Moses on Canal Street

by IRA WOLFERT

Ay-WON Pipes, Rite-Tite Fittings, D. B. Magdiel, prop.” Wes Olmstead saw the sign and walked in. He never knew exactly why, no more than an animal knows exactly why when it stumbles over a block of salt and begins to lick. It was a sidewalk plant just before Canal Street, with a foundry rumbling and clashing in the basement. This was a man’s world — a shop floor, thriving, alive, every inch of it shaking and pounding with life. But Wes had to get permission from the office before he could go sniffing around among the planers and grinders, spinners, lathes, presses, drills, and hammers.

The main office, it seems, was upstairs through another entrance in the building. But there was a shop office — a far corner partitioned off in glass. Wes took out a card identifying him as a representative of Koopmans & Hicking, Grand Island, and hesitated at the door. The glass partition was clear and he could see two men in the office. One of them was so jolly-looking, with his stumpy, barrel-shaped body and cotton-white hair and dimpled, ruddy, tough-fleshed face, that he seemed out of place anywhere except climbing down a chimney on Christmas Eve. The other man was about fifty, lanky and black-haired, a powerful, aggressive figure, his beetling black brows mottled with bright silver.

But the jolly man was not jolly now. He was in a towering rage, and his age seemed to be no impediment in expressing it. His body thrust like a fist as he paced up and down. His voice carried through the glass and above the din of the shop as he shouted, and he kept waving his massive, thickfingered hands with furious energy. The younger man was in just as great a rage. They were arguing over an elbow of brass pipe. The elbow passed from one to the other. As soon as one snatched it and began to illustrate a point, the other snatched it back and began to illustrate his rebuttal.

However, Wes stood his ground. The argument was none of his business, but the shop floor was. It was trembling under him from the ardor of its machines and the rumblings and muffled bellowings of the casting going on in the basement, and Wes could no more have left it at this moment than a starved man could have left food.

When the old man noticed Wes, he strode to the door and pulled it open. “I’m out to lunch,” he said curtly.

Wes held out his card. “I’d like to see Mr. Magdiel.”

The old man had almost closed the door. He pulled it open. “Did you hear me?” he said angrily. “He’s out to lunch.”

“I just want to see the shop.”

The old man had slammed the door in Wes’s face, but only because he had been unable to stop himself in time. He hesitated a moment before the closed door. He was staring full at Wes through the glass, and his face was working as if he were arguing with himself. The debate lasted only an instant. Then he pulled the door open again. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Wes handed over his card. Mr. Magdiel took it but he didn’t look at it. “What are you selling?” he asked.

“I’m not selling anything. I’m in town just as a tourist.”

“My office sees the salesmen. Upstairs. Go bother them.”

“Is there someone in your office who can give me permission to look around the shop?”

“My shop? What do you want with my shop?”

“I just would like to see it.”

“What’s in my shop?”

“I can see you’re busy. But I’ll wait. I’ve got time.”

“ Who’s busy? You mean you really are a tourist in New York to see the sights?”

“That’s right, Mr. Magdiel.”

For the first time since he had taken it, Mr. Magdiel looked down at Wes’s card. He was grinning. “You think maybe I got the Statue of Liberty here? He turned to call to the man with whom he had been arguing so violently. “You hear that, Morris? He’s a greenhorn, so somebody told him to come in here to see the Statue of Liberty.”

“So show it to him.” Morris waved the elbow of pipe. “I’m in a hurry.”

“Nobody told me,” Wes said. “I was passing by.”

‘You were passing by?”

“I felt I’d like to see how you New York fellows did things.”

“Why not? Come in, come in. What’s your name? Olmstead? Come in to the office, Mr. Olmstead. I understand perfectly. You were passing by, and you got hungry to see a shop. I know just how it was. I did the same thing myself once twenty years ago. I was in a place. Where was the place I was in, Morris?”

He had taken Wes’s arm and led him into the office.

“How should I know?” replied Morris.

“I’ve told you about it enough times.”

“I was told, and you were there. And you don’t remember. But I should?”

A slyness came into the old man’s eyes. “If you’re so much smarter than me, why not?”

“Baltimore, Maryland,” replied Morris gruffly.

The old man winked at Wes. “Morris, you’re right,” he cried. “I’ll tell you how I know.”

