for a violin. My baby! Why, darlink, mamma'll sell her clothes off her back to get you a violin. He's a musician, Abrahm! I should have known it the way he's fooling always around the chimes and the bells in the store!"

Then Mrs. Kantor took to rocking his head between her palms.

"_Oi--oi!_ The mother is crazier as her son. A moosican! A _Fresser_ you mean. Such an eater, it's a wonder he ain't twice too big instead of twice too little for his age."

"That's a sign, Abrahm; they all eat big. For all we know he's a genius.

I swear to you, Abrahm, all the months before he was born, I prayed for it. Each one before they came, I prayed it should be the one. I thought that time the way our Isadore ran after the organ-grinder he would be the one. How could I know it was the monkey he wanted? When Isadore wouldn't take it, I prayed my next one and then my next one should have the talent. I've prayed for it, Abrahm. If he wants a violin, please, he should have it."

"Not with my money."

"With mine! I've got enough saved, Abrahm. Them three extra dollars right here inside my own waist, that I saved toward that cape down on Grand Street. I wouldn't have it now the way they say the wind blows up them--"

"I tell you the woman's crazy!"

"I feel it! I know he's got talent! I know my children so well. A--a father don't understand. I'm so next to them. It's like I can tell always everything that will happen to them--it's like a pain--somewheres here--in back of my heart."

"A pain in the heart she gets!"

"For my own children I'm always a prophet, I tell you. You think I didn't know that--that terrible night after the pogrom after we got out of Kief to cross the border! You remember, Abrahm, how I predicted it to you then--how our Mannie would be born too soon and--and not right from my suffering? Did it happen on the ship to America just the way I said it would? Did it happen just exactly how I predicted our Izzy would break his leg that time playing on the fire-escape? I tell you, Abrahm, I get a real pain here under my heart that tells me what comes to my children. Didn't I tell you how Esther would be the first in her confirmation-cla.s.s and our baby Boris would be red-headed? At only five years, our Leon all by himself cries for a fiddle--get it for him, Abrahm--get it for him!"

"I tell you, Sarah, I got a crazy woman for a wife! It ain't enough we celebrate eight birthdays a year with one-dollar presents each time and copper goods every day higher. It ain't enough that right to-morrow I got a fifty-dollar note over me from Sol Ginsberg--a four-dollar present she wants for a child that don't even know the name of a feedle!"

"Leon baby, stop hollering--papa will go back and get the fiddle for you now before supper. See--mamma's got money here in her waist--"

"Papa will go back for the feedle not--three dollars she's saved for herself he can holler out of her for a feedle!"

"Abrahm, he's screaming so he--he'll have a fit."

"He should have two fits."

"Darlink--"

"I tell you the way you spoil your children it will some day come back on us."

"It's his birthday night, Abrahm--five years since his little head first lay on the pillow next to me."

"All right--all right--drive me crazy because he's got a birthday."

"Leon baby--if you don't stop hollering you'll make yourself sick.

Abrahm, I never saw him like this--he's green--"

"I'll green him. Where is that old feedle from Isadora--that seventy-five-cents one?"

"I never thought of that! You broke it that time you got mad at Isadore's lessons. I'll run down. Maybe it's with the junk behind the store. I never thought of that fiddle, Leon darlink--wait--mamma'll run down and look--wait, Leon, till mamma finds you a fiddle."

The raucous screams stopped then suddenly, and on their very l.u.s.tiest crest, leaving an echoing gash across silence. On willing feet of haste, Mrs. Kantor wound down backward the high, ladderlike staircase that led to the bra.s.s shop.

Meanwhile, to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour, had a.s.sembled the house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium, delirium-tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley din of things. Isadore, already astride his chair, well into center-table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound loaf; Esther Kantor, old at ch.o.r.es, settled an infant into the high chair, careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib.

"Papa, Izzy's eating first again."

"Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up or you'll get a potch you won't soon forget."

"Say, pop--"

"Don't 'say pop' me! I don't want no street-b.u.m freshness from you!"

"I mean, papa, there was an uptown swell in, and she bought one of them seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price,"

"_Schlemmil--Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the sink.

"Didn't I always tell you it's the first price times two when you see up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough a slummer must pay for her nosiness?"

There entered then, on poor shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor so marred in the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the down upon his face, and in growth unr.e.t.a.r.ded by any great nervosity of system, his vacuity of face was not that of childhood but rather as if his light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so terribly and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells closed against himself.

At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly.

"Giddy-ap!" he cried. "Giddy-ap!"

And then Mannie, true to habit, would scamper and scamper.

Up out of the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one string and a broken back.

"See, Leon--what mamma got! A violin! A fiddle! Look--the bow, too, I found. It ain't much, baby, but it's a fiddle."

"Aw, ma--that's my old violin--gimme--I want it--where'd you find--"