Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

6. A Business Venture

A FEW WEEKS AFTER MARTIN’S SIXTEENTH birthday, Mr. Henning summoned him into the small office located behind an oak door between two pilasters near the ladies’ parlor. Seated at a high-backed desk with envelopes sticking out of every pigeonhole, Mr. Henning motioned for Martin to sit down in a mahogany armchair upholstered in green morocco, opened a cedarwood box, and began to remove a fancy Havana. He paused to offer the box hesitantly to Martin, and seemed startled when Martin bent forward and removed one. “Strictly between us, of course,” he said. “Your father—” Martin, who had never smoked a cigar in his life, despite sampling hundreds of them in his father’s presence since the age of thirteen, but who didn’t like to refuse a challenge, sat rolling the cigar under his nose and admiring the smoothness of the wrapper before he thrust it decisively into the pocket of his bellboy jacket. Mr. Henning quickly closed the box, clipped his cigar, rolled it on his tongue, removed it, and seemed to forget about it as he swiveled in his chair, thrust a thumb into the pocket of his vest, and began to speak.

“I’m not going to beat about the bush, Martin: ’tain’t my style. Fact is, you’ve done a pretty good job here at the Vanderlyn. I suppose you know it. We’ve been keeping an eye on you, lad, watching you, you might say — well, we’ll speak no more about that. Pretty soon a fellow gets all full of himself and then his hat won’t fit on his head. Has to get himself a new hat, or maybe a new head, old one isn’t good enough for him any more. You catch my drift. Cochran — clerk — little guy, up to here on me, you may have run into him — Cochran’s been given notice, not up to the mark and so forth, no concern of yours. We’ll move Charley into the night slot where he won’t have to get up at five in the morning and you can take Charley’s spot ’longside of John. He’ll show you the ropes. You’ll catch on quick. Well, then. What do you say?”

Martin, who had been distracted by the aroma of the cigar in his pocket, an aroma that reminded him of a familiar one he couldn’t quite place, realized suddenly that he had just been offered a promotion. He sat up straight, was about to accept, felt a sharp hesitation, and said he’d think it over. To his surprise, Mr. Henning grew angry.

“Think it over, by God. Sure sir very good sir I’ll just think it over a bit sir thank you sir will that be all sir. By God, boy, you don’t think over a thing like this. You seize it by the scruff of the neck and hold onto it and pray it don’t get away.”

Martin realized that he had been careless, that by appearing cool he had hurt Mr. Henning in his pride. He was irked at himself, and at the stupid cigar, but the hesitation had been powerful and couldn’t be ignored. He knew perfectly well that the promotion was a great chance; what caused him to hold back was something else, something that had to do with his relation to this hotel and to any hotel. He needed time to think it over. He said, “What I meant was, I always talk these things over with my father.”

Mr. Henning raised his eyebrows and threw up his hands, one of which still held the unlighted cigar. “And do you think for a minute I haven’t spoken of it to your father?”

It struck Martin that Mr. Henning was shrewder than he’d given him credit for: the assistant manager had sensed a crucial thing. Martin agreed to finish out the week as bellboy before taking up his new position, and that night, seated in the parlor over the cigar store, listening to his mother and father talking down below, it suddenly came to him: he had hesitated because his life in the hotel was a dream-life, an interlude, a life from which he would one day wake to his real life — whatever that might be.

Meanwhile Mr. Henning had plans for him, and that was fine with Martin, who threw himself into his new duties with a zest that surprised him. It was as if, having acknowledged the dream-nature of his life in the Vanderlyn Hotel, he was able to sink wholly into the dream without any fretful hankering to wake up. He liked his new hatless uniform, with its chocolate-brown jacket and brass buttons, and the shiny mahogany counter, and the rows of heavy keys hanging from numbered hooks. Mr. Henning hovered erratically behind the desk before vanishing on mysterious errands. It was John Babcock, the other day clerk, a polite and reserved young man of eighteen whose thick pale eyelashes gave him a slightly blurred look, who helped Martin with the details of his new job, such as presenting the leather-bound hotel register for guests to sign, distributing mail to the rows of wooden boxes, and operating the handsome new cash register, with its jumping-up numerals that appeared behind the glass at the top and the satisfying bing of its bell. It all seemed very clear to Martin, as if he’d been working behind the desk for a long time. He enjoyed attending to newly arrived guests, answering questions, soothing ruffled tempers — talking to people. Was it so different from the cigar store, really? People talked to you, and you talked back. You tried to imagine the confusion of strangers, satisfy their desires, make things simple and orderly and clear. And people liked him back: he could feel it in his bones. Guests began relying on him, coming to him for advice. John Babcock was an efficient room clerk, but Martin saw that he didn’t really like anyone; he spoke to everyone in the same polite toneless voice, which seemed the echo of his eyelashes.

Mornings, Martin arrived at a quarter to six, changed into his uniform, and took over from Charley Stratemeyer, whose skin beneath his melancholy eyes was the color of plums and who had taken to greeting Martin with ironical flourishes. “Ah, young Lochinvar is come out of the West,” he would say, or “Up bright and early to greet the dawn, eh, Martin?” There was a new coolness about Charley, which shaded at times into an air of mockery, mixed with something murkier that felt like a sort of spiteful respect. It occurred to Martin that at twenty-two his old pal must sometimes wonder whether he was going to spend the rest of his life as a room clerk. Charley had already received two warnings from Mr. Henning for arriving late; the plum-dark patches under his eyes, the waxy skin, the talk of hookers under the El and the joys of bought love in borrowed rooms, a touch of harshness about the mouth, all this gave Martin the sense that Charley was turning into someone else before his eyes.

From his position behind the front desk he had a clear view of the glass doors before him, through which he could see a strip of awning and the clattering traffic on Broadway. He also commanded a view of the great lobby stretching away to the left and, in an alcove of the lobby, the newsstand and an edge of the cigar stand. Everything about the cigar stand irritated Martin: the choice of cigars, the display, the dullness or indifference of old man Hendricks, who never offered customers advice and sat on a stool reading a newspaper through small square spectacles worn low on his nose. Once or twice Martin had tried to strike up a conversation with him, in an effort to win his confidence and offer a suggestion or two, but the old man had looked up from his paper with red-rimmed hostile eyes. After that, Martin had no qualms about sending cigar-smoking guests to Dressler’s Cigars and Tobacco, conveniently located just down the block. He wondered how the concession could possibly pay, though of course it was more convenient for a guest to step out of an elevator and walk three steps to purchase a morning paper and a so-so cigar than to leave the hotel for even a short walk down the street. The hotel rented lobby space to three other concessions — the newsstand, a florist’s shop, and a railway ticket agency — all of which seemed to Martin to be operated far more skillfully than the cigar stand. When he asked the assistant manager whether the hotel couldn’t enforce higher standards, since it owned the space, Mr. Henning looked at him with amusement. He said that there had been no complaints, that the hotel wasn’t in the cigar business, and that so far as the lobby concessions were concerned, the hotel was simply a landlord, who demanded from the concessionaires only the rent check and behavior appropriate to the reputation of the Vanderlyn Hotel. Martin argued that the Vanderlyn was in the business of attracting guests, and that the lobby concessions were part of that business, and that therefore — but here Mr. Henning laughed and said that all this talk about cigars was making him hungry for a smoke, and if it made Martin feel better, there was talk that old man Hendricks would be giving up the concession when the lease ran out at the end of the year. “Then I’ll take it over myself,” Martin said irritably. Mr. Henning burst out laughing, then looked at him sharply. “Go easy, lad. One thing at a time.”

The old man gave notice before the end of the year: John Babcock said he was moving out to Brooklyn to live with his widowed sister, a milliner who owned the house over her shop and took in boarders. And Martin, after thinking things out for two months, explained his plan to his father, presented it in detail to Mr. Westerhoven, the hotel manager, and took over the cigar concession. For the past two years Martin had been giving half his salary to his father and putting the other half in the bank; although he had saved enough money for a month’s rent, he needed his father’s signature as guarantor of the lease, which ran for one year. His father agreed to advance Martin a sum of money good for six months’ rent, after which Martin had to pay the rent himself or give up the lease. And Martin, who had no intentipn of giving up either the lease or his post as day clerk, had in addition to pay the salary of the cigar vendor. He wanted someone young and vigorous, someone who knew cigars, and Otto Dressler had just the man for him: Wilhelm Baer, the twenty-year-old son of Gustav Baer, a cigarmaker on Forsyth Street in the old neighborhood. Wilhelm, who had no trace of a German accent and called himself Bill, had worked as a cigarmaker and a packer before clerking in a cigar store on Third Avenue under the El; he was out of work and would jump at the chance. Martin took an immediate liking to Bill Baer, a friendly man with alert blue eyes and copper-colored hair brushed hard to the side. He seemed grateful for the job, agreed with Martin in principle about the display of cigars but had strong opinions of his own, and seemed untroubled by the idea of working for someone three years younger than himself — although Martin at seventeen, with his serious dark eyes and soft brown mustache, looked like a man of twenty-one.

Bill Baer fell in happily with a secret plan of Martin’s, and one Sunday a few weeks before the cigar stand was to change hands, the two men took the Second Avenue El down to the old neighborhood, getting off at Canal and walking east toward the river. The old neighborhood was changing. Poles and Bohemians stood in doorways and leaned out of windows, ragged children sat on the curbs, and everywhere you looked you saw the black-eyed Ostjuden, dark and curly-bearded, gabbling their harsh tongue, crowding the streets, filling the tenements — forcing the Germans north, Bill Baer told Martin, into the quiet German streets around Tompkins Square, which the old people still called Der Weisse Garten. On a cobbled lane lined with furniture shops and clothing stores they came to a narrow alley. Baer led Martin along the alley to a small courtyard of workshops, where over an open doorway hung a wooden griffin with faded red wings and a blue tongue. Inside the dusky shop there was a sharp smell of fresh wood and varnish. Pallid sunlight swirling with sawdust penetrated partway into the gloom. They walked along a twisting path that led among shadowy life-sized figures, leaning wooden signs, upside-down barrels heaped with pawnbrokers’ balls, a wooden lion with open jaws — and always the stern Indians, standing erect, eyes glaring out their defiance. Martin heard scraping sounds. They came to an open door that led into a small workroom. A short, thick-chested old man in a leather apron stood planing a rough figure beside a workbench. Another man stood in a corner, applying paint to the face of an Indian. On the bench lay an ax, a spokeshave, scattered chisels, a mallet, piles of sandpaper of different roughnesses. The woodcarver, Asmus Friedländer, spoke only German. Bill Baer questioned him and led Martin back into the shop.

“He says we can pick any one we like, except the fellows over there by the windows, with the tickets around their necks. They’re sold. Or he can knock one out for us. Any style.”

“If we can’t find the right one. But I have a feeling—” Together they walked among the wooden Indians, who in the half dark stared at them with a kind of melancholy fierceness. Some stood stiffly with their arms close to their sides, some leaned forward on one foot and shaded their eyes like old Tecumseh, some held an arm straight out, but however they posed, they clutched in one fist a bundle of wooden cigars. Bill explained that all the Indians were made of white pine; the logs came from the waterfront spar yards. Martin imagined a barge loaded with white pine logs floating down the East River to a loading dock, where they were piled onto a delivery wagon and drawn clattering over cobbles by a team of big-hoofed truck horses to the workshop of Asmus Friedländer. There were stern chiefs and brave young scouts and bosomy squaws, and here and there a different sort of figure who also held out a bundle of cigars: a Blackamoor with a brilliant red turban, a Highlander in a kilt, a fashionable lady wearing boots. Martin was surprised to see a Chinaman in a pigtail holding a large box in both hands; Bill explained that it was destined for a tea store. After a while Martin stopped before a figure and stood looking at it with his chin in his hand and his head tilted slightly. The Indian was a chief, a little smaller than life-sized. Both elbows were pressed close to the sides and both forearms extended: one hand held a tomahawk, the other a bundle of cigars.

“What do you think of this noble warrior?” he asked Bill.

“Oh, he’ll bring ’em in. He’ll do just fine. With a little more color in his feathers—”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Martin said, and placed his hand on the Indian’s shoulder. “Old fellow, you’re about to move uptown.”

One week later the new Indian, with his brightly painted headdress and his emerald-green tunic, stood before the cigar stand in the lobby of the Vanderlyn Hotel, holding out in one hand a bundle of pinewood cigars. To the handle of the upright tomahawk was attached a white sign that announced in large red letters: GRAND OPENING. The washed and sparkling display case was filled with an entirely new selection of expensive and medium-priced cigars. Before each open box rested a small card advertising the virtues of the tobacco (“smooth, rich flavor for the discriminating smoker”). In an attempt to attract the patronage of female guests, the display included half a dozen packages of the newly fashionable little cigars called cigarettes, which Otto Dressler refused to carry. Beside the new cash register stood several arrangements of cigars bound in ribbons and suggested as gifts for a beloved husband or friend. On the wall behind the display case hung a framed painting of a band of Plains Indians riding across a desert.

The day before, Martin had placed in every hotel mailbox a printed circular announcing the grand opening, advertising an improved and expanded line of outstanding but moderately priced cigars, and introducing the new sales clerk, William Baer, expert tobacconist.

Opening day was a modest success; Martin, who had hoped for a spectacular showing, was disappointed. But the new cigar stand with its handsome Indian and its alert, cheerful young salesman continued to attract customers, and by the end of the second week it was clear that the stand was making an impression. Bill was doing a brisk business in cigarettes, for which orders had tripled, and at the request of hotel guests he began to stock a variety of smoking tobaccos and a selection of sundries: embossed leather cigar cases, ebony tobacco boxes, briar and meerschaum cigar holders with amber mouthpieces, nickel-plated match safes with spring covers. Martin watched the busy stand from his post at the front desk and spent part of his lunch hour going over accounts with Bill, who liked to bring in lunch from a delicatessen and eat on the stool behind the cigar stand; and once a week they had dinner at a restaurant on Sixth Avenue. The stand had caught on, there was no doubt about it. Martin raised Bill’s salary, and they made plans to add a small wing to the display case and put in wall shelves.