The helpers loaded the bureau and the dressing table in the van alongside the sitting room suite, then, after knocking the bed apart, brought it down in sections. One of them brought down the mattress, and the other brought down the springs. They packed the springs but left the mattress on the tailgate to be used as a buffer for the stuff from the kitchen. Before going back up, they went forward to the driver's compartment and drank heartily from a bottle of California muscatel wine.

A young man standing in the doorway of the adjoining tenement sucked on a marijuana cigarette and watched them with an expression of infantile concentration. He had a big, flat body, whose wide square shoulders gave the impression of abnormal strength. He had a small head with a round babyish face and smooth brown hairless skin. His big eyes with their drug-widened pupils looked completely senseless. Despite the heat he wore a heavy tweed jacket with thick shoulder pads, a wide-brimmed beaver hat pulled low over his forehead and skintight mustard-colored corduroy pants tucked into black and white cowboy boots. On first sight he looked like a harmeless moron.

As soon as the Jew's two helpers went back upstairs, he squashed the marijuana butt, stuck it into the band of his hat and sauntered toward the truck. Without looking about to see whether or not he was being watched, he shouldered the mattress as though it were stuffed with down and began walking casually in the direction of Lenox Avenue.

A young brown-skinned woman, looking out of a window as he passed her tenement lodging, laughed melodiously.

"Hey, baby, come look at this spook with his house on his back," she called over her shoulder.