“I know how you know. You were there.”

“No.”The old man turned to Wes. “My daughter Judith went to Niagara Falls for her honeymoon. But my wife is a very sensitive woman. On the honeymoon, she said, she doesn’t want to be a mother-in-law. So we have to go in the opposite direction to rest up from marrying her off, and what’s opposite? Baltimore, Maryland. That’s how I know. A beautiful place. You been there, Mr. Olmstead? A city of heaven. I can recommend it the highest. But my Judith was the youngest of nine that we married off, thank God, and you know how it is, Mr. Olmstead. We were having a very good time, but it didn’t seem so good to me. When you eat candy all day long, at the end of the day are you satisfied? No, you’re starved for a piece of meat. Then, my daughter—the youngest, the last, the house cleaned out. . . .

“Well, so one afternoon I put Mrs. Magdiel into a department store with one hundred dollars. If you want more, I told her, cut it in half and it’ll go twice as far. Then I went for a walk, and I passed by a machine shop. I walked in like you, and it ended up that I sold them the idea to use pipe instead of wood for their bench legs.”

Mr. Magdiel sighed suddenly. By “selling” them the idea, he had meant only that he had convinced them of its value. No pipes had been sold by him. The idea was his gift to the shop, his despondency had been cured.

2

IT HAD been like the day when he first landed in America. The day had been too hurly-burly for thought, but the thoughts had begun to creep in at night. He had been hired on the pier for a railroad gang, rushed through immigration, marched to a big bare room and bedded down on the floor with the others, a burlap sack as a mattress. There had been running water in the room — a sink with one faucet. David Ben Magdiel, descendant of kings, had never seen running water before. For his bed, he picked the sack nearest this marvel of America. He wanted to study how it worked.

He studied until it was too dark to see. Then he tried to sleep. But the thoughts came, the fever, the terror. America was so big. He was so little. The faucet kept dripping, plunk-plunk, plunkplunk. He had seen the sink turning green under the drip and he knew it should not be, but what could he do? He was a greenhorn himself. Plunkplunk. Plunk-plunk. Oh my, what a night. How it stretched out, and at the end of it there would be only the day. He couldn’t face it. Plunk-plunk. America itself was dripping on him.

Suddenly an idea came to him. He found a string and tied it to the faucet, letting the end rest in the sink. The water dripped silently down the string. He beamed on it, and slept like a babe the rest of the night. In the morning he studied the faucet, took it apart, using his hands and his teeth for a wrench, using the string for a washer, put it together, saw that he had stopped the leak; and although the railroad gang for which he had been hired worked under armed guards, was locked up at night, was charged more per day for its food and “rental” of picks and shovels than it could earn, and could quit for a better job only by organizing a mutiny to overpower the guards, never again did America have any terrors for Mr. Magdiel.

The dripping faucet and Baltimore passed through Mr. Magdiel’s mind with a single sigh. “Oh, I tell you,” he said to Wes, “when you’re young beautiful things happen to you. Your heart gets hungry and you can feed it. But when you’re old, he happens.” He thrust out an accusing finger at Morris.

Morris waved the elbow of pipe indignantly. “I wouldn’t happen if this didn’t happen.”

“That’s Mr. Siegel.” Mr. Magdiel had turned to Wes. “Maybe you heard of them, Siegel & Lansky, jobbers in plumbing supplies. In their line, the’re big, the biggest in New York.”

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Siegel.”

“Likewise.”

They shook hands, and Mr. Magdiel courteously conducted Wes to a chair near his desk. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Olmstead,” he said, and turned to Mr. Siegel, his manner changing as abruptly as an actor’s does when he steps from the wings to the stage. “Are you going to be sensible,” he demanded, “or are you going to disgrace yourself in front of my visitor?”

Mr. Siegel started to laugh. He looked past Mr. Magdiel at Wes. “You hear him?” he said. “This is what I got to put up with.”

But Mr. Magdiel was stern. “He came to see New York,”he said. “Now I leave it to you. Show him New York.”

It had got under Mr. Siegel’s skin. He waved the elbow of pipe. “Is this the Brooklyn Bridge to you?” he cried. “It isn’t to me.”

