livelihood. But released from circumstances defined by animal waste, the old drek shlepper was fairly rejuvenated; he threw himself into his new role with a passion, assiduously adjusting prices and filing invoices, inspecting meat lockers and equipment, hiring laborers with the shrewdness of a captain interviewing a crew for a dangerous voyage. He also appointed himself shop steward of the IMU, the Ice Man’s Union, a collective of his own formation for which he obtained a national charter, making him both an essential liaison between management and labor and a thorn in the side of his employers ever after.
In private moments, of which there were lately precious few, Shmerl asked himself if this was really the life he desired; was he a hypocrite for his headlong entry into the world of free trade? But such questions, he had to admit, came more from force of habit than any genuine consternation on his part, since for better or worse his total immersion in temporal affairs kept him in a state of mild intoxication. He was gratified as well by the way his partnership with Max seemed to consolidate the friendship that had preceded their business arrangement. While he remained puzzled at times by the yungerman’s periodic aloofness and inordinate modesty—Max still refused, for instance, to attend the public baths despite Shmerl’s example, opting instead to reduce his gaminess by the occasional sitz-bod behind a canvas tarp in the shack—these were trivial imperfections that in no way impeded the inventor’s ever increasing admiration for his friend.
Their division of labor, however, left them less inseparable than they’d been before commencing their entrepreneurial relationship, which made Shmerl cherish the time they spent together all the more. Sometimes they might take a meal at a Grand Street cafeteria (they could afford it now), then repair to an East Broadway tearoom where the intelligents gathered and the companions, feeling a little like capitalist spies, kibbitzed conversations about rallies, strikes, and the impending revolution. Once in a while they took in a Yiddish play on Second Avenue, where they saw Mrs. Krantsfeld and a pop-eyed Ludwig Satz sink into deepest depravity in Zolatarevsky’s Money, Love, and Shame, and hailed Boris Tomashevsky wearing tights that made sausage links of his legs as he strutted the boards in Alexander, Crown Prince of Jerusalem. Once, taking a rare holiday, they rode the New York & Sea Beach Line out to Coney Island to see the Elephant; they had their weight guessed and their fortunes read by a gypsy (who seemed diverted by Max’s soft palm, troubled by something she saw in Shmerl’s); they tested their strength, ate chazzerai, and threw baseballs at the head of a Negro, then strolled the boardwalk past couples spooning along the Iron Pier.
Max teased Shmerl because he was leering at the girls gamboling in the surf in their revealing costumes. “Perhaps they are numbered your bachelor days.” But no sooner had he poked fun at his friend and seen his subsequent chagrin than Max flushed a deep crimson himself.
On the eve of the grand reopening of the Ice Castle, the partners celebrated over dinner at Virág’s Hungarian Noodle Shop in a cellar on Forsyth Street. For all intents and purposes, their business was already under way. Ads had been placed in both Yiddish and mainstream papers, sparking a small controversy, some of the natural ice houses having complained in the press that “artificial” ice was ungodly. To counter the attacks, Max had managed a deft feat of public relations, engaging local clergy, both Jewish and gentile, to endorse their product. In the end, having focused attention on the Ice Castle’s innovation, the discord proved a useful marketing ploy, and already there were orders from several breweries and meat-packing companies; in addition, the Gebirtigs’ legitimate cold storage clients had renewed their contracts with the novice owners. The lockers and vaults of perishables were stocked to near capacity, making the official launching of the plant somewhat after the fact. Nevertheless, decked out in sporty new threads for the occasion (dress worsteds with pencil stripes) the two friends dined on hot shtshav and goulash and, characterizing themselves as “two corpses gone dancing,” toasted each other with sweet Muscat wine.
“To the Ice Castle…,” proposed Max. “
…that ice folly it don’t turn out to be,” said Shmerl, clinking his partner’s glass.
“L’chayim.”
Beneath a hat rack in the corner a fiddle and bass played an apathetic schottische as the partners discussed their joint venture, waxing nostalgic over the distance they’d traveled together