CHAPTER I
SOMETIMES when I think of my past in a superficial casual way the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothing short of a miracle I was born and reared in the lowest depths of poverty and I arrived in America—in 1885—with four cents in my pocket I am now worth more than two million dollars and recognized as one of the two or three leading men in the cloakandsuit trade in the United States And yet when I take a look at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the same as it was thirty or forty years ago My present station power the amount of worldly happiness at my command and the rest of it seem to be devoid of significance
When I was young I used to think that middleaged people recalled their youth as something seen through a haze I know better now Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be The last years that I spent in my native land and my first years in America come back to me with the distinctness of yesterday Indeed I have a better recollection of many a trifle of my childhood days than I have of some important things that occurred to me recently I have a good memory for faces but I am apt to recognize people I have not seen for a quarter of a century more readily than I do some I used to know only a few years ago
I love to brood over my youth The dearest days in ones life are those that seem very far and very near at once My wretched boyhood appeals to me as a sick child does to its mother
I was born in Antomir in the Northwestern Region Russia in 1865 All I remember of my father is his tawny beard a huge yellow apple he once gave me at the gate of an orchard where he was employed as watchman and the candle which burned at his head his body lay under a white shroud on the floor I was less than three years old when he died so my mother would carry me to the synagogue in her arms to have somebody say the Prayer for the Dead with me I was unable fully to realize the meaning of the ceremony of course but its solemnity and pathos were not altogether lost upon me There is a streak of sadness in the blood of my race Very likely it is of Oriental origin If it is it has been amply nourished by many centuries of persecution
Left to her own resources my mother strove to support herself and me by peddling pea mush or doing odds and ends of jobs She had to struggle hard for our scanty livelihood and her trials and loneliness came home to me at an early period
I was her all in all though she never poured over me those torrents of senseless rhapsody which I heard other Jewish mothers shower over their children The only words of endearment I often heard from her were My little bean and My comfort Sometimes when she seemed to be crushed by the miseries of her life she would call me My poor little orphan Otherwise it was Come here my comfort Are you hungry my little bean or You are a silly little dear my comfort These words of hers and the sonorous contralto in which they were uttered are ever alive in my heart like the Flame Everlasting in a synagogue
Mamma why do you never beat me like other mammas do I once asked her
She laughed kissed me and said Because God has punished you hard enough as it is poor orphan mine
I scarcely remembered my father yet I missed him keenly I was ever awake to the fact that other little boys had fathers and that I was a melancholy exception that most married women had husbands while my mother had to bear her burden unaided In my dim childish way I knew that there was a great blank in our family nest that it was a widows nest and the feeling of it seemed to color all my other feelings When I was a little older and would no longer sleep with my mother a rusty old coat of my deceased fathers served me as a quilt At night before falling asleep I would pull it over my head shut my eyes tight and evoke a flow of fantastic shapes bright beautifully tinted and incessantly changing form and color While the play of these figures and hues was going on before me I would see all sorts of bizarre visions which at times seemed to have something to do with my fathers spirit
Is papa in heaven now Is he through with hell I once inquired of my mother Some things or ideas would assume queer forms in my mind God for example appealed to me as a beardless man wearing a quilted silk cap holiness was something burning forbidding something connected with fire while a day had the form of an oblong box
I was a great dreamer of day dreams One of my pastimes was to imagine a host of tiny soldiers each the size of my little finger but alive and real These I would drill as I saw officers do their men in front of the barracks some distance from our home Or else I would take to marching up and down the room with mothers rollingpin for a rifle grunting ferociously in Russian Left one Left one Left one in the double capacity of a Russian soldier and of David fighting Goliath
Often while bent upon her housework my mother would hum some of the songs of the famous wedding bard Eliakim Zunzer who later emigrated to America
I distinctly remember her singing his There is a flower on the road decaying in the dust Passersby treading upon it his Summer and Winter and his Rachael is bemoaning her children I vividly recall these brooding airs as she used to sing them for I have inherited her musical memory and her passionate love for melody though not her voice I cannot sing myself but some tunes give me thrills of pleasure keen and terrible as the edge of a sword Some haunt me like ghosts But then this is a common trait among our people
She was a wiry little woman my mother with prominent cheekbones a small firm mouth and dark eyes Her hair was likewise dark though I saw it but very seldom for like all orthodox daughters of Israel she always had it carefully covered by a kerchief a nightcap or—on Saturdays and holidays—by a wig She was extremely rigorous about it For instance while she changed her kerchief for her nightcap she would cause me to look away
My great sport during my ninth and tenth years was to play buttons These we would fillip around on some patch of unpaved ground with a little pit for a billiard pocket My own pockets were usually full of these buttons As the game was restricted to brass ones from the uniforms of soldiers my mother had plenty to do to keep those pockets of mine in good repair To develop skill for the sport I would spend hours in some secluded spot secretly practising it by myself Sometimes as I was thus engaged my mother would seek me out and bring me a hunk of rye bread
Here she would say gravely handing me it And I would accept it with preoccupied mien take a deep bite and go on filliping my buttons
I gambled passionately and was continually counting my treasure or running around the big courtyard jingling it selfconsciously But one day I suddenly wearied of it all and traded my entire hoard of buttons for a pocketknife and some trinkets
Dont you care for buttons any more mother inquired
I cant bear the sight of them I replied
She shrugged her shoulders smilingly and called me queer fellow
Sometimes I would fall to kissing her passionately Once after an outburst of this kind I said Are people sorry for us mamma
What do you mean
Because I have no papa and we have no money
Antomir which then boasted eighty thousand inhabitants was a town in which a few thousand rubles was considered wealth and we were among the humblest and poorest in it The bulk of the population lived on less than fifty copecks twentyfive cents a day and that was difficult to earn A hunk of rye bread and a bit of herring or cheese constituted a meal A quarter of a copeck an eighth of a cent was a coin with which one purchased a few crumbs of potcheese or some boiled water for tea Rubbers were worn by people of means only I never saw any in the district in which my mother and I had our home A white starched collar was an attribute of aristocracy Children had to nag their mothers for a piece of bread
Mamma I want a piece of bread with a mild whimper
Again bread Youll eat my head off May the worms eat you
Dialogues such as this were heard at every turn
My boyhood recollections include the following episode Mother once sent me to a tinkers shop to have our drinkingcup repaired It was a plain tin affair and must have cost when new something like four or five cents It had done service as long as I could remember It was quite rusty and finally sprang a leak And so I took it to the tinker or tinsmith who soldered it up On my way home I slipped and fell whereupon the cup hit a cobblestone and sprang a new leak When my mother discovered the damage she made me tell the story of the accident over and over again wringing her hands and sighing as she listened The average mother in our town would have given me a whipping in the circumstances She did not
CHAPTER II
WE lived in a deep basement in a large dusky room that we shared with three other families each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife Fights over pots were as frequent and as truculent as those over the children
Of our roommates I best recall a bookbinder and a retired old soldier who mended old sheepskin coats for a living My memories of home are inseparable from the odors of sheepskin and paste and the image of two upright wooden screws the bookbinders machine The soldier had finished his term of military service years before yet he still wore his uniform—a dilapidated black coat with new brass buttons and a similar overcoat of a coarse gray material Also he still shaved his chin sporting a pair of formidable gray sidewhiskers Shaving is one of the worst sins known to our faith but somehow people overlooked it in one who had once been compelled to practise it in the army Otherwise the furrier or sheepskin tailor was an extremely pious man He was very kind to me so that his military whiskers never awed me Not so his lame tall wife who often hit me with one of her crutches
She was the bane of my life The bookbinders wife was much younger than her husband and one of the things I often heard was that he was crazy for her because she is his second wife from which I inferred that second wives were loved far more than first ones
The bookbinder had a redhaired little girl whom I hated like poison Red Esther we called her to distinguish her from a Black Esther whose home was on the same yard She was full of fight Knowing how repulsive she was to me she was often the first to open hostilities mocking my way of speaking or sticking out her tongue at me Or else she would press her freckled cheek against my lips and then dodge back shouting gloatingly He has kissed a girl He has kissed a girl Sinner Shame Sinner Sinner
There were some other things that she or some of the other little girls of our courtyard would do to make an involuntary sinner of me but these had better be left out
I had many a fierce duel with her I was considered a strong boy but she was quick and nimble as a cat and I usually got the worst of the bargain often being left badly scratched and bleeding At which point the combat would be taken up by our mothers
The room part of which was our home and two other singleroom apartments similarly tenanted opened into a pitchdark vestibule which my fancy peopled with evil ones A steep stairway led up to the yard part of which was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle onestory houses It was known as Abners Court During the summer months it swarmed with tattered unkempt humanity There was a peculiar odor to the place which I can still smell
Indeed many of the things that I conjure up from the past appeal as much to my sense of smell as to my visual memory It was anything but a grateful odor
The far end of our street was part of a squalid little suburb known as the Sands It was inhabited by Gentiles exclusively Sometimes when a Jew chanced to visit it some of its boys would descend upon him with shouts of Damned Jew Christkiller and sick their dogs at him As we had no dogs to defend us orthodox Jews being prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a custom amounting to a religious injunction our boys never ventured into the place except perhaps in a spirit of daredevil bravado
One day the bigger Jewish boys of our street had a pitched battle with the Sands boys an event which is one of the landmarks in the history of my childhood
Still some of the Sands boys were on terms of friendship with us
and would even come to play with us in our yard The only
Gentile family that lived in Abners Court was that of the porter
His children spoke fairly good Yiddish
One Saturday evening a pockmarked lad from the Sands the son of a chimneysweep meeting me in the street set his dog at me As a result I came home with a fairsized piece of my trousers kneebreeches were unknown to us missing
Im going to kill him my mother said with something like a sob
Im just going to kill him
Cool down the retired soldier pleaded without removing his shortstemmed pipe from his mouth
Mother was silent for a minute and even seated herself but presently she sprang to her feet again and made for the door
The soldiers wife seized her by an arm
Where are you going To the Sands Are you crazy If you start a quarrel over there youll never come back alive
I dont care
She wrenched herself free and left the room
Half an hour later she came back beaming
His father is a lovely Gentile she said He went out brought his murderer of a boy home took off his belt and skinned him alive
A good Gentile the soldiers wife commented admiringly
There was always a pile of logs somewhere in our Court the property of some family that was to have it cut up for firewood This was our great gatheringplace of a summer evening Here we would bandy stories often of our own inventing or discuss things the leading topic of conversation being the soldiers of the two regiments that were stationed in our town We saw a good deal of these soldiers and we could tell their officers commissioned or noncommissioned by the number of stars or bands on their shoulderstraps Also we knew the names of their generals colonels and some of their majors or captains The more important manoeuvers took place a great distance from Abners Court but that did not matter If they occurred on a Saturday when we were free from school—and as good luck would have it they usually did—many of us myself invariably included would go to see them The blare of trumpets the beat of drums the playing of the band the rhythmic clatter of thousands of feet the glint of rows and rows of bayonets the red or the blue of the uniforms the commanding officer on his mount the spirited singing of the men marching back to barracks—all this would literally hold me spellbound
That we often played soldiers goes without saying but we played hares more often a game in which the counting was done by means of senseless words like the American Eeny meeny miny moe Sometimes we would play war with the names of the belligerents borrowed from the Old Testament and once in a while we would have a real war with the boys of the next street
I was accounted one of the strong fellows among the boys of Abners Court as well as one of the conspicuous figures among them Compactly built broadshouldered with a small firm mouth like my mothers a wellformed nose and large dark eyes I was not a homely boy by any means nor one devoid of a certain kind of magnetism
One of my recollections is of my mother administering a tonguelashing to a married young woman whom she had discovered flirting in the dark vestibule with a man not her husband
A few minutes later the young woman came in and begged my mother not to tell her husband
If I was your husband I would skin you alive
Oh dont tell him Take pity Dont
I wont Get out of here you lump of stench
Oh swear that you wont tell him Do swear dearie Long life to you
Health to every little bone of yours
First you swear that youll never do it again you heap of dung
Strike me blind and dumb and deaf if I ever do it again There
Your oaths are worth no more than the barking of a dog Cant you be decent You ought to be knouted in the marketplace You are a plague Black luck upon you Get away from me
But I will be decent May I break both my legs and both my arms if I am not Do swear that you wont tell him
My mother yielded
She was passionately devout my mother Being absolutely illiterate she would murmur meaningless words in the singsong of a prayer pretending to herself that she was performing her devotions This however she would do with absolute earnestness and fervor often with tears of ecstasy coming to her eyes To be sure she knew how to bless the Sabbath candles and to recite the two or three other brief prayers that our religion exacts from married women But she was not contented with it and the sight of a woman going to synagogue with a huge prayerbook under her arm was ever a source of envy to her
Most of the tenants of the Court were good people honest and pure but there were exceptions Of these my memory has retained the face of a man who was known as Carrot Pudding Moe a redheaded broadshouldered finger worker a specialist in short change yardstick frauds and other varieties of marketplace legerdemain One woman a cross between a beggar and a dealer in secondhand dresses had four sons all of whom were pickpockets but she herself was said to be of spotless honesty She never allowed them to enter Abners Court though every time one of them was in prison she would visit him and bring him food
Nor were professional beggars barred from the Court as tenants Indeed one of our nextdoor neighbors was a regular recipient of alms at the hands of my mother For poor as she was she seldom let a Friday pass without distributing a few halfgroschen an eighth of a cent in charity The amusing part of it was the fact that one of the beggars on her list was far better off than she
Hes old and lame and no hypocrite like the rest of them she would explain
She had a ferocious temper but there were people myself among them with whom she was never irritated The women of Abners Court were either her devoted followers or her bitter enemies She was a leader in most of the feuds that often divided the whole Court into two warring camps and in those exceptional cases when she happened to be neutral she was an ardent peacemaker She wore a darkblue kerchief which was older than I and almost invariably when there was a crowd of women in the yard that kerchief would loom in its center
Growing as I did in that crowded basement room which was the home of four families it was inevitable that the secrets of sex should be revealed to me before I was able fully to appreciate their meaning Then too the neighborhood was not of the purest in town Located a short distance from Abners Court midway between it and the barracks was a lane of ill repute usually full of soldiers If it had an official name I never heard it It was generally referred to as that street in a subdued voice that was suggestive either of shame and disgust or of waggish mirth For a long time I was under the impression that That was simply the name of the street
One summer day—I must have been eight years old—I told my mother that I had peeked in one of the little yards of the mysterious lane that I had seen halfnaked women and soldiers there and that one of the women had beckoned me in and given me some cake
Why you mustnt do that Davie she said aghast Dont you ever go near that street again Do you hear
Why
Because it is a bad street
Why is it bad
Keep still and dont ask foolish questions
I obeyed with the result that the foolish questions kept rankling in my brain
On a subsequent occasion when she was combing my dark hair fondly I ventured once more Mamma why mustnt I come near that street
Because it is a sin to do so my comfort Fie upon it
This answer settled it One did not ask why it was a sin to do this or not to do that You dont demand explanations of the Master of the World as people were continually saying around me My curiosity was silenced That street became repellent to me something hideously wicked and sinister
Sometimes some of the excommunicated women would drop in at our yard As a rule my mother was bitterly opposed to their visits and she often chased them out with maledictions and expressions of abhorrence but there was one case in which she showed unusual tolerance and even assumed the part of father confessor to a woman of this kind She would listen to her tale of woe homesickness and repentance including some of the most intimate details of her loathsome life She would even deliver her donations to the synagogue thus helping her cheat the Biblical injunction which bars the gifts of fallen women from a house of God
My mother would bid me keep away during these confabs of theirs but this only whetted my curiosity and I often overheard far more than I should
Fridays were halfholidays with us Jewish boys One Friday afternoon a wedding was celebrated in our courtyard The procession emerged from one of the rickety onestory houses accompanied by a band playing a solemn tune
When it reached the center of the vacant part of the yard it came to a halt and a canopy was stretched over the principal figures of the ceremony
Prayers and benedictions were chanted The groom put the ring on the brides finger dedicating her to himself according to the laws of Moses and Israel more prayers were recited the bridegroom and the bride received sips of wine a plate was smashed the sound being greeted by shouts of Good luck Good luck The band struck up a lively tune with a sad tang to it
The yard was crowded with people It was the greatest sensation we children had ever enjoyed there We remained out chattering of the event till the windows were aglitter with Sabbath lights
I was in a trance The ceremony was a poem to me something inexpressibly beautiful and sacred
Presently a boy somewhat older than I made a jest at the young couples expense What he said was a startling revelation to me Certain things which I had known before suddenly appeared in a new light to me I relished the discovery and I relished the deviltry of it But the poem vanished The beauty of the wedding I had just witnessed and of weddings in general seemed to be irretrievably desecrated
That boys name was Naphtali He was a trimlooking fellow with curly brown hair somewhat nearsighted He was as poor as the average boy in the yard and as poorly dressed but he was the tidiest of us He would draw with a piece of chalk figures of horses and men which we admired He knew things good and bad and from that Friday I often sought his company Unlike most of the other boys he talked little throwing out his remarks at long intervals which sharpened my sense of his wisdom His father never let him attend the manoeuvers yet he knew more about soldiers than any of the other boys more even than I though I had that retired soldier the sheepskin man to explain things military to me
One summer evening Naphtali and I sat on a pile of logs in the yard watching a boy who was playing on a toy fiddle of his own making I said I wish I knew how to play on a real fiddle dont you
Naphtali made no answer After a little he said You must think it is the bow that does the playing dont you
What else does it I asked perplexed
Its the fingers of the other hand those that are jumping around
Is it
I did not understand but I was deeply impressed all the same The question bothered me all that evening Finally I submitted it to my mother Mamma Naphtali says when you play on a fiddle it is not the bow that makes the tune but the fingers that are jumping around Is it true
She told me not to bother her with foolish questions but the retired soldier who had overheard my query volunteered to answer it
Of course it is not the bow he said
But if you did not work the bow the strings would not play would they I urged
You could play a tune by pinching them he answered But if you just kept passing the bow up and down there would be no tune at all
I plied him with further questions and he answered them all patiently and fondly illustrating his explanations with a thread for a violin string my mother looking from him to me beamingly
When we were through she questioned him Do you think he understands it all He certainly does He has a good head he answered with a wink And she flushed with happiness
CHAPTER III
THE tuition fee at a school for religious instruction or cheder was from eight to ten rubles five dollars for a term of six months My mother could not afford it On the other hand she would not hear of sending me to the free cheder of our town because of its reputation for poor instruction So she importuned and harassed two distant relatives of ours until they agreed to raise part of the sum between them The payments were made with anything but promptness the result being that I was often turned out of school
Mother however would lose no time in bringing me back She would implore the schoolmaster to take pity on the poor helpless woman that she was assuring him with some weird oaths that she would pay him every penny If that failed she would burst into a flood of threats and imprecations daring him to let a fatherless boy grow up in ignorance of the Word of God This was followed by similar scenes at the houses of my cousins until finally I was allowed to resume my studies sometimes at the same cheder sometimes at some other one There were scores of such private schools in our town and before I got through my elementary religious education I had become acquainted with a considerable number of them
Sometimes when a teacher or his wife tried to oust me I would clutch at the table and struggle sullenly until they yielded
I may explain that instruction in these cheders was confined to the Hebrew Old Testament and rudiments of the Talmud the exercises lasting practically all day and part of the evening The classroom was at the same time the bedroom livingroom and kitchen of the teachers family His wife and children were always around These cheder teachers were usually a haggardlooking lot with full beards and voices hoarse with incessant shouting
A special man generally came for an hour to teach the boys to write As he was to be paid separately I was not included The feeling of envy abasement and selfpity with which I used to watch the other boys ply their quills is among the most painful memories of my childhood
During the penmanship lesson I was generally kept busy in other directions
The teachers wife would make me help her with her housework go her errands or mind the baby in one instance I became so attached to the baby that when I was expelled I missed it keenly
I seized every opportunity to watch the boys write and would practise the art with chalk on my mothers table or bed on the door of our basement room on many a gate or fence Sometimes a boy would let me write a line or two in his copybook Sometimes too I would come to school before the schoolmaster had returned from the morning service at the synagogue and practise with pen and ink following the copy of some of my classmates One of my teachers once caught me in the act He held me up as an inkthief and forbade me come to school before the beginning of exercises
Otherwise my teachers scarcely ever complained of my behavior As to the progress I was making in my studies they admitted some even with enthusiasm that mine was a good head Nevertheless to be beaten by them was an everyday experience with me
Overworked underfed and goaded by the tonguelashings of their wives these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts Bursts of ill temper in the form of invective hairpulling earpulling pinching caning napecracking or chinsmashing were part of the routine and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of other boys When a pupil deserved punishment and the schoolmaster could not afford to inflict it because the culprit happened to be the pet of a welltodo family the teachers anger was almost sure to be vented on me If I happened to be somewhat absentminded the only offense I was ever guilty of or was not quick enough to turn over a leaf or there was the slightest halt in my singsong I received a violent nudge or a pull by the ear
Lively lively carcass you I can almost hear one of my teachers shout these words as he digs his elbow into my side The millions one gets from your mother
This man would beat and abuse me even by way of expressing approval
A bright fellow curse him he would say punching me with an air of admiration Or Where did you get those brains of yours you wild beast with a violent pull at my forelock
During the winter months when the exercises went on until 9 in the evening the candle or kerosene was paid for by the boys in rotation When it was my turn to furnish the light it often happened that my mother was unable to procure the required two copecks one cent Then the teacher or his wife or both would curse me for a sponge and a robber and ask me why I did not go to the charity school
Almost every teacher in town was known among us boys by some nickname which was usually borrowed from some trade If he had a predilection for pulling a boys hair we would call him wigmaker or brushmaker if he preferred to slap or calcimine the culprits face we would speak of him as a mason
A coachman was a teacher who did not spare the rod or the whip a carpenter one who used his finger as a gimlet boring a pupils side or cheek a locksmith one who had a weakness for turning the screw or pinching
The greatest locksmith in town was a man named Shmerl But then he was more often called simply Shmerl the Pincher He was one of my schoolmasters
He seemed to prefer the flesh of plump wellfed boys but as these were usually the sons of prosperous parents he often had to forego the pleasure and to gratify his appetite on me There was something morbid in his cruel passion for young flesh something perversely related to sex perhaps He was a young man with a wide sneering mouth
He would pinch me black and blue till my heart contracted with pain Yet I never uttered a murmur I was too profoundly aware of the fact that I was kept on sufferance to risk the slightest demonstration I had developed a singular faculty for bearing pain which I would parade before the other boys Also I had developed a relish for flaunting my martyrdom for being an object of pity
Oh how I did hate this man especially his sneering mouth In my helplessness I would seek comfort in dreams of becoming a great man some day rich and mighty and avenging myself on him Behold Shmerl the Pincher is running after me cringingly begging my pardon and I omnipotent and formidable say to him Do you remember how you pinched the life out of me for nothing Away with you you cruel beast
Or I would vision myself dropping dead under one of his onslaughts Behold him trembling with fright the heartless wretch Serves him right
If my body happened to bear some mark of his cruelty I would conceal it carefully from my mother lest she should quarrel with him Moreover to betray school secrets was considered a great sin
One night as I was changing my shirt anxiously manoeuvering to keep a certain spot on my left arm out of her sight she became suspicious
Hold on What are you hiding there she said stepping up and inspecting my bare arm She found an ugly blotch Woe is me A lamentation upon me she said looking aghast Who has been pinching you
Nobody
It is that beast of a teacher isnt it
No
Dont lie Davie It is that assassin the cholera take him Tell me the truth Dont be afraid
A boy did it
What is his name
I dont know It was a boy in the street
You are a liar
The next morning when I went to cheder she accompanied me
Arrived there she stripped me halfnaked and pointing at the discoloration on my arm she said with ominous composure Look Whose work is it
Mine Shmerl answered without removing his longstemmed pipe from his wide mouth He was no coward
And you are proud of it are you If you dont like it you can take your ornament of a son along with you
Clear out you witch
She flew at him and they clenched When they had separated some of his hair was in her hand while her arms as she subsequently owned to me were marked with the work of his expert fingers
Another schoolmaster had a special predilection for digging the huge nail of his thumb into the side of his victim a peculiarity for which he had been named the Cossack his famous thumb being referred to by the boys as his spear He had a passion for inventing new and complex modes of punishment his spear figuring in most of them One of his methods of inflicting pain was to slap the boys face with one hand and to prod his side with the thumb of the other the slaps and the thrusts alternating rhythmically This heartless wretch was an abject coward He was afraid of thunder of rats spiders dogs and above all of his wife who would call him indecent names in our presence I abhorred him yet when he was thus humiliated I felt pity for him His wife kept a stand on a neighboring street corner where she sold cheap cakes and candy and those of her husbands pupils who were on her list of good customers were sure of immunity from his spear As I scarcely ever had a penny he could safely beat me whenever he was so disposed
CHAPTER IV
THE Cossack had a large family and one of his daughters a little girl named SarahLeah was the heroine of my first romance
SarahLeah had the misfortune to bear a striking resemblance to a sister of her fathers an offense which her mother never forgave her She treated her as she might a stepdaughter As for the Cossack he may have cared for the child but if he did he dared not show it Poor little SarahLeah She was the outcast of the family just as I was the outcast of her fathers school
She was about eleven years old and I was somewhat younger The similarity of our fates and of our selfpity drew us to each other When her father beat me I was conscious of her commiserating look and when she was mistreated by her mother she would cast appealing glances in my direction Once when the teacher punished me with special cruelty her face twitched and she broke into a whimper whereupon he gave her a kick saying Is it any business of yours Thank God your own skin has not been peeled off
Once during the lunch hour when we were alone SarahLeah and
I in a corner of the courtyard she said You are so strong Davie
Nothing hurts you
Nothing at all I could stand everything I bragged
You could not if I bit your finger
Go ahead I said with bravado holding out my hand She dug her teeth into one of my fingers It hurt so that I involuntarily ground my own teeth but I smiled
Does it not hurt you Davie she asked with a look of admiration
Not a bit Go on bite as hard as you can
She did the cruel thing and like many an older heroine she would not desist until she saw her lovers blood
It still does not hurt does it she asked wiping away a red drop from her lips
I shook my head contemptuously
When you are a man you will be strong as Samson the Strong
I was the strongest boy in her fathers school She knew that most of the other boys were afraid of me but that did not seem to interest her At least when I began to boast of it she returned to my ability to stand punishment as the pugilists would put it
One day one of my schoolmates aroused her admiration by the way he played taps with his fist for a trumpet I tried to imitate him but failed grievously The other boy laughed and SarahLeah joined him That was my first taste of the bitter cup called jealousy
I went home a lovelorn boy
I took to practising taps I was continually trumpeting I kept at it so strenuously that my mother had many a quarrel with our roommates because of it
My efforts went for nothing however My rival and with him my lady love continued to sneer at my performances
I had only one teacher who never beat me or any of the other boys Whatever anger we provoked in him would spend itself in threats and even these he often turned to a joke in a peculiar vein of his own
If you dont behave Ill cut you to pieces he would say Ill just cut you to tiny bits and put you into my pipe and youll go up in smoke Or Ill give you such a thrashing that you wont be able to sit down stand up or lie down The only thing youll be able to do is to fly—to the devil
This teacher used me as a living advertisement for his school He would take me from house to house flaunting my recitations and interpretations Very often the passage which he thus made me read was a lesson I had studied under one of his predecessors but I never gave him away
Every cheder had its king As a rule it was the richest boy in the school but I was usually the power behind the throne Once one of these potentates it was at the school of that kindly man mimicked my mother hugging her pot of pea mush
If you do it again Ill kill you I said
If you lay a finger on me he retorted the teacher will kick you out
Your mother doesnt pay him anyhow
I flew at him His Majesty tearfully begged for mercy Since then he was under my thumb and never omitted to share his ringshaped rolls or apples with me
Often when a boy ate something that was beyond my mothers means—a cookie or a slice of buttered white bread—I would eye him enviously till he complained that I made him choke Then I would go on eying him until he bribed me off with a piece of the tidbit If staring alone proved futile I might try to bring him to terms by naming all sorts of loathsome objects At this it frequently happened that the prosperous boy threw away his cookie from sheer disgust whereupon I would be mean enough to pick it up and to eat it in triumph calling him something equivalent to Sissy
The compliments that were paid my brains were ample compensation for my mothers struggles Sending me to work was out of the question She was resolved to put me in a Talmudic seminary I was the crown of her head and she was going to make a fine Jew of me Nor was she a rare exception in this respect for there were hundreds of other poor families in our town who would starve themselves to keep their sons studying the Word of God
Whenever one of the neighbors suggested that I be apprenticed to some artisan she would flare up On one occasion a suggestion of this kind led to a violent quarrel
One afternoon when we happened to pass by a bookstore she stopped me in front of the window and pointing at some huge volumes of the Talmud she said This is the trade I am going to have you learn and let our enemies grow green with envy
BOOK II
ENTER SATAN
CHAPTER I
THE Talmudic seminary or yeshivah in which my mother placed me was a celebrated old institution attracting students from many provinces Like most yeshivahs it was sustained by donations and instruction in it was free Moreover outoftown students found shelter under its roof sleeping on the benches or floors of the same rooms in which the lectures were delivered and studied during the day Also they were supplied with a pound of rye bread each for breakfast As to the other meals they were furnished by the various households of the orthodox community I understand that some schoolteachers in certain villages of New England get their board on the rotation plan dining each day in the week with another family This is exactly the way a poor Talmud student gets his sustenance in Russia the system being called eating days
One hour a day was devoted to penmanship and a sorry smattering of Russian the cost of tuition and writingmaterials being paid by a modern philanthropist
I was admitted to that seminary at the age of thirteen As my home was in the city I neither slept in the classroom nor ate days The lectures lasted only two hours a day but then there was plenty to do studying them and reviewing previous work This I did in an old house of prayer where many other boys and men of all ages pursued similar occupations It was known as the Preachers Synagogue and was famed for the large number of noted scholars who had passed their young days reading Talmud in it
The Talmud is a voluminous work of about twenty ponderous tomes To read these books to drink deep of their sacred wisdom is accounted one of the greatest good deeds in the life of a Jew It is however as much a source of intellectual interest as an act of piety If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor the distinction is probably due in some measure to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race
A Talmudic education was until recent years practically the only kind of education a Jewish boy of oldfashioned parents received I spent seven years at it not counting the several years of Talmud which I had had at the various cheders
What is the Talmud The bulk of it is taken up with debates of ancient rabbis It is primarily concerned with questions of conscience religious duty and human sympathy—in short with the relations between man and God and those between man and man But it practically contains a consideration of almost every topic under the sun mostly with some verse of the Pentateuch for a pretext All of which is analyzed and explained in the minutest and keenest fashion discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes relieved by an anecdote or two a bit of folklore worldly wisdom or small talk Scattered through its numerous volumes are priceless gems of poetry epigram and storytelling
It is at once a fountain of religious inspiration and a brainsharpener Can you fathom the sea Neither can you fathom the depths of the Talmud as we would put it We were sure that the highest mathematics taught in the Gentile universities were childs play as compared to the Talmud
In the Preachers Synagogue then I spent seven years of my youthful life
For hours and hours together I would sit at a gaunt readingdesk swaying to and fro over some huge volume reading its ancient text and interpreting it in Yiddish All this I did aloud in the peculiar Talmud singsong a trace of which still persists in my intonation even when I talk cloaks and bank accounts and in English
The Talmud was being read there in a hundred variations of the same singsong literally every minute of the year except the hours of prayer
There were plenty of men to do it during the day and the evening and at least ten men a sacred number to keep the holy word echoing throughout the night The majority of them were simply scholarly business men who would drop in to read the sacred books for an hour or two but there was a considerable number of such as made it the occupation of their life These were supported either by the congregation or by their own wives who kept shops stalls inns or peddled while their husbands spent sixteen hours a day studying Talmud
One of these was a man named Reb Rabbi Sender an insignificant ungainly little figure of a man with a sad childlike little face flanked by a pair of thick heavy darkbrown sidelocks that seemed to weigh him down
His wife kept a trimmingstore or something of the sort and their only child a girl older than I helped her attend to business as well as to keep house in the singleroom apartment which the family occupied in the rear of the little shop As he invariably came to the synagogue for the morning prayer and never left it until after the evening service his breakfasts and dinners were brought to the house of worship His wife usually came with the meal herself Waiting on ones husband and giving him strength to learn the law was a good deed
She was a large woman with an interesting dark face and poor
Reb Sender cut a sorry figure by her side
Men of his class are described as having no acquaintance with the face of a coin All the money he usually handled was the penny or two which he needed to pay for his bath of a Friday afternoon Occasionally he would earn three or four copecks by participating in some special prayer for a sick person for instance These pennies he invariably gave away Once he gave his muffler to a poor boy His wife subsequently nagged him to death for it The next morning he complained of her to one of the other scholars
Still he concluded if you want to serve God you must be ready to suffer for it A good deed that comes easy to you is like a donation which does not cost you anything I made his acquaintance by asking him to help me out with an obscure passage This he did with such simple alacrity and kindly modesty as to make me feel a chum of his I warmed to him and he reciprocated my feelings He took me to his bosom He often offered to go over my lesson with me and I accepted his services with gratitude He spoke in a warm mellow basso that had won my heart from the first His singsong lent peculiar charm to the pages that we read in duet As he read and interpreted the text he would wave his snuffbox by way of punctuating and emphasizing his words much as the conductor of an orchestra does his baton now gently insinuatingly now with a passionate jerk now with a sweeping majestic movement One cannot read Talmud without gesticulating and Reb Sender would scarcely have been able to gesticulate without his snuffbox
It was of tortoise shell with a lozengeshaped bit of silver in the center
It gradually became dear to me as part of his charming personality
Sometimes when we were reading together that glistening spot in the center of the lid would fascinate my eye so that I lost track of the subject in hand
He often hummed some liturgical melody of a wellknown synagogue chanter
One afternoon he sang something to me with his snuffbox for a baton and then asked me how I liked it
I composed it myself he explained boastfully
I did not like the tune In fact I failed to make out any tune at all but I was overflowing with a desire to please him so I said with feigned enthusiasm Did you really Why its so beautiful so sweet
Reb Senders face shone
After that he often submitted his compositions to me though he was too shy to sing them to older people They were all supposed to be liturgical tunes or at least some hop for the Day of the Rejoicing of the Law When I hailed the newly composed air with warm approval he would show his satisfaction either with shamefaced reserve or with childlike exuberance
If on the other hand I failed to conceal my indifference he would grow morose and it would be some time before I succeeded in coaxing him back to his usual good humor
Nor were his melodies the only things he confided to me When I was still a mere boy fourteen or fifteen years old he would lay bare to me some of the most intimate secrets of his heart
You see my wife thinks me a fool he once complained to me She thinks I dont see it Do you understand David She looks up to me for my learning but otherwise she thinks I have no sense It hurts you know He was absolutely incapable of keeping a secret or of saying or acting anything that did not come from the depths of his heart He often talked to me of God and His throne of the world to come and of the eternal bliss of the righteous quoting from a certain book of exhortations and adding much from his own exalted imagination And I would listen thrilling and make a silent vow to be good and to dedicate my life to the service of God
Study the Word of God Davie dear he would say taking my hand into his
There is no happiness like it What is wealth A dream of fools What is this world A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter Only the other world has substance and reality only good deeds and holy learning have tangible worth Beware of Satan Davie When he assails you just say no turn your heart to steel and say no Do you hear my son
The anecdotes and sayings of the Talmud its absurdities no less than its gems of epigrammatic wisdom were mines of poetry philosophy and science to him He was a dreamer with a noble imagination with a soul full of beauty
This unsophisticated simplehearted man with the mind of an infant was one of the most quickwitted nimbleminded scholars in town
His great delight was to tackle some intricate maze of Talmudic reasoning
This he would do with ferocious zest like a warrior attacking the enemy flashing his tortoise snuffbox as if it were his sword When away from his books or when reading some of the fantastic tales in them he was meek and gentle as a little bird No sooner did he come across a fine bit of reasoning than he would impress me as a lion
On one occasion after Reb Sender got through a celebrated tangle with me arousing my admiration by the ingenuity with which he discovered discrepancies and by the adroitness with which he explained them away he said I do enjoy reading with you Sometimes when I read by myself I feel lonely Anyhow I love to have you around David If you went to study somewhere else I should miss you very much On another occasion he said You are like a son to me Davie Be good be genuinely pious for my sake if for nothing else Above all dont be doublefaced never say what you do not mean do not utter words of flattery
As I now analyze my reminiscences of him I feel that he was a yearning lonely man He was in love with his wife and in spite of her devotion to him he was lovelorn Poor Reb Sender He was anything but a handsome man while she was well built and pretty And so it may be that she showed more reverence for his learning and piety than love for his person He was continually referring to her apparently thirsting to discuss her demeanor toward him
The Lord of the Universe has been exceptionally good to me he once said to me May I not forfeit His kindness for my sins He gives me health and my daily bread and I have a worthy woman for a wife Indeed she is a woman of rare merits so clever so efficient and so good She nags me but seldom very seldom He paused to take snuff and then remained silent apparently hesitating to come to the point Finally he said In fact she is so wise I sometimes wish I could read her thoughts I should give anything to have a glimpse into her heart She has so little to say to me
She thinks I am a fool There is a sore in here —pointing at his heart
We have been married over twentytwo years and yet—would you believe it—I still feel shy in her presence as if we were brought together for the first time by a matchmaker dont you know But then you are too young to understand these things Nor indeed ought I to talk to you about them for you are only a child But I cannot help it If I did not unburden my mind once in a while I might not be able to stand it
That afternoon he composed what he called a very sad tune and hummed it to me I failed to make out the tune but I could feel its sadness
I loved him passionately As for the other men of the synagogue if they did not share my ardent affection for him they all with one exception liked him The exception was a middleaged little Talmudist with a tough little beard who held everybody in terror by his violent temper and pugnacity He was a pious man but his piety never manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he exposed the impiety of others He was forever picking quarrels forever challenging people to debate with him forever offering to show that their interpretation of this passage or that was all wrong The sound of his acrimonious voice or venomous laughter grated on Reb Senders nerves but he bore him absolutely no illwill Nor did he ever utter a word of condemnation concerning a certain other scholar an inveterate talebearer and gossipmonger though a goodnatured fellow who not infrequently sought to embroil him with some of his warmest friends
One Talmudist a corpulent old man whose seat was next to Reb Senders was more inclined to chat than to study Now and again he would break in upon my friends reading with some piece of gossip and the piteous air with which Reb Sender would listen to him casting yearning glances at his book as he did so was as touching as it was amusing
My mother usually brought my dinner to the synagogue She would make her entrance softly so as to take me by surprise while I was absorbed in my studies It did her heart good to see me read the holy book As a result I was never so diligent as I was at the hour when I expected her arrival with the dinnerpot Very often I discovered her tiptoeing in or standing at a distance and watching me admiringly Then I would take to singing and swaying to and fro with great gusto She often encountered Reb Senders wife at the synagogue They did not take to each other
On one occasion my mother found Reb Senders daughter at the house of prayer Having her fathers figure and features the girl was anything but prepossessing My mother surveyed her from head to foot
That evening when I was eating my supper at home my mother said Look here Davie I want you to understand that Reb Senders wife is up to some scheme about you She wants you to marry that monkey of hers Thats what she is after I was not quite fifteen
Leave me alone I retorted coloring
Never mind blushing It is she who tells Reb Sender to be so good to you
The foxy thing She thinks I dont see through her That scarecrow of a girl is old enough to be your mother and she has not a penny to her marriage portion either A fine match for a boy like you Why you can get the best girl in town
She said it aloud by way of flaunting my future before our roommates Two of the three families who shared the room with us by the way were the same as when I was a little boy Moving was a rare event in the life of the average Antomir family
Red Esther was still there She was one of those who heard my mothers boastful warning to me She grinned After a little as I was crossing the room she sang out with a giggle Bridegroom
Ill break your bones I returned pausing
She stuck out her tongue at me
I still hated her but somehow she did not seem to be the same as she had been before The new lines that were developing in her growing little figure and more particularly her own consciousness of them were not lost upon me A new element was stealing into my rancor for her—a feeling of forbidden curiosity At night when I lay in bed before falling asleep I would be alive to the fact that she was sleeping in the same room only a few feet from me Sometimes I would conjure up the days of our childhood when Red Esther caused me to sin against my will whereupon I would try to imagine the same scenes but with the present fifteenyearold Esther in place of the fiveyearold one of yore
The word girl had acquired a novel sound for me one full of disquieting charm The same was true of such words as sister niece or bride but not of woman Somehow sisters and nieces were all young girls whereas a woman belonged to the realm of middleaged humanity not to my world
Naphtali went to the same seminary He was two grades ahead of me He ate days for his father had died and his mother had married a man who refused to support him He was my great chum at the seminary The students called him Tidy Naphtali or simply the Tidy One He was a slender trim lad his curly brown hair and his nearsighted eyes emphasizing his Talmudic appearance He was the cleanliest and neatest boy at the yeshivah This often aroused sardonic witticism from some of the other students Scrupulous tidiness was so uncommon a virtue among the poorer classes of Antomir that the painstaking care he bestowed upon his person and everything with which he came in contact struck many of the boys as a manifestation of girllike squeamishness As for me it only added to my admiration of him His conscience seemed to be as clean as his fingernails He wrote a beautiful hand he could draw and carve and he was a good singer His interpretations were as clearcut as his handwriting He seemed to be a Jack of all trades and master of all I admired and envied him His reticence piqued me and intensified his power over me I strove to emulate his cleanliness his graceful Talmud gestures and his handwriting At one period I spent many hours a day practising caligraphy with some of his lines for a model
Oh I shall never be able to write like you I once said to him in despair
Let us swap then he replied gaily Give me your mind for learning and I shall let you have my handwriting
Pshaw Yours is a better mind than mine too
No it is not he returned and resumed his reading Besides you are ahead of me in piety and conduct He shook his head deprecatingly and went on reading He was one of the noted men of diligence at the seminary With his nearsighted eyes close to the book he would read all day and far into the night in ringing ardent singsongs that I thought fascinating The other reticent Talmudists I knew usually read in an undertone humming their recitatives quietly He seldom did Sparing as he was of his voice in conversation he would use it extravagantly when intoning his Talmud
It is with a peculiar sense of duality one reads this ancient work While your mind is absorbed in the meaning of the words you utter the melody in which you utter them tells your heart a tale of its own You live in two distinct worlds at once Naphtali had little to say to other people but he seemed to have much to say to himself His singsongs were full of meaning of passion of beauty Quite often he would sing himself hoarse
Regularly every Thursday night he and I had our vigil at the Preachers Synagogue where many other young men would gather for the same purpose We would sit up reading side by side until the worshipers came to morning service To spend a whole night by his side was one of the joys of my existence in those days
Reb Sender was somewhat jealous of him
Soon after graduation Naphtali left Antomir for a town in which lived some of his relatives I missed him as I would a sweetheart
CHAPTER II
I WAS nearly sixteen I had graduated from the seminary and was pursuing my studies at the Preachers Synagogue exclusively as an independent scholar I was overborne with a sense of my dignity and freedom I seemed to have suddenly grown much taller If I caught myself walking fast or indulging in some boyish prank I would check myself saying in my heart You must not forget that you are an independent scholar You are a boy no longer
I was free to loaf but I worked harder than ever I was either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and melancholy—of causeless meaningless melancholy
My Talmudic singsong reflected my moods Sometimes it was a spirited recitative ringing with cheery selfconsciousness and the joy of being a lad of sixteen at other times it was a solemn song aglow with devotional ecstasy When I happened to be dejected in the commonplace sense of the word it was a listless murmur doleful or sullen But then the very reading of the Talmud was apt to dispel my gloom My voice would gradually rise and ring out vibrating with intellectual passion
The intonations of the other scholars too echoed the voices of their hearts some of them sonorous with religious bliss others sad still others happygolucky Although absorbed in my book I would have a vague consciousness of the connection between the various singsongs and their respective performers I would be aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk that the squeaky jerky intonation to the right came from the redheaded fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips or that the sweet unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel the man of acumen whose fatherinlaw had made a fortune as a warcontractor in the late conflict with Turkey All these voices blended in a symphonic source of inspiration for me It was divine music in more senses than one
The ancient rabbis of the Talmud the Tanaim of the earlier period and the Amorairn of later generations were living men I could almost see them each of them individualized in my mind by some of his sayings by his manner in debate by some particular word he used or by some particular incident in which he figured I pictured their faces their beards their voices
Some of them had won a warmer corner in my heart than others but they were all superior human beings godly unearthly denizens of a world that had been ages ago and would come back in the remote future when Messiah should make his appearance
Added to the mystery of that world was the mystery of my own singsong Who is there—I seemed to be wondering my tune or recitative sounding like the voice of some other fellow It was as if somebody were hidden within me
What did he look like If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting As you sit reading the great folio He looks down from heaven upon you Sometimes I seemed to feel His gaze shining down upon me as though casting a halo over my bead
My relations with God were of a personal and of a rather familiar character
He was interested in everything I did or said He watched my every move or thought He was always in heaven yet somehow he was always near me and I often spoke to Him as I might to Reb Sender
If I caught myself slurring over some of my prayers or speaking ill of another boy or telling a falsehood I would say to Him audibly Oh forgive me once more You know that I want to be good I will be good
I know I will
Sometimes I would continue to plead in this manner till I broke into sobs
At other times as I read my Talmud conscious of His approval of me tears of bliss would come into my eyes
I loved Him as one does a woman
Often while saying my prayers I would fall into a veritable delirium of religious infatuation Sometimes this fit of happiness and yearning would seize me as I walked in the street
O Master of the World Master of the Universe I love you so I would sigh Oh how I love you
I also had talks with the Evil Spirit or Satan He too was always near me But he was always trying to get me into trouble
You wont catch me again scoundrel you I would assure him with sneers and leers Or Get away from me heartless mischiefmaker you Youre wasting your time I can tell you that
My bursts of piety usually lasted a week or two Then there was apt to set in a period of apathy which was sure to be replaced by days of penance and a new access of spiritual fervor
One day as Reb Sender and I were reading a page together a very pretty girl entered the synagogue She came to have a letter written for her by one of the scholars I continued to read aloud but I did so absently now trailing along after my companion My mind was upon the girl and I was casting furtive glances
Reb Sender paused with evident annoyance What are you looking at David he said with a tug at my arm Shame You are yielding to Satan
I colored
He was too deeply interested in the Talmudic argument under consideration to say more on the matter at this minute but he returned to it as soon as we had reached the end of the section He spoke earnestly with fatherly concern You are growing David You are a boy no longer You are getting to be a man This is just the time when one should be on his guard against Satan
I sat looking down my brain in a daze of embarrassment
Remember David He who looks even at the little finger of a woman is as guilty as though he looked at a woman that is wholly naked He quoted the Talmudic maxim in a tone of passionate sternness beating the desk with his snuffbox at each word
As to his own conduct he was one of three or four men at the synagogue of whom it was said that they never looked at women and to a very considerable extent his reputation was not unjustified
You must never tire fighting Satan David he proceeded Fight him with might and main
As I listened I was tingling with a mute vow to be good Yet at the same time the vision of a woman that is wholly naked was vividly before me
He caused me to bring a certain ancient work one not included in the Talmud in which he made me read the following Rabbi Mathia the son of Chovosh had never set eyes on a woman
Therefore when he was at the synagogue studying the Law his visage would shine as the sun and its features would be the features of an angel One day as he thus sat reading Satan chanced to pass by and in a fit of jealousy Satan said Can it really be that this man has never sinned He is a man of spotless purity answered God
Just grant me the liberty Satan urged and I will lead him to sin You will never succeed Let me try Proceed Satan then appeared in the guise of the most beautiful woman in the world of one the like of whom had not been born since the days of Naomi the sister of Tuval Cain the woman who had led angels astray
When Rabbi Mathia espied her he faced about So Satan still in the disguise of a beautiful woman took up a position on the left side of him and when he turned away once more he walked over to the right side again Finally Rabbi Mathia had nails and fire brought him and gouged out his own eyes
At this God called for Angel Raphael and bade him cure the righteous man Presently Raphael came back with the report that Rabbi Mathia would not be cured lest he should again be tempted to look at pretty women
Go tell him in My name that he shall never be tempted again said God
And so the holy man regained his eyesight and was never molested by Satan again
The painful image of poor Rabbi M athia gouging out his eyes supplanted the nude figure of the previous quotation in my mind
Reb Sender pursued his exhortative talk He dwelt on the duties of man to man
If a man is tonguetied dont laugh at him but rather feel pity for him as you would for a man with broken legs Nor should you hate a man who has a weakness for telling falsehoods This too is an affliction like stuttering or being lame Say to yourself Poor fellow he is given to lying Above all you must fight conceit envy and every kind of illfeeling in your heart Remember the sum and substance of all learning lies in the words Love thy neighbor as thyself Another thing remember that it is not enough to abstain from lying by word of mouth for the worst lies are often conveyed by a false look smile or act Be genuinely truthful then And if you feel that you are good dont be too proud of it
Be modest humble simple Control your anger
He worked me up to a veritable frenzy of penitence
I will I will I said tremulously And if I ever catch myself looking at a woman again I will gouge out my eyes like Rabbi Mathia
Ssh Dont say that my son About a quarter of an hour later as I sat reading by myself I suddenly sprang to my feet and walked over to Reb Sender
You are so dear to me I gasped out You are a man of perfect righteousness I love you so I should jump into fire or into water for your sake
Ssh he said taking me gently by the hand and pressing me down into a seat by his side You are a good boy As to my being a man of perfect righteousness alas I am far from being one We are all sinful Come let us read another page together
Satan kept me rather busy these days It was not an easy task to keep ones eyes off the girls who came to the Preachers Synagogue and when none was around I would be apt to think of one I would even picture myself touching a feminine cheek with the tip of my finger Then my heart would sink in despair and I would hurl curses at Satan
Eighty black years on you vile wretch you I would whisper gnashing my teeth and fall to reading with ferocious zeal
In the relations between men and women it is largely case of forbidden fruit and the mystery of distance The great barrier that religion law and convention have laced between the sexes adds to the joys and poetry of love but it is responsible also for much of the suffering degradation and crime that spring from it In my case his barrier was of special magnitude
Dancing with a girl or even taking one out for a walk was out of the question Nor was the injunction confined to men who devoted themselves to the study of holy books It was the rule of ordinary decency for any Jew except one who lived like a Gentile that is like a person of modern culture Indeed there were scores of towns in the vicinity of Antomir where one could not take a walk even with ones own wife without incurring universal condemnation There was a dancingschool or two in Antomir but they were attended by young mechanics of the coarser type To be sure there were plenty of young Jews in our town who did live like Gentiles who called the girls of their acquaintance young ladies took off their hats to them took them out for a walk in the public park and danced with them just like the nobles or the army officers of my birthplace But then these fellows spoke Russian instead of Yiddish and altogether they belonged to a world far removed from mine Many of these modern young Jews went to high school and wore pretty uniforms with silverplated buttons and silver lace
To me they were apostates sinners in Israel And yet I could not think of them without a lurking feeling of envy The Gentile books they studied and their social relations with girls who were dressed like young noblewomen piqued my keenest curiosity and made me feel small and wretched
The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life
Attending divine service is not obligatory for her and those of the sex who wish to do so are allowed to follow the devotions not in the synagogue proper but through little windows or peepholes in the wall of an adjoining room In the eye of the spiritual law that governed my life women were intended for two purposes only for the continuation of the human species and to serve as an instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the stronger sex to sin Marriage was simply a duty imposed by the Bible Love So far as it meant attraction between two persons of the opposite sex who were not man and wife there was no such word in my native tongue One loved ones wife mother daughter or sister To be in love with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was something unseemly something which only Gentiles or modern Jews might indulge in
But at present all this merely deepened the bewitching mystery of the forbidden sex in my young blood And Satan wide awake and sharpeyed as ever was not slow to perceive the change that had come over me and made the most of it
There was no such thing as athletics or outdoor sports in my world The only physical exercise known to us was to be swinging like a pendulum in front of your readingdesk from nine in the morning to bedtime every day and an allnight vigil every Thursday in addition Even a most innocent frolic among the boys was suppressed as an offense to good Judaism
All of which tended to deepen the mystery of girlhood and to increase the chances of Satan
I must explain that although women could not attend divine service except through a peephole they were free to visit the house of worship on all sorts of other errands So some of them would come with food for the scholars others with candles for the chandeliers while still others wanted letters read or written One of the several rabbis of the town was in the habit of spending his evenings reading Talmud in the Preachers Synagogue so housewives of the neighborhood or their daughters would bring some spoon pot or chicken to have them passed upon according to the dietary laws of Moses and the Talmud
I would scrutinize the faces and figures of these girls I would draw comparisons make guesses as to whether they were engaged to be married I did not have to speculate upon whether they were already married because a young matron who would visit our synagogue was sure to have her hair covered with a wig It became one of my pastimes to make forecasts as to the looks of the next young woman to call at the synagogue whether she would be pretty or homely tall or short fair or dark plump or spare I was interested in their eyes but somehow I was still more interested in their mouths Some mouths would set my blood on fire I would invent all sorts of romantic episodes with myself as the hero I would portray my engagement to some of the pretty girls I had seen our wedding and above all our married life The worst of it was that these images often visited my brain while I was reading the holy book Satan would choose such moments of all others because in this manner he would involve me in two great sins at once for in addition to the wickedness of indulging in salacious thoughts there was the offense of desecrating the holy book by them
Reb Senders daughter was about to be married to a tradesman of Talmudic education I did not care for her in the least yet her approaching wedding aroused a lively interest in me
Red Esther had gone out to service She came home but seldom and when she did we scarcely ever talked to each other The coarse brightness of her complexion and the harsh femininity of her laughter repelled me
I do hate her I once said to myself as I heard that laugh of hers
And yet you would not mind kissing her would you now a voice retorted
I had to own that I would not and then I cudgeled my brains over the amazing discrepancy of the thing Kissing meant being fond of one I enjoyed kissing my mother for instance Now I certainly was not fond of Esther I was sure that I hated her Why then was I impelled to kiss her How could I hate and be fond of her at once I went on reasoning it out Talmud fashion till I arrived at the conclusion that there were two kinds of kisses the kiss of affection and the kiss of Satan I submitted it as a discovery to some of the other young Talmudists but they scouted it as a truism A majority of us were modest of speech and conduct But there were some who were not
CHAPTER III
WHEN I was a little over eighteen the number of steady readers at the Old Synagogue was increased by the advent of a youth from the Polish provinces
His appearance produced something of a sensation for in addition to being the son of a rich merchant and the prospective soninlaw of a celebrated rabbi he was the possessor of a truly phenomenal memory He was well versed in the entire Talmud and could recite by heart about five hundred leaves or one thousand pages of it He was generally called the Pole He was tall and supple faircomplexioned and wellgroomed with a suggestion of selfsatisfaction and aloofness in the very sinuosity of his figure His velvet skullcap which was always pushed back on his head exposed to view a forelock of golden hair His longskirted wellfitting coat was of the richest broadcloth I had ever seen He wore a watch and chain that were said to be worth a small fortune I hated him He was repugnant to me for his Polish accent for his good clothes for his wellfed face for his haughty manner for the servile attention that was showered on him and above all for his extraordinary memory I had always been under the impression that the boys of welltodo parents were stupid Brains did not seem to be in their line That this young man who was so well supplied with this worlds goods should possess a wonderful mind as well jarred on me as an injustice to us poor boys
I would seek comfort in the reflection that the essence of scholarship lay in profundity and acumen rather than in the ability to rattle off pages like so many psalms Yet those five hundred leaves of his gave me no peace
Five hundred The figure haunted me Finally I set myself the task of memorizing five hundred leaves It was a gigantic undertaking although my memory was rather above the average I worked with unflagging assiduity for weeks and weeks Nobody was to know of my purpose until it had been achieved I worked so hard and was so absorbed in my task that my interest in girls lost much of its usual acuteness At times I had a sense of my own holiness When I walked through the streets on my way to or from the synagogue I kept reciting some of the pages I had mastered While in bed for the night I whispered myself to sleep reciting Talmud When I ate some bit of Talmud was apt to be running through my mind If there was a hitch and I could not go on my heart would sink within me I would stop eating and make an effort to recall the passage
It was inevitable that the new character of my studies should sooner or later attract Reb Senders attention My secret hung like a veil between us
He was jealous of it Ultimately he questioned me beseechingly and I was forced to make a clean breast of it
Reb Sender beamed The veil was withdrawn Presently his face fell again
What I dont like about it is your envy of the Pole he said gravely
Dont take it ill my son but I am afraid you are envious and begrudging
Fight it Davie Give up studying by heart It is not with a pure motive you are doing it Your studies are poisoned with hatred and malice Do you want to gladden my heart Davie
I do I will What do you mean Just step up to the Pole and beg his pardon for the evil thoughts you have harbored about him
A minute later I stood in front of my hated rival thrilling with the ecstasy of penitence
I have sinned against you Forgive me I said with downcast eyes
The Pole was puzzled
I envied you I explained I could not bear to hear everybody speak of the five hundred leaves you know by heart So I wanted to show you that I could learn by heart just as much if not more
A suggestion of a sneer flitted across his wellfed face It stung me as if it were some loathsome insect His golden forelock exasperated me
And I could do it too I snapped I have learned more than fifty leaves already It is not so much of a trick as I thought it was
Is it not the Pole said with a fullgrown sneer
You need not be so stuck up anyhow I shot back and turned away
Before I had reached Reb Sender who had been watching us I rushed back to the Pole
I just want to say this I began in a towering rage With all your boasted memory you would be glad to change brains with me
His shoulders shook with soundless mirth
Laugh away But let Reb Sender examine both of us Let him select a passage and see who of us can delve deeper into it you or I Memory alone is nothing
Isnt it Then why are you green with envy of me And once more he burst into a laugh with a graceful jerk of his head which set my blood on fire
Youre a pampered idiot
Youre green with envy
Ill break every bone in you
We flew at each other but Reb Sender and two other scholars tore us apart
Shame the Talmudists cried shrugging their shoulders in disgust
Just like Gentiles some one commented
It is an outrage to have the holy place desecrated in this manner
What has got into you Reb Sender said to me as he led me back to my desk
I resumed studying by heart with more energy than ever Thats all right I thought to myself Ill have that silkstocking of a fellow lick the dust of my shoes I now took special measures to guard my secret even from Reb Sender One of these was to take a book home and to work there staying away from synagogue as often as I could invent a plausible pretext I was lying right and left Satan chuckled in my face but I did not care I promised myself to settle my accounts with the Uppermost later on The only thing that mattered now was to beat the Pole
The sight of me learning the Word of God so diligently was a source of indescribable joy to my mother She struggled to suppress her feeling but from time to time a sigh would escape her as though the rush of happiness was too much for her heart
Alas this happiness of hers was not to last much longer
BOOK III
I LOSE MY MOTHER
CHAPTER I
IT was Purim the feast of Esther Our schoolboys were celebrating the downfall of Haman and they were doing it in the same warlike fashion in which American boys celebrate their forefathers defiance of George III The synagogues roared with the booming of firecrackers the report of toy pistols the whirwhir of Purim rattles It was four weeks to the great eightday festival of Passover and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened bread She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day so that she often dozed off over her rollingpin from sheer exhaustion But then she earned far more than usual Including tips from customers the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families whose flour he transformed into flat round tasteless Passover cakes or matzoths she saved up during the period a little over twenty rubles With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for me and bought me a new cap I remember that coat very well It was of a darkbrown cotton stuff neat at the waist and with absurdly long skirts of course The Jewish Passover often concurs with the Christian Easter This was the case in the year in question One afternoon—it was the seventh day of our festival—I chanced to be crossing the Horsemarket As it was not market day it was deserted save for groups of young Gentiles civilians and soldiers who were rolling brightly colored Easter eggs over the ground My new longskirted coat and sidelocks provoked their mirth until one of them hit me a savage blow in the face splitting my lower lip
Another rowdy snatched off my new cap—just because our people considered it a sin to go bareheaded And as I made my way bleeding with one hand to my lip and the other over my bare head the company sent a shower of broken eggs and a chorus of jeers after me
It was only a short distance from Abners Court When I entered our basement and faced my mother she stared at me for a moment as though dumfounded and then slapping her hands together she sobbed Woe is me Darkness is me What has happened to you
When she had heard my story she stood silent awhile looking aghast and then left the house
Im going to kill him I am just going to kill him she said in measured accents which still ring in my ears
The bookbinders wife the retired soldier and I ran after her imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy errand but she took no heed of us
Foolish woman You dont even know who did it urged the soldier
Ill find out she answered
The bookbinders wife seized her by an arm but she shook her off
I pleaded with her with tears in my eyes
Go back she said to me trying to be gentle while her eyes were lit with an ominous look
These were the last words I ever heard her utter
Fifteen minutes later she was carried into our basement unconscious Her face was bruised and swollen and the back of her head was broken She died the same evening
I have never been able to learn the ghastly details of her death The police and an examining magistrate were said to be investigating the case but nothing came of it
There was no lack of excitement among the Jews of Antomir The funeral was expected to draw a vast crowd But the epidemic of antiJewish atrocities of 1881 and 1882 were fresh in ones mind so word was passed round not to irritate the Gentiles The younger and modern element in town took exception to this timidity They insisted upon a demonstrative funeral They were organizing for selfdefense in case the procession was interfered with but the counsel of older people prevailed As a consequence the number of mourners following the hearse was even smaller than it would have been if my mother had died a natural death And the few who did take part in the sad procession were unusually silent A Jewish funeral without a chorus of sobbing women was inconceivable in Antomir Indeed a pious matron who happens to come across such a scene will join in the weeping whether she had ever heard of the deceased or not On this occasion however sobs were conspicuous by their absence
Ssh ssh None of your wailing an old man kept admonishing the women
I spent the Seven Days of mourning in our basement where I received visits from neighbors from the families of my two distant relatives from Reb Sender and other Talmudists of my synagogue Among these was the Pole
This time my rival begged my forgiveness I granted it of course but I felt that we never could like each other
There was a great wave of sympathy for me Offers of assistance came pouring in in all sorts of forms Had there been a Yiddish newspaper in town and such things as public meetings the outburst might have crystallized into what to me would have been a great fortune As it was public interest in me died before anything tangible was done Still there were several prosperous families of the oldfashioned class each of which wanted to provide me with excellent board But then Reb Senders wife in a fit of compassion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the moment claimed the sole right to feed me
Ill take his mothers place she said Whatever the Upper One gives us will be enough for him too Her husband was happy while I lacked the courage to overrule them
As to lodgings it was deemed most natural that I should sleep in some house of worship as thousands of Talmud students did in Antomir and other towns
To put up with a synagogue bench for a bed and to eat days was even regarded as a desirable part of a young mans Talmud education And so I selected a pew in the Preachers Synagogue for my bed I was better off than some others who lived in houses of God for I had some of my mothers bedding while they mostly had to sleep on hay pillows with a coat for a blanket
It was not until I found myself lying on this improvised bed that I realized the full extent of my calamity During the first seven days of mourning I had been aware of course that something appalling had befallen me but I had scarcely experienced anything like keen anguish I had been in an excited hazy state of mind more conscious of being the central figure of a great sensation than of my loss As I went to bed on the synagogue bench however instead of in my old bunk at what had been my home the fact that my mother was dead and would never be alive again smote me with crushing violence It was as though I had just discovered it I shall never forget that terrible night
At the end of the first thirty days of mourning I visited mothers grave
Mamma Mamma I shrieked throwing myself upon the mound in a wild paroxysm of grief
The dinners which Reb Senders wife brought to the synagogue for her husband and myself were never quite enough for two and for supper which he had at home she would bring me some bread and cheese or herring Poor Reb Sender could not look me in the face The situation grew more awkward every day It was not long before his wife began to drop hints that I was hard to please that she did far more than she could afford for me and that I was an ingrate The upshot was that she allowed me to accept days from other families But the welltodo people had by now forgotten my existence and the housewives who were still vying with one another in offering me meals were mostly of the poorer class These strove to make me feel at home at their houses and yet in some cases at least as I ate I was aware of being watched lest I should consume too much bread As a consequence I often went away half hungry All of which quickened my selfpity and the agony of my yearnings for mother I grew extremely sensitive and more quarrelsome than I am naturally I quarreled with one of my relatives a woman and rejected the day which I had had in her house and shortly after abandoned one of my other days
Reb Sender kept tab of my missing days and tried to make up for them by sharing his dinner with me His wife however who usually waited for the dishes and so was present while I ate was anything but an encouraging witness of her husbands hospitality The food would stick in my throat under her glances I was repeatedly impelled abruptly to leave the meal but refrained from doing so for Reb Senders sake I obtained two new days One of these I soon forfeited having been caught stealing a hunk of bread but I kept the matter from Reb Sender To conceal the truth from him I would spend the dinner hour in the street or in a little synagogue in another section of the city Tidy Naphtali had recently returned to Antomir and this house of worship was his home now His vocal cords had been ruined by incessantly reading Talmud at the top of his lungs He now spoke or read in a low hoarse voice He still spent most of his time at a readingdesk but he had to content himself with whispering
