Abe and Mawruss Part 31

"He's a dangerous feller, Abe," Morris commented. "He don't never stop at nothing to sell goods."

"Well, I wasn't much behind him, Mawruss," Abe said. "When he smells it, I smell it. He wets his finger, I wet my finger. Everything what that sucker does to that fiddle, I did. He couldn't get nothing on me.

Mawruss. If he would offer to eat the fiddle, y'understand, I would got just so good appet.i.te as he got it, Mawruss, and don't you forget it. I ain't going to let go so easy."

"Might you couldn't help yourself maybe," Morris commented.

"You shouldn't worry, Mawruss," Abe concluded. "I sold Felix Geigermann since way before the Spanish War already, and I would sooner expect my own brother--supposing I got one--to turn us down as him."

Despite Abe's optimism, however, the order for spring goods that Felix Geigermann bestowed on them a month later fell short of their expectations by over five hundred dollars.

"Business couldn't be so good with Felix this year, Mawruss," Abe commented.

"Don't you jolly yourself, Abe," Morris replied. "It ain't so much that business is bad with Felix as it is better with Klinger & Klein. Them two cut-throats ain't paying Rabiner good money for only playing the pianner. He's got to sell goods too."

"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Let him go ahead and _spiel_ pianner till he's blue in the face. Sooner or later Geigermann would find out what stickers them Klinger & Klein garments is, and then Moe Rabiner couldn't sell him no more of them goods, not if he would be a whole orchestra already."

The personality of Aaron Sh.e.l.lak was simply thrown away on the garment trade. His lean, scholarly face, surmounted by a shock of wavy brown hair, would have a.s.sured his success as a virtuoso, and no one knew this better than his brother, Professor Ladislaw Wcelak, under whose tuition he had struggled through the intricacies of the first and second positions.

"If you would only forget you ain't got a pair of shears in your right hand, Aaron," the professor said, "and listen to what I am telling you, in two years' time you are making more money than all the garment cutters together. All you got to do is to play just halfway good."

"I suppose you're a millionaire, ain't it?" Aaron rejoined. "And you can play fiddle like a streak." The professor heaved a great sigh as he pa.s.sed his hand over his bald head.

"With your hair, Aaron," he said, "I could make fifty thousand a year on concert towers alone, to say nothing of two recitals up on Fifty-seventh Street. But if a feller only got one arm, Aaron, he would better got a show to be a fiddle virtuoso as if he would be bald.".

Thus encouraged Aaron persevered with his practice for some months; but, despite the patient instruction of his brother Louis the garment cutter's wrist still handicapped him.

"That's a legato phrase," Louis Sh.e.l.lak cried impatiently, one night in mid-February. "With one bow you got to play it."

"Which phrase are you talking about," Aaron asked--"the one that goes 'Ta-ra-reera, ta-ra-reera'?"

He sang the two measures in a clear tenor voice, whereat Louis s.n.a.t.c.hed the violin from his brother's grasp and, seating himself at the piano, he struck the major triad of C natural with force sufficient to wreck the instrument.

"Sing 'Ah'!" he commanded.

Aaron attacked the high C like a veteran and Professor Ladislaw Wcelak leaped from the piano stool with an inarticulate cry. Immediately thereafter he secured a strangle-hold on his brother and kissed him Budapest fas.h.i.+on on both cheeks.

"To-morrow night already you will commence lessons with the best teacher money could buy," he declared.

"Whose money?" Aaron Sh.e.l.lak inquired, as he wiped away the marks of his brother's affection--"yours or mine?"

"Me--I ain't got no money," Louis admitted.

"Me neither," Aaron said. He was the sole support of his mother and sisters, for Louis, as _chef d'orchestre_ in a Second Avenue restaurant, constantly antic.i.p.ated his salary over _stuss_ or _tarrok_ in the rear of his employer's cafe.

"How much would it take?" he asked Louis after a silence of several minutes.

