第8章 The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein 埃基·舍恩斯坦的媚药

The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon.

The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk—pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.

Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glace. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.

Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's, two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain—you must have guessed it—Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal—the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of ammonia.

The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope! ) was Chunk McGowan.

Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no outfielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.

One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.

“Ikey,” said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, “get busy with your ear. It's drugs for me if you've got the line I need.”

Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found none.

“Take your coat off,” he ordered. “I guess already that you have been stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have many times told you those Dagoes would do you up.”

Mr. McGowan smiled. “Not them,” he said. “Not any Dagoes. But you've located the diagnosis all right enough—it's under my coat, near the ribs. Say! Ikey—Rosy and me are goin' to run away and get married to-night.”

Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom.

“That is,” he continued, “if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've been layin' pipes for the getaway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on to-night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up when it comes to the scratch.”

“You said you wanted drugs,” remarked Ikey.

Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed—a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.

“I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million,” he said. “I've got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at .. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't change her mind again!” —Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts.

“I don't see then yet,” said Ikey, shortly, “what makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about it.”

“Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit,” went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. “For a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $ a week and she'll never regret flyin' the coop with Chunk McGowan.”

“You will excuse me, Chunk,” said Ikey. “I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon.”

“Say,” said McGowan, looking up suddenly, “say, Ikey, ain't there a drug of some kind—some kind of powders that'll make a girl like you better if you give 'em to her?”

Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued: “Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed 'em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks.”

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

“I thought,” went on Chunk hopefully, “that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff'll work just for a couple of hours it'll do the trick.”

“When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?” asked Ikey.

“Nine o'clock,” said Mr. McGowan. “Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano lets me through to his back yard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to make it early on the preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey?”

Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly.

“Chunk,” said he, “it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquaintance would I intrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to think of you.”

Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would insure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper. This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar.

The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr. Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action.

“Much obliged,” he said, briefly, to Ikey. “The lazy Irish loafer! My own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go up there myself after supper and load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my back yard he'll go away in an ambulance instead of a bridal chaise.”

With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many hours' deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture.

All night in the Blue Light Drug Store he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came.

At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lo! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a passing street car and grasped his hand—Chunk McGowan with a victor's smile and flushed with joy.

“Pulled it off,” said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. “Rosy hit the fire-escape on time to a second, and we was under the wire at the Reverend's at 9.30 1/4. She's up at the flat—she cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue kimono—Lord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for now.”

“The—the—powder?” stammered Ikey.

“Oh, that stuff you gave me!” said Chunk, broadening his grin; “well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, ‘Chunk, if you get the girl get her on the square—don't try any hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her.’ And I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then my lamps fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin’ in a proper affection toward his comin' son-in- law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle's coffee—see?”

蓝光药店位于鲍威利街和第一大街之间的闹市区，是两条街相距最短的地方。蓝光药店认为，药店不是卖小摆设、香水和冰淇淋苏打水的地方。要是你要买镇痛剂，它就不会给你夹心糖。

蓝光药店看不起现代药房省工的做法。它要浸透鸦片，渗滤出鸦片酊和止痛剂。直到今天，它的药丸都是在高高的处方台后面制作的——在店里的瓷砖上面铺开，用抹刀分开，食指和拇指捻圆，撒上一层氧化镁粉，然后装进纸板做的又小又圆的药丸盒里。这家药店位于拐角处，一群群衣衫褴褛、欢蹦乱跳的孩子在附近玩耍，止咳丸和止咳糖浆正好等着他们进去购买。

埃基·舍恩斯坦是蓝光药店的夜班店员，也是顾客们的朋友。因为药店在纽约东部的贫民区，所以药物里是不加糖的。配药师理所当然是那里的顾问、忏悔牧师、指导老师、能干乐意的传教士和良师益友，他博学多识受人尊敬，他玄妙智慧使人崇敬，他配的药往往尝也不尝就倒进了排水沟。因此，埃基眼镜下的角状鼻子和知识压弯的瘦小身材在蓝光药店附近赫赫有名，而且大家都非常渴望得到他的建议和警告。

埃基寄宿在离药店有两个街区的里德尔太太的家里，早餐也在那里吃。里德尔太太有一个女儿，名叫露西。转弯抹角的陈述毫无意义——你肯定已经猜到了——埃基爱慕露西。露西让他魂牵梦绕；她是一切化学纯净成药的复合精华——药典里都没有和她相提并论的东西。然而，埃基胆小羞怯，所以他的希望在畏缩与畏惧的溶剂里还没有溶解。在柜台后面，他技高一筹，处事冷静，晓得专门知识和价值；出得柜台外面，他却优柔寡断，反应迟钝，走在路上常常遭到机车司机的谩骂，不合身的衣服上沾满了化学药品的斑点，散发着索歌德林芦荟和氨水戊酸盐的气味。

埃基药膏里的苍蝇（大受欢迎，比喻恰当！）是昌克·麦高恩。

麦高恩先生也在力争抓住露西不时抛来的欢快笑容。但是，他不像埃基一样是棒球外场手，而是马上接球。同时，他是埃基的朋友和顾客，经常在鲍威利街度过一个愉快的夜晚后，光顾蓝光药店，要么让人给外伤擦点碘酒，要么让人给伤口贴一张橡皮膏药。

一天下午，麦高恩默不作声、轻松随意地走进来，坐在一只凳子上，举止得体，态度和蔼，既坚定不屈，又亲切随和。

“埃基，”他说，这时他的朋友取来研钵，坐在对面，正在把安息香树胶磨成粉，“用心听。要是你有我需要的那一系列药，那就是给我的。”

埃基仔细查看麦高恩的面容，想寻找通常冲突后留下的痕迹，但什么也没有发现。

“脱掉衣服，”他命令道。“我已经猜到你的肋部挨了一刀。我曾经多次告诉过你，那些拉丁人会收拾你。”

麦高恩微微一笑。“不是他们，”他说。“不是任何拉丁人。不过，你诊断的地方真够准的——就是在上衣里面、肋骨附近。喂！埃基——我和露西今晚要私奔结婚。”

埃基左手食指扣紧研钵的边沿，把稳了它，用碾槌一阵狂捣，但他自己没有感觉到这一切。同时，麦高恩先生的微笑渐渐变得困惑忧郁。

他接着说道：“她要是把那个想法隐瞒到那个时候，那就成了。我们已经为私奔作了两周准备。有一天，她说她愿意，同一天傍晚她又说不行。今晚我们已经取得了一致意见，这次露西花了整整两天才肯定下来。可是，到那时还有五个小时，我怕决定采取行动时，她又失约，让我失望。”

“你刚才说你需要药，”埃基说。

麦高恩先生神色不安而又厌烦——和他平常的举止相反。他把一本专利药年鉴卷成圆筒，无聊而又仔细地套在手指上。

“我无论如何都不想让这种双重阻碍造成今晚不成功的开始，”他说。

“我已经在哈莱姆区买了一个小公寓，一切就绪，桌上放着菊花和准备烧开水的壶。我已经聘请了一位布道的牧师，请他九点半在他家里等我们。这件事必须成功。只要露西不再改变主意，就行！”——麦高恩先生停住话头，疑虑重重，苦恼不已。

“那我还是不明白，”埃基简略地说，“你怎么会说起药，我又能干什么。”

“老头子里德尔一点也不喜欢我，”这位心神不安的求婚者继续说着，专心陈述他的观点。“他一周都不让露西跟我出门。要不是怕失去一个搭伙人，他们早就把我赶走了。现在，我每周挣二十美元，她绝不后悔跟昌克·麦高恩私奔。”

“请原谅，昌克，”埃基说。“我必须开个药方，有人马上就要来取。”

“嗨，”麦高恩突然抬起头说，“嗨，埃基，是不是有某种药——某种药粉，给一个女孩吃下去，就会使她更喜欢你呢？”

埃基完全明白了他的意思，轻蔑地翘了翘上嘴唇；但还没等他来得及回答，麦高恩便又继续说道：“蒂姆·莱西告诉我说，他有一次从住宅区一个医生那里搞到一些药，放进苏打水给他的女友喝了下去。一剂下来，对她来说，他成了最好的，其他任何人都不值一看。他们不到两周就结了婚。”

昌克·麦高恩强壮而又朴素。比埃基眼明的人都能看出，昌克强壮的体格仿佛悬在细铁丝上。他像一位准备入侵敌人领土的良将，正在试图守卫每个据点，防止可能的失败。

“我想，”昌克满怀希望地接着说道，“今天晚饭见到她时，要是我有那种药粉给露西喝，说不定会让她下定决心，以防她毁约不跟我私奔。我想她不需要一个骡队来拖走，但女人更善于当教练，而不善于去跑垒。只要那东西发挥两小时作用，就会获得成功。”

“这次愚蠢的私奔要什么时候进行？”埃基问道。

“九点钟，”麦高恩先生说。“晚饭七点钟吃。八点钟，露西说头痛，就上床睡觉去了。九点钟，老帕文扎诺让我穿过他家的后院，隔壁里德尔家的篱笆上有一块木板。我走到她的窗下，帮她爬下防火梯。因为牧师的缘故，所以我们不得不提早赶到。落旗时，只要露西不做犯规的假动作，一切就会易如反掌。你能给我准备这种药粉吗，埃基？”

埃基·舍恩斯坦慢慢地揉着鼻子。

“昌克，”他说，“这种类型的药，药剂师必须多加小心。在我认识的熟人中，我只放心给你这种药粉。我只会对你配这种药，你将看到它会使露西多么想你。”

埃基走到处方桌后面，把两片可溶药片压成粉末，每片含四分之一格令吗啡。他又加了一点奶糖，增加体积，然后用一张白纸包好这种混合剂。成年人服了这种药粉，它会确保睡眠者沉睡几小时没有危险。他把药粉递给昌克·麦高恩，嘱咐他，如有可能，就要把它放进液体里服用。同时，他还受到了后院这位洛金伐尔的衷心感谢。

埃基行为的微妙之处，我们要等他的下一步棋，才能清楚。他派人给里德尔先生报信，透露了麦高恩先生和露西私奔的计划。里德尔先生身体结实，行动迅速，面部呈砖灰色。

“多谢，”里德尔先生简要地对埃基说。“这个懒惰的爱尔兰二流子！我自己的房间就在露西的上面，晚饭后，我就亲自去那里，给猎枪装上子弹等着。只要他踏进我的后院，他就得坐救护车，而不是坐迎亲马车离开。”

露西在睡梦之神摩耳甫斯的控制下要沉睡好多小时，加上她残忍的父亲事先得到警告持枪在等待，埃基觉得他的情敌确实离失败不远了。

他通宵都在蓝光药店值班，等待偶发惨案的消息，但什么也没等来。

第二天早上八点钟，日班店员来上班，埃基匆匆赶往里德尔家了解结果。瞧！他走出药店时，昌克·麦高恩从路过的一辆有轨电车上跳下来，紧紧握住他的手——昌克·麦高恩带着胜利者的微笑，高兴得满脸通红。

“得手了，”昌克笑得合不拢嘴地说道。“露西一秒不差准时登上了防火梯，我们九点三十分十五秒，在最后期限之前，赶到了牧师家。她在公寓里已经起床了——她今天早上穿着蓝色晨衣还煮了鸡蛋呢——上帝！我是多么幸运！埃基，你哪天一定要过来，跟我们一起吃饭。我已经在大桥附近找到了一份工作，现在我正要去那里上班。”

“那——那——药粉呢？”埃基结结巴巴地问道。

“噢，你给我的那东西！”昌克说，笑得更开心了。“啊，是这样。昨天夜里，我在里德尔家的餐桌边坐下来，看着露西，对自己说：‘昌克，要是你要得到这个女孩，就要光明正大地得到她——不要企图用任何花招来欺骗像她这样一位有教养的人。’我把你给我的那个纸包放在口袋里。后来，我的目光落在了在场的另一个人身上。我对自己说：他对未来的女婿应有的感情上表现欠佳，所以我看准时机，把那药粉倒进了老头子里德尔的咖啡里——明白了吗？”