I found a new day but lost three of my old ones Naphtali had as little to eat as I yet he scarcely ever left his books One late afternoon I sat by his side while he was reading in a spiritless whisper Neither of us had lunched that day His curly head was propped upon his arm his nearsighted eyes close to the book He never stirred He was too faint to sway his body or to gesticulate I was musing wearily and it seemed as though my hunger was a living thing and was taking part in my thoughts
Do you know Naphtali I said it is pleasant even to famish in company
If I were alone it would be harder to stand it The misery of the many is a consolation He made no answer Minutes passed Presently he turned from his desk
Do you really think there is a God he asked irrelevantly
I stared
Dont be shocked It is all bosh And he fell to swaying over his book
I was dumfounded Why do you keep reading Talmud then I asked looking aghast
Because I am a fool he returned going on with his reading A minute later he added But you are a bigger one
I was hurt and horrified I tried to argue but he went on murmuring his eyes on the folio before him
Finally I snapped You are a horrid atheist and a sinner in Israel You are desecrating the holy place And I rushed from the little synagogue
His shocking whisper Do you really think there is a God haunted me all that afternoon and evening He appeared like another man to me I was burning to see him again and to smash his atheism to prove to him that there was a God But as I made a mental rehearsal of my argument I realized that I had nothing clear or definite to put forth So I cursed Naphtali for an apostate registered a vow to shun him and was looking forward to the following day when I should go to see him again
My interest in the matter was not keen however and soon it died down altogether Nothing really interested me except the fact that I had not enough to eat that mother was no more that I was all alone in the world
The shock of the catastrophe had produced a striking effect on me My incessant broodings and the corroding sense of my great irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a nerveless listless wreck of me a mere shadow of my former self I was incapable of sustained thinking
My communions with God were quite rare now Nor did He take as much interest in my studies as He used to Instead of the Divine Presence shining down on me while I read the face of my martyred mother would loom before me Once or twice in my hungry rambles I visited Abners Court and let my heart be racked by the sight of what had once been our home mothers and mine I said prayers for her three times a day with great devotion with a deep yearning But this piety was powerless to restore me to my former feeling for the Talmud
I distinctly recall how I would shut my eyes and vision my mother looking at me from her grave her heart contracted with anguish and pity for her famished orphan It was an excruciating vision yet I found comfort in it I would mutely complain of the world to her It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her Ah I have got you I seemed to say to the people of Antomir The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness You cant wriggle out of it This was my revenge I reveled in it
But nothing daunted the people of Antomir would go about their business as usual and my heart would sink with a sense of my helplessness
I was restless I coveted diversion company and I saw a good deal of Naphtali As for his Free Thought it soon after we had two mild quarrels over it began to bore me It appeared that the huge tomes of the Talmud were not the only books he read these days He spent much time clandestinely on little books written in the holy tongue on any but holy topics They were taken up with such things as modern science poetry fiction and above all criticism of our faith He made some attempts to lure me into an interest in these books but without avail The only thing connected with them that appealed to me were the anecdotes that Naphtali would tell me in his laconic way concerning their authors I scarcely ever listened to these stories without invoking imprecations upon the infidels but I enjoyed them all the same They were mostly concerned with their apostasy but there were many that were not Some of these or rather the fact that I had first heard them from Naphtali in my youth were destined to have a peculiar bearing on an important event in my life on something that occurred many years later when I was already a prosperous merchant in New York They were about Doctor Rachaeles a famous Hebrew writer who practised medicine in Odessa and his soninlaw a poet named Abraham Tevkin Doctor Rachaeless daughter was a celebrated beauty and the poets courtship of her had been in the form of a long series of passionate letters addressed not to his ladylove but to her father This lovestory made a strong impression on me The figures of the beautiful girl and of the enamoured young poet as I pictured them were vivid in my mind
Did he write of his love in those letters I demanded shyly
He did not write of onions did he Naphtali retorted After a little I asked But how could she read those letters She certainly does not read holy tongue
Go ask her
Youre a funny fellow Did Tevkin get the girl
He did and they have been married for many years Why did you wonder if you mightnt have a chance
Youre impossible Naphtali
He smiled
CHAPTER II
ONE afternoon Naphtali called on me at the
Preachers Synagogue
Have you got all your days he asked in his whisper
Why
He had discovered a treasure—a pious rich elderly woman whose latest hobby was to care for at least eighteen poor Talmudists—eighteen being the numerical value of the letters composing the Hebrew word for life Her name was Shiphrah Minsker She belonged to one of the oldest families in Antomir and her husband was equally wellborn Her religious zeal was of recent origin in fact and even now she wore her hair Gentile fashion It was a great sin but she had never worn a wig in her life and putting on one now seemed to be out of the question This hair of hers was of a darkbrown hue threaded with silver and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps that seemed to be symbolic of her harumscarum character She was as pugnacious as she was charitable and as quick to make up a quarrel as to pick one Her husband Michael Minsker was a worldly man with only a smattering of Talmud and their younger children were being educated at the Russian schools But they all humored her newly adopted oldfashioned ways to a certain extent at least while she tolerated their Gentile ones as she did her own uncovered hair Relegating her household affairs to a devoted old servant with whom she was forever wrangling Shiphrah spent most of her time raising contributions to her various charity funds looking after her Talmud students quarreling with her numerous friends and begging their forgiveness If she was unable to provide meals for a student in the houses of some people of her acquaintance she paid for his board out of her own purse
Her husband was an exporter of grain and his business often took him to Koenigsberg Prussia for several weeks at a time Occasions of this kind were hailed by Shiphrah as a godsend in the literal sense of the term for in his absence she could freely spend on her beneficiaries and even feed some of them at her own house
When I was introduced to her as the son of the woman who had been killed on the Horsemarket and she heard that I frequently had nothing to eat she burst into tears and berated me soundly for not having knocked at her door sooner
Its terrible Its terrible she moaned breaking into tears again In fact I too deserve a spanking To think that I did not look him up at once when that awful thing happened
As a matter of fact she had not done so because at the time of my mothers death her house had been agog with a trouble of its own But of this presently
She handed me a threeruble bill and set about filling up the gaps in my eating calendar and substituting fat days for lean ones
She often came to see me at the synagogue never emptyhanded Now she had a silver coin for me now a pair of socks a shirt or perhaps a pair of trousers which some member of her family had discarded Often too she would bring me a quarter of a chicken cookies or some other article of food from her own table
My days of hunger were at an end I lived in clover Now I can work I thought to myself with the satisfaction of a wellfilled stomach And work I will Ill show people what I can do
I applied myself to my task with ardor but it did not last long My former interest in the Talmud was gone The spell was broken irretrievably Now that I did not want for food my sense of loneliness became keener than ever Indeed it was a novel sense of loneliness quite unlike the one I had experienced before
My surroundings had somehow lost their former meaning Life was devoid of savor and I was thirsting for an appetizer as it were for some violent change for piquant sensations
Then it was that the word America first caught my fancy
The name was buzzing all around me The great emigration of Jews to the United States which had received its first impulse two or three years before was already in full swing It may not be out of order to relate briefly how it had all come about
An antiSemitic riot broke out in a southern town named Elisabethgrad in the early spring of 1881 Occurrences of this kind were in those days quite rare in Russia and when they did happen they did not extend beyond the town of their origin But the circumstances that surrounded the Elisabethgrad outbreak were of a specific character It took place one month after the assassination of the Czar Alexander II The actual size and influence of the underground revolutionary organization being an unknown quantity St
Petersburg was full of the rumblings of a general uprising The Elisabethgrad riot however was not of a revolutionary nature Yet the police so far from suppressing it encouraged it The example of the Elisabethgrad rabble was followed by the riffraff of other places The epidemic quickly spread from city to city Whereupon the scenes of lawlessness in the various cities were marked by the same method in the mobs madness by the same connivance on the part of the police and by many other traits that clearly pointed to a common source of inspiration It has long since become a wellestablished historical fact that the antiJewish disturbances were encouraged even arranged by the authorities as an outlet for the growing popular discontent with the Government
Count von Plehve was then at the head of the Police Department in the Ministry of the Interior
This bit of history repeated itself on a larger scale twentytwo years later when Russia was in the paroxysm of a real revolution and when the ghastly massacres of Jews in Kishineff Odessa Kieff and other cities were among the means employed in an effort to keep the masses busy
Count von Plehve then held the office of Prime Minister To return to 1881 and 1882 Thousands of Jewish families were left homeless Of still greater moment was the moral effect which the atrocities produced on the whole Jewish population of Russia Over five million people were suddenly made to realize that their birthplace was not their home a feeling which the great Russian revolution has suddenly changed Then it was that the cry To America was raised It spread like wildfire even over those parts of the Pale of Jewish Settlement which lay outside the riot zone
This was the beginning of the great New Exodus that has been in progress for decades
My native town and the entire section to which it belongs had been immune from the riots yet it caught the general contagion and at the time I became one of Shiphrahs wards hundreds of its inhabitants were going to America or planning to do so Letters full of wonders from emigrants already there went the rounds of eager readers and listeners until they were worn to shreds in the process
I succumbed to the spreading fever It was one of these letters from America in fact which put the notion of emigrating to the New World definitely in my mind An illiterate woman brought it to the synagogue to have it read to her and I happened to be the one to whom she addressed her request The concrete details of that letter gave New York tangible form in my imagination It haunted me ever after
The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and honey but also and perhaps chiefly as one of mystery of fantastic experiences of marvelous transformations To leave my native place and to seek my fortune in that distant weird world seemed to be just the kind of sensational adventure my heart was hankering for
When I unburdened myself of my project to Reb Sender he was thunderstruck
To America he said Lord of the World But one becomes a
Gentile there
Not at all I sought to reassure him There are lots of good Jews there and they dont neglect their Talmud either The amount that was necessary to take me to America loomed staggeringly large Where was it to come from I thought of approaching Shiphrah but the idea of her helping me abandon my Talmud and go to live in a godless country seemed preposterous So I began by saving the small allowance which I received from her and by selling some of the clothes and food she brought me For the evening meal I usually received some rye bread and a small coin for cheese or herring so I invariably added the coin to my little hoard relishing the bread with thoughts of America
While I was thus pinching and saving pennies I was continually casting about for some more effective way of raising the sum that would take me to New York I confided my plan to Naphtali
Not a bad idea he said but you will never raise the money You are a master of dreams David
Ill get the money and what is more when I am in America I shall bring you over there too
May your words pass from your lips into the ear of God
I thought you did not believe in God
How long will you believe in Him after you get to America
BOOK IV
MATILDA
CHAPTER I
I COULD scarcely think of anything but America I read every letter from there that I could obtain I was constantly seeking information about the country and the opportunities it held out to a man of my type and cudgeling my brains for some way of scraping together the formidable sum I was restless sleepless and finally when I caught a slight cold my health broke down so completely that I had to be taken to the hospital Shiphrah visited me every day calling me poor orphan boy and quarreling with the superintendent over me One afternoon after I had been discharged when she saw me at the synagogue feeble and emaciated she gasped
Youre a cruel heartless man she flared up addressing herself to the beadle The poor boy needs a good soft bed fine chicken soup and real care Why didnt you let me know at once Come on David
Where to I inquired timidly
None of your business Come on Im not going to take you to the woods you may be sure of that I want you to stay in my house until you are well rested and strong enough to study Dont you like it she added with a wink to the beadle
It appeared that her husband was away on one of his prolonged business excursions Otherwise installing in her modern home an oldfashioned ridiculous young creature like a Talmud student would have been out of the question
I followed her with fastbeating heart I knew that her family was modern that her children spoke Russian and behaved like Gentiles that there was a grown young woman among them and that her name was Matilda
The case of this young woman had been the talk of the town the year before
She had been persuaded to marry a man for whom she did not care and shortly after the wedding and after a sensational passage at arms between his people and hers she made her father pay him a small fortune for divorcing her
Matildas family being one of the upper ten in our town its members were frequently the subject of envious gossip and so I had known a good deal about them even before Shiphrah befriended me I had heard for example that Matilda had received her early education in a boardingschool in Germany in accordance with a custom that had been in existence among people of her fathers class until recently that she had subsequently studied Russian and other subjects under Russian tutors at home and that her two brothers who were younger than she were at the local Russian gymnasium or high school I had heard also that Matilda was very pretty That she was well dressed went without saying
All this both fascinated and cowed me
Suddenly Shiphrah paused as though bethinking herself of something Wait
Dont stir she said rushing back Ten or fifteen minutes later she returned saying I was not long was I I just went to get the beadles forgiveness Had insulted him for nothing But hes a dummy all the same
Come on David
Arrived at her house she introduced me to her old servant in the kitchen
Hell stay a week with us perhaps more she explained I want you to build him up Fatten him up like a Passover goose Do you hear
The servant a tall spare woman with an extremely dark face tinged with blue began by darting hostile glances at me
Look at the way she is staring at him Shiphrah growled He is the son of the woman who was murdered at the Horsemarket
The old servant started Is he she said aghast
Are you pleased now Will you take good care of him
May the Uppermost give him a good appetite
As Shiphrah led me from the kitchen into another room she said
She took a fancy to you It will be all right
She towed me into a vast sittingroom so crowded with new furniture that it had the appearance of a furniturestore There were many rooms in the apartment and they all produced a similar impression I subsequently learned that the superabundance of sofas chests of drawers chairs or bricàbracstands was due to Shiphrahs passion for bargains a weakness which made her the fair game of tradespeople and artisans Several of her wardrobes and bureaus were packed full of all sorts of things for which she had no earthly use and many of which she had smuggled in when her husband and the children were out
Ensconced in a corner of an enormous green sofa in the big crowded sittingroom with a book in her lap we found a young woman with curly brown hair and sparkling brown eyes set in a small oval face She looked no more than twenty but when her mother addressed her as Matilda I knew that I was facing the heroine of the sensational divorce She was singularly interesting but pretty she certainly was not Her Gentile name had a world of charm for my ear
One of the trifles that clung to my memory is the fact that upon seeing her I felt something like amazement at her girlish appearance I had had a notion that a married woman no matter how young must have a married face something quite distinct from the countenance of a maiden while this married woman did not begin to look married
Matilda got up cast a frowning sideglance at her mother and walked over to one of the four immense windows illuminating the room Less than a minute later she turned around and crossed over to her mothers side
She was small but well made and her movements were brisk firm elastic
Come on mother theres something I want to tell you she said a jerk of her curly head indicating the adjoining room
I have no secrets Shiphrah growled What do you want
A snappish whispered conference ensued the trend of which was at once betrayed in an acrimonious retort by Shiphrah Just keep your foolish nose out of my affairs will you When I say he is going to stay here for some time I mean it Dont you mind her David
Mother Mother Mother Matilda trilled with a gesture of disgust and flounced out of the room
I felt my face turning all colors and at the same time her Mother Mother Mother instead of Mamma Mamma Mamma was echoing in my brain enchantingly
Presently a faircomplexioned youth of eighteen or nineteen came in apparently attracted by his mothers angry voice He wore a blue coat with silver lace and silver buttons the uniform of a Russian high school which sent a flutter of mixed envy and awe through me He threw a frowning glance at me and withdrew Two smaller children a uniformed boy and a little girl made their appearance talking in Russian noisily At sight of me they fell silent looked me over from my sidelocks to the edge of my longskirted coat and then took to whispering and giggling
Clear out you devils Shiphrah shouted stamping her foot Shoo A young chambermaid passed through the room and Shiphrah stopped her long enough to introduce me and to command her to look after me as if I were one of the family—even better
CHAPTER II
THE spacious sittingroom was used as a breakfastroom as well It was in this room on the enormous green sofa that my bed was made for the night
It was by far the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in
Early the next morning after I finished my long prayer and had put away my phylacteries the young chambermaid removed the bedding and the swarthy old servant served me my breakfast
Go wash your hands and eat in good health Eat hearty and may it well agree with you she said with a compound of deep commiseration reverence and disdain I went to the kitchen where I washed my hands and while wiping them muttered the brief prayer which one offers before eating As I returned to the sittingroom I found Matilda there She was seated at some distance from the table upon which my breakfast was spread She wore a sort of white kimono One did not have to stand on ceremony with a fellow who did not even wear a stiff collar and a necktie Nor did I know enough to resent her costume She did not order anything to eat for herself not even a glass of tea It seemed as though she had come in for the express purpose of eying me out of countenance If she had she succeeded but too well Her silent glances fell on me like splashes of hot water I was so disconcerted I could not swallow my food There were centuries of difference between her and myself not to speak of the economic chasm that separated us To me she was an aristocrat while I was a poor wretched day eater a cross between a beggar and a recluse I dared not even look at her Talmud students were expected to be the shyest creatures under the sun On this occasion I certainly was
The other children entered the room They were dressing themselves eating and studying their Gentile lessons all at once Matilda had a mild altercation with Yeffim her eighteenyearold brother ordered breakfast for herself and seemed to have forgotten my existence Her mother came in and took to cloying me with food
At about 4 oclock in the afternoon I was alone in the drawingroom I stood at the piano—the first I had ever laid eyes on—timidly sounding some of the keys when I heard approaching voices With my heart in my mouth I rushed over to the nearest window where I paused feigning interest in some passing peasant teams Presently Matilda made her appearance accompanied by two girl friends
The three young women were chattering in Russian a language of which I understood scarcely three dozen words I could conjecture however that the subject of their talk was no other than my own quailing personality
Suddenly Matilda addressed herself to me in Yiddish Look here young man Dont you know it is bad manners for a gentleman to stand with his back to ladies
I faced about all flushed and scared
Thats better she said gaily Never mind staring at the floor
Give us a look will you Dont act as a shy bridegroom
I made no answer The room seemed to be in a whirl
Why dont you speak Matilda insisted concealing her quizzical purpose under a wellacted air of gravity
Her two friends roared and spurred on by their merriment she continued to make game of me
Wont you give us one look at least Do please Come my mother will never find out you have been guilty of a great sin like that
I was dying to get up and fling out of the room but I felt glued to the spot Their cruel sport which made me faint with embarrassment and misery had something inexpressibly alluring in it
One of the two girls said something in Russian of which I caught the word kiss and which was greeted by a new outburst of laughter I was terrorstricken
Well pious Jew Matilda resumed Suppose a girl were to give you a kiss
What would you do Commit suicide would you Well never fear we wont be as cruel as all that I tell you what though Ill hide your sidelocks behind your ears I just want to see how you would look without them At this she stepped up close to me and reached out her hands for my two appendages
I pushed her off Please let me alone I protested
At last we have heard his voice Bravo Were making headway arent we
At this point her mothers angry voice made itself heard Matilda desisted with a merry remark to her friends
The next morning when she and I were alone she tantalized me again She made another attempt to tuck my sidelocks behind my ears As we were alone I had more courage
If you dont stop Ill go away from here I said in a rage What do you want of me
As I thus gave vent to my resentment I instinctively felt that so far from causing her to avoid me it would quicken her rompish interest in me And I hoped it would
Ssh dont yell she said startled Cant you take a joke
A nice joke that
Very well I wont do it again I didnt know you were a touchmenot After a pause she resumed in grave friendly accents Come dont be angry I want to talk to you Look here Is there any sense in your wasting your life the way you do Look at the way you are dressed the way you live generally Besides the idea of a young man like you not being able to speak a word of Russian Arent you ashamed of yourself Why mother says you are remarkably bright Isnt it a pity that you should throw it all away Why dont you try to study Russian geography history Why dont you try to become an educated man
The idea I said with a laugh
My confusion was gone partly at least I looked her full in the face
She flared up The idea she mocked me Rather say The idea of a bright young fellow being so ignorant Did you ever hear of a provoking thing like that There was a good deal of her mothers helterskelter explosiveness in her
Now that I had scanned her features in the light of the fact that she was a married woman I read that fact into them She did look married I remarked to myself Her exposed hair gave her an effect of aristocratic wickedness and wantonness which repelled and drew me at once She was a girl and yet she was a married woman This duality of hers deepened the fascinating mystery of the distance between us
She proceeded to draw me out She made me tell her the story of my young life and I obeyed her but too willingly I told her my whole tale of woe reveling in my own rehearsal of my sufferings and more especially in the expressions of horror and heartfelt pity which it elicited from her
My God My God she cried gasping and wringing her hands Poor boy or Oh I cant hear it I cant hear it It is enough to drive one crazy
At one point as I described the pangs of hunger which I had often borne there were tears in her interesting eyes
When I had finished my story flushed with a sense of my histrionic success she ordered tea and preserves as though to indemnify me for my past sufferings
All the more reason for you to study Russian and to become an educated man she said as she put sugar into my glass She cited the cases of former Talmudists poor and friendless like myself who had studied at the universities fighting every inch of their way till they had achieved success as physicians lawyers writers She spoke passionately often with the absurd acerbity of her mother Its a crime for a young man like you to throw himself away on that idiotic Talmud of yours she said pacing up and down the room fiercely
All this sounded shockingly wicked and yet it did not shock me in the least
I have a plan I said
When she heard what I wanted to do she shook her head and frowned She said in substance that America was a land of dollars not of education and that she wanted me to be an educated man I assured her that I should study English in America and after I had laid up some money prepare for college there she could have made me promise anything But colleges in which the instruction was not in Russian failed to appeal to her imagination
Still when she saw that my heart was set on the project she yielded She seemed to like the fervor with which I defended my cause and the notion of my going to a faraway land was apparently beginning to have its effect I was the hero of an adventure Gradually she became quite enthusiastic about my plan
I tell you what I can raise the money for you she said with a gesture of sudden resolution How much is it
When I said forlornly that it would come to about eighty rubles she declared gravely Thats all right I shall get it for you Only say nothing to mother about it I thought myself in a flurry of joy over this windfall but a little later when I was left to myself I became aware that the flurry I was in was of quite a different nature When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition in that direction had lost its former vitality
I was deeply in love with Matilda
CHAPTER III
SHE continued to treat me in a patronizing playful way but we were supposed to be great friends and I asked myself no questions
The money is assured she once announced You shall get it in a few days
You may begin to pack your great baggage she jested
My heart sank within me but I feigned exultation
Do you deserve it pious soul that you are she laughed And casting a glance at my sidelocks she added I do wish you would cut off those horrid things of yours You wont take them to America will you
I smiled Small as was my stock of information of the New World I knew enough of it to understand in a general way that sidelocks were out of place there
She proceeded to put my sidelocks behind my ears and this time I did not object She then smoothed them down the touch of her fingers thrilling me through and through Then she brought a handglass and made me look at myself
Do you see the difference she demanded If you were not rigged out like the savage that you are you wouldnt be a badlooking fellow after all
Why girls might even fall in love with you But then what does a pious soul like you know about such things as love
How do you know I dont I ventured to say blushing like a poppy
Do you really she said with mischievous surprise
I nodded
Well well So you are not quite so saintly as I thought you were Perhaps you have even been in love yourself Have you Tell me
I kept silent My heart was throbbing wildly
Do you love me
I nodded once more My heart stood still
Kiss me then
She put my arms around her made me clasp her to my breast and we kissed passionately
I suddenly felt ten years older
She broke away from me jumping around slapping her hands and bubbling over with triumphant mirth as she shouted There is a pious soul for you There is a pious soul for you
A thought of little Red Esther of my childhood days flashed through my brain of the way she would force me to sin and then gloat over my fall
A penny for your piety Matilda added gravely When you are in America youll dress like a Gentile and even shave Then you wont look so ridiculous Good clothes would make another man of you At this she looked me over in a businesslike sort of way Pretty good figure that she concluded
In the evening of that day when there was company in the house she bore herself as though she did not know me But the next morning after the children had gone to school and her mother was away on her various missions she made me put on the glittering coat and cap of her brothers Sunday uniform
Its rather too small for you but its becoming all the same she said enthusiastically If mamma came in now she would not know you But then there would be a nice howdoyoudo if she did She gave a titter which rolled through my very heart Well Mr Gymnasist note are you really in love with me
Dont make fun of me pray I implored her It hurts you know
Very well I shant But you havent answered my question
What question
What a poor memory you have And yet mother says you have a good head Try to remember
I do remember your question
Then what is your answer
Yes
Yes she mocked me Thats not the way gentlemen declare their love What else shall I say
What else Well say I am ready to die for you You are the sunshine of my life You are the sunshine of my life I echoed with a smile that was a combination of mirth and resentment
You are my happiness my soul The world would be dark without you
I am no baby to parrot somebody elses words
Then you dont love me
Yes I do But I hate to be made fun of Dont Please dont I said it with a beseeching passionate tremor in my voice and all at once I clasped her violently to me and was about to kiss her She put up her lips responsively but suddenly she wrenched herself back
Easy easy you saintly Talmudist she said goodnaturedly You must not forget that you are not a gymnasist that to kiss a woman is a sin a great sin Youll be beaten with rods of iron in the world to come Well goodby she concluded gravely I must go Take off that coat and cap
Mamma may come in at any moment She showed me where to hang them
note Gymnasist A pupil of a gymnasium or high school
CHAPTER IV
In my incessant reveries of her I developed the theory that if I abandoned my plan about going to America she would have her father send me to college with a view to my marrying her Indeed matches of this kind were not an unusual arrangement in our town nor are they in the Jewish districts of New York Philadelphia Boston or Chicago for example
My bed was usually made on the enormous green sofa in the spacious sittingroom One night when I was asleep on that great sofa I was suddenly aroused by the touch of a hand
Ssh I heard Matildas whisper I want to talk to you I cant sleep anyhow I dont know why So I was thinking of all kinds of things till I came to your plan about America It is foolish Why go so far Perhaps something can be done to get you into high school and then into the university
I have guessed it right then I exclaimed within myself The room was pitchdark Her white kimono was all I could see of her
She explained certain details She spoke in a very low undertone with great earnestness I took her by the hand and drew her down to a seat on the edge of the sofa beside me She offered no resistance She continued to talk partly in the same undertone partly in whispers with her hand remaining in mine I was aflame with happiness yet I listened intently I felt sure that she was my bridetobe that it was only a matter of days when our engagement would be celebrated My heart went out to her with a passion that seemed to be sanctioned by God and men I strained down her head and kissed her but that was the stainless kiss of a man yearning upon the lips of his betrothed I clasped her flimsily garmented form kissed her again and again let her kiss and bite me and still it all seemed legitimate or nearly so I saw in it an emphatic confirmation of my feeling that she did not regard herself a stranger to me That mattered more than anything else at this moment
Youre a devil she whispered slapping me on both cheeks a devil with sidelocks And she broke into a suppressed laugh
Ill study as hard as I can I assured her with boyish exultation
Youll see what I can do The Gentile books are childs play in comparison with the Talmud
I went into details She took no part in my talk but she let me go on I became so absorbed in what I was saying that my caresses ceased I sat up and spoke quite audibly
Ssh she cautioned me in an irritated whisper
I dropped my voice She listened for another minute or two and then suddenly rising she said Oh you are a Talmud student after all and her indistinct kimono vanished in the darkness
I felt crushed but I was sure that the words Talmud student which are Yiddish for ninny merely referred to my rendering our confab dangerous by speaking too loud
The next afternoon she kissed me once more calling me Talmud student again
But she was apparently getting somewhat fidgety about our relations She was more guarded more on the alert for eavesdroppers as though somebody had become suspicious My Gentile education she never broached again Finally when a letter came from her father announcing his speedy return and Shiphrah hastened to terminate my stay at the house Matilda was obviously glad to have me go
I shall bring you the money to the synagogue she whispered as I was about to leave
I was stunned I left in a turmoil of misery and perplexity yet not in despair
When I returned to the synagogue everybody and everything in it looked strange to me Reb Sender was dearer than ever but that was chiefly because I was longing for a devoted friend I was dying to relieve my fevered mind by telling him all and seeking advice but I did not
Are you still weak he asked tenderly looking close into niy eyes
Oh it is not that Reb Sender Is it the death of your dear mother—peace upon her
Yes of course That and lots of other things
It will all pass She will have a bright paradise and The Upper
One will help you Dont lose heart my boy
I ran over to Naphtalis place We talked of Shiphrah and her children—at least I did He asked about Matilda and I answered reluctantly Now and again I felt impelled to tell him all It would have been such a relief to ease my mind of its cruel burden and to hear somebodys anybodys opinion about it But his laconical questions and answers were anything but encouraging
I spent many an hour in his company but he was always absorbed in the Talmud or in some of his infidel books The specific character of my restlessness was lost upon him
I was in the grip of a dull enervating overpowering agony that seemed to be weighing my heart down and filling my throat with pentup sobs I was writhing inwardly praying for Matildas mercy It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced I remember it distinctly in every detail If I now wished to imagine a state of mind driving one to suicide I could not do it better than by recalling my mental condition in those days
In point of fact I took pride in my misery I am in love I am no mere slouch of a Talmud student I would say to myself
In the evening of the fourth day as I was making a pretense at reading Talmud a poor boy came in to call me out In the alley outside the house of worship I found Matilda She had the money with her
I dont think I want it now I said I dont care to go to America Why she asked impatiently Oh take it and let me be done with it she said forcing a small packet into my hand I have no time to bother with you Go to America I wish you good luck
But Ill miss you I shant be able to live without you
What Are you crazy she said sternly You forget your place young man
She stalked hastily away her form at once an angel of light and a messenger of death being swallowed up by the gloom
Ten minutes later when I was at my book again my heart bleeding and my head in a daze I was called out once more
Again I found her standing in the lane
I did not mean to hurt your feelings she said I wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart
She uttered it with a warm cordiality and yet the note of impatience which rang in her voice ten minutes before was again there
Try to become an educated man in America she added Thats the main thing Goodby You have my best wishes Goodby
And before I had time to say anything she shook my hand and was gone
CHAPTER V
A LITTLE over three weeks had elapsed It was two days after Passover I had just solemnized the first anniversary of my mothers death The snow had melted Each of my five senses seemed to be thrillingly aware of the presence of spring
I was at the railway station Clustered about me were Reb Sender and his wife two other Talmudists from the Preachers Synagogue the retired old soldier with the formidable sidewhiskers and Naphtali
As I write these words I seem to see the group before me It is one of those scenes that never grow dim in ones memory
Be a good Jew and a good man Reb Sender murmured to me confusedly Do not forget that there is a God in heaven in America as well as here Do not forget to write us Naphtali speaking in his hoarse whisper half in jest half in earnest made me repeat my promise to send him a ship ticket from America I promised everything that was asked of me My head was swimming
While the first bell was sounding for the passengers to board the train Shiphrah rushed in puffing for breath I looked at the door to see if Matilda was not following her She was not
The group around me made way for the rich woman
Here she said handing me a tenruble bill and a package There is a boiled chicken in it and some other things provided you wont neglect your Talmud in America
A minute later she drew her purse from her skirt pocket produced a fiveruble bill and put it into my hand That all the other money I had for my journey had come from her daughter she had not the remotest idea
I made my final farewells amid a hubbub of excited voices and eyes glistening with tears
BOOK V
I DISCOVER AMERICA
CHAPTER I
TWO weeks later I was one of a multitude of steerage passengers on a Bremen steamship on my way to New York Who can depict the feeling of desolation homesickness uncertainty and anxiety with which an emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean I proved to be a good sailor but the sea frightened me The thumping of the engines was drumming a ghastly accompaniment to the awesome whisper of the waves I felt in the embrace of a vast uncanny force And echoing through it all were the heartlashing words Are you crazy You forget your place young man When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic on his first great voyage his men doubted whether they would ever reach land So does many an Americabound emigrant to this day Such at least was the feeling that was lurking in my heart while the Bremen steamer was carrying me to New York Day after day passes and all you see about you is an unbroken waste of water an unrelieved a hopeless monotony of water You know that a change will come but this knowledge is confined to your brain Your senses are skeptical
In my devotions which I performed three times a day without counting a benediction before every meal and every drink of water grace after every meal and a prayer before going to sleep I would mentally plead for the safety of the ship and for a speedy sight of land My scanty luggage included a pair of phylacteries and a plump little prayerbook with the Book of Psalms at the end The prayers I knew by heart but I now often said psalms in addition particularly when the sea looked angry and the pitching or rolling was unusually violent I would read all kinds of psalms but my favorite among them was the 104th generally referred to by our people as Bless the Lord O my soul its opening words in the original Hebrew It is a poem on the power and wisdom of God as manifested in the wonders of nature some of its verses dealing with the sea It is said by the faithful every Saturday afternoon during the fall and winter so I could have recited it from memory but I preferred to read it in my prayerbook For it seemed as though the familiar words had changed their identity and meaning especially those concerned with the sea Their divine inspiration was now something visible and audible It was not I who was reading them It was as though the waves and the clouds the whole farflung scene of restlessness and mystery were whispering to me Thou who coverest thyself with light as with a garment who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters who maketh the clouds his chariot who walketh upon the wings of the wind So is this great and wide sea wherein are things creeping innumerable both small and great beasts There go the ships there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein
The relentless presence of Matilda in my mind worried me immeasurably for to think of a woman who is a stranger to you is a sin and so there was the danger of the vessel coming to grief on my account And as though to spite me the closing verse of Psalm 104 reads Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be no more I strained every nerve to keep Matilda out of my thoughts but without avail
When the discoverers of America saw land at last they fell on their knees and a hymn of thanksgiving burst from their souls The scene which is one of the most thrilling in history repeats itself in the heart of every immigrant as he comes in sight of the American shores I am at a loss to convey the peculiar state of mind that the experience created in me
When the ship reached Sandy Hook I was literally overcome with the beauty of the landscape
The immigrants arrival in his new home is like a second birth to him
Imagine a newborn babe in possession of a fully developed intellect Would it ever forget its entry into the world Neither does the immigrant ever forget his entry into a country which is to him a new world in the profoundest sense of the term and in which he expects to pass the rest of his life I conjure up the gorgeousness of the spectacle as it appeared to me on that clear June morning the magnificent verdure of Staten Island the tender blue of sea and sky the dignified bustle of passing craft—above all those floating squatting multitudinously windowed palaces which I subsequently learned to call ferries It was all so utterly unlike anything I had ever seen or dreamed of before It unfolded itself like a divine revelation I was in a trance or in something closely resembling one
This then is America I exclaimed mutely The notion of something enchanted which the name had always evoked in me now seemed fully borne out
In my ecstasy I could not help thinking of Psalm 104 and opening my little prayerbook I glanced over those of its verses that speak of hills and rocks of grass and trees and birds
My transport of admiration however only added to my sense of helplessness and awe Here on shipboard I was sure of my shelter and food at least
How was I going to procure my sustenance on those magic shores
I wished the remaining hour could be prolonged indefinitely
Psalm 104 spoke reassuringly to me It reminded me of the way God took care of man and beast Thou openest thine hand and they are filled with good But then the very next verse warned me that Thou hidest thy face they are troubled thou takest away their breath they die So I was praying God not to hide His face from me but to open His hand to me to remember that my mother had been murdered by Gentiles and that I was going to a strange land
When I reached the words I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live I will sing praise to my God while I have my being I uttered them in a fervent whisper
My unhappy love never ceased to harrow me The stern image of
Matilda blended with the hostile glamour of America
One of my fellowpassengers was a young Yiddishspeaking tailor named Gitelson He was about twentyfour years old yet his forelock was gray just his forelock the rest of his hair being a fine glossy brown His own cap had been blown into the sea and the one he had obtained from the steerage steward was too small for him so that gray tuft of his was always out like a plume We had not been acquainted more than a few hours in fact for he had been seasick throughout the voyage and this was the first day he had been up and about But then I had seen him on the day of our sailing and subsequently many times as he wretchedly lay in his berth He was literally in tatters He clung to me like a lover but we spoke very little
Our hearts were too full for words
As I thus stood at the railing prayerbook in hand he took a look at the page The most ignorant man of the earth among our people can read holy tongue Hebrew though he may not understand the meaning of the words This was the case with Gitelson
Saying Bless the Lord O my soul he asked reverently Why this chapter of all others
Because—Why just listen With which I took to translating the
Hebrew text into Yiddish for him
He listened with devout mien I was not sure that he understood it even in his native tongue but whether he did or not his beaming wistful look and the deep sigh he emitted indicated that he was in a state similar to mine
When I say that my first view of New York Bay struck me as something not of this earth it is not a mere figure of speech I vividly recall the feeling for example with which I greeted the first cat I saw on American soil It was on the Hoboken pier while the steerage passengers were being marched to the ferry A large black wellfed feline stood in a corner eying the crowd of newcomers The sight of it gave me a thrill of joy Look there is a cat I said to Gitelson And in my heart I added Just like those at home For the moment the little animal made America real to me At the same time it seemed unreal itself I was tempted to feel its fur to ascertain whether it was actually the kind of creature I took it for
We were ferried over to Castle Garden One of the things that caught my eye as I entered the vast rotunda was an iron staircase rising diagonally against one of the inner walls A uniformed man with some papers in his hands ascended it with brisk resounding step till he disappeared through a door not many inches from the ceiling It may seem odd but I can never think of my arrival in this country without hearing the ringing footfalls of this official and beholding the yellow eyes of the black cat which stared at us at the Hoboken pier The harsh manner of the immigration officers was a grievous surprise to me As contrasted with the officials of my despotic country those of a republic had been portrayed in my mind as paragons of refinement and cordiality My anticipations were rudely belied They are not a bit better than Cossacks I remarked to Gitelson But they neither looked nor spoke like Cossacks so their gruff voices were part of the uncanny scheme of things that surrounded me These unfriendly voices flavored all America with a spirit of icy inhospitality that sent a chill through my very soul
The stringent immigration laws that were passed some years later had not yet come into existence We had no difficulty in being admitted to the United States and when I was I was loath to leave the Garden
Many of the other immigrants were met by relatives friends There were cries of joy tears embraces kisses All of which intensified my sense of loneliness and dread of the New World The agencies which two Jewish charity organizations now maintain at the Immigrant Station had not yet been established Gitelson who like myself had no friends in New York never left my side He was even more timid than I It seemed as though he were holding on to me for dear life This had the effect of putting me on my mettle
Cheer up old man I said with bravado America is not the place to be a ninny in Come pull yourself together In truth I addressed these exhortations as much to myself as to him and so far at least as I was concerned my words had the desired effect
I led the way out of the big Immigrant Station As we reached the park outside we were pounced down upon by two evillooking men representatives of boardinghouses for immigrants They pulled us so roughly and their general appearance and manner were so uninviting that we struggled and protested until they let us go—not without some parting curses Then I led the way across Battery Park and under the Elevated railway to State Street
A train hurtling and panting along overhead produced a bewildering a daunting effect on me The active life of the great strange city made me feel like one abandoned in the midst of a jungle Where were we to go What were we to do But the presence of Gitelson continued to act as a spur on me I mustered courage to approach a policeman something I should never have been bold enough to do at home As a matter of fact I scarcely had an idea what his function was To me he looked like some uniformed nobleman—an impression that in itself was enough to intimidate me With his coat of blue cloth starched linen collar and white gloves he reminded me of anything but the policemen of my town I addressed him in Yiddish making it as near an approach to German as I knew how but my efforts were lost on him He shook his head With a witheringly dignified grimace he then pointed his club in the direction of Broadway and strutted off majestically
Hes not better than a Cossack either was my verdict
At this moment a voice hailed us in Yiddish Facing about we beheld a middleaged man with huge round perpendicular nostrils and a huge round deep dimple in his chin that looked like a third nostril Prosperity was written all over his smoothshaven face and broadshouldered stocky figure
He was literally aglow with diamonds and selfsatisfaction But he was unmistakably one of our people It was like coming across a human being in the jungle Moreover his very diamonds somehow told a tale of former want of a time when he had landed an impecunious immigrant like myself and this made him a living source of encouragement to me
God Himself has sent you to us I began acting as the spokesman but he gave no heed to me His eyes were eagerly fixed on Gitelson and his tatters
Youre a tailor arent you he questioned him
My steerage companion nodded Im a ladies tailor but I have worked on mens clothing too he said
A ladies tailor the welldressed stranger echoed with illconcealed delight Very well come along I have work for you
That he should have been able to read Gitelsons trade in his face and figure scarcely surprised me In my native place it seemed to be a matter of course that one could tell a tailor by his general appearance and walk
Besides had I not divined the occupation of my fellowpassenger the moment I saw him on deck As I learned subsequently the man who accosted us on State Street was a cloak contractor and his presence in the neighborhood of Castle Garden was anything but a matter of chance He came there quite often in fact his purpose being to angle for cheap labor among the newly arrived immigrants
We paused near Bowling Green The contractor and my fellowpassenger were absorbed in a conversation full of sartorial technicalities which were Greek to me but which brought a gleam of joy into Gitelsons eye My former companion seemed to have become oblivious of my existence
As we resumed our walk up Broadway the bejeweled man turned to me
And what was your occupation You have no trade have you
I read Talmud I said confusedly
I see but thats no business in America he declared Any relatives here Well dont worry You will be all right If a fellow isnt lazy nor a fool he has no reason to be sorry he came to America Itll be all right
All right he said in English and I conjectured what it meant from the context In the course of the minute or two which he bestowed upon me he uttered it so many times that the phrase engraved itself upon my memory It was the first bit of English I ever acquired
The welldressed trimlooking crowds of lower Broadway impressed me as a multitude of counts barons princes I was puzzled by their preoccupied faces and hurried step It seemed to comport ill with their baronial dress and general highborn appearance
In a vague way all this helped to confirm my conception of
America as a unique country unlike the rest of the world
When we reached the General PostOffice at the end of the Third
Avenue surface line our guide bade us stop
Walk straight ahead he said to me waving his hand toward Park Row Just keep walking until you see a lot of Jewish people It isnt far from here With which he slipped a silver quarter into my hand and made Gitelson bid me goodby
The two then boarded a big red horsecar
I was left with a sickening sense of having been tricked cast off and abandoned I stood watching the receding public vehicle as though its scarlet hue were my last gleam of hope in the world When it finally disappeared from view my heart sank within me I may safely say that the halfhour that followed is one of the worst I experienced in all the thirtyodd years of my life in this country
The big round nostrils of the contractor and the gray forelock of my young steeragefellow haunted my brain as hideous symbols of treachery
With twentynine cents in my pocket four cents was all that was left of the sum which I had received from Matilda and her mother I set forth in the direction of East Broadway
CHAPTER II
TEN minutes walk brought me to the heart of the Jewish East Side The streets swarmed with Yiddishspeaking immigrants The signboards were in English and Yiddish some of them in Russian The scurry and hustle of the people were not merely overwhelmingly greater both in volume and intensity than in my native town It was of another sort The swing and step of the pedestrians the voices and manner of the street peddlers and a hundred and one other things seemed to testify to far more selfconfidence and energy to larger ambitions and wider scopes than did the appearance of the crowds in my birthplace
The great thing was that these people were better dressed than the inhabitants of my town The poorestlooking man wore a hat instead of a cap a stiff collar and a necktie and the poorest woman wore a hat or a bonnet
The appearance of a newly arrived immigrant was still a novel spectacle on the East Side Many of the passersby paused to look at me with wistful smiles of curiosity
There goes a green one some of them exclaimed
The sight of me obviously evoked reminiscences in them of the days when they had been green ones like myself It was a second birth that they were witnessing an experience which they had once gone through themselves and which was one of the greatest events in their lives
Green one or greenhorn is one of the many English words and phrases which my mothertongue has appropriated in England and America Thanks to the many millions of letters that pass annually between the Jews of Russia and their relatives in the United States a number of these words have by now come to be generally known among our people at home as well as here In the eighties however one who had not visited any Englishspeaking country was utterly unfamiliar with them And so I had never heard of green one before Still green in the sense of color is Yiddish as well as English so I understood the phrase at once and as a contemptuous quizzical appellation for a newly arrived inexperienced immigrant it stung me cruelly As I went along I heard it again and again Some of the passersby would call me greenhorn in a tone of blighting gaiety but these were an exception For the most part it was green one and in a spirit of sympathetic interest It hurt me all the same Even those glances that offered me a cordial welcome and good wishes had something selfcomplacent and condescending in them Poor fellow he is a green one these people seemed to say We are not of course We are Americanized
For my first meal in the New World I bought a threecent wedge of coarse rye bread off a huge round loaf on a stand on Essex Street I was too strict in my religious observances to eat it without first performing ablutions and offering a brief prayer So I approached a bewigged old woman who stood in the doorway of a small grocerystore to let me wash my hands and eat my meal in her place She looked oldfashioned enough yet when she heard my request she said with a laugh Youre a green one I see
Suppose I am I resented Do the yellow ones or black ones all eat without washing Cant a fellow be a good Jew in America
Yes of course he can but—well wait till you see for yourself
However she asked me to come in gave me some water and an old apron to serve me for a towel and when I was ready to eat my bread she placed a glass of milk before me explaining that she was not going to charge me for it
In America people are not foolish enough to be content with dry bread she said sententiously
While I ate she questioned me about my antecedents I remember how she impressed me as a strong clever woman of few words as long as she catechised me and how disappointed I was when she began to talk of herself
The astute knowing mien gradually faded out of her face and I had before me a gushing boastful old bore
My intention was to take a long stroll as much in the hope of coming upon some windfall as for the purpose of taking a look at the great American city Many of the letters that came from the United States to my birthplace before I sailed had contained a warning not to imagine that America was a land of gold and that treasure might be had in the streets of New York for the picking But these warnings only had the effect of lending vividness to my image of an American street as a thoroughfare strewn with nuggets of the precious metal Symbolically speaking this was the idea one had of the land of Columbus It was a continuation of the widespread effect produced by stories of Cortes and Pizarro in the sixteenth century confirmed by the successes of some Russian emigrants of my time
I asked the grocerywoman to let me leave my bundle with her and after considerable hesitation she allowed me to put it among some empty barrels in her cellar
I went wandering over the Ghetto Instead of stumbling upon nuggets of gold I found signs of poverty In one place I came across a poor family who—as I learned upon inquiry—had been dispossessed for nonpayment of rent A mother and her two little boys were watching their pile of furniture and other household goods on the sidewalk while the passersby were dropping coins into a saucer placed on one of the chairs to enable the family to move into new quarters
What puzzled me was the nature of the furniture For in my birthplace chairs and a couch like those I now saw on the sidewalk would be a sign of prosperity But then anything was to be expected of a country where the poorest devil wore a hat and a starched collar
I walked on
The exclamation A green one or A greenhorn continued If I did not hear it I saw it in the eyes of the people who passed me
When it grew dark and I was much in need of rest I had a street peddler direct me to a synagogue I expected to spend the night there What could have been more natural At the house of God I found a handful of men in prayer It was a large spacious room and the smallness of their number gave it an air of desolation I joined in the devotions with great fervor My soul was sobbing to Heaven to take care of me in the strange country
The service over several of the worshipers took up some Talmud folio or other holy book and proceeded to read them aloud in the familiar singsong
The strange surroundings suddenly began to look like home to me
One of the readers an elderly man with a pinched face and forked little beard paused to look me over
A green one he asked genially
He told me that the synagogue was crowded on Saturdays while on weekdays people in America had no time to say their prayers at home much less to visit a house of worship
It isnt Russia he said with a sigh Judaism has not much of a chance here
When he heard that I intended to stay at the synagogue overnight he smiled ruefully
One does not sleep in an American synagogue he said It is not Russia Then scanning me once more he added with an air of compassionate perplexity Where will you sleep poor child I wish I could take you to my house but—well America is not Russia There is no pity here no hospitality My wife would raise a rumpus if I brought you along I should never hear the last of it
With a deep sigh and nodding his head plaintively he returned to his book swaying back and forth But he was apparently more interested in the subject he had broached When we were at home he resumed she too was a different woman She did not make life a burden to me as she does here Have you no money at all
I showed him the quarter I had received from the cloak contractor
Poor fellow Is that all you have There are places where you can get a nights lodging for fifteen cents but what are you going to do afterward I am simply ashamed of myself
Hospitality he quoted from the Talmud is one of the things which the giver enjoys in this world and the fruit of which he relishes in the world to come To think that I cannot offer a Talmudic scholar a nights rest Alas America has turned me into a mound of ashes
You were well off in Russia werent you I inquired in astonishment
For indeed I had never heard of any but poor people emigrating to
America
I used to spend my time reading Talmud at the synagogue was his reply
Many of his answers seemed to fit not the question asked but one which was expected to follow it You might have thought him anxious to forestall your next query in order to save time and words had it not been so difficult for him to keep his mouth shut
She he said referring to his wife had a nice little business She sold feed for horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was married to a man of learning True she has a tongue That she always had but over there it was not so bad She has become a different woman here Alas America is a topsyturvy country
He went on to show how the New World turned things upside down transforming an immigrant shoemaker into a man of substance while a former man of leisure was forced to work in a factory here In like manner his wife had changed for the worse for lo and behold instead of supporting him while he read Talmud as she used to do at home she persisted in sending him out to peddle America is not Russia she said A man must make a living here But alas it was too late to begin now He had spent the better part of his life at his holy books and was fit for nothing else now His wife however would take no excuse He must peddle or be nagged to death And if he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught redhanded so to say for indeed she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play truant
Alas America was not Russia
A thought crossed my mind that if Reb Sender were here he too might have to go peddling Poor Reb Sender The very image of him with a basket on his arm broke my heart America did seem to be the most cruel place on earth
I am telling you all this that you may see why I cant invite you to my house explained the peddier
All I did see was that the poor man could not help unburdening his mind to the first listener that presented himself
He pursued his tale of woe He went on complaining of his own fate quite forgetful of mine Instead of continuing to listen I fell to gazing around the synagogue more or less furtively One of the readers attracted my special attention He was a venerablelooking man with a face which as I now recall it reminds me of Thackeray Only he had a finer head than the English novelist
At last the henpecked man discovered my inattention and fell silent A minute later his tongue was at work again
You are looking at that man over there arent you he asked
Who is he
When the Lord of the World gives one good luck he gives one good looks as well
Why is he rich
His soninlaw is but then his daughter cherishes him as she does the apple of her eye and—well when the Lord of the World wishes to give a man happiness he gives him good children dont you know
He rattled on betraying his envy of the venerablelooking man in various ways and telling me all he knew about him—that he was a widower named Even that he had been some years in America and that his daughter furnished him all the money he needed and a good deal more so that he lived like a monarch Even would not live in his daughters house however because her kitchen was not conducted according to the laws of Moses and everything else in it was too modern So he roomed and boarded with pious strangers visiting her far less frequently than she visited him and never eating at her table
He is a very proud man my informant said One must not approach him otherwise than on tiptoe
I threw a glance at Even His dignified singsong seemed to confirm my interlocutors characterization of him
Perhaps you will ask me how his soninlaw takes it all the voluble Talmudist went on Well his daughter is a beautiful woman and well favored The implication was that her husband was extremely fond of her and let her use his money freely They are awfully rich and they live like veritable Gentiles which is a common disease among the Jews of America But then she observes the commandment Honor thy father That she does
Again he tried to read his book and again the temptation to gossip was too much for him He returned to Evens pride dwelling with considerable venom upon his love of approbation and vanity May the Uppermost not punish me for my evil words but to see him take his roll of bills out of his pocket and pay his contribution to the synagogue one would think he was some big merchant and not a poor devil sponging on his soninlaw
A few minutes later he told me admiringly how Even often loaned him a halfdollar to enable him to do some reading at the house of God
I tell my virago of a wife I have sold fifty cents worth of goods he explained to me sadly
After a while the man with the Thackeray face closed his book kissed it and rose to go On his way out he unceremoniously paused in front of me a silver snuffbox in his left hand and fell to scrutinizing me He had the appearance of a wellpaid rabbi of a large prosperous town He is going to say A green one I prophesied to myself all but shuddering at the prospect And sure enough he did but he took his time about it which made the next minute seem a year to me He took snuff with tantalizing deliberation Next he sneezed with great zest and then he resumed sizing me up The suspense was insupportable Another second and I might have burst out For mercys sake say A green one and let us be done with it But at that moment he uttered it of his own accord A green one I see Where from And grasping my hand he added in Hebrew Peace be to ye
His first questions about me were obsequiously answered by the man with the forked beard whereupon my attention was attracted by the fact that he addressed him by his Gentile name—that is as Mr Even and not by his Hebrew name as he would have done in our birthplace Surely America did not seem to be much of a Godfearing country
When Mr Even heard of my Talmud studies he questioned me about the tractates I had recently read and even challenged me to explain an apparent discrepancy in a certain passage for the double purpose of testing my Talmud brains and flaunting his own I acquitted myself creditably it seemed and I felt that I was making a good impression personally as well
Anyhow he invited me to supper in a restaurant
On our way there I told him of my mothers violent death vaguely hoping that it would add to his interest in me It did—even more than I had expected To my pleasant surprise he proved to be familiar with the incident It appeared that because our section lay far outside the region of pogroms or antiJewish riots the killing of my mother by a Gentile mob had attracted considerable attention I was thrilled to find myself in the limelight of worldwide publicity I almost felt like a hero
So you are her son he said pausing to look me over as though I had suddenly become a new man My poor orphan boy He caused me to recount the incident in every detail In doing so I made it as appallingly vivid as I knew how He was so absorbed and moved that he repeatedly made me stop in the middle of the sidewalk so as to look me in the face as he listened
Oh but you must be hungry he suddenly interrupted me Come on Arrived at the restaurant he ordered supper for me Then he withdrew commending me to the care of the proprietress until he should return
He had no sooner shut the door behind him than she took to questioning me Was I a relative of Mr Even If not then why was he taking so much interest in me She was a vivacious wellfed young matron with cheeks of a flaming red and with the consciousness of business success all but spurting from her black eyes From what she assisted by one of the other customers present told me about my benefactor I learned that his soninlaw was the owner of the tenementhouse in which the restaurant was located as well as of several other buildings They also told me of the landlords wife of her devotion to her father and of the latters piety and dignity It appeared however that in her filial reverence she would draw the line upon his desire not to spare the rod upon her children which was really the chief reason why he was a stranger at her house
I had been waiting about two hours and was growing uneasy when Mr Even came back explaining that he had spent the time taking his own supper and finding lodgings for me
He then took me to store after store buying me a suit of clothes a hat some underclothes handkerchiefs the first white handkerchiefs I ever possessed collars shoes and a necktie
He spent a considerable sum on me As we passed from block to block he kept saying Now you wont look green or That will make you look American At one point he added Not that you are a badlooking fellow as it is but then one must be presentable in America At this he quoted from the Talmud an equivalent to the saying that one must do in Rome as the Romans do
When all our purchases had been made he took me to a barber shop with bathrooms in the rear
Give him a haircut and a bath he said to the proprietor Cut off his sidelocks while you are at it One may go without them and yet be a good Jew
He disappeared again but when I emerged from the bathroom I found him waiting for me I stood before him necktie and collar in hand not knowing what to do with them till he showed me how to put them on
Dont worry David he consoled me When I came here I too had to learn these things When he was through with the job he took me in front of a lookingglass Quite an American isnt he he said to the barber beamingly And a goodlooking fellow too
When I took a look at the mirror I was bewildered I scarcely recognized myself
I was mentally parading my modern makeup before Matilda A pang of yearning clutched my heart It was a momentary feeling For the rest I was all in a flutter with embarrassment and a novel relish of existence It was as though the haircut and the American clothes had changed my identity The steamer Gitelson and the man who had snatched him up now appeared to be something of the remote past The day had been so crowded with novel impressions that it seemed an age
He took me to an apartment in a poor tenementhouse and introduced me to a tall bewhiskered moroselooking elderly man and a smiling woman of thirtyfive explaining that he had paid them in advance for a months board and lodging When he said This is Mr Levinsky I felt as though I was being promoted in rank as behooved my new appearance Mister struck me as something like a title of nobility It thrilled me But somehow it seemed ridiculous too Indeed it was some time before I could think of myself as a Mister without being tempted to laugh
And here is some cash for you he said handing me a fivedollar bill and some silver in addition And now you must shift for yourself Thats all I can do for you Nor indeed would I do more if I could A young man like you must learn to stand on his own legs Understand If you do well come to see me Understand
There was an eloquent pause which said that if I did not do well I was not to molest him Then he added aloud There is only one thing I want you to promise me Dont neglect your religion nor your Talmud Do you promise that David
I did There was a note of fatherly tenderness in the way this utter stranger called me David It reminded me of Reb Sender I wanted to say something to express my gratitude but I felt a lump in my throat
He advised me to invest the five dollars in drygoods and to take up peddling Then wishing me good luck he left
My landlady who had listened to Mr Evens parting words with pious nods and rapturous grins remarked that one would vainly search the world for another man like him and proceeded to make my bed on a lounge
The room was a kitchen The stove was a puzzle to me I wondered whether it was really a stove
Is this used for heating I inquired
Yes for heating and cooking she explained with smiling cordiality And she added with infinite superiority America has no use for those big tile ovens
When I found myself alone in the room the feeling of desolation and uncertainty which had tormented me all day seized me once again
I went to bed and began to say my bedprayer I did so mechanically My mind did not attend to the words I was murmuring Instead it was saying to God Lord of the Universe you have been good to me so far I went out of that grocerystore in the hope of coming upon some good piece of luck and my hope was realized Be good to me in the future as well I shall be more pious than ever I promise you even if America is a godless country
I was excruciatingly homesick My heart went out to my poor dead mother
Then I reflected that it was my story of her death that had led Even to spend so much money on me It seemed as if she were taking care of me from her grave It seemed too as though she had died so that I might arouse sympathy and make a good start in America I thought of her and of all Antomir and my pangs of yearning for her were tinged with pangs of my unrequited love for Matilda
CHAPTER III
MY landlady was a robust little woman compact and mobile as a billiardball continually bustling about chattering and smiling or laughing She was a goodnatured silly creature and her smile which automatically shut her eyes and opened her mouth from ear to ear accentuated her kindliness as well as her lack of sense When she did not talk she would hum or sing at the top of her absurd voice the then popular American song Climbing Up the Golden Stairs She told me the very next day that she had been married less than a year and one of the first things I noticed about her was the pleasure it gave her to refer to her husband or to quote him Her prattle was so full of My husband says says my husband that it seemed as though the chief purpose of her jabber was to parade her married state and to hear herself talk of her spouse The words My husband were music to her ears They actually meant Behold I am an old maid no longer
She was so deeply impressed by the story of my meeting with Mr Even whose soninlaw was her landlord and by the amount he had spent on me that she retailed it among her neighbors some of whom she invited to the house in order to exhibit me to them
Her name was Mrs Dienstog which is Yiddish for Tuesday Now
Tuesday is a lucky day so I saw a good omen in her and thanked
God her name was not Monday or Wednesday which according
to the Talmud are unlucky
One of the first things I did was to make up a list of the English words and phrases which our people in this country had adopted as part and parcel of their native tongue This I felt was an essential step toward shedding ones greenhornhood an operation every immigrant is anxious to dispose of without delay The list included floor ceiling window dinner supper hat business job clean plenty never ready anyhow never mind hurry up all right and about a hundred other words and phrases
I was quick to realize that to be stylishly dressed was a good investment but I realized too that to use the Yiddish word for collar or clean instead of their English correlatives was worse than to wear a dirty collar
I wrote down the English words in Hebrew characters and from my landladys dictation so that never mind for example became nevermine
When I came home with a basket containing my first stock of wares Mrs
Dienstog ran into ecstasies over it She took to fingering some of my collarbuttons and garters and when I protested she drew away pouting
Still the next morning as I was leaving the house with my stock she wished me good luck ardently and when I left the house she ran after me shouting Wait Mr Levinsky Ill buy something of you for a lucky start She picked out a paper of pins and as she paid me the price she said devoutly May this little basket become one of the biggest stores in New York
My plan of campaign was to peddle in the streets for a few weeks—that is until my greenness should wear off— and then to try to sell goods to tenement housewives I threw myself into the business with enthusiasm but with rather discouraging results I earned what I then called a living but made no headway As a consequence my ardor cooled off It was nothing but a daily grind My heart was not in it My landlord who was a truckdriver but who dreamed of business thought that I lacked dash pluck tenacity and the proprietor of the peddler supply store in which I bought my goods seemed to be of the same opinion for he often chaffed me on the smallness of my bill On one occasion he said If you want to make a decent living you must put all other thoughts out of your mind and think of nothing but your business
Only my smiling little landlady was always chirping words of encouragement assuring me that I was not doing worse than the average beginner This and her cordial goodnatured manner were a source of comfort to me We became great friends She taught me some of her broken English and I let her talk of her husband as long as she wanted One of her weaknesses was to boast of holding him under her thumb though in reality she was under his
Ceaselessly gay in his absence she would become shy and reticent the moment he came home I never saw him talk to her save to give her some order which she would execute with feverish haste Still in his surly domineering way he was devoted to her
I was ever conscious of my modern garb and as I walked through the streets I would repeatedly throw glances at store windows trying to catch my reflection in them Or else I would pass my fingers across my temples to feel the absence of my sidelocks It seemed a pity that Matilda could not see me now
One of the trifles that have remained embedded in my memory from those days is the image of a big floridfaced huckster shouting at the top of his husky voice Strawberriiies strawberriiies five cents a quart
I used to hear and see him every morning through the windows of my lodging and to this day whenever I hear the singsong of a strawberrypeddler I scent the odors of New York as they struck me upon my arrival in 1885 and I experience the feeling of uncertainty homesickness and lovesickness that never left my heart at that period
I often saw Antomir in my dreams
The immigrants from the various Russian Galician or Roumanian towns usually have their respective synagogues in New York Philadelphia Boston or Chicago So I sought out the house of worship of the Sons of Antomir
There were scores perhaps hundreds of small congregations on the East Side each of which had the use of a single room for the service hours on Saturdays and holidays in a building rented for all sorts of gatherings—weddings dances lodge meetings tradeunion meetings and the like The Antomir congregation however was one of those that could afford a whole house all to themselves Our synagogue was a small rickety frame structure
It was for a Saturdaymorning service that I visited it for the first time
I entered it with throbbing heart I prayed with great fervor When the devotions were over I was disappointed to find that the congregation contained not a single worshiper whom I had known or heard of at home
Indeed many of them did not even belong to Antomir When I told them about my mother there was a murmur of curiosity and sympathy but their interest in me soon gave way to their interest in the information I could give each of them concerning the house and street that had once been his home
Upon the advice of my landlord the truckdriver and largely with his help I soon changed the character of my business I rented a pushcart and tried to sell remnants of dressgoods linen and oilcloth This turned out somewhat better than basket peddling but I was one of the common herd in this branch of the business as well
Often I would load my pushcart with cheap hosiery collars brushes handmirrors notebooks shoelaces and the like sometimes with several of these articles at once but more often with one at a time In the latter case I would announce to the passersby the glad news that I had struck a miraculous bargain at a wholesale bankruptcy sale for instance and exhort them not to miss their golden opportunity I also learned to crumple up new underwear or even to wet it somewhat and then shout that I could sell it so cheap because it was slightly damaged
I earned enough to pay my board but I developed neither vim nor ardor for the occupation I hankered after intellectual interest and was unceasingly homesick I was greatly tempted to call on Mr Even but deferred the visit until I should make a better showing
I hated the constant chase and scramble for bargains and I hated to yell and scream in order to create a demand for my wares by the sheer force of my lungs Many an illiterate dolt easily outshouted me and thus dampened what little interest I had mustered One fellow in particular was a source of discouragement to me He was a half witted hideouslooking man with no end of vocal energy and senseless fervor He was a veritable engine of imbecile vitality He would make the street ring with deafening shrieks working his arms and head sputtering and foaming at the mouth like a madman And it produced results His nervous fit would have a peculiar effect on the pedestrians One could not help pausing and buying something of him The block where we usually did business was one of the best but I hated him so violently that I finally moved my pushcart to a less desirable locality
I came home in despair
Oh it takes a blockhead to make a success of it I complained to
Mrs
Dienstog
Why why she consoled me it is a sin to be grumbling like that
There are lots of peddlers who have been years in America and
who would be glad to earn as much as you do Itll be all right
Dont worry Mr Levinsky
It was less than a fortnight before I changed my place of business once again The only thing by which these few days became fixed in my memory was the teeth of a young man named Volodsky and the peculiar tale of woe he told me He was a homely commonplacelooking man but his teeth were so beautiful that their glistening whiteness irritated me somewhat They were his own natural teeth but I thought them out of place amid his plain features or amid the features of any other man for that matter They seemed to be more suited to the face of a woman His pushcart was next to mine but he sold—or tried to sell—hardware while my cart was laden with other goods and as he was moreover as much of a failure as I was there was no reason why we should not be friends So we would spend the day in hearttoheart talks of our hard luck and homesickness His chief worry was over the dower money which he had borrowed of his sister at home to pay for his passage