Louis shrugged.

"Who knows?" he replied. "Fifty dollars _oder_ a hundred, perhaps."

Aaron nodded; and the next day, when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's place of business, he carried with him his violin and bow in a black leather case. Thus it happened that the strains of G.o.dard's _Berceuse_ saluted Abe as he stepped from the elevator that morning; and without removing his coat he made straight for the cutting room.

"_Koos.h.!.+_" he bellowed. "What are we running here, anyhow, Sh.e.l.lak--a cloak-and-suit house _oder_ a theayter?"

Aaron hastily replaced the instrument in its case.

"I am only showing it to Nathan," he mumbled by way of explanation.

"Might he would like to buy it maybe."

"If you want to sell fiddles, Sh.e.l.lak," Abe said, "do it outside business hours. That's all I got to say."

He proceeded at once to the showroom, where Morris was peeling off his overcoat. The latter greeted Abe with a sour nod. "I am sick and tired of it, Abe," he declared. "Everybody is stealing our business."

"What d'ye mean, everybody's stealing our business?" Abe asked.

"Last night I am sitting in the Harlem Winter Garden with Felix Geigermann, and Leon Sammet b.u.t.ts in on us and tells Geigermann he's got a cousin which he could play sh.e.l.lo, and Geigermann says that he should come around to the house next Tuesday and play it with him and Rabiner."

Abe shrugged his shoulders.

"My _tzuris_ if he does, Mawruss," he said; "because while I don't know nothing about this here game, y'understand, a good way to lose a customer is to play cards with him."

"What are you talking nonsense, Abe?" Morris cried. "Sh.e.l.lo ain't cards.

A sh.e.l.lo is a fiddle which you play it with your knees."

"For my part he could play it with his nose, Mawruss," Abe declared hotly. "Do you mean to told me, Mawruss, that a business man like Geigermann is going to buy a line of goods like Sammet Brothers got it just because Leon Sammet's cousin plays a fiddle with his knees?"

"Yow! His cousin?" Morris exclaimed. "He's as much got a cousin which he plays the sh.e.l.lo as I got one. He's going to give some greenhorn a couple of dollars to go with him to Geigermann's house and play the fiddle; and the first thing you know, Abe, Geigermann is buying from him a big bill of goods and all the time our orders gets smaller and smaller till we lose his trade altogether."

Abe laughed mirthlessly and bit the end off his after-breakfast cigar.

"If I would worry myself the way you do, Mawruss, every time a compet.i.tor says 'h.e.l.lo' to a customer of ours," he said as he turned away, "I would gone crazy in the head _schon_ long since ago already."

Nevertheless he pondered Leon Sammet's move all the morning, and after Morris had gone to lunch he paced the showroom floor for more than a quarter of an hour in an effort to formulate some plan for regaining Geigermann's business. His reflections were at length interrupted by a faint sc.r.a.ping from the rear of the store. Once more Aaron Sh.e.l.lak was entertaining the cutting-room staff with a pianissimo rendition of G.o.dard's _Berceuse_; but even as Abe tiptoed across the showroom to crush the performance with an explosive "_Koos.h.!.+_" the melody ceased.

"That's a genu-ine Amati," Aaron said, "and you could see for yourself--inside here is the label."

Abe stopped short. The word "Amati" brought back to him the scene of Felix Geigermann's musicale, and his heart thumped unpleasantly as he listened to Aaron's exhibition of salesmans.h.i.+p.

"Moreover," Aaron continued, "here is the scroll which it is ever so much finer as them other fiddles you could buy for fifty _oder_ sixty dollars. Look at the varnish on the back, Nathan--s.h.i.+nes like rubies, ain't it?"

"What would I do with a fiddle, Aaron?" Nathan Schenkman, the s.h.i.+pping clerk, asked.

"You I ain't saying at all," Aaron said; "but you got a little boy Nathan."

"He ain't a year old yet," Nathan interrupted.