Beta Book

He was still "funny and sort of scary," not like the
overpowering Southern gentlemen she supposed she remembered.
Also, she was hungry. She listened with stolid glumness to Mr.
Wrenn's observation that that was "an awful big hat the lady
with the funny guy had on."
He was chilled into quietness till Papa Gouroff, the owner of
the restaurant, arrived from above-stairs. Papa Gouroff was
a Russian Jew who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel
proprietor in Mogador, where he called himself Turkish and
married a renegade Armenian. He had a nose like a sickle and a
neck like a blue-gum nigger. He hoped that the place would
degenerate into a Bohemian restaurant where liberal clergymen
would think they were slumming, and barbers would think they
were entering society, so he always wore a _fez_ and talked bad
Arabic. He was local color, atmosphere, Bohemian flavor. Mr.
Wrenn murmured to Theresa:
"Say, do you see that man? He's Signor Gouroff, the owner.
I've talked to him a lot of times. Ain't he great! Golly! look
at that beak of his.


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