She gave it to me cheerfully he said in a brooding listless way She thought I would send it back to her at once People over there think treasure can really be had for the picking in America Well I have been over two years here and have not been able to send her a cent Her letters make holes in my heart She has a good marriage chance so she says and unless I send her the money at once it will be off Her lamentations will drive me into the grave
CHAPTER IV
I SOON had to move from the Dienstogs to make room for a relative of the truckdrivers who had arrived from England My second lodgings were an exact copy of my first a lounge in a kitchen serving me as a bed To add to the similarity my new landlady was incessantly singing Only she had three children and her songs were all in Yiddish Her ordinary speech teemed with oaths like Strike me blind May I not be able to move my arms or my legs May I spend every cent of it on doctors bills May I not be able to get up from this chair
A great many of our women will spice their Yiddish with this kind of imprecations but she was far above the average in this respect
The curious thing about her was that her name was Mrs Levinsky though we were not related in the remotest degree
Whatever enthusiasm there was in me found vent in religion I spent many an evening at the Antomir Synagogue reading Talmud passionately This would bring my heart in touch with my old home with dear old Reb Sender with the grave of my poor mother It was the only pleasure I had in those days and it seemed to be the highest I had ever enjoyed At times I would feel the tears coming to my eyes for the sheer joy of hearing my own singsong my old Antomir singsong It was like an echo from the Preachers Synagogue My former self was addressing me across the sea in this strange uninviting big town where I was compelled to peddle shoeblack or oilcloth and to compete with a yelling idiot I would picture my mother gazing at me as I stood at my pushcart I could almost see her slapping her hands in despair
As for my love it had settled down to a chronic dull pain that asserted itself on special occasions only
I was so homesick that my former lodging in New York to which I had become used now seemed like home by comparison I missed the Dienstogs keenly and I visited them quite often
I wrote long passionate letters to Reb Sender in a conglomeration of the Talmudic jargon bad Hebrew and good Yiddish referring to the Talmud studies I pursued in America and pouring out my forlorn heart to him His affectionate answers brought me inexpressible happiness
But many of the other peddlers made fun of my piety and it could not last long Moreover I was in contact with life now and the daily surprises it had in store for me dealt my former ideas of the world blow after blow I saw the cunning and the meanness of some of my customers of the tradespeople of whom I bought my wares and of the peddlers who did business by my side Nor was I unaware of certain unlovable traits that were unavoidably developing in my own self under these influences And while human nature was thus growing smaller the human world as a whole was growing larger more complex more heartless and more interesting The striking thing was that it was not a world of piety I spoke to scores of people and I saw tens of thousands Very few of the women who passed my pushcart wore wigs and men who did not shave were an exception Also I knew that many of the people with whom I came in daily contact openly patronized Gentile restaurants and would not hesitate even to eat pork
The orthodox Jewish faith as it is followed in the old Ghetto towns of Russia or Austria has still to learn the art of trimming its sails to suit new winds It is exactly the same as it was a thousand years ago It does not attempt to adopt itself to modern conditions as the Christian Church is continually doing It is absolutely inflexible If you are a Jew of the type to which I belonged when I came to New York and you attempt to bend your religion to the spirit of your new surroundings it breaks It falls to pieces The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate had a fatal effect on my religious habits A whole book could be written on the influence of a starched collar and a necktie on a man who was brought up as I was It was inevitable that sooner or later I should let a barber shave my sprouting beard
What do you want those things for Mrs Levinsky once said to me pointing at my nascent whiskers Oh go take a shave and dont be a fool It will make you ever so much betterlooking May my luck be as handsome as your face will then be
Never I retorted testily yet blushing
She gave a sarcastic snort They all speak like that at the beginning she said The girls will make you shave if nobody else does
What girls I asked with a scowl but blushing once again
What do I know what girls she laughed Thats your own lookout not mine
I did not like her She was provokingly crafty and cold and she had a mean smile and a dishonest voice that often irritated me She was ruddyfaced and bursting with health taller than Mrs Dienstog yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her bust I thought she looked absurdly dumpy What I particularly hated in her was her laughter which sounded for all the world like the gobble of a turkey
She was constantly importuning me to get her another lodger who would share her kitchen lounge with me
Rent is so high I am losing money on you May I have a year of darkness if I am not she would din in my ears
She was intolerable to me but I liked her cooking and I hated to be moving again so I remained several months in her house
It was not long before her prediction as to the fate of my beard came true
I took a shave What actually decided me to commit so heinous a sin was a remark dropped by one of the peddlers that my downcovered face made me look like a green one It was the most cruel thing he could have told me I took a look at myself as soon as I could get near a mirror and the next day I received my first shave What would Reb Sender say I thought When I came home that evening I was extremely ill at ease Mrs Levinsky noticed the change at once but she also noticed my embarrassment so she said nothing but she was continually darting furtive glances at me and when our eyes met she seemed to be on the verge of bursting into one of her turkey laughs I could have murdered her
BOOK VI
A GREENHORN NO LONGER
CHAPTER I
I BOUGHT my goods in several places and made the acquaintance of many peddlers One of these attracted my attention by his popularity among the other men and by his peculiar talks of women His name was Max Margolis We used to speak of him as Big Max to distinguish him from a Little Max till one day a peddler who was a good chessplayer and was then studying algebra changed the two names to Maximum Max and Minimum Max which the other peddlers pronounced Maxie Max and Minnie Max
Some of the other fellows too were addicted to obscene storytelling but these mostly made or pretended to make a joke of it The man who had changed Maxs sobriquet for instance never tired of composing smutty puns while another man who had a married daughter was continually hinting with merry bravado at his illicit successes with Gentile women Maximum Max on the other hand would treat his lascivious topics with peculiar earnestness and even with something like sadness as though he dwelt on them in spite of himself under the stress of an obsession
Otherwise he was a jovial fellow
He was a tall largeboned man loosely built His lips were always moist and when closed they were never in tight contact He had the reputation of a liar and as is often the case with those who suffer from that weakness people liked him Nor indeed were his fibs as a rule made out of whole cloth They usually had a basis of truth When he told a story and he felt that it was producing no effect he would play it up as newspapermen would put it often quite grotesquely Altogether he was so inclined to overemphasize and embellish his facts that it was not always easy to say where truth ended and fiction began Somehow it seemed to me as though the moistness and looseness of his lips had something to do with his mendacity
He was an ignorant man barely able to write down an address
Max was an instalment peddler his chief business being with frequenters of dancehalls to whom he sold clothing dressgoods jewelry and—when there was a marriage among them—furniture Many a young housewife who had met her predestined one in one of these halls wore a marriage ring and had her front room furnished with a parlor set bought of Max Margolis He was as popular among the dancers as he was among the men he met at the stores He was married Max yet it was as much by his interest in the dancers as by his business interest that he was drawn to the dancehalls He took a fancy to me and he often made me listen to his discourses on women
The youngest married man usually appealed to me as being old enough to be my father and as Maximum Max was not only married but eleven years my senior there seemed to be a great chasm between us That he should hold this kind of conversations with an unmarried youngster like myself struck me as something unnatural doubly indecent As I listened I would feel awkward but would listen nevertheless
One day he looked me over much as an expert in horseflesh would a colt and said with the utmost seriousness Do you know Levinsky you have an awfully fine figure You are a goodlooking chap all around for that matter A fellow like you ought to make a hit with women Why dont you learn to dance
The compliment made me wince and blush Perhaps if he had put it in the form of a jest I should even have liked it As it was I felt like one stripped in public Still I recalled with pleasure that Matilda had said similar things about my figure
Why dont you learn to dance Levinsky he repeated
I laughed waving the suggestion aside as a joke
On another occasion he said Every woman can be won absolutely every one provided a fellow knows how to go about it
As he proceeded to develop his theory he described various types of women and the various methods to be used with them
Of course the man must not be repulsive to her he said
That evening when Mrs Levinskys husband their three children and myself sat around the table and she was serving us our supper she appeared in a new light to me She was nearly twice my age and I hated her not only for her meanness and low cunning but also for her massive broadshouldered figure and for her turkey laugh but she was a fullblooded healthy female after all So as I looked at her bustling between the table and the stove Maxs rule came back to me I could almost hear his voice Every woman can be won absolutely every one Mrs Levinskys oldest child was a young man of nearly my age yet I looked her over lustfully and when I found that her florid skin was almost spotless her lips fresh and her black hair without a hint of gray I was glad Presently while removing my plate she threw the trembling bulk of her great firm bust under my very eyes I felt disturbed Some morning when we are alone I said to myself I shall kiss those red lips of hers
From that moment on she was my quarry
As her husband worked in a sweatshop while I peddled he usually got up at least an hour before me And it was considered perfectly natural that Mrs
Levinsky should be hovering about the kitchen while I was sleeping or lying awake on the kitchen lounge Also that after her husband left for the day I should go around halfnaked washing and dressing myself in the same crowded little room in which she was then doing her work as scantily clad as I was and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to her armpits
I had never noticed these things before but on the morning following the above supper I did As I opened my eyes and saw her bare fleshy arms held out toward the little kerosenestove I thought of my resolve to kiss her
She was humming something in a very low voice To let her know that I was awake I stretched myself and yawned audibly Her voice rose It was a song from a wellknown Jewish play she was singing
Good mornings Mrs Levinsky I greeted her in a familiar tone which she now heard for the first time from me You seem to be in good spirits this morning
She was evidently taken aback I was the last man in the world she would have expected to address a remark of this kind to her
How can you see it she asked with a sideglance at me
Have I no ears Dont I hear your beautiful singing
Beautiful singing she said without looking at me
After a considerable pause I said awkwardly You know Mrs
Levinsky I dreamed of you last night
Did you
Arent you interested to know something more about it I dreamed of telling you that you are a goodlooking lady I pursued with fastbeating heart
What has got into that fellow she asked of the kerosenestove He is a greenhorn no longer as true as I am alive You wont deny you are goodlooking will you
What is that to you And again addressing herself to the
kerosenestove What do you think of that fellow A pious
Talmudist indeed Strike me blind if I ever saw one like that
And she uttered a gobblelike chuckle
I saw encouragement in her manner I went on to talk of her songs and the Jewish theater a topic for which I knew her to have a singular weakness
The upshot was that I soon had her telling me of a play she had recently seen As she spoke it was inevitable that she should come up close to the lounge As she did so her fingers touched my quilt her bare sturdy arms paralyzing my attention The temptation to grasp them was tightening its grip on me I decided to begin by taking hold of her hand I warned myself that it must be done gently with romance in my touch I shall just caress her hand I decided not hearing a word of what she was saving
I brought my hand close to hers My heart beat violently I was just about to touch her fingers but I let the opportunity pass I turned the conversation on her husband on his devotion to her on their wedding She mocked my questions but answered them all the same
He must have been awfully in love with you I said
What business is that of yours Where did you learn to ask such questions At the synagogue Of course he loved me What would you have That he should have hated me Why did he marry me then Of course he was in love with me Else I would not have married him would I Are you satisfied now She boasted of the rich and wellconnected suitors she had rejected
I felt that I had sidetracked my flirtation Touching her hand would have been out of place now
A few minutes later when I was saying my morning prayers I carefully kept my eyes away from her lest I should meet her sneering glance
When I had finished my devotions and had put my phylacteries into their little bag I sat down to breakfast I dont like this woman at all I said to myself looking at her In fact I abhor her Why then am I so crazy to carry on with her It was the same question that I had once asked myself concerning my contradictory feelings for Red Esther but my knowledge of life had grown considerably since then
In those days I had made the discovery that there were kisses prompted by affection and kisses prompted by Satan I now added that even love of the flesh might be of two distinct kinds There is love of body and soul and there is a kind of love that is of the body only I theorized There is love and there is lust
I thought of my feeling for Matilda That certainly was love
Various details of my relations with Matilda came back to me during these days
One afternoon as I was brooding over these recollections while passively awaiting customers at my cart I conjured up that night scene when she sat on the great green sofa and I went into ecstasies speaking of my prospective studies for admission to a Russian university I recalled how she had been irritated with me for talking too loud and how calling me Talmud student or ninny she had abruptly left the room I had thought of the scene a hundred times before but now a new interpretation of it flashed through my mind It all seemed so obvious I certainly had been a ninny an idiot I burst into a sarcastic titter at Matildas expense and my own
Of course I was a ninny I scoffed at myself again and again
I saw Matilda from a new angle It was as if she had suddenly slipped off her pedestal Instead of lamenting my fallen idol however I gloated over her fall And instead of growing cold to her I felt that she was nearer to me than ever nearer and dearer
CHAPTER II
ONE morning after breakfast when I was about to leave the house and Mrs Levinsky was detaining me trying to exact a promise that I should get somebody to share the lounge with me I said Ill see about it I must be going Goodby At this I took her hand ostensibly in farewell
Goodby she said coloring and trying to free herself
Goodby I repeated shaking her hand gently and smiling upon her
She wrenched out her hand I took hold of her chin but she shook it free
Dont she said shyly turning away
Whats the matter I said gaily
She faced about again Ill tell you what the matter is she said If you do that again you will have to move If you think I am one of those landladies—you know the kind I mean—you are mistaken
She uttered it in calm rather amicable accents So I replied Why why of course I dont Indeed you are the most respectable and the most sweetlooking woman in the world
I stepped up close to ner and reached out my hand to seize hold of her bare arm
None of that mister she flared up drawing back Keep your hands where they belong If you try that again Ill break every bone in your body May both my hands be paralyzed if I dont
Ssh I implored Which only added fuel to her rage
Ssh nothing Ill call in all the neighbors of the house and tell them the kind of pious man you are Saying his prayers three times a day indeed
I sneaked out of the house like a thief I was wretched all day wondering how I should come to supper in the evening I wondered whether she was going to deliver me over to the jealous wrath of her husband I should have willingly forfeited my trunk and settled in another place but Mrs Levinsky had an approximate knowledge of the places where I was likely to do business and there was the danger of a scene from her Maximum Maxs theory did not seem to count for much But then he had said that one must know how to go about it Perhaps I had been too hasty
Late in the afternoon of that day Mrs Levinsky came to see me Pretending to be passing along on some errand she paused in front of my cart accosting me pleasantly
Ill bet you are angry with me she said smiling broadly
I am not angry at all I answered with feigned moroseness But you certainly have a tongue Whew And well you cant take a joke
I did not mean to hurt your feelings Mr Levinsky May my luck be as good as is my friendship for you I certainly wish you no evil May God give me all the things I wish you I just want you to behave yourself Thats all I am so much older than you anyhow Look for somebody of your own age You are not angry at me are you she added suavely
She simply could not afford to lose the rent I paid her
Since then she held herself at a respectful distance from me
I called on smiling Mrs Dienstog my former landlady in whose house I was no stranger I timed this visit at an hour when I knew her to be alone
In this venture I met with scarcely any resistance at first She let me hold her hand and caress it and tell her how soft and tender it was
Do you think so she said coyly her eyes clouding with embarrassment I dont think they are soft at all They would be if I did not have so much washing and scrubbing to do Then she added sadly America has made a servant of me A land of gold indeed When I was in my fathers house I did not have to scrub floors
I attempted to raise her wrist to my lips but she checked me She did not break away from me however She held me off but she did not let go of the index finger of my right hand which she clutched with all her might playfully As we struggled we both laughed nervously At last I wrenched my finger from her grip and before she had time to thwart my purpose she was in my arms I was aiming a kiss at her lips but she continued to turn and twist trying to clap her hand over my mouth as she did so and my kiss landed on one side of her chin
Just one more dearest I raved Only one on your sweet little lips my dove Only one Only one
She yielded Our lips joined in a feverish kiss Then she thrust me away from her and after a pause shook her finger at me with a goodnatured gesture as much as to say You must not do that bad boy you
I went away in high feather
I called on Mrs Dienstog again the very next morning She received me well but the first thing she did after returning my greeting was to throw the door wide open and to offer me a chair in full view of the hallway
Oh shut the door I whispered in disgust Dont be foolish
She shook her head
Just one kiss I begged her You are so sweet
She held firm
I came away sorely disappointed but convinced that her inflexibility was a mere matter of practical common sense
I kept these experiences and reflections to myself Nor did an indecent word ever cross my lips In the street while attending to my business I heard uncouth language quite often The other pushcart men would utter the most revolting improprieties in the hearing of the women peddlers or even address such talk to them as a matter of course Nor was it an uncommon incident for a peddler to fire a volley of obscenities at a departing housewife who had priced something on his cart without buying it These things scandalized me beyond words I could never get accustomed to them
Look at Levinsky standing there quiet as a kitten the other peddlers would twit me One would think he is so innocent he doesnt know how to count two Shy young fellows are the worst devils in the world
They were partly mistaken during the first few weeks of our acquaintance at least For the last thread that bound me to chastity was still unbroken
It was rapidly wearing away though
CHAPTER III
THE last thread snapped It was the beginning of a period of unrestrained misconduct Intoxicated by the novelty of yielding to Satan I gave him a free hand and the result was months of debauchery and selfdisgust The underworld women I met the humdrum filth of their life and their matteroffact businesslike attitude toward it never ceased to shock and repel me I never left a creature of this kind without abominating her and myself yet I would soon sometimes during the very same evening call on her again or on some other woman of her class
Many of these women would simulate love but they failed to deceive me I knew that they lied and shammed to me just as I did to my customers and their insincerities were only another source of repugnance to me But I frequented them in spite of it all in spite of myself I spent on them more than I could afford Sometimes I would borrow money or pawn something for the purpose of calling on them
The fact that these wretched women were not segregated as they were in my native town probably had something to do with it Instead of being confined to a fixed outoftheway locality they were allowed to live in the same tenementhouses with respectable people beckoning to men from the front steps under open protection from the police Indeed the police as silent partners in the profits of their shame plainly encouraged this vice traffic All of which undoubtedly helped to make a profligate of me but of course it would be preposterous to charge it all or even chiefly to the police
My wild oats were flavored with a sense of my failure as a business man by my homesickness and passion for Matilda My pushcart bored me I was hungry for intellectual interest for novel sensations I was restless Sometimes I would stop from business in the middle of the day to plunge into a page of Talmud at some nearby synagogue and sometimes I would lay down the holy book in the middle of a sentence and betake myself to the residence of some fallen woman In my loneliness I would look for some human element in my acquaintance with these women I would ply them with questions about their antecedents their family connections as my mother had done the girl from That Street
As a rule my questions bored them and their answers were obvious fabrications but there were some exceptions
One of these a plump handsome languideyed female named Bertha occupied two tiny rooms in which she lived with her tenyearold daughter One of the two rooms was often full of men some of them with heavy beards who would sit there each awaiting his turn as patients do in the receptionroom of a physician and whiling their time away by chaffing the little girl upon her mothers occupation and her own future Some of the questions and jokes they would address to her were of the most revolting nature whereupon she would reply Oh go to hell or stick out her tongue resentfully
One day I asked Bertha why she was giving her child this sort of bringing up
I once tried to keep her in another place with a respectable family she replied ruefully But she would not stay there Besides I missed her so much I could not stand it
Another fallen woman who was frank with me proved to be a native of Antomir
When she heard that I was from the same place she flushed with excitement
Go away she shouted Youre fooling me
We talked of the streets lanes and yards of our birthplace she hailing every name I uttered with outbursts of wistful enthusiasm
I wondered whether she knew of my mothers sensational death but I never disclosed my identity to her though she on her part told me with impetuous frankness the whole story of her life
You are a Talmudist arent you she asked
How do you know
How do I know As if it could not be seen by your face A little later she said I am sorry you came here Honest You should have stayed at home and stuck to your holy books It would have been a thousand times better than coming to America and calling on girls like myself Honest
She was known as Argentine Rachael
It was from her that I first heard of the relations existing between the underworld and the police of New York But then my idea of the Russian police had always been associated in my mind with everything cruel and dishonest so the corruption of the New York police did not seem to be anything unusual
One day she said to me If you want a good street corner for your cart I can fix it for you I know CuffButton Leary
Who is he
Why have you never heard about him Is he a big police officer
Bigger The police are afraid of him
Why
Because he is the boss He is the district leader What he says goes
She went on to explain that he was the local chieftain of the dominant politician party as she termed it
What is a politician party I asked
She tried to define it and failing in her attempt she said with a giggle Oh you are a boob You certainly are a green one Why its an organization a lot of people who stick together dont you know
She talked on and the upshot was that I formed a conception of political parties as of a kind of competing business companies whose specialty it was to make millions by ruling some big city levying tribute on fallen women thieves and liquordealers doing favors to friends and meting out punishment to foes I learned also that DistrictLeader Leary owed his surname to a celebrated pair of diamond cuffbuttons said to have cost him fifteen thousand dollars from which he never was separated and by the blaze of which he could be recognized at a distance Well shall I speak to him about you she asked I gave her an evasive answer
Why dont you want to have favors from a girl like me she laughed
I colored whereupon she remarked reflectively I dont blame you either
She never tired talking of our birthplace
Arent you homesick she once demanded
Not a bit I answered with bravado
Then you have no heart I have been away five times as long as you yet I am homesick
Really
Honest
She was as repellent to me as the rest of her class I could never bring myself to accept a cup of tea from her hands And yet I could not help liking her spirit She was truthful and affectionate This and above all her yearning for our common birthplace appealed to me strongly I was very much inclined to think that in spite of the horrible life she led she was a good girl To hold this sort of opinion about a woman of her kind seemed to be an improper thing to do I knew that according to the conventional idea concerning women of the street they were all the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect So I would tell myself that I must consider her too one of the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect But I did not For I knew that at heart she was better than some of the most respectable people I had met It was one of the astonishing discrepancies I had discovered in the world Also it was one of the things I had found to be totally different from what people usually thought they were I was gradually realizing that the average man or woman was full of all sorts of false notions
CHAPTER IV
I ENROLLED in a public evening school I threw myself into my new studies with unbounded enthusiasm After all it was a matter of booklearning something in which I felt at home Some of my classmates had a much better practical acquaintance with English than I but few of these could best the mental training that my Talmud education had given me As a consequence I found things irksomely slow Still the teacher—a young East Side dude hazeleyed applefaced and girlish of feature and voice—was a talkative fellow with oratorical proclivities and his garrulousness was of great value to me He was of German descent and as I subsequently learned from private conversations with him his mother was Americanborn like himself so English was his mothertongue in the full sense of the term He would either address us wholly in that tongue or intersperse it with interpretations in labored German which thanks to my native Yiddish I had no difficulty in understanding His name was Bender At first I did not like him Yet I would hang on his lips striving to memorize every English word I could catch and watching intently not only his enunciation but also his gestures manners and mannerisms and accepting it all as part and parcel of the American way of speaking Sign language which was the chief means of communication in the early days of mankind still holds its own It retains sway over nations of the highest culture with tongues of unlimited wealth and variety And the gestures of the various countries are as different as their spoken languages The gesticulations and facial expressions with which an American will supplement his English are as distinctively American as those of a Frenchman are distinctively French One can tell the nationality of a stranger by his gestures as readily as by his language In a vague general way I had become aware of this before probably from contact with some Americanborn Jews whose gesticulations when they spoke Yiddish impressed me as utterly unYiddish And so I studied Benders gestures almost as closely as I did his words
Even the slight lisp in his s I accepted as part of the real Yankee utterance Nor indeed was this unnatural in view of the th sound that stumblingblock of every foreigner whom it must needs strike as a fullgrown lisp Bender spoke with a nasal twang which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to the overdignified drawl he affected in the classroom But then I had noticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans as well so altogether English impressed me as the language of a people afflicted with defective organs of speech Or else it would seem to me that the Americans had normal organs of speech but that they made special efforts to distort the t into a th and the v into a w
One of the things I discovered was the unsmiling smile I often saw it on Bender and on other native Americans— on the principal of the school for instance who was an AngloSaxon In Russia among the people I knew at least one either smiled or not here I found a peculiar kind of smile that was not a smile It would flash up into a lifeless flame and forthwith go out again leaving the face cold and stiff They laugh with their teeth only I would say to myself But of course I saw real smiles too on Americans and I instinctively learned to discern the smile of mere politeness from the sort that came from ones heart Nevertheless one evening when we were reading in our schoolbook that Kate had a smile for everybody and I saw that this was stated in praise of Kate I had a disagreeable vision of a little girl going around the streets and grinning upon everybody she met
I abhorred the teacher for his girlish looks and affectations but his twang and th made me literally pant with hatred At the same time I strained every nerve to imitate him in these very sounds It was a hard struggle and when I had overcome all difficulties at last and my girlishlooking teacher complimented me enthusiastically upon my thick and thin my aversion for him suddenly thawed out
Two of my classmates were a grizzly heavyset man and his sixteenyearold son both trying to learn English after a long days work On one occasion when it was the boys turn to read and he said bat for bath the teacher bellowed imperiously Stick out the tip of your tongue This way
The boy tried and failed
Oh you have the brain of a horse his father said impatiently in Yiddish Let me try Mr Teacher And screwing up his bewhiskered old face he yelled Battt and then he shot out half an inch of thick red tongue
The teacher grinned struggling with a more pronounced manifestation of his mirth
His tongue missed the train I jested in Yiddish
One of the other pupils translated it into English whereupon Benders suppressed laughter broke loose and I warmed to him still more
Election Day was drawing near The streets were alive with the banners transparencies window portraits of rival candidates processions fireworks speeches I heard scores of words from the political jargon of the country I was continually asking questions inquiring into the meaning of the things I saw or heard around me Each day brought me new experiences fresh impressions keen sensations An American day seemed to be far richer in substance than an Antomir year I was in an everlasting flutter I seemed to be panting for breath for the sheer speed with which I was rushing through life
What was the meaning of all this noise and excitement Everybody I spoke to said it was all humbug People were making jokes at the expense of all politicians irrespective of parties One is as bad as the other I heard all around me They are all thieves Argentine Rachaels conception of politics was clearly the conception of respectable people as well
Rejoicing of the Law is one of our great autumn holidays It is a day of picturesque merrymaking and ceremony when the stringent rule barring women out of a synagogue is relaxed On that day which was a short time before Election Day I saw an East Side judge a Gentile at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir He was very short and the high hat he wore gave him droll dignity He went around the house of worship kissing babies in their mothers arms and saying pleasant things to the worshipers Every little while he would instinctively raise his hand to his high hat and then reminding himself that one did not bare ones head in a synagogue he would feverishly drop his hand again
This part of the scene was so utterly so strikingly unRussian that I watched it openmouthed
A great friend of the Jewish people isnt he the worshiper who stood next to me remarked archly
He is simply in love with us I chimed in with a laugh by way of showing off my understanding of things American Its Jewish votes he is after
Still hes not a bad fellow the man by my side remarked If you have a trial in his court hell decide it in your favor
How is that I asked perplexed And how about the other fellow He cant decide in favor of both can he
There is no cant in America the man by my side returned with a sage smile
I pondered the riddle until I saw light I know what you mean I said He does favors only to those who vote for his party
You have hit it upon my word Youre certainly no longer a green one
Voting alone may not be enough though another worshiper interposed If you ever happen to have a case in his court take a lawyer who is close to the judge Understand
All such talks notwithstanding the campaign or the spectacular novelty of it thrilled me
Bender delivered a speech to our class but all I could make of it was that it dealt with elections in general and that it was something solemn and lofty like a prayer or a psalm
Election Day came round I did not rest I was continually snooping around watching the politicians and their customers as we called the voters
Traffic in votes was quite an open business in those days and I saw a good deal of it on a sidestreet in the vicinity ot a certain pollingplace or even in front of the pollingplace itself under the very eyes of policemen
I saw the bargaining the haggling between buyer and seller I saw money passed from the one to the other I saw a heeler put a ballot into the hand of a man whose vote he had just purchased the present system of voting had not yet been introduced and then march him into a pollingplace to make sure that he deposited the ballot for which he had paid him I saw a man beaten black and blue because he had cheated the party that had paid him for his vote I saw Leary blazing cuffbuttons and all He was a broadshouldered man with rather pleasing features I saw him listening to a whispered report from one of the men whom I had seen buying votes
There was no such thing as political life in the Russia of that period The only political parties in existence there were the secret organizations of revolutionists of people for whom government detectives were incessantly searching so that they might be hanged or sent to Siberia As a consequence a great many of our immigrants landed in America absolutely ignorant of the meaning of citizenship and the first practical instructors on the subject into whose hands they fell were men like CuffButton Leary or his political underlings These taught them that a vote was something to be sold for two or three dollars with the prospect of future favors into the bargain and that a politician was a specialist in doing people favors Favors favors favors I heard the word so often in connection with politics that the two words became inseparable in my mind A politician was a master of favors as my native tongue would have it
I attended school with religious devotion This and the rapid progress I was making endeared me to Bender and he gave me special attention He taught me grammar which I relished most keenly The prospect of going to school in the evening would loom before me during the hours of boredom or distress I spent at my cart as a promise of divine pleasure
Some English words inspired me with hatred as though they were obnoxious living things The disagreeable impression they produced on me was so strong that it made them easy to memorize so that I welcomed them in spite of my aversion or rather because of it The list of these words included satisfaction think and because
At the end of the first month I knew infinitely more English than I did Russian
One evening I asked Bender to tell me the real difference between I wrote and I have written He had explained it to me once or twice before but I was none the wiser for it
What do you mean by real difference he demanded I have told you havent I that I wrote is the perfect tense while I have written is the imperfect tense This was in accordance with the grammatical terminology of those days
I know I replied in my wretched English but what is the difference between these two tenses Thats just what bothers me
Well he said grandly the perfect refers to what was while the imperfect means something that has been
But when do you say was and when do you say has been Thats just the question Youre a nuisance Levinsky was his final retort
I was tempted to say And you are a blockhead But I did not of course
At the bottom of my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead
The first thing he did the next evening was to take up the same subject with me the rest of the class watching the two of us curiously I could see that his performance of the previous night had been troubling him and that he was bent upon making a better showing He spent the entire lesson of two hours with me exclusively trying all sorts of elucidations and illustrations all without avail The trouble with him was that he pictured the working of a foreigners mind with regard to English as that of his own It did not occur to him that people born to speak another language were guided by another language logic so to say and that in order to reach my understanding he would have to impart his ideas in terms of my own linguistic psychology Still one of his numerous examples gave me a glimmer of light and finally it all became clear to me I expressed my joy so boisterously that it brought a roar of laughter from the other men
He made a pet of me I became the monitor of his class that is I would bring in and distribute the books and he often had me escort him home so as to talk to me as we walked He was extremely companionable and loquacious He had a passion for sharing with others whatever knowledge he had or simply for hearing himself speak Upon reaching the house in which he lived we would pause in front of the building for an hour or even more
Or else we would start on a ramble usually through Grand Street to East River and back again through East Broadway His favorite topics during these walks were civics American history and his own history
Diligence perrseverance tenacity he would drawl out with nasal dignity Get these three words engraved on your mind Levinsky Diligence perseverance tenacity
And by way of illustration he would enlarge on how he had fought his way through City College how he had won some prizes and beaten a rival in a race for the presidency of a literary society how he had obtained his present two occupations—as customhouse clerk during the day and as schoolteacher in the winter evenings—and how he was going to work himself up to something far more dignified and lucrative He unbosomed himself to me of all his plans he confided some of his intimate secrets in me often dwelling on my young lady who was a first cousin of his and to whom he had practically been engaged since boyhood
All this his boasts not excepted were of incalculable profit to me It introduced me to detail after detail of American life It accelerated the process of getting me out of my greenhornhood in the better sense of the phrase
Bender was an ardent patriot He was sincerely proud of his country He was firmly convinced that it was superior to any other country absolutely in every respect One evening in the course of one of those rambles of ours he took up the subject of political parties with me He explained the respective principles of the Republicans and the Democrats Being a Democrat himself he eulogized his own organization and assailed its rival but he did it strictly along the lines of principle and policy
The principles of a party are its soul he thundered probably borrowing the phrase from some newspaper And he proceeded to show that the Democratic soul was of superior quality
He went into the question of State rights of personal liberty of Jeffersonian ideals It was all an abstract formula and I was so overwhelmed by the image of a great organization fighting for lofty ideals that the concrete question of political babykissing of CuffButton Learys power and of the scenes I had witnessed on Election Day escaped me at the moment I merely felt that all I had heard about politics and political parties from Argentine Rachael and from other people was the product of untutored brains that looked at things from the special viewpoint of the gutter
Presently however the screaming discrepancy between CuffButton Learys rule and Jeffersonian ideals did occur to me I conveyed my thoughts to Bender as well as I could
He flared up Nonsense he said Mr Leary is the best man in the city
He is a friend of mine and I am proud of it Ask him for any favor and he will do it for you if he has to get out of bed in the middle of the night
He spends a fortune on the poor He has the biggest heart of any man in all New York I dont care who he is He helps a lot of people out of trouble but he cant help everybody can he Thats why you hear so many bad things about him He has a lot of enemies But I love him just for the enemies he has made
People say he collects bribes from disreputable women I ventured to urge
Its a lie Its all rumors he shouted testily
On Election Day I saw a man who was buying votes whisper to him
Whisper to him Whisper to him Haha haha Well is that all the evidence you have got against Mr Leary I suppose thats the kind of evidence you have about the buying of votes too I am afraid you dont quite understand what you see Levinsky
His answers were far from convincing I was wondering what interest he had to defend Leary to deny things that everybody saw But he disarmed me by the force of his irritation
Bender himself was a clean honest fellow In his peculiar American way he was very religious and I knew that his piety was not a mere affectation
Which was another puzzle to me for all the educated Jews of my birthplace were known to be atheists He belonged to a Reformed synagogue where he conducted a Bible class
One evening he expanded on the beauty of the English translation of the Old Testament He told me it was the best English to be found in all literature
Study the Bible Levinsky Read it and read it again
The suggestion took my fancy for I could read the English Bible with the aid of the original Hebrew text I began with Psalm 104 the poem that had thrilled me when I was on shipboard I read the English version of it before Bender until I pronounced the words correctly I thought I realized their music I got the chapter by heart When I recited it before Bender he was joyously surprised and called me a corker
What is a corker I asked beamingly
Its slang for a great fellow With which he burst into a lecture on slang
I often sat up till the small hours studying the English Bible I had many a quarrel with Mrs Levinsky over the kerosene I consumed Finally it was arranged that I should pay her five cents for every night I sat up late But this merely changed the bone of contention between us Instead of quarreling over kerosene we would quarrel over hours—over the question whether I really had sat up late or not
To this day whenever I happen to utter certain Biblical words or names in their English version they seem to smell of Mrs Levinskys lamp
CHAPTER V
EVENING school closed in April The final session was of a festive character Bender excited and sentimental distributed some presents
Promise me that you will read this glorious book from beginning to end Levinsky he said solemnly as he handed me a new volume of Dombey and Son and a small dictionary We may never meet again So you will have something to remind you that once upon a time you had a teacher whose name was Bender and who tried to do his duty
I wanted to thank him to say something handsome but partly because I was overcome by his gift partly because I was at a loss for words I merely kept saying sheepishly Thank you thank you thank you thank you
That volume of Dickens proved to be the ruin of my pushcart business and caused me some weeks of the blackest misery I had ever experienced
As I started to read the voluminous book I found it an extremely difficult task It seemed as though it was written in a language other than the one I had been studying during the past few months I had to turn to the dictionary for the meaning of every third word if not more often while in many cases several words in succession were Greek to me Some words could not be found in my little dictionary at all and in the case of many others the English definitions were as much of an enigma to me as the words they were supposed to interpret Yet I was making headway I had to turn to the dictionary less and less often
It was the first novel I had ever read The dramatic interest of the narrative coupled with the poetry and the humor with which it is so richly spiced was a revelation to me I had had no idea that Gentiles were capable of anything so wonderful in the line of bookwriting To all of which should be added my selfcongratulations upon being able to read English of this sort a state of mind which I was too apt to mistake for my raptures over Dickens It seemed to me that people who were born to speak this language were of a superior race
I was literally intoxicated and drunkardlike I would delay going to business from hour to hour The upshot was that I became so badly involved in debt that I dared not appear with my pushcart for fear of scenes from my creditors Moreover I scarcely had anything to sell Finally I disposed of what little stock I still possessed for onefourth of its value and to my relief as well as to my despair my activities as a peddler came to an end
I went on reading or rather studying Dombey and Son with voluptuous abandon till I found myself literally penniless
I procured a job with a man who sold dill pickles to Jewish grocers From his description of my duties— chiefly as his bookkeeper—I expected that they would leave me plenty of leisure between whiles to read my Dickens I was mistaken My first attempt to open the book during business hours which extended from 8 in the morning to bedtime was suppressed My employer who had the complexion of a dill pickle by the way proved to be a severe taskmaster absurdly exacting and so niggardly that I dared not take a decentlooking pickle for my lunch
I left him at the end of the second week obtaining employment in a prosperous fishstore next door My new boss was a kinder and pleasanter man but then the malodorous and clamorous chaos of his place literally sickened me
I left the fishmonger and jumped my board at Mrs Levinskys to go to a New Jersey farm where I was engaged to read Yiddish novels to the illiterate wife of a New York merchant but my client was soon driven from the place by the New Jersey mosquitoes and I returned to New York with two dollars in my pocket I worked as assistant in a Hebrew school where the Americanborn boys mocked my English and challenged me to have an American fight with them till—on the third day—I administered a sound unAmerican thrashing to one of them and lost my job
Maximum Max got the proprietor of one of the dancehalls in which he did his instalment business to let me sleep in his basement in return for some odd jobs While there I earned from two to three dollars a week in tips and a good supper every time there was a wedding in the place which happened two or three times a week I had plenty of time for Dickens I was still burrowing my way through Dombey and Son while the affairs of the hall—weddings banquets balls mass meetings—were quite exciting I felt happy but this happiness of mine did not last long I was soon sent packing
This is the way it came about It was in the large ballroom of the establishment in question that I saw a modern dance for the first time in my life It produced a bewitching effect on me Here were highly respectable young women who would let men encircle their waists each resting her arm on her partners shoulder and then go spinning and hopping with him with a frank relish of the physical excitement in which they were joined As I watched one of these girls I seemed to see her surrender much of her womanly reserve I knew that the dance—an ordinary waltz—was considered highly proper yet her pose and his struck me as a public confession of unseemly mutual interest I almost blushed for her And for the moment I was in love with her As this young woman went round and round her face bore a faint smile of embarrassed satisfaction I knew that it was a sex smile Another woman danced with grave mien and I knew that it was the gravity of sex
To watch dancing couples became a passion with me One evening as I stood watching the waltzing members of a wedding party a married sister of the brides shouted to me in Yiddish What are you doing here Get out Youre a killjoy
This was her way of alluding to my unpresentable appearance When the proprietor heard of the incident he sent for me He told me that I was a nuisance and bade me find another hangout for myself
The following month or two constitute the most wretched period of my life in America I slept in the cheapest lodginghouses on the Bowery and not infrequently in some expresswagon I was constantly borrowing quarters dimes nickels
Maximum Max was very kind to me As I could not meet him at the stores where I dared not face my creditors I would waylay him in front of his residence
I tell you what Levinsky he once said to me You ought to learn some trade Its plain you were not born to be a business man The black dots meaning the words in books take up too much room in your head
Finally I owed him so many quarters and even halfdollars that I had not the courage to ask him for more
Hunger was a frequent experience I had been no stranger to the sensation at Antomir at least after the death of my mother but for some reason I was now less capable of bearing it The pangs I underwent were at times so acute that I would pick up cigarette stubs in the street and smoke them without being a smoker for the purpose of having the pain supplanted by dizziness and nausea Sometimes too I would burn my hand with a match or bite it as hard as I could Any kind of suffering or excitement was welcome provided it made me forget my hunger
When famished I would sometimes saunter through the streets on the lower East Side which disreputable creatures used as their marketplace It was mildly exciting to watch women hunt for men and men hunt for women their furtive glances winks tacit understandings bargainings the little subterfuges by which they sought to veil their purpose from the other passersby the way a man would take stock of a passing woman to ascertain whether she was of the approachable class the timidity of some of the men and the matteroffact ease of others the mutual spying of two or three rivals aiming at the same quarry the pretended abstraction of the policemen and a hundred and one other details of the traffic Many a time I joined in the chase without having a cent in my pocket stop to discuss terms with a woman in front of some window display or around a corner only soon to turn away from her on the pretense that I had expected to be taken to her residence while she proposed going to some hotel Thus held by a dull dogged fascination I would tramp around sometimes for hours until feeling on the verge of a faintingspell with hunger and exhaustion I would sit down on the front steps of some house
I often thought of Mr Even but nothing was further from my mind than to let him see me in my present plight One morning I met him face to face on the Bowery but he evidently failed to recognize me
One afternoon I called on Argentine Rachael Look here Rachace I said in a studiously matteroffact voice Im dead broke today Ill pay you in a day or two Her face fell I never trust Never she said shaking her head mournfully It brings bad luck anyhow
I felt like sinking into the ground All right Ill see you some other time I said with an air of bravado
She ran after me Wait a moment Whats your hurry
By way of warding off bad luck she offered to lend me three dollars in cash out of which I could pay her I declined her offer She pleaded and expostulated But I stood firm and I came away in a state of the blackest wretchedness and selfdisgust
I could never again bring myself to show my face at her house
A little musicstore was now my chief resort It was kept by a man whom I had met at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir a former cantor who now supplemented his income from the store by doing occasional service as a wedding bard The musicians singers and musicteachers who made the place their headquarters had begun by taking an interest in me but the dimes and nickels I was now unceasingly borrowing of them had turned me into an outcast in their eyes I felt it keenly I would sulk around the store anxious to leave and loitering in spite of myself There was a piano in the store upon which they often played This their talks of music and their venomous gossip had an irresistible fascination for me
I noticed that morbid vanity was a common disease among them Some of them would frankly and boldly sing their own panegyrics while others more discreet and tactful let their high opinions of themselves be inferred Nor could they conceal the grudges they bore one another the jealousies with which they were eaten up I thought them ludicrous repugnant and yet they lured me I felt that some of those among them who were most grotesque and revolting in their selfishness had something in their makeup—certain interests passions emotions visions— which placed them above the common herd This was especially true of a spare haggardlooking violinist boyish of figure and catlike of manner with deep dark rings under his insatiable blue eyes He called himself Octavius He was literally consumed by the blaze of his own conceit and envy When he was not in raptures over the poetry subtlety or depth of his own playing or compositions he would give way to paroxysms of malice and derision at the expense of some other musician from his East Side rivals all the way up to Sarasate who was then at the height of his career and had recently played in New York Wagner was his god yet no sooner would somebody else express admiration for Wagner music than he would offer to show that all the good things in the works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the compositions of other men He possessed a phenomenal memory He seemed to remember every note in every opera symphony oratorio or concerto that anybody ever mentioned and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated man but he was ready to prove that it had been stolen from some other celebrated man
His invective was particularly violent when he spoke of those Jewish immigrants in the musical profession whose success had extended beyond the East Side He could never mention without a jeer or some coarse epithet the name of a Madison Street boy a violinist who was then attracting attention in Europe and who was booked for a series of concerts before the best audiences in the United States
He was a passionate phrasemaker Indeed it would have been difficult to determine which afforded him more pleasure—his selflaudations or the colorful pungent often preposterous language in which they were clothed
I am writing something with hot tears in it I once heard him brag
Theyll be so hot theyll scald the heart of every one who hears it provided he has a heart
He had given me some nickels yet his boasts would fill me with disgust On the occasion just mentioned I was so irritated with my poverty and with the whole world that I was seized with an irresistible desire to taunt him As he continued to eulogize his forthcoming masterpiece I threw out a Hebrew quotation Let others praise thee but not thine own mouth
He took no heed of my thrust But since then he never looked at me and I never dared ask him for a nickel again
He had a ferocious temper When it broke loose it would be a veritable volcano of revolting acrimony his thin firm opening and snapping shut in a peculiar fashion as though he were squirting venom all over the floor He was as sensual as Maximum Max only his voluptuous talks of women were far more offensive in form But then his lewd drivel was apt to glitter with flashes of imagination I do not remember ever seeing him in good humor
BOOK VII
MY TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
ONE Friday evening in September I stood on Grand Street with my eyes raised to the big open windows of a dancehall on the second floor of a brick building on the opposite side of the lively thoroughfare Only the busts of the dancers could be seen This and the distance that divided me from the hall enveloped the scene in mystery As the couples floated by as though borne along on waves of the music the girls clinging to the men their fantastic figures held me spellbound Several other people were watching the dancers from the street mostly women who gazed at the appearing and disappearing images with envying eyes
Presently I was accosted by a dandifiedlooking young man who rushed at me with an exuberant How are you in English He was dressed in the height of the summer fashion He looked familiar to me but I was at a loss to locate him
Dont you know me Try to remember
It was Gitelson my fellowpassenger on board the ship that had brought me to America the tailor who clung to my side when I made my entry into the New World sixteen months before
The change took my breath away
You didnt recognize me did you he said with a triumphant snicker pulling out his cuffs so as to flaunt their gold or gilded buttons
He asked me what I was doing but he was more interested in telling me about himself That cloakcontractor who picked him up near Castle Garden had turned out to be a skinflint and a slavedriver He had started him on five dollars a week for work the market price of which was twenty or thirty So Gitelson left him as soon as he realized his real worth and he had been making good wages ever since Being an excellent tailor he was much sought after and although the trade had two long slack seasons he always had plenty to do He told me that he was going to that dancehall across the street which greatly enhanced his importance in my eyes and seemed to give reality to the floating phantoms that I had been watching in those windows
He said he was in a hurry to go up there as he had an appointment with a lady this in English yet he went on describing the picnics balls excursions he attended
Thereupon I involuntarily shot a look at his jaunty straw hat thinking of his gray forelock I did so several times I could not help it Finally my furtive glances attracted his attention
What are you looking at Anything wrong with my hat he asked baring his head His hair was freshly trimmed and dudishly dressed As I looked at the patch of silver hair that shone in front of a glossy expanse of brown he exclaimed with a laugh Oh you mean that Thats nothing The ladies like me all the same
He went on boasting but he did it in an inoffensive way He simply could not get over the magic transformation that had come over him While in his native place his income had amounted to four rubles about two dollars a week his wages here were now from thirty to forty dollars He felt like a peasant suddenly turned to a prince But he spoke of his successes in a pleasing soft voice and with a kindly confiding smile that won my heart
Altogether he made the impression of an exceedingly unaggressive goodnatured fellow without anything like ginger in his makeup
After he had bragged his fill he invited me to have a glass of soda with him There was a sodastand on the next corner and when we reached it I paused but he pulled me away
Come on he said disdainfully Well go into a drugstore or better still lets go to an icecream parlor
This I hesitated to do because of my shabby clothes When he divined the cause of my embarrassment he was touched
Come on he said with warm hospitality uttering the two words in English When I say Come on I know what I am talking about
But your lady is waiting for you She can wait Ladies are never on time anyhow
But maybe she is
If she is she can dance with some of the other fellows I wouldnt be jealous There are plenty of other ladies I should not take fifty ladies for this chance of seeing you Honest
He took me into a little candystore dazzlingly lighted and mirrored and filled with marbletopped tables
We seated ourselves and he gave the order He did so rather swaggeringly but his manner to me was one of affectionate and compassionate respectfulness
Oh I am so glad to see you he said You remember the ship
As if one could ever forget things of that kind
I have often thought of you I wonder what has become of him I said to myself He did not remember my name or perhaps he had never known it so I had to introduce myself afresh The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy wretchedlooking appearance as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me made me sorely ill at ease The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace I was longing to go away but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs once more and this time he did so with such unfeigned concern that I told him the whole cheerless story of my sixteen months life in America
He was touched In his mild unemphatic way he expressed heartfelt sympathy
But why dont you learn some trade he inquired You dont seem to be fit for business anyhow the last two words in mispronounced English
Everybody is telling me that
There you are You just listen to me Mr Levinsky You wont be sorry for it He proposed machineoperating in a cloakshop which paid even better than tailoring and was far easier to learn Finally he offered to introduce me to an operator who would teach me the trade and to pay him my tuition fee
He went into details He continued to address me as Mr Levinsky and tried to show me esteem as his intellectual superior but in spite of himself as it were he gradually took a respectfully contemptuous tone with me
Dont be a lobster Mr Levinsky Lobster he said in English This is not Russia Here a fellow must be no fool There is no sense in living the way you do Do as Gitelson tells you and youll live decently dress decently and lay by a dollar or two There are lots of educated fellows in the shops He told me of some of these particularly of one young man who was a shopmate of his He never comes to work without some book he said
When there is not enough to do he reads When he has to wait for a new bundle as we call it he reads Other fellows carry on but he is always reading He is so highly educated he could read any kind of book and I dont believe there is a book in the world that he has not read He is saving up money to go to college
On parting he became fully respectful again Do as I tell you Mr
Levinsky he said Take up cloakmaking
He made me write down his address He expected that I would do it in Yiddish When he saw me write his name and the name of the street in English he said reverently Writing English already There is a mind for you If I could write like that I could become a designer Well dont lose the address Call on me and if you make up your mind to take up cloakmaking just say the word and Ill fix you up When Gitelson says he will he will The image of that cloakoperator reading books and laying by money for a college education haunted me Why could I not do the same I pictured myself working and studying and saving money for the kind of education which Matilda had dinned into my ears
I accepted Gitelsons offer Cloakmaking or the cloak business as a career never entered my dreams at that time I regarded the trade merely as a steppingstone to a life of intellectual interests
CHAPTER II
THE operator to whom Gitelson apprenticed me was a short plump darkcomplexioned fellow named Joe I have but a dim recollection of his features though I distinctly remember his irresistible wideeyed smile and his emotional nature
He taught me to bind seams and later to put in pockets to stitch on under collars and so forth After a while he began to pay me a small weekly wage he himself being paid for our joint work by the piece The shop was not the manufacturers It belonged to one of his contractors who received from him bundles of material which his employees tailors machine operators pressers and finisher girls made up into cloaks or jackets The cheaper goods were made entirely by operators the better grades partly by tailors partly by operators or wholly by tailors but these were mostly made inside in the manufacturers own establishment The designing cutting and making of samples were inside branches exclusively Gitelson as a skilled tailor was an inside man being mostly employed on samples
My work proved to be much harder and the hours very much longer than I had anticipated I had to toil from six in the morning to nine in the evening
Joe put in even more time I always found him grinding away rapturously when I came to the shop in the morning and always left him toiling as rapturously when I went home in the evening Ours is a seasonal trade All the work of the year is crowded into two short seasons of three and two months respectively during which one is to earn enough to last him twelve months only samplemakers highgrade tailors like Gitelson were kept busy throughout the year But then wages were comparatively high so that a good mechanic particularly an operator could make as much as seventyfive dollars a week working about fifteen hours a day However during the first two or three weeks I was too much borne down by the cruelty of my drudgery to be interested in the luring rewards which it held out Not being accustomed to physical exertion of any kind I felt like an innocent man suddenly thrown into prison and put at hard labor I was shocked I was crushed I was continually looking at the clock counting the minutes and when I came home I would feel so sore in body and spirit that I could not sleep Studying or reading was out of the question
Moreover as a peddler I seemed to have belonged to the world of business to the same class as the rich the refined while now behold I was a workman a laborer one of the masses I pitied myself for a degraded wretch And when some of my shopmates indulged in coarse pleasantry in the hearing of the finisher girls it would hurt me personally as a confirmation of my disgrace And this is the kind of people with whom I am doomed to associate I would lament In point of fact there were only four or five fellows of this kind in a shop of fifty Nor were some of the peddlers or musicteachers I had known more modest of speech than the worst of these cloakmakers What was more I felt that some of my fellowemployees were purer and better men than I But that did not matter I abhorred the shop and everybody in it as a wellbred convict abhors his jail and his fellowinmates
When the men quarreled they would call one another among other things bundleeaters This meant that they accused one another of being ever hungry for bundles of raw material ever eager to gobble up all the work in the shop I wondered how one could be anxious for physical toil They seemed to be a lot of savages
The idea of leaving the shop often crossed my mind but I never had the courage to take it seriously I had tried my hand at peddling and failed
Was I a failure as a mechanic as well Was I unfit for anything
The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life while
I was a waif a neerdowell nearly two years in America with
nothing to show for it
Thoughts such as these had a cowing effect on me They made me feel somewhat like the fresh prisoner who has been put to work at stonebreaking to have his wild spirit broken I dared not give up my new occupation I would force myself to work hard and as I did so the very terrors of my toil would fascinate me giving me a sense of my own worth As the jackets that bore my stitches kept piling up the concrete result of my useful performance would become a source of moral satisfaction to me And when I received my first wages—the first money I had ever earned by the work of my hands—it seemed as if it were the first money I had ever earned honestly
By little and little I got used to my work and even to enjoy its processes
Moreover the thinking and the dreaming I usually indulged in while plying my machine became a great pleasure to me It seemed as though ones mind could not produce such interesting thoughts or images unless it had the rhythmic whir of a sewingmachine to stimulate it
I now ate well and slept well I was in the best of health and in the best of spirits I was in an uplifted state of mind No one seemed to be honorable who did not earn his bread in the sweat of his brow as I did Had I then chanced to hear a Socialist speech I might have become an ardent follower of Karl Marx and my life might have been directed along lines other than those which brought me to financial power
The girls in the shop individually scarcely interested me but their collective presence was something of which I never seemed to be quite unconscious It was as though the workaday atmosphere were scented with the breath of a delicate perfume—a perfume that was tainted with the tang of my yearning for Matilda
Two girls who were seated within a yard from my machine were continually bandying secrets Now one and then the other would look around to make sure that the contractor was not watching and then she would bend over and whisper something into her chums ear This would set my blood tingling with a peculiar kind of inquisitiveness It was reasonable to suppose that their whispered conferences mostly bore upon such innocent matters as their work earnings lodgings or dresses Nevertheless it seemed to me that their whispers especially when accompanied by a smile a giggle or a wink conveyed some of their intimate thoughts of men They were homely girls with pinched faces yet at such moments they represented to me all that there was fascinating and disquieting in womanhood
The jests of the foulmouthed rowdies would make me writhe with disgust As a rule they were ostensibly addressed to some of the other fellows or to nobody in particular their real target being the nearest girls These would receive them with gestures of protest or with an exclamation of mild repugnance or—in the majority of cases—pass them unnoticed as one does some unavoidable discomfort of toil There was only one girl in the shop who received these jests with a shamefaced grin or even with frank appreciation and she was a perfectly respectable girl like the rest There were some finisher girls who could not boast an unsullied reputation but none of them worked in our shop and indeed their number in the entire trade was very small
One of the two girls who sat nearest to my machine was quite popular in the shop but that was because of her sweet disposition and sound sense rather than for her looks She was known to have a snug little account in a savingsbank It was for a marriage portion she was saving but she was doing it so strenuously that she stinted herself the expense of a decent dress or hat or the price of a ticket to a ball picnic or dancingclass
The result was that while she was pinching and scrimping herself to pave the way to her marriage she barred herself by this very process from contact with possible suitors She was a good soul From time to time she would give some of her money to a needy relative and then she would try to make up for it by saving with more ardor than ever Her name was Gussie
Joe the plump dark fellow who was teaching me the trade was one of the several men in the shop who were addicted to salacious banter One of his favorite pranks was to burlesque some synagogue chant from the solemn service of the Days of Awe with disgustingly coarse Yiddish in place of the Hebrew of the prayer But he was not a bad fellow by any means He was goodnatured extremely impressionable and susceptible of good influences
A sad tune would bring a woebegone look into his face while a good joke would make him laugh to tears He was fond of referring to himself as my rabbi which is Hebrew for teacher and that was the way I would address him at first playfully and then as a matter of course
One day after he had delivered himself of a quip that set my teeth on edge I said to him appealingly Why should you be saying these things rabbi
If you dont like them you can stop your Godfearing ears he fired back goodnaturedly
I retorted that it was not a matter of piety but of common decency and my words were evidently striking home but the girls applauded me which spoiled it all
If you want to preach sermons youre in the wrong place he flared up
This is no synagogue
Nor is it a pigsty Gussie urged without raising her eyes from her work
A month or two later he abandoned these sallies of his own accord The other fellows twitted him on his burst of righteousness and made efforts to lure him into a race of ribald punning but he stood his ground
By and by it leaked out that he was engaged and madly in love with his girl
I warmed to him
The young woman who had won his heart was not an employee of our shop
Indeed loveaffairs between workingmen and workinggirls who are employed in the same place are not quite so common as one might suppose The factory is scarcely a proper setting for romance It is one of the battlefields in our struggle for existence where we treat woman as an inferior being whereas in civilized lovemaking we prefer to keep up the chivalrous fiction that she is our superior The girls of our shop hardworked disheveled and handled with anything but chivalry aroused my sympathy but it was not the kind of feeling that stimulates romantic interest Still collectively as an abstract reminder of their sex they flavored my sordid environment with poetry
CHAPTER III
THE majority of the students at the College of the City of New York was already made up of Jewish boys mostly from the tenementhouses One such student often called at the cloakshop in which I was employed and in which his father—a toughlooking fellow with a sandy beard a former teamster—was one of the pressers A classmate of this boy was supported by an aunt a spinster who made good wages as a bunchmaker in a cigarfactory
To make an educated man of her nephew was the great ambition of her life
All this made me feel as though I were bound to that college with the ties of kinship Two of my other shopmates had sons at high school The East Side was full of poor Jews—wageearners peddlers grocers salesmen insurance agents—who would beggar themselves to give their children a liberal education Then too thousands of our workingmen attended public evening school while many others took lessons at home The Ghetto rang with a clamor for knowledge
To save up some money and prepare for college seemed to be the most natural thing for me to do I said to myself that I must begin to study for it without delay But that was impossible and it was quite some time before I took up the course which the pressers boy had laid out for me During the first three months I literally had no time to open a book Nor was that all
My work as a cloakmaker had become a passion with me so much so that even on Saturdays when the shop was closed I would scarcely do any reading
Instead I would seek the society of other cloakmakers with whom
I might talk shop
I was developing speed rather than skill at my sewingmachine but this question of speed afforded exercise to my brain It did not take me long to realize that the number of cloaks or jackets which one turned out in a given length of time was largely a matter of method and system I perceived that Joe who was accounted a fast hand would take up the various parts of a garment in a certain order calculated to reduce to a minimum the amount of time lost in passing from section to section So I watched him intently studying his system with every fiber of my being Nor did I content myself with imitating his processes I was forever pondering the problem and introducing little improvements of my own I was making a science of it It was not merely physical exertion It was a source of intellectual interest as well I was wrapped up in it If I happened to meet a cloakoperator who was noted for extraordinary speed I would feel like an ambitious musician meeting a famous virtuoso Some cloakoperators were artists I certainly was not one of them I admired their work and envied them but I lacked the artistic patience and the dexterity essential to workmanship of a high order Much to my chagrin I was a born bungler But then I possessed physical strength nervous vitality method and inventiveness—all the elements that go to make up speed
I was progressing with unusual rapidity Joe criticized my work severely often calling me botcher but I knew that this was chiefly intended to veil his satisfaction at the growing profits that my work was yielding him
I now earned about ten dollars a week of which I spent about five saving the rest for the next season of idleness
At last that season set in There was not a stroke of work in the shop I was so absorbed in my new vocation that I would pass my evenings in a cloakmakers haunt a café on Delancey Street where I never tired talking sleeves pockets stitches trimmings and the like There was a good deal of cardplaying in the place but somehow I never succumbed to that temptation
But then under the influence of some of the fellows I met there I developed a considerable passion for the Jewish theater These young men were what is known on the East Side as patriots that is devoted admirers of some actor or actress and members of his or her voluntary claque Several of the other frequenters were also interested in the stage or at least in the gossip of it so that on the whole there was as much talk of plays and players as there was of cloaks and cloakmakers Our shop discussions certainly never reached the heat that usually characterized our debates on things theatrical
The most ardent of the patriots was a young contractor named Mindels He attended nearly every performance in which his favorite actor had a part selling dozens of tickets for his benefit performances and usually losing considerable sums on these sales loading him with presents and often running his errands I once saw Mindels in a violent quarrel with a man who had scoffed at his idol
Mindelss younger brother Jake fascinated me by his appearance and we became great chums He was the handsomest fellow I ever had seen with a fine head of darkbrown hair classic features and large softblue eyes too soft and too blue perhaps His was a manly face and figure and his voice was a manly a beautiful basso but this masculine exterior contained an effeminate psychology In my heart I pronounced him a calf and when I had discovered the English word sissy I thought that it just fitted him
Yet I adored him and even looked up to him all because of his good looks
He was a Talmudist like myself and we had much in common also regarding our dreams of the future
Oh I am so glad I have met you I once said to him
I am glad too he returned flushing
I found that he blushed rather too frequently which confirmed my notion of him as a sissy Like most handsome men he bestowed a great deal of time on his personal appearance He never uttered a foul word nor a harsh one If he heard a cloakmaker tell an indecent story he would look down smiling and blushing like a girl
Formerly he had been employed in his brothers shop while now he earned his living by soliciting and collecting for a lifeinsurance company
CHAPTER IV
JAKE MINDELS was a devotee of Madame Klesmer the leading Jewish actress of that period which by the way was practically the opening chapter in the interesting history of the Yiddish stage in America Madame Klesmer was a tragedienne and a prima donna at oncea usual combination in those days
One Friday evening we were in the gallery of her theater The play was an historical opera and she was playing the part of a Biblical princess It was the closing scene of an act The whole company was on the stage swaying sidewise and singing with the princess her head in a halo of electric light in the center Jake was feasting his large blue eyes on her Presently he turned to me with the air of one confiding a secret Wouldnt you like to kiss her And swinging around again he resumed feasting his blue eyes on the princess
I have seen prettier women than she I replied
Ssh Let a fellow listen She is a dear all the same You dont know a good thing when you see it Levinsky
Are you in love with her
Ssh Do let me listen
When the curtain fell he made me applaud her There were several curtaincalls during all of which he kept applauding her furiously shouting the prima donnas name at the top of his voice and winking to me imploringly to do the same When quiet had been restored at last I returned to the subject Are you in love with her
Sure he answered without blushing As if a fellow could help it If she let me kiss her little finger I should be the happiest man in the world
And if she let you kiss her cheek I should go crazy
And if she let you kiss her lips Whats the use asking idle questions
Would you like to kiss her neck You ask me foolish questions
You are in love with her I declared reflectively
I should say I was
It was a unique sort of love for he wanted me also to be in love with her
If you are not in love with her you must have a heart of iron or else your soul is dry as a raisin With which he took to analyzing the prima donnas charms going into raptures over her eyes smile gestures manner of opening her mouth and her swing and step as she walked over the stage
No I dont care for her I replied
You are a peculiar fellow
If I did fall in love I said by way of meeting him halfway I should choose Mrs Segalovitch She is a thousand times prettier than Mrs
Klesmer
Tut tut
Mrs Segalovitch was certainly prettier than the prima donna but she played unimportant parts so the notion of ones falling in love with her seemed queer to Jake
That night I had an endless chain of dreams in every one of which Madame Klesmer was the central figure When I awoke in the morning I fell in love with her and was overjoyed
When I saw Jake Mindels at dinner I said to him with the air of one bringing glad news Do you know I am in love with her
With whom With Mrs Segalovitch Oh pshaw I had forgotten all about her I mean Madame Kiesmer I said selfconsciously
Somehow my love for the actress did not interfere with my longing thoughts of Matilda I asked myself no questions
And so we went on loving jointly Jake and I the companionship of our passion apparently stimulating our romance as companionship at a meal stimulates the appetite of the diners Each of us seemed to be infatuated with Madame Klesmer Yet the community of this feeling far from arousing mutual jealousy in us seemed to strengthen the ties of our friendship
We would hum her songs in duet recite her lines compare notes on our dreams of happiness with her One day we composed a loveletter to her a long epistle full of Biblical and homespun poetry which we copied jointly his lines alternating with mine and which we signed Your two lovelorn slaves whose hearts are panting for a look of your starlike eyes Jacob and David We mailed the letter without affixing any address
The next evening we were in the theater and when she appeared on the stage and shot a glance to the gallery Jake nudged me violently
But she does not know we are in the gallery I argued She must think we are in the orchestra
Hearts are good guessers
Guessers nothing
Ssh Lets listen
