The Sound of Thunder Page 8

  “It gives us opportunities,” said Edward. He bent over the catalogue again. “Pa, we’d better have a talk with Ma. She understands things. She’s very worried about the kids. They’re growing up, fast.”

  “The mother will swoon,” said Heinrich, with gloomy positiveness. “It will anger her, your dreams and foolishness. I will stand beside you, while you talk with her, and plead that it is only your youth and then we shall forget it all.”

  Edward smiled. “We’ll talk to Ma tonight,” he said. He pulled out a large glossy piece of cardboard from under the counter and began to letter on it, carefully, “ENGER’S WITH THE FIRST! EXOTIC IMPORTATIONS FOR CHRISTMAS, AS GIFTS OR FOR FAMILY ENJOYMENT! TASTE DELIGHTS BEYOND COMPARE! AFTER DECEMBER FIFTEENTH! WATERFORD DESERVES THE BEST FOR THE BEST PALATES!”

  He set the card on a prominent place near the English tongue and stood back to admire it. Heinrich peered at it with horror. Edward, wetting a pencil between his lips, began to make out an incredible order on some blanks. “We’ll get these in the mails tomorrow, and I’m marking the orders ‘Rush.’”

  “The prices!” exclaimed Heinrich, wildly. “Who will pay those prices? Have you considered our neighbors? Working people, poor people! People who must buy our quarters of butter, or only a pound of flour, or half a pound of coffee, or a quarter pound of tea. Or must go on the ticket and pay next wages. Or must buy but two slices of ham.”

  “I’m after the carriage trade,” said Edward, easily, printing his orders. “They go to Albany once a month for these very things or send to New York. Why should they? Why shouldn’t we have the money?”

  Heinrich sat down abruptly on his stool. His dark little eyes sparkled with real anger on his son. “And the carriage trade, the ladies and gentlemen, will come to this small shop, their horses shining, and the livery and with the coachmen? And the silver bells sounding, perhaps, on their sleighs? To this shop, this delicatessen?”

  “Why not?” said Edward calmly. “We’ve just got to advertise.” He pulled a small pad of paper toward him, wet his pencil again. “Here’s the ad for the two Waterford papers: ‘Why send to New York or Albany for the imported delicacies you love? Enger’s has them!’ Now I’ll list what I’ve ordered. Um. Now, Pa, wait a minute. You confuse me, whimpering like that. ‘Enger’s quaint Old World Shop. Sussex and Bradford Streets. Both phones. Deliveries made if desired.’”

  “Ach, Mein Gott!” shrieked Heinrich, rolling his head in his hands. “You will ruin me, you will have us on the street, in the snow. Eddie, this you shall not do!”

  “I’ll make the deliveries myself, and when business gets better, we’ll hire a couple of kids, too,” said Edward, ignoring his father’s frenzied hysterics. He had gone through this many times before, but not, he admitted to himself, over such a stupendous idea as this.

  Without haste he picked up one of the two telephones on the counter and called the owner of the shops on each side of the delicatessen while Heinrich, blinking with stupefaction and despair, could only sit in paralysis. “Mr. Enreich?” said Edward in a deep voice. “This is Edward Enger, your tenant. My father and I have decided to rent those two stores next door to us. They’ve been empty for nearly a year. We’re willing to meet a fair rent, better than you had before, if you can give us a promise that you’ll break down the walls between and throw all three stores together, completely finished, before December fifteenth. We’re expanding.”

  Mr. Enreich, a middle-aged and wealthy, childless man who greatly admired Edward and who knew him well, and had often dreamed that Edward was his son, chuckled. “Up to the fine old tricks again, eh, Eddie? One of these days, Eddie, and I shall help you. Did I not tell you many times that it is you who have the Enger brains? Ach, but you would not listen. All those geniuses. Ja. But the genius is you, the American genius. Who is it that made the delicatessen? It was Eddie.”

  Edward smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Enreich. But about those stores.”