Mr. Magdiel snatched the elbow out of his hand. “Get out of here,”he roared.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, get out of here. If you don’t like my work, you’re not my customer.”

“If your work’s no good, how can I like it?”

“If you can’t like it, get out.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Why not? I’m seventy-four years old. Do you think yoI’ll be the first customer I’ve lost?”

“You’re not losing me. You’re throwing me away.”

“I’m throwing you away?”

“What else does ‘get out’ mean?”

Mr. Magdiel’s voice began to rise. He was so angry his full-blown bottle of a nose shook. “I’m throwing you away? Me? You walk in here and tell me that when you put a wrench on my pipe the pipe turns to sand, and I’m the one who’s throwing you away?” He turned violently to Wes. “Did you ever hear of anything like that before in your life? I’ve been casting pipe for sixty years. I’m selling him pipe cheaper than anybody can make it, and I’m throwing him away! You got people like Mr. Siegel in Grand Island, Mr. Olmstead?”

Before Wes could do more than nod, Mr. Siegel interrupted. “Are you talking to him or to me?”

“I’m talking to him,” replied Mr. Magdiel. “He has more sense.”

“He’s a toolmaker. What does he know about pipes?”

“He knows enough not to say what he doesn’t know, and that’s more than you know.”

Mr. Siegel shouldered past Mr. Magdiel. Now it was be who was appealing to Wes. “Listen,” he said, “you’ve traveled. Did you ever hear of anybody trying to turn elbows by extrusion?”

Mr. Magdiel held up the elbow with a roar. “I’m trying? I’m doing it. Look.”

“All right, so you’re doing it. But you’re not going to do if to me.”

“If you don’t want me to do it to you, don’t come in here.”

A look of suffering came over Mr. Siegel. He had a majestic face, dark, the nose hooked fiercely and the modeling and shape from hair to chin fiercely proud. The power of his face made his suffering painful to see. “Zadig,” he cried, “how many years have we been doing business? Thirty? Do you want if to end here over nothing?”

“Nothing?”

“All right, if’s not nothing,” Mr. Siegel cried. “It’s a wonderful idea. On paper it’s a million dollars. But what good is it if it doesn’t work?”

“Who says it doesn’t work?”

“My trade says if. Can I argue with them? I can only sell them what they want.”

“Then don’t sell to them. And don’t buy from me,”

“I want to buy from you. But you got to cut out extruding, that’s all.”

“Sure. You want molding, but an extruding price. Is that it?”

“I’ll give you your price. Give me molding.”

The offer took Mr. Magdiel aback. “You’re crazy,” he muttered. He stood irresolutely. Then he turned to Wes. “What do you think of a man like that? I’m saving him half, and he doesn’t want it.”

“Do me a favor,” said Mr. Siegel. “Don’t save my money.”

Mr. Magdiel shrugged. But he seemed confused. A war as old as trade itself was going on in him. Mr. Siegel was afraid of Mr. Magdiel’s process for turning pipe only because it was new. The first season-crack that had developed in a run of a thousand had made him suspicious. He didn’t want it. The trade would pay for the old way. Let them have it. But, for the same reason Mr. Siegel doubled, Mr. Magdiel had faith. It was new. The new was always better than the old.

3

Now the ancient battle that creative energy has always fought in the market place was being waged in Mr. Magdiel. Was he in business to make money or to make progress? He was an old man. When it was a question of sacrificing money to make progress, or sacrificing progress to make money, what was the answer? Yes, he was a very old man. Did he owe a greater loyalty to his own present or to the world’s future?

It was plain that the battle was wounding Mr. Magdiel, and Mr. Siegel’s voice became gentle. “What’s the use of an elbow that you can’t put a wrench on?” he asked.

“That’s what you say.”

“That’s what my trade tells me.”

Mr. Magdiel grabbed up the elbow in a rage and ran to an open radiator. He slammed the pipe down on it with all his strength. The whole room clanged from the blow. The shock waves must have corrugated the old man inside from head to foot, but he was a formidable fellow. Let the shock waves get corrugated. He refused. He held the elbowout to Mr. Siegel. “What happened?” he cried. “Did anything happen?”

The casting had not cracked. But Mr. Siegel disdained to examine it. “That’s only one,” he observed.

“You wait right here,” commanded Mr. Magdiel. “I’m going to show you something.”