Madame Klesmer was playing the part of a girl in a modern Russian town She declaimed her lines speaking like a prophetess in ancient Israel and I liked it extremely I was fully aware that it was unnatural for a girl in a modern Russian town to speak like a prophetess in ancient Israel but that was just why I liked it I thought it perfectly proper that people on the stage should not talk as they would off the stage I thought that this unnatural speech of theirs was one of the principal things an audience paid for The only actor who spoke like a human being was the comedian and this too seemed to be perfectly proper for a comedian was a fellow who did not take his art seriously and so I thought that this natural talk of his was part of his funmaking I thought it was something like a clown burlesquing the Old Testament by reading it not in the ancient intonations of the synagogue but in the plain conversational accents of everyday life
During the intermission in the course of our talk about Madame Klesmer Jake said Do you know Levinsky I dont think you really love her
I love her as much as you and more too I retorted
How much do you love her Would you walk from New York to
Philadelphia if she wanted you to do so
Why should she What good would it do her
But suppose she does want it
How can I suppose such nonsense Well she might just want to see how much you love her
A nice test that
Oh well she might just get that kind of notion Women are liable to get any kind of notion dont you know
Well if Madame Klesmer got that kind of notion I should tell her to walk to Philadelphia herself
Then you dont love her
I love her as much as you do but if she took it into her head to make a fool of me I should send her to the eighty devils
He winced And you call that love dont you he said with a sneer in the corner of his pretty mouth As for me I should walk to Boston if she wanted me to
Even if she did not promise to let you kiss her
Even if she did not
And if she did
I should walk to Chicago
And if she promised to be your mistress
Oh whats the use talking that way he protested blushing Arent you shy A regular bridetobe I declare Stop he said coloring once again
It dawned upon me that he was probably chaste and searching his face with a mocking look I said I bet you you are still innocent Leave me alone please he retorted softly
I have hit it then I importuned him with a great sense of my own superiority
Do let me alone will you
I just want you to tell me whether you are innocent or not
Its none of your business
Of course you are
And if I am Is it a disgrace Who says it is
I desisted He became more attractive than ever to me
Nevertheless I made repeated attempts to deprave him His chastity bothered me The idea of breaking it down became an irresistible temptation I would ridicule him for a sissy appeal to him in the name of his health beg him as one does for a personal favor all in vain
He spoke better English than I with more ease and in that pretty basso of his which I envied He had never read Dickens or any other English author but he was familiar with some subjects to which I was a stranger He was well grounded in arithmetic knew some geography and now with a view of qualifying for the study of medicine he was preparing with the aid of a private teacher for the Regents examination in algebra geometry English composition American and English history I thought he did not study deeply enough that he took more real interest in his collars and neckties the shine of his shoes or the hang of his trousers than he did in his algebra or history
By his cleanliness and tidiness he reminded me of Naphtali which indeed had something to do with my attachment for him My relations toward him echoed with the feelings I used to have for the reticent omniscient boy of Abners Court and with the hoarse studious young Talmudist with whom I would famish in company He had neither Naphtalis brains nor his individuality yet I looked up to him and was somewhat under his influence
I adopted many of the English phrases he was in the habit of using and tried to imitate his way of dressing As a consequence he would sometimes assume a patronizing tone with me addressing me with a goodnatured sneer which I liked in spite of myself
We made a compact to speak nothing but English and to a considerable extent we kept it
CHAPTER V
A FEW weeks of employment were succeeded by another period of enforced idleness I took up arithmetic but reading was still a great passion with me My mornings and forenoons during that slack season were mostly spent over Dickens or Thackeray
I now lived in a misshapen attic room which I rented of an Irish family in what was then a Gentile neighborhood I had chosen that street for the English I had expected to hear around me I had lived more than two months in that attic and almost the only English I heard from my neighbors were the few words my landlady would say to me when I paid her my weekly rent
Yet somehow the place seemed helpful to me as though its very atmosphere exuded a feeling for the language I was so eager to master I made all sorts of advances to the Irish family all sorts of efforts to get into social relations with them all to no purpose Finally one evening I had a real conversation with one of my landladys sons My window gave me trouble and he came up to put it in working order for me We talked of his work and of mine I told him of my plans about going to college He was interested and I thought him charmingly courteous and sociable He remained about an hour and a half in my room When he had departed I was in high spirits I seemed to feel the progress my English had made in that hour and a half
My bed was so placed that by lying prone diagonally across it my head toward the window and my feet suspended in the air I would get excellent daylight So this became my favorite posture when I read in the daytime
Thus lying on my stomach with a novel under my eyes and the dictionary by my side I would devour scores of pages In a few weeks often reading literally day and night I read through Nicholas Nickleby and Vanity Fair
Thackerays masterpiece did not strike me as being in the same class with anything by Dickens It seemed to me that anybody in command of bookish English ought to be able to turn out a work like Vanity Fair where men and things were so simple and so natural that they impressed me like people and things I had known Indeed I had a lurking feeling that I too could do it after a while at least On the other hand Nicholas Nickleby and Dombey and Son were so full of extraordinary characters unexpected wit outbursts of beautiful rhetoric and other wonderful things that their author appealed to me as something more than a human being And yet deep down in my heart I enjoyed Thackeray more than I did Dickens It was at the East Side branch of the Young Mens Hebrew Association that I obtained my books It was a sort of university settlement in which educated men and women from uptown acted as workers The advice these would give me as to my reading their kindly manner their native English and last but not least the flattering way in which they would speak of my intellectual aspirations led me to spend many an hour in the place The great thing was to hear these Americanborn people speak their native tongue and to have them hear me speak it It was the same as in the case of the chat I had with the son of my Irish landlady Every time I had occasion to spend five or ten minutes in their company I would seem to be conscious of a perceptible improvement in my English
Some days I would be so carried away by my reading that I never opened my arithmetic At other times I would drift into an arithmetical mood and sit up all night doing problems
When I happened to be in raptures over some book I would pester Jake with lengthy accounts of it dwelling on the chapters I had read last and trying to force my exaltation upon him As a rule he was bored but sometimes he would become interested in the plot or in some romantic scene
One evening as we were discussing love in general I said Love is the greatest thing in the world
Sure it is he answered But if you love and are not loved in return it is nothing but agony
Even then it is sweet I rejoined reflectively the image of
Matilda before me
How can pain be sweet
But it can
If you were really in love with Madame Klesmer you wouldnt think so
I love her as much as you do
You are always saying you do but you dont
Yes I do And suddenly lapsing into a confidential tone I questioned him By the way Jake is this the first time you have ever been in love
Why
I just want to know Is it
What difference does it make Have you ever been in love before
What difference does that make If you answer my question I shall answer yours Well then I have never been in love before
And I have
He was intensely interested and I confided my love story in him which served to strengthen our friendship still further When I concluded my narrative he said thoughtfully Of course you dont love Madame Klesmer I tell you what Levinsky you are still in love with Matilda
I made no answer
Anyhow you dont love Madame Klesmer
This time he said it without reproach Once I was in love with somebody else I was excused
The next season came around I was a fullfledged helper now and according to the customary arrangement I received thirty per cent of what Joe received for my work This brought me from twenty to twentyfive dollars a week quite an overwhelming sum according to my then standard of income and expenditures I saved about fifteen dollars a week I shall never forget the day when my capital reached the round figure of one hundred dollars I was in a flutter When I looked at the passersby in the street I would say to myself These people have no idea that I am worth a hundred dollars
Another thing I was ever conscious of was the fact that I had earned the hundred dollars by my work There was a touch of solemnity in my mood as though I had performed some feat of valor or rendered some great service to the community I was impelled to convey this feeling to Jake but when I attempted to put it into words it was somehow lost in a haze and what I said was something quite prosaic
Guess how much I have in the savingsbank I began
I havent any idea How much
Just one hundred
Really
Honest But then what does it amount to after all Of course it is pleasant to feel that you have a trade and that you know how to keep a dollar dont you know
So far from endearing me to the cloak trade as might have been expected the hundred dollars killed at one stroke all the interest I had taken in it
It lent reality to my vision of college Cloakmaking was now nothing but a temporary round of dreary toil an unavoidable steppingstone to loftier occupations
Another year and I should be a fully developed mechanic working on my own hook—that is as the immediate employee of some manufacturer or contractor
I shall soon be earning forty or fifty dollars a week I would muse At that rate I shall save up plenty of money in much less time than I expected
I shall spend as little as possible and study as hard as possible
The Regents examinations were not exacting in those days I could have prepared to qualify for admission to a school of medicine law or civil engineering in a very short time But I aimed higher I knew that many of the professional men on the East Side and indeed everywhere else in the United States were people of doubtful intellectual equipment while I was ambitious to be a cultured man in the European way There was an odd confusion of ideas in my mind On the one hand I had a notion that to become an American was the only tangible form of becoming a man of culture for did not I regard the most refined and learned European as a greenhorn on the other hand the impression was deep in me that American education was a cheap machinemade product
CHAPTER VI
COLLEGE The sound was forever buzzing in my ear The seven letters were forever floating before my eyes They were a magic group a magic whisper
Matilda was to hear of me as a college man What would she say What do you want City College for Jake would argue Why not take up medicine at once
Once I am to be an educated man I want to be the genuine article I would reply
Every bit of new knowledge I acquired aroused my enthusiasm I was in a continuous turmoil of exultation
My plan of campaign was to keep working until I had saved up six hundred dollars by which time I was to be eligible to admission to the junior class of the College of the City of New York commonly known as City College where tuition is free The six hundred dollars was to last me two years—that is till graduation when I might take up medicine engineering or law During the height of the cloak season I might find it possible to replenish my funds by an occasional few days at the sewingmachine or else it ought not to be difficult to support myself by joining the army of private instructors who taught English to our workingmen at their homes
The image of the modest college building was constantly before me More than once I went a considerable distance out of my way to pass the corner of Lexington Avenue and Twentythird Street where that edifice stood I would pause and gaze at its red ivyclad walls mysterious high windows humble spires I would stand watching the students on the campus and around the great doors and go my way with a heart full of reverence envy and hope with a heart full of quiet ecstasy
It was not merely a place in which I was to fit myself for the battle of life nor merely one in which I was going to acquire knowledge It was a symbol of spiritual promotion as well Universitybred people were the real nobility of the world A college diploma was a certificate of moral as well as intellectual aristocracy
My old religion had gradually fallen to pieces and if its place was taken by something else if there was something that appealed to the better man in me to what was purest in my thoughts and most sacred in my emotions that something was the red churchlike structure on the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and Twentythird Street
It was the synagogue of my new life Nor is this merely a figure of speech the building really appealed to me as a temple as a House of Sanctity as we call the ancient Temple of Jerusalem At least that was the term I would fondly apply to it years later in my retrospective broodings upon the first few years of my life in America
I was impatiently awaiting the advent of the slack season and when it came at last I applied myself exclusively to the study of subjects required for admission to college To accelerate matters I engaged as my instructor in mathematics and geography the son of our toughlooking presser I paid him twentyfive cents an hour
My geography lessons were rapidly dispelling the haze that had enshrouded the universe from me I beheld the globe hanging in space a vast independent world and yet a mere speck among countless myriads of other worlds Its rotations were so vivid in my mind that I seemed to hear it hum as it spun round and round its axis The phenomena producing day and night and the four seasons were as real to me as the things that took place in my restaurant The earth was being disclosed to my mental vision as a whole and in detail Order was coming out of chaos Continents seas islands mountains rivers countries were defining themselves out of a misty jumble of meaningless names Light was breaking all around me Life was becoming clearer I was broadening out I was overborne by a sense of my growing perspicacity
My keenest pleasure was to do geometrical problems preferably such as contained puzzles in construction On one occasion I sat up all night and far into the following day over a riddle of this kind It was about 2 oclock when I dressed and went to lunch which was also my breakfast The problem was still unsolved I hurried back home as soon as I had finished my meal went at the problem again and did not let go until it surrendered
Odd as it may seem I found a certain kind of similarity between the lure of these purely mental exercises and the appeal of music In both cases I was piqued and harassed by a personified mystery If a tune ran in my mind it would appear as though somebody I knew not who was saying something I knew not what What was he saying Who was he What had happened to him Was he reciting some grievance bemoaning some loss or threatening vengeance What was he nagging me about Questions such as these would keep pecking at my heart and this pain this excruciating curiosity I would call keen enjoyment
In like manner every difficult mathematical problem seemed to shelter some unknown fellow who took pleasure in teasing me and daring me to find him It was the same mischievous fellow in fact who used to laugh in my face when I had a difficult bit of Talmud to unravel
Why geometry is even deeper than Talmud I once exclaimed to
Jake
Do you think so he answered indifferently
I think an interesting geometrical problem is more delicious than the best piece of meat
Why dont you live on problems then Why spend money on dinners
Smart boy arent you
Is doing problems as sweet as being in love he demanded with sheepish earnestness
You are in love with Madame Klesmer You ought to know
He made no answer
On the day when I began these studies I had thirtysix dollars besides the hundred which I kept in the savingsbank Of this I was now spending including tuition fees less than six dollars a week Every time I changed a dollar my heart literally sank within me Finally when my cash was all gone I borrowed some money of Joe my rabbi at the art of cloakmaking
Breaking the round sum total of my savingsbank account was out of the question Joe advanced me money more than cheerfully He was glad to have me in his debt as a pledge of my continuing to work for him His motive was obvious and yet I went on borrowing of him rather than draw upon my bank account
One day it crossed my mind that it would be a handsome thing if I looked up Gitelson and paid him the ten dollars I owed him It was sweet to picture myself telling him how much his ten dollars had done and was going to do for me I was impatient to call on him and so I borrowed ten dollars of Joe and betook myself to the factory where I had visited Gitelson several times before As he was a samplemaker his work knew no seasons When I called at that factory I found that he had given up his job there that he had married and established a small customtailor shop somewhere uptown nobody seemed to know where Joe had not even heard of his marriage Meanwhile my enthusiasm for paying him his debt was gone and I was rather glad that I had not found him
It was the middle of July The great winter season was developing I felt perfectly competent to make a whole garment unaided It was doubtful however whether I should be readily accepted as an independent mechanic in the shop where I was employed now and where one was in the habit of regarding me as a mere apprentice So I was determined to seek employment elsewhere Joe was suspicious Not that I betrayed my plans in any way He took them for granted And so he visited me every day on all sorts of pretexts dined me and wined me if the phrase may be applied to a sodawater dinner and watched my every step
Finally I wearied of it all and one afternoon as we were seated in the restaurant I picked a quarrel with him
I dont want your dinners I burst out and I dont want to be watched by you as if I were a recruit in the Russian army and you were my little uncle Ill pay you what I owe you and leave me alone
As if I were uneasy about those few dollars he said ingratiatingly
I know you are not Thats just it
He took fire What am I after then You think I get rich on your work dont you
Our altercation waxed violent At one point he was about to lapse into a conciliatory tone again but his dignity prevailed
I would not keep you if you begged me he declared I hate to deal with an ingrate But I want my money at once I shall pay it to you when work begins
No sirrah I want it at once An ugly scene followed He seized me by my coat lapels and threatened to have me arrested
Finally the restaurantkeeper and Gussie the homely finisher girl whom we all respected made peace between us and things were arranged more or less amicably
I obtained employment in an inside place a factory owned by twin brothers named Manheimer
I was in high feather My sense of advancement and independence reminded me of the days when I had just been graduated from the Talmudic Academy and went on studying as an independent scholar I had not however begun to work in my new place when a general strike of the trade was declared
CHAPTER VII
THE Cloakmakers Union had been a weak insignificant organization but at the call for a general strike it suddenly burst into life There was a great rush for membership cards Everybody seemed to be enthusiastic full of fight To me however the strike was a sheer calamity I laid it all to my own hard luck It seemed as though the trouble had been devised for the express purpose of preventing me from being promoted to full pay for the express purpose of upsetting my financial calculations in connection with my college plans Everybody was saying that prices were outrageously low that the manufacturers were taking advantage of the weakness of the union and that they must be brought to terms All this was lost upon me The question of prices did not interest me because the wages I was going to receive were by far the highest I had ever been paid But the main thing was that I looked upon the whole business of making cloaks as a temporary occupation
My mind was full of my books and my college dreams All I wanted was to start the season as soon as possible to save up the expected sum and to reach the next period of freedom from physical toil when I should be able to spend day and night on my studies again But going to work as a strikebreaker was out of the question A new kind of Public Opinion had suddenly sprung up among the cloakmakers a man who did not belong to the union was a traitor worse than an apostate worse than the worst of criminals
And so feeling like a schoolboy in Antomir when he is made to furnish the very rod with which he is to be chastised I went to the headquarters of the union paid my initiation fee and became a member It was on a Friday afternoon The secretaries of the organization were seated at a long table in the basement of a meetingroom building on Rivington Street The basement and the street outside were swarming with cloakmakers A number of mass meetings had been arranged to take place in several halls with wellknown Socialists for speakers but I had not even the curiosity to attend them
When some of my shopmates reproached me for my indifference I said sullenly Ive joined the union What more do you want
One of them a Talmudist like myself spoke of capital and labor of the injustice of the existing economic order He had recently through the strike been converted to Socialism He made a fiery appeal to me He spoke with the exaltation of a new proselyte But his words fell on deaf ears I had no mind for anything but my college studies
Do you think it right that millions of people should toil and live in misery so that a number of idlers might roll in luxury he pleaded
I havent made the world nor can I mend it was my retort
The manufacturers yielded almost every point The season began with a rush
My payenvelope for the first week contained thirtytwo dollars and some cents I knew the union price of course and I had figured out the sum before I received it yet when I beheld the two figures on the envelope the blood surged to my head Thirtytwo dollars Why that meant sixtyfour rubles I was tempted to write Naphtali about it
The next week brought me an even fatter envelope I worked sixteen hours a day Reading and studying had to be suspended till October I lived on five dollars a week My savings and with them my sense of my own importance in the world grew apace As there was no time to go to the savingsbank I had to carry what I deemed a great sum on my person in a moneybelt that I had improvised for the purpose This was a constant source of anxiety as well as of joy No matter how absorbed I might have been in my work or in thought the consciousness of having that wad of paper money with me was never wholly absent from my mind It loomed as a badge of omnipotence I felt in the presence of Luck which was a living spirit a goddess I was mostly grave The frivolities of the other men in the factory seemed so fatuous so revolting A great sense of security and selfconfidence swelled my heart When I walked through the American streets I would feel at home in them far more so than I had ever felt before At the same time danger was constantly hovering about methe danger of the street crowds seizing that magic wad from me
The image of the college building loomed as a brideelect of mine But that somehow did not seem to have anything to do with my moneybelt as though I expected to go to college without encroaching upon my savings—a case of eating the cake and having it
The cloakmakers were so busy they had no time to attend meetings and being little accustomed to method and discipline they suffered their organization to melt away By the time the season came to a close the union was scarcely stronger than it had been before the strike As there was no work now and no prices to fix one did not miss its protection
The number of men employed in the trade in those years did not exceed seven thousand The industry was still in its infancy
I resumed my studies with a passion amounting to a frenzy I would lay in a supply of coarse rye bread cheese and salmon to last me two or even three days and never leave my lair during that length of time I dined at the Delancey Street restaurant every third or fourth day and did not go to the theater unless Jake was particularly insistent But then I religiously attended Felix Adlers ethicalculture lectures at Chickering Hall on Sunday mornings I valued them for their English rather than for anything else but their spirit reinforced by the effect of organ music and the general atmosphere of the place would send my soul soaring These gatherings and my prospective alma mater appealed to me as being of the same order of things of the same world of refined ways new thoughts noble interests
If I came across a street faker and he spoke with a foreign accent I would pass on if however his English struck me as that of a real American I would pause and listen to his lecture sometimes for more than an hour
People who were born to speak English were superior beings
Even among fallen women I would seek those who were real
Americans
CHAPTER VIII
I WAS reading Pendennis The prospect of returning to work was a hideous vision The high wages in store for me had lost their magnetism I often wondered whether I might not be able to secure some pupils in English or Hebrew and drop cloakmaking at once I dreamed of enlisting the interest of a certain Maecenas a GermanAmerican Jew who financed many a struggling college student of the Ghetto Thoughts of a college match would flash through my mind—that is of becoming engaged to some girl who earned good wages and was willing to support me through college This form of matrimonial arrangement which has been mentioned in an earlier chapter is not uncommon among our immigrants Alliances of this sort naturally tend to widen the intellectual chasm between the two parties to the contract and often result in some of the tragedies or comedies that fill the swiftflowing life of American Ghettos But the ambition to be the wife of a doctor lawyer or dentist is too strong in some of our workinggirls to be quenched by the dangers involved
One of the young women I had in mind was Gussie the cloakfinisher mentioned above who saved for a marriage portion too energetically to make a marriage She was a good girl and no fool either and I thought to myself that she would make me a good wife even if she was plain and had a washedout appearance and was none too young I was too passionately in love with my prospective alma mater to care whether I could love my fiancée or not
I have a fellow for you I said to Gussie under the guise of pleasantry meeting her in the street one day Something fine
Who is it—yourself she asked quickly
You have guessed it right
Have I Then tell your fellow to go to all the black devils
Why
Because
If I could go to college—
You want me to pay your bills do you
Wouldnt you like to be the wife of a doctor You would take rides in my carriage—
You mean the other way around you would ride in my carriage and I should have to start a breachofpromise case against Dr Levinsky Youll have to look for a bigger fool than I she concluded with a smile
It was an attractive smile full of good nature and common sense A smile of this kind often makes a homely face pretty Gussies did not The light it shed only served to publish her ugliness But I did not care The infatuation I had brought with me from Antomir had not yet completely faded out anyhow And so I harbored vague thoughts that some day when I saw fit to press my suit Gussie might yield
I was getting impatient The idea of having to go back to work became more hateful to me every day I was in despair Finally I decided to consider my career as a cloakmaker closed to cut my expenses to the veriest minimum to live on my savings look for some source of income that would not interfere with my studies take the college examination as soon as I was ready for it and let the future take care of itself
In the heart of the Jewish neighborhood I found an attic for half of what I was paying the Irish family Moreover it was a neighborhood where everything was cheaper than in any other part of New York the only one in which it was possible for a man to have a room to himself and live on four dollars a week So I moved to that attic a step for which as I now think of it I cannot but be thankful to fate for it brought me in touch with a quaint simple man who is my warm friend to this day perhaps the dearest friend I have had in America
The house was a rickety twostory frame structure the smallest and oldestlooking on the block Its ground floor was used as a tailoring shop by the landlord himself a whiteheaded giant of a man whom I cannot recall otherwise than as smiling wistfully and sighing His name was Esrah Nodelman His wife who was a dwarf beside him ruled him with an iron hand
Mrs Nodelman gave me breakfasts and I soon felt like one of the family
She was a veritable chatterbox her great topic of conversation being her son Meyer upon whom she doted and his Americanborn wife whose name she scarcely ever uttered without a malediction She told me how she Meyers mother her sister and a niece had turned out their pockets and pawned their jewelry to help Meyer start in business as a clothingmanufacturer
Hes now worth a hundred thousand dollars—may no evil eye hit him she said Hes a good fellow a lump of gold If God had given him a better wife may the plague carry off the one he has he would be all right She has a meatball for a face the face of a murderess She always was a murderess but since Meyer became a manufacturer there is no talking to her at all The airs she is giving herself And all because she was born in America the frog that she is
I soon made Meyers acquaintance He was a dark man of forty with Oriental sadness in his eyes To lend his face capitalistic dignity he had recently grown a pair of sidewhiskers but one day a week or two after I met him he saw a circus poster of Jo Jo the human dog and then he hastened to discard them
I dont want to look like a mandog he explained gaily to his mother who was unpleasantly surprised by the change
Mandog nothing she protested addressing herself to me He was as handsome as gold in those whiskers He looked like a regular monarch in them And then to him I suppose it was that treasure of a wife you have who told you to have them taken off Its a lucky thing she does not order you to have your foolish head taken off
You better shut up mamma he said sternly And she did
He called to see his parents quite frequently sometimes with some of his children but never with his wife at least not while I lived there
Crassly illiterate save for his ability to read some Hebrew without knowing the meaning of the words he enjoyed a considerable degree of native intellectual alertness and in his crude untutored way was a thinker
One evening he took to quizzing me on my plans partly in Yiddish
and partly in broken English which he uttered with a strong
Cockney accent a relic of the several years he had spent in
London
And what will you do after you finish he pronounced it fiendish college he inquired with a touch of derision
I shall take up some higher things I rejoined reluctantly
And what do you call higher things he pursued in his quizzical browbeating way Are you going to be a philosopher
Yes I shall be a doctor of philosophy I answered frostily
Whats that You want to be both a doctor and a philosopher But you know the saying Many trades—few blessings
I am not going to be a doctor and a philosopher but a doctor of philosophy I said with a sneer
And how much will you make
Oh let him alone Meyer his mother intervened He is an educated fellow and he doesnt care for money at all
Doesnt care for money eh the younger Nodelman jeered
Do you think money is really everything I shot back One might be able to find a thing or two which could not be bought with it
Not even at Ridleys note he jested but he was manifestly beginning to resent my attitude and to take our passage at arms rather seriously
Not even at Ridleys You cant get brains there can you
Well I never learned to write but I have a learned fellow in my office
Hes chuck full of learning and that sort of thing Yet who is working for whom—I for him or he for me So much for education—for the stuff thats in a mans head And now lets take charity—the stuff thats in a mans heart
I dont care what you say but of what use is a good heart unless he has some jinglers note to go with it You cant shove your hand into your heart and pull out a few dollars for a poor friend can you You can help him out of your pocket though—that is provided it is not empty
My bewigged little landlady was feasting her eyes on her son
Meyer went on with his argument What is a man without capital Nothing Nobody cares for him He is like a beast A beast cant talk and he cant
Money talks as the Americans say
His words and manner put me in a socialist mood He was hateful to me I listened in morose silence He felt piqued and he wilted The ginger went out of his voice My taciturnity continued until gradually he edged over to my side of the controversy taking up the cudgels for education and spiritual excellence with the same force with which he had a short while ago tried to set forth their futility
Of course its nice to be educated he said A man without writing is just like a deaf mute Whats the difference The man who cant write has speech in his mouth but he is dumb with his fingers while the deaf mute he cant talk with his mouth but he can do so with his fingers Both should be pitied I do like education Of course I do Dont I send my boy to college I am an ignorant boor myself because my father was poor but my children shall have all the wisdom they can pile in We Jews have too many enemies in the world Everybody is ready to shed our blood So where would we be if many of our people were not among the wisest of the wise Why they would just crush us like so many flies When I see an educated Jew I say to myself Thats it
When he heard of my ambition to give lessons he said I tell you what Ill be your first pupil I mean it he added seriously
My heart gave a leap Very well Ill try my best I replied
Mind you I dont want to be a philosopher I just want you to fix me up in reading writing and figuring a little bit Thats all You dont think its too late do you
Too late I chuckled hysterically Why
I can sign or indorse a check and thank God for a good few dollars too—but when it comes to fixing in the stuffing there is trouble I know how to write the figures but not the words I can write almost any number
If I was worth all the money I can put down in figures I should be richer than Vanderbilt
To insure secrecy I was to give him his lessons in my attic room
I dont want my kids to know their pa is learning like a little boy dont you know he explained American kids have not much respect for their fathers anyhow
As a preliminary to his initial lesson Nodelman offered to show me what he could do When I brought pen and ink and some paper he cleared his throat screwed up a solemn mien and took hold of the pen In trying to shake off some of the ink he sent splashes all over the table At last he proceeded to write his name He handled the pen as he would a pitchfork It was quite a laborious proceeding and his first attempt was a fizzle for he reached the end of the paper before he finished the in in Nodelman He tried again and this time he was successful but it was three minutes before the task was completed It left him panting and wiping his inkstained fingers on his hair
A man who has to work as hard as that over his signature has no business to be seen among decent people he said with sincere disgust I ought to be a horsedriver not a manufacturer
So speaking he submitted his signature for my inspection without however letting go of the sheet
Tell me how rotten it is he said bashfully
When I protested that it was not rotten at all he grunted something to the effect that once I was to instruct him he would expect to pay me not for empty compliments but for the truth At this he lighted a match and applied it to the sheet of paper containing his signature
A signature is no joke he explained as he watched it burn Put a few words and some figures on top of it and it is a note as good as cash When a fellow is a beggar he has nothing to fear but when he is in business he had better be careful
When he asked me how much I was going to charge him and I said twentyfive cents an hour he smiled
Ill pay you more than that You just try your best for me will you
At the end of the first week he handed me two dollars for three lessons
I was the happiest man in New York that day If I had had to choose between earning ten dollars a week in tuition fees and a hundred dollars as wages or profits I should without the slightest hesitation have decided in favor of the ten dollars and now behold that coveted source of income seemed nearer at hand than I had dared forecast Once a start had been made I might expect to procure other pupils even if they could not afford to pay so lavish a price as two dollars for three lessons
But alas My happiness was not to last long
I was giving Nodelman his fifth lesson We were spelling out some syllables in a First Reader Presently he grew absentminded and then suddenly pushing the schoolbook from him said Too late Too late Those black little dots wont get through my forehead
It has grown too hard for them I suppose
I attempted to reassure him but in vain
When the next cloak season came I slunk back to work I felt degraded But I earned high wages and my good spirits soon returned I firmly made up my mind come what might to take the collegeentrance examination the very next fall I expected to have four hundred dollars by then but I was determined to enter college even if I had much less I shant starve I said to myself And if I dont get enough to eat hunger is nothing new to me
The very firmness of my purpose was a source of encouragement and joy
note Ridleys A wellknown department store in those days
note jingler Coin money
BOOK VIII
THE DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
AN unimportant accident a mere trifle suddenly gave a new turn to the trend of events changing the character of my whole life
It was the middle of April The spring season was over but Manheimer Brothers the firm by which I was employed had received heavy duplicate orders for silk coats and considering the time of the year we were unusually busy One day at the lunch hour as I was opening a small bottle of milk the bottle slipped out of my hand and its contents were spilled over the floor and some silk coats
Jeff Manheimer one of the twins happened to be near me at the moment and a disagreeable scene followed But first a word or two about Jeff Manheimer
He was the inside man of the firm having charge of the mechanical end of the business as well as of the offices He was of German parentage but of American birth Baldheaded as a melon and with a tendency to corpulence he had the back of a man of fortyfive and the front of a man of twentyfive
He was a vivacious fellow one of those who are indefatigable in abortive attempts at being witty one of his favorite puns being that we Russians were not rushin at all that we were a slow lot Altogether he treated us as an inferior race often lecturing us upon our lack of manners
I detested him
When he saw me drop the bottle of milk he flew into a rage
Eh he shouted did you think this was a kitchen Cant you take better care of things As he saw me crouching and wiping the floor and the coats with my handkerchief he added You might as well take those coats home The price will be charged against you That ll make you remember that this is not a barn but a factory Where were you brought up Among Indians
Some of my shopmates tittered obsequiously which encouraged
Manheimer to further sarcasm
Why he doesnt even know how to handle a bottle of milk Did you ever see such a lobster
At this there was an explosion of merriment
A lobster one of the tailors repeated relishingly
I could have murdered him as well as Manheimer
My head was swimming I was about to say something insulting to my employer to get up and leave the place demonstratively But I said to myself that I should soon be through with this kind of life for good and I held myself in leash
Two or three minutes later I sat at a machine eating my milkless lunch I was trying to forget the incident trying to think of something else but in vain Manheimers derision especially the word lobster was ringing in my ear
He passed out of the shop but ten or fifteen minutes later he came back and as I saw him walk down the aisle I became breathless with hate The word lobster was buzzing in my brain amid vague helpless visions of revenge
Presently my eye fell upon Ansel Chaikin the designer and a strange thought flashed upon me
He was a Russian like myself He was an ignorant tailor as illiterate as Meyer Nodelman but a born artist in his line It was largely to his skill that the firm which was doing exceedingly well owed the beginning of its success It was the common talk among the hands of the factory that his Americanized copies of French models had found special favor with the buyer of a certain large department store and that this alone gave the house a considerable volume of business Jeff Manheimer who superintended the work was a commonplace man with more method and system than taste or initiative
Chaikin was the heart and the actual master of the establishment Yet all this really wonderful designer received was fortyfive dollars a week He knew his value and he saw that the two brothers were rapidly getting rich but he was a quiet man unaggressive and unassuming and very likely he had not the courage to ask for a raise
As I now looked at him with my heart full of rancor for
Manheimer I exclaimed to myself What a fool
He appeared to me in a new light as the willing victim of downright robbery It seemed obvious that the Manheimers could not do without him that he was in a position to dictate terms to them even to make them accept him as a third partner And once the matter had presented itself to me in that light it somehow began to vex me It got on my nerves as though it were an affair of my own I complimented myself upon my keen sense of justice but in reality this was my name for my disgust with Chaikins passivity and for the annoyance and the burning illwill which the rapid ascent of the firm aroused in me I begrudged them—or rather Jeff—the money they were making through his efficiency
The idiot I soliloquized He ought to start on his own hook with some smart business man for a partner Let Jeff try to do without that lobster of a Russian
The idea took a peculiar hold upon my imagination I could not look at Ansel Chaikin or think of him without picturing him leaving the Manheimers in a lurch and becoming a fatal competitor of theirs I beheld their downfall I gloated over it
But Chaikin lacked gumption and enterprise What he needed was an able partner some man of brains and force And so unbeknown to Chaikin the notion was shaping itself in my mind of becoming his manufacturing partner
The thought of Meyer Nodelmans humble beginnings and of the three hundredodd dollars I had in my savingsbank whispered encouragement into my ear I had heard of people who went into manufacturing with even less than that sum
Moreover it was reasonable to expect that Chaikin had laid up some money of his own Our precarious life among unfriendly nations has made a thrifty people of us and for a man like Chaikin fortyfive dollars a week every week in the year meant superabundance
The Manheimers were relegated to the background It was no longer a mere matter of punishing Jeff It was a much greater thing
I visioned myself a rich man of course but that was merely a detail What really hypnotized me was the venture of the thing It was a great daring game of life
I tried to reconcile this new dream of mine with my college projects I was again performing the trick of eating the cake and having it I would picture myself building up a great cloak business and somehow contriving at the same time to go to college
The new scheme was scarcely ever absent from my mind I would ponder it over my work and during my meals It would visit me in my sleep in a thousand grotesque forms Chaikin became the center of the universe I was continually eying him listening for his voice scrutinizing his look his gestures his clothes
He was an insignificantlooking man of thirtytwo with almost a cadaverous face and a very prominent Adams apple He was not a prepossessing man by any means but his bluish eyes had a charming look of boylike dreaminess and his smile was even more childlike than his look He was dressed with scrupulous neatness and rather pretentiously as behooved his occupation but all this would scarcely have prevented one from telling him for a tailor from some poor town in Russia
Now and then my project struck me as absurd For Chaikin was in the foremost ranks of a trade in which I was one of the ruck Should he conceive the notion of going into business on his own account he would have no difficulty in forming a partnership with considerable capital Why then should he take heed of a piteous schemer of my caliber But a few minutes later I would see the matter in another light
CHAPTER II
ONE Sunday morning in the latter part of May I betook myself to a certain block of new tenementhouses in the neighborhood of East 110th Street and Central Park then the new quarter of the more prosperous Russian Jews
Chaikin had recently moved into one of these houses and it was to call on him that I had made my way from downtown I found him in the diningroom playing on an accordion while his wife who had answered my knock at the door was busy in the kitchen
He scarcely knew me To pave the way to the object of my visit I began by inquiring about designing lessons As teaching was not in his line we soon passed to other topics related to the cloak trade I found him a poor talker and a very uninteresting companion He answered mostly in monosyllables or with mute gestures often accompanied by his childlike grin or by a perplexed stare of his bluish eyes
Gradually I gave the conversation a more personal turn When somewhat flushed I finally hinted at my plan he shrank with an air of confusion
At this juncture his wife made her appearance followed by her eightyearold boy Chaikin looked relieved
I hear you are talking business she said summarily taking possession of the situation What is it all about
Completely taken aback by her domineering manner I sought escape in embarrassed banter
You have scared me so I said I cant speak Ill tell you everything
Thats just what brings me here Only let me first catch my breath and take a look at your stalwart little man of a boy
Her grave face relaxed into an involuntary smile
What struck me most in her was the startling resemblance she bore to her husband The two looked like brother and sister rather than like husband and wife
You must be relatives I observed for something pleasant to say and put my foot in it
Not at all she replied with a frown
To win back her good graces I proceeded to examine Maxie her boy in spelling The stratagem had the desired effect
We got down to business again When she heard my plan she paused to survey me I felt a sinking at the heart I interpreted her searching look as saying The nerve this snoozer has But I was mistaken Her pinched sallow face grew tense with excitement and she said with coy eagerness How can we tell if your plan amounts to anything If you gave us an idea of how much you could put up—
It would not require a million I hazarded
A million Who talks of millions Still it would take a good deal of capital to start a factory that should be something like
Therell be no trouble about money I parried fighting shy of the more imposing term capital which made my paltry three hundred still paltrier
There is money and money she answered with furtive glances at me A nickel is also money
I am not speaking of nickels of course
I should say not Its a matter of many thousands of dollars
I was dumfounded but instantly rallied Of course I assented
At the same time it depends on many things
Still you ought to give us some idea how much you could put in
Is it—is it say fifteen thousand
That she should not deem it unnatural for a young man of my station to be able to raise a sum of this size was partly due to her utter lack of experience and partly to an impression prevalent among people of her class that nothing is impossible in the land of Columbus
I pretended to grow thoughtful with an effect of making computations I even produced a piece of paper and a pencil and indulged in some sham figuring At last I said Well I cant as yet tell you exactly how much As I have said it depends on certain things but itll be all right Besides money is really not the most important part in a scheme of this kind A man of brains and a hustler will make a lot of money while a fool will lose a lot There are others who want to go into business with me Only I know Mr Chaikin is an honest man and thats what I value more than anything else I hate to take up with people of whom I cant be sure dont you know—
You forget the main thing she could not forbear to break in
Mr Chaikin is the best designer in New York
Everybody knows that I conceded deeming it best to flatter her vanity
Thats just what makes it ridiculous that he should work for others make other people rich instead of trying to do something for himself I have some plans by which the two of us—Mr Chaikin taking charge of the manufacturing and I of the business outside—would do wonders We would simply do wonders
There is another fine designer who is anxious to form a partnership with me but I said to myself I must first see if I could not get Mr Chaikin interested
Mrs Chaikin tried to guess who that other designer was but I pleaded mysteriously certain circumstances that placed the seal of discretion on my lips
I wont tell anybody she assured me in a flutter of curiosity
I know you wont but I cant Honest
But I tell you I wont say a word to anybody Strike me dumb if I do
I cant Mrs Chaikin I besought her
Dont bother her husband put in goodnaturedly A woman will be a woman
I went on to describe the wonders that the firm of Chaikin Levinsky would do Mrs Chaikins eyes glittered I held her spellbound Her husband who had hitherto been a passive listener as if the matter under discussion was one in which he was not concerned began to show signs of interest It was the longest and most eloquent speech I had ever had occasion to deliver
It seemed to carry conviction
Children often act as a barometer of their mothers moods So when I had finished and little Maxie slipped up close to me and tactily invited me to fondle him I knew that I had made a favorable impression on his mother
I was detained for dinner I played with Maxie gave him problems in arithmetic went into ecstasies over his cuteness I had a feeling that the way to Mrs Chaikins heart was through Maxie but I took good care not to overplay my part
We are all actors more or less The question is only what our aim is and whether we are capable of a convincing personation At the time I conceived my financial scheme I knew enough of human motive to be aware of this
CHAPTER III
IT was a sultry sweltering July afternoon in May one of those escapades of the New York climate when the population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discomforts without having had time to get seasoned to them I went into the Park I had come away from the Chaikins under the impression that if I could raise two or three thousand dollars I might be able by means of perseverance and diplomacy to achieve my purpose But I might as well have set myself to raise two or three millions
I thought of Meyer Nodelman of Mr Even and his wealthy soninlaw of Maximum Max But the idea of approaching them with my venture could not be taken seriously The images of Gitelson and of Gussie crossed my mind almost simultaneously I rejected them both Gitelson and I might perhaps start manufacturing on a small scale leaving Chaikin out But Chaikin was the very soul of my project Without him there was no life to it Besides where was he Gitelson Was it worth while hunting for him As for Gussie the notion of marrying her for her money seemed a joke even if she were betterlooking and younger That her dower was anywhere near three thousand dollars was exceedingly doubtful However the image of her washedout face would not leave my mind Her hoarding might amount to over one thousand and in my despair the sum was tempting She is a good girl the best of all I know I defended myself before the Good Spirit in me
Also she is a most sensible girl Just the kind of wife a business man needs In addition I urged the timehonored theory that a homely wife is less likely to flirt with other men and to neglect her duties than a goodlooking one
I took the car downtown and made my way to Gussies lodgings that very afternoon I did so before I had made up my mind that I was prepared to marry her Ill call on her anyhow I decided Then we shall see There can be no harm in speaking to her
I was impelled by the adventure of it more than by anything else
In spite of the unbearable heat I almost felt sure that I should find her at home Going out of a Sunday required presentable clothes which she did not possess She was saving for her dower with her usual intensity
I was not mistaken I found her on the stoop in a crowd of women and children
I must speak to you Gussie I said as she descended to the sidewalk to meet me Lets go somewhere I have something very important I want to say to you
Is it again something about your studying to be a smart man at my expense she asked rather goodnaturedly
No no Not at all Its something altogether different Gussie
The nervous emphasis with which I said it piqued her interest Without going upstairs for her hat she took me to the Grand Street dock not many blocks away The best spots were already engaged but we found one that suited our purpose better than the water edge would have done It was a secluded nook where I could give the rein to my eloquence
I told her of my talk with the Chaikins omitting names but inventing details and bits of local color calculated to appeal to my listeners imagination and business sense She followed my story with an air of stiff aloofness but this only added fuel to the fervor with which I depicted the opportunity before me
So you have thrown that college of yours out of your mind havent you she said in a dry noncommittal way
I felt the color mounting to my face Well not entirely I answered
Not entirely
I mean—Well anyhow what do they do at college They read books Cant I read them at home One can find time for everything Returning to my new project I said Its a great chance Gussie It would be an awful thing if I had to let it slip out of my hand
That what I wanted was her dower with herself as an unavoidable appendage went without saying It was implied as a matter of course
How much would your great designer want you to invest she asked with an air of one guided by mere curiosity and with a touch of irony to boot
A couple of thousand dollars might do I suppose
A couple of thousand she said lukewarmly Tell your great designer he is riding too high a horse
Still in order to start a decent business— I said throwing a covert glance at her
Cloakfactories have been started with a good deal less she snapped back
On Division Street perhaps
And what do you fellows expect to do—start on Broadway
Well it takes some money to get started even on Division Street
Not two thousand It has been done for a good deal less
I know but still—I am sure a fellow must have some money
It depends on what you call some It was the same kind of fencing contest as that which I had had with Mrs
Chaikin I was sounding Gussies purse as the designers wife had mine
Finally she took me in hand for a severe crossexamination She was obviously interested I contradicted myself in some minor points but upon the whole I stood the test well
If it is all as you say she finally declared there seems to be something in it
Gussie I said tremulously there is a great chance for us—
Wait she interrupted me suddenly bethinking herself of a new point If he is as great a designer as you say he is and he works for a big firm how is it then that he cant find a partner with big money
He could any number of them but he has confidence in me He says he would much rather start with me on two thousand than with somebody else on twenty
He thinks I should make an excellent business man and that between the two of us we should make a great success of it Money is nothing—so he says—money can be made but with a fool of an outside man even more than twenty thousand dollars might go up in smoke Thats so Gussie assented musingly There was a pause
Well Gussie I mustered courage to demand
You dont want me to give you an answer right off do you
Things like that are not decided in a hurry
We went on to discuss the project and some indifferent topics It was rapidly growing dark and cool Looming through the thickening dusk somewhat diagonally across the dock from us was the figure of a young fellow with his head reclining on the shoulder of a young woman A little further off and nearer to the water I could discern a white shirtwaist in the embrace of a dark coat A song made itself heard It was After the Ball is Over one of the sentimental songs of that day Tararaboomdeaye followed a tune usually full of joyous snap and go but now performed in a subdued brooding tempo tinged with sadness It rang in a girlish soprano the rest of the crowd listening silently By this time the gloom was so dense that the majority of us could not see the singer which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of her young voice Presently other voices joined in all in the same meditative somewhat doleful rhythm Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier with the starry enchantment of the passing ferryboats with the loveenraptured solemnity of the spring night
I had not the heart even to think of business much less to talk it We fell silent both of us listening to the singing Poor Gussie She was not a pretty girl and she did not interest me in the least Yet at this moment I was drawn to her The brooding plaintive tones which resounded around us had a bewitching effect on me It filled me with yearning it filled me with love Gussie was a woman to me now My hand sought hers It was an honest proffer of endearment for my soul was praying for communion with hers
She withdrew her hand This should not be done in a hurry either she explained pensively
Gussie Dear Gussie I said sincerely though not unaware of the temporary nature of my feeling
Dont she implored me
There was something in her plea which seemed to say You know you dont care for me Its my money that has brought you here Alas It is not my lot to be loved for my own sake
Her unspoken words broke my heart
Gussie I swear to you youre dear to me Cant you believe me
The singing night was too much for her She yielded to my arms Urged on by the chill air we clung together in a delirium of lovemaking There were passionate embraces and kisses I felt that her thin driedup lips were not to my taste but I went on kissing them with unfeigned fervor
The singing echoed dolefully We remained in that secluded nook until the growing chill woke us from our trance I took her home When we reached a tiny square jammed with expresswagons we paused to kiss once more and when we found ourselves in front of her stoop which was now deserted the vigorous handclasp with which I took my leave was symbolic of another kiss
I went away without discovering the size of her hoard I was to call on her the next evening
As I trudged along through the swarming streets on my way home the predominant feeling in my heart was one of physical distaste Poor thing I felt that marrying her was out of the question
Nevertheless the next evening I went to see her as arranged I found her out Her landlady handed me a letter It was in Yiddish
Mr Levinsky it read I do not write this myself for I cannot write and I do not want you to think that I want to make believe that I can A man is writing it for me for ten cents I am telling him the words and he is writing just as I tell him It was all a mistake You know what I mean I dont care to marry you You are too smart for me and too young too I am afraid of you I am a simple girl and you are educated I must look for my equal If I married you both of us would be sorry for it
Excuse me and I wish you well Please dont come to see me any more
GUSSIE
The message left me with a feeling of shame sadness and commiseration
During that evening and the forenoon of the following day I was badly out of spirits
There was nothing to do at the shop yet I went there just to see Chaikin so as to keep up his interest in my scheme He was glad to see me He had a message from his wife who wanted me to call in the evening Gussies letter was blotted out of my memory I was once more absorbed in my project
I spent the evening at the designers house Mrs Chaikin made new attempts at worming out the size of my fortune and in addition something concerning its origin
Is it an inheritance she queried
An inheritance Why would you like me to get one I said playfully as though talking to a child
She could not help laughing Well then is it from a rich brother or a sister or is it your own money she pursued falling in with the facetious tone that I was affecting
Any kind of money you wish Mrs Chaikin But seriously there will be no trouble about cash The main point is that I want to go into manufacturing and that I should prefer to have Mr Chaikin for my partner There is plenty of money in cloaks and I am bent upon making heaps great heaps of it—for Mr Chaikin and myself Really isnt it maddening to think that he should be making other people rich while all he gets is a miserable few dollars a week Its simply outrageous
So speaking I worked Mrs Chaikin up to a high sense of the absurdity of the thing I was rapidly gaining ground with her
And so pending that mysterious something to which I was often alluding as the source of my prospective fortune I became a frequent visitor at her house Sometimes she would invite me to supper once or twice we spent Sunday together As for little Maxie he invariably hailed me with joy I was actually fond of him and I was glad of it
CHAPTER IV
THE time I speak of the late 80s and the early 90s is connected with an important and interesting chapter in the history of the American cloak business Hitherto in the control of German Jews it was now beginning to pass into the hands of their Russian coreligionists the change being effected under peculiar conditions that were destined to lead to a stupendous development of the industry If the average American woman is today dressed infinitely better than she was a quarter of a century ago and if she is now easily the bestdressed average woman in the world the fact is due in a large measure to the change I refer to
The transition was inevitable While the manufacturers were German Jews their contractors tailors and machine operators were Yiddishspeaking immigrants from Russia or Austrian Galicia Although the former were of a superior commercial civilization it was after all a case of Greek meeting Greek and the circumstances were such that just because they represented a superior commercial civilization they were doomed to be beaten
The German manufacturers were the pioneers of the industry in America It was a new industry in fact scarcely twenty years old Formerly and as late as the 70s womens cloaks and jackets were little known in the United States Shawls were worn by the masses What few cloaks were seen on women of means and fashion were imported from Germany But the demand grew
So gradually some GermanAmerican merchants and an American shawl firm bethought themselves of manufacturing these garments at home The industry progressed the newborn great Russian immigration—a child of the massacres of 1881 and 1882—bringing the needed army of tailors for it There was big money in the cloak business and it would have been unnatural if some of these tailors had not sooner or later begun to think of going into business on their own hook At first it was a hard struggle The American business world was slow to appreciate the commercial possibilities which these newcomers represented but it learned them in course of time
It was at the beginning of this transition period that my scheme was born in my mind Schemes of that kind were in the air
Meyer Nodelman the son of my landlady had not the remotest inkling of my plans yet I had consulted him about them more than once Of course it was all done in a purely abstract way Like the majority of our people he was a talkative man so I would try to keep him talking shop By a system of seemingly casual questioning I would pump him on sundry details of the clothing business on the differences and similarities between it and the cloak trade and more especially on how one started on a very small capital
He bragged and blustered but oftentimes he would be carried away by the sentimental side of his past struggles Then he would unburden himself of a great deal of unvarnished history On such occasions I would obtain from him a veritable treasure of information and suggestions
Some of the generalizations of this homespun and quaint thinker too were interesting Talking of credit for example he once said When a fellow is a beginner its a good thing if he has a credit face
I thought it was some sort of commercial term he was using and when I asked him what it meant he said Why some people are just born with the kind of face that makes the woolen merchant or the bank president trust them They are not more honest than some other fellows Indeed some of them are plain pickpockets but they have a credit face so you have got to trust them You just cant help it
And if they dont pay
But they do They get credit from somebody else and pay the jobber or the banker Then they get more credit from these people and pay the other fellows People of this kind can do a big business without a cent of capital In Russia a fellow who pays his bills is called an honest man but America is miles ahead of Russia Here you can be the best pay in the world and yet be a crook You wouldnt say that every man who breathes Gods air is honest would you Well paying your bills in America is like breathing
If you dont you are dead
Chaikin too often let fall in his hesitating monosyllabic way some observation which I considered of value Of the purely commercial side of the industry he knew next to nothing but then he could tell me a thing or two concerning the psychology of popular taste the forces operating behind the scenes of fashion the methods employed by small firms in stealing styles from larger ones and other tricks of the trade
At last I resolved to act It was the height of the season for winter orders and I decided to take time by the forelock
One day when I called at the designers and Mrs Chaikin asked me for news alluding to the thousands I was supposed to be expecting I said Well I have rented a shop
Rented a shop
Thats what I did Its no use missing the season If a fellow wants to do something there is nothing for it but to go to work and do it else he is doomed to be a slave all his life
When I added that the shop was on Division Street her face fell
But what difference does it make where it is I argued with studied vehemence Its only a place to make samples in—for a start
Mr Chaikin is not going into a wee bit of a business like that No sir
In the course of our many discussions it had often happened that after overruling me with great finality she would end by yielding to my point of view I hoped this would be the case in the present instance
Dont be so hasty Mrs Chaikin I said with a smile Wait till you know a little more about the arrangement
And dropping into the Talmudic singsong which usually comes back to me when my words assume an argumentative character I proceeded In the first place I dont want Mr Chaikin to leave the Manheimers—not yet All I want him to do is to attend to our shop evenings Dont be uneasy the Manheimers wont get wind of it Leave that to me Well all I want is some samples to go around the stores with The rest will come easy
Well make things hum See if we dont When we have orders and get really started well move out of Division Street Of course we will But would it not be foolish to open up on a large scale and have Mr Chaikin give up his job before we have accomplished anything I think it would Indeed its my money thats going to be invested Do you blame me for being careful at the beginning at least I neither want Mr Chaikin to risk his job nor myself to risk big money
But you havent even told me how much you can put in she blurted out excitedly
As much as will be necessary But whats the use dumping a big lot at once Many a big business has failed while firms who start in a modest way have worked themselves up Why should Mr Chaikin begin by risking his position Why Why
The long and short of it was that Mrs Chaikin became enthusiastic for my Division Street shop and the next day her husband took two hours off to accompany me to a nondescript woolenstore on Hester Street where we bought fifty dollars worth of material
The rent for the shop was thirty dollars a month One months rent for two sewingmachines was two dollars A large secondhand table for designing and cutting and some old chairs cost me twelve dollars more leaving me a balance of over two hundred dollars
Before I went to rent the premises for our prospective shop I had withdrawn my money from the savingsbank and deposited it in a small bank where I opened a check account
Once I am to play the part of a manufacturer it would not do to pay bills in cash I reflected I must pay in checks and do so like one to the manner born
At this the magic word credit loomed in letters of gold before me I was aware of the fascination of checkbooks so being armed with one I expected to be able to buy things in some cases at least without having to pay for them at once Besides my bank might be induced to grant me a loan Then too one might issue a check before one had the amount and thereby gain a days time There seemed to be a world of possibilities in the long narrow book in my breast pocket I was ever conscious of its presence I have a vivid recollection of the elation with which I drew and issued my first check in payment of thirty dollars the first months rent for our prospective cloakfactory Humanity seemed to have become divided into two distinct classes—those who paid their obligations in cash and those who paid them in checks I still have that first checkbook of mine
CHAPTER V
CHAIKIN made up half a dozen sample garments I took them to the department store to which the Manheimer Brothers catered but the buyer of the cloak department would not so much as let me untie my bundle He was a middleaged man women buyers were rare in those days an IrishAmerican of commanding figure After sweeping me with a glance of cold curiosity he waved me aside My Russian name and my appearance were evidently against me I tried the other department stores —with the same result The larger business world of the city had not yet learned to take the Russian Jew seriously as a factor in advanced commerce The buyer of the cloak department in the last store I visited was an American Jew a faircomplexioned little fellow all aglitter with neatness At first he took an amused interest in me When I had unpacked my goods and was about to show him one of Chaikins jackets he checked me
Suppose we gave you an order for five hundred he said with a smile five hundred jackets to be delivered at a certain date
I would deliver it I answered boldly Why not
I dont know why Maybe you would maybe you wouldnt How can we be sure you would Before I had time to answer he asked me how long I had been in the country
When I told him he complimented me on my English I was sure it meant business I was thrilled
Have you got a shop he further questioned How many hands do you employ
Seventyfive
He sized me up Where is your place
On Division Street
Well well What is your rating I did not know what he meant So for an answer I made a new attempt to submit the contents of my bundle for his inspection At this he made a gesture of disgust and withdrew A cold sweat broke out on my forehead
I had heard of the existence of small department stores in various sections of the city so I went in search of them
I found myself in the vicinity of the City College As I passed that corner I studiously looked away I felt like a convert Jew passing a synagogue
It was a warm day My pack seemed to grow heavier with every block I walked and so did my heart I was perspiring freely my collar wilted All of which did anything but make me look as a man who paid his bills in checks At last walking up Third Avenue I came across a place where there was quite a large display of jackets in the windows Upon my opening the door and announcing my mission two jaunty young fellows invited me in with elaborate courtesy almost with anxiety My heart leaped for joy I fell to opening my bundle The two young men inspected every jacket went into ecstasies over each of them and then asked me all sorts of irrelevant questions until it dawned upon me that I was being made game of It appeared that the father of the two young men the proprietor of the store manufactured his own goods for wholesale as well as for retail trade
I received much better treatment in a store on Avenue B but my goods proved too high for that neighborhood As if to atone for this the proprietor of this store a kindly Galician Jew gave me a list of the minor department stores I was looking for and some valuable suggestions in addition
My dinner that day consisted of two ringshaped rolls which I bought in a Jewish grocerystore and which I ate on a bench in Tompkins Square
The day passed most discouragingly It was about 7 oclock when disheartened to the point of despair I dragged my wearied limbs in the direction of my factory When I got there I found my partner waiting for me—not alone but in the company of his wife
Well she shrieked jumping to meet me
Splendid I replied with enthusiasm It looks even better than I expected I could have got good orders at once but a fellow must not be too hasty You have got to look around first—find out who is who you know
Mrs Chaikin looked crestfallen So you did not get any orders at all
Whats your hurry her husband said pleadingly Levinsky is right You cant sell goods unless you know who you deal with
The following two days were as barren of results as the first Mrs Chaikin had lost all confidence in the venture She was becoming rather hard to handle
I dont want Ansel to bother any more she said peevishly You know what the Americans say Time is money Pay Ansel for his work and let us be friends at a distance
Very well I said and producing my checkbook I asked How much is it
The sight of my checkbook acted like a charm The situation suddenly assumed brighter colors in Mrs Cbaikins eyes
Look at him He thought I really meant it she grinned sheepishly
Every night I would go to bed sick at heart and with my mind half made up to drop it all only to wake in the morning more resolute and hopeful than ever Hopeful and defiant It was as though somebody—the whole world—were jeering at my brazenfaced piteous efforts and I was bound to make good just for spite
I learned of the existence of purchasing offices where the buyers of several department stores from so many cities made their headquarters in New York Also I discovered that in order to keep track of the arrivals of these buyers I must follow a daily paper called Hotel Reporter the ordinary newspapers did not furnish information of this character in those days A man who manufactured neckties in the same ramshackle building in which I hoped to manufacture cloaks volunteered to let me look at his Reporter every day This man was naturally inclined to be neighborly but I had found that an occasional quotation or two from the Talmud was particularly helpful in obtaining a small favor from him
I knocked about among the purchasing offices with bulldog tenacity but during the first few days my efforts in this direction were as futile as in the case of the New York stores Meanwhile time was pressing So far as outoftown buyers were concerned the winter season was drawing to a close All I could see were some belated stragglers One of these was a man from the Middle West a stout fleshy American with quick nervous movements which contradicted his wellfed languidlooking face
He shot a few glances at my samples just to get rid of me but he liked the designs and I could see that he found my prices tempting
How soon will you be able to deliver five hundred he snarled
In three weeks
Very well—go ahead And speaking in his jerky impatient way he went on to specify how many cloaks he wanted of each kind
I left him with my heart divided between unutterable triumph and black despair Five hundred cloaks How would I raise the money for so much raw material It almost looked like another practical joke
By this time I was more than sure that the Chaikins had a considerable little pile but to turn to them for funds was impossible It would have let my cat out of the bag I sought credit at Claflins and at half a dozen smaller places but all in vain I could not help thinking of Nodelmans credit face Ah if that kind of a face had fallen to my lot But it had not it seemed It looked as if there were no hope for me
Finally I took the necktie man into my confidence the result being that he unburdened himself of his own financial straits to me
One afternoon I was moping around some of the sidestreets off lower Broadway in quest of some new place where I might try to beg for credit when I noticed the small signboard of a commission merchant Upon entering the place I found a finelooking elderly American dictating something to a stenographer When the man had heard my plea be looked me over from head to foot
I felt like a prisoner facing the jury which is about to announce its verdict
At last he said Well you look pretty reliable I guess Ill trust you the goods for thirty days
It was all I could do to restrain myself from invoking benedictions on his head and kissing his hands as my mother would have done under similar circumstances
So I do have a credit face I exclaimed to myself gleefully
When I found myself in the street again I looked at my reflection in store windows scanning my credit face
The Chaikins took it for granted that I had paid for the goods on the spot
Things brightened up at our factory I ordered an additional sewingmachine of the instalment agent and hired two operators—poor fellows who were willing to work fourteen or fifteen hours a day for twelve dollars a week The union had again been revived but it was weak and my employees did not belong to it As for myself I toiled at my machine literally day and night snatching two or three hours sleep at dawn with some bundles of cut goods or halffinished cloaks for a bed Chaikin spent every night from 7 to 2 with me cutting the goods and doing the better part of the other work Mrs Chaikin too lent a hand Leaving Maxie in the care of her mother she would spend several hours a day in the factory finishing the cloaks
The five hundred cloaks were shipped on time I was bursting with consciousness of the fact that I was a manufacturer—that a big firm out West a firm of Gentiles mind you was recognizing my claim to the title
I was American enough to be alive to the special glamour of the words out West
Goods in our line of business usually sold for cash which meant ten days
Ten days more then and I should receive a big check from that firm That would enable me to start new operations Accordingly I went out to look for more orders
Whether my first success had put new confidence in me or whether my past experiences had somewhat rounded off my rough edges and enabled me to speak to business people in a more effective manner than I could have done before the proprietor of a small department store on upper Third Avenue let me show him my samples My prices made an impression on him My cloaks were five dollars apiece lower than he was in the habit of paying He looked askance at me as though my figures seemed too good to be true until I found it the best policy to tell him the unembellished truth
The big manufacturers of whom you buy have big office expenses I explained They make a lot of fuss and youve got to pay for it My principle is not to make fuss at the retailers expense Our office costs us very very little We are plain people But that isnt all Your big manufacturer pays for union labor so he takes it out of you Now we dont bother about these things We get the best work done for the lowest wages The big men in the business wouldnt even know where hands of this kind could be got We do
I took my departure with an order for three hundred cloaks expecting to begin work on them as soon as I received that check from out West Things seemed to be coming my way
As I sat in an Elevated train going downtown I figured the profits on the two orders and pictured other orders coming in I beheld our little factory crowded with machines I heard their bewitching whirr whirr Chaikin would have to leave the Manheimers of course
In the afternoon of the sixth day when I called at one of the purchasing offices I have mentioned I received the information that the firm whose check I was awaiting so impatiently had failed
CHAPTER VI
THE failure of the Western firm seemed to have nipped my commercial career in the bud The large order I had received from its representative was apparently to be the death as well as the birth of my glory In my despair I tried to make a virtue of necessity I was telling myself that it served me right that I had had no business to abandon my intellectual pursuits I was inclined to behold something like the hand of Providence in the bankruptcy of that firm At the same time I was casting about in my mind for some way of raising new money with which to pay the kindly commission merchant get a new bill of goods from him and fill my new order
When I explained the matter to Mrs Chaikin she was on the brink of a fainting spell
Youre a liar and a thief she shrieked There never was a Western firm in the world Its all a lie You sold the goods for cash
Her husband knew something about firms and credit so I had no difficulty in substantiating my assertion to him
Its only a matter of days when I shall get the big check that is coming to me I assured them I went on to spin a long yarn to which she listened with jeers and outbursts of uncomplimentary Yiddish
One day I mustered courage and called on Mrs Chaikin I did so on an afternoon when her husband was sure to be at work because I had a lurking feeling that being alone with me she would be easier to deal with
When she saw me she gasped What you she said You have the nerve to come up here
Come come Mrs Chaikin I said earnestly Please be seated and let us talk it all over in a businesslike manner With your sense and especially with your sense for business you will understand me
Please dont flatter me she demurred sternly
But I knew that nothing appealed to her vanity so much as being thought a clever business woman and I protested Flatter you In the first place it is a wellknown fact that women have more sense than men In the second place it is the talk of every cloakshop that Mr Chaikin owes his high position to you as much as to his own ability Everybody everybody says so
I talked of unforeseen difficulties of a wellknown landlord whose big check I was expecting every day I composed a story about that landlords fatherinlaw agreed with Mrs Chaikin that it had been a mistake on my part to trust the buyer of that Western firm the goods without first consulting her and the upshot was that she made me stay to supper and that pending the arrival of Chaikin I took Maxie to the Park
The fatherinlaw of my story was Mr Even of course I had portrayed him vividly as coming to my rescue in my present predicament so vividly indeed that my own fib haunted me the next day The result was that in the evening I made myself as presentable as I could and repaired to the synagogue where he spent much of his time reading Talmud
I had not visited the place since that memorable day my first day in America I recognized it at once I was thrilled The fourodd years seemed twentyfour
Mr Even was not there but he soon came in He had aged considerably He was beginning to look somewhat decrepit His dignity was tinged with the sadness of old age
Good evening Mr Even Do you know me I began
He scanned me closely but failed to recognize me
I am David Levinsky the green one you befriended four and a half years ago Dont you remember me Mr Even It was in this very place where I had the good fortune to make your acquaintance Im the son of the woman who was killed by Gentiles in Antomir I added mournfully
Oh yes indeed he said with a wistful smile somewhat abashed He took snuff looked me over once more and as if his memory had been brightened by the snuff he burst out Lord of the World You are that young man Why I confess I scarcely recognize you Of course I remember it all Why of course I remember you Well well How have you been getting along in America
Cant complain Not at all You remember that evening After you provided me with a complete outfit like a father fixing up his son for his weddingday and you gave me five dollars into the bargain you told me not to call on you again until I was well established in life Do you remember that