  “So it is the expanding, hein? Good. It is what I suggested to the father six months ago.” He relapsed into “low” German. “The father did not tell you? That is to be understood, yes. He was very frightened, he has the timid soul. Eddie, I will break down the walls for you. I will make you a good rent. I will have it ready for Christmas, two weeks before. That English tongue—it is very good. Save me two tins. You are expanding on the imported delicacies?” He chuckled again. “Good luck again to you, my genius.”

  Edward thoughtfully replaced the receiver. “He said no, is it not so?” asked Heinrich, eagerly. “The Herr Manager of the coke mills and such said no? That is to be expected. Ach, you should not have trespassed on his office, at his desk!”

  “The Herr Manager said yes,” Edward replied. “He’s very pleased. He likes—us. He thinks everything’s fine.”

  Heinrich moaned. “The Herr Manager is a burgher. He has no soul. He knows nothing of music. He is not impressed that the mother is a Von. He scoffs at geniuses. But he was born in Prussia, of no noble family, and we know those Prussians! He wishes to ruin us!”

  He bowed his head dramatically, “It is enough. When the mother knows that the Herr Manager, the Prussian brute, the Prussian burgher, the man with no soul, approves of this nonsense, the mother will set her foot down firmly and we shall have peace.”

  Edward did not reply. He was pacing the small floor now, frowning, planning. Heinrich watched him, more affrighted than ever. Edward said, “We’ll have one side given over to the imported canned meats and the bulk meats. Over here, we’ll have the other delicacies, on a special round table draped with a lace cloth. Only a few tins and cans at a time. Then we must buy one of those new glass counter iceboxes, for the tinned fish and caviar and the paté. Blocks of ice, the tins tossed among them. They don’t need ice, but it gives a clean fresh look, and people like that. A row of electric lights above them. We’ve got to get rid of this gaslight. Four big electric globes from the ceiling.” His intense gray eyes were sparkling brilliantly behind their thick black lashes. “No more sawdust on the floor. Blocked linoleum, black and white. Like in the catalogue of the big New York stores. A display.”

  “My son is mad, mad,” whispered Heinrich with genuine terror. “What is this that my son would do?”

  “I think a thousand dollars would do it all,” said Edward meditatively.

  Heinrich lifted his head, cheered. “The mother will refuse,” he said. “The mother is wise. Ach, here are some customers.”

  At noon Edward went home. He knew his mother would be alone, the children at school, including fifteen-year-old David, who was in second-year high. Maria was polishing the already glistening floor of the tiny dark parlor, with its navy-blue velvet draperies, its shining hard tables, its poisonous green settees and repulsively carved red velvet chairs. Her wonderful hair was wrapped in a big handkerchief and a huge white apron covered her brown woolen dress. A white handkerchief, with lace edge, peeped from her sleeve as usual. She said coldly, “You have left the father in the shop? You did not have your meal there?”

  “I have to talk to you, Mother,” said Edward. “It is a matter of the necessity and I must have your advice.”

  “You are careless with your syntax,” said Maria, but she formally removed her kerchief and her apron, put them out of sight, and sat down with her natural stately dignity. On these occasions, when she talked alone with Edward on business matters or matters concerning the family, a curious rapport and understanding rose immediately between them, and they conversed as respectful and self-respecting equals, having esteem for each other’s point of view. Edward did not wonder at this; he merely accepted it. When other more personal occasions arose, concerning Edward’s life or his infrequent controversies with his brothers and sister, Maria treated him sternly or impatiently and filled him with sheepish rage or dread or a silent resentment.

  It was Edward, of all the children, who had the best command of formal German, and this sometimes irritated Maria—though she alone, of all the family includin
g Heinrich, did not underestimate Edward. The boy had earnestly studied his parents’ native language, more to please them than to acquire perfect facility in it, and this Maria knew also, though she never spoke of it. The other children considered German “foreign” and inferior, and only spoke it at home, and then not often.

  Edward sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing his mother, while a December blizzard began to lash the little windows with their heavy blue velvet draperies. The room was cold; Maria conserved on fuel during the day. The panes of glass became moist, and crystals of ice crept along the lower edges. Edward was careful not to shudder. He told his mother of his plans and his conversation with Mr. Enreich.

