Word: alexandroff
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Clients never saw the back room where he slept, never heard him speak of his family, knew of no confidants. In a neighborhood where world politics is the breath of life, he said nothing of politics; in a period when Russians were Bolsheviks, Whites, or something in between, Alexander Alexandroff listened to arguments, rolling innumerable cigarets, said nothing. Wearing the same clothes until they wore out, he imperceptibly became Uncle Alex, the most familiar figure of the neighborhood-a portly man now, kindly but frugal, helpful, but insisting on being paid for it, his brown hair reduced to a faint...
...coast where the tides of Manhattan's racial mixtures endlessly swirl and boil. Around him were Italians, Poles, Russians, Rumanians, Germans, living in an area of employment agencies, meat markets, secondhand clothing and furniture stores. Around him too were hordes of immigrants who knew no English. Alexander Alexandroff spoke English. French, German, Polish. Italian. Hebrew, Russian, and understood several other languages besides. Soon his neighbors began to use his office as a place to receive mail. Soon they began to rely on him to write their letters, advise them about the strange ways of the U. S., or translate...
...years passed. Dust veneered the walls that Alexander Alexandroff would not repaint. Dirt grimed the windows that he would not wash, settled thickly on the unswept floor. Deeds, bank books, letters and records of his clients were stacked on the floor, in chronological order, the oldest on the bottom, until they towered in huge, confused piles...
...morning last week, neighbors began to arrive as usual to get their mail at Uncle Alex's office, found his door locked. Soon a crowd filled the sidewalk-people who wanted Alexander Alexandroff to deposit their money, or register their deeds, or give them his advice for a fee. By midday the crowd was big, and Mike Sawicki, who repairs umbrellas in the same tenement, called the police. They found Alexander Alexandroff in bed in his back room, dead. One of his many cats was crouched at the window...
...junklike jumble of records, the police found bank books showing that Alexander Alexandroff possessed a fortune of about $20,000, also that he had become a U. S. citizen in 1937 under the name of Alexander Isaac Slowly, and owned more property under that name...