He slammed out indignantly and disappeared in the shop. A stillness settled on the office. Mr. Magdiel seemed to have taken all the tumult with him. Wes stood up. He was used to the rough-andtumble of shop life. But when Mr. Koopmans’ temper reached the pitch that Mr. Magdiel’s had, blood almost invariably flowed. So Wes had been waiting apprehensively for Mr. Magdiel to brain Mr. Siegel with the brass elbow. That would have been the orthodox way to prove the mettle of a casting to a doubting middleman.

But Wes would have hated to see it happen. A very warm feeling had developed in Wes toward both these men. He had not expressed it to himself as picturesquely as Mr. Magdiel, but he could feel the truth of it.

Wes knew almost nothing about Jews. He had never heard of their religious law, teaching them to regard the stranger who appeals for charity as having done them a charity. Nor had he ever had any experience with this concept before. But the practice had had its effect upon him. In the code under which Wes had been brought up, it was not an act of hospitality to stage a quarrel all around and over a guest. Yet, curiously, the quarrel had made him feel at home more quickly than anything in his own code could have. He felt as if both these men had made him more than just a passing stranger asking for charity, had made him a member of their family.

Mr. Siegel was smiling. “Some tough guy, eh?”

“Is he really seventy-four years old?” asked Wes.

“He’s bragging. He said that for your benefit, not mine.”

Now Wes smiled, too. He hadn’t really believed Mr. Magdiel had retained so much physical energy to such an advanced age. “I had an idea he was putting it on.”

“He wouldn’t tell his right age to his own mother,” Mr. Siegel said. “Did you see those fingers on him? I’ve seen him come among ladies.

. . .He likes ladies, oh yes. Nice ones, and even when they’re not so nice. Do you know how he entertains them? He puts a nut between his middle fingers and cracks it. Would you believe it ? Walnuts, butternuts, anything.”

Wes shook his head. “’d tike to see that.”

“I’ve seen it. That’s a man. Do you know what he is? He’s one of those real old-timers, a leftover from the days of the prophets. I was thinking of it the other night. What would Moses have done if he had been given to come out of the wilderness? He’d have run around the Promised Land making a living like anybody else. Well, that’s Dov Magdiel — a Moses running around on Canal Street. I got all the reverence in the world for him. But I’m warning you. If he admits he’s seventy-four, you can bet he’s ninety.”

“Ninety?” cried Wes, aghast.

“Well, eighty-five surely. I know he was sixtynine years old for ten years that I counted. When my oldest boy was bar-mitzvahed at thirteen, he got sentimental and told me he was sixty-nine. Then, when my boy got married at twenty-three, he got sentimental all over again and told me he was seventy.”

“That’s very remarkable.”

“You should try and do business with him, though. He’ll drive you crazy. He’s got two religions. I shouldn’t say that. He’s a better Jew than I am. But what would you call it when a man believes that whatever is modern is automatically better? I’m telling you a fact. If he took those extruded elbows out on the job himself and they came away in his own wrench, he’d still say they were better. Isn’t that a religion?”

4

AFTER a few moments, Wes excused himself and went out into the shop. Mr. Magdiel was standing impatiently near a planing machine, watching its operator.

“How do you turn those elbows, Mr. Magdiel?” asked Wes.

“What do you want to know for?” I he old man cried bitterly. “The market doesn’t want them. Extrusion cuts your labor in half. I admit half, so you can take it it’s one-quarter. Here, you see this elbow?” He led Wes to a pile and showed him one. “How much would you pay for it?”

“In quantities? I don’t know.”

“Eight cents,” said Mr. Magdiel. “That’s the price today, anywhere in the city of New York, in lots of a thousand. I’m getting four. Ten years from now you’re going to buy it for a penny, a penny mid a half, and got robbed worse even than I’m robbing by charging four.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Wes. “But what’s the theory behind it"”

“The theory? Did you ever squeeze toothpaste out of a tube? Well, when it comes out, they call it that you’re extruding it.”

“Oh yes, I understand that much, Mr. Magdiel. I know die work. But the elbow. How can you make a pipe turn a corner just by pressing it through the hole in the die?”

