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Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen. John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment.
One of the men fetched him a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. "Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski," requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges."
"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike, frowning at the polyglot description. "He is a" answered Sloviski "he is a I dink he come from I dink he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, "and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen." "Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to watch him fly."
Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale. "I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce it. Writing of it in paper is better."
"It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned." "Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver, "and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of hair and head noises." Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, and was reputed to be a linguist.
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