Black Spring by Henry Miller

day used to start like this: “Ask so-and-so for a little something on account, but don’t insult him!” They were ticklish bastards, all these old farts we catered to. It was enough to drive any man to drink. There we were, just opposite the Olcott, Fifth Avenue tailors even though we weren’t on the Avenue. A joint corporation of father and son, with mother holding the boodle.
    Mornings, eight A.M. or thereabouts, a brisk intellectual walk from Delancey Street and the Bowery to just below the Waldorf. No matter how fast I walked old man Bendix was sure to be there ahead of me, raising hell with the cutter because neither of the bosses was on the job. How was it we could never get there ahead of that old buzzard Bendix? He had nothing to do, Bendix, but run from the tailor to the shirtmaker and from the shirtmaker to the jeweler’s; his rings were either too loose or too tight, his watch was either twentyfive seconds slow or thirty-three seconds fast. He raised hell with everybody, including the family doctor, because the latter couldn’t keep his kidneys clear of gravel. If we made him a sack coat in August by October it was too large for him, or too small. When he could find nothing to complain about he would dress on the right side so as to have the pleasure of bawling the pants maker out because he was strangling his, H. W. Bendix’s, balls. A difficult guy. Touchy, whimsical, mean, crotchety, miserly, capricious, malevolent. When I look back on it all now, see the old man sitting down to table with his boozy breath and saying shit why don’t some one smile, why do you all look so glum, I feel sorry for him and for all merchant tailors who have to kiss rich people’s asses. If it hadn’t been for the Olcott bar across the way and the sots he picked up there God knows what would have become of the old man. He certainly got no sympathy at home. My mother hadn’t the least idea what it meant to be kissing rich people’s backsides. All she knew how to do was to groan and lament all day, and with her groaning and lamenting she brought on the boozy breath and the potato dumplings grown cold. She got us so damned jumpy with her anxiety that we would choke on our own spittle, my brother and I. My brother was a halfwit and he got on the old man’s nerves even more than H. W. Bendix with his “Pastor So-and-so’s going to Europe…. Pastor So-and-so’s going to open a bowling alley,” etc. “Pastor So-and-so’s an ass,” the old man would say, “and why aren’t the dumplings hot?”
    There were three Bendixes-H. W., the grumpy one, A. F., whom the old man referred to in the ledger as Albert, and R.N., who never visited the shop because his legs were cut off, a circumstance, however, which did not prevent him from wearing out his trousers in due season. R. N. I never saw in the flesh. He was an item in the ledger which Bunchek the cutter spoke of glowingly because there was always a little schnapps about when it came time to try on the new trousers. The three brothers were eternal enemies; they never referred to one another in our presence. If Albert, who was a little cracked and had a penchant for dotted vests, happened to see a cutaway hanging on the rack with the words H. W. Bendix written in green ink on the try-on notice, he would give a feeble little grunt and say-“feels like spring today, eh?” There was not supposed to be a man by the name of H. W. Bendix in existence, though it was obvious to all and sundry that we were not making clothes for ghosts.
    Of the three brothers I liked Albert the best. He had arrived at that ripe age when the bones become as brittle as glass. His spine had the natural curvature of old age, as though he were preparing to fold up and return to the womb. You could always tell when Albert was arriving because of the commotion in the elevator -a great cussing and whining followed by a handsome tip which accompanied the process of bringing the floor of the elevator to a dead