Mr. Magdiel had begun to look very happy now. “I wish I could make up a few for you, and show you. But what’s the use? You got boneheads running business nowadays the market, God should forgive me for what I think of it! So my machine is not running any more. Are you married, by the way, Mr. Olmstead?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Has your wife got a sewing machine? The reason I ask is that’s how it came to me. I was watching Mrs. Magdiel one night. She makes all the clothes for her grandchildren — and when they got too big and fancy, she makes them for the great-grandchildren. It gives her something to do. You know, when a woman has spent her years doing for nine children, what’s one husband? It’s not enough work for her canary even. So, the grandchildren, and then some day soon the grandchildren of the grandchildren. If they’ll only hurry up and come. Anyway, I was sitting with her one night. She pins up models on me, and I noticed that, when she wants the machine to stitch around a righthand corner, she pushes the left side faster and holds back the right side. For a left-hand corner just the opposite. You see it now?”

“You mean you govern the rate of flow through the die so that it’s faster on one side than on the other?”

“That’s it. That’s the whole thing. I went to Cohen & Schwimmer, the toolmakers on Grand Street. I put it up to them. They said it can’t be done. So I said to them if a grandma like Mrs. Magdiel can do it, why can’t two strapping men like Cohen & Schwimmer do it? So they did it.”

“You mean with no trouble?”

“Trouble? Plenty trouble. Mine started when theirs finished. You’ve got to understand something, Mr. Olmstead. I don’t know what your experience is, but my experience is that a piece of iron is alive like a living person. It has a heart. Any piece of metal you can name — it comes from God, so it has a heart and private feelings. Do you know what I found out after Cohen & Schwimmer delivered me my extruder? My babies didn’t like it.

“Did you ever see a billet go through the die? Well, you study and you’ll see. The skin outside gets pushed down into the inside, and the billets didn’t like it. All my babies — lead, brass, copper, galvanized iron, anything I tried, they didn’t like the temperature change. The skin was too hot. It was too cold. It was too everything. It gave them gas. But when the temperature was just right, for each different, you should see how they behaved. They were as good as princes.

“Oh no, the only part of the thing that was easy was for Morris Siegel and his plumbers — you should excuse the expression — to spit on it.”

Mr. Magdiel turned in deep distress to the planer. He had ordered a brass elbow shingled and sectioned to expose its interior structure. But the work had not been finished yet.

“Do you know why it hurts me?" he cried to Wes. “The money? I like money, but not that much. But the thing is that first it came from Mrs. Magdiel. God has made a friend for Himself in that woman. She gives everything. Second is that I had a river coming out and I was using it. You make the left side move slower than the right side, and the river is pulled to the left. You make the right side move slower, and the river is pulled to the right. Now that’s beautiful. You’re a young man, Mr. Olmstead. Maybe you don’t feel about those things the way I do. But I felt it when I was young. I slept under a sink my first night in this country, and when I woke up I said, ‘America, I did not come here to hurt you. So use me.’ There’s no greater pleasure for anything than to have what it can do taken and used to do good things. That’s all, that’s all. I’ve had my say. And now Morris Siegel has his.”

The old man couldn’t go on. There were tears in his eyes. He turned anti shouted at the man at the planer, “I can build a building while you keep Mr. Siegel standing on one foot.” When he got enough pieces of the split, shingled, and grooved brass elbow, he took them in his clublike bands and ran like a bear back to his office.

5

WES had been deeply moved by the old man’s speech, and he sprang to open the door for him. But Mr. Magdiel paid no attention to him. He dumped the pieces of brass on his desk and turned to Mr. Siegel. “Come here, plumber,” he said. “I’ll show you something.”

“I don’t want to see,” replied Mr. Siegel.

“I’m going to show you something anyway, Morris. Come here, you.” The old man crooked his finger at Wes. “You can pick any ignoramus off the street,”he cried to Mr. Siegel. “Here’s one. He comes from the country. What’s plumbing to him? It’s a hole in the ground with a board to sit on. But he’s got eyes, and I’ll go by what he says. Come here, greenhorn. Look at this and tell me what you see.”

Wes bad already approached the desk, but Mr. Magdiel was covering the pieces of brass with his hands. Now Mr. Magdiel’s fingers began touching the raw, gashed-open metal. It was still hot from its wounds. The old man had a pianist’s fingers — four ball bats, the thumb a paddle. But they were trembling with tenderness now. They moved over the metal the way a blind lover’s fingers might move over the face of his beloved, every pore stretching to see. He was torn between pity for the mutilated elbow and love for the beauty the mutilating had exposed.

“What do you see?” he cried, as his fingers drank in the knowledge of what they were touching. “Do you see any fiber fractures? Show me coarseness. Show me off-color. Look at these crystals. Look how little they are. This is sugar here. Look how twinned those crystals are. Did you ever see castings better twinned in your life? You show me a fiber in there, or a coarse crystal, and I’ll eat it. That’s what I make in my shop, Mr. Olmstead sugar. And this big millionaire over here, Mr. Siegel, he spits it out.”

Wes picked up a section and studied it. Mr. Magdiel had not been exaggerating. The crystals were very small throughout, closely matted, and of identical size. There was not an outsize crystal to be seen, nor an elongated one, nor an off-color one. It was a beautiful piece of work. Mr. Magdiel had married zinc and copper and turned them into a golden snow.

“What are you looking at?” Mr. Siegel cried. “I need elbows by the carload, and that’s only one.”

“Mr. Siegel,” said Wes, “you can’t turn out castings like this by accident. If it’s in one, it’s in the carload.”

“Look,” protested Mr. Siegel, “for my part it can be hung on the wall in a museum. But if my trade is afraid of extruded elbows, what good is it to me?” He turned on Mr. Magdiel. “I’m not a museum, Dov,” he cried. “I’m in business. I’ve got, to have what my trade will buy. Can I get it here or not?”

Mr. Magdiel smiled at Wes in a shaken way. “See what it is?”

“Well, what’s the answer?” demanded Mr. Siegel.

“What should be the answer?”

“I’d like to hear it finally. Are you going to make elbows for me or not?”

Mr. Magdiel turned to Wes. “What’s your answer?” he asked.

“How can I say, Mr. Magdiel?”

“Why not? You’re a young man. The future is for you, not for me. What shall I do, throw my extruder away or not? I’ll do what you say.”

“I’d say it all depends on how much you need the order.”

“I need the order.”

Wes threw up his hands.

“Is that what the young man says?” cried Mr. Magdiel in a piercing voice.

“What can I say?”

“Say what you feel.”

“I feel if you need the order, you ought to take it.”

Mr. Magdiel turned away brusquely. “All right, Morris,” he said, “I’ll make elbows for you.”

There were three unhappy men in the office now. Wes stood about feeling a vague glumness, and Mr. Siegel and Mr. Magdiel discussed sizes, quantities, prices, and deliveries and exuded the same glumness. While Mr. Siegel put on his coal, Mr. Magdiel sat at his desk muttering, ostensibly over the notations he had made for his clerical department but actually over fate.

Mr. Siegel winked at Wes. “What did I tell you about Moses?” he said. “You come in here to give him a nine-thousand-dollar order and you walk out feeling you have insulted God, or something.”

It did feel that way, Wes had to admit. He hadn’t thought of it before, but in some way Mr. Magdiel had made their act in bowing down to the market place seem a violation of the Old Testament injunction against bowing down to graven images.

Mr. Magdiel remained at his desk until Mr. Siegel left. Then he pushed aside his notations. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get the taste out.”

He jumped up from his desk and walked out into the shop. He noticed the glum expression on Wes’s face. “Don’t feel bad about it,” he said. “If yo’d told me no, ’d have decided yes anyway.”

“If you don’t serve the market, you might as well go out of business.”

“Who knows better than me?” cried Mr. Magdiel bitterly.

But Mr. Magdiel became a happy man again in his shop, and Wes became happy by his side. They went through the entire operation, stopping short only of the clerks, and Mr. Magdiel insisted on conducting Wes personally. His office and shop staff kept coming to him for decisions, but he refused to be bothered. “I’m out to lunch,” he kept saying.

By five O’clock, Wes had grease on his shoes and under his fingernails, and oil spots on his clothes, and metal dust in his ears. He had been able to tell Mr. Magdiel something the old man did not know about a better oiling mechanism for milling machines to wash away the chips and lessen grooving and scoring, and when he reached the lobby of the Murray Hill Hotel he stopped and bought his wife a dozen roses.