Books › The Red Book 1911-10: Vol 17 Iss 6, 1911 › scan 99
Scan 99
The Red Book 1911-10: Vol 17 Iss 6, 1911
30 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. Printed page 1060. See the scan on archive.org.
1day; it was not worth while to go out on Saturday. So he sat in a chair with his violin on his knees, read his newspaper and watched his wife busy about her household affairs. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye he reflected that it had not been very difficult to deceive her.
3"Lying have I not much done," he thought. "Only little lies, quite little, here and there," his mind qualified.
5The Saturday and Sunday afforded him a much needed rest.
7"A month yet I can the flat keep," was his Sunday night decision. "Thereto reach still the savings."
9He regretted for the first time the fact that his bank account was not larger. The consciousness of their age had never been very real either to him or his wife. Their cheeks were still ruddy, and Herr Amsler stood five feet eleven in his stockings, and weighed two hundred pounds. With such an equipment he had fearlessly undertaken the education of his wife's three orphaned nieces in Germany. They were all married now, God be thanked!—else the complication of life at present would have been even more appalling.
11On Monday Herr Amsler began the search afresh. It was on Wednesday of the third week that he felt the pressure of necessity. His leeway was drawing to a close.
13"I must find it," he muttered. "Today I must find it."
15His shoes were quite worn down at the heels, yet he hesitated to take them to a cobbler's for the necessary repairs. And he had begun to go without his lunches. "To miss the coffee so much, that is foolishness," he told himself.
17That morning he caught sight of one of his colleagues in the distance; it was Herscher, the trombone player, his friend for many years. Herscher's red, open face shone benevolently; under his curly, yellow hair the little, blue eyes twinkled. Herr Amsler, at sight of the familiar, short, rotund figure with protuberant stomach, hurried down a side-street like a guilty thing.
19"No, those I cannot see," he whispered. "None of those."
21He wondered whether Herscher had recognized him. In the sweetness of his nature a tiny seed of bitterness was beginning to sprout. None of his friends of the orchestra had been near him during those three and a half terrible weeks. Yet he had not asked them not to come, but only to guard his secret. The glimpse of Herscher had quite unnerved him; he felt physically weak. This would not do! "Vorwärts!" he gave the word of command, and obeyed it with military precision, shoulders squared. "Wohin?" cried out his lonely heart of a wanderer.
23He had been on his way to the pawnbroker's when he had seen Herscher. Now he could not go. Leave it—to-day—the only friend he had left?
25"Where I go this day, come you also," he breathed, holding his violin-case tight in his cramped hands, until they hurt him.
27The city with its congested streets had dealt unkindly by him. Perhaps in the open spaces he might find something to do. He took a train out to the Bronx, and then, feeling the need of air, descended and began to walk along one of the great new boulevards that stretch as far as the eye can reach along the outskirts of the district. There was no sign of life about this one save an occasional motor whizzing by in a cloud of dust.
29Parallel with the boulevard and only a few hundred feet distant, ran a new street that had just been cut out of solid rock. Herr Amsler wondered vaguely why it was there, and whether it was an example of the "graft" he had lately read so much of in his Staats Zeitung. Then he began to take a more personal interest. Sharply there came to him in the winter stillness the sounds of pick and shovel, plied monotonously with hollow reverberation. It was a desolate spectacle, this barren and dusty street, without houses and only a plan of houses in years to come. Herr Amsler, having left the boulevard and walked over to it, watched the gang of laborers at work. They were Italians, and their swarthy faces showed neither content nor annoyance, but passivity only. The overseer, who seemed to be an Irishman,
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