“If you are ein richtiger Amerikaner,” he said, “I can show you where to pick up the price of a lodging.”
I nodded. The youth called to the Hebrew to leave his door unlocked, and led the way down the Moosky, across the square, and along a street that flanked a wooded park.
“Esbekieh Gardens, those,” he said. “I’m taking you to the American Mission Hospital. There are eight American preachers there, but your best chance now is Reverend ——. He lives in the third story, first door to the right of the stairway. You will find him studying. He studies until two in the morning. Knock on the door once. He won’t answer; but push it open and begin a hard-luck story right away. Now don’t tell him that you’ve just come to Egypt, nor that you’re a sailor; and, if he asks you if you speak German, say no. Tell him you are a civil engineer, or a plate-layer, or a mason, and that you’ve just walked down from Central Africa—your clothes fit that—and that you could get no work there, or—or that you got sick; yes, that’s better, for he’s an old wise one and knows there’s plenty of work up the river. Tell him you speak only English and that you are an American—that is if you are—and he will give you ten piastres. If you’re not sure you can talk English without a foreign accent—I can’t tell whether you do or not—well, I wouldn’t disturb the old man. He doesn’t like Germans.”
The youth pointed out a door of the Mission and slipped into the blacker night of one of her pillars. I stepped inside, and, mounting to the first landing, sat down to think matters over. The night air of January was too cold to sleep out of doors even should I succeed in hiding where the patrol could not rout me out. But to come at midnight to disturb an aged missionary with a stereotyped tale of woe! Yet I knew the bitter hopelessness of looking for work after a night in the streets, and “a deep breath for breakfast.” Work? Why, of course! Just the point! I must find work before I left Cairo; why could I not ask for a small loan and pay it back?
I continued up the stairs and knocked on the door that had been indicated. There was no response, but a tiny thread of light showed on the threshold. I stepped inside. In the far corner of a small room, a white-haired man closed, over a finger, the book he was reading, and turned the light of a student lamp full upon me. I began my story—not the one the German had plotted—and stated my case briefly. To my dismay, the word “borrow” fell flat.
“I rarely,” said the old man, in a voice that would have chorded well with the last key of a piano, “I rarely give money to a man who has just come to the country. What business has he here without sufficient funds to establish himself? I have never given money to sailors. I know their ways too well. But after long months of daily visits from ‘Americans’ who speak English as if they had learned it in the slums of Berlin, I am glad to see a real American again; though sorry to find that he is without money, and still more so that he is a sailor. Here is a half-dollar”—handing me a ten-piastre piece—“I hope you will not drink quite all of it up. What state are you from?”
“Michigan. You understand I am only borrowing this until I can find work—”
“Young man,” said the missionary, rising to his feet, “you already have the money—the amount I give, if I give at all. No additions to your tale will cause me to offer more. Why, then, attempt to raise false hopes within my breast? So you are from Michigan? I am from Pittsburg. Good night,” and without giving me time for reply, he sat down and lost himself in the pages of his book.
“You were gone a long time,” said the German, as I emerged from the doorway. “You couldn’t show him you were an American?”
I held out the coin in my hand.