Of course I do he answered with a beaming glance at two old
Talmudists who sat at their books close by
Well here I am I am running a cloakfactory
He began to question me about my affairs with sad curiosity I said that business was good too good in fact so that it required somewhat more capital than I possessed
I soon realized however that he did not care for me now My
Americanized self did not make the favorable impression that I
had made four and a half years before when he gave me my first
American haircut
I inquired after his daughter and his soninlaw but my hint that the latter might perhaps be willing to indorse a note for me evoked an impatient grunt
My soninlaw Why you dont even know him he retorted with a suspicious look at me
I turned it off with a joke and asked about the henpecked man Mr Even had not seen him for four years The other Talmudists present had never even known him A man with extremely long black sidelocks who spoke with a Galician accent became interested After Mr Even went to his wonted seat at the east wall where he took up a book this man said to me with a sigh Oh it is not the old home Over there people go to the same synagogue all their lives while here one is constantly on the move They call it a city
Pshaw It is a marketplace a bazar an inn not a city People are together for a day and then behold they have flown apart Where to Nobody knows I dont know what has become of you and you dont know what has become of me
Thats why there is no real friendship here I chimed in heartily
Thats why one feels so friendless so lonely
My shop of course shut down and I roamed about the streets a good deal I was restless I continually felt nonplussed ashamed to look myself in the face as it were One forenoon I found myself walking in the direction of Twentythird Street and Lexington Avenue The college building was now a source of consolation Indeed what was money beside the halo of higher education I paused in front of the building There were several students on the campus all Jewish boys I accosted one of them I spoke to him enviously and left the place thrilling with a determination to drop all thought of business to take the entrance examination and be a college student at last I was almost grateful to that Western firm for going into bankruptcy
And yet even while I was tingling with this feeling a voice exclaimed in my heart Ah if that Western firm had not failed
The debt I owed the American commission merchant agonized me without letup
I couldnt help thinking of my credit face To disappoint him of all men seemed to be the most brutal thing I had ever done I imagined myself obtaining just enough money to pay him but as I did so I could not resist the temptation of extending the sum so as to go on manufacturing cloaks I was incessantly cudgeling my brains for some angel who would come to my financial rescue
The spell of my college aspirations was broken once for all My Temple was destroyed Nothing was left of it but vague yearnings and something like a feeling of compunction which will assert itself sometimes to this day
The Talmud tells us how the destruction of Jerusalem and the great Temple was caused by a hen and a rooster The destruction of my American Temple was caused by a bottle of milk
The physical edifice still stands though the college has long since moved to a much larger and more imposing building or group of buildings I find the humble old structure on Lexington Avenue and Twentythird Street the more dignified and the more fascinating of the two To me it is a sacred spot It is the sepulcher of my dearest ambitions a monument to my noblest enthusiasm in America
BOOK IX
DORA
CHAPTER I
HOW about it Mrs Chaikin said to me ominously
About what What do you mean Mrs Chaikin
Oh you know what I mean It is no use playing the fool and trying to make a fool of me
The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon The three sewingmachines the cuttingtable and the pressingtable looked desolate
She spoke in an undertone almost in a whisper lest the secret of her husbands relations with me should leak out and reach his employers She had been guarding that secret all along but now that our undertaking had apparently collapsed she was particularly uneasy about it
I dont believe that store in the West has failed at all In fact I know it has not Somebody told me all about it
This was her method of crossexamining me I read her a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy but as she could not read it herself she only sneered I reasoned with her I pleaded I swore but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully
I dont believe you I dont believe you she finally said shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion Do I believe a dog when it barks Neither do I believe you I curse the day when I first met you It was the black year that brought you to us She fell to wringing her hands and moaning Woe is me Woe is me
Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself I thought of Meyer Nodelman A selfmade man and one who had begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself he seemed to be just the man I needed A thought glimmered through my mind And who knows but he may come to my rescue I was going to call at his warehouse but upon second thought I realized that the seat of his cold selfinterest would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere of his mothers home for the purpose
The next time I saw him at his mothers I took him up to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him I told him the whole story almost without embellishments omitting nothing but Chaikins name
Is it all true he interrupted me at one point
I swore that it was and went on At the end I offered to prove it all to his satisfaction
You dont need to prove it to me he replied What do I care Then suddenly casting off his reserve he blurted out Look here young fellow If you think I am going to lend you money you are only wasting time for I am not And why not I asked boldly with studied dignity
Why not You better tell me why yes he chuckled You have a lot of spunk That you certainly have and you ought to make a good business man but I wont loan you money for all that
Werent you once hard up yourself Mr Nodelman You have made a success of it and now it would only be right that you should help another fellow get up in the world You wont lose a cent by it either I take an oath on it
You cant have an oath cashed in a bank can you
Why did that commission merchant take a chance If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew and one whom he had never seen before you should not hesitate either
Well there is no use talking about it was his final decision
The following day I received a letter from him inviting me to his office
His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway Arrived there I had to pass several men all in their shirtsleeves who were attacking mountains of cloth with long narrow knives One of these directed me to a remote window in front of which I presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tapemeasure around his neck
Nodelman kept me waiting without offering me a scat a good halfhour He was in his shirtsleeves like the others yet he looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before It was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made another man of him
Finally he left the man with the tapemeasure and silently led me into his little private office a narrow strip of partitionedoff space at the other end of the loft
When we were seated and the partition door was shut he said with grave mien Well and fell silent again
I gazed at him patiently
Well he repeated I have thought it over And again he paused At last he burst out I do want to help you young fellow You didnt expect it did you I do want to help you And do you know why Because otherwise you wont pay that Gentile and I dont want a goodhearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot Thats number one Number two is this If you think Meyer Nodelman is a hog you dont know Meyer Nodelman Number three I rather liked the way you talked yesterday I said to myself said I An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right He ought to be given a lift for most educated people are damn fools Well Ill tell you what I am willing to do for you Ill get you the goods for that order of yours not for thirty days but for sixty What do you think of that Now is Nodelman a hog or is he not But thats as far as I am willing to go I can only get you the goods for that Third Avenue order See But that wont be enough to help you out of your scrape not enough for you to pay that good Gentile on time He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an additional four hundred dollars and he wound up by an ultimatum he would not furnish me the goods until I had produced that amount
Look here young fellow he added since you were smart enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out it ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an interest in you Do you remember what I told you about those credit faces I think you have got one
I have an honest heart too I said with a smile
Your heart I cant get into so I dont know See Maybe there is a rogue hiding there and maybe there isnt But your face and your talk certainly are all right They ought to be able to get you some more cash And if they dont then they dont deserve that I should help you out either See He chuckled in appreciation of his own syllogism
Its a nice piece of Talmud reasoning I complimented him with an enthusiastic laugh But seriously Mr Nodelman I shall pay you every cent You run absolutely no risk
I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation unconditionally I tried to convince him that I should contrive to do without the additional cash But he was obdurate and at last I took my leave
Wait a moment Whats your hurry Are you afraid youll be a couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire There is something I want to ask you
What is it Mr Nodelman
How about your studying to be a doctorphilosopher he asked archly
Oh well one can attend to business and find time for books too
I answered
I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony of despair at once On the whole however my spirits were greatly buoyed up
Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence I decided to try a similar hearttoheart talk on Max Margolis better known to the reader as Maximum Max He had some money
I had seen very little of him in the past two years having stumbled upon him in the street but two or three times But upon each of these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs with genuine interest He was fond of me I had no doubt about it And he was so goodnatured Our last chance meeting antedated my new venture by at least six months and he was not likely to have any knowledge of it I felt that he would be sincerely glad to hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch it Anyhow he seemed to be my last resort and I was determined to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how
As he had always seen me shabbily clad I decided to overwhelm him with a new suit of clothes I needed one at any rate
After some seeking and inquiring I found him in a Bowery furniturestore one of the several places from which he supplied his instalment customers
It was about 10 oclock in the morning
There is something I want to consult you about Max I said Something awfully important to me Youre the only man I know who could advise me and in whom I can confide I added with an implication of great intimacy and affection Its a business scheme Max I have a chance to make lots of money
The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the labyrinthine store a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture
What is that A business scheme he asked in a preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over You are dressed up I see Quite prosperous arent you
As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scrutinized my suit once again I quailed I now felt that to have come in such a screamingly new suit was a fatal mistake I cursed myself for an idiot of a smart Aleck But he spoke to me with his usual cordiality and my spirits rose again However he seemed to be busy and so I asked him to set an hour when he could see me at leisure We made an appointment for 3 oclock in the afternoon I was to meet him at the same furniturestore but upon second thought and with another glance at my new clothes he said jovially Why you are rigged out like a regular monarch It is quite an honor to invite you to the house Come up will you And as I wont have to go out to meet you you can make it 2 oclock or half past
CHAPTER II
MAX occupied the top floor of an old private house on Henry Street a small railroad apartment of two large bright rooms—a livingroom and a kitchen—with two small dark bedrooms between them The ceiling was low and the air somewhat tainted with the odor of mold and dampness I found Max in the general livingroom which was also a diningroom a fat boy of three on his lap and a slender pale girl of eight on a chair close by His wife a slender young woman with a fine white complexion and serious black eyes was clearing away the lunch things
Mrs Margolis Mr Levinsky he introduced us Plainly speaking this is my wifey and this is a friend of mine
As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called after her
Dvorah Dora make some tea will you
She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment Its a good thing you are telling me that she said Otherwise I shouldnt know what I have got to do should I
When she had disappeared he explained to me that he variously addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of her name
We are plain Yiddish folk he generalized goodhumoredly
A few minutes later as Mrs Margolis placed a glass of Russian tea before me he drew her to him and pinched her white cheek
What do you think of my wifey Levinsky
She smiled—a grave deprecating smile—and took to pottering about the house
And what do you think of these little customers he went on Lucy examine mamma in spelling Quick Dora be a good girl sit down and let Levinsky see how educated you are Educated he said in English with the accent on the a What do you want his wife protested softly Mr Levinsky wants to see you on business and here you are bothering him with all sorts of nonsense
Never mind his business It wont run away Sit down I say It wont take long She yielded Casting bashful sideglances at nobody in particular she seated herself opposite Lucy
Well she said with a little laugh
I thought her eyes looked too serious almost angry Insane people have eyes of this kind I said to myself I also made a mental note of her clear fresh delicate complexion Otherwise she did not interest me in the least and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her out of the room
How do you spell great the little girl demanded
Great—great her mother answered with a smile
Book
Book—book Oh give me some harder words
Laughter
Laughter—laughter
Is that correct Margolis turned to me all beaming I wish I could do as much And nobody has taught her either She has learned it all by herself
Little Lucy is the only teacher she ever had But she will soon be ahead of her Wont she Lucy
Im afraid I am ahead of her already Mrs Margolis said gaily yet flushed with excitement
You are not Lucy protested with a goodnatured pout
Shut up bad girl you her mother retorted again with a bashful sideglance
Is that the way you talk to your mamma Max intervened Ill tell your teacher
I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get down to the object of my visit
Finally he said brusquely Well we have had enough of that
Leave us alone Dora Go to the parlor and take the kids along
She obeyed
When he heard of my venture he was interested He often interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admiration for my subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole With all his boisterousness however there was an air of caution about him as if he scented danger When I finally said that all depended upon my raising four hundred dollars his face clouded
I see I see he murmured with sudden estrangement I see I see Dont lose courage I said to myself Nodelman was exactly like that at first Go right ahead
I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring colors and gave Max to understand that if somebody advanced me the four hundred dollars he would be sure to get it back in thirty days plus any interest he might name
It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on account of such a thing I concluded
There was a moment of very awkward silence It was broken by
Max
Its really too bad What are you going to do about it he said
Where can you get such a somebody
I dont know Thats why I came to consult you I thought you might suggest some way It would be a pity if I had to give it all up on account of four hundred dollars
Indeed it would It would be terrible Still four hundred dollars is not four hundred cents I wish I were a rich man I should lend it to you at once You know I should
I should pay you every cent of it Max
You say it as if I had money You know I have not What I did know was that he had and he knew that I did
He took to analyzing the situation and offering me advice Why not go to that kindly Gentile the commission merchant make a clean breast of it and obtain an extension of time Why not apply to some moneylender Why not make a vigorous appeal to Nodelman He seemed to be an obliging fellow so if I pressed him a little harder he might give me the cash as well as the goods
I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap and he apparently read my thoughts
Presently he said with genuine ardor I tell you what Levinsky Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking From what you have told me she ought not to be a hard nut to crack if you only go about it in the right way
This suggestion made a certain appeal to me but I would not betray it I continued resentfully silent
You just try her Levinsky Shell let you have the four hundred dollars or half of it at least
And if she does her son will refuse to get me the goods I remarked with a sneer
Nonsense If you know how to handle her she will realize that she must keep her mouth shut until after she gets the money back
Oh whats the use I said impatiently I must get the cash at once or all is lost
Again he spoke of moneylenders He went into details about one of them and offered to ascertain his address for me He evidently felt awkward about his part in the matter and eager to atone for it in some way
Why should a usurer trust me I said rising to go
Wait Whats your hurry If that moneylender hears your story he may trust you He is a peculiar fellow dont you know When he takes a fancy to a man he is willing to take a chance on him Of course the interest would be rather high He paused abruptly wrinkled his forehead with an effect of pondering some new scheme and said Wait I think I have a better plan
Ill see if I cant get you the money without a moneylender With this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his coat and hat Ill be back in less than half an hour he said Dvorah dear give Levinsky some more tea will you I am going out for a few minutes Dont let him be downhearted Then shaking a finger of warning at me he said playfully Only take care that you dont fall in love with her And he was gone
Its all playacting I thought He just wants me to believe he is trying to do something for me But of course I was not altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken and that he was making a sincere effort to raise a loan for me
Mrs Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her husband departed
Presently she came back carrying a glass of tea on a saucer She placed it before me with an embarrassed sideglance brought some cookies and seated herself at the far end of the table I uttered some complimentary trivialities about the children
When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is neither his wife nor a close relative both feel awkward It is as though they heard a whisper There is nobody to watch the two of you
Still confused as I was I was fully aware of her tempting complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely interesting Upon the whole however I do not think she made any appeal to me save by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and that we were alone I was tense with the consciousness of that fact and everything about her disturbed me She wore a navyblue summer wrapper and I noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her neck I remarked to myself that she looked younger than her husband that she must be about twentyeight or thirty perhaps My glances apparently caused her painful embarrassment Finally she got up again making a pretense of bustling about the room It seemed to me that when she was on her feet she looked younger than when she was seated
I asked the boy his name and he answered in lugubrious but distinct accents Daniel Margolis
He speaks like a grown person I said
She used to speak like that too when she was of his age my hostess replied with a glance in the direction of her daughter
Did you I said to Lucy
The little girl grinned coyly
Why dont you answer the gentlemans question her mother rebuked her in English Its Mr Levinsky a friend of papas
Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me Dont you like me at all Not even a little bit I pleaded
She soon unbent and took to plying me with questions Where did I live Was I a customer peddler like her papa How long had I been in America A question which a child of the East Side hears as often as it does queries about the weather Can you spell No I answered Not at all
Not at all
Shame But my papa cant spell neither
Shut up you bad girl you her mother broke in with a laugh Vere you lean such nasty things By your mamma The gentleman will think by your mamma
She delivered her a little lecture in English taking pains to produce the th and the American r though her ws were vs
She urged me not to let the tea get cold As I took hold of the tall thin cylindrical glass I noted that it was scrupulously clean and that its contents had a good clear color I threw a glance around the room and I saw that it was well kept and tidy
Mrs Margolis took a seat again Lucy with part of a cooky in her mouth stepped over to her and seated herself on her lap throwing her arm around her She struck me as the very image of her mother Presently however I discovered that she resembled her father quite as closely It seemed as though the one likeness lay on the surface of her face while the other loomed up from underneath as the reflection of a face does from under the surface of water Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my side I put her on my lap She would not let me pat her but she did not mind sitting on my knees
Are you a good speller I asked
I cn spell all the words we get at school she answered sagely
How do you spell colonel
We never got it at school But you cant spell it either
How do you know I cant Maybe I can Well let us take an easier word How do you spell because
She spelled it correctly her mother joining in playfully I gave them other words addressing myself to both and they made a race of it each trying to head off or outshout the other At first Mrs Margolis did so with feigned gaiety but her face soon set into a grave look and glowed with excitement
At last I asked them to spell coefficient
We never got it at school Lucy demurred
I dont know what it means said Mrs Margolis with a shrug of her shoulders
It means something in mathematics in high figuring I explained in Yiddish
Mrs Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more
I asked Lucy to try me in spelling She did and I acquitted myself so well that she exclaimed Oh you liar you Why did you say you didnt know how to spell
Once more her mother took her to task for her manners
Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman Shame Vere you lean up to be such a pig Not by your mamma
When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that I could spell awful good To which he replied in Yiddish that he knew I was a smart fellow that I could read and write everything and that I had studied to go to college and to be a doctor a lawyer or anything
His wife looked me over with bashful sideglances Really she said
Max told me a lame story about his errand and promised to let me know the final result It was clearer than ever to me that he was making a fool of me
CHAPTER III
WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it but it is almost sure to reassert itself later on I scarcely ever think of it during the first two three or four days but then all of a sudden it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession humming itself and nagging me like a living thing
This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs Margolis During the first two days after I left her house I never gave her a thought but on the third her shy sideglances suddenly loomed up in my mind and would not leave it Just her black serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white strikingly interesting complexion Her face in general was a mere blur in my memory
I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs I was so lowspirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate or of the streets through which I passed yet her manner of darting embarrassed glances out of the corner of her eye and her complexion were never absent from my mind I felt like seeing her once more However the prospect of calling at her house was now anything but alluring I could almost see the annoyed air with which her husband would receive me
I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the loan but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security than the bare story or my venture I made other efforts to raise the money I approached several people including the proprietor of the little musicstore All to no purpose
One afternoon eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises when I came to my factory I found under the door a closed envelope bearing the name of that Western firm It contained a typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill Also a circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty of capital and naming as one of its new directors a man who from the tone of the circular seemed to be of high standing in the financial world
My head was in a whirl The desolatelooking sewingmachines of my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up I looked at the check again and again The figure on it literally staggered me It seemed to be part of a fairy tale
I rushed over to Nodelmans office but found him gone for the day The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with my partner But Chaikin never came home before 7 So I first dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Maxs face and incidentally to see his wife
I found him playing with his fat boy
Hello Max I have good news I shouted excitedly Which actually meant Dont be uneasy Max I am not going to ask you for a loan again
When he had examined the check he said sheepishly Now you are all right Why something told me all along that you would get it His wife came in apparently from the kitchen She returned my Good evening with free and easy amiability without any shyness or sideglances and disappeared again I felt annoyed I was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good look at her
Say Levinsky you must have thought I would not trust you for the four hundred dollars Max said May I have four hundred days of distress if I have a cent What few dollars I do have is buried in the business So help me God Let a few of my customers stop paying and I would have to go begging Its the real truth I am telling you Honest
I know I know I said awkwardly Well it was as if the check had dropped from heaven Thank God Now I can begin to do things
I went over the main facts of my venture this time with a touch of bluster
And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine interest than he had done on the previous occasion We discussed my plans and my prospects
At one point when I referred to the Western check he asked to see it again just for curiositys sake and as I watched him look it over I could almost see the change that it was producing in his attitude toward me I do not know to what extent he had previously believed my story if at all One thing was clear the magic check now made it all real to him As he handed me back the strip of paper he gave me a look that seemed to say So you are a manufacturer you whom I have always known as a miserable ragamuffin
Mrs Margolis reappeared Her husband told her of my great check and she returned some trivialities As we thus chatted I made a mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh
He made me stay to supper It was a cheery repast As though to make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his door Max overwhelmed me with attention
We were eating cold sorrel soup prepared in the old Ghetto way with cream bits of boiled egg cucumber and scallions
How do you like it he asked
Delicious And the genuine article too
The genuine article he mocked me Whats the use praising it when you eat it like a bird Whats the matter with you Are you bashful Fire away old man Then to his wife Why do you keep quiet Dvorah Why dont you tell him to eat like a man and not like a bird
Maybe he doesnt care for my cooking she jested demurely
Why why I replied The sorrel soup is fit for a king
You mean for a president Max corrected me We are in
America not in Europe
How do you know the President of the United States would care for a plate of cold sorrel soup
And how do you know a king would If you care for it I am satisfied the hostess said to me
I certainly do I havent eaten anything like it since I left home I replied
Feed him well Dvorah Now is your chance He will soon be a millionaire dont you know Then he wont bother about calling on poor people like us
But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king and a king has many millions I rejoined I shall always be glad to come provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection You remember their names dont you Mrs Margolis said beamingly You certainly have a good memory
Who else should have one her husband chimed in I have told you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer Lucy did you hear what uncle said If you let him in he will come to see us even when he is worth a million What do you say Will you let him in
Lucy grinned childishly
Max did most of the talking He entertained me with stories of some curious weddings which he said had recently been celebrated in his dancehalls and as usual it was not easy to draw a line of demarkation between fact and fiction Of one bridegroom who had agreed to the marriage under threats of violence from the girls father he said You should have seen the fellow He looked like a man going to the electric chair They were afraid he might bolt so the brides father and brother big strapping fellows both stuck to him like two detectives You had better not make monkey business they said to him If you dont want a wedding youll have a funeral Thats exactly what they said to him I was standing close to them and I heard it with my own ears May I not live till tomorrow if I did not Mrs Margolis looked down shamefacedly She certainly was not unaware of her husbands failing and she obviously took anything but pride in it As I glanced at her face at this moment it struck me as a singularly truthful face Those eyes of hers do not express anger but integrity I said to myself And the more I looked at her watched her gestures and listened to her voice the stronger grew my impression that she was a seriousminded ingenuous woman incapable of playing a part Her mannerisms were mostly her version of manners and those that were not were frankly affected as it were
The meal over and the dishes washed Mrs Margolis caused Lucy to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud Lucy or I correcting her pronunciation where it was faulty She was frankly parading her intellectual achievements before me and I could see that she took them quite seriously
She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made She accepted our corrections Lucys and mine with great earnestness often with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her memory
When I bade them good night Max said heartily in English Call again Levinsky And he added in a mixture of English and Yiddish Dont be a stranger even if you are a manufacturer
Call again his wife echoed affably
Call again shouted Dannie in his funereal voice
I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two in a house where I was sincerely welcome
Its a good thing to have real friends I soliloquized in a transport of good spirits on my way to the Elevated station Now I shant feel all alone in the world There is at least one house where I can call and feel at home
I beheld Mrs Margoliss face and her slender figure and I was conscious of a remote desire to see her again
I was in high feather While the Elevated train was carrying me uptown I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a spacious factory full of machines and men I saw myself building up a great business An ugly thought flashed through my mind Why be saddled with a partner Why not get rid of Chaikin I belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful start and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat But I instantly saw the other side of the situation It was Chaikins models that had made the Manheimers what they were and if I clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my factory And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having entertained that thought even for a single moment My heart warmed to Chaikin and his family I shall be faithful to them I vowed inwardly
They have been so good to me We must be absolutely devoted to each other
Their house too will be like a home to me Oh it is so sweet to have friends real friends
It was close upon 10 oclock when I reached the Chaikins flat in Harlem I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped out the check and dangling it before Mrs Chaikin I said radiantly Good evening Guess what it is The check you expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you
Is it she conjectured
No Its something far better I replied Its a check from the Western company and for the full amount too And although I was fairly on the road to atheism I exclaimed with a thrill of genuine pity Oh God has been good to us Mrs Chaikin
I let her see the figures which she could scarcely make out Then her husband took a look at the check He did know something about figures so he read the sum out aloud
Instead of hailing it with joy as I had expected her to do she said to me glumly And how do we know that you did not receive more
But that was the bill her husband put in
I am not asking you am I she disciplined him
But it is the amount on the bill I said with a smile
And how do we know that it is she demanded Its you who write the bills and its you who get the checks What do we know
Mrs Chaikin Mrs Chaikin I remonstrated Why should you be so suspicious Cant you see that I am the most devoted friend you people ever had God has blessed us we are making a success of our business so we must be devoted to one another while here you imagine all kinds of nonsense
A woman will be a woman Chaikin muttered with his sheepish smile
The unfeigned ardor of my plea produced an impression on Mrs
Chaikin
Still she insisted upon receiving her husbands share of the profits at once in spot cash I argued again
Why of course you are going to get your share of the profits I said genially Of course you are Only we must first pay for the goods of those five hundred coats and for some other things Mustnt we Then too there is that other order to fill We need more goods and cash for wages and rent and other expenses
But you said you were going to get it all yourself and now you want us to pay for it You think you are smart dont you
Her husband opened his mouth but she waved it shut before she had any idea what he wanted to say
Anybody could fool you she said When a fool goes shopping there is rejoicing among the shopkeepers
With our joint efforts we finally managed to placate her however and the next evening our shop was the scene of feverish activity
CHAPTER IV
I FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on soliciting other business The season was waning but I obtained a number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales Our capital was growing apace but we often lacked working cash
After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained other favors from him He took a sponsorial interest in my business and often offered me the benefit of his commercial experience in the form of maxims
Dont bite off more than you can chew Levinsky he would tell me
Finding it easy to get people to trust you is not enough You must also find it easy to pay them
Some of his other rules were Be pleasant with the man you deal with even if he knows you dont mean it
He likes it anyway
Take it from me Levinsky honesty is the best policy There is only one line of business in which dishonesty pays the burglar business provided the burglar does not get caught If I thought lying could help my business I should lie day and night But I have learned that it hurts far more than it helps Be sure that the other fellow believes what you say If you have his confidence you have him by the throat
It was not always easy to comply with Meyers tenets however The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable One day when we had some bills to meet two days before I could expect to obtain the cash I made out and signed checks but inclosed each of them in the wrong envelope—this supposed act of inadvertence gaining me the needed two days of grace On another occasion I sent out a number of checks without my signature which presumably I had forgotten to affix There were instances when I was so hard pressed for funds that the fate of our factory hinged on seventyfive or a hundred dollars In one of these crises I bought two gold watches on the instalment plan for the express and sole purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars I bought the watches of two men who did not know each other and returned them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem them forfeiting the several weekly payments which I had made on the pretended purchases
There were instances too when I had to borrow of my employees a few dollars with which to buy cotton Needless to say that all this happened in the early stages of my experience as a manufacturer I have long since been above and beyond such methods Indeed business honor and business dignity are often a luxury in which only those in the front ranks of success can indulge But then there are features of the game in which the small man is apt to be more honorable and less cruel than the financial magnate
I was continually consulting Max on my affairs Not that I needed his advice or expected to act upon it These confidential talks seemed to promote our intimacy and to enhance the security of the welcome I found in his house A great immigrant city like New York or Chicago is full of men and women who are alone amid a welter of human life For these nothing has a greater glamour than a family in whose house they might be made to feel at home I was one of these desolate souls I still missed my mother The anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing agony and spiritual bliss to me I scarcely ever visited the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir these days but on that great day I was sure to be there Forgetful of my atheism I would place a huge candle for her soul attend all the three services without omitting a line and recite the prayer for the dead with sobs in my heart I had craved some family who would show me warm friendship The Margolises were such a family Meyer Nodelman never invited me to his house They were a godsend to me
Max was essentially a hospitable man and really fond of me As for his wife who received me with the same hearty welcome as he her liking for me was primarily based as she once put it herself in the presence of her husband upon my intellectual qualifications
Its good to have educated people come to the house she remarked Its good for the children and for everybody else I knew she would like you Max said to me She would give her head for education Only better look out you two See that you dont fall in love with each other Ha ha
Sometimes there were other visitors in the house—some of Maxs friends his and her fellowtownspeople her relatives or some neighbor Doras great friend was a stout woman with flaxen hair and fishy eyes named Sadie or Mrs Shornik whose little girl Beckie was a classmate of Lucys the acquaintance and devoted intimacy of the two mothers having originated in the intimacy of the two schoolgirls Sadie lived several blocks from the Margolises but she absolutely never let a day pass without calling on her if it were only for just time enough to kiss her She was infatuated with Dora and Beckie was infatuated with Lucy
They just couldnt live without one another Max said after introducing me to Sadie and explaining the situation
Suppose Lucy and Beckie had not happened to be in the same school I jested addressing myself to the two women What would you have done then
This shows that we have a good God in heaven Sadie returned radiantly
He put the children in the same school so that we might meet
A providential match I observed
May it last for many many years Sadie returned devoutly
Say women Max shouted you have been more than five minutes without kissing Whats the matter with you
At this Sadie with mock defiance walked up to Mrs Margolis threw her arms around her and gave her a luscious smack on the lips
Bravo And now you kids Max commanded
With a merry chuckle the two little girls flew into each others arms and kissed Lucy had dark hair like Doras and Beckie flaxen hair like Sadies so when their heads were close together they were an amusing reduced copy of their mothers as these had looked embracing and kissing a minute before
Max often dropped in to see me at my factory and when I was not busy we would talk of my cloaks of his instalment business or of women Women were his great topic of conversation as usual But then these talks of his no longer found a ready listener in me Now that I knew his wife they jarred on me A decided change had come over me in this respect I remember it vividly It was as if his lewd discourses desecrated her name and thereby offended me It may be interesting to note however that he never took up this kind of topics when we were in his house not even when his wife was out
Sometimes I would have supper at his house More often however—usually on Monday when Max seldom went to the dancehalls—I would come after supper and spend the rest of the evening there Sometimes the Shorniks would drop in—Sadie her husband and Beckie Ben Shornik and Max would play a game of pinochle while I who never cared for cards would chat with the women or entertain them by entertaining the children Ben—as I came into the habit of calling him—was a spare little man with an extremely high forehead He was an insurancecollector and only one degree less illiterate than Max but because he had the forehead of a learned man and because it was his business to go from house to house with a long thick book under his arm he affected longish hair flowing black neckties and a certain pomposity of manner One of his ways of being tremendously American was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say I dont care a continental or One two three and there you are The latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring to himself when he was absorbed in pinochle
CHAPTER V
ONE evening when the Shorniks and I were at Maxs house and Max and Ben were having their game of pinochle the conversation between the women and myself turned upon Doras efforts to obtain education through her little daughter Encouraged by Sadie and myself Dora let herself loose and told us much of Lucys history or rather of her own history as Lucys mother In her crude lumbering way and with flushed cheeks she talked with profound frankness and quaint introspective insight in the manner of one touching upon things that are enshined in innermost recesses of ones soul
She depicted the thrills of joyous surprise with which she had watched Lucy in her infancy master the beginnings of speech Sometimes her delight would be accompanied by something akin to fright There had been moments when it all seemed unreal and weird
The little thing seemed to be a stranger to me she said Or else she did not seem to be a human being at all
The next moment she would recognize her as it were and then she would kiss and yearn over her in a mad rush of passion
The day when she took Lucy to school—about two years before—was one of the greatest days in Doras life She would then watch her learn to associate written signs with spoken words as she had once watched her learn to speak
But that was not all She became jealous of the child She herself had never been taught to read even Hebrew or Yiddish much less a Gentile language while here lo and behold her little girl possessed a Gentile book and was learning to read it She was getting education her child just like the daughter of the landlord of the house in Russia in which Dora had grown up
Cat—cat Lucy would spell out Rat—rat Mat—mat
And poor Dora would watch the performance with mixed joy and envy and exclamations like What do you think of that snip of a thing Did you ever
Lucys schoolreader achievements stirred a novel feeling of rivalry in Doras breast When the little girl could spell half a dozen English words she hated herself for her inferiority to her
The idea of that kitten getting ahead of me Why it worried the life out of me she said You may think it foolish but I couldnt help it I kept saying to myself Shell grow up and be an educated American lady and shell be ashamed to walk in the street with me Dont we see things like that People will beggar themselves to send their children to college only to be treated as fools and greenhorns by them I call that terrible Dont you Well I am not going to let my child treat me like that Not I I should commit suicide first I want my child to respect me not to look down on me If she reads a book she is to bear in mind that her mother is no ignorant slouch of a greenhorn either
A nextdoor neighbor a woman who could read English would help Lucy with her spelling lesson of an evening This seemed to have established special relations between the child and that woman from which Dora was excluded
She made up her mind to learn to read If Lucy could manage it she her mother could So she caused the child to teach her to spell out words in her First Reader At first she pretended to treat it as a joke but inwardly she took it seriously from the very outset and later under the intoxicating effect of the progress she was achieving these studies became the great passion of her life Whenever Lucy recited some new lines learned at school she would not rest until she too had learned them by heart
Here are two pieces which she proudly recited to us The snow is white The sky is blue The sun is bright And so are you
Our ears were made to hear Our tongues were made to talk Our eyes were made to see Our feet were made to walk
Her voice as she declaimed the lines attracted Lucys attention so she sent her and Beckie into the kitchen
She doesnt know what a treasure she is to me she said to us
Then after she finished the two verses she remarked wistfully
Well my own life is lost but she shall be educated
Why Why should you talk like that Dora Sadie protested her fishy eyes full of tragedy Why you are only beginning to live
Of course she is I chimed in
Well Dora rejoined anyhow I am afraid I love her too much
Sometimes it seems to me I am going crazy over her I love
Dannie too of course
When he happens to hurt a finger or to hit his dear little head against something I cant sleep Is he not my flesh and blood like Lucy Still Lucy is different She paused and then rose from her seat saying with a smile Wait I am going to show you something She went into the kitchen and came back holding a toothbrush in either hand Guess what it is
Two toothbrushes I answered with perplexed gaiety
Arent you smart I know they are not shoebrushes but what kind of toothbrushes How did I come by them Thats the question Did I use a toothbrush in my mothers house
She then told me how Lucy coming from school one day had announced an order from the teacher that every girl in the class must bring a toothbrush the next morning
Sadie nodded confirmation
Of course I went to work and bought not one brush but two Dora pursued I am as good as Lucy am I not If she is worth twelve cents I am And if she is American lady enough to use a toothbrush I am
Lucy is not a usual name on the East Side It was in fact the principal of the school who had recommended it at Doras solicitation The little girl had hitherto been called Lizzie the commonplace East Side version of Leah her Hebrew name Dora never liked it It did not sound American enough for there were Lizzies or Lizas in Europe too Any greenhorn might bear such a name So she called on Lizzies principal and asked her to suggest some nicer name for her daughter
I want a real American one she said
The principal submitted half a dozen names beginning with L and the result was that Lizzie became Lucy
Dora went over every spelling lesson with the child It was so sweet to be helpful to her in this way Lucy on her part had to reciprocate by hearing her mother spell the same words and often they would have a spellingmatch
All of which as I could see had invested Lucy with the fascination of a spiritual companion
The child had not been at school many weeks when she began to show signs of estrangement from her mothertongue Her Yiddish was rapidly becoming clogged with queersounding rs and with quaintly twisted idioms Yiddish words came less and less readily to her tongue and the tendency to replace them with their English equivalents grew in persistence Dora would taunt her on her Gentile Yiddish yet she took real pride in it Finally Lucy abandoned her native tongue altogether She still understood her parents of course but she now invariably addressed them or answered their Yiddish questions in English As a result Dora would make efforts to speak to her in the language that had become the childs natural means of expression It was a sorry attempt at first but she was not one to give up without a hard struggle She went at it with great tenacity listening intently to Lucys English and trying to repeat words and phrases after her And so with the childs assistance conscious or unconscious she kept adding to her practical acquaintance with the language until by the end of Lucys first school year she spoke it with considerable fluency
Dora tried her hand at writing but little Lucy proved a poor penmanshipteacher and she was forced to confine herself to reading She forged ahead of her reading pages which Lucys class had not yet reached
To take Lucy to school was one of the keen joys of Doras existence Very often they would fall in with Lucys bosom friend
Good morning Lucy
Good morning Beckie
As she described the smiling childishly ladylike way in which the little girls exchanged their greetings and then intertwined their little arms as they proceeded on their way together Sadies fishy eyes filled with tears
Oh how sweet it is to be a mother Dora said
I should say it was her chum and follower echoed wiping her tears and laughing at once
There was a curious element of superstition in Doras attitude toward her little girl She had taken it into her head that Lucy had been playing the part of a mascot in her life
I was a bag of bones until she was born she said Why people who are put into the grave look better than I did But my birdie darling came and well if I dont look like a monkey now I have her to thank It was after her birth that I began to pick up She had formed the theory that the child was born to go to school for her mothers sake as well as her own—a little angel sent down from heaven to act as a messenger of light to her
Her story made a strong impression on me Max is not worthy of her I reflected I wondered whether she was fully aware what manner of man he was
CHAPTER VI
SOMETIMES we would go to the Jewish theater together Max Dora and I the children being left at Sadies house Once when Maxs lodge had a benefit performance and he had had some tickets for sale we made up a party of five the two couples and myself On that occasion I met Jake Mindels at the playhouse He was now studying medicine at the University Medical College and it was a considerable time since I had last seen him To tell the truth I had avoided meeting him I hated to stand confessed before him as a traitor to my dreams of a college education and I begrudged him his medical books
I took Max and Dora to see an American play He did not understand much of what he saw and was bored to death As for her she took in scarcely more than did her husband though she understood many of the words she heard but then she reverently followed the good manners of the real Americans on the stage and the sound of their educated English seemed to inspire her with mixed awe and envy
Once on a Monday evening when I called on the Margolises I found Max out
Dora seemed to be ill at ease in my company and I did not stay long It seemed natural to fear that Max who gave so much attention to the relations between the sexes should view visits of this kind with misgivings His playful warnings that we should beware of falling in love with each other seemed to be always in the air and on that evening when he was away and we found ourselves alone I seemed to hear their echo more distinctly than ever
It had a disquieting effect on me that echo and I decided never to call unless Max was sure to be at home I enjoyed their hospitality too much to hazard it rashly Moreover Max and Dora lived in peace and I was the last man in the world to wish to disturb it
To my surprise however he did not seem to be jealous of me in the least
Quite the contrary He encouraged my familiarities with her so much so that I soon drifted into the habit of addressing her as Dora
The better I knew her the greater was the respect with which she inspired me I thought her an unusual woman and I looked up to her
It became a most natural thing that I should propose myself as a boarder
Thousands of families like the Margolises kept boarders to lighten the burden of rentday
The project had been trailing in my mind for some time and I must confess the fact that Max stayed out till the small hours four or five nights a week had something to do with it
You would be alone with her Satan often whispered Still there was nothing definitely reprehensible in this reflection It was the prospect of often being decorously alone with a woman who inspired me with respect and interested me more and more keenly that tempted me Vaguely however I had a feeling that I was on the road to falling in love with her
One evening as I complained of my restaurant meals and of certain inconveniences of my lodgings Max said Nothing like being married Levinsky Take my advice and get you a nice little wifey One like mine for instance
Like yours The trouble is that there is only one such and you have captured her Dont worry Dora broke in There are plenty of others and better ones too
I have a scheme I said seriously Why shouldnt you people let me board with you
Natural as the suggestion was it took them by surprise For a second or two Max gazed at his wife with a perplexed air Then he said That would not he a bad idea Would it Dora
I dont know I am sure she answered with a shrug and an embarrassed smile We have never kept boarders
You will try to keep one now then I urged
If there were room in the house I should be glad Upon my health and strength I should Oh you can make room I said
Of course you can Max put in warming to the plan somewhat He could have the childrens bedroom and they could sleep in this room
She held to her veto
Oh you dont know what an obstinate thing she is Max said Let her say that white is black and black it must be even if the world turned upside down
What do you want of me she protested Levinsky may think I really dont care to have him Let us move to a larger apartment and Ill be but too glad to give him a room
The upshot was a compromise For the present I was to content myself with having my luncheons and dinners or suppers at their house Dora charging me cost price
Get him to move to one of those new houses with modern improvements she said to me earnestly to an apartment of five light rooms and I shall give you a room at once The rent would come cheaper than it is now But Max would rather pay more and have the children grow in these damp rooms than budge
Dont bother me By and by we shall move out of here All in due time
Dont bother Meanwhile see that your dinners and suppers are all right
Levinsky thinks you a good cook Dont disappoint him then Dont run away with the idea its on your own account he wants to board with us It is on account of your cooking Thats all Isnt it Levinsky
Its a good thing to know that I am not a bad cook at least she returned
But how about the profits you are going to make on him Ill deduct them from your weekly allowance you know he chaffed her
Oh no I am just going to save them and buy a house on Fifth
Avenue
You ought to allow me ten per cent for cash I said She does not want cash Max replied Your note is good enough
I had been taking my meals with them a little over a month when they moved into a new apartment with me as their roomer and boarder The apartment was on the third floor of a corner house on Clinton Street one of a row of what was then a new type of tenement buildings It consisted of five rooms and bath all perfectly light and it had a tiny private corridor or vestibule a dumbwaiter an enameled bathtub electric and gas light and an electric doorbell There was a rush for these apartments and Dora paid a deposit on the first months rent before the builder was quite through with his work
My room opened into the vestibule its window looking out upon a sidestreet The rent for the whole apartment was thirtytwo dollars my board being five and a half dollars a week which was supposed to include a monthly rental of six dollars for my room
The Shorniks moved into the same house
CHAPTER VII
MY growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at once as it were It happened at a moment which is distinctly fixed in my mind At least I distinctly remember the moment when I became conscious of it
It was on an afternoon four days after the Margolises had taken possession of the new place The family was fully established in it while I had just moved in I had seen my room furniture and all several times before but I had never seen it absolutely ready for my occupancy as I did now It was by far the brightest airiest bestfurnished and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself Everything in it from the wallpaper to the little washstand was invitingly new I can still smell its grateful odor of freshness When I was left to myself in it for the first time and I shut its door the room appealed to me as a compartment in the nest of a family of which I was a member My lonely soul had a sense of home and domestic comfort that all but overpowered me The sight of the new quilt and of the fresh white pillow coupled with the knowledge that it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for me sent a glow of delight through my heart
Doras name was whispering itself in my mind I paused at the window an enchanted man
A few minutes later when I reentered the livingroom where she was counting some freshly ironed napkins her face seemed to have acquired a new meaning I felt that a great change had come in my attitude toward her
Well is everything all right she inquired
First rate I answered in a voice that sounded unnatural to myself
Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor The children were gamboling from room to room testing the faucets the dumbwaiter
Get avey from there Dora shouted Youll hurt yourself Max tell Lucy not to touch the dumbvaiter vill you
Children Children Whats a madder vitch you he called out from the parlor in English with a perfunctory snarl Presently he came into the livingroom Well are you satisfied with your new palace he addressed me in Yiddish And for the hundredth time he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern improvements at the abundance of light and at my new rank of real boarder
It is one of the old and deeprooted customs of the Ghetto towns of Europe for a young couple to live with the parents of the bride for a year or two after the wedding So Max gaily dubbed me his boarding soninlaw
Try to behave boarding soninlaw he bantered me If you dont your motherinlaw will starve you
The pleasantry grated on me
Doras ambition to learn to read and spell English was a passion and the little girl played a more important part in the efforts she made in this direction than Dora was willing to admit Lucy would tell her the meaning of new words as she had heard it at school but it often happened that the official definition she quoted was incomprehensible to both This was apt to irritate Dora or even lead to a disagreeable scene
If I happened to be around I would explain things to her but she seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of salt She bowed before my intellectual status in a general way but since she had good reason to doubt the quality of my English enunciation she doubted my Yiddish interpretations as well Indeed she doubted everything that did not bear the indorsement of Lucys school Whatever came from that sacred source was real Yankee everything else was greenhorn If she failed to grasp some of the things that Lucy brought back from school she would blame it on the child
Oh you didnt understand what your teacher said she would scold her
You must have twisted it all up you stupid
One afternoon when business was slow and there did not seem to be anything to preclude my staying at home and breathing the air that Dora breathed I witnessed a painful scene between them It was soon after Lucy returned from school Her mother wanted her to go over her last readinglesson with her and the child would not do so pleading a desire to call on Beckie
Stay where you are and open your reader Dora commanded
Lucy obeyed whimperingly Read I want to go to Beckie
Read I say And she slapped her hand
Dont I remonstrated Let the poor child go enjoy herself But it only spoiled matters
Read she went on with grim composure hitting her on the shoulder
I dont want to I want to go downstairs Lucy sobbed defiantly
Read And once more she hit her
My heart went out to the child but I dared not intercede again
Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded sobbingly
I left the room in disgust The scene preyed upon my mind all that afternoon I remained in my room until suppertime Then I found Dora taciturn and downcast and I noticed that she treated Lucy with exceptional though undemonstrative tenderness
Must have given her a licking Max explained to me with a wink
I kept my counsel
She beat her quite often sometimes violently each scene of this kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her part Her devotion to her children was above that of the average mother Lucy had been going to school for over two years yet she missed her every morning as though she were away to another city and when the little girl came back Doras face would brighten as if a flood of new sunshine had burst into the house
On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and daughter over the result of a spellingmatch between them which I had umpired and which Lucy had won Dora took her defeat so hard that she was dejected all that evening
I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy she was jealous of her She was jealous not only of the school education she was receiving but also of her American birth
She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the real American syle and the realization of her helplessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of table manners and whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise and make Lucy practise with amusing pomp and circumstance
Dont reach out for the herring Lucy she would say sternly
How many times must I tell you about it What do you say
Pass me the herring mamma please Not mamma
Pass me the herring mother please
The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a ladylike gesture
Thank you maam says Lucy
There is another way Dora might add in a case of this kind Instead of saying Pass me the herring or the butter you can say—What is it Lucy
May I trouble you for the herring mother
I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette too and she did Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly or with a burst of merriment or with a scandalized air as if she had caught me in the act of committing a felony This was her revenge for my general intellectual superiority which she could not help admitting and envying
You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you Max would say to me
Sometimes when I mispronounced an English word with which she happened to be familiar or uttered an English phrase in my Talmudic singsong she would mock me gloatingly On one such occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by pointing out that she had said nice where nicely was in order
What do you mean she asked perplexedly
My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth It had the intended effect She listened to my explanation stupidly and when I had finished she said with resignation I dont understand what you say I wish I had time to go to evening school at least as you did I havent any idea of these things Lucy will be educated for both of us for herself and for her poor mamma If my mother had understood as much as I do it would have been different She uttered a sigh fell silent and then resumed But I cant complain of my mother either She was a diamond of a woman and she was wise as daylight But Russia is not America No I cant complain of my parents My father was a poor man but ask Max or some of our fellowtownspeople and they will tell you what a fine name he had
She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman of her class but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her Moreover the tireless assiduity and precision which she brought to her housework and above all the grim passion of her intellectual struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that inspired me with something like reverence
Living in that atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me
Attempting a lark with her as I had done with Mrs Dienstog and
Mrs
Levinsky my first two landladies in New York was out of the question
Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not prevent my eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious complexion her clear honest voice and all else that made me feel both happy and forlorn in her company Nor would she aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry In short we often held converse in that language of smiles glances blushes pauses gestures which is the gesture language of sex across the barrier of decorum
These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which I should have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade When away from the magnetic force of her presence I would attend to business with unabated intensity
Her image visited my brain often but it did not disturb me Rather it was the image of some customer or creditor or of some new style of jacket or cloak that would interfere with my peace of mind My brain was full of prices bills notes checks fabrics color effects lines Not infrequently while walking in the street or sitting in a streetcar I would catch myself describing some of those garment lines in the air
And yet through all these preoccupations I seemed to be constantly aware that something unusual had happened to me giving a novel tinge to my being that I was a changed man
CHAPTER VIII
MAX saw nothing His wife was a very womanly woman with a splendid almost a gorgeous snowwhite womanly complexion and I was a young man in whom according to his own dictum women ought to be interested yet he never seemed to feel anything like apprehension about us This man who plumed himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually had a great deal of insight in these matters this man I say was absolutely blind to his wifes power over me He suspected every man and every woman under the sun yet he was the least jealous of men so far as his wife was concerned though he loved and was proud of her From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself on the danger of our falling in love with each other but that was never more than a joke and at any rate I heard it from him far less often than that other joke of his—about my being his and Doras soninlaw
Look out motherinlaw he would say to her If you dont treat your soninlaw right youll lose him
I have said that he was proud of her One evening while she stood on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant windowshade he drew my attention to her efforts admiringly
Look at her he said under his breath Another woman would make her husband do it Not she I cant kick She is not a lazy slob is she
Certainly not I asserted
We watched her take the shade down wind up the spring fit the pins back into their sockets and then test the flap It was in good working order now
No she is not a slob he repeated exultantly And she is not a gossiping sort either She just minds her own business
At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat Move along he said gaily Dont disturb us I am telling Levinsky what a bad girl you are Run along
She gave us a shy sideglance like those that had carried the first germ of disquiet into my soul and moved away
No she is no slob thank God he resumed He boasted of her tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned to read and spell with little Lucy for her teacher He depicted the tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school Once she makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it even if the world went under Thats the kind of woman she is And she is no mean foxy thing either When she says something you may be sure she means it if I do say so You ought to know her by this time Have you ever heard her say things that are not so Or have you heard her talk about the neighbors as other womenfolk will do Have you now Just tell me he pressed me
Of course I have not I answered awkwardly There are not many women like her
I know there are not And well if she is not devoted to her hubby
I dont know who is he added sheepishly
CHAPTER IX
IT was during this period that I received my first baptism of dismay as patron of a highclass restaurant The occasion was a lunch to which I had invited a buyer from Philadelphia The word buyer had a bewitching sound for me inspiring me with awe and enthusiasm at once The word king certainly did not mean so much to me The august person to whom I was doing homage on the occasion in question was a man named Charles M Eaton a fullblooded AngloSaxon of New England origin with a huge round forehead and small blue extremely genial eyes He was a large faircomplexioned man and the way his kindly little eyes looked from under his hemispherical forehead like two swallows viewing the world from under the eaves of a roof gave him a striking appearance The immense restaurant with its high frescoed ceiling the dazzling whiteness of its rows and rows of tablecloths the crowd of welldressed customers the glint and rattle of knives and forks the subdued tones of the orchestra and the imposing blackandwhite figures of the waiters struck terror into my Antomir heart
The bill of fare was of course Chinese to me though I made a pretense of reading it The words swam before me My inside pocket contained sufficient money to foot the most extravagant bill our lordly waiter was likely to present but I was in constant dread lest my treasure disappear in some mysterious way so from time to time I felt my breast to ascertain whether it was still there
The worst part of it all was that I had not the least idea what I was to say or do The occasion seemed to call for a sort of table manners which were beyond the resources not only of a poor novice like myself but also of a trained specialist like Dora
Finally my instinct of selfpreservation whispered in my ear Make a clean breast of it And so dropping the bill of fare with an air of mock despair I said jovially Im afraid youll have to tell me what to do Mr Eaton Its no use bluffing I have never been in such a fine restaurant in my life I am scared to death Mr Eaton Take pity
The Philadelphian who was a slowspoken slowwitted though shrewd man was perplexed at first
I see he said coloring and looking confusedly at me The next minute he seemed to realize the situation and to enjoy it too but even then he was apparently embarrassed I cracked another joke or two at my own expense until finally he burst into a hearty laugh and cheerfully agreed to act as master of ceremonies Not only did he do the ordering explaining things to me when the waiter was not around but he also showed me how to use my napkin how to eat the soup the fish the meat what to do with the fingerbowl and so forth and so on to the minutest detail
I am afraid one lesson wont be enough I said You must give me another chance
With pleasure he replied Only the next lesson will be on me
And then he had to tell me what on me meant
He took a fancy to me and that meant orders not only from him but also from some people of his acquaintance buyers from other towns
I sought to dress like a genteel American my favorite color for clothes and hats being and still is dark brown It became my dark hair well I thought The difference between taste and vulgar ostentation was coming slowly but surely I hope I remember the passionate efforts I made to learn to tie a fourinhand cravat then a recent invention I was forever watching and striving to imitate the dress and the ways of the wellbred American merchants with whom I was or trying to be thrown All this I felt was an essential element in achieving business success but the ambition to act and look like a gentleman grew in me quite apart from these motives
Now Dora seemed to notice these things in me and to like them So I would parade my newly acquired manners before her as I did my neckties or my English vocabulary
After that lecture I gave her on adverbs she no longer called my English in question To be educated and an American lady had thanks to Lucys influence become the great passion of her life It almost amounted to an obsession She thought me educated and a good deal of an American so she looked up to me and would listen to my harangues reverently
CHAPTER X
ONE Saturday evening she said to me Lord you are so educated I wish I had a head like yours
Why you have an excellent head Dora I replied You have no reason to complain
She sighed
I wish I had not gone into business I resumed
I had already told her more than once in fact how I had been about to enter college when an accident had led me astray so I now referred to those events dwelling regretfully upon the sudden change I had made in my life plans
It was the devil that put it in my head to become a manufacturer I said bitterly yet with relish in the manufacturer Well one can be a manufacturer and educated man at the same time she consoled me
Of course Thats exactly what I always say I returned joyously
Still I wish I had stuck to my original plan There was a lady in
Antomir who advised me to prepare for college She was always
speaking to me about it
It was about 10 oclock Max was away to his dancingschools The children were asleep We were alone in the livingroom
I expected her to ask who that Antomir lady was but she did not so I went on speaking of Matilda of my own accord I sketched her as an aristocratic young woman the daughter of one of the leading families in town accomplished clever pretty and modern
It was she in fact who got me the money for my trip to America I said lowering my voice as one will when a conversation assumes an intimate character
Was it Dora said also in a low voice
Yes It is a long story It is nearly five years since I left home but I still think of it a good deal Sometimes I feel as if my heart would snap unless I had somebody to tell about it
This was my way of drawing Dora into a flirtation my first attempt in that direction though in my heart I had been making love to her for weeks
I told her the story of my acquaintance with Matilda She listened with noncommittal interest with an amused patronizing glimmer of a smile
You did not fall in love with her did you she quizzed me as she might Lucy
Thats the worst part of it I said gravely
Is it she asked still gaily but with frank interest now
I recounted the episode at length To put it in plain English I was using my affair with Matilda or shall I say her affair with me as a basis for an adventure with Dora At first I took pains to gloss over those details in which I had cut an undignified figure but I soon dropped all embellishments The episode stood out so bold in my memory its appeal to my imagination was so poignant that I found an intoxicating satisfaction in conveying the facts as faithfully as I knew how To be telling a complete unvarnished truth is in itself a pleasure It is as though there were a special sense of truth and sincerity in our makeup just as there is a sense of musical harmony for example and the gratification of it were a source of delight
Nor was this my only motive for telling Dora all I had long since realized that the disdain and mockery with which Matilda handled me had been but a cloak for her interest in my person So when I was relating to Dora the scenes of my ignominy I felt that the piquant circumstances surrounding them were not unfavorable to me
Anyhow I was having a singularly intimate talk with Dora and she was listening with the profoundest interest all the little tricks she employed to disguise it notwithstanding
In depicting the scene of the memorable night when Matilda came to talk to me at my bedside I emphasized the fact that she had called me a ninny
I did not know what she meant I said
Dora tittered looking at the floor shamefacedly The nasty thing she said
What do you mean I inquired dishonestly
I mean just what I say She is a nasty thing that grand lady of yours And she added another word—the East Side name for a woman of the streets—that gave me a shock
Dont call her that I entreated Please dont You are mistaken about her I assure you she is a highly respectable lady She has a heart of gold I added irrelevantly
Well well You are still in love with her arent you
I was tempted to say No It is you I now love But I merely said dolefully No Not any more
She contemplated me amusedly and broke into a soft laugh
The next time we were alone in the house I came back to it I added some details I found a lascivious interest in dwelling on our passionate kisses Matildas and mine Also it gave me morbid pleasure to have her behold me at Matildas feet lovelorn disdained crushed yet coveted kissed triumphant
Dora listened intently She strove to keep up an amused air as though listening to some childish nonsense but the look of her eye tense or flinching and the warm color that often overspread her cheeks betrayed her
CHAPTER XI
WE talked about my first loveaffair for weeks She asked me many questions ahout Matilda mostly with that pretended air of amused curiosity Every time I had something good to say about Matilda she would assail her brutally
The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the presence of her husband was a tacit confession that we had a secret from him Outwardly it meant that the secret was mine not hers that she had nothing to do with it but then there was another secret—the fact that she was my sole confidante in a matter of this nature—and this secret was ours in common
On one occasion in the course of one of these confabs of ours she said with illconcealed malice Do you really think she cared for you Not that much marking off the tip of her little finger
Why should you say that Why should you hurt my feelings I protested
It still hurts your feelings then does it There is a faithful lover for you But what would you have me say That she loved you as much as you loved her
At this Dora jerked her head backward with a laugh that rang so charmingly false and so virulent that I was impelled both to slap her face and to kiss it
But tell me she said with a sudden affectation of sedate curiosity was she really so beautiful
I never said she was so beautiful did I You are far more beautiful than she Oh stop joking please Cant you answer seriously
I really mean it
Mean what
That you are prettier than Matilda Is that the way you are faithful to her
Oh that was five years ago Now there is somebody else I am faithful to
She was silent Her cheeks glowed
Why dont you ask who that somebody is
Because I dont care What do I care And please dont talk like that I mean what I say You must promise me never to talk like that she said gravely
During the following few days Dora firmly barred all more or less intimate conversation She treated me with her usual friendly familiarity but there was something new in her demeanor something that seemed to say I dont deny that I enjoy our talks but thats all the more reason why you must behave yourself
The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough so she let me tell her bits of it and before she was aware of it she was following my childish loveaffair with the daughter of one of my despotic schoolteachers my struggles with Satan and my early dreams of marriage Gradually she let me draw her out concerning her own past
One evening while Lucy was playing schoolteacher with Dannie for the class Dora told me of an episode connected with her betrothal to Max
Was that a love match I asked with a casual air when she had finished
She winced What difference does it make she said with an annoyed look
We were engaged as most couples are engaged Much I knew of the love business in those days
You speak as though you married when you were a mere baby
You certainly knew how you felt toward him
I dont think I felt anything she answered
Still I insisted you said to yourself This man is going to be my husband he will kiss me embrace me How did you feel then
You want to know too much Levinsky she said coloring You know the saying If you know too much you get old too quick Well I dont think I gave him any thought at all I was too busy thinking of the wedding and of the pretty dress they were making for me Besides I was so rattled and so shy Much I understood I was not quite nineteen
It called to my mind that in the excitement following my mothers death I was so overwhelmed by the attentions showered on me that it was a day or two before I realized the magnitude of my calamity
Anyhow you certainly knew that marriage is the most serious thing in life I persisted
Oh I dont think I knew much of anything
And after the wedding
After the wedding I knew that I was a married woman and must be contented she parried
But this is not love I pressed her
Oh let us not talk of these things pray Dont ask me questions like that she said in a low entreating voice It isnt right
I dont know if it is right or wrong I replied also in a low voice All I do know is that I am interested in everything that ever happened to you
Silence fell She was the first to break it She tried to talk of trivialities I scarcely listened She broke off again
Dora I said amorously My heart is so full
Dont she whispered with a gesture of pained supplication
Talk of something else pray
I cant I cant talk of anything else Nor think of anything else either
You mustnt you mustnt you mustnt she said with sudden vehemence though still with a beseeching ring in her voice I wont let you May I not live to see my children again if I will Do you hear Levinsky Do you hear Do you hear I want you to understand it Be a man Have a heart Levinsky You must behave yourself If you dont youll have to move There cant be any other way about it If you are a real friend of mine not an enemy you must behave yourself She spoke with deep solemn earnestness somewhat in the singsong of a woman reading the Yiddish Commentary on the Five Books of Moses or wailing over a grave She went on Why should you vex me You are a respectable man You dont want to do what is wrong You dont want to make me miserable do you So be good Levinsky I beg of you
I beg of you Be good Be good Be good Let us never have another talk like this Do you promise
I was silent
Do you promise Levinsky You must You must Do you promise me never to come back to this kind of talk
I do I said like a guilty schoolboy
She was terribly in earnest She almost broke my heart I could not thwart her will
She was in love with me
Days passed There was no lack of unspoken tenderness between us That she was tremulously glad to see me every time I came home was quite obvious but she bore herself in such a manner that I never ventured to allude to my feeling much less to touch her hand or sit close to her
It is as well that I should not I often said to myself Am I not happy as it is Is it not bliss enough to have a home—her home It would be too awful to forfeit it I registered a vow to live up to the promise she had exacted from me but I knew that I would break it
She was in love with me She had an iron will but I hoped that this too would soon be broken
There were moments when I would work myself up to an exalted religious kind of mood over it I should be a vile creature if I interfered with the peace of this house I would exhort myself passionately Max has been a warm friend to me Oh I will be good
Dora talked less than usual She too seemed to be a changed person She was particularly taciturn when we happened to be alone in the house and then it would be difficult for us to look each other in the face Such têteàtêtes occurred once or twice a week quite late in the evening I was very busy at the shop and I could never leave it before 10 11 or even 12 except on Sabbath eve Friday night when it was closed On those evenings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little diningroom sewing mending or—more often—poring over Lucys school reader or storybook
