World's Fair by E. L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page A

junket, for example, or Cream of Wheat—was too high for him to reach, he grabbed it with a long pinching stick whose ends he could contract by squeezing the handle. The box flew through the air and he caught it. Then, with the purchases stacked in front of him, he wrote the cost of each on a brown paper bag with a small pencil he took from behind his ear and totaled the row of sums smartly, and then used the same bag to pack everything. I liked this store because of the coffee smell and the sawdust on the floor. I liked sawdust as long as it was dry.
    In Irving’s Fish Store, the sawdust was often wet. Irving’s had a kind of swimming-pool atmosphere about it. The walls were bare of shelves. Everything was white. Two holding tanks of live fish were along the wall where the customer came in. Water ran in them continuously. Irving’s apron tended to be wet and red with fish blood. He was a big jovial man. “Hello, Missus!” he said to my mother as we walked in. He was scaling a big brown fish. Fish scales flew through the air, some sticking to his glasses like snow. “How are you, sonny boy?” he said to me. “I want some salmon, Irving,” my mother said, “but only if it’s not expensive.” Irving came around from behind his counter, took a short-handled net from the wall and ran it around the dark tank, where I could see the shadows of several fish slithering in panic. They looked elusive to me, but in a second or two Irving had raised one twisting and curling in the net and dripping water on the floor. “I saved this beauty for you,” he said to my mother. He slapped the salmon down on the counter and held it pressed against the wood block with one hand while with the other he banged it on the head with a heavy wooden mallet. The fish went still. I admired Irving’s fast hands. My mother turned away, but I watched as he sliced off the salmon’s head with one of his largeknives, eviscerated it, washed it under the faucet, and sliced it up in steaks. I recognized the salmon now.
    Our last stop was Rosoff’s Drugstore, on the corner of Morris Avenue. Large glass jars of red and blue liquid stood on display in the window; what they were meant to suggest I had no idea, but I liked the way the sunlight went through them and lit the colors. Also on display was a brass mortar and pestle, whose function I understood because my grandmother had one just like it to use in the kitchen to pound nuts and seeds. There were also various mysterious items made of red rubber. Inside the store I breathed an atmosphere of sweet soaps and bitter medicines, rolled bandages and anodynes, sodas, salts and pungent tinctures. Along the walls were glass cabinets that went all the way up to the patterned tin ceiling. Mr. Rosoff reached the upper levels by means of a railed ladder, which he rolled along the wall. He climbed the ladder for the implement of porcelain or the bottle, box, packet or tin the customer called for. He was a tiny sweet-tempered man with a round face and a soft voice. He politely inquired about the health of everyone in the family, particularly my grandmother. He shook his head in sympathy as my mother told him. He wore a starched white short-sleeved tunic buttoned to the neck, like a doctor’s, and could offer such medical services as taking out things that had gotten into your eye—rolling your eyelid back and dabbing off the offending mote with a bit of cotton. He had done that for me.
    My mother made a purchase, a box that Mr. Rosoff placed precisely in the middle of a sheet of dark green wrapping paper, which he had torn from a big roll on his counter. His pudgy hands flew about the box like bird wings and in a matter of seconds the green wrapping had been folded over, tucked in at the corners, triangulated at the ends, and tied around with white string from a spool hanging from the ceiling above his head. To break the string he looped it around each hand and gave a smart tug.
    When we left I asked my mother