  “There will be no money for the educations unless we expand, and very quickly,” he concluded. “In two years David will be ready for his serious music studies. In three years Sylvia will need theatrical education. We have not come, of course, to Gregory and Ralph, who are younger. Is this small shop to pour out gold easily? Or shall it be shown the older children that they must work for their educations, if possible—as others do, I have heard—waiting on the tables in the universities or working outside their classroom hours?”

  “That is not to be considered,” said Maria. “My children are not vagabonds.”

  “Then we must have some courage,” said Edward. “We must risk the one thousand dollars. We shall not fail.”

  Maria thoughtfully smoothed her handkerchief on one massive knee. She had known great poverty and humiliation in her life, as the daughter of a Herr Professor in a very small school in Munich. She had come to her more affluent relatives in Dorfinger almost penniless, even after three years of being a Fräulein to an English family. She knew the value of money, and understood only too well that if poverty is not a crime it is treated by the world as such. The thousand dollars Edward spoke about now was the harvest of two years of very hard work. She glanced up and saw his young eyes and their inflexible surety.

  “The father is afraid,” she said, and smiled her cold and infrequent smile.

  “The father,” said Edward very gently, “is always afraid. He is very kind and very innocent. He is also worried.”

  Again Maria gave that significant smile. “It does no good to worry. Worry is a waste, unless it is accompanied by a plan. Then, when one carries out a plan, there is no time to worry.”

  Edward sighed and smiled. He had won. “You, Mother, will speak to him about it? He must not know that I have gone behind his back.”

  “Do I do that?” asked Maria haughtily. “Such a thing is ill bred. I shall speak to him tonight as if it is my own suggestion.” She paused. “You said that the Herr Manager Enreich hinted of assistance to you. Why did you not suggest that he assist the geniuses, as a patron?”

  Edward stood up, trying not to scowl. “The Herr Manager is businessman and not interested in geniuses. I do not think he would understand about being a patron.”

  Again Maria was thoughtful, scrutinizing her son. She said, “In America it is a genius to be a good businessman. I think you are that genius, Edward.”

  She had never complimented him before, and Edward’s eyes brightened. He took a step toward his mother, involuntarily, but was interrupted by the loud and furious banging of the kitchen door. A boy shouted, “Ma, where are you, Ma!”

  “David,” said Maria with consternation. “Why is he home? Is he ill?” She rose quickly just as David charged vehemently into the parlor. He was taken aback at seeing Edward, then dismissed him and turned to his mother.

  “The teacher’s an idiot,” he said in English. “I suggested Mozart for the Christmas theme and the play. Sylvia’s directing the play and she wants Mozart. And the teacher doesn’t want Mozart! She wants the silly little American Christmas songs! I said no. And she said that she’d choose somebody else for the piano. If that wouldn’t make a fellow dippy and go out of his mind, I’d like to know what would!”

  Edward was interested. He said, “Look, Dave, the kids like the songs they know for Christmas. What does it matter to you what you play for them?”

  David swung on him passionately. “What would a fool, smelling of pickles and garlic, know of anything?” he demanded. “Shut up, will you?”

  David was taller than Edward, who was himself unusually tall for his age. But David was as thin as a long stalk of grass and very dark and very elegant and temperamental. His cheap, neat clothing hung on his elongated body as if the suit he wore had cost over a hundred dollars rather than fifteen, and his shoes were polished to an almost impossible glitter. Everything about him seemed “stretched out,” as Edward had said, from his narrow and mobile face, dark to extreme sallowness, from his wide, thin mouth with its sensitive and tremulous corners, from his slender nose with its aquiline hint and flaring nostrils, to his spare but jutting chin almost coming to a point. His fine black hair rolled back from a high forehead and was never disturbed, no matter what his temper. He gave a tubercular impression, but he was extremely sturdy as were all the Enger children. All his movements were quick and vivid and co-ordinated.

  “If your teacher won’t have Mozart, are you going to bow out of the Christmas business?” asked Edward, undisturbed by his brother’s gibe.

  “No!” cried David. “I need audiences!”

  “Then why don’t you do what she wants?” said Edward reasonably. “She’s got a right to choose and so do the kids.”