After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her each of us aware of the others embarrassment I would take a seat a considerable distance from her and take up a newspaper or clipping from one while she went on with her work or reading Lucy had begun to take juvenile books out of the circulating library of the Educational Alliance so her mother would read them also The words were all short and simple and Dora had not much difficulty in deciphering their meaning Anyhow she now never sought my assistance for her reading I can still see her seated at the table a considerable distance from me moving her head from word to word and from line to line and silently working her lips as though muttering an incantation I would do her all sorts of little services though she never asked for any all silently softly as if performing a religious rite
I have said that on such occasions I would read my newspaper or some clipping from it In truth I read little else in those days Editorials of the daily press interested me as much as the most sensational news and if some of the more important leading articles in my paper had to be left unread on the day of their publication I would clip them and glance them over at the next leisure moment sometimes days later
The financial column was followed by me with a sense of being a member of a caste for which it was especially intended to the exclusion of the rest of the world At first the jargon of that column made me feel as though I had never learned any English at all But I was making headway in this jargon too and when I struck a recondite sentence I would cut the few lines out and put them in my pocket on the chance of coming across somebody who could interpret them for me Often too I would clip and put away a paragraph containing some curious piece of information or a bit of English that was an addition to my knowledge of the language My inside pocket was always full of all sorts of clippings
CHAPTER XII
It was about this time that I found myself confronted with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business affairs There were several circumstances that made it possible for a financial midget like myself to outbid the lions of the cloakandsuit industry Now however a new circumstance arose which threatened to rob me of my chief advantage and to undermine the very foundation of my future
The rent of my loft which was in the slums was comparatively speaking a mere trifle while my overhead expense amounted to scarcely anything at all
I did my own bookkeeping and a thirteenyearold girl Americanborn schoolbred and bright whose bewigged mother was one of my finishers took care of the shop while I was out helped me with my mail and sewed on buttons betweenwhiles—all for four dollars a week Another finisher a young widow saved me the expense of a figure woman To which should be added that I did business on a profit margin far beneath the consideration of the wellknown firms All this however does not include the most important of all the items that gave me an advantage over the princes of the trade That was cheap labor
Three of my men were excellent tailors They could have easily procured employment in some of the largest factories where they would have been paid at least twice as much as I paid them They were bewhiskered elderly people strictly orthodox and extremely oldfashioned as to dress and habits They felt perfectly at home in my shop and would rather work for me and be underpaid than be employed in an uptodate factory where a tailor was expected to wear a starched collar and necktie and was made the butt of ridicule if he covered his head every time he took a drink of water These however were minor advantages The important thing the insurmountable obstacle which kept these three skilled tailors away from the big cloakshops was the fact that one had to work on Saturdays there while in my place one could work on Sunday instead of Saturday
My pressers were of the same class as my tailors As for my operators who were younger fellows and had adopted American ways my shop had other attractions for them For example my operations were limited to a very small number of styles and as theirs was piecework it meant greater earnings While the employee of a Broadway firm or of one of its contractors was engaged on a large variety of garments being continually shifted from one kind of work to another a man working for me would be taken up with the same style for many days in succession thus developing a much higher rate of speed and a fatter payenvelope
Altogether I always contrived to procure the cheapest labor obtainable although this as we have seen by no means implied that my hands were inferior mechanics The sum and substance of it all was that I could afford to sell a garment for less than what was its cost of production in the bestknown cloakhouses
My business was making headway when the Cloak and Suit Makers Union sprang into life again with the usual rush and commotion but with unusual portents of strength and stability It seemed as if this time it had come to stay My budding little establishment was too small in fact to be in immediate danger It was one of a scattered number of insignificant places which the union found it difficult to control Still cheap labor being my chief excuse for being the organization caused me no end of worry
Just when a fellow is beginning to make a living all sorts of black dreams will come along and trip him up I complained to Meyer Nodelman bitterly
A bunch of goodfornothings too lazy to work will stir up trouble and there you are
Oh it wont last long Meyer Nodelman consoled me Dont be excited anyhow Business does not always go like grease you know You must be ready for trouble too
He told me of his own experiences with unions and he drifted into a philosophic view of the matter You and I want to make as much money as possible dont we he said Well the workingmen want the same Can you blame them We are fighting them and they are fighting us The world is not a weddingfeast Levinsky It is a big barnyard full of chickens and they are scratching one another and scrambling over one another Why Because there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each chicken wants to get as much of it as possible So let us try our best But why be mad at the other chickens Scratch away Levinsky but whats the use being excited
He gave a chuckle and I could not help smiling but at heart I was bored and wretched
The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages yet they were fighting tooth and nail and I certainly could not afford to pay high wages
If I had to I should have to get out of business
Officially mine had become a union shop yet my men continued to work on nonunion terms They made considerably more money by working for nonunion wages than they would in the places that were under stringent union supervision They could work any number of hours in my shop and that was what my pieceworkers wanted To toil from sunrise till long after sunset was what every tailor was accustomed to in Antomir for instance Only over there one received a paltry few shillings at the end of the week while I paid my men many dollars
So far then I had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the walking delegates and my shop was in full blast from 5 in the morning to midnight whereas in the genuine union shops the regular workday was restricted to ten hours and overtime to three which coupled with the especial advantage accruing from a limited number of styles handled made my shop a desirable place to my hands
A storm broke All cloakmanufacturers formed a coalition and locked out their union men A bitter struggle ensued As it was rich in quaint humannature material the newspapers bestowed a good deal of space upon it
I made a pretense of joining in the lockout my men clandestinely continuing to work for me More than that my working force was trebled for besides filling my own orders I did some of the work of a wellknown firm which found it much more difficult to procure nonunion labor than I did What was a great calamity to the trade in general seemed to be a source of overwhelming prosperity to me But the golden windfall did not last long
The agitation and the picketing activities of the union aided by the Arbeiter Zeitung a Yiddish socialist weekly were spreading a spell of enthusiasm or fear to which my men gradually succumbed My best operator a young fellow who exercised much influence over his shopmates and who had hitherto been genuinely devoted to me became an ardent convert to union principles and led all my operatives out of the shop I organized a shop elsewhere but it was soon discovered
Somebody must have reported to the editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung that at one time I had been a member of the union myself for that weekly published a scurrilous paragraph branding me as a traitor
I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain and yet the sight of my name in print flattered my vanity and when the heat of my fury subsided I became conscious of a sneaking feeling of gratitude to the socialist editor for printing the attack on me For behold the same organ assailed the Vanderbilts the Goulds the Rothschilds and by calling me a fleecer of labor it placed me in their class I felt in good company I felt too that while there were people by whom fleecers were cursed there were many others who held them in high esteem and that even those who cursed them had a secret envy for them hoping some day to be fleecers of labor like them
The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the appellation of cockroach manufacturer by which it referred to me I was going to parade the quip before Max and Dora but thought better of it The notion of Dora hearing me called cockroach made me squirm
But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph and one evening as I came home for supper he said goodnaturedly You got a spanking didnt you I have seen what they say in the Arbeiter Zeitung about you
Oh to the eighty black years with them I answered blushing and hastened to switch the conversation to the lockout and strike in general
Oh well get all the men we want I said Its only a matter of time
Well teach these scoundrels a lesson theyll never forget
If only you manufacturers stick together
You bet we will We can wait We are in no hurry We can wait till those tramps come begging for a job I said For the benefit of Dora I added a little disquisition on the opportunities America offered to every man who had brains and industry and on the grudge which men like myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows Those union leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work Thats why they cant work themselves up I said Yes and thats why they begrudge those who can All those scoundrels are able to do is to hatch trouble
I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes and of long standing That some of the big cloak firms had promised to back me with funds to keep me from yielding to the union I never mentioned
CHAPTER XIII
MY shop being practically closed I was at home most of the time not only in the evening but many a forenoon or afternoon as well Dora and I would hold interminable conversations Our love was never alluded to A relationship on new terms seemed to have been established between us It was as if she were saying Now isnt this better Why cant we go on like this forever
Sometimes I would watch her read with Lucy Or else I would take up a newspaper or a book and sit reading it at the same table Dora was making rapid headway in her studies It was July and Lucy was free from school so she would let her spend many an hour in the street but she caused her to spend a good deal of time with her too If she did not read with her she would talk or listen to her I often wondered whether it was for fear of being too much thrown into my company that she would make the child stay indoors At all events her readings spelling contests or talks with Lucy bore perceptible fruit Her English seemed to be improving every day so much so that we gradually came to use a good deal of that language even when we were alone in the house even when every word we said had an echo of intimacy with which the tongue we were learning to speak seemed to be out of accord
One evening mother and daughter sat at the open parlor window While I was reclining in an easychair at the other end of the room Lucy was narrating something and Dora was listening apparently with rapt attention I watched their profiles Finally I said She must be telling you something important considering the interest you are taking in it
Everything she says is important to me Dora answered
What has she been telling you
Oh about her girls about their brothers and their baseball games about lots of things she said with a faraway tone in her voice I want to know everything about her Everything I wish I could get right into her I wish I could be a child like her Oh why cant a person be born over again
Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with her feelings for me than with her feelings for her child Anyhow what she said about her being interested in everything that Lucy had to say was true And whether she listened to the childs prattle or not it always seemed to me as though she absorbed every English word Lucy uttered and every American gesture she made The American schoolgirl radiated a subtle influence a spiritual ozone which her mother breathed in greedily
My own life is lost but she shall be educated— these words dropped from her lips quite often On one occasion they came from her with a modification that lent them unusual meaning It was on a Friday evening Max was out as usual and the children were asleep My own life is lost but Lucy shall be happy she said
Why I said feelingly Why should you think yourself lost I cant bear it Dora
She made no answer I attempted to renew the conversation but without avail She answered in melancholy monosyllables and my voice had a constrained note
At last I burst out in our native tongue Why do you torture me
Dora Why dont you let me talk and pour my heart out
Ssh You mustnt she said peremptorily also in Yiddish Youll get me in trouble if you do Itll be the ruin of me and of the children too
You mustnt
But you say your life is lost I retorted coming up close to the chair on which she sat Do you think its easy for me to hear it Do you think my heart is made of iron
Ssh You know everything without my speaking she said slowly rising and drawing back You know well enough that I am not happy Cant you rest until you have heard me say so again and again Must you drink my blood All right then Go ahead Here I am unhappy I am unhappy I am unhappy Max is a good husband to me I cant complain And we get along well too And I shall be true to him May I choke right here may darkness come upon me if I ever cease to be a faithful wife to him But you know that my heart has never been happy Lucy will be happy and that will be my happiness too She shall go to college and be an educated American lady and if God lets me live I shall see to it that she doesnt marry unless she meets the choice of her heart She must be happy She must make up for her mothers lost life too If my mother had understood things as I do I too should have been happy But she was an oldfashioned woman and she would have me marry in the oldfashioned way as she herself had married without laying her eyes on her predestined one until the morning after the wedding She laughed bitterly Of course I did see Max before the wedding but it made no difference I obeyed my mother peace upon her soul I thought lovemarriages were something which none but educated girls could dream of
My mother—peace upon her soul—told me to throw all fancies out of my mind that I was a simple girl and must get married without fuss And I did In this country people have different notions But I am already married and a mother All I can do now is to see to it that Lucy shall be both educated and happy and well I beg of you I beg of you I beg of you Levinsky never let me talk of these things again They must be locked up in my heart and the key must be thrown into the river Levinsky It cannot be otherwise Levinsky Do you hear
CHAPTER XIV
THE situation could not last One morning about three weeks subsequent to the above conversation Max left town for a day One of his debtors a dancingmaster had disappeared without settling his account and Max had recently discovered that he was running a dancehall and meetingrooms in New Haven so he went there to see what he could do toward collecting his bill His absence for a whole day was nothing new and yet the house seemed to have assumed a novel appearance that morning When after breakfast Lucy ran out into the street I felt as though Dora and I were alone for the first time and from her constraint I could see that she was experiencing a similar feeling I hung around the house awkwardly She was trying to keep herself busy Finally I said I think Ill be going Maybe there is some news about the lockout
I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat but on my way thither as I came abreast of her I paused and with amorous mien I drew her to me
She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance and when I kissed her she responded our lips clinging together hungrily It all seemed to have happened in a most natural way When our lips parted at last her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes looked filmed
Dearest I whispered
I must go out she said shrinking back her embarrassed gaze on the floor I have some marketing to do
Dont Dont go away from me Dora Please dont I said in
Yiddish with the least bit of authority I love thee I love thee
Dora I raved for the first time addressing her in the familiar
pronoun
You ought not to speak to me like that she said limply with frank happiness in her voice Its terrible What has got into me
I strained her to me once again and again we abandoned ourselves to a transport of kisses and hugs
Dost thou love me Dora Tell me I want to hear it from thine own lips
She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with all her might That was her answer to my question Then with a hurried parting kiss on my forehead she said Go Attend to business dearest As I walked through the street I was all but shouting to myself Dora has kissed me Dora dear is mine My heart was dancing with joy over my conquest of her and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her It was a blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity I really loved her
I attended to my affairs that is to some of the affairs of the Manufacturers Organization that day but while thus engaged I was ever tremulously conscious of my happiness ever in an uplifted state of mind I was bubbling over with a desire to be good to somebody to everybody—except of course the Cloakmakers Union My membership in the Manufacturers Association flattered my vanity inordinately and I always danced attendance upon the other members the German Jews the big men of the trade now however I ran their errands with an alacrity that was not mere servility
I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my second loveaffair as if it were something to be proud of My love for Matilda was remote as a piece of art while my passion for Dora was a flaming reality Matilda only tortured me I said to myself without malice She treated me as she would a dog whereas Dora is an angel I would jump into fire for her Dora dear Sweetheart mine I had not the patience to wait until evening I ran in to see her in the middle of the day
She flung herself at me and we embraced and kissed as if we had been separated for years Then holding me by both hands she gave me a long look full of pensive bliss and clasped me to her bosom again When she had calmed down she smoothed my hair adjusted my necktie told me she did not like it and offered to get me one more becoming
Do you love me Do you really she asked with deep earnestness
I do I do Dora mine I am crazy for you I replied Now I know what real love means
She sighed and after a pause her grave strained mien broke into a smile
So all you told me about Matilda was a lie was it she said roguishly
There is no such person in the world is there
Dont talk about her pray You dont understand me I never was happy before Never in my life
Never at all she questioned me earnestly
Never Dora dearest Anyhow let bygones be bygones All I know is that I love you that I am going crazy for you Oh I do love you And nobody else
And nobody else
And you are not lying
Lying Why should you talk like that dearest
Why have you forgotten Matilda so soon
Do you call that soon Its more than five years
But you told me that you had been in love with her a considerable time after you came to this country Will you forget me so soon too
I squirmed I writhed Dont be tormenting me dearest I implored my voice quavering with impatience I love thee and nobody else
She fell into a muse Then she said with a faraway look in her eyes I dont know where this will land me It seems as if a great misfortune had befallen me But I dont care I dont care I dont care Come what may I cant help it At last I know what it means to be happy I have been dreaming of it all my life Now I know what it is like and I am willing to suffer for it Yes I am willing to suffer for you Levinsky She spoke with profound evenvoiced earnestness with peculiar solemnity as though chanting a prayer I was somewhat bored Presently she paused and changing her tone she asked Matilda talked to you of education She wanted you to be an educated man did she Yes but what did she do for you She drank your blood the leech and when she got tired of it she dropped you A woman like that ought to be torn to pieces May every bit of the suffering she caused you come back to her a thousandfold May her blood be shed as she shed yours Suddenly she checked herself and said But no I am not going to curse her I dont want you to think badly of her Your love must be sacred Levinsky If you ever go back on me and love somebody else dont let her curse me Dont let anybody say a cross word about me Max came home after midnight and I did not see him until the next evening
When we met at supper Dora was out at that moment I had to make an effort to meet his eye But he did not seem to notice anything out of the usual and my awkwardness soon wore off
Nor indeed was there any change in my feelings toward him I had expected that he would now be hateful to me He was not He was absolutely the same man as he had always been except perhaps that I vaguely felt like a thief in his presence Only I hated to think of Dora while I looked at him
Presently Dora made her appearance My embarrassment returned more acute than ever The consciousness of her confusion and above all the consciousness of the three of us being together was insupportable It was a terrible repast though Max was absolutely unaware of anything unnatural in our demeanor I retired to my room soon after supper
I had a whatnot half filled with books so I drew a volume from it I found it difficult to get my mind on it My thoughts were circling round Dora and Max round my precarious happiness round the novelty of carrying on a romantic conspiracy with a married woman Dora was so dear to me I seemed to be vibrating with devotion to her Regardless of the fact that she was somebody elses wife and a mother of two children my love impressed me as something sacred I seemed to accept the general rule that a wifestealer is a despicable creature a thief a vile immoral wretch But now that I was not facing Max that rule somehow did not apply to my relations with Dora
Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which excused my conduct on the theory that everybody was at the bottom of his heart likewise ready to set that rule at defiance and to make a mistress of his friends wife provided it could be done with absolute secrecy and safety Max in my place would certainly not have scrupled to act as I did But then I hated to think of him in this connection I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would a vicious fly I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a moments compunction I treated myself as a doting mother does a wayward son
The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert Spencers Sociology My interest in this author and in Darwin was of recent origin It had been born of my hatred for the Cloakmakers Union in fact This is how I came to discover the existence of the two great names and to develop a passion for the ideas with which they are identified
In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had often characterized them as so many goodfornothings jealous of those who had succeeded in business by their superior brains industry and efficiency
One day I found a long editorial in my newspaper an answer to a letter from a socialist The editorial derived its inspiration from the theory of the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest Unlike many of the other editorials I had read it breathed conviction It was obviously a work of love When the central idea of the argument came home to me I was in a turmoil of surprise and elation Why thats just what I have been saying all these days I exclaimed in my heart The able fellows succeed and the misfits fail Then the misfits begrudge those who accomplish things I almost felt as though Darwin and Spencer had plagiarized a discovery of mine Then as I visualized the Struggle for Existence I recalled Meyer Nodelmans parable of chickens fighting for food and it seemed to me that between the two of us Nodelman and I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine Later however when I dipped into Social Statics I was overborne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense of my own futility ignorance and cheapness I felt at the gates of a great world of knowledge whose existence I had not even suspected I had to read the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man and then Spencer again I sat up nights reading these books Apart from the purely intellectual intoxication they gave me they flattered my vanity as one of the fittest It was as though all the wonders of learning acumen ingenuity and assiduity displayed in these works had been intended among other purposes to establish my title as one of the victors of Existence
A workingman and every one else who was poor was an object of contempt to me—a misfit a weakling a failure one of the ruck
CHAPTER XV
IT was August In normal times this would have been the beginning of the great winter season in our trade As it was the deadlock continued The stubbornness of the men far from showing signs of wilting under the strain of so many weeks of enforced idleness and suffering seemed to be gathering strength while our own people the manufacturers were frankly weakening
The danger of having the great season pass without one being able to fill a single order overcame the fighting blood of the most pugnacious among them
One was confronted with the risk of losing ones best customers The trade threatened to pass from New York to Philadelphia and Chicago If you called the attention of a manufacturer to the unyielding courage of the workmen the reply invariably was first that it was all mere bravado and second that anyhow the poor devils had nothing to lose while the manufacturers had their investments to lose
The press supported the strikers It did so not because they were workingpeople but because they were EastSiders Their district was the great field of activity for the American University Settlement worker and fashionable slummer The East Side was a place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and local color as well as for purposes of philanthropy and uplift work To spend an evening in some East Side café was regarded as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre so much so that one such café in the depth of East Houston Street was making a fortune by purveying expensive wine dinners to people from uptown who came there ostensibly to see how the other half lived but who only saw one another eat and drink in freedom from the restraint of manners Accordingly to show sympathy for East Side strikers was within the bounds of the highest propriety It was as correct as belonging to the Episcopal Church And so public opinion was wholly on the side of the Cloakmakers Union This hastened the end We succumbed A settlement was patched up We were beaten
But even this did not appease the men They repudiated the agreement between their organization and ours branding it as a trap and the strike was continued Then the manufacturers yielded completely acceding to every demand of the union
I became busy I continued to curse the union but at the bottom of my heart I wished it well for the vigor with which it enforced its increased wage scale in all larger factories gave me greater advantages than ever I was still able to get men who were willing to trick the organization Every Friday afternoon these men received payenvelopes which bore figures in strict conformity with the unions schedule but the contents of which were considerably below the sum marked outside Subsequently this proved to be a risky practice to pursue for the walking delegates were wide awake and apt to examine the envelopes as the operatives were emerging from the shop
Accordingly I adopted another system the men would receive the union pay in full but on the following Monday each of them would pay me back the difference between the official and the actual wage The usual practice was for the employee to put the few dollars into his little wagebook which he would then place on my desk for the ostensible purpose of having his account verified
By thus cheating the union I could now undersell the bigger manufacturers more easily than I had been able to do previous to the lockout and strike I had more orders than I could fill Money was coming in in floods
The lockout and the absolute triumph of the union was practically the making of me
I saw much less of Dora than I had done during the five months of the lockout and our happiness when we managed to be left alone was all the keener for it Our best time for a têàtte were the hours between 10 and 12 on the evenings when Max was sure to be away at his dancingschools but then it often happened that those were among my busiest hours at the shop
Sometimes I would snatch half an hour from my work in the middle of a busy day to surprise her with my caresses If a week passed without my doing so she would punish me with mute scenes of jealousy of which none but she and I were aware She would avoid looking at me and I would press my hand to my heart and raise a pleading gaze at her which said I couldnt get away dearest Honest I couldnt
One evening I bought her some roses As I carried them home I was thrilled as much by the fact that I David of Abners Court was taking flowers to a lady as I was by visioning the moment when I should hand them to Dora When I came home and put my offering into her hand she was in a flurry of delight over it but she was scared to death lest it should betray our secret After giving way to bursts of admiration for the flowers and myself and smelling her fill and covering me with kisses she burned the bouquet in the stove and forbade me to use this method of showing her attention again
Your dear eyes are the best flowers you can bring me she said
Her love burned with a steady flame bright and even It manifested itself in a thousand little things which she did for the double purpose of ministering to my comfort and keeping me in mind of herself I felt it in the taste of the coffee I drank in the quality of my cup and saucer in the painstaking darning on my socks in the frequency with which my room was swept my towel changed my books dusted
Did you notice the new soapdish on your washstand she asked me one morning Do you deserve it Do you know how often I am in your room every day Just guess
A million times a day
To you its a joke But if you loved as I do you would not be up to joking
Very well Ill cry And I personated a boy crying Dont It breaks my heart she said earnestly I cant see you crying even for fun She kissed my eyes No really I go to your room twenty times a day perhaps
When I am there it seems to me that I am nearer to you I kiss the pillow on which you sleep I pat the blanket the pitcher every book of yours—everything your dear little hands touch I want you to know it I want you to know how I love you I knew that love was sweet but I never knew that it was so sweet Oh my loved one
She would pour out all sorts of endearments on me some of them rather of a fantastic nature but my loved one became her favorite appellation while I found special relish in calling her my bride or bridie mine
I can almost feel her white fingers as they played with my abundant dark hair or rested on my shoulders while she looked into my eyes and murmured yearningly My loved one My loved one My loved one
The set of my shoulders was a special object of her admiration She would shake them tenderly call me monkey and ask me if I realized how much she loved me and if I deserved it all bad boy that I was
She held me in check with an iron hand Whenever my caresses threatened to overstep the bounds of what she termed respectable love she would stop them With clouded eyes she would slap my hand and then kiss it saying Be a gentleman Levinsky Be a gentleman Cant you be a gentleman
Oh you dont love me I would grunt
I dont I dont I wish you would love me half as much with a sigh If you did you would not behave the way you do Thats all your love amounts to—behaving like that All men are hogs after all With which she would take to lecturing me and pouring out her infatuated heart in that solemn singsong of hers which somewhat bored me
If she thought my kisses unduly passionate and the amorous look of my eye dangerous she would move away from me
Dont be angry at me sweetheart she would say cooingly
I am not angry but you dont love me
Why should you hurt my feelings like that Why should you shed my blood Am I not yours heart and soul Am I not ready to cut myself to pieces to please you Why should you torture me
What are you afraid of He wont know any more than he does now I once urged
She blushed looking at the floor After a minutes silence she said dolefully It isnt so much on account of that as on account of the children How could I look Lucy in the face
Her eyes grew humid My heart went out to her
I understand You are right I yielded
The scene repeated itself not many days after It occurred again and again at almost regular intervals She fought bravely
Many months passed and still she was able to look Lucy in the face
At first for a period of six or seven weeks my moral conduct outside the house was immaculate Then I renewed my excursions to certain streets I made rather frequent calls at the apartment of a handsome Hungarian woman who called herself Cleo Once in a frenzy I tried to imagine that she was Dora and then I experienced qualms of abject compunction and selfloathing
Sometimes Lucy would arouse my jealous rancor as a living barrier between her mother and myself But she was really dear to me I revered Dora for her fortitude and Lucy appealed to me as the embodiment of her mothers saintliness
I would watch Lucy She was an interesting study Her manner of speaking her giggle her childish little affectations seemed to grow more American every day She was like a little foreigner in the house
Dora was watching and studying her with a feeling akin to despair I thought It was as though she was pursuing the little girl with outstretched arms vainly trying to overtake her
CHAPTER XVI
I WAS rapidly advancing on the road to financial triumphs I was planning to move my business to larger quarters in the same modest neighborhood Mrs
Chaikin my partners wife failed to realize the situation however She could not forgive me the false representations I had made to her regarding my assets
And where is the treasure you were expecting she would twit me You never tell a lie do you You simply dont know how to do it Poor thing
When we were in the midst of an avalanche of lucrative orders promising a brilliant winter season she took it into her head to withdraw her husband from the firm in which he was a silent partner Her decision was apparently based on the extreme efforts she had once seen me making to raise five hundred dollars As a matter of fact this was due to the rapidity of our growth I lacked capital But then my credit was growing too and altogether things were in a most encouraging condition
What is the use worrying along like that she said You deceived me from the start You made me believe you had a lot of money while you were really a beggar Yes you are a beggar and a beggar you are bound to stay A beggar and a swindler—thats what you are You have fooled me long enough
You cant fool me any longer So there
Her husband was still employed by the German firm attending to the needs of our growing little factory surreptitiously every evening and on Sundays The day seemed near when it would pay him to give all his time to our shop And he was aware of it too to some extent at least But Mrs Chaikin ordained otherwise
I attempted to present the actual state of affairs to her but broke off in the middle of a sentence It suddenly flashed upon my mind that it might all be to my advantage A designer can be hired I said to myself The business is progressing rapidly To make him my life partner is too high a price to pay for his skill Besides having him for a partner actually means having his nuisance of a wife for a partner It will be a good thing to get rid of her I consulted Max as I did quite often now Not that I thought myself in need of his advice or anybody elses for that matter Success had made me too selfconfident for that I played the intimate and ardent friend and this was simply part of my personation To flatter his vanity I would make him think his suggestions had been acted upon and that they had brought good results As a consequence he was developing the notion that my success was largely due to his guidance a notion which jarred on me but which I humored nevertheless
Do you know whats the matter he said sagely Mrs Chaikin must have found another partner for her husband Some fellow with big money I suppose
You are right Max I said sincerely How stupid I am
Why of course they have got another partner Of course they have he repeated with elation So much the better for you Let them go to the eighty black years Dont run after him Just do as I tell you and youll be all right Levinsky My advice has never got you in trouble has it
Indeed not Indeed not I answered
Maxs blindness to what was going on between Dora and myself was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution That this cynic who charged every man and woman with immorality should in the circumstances be so absolutely undisturbed in his confidence regarding his wife seemed nothing short of a miracle When I now think of the riddle I see its solution in a modified version of the old rule concerning the mote in thy neighbors eye and the beam in thine own eve Your worst pessimist is after all an optimist with regard to himself We are quick to recognize the gravity of ill health in somebody else yet we ourselves may be on the very brink of death without realizing it It is a special phase of selfishness We are loath to connect the idea of a catastrophe with our own person Max who saw a mote in the eye of everybody elses wife failed to perceive the beam in the eye of his own
As for Sadie who lived in the same house now and who visited Doras apartment at all hours she was too silly and too deeply infatuated with her friend to suspect her of anything wrong
I idolized Dora It seemed to me that I adored her soul even more than I did her body I was under her moral influence and the firmness with which she maintained the distance between us added to my respect for her And yet I never ceased to dream of and to seek her moral downfall
I had extended my canvassing activities to a number of cities outside New York my territory being a semicircle with a radius of about a hundred and fifty miles I had long since picked up some of the business jargon of the country and I was thirstily drinking in more and more
What do you think of this number Mr Soandso I would say selfconsciously to a merchant as I dangled a garment in front of him
You can make a run on it Its the kind of suit that gives the wearer an air of distinction
If I heard a bit of business rhetoric that I thought effective I would jot it down and commit it to memory In like manner I would write down every new piece of slang the use of the latest popular phrase being as I thought helpful in making oneself popular with Americans especially with those of the young generation But somehow a slang phrase would be in general use for a considerable time before it attracted my attention The Americans I met were so quick to discern and adopt these phrases it seemed as if they were born with a special slang sense which I poor foreigner that I was lacked
That I was not born in America was something like a physical defect that asserted itself in many disagreeable ways—a physical defect which alas no surgeon in the world was capable of removing
Other things that I would enter in my notebook were names of dishes on the bills of fare of the better restaurants with explanations of my own I would describe the difference between Roquefort cheese and Liederkranz cheese between consommé Celestine and consommé princesse I would make a note of the composition of macaroni au gratin the appearance and taste of potatoes Lyonnaise of various saladdressings But I gradually picked up this information in a practical way and really had no need of my culinary notes I had many occasions to eat in highclass restaurants and I was getting to feel quite at home in them
Maxs conjecture regarding Chaikin was borne out The talented designer had given up his job at the Manheimer Brothers and opened a cloakandsuit house with a man who had made considerable money as a cloak salesman and as a landlord for a partner When Max heard of it he was overjoyed
I tell you what Levinsky he said half in jest and half in earnest Let the two of us make a partnership of it I could put some money into the business
I reflected that when I approached him for a loan of four hundred dollars on my first visit at his house he had pleaded poverty
I could do a good deal of hustling too he added gravely
Between the two of us we should make a great success of it
I gave him an evasive answer I must have looked annoyed for he exclaimed Look at him Look at him Dora Scared to death isnt he And to me Dont be uneasy old chap I am not going to snatch your factory from you
But you are a big hog all the same I can tell you that How will you manage all alone Who will take care of your business when you go traveling
Oh Ill manage it somehow I answered making an effort to be pleasant
Chaikin was scarcely ever in the shop anyhow
CHAPTER XVII
I TRAVELED quite often sometimes staying away from New York for two or three days but more frequently for only one day On one occasion however I was detained on the road for five days in succession It was the beginning of June a little over a year since the Margolises moved into the Clinton Street flat with myself as their boarder I was homesick I missed Dora acutely I loved her passionately tenderly devotedly I now felt it with special force Her face and figure loomed up a hundred times a day
Dora dear Bridie mine I would whisper all but going to pieces with tenderness and yearning
One afternoon after closing an unexpectedly large sale in a department store I went to the jewelry department of the same firm and paid a hundred and twenty dollars for a bracelet I knew that she would not be able to wear it yet I was determined to make her accept it
Let her keep it in some hidingplace I thought Let her steal an occasional look at it I dont care what she does with it I want her to know that I think of her that I am crazy for her
It was Friday evening when I returned to New York having been on the road since the preceding Monday morning I first went to my place of business and then to a restaurant for supper I would not make my appearance at the house until half past 10 when the coast was sure to be clear With thrills of anticipation that verged on physical pain I was looking forward to the moment when I should close the bracelet about her slender white wrist
At the fixed minute I was at the door of the Clinton Street apartment I pulled the bell I expected an excited rush a violent opening of the door a tremulous My loved one My loved one
There was a peculiar disappointment in store for me She received me icily not letting me come near her
Why whats the matter Whats up Nothing she muttered
When we reached the light of the Sabbath candles in the diningroom I noticed that she looked worn and haggard
What has happened I asked greatly perplexed I have something for you I said producing the bluevelvet box containing the bracelet and opening it Here my bride
How dare you call me bride you hypocrite she gasped Away with you your present and all
Why Why What does it all mean I asked between mirth and perplexity
For an answer she merely continued You thought you could bribe me by this present of yours did you You can fool me no longer I have found you out
You have fallen into your own trap You have How dare you buy me presents
At this she tore the bracelet out of my hand and flung it into the little corridor She was on the verge of a fit of hysterics I fetched her a glass of water but she dashed it out of my hand Then frightened and sobered by the crash she first tiptoed to the bedroom to ascertain if Lucy was not awake and listening and then went to the little corridor picked up the bracelet and slipped it into my pocket
If you have decided to get married I cant stop you of course she began in a ghastly undertone as she crouched to gather up the fragments of the glass and to wipe the floor
Decided to get married I interrupted her Where on earth did you get that What trap are you talking about Dora
She made no answer I continued to protest my innocence Finally when she had removed the broken glass she said Its no use pretending you dont know anything about it It wont do you any good You have been very foxy about it but you made a break and there you are You think you are very clever If you were you wouldnt let your shadchen note know where you live—
Oh I see I said with a hearty laugh Has he been here And I gave way to another guffaw
Shadchen was a conspiracy name for a man who would bring an employer together with cloakmakers who were willing to cheat the union The one who performed these services for me was one of my own hands He was thoroughly dishonest but he possessed a gentle disposition and a certain gift of expression This gave him power over his shopmates He was their shop chairman and a member of their price committee He was the only man in my employ who actually received the full union price In addition to this I paid him his brokers commission for every new man he furnished me and various sums as bribes pure and simple
I explained it all to Dora The ardor with which I spoke and the details of my dealings with the shadchen must have made my explanation convincing for she accepted it at once
Youre not fooling me are you she asked piteously yet in a tone of immense relief
Strike me dumb if—
Ssh Dont curse yourself she said clapping her hand over my mouth I cant bear to hear it I believe you If you knew what I have gone through
Poor poor child I said kissing her soft white fingers tenderly Poor poor baby How could you think of such a thing There is only one bride for me in all the world and that is my own Dora darling
Her face shone with a wan beseeching kind of light
Again I drew forth the bracelet
Foolish child I said examining it Thank God it isnt damaged
Not a bit
I took her by the hand opened the bracelet and closed it over her wrist
She instantly took it off again with an instinctive sideglance at the door Then holding it up to the light admiringly she said Oh Oh Must have cost a pile of money Why did you spend so much I cant wear it anyway Better return it
Never Its yours my sweetheart Do whatever you like with it Put it away somewhere If you wear it for one minute every week I shall be happy If you only look at it once in a while I shall be happy
I am afraid to keep it Somebody may come across it some day Better return it my loved one I am happy as it is It would make me nervous to have it in the house
She made me take it back
Thank God it wasnt a real shadchen I thought I was going to commit suicide she said
I seized her in my arms She abandoned herself to a transport of gratitude and happiness in which her usual fortitude melted away
The next morning she had the appearance of one doomed to death Her eyes avoided everybody not only her husband and Lucy but myself as well She pleaded indisposition
Max left for the synagogue as he always did on Saturday morning I accompanied him out of the house on my way to business We parted at a corner where I was to wait for a streetcar Instead of boarding a car however I returned home I was burning to be alone with Dora to cuddle her out of her forlorn mood
I have come back for a minute just to tell you how dear you are to me I whispered to her in the presence of the children who were having their breakfast I signed to her to follow me into the parlor and she did Just one kiss dearest I said clasping her to me and kissing her Id let myself be cut to pieces for you
She nestled to me for a moment gave me a hasty kiss and ran back to the children all without looking at me
I went away with a broken heart
Late that evening when we found ourselves alone and I rushed at her she gently pushed me off
Why Whats the trouble I asked
No trouble at all she answered looking down with shamefaced gravity
Do you hate me
Hate you I wish I could she answered with a sad smile still looking down
Why this new way then I said rather impatiently You are dearer than ever to me Levinsky Tell me to jump into fire and I will But—cant we love each other and be good
What are you talking about Dora What has got into you Do you know what you are to me now I demanded melodramatically
I made another attempt at kissing her but was repulsed again
Not now anyway my loved one she said entreatingly Let a few days pass You dont want me to feel bad do you dearest
I looked sheepish I was convinced that it was merely a passing mood
note shadchen Marriage broker matchmaker
CHAPTER XVIII
NEXT Monday when I was ready to go to my place of business Dora left the house pitcher in hand before I rose from the breakfasttable She was going for milk but a sideglance which she cast at the floor in my direction as she turned to shut the door behind her told me that she wanted to see me in the street After letting some minutes pass I put on my overcoat and hat bade Max a studiously casual goodby and departed
I awaited her on the stoop Presently she emerged from the grocery in the adjoining building
Could you be free at 4 oclock this afternoon she asked ascending the few steps and pausing by my side I want to have a talk with you
Somewhere else Not at home
Why not at home in the evening No That wont do she
overruled me softly Somebody might come in and interrupt me
Ill wait for you in the little park on Second Avenue and Fifteenth
Street You know the place dont you
She meant Stuyvesant Park which the sunny Second Avenue cuts in two and she explained that our meeting was to take place on the west side of the thoroughfare
Will you come she asked nervously
I will I will But whats up Why do you look so serious Dora
Dora mine
Ssh You had better go When we meet Ill explain everything At 4 oclock then Dont forget As you come up the avenue going uptown it is on the lefthand side Write it down
To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me repeat it and then jot it down As she turned to go upstairs she said in a melancholy whisper Goodby dearest
When I reached the appointed place the brass hands of the clock on the steeple high overhead indicated ten minutes of 4 It was June but the day was a typical November day mildly warm clear and charged with the exhilarating breath of a New York autumn Dora had not yet arrived The benches in the little park were for the most part occupied by housewives or servantgirls who sat gossiping in front of babycarriages amid the noise of romping children Here and there an elderly man sat smoking his pipe broodingly They were mostly Germans or Czechs There were scarcely any of our people in the neighborhood at the period in question and that was why Dora had selected the place
I stood outside the iron gate gazing down the avenue The minutes were insupportably long
At last her womanly figure came into dim view My heart leaped I was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and joyous anticipation Oh shell back down I persuaded myself
She was walking fast apparently under the impression that she was late Her face was growing more distinct every moment The blue hat she wore and the parasol she carried gave her a new aspect I had more than once seen her leave the house in street array but watching her come up the street thus formally attired somehow gave her a different appearance
She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely ladylike she almost seemed to be a stranger This added to her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst produced a singular effect upon me
Am I very late she asked
No Not at all Dora I said yearningly
She made no answer
We could not find an empty bench and to let Germans overhear our Yiddish which is merely a German dialect would have been rather risky So she delivered her message as we walked round and round both of us eying the asphalt all the while Her beautiful complexion and our manner attracted much attention The people on the benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our interview One whitehaired little man with a terrier face never took his eyes off her
First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the most important days in my life she began It is certainly not a happy day Its Yom Kippur note with me I want to say right here that I am willing to die for you Levinsky I am terribly in love with you Levinsky Yes—
Her voice broke She was confused and agitated but she soon regained her selfmastery She spoke in sad solemn quietly passionate tones and gradually developed a homespun sort of eloquence which I had never heard from her before But then the gift of homely rhetoric is rather a common talent among Yiddishspeaking women
The revolting sight of the dogfaced old fellow who was ogling Dora so fascinated me that it interfered with my listening I made a point of looking away from him every time we came round to his bench but that only kept me thinking of him instead of listening to Dora Finally we confined our walk to the farther side of the little park giving him a wide berth
I love you more than I can tell you Levinsky she resumed But it is not my good luck to be happy I dreamed all my life of love and now that it is here right here in my heart I must choke it with my own hands Why Why I said with vehemence Why must you
Why she echoed bitterly Because the Upper One brought you to me only to punish me to tease me Thats all Thats all Thats all
Why should you take it that way Dont interrupt me Levinsky she said chanting rather than speaking As she proceeded her voice lapsed into a quaint doleful singsong not unlike the lament of our women over a grave No Levinsky It is not given to me to be happy But I ask no questions of the Upper One I used to live in peace I was not happy but I lived in peace I did not know what happiness was so I did not miss it much I only dreamed of it But the Lord of the World would have me taste it so that I might miss it and that my heart might be left with a big big wound I want you to know exactly how I feel
Oh if I could turn this poor heart of mine inside out Then you could see all that is going on there Listen Levinsky If it were not for my children my dear children my all in all in the world I should not live with Margolis another day If he gave me a divorce well and good if not then I dont know what I might do I shouldnt care I love you so and I want to be happy I do I do I do
A sob rang through her voice as she repeated the words You do and yet you are bound to make both of us miserable I said
Can I help it
If you would you could I said grimly Get a divorce and let us be married and have it over
She shook her head sadly
Thousands of couples get divorced She kept shaking her head
Then whats the use pretending you love me
Pretending Shall I turn my heart inside out to show you how hard it is to live without you But you cant understand No Levinsky I have no right to be happy Lucy shall be happy She certainly shant marry without love Her happiness will be mine too Thats the only kind I am entitled to She shall go to college She shall be educated She shall marry the loved one of her heart She shall not be buried alive as her mother was Let her profit by what little sense I have been able to pick up
A bench became vacant and we occupied it The momentary interruption and the change in her physical attitude broke the spell The solemnity was gone out of her voice She resumed in a distracted and somewhat listless manner but she soon warmed up again
What would you have me do Let Lucy find out some day that her mother was a bad woman I should take poison first
A bad woman I protested A better woman could not be found anywhere in the world You are a saint Dora
No I am not I am a bad wicked nasty woman I hate myself
Ssh You mustnt speak like that I said stopping my ears I cannot bear it
Yes thats what I am a nasty creature I used to be pure as gold There was not a speck on my soul and now woe is me pain is me What has come over me
When she finally got down to the practical side of her resolution it turned out that she wanted me to move out of her house and never to see her again
I was shocked I flouted the idea of it I argued I poured out my lovelorn heart But she insisted with an ironclad finality I argued again entreated raved all to no purpose
Ill never come close to you All I want is to be able to see you to live in the same house with you
Dont be tearing my heart to pieces she said It is torn badly enough as it is Do as I say Levinsky Dont you want to see me at all Oh its cruel of you to ask questions like that You have no heart Levinsky Its just because I am crazy to see you that you have got to move
Dont you want me even to call at your house I asked with an ironical smile as though I did not take the matter seriously
Well that would look strange Call sometimes not often though and never when Margolis is out
Oh I shall commit suicide I snarled
Oh well It isnt as bad as all that
I will I certainly will I said knowing that I was talking nonsense
Dont torment me Levinsky Dont sprinkle salt over my wound Take pity on me Do as I wish and let the tooth be pulled out with as little pain as possible
I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston Street where she insisted upon our parting Before we did however she indulged in another outburst of funereal oratory bewailing her happiness as she would a dead child It was apparently not easy for her to take leave of me but her purpose to make our romance a thing of the past and to have me move to other lodgings remained unshaken
This is the last time I shall ever speak to you of my love Levinsky she said I must tear it out of my heart even if I have to tear out a piece of my heart along with it Such is my fate Goodby Levinsky Good luck to you Be good Be good Be good Remember you have a good head Waste no time Study as much as you can God grant you luck in your business but try to find time for your books too You must become a great man Do you promise me to read and study a lot
I do I do But I wont move out I cant live without you We belong to each other and all you say is nothing but a womans whim Its all bosh I concluded with an air of masculine superiority I wont move out
You shall dearest Goodby Goodby
She broke into a fit of sobbing but checked it shook my hand vehemently and hastened away
note Yom Kippur Day of Atonement figuratively a day of anguish and tears
CHAPTER XIX
I HOPED she would yield but she did not I found myself in the grip of an iron will and I did as I was bidden
When I set out in quest of a furnished room I instinctively betook myself to the neighborhood of Stuyvesant Park That park had acquired a melancholy fascination for me As though to make amends for my agonies I determined to move into a good spacious room even if I had to pay three or four times as much as I had been paying at the Margolises I found a sunny front room with two windows in an old brownstone house on East Nineteenth Street between Second Avenue and First a short distance from the little park and near an Elevated station The curtains the carpet the huge soft armchair and the lounge struck me as decidedly aristocratic To cap the climax of comfort and swellness the landlady—a gray little GermanAmerican—had at my request a bookcase placed between the mantelpiece and one of the windows It was a regular bookcase doors and all not a mere whatnot and the sight of it swelled my breast
I shall forget all my troubles here I thought I am going to buy a complete set of Spencer and some other books Wont the bookcase look fine I shall read read read
When I reported to Dora that I was ready to move her face clouded
You seem to be glad to she said with venom dropping her eyes
Glad Glad Why I am not going to move then May I stay here darling mine May I
Are you really sorry you have to move she asked fixing a loving glance at me Do you really love me
There were tears in her eyes I attempted to come close to her to kiss her but she held me back
No dearest she said shaking her head Move out tomorrow will you Lets be done with it
And what will Max say I asked sardonically Will nothing seem strange to him nothing at all
Never mind that
She never mentioned Max to me now not even by pronoun
Then you must know him to be an idiot Now I hated Max with all my heart
Dont she implored
Oh I see Hes dear to you now I laughed
Have a heart Levinsky Have a heart Must you keep shedding my blood Have you no pity at all
But it is all so ridiculous It will look strange I argued seriously
He is bound to get suspicious
I have thought it all out Dont be uneasy Ill say we had a quarrel over your board bill
A nice dodge indeed It may fool Dannie not him
Leave it all to me Better tell me what sort of lodgings you have got Is it a decent room Plenty of air and sunshine But no Dont tell me anything I mustnt know I sneered
She was absorbed in thought flushed nervous
Presently she said with an effect of speaking to herself Its sweet to suffer for what is right
I moved out according to her program I came home at 10 the first evening
My double room with its great armchair carpets bookcase imposing lace curtains and the genteel silence of the street outside was a prison to me
I attempted to read but there was a lump in my throat and the lines swam before me
I went out roamed about the streets dropped in at a Hungarian café took another ramble and returned to my room
I tossed about on my great double bed I sat up in front of one of my two windows gazing at a streetlamp It was not solely Dora but also Lucy and Dannie that I missed Only the image of Max now aroused hostile feelings in me
Max called at my shop the very next day The sight of him cut me to the quick I received him in morose silence
Whats the matter Whats the matter he inquired with pained amazement
What did you two quarrel about
I made no answer His presence oppressed me My surly reticence was no mere acting But I knew that he misinterpreted it into grim resentment of Doras sally as though I said Your wifes conduct had better be left undiscussed
What nonsense She charged you too much did she Is that the way it all began Did she insult you Well womenfolk are liable to flare up you know Tell me all about it Ill straighten it out between you The children miss you awfully Come dont be a fool Levinsky Who ever took the words of a woman seriously What did she say that you should take it so hard
You had better ask her I replied with a wellacted frown
Ask her She gets wild when I do I never saw her so wild She thinks you insulted her first Well she is a woman but you arent one are you Come to the house this evening will you
Thats out of the question
Then meet me somewhere else I want to have a talk with you Its all so foolish I pleaded important other engagements but he insisted that I should meet him later in the evening and I had to make the appointment I promised to be at a Canal Street café on condition that he did not mention the disagreeable episode nor offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora and myself
Youre a tough customer As tough as Dora he said
When I came to the café at about 11 I found him waiting for me He kept his promise about avoiding the subject of Dora but he talked of women which jarred on me inordinately now His lecherous fibs and philosophy made him literally unbearable to me To turn the conversation I talked shop and this bored him
About a week later he called on me again He informed me that Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem where the rooms were even more modern and cheaper than on Clinton Street
I wouldnt mind staying where we are he observed But you know how women are Everybody is moving uptown so she must move too
My face hardened as if to say Why will you speak of your wife You know I cant bear to hear of her At the same time I said to myself Poor Dora She must have found it awful to live in the old place now that I am no longer there
His next visit at my shop took place after a lapse of three or four weeks
He descanted upon his new home and the Harlem dwellings in general and I made an effort to show him cordial attention and to bear myself generally as though there were no cause for estrangement between us but I failed
At last he said resentfully Whats the matter with you Why are you so sour If you and Dora have had a falling out is that any reason why you and I should not be good friends Why why I protested Who says I am sour
We parted on very friendly terms But it was a long time before I saw him again and then under circumstances that were a disagreeable surprise to me
BOOK X
ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER I
WEEKS went by My desolation seemed to be growing in excruciating intensity
From time to time when I chanced to recall some trait or trick of Doras her person would come back to me with special vividness smiting me with sudden cruelty The very odor of her flesh would grip my consciousness At such moments my agony would be so great that I seemed to be on the brink of a physical collapse During intervals there was a steady gnawing pain It was as though the unrelenting tortures of a dull toothache had settled somewhere in the region of my heart or stomach I knew not exactly where I recognized the pang as an old acquaintance It had the same flavor as the terrors of my tantalizing love for Matilda
My shop had lost all meaning to me I vaguely longed to flee from myself
There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside appointments to keep not to speak of my brief trips as traveling salesman To all of which I attended with automatic regularity with listless doggedness The union was a constant source of worry In addition there was a hitch in my relations with the marriage broker But even my worrying seemed to be done automatically
Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin who now gave all his time to his newly established factory I filled the gap with all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances An employee of one of the big shops a tailor stole designs for me These were used in my shop by a psalmmuttering old tailor with a greenishwhite beard full of snuff who would have become a Chaikin if he had been twenty years younger Later I hired the services of a newly graduated cloakdesigner who would drop in of an afternoon Officially the old man was my foreman but in reality he acted as a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my samplemakers as well as foreman
I was forming new connections obtaining orders from new sources Things were coming my way in spite of myself as it were There was so much work and bustle that it became next to impossible to manage it all singlehanded
The need of a bookkeeper at least was felt more keenly every day
But I simply lacked the initiative to get one
While I was thus cudgeling my brains hovering about my shop meeting people signing checks reading or writing letters that dull pain would keep nibbling nibbling nibbling at me At times during some of those violent onslaughts I would seek the partial privacy of my secondhand desk for the express purpose of abandoning myself to the tortures of my helpless love There is pleasure in this kind of pain It was as though I were two men at once one being in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled with the joy of loving all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding
One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an impulsive Hello Levinsky
It was Bender my oldtime eveningschool instructor I had not seen him for more than three years during which time he had developed a pronounced tendency to baldness though his apple face had lost none of its roseate freshness He looked spruce as ever his clothes spick and span his fourinhand tastefully tied his collar and cuffs immaculate His hazel eyes however had a worn and wistful look in them
Quite an American I declare he exclaimed with patronizing admiration and pride as who should say My work has borne fruit hasnt it
Well how is the world treating you he questioned me after having looked me over more carefully You seem to be doing well
When he heard that I was trying to manufacture cloaks and suits he surveyed me once again with novel interest
Are you really Thats good Glad to hear youre getting on in the world
Do you remember the two books you gave me—Dombey and Son and the little dictionary
I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented me on my English
He wanted to know more about my business and I sketched for him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now making My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as my growing credit my in my desk dinner with a buyer from Ohio all of which I uttered with great selfconsciousness He congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil
He still taught evening school during the winter months When I asked about his work at the customhouse which had been his chief occupation three years before he answered evasively By little and little however he threw off his reserve and told at first with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness how the new Republican broom swept clean and how he had lost his job because of his loyalty to the Democratic party He dwelt on the civilservice reform of President Cleveland charging the Republicans with offensive partisanship a Cleveland phrase then as new as fourinhand neckties And in the next breath he proceeded to describe certain injustices of which he apparently considered himself a victim within the fold of his own party His immediate ambition was to obtain a permanent appointment as teacher of a public day school
He was a singular surprise to me Formerly I had looked up to him as infinitely my superior whereas now he struck me as being piteously beneath me
Cant you think of something better I said with mild contempt Then with a sudden inspiration I exclaimed I have a scheme for you Mr
Bender Suppose you try to sell cloaks Theres lots of money in it
The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to spend a week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting orders for me at first in the city and then on the road
Our interview lasted a little over an hour but that hour produced a world of difference in our relations He had met me with a patronizing Hello Levinsky When we parted there was a note of gratitude and of something like obsequiousness in his voice
CHAPTER II
ON a Friday afternoon during the first week of Benders connection with my establishment as he and I were crossing a sidestreet on our way from luncheon I ran into the loosely built bulky figure of Max Margolis Max and I paused with a start both embarrassed I greeted him complaisantly
And how are you he said looking at the lower part of my face
I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of trivialities we were about to part when Max detained me
Wait Whats your hurry he said There is something I want to speak to you about In fact it was to your shop I was going
His manner disturbed me Were you Come on then I said
Hold on Whats your hurry We might as well talk here
Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away leaving us to ourselves
What is it I repeated with studied indifference
Well I should like to have a plain frank talk with you Levinsky he answered There is something that is bothering my mind I never thought I should speak to you about it but at last I decided to see you and have it out I was going to call on you and to ask you to go out with me because you have no private office
There was a nervous underdog kind of air about him His damp lips revolted me
But what is it What are all these preliminaries for Come to the point and be done with it What is it Then I asked with wellsimulated indignation Your wife has not persuaded you that I have cheated her out of some money has she
Why no Not at all he answered looking at the pavement It isnt that at all The thing is driving me mad
But what is it I shouted in a rage
Ssh he said nervously If you are going to be excited like that its no use speaking at all Perhaps you are doing it on purpose to get out of it
Get out of what What on earth are you prating about I demanded with a fine display of perplexity and sarcasm
We were attracting attention Bystanders were eying us An old woman leading a boy by the hand even paused to watch us and then her example was followed by some others
Come on for Gods sake he implored me All I want is a friendly talk with you We might talk in your shop but you have no private office
Whether I have one or not is none of your business I retorted with irrelevant resentment
We walked on He proposed to take me to one of the ball and meetingroom places in which he did business and I acquiesced
A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion of red plush covering one of the benches in a long narrow meetinghall We were close to the window in the full glare of daylight A few feet off the room was in semidarkness which still farther off lapsed into night As the plush cushions stretched their lengths into the deepening gloom their live red died away There was a touch of weirdness to the scene adding to the oppressiveness of the interview
I want to ask you a plain question he began in a strange voice And I want you to answer it frankly I assure you I shant be angry On the contrary I shall be much obliged to you if you tell me the whole truth
Tell me what happened between you and Dora I was about to burst into laughter but I felt that it would not do Before I knew how to act he added with a sort of solemnity She has confessed everything
Confessed everything I exclaimed with a feigned compound of hauteur indignation and amusement playing for time
Thats what she did
A frenzy of hate took hold of me I panted to be away from him to be out of this room semidarkness red cushions and all and let the future take care of itself And so jumping to my feet I said in a fury You always were a liar and an idiot I dont want to have anything to do with you With which I made for the door
Oh dont be excited Dont go yet Levinsky dear please he implored hysterically running after me I have the best of feelings for you May the things that I wish you come to me Levinsky Dear friend Darling
What do you want of me I demanded with quiet rancor pausing at the door and half opening it without moving on
If you tell me it isnt true Ill believe you even if she did confess I dont know if she meant what she said If only you were not excited I want to tell you everything everything
I laughed sardonically My desire to escape the ordeal gave way to strange curiosity He seemed to be aware of it for he boldly shut the door He begged me to take a seat again and I did a short distance from the door where the gloom was almost thick enough to hide our faces from each others view
Why you are simply crazy Max I said You probably bothered the life out of her and she confessed to put an end to it all You might as well have made her confess to murder
Thats what she says now But I dont know When she confessed she confessed I could see it was the truth
You are crazy Max It is all nonsense Absolutely
Is it he demanded straining to make out the expression of my face through the dusk Do assure me it is all untrue Take pity dear friend Do take pity
How can I assure you seeing that you have taken that crazy notion into your head and dont seem to be able to get rid of it Come throw that stuff out of your mind I scolded him mentorially Its enough to make one sick Come to reason Dont be a fool I am no saint but in this case you are absolutely mistaken Why Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman a fellow would never dare have the slightest kind of fun with her The idea—with a little laugh You are a baby Max Upon my word you are
Dora and I had some words over my bill and—well she insulted me and I wouldnt take it from her Thats all there was to it Why look here Max
With your knowledge of men and women do you mean to say that something was going on under your very nose and you never noticed anything Dont you see how ridiculous it is
Well I believe you Levinsky he said lukewarmly Now that you assure me you dont know anything about it I believe you I know you are not an enemy of mine I have always considered you a true friend You know I have
Thats why I am having this talk with you I am feeling better already But you have no idea what I have been through the last few weeks She is so dear to me I love her so His voice broke
I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and sympathy
You are a child I said taking him by the hand As I did so every vestige of hostility faded out of me My heart went out to him Come Max pull yourself together Be a man
I have always known you to be my friend I believe all you say I first began to think of this trouble a few days after you moved out But at first I made no fuss about it I thought she was not well I came to see you a few times and you did not behave like a fellow who was guilty
I gave a silent little laugh
He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused his first twinge of suspicion He was revoltingly frank
I spoke to her plainly he said Whats the matter with you Dora I asked her Dont you like me any more And she got wild and said she hated me like poison She never talked to me like that before It was a different Dora She was always downhearted cranky The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears It got worse and worse Oh it was terrible We quarreled twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought I was going mad
Maybe she was just missing you You were like one of the family dont you know And well you are a goodlooking fellow Levinsky and she is only a woman
Nonsense I returned the hot color mounting to my cheeks I am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind—
But she confessed he interrupted me She said she was crazy for you and I could do as I pleased
But you know she did not mean it She said it just for spite just to make you feel bad because you were quarreling with her
He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her concerning her relations with me and then he quoted Dora as answering Yes yes yes And if you dont like it you can sue me for divorce
I laughed making my merriment as realistic as I could Its all ridiculous nonsense Max I said You made life miserable to her and she was ready to say anything She may have been worried over something and you imagined all sorts of things Maybe it was something about her education that worried her You know how ambitious she is to be educated and how hard she takes these things
Max shook his head pensively
I am sure it is as I say I continued Dora is a peculiar woman The trouble is you judge her as if she were like the other women you meet Hers is a different character
This point apparently interested him
She is always taken up with her thoughts I pursued She is not so easy to understand anyway I lived over a year in your house and yet Ill be hanged if I know what kind of woman she is Of course youre her husband but still—can you say you know what she is thinking of most of the time
There is something in what you say he assented halfheartedly
As we rose to go he said timidly There is only one more question
I want to ask of you Levinsky You wont be angry will you
What is it I demanded with a goodnatured laugh What is
bothering your head
I mean if you meet her now sometimes
Now look here Max You are simply crazy I said earnestly I swear to you by my mother that I have not seen Dora since I moved out of your house and that all your suspicions are nonsense to keep the memory of my mother from desecration I declared mutely that my oath referred to the truthful part of my declaration only— that is exclusively to the fact that I no longer met Dora
I believe you I believe you Levinsky he rejoined We parted more than cordially Max promising to call on me again and to spend an evening with me
I was left in a singular state of mind I was eaten up with compunction and yet the pain of my love reasserted itself with the tantalizing force of two months before
Max never called on me again
CHAPTER III
AS a salesman Bender proved a dismal failure but I retained him in my employ as a bookkeeper and a sort of general supervisor I could offer him only ten dollars a week with a promise to raise his salary as soon as I could afford it and he accepted the job temporarily As general supervisor under my orders he developed considerable efficiency although he lacked initiative and his naïveté was a frequent cause of annoyance to me I found him spotlessly honest and devoted
I quickly raised his salary to fifteen dollars a week
He was the embodiment of method and precision and he often nagged me for my deficiency in these qualities Sometimes these naggings of his or some display of poor judgment on his part would give rise to a tiff between us
Otherwise we got along splendidly We were supposed to be great chums In reality however I would freely order him about while he would address me with a familiarity which had an echo of respectful distance to it
With him to take care of my place when I was away it became possible for me gradually to extend my territory as traveling salesman till it reached Nebraska and Louisiana Thus having failed as a drummer himself he made up for it by enabling me to act as one
He had been less than a year with me when his salary was twenty dollars
Charles Eaton the Pennsylvanian of the hemispherical forehead and bushy eyebrows who had given me my first lesson in restaurant manners was now my sponsor at the beginning of my career as a fullfledged traveling salesman
He took a warm interest in me Having spent many years on the road himself more particularly in the Middle West and Canada he had formed many a close friendship among retailers so he now gave me some valuable letters of intro duction to merchants in several cities
When I asked him for suggestions to guide me on the road he looked perplexed
Oh well I guess youll do well he said
Still you have had so much experience Mr Eaton
Well I really dont know Its all a matter of common sense I guess And after all the merchandise is the thing the merchandise and the price
He added a word or two about the futility of laying down rules and that was all I could get out of him That a man of few words like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter But at the time in question I was sure that the gift of the gab was an indispensable element of success in a salesman
Indeed one of my faults as a drummer during that period at least was that I was apt to talk too much I would do so partly for the sheer lust of hearing myself use the jargon of the market but chiefly of course from eagerness to make a sale from overinsistence I was too exuberant in praising my own goods and too harsh in criticising those of my competitors
Altogether there was more emphasis than dignity in my appeal
One day as I was haranguing the proprietor of a small department store in a Michigan town he suddenly interrupted me by placing a friendly hand on my shoulder His name was Henry Gans He was a stout man of fifty with the stamp of American birth on a strong Jewish face
Let me give you a bit of advice young man he said with paternal geniality You wont mind will you
I uttered a perplexed Why no and he proceeded If you want to make good as a salesman observe these two rules Dont knock the other fellow and dont talk too much
For a minute I stood silent utterly nonplussed Then pulling myself together I said with a bow Thank you sir Thank you very much I am only a beginner and only a few years in the country I know I have still a great deal to learn Its very kind of you to point out my mistakes to me The gay light of Ganss eye gave way to a look of hearttoheart earnestness
It aint nice to run down your competitor he said Besides it dont pay It makes a bad impression on the man you are trying to get an order from
We had a long conversation gradually passing from business to affairs of a personal nature He was interested in my early struggles in America in my mode of living in the state of my business and I told him the whole story
He seemed to be well disposed toward me but it was evident that he did not take my onehorse establishment seriously and I left his store without an order I was berating myself for having revealed the true size of my business Somehow my failure in this instance galled me with special poignancy I roamed around the streets casting about for some scheme to make good my mistake
Less than an hour after I left Ganss store I reentered it full of fresh spirit and pluck
I beg your pardon for troubling you again Mr Gans I began stopping him in the middle of an aisle Youve been so kind to me I should like to ask you one more question Only one I trust I am not intruding
Go ahead he said patiently
