“Fifty cents!” The bid came from Gerrit Pon at the other end of the hall. A dashing offer, as a start, in this district where one dollar often represented the profits on a whole load of market truck brought to the city.
Crash! went the potato masher. “Fifty cents I’m bid. Who’ll make it seventy-five? Who’ll make it seventy-five?”
“Sixty!” Johannes Ambuul, a widower, his age more than the sum of his bid.
“Seventy!” Gerrit Pon.
Adam Ooms whispered it—hissed it. “S-s-s-seventy. Ladies and gents, I wouldn’t repeat out loud sucha figger. I would be ashamed. Look at this basket, gents, and then you can say . . . s-s-seventy!”
“Seventy-five!” the cautious Ambuul.
Scarlet, flooding her face, belied the widow’s outward air of composure. Pervus DeJong, standing beside Selina, viewed the proceedings with an air of detachment. High Prairie was looking at him expectantly, openly. The widow bit her red lip, tossed her head. Pervus DeJong returned the auctioneer’s meaning smirk with the mild gaze of a disinterested outsider. High Prairie, Low Prairie, and New Haarlem sat tense, like an audience at a play. Here, indeed, was drama being enacted in a community whose thrills were all too rare.
“Gents!” Adam Ooms’s voice took on a tearful note—the tone of one who is more hurt than angry. “Gents!” Slowly, with infinite reverence, he lifted one corner of the damask cloth that concealed the hamper’s contents—lifted it and peered within as at a treasure. At what he saw there he started back dramatically, at once rapturous, despairing, amazed. He rolled his eyes. He smacked his lips. He rubbed his stomach. The sort of dumb show that, since the days of the Greek drama, has been used to denote gastronomic delight.
“Eighty!” was wrenched suddenly from Goris Von Vuuren, the nineteen-year-old fat and gluttonous son of a prosperous New Haarlem farmer.
Adam Ooms rubbed brisk palms together. “Now then! A dollar! A dollar! It’s an insult to this basket to make it less than a dollar.” He lifted the cover again, sniffed, appeared overcome. “Gents, if it wasn’t for Mrs. Ooms sitting there I’d make it a dollar myself and a bargain. A dollar! Am I bid a dollar!” He leaned far forward over his improvised pulpit. “Did I hear you say a dollar, Pervus DeJong?” DeJong stared, immovable, unabashed. His very indifference was contagious. The widow’s bountiful basket seemed to shrink before one’s eyes. “Eighty-eighty-eighty-eighty—gents! I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to whisper a secret.” His lean face was veined with craftiness. “Gents. Listen. It isn’t chicken in this beautiful basket. It isn’t chicken. It’s”—a dramatic pause—“it’s roast duck!” He swayed back, mopped his brow with his red handkerchief, held one hand high in the air. His last card.