  “Quiet,” said Maria with icy anger. “What do you know of these things, Edward? Is my son, the pianist, to be insulted this way?”

  Edward shrugged. “I don’t see what else he can do,” he remarked. He picked up his cap and worn overcoat, which he had inherited from David, nodded to his mother, and turned to go. But he was almost knocked down by the wild charge of a young girl who burst into the parlor in a mood almost as furious as David’s.

  “I won’t, I won’t!” she shrieked. “I will not direct a play about fuzzy lambs and Christmas carols and silly babies bouncing around in hay! Where’s David—?” She saw her oldest brother and threw herself dramatically into a chair. “I’m through with that school. I’m not going back, and if Dave’s got a brain in his head, he won’t either!”

  “There’s a matter of law,” said Edward anxiously. “You’re only thirteen, Sylvia.”

  “Shut up, boob!” howled Sylvia, and burst into excitable tears. She bent her head on her black cotton knees and wept noisily. David came to her, walking with carefully dignified steps, and put a narrow hand on her bobbing head. Sylvia, at thirteen, was not particularly prepossessing, being all spindly arms and legs like a dark spider, her fine black hair pulled back from a white and bony face in two long pigtails, her tilted black eyes starting from their sockets in an aghast expression. Her white shirtwaist and plaid skirt only emphasized her general gauntness, and the little red ribbons at the end of her plaits seemed pathetically incongruous.

  “What do you know about an artist’s soul?” asked David. He gave Edward a devastating look, then turned to his mother. “You see how it is,” he added.

  “I see how it is,” said Maria sternly. “But this is America. What can an artist do?”

  He can stop being a damn fool, thought Edward, irreverently. Then he crushed down the thought. Who was he to judge, who was not a genius? He was ashamed of himself. He walked slowly and despondently into the little dim dining room with its big oval table which reflected back the stark and shifting light that drifted through the one window. The eight rigid chairs were lined up against a latticed wall all somber crimson roses and twisting green leaves. The sideboard, pushed into a corner, seemed too frail for Maria’s family silver of a big German tea set, and its high shelves bulged with Bavarian china. The rugless floor was no less polished than the silver, and Edward, as usual, slid on it and caught his hip against the table. It was deathly cold in the room, for it had no means of heat except from the kitchen, and the kitchen door was closed. Edward shivered, for all his thick, rough clothes, and absently rubbed his hip as he looked thr
ough the crimson-draped windows at the blank, clapboarded wall of the house next door. Darkness was falling, as the snow fell. Edward could hear Sylvia’s wailing and David’s perorations and Maria’s indignant voice behind him. He went into the kitchen, held his hands over the stove lids, and warmed them. He shook his head as if talking to himself. The door opened and Maria walked solidly into the kitchen. She frowned. “I thought you had returned to the shop,” she said. The rapport and understanding between mother and son had gone, as it always went when others of the family were in the house.

  “Ma,” said Edward, hopelessly. “I’d send Dave and Sylvia back to school right now if I were you.” He looked at the alarm clock on its little shelf near the sink, “If they hurry up, they’ll only be about five minutes late.”

  “Were you asked?” said Maria.

  Again Edward shook his head. He pulled on his woolen mittens and went out into the increasing storm. He walked slowly, his head bent. About his feet the sandlike snow whirled in miniature cyclones, boiling almost to his knees and sloping from the somber sky. The stiff and empty trees screamed and lashed; the snow was so fine that little rivers of it ran between the cobblestones, twisting and turning. The houses huddled together; drifts were already gathering on wooden steps and on the edges of porches. Chimneys fumed timorously, and roofs blew with white clouds. Edward’s face burned and stung and turned red. He rubbed his ears as he walked, thinking. David had missed school too much since September. There was no law that compelled a young man to attend school after his fourteenth birthday, but still he ought to take advantage of the opportunity, thought Edward. David “despised” school. It was filled with numbskulls of boys and girls and idiots of teachers. Yet, Edward reflected with worry, David’s report cards were very poor, though his deportment was listed as above average. Sylvia’s cards were as bad, except for English, and the younger children’s cards bore the lowest marks. Only he, Edward, had made an excellent record in school.