I shall do as you advise me I shall never knock the other fellow I began with a smile But suppose his merchandise is really good and I can outbid him Why should it not be proper for me to say so If youll permit me—pointing at one of the suits displayed in the store a brown cheviot trimmed with velvet Take that suit for instance Its certainly a fine garment It has style and dash Its really a beautiful garment I havent the least idea how much you pay for it of course but I do know that I could make you the identical coat for a much smaller price So why shouldnt it be right for me to say so
He contemplated me for a moment broke into a hearty laugh and said Youre a pretty shrewd fellow Why of course theres nothing wrong in selling cheaper than your competitor Thats what were all trying to do
Thats the game provided you really can sell cheaper than the other man and there are no other drawbacks in doing business with you
What I said about the brown suit piqued him He had his bookkeeper show me the bill and defied me to sell him a garment of exactly the same material cut and workmanship for less I accepted the challenge offering to reduce the price by four dollars and a half before I had any idea whether I could afford to do so I was ready to lose money on the transaction so long as I got a start with this man
Gans expressed doubt of my ability to make good my offer I proceeded to explain the special conditions under which I ran my business I waxed eloquent
Doing business on a gigantic scale is not always an advantage Mr Gans I sang out with an affected Yankee twang There are exceptions And the cloakandsuit industry is one of these exceptions especially now that the Cloakmakers Union has come to stay By dealing with a very big firm youve got to pay for union labor while a modest fellow like myself has no trouble in getting cheap labor And when I say cheap I dont mean poor labor but just the opposite I mean the very best tailors the most skilled mechanics in the country It sounds queer doesnt it But its a fact nevertheless Mr Gans It is a fact that the best ladies tailors are oldfashioned pious people green in the country who hate to work in big places and who keep away from Socialists anarchists unionists and their whole crew They need very little and they love their work They willingly stay in the shop from early in the morning till late at night
They are dead stuck on it hey Gans said quizzically They are used to it I explained In Russia a tailor works about fourteen hours a day Of course I dont let them overwork themselves I treat them as if they were my brothers or uncles We get along like a family and they earn twice as much as the strict union people too
I see They get low wages and dont work too much and are ahead of the game after all Is that it Well well But youre a smart fellow just the same
I explained to him why my men earned more than they would in the big shops and the upshot was an order for a hundred suits Twenty of these were to be copies of the browncheviot garment which was the subject of his challenge I buying that suit of him so as to use it as a sample
On my way home I exhibited that suit to merchants in other cities giving it out for my own product It was really an attractive garment and it brought me half a dozen additional sales
I developed into an excellent salesman If I were asked to name some single element of my success on the road I should mention the enthusiasm with which I usually spoke of my merchandise It was genuine and it was contagious
Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my goods
CHAPTER IV
THE road was a great school of business and life to me I visited scores of cities I met hundreds of human types I saw much of the United States
Every time I returned home I felt as though in comparison with the places which I had just visited New York was not an American city at all and as though my last trip had greatly added to the real American quality in me
Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in the world I could not go to bed in a Pullman car walk over the springy runner of a hotel corridor unfold the immense napkin of a hotel diningroom or shake down my trousers upon alighting from a bootblacks chair without being conscious of the difference between my present life and my life in Antomir
I was full of energy full of the joy of being alive but there was usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this While on the road I would feel homesick for New York and at the same time I would feel that I had no home anywhere that my mother was dead and I was all alone in the world
I missed Dora many months after she made me move from her house As for Max the thought of him his jealousy and the way he groveled before me the last time I had seen him would give me a bad taste in the mouth I both pitied and despised him and I hated my guilty conscience so I would try to keep him out of my mind What I missed almost as much as I did Dora was her home
There was no other to take its place There was not a single family in New York or in any other American town who would invite me to its nest and make me feel at home there I saw a good deal of Meyer Nodelman but he never asked me to the house And so I was forever homesick not for Antomir—for my native town had become a mere poem—but for a home
I did some reading on the road There was always some book in my handbag—some volume of Spencer Emerson or Schopenhauer in an English translation perhaps I would also read articles in the magazines not to mention the newspapers But I would chiefly spend my time in the smoker talking to the other drummers or listening to their talk There was a good deal of cardplaying in the cars but that never had any attraction for me
I tried to learn poker but found it tedious
The cigarette stumps by which I had sought to counteract my hunger pangs at the period of my dire need had developed the cigarette habit in me This had subsequently become a cigar habit I had discovered the psychological significance of smoking the cigar of peace and good will I had realized the importance of offering a cigar to some of the people I met I would watch American smokers and study their ways as though there were a special American manner of smoking and such a thing as smoking with a foreign accent I came to the conclusion that the dignity of smoking a cigar lasted only while the cigar was still long and fresh There seemed to be special elegance in a smoker taking a newly lighted cigar out of his mouth and throwing a glance at its glowing end to see if it was smoking well
Accordingly I never did so without being conscious of my gestures and trying to make them as American as possible
The other cloak salesmen I met on the road in those days were mostly representatives of much bigger houses than mine They treated me with illconcealed contempt and I would retaliate by overstating my sales One of the drummers who were fond of taunting me was an American by birth a fellow named Loeb
Well Levinsky he would begin Had a big day didnt you
I certainly did I would retort
How much Twentyfive thousand Well its no use trying to be funny but Ive pulled in five thousand dollars today Is that all
Well if you dont believe me whats the use asking What good would it do me to brag If I say five thousand it is five thousand As a matter of fact it ll amount to more Whereupon he would slap his knee and roar
He was a goodlooking floridfaced man with sparkling black eyes—a gay boisterous fellow one of those who are the first to laugh at their own jests He was connected with the largest house in the cloak trade Our relations were of a singular character He was incessantly poking fun at me nothing seemed to afford him more pleasure than to set a smokerful of passengers laughing at my expense At the same time he seemed to like me
But then he hated me too As for me I reciprocated both feelings
One day on the road he made me the victim of a practical joke that proved an expensive lesson to me The incident took place in a hotel in Cincinnati Ohio He confidentially let me see one of his samples hinting that it was his leader or best seller He then went to do some telephoning leaving the garment with me the while Whereupon I lost no time in making a pencilsketch of it with a few notes as to materials tints and other details I subsequently had the garment copied and spent time and money offering it to merchants in New York and on the road It proved an unmitigated failure
You are a nice one you are he said to me with mock gravity on a subsequent trip You copied that garment I showed you in Cincinnati didnt you
What garment What on earth are you talking about I lied my face on fire
Come come Levinsky You know very well what garment I mean While I was away telephoning you went to work and made a sketch of it It was downright robbery Thats what I call it Well have you sold a lot of them And he gave me a merry wink that cut me as with a knife
One of the things about which he often made fun of me was my Talmud gesticulations a habit that worried me like a physical defect It was so distressingly unAmerican I struggled hard against it I had made efforts to speak with my hands in my pockets I had devised other means for keeping them from participating in my speech All of no avail I still gesticulate a great deal though much less than I used to
One afternoon on a westbound train Loeb entertained a group of passengers of which I was one with wornout stories of gesticulating Russian Jews He told of a man who never opened his mouth when he was out of doors and it was too cold for him to expose his hands of another man who never spoke when it was so dark that his hands could not be seen I laughed with the others but I felt like a cripple who is forced to make fun of his own deformity It seemed to me as though Loeb who was a Jew was holding up our whole race to the ridicule of Gentiles I could have executed him as a traitor to his people Presently he turned on me
By the way Levinsky you never use a telephone do you
Why Who says I dont I protested timidly
Because its of no use to you he replied The fellow at the other end of the wire couldnt see your hands could he And he broke into a peal of selfsatisfied mirth in which some of his listeners involuntarily joined
You think youre awfully smart I retorted in abject misery
And you think youre awfully grammatical And once more he roared
You are making fun of the Jewish people I said in a rage
Arent you a Jew yourself
Of course I am he answered wiping the tears from his laughing black eyes And a good one too I am a member of a synagogue But what has that got to do with it I can speak on the telephone all right And again the car rang with his laughter
I was aching to hurl back some fitting repartee but could think of none and to my horror the moments were slipping by and presently the conversation was changed
At the request of a gay little Chicagoan who wore a skullcap a very fat Chicagoan told a story that was rather risqué Loeb went him one better The man in the skullcap declared that while he could not bring himself to tell a smutty story himself he was as good as any man in appreciating one He then offered a box of cigars for the most daring anecdote and there ensued an orgy of obscenity that kept us shouting I could not help thinking of similar talks at the cloakshops Loeb suggested that the smokingroom be dubbed smutty room and was applauded by the little Chicagoan The prize was awarded by a vote to a man who had told his story in the gravest tone of voice and without a hint of a smile
Frivolity gave way to a discussion of general business conditions A lanky man with a gray beard neatly trimmed and with the most refined manners in our group said something about competition in the abstract I made a remark which seemed to attract attention and then I hastened to refer to the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest Loeb dared not burlesque me I was in high feather
Dinner was announced To keep my traveling expenses down I was usually very frugal on the road I had not yet seen the inside of a diningcar while stopping at a hotel I would not indulge in a diningroom meal unless I deemed it advisable to do so for business considerations On this occasion however when most of our group went to the diningcar I could not help joining them The lanky man the little Chicagoan and the fleshy Chicagoan—the three stars of the smoker—went to the same table and I hastened with their ready permission to occupy the remaining seat at that table I ordered an expensive dinner At my instance the chat turned on national politics a subject in which I felt at home owing to my passion for newspaper editorials I said something which met with an encouraging reception and then I entered upon a somewhat elaborate discourse My listeners seemed to be interested I was so absorbed in the topic and in the success I was apparently scoring that I was utterly oblivious to the taste of the food in my mouth But I was aware that it was aristocratic American food that I was in the company of welldressed American Gentiles eating and conversing with them a nobleman among noblemen I throbbed with love for America
Dont be excited I was saying to myself Speak in a calm low voice as these Americans do And for goodness sake dont gesticulate
I went on to speak with exaggerated apathy my hands so strenuously still that they fairly tingled with the effort and of course I was so conscious of the whole performance that I did not know what I was talking about This state of my mind soon wore off however
Neither the meal nor the appointments of the car contained anything that I had not enjoyed scores of times before—in the hotels at which I stopped or at the restaurants at which I would dine and wine some of my customers but to eat such a meal amid such surroundings while on the move was a novel experience The electric lights the soft red glint of the mahogany walls the whiteness of the table linen the silent efficiency of the colored waiters coupled with the fact that all this was speeding onward through the night made me feel as though I were partaking of a repast in an enchanted palace The easy urbanity of the three welldressed Americans gave me a sense of uncanny gentility and bliss
Can it be that I am I I seemed to be wondering
The gaunt elderly man who was a member of a wholesale butcher concern was seated diagonally across the table from me but my eye was for the most part fixed on him rather than on the fat man who occupied the seat directly opposite mine He was the most refinedlooking man of the three and his vocabulary matched his appearance and manner He fascinated me His cultured English and ways conflicted in my mind with the character of his business I could not help thinking of raw beef bones and congealed blood I said to myself It takes a country like America to produce butchers who look and speak like noblemen The United States was still full of surprises for me
I was still discovering America
After dinner when we were in the smokingroom again it seemed to me that the three Gentiles were tired of me Had I talked too much Had I made a nuisance of myself I was wretched
CHAPTER V
I LOST track of Loeb before the train reached Chicago but about a fortnight later when I was in St Louis I encountered him again It was on a Monday morning With samplecase in hand I was crossing one of the busiest spots in the shopping district with preoccupied mien when he hailed me Hello Levinsky How long have you been here
Just arrived I answered
Where are you stopping
I named my hotel I could see that he was taking note of the fact that I was crossing the street to the Great Bazar one of the largest department stores in St Louis
I am going to tackle Huntington this morning I said with mild defiance
Are you Wish you luck he remarked quite gravely Youll find him a pretty tough customer though He was apparently too busy to indulge in raillery Wish you luck he repeated and was off
Huntington was the new head of the cloakandsuit department in the Great Bazar and in this capacity he was said to be doing wonders It was not true that I had just arrived I had been in the city nearly three days and the day before I had mailed a letter to Huntington upon which I was building great hopes I knew but too well that he was a tough customer my previous efforts to obtain an interview with him—in New York as well as here in St
Louis—having proven futile I was too small a fish for him Nor indeed was the Great Bazar the only large department store in the country whose door was closed to me Barring six or seven such stores in as many cities with which I was in touch largely through the good offices of Eaton my business was almost confined to small concerns Eaton had given me letters to many other large firms but these had brought no result For one thing my Russian name was against me As I have said before the American business world had not yet learned to take our people seriously
And so I had written Huntington making a special plea for a few minutes of his most valuable time All I asked for was an opportunity to point out some specific conditions that enable our house to reduce the cost of production to an unheardof level If he had only read that letter I had bestowed so much effort on it and I gave myself credit for having made a fine job of it
Arriving at the big store I made my way to the samplerooms I did so by a freightelevator the passengercars being denied to men carrying samplecases In the waitingroom of the buyers offices I found four or five men all of them accompanied by colored porters who carried their samplecases for them A neatlooking officeboy behind a small desk was rocking on the hind legs of his chair with an air of supreme indifference
Will you take it in I said to him handing him my card I want to see Mr Huntington
Mr Huntington is busy he answered mechanically without ceasing to rock
Take it in please I whispered imploringly But he took no heed of me
Had I been the only salesman in the room I should have offered him a bribe
As it was there was nothing to do but to take a seat and wait
These officeboys treat salesmen like so many dogs I muttered addressing myself to the man by my side
He sized me up without deigning an answer
Other salesmen made their appearance some modestly others with a studied air of confidence loudly greeting those they knew The presence of so many rivals and the frigidity of the officeboy made my heart heavy I was still a novice at the game and the least mark of hostility was apt to have a depressing effect on my spirits though as a rule it only added fuel to my ambition
Some of the other salesmen were chatting and cracking jokes for all the world like a group of devoted friends gathered for some common purpose The ostensible meaning of it all was that the competition in which they were engaged was a mere matter of business of civilized rivalry that it was not supposed to interfere with their friendship and mutual sense of fair play But I thought that all this was mere pretense and that at the bottom of their hearts each of them felt like wiping the rest of us off the face of the earth
Presently the officeboy gathered up our cards and disappeared behind a door He was gone quite a few minutes They were hours to me I was in the toils of suspense in a fever of eagerness and anxiety As I sat gazing at the door through which the officeboy had vanished Mr Huntington loomed in my imagination large and formidable mighty and stern To be admitted to his presence was at this moment the highest aim of my life Running through my anxious mind were various phrases from the letter I had sent him Some of these seemed to be highly felicitous The epistle was bound to make an impression Provided he has read it I thought anxiously But why should he have bothered with it He probably receives scores like it No he has not read it
The next moment it became clear to me that the opening sentence of my plea was sure to have arrested Huntingtons attention that he had read it to the end and would let me not only show him my samples but explain matters as well Of a sudden however it struck me to my horror that I had no recollection of having signed that letter of mine
A middleaged woman with a Jewish cast of features passed through the waitingroom I knew that she was Huntingtons assistant and she was apparently going to his compartment of the sampleroom The fact that she had a Jewish face seemed encouraging Not that the Jews I had met in business had shown me more leniency or cordiality than the average Gentile
Nor was an assistant buyer as a rule in a position to do something for a salesman unless his samples had been referred to her by her superior
Nevertheless her Jewish features spoke of kinship to me They softened the grimness of the atmosphere around me
Finally the officeboy came back My heart beat violently Pausing at his desk with only two or three of all the cards he had taken to the potentate he looked at them as he called out with great dignity Mr Huntington will see Mr Sallinger Mr Stewart and Mr Feltman
My heart sank I suspected that my poor card had never reached its destination that the boy had simply thrown it away together with some of the other cards perhaps on his way to Mr Huntingtons room Indeed I knew that this was the fate of many a salesmans card
The boy called out Sallingers name again this time admitting him to the inner precincts All those whose cards had been ignored except myself—there were about a dozen of them—picked up their samplecases or had their porters do so and passed out without ado As for me I simply could not bring myself to leave
He didnt mark my card did he I said to the boy
No sir he snapped with a scowl
When I reached the street I paused for some minutes as though glued to the sidewalk Was it all over Was there no hope of my seeing Huntington My mind would not be reconciled to such an outcome I stood racking my brains for some subterfuge by which I might be able to break through the Chinese wall that separated me from the great Mogul and when I finally set out on my way to other stores I was still brooding over the question I visited several smaller places that day and I made some sales but all the while I was displaying my samples quoting prices arguing cajoling explaining jesting the background of my brain never ceased bothering about Huntington and devising means of getting at him
The next morning I was in Huntingtons waitingroom again I fared no better than on the previous occasion I tried to speak to Huntington on the telephone but I only succeeded in speaking to a telephonegirl and she told me that he was busy
Please tell Mr Huntington I have a job to close out a seventeendollar garment for seven fifty
Mr Huntington is busy
At this moment it seemed to me that all talk of American liberty was mere cant
I asked the manager of the hotel at which I was stopping to give me a letter of introduction to him and received a polite no for an answer I discovered the restaurant where Huntington was in the habit of taking lunch and I went there for my next noonhour meal for the purpose of asking him for an interview I knew him by sight for I had seen him twice in New York so when he walked into the restaurant there was a catch at my heart He was a spare little man with a face mustache and hair that looked as though he had just been dipped in a pail of saffron paint He was accompanied by another man I was determined first to let him have his lunch and then on his way out to accost him Presently lo and behold Loeb entered the restaurant and walked straight up to Huntingtons table evidently by appointment I nearly groaned I knew that Loeb had a spacious sampleroom at his hotel with scores of garments hung out and even with wire figures
It was clear that Huntington had visited it or was going to while I could not even get him to hear my prices Was that fair I saw the law of free competition the great law of struggle and the survival of the fittest defied violated desecrated
I discovered the residence of Huntingtons assistant and called on her I had offered presents to other assistant buyers and some of them had been accepted so I tried the same method in this case—with an unfortunate result Huntingtons assistant not only rejected my bribe but flew into a passion to boot and it was all my powers of pleading could do to have her promise me not to report the matter to her principal
I learned that Huntington was a member of the Elks and a frequenter of their local clubhouse but unfortunately I was not a member of that order
I went to the Yiddishspeaking quarter of St Louis made the acquaintance of a man who was ready to sell me on the instalment plan everything under the sun from a house lot and a lottery ticket to a divorce and who undertook to find me for ten dollars somebody who would give me a firstclass introduction to Huntington but his eager eloquence failed to convince me I had my coat pressed by a Jewish tailor whose place was around the corner from Huntingtons residence and who pressed his suits for him I had a shave in the barber shop at which Huntington kept his shavingcup I learned something of the great mans family life of his character ways habits It proved that he lived quite modestly and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week Mine was three times as large That I should have to rack my brains do detective work and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to be a most absurd injustice
I was losing precious time but I could not bring myself to get away from St Louis without having had the desired interview Huntingtons name was buzzing in my mind like an insect It was a veritable obsession
My talk with his barber led me to a bowlingalley Being a passionate bowler the cloakbuyer visited the place for an hour or so three or four times a week As a consequence of this discovery I spent two afternoons and an evening there practising a game which I had never even heard of before
My labors were not thrown away The next evening I saw Huntington and a son of his in the place and we bowled some games together Seen at close range the cloakbuyer was a commonplacelooking fellow I thought that he did not look much older than his son and that both of them might have just stepped out from behind a necktie counter I searched the older mans countenance for marks of astuteness initiative or energy without being able to find any But he certainly was a forcible bowler
When he made a sensational hit and there broke out a roar of admiration I surpassed all the other bystanders in exuberance I must not overdo it though I cautioned myself He cannot be a fool Hell see through me His son was apparently very proud of him so I said to the young man Anybody can see your father is an energetic man
You bet he is the young man returned appreciatively I led him on and he told me about his fathers baseball record I dropped a remark about his being successful in business as well as in athletics and wound up by introducing myself and asking to be introduced to his father It was a rather dangerous venture for the older Huntington was apt to remember my name in which case my efforts might bring me nothing but a rebuff Anyhow I took the plunge and to my great delight he did not seem ever to have heard of me
Ten minutes later the three of us were seated over glasses of lager in the beergarden with which the bowlingalley was connected I told them that I was from New York and that I had come to St Louis partly on business and partly to visit a sister who lived in their neighborhood The elder Huntington said something of the rapid growth of New York of its new high buildings His English was curiously interspersed with a bookish phraseology that seemed to be traceable to the highflown advertisements of his department in the newspapers I veered the conversation from the architectural changes that had come over New York to changes of an ethnographic character
Our people immigrants from Russia I mean are beginning to play a part in the business life of the city I said
Are you a Russian he asked
I used to be I answered with a smile I am an American now
Thats right
You see we are only newcomers The German Jews began coming a great many years ahead of us but we cant kick either
I suppose not he said genially
For one thing we are the early bird that gets or is bound to get the worm I mean it in a literal sense Our people go to business at a much earlier hour and go home much later There is quite a number of them in your line of business too
I know he said Of course the hands are mostly Russian Hebrews but some of them have gone into manufacturing and I dont doubt but theyll make a success of it
Why they are making a success of it Mr Huntington
I felt that I was treading on risky gound that he might smell a rat at any moment but I felt also that when he heard why manufacturers of my type were able to undersell the big old firms he would find my talk too tempting to cut it short And so I rushed on I explained that the Russian cloakmanufacturer operated on a basis of much lower profits and figured down expenses to a point never dreamed of before that the GermanAmerican cloakmanufacturer was primarily a merchant not a tailor that he was compelled to leave things to his designer and a foreman whereas his Russian competitor was a tailor or cloakoperator himself and was therefore able to economize in ways that never occurred to the heads of the old houses
I see Huntington said with a queer stare at me
Besides our people content themselves with small profits I pursued We are modest
Here I plagiarized an epigram I had heard from Meyer Nodelman Our German coreligionists will spend their money before they have made it while we try to make it first
I expected Huntington to smile but he did not He was listening with sphinxlike gravity When I paused my face and my ears burning he said with some embarrassment What is your business may I ask I am in the same line Cloaks Are you With another stare
Tense with excitement I said with daredevil recklessness The trouble is that successful men like yourself are so hard to get at Mr
Huntington
What do you mean he said with a cryptic laugh
I made a clean breast of it
Perhaps he was flattered by my picture of him as an inaccessible magnate perhaps he simply appreciated the joke of the thing and the energy and tenacity I had brought to it but he let me narrate the adventure in detail
I told him the bare truth and I did so with conscious simpleheartedness straining every nerve to make a favorable impression
As he listened he repeatedly broke into laughter and when I had finished he said to his son Sounds like a detective story doesnt it
But his demeanor was still enigmatic and I anxiously wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely as an adventurer a crank or even a crook
All I ask for is an opportunity to show you my samples Mr
Huntington I said
Well he answered deliberately there can be no harm in that And after a pause Youve bagged your game so far as thats concerned
And he merrily made me an appointment for the next morning
About a month later I came across Loeb on Broadway New York
By the way he said in the course of our brief talk with a twinkle in his eve did you sell anything to Huntington Huntington St Louis Why he really is a hard man to reach I answered glumly
At that very moment my cutters were at work on a big order from Huntington largely for copies from Loebs styles I had filled a test order of his so promptly and so completely to his satisfaction and my prices were so overwhelmingly below those in Loebs bill that the St Louis buyer had wired me a duplicate for eight hundred suits
There was a buyer in Cleveland a bright forceful little man who would not let a salesman quote his price until he had made a guess at it His name was Lemmelmann He was an excellent business man and a charming fellow but he had a weakness for parading his ability to estimate the price of a garment down to a cent The salesmen naturally humored this ambition of his and every time he made a correct guess they would applaud him without stint and I would follow their example On one occasion I came to Cleveland with two especially prepared compliments in my mind
Every human being has five senses I said to the little buyer You have six Mr Lemmelmann You were born with a price sense besides the ordinary five
My but its a good one he returned jovially
Yes you have more senses than anybody else Mr
Lemmelmann I added
Youre the most sensible man in the world
Why—why you can send stuff like that to Puck or Judge and get a fivedollar bill for it How much will you charge me Will that do he asked handing me a cigar
The two compliments cemented our friendship At least I thought they did
Another buyer in Atlanta Georgia had a truly wonderful memory He seemed to remember every sample he had ever seen—goods lines trimmings price and all He was an eccentric man Sometimes he would receive a crowd of salesmen in rapid succession inspect their merchandise and hear their prices without making any purchase Later sometimes on the same day he would send out orders for the numbers that had taken his fancy
While showing him my samples one morning I essayed to express amazement at his unusual memory But in this case I mistook my man
If everybody had your marvelous memory there would be little work for bookkeepers I jested
Whereupon he darted an impatient glance at me and growled Never mind my memory You sell cloaks and suits dont you If you deal in taffy youll have to see the buyer of the candy department
CHAPTER VI
HUNTINGTON was a rising man and the other cloakbuyers were watchng him
When it became known that there was a young manufacturer named Levinsky with whom he was placing heavy orders I began to attract general attention My reputation for selling firstrate stuff for the lowest prices quoted spread Buyers would call at my rookery of a shop before I had time to seek an interview with them The appearance of my place and the crudity of my office facilities so far from militating against my progress helped to accelerate it Skeptical buyers who had doubted my ability to undersell the oldestablished houses became convinced of it when they inspected my primitivelooking establishment
The place became far too small for me I moved to much larger quarters consisting of the two uppermost floors and garret of a double tenementhouse of the old type A hall bedroom was converted into an office the first separate room I ever had for the purpose and I enjoyed the possession of it as much as I had done my first checkbook I had a lounge put in it and often at the height of the manufacturing season when I worked from daybreak far into the night and lived on sandwiches I would instead of going home for the night snatch three or four hours sleep on it The only thing that annoyed me was a faint odor of mold which filled my bedroomoffice and which kept me in mind of the Margolises old apartment
There was the pain of my second loveaffair in that odor for although I had not seen Dora nor heard of her for more than two years I still thought of her often and when I did her image still gave me pangs of yearning
There was an air of prosperity and growth about my new place but this did not interfere with the old air of skimpiness and cheapness as to running expenses and other elements that go to make up the cost of production
Benders salary had been raised substantially so much so that he had resigned his place as eveningschool teacher devoting himself exclusively to my shop and office He was provokingly childish as ever but he had learned a vast deal about the cloak business its mechanical branch as well as the commercial end of it and his usefulness had grown enormously
One morning I was hustling about my garret floor vibrating with energy and selfimportance when he came up the stairs saying There is a woman on the main floor who wants to see you She says you know her Was it Dora I descended the stairs in a flutter
I was mistaken It was Mrs Chaikin She looked haggard and more than usually frowsy The cause of her pitiable appearance was no riddle to me I knew that her husbands partner had made a mess of their business and that Chaikin had lost all his savings Does she want a loan I speculated
My first impulse was to take her to my little office but I instantly realized that it would not be wise to flaunt such a mark of my advancement before her I offered her a chair in a corner of the room in which I found her
How is Chaikin How is Maxie
Thank God Maxie is quite a boy she answered coyly Why dont you come to see him Have you forgotten him He has not forgotten you Always asking about Uncle Levinsky Some little children have a better memory than some grown people
Having delivered this thrust she swept my shop with a sepulchral glance followed by a succession of nods Then she said with a grin at once wheedling and malicious There are two more floors arent there And I see youre very busy thank God Plenty of orders hey Thank God Well when Chaikin gets something started and there is nobody to spoil it its sure to go well Isnt it
Chaikin is certainly a fine designer I replied noncommittally wondering what she was driving at
A fine designer Is that all she protested with exquisite sarcasm And who fixed up this whole business styles got the business started and gave it the name it has Only a fine designer indeed Its a good thing you admit that much at least Well but whats the use quarreling I am here as a friend not to make threats Thats not in my nature
She gave me a propitiating look and paused for my reply What do you mean Mrs Chaikin I asked with an air of complaisant perplexity
What do you mean she mocked me suavely Poor fellow he doesnt understand what a person means He has no head on his shoulders the poor thing But whats the good beating about the bush Levinsky I am here to tell you that we have decided to come back and be partners again
I did not burst into laughter I just looked her over and said in the calmest and most businesslike manner Thats impossible Mrs Chaikin The business doesnt need any partner
Doesnt need any partner But its ours this business as much as yours even more It is our sweat and our blood Why you hadnt a cent to your name when we started it and you know it And what did you have pray Did you know anything about cloaks Could you do anything without Chaikin
We wont argue about it Mrs Chaikin
Not argue about it
She was working herself into a rage but she nipped it in the bud Now look here Levinsky she said with fresh suavity I have told you I havent come here to pick a quarrel Maxie misses you very much Hes always speaking about you She tried a tone of persuasion When Chaikin and you are together again the business will go like grease You know it will Hell be the inside man and youll attend to the outside business You wont have to worry about anything around the shop and well I neednt tell you what his designs will do for the business Why the Manheimers are just begging him to become their partner this was a lie of course but I say No Chaikin Better let us stick to our own business even if it is much smaller and lets be satisfied with whatever God is pleased to give us Her protestations and pleadings proving ineffectual she burst into another fury and made an ugly scene threatening to retain the biggest lawyer in the Nited States and to commence action against me
I smiled
Look at him Hes smiling she said addressing herself to some of my men
He thinks he can swindle people and be left alone
Better go home Mrs Chaikin I said impatiently I have no time All right We shall see she snapped flouncing out Before she closed the door on herself she returned and stalking up to the chair which she had occupied a minute before she seated herself again defiantly Chase me out if you dare she said with a sneer her chin in the air I should just like to see you do it Should like to see you chase me out of my own shop Its all mine all mine she shouted her voice mounting hysterically All mine Chaikins sweat and blood Youre a swindler a thief Ill put you in Sing Sing
She went off into a swoon more or less affected and when I had brought her to herself she shed a flood of quiet tears
Take pity oh do take pity she besought patting my hand You have a Jewish heart youll take pity
There was nothing for it but to edge out of the room and to hide myself
A week later she came again this time with Maxie whom I had not seen for nearly three years and who seemed to have grown to double his former size
On this occasion she threatened to denounce me to the Cloakmakers Union for employing scab labor Finally she made a scene that caused me to whisper to Bender to telephone for a policeman Before complying however he tried persuasion
You had better go madam he said to her meekly You are excited
Partly because he was a stranger to her but mainly I think because of his American appearance and English she obeyed him at once
The next day her husband came He looked so worn and wretched and he was so ill at ease as he attempted to explain his errand that I could scarcely make out his words but I received him well and my manner was encouraging so he soon found his tongue
Dont you care to have it in the old way again he said piteously
Why I wish I could Mr Chaikin I should be very glad to have you here I mean what I say But its really impossible
I should try my best you know I know you would
After a pause he said Shell drive me into the grave She makes my life so miserable
But it was she who made you get out of our partnership I remarked sympathetically
Yes and now she blames it all on me When she heard you had moved to a larger place she fainted Couldnt you take me back
He finally went to work as a designer for one of the old firms at a smaller salary than his former employers had paid him
For the present I continued to worry along with my freelance designer but as a matter of fact Chaikins wonderful feeling for line and color was unbeknown to himself in my service The practice of pirating designs was rapidly becoming an open secret in fact Styles put out by the big houses were copied by some of their tailors who would sell the drawing for a few dollars to some of the smaller houses in plenty of time before the new cloak or suit had been placed on the market In this manner it was that I obtained almost regularly copies of Chaikins latest designs
The period of dire distress that smote the country about this time—the memorable crisis of 1893—dealt me a staggering blow but I soon recovered from it The crisis had been preceded by a series of bitter conflicts between the old manufacturers and the Cloakmakers Union in the form of lockouts strikes and criminal proceedings against the leaders of the union which had proved fatal to both The union was still in existence but it was a mere shadow of the formidable body that it had been three years before And as work was scarce labor could be had for a song as the phrase goes This enabled me to make a number of comparatively large sales
To tell the truth the decay of the union was a source of regret to me as the special talents I had developed for dodging it while it was powerful had formerly given me an advantage over a majority of my competitors which I now did not enjoy Everybody was now practically free from its control
Everybody could have all the cheap labor he wanted
Still I was one of a minority of cloakmanufacturers who contrived to bring down the cost of production to an extraordinarily low level and so I gradually obtained considerable business rallying from the shock of the panic before it was well over
CHAPTER VII
THE panic was followed by a carnival of prosperity of which I received a generous share My business was progressing with leaps and bounds
The factory and office were moved to Broadway This time it was a real office with several bookkeepers stenographers model girls and golden legends on the doors These legends were always glittering in my mind
People were loading me with flattery Everybody was telling me that I had got there and some were hinting or saying in so many words that I was a man of rare gifts of exceptional character I accepted it all as my due
Nay I regarded myself as rather underestimated They dont really understand me I would think to myself They know that I possess brains and grit and all that sort of thing but they are too commonplace to appreciate the subtlety of my thoughts and feelings
Every successful man is a Napoleon in one thing at least—in believing himself the ward of a lucky star I was no exception to this rule I came to think myself infallible
In short prosperity had turned my head
I looked upon poor people with more contempt than ever I still called them misfits in a Darwinian sense The removal of my business to Broadway was an official confirmation of my being one of the fittest and those golden inscriptions on my two office doors seemed to proclaim it solemnly
At the same time I did not seem to be successful enough I felt as though my rewards were inadequate I was now worth more than one hundred thousand dollars and the sum did not seem to be anything to rejoice over My fortune was not climbing rapidly enough I was almost tempted to stamp my foot and snarlingly urge it on Only one hundred thousand Why there were so many illiterate dunces who had not even heard of Darwin and Spencer and who were worth more
There were moments however when my success would seem something incredible That was usually when I chanced to think of some scene of my past life with special vividness Could it be possible that I was worth a hundred thousand dollars that I wore sixdollar shoes ate dollar lunches and had an army of employees at my beck and call I never recalled my unrealized dreams of a college education without experiencing a qualm of regret
One day—it was a drizzly afternoon in April—as I walked along Broadway under my umbrella I came across Jake Mindels the handsome young man who had been my companion during the period when I was preparing for City College I had not seen him for over two years but I had kept track of his career and I knew that he had recently graduated from the University Medical College and had opened a doctors office on Rivington Street His studiously dignified carriage his Prince Albert coat the way he wore his soft hat the way he held his open umbrella and above all the beard he was growing betrayed a desire to look his new part And he did look it too The nascent beard the frockcoat and the soft hat became him He was handsomer than ever and there was a new air of quiet though conscious intellectual importance about him
The sight of him as I beheld him coming toward me gave me a pang of envy
Levinsky How are you How are you he shouted flinging himself at me effusively
I hear youre practising medicine I returned And looking him over gaily I added A doctor every inch of you
He blushed
And youre a rich man I hear
Vanderbilt is richer I can assure you I should change places with you any time In my heart I remarked Yes I am worth a hundred thousand dollars while he is probably struggling to make a living but I can beat him at his own intellectual game too even if he has studied anatomy and physiology
Well you will be a Vanderbilt some day Youre only beginning to make money People say you are a great success I was so glad to hear of it
And I am glad to hear that you were glad I jested gratefully
And how are things with you
All right he answered firmly I cant complain For the time Ive been practising I am doing very well Very well indeed
He told me of a case in which one of the oldest and most successful physicians on the East Side had made a false diagnosis and where he Mindels had made the correct one and saved the patients life
The family wouldnt hear of another doctor now They would give their lives for me he said with a simper
I took him up to my factory and showed him about He was lavish in his expressions of surprise at the magnitude of my concern and when I asked him to have dinner with me that evening he seemed to be more than pleased Apart from other feelings he was probably glad to renew acquaintance with a man who could afford to pay a decent doctors bill and through whom he might get in touch with other desirable patrons
Presently he wrinkled his forehead as though he had suddenly remembered something
Oh Let me see he said Couldnt we postpone it I have a confinement this evening I expect to be called at any moment
We changed the date and he departed I was left somewhat excited by the reminiscences that the meeting had evoked in me I fell to pacing the floor of my office ruminating upon the change which the past few years had wrought in his life and in mine His boastful garrulity was something new in him Was it the struggle for existence which was forcing it upon him I wondered whether that confinement story was not a fib invented to flaunt his professional success Thereupon I gave myself credit for my knowledge of human nature Thats one of the secrets of my success I thought I complimented myself upon the possession of all sorts of talents but my keenest ambition was to be recognized as an unerring judge of men
The amusing part of it was that in 1894 for example I found that in 1893 my judgment of men and things had been immature and puerile I was convinced that now at last my insight was a thoroughly reliable instrurnent only a year later to look back upon my opinions of 1894 with contempt I was everlastingly revising my views of people including my own self
BOOK XI
MATRIMONY
CHAPTER I
ONE afternoon in January or February I was on a Lexington Avenue car going uptown At Sixtyseventh Street the car was invaded by a vivacious crowd of young girls each with a stack of books under one of her arms It was evident that they were returning home from Normal College which was on that corner Some of them preferred to stand holding on to straps so as to face and converse with their seated chums
I was watching them as they chattered laughed or whispered bubbling over with the joy of being young and with the consciousness of their budding womanhood when my attention was attracted to one of their number—a tall lanky longnecked lass of fifteen or sixteen She was hanging on to a strap directly across the car from me I could not see her face but the shape of her head and a certain jerk of it when she laughed looked strikingly familiar to me Presently she chanced to turn halfway around and I recognized her It was Lucy I had not seen her for six years She was completely changed and yet the same Not yet fully formed elongated attenuated angular ridiculously too tall for her looks and not quite so pretty as she had been at nine or ten but overflowing with color with light with blossoming life she thrilled me almost to tears I was aching to call out her name to hear myself say Lucy as I had once been wont to do but I was not sure that it would be advisable to let her father hear of my lingering interest in his family While I was thus debating with myself whether I should accost her her glance fell on me She transferred it to one of the windows and the next moment she fell to eying me furtively
She has recognized me but she wont come over to me I thought She seems to be aware of her fathers jealousy It was a painful moment
Presently her fresh youthful face brightened up She bent over to two of her girl friends and whispered something to them and then these threw glances at me After some more whispering Lucy faced about boldly and stepped over to me
I beg your pardon Arent you Mr Levinsky she asked with sweet girlish shyness
Of course I am Lucy Lucy dear how are you Quite a young lady
I was wondering she went on without answering At first I did not know
You did seem familiar to me but I could not locate your face But then all at once dont you know I said to myself Why its Mr Levinsky Oh Im so glad to see you
She was all flushed and beaming with the surprise of the meeting with consciousness of the eyes of her classmates who were watching her and with something else which seemed to say I am Lucy but not the little girl you used to play with I am a young woman
And I was wondering who that tall charming young lady was I said Lord how you have grown Lucy
Yes Im already taller than mother and father she answered
Than both together
No not as bad as all that she giggled
For children of our immigrants to outgrow their parents not only intellectually but physically as well is a common phenomenon Perhaps it is due to their being fed far better than their parents were in their childhood and youth
I asked Lucy to take a seat by my side and she did cheerfully
Maybe she does not know anything I wondered How is
Danny I asked Still fat
No not very she laughed He goes to school I have a little sister too she added blushing the least bit
I winced It was as though I had heard something revoltingly unseemly Then a thought crossed my mind and seized with an odd feeling of curiosity I asked How old is she
Oh a little less than a year Lucy replied Shes awful cute she laughed
And how is papa I inquired to turn the conversation
Hes all right thank you she answered gravely Only he lost a lot of money on account of the hard times Many of his customers were out of work
Business is picking up though
And how is Becky Are you still great friends
Why she ought to be here she replied gazing around the car
Must be in the next car
In another car I exclaimed in mock amazement Not by your side Lucy laughed We are in the same class she said
And of course the families still live in the same house She nodded affirmatively adding that they lived at One Hundred and Second Street near Madison Avenue about a block and a half from the Park
Come up some time wont you she gurgled with childish amiability yet with apparent awkwardness
I wondered whether she was aware of her fathers jealousy If she were she certainly would not invite me to the house I reflected
I made no answer to her invitation
Wont you come up she insisted
I thought She doesnt seem to know anything about it She has only heard that I had a quarrel with her mother I shook my head smiling affectionately
Why are you still angry at mother she pursued shaking her head deprecatingly as who should say Youre a bad boy
I thought Of course she doesnt know I smiled again Then I said Youre a sweet girl all the same And a big one too
Thank you Do come Will you I shook my head
Will you never come she asked playfully Never Never
I have told you youre a charming girl havent I What more do you want
The American children of the Ghetto are American not only in their language tastes and ambitions but in outward appearance as well Their bearing gestures the play of their features and something in the very expression of their Semitic faces proclaim the land of their birth All this was true of Lucy She was fascinatingly American and I told her so
Youre not simply a charming girl Youre a charming American girl I said
I wondered whether Dora had been keeping up her studies and by questioning Lucy about the books under her arm I contrived to elicit the information that her mother had read not only such works as the Vicar of Wakefield Washington Irvings Sketch Book and Lambs Shakespeare Stories which had been part of Lucys course during her first year at college but that she had also read some of the works of Cooper George Eliot Dickens Thackeray Hawthorne and all sorts of cheaper novels
Mother is a great reader Lucy said She reads more than I do Why she reads newspapers and magazines—everything she can lay her hands on Father calls her Professor
She also told me that her mother had read a good deal of poetry that she knew the Ancient Mariner and The Raven by heart
Shes always at me because I dont care for poetry as much as she does she laughed
Well youre not taller than your mother in this respect are you
Nno she assented with an appreciative giggle
She left the car on the corner of One Hundred and Second Street I was in a queer state of excitement
It flashed upon my mind that the section of Central Park in the vicinity of One Hundred and Second Street teemed with women and babycarriages and that it was but natural to suppose that Dora would be out every day wheeling her baby in that locality and reading a book perhaps I visioned myself meeting her there some afternoon and telling her of my undying love I even worked out the details of the plan but I felt that I should never carry it out
I still loved Dora but that was the Dora of six years before an image of an enshrined past She was a dear sad memory scarcely anything more and it seemed as though to disturb that sadness were sacrilege
I shall probably run up against her some day I said to myself dolefully
And an echo seemed to add You are all alone in the world
CHAPTER II
I WAS a lonely man I was pulsating with activity and with a sense of triumph I was receiving multitudes of new impressions and enjoying life in a multitude of ways with no dearth of woman and song in the program But at the bottom of my consciousness I was always lonely
There were moments when my desolation would assert itself rather violently
This happened nearly every time I returned to New York from the road As the train entered the great city my sense of homecoming would emphasize a feeling that the furnished tworoom apartment on Lexington Avenue which was waiting to receive me was not a home
Meyer Nodelman whom I often met in a Broadway restaurant at the lunch hour these days would chaff or lecture me earnestly upon my unmarried state
You dont know who youre working for he would say his sad Oriental face taking on an affectionate expression Life is short at best but when a fellow has nobody to bear his name after he is gone it is shorter still
Get married my boy Get married He took a lively interest in the growth of my business He rejoiced in it as though he ascribed my successes to the loans he had given me when I struggled for a foothold He often alluded to those favors but he was a devoted friend all the same Moreover he was a most attractive man to talk to especially when the conversation dealt with ones intimate life With all his illiteracy and crudity of language he had rare insight into the human heart and was full of subtle sympathy He was the only person in America with whom I often indulged in a hearttoheart confab He was keenly aware of my loneliness It seemed as though it disturbed him
You are not a happy man Levinsky he once said to me You feel more alone than any bachelor I ever knew Youre an orphan poor thing You have a fine business and plenty of money and all sorts of nice times but you are an orphan just the same Youre still a child You need a mother Well but whats the use Your own mother—peace upon her—cannot be brought to life until the coming of the Messiah so do the next best thing Levinsky Get married and you will have a mother—for your children It isnt the same kind but you wont feel lonesome any longer
I laughed
Laugh away Levinsky But you cant help it And the smart books you read wont help you either Youve got to get married whether you want it or not This is a bill that must be paid
I had lunch with him a day or two after my meeting with Lucy The sight of his affectionate melancholy face and the warmth of his greeting somehow made me think of the sentimental mood in which I had been left by that encounter
I do feel lonesome I said with a smile in the course of our chat
I met a girl the other day—
Did you he said expectantly
Oh she is a mere child not the kind of girl you mean Mr Nodelman I once boarded in her mothers house She was a mere child then She is still a child but she goes to college now and she is taller than her mother
When I saw her I felt old
Is that anything to be sad about Pshaw Get married and youll have a daughter of your own and when she grows up you wont be sorry Take it from me Levinsky There can be no greater pleasure than to watch your kids grow And he added in a lower tone I do advise you to get married
Perhaps I ought to I said listlessly But then it takes two to make a bargain
Oh there are lots of good girls and you can have the best piece of goods there is Oh I dont know It wouldnt be hard to find a good girl perhaps The question is whether shell be good after the honeymoon is over
You dont want a bond and mortgage to guarantee that youll be happy do you A fellow must be ready to take a chance
There is an old story of a rabbi who upon being asked by a bachelor whether he should marry said If you do you will regret it my son but then if you remain single you are sure to regret it just as much perhaps more So get married like everybody else and regret it like everybody else Nodelman now quoted that rabbi I had heard the anecdote more than once before but it seemed as though its meaning had now revealed itself to me for the first time
According to that rabbi marriage is not a pleasure but a miserable necessity I urged
Well it isnt all misery either People are fond of saying that the best marriage is a curse But its the other way around The worst marriage has some blessing in it Levinsky
Oh I dont know
Get married and you will There is plenty of pleasure in the worst of homes Take it from me Levinsky When I come home and feel that I have somebody to live for that it is not the devil I am working for then—take it from me Levinsky—I should not give one moment like that for all the other pleasures in the world put together
I thought of his wife whom his mother had repeatedly described to me as a meatball face and a virago and of his home which I had always pictured as hell His words touched me
It isnt that I dont want to take chances Mr Nodelman Its something else Were you ever in love Mr Nodelman
What Was I in love Why he demanded coloring What put it in your head to ask me such a funny question
Funny Theres more pain than fun in it Well I have loved Mr Nodelman and thats why its so hard for me to think of marriage as a cold proposition I dont think I could marry a girl I did not love
I expected an argument against lovemarriages but Nodelman had none to offer Instead he had me dilate on the bliss and the agony of loving He asked me questions and eagerly listened to my answers I told him of my own two loveaffairs particularly of my relations with Dora I omitted names and other details that might have pointed ever so remotely to Mrs
Margoliss identity Nodelman was interested intensely His interrogations were of the kind that a girl of sixteen who had not yet loved might address to a bosom friend who had How does it feel to be in doubt whether ones passion had found an echo How did I feel when our lips were joined in our first kiss How did she carry herself the next time I saw her Was she shy Did she look happy Was she afraid of her husband Was I afraid The restaurant had been nearly deserted for about an hour and we still sat smoking cigars and whispering
CHAPTER III
ONE day as Nodelman took his seat across the table from me at the restaurant he said Well Levinsky its no use youll have to get married now There will be no wriggling out of it My wife has set her mind on it
Your wife I asked in surprise
Yes I have an order to bring you up to the house and thats all there is to it Dont blame her though The fault is mine I have told her so much about you she wants to know you
To know me and to marry me off hey And yet you claim to be a friend of mine
Well its no use talking Youll have to come
I received a formal invitation written in English by Mrs Nodelman and on a Friday night in May I was in my friends house for supper as Nodelman called it or dinner as his wife would have it
The family occupied one of a small group of lingering brownstone private dwellings in a neighborhood swarming with the inmates of new tenement barracks
Glad to meechye Mrs Nodelman welcomed me Meyer should have broughchye up long ago Why did you keep Mr Levinsky away Meyer Was you afraid you might have reason to be jealous
Thats just it She hit it right I told you she was a smart girl didnt
I Levinsky
Dont be uneasy Meyer Mr Levinsky wont even look at an old woman like me Its a pretty girl hes fishin for Ainchye Mr Levinsky
She was middleaged with small features inconspicuously traced in a bulging mass of fullblooded flesh This was why her motherinlaw called her meatball face She had a hoarse voice and altogether she might have given me the impression of being drunk had there not been something pleasing in her hoarseness as well as in that droll face of hers That she was Americanborn was clear from the way she spoke her unpolished English Was Nodelman the henpecked husband that his mother advertised him to be I wondered whether the frequency with which his wife used his first name could be accepted as evidence to the contrary
They had six children a youth of nineteen named Maurice who was the image of his father and having spent two years at college was with him in the clothing business a highschool boy who had his mothers face and whose name was Sidney—an appellation very popular among our people as swell American and four smaller children the youngest being a little girl of six
What do you think of my stock Levinsky Nodelman asked Quite a lot isnt it May no evil eye strike them What do you think of the baby Come here Beatrice Recite something for uncle The command had barely left his mouth when Beatrice sprang to her feet and burst out mumbling something in a kindergarten singsong This lasted some minutes Then she courtesied shook her skirts and slipped back into her seat
She is only six and she is already more educated than her father
Nodelman said And Sidney hes studyin French at high school
Sidney talk some French to Mr Levinsky Hell understand you
Come on show Mr Levinsky you aint going to be as ignorant as
your pa
The scene was largely a stereotyped copy of the one I had witnessed upon my first call at the Margolises
Sidney scowled
Come on Sidney be a good boy Nodelman urged taking him by the sleeve
Let me alone Sidney snarled breaking away and striking the air a fierce backward blow with his elbow
What do you want of him Mrs Nodelman said to her husband frigidly
My friend desisted sheepishly
He does seem to be afraid of his American household I said to myself
After the meal when we were all in the parlor again Nodelman said to his wife winking at me Poor fellow his patience has all given out He wants to know about the girl youve got for him He has no strength any longer Cant you see it Bella Look at him Look at him Another minute and hell faint
What girl Oh I see Why there is more than one Mrs Nodelman returned confusedly I didnt mean anybody in particular There are plenty of young ladies
Thats the trouble There are plenty and no one in particular I said
Dont cry Nodelman said Just be a good boy and Mrs
Nodelman will get you a peach of a young lady Wont you
Bella
I guess so she answered with a smile
Dont you understand he proceeded to explain She first wants to know the kind of customer you are Then shell know what kind of merchandise to look for Isnt that it Bella
She made no answer
I hope Mrs Nodelman will find me a pretty decent sort of customer I put in
Youre all right she said demurely Im afraid it wont be an easy job to get a young lady to suit a customer like you
Try your best will you I said
I certainly will
She was less talkative now and certainly less at her ease than she had been before the topic was broached which impressed me rather favorably
Altogether she was far from the virago or witch her motherinlaw had described her to be As to her attitude toward her husband I subsequently came to the conclusion that it was a blend of affection and contempt
Nodelman was henpecked but not badly so
I called on them three or four times more during that spring Somehow the question of my marriage was never mentioned on these occasions and then Mrs Nodelman and the children all except Maurice went to the seashore for the summer
CHAPTER IV
YOULL examine the merchandise and if you dont like it nobody is going to make you buy it said Nodelman to me one day in January of the following winter By merchandise he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch the daughter of a wealthy furnituredealer to whom I was to be introduced at the Nodelman residence four days later She is a peach of a girl beautiful as the sun and no runt either a lovely girl Good looks arent everything Beauty is skin deep and handsome is as handsome does I paraded my English
Oh she is a good girl every way a fine housekeeper goodnatured and educated Gee how educated she is Why she has a pile of books in her room Bella says a pile that high He raised his hand above his head She is dead stuck on her Bella is
Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family the projected meeting could not take place but Nodelmans birthday was to be celebrated in March so the gathering was to serve as a matchmaking agency as well as a social function
The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening The prospect of facing a girl who offered herself as a candidate for becoming my wife put me all in a flutter It took me a long time to dress and I made my appearance at the Nodelmans rather late in the evening Mrs Nodelman who met me in the hall offered me a tempestuous welcome
Here he is Better late than never she shrieked hoarsely as I entered the hall at the head of the high stoop I was gettin uneasy Honest I was And dropping her voice Miss Kalmanovitch came on time Shes a good girl Always And she gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a coy smile into hers
Her husband appeared a minute later After greeting me warmly he whispered into my ear Nobody knows anything about it not even the young lady Only her mother does
But I soon discovered that he was mistaken My appearance produced a sensation and the telltale glances of the women from me to a large girl with black eyes who stood at the mantelpiece not only showed plainly that they knew all about it but also indicated who of the young women present was Miss Kalmanovitch
The spacious parlor was literally jammed The hostess led the way through the throng introducing me to the guests as we proceeded There were Nodelmans father and mother among them the gigantic old tailor grinning childishly by the side of his wife who looked glum
That one with the dark eves by the mantelpiece Meyer
Nodelman whispered to me eagerly
The girl pointed out was large and plump with full ivoryhued cheeks and a dimple in her fleshy chin Her black eyes were large and round That the object of my coming and of her own was no secret to her was quite evident
She was blushing to the roots of her glossy black hair and in her apparent struggle with her constraint she put her stout long arm around the waist of a girl who stood by her side against the mantelpiece
Upon the whole Miss Kalmanovitch impressed me more than favorably but a minute later when I was introduced to her and saw her double chin and shook her gently by a hand that was fat and damp with perspiration I all but shuddered I felt as though she exuded oil I was introduced to her mother a spare hatchetface little woman with bad teeth who looked me over in a most businesslike way and to her father a gray man with a goatee
Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated side by side Conscious of being the target of many eyes I was as disconcerted as I had been twelve years before when Matilda played her first practical joke upon my sidelocks My wouldbe fiancée was the first to recover her ease She asked me if I was related to a whitegoods man named Levinsky and when I said no she passed to other topics She led the conversation and I scarcely followed her At one moment for example as I looked her in the face endeavoring to listen to what she was saying about the Purim ball she had attended I remarked to myself that the name Kalmanovitch somehow seemed to go well with her face and figure and that she was too selfpossessed for a bridal candidate
Presently we heard Mrs Nodelmans hoarse voice Now Miss
Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music Wont you please
Miss Kalmanovitch
A swarthy middleaged woman with features that somewhat resembled those of the host whose cousin she was and with huge golden teeth that glistened goodnaturedly took Miss Kalmanovitch by the arm saying in a mannish voice Come on Ray Show them what you can do
My companion rose and throwing gay glances at some of the other girls she walked over to the piano and seated herself Then with some more smiles at the girls she coldbloodedly attacked the keyboard
A nauctourrn by Chopin her mother explained to me in an audible whisper across the room
Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect of showing how quickly she could get through the nocturne I am not musical in the accepted meaning of the term and in those days I was even less so than I am now perhaps but I was always fond of music and had a discriminating feeling for it At all events I knew enough to realize that my wouldbe fiancée was playing execrably But her mother her father the hostess and the swarthy woman with the golden teeth were shooting glances at me that seemed to say What do you think of that Did you ever see such fast playing and there was nothing for it but to simulate admiration
The woman with the great golden teeth Meyer Nodelmans cousin was even more strenuous in her efforts to arouse my exultation than Rays mother She was the wife of a prosperous teamster whose movingvans were seen all over the East Side Gaunt flatchested with a solemn masculine face she was known for her jolly disposition and goodnatured sarcasm There was something suggestive of Meyer Nodelman in her manner of speaking as well as in her looks She was childless and took an insatiable interest in the loveaffairs and matrimonial politics of young people Her name was Mrs
Kalch but everybody called her Auntie Yetta
When Ray finished playing Auntie Yetta led the applause for all the world like a ward heeler When the acclaim had died down she rushed at Ray pressed her ample bosom to her own flat one kissed her a sounding smack on the lips and exclaimed with a wink to me Ever see such a tasty duck of a girl
Miss Kalmanovitch was followed by a bespectacled anemic boy of thirteen who played something by Wieniavsky on the violin and then Miss Kalmanovitch obliged us with a recitation from Macbeth There were four other solos on the piano and on the violin by boys and girls children of the invited guests the violinists having brought their instruments with them Not that the concert was part of a preconceived program although it might have been taken for granted The mothers of the performers had simply seized the opportunity to display the talents of their offspring before an audience
Only one boy—a curlyheaded longnecked little pianist introduced as Bennie Saminsky—played with much feeling and taste All the rest grated on my nerves
I beguiled the time by observing the women I noticed for instance that Auntie Yetta whose fingers were a veritable jewelrystore now and again made a pretense of smoothing her grayish hair for the purpose of exhibiting her flaming rings Another elderly woman whose fingers were as heavily laden kept them prominently interlaced across her breast From time to time she would flirt her interlocked hands in feigned absentmindedness thus flashing her diamonds upon the people around her At one moment it became something like a race between her and Auntie Yetta Nodelmans cousin caught me watching it whereupon she winked to me merrily and interlaced her own begemmed fingers as much as to say What do you think of our contest and burst into a voiceless laugh
I tried to listen to the music again To add to my ordeal I had to lend an ear to the boastful chatter of the mothers or fathers on the virtuosity of Bennie Sidney Beckie or Sadie The mother of the curlyheaded pianist the illiterate wife of a baker first wore out my patience and then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical terminology which she apparently had picked up from talks with her boys pianoteacher She interspersed her unsophisticated Yiddish with English phrases like rare technique vonderful touch beeyoutiful tone or poeytic temperament She assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully At first I thought that she was prattling these words parrot fashion but I soon realized that to a considerable extent at least she used them intelligently
She had set her heart upon making the greatest pianist in the world of Bennie and by incessantly discussing him with people who were supposed to know something about music she had gradually accumulated a smattering acquaintance with the subject That she was full of it there could be no doubt Perhaps she had a native intuition for music Perhaps too it was from her that her son had inherited his feeling for the poetry of sound She certainly had imagination
Some boys play like monkeys she said in Yiddish They dont know what they are at May I know evil if they do My Bennie is not that sort of a pianist thank God He knows what he is talking about—on his piano I mean
You saw for yourself that he played with head and heart didnt you
Indeed I did I said with ardor I liked his playing very much
Yes it comes right from his heart she pursued He has a golden temperament The piano just talks under his fingers I mean what I say
People think a piano is just a row of dead pieces of bone or wood It is not No sirrah It has speech just like a human being provided you know how to get it out of the keyboard Bennie does
In a certain sense this unlettered woman was being educated by her little boy in the same manner as Dora had been and still was perhaps by Lucy
There were at least three girls in the gathering who were decidedly pretty
One of these was a graduate of Normal College She was darkeyed like Miss Kalmanovitch but slender and supple and full of life Everybody called her affectionately by her first name which was Stella At the suppertable in the diningroom I was placed beside Miss Kalmanovitch but I gave most of my attention to Stella who was seated diagonally across the table from us
I felt quite at home now
What was your favorite subject at college I questioned Stella facetiously
Thats my secret she answered
I can guess it though
Try
Dancing
Thats right she shouted amidst an outburst of laughter
Well have you learned it well I went on
Why dont you ask me for a waltz and find out for yourself
I wish I could but unfortunately they did not take up dancing at my college
Did you go to college Stella asked seriously
I dont look like one who did I suppose Well I should like to say
I did but I havent the heart to tell you a lie
Never mind Nodelman broke in Hes an educated fellar all the same
Hes awful educated Thats what makes him such a smart business man By the way Levinsky how is the merchandise
This is no place to talk shop I replied deprecatingly Especially when there are so many pretty ladies around
Thats right several of the women chimed in in chorus
Mrs Nodelman the hostess who stood in the doorway beckoned to her husband and he jumped up from the table As he passed by my seat I seized him by an arm and whispered into his ear The merchandise is too heavy I want lighter goods With this I released him and he disappeared with Mrs Nodelman
A few minutes later he came back
Be a good boy Show Ray a little more attention he whispered into my ear
Do it for my sake Will you
All right
I became aware of Mrs Kalmanovitchs fireflashing eyes and my efforts to entertain her daughter were a poor performance
The Kalmanovitch family left immediately after supper scarcely making their farewells Portentous sounds came from the hallway We could hear Mrs
Kalmanovitchs angry voice A nervous hush fell over the parlor
Auntie Yetta gave us all an eloquent wink
Theres a woman with a tongue for you she said in an undertone Pitch and sulphur When she opens her mouth people had better sound the firealarm After a pause she added Do you know why her teeth are so bad Her mouth is so full of poison it has eaten them up
Presently the younger Mrs Nodelman made her appearance Her ruddy meatball face was fairly ablaze with excitement Her husband followed with a guilty air
Whats the matter with you folks the hostess said Why ainchye doin somethin
What shall we do the bakers wife answered in Yiddish We have eaten a nice supper and we have heard music and now we are enjoying ourselves quietly like the gentlemen and the ladies we are What more do you want Come folks lets have a dance Bennie will play us a waltz Quick Bennie darling Girls get a move on you
I called the hostess aside May I ask you a question Mrs
Nodelman I said in the manner of a boy addressing his teacher
What is it she asked awkwardly
No I wont ask any questions I see you are angry at me
I aint angry at all she returned making an effort to look me straight in the face
Sure
Sure with a laugh What is it you want to ask me about
And again assuming the tone of a penitent pupil I said May I ask
Stella to dance with me
But you dont dance
Let her teach me then
Let her if she wants to I aint her mother am I
But you have no objection have you
Where do I come in On my part you can dance with every girl in the house
Oh you dont like me this evening Mrs Nodelman You are angry witn me
Else you wouldnt talk the way you do
She burst into a laugh and said Youre a hell of a fellow you are
I know I misbehaved myself but I couldnt help it Miss
Kalmanovitch is too fat you know and her hands perspire so
Shes a charmin girl she returned with a hearty laugh I wish her mother was half so good
Was she angry her mother
Was she She put all the blame on me I invited her daughter on purpose to make fun of her she says My how she carried on
Im really sorry but its a matter of taste you know
I know it is I dont blame you at all
So you and I are friends again arent we
She laughed
Well then you have no objection to my being sweet on Stella have you
You are a hell of a fellow Thats just what you are But I might as well tell you its no use trying to get Stella Shes already engaged
Is she really
Honest
Well I dont care Ill take her away from her fellow Thats all there is to it You cant do it she said gaily She is dead stuck on her intended
Theyll be married in June
I went home a lovesick man but the following evening I went to
Boston for a day and my feeling did not survive the trip
CHAPTER V
THAT journey to Boston is fixed in my memory by an incident which is one of my landmarks in the history of my financial evolution and indeed in the history of the American cloak industry It occurred in the afternoon of the Monday which I spent in that city less than two days after that birthday party at the Nodelmans I was lounging in an easychair in the lobby of my hotel when I beheld Loeb the star salesman of what had been the star firm in the cloakandsuit business I had not seen him for some time but I knew that his employers were on their last legs and that he had a hard struggle trying to make a living Nor was that firm the only one of the oldestablished cloakandsuit concerns that found itself in this state at the period in question—that is at the time of the economic crisis and the burst of good times that had succeeded it Far from filling their coffers from the golden flood of those few years they were drowned in it almost to a man The trade was now in the hands of men from the ranks of their former employees tailors or cloak operators of Russian or Galician origin some of whom were Talmudic scholars like myself It was the passing of the German Jew from the American cloak industry
We did profit by the abundance of the period Moreover there were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had proved a blessing To begin with some of our tailors being unable to obtain employment in that year had been driven to make up a garment or two and to offer it for sale in the street huckster fashion—a venture which in many instances formed a steppingstone to a cloakfactory Others of our workmen had achieved the same evolution by employing their days of enforced idleness in taking lessons in cloakdesigning and then setting up a small shop of their own
Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now springing up like mushrooms
Joe my oldtime instructor in cloakmaking was one of the latest additions to their number They worked—often assisted by their wives and children—in all sorts of capacities and at all hours They lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a nominal margin of profit There were instances when the clippings from the cuttingtable constituted all the profit the business yielded them Pitted against manufacturers of this class or against a fellow like myself were the oldestablished firms with their dignified office methods and high profitrates firms whose fortunes had been sorely tried to boot by their bitter struggle with the union
Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as usual But the smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity I could see at once that he felt nothing but hate for me
Hello GetRichQuick Levinsky he greeted me Havent seen you for an age
How are you Loeb I asked genially my heart full of mixed triumph and compassion
We had not been talking five minutes before he grew sardonic and venomous
As Division Street—a few blocks on the lower East Side—was the center of the new type of cloakmanufacturing he referred to us by the name of that street My business was on Broadway yet I was included in the term Division Street manufacturer
What is Division Street going to do next he asked Sell a fifteendollar suit for fifteen cents
I smiled
Thats a great place that is There are two big business streets in New York—Wall Street and Division He broke into a laugh at his own joke and I charitably joined in I endeavored to take his thrusts goodnaturedly and for many minutes I succeeded but at one point when he referred to us as manufacturers with a sneering implication of quotation marks over the word I flared up
You dont seem to like the Division Street manufacturers do you I said
I suppose you have a reason for it I have a reason Of course I have he retorted So has every other decent man in the business
It depends on what you call decent Every misfit claims to be more decent than the fellow who gets the business
He grew pale It almost looked as though we were coming to blows After a pause he said with an effect of holding himself in leash Business Do you call that business I call it peanuts
Well the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the oranges and the apples are shrinking and rotting The fittest survives A lot he knows about the theory of the survival of the fittest I jeered in my heart He hasnt even heard the name of Herbert Spencer Peanuts are peanuts thats all theres to it he returned
Then why are you excited How can we hurt you if we are only peanuts
He made no answer
We dont steal the trade were getting do we If the American people prefer to buy our product they probably like it
Oh chuck your big words Levinsky You fellows are killing the trade and you know it
He laughed but what I said was true The old cloakmanufacturers the German Jews were merely merchant Our people on the other hand were mostly tailors or cloak operators who had learned the mechanical part of the industry and they were introducing a thousand innovations into it perfecting revolutionizing it We brought to our work a knowledge a taste and an ardor which the men of the old firms did not possess And we were shedding our uncouthness too In proportion as we grew we adapted American business ways
Speaking in a semiamicable vein Loeb went on citing cases of what he termed cutthroat competition on our part till he worked himself into a passion and became abusive again The drift of his harangue was that smashing prices was something distasteful to the American spirit that we were only foreigners products of an inferior civilization and that we ought to know our place
This way of doing business may be all right in Russia but it wont do in this country he said I tell you it wont do
But it does do So it seems
As he continued to fume and rail at us and I sat listening with a bored air an idea flashed upon my mind and acting upon it on the spur of the moment I suddenly laid a friendly hand on his arm
Look here Loeb I said Whats the use being excited I have a scheme
Whats the matter with you selling goods for me
He was taken aback but I could see that he was going to accept it
What do you mean he asked flushing
I mean what I say I want you to come with me You will make more money than you have ever made before Youre a firstrate salesman Loeb and—well it will pay you to make the change What do you say
He contemplated the floor for a minute or two and then looking up awkwardly he said Ill think it over But youre a smart fellow Levinsky I can tell you that
We proceeded to discuss details and I received his answer—a favorable one—before we left our seats
To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that evening our pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized by a toast which we drank in the costliest champagne the hotel restaurant could furnish
It was not a year and a half after this episode that Chaikin entered my employ as designer
CHAPTER VI
I SAW other girls with a view to marriage but I was too particular as my friends the Nodelmans would have it I had two narrow escapes from breachofpromise suits
He has too much education Nodelman once said to his wife in my presence
Too much in his head dont you know You think too much Levinsky Thats whats the matter First marry and do your thinking afterward If you stopped to think before eating you would starve to death wouldnt you Well and if you keep on thinking and figuring if this girls nose is nice enough and if that girls eyes are nice enough youll die before you get married and there are no weddings among the dead you know
My matrimonial aspirations made themselves felt with fits and starts There were periods when I seemed to be completely in their grip when I was restless and as though ready to marry the first girl I met Then there would be many months during which I was utterly indifferent enjoying my freedom and putting off the question indefinitely
Year after year slid by When my thirtyninth birthday became a thing of the past and I saw myself entering upon my fortieth year without knowing who I worked for I was in something like a state of despair When I was a boy forty years had seemed to be the beginning of old age This notion I now repudiated as ridiculous for I felt as young as I had done ten fifteen or twenty years before and yet the words forty years appalled me The wish to settle down then grew into a passion in me The vague portrait of a woman in the abstract seemed never to be absent from my mind Coupled with that portrait was a similarly vague image of a window and a table set for dinner That somehow was my symbol of home Home and woman were one a complex charm joining them into an inseparable force There was the glamour of sex shelter and companionship in that charm and of something else that promised security and perpetuity to the successes that fate was pouring into my lap It whispered of a future that was to continue after I was gone
My loneliness often took on the pungence of acute physical discomfort The more I achieved the more painful was my selfpity
Nothing seemed to matter unless it was sanctified by marriage and marriage now mattered far more than love
Girls had acquired a new meaning They were not merely girls
They were matrimonial possibilities
Odd as it may appear my romantic ideals of twenty years ago now reasserted their claim upon me It was my ambition to marry into some orthodox family welltodo well connected and with an atmosphere of Talmudic education—the kind of match of which I had dreamed before my mother died with such modifications as the American environment rendered natural
There were two distinct circumstances to account for this new mood in me
In the first place my sense of approaching middle age somehow rekindled my yearning interest in the scenes of my childhood and boyhood Memories of bygone days had become ineffably dear to me I seemed to remember things of my boyhood more vividly than I did things that had happened only a year before
I was homesick for Antomir again
To revisit Abners Court or the Preachers Synagogue to speak to Reb Sender or to the bewhiskered old soldier the skeepskin tailor if they were still living was one of my daydreams
Eliakim Zunzer the famous weddingbard whose songs my mother used to sing in her dear sonorous contralto had emigrated to America several years before and I had heard of it at the time of his arrival yet I had never thought of going to see him Now however I could not rest until I looked him up It appeared that he owned a small printingshop in a basement on East Broadway so I called at his place one afternoon on the pretext of ordering some cards When I saw the poet—an aged little man with a tragic tired look on a cadaverous face—I was so unstrung that when a young man in the shop asked me something about the cards he had to repeat the question before I understood it
My mother used to sing your beautiful songs Mr Zunzer I said to the poet some minutes later my heart beating violently again
Did she Where do you come from he asked with a smile that banished the tired look but deepened the tragic sadness of his deathlike countenance
Everything bearing the name of my native place touched a tender spot in my heart It was enough for a cloakmaker to ask me for a job with the Antomir accent to be favorably recommended to one of my foremen A number of the men who received special consideration and were kept working in my shop in the slack seasons when my force was greatly reduced were fellowtownspeople of mine This had been going on for several years in fact till gradually an Antomir atmosphere had been established in my shop and something like a family spirit of which I was proud We had formed a Levinsky Antomir Benefit Society of which I was an honorary member and which was made up for the most part of my own employees
All this I confess was not without advantage to my business interests for it afforded me a low average of wages and safeguarded my shop against labor troubles The Cloakmakers Union had again come into existence and although it had no real power over the men the trade was not free from sporadic conflicts in individual shops My place however was absolutely immune from difficulties of this sort—all because of the Levinsky Antomir Benefit Society
If one of my operatives happened to have a relative in Antomir a womens tailor who wished to emigrate to America I would advance him the passage money with the understanding that he was to work off the loan in my employ
That the green one was to work for low wages was a matter of course But then in justice to myself I must add that I did my men favors in numerous cases that could in no way redound to my benefit Besides the fiscal advantages that I did derive from the Antomir spirit of my shop really were not a primary consideration with me I sincerely cherished that spirit for its own sake Moreover if my Antomir employees were willing to accept from me lower pay than they might have received in other places their average earnings were actually higher than they would have been elsewhere I gave them steady work Besides they felt perfectly at home in my shop I treated them well I was very democratic
Compared to the thoughts of home that had oppressed me during my first months in America my new visions of Antomir were like the wistful lights of a sunset as compared with the glare of midday But then sunsets produce deeper if quieter effects on the emotions than the strongest daylight
It was my new homesickness then which inclined me to an American form of the kind of marriage of which I used to dream in the days of my Talmudic studies Another motive that led me to matrimonial aspirations of this kind lay in my new ideas of respectability as a necessary accompaniment to success Marrying into a welltodo orthodox family meant respectability and solidity It implied law and order the antithesis of anarchism socialism tradeunionism strikes
I was a convinced freethinker Spencers Unknowable had irrevocably replaced my God Yet religion now appealed to me as an indispensable instrument in the great orchestra of things From what I had seen of the world or read about it in the daily press I was convinced that but few people of wealth and power had real religion in their hearts I felt sure that most of them looked upon churches or synagogues as they did upon policecourts that they valued them primarily as safeguards of law and order and correctness and this had become my attitude For the rest I felt that a vast number of the people who professed Christianity or Judaism did so merely because to declare oneself an atheist was not a prudent thing to do from a business or social point of view or that they were in doubt and chose to be on the safe side of it lest there should be a God after all while millions of other people were not interested enough even to doubt or to ask questions and were content to do as everybody did But there were some who did ask questions and did dare to declare themselves atheists I was one of these and yet I looked upon religion as a most important institution and was willing to contribute to its support
My business life had fostered the conviction in me that outside of the family the human world was as brutally selfish as the jungle and that it was wormeaten with hypocrisy into the bargain From time to time the newspapers published sensational revelations concerning some pillar of society who had turned out to be a common thief on an uncommon scale I saw that political speeches sermons and editorials had with very few exceptions no more sincerity in them than the rhetoric of an advertisement
I saw that Americans who boasted descent from the heroes of the Revolution boasted in the same breath of having spent an evening with Lord Soandso that it was their avowed ambition to acquire for their daughters the very titles which their ancestors had fought to banish from the life of their country I saw that civilization was honeycombed with what Max Nordau called conventional lies with sham ecstasy sham sympathy sham smiles sham laughter
The riot of prosperity introduced the fashion of respectable women covering their faces with powder and paint in a way that had hitherto been peculiar to women of the streets so I pictured civilization as a harlot with cheeks lips and eyelashes of artificial beauty I imagined mountains of powder and paint a deafening chorus of affected laughter a huge heart as large as a city full of falsehood and mischief
The leaders of the Jewish socialists who were also at the head of the Jewish labor movement seemed to me to be the most repulsive hypocrites of all I loathed them
I had no creed I knew of no ideals The only thing I believed in was the cold drab theory of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest This could not satisfy a heart that was hungry for enthusiasm and affection so dreams of family life became my religion Selfsacrificing devotion to ones family was the only kind of altruism and idealism I did not flout
I was worth over a million and my profits had reached enormous dimensions so I was regarded a most desirable match and matchmakers pestered me as much as I would let them but they found me a hard man to suit
There was a homesick young man in my shop a native of Antomir with whom I often chatted of our common birthplace His name was Mirmelstein He was a little fellow with a massive head and a neck that seemed to be too slender to support it I liked his face for its honest ingenuous expression but more especially because I thought his eyes had a homesick look in them He was a poor mechanic but I found him a steady job in my shipping department
He could furnish me no information about Reb Sender of whom he had never heard before he knew of the Minsker family of course and he told me that Shiphrah Matildas mother was dead that Yeffim Matildas brother had been sent to Siberia some three years before for complicity in the revolutionary movement and that Matilda herself had had a hairbreadth escape from arrest and was living in Switzerland
He wrote to Antomir and a few weeks later he brought me the sad information that Reb Sender had been dead for several years and that his wife had married again
CHAPTER VII
ONE day in November less than six months after I
had learned of Yeffim Minskers arrest and of Matildas escape as
I was making the rounds of my several departments little
Mirmelstein accosted me timidly
Yeffim Minsker and his sister are here he said with the smile of one breaking an interesting surprise
I paused flushing I feigned indifference and preoccupation but the next moment I cast off all pretense
Are they really I asked
He produced a clipping from a socialist Yiddish daily containing an advertisement of a public meeting to be held at Cooper Institute under the auspices of an organization of Russian revolutionists for the purpose of welcoming Yefflm and another man a Doctor Gorsky both of whom had recently escaped from Siberia The revolutionary movement was then at its height in Russia and the Jews were among its foremost and bravest leaders which by the way accounts for the antiJewish riots and massacres which the Government inspired and encouraged quite openly As was mentioned in an early chapter of this book the then Minister of the Interior was the same man who had been Director of Police over the whole empire at the time of the antiJewish riots which followed the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 and which started the great emigration of Jews to America From time to time some distinguished revolutionist would be sent to America for subscriptions to the cause This was the mission of Doctor Gorsky and Yeffim They were here not as immigrants but merely to raise funds for the movement at home
As for Matilda it appeared that Doctor Gorsky was her husband Whether he had married her in Russia before his arrest or in Switzerland where he and her brother had spent some time after their escape from exile Mirmelstein could not tell me Matildas name was not mentioned in the advertisement but my shippingclerk had heard of her arrival and marriage from some Antomir people
I could scarcely do anything that day I was in a fever of excitement Do I still love her I wondered
I made up my mind to attend the Cooper Institute meeting It was a bold venture for the crowd was sure to contain some socialist cloakmakers who held me in anything but esteem But then I had not had a strike in my shop for several years and it did not seem likely that they would offer me an insult Anyhow the temptation to see Matilda was too strong I had to go
She was certain to be on the platform and all I wanted was to take a look at her from the auditorium And who knows but I may have a chance to speak to her too I thought
It was a cold evening in the latter part of November I went to the meeting in my expensive fur coat although fur coats were still a rare spectacle in the streets with a secret foretaste of the impression my prosperity would make upon Matilda It was a fatal mistake
It was twenty minutes to 8 when I reached the front door of the historical meetinghall but it was already crowded to overflowing and the policemen guarding the brightly illuminated entrance tumed me away with a crowd of others I was in despair I tried again and this time apparently owing to my mink coat I was admitted Every seat in the vast underground auditorium was occupied But few people were allowed to stand in the rear of the hall and I was one of them From the chat I overheard around me I gathered that there were scores of men and women in the audience who had been in the thick of sensational conflicts in the great crusade for liberty that was then going on in Russia I questioned a man who stood beside me about Doctor Gorsky and from his answers I gained the impression that Matildas husband was considered one of the pluckiest men in the struggle At the time of his arrest he was practising medicine
Ranged on the platform on either side of the speakers desk were about a hundred chairs several of which in the two front rows were kept vacant
Presently there was a stir on the platform A group of men and women made their appearance and seated themselves on the unoccupied chairs They were greeted with passionate cheers and applause
One of them was Matilda I recognized her at once Her curly brown hair was gray at the temples and her oval little face was somewhat bloated and she was stouter than she had been twentyone years before but all this was merely like a new dress Had I met her in the street I might have merely felt that she looked familiar to me without being able to trace her As it was she was strikingly the same as I had known her though not precisely the same as I had pictured her of late years at least Some errors had stolen into my image of her and now that I saw her in the flesh I recalled her likeness of twentyone years before and she now looked precisely as she had done then She was as interesting as ever I was in such a turmoil that I scarcely knew what was happening on the platform Did I still love her or was it merely the excitement of beholding a living memory of my youth One thing was certain—the feeling of reverence and awe with which I had once been wont to view her and her parents was stirring in my heart again For the moment I did not seem to be the man who owned a big cloakfactory and was worth over a million American dollars
The chairman had been speaking for some time before I became aware of his existence As his address was in Russian and I had long since unlearned what little I had ever known of that language his words were Greek to me
Matilda was flanked by two men both with full beards one fair and the other rather dark The one of the fair complexion and beard was Yeffim although I recognized him by his resemblance to Matilda and more especially to her father rather than by his image of twentyone years ago I supposed that the man on the other side of her the one with the dark beard was her husband and I asked the man by my side about it but he did not know
Several speakers made brief addresses of welcome One of these spoke in Yiddish and one in English so I understood them They dealt with the revolution and the antiSemitic atrocities and paid glowing tributes to the newcomers They were interrupted by outburst after outburst of enthusiasm and indignation When finally Doctor Gorsky was introduced it was the man with the dark beard there was a veritable pandemonium of applause cheers and ejaculations that lasted many minutes He spoke in Russian and he seemed to be a poor speaker I searched his face for evidence of valor and strength but did not seem to find any I thought it was rather a weak face—weak and kindly and girlishlooking His beard which was long and thin did not become him I asked myself whether I was jealous of him and the question seemed so incongruous so remote He made a good impression on me The fact that this man who was possessed of indomitable courage had a weak goodnatured face interested me greatly and the fact that he had gone through much suffering made a strong appeal to my sympathies somehow his martyrdom was linked in my mind to his futility as a speaker I warmed to him
He was followed by Yeffim and the scene of wild enthusiasm was repeated
When Minsker had finished the chairman declared the meeting closed There was a rush for the platform It was quite high above the auditorium floor unless one reached it by way of the committeeroom which was a considerable distance to the right it had to be mounted not without an effort by means of the chairs in the press inclosure After some hesitation I made a dash for one of these chairs and the next minute I was within three or four feet from Matilda but with an excited crowd between us Everybody wanted to shake hands with the heroes The jam and scramble were so great that Doctor Gorsky Yeffim and Matilda had to extricate themselves and to escape into the spacious committeeroom in the rear of the platform
Some minutes later I stood by her side in that room amid a cluster of revolutionists her husband and Yeffim being each the center of another crowd in the same room
I beg your pardon I began with a sheepish smile Do you know me
Her glittering brown eyes fixed me with a curious look My name is David Levinsky I added Dovid the Talmudic student to whom you gave money with which to go to America
Of course I know you she snapped taking stock of my mink overcoat And I have heard about you too You have a lot of money havent you I see you are wearing a costly fur coat And she brutally turned to speak to somebody else
My heart stood still I wanted to say something to assure her that I was not so black as the socialists painted me I had an impulse to offer her a generous contribution to the cause but I had not the courage to open my mouth again The bystanders were eying me with glances that seemed to say The idea of a fellow like this being here I was a despicable bourgeois a capitalist of the kind whose presence at a socialist meeting was a sacrilege
I slunk out of the room feeling like a whipped cur Why she is a perfect savage I thought But then what else can you expect of a socialist
I thought of the scenes that had passed between her and myself in her mothers house and I sneered A socialist a good pure soul indeed I mused gloatingly Thats exactly like them A bunch of hypocrites thats all they are
At the same time I was nagging myself for having had so little sense as to sport my prosperity before a socialist of all the people in the world
A few days later the episode seemed to have occurred many years before It did not bother me Nor did Matilda
CHAPTER VIII
IT was an afternoon in April My chief bookkeeper one of my stenographers Bender and myself were hard at work at my Broadway factory amid a muffled turmoil of industry There were important questions of credit to dispose of and letters to answer I was taking up account after account weighing my data with the utmost care giving every detail my closest attention And all the while I was thus absorbed seemingly oblivious to everything else I was alive to the fact that it was Passover and the eve of the anniversary of my mothers death that three or four hours later I should be solemnizing her memorial day at the new Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir that while there I should sit next to Mr Kaplan a venerablelooking man to whose daughter I had recently become engaged and that after the service I was to accompany Mr Kaplan to his house and spend the evening in the bosom of his family by the side of the girl that was soon to become my wife My consciousness of all this grew keener every minute till it began to interfere with my work
I was getting fidgety Finally I broke off in the middle of a sentence
I washed myself combed my plentiful crop of dark hair carefully brushed myself and put on my spring overcoat and derby hat—both of a darkbrown hue
I shant be back until the day after tomorrow I announced to
Bender after giving him some orders
Till day after tomorrow he said with reproachful amazement
I nodded
Cant you put it off This is no time for being away he grumbled
It cant be helped
Youre not going out of town are you
What difference does it make After a pause I added It isnt on business Its a private matter
Oh he uttered with evident relief Nothing hurt his pride more than to suspect me of having business secrets from him
He was a married man now having less than a year ago wedded a sweet little girl a cousin who was as simplehearted and simpleminded as himself and to whom he had practically been engaged since boyhood His salary was one hundred and twentyfive dollars a week now I was at home in their wellordered little establishment the sunshine that filled it having given an added impulse to my matrimonial aspirations
I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue The congregation had greatly grown in prosperity and had recently moved from the ramshackle little frame building that had been its home into an impressive granite structure formerly a Presbyterian church This was my first visit to the building
Indeed I had not seen the inside of its predecessor the little old house of prayer that had borne the name of my native town years before it was abandoned In former years even some time after I had become a convinced freethinker I had visited it at least twice a yearon my two memorial days—that is on the anniversaries of the death of my parents I had not done so since I had read Spencer This time however the anniversary of my mothers death had a peculiar meaning for me Vaguely as a result of my new mood and distinctly as a result of my betrothal I was lured to the synagogue by a force against which my Spencerian agnosticism was powerless
I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated The woodwork of the stand and the bible platform the velvetandgold curtains of the Holy Ark and the fresco paintings on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy So were the ornamental electric fixtures Altogether the place reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified This seemed to accentuate the fact that the building had until recently been a Christian church The glaring electric lights and the glittering decorations struck me as something unholy Still the scattered handful of worshipers I found there and more particularly the beadle looked orthodox enough and I gradually became reconciled to the place as a house of God
The beadle was a new incumbent Better dressed and with more authority in his appearance than the man who had superintended the old place he comported well with the look of things in the new synagogue After obsequiously directing me to the pew of my prospective fatherinlaw who had not yet arrived he inserted a stout tall candle into one of the sockets of the stand and lit it It was mine It was to burn uninterruptedly for my mothers soul for the next twentyfour hours Mr
Kaplans pew was in a place of honor—that is by the east wall near the Holy Ark To see my memorial candle I had to take a few steps back I did so and as I watched its flame memories and images took possession of me that turned my present life into a dream and my Russian past into reality
According to the Talmud there is a close affinity between the human soul and light for the spirit of man is the lamp of God as Solomon puts it in his Parables Hence the custom of lighting candles or lamps for the dead And so as I gazed at that huge candle commemorating the day when my mother gave her life for me I felt as though its light was part of her spirit The gentle flutter of its flame seemed to be speaking in the sacred whisper of a graveyard
Mother dear Mother dear my heart was saying And then Thank God mother dear I own a large factory I am a rich man and I am going to be married to the daughter of a fine Jew a man of substance and Talmud And the family comes from around Antomir too Ah if you were here to escort me to the wedding canopy
The number of worshipers was slowly increasing An old woman made her appearance in the gallery reserved for her sex At last Mr Kaplan the father of my fiancée entered the synagogue—a man of sixty with a gray patriarchal beard and a general appearance that bespoke Talmudic scholarship and prosperity He was a native of a small town near Antomir where his father had been rabbi and was now a retired flour merchant having come to America in the seventies He had always been one of the pillars of the Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir In the days when I was a frequenter at the old house of prayer the social chasm between him and myself was so wide that the notion of my being engaged to a daughter of his would have seemed absurd Which by the way was one of the attractions that his house now had for me
Good holiday Mr Kaplan some of the other worshipers saluted him as he made his way toward his pew
Good holiday Good holiday he responded with dignified geniality
I could see that he was aware of my presence but carefully avoided looking at me until he should be near enough for me to greet him He was a kindly seriousminded man sincerely devout and not overbright He had his little vanities and I was willing to humor them
Good holiday Mr Kaplan I called out to him
Good holiday Good holiday David he returned amiably Here already Ahead of me Thats good Just follow the path of Judaism and everything will be all right Hows everybody I asked
All are well thank God
Hows Fanny
Now youre talking Thats the real question isnt it he chaffed me with dignity Shes well thank God
He introduced me to the cantor—a pugnosed man with a pale face and a skimpy little beard of a brownish hue
Our new cantor the celebrated Jacob Goldstein he said And this is Mr
David Levinsky my intended soninlaw An Antomir man Was a fine scholar over there and still remembers a lot of Talmud
The newly arrived synagogue tenor was really a celebrated man in the Antomir section of Russia at least His coming had been conceived as a sensational feature of the opening of the new synagogue While town cantor in Antomir he had received the highest salary ever paid there The contract that had induced him to come over to America pledged him nearly five times as much Thus the New York Sons of Antomir were not only able to parade a famous cantor before the multitude of other New York congregations but also to prove to the people at home that they were the financial superiors of the whole town of their birth So far however as the New York end of the sensation was concerned there was a goodsized bee in the honey The imported cantor was a tragic disappointment The trouble was that his New York audiences were far more critical and exacting than the people in Antomir and he was not up to their standard For one thing many of the Sons of Antomir and others who came to their synagogue to hear the new singer people who had mostly lived in poverty and ignorance at home now had a piano or a violin in the house with a son or a daughter to play it and had become frequenters of the Metropolitan Opera House or the Carnegie Music Hall for another the New York Ghetto was full of good concerts and all other sorts of musical entertainments so much so that good music had become all but part of the daily life of the Jewish tenement population for a third the audiences of the imported cantor included people who had lived in much larger European cities than Antomir in such places as Warsaw Odessa Lemberg or Vienna for example where they had heard much better cantors than Goldstein Then too life in New York had Americanized my fellowtownspeople modernized their tastes broadened them out As a consequence the methods of the man who had won the admiration of their native town seemed to them oldfashioned crude droll
Still the trustees and several others who were responsible for the coming of the pugnosed singer persisted in speaking of him as a greater tenor than Jean de Rezske and my prospective fatherinlaw was a trustee and a goodnatured man to boot so he had compassion for him
In the old country when we meet a newcomer we only say Peace to you I remarked to the cantor gaily Here we say this and something else besides We ask him how he likes America
But I have not yet seen it the cantor returned with a broad smile in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size
I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper reporters boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and asking some European celebrity how he likes America hours before he has set foot on its soil
Thats what we call hurry up Kaplan remarked
That means quick doesnt it the cantor asked with another broad smile
Youre picking up English rather fast I jested
He has not only a fine voice but a fine head too Kaplan put in
I know what all right means too the cantor laughed I thought there was servility in his laugh and I ascribed it to the lukewarm reception with which he had met I was touched We talked of Antomir and although a conversation of this kind was nothing new to me yet what he said of the streets marketplaces the bridge the synagogues and of some of the people of the town interested me inexpressibly
Presently the service was begun—not by the imported singer but by an amateur from among the worshipers the service on a Passover evening not being considered important enough to be conducted by a professional cantor of consequence
My heart was all in Antomir in the good old Antomir of synagogues and Talmud scholars and oldfashioned marriages not of college students revolutionists and Matildas
When the service was over I stepped up close to the Holy Ark and recited the Prayer for the Dead in chorus with several other men and boys As I cast a glance at my memorial candle my mother loomed saintly through its flame I beheld myself in her arms a boy of four on our way to the synagogue where I was to be taught to parrot the very words that I was now saying for her spirit
The Prayer for the Dead was at an end A good holiday A merry holiday rang on all sides as the slender crowd streamed chatteringly toward the door
Mr Kaplan the cantor and several other men clustering together lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir interspersing them with bits of law
CHAPTER IX
The Kaplans occupied a large old house on Henry Street that had been built at a period when the neighborhood was considered the best in the city While Kaplan and I were taking off our overcoats in the broad carpeted rather dimly lighted hall a darkeyed girl appeared at the head of a steep stairway
Hello Dave Youre a good boy she shouted joyously as she ran down to meet me with coquettish complacency
She had regular features and her face wore an expression of ease and selfsatisfaction Her dark eyes were large and pretty and altogether she was rather goodlooking Indeed there seemed to be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty but she was not Perhaps it was because of that selfsatisfied air of hers the air of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss Kalmanovitch but she was the betterlooking of the two I was not in love with her but she certainly was not repulsive to me
Good holiday dad Good holiday Dave she saluted us in Yiddish throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she reached us
She was born in New York and had graduated at a public grammarschool and English was the only language which she spoke like one born to speak it and yet her Yiddish greeting was precisely what it would have been had she been born and bred in Antomir
Her Good holiday dad Good holiday Dave went straight to my heart
Well Ive brought him to you havent I Are you pleased her father said with affectionate grimness in Yiddish
Oh youre a dandy dad Youre just sweet she returned in English putting up her red lips as if he were her baby And this too went to my heart
When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for slippers and before her mother came down from her bedroom where she was apparently dressing for supper Fanny slipped her arm around me and I kissed her lips and eyes
A chuckle rang out somewhere near by Standing in the doorway of the back parlor Mefistolike was Mary Fannys twelveyearold sister
Shame she said gloatingly
The nasty thing Fanny exclaimed half gaily half in anger
Youre nasty yourself returned Mary making faces at her sister
Shut up or Ill knock your head off
Stop quarreling kids I intervened Then addressing myself to
Mary Can you spell eavesdropping
Mary laughed
Never mind laughing I insisted Do you know what eavesdropping means Is it a nice thing to do Anyhow when youre as big as Fanny and you have a sweetheart wont you let him kiss you As I said this I took Fannys hand tenderly
She has sweethearts already said Fanny She is running around with three boys
I aint Mary protested pouting
Well three sweethearts means no sweetheart at all I remarked
Fanny and I went into the front parlor a vast highceiled room as large as the average fourroom flat in the modern apartmenthouse that had recently been completed on the next block It was drearily too large for the habits of the East Side of my time depressingly out of keeping with its sense of home It had lanky pinkandgold furniture and a heavy bright carpet all of which had a forbidding effect It was as though the chairs and the sofa had been placed there not for use but for storage Nor was there enough furniture to give the room an air of being inhabited the six pinkandgold pieces and the marbletopped centertable losing themselves in spaces full of gaudy desolation
Shes awful saucy said Fanny
I caught her in my arms I have not three sweethearts I have only one and thats a real one I cooed
Only one Really and truly she demanded playfully She gathered me to her plump bosom planting a deep slow sensuous kiss on my lips
I cast a sideglance to ascertain if Mary was not spying upon us
Dont be uneasy Fanny whispered She wont dare We can kiss all we want
I thought she was putting it in a rather matteroffact way but I kissed her with passion all the same
Dearest If you knew how happy I am I murmured
Are you really Oh I dont believe you she jested selfsufficiently
Youre just pretending thats all Let me kiss your sweet mouthie again
She did and then breaking away at the sound of her mothers lumbering steps she threw out her bosom with an upward jerk a trick she had which I disliked
Ten minutes later the whole family myself included were seated around a large oval table in the basement diningroom Besides the members already known to the reader there was Fannys mother a corpulent woman with a fat diabetic face and large listless eyes and Fannys brother Rubie a boy with intense features one year younger than Mary Rubie was the youngest of five children the oldest two daughters being married
Mr Kaplan was in his skullcap while I wore my darkbrown derby
Everything in this house was strictly orthodox and as oldfashioned as the American environment would permit
That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the house its place being taken by thin flat unleavened matzos and that the repast included matzo balls wine mead and other accessories of a Passover meal is a matter of course
Mr Kaplan was wrapped up in his family and on this occasion though he presided with conscious dignity he was in one of his best domestic moods talkative and affectionately facetious The children were the real masters of his house
Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not accept another matzo ball Mr Kaplan said Dont worry Malkah Your matzo balls are delicious even if your only son wont do justice to them Arent they David
They certainly are I answered What is more they have the genuine Antomir taste to them
Hear that Fanny Mr Kaplan said to my betrothed You had better learn to make matzo balls exactly like these He likes everything that smells of Antomir you know Thats all right said Malkah Fanny is a good housekeeper May I have as good a year
Its a good thing you say it her husband jested Else David might break the engagement
Let him said Fanny with a jerk of her bosom and a theatrical glance at me I really dont know how to make matzo balls and Passover is nearly over so theres no time for mamma to show me how to do it
Ill do so next year her mother said with an affectionate smile that kindled life in her diabetic eyes The two of you will then have to pass Passover with us
I accept the invitation at once I said
Provided you attend the seder too remarked Kaplan referring to the elaborate and picturesque ceremony attending the first two suppers of the great festival
I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial repasts on the first and second nights of this Passover but had been unavoidably kept away from the city Kaplan had resented it and even now as he spoke of the next years seder there was reproach in his voice
I will I will I said ardently
One mustnt do business on a seder night It isnt right
Give it to him pa Fanny cut in
I am not joking Kaplan persisted One has got to be a Jew Excuse me David for speaking like that but you re going to be as good as a son of mine and I have a right to talk to you in this way
Why of course you have I answered with filial docility
His lecture bored me but it did me good too It was sweet to hear myself called as good as a son by this man of Talmudic education who was at the same time a man of substance and of excellent family
The chicken was served My intended wife ate voraciously biting lustily and chewing with gusto The sight of it jarred on me somewhat but I overruled myself Its all right I thought Shes a healthy girl Shell make me a strong mate and shell bear me healthy children
I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her I am not in love with her and yet I am so happy I thought Oh love isnt essential to happiness Not at all Our old generation is right
Fannys reading which was only an occasional performance was confined to the cheapest stories published Even the popular novels of the day the best sellers seemed to be beyond her depth Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her oldfashioned mother whose literary attainments were restricted to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch She often interrupted me or her mother everybody except her father But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting She is expected to be a wife a mother and a housekeeper I reflected and that she will know how to be Everything else is nonsense I dont want to discuss Spencer with her do I
Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the Talmud bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness I took it up finishing the passage for him
See he said to his wife I have told you he remembers his
Talmud pretty well havent I
When a man has a good head he has a good head she returned radiantly
Rubie went to a public school but he spent three or four hours every afternoon at an oldfashioned Talmudic academy or yeshivah There were two such yeshivahs on the East Side and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in the Ghetto I had never met such boys before That an American schoolboy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me I could not take Rubies holy studies seriously As we now sat at the table I banteringly asked him about the last page he had read He answered my question and at his fathers command he ran upstairs into the back parlor where stood two huge bookcases filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of holy lore and came back with one containing the page he had named
Find it and let David see what you can do his father said
Rubie complied reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old He even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to do To complete the picture his mother watching him beamed as my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the Preachers Synagogue or at home in our wretched basement I was deeply affected
Hes all right I said
Hes a loafer just the same his father said gaily If he had as much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his schoolbooks he would really be all right What do you want of him Malkah interceded Doesnt he work hard enough as it is He hardly has an hours rest
There you have it I didnt speak respectfully enough of her only son I beg your pardon Malkah Mr Kaplan said facetiously
The wedding had been set for one of the halfholidays included in the Feast of Tabernacles about six months later Mrs Kaplan said something about her plans concerning the event Fanny objected Her mother insisted and it looked like an altercation when the head of the family called them to order
And where are you going for your honeymoon Fanny asked
Mary
Thats none of your business her sister retorted
Shes stuck up because shes going to be married Mary jeered
Shut your mouth her father growled
Do you know my idea of a honeymoon said I That is if it were
possible—if Russia didnt have that accursed government of hers
We should take a trip to Antomir Wouldnt that be lovely said
Fanny We would stop in Paris wouldnt we
Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations for the wedding I scarcely listened yet I was thrilled I gazed at Fanny trying to picture her as the mother of my first child If its a girl shell be named for mother of course I mused I reflected with mortification that my mothers name could not be left in its original form but would have to be Americanized and for the moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me
My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage was primitive enough and yet our engagement had an ennobling effect on me I was in a lofty mood
My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my own nest The vision of working for my wife and children somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense While free from any vestige of religion in the ordinary meaning of the word I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based on a sense of public duty The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir seemed to represent not a creed but unselfishness I donated generously to it Also I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side hospital of which Kaplan was a member and to other institutions The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir and a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short sketch of my life I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali before leaving Antomir to send him a ship ticket I had thought of it many times before but I had never even sought to discover his whereabouts This time however I throbbed with a firm resolution to get his address and in case he was poor to bring him over and liberally provide for his future
My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life It appealed to my imagination as a new birth like my coming to America I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss
Three or four months later however something happened that played havoc with that feeling
BOOK XII
MISS TEVKIN
CHAPTER I
ON a Saturday morning in August I took a train for Tannersville Catskill Mountains where the Kaplan family had a cottage I was to stay with them over Sunday I had been expected to be there the day before but had been detained August being part of our busiest season While in the smokingcar it came over me that from Kaplans point of view my journey was a flagrant violation of the Sabbath and that it was sure to make things awkward
Whether my riding on Saturday would actually offend his religious sensibilities or not for in America one gets used to seeing such sins committed even by the faithful it was certain to offend his sense of the respect I owed him And so to avoid a sullen reception I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the following day
The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous results
It was lunchtime when I alighted from the train amid a hubbub of gay voices Women and children were greeting their husbands and fathers who had come from the city to join them for the weekend I had never been to the mountains before nor practically ever taken a days vacation It was so full of ozone so full of healthgiving balm it was almost overpowering I was inhaling it in deep intoxicating gulps It gave me a pleasure so keen it seemed to verge on pain It was so unlike the air I had left in the sweltering city that the place seemed to belong to another planet
I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House There were several other hotels or boardinghouses in the village and all of them except one were occupied by our people the Rigi Kulm being the largest and most expensive hostelry in the neighborhood lt was crowded and I had to content myself with sleepingaccommodations in one of the nearby cottages in which the hotelkeeper hired rooms for his overflow business taking my meals in the hotel
The Rigi Kulm stood at the end of the village and my cottage was across the main country road from it Both were on high ground Viewed from the veranda of the hotel the village lay to the right and the open country—a fascinating landscape of meadowland timbered hills and a brook that lost itself in a grove—to the left The mountains rose in two ranges one in front of the hotel and one in the rear
The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up of families of cloakmanufacturers shirtmanufacturers ladieswaistmanufacturers cigarmanufacturers clothiers furriers jewelers leathergoods men realestate men physicians dentists lawyers—in most cases people who had blossomed out into nabobs in the course of the last few years The crowd was ablaze with diamonds painted cheeks and brightcolored silks It was a babel of blatant selfconsciousness a miniature of the parvenu smugness that had spread like wildfire over the country after a period of need and low spirits
In addition to families who were there for the whole season—that is from the Fourth of July to the first Monday in October—the hotel contained a considerable number of single young people of both sexes—salesmen stenographers bookkeepers librarians—who came for a fortnights vacation
These were known as twoweekers They occupied tiny rooms usually two girls or two men in a room Each of these girls had a large supply of dresses and shirtwaists of the latest style and altogether the two weeks vacation ate up in many cases the savings of months
To be sure the twoweekers of the gentle sex were not the only marriageable young women in the place They had a number of heiresses to compete with
I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries for my name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like the Rigi Kulm House Moreover several of the people I found there were my personal acquaintances One of these was Nodelmans cousin Mrs Kalch or Auntie Yetta the gaunt childless woman of the solemn countenance and the gay disposition of the huge gold teeth and the fingers heavily laden with diamonds I had not seen her for months
As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his great diningroom she rushed out to me her teeth aglitter with hospitality and made me take a seat at a table which she shared with her husband the movingvan man and two middleaged women I could see that she had not heard of my engagement and to avoid awkward interrogations concerning the whereabouts of my fiancée I omitted to announce it
I know what you have come here for she said archly You cant fool Auntie Yetta But you have come to the right place I can tell you that a larger assortment of beautiful young ladies you never saw Mr Levinsky And theyre educated too If you dont find your predestined one here youll never find her What do you say Mr Rivesman she addressed the proprietor of the hotel who stood by and whom I had known for many years
I agree with you thoroughly Mrs Kalch he answered smilingly
But Mr
Levinsky tells me he can stay only one day with us
Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place like this
Besides you just tell him that you have a lot of fine educated young ladies Mr Rivesman He is an educated gentleman Mr Levinsky is and if he knows the kind of boarders you have hell stay longer I know Mr Levinsky is an educated man Rivesman answered As for our boarders theyre all fine—superfine
So youve got to find your predestined one here she resumed turning to me again Otherwise you cant leave this place See
But suppose I have found her already—elsewhere
You had no business to Anyhow if she doesnt know enough to hold you tight and you are here to spend a weekend with other girls she does not deserve to have you
But I am not spending it with other girls
What else did you come here for And she screwed up onehalf of her face into a wink so grotesque that I could not help bursting into laughter
About an hour after lunch I sat in a rockingchair on the front porch gazing at the landscape The sky was a blue so subtle and so noble that it seemed as though I had never seen such a sky before This is just the kind of place for God to live in I mused Whereupon I decided that this was what was meant by the word heaven whereas the blue overhanging the city was a mere sky The village was full of blinding scorching sunshine yet the air was entrancingly ref reshing The veranda was almost deserted most of the women being in their rooms gossiping or dressing for the arrival of their husbands fathers sweethearts or possible sweethearts Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and goodwill The slender brook to the left of me was droning like a bee Everything was charged with peace and soothing mystery A feeling of lassitude descended upon me I was too lazy even to think but the landscape was continually forcing images on my mind A hollow in the slope of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the world like a huge spoon
Half of it was dark while the other half was full of golden light It seemed as though it was the suns favorite spot The enchanted spot I named it I tried to imagine that ovalshaped hollow at night I visioned a company of ghosts tiptoeing their way to it and stealing a nights lodging in the spoon and later at the approach of dawn behold the ghosts were fleeing to the woods near by
Rising behind that mountain was the timbered peak of another one It looked like the fur cap of a monster and I wondered what that monster was thinking of
When I gazed at the mountain directly opposite the hotel I had a feeling of disappointment I knew that it was very high that it took hours to climb it but I failed to realize it
It was seemingly quite low and commonplace Darkling at the foot of it was what looked like a moat choked with underbrush and weeds The spot was about a mile and a half from the hotel yet it seemed to be only a minutes walk from me But then a bird that was flying over that moat at the moment winging its way straight across it was apparently making no progress Was this region exempt from the laws of space and distance The bewitching azure of the sky and the divine taste of the air seemed to bear out a feeling that it was exempt from any law of nature with which I was familiar The mountainpeak directly opposite the hotel looked weird now Was it peopled with Liliputians Another bird made itself heard somewhere in the underbrush flanking the brook It was saying something in querulous accents I knew nothing of birds and the song or call of this one sounded so queer to me that I was almost frightened All of which tended to enhance the uncanny majesty of the whole landscape
Presently I heard Mrs Kalch calling to me She was coming along the veranda resplendent in a purple dress a huge diamond breastpin and huge diamond earrings
All alone All alone she exclaimed as she paused interlocking her bediamonded fingers in a posture of mock amazement All alone Arent you ashamed of yourself to sit moping out here when there are so many pretty young ladies around Come along Ill find you one or two as sweet as sugar kissing the tips of her fingers
Thank you Mrs Kalch but I like it here
Mrs Kalch Auntie Yetta you mean And the lumps of gold in her mouth glinted goodnaturedly
Very well Auntie Yetta
Thats better Wait Waitll I come back
She vanished Presently she returned and grabbing me by an arm stood me up and convoyed me halfway around the hotel to a secluded spot on the rear porch where four girls were chatting quietly
Perhaps youll find your predestined one among these she said
But I have found her already I protested with illconcealed annoyance
She took no heed of my words After introducing me to two of the girls and causing them to introduce me to the other two she said And now go for him young ladies You know who Mr Levinsky is dont you It isnt some kike Its David Levinsky the cloakmanufacturer Dont miss your chance Try to catch him
Im ready said Miss Lazar a pretty brunette in white
Shes all right declared Auntie Yetta Her tongue cuts like a knife that has just been sharpened but shes as good as gold
Am I I aint so sure about it You had better look out Mr
Levinsky the brunette in white warned me
Why that just makes it interesting I returned Danger is tempting you know How are you going to catch me—with a net or a trap
Auntie Yetta interrupted us Im off she said rising to go I can safely leave you in their hands Mr Levinsky Theyll take care of you she said with a wink as she departed
You havent answered my question I said to Miss Lazar
What was it
She has a poor memory dont you know laughed a girl in a yellow shirtwaist She was not pretty but she had winning blue eyes and her yellow waist became her Mr Levinsky wants to know if youre going to catch him with a net or with a trap
And how about yourself I demanded What sort of tools have you
Oh I dont think I have a chance with a big fish like yourself she replied
Her companions laughed
Well thats only her way of fishing said Miss Lazar She tells every fellow she has no chance with him Thats her way of getting started Youd better look out Mr Levinsky
And her way is to put on airs and look as if she could have anybody she wanted retorted the one of the blue eyes
Stop girls said a third who was also interesting If we are going to give away one anothers secrets therell be no chance for any of us
I could see that their thrusts contained more fact than fiction and more venom than gaiety but it was all laughed off and everybody seemed to be on the best of terms with everybody else I looked at this bevy of girls each attractive in her way and I became aware of the fact that I was not in the least tempted to flirt with them I am a wellbehaved sedate man now and all because I am engaged I congratulated myself There is only one woman in the world for me and that is Fanny my Fanny the girl that is going to be my wife in a few weeks from today
Directly in front of us and only a few yards off was a tenniscourt It was unoccupied at first but presently there appeared two girls with rackets and balls and they started to play One of these arrested my attention violently as it were I thought her strikingly interesting and pretty I could not help gazing at her in spite of the eyes that were watching me and she was growing on me rapidly It seemed as though absolutely everything about her made a strong appeal to me She was tall and stately with a fine pink complexion and an effective mass of chestnut hair I found that her face attested intellectual dignity and a kindly disposition I liked her white strong teeth I liked the way she closed her lips and I liked the way she opened them into a smile the way she ran to meet the ball and the way she betrayed disappointment when she missed it I still seemed to be congratulating myself upon my indifference to women other than the one who was soon to bear my name when I became conscious of a mighty interest in this girl I said to myself that she looked refined from head to foot and that her movements had a peculiar rhythm that was irresistible
Physically her cast of features was scarcely prettier than Fannys for my betrothed was really a goodlooking girl but spiritually there was a world of difference between their faces the difference between a Greek statue and one of those lay figures that one used to see in front of cigarstores
The other tennisplayer was a short girl with a long face I reflected that if she were a little taller or her face were not so long she might not be uninteresting and that by contrast with her companion she looked homelier than she actually was
Miss Lazar watched me closely
Playing tennis is one way of fishing for fellows she remarked
So the racket is really a fishingtackle in disguise is it I returned
But where are the fellows
Arent you one No
Oh these two girls go in for highbrow fellows said a young woman who had hitherto contented herself with smiling and laughing Theyre highbrow themselves
Do they use big words I asked
Well theyre well read Ill say that for them observed Miss
Lazar with a fine display of fairness
College girls
Only one of them
Which
Guess
The tall one
I thought shed be the one youd pick Youll have to guess again
What made you think Id pick her for a college girl Youll have to guess that too Well she is an educated girl all the same
She volunteered the further information that the tall girls father was a writer and as though anxious lest I should take him too seriously she hastened to add He doesnt write English though Its Jewish or Hebrew or something
Whats his name I asked
Tevkin she answered under her breath
The name sounded remotely familiar to me Had I seen it in some Yiddish paper Had I heard it somewhere The intellectual East Side was practically a foreign country to me and I was proud of the fact I knew something of its orthodox Talmudists but scarcely anything of its modern men of letters poets thinkers humorists whether they wrote in Yiddish in Hebrew in Russian or in English If I took an occasional look at the socialist Yiddish daily it was chiefly to see what was going on in the Cloakmakers Union Otherwise I regarded everything that was written for the East Side with contempt and East Side writer was synonymous with greenhorn and tramp Worse than that it was identified in my mind with socialism anarchism and tradeunionism It was something sinister absurd and uncouth
But Miss Tevkin was a beautiful girl nevertheless So I pitied her for being the daughter of an East Side writer
The tennis game did not last long Miss Tevkin and her companion soon went indoors I went out for a stroll by myself I was thinking of my journey to Tannersville the next morning The enforced loss of time chafed me Of the strong impression which the tall girl had produced on me not a trace seemed to have been left She bothered me no more than any other pretty girl I might have recently come across Young women with strikingly interesting faces and figures were not rare in New York
I had not been walking five minutes when I impatiently returned to the hotel to consult the timetables
CHAPTER II
I WAS chatting with Rivesman the lessee of the hotel across the counter that separated part of his office from the lobby As I have said I had known him for many years He had formerly been in the insurance business and he had at one time acted as my insurance broker He was a Talmudist and well versed in modern Hebrew literature to boot He advised me concerning trains to Tannersville and then we passed to the hotel business and mutual acquaintances
Presently Miss Tevkin apparently on her way from her room paused at the counter by my side to leave her key She was dressed for dinner although it was not yet half past 4 oclock and the great Saturdayevening repast for which train after train was bringing husbands and other weekenders to the mountains was usually a very late affair
The dress she now wore was a modest gown of navy blue trimmed with lace The change of attire seemed to have produced a partial change in her identity
She was interesting in a new way I thought
Going to enjoy the fresh air Rivesman asked her gallantly
Yees she answered pleasantly Its glorious outside And she vanished
Pretty girl I remarked
And a wellbred one too—in the real sense of the word
One of your twoweek guests I suppose I said with studied indifference
Yes She is a stenographer Whereupon he named a wellknown lawyer a man prominent in the affairs of the Jewish community as her employer It was an admirer of her father who got the job for her
From what followed I learned that Miss Tevkins father had once been a celebrated Hebrew poet and that he was no other than the hero of the romance of which Naphtali had told me a few months before I left my native place to go to America and that her mother was the heroine of that romance In other words her mother was the once celebrated beauty the daughter of the famous Hebrew writer long since deceased Doctor Rachaeless of Odessa
It was her father then who wrote those loveletters I exclaimed excitedly And it was about her mother that he wrote them Somebody told me on the veranda that her name was Miss Tevkin I did think the name sounded familiar but I could not locate it The discovery stirred me inordinately I was palpitating with reminiscent interest and with a novel interest in the beautiful girl who had just stood by my side
At my request Rivesman followed by myself sought her out on the front porch and introduced me to her as a great admirer of your fathers poetry
Seated beside her was a baldheaded man with a lone wisp of hair directly over his forehead whom the hotelkeeper introduced as Mr Shapiro a counselor and who by his manner of greeting me showed that he was fully aware of my financial standing
The old romance of the Hebrew poet and his present wife and more especially the fact that I had been thrilled by it in Antomir threw a halo of ineffable fascination around their beautiful daughter
So you are a daughter of the great Hebrew poet I said in English
Its awfully kind of you to speak like that she returned
Mr Levinsky is known for his literary tastes you know Shapiro put in
I wish I deserved the compliment I rejoined Unfortunately I dont I am glad I find time to read the newspapers
The newspapers are life observed Miss Tevkin and life is the source of literature or should be
Or should be Shapiro mocked her fondly Is that a dig at the popular novels And in an aside to me Miss Tevkin has no use for them you know
She smiled
Still worshiping at the shrine of Ibsen he asked her
More than ever she replied gaily
I admire your loyalty though I regret to say that I am still unable to share your taste
It isnt a matter of taste she returned It depends on what one is looking for in a play or a novel
She smiled with the air of one abstaining from a fruitless discussion
Shes a bluestocking I said to myself Women of this kind are usually doomed to be old maids And yet she drew me with a magnetic force that seemed to be beyond my power of resistance
It was evident that she enjoyed the discussion and the fact that it was merely a pretext for the lawyer to feast his eyes on her
I wondered why a baldheaded man with a lone tuft of hair did not repel her
A younger brother of Shapiros a realestate broker joined us He also was baldheaded but his baldness formed a smaller patch than the lawyers
The two brothers did most of the talking and among other things they informed Miss Tevkin and myself that they were graduates of the City College With a great display of reading and repeatedly interrupting each other they took up the cudgels for the good old school I soon discovered however that their range was limited to a small number of authors whose names they uttered with great gusto and to whom they returned again and again These were Victor Hugo Dumas Dickens Thackeray George Eliot Coleridge Edgar Poe and one or two others If the lawyer added a new name like Walter Pater to his list the realestate man would hasten to trot out De Quincey for example For the rest they would parade a whole array of writers rather than refer to any one of them in particular The more they fulminated and fumed and bullied Miss Tevkin the firmer grew my conviction that they had scarcely read the books for which they seemed to be ready to lay down their lives
Miss Tevkin however took them seriously She followed them with the air of a good girl listening to a lecture by her mother or teacher
I dont agree with you at all she would say weakly from time to time and resume listening with charming resignation
The noise made by the two brothers attracted several other boarders One of these was a slovenlylooking man of fortyfive who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent far worse than mine That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all over his face By profession he was a photographer
His name was Mendelson He took a hand in our discussion and it at once became apparent that he had read more and knew more than the baldheaded brothers He was overflowing with withering sarcasm and easily sneered them into silence
Miss Tevkin was happy But the slovenly boarder proved to be one of those people who know what they do not want rather than what they do And so he proceeded in a spirit of chivalrous banter to make game of her literary gods as well
You dont really mean to tell us that you enjoy an Ibsen play he demanded Why you are too full of life for that
But thats just what the Ibsen plays are—full of life she answered If youre bored by them its because youre probably looking for stories for action But art is something more significant than that There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the old masters
Thats exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the uptodate rabbis are always talking about—moral force moral beauty and moral clamchowder Mendelson retorted
The realestate man uttered a chuckle
Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue the photographer continued People go to see a play because they want to enjoy themselves not because they feel that their morals need darning
But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon Miss Tevkin replied It naturally follows from the life it presents Anyhow the other kind of literature is mere froth You read page after page and there doesnt seem to be any substance to it She said it plaintively as though apologizing for holding views of this kind
Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens too I ventured
I do she answered in the same doleful tone
She went on to develop her argument We did not interrupt her the two brothers the photographer and myself listening to her with admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and the music of her soft girlish voice than with what she was saying There was a congealed sneer on the photographers face as he followed her plea but it was full of the magic of her presence
Youre a silly child his countenance seemed to say But I could eat you all the same
She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen Strindberg Knut Hamsen Hauptmann and a number of others mostly names I did not recollect ever having heard before and she often used the word decadent which she pronounced in the French way and which I did not then understand Now and then she would quote some critic or some remark heard from a friend or from her father and once she dwelt on an argument of her oldest brother who seemed to be well versed in Russian literature and to have clearcut opinions on literature in general
She spoke with an evenvoiced fluency with a charming gift of language
Words came readily pleasantly from her pretty lips It was evident too that she was thoroughly familiar with the many authors whose praises she was sounding Yet I could not help feeling that she had not much to say The opinions she voiced were manifestly not her own as though she was reciting a wellmastered lesson And I was glad of it Shes merely a girl after all I thought fondly Shes the sweetest thing I ever knew and her father is the man who wrote those loveletters and her mother is the celebrated beauty with whom he was in love
Whether the views she set forth were her own or somebody elses I could see that she relished uttering them Also that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing which was certainly her own Whether she spoke from conviction or not one thing seemed indisputable the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her There was a naive sincerity in her rhetoric and her delivery and gestures had a rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her movements in the tenniscourt
Miss Lazar passed by us giving me a smiling look which seemed to say I knew you would sooner or later be in her company I felt myself blushing
Tomorrow Ill be in Tannersville and all this nonsense will be over I said to myself
The longfaced short girl with whom Miss Tevkin had played tennis emerged from the lobby door and was introduced to me as Miss Siegel As I soon gathered from a bit of pleasantry by the lawyer she was a schoolteacher
At Miss Tevkins suggestion we all went to see the crowd waiting for the last husband train
As we rose to go I made a point of asking Miss Tevkin for the name of the best Ibsen play my object being to be by her side on our walk down to the village The photographer hastened to answer my question thus occupying the place on the other side of her
We were crossing the sloping lawn Miss Tevkin on a narrow flagged walk while we were trotting along through the grass on either side of her with the other three of our group bringing up the rear Presently as we reached the main sidewalk we were held up by Auntie Yetta who was apparently returning from one of the cottages across the road
Is this the one you are after she demanded of me with a wink in the direction of Miss Tevkin And looking her over You do know a good thing when you see it Then to her Hold on to him young lady Hold on tight
Mr Levinsky is said to be worth a million you know
Shes always joking I said awkwardly as we resumed our walk
Miss Tevkin made no answer but I felt that Auntie Yettas joke had made a disagreeable impression on her I sought to efface it by a humorous sketch of Auntie Yetta and seemed to be successful
The village was astir The great husband train the last and longest of the day was due in about ten minutes Groups of women and children in gala dress were emerging from the various boardinghouses feeding the main human stream Some boarders were out to meet the train others were on their way to the postoffice for letters A sunset of pale gold hung broodingly over the mountains Miss Tevkins voice seemed to have something to do with it
Presently we reached the crowd at the station The train was late The children were getting restless At last it arrived the first of two sections with a few minutes headway between them There was a jam and a babel of voices Interminable strings of passengers travelworn begrimed their eyes searching the throng came dribbling out of the cars with tantalizing slowness Men in livery caps were chanting the names of their respective boardinghouses Passengers were shouting the pet names of their wives or children women and children were calling to their newly arrived husbands and fathers some gaily others shrieking as though the train were on fire There were a large number of handsome wellgroomed women in expensive dresses and diamonds and some of these were being kissed by puny but successfullooking men They married them for their money I said to myself An absurdlooking shirtwaistmanufacturer of my acquaintance a man with the face of a squirrel swooped down upon a large young matron of dazzling animal beauty who had come in an automobile He introduced me to her with a beaming air of triumph I can afford a machine and a beautiful wife his radiant squirrelface seemed to say He was parading the fact that this tempting female had married him in spite of his ugliness He was mutely boasting as much of his own homeliness as of her coarse beauty
Prosperity was picking the cream of the bride market for her favorite sons I thought of Lenox Avenue a great broad thoroughfare uptown that had almost suddenly begun to swarm with goodlooking and flashily gowned brides of Ghetto upstarts like a meadow bursting into bloom in spring
And how about your own case a voice retorted within me Could you get a girl like Fanny if it were not for your money Ah but Im a goodlooking chap myself and not as ignorant as most of the other fellows who have succeeded I answered inwardly Yes and I am entitled to a better girl than Fanny too And I became conscious of Miss Tevkins presence by my side
Conversation with the poets daughter was practically monopolized by the misanthropic photographer I was seized with a desire to dislodge him I was determined to break into the conversation and to try to eclipse him With a fastbeating heart I began What an array of beautiful women Present company —with a bow to Miss Tevkin and her longfaced chum— not excepted of course Far from it
The two girls smiled
Why Why Whence this sudden fit of gallantry asked the photographer his sneer and the rasping Yiddish enunciation with which he spoke English filling me with hate
Come Mr Mendelson I answered its about time you cast off your grouch Look The sky is so beautiful the mountains so majestic Cheer up old man
The realestate man burst into a laugh The two girls smiled looking me over curiously I hastened to follow up my advantage
One does get into a peculiar mood on an evening like this I pursued The air is so divine and the people are so happy Thats what we all come to the mountains for the photographer retorted
Ignoring his remark I resumed It may seem a contradiction of terms but these family reunions these shouts of welcome are so thrilling it makes one feel as if there was something pathetic in them
Pathetic the baldheaded realestate man asked in surprise
Mr Levinsky is in a pathetic mood dont you know the photographer cut in
Yes pathetic I defied him But pathos has nothing to do with grouch has it I asked addressing myself to the girls
Why no Miss Siegel replied with a perfunctory smile Still I should rather see people meet than part Its heartbreaking to watch a train move out of a station with those white handkerchiefs waving and getting smaller smaller Oh those handkerchiefs
It was practically the first remark I had heard from her It produced a stronger impression on my mind than all Miss Tevkin had said Nevertheless I felt that I should much rather listen to Miss Tevkin
Of course of course I said Leavetaking is a very touching scene to witness But still when people meet again after a considerable separation its also touching Dont you think it is
Yes I know what you mean Miss Siegel assented somewhat aloofly
People cry for joy Miss Tevkin put in noncommittally
Yes but they cry all the same There are tears I urged
I had no idea you were such a crybaby Mr Levinsky the photographer said Perhaps youll feel better when youve had dinner But I thought you said this weather made you happy
It simply means that at the bottom of our hearts we Jews are a sad people Miss Tevkin interceded There is a broad streak of tragedy in our psychology Its the result of many centuries of persecution and homelessness Gentiles take life more easily than we do My father has a beautiful poem on the theme But then the Russians are even more melancholy than we are Russian literature is full of it My oldest brother who is a great stickler for everything Russian is always speaking about it
Always referring to her papa and her brother I thought What a sweet child
Presently she and her longfaced chum were hailed by a group of young men and women and excusing themselves to us they ran over to join them I felt like a man sipping at a glass of wine when the glass is suddenly seized from his hand
Some time later I sat on a cane chair amid flowerbeds in front of the Rigi Kulm inhaling the scented evening air and gazing down the sloping side of the lawn Women and girls were returning from the postoffice many of them with letters in their hands Some of these were so impatient to know their contents that they were straining their eyes to read them in the sickly light that fell from a sparse row of electric lamps I watched their faces
In one case it was quite evident that the letter was a lovemessage and that the girl who was reading it was tremendously happy In another I wondered whether the missive had come from a son It was for Miss Tevkins return that I was watching But the dinnergong sounded before she made her appearance
CHAPTER III
DINNER at the Rigi Kulm on a Saturday evening was not merely a meal It was in addition or chiefly a great social function and a gown contest
The band was playing As each matron or girl made her appearance in the vast diningroom the female boarders already seated would look her over with feverish interest comparing her gown and diamonds with their own It was as though it were especially for this parade of dresses and finery that the band was playing As the women came trooping in arrayed for the exhibition some timid others brazenly selfconfident they seemed to be marching in time to the music like so many chorusgirls tripping before a theater audience or like a procession of modelgirls at a styledisplay in a big department store Many of the women strutted affectedly with refined mien Indeed I knew that most of them had a feeling as though wearing a hundredandfiftydollar dress was in itself culture and education
Mrs Kalch kept talking to me now aloud now in whispers She was passing judgment on the gowns and incidentally initiating me into some of the innermost details of the gown race It appeared that the women kept tab on one anothers dresses shirtwaists shoes ribbons pins earrings She pointed out two matrons who had never been seen twice in the same dress waist or skirt although they had lived in the hotel for more than five weeks Of one woman she informed me that she could afford to wear a new gown every hour in the year but that she was too big a slob to dress up and too lazy to undress even when she went to bed of another that she would owe her grocer and butcher rather than go to the country with less than ten big trunks full of duds of a third that she was repeatedly threatening to leave the hotel because its bills of fare were typewritten whereas for the money she paid she could go to a place with printed menucards
Must have been brought up on printed menucards one of the other women at our table commented with a laugh
Thats right Mrs Kalch assented appreciatively I could not say whether her father was a horsedriver or a stoker in a bathhouse but I do know that her husband kept a coalandice cellar a few years ago
Thatll do her bewhiskered husband snarled Its about time you gave your tongue a rest
Auntie Yettas golden teeth glittered goodhumoredly The next instant she called my attention to a woman who driven to despair by the superiority of her bosom friends gowns had gone to the city for a fortnight ostensibly to look for a new flat but in reality to replenish her wardrobe She had just returned on the big husband train and now her bosom friend wont be able to eat or sleep trying to guess what kind of dresses she brought back
Nor was this the only kind of gossip upon which Mrs Kalch regaled me She told me for example of some sensational discoveries made by several boarders regarding a certain mother of five children of her sister who was not a bit better and of a couple who were supposed to be man and wife but who seemed to be somebody elses man and somebody elses wife
At last Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel entered the diningroom
Something like a thrill passed through me I felt like exclaiming
At last
Thats the one I met you with isnt it Not badlooking said Mrs
Kalch
Which do you mean
Which do you mean The tall one of course the one you were so sweet on
Not the dwarf with the horseface
Theyre fine educated girls both of them I rejoined Both of them As if it was all the same to you At this she bent over and gave me a glare and a smile that brought the color to my face The tall one is certainly not badlooking but we dont call that pretty in this place
Are there many prettier ones I asked gaily
I havent counted them but I can show you some girls who shine like the sun There is one she said pointing at a girl on the other side of the aisle A regular princess Dont you think so
Shes a pretty girl all right I replied but in comparison with that tall one shes like a nice piece of cotton goods alongside of a piece of imported silk
Look at him Hes stuck on her Does she know it If she does not
Ill tell her and collect a marriagebrokers commission
I loathed myself for having talked too much
I was joking of course I tried to mend matters All girls are pretty Luckily Mrs Kalchs attention was at this point diverted by the arrival of the waiter with a huge platter laden with roast chicken which he placed in the middle of the table There ensued a silent race for the best portions
One of the other two women at the table was the first to obtain possession of the platter Taking her time about it she first made a careful examination of its contents and then attacked what she evidently considered a choice piece By way of calling my attention to the proceeding Auntie Yetta stepped on my foot under the table and gave me a knowing glance
The noise in the diningroom was unendurable It seemed as though everybody was talking at the top of his voice The musicians—a pianist and two violinists—found it difficult to make themselves heard They were pounding and sawing frantically in a vain effort to beat the bedlam of conversation and laughter It was quite touching The better to take in the effect of the turmoil I shut my eyes for a moment whereupon the noise reminded me of the Stock Exchange
The conductor who played the first violin was a fiery little fellow with a high crown of black hair He was working every muscle and nerve in his body
He played selections from Aïda the favorite opera of the Ghetto he played the popular American songs of the day he played celebrated hits of the Yiddish stage All to no purpose Finally he had recourse to what was apparently his last resort He struck up the Starspangled Banner The effect was overwhelming The few hundred diners rose like one man applauding The children and many of the adults caught up the tune joyously passionately It was an interesting scene Men and women were offering thanksgiving to the flag under which they were eating this good dinner wearing these expensive clothes There was the jingle of newlyacquired dollars in our applause But there was something else in it as well Many of those who were now paying tribute to the Stars and Stripes were listening to the tune with grave solemn mien It was as if they were saying We are not persecuted under this flag At last we have found a home Love for America blazed up in my soul I shouted to the musicians My Country and the cry spread like wildfire The musicians obeyed and we all sang the anthem from the bottom of our souls
CHAPTER IV
I WAS in the lobby chatting with the clerk across his counter and casting glances at the diningroom door Miss Tevkin had