Tales From Gavagan's Bar (36 page)

-

             
Mr. Witherwax had made a discovery. "Listen," he said, "it works. There was this guy from Hungary and this Roberts, see? They started right in there in the lobby and understood each other perfect. It's like the manual says; more than half the wars and troubles in the world are because people don't understand what they mean. What about that piece in yesterday's
Journal,
huh? Where it says the Russians and us don't mean the same thing by democracy? If they had this Esperanto, they couldn't make no mistakes like that."

             
"Oh, yes, they could," said Doc Brenner. "It's not a question of understanding what a word means, but how far you carry the idea the word represents. Like 'water'; I might want a bathtub full of it and get a glass of it to drink. That reminds me, Mr.
Co-han;
I don't want any water tonight. I want an Appetizer Number Three."

             
"Yes, but—" said Witherwax.

             
What was that you ordered, old man?" It was the stooped and tweedy Professor Thott who, as usual, had drifted up as quietly as so much ectoplasm.

             
"Appetizer Number Three, the real dry whiskey cocktail," said Brenner, and then quickly, before Witherwax could get under way again: "Now if you want a real universal language, why not one like English, which already has hundreds of millions of speakers?"

             
Thott nodded: "And can be learned quickly by anyone
who'll take the trouble to study the basic form."

             
"The manual says," persisted Witherwax, "that English is too irregular and too hard to spell. And besides—"

             
Mr. Gross belched ponderously over his Boilermaker. "My wife's nephew Adrian," he said, "when he was in college, roomed with a guy that said Russian was going to be spoke by everybody. This fella was one of them Reds, I think. But that was before he got bit by the yak."

             
"And besides," said Witherwax, "the manual says it's gotta be a language that don't belong to nobody in the beginning. Otherwise, some people know more about it than anybody else, and then they're boss, and you ain't got no international brotherhood."

             
"Russian wouldn't do at all," said Thott. "Yes, Mr. Cohan, you may give me an Appetizer Number Three. In fact, I can scarcely conceive of a worse candidate for a world language—"

             
"That's like I said," said Witherwax. "Once you get talking like them Russians, you have to think like them."

             
"No," said Professor Thott, judicially. "The fault of Russian is its syntax."

             
"Another Boilermaker, Mr. Cohan," said Gross. "I once had a business partner that got an infection in his syntax—"

             
"This drink is good," said Thott. "In Russian you first have to learn an enormously complicated grammar. Then you find words don't mean what you think they mean, because Russians use a lot of arbitrary colloquialisms—"

             
"That's just like the manual says," said Witherwax. "If we want to have international brotherhood, we gotta get a language that everybody understands all the time."

             
"You mean with no homonyms?" said Doc Brenner.

             
Mr. Gross belched again, and held up two fingers to indicate another Boilermaker. "Are you saying that the language a fella speaks can make a fairy of him?"

             
"I do not know—" began Doc Brenner, and stopped as a newcomer leaned across the bar next to him and addressed Mr. Cohan:

             
"Has that unhappy servitor of mine been in here? You know, Joe Kozikowski. Make mine a Scotch and, a double Scotch."
             

             
"That he has not," said Mr. Cohan, pouring. "Maybe one of the gentlemen would have seen him. I will make you acquainted with them. Mr. Medford: Professor Thott, Doc Brenner, Mr. Witherwax, Mr. Gross."

             
There were murmurs of politeness. "And what would have happened to poor Joe, may the blessed Virgin preserve him?" asked Mr. Cohan.

             
"That's what I'd like to know. I want to get him back on the job," said Mr. Medford.

             
"And a credit to you it is to take such care of the poor felly," said Mr. Cohan. "Meself, I had him here for a couple of days and it was Gavagan's own orders to fire him, for he would be breaking the bottles and pouring the Kummel in with the Kirsch to make one bottle the less of things that looked all the same to him."

             
Medford sighed heavily. "I know. But I like the kid, and now there's a special reason."

             
"My brother Julius, that's on the force—" began Mr. Cohan, but Medford stopped him with a horrified gesture.

             
"I don't want him arrested," he said. "He hasn't done anything wrong. Just the opposite. Besides, I've already called Missing Persons, and they wouldn't touch the case for me because I wasn't a relative, and if anybody wanted to quit a job, he could. As for those private eyes, I wouldn't want anyone to have one of them looking me up. The next thing you know, you're being blackmailed."

             
Witherwax said: "I read it once in a book that everybody had to behave like he wants everybody else to behave."

             
"The Kantian categorical imperative, that is called," said Professor Thott.

             
"Who is this Joe Koz-something?" boomed Mr. Gross. "A man that is in trouble should not be left alone."

             
"Joe's not in any trouble that I know of," said Medford, waving his double Scotch. "He works for me—or used to. But he knows something, or has discovered something, and I'll pay him handsomely to find out how he did it."

             
"The thing about this Esperanto—" began Witherwax.

             
Doc Brenner laid a hand on his arm. "Mr. Cohan, another
Martini for Mr. Witherwax, while Mr. Medford tells us about this Joe.
"

#
★
#

             
Mr. Cohan knows him [Medford replied readily]. Another one of these—I can't fly on one wing. He's the son of the fellow that used to be janitor of the building where I live, over on Sixteenth Street. The old boy used to call himself Stanley Kozi
kowski and say he was in the Polish army during the war, but I always rather doubted that story. He had a funny accent that might have been Polish, but might have been a good many other things, too, and he was darker in the face than most Poles. I never knew him to be going to any of those Polish gatherings, either. He just stayed home in the basement apartment with Joe and gabbled with him in their own language, whatever it was. This Joe was a feeble-minded kid; I don't think he ever got beyond third grade and that was in a school for backward children. That is, they said he was feeble-minded; what happened makes it seem he wasn't so much feeble-minded as living in another kind of world, if you get me, with only part of him in this one.

             
Well, a couple of months ago, the Jap who was working for me got his Ph.D. and quit. I needed someone to take care of the apartment, and I didn't want women running around, so I took the line of least resistance and offered Joe the job. He doesn't have much behind the eyes, but I figured he was capable of handling things like sweeping the floor and washing the glasses, and beside being amiable, he's willing as the day is long. My Nisei used to cook for me, and Joe couldn't do that—he'd be likely to put tomato catsup in the salad dressing because it was the same color as paprika—but I don't mind cooking as long as someone can clean up the dishes.

             
The scheme worked out pretty well. When you have people working for you, you have to use them for what they can do, and it isn't always the same with any two, even when they have the same job. One will turn out to be a saw and the other one a claw-hammer, if you understand what I mean. Joe was certainly a blunt instrument. No matter what you
said to him, he'd smile beautifully across that sun-tan face and say "Yesss, Misster Medford," pulling out the s's, and do what he thought was right, which wasn't always what I wanted.

             
I remember the first time I sent him out to market for me. I wanted some chick-peas to make minestrone—I'm fond of Italian cooking—so he brought home a chicken trussed for roasting and a can of peas. After that I wrote out a list he could hand to the storekeeper, and I found I had to run charge accounts, because I discovered that a one dollar bill and a five meant exactly the same thing to Joe. But upon the whole, he was a good and faithful servant, and it was convenient to have him living in the building.

             
That is, up to a month ago. Joe had finished the dishes that night and gone downstairs, and I settled down with a bottle of Port and a book, when I heard him come back in. For a while, he didn't come into the living room at all, and I was just getting up from my chair, wondering whether it was Joe after all, when he got through the door. Half-wit or not, I've never seen anyone look so miserable. He wasn't crying; maybe he didn't know how, but his whole face was twisted with misery and his feet dragged.

             
"What's the matter, Joe?" I asked.

             
He just stood there for a minute with his face working. Then he said: "He gone."

             
I said: "Who's gone? Your father?" It was pretty clear that he was the only person who could be.

             
"He gone," said Joe.

             
I thought, of course, that the old man must have died, so I started for the elevator. Joe tagged along behind, unwillingly I thought, and repeating at intervals: "He gone."

             
But he wasn't dead, at least in the building. The place where he lived was as neat as a new cocktail shaker—that reminds me, Mr. Cohan, you better furnish me something for drinking purposes. [Doc Brenner silently pointed to his own glass and that of Professor Thott.]