"Humoresque"

"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-class 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 lustiest 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 brass shop.

Meanwhile, to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour, had assembled 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 chores, 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-bum 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 unretarded 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--"

"Hush up, Izzy! This ain't yours no more. See, Leon, what mamma brought you! A violin!"

"Now, you little Chammer, you got a feedle, and if you ever let me hear you holler again for a feedle, by golly if I don't--"

From his corner, Leon Kantor reached out, taking the instrument and fitting it beneath his chin, the bow immediately feeling, surely and lightly for string.

"Look, Abrahm! He knows how to hold it! What did I tell you? A child that never in his life seen a fiddle, except a beggar's on the street!"

Little Esther suddenly cantered down-floor, clapping her chubby hands.

"Looky--looky--Leon!"

The baby ceased clattering his spoon against the wooden bib. A silence seemed to shape itself.

So black and so bristly of head, his little clawlike hands hovering over the bow, Leon Kantor withdrew a note, strangely round and given up almost sobbingly from the single string. A note of warm twining quality, like a baby's finger.

"Leon--darlink!"

Fumbling for string and for notes the instrument could not yield up to him, the birdlike mouth began once more to open widely and terribly into the orificial O.

It was then Abrahm Kantor came down with a large hollow resonance of palm against the aperture, lifting his small son and depositing him plop upon the family album.

"Take that! By golly, one more whimper out of you and if I don't make you black-and-blue, birthday or no birthday! Dish up, Sarah, quick, or I'll give him something to cry about."

The five pink candles had been lighted, burning pointedly and with slender little smoke wisps. Regarding them owlishly, the tears dried on Leon's face, his little tongue licking up at them.

"Look how solemn he is, like he was thinking of something a million miles away except how lucky he is he should have a pink birthday-cake! Uh--uh--uh! Don't you begin to holler again--Here, I'm putting the feedle next to you--uh--uh--uh!"

To a meal plentifully ladled out directly from stove to table, the Kantor family drew up, dipping first into the rich black soup of the occasion. All except Mrs. Kantor.

"Esther, you dish up; I'm going somewhere. I'll be back in a minute."

Contents