Free The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

in Ethan before he knew it and he was surprised. “I’m not a chiseler, Marullo.”
    “Who’s a chiseler? That’s good business, and good business is the only kind of business that stays in business. You think Mr. Baker is giving away free samples, kid?”
    Ethan’s top blew off with a bang. “You listen to me,” he shouted. “Hawleys have been living here since the middle seventeen hundreds. You’re a foreigner. You wouldn’t know about that. We’ve been getting along with our neighbors and being decent all that time. If you think you can barge in from Sicily and change that, you’re wrong. If you want my job, you can have it—right here, right now. And don’t call me kid or I’ll punch you in the nose—”
    All Marullo’s teeth gleamed now. “Okay, okay. Don’t get mad. I just try to do you a good turn.”
    “Don’t call me kid. My family’s been here two hundred years.” In his own ears it sounded childish, and his rage petered out.
    “I don’t talk very good English. You think Marullo is guinea name, wop name, dago name. My genitori , my name, is maybe two, three thousand years old. Marullus is from Rome, Valerius Maximus tells about it. What’s two hundred years?”
    “You don’t come from here.”
    “Two hundred years ago you don’t neither.”
    Now Ethan, his rage all leaked away, saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. He saw the immigrant, guinea, fruit-peddler change under his eyes, saw the dome of forehead, the strong beak nose, deep-set fierce and fearless eyes, saw the head supported on pillared muscles, saw pride so deep and sure that it could play at humility. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder: If I’ve missed this, what else have I failed to see?
    “You don’t have to talk dago talk,” he said softly.
    “Good business. I teach you business. Sixty-eight years I got. Wife she’s died. Arthritis! I hurt. I try to show you business. Maybe you don’t learn. Most people they don’t learn. Go broke.”
    “You don’t have to rub it in because I went broke.”
    “No. You got wrong. I’m try to learn you good business so you don’t go broke no more.”
    “Fat chance. I haven’t got a business.”
    “You’re still a kid.”
    Ethan said, “You look here, Marullo. I practically run this store for you. I keep the books, bank the money, order the supplies. Keep customers. They come back. Isn’t that good business?”
    “Sure—you learned something. You’re not no kid no more. You get mad when I call you kid. What I’m going to call you? I call everybody kid.”
    “Try using my name.”
    “Don’t sound friendly. Kid is friendly.”
    “It’s not dignified.”
    “Dignified is not friendly.”
    Ethan laughed. “If you’re a clerk in a guinea store, you’ve got to have dignity—for your wife, for your kids. You understand?”
    “Is a fake.”
    “Course it is. If I had any real dignity, I wouldn’t think about it. I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. He said the words ‘son of a bitch’ are only an insult to a man who isn’t quite sure of his mother, but how would you go about insulting Albert Einstein? He was alive then. So you go right on calling me kid if you want to.”
    “You see, kid? More friendly.”
    “All right then. What were you going to tell me about business that I’m not doing?”
    “Business is money. Money is not friendly. Kid, maybe you too friendly—too nice. Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”
    “That’s nonsense, Marullo. I know plenty of nice, friendly, honorable businessmen.”
    “When not doing business, kid, yes. You going to find out. When you find out is too late. You keep store nice, kid, but if it’s your store you maybe go friendly broke. I’m teaching true lesson like school. Goo-by, kid.” Marullo flexed his