Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [134]
Lazar had become everything Gilbert longed to be but wasn’t and couldn’t. Together with a shyster lawyer, Gilbert made it a living hell for his cousin to collect the four thousand dollars from Hyman’s will. In trust and innocence, Lazar signed a half-dozen documents that guaranteed he’d be indebted to Gilbert for years.
“If your father, Hyman, God rest his soul, had lived to see this, he would turn over in his grave,” Hannah declared.
“Business is business,” Gilbert retorted.
“So, didn’t I tell you?” Hannah moaned later to Lazar, wringing her hands in disgust. “Gilbert Diamond is a cockroach with the flat feet and bifocal eyes and the limp handshake. Not even the Czar’s army would have taken him.”
Lazar found a drugstore for sale in a good location, across from the trolley car barn, at the intersection of North Avenue and Pennsylvania. It was a transfer corner for the number 8 and 31 streetcars, and at five o’clock business was brisk in cigarettes and magazines. Along with active foot traffic, it had a nice six-stool, two-table soda fountain and a couple of shvartzers with bicycles for home delivery. It could have been a first-class money-maker, except that Gilbert cut himself in as the 51 percent partner before he would release any funds. Lazar was in for a struggle.
Gilbert’s own inheritance from his father had been a bitter disappointment. Hyman had given away too much. Always with the relatives. No matter what the mishpocha carried out of his father’s store, no one ever got a bill. Gilbert convinced himself that Lazar was lucky to get what he did: As for himself, he’d help the family only as a last resort.
No one took Moses into account, so Lazar became the titular head of the family. But if he had returned from France with Joan of Arc as his wife, she wouldn’t have won Hannah’s approval. Phew! What they’d heard about those Frenchwomen. Enough to make a cat stand on its tail. The Frenchwomen were all you-know-whats. Hannah prayed that their offspring didn’t have congenital deficiencies.
It was traditional that the entire family, over twenty-five strong in cousins, aunts, uncles, and brothers and sisters, made a duty call to Hannah’s house on Sunday.
Even Hannah’s older sister, Sonia, and her no-goodnik husband, Jake, and their kids attended. Gilbert and Minnie and their pasty-faced children usually arrived late, so they could leave early and avoid a fight. To miss a week’s homage at the matriarch’s was unconscionable. When Lazar and Simone and her son, Pierre, failed to show up two weeks in a row, Hannah got the message. She was clever enough not to make a big tsimmes about it, for fear that Lazar might really leave the fold.
Simone’s pregnancy, that agony shared by all women, was plenty enough reason for Hannah to worm herself into the good graces of her daughter-in-law. After a while the two women developed a genuine affection for each other, and also genuine respect.
As a war veteran, Dominick was given a choice of a number of “soft” beats. He took the first opening as a motorcycle cop for Druid Hill Park and the placid surrounding neighborhood. Moving out of Angelo’s home was not accomplished without a major Italian family brawl. Dominick bought a small row house of his own, near his precinct station. As his reward, Pearl became pregnant again.
Hannah’s two new eynikles were born a few weeks apart, one in Mercy Hospital and one in Sinai. Hannah muffled her consternation that Pearl had a boy. After all, little baby boys should not be condemned for the sins of their fathers.
OUT OF CLEVELAND, the Singers were not faring so well. Al was no go-getter. He hung out at the Jewish Veterans’ Club, playing acey-deucey and cribbage day and night, between jobs. For Fanny, one winter in Siberian Cleveland was enough. Fanny nagged, the baby screamed, home had become a nightmare.
Al was no tower of strength. Faced with the