A young Jew was installed as manager. He was sleek and ingratiating in his manner. I tried my hardest to persuade myself that I liked him, upbraiding myself for insular prejudices.
However, Captain Welfare vouched for his integrity and knowledge of the business. He had been born and bred in the Levant, he said, and was an expert in Oriental bric-à-brac. I was compelled to admit, when I saw our emporium as arrayed by him, that he had much of the artistic instinct of his race.
There was in the small window only a single very beautiful Shiraz rug, which hid the interior of the shop, and formed a background for a couple of brass and copper vases inlaid with hammered silver.
Inside, the polished floor was covered with a few more Shiraz and Khorassan rugs. There was a large screen and some chairs of mesharabieh work. Small electric lights, hidden in imitation mosque lamps of Egyptian brasswork, depending from the ceiling, lit the room with a mysterious glow. In the background a couple of luxurious couches flanked a low table whose top was formed of an immense brass tray. Here Turkish coffee and cigarettes were always ready for visitors, whether purchasing or not. On shelves around the sides, the dim light was reflected in stray gleams from brass and copper-ware and pottery, and faintly lit up silks and embroidery, and a museum of native work, curios, and “anticas” from all the countries of the East.
“It’s not in the least like a shop,” I said with an involuntary note of relief, as I sipped a cup of excellent though syrupy coffee.
“It’s like an Eastern Shop,” Edmund explained. “And we’re going to run it on Eastern lines, bargaining, coffee, and a bit of rubbish as ‘backshish,’ and all.”
“There is very much money in that, sir,” said the Barber’s Block, so I had mentally christened our Hebrew manager. He had the delicate beauty of one of those waxen heads on which hair-dressers sometimes exhibit their wigs, and his teeth reminded me of those lovely designs in pearl and coral that one sees displayed in glass cases outside the doors of the humbler kind of dentists.
He had his own atmosphere too, like a perfumed asteroid. He revolted me, and I knew that there was something subtly, disgustingly attractive about him.
“We ask one pound,” he continued, “for something we can sell for eight-and-six and have our profit, and very often we get twelve or fifteen shillings, and the customer is more pleased than if we ask eight-and-six, and he pays it. So we give him some little thing, ‘backshish,’ and almost always he buys something more.”
This account of our business methods was extremely disagreeable to me and I remarked: