“Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that woman,” answered Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone look with Vladimir.
“I have some goods lying at the railroad station for me,” said a little man with a puckered forehead. “It has been there about a month. ‘Shall I take it to the shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to pillage?’ I thought to myself. Would you really advise me to receive it, doctor?”
Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. “Do you want me to sign a guarantee for it?” he said. “Do you want me to be responsible for the goods? You people are an awful lot.”
“I was merely asking your advice, doctor,” the man with the puckered forehead answered, wretchedly. “You can’t do much business these days, anyhow. The best Gentiles won’t pay. One has nothing but a book full of debts. Besides, when the door flies open one’s soul sinks. And when a Gentile customer comes in you pray God that he may leave your shop as soon as possible. For who knows but his visit may be a put-up job and that all he wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other rowdies to break in?”
“And the Gentile sees your cowardice,” the doctor cut in with an effect of continuing the man’s story, “and becomes arrogant, and this is the way a riot is hatched.” By degrees he resumed his superior manner and his Germanised Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.
“Arrogant!” said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller. “You have told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well, the other day an army officer came into my place with a lady. He selected a ring for her, and when I said it was forty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady away with the ring, and then—you should have seen him break out at me. I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid; but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name. Then I went before his colonel” (the jeweller named the regiment), “but what do you think the colonel said: ‘He’s a nice fellow. I shall never believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he’ll pay you. At a time like this you Jews oughtn’t to press your claims too hard.’ That’s what the colonel said.”
When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it, the doctor flew into a passion.
“Why did you? Why did you?” he growled, stamping his feet, just as he would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his orders. “It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this.”
This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.
“I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on either hand,” he said, “when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot covered full of warts. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to wear such a cap?’ says I. ‘Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty, horrid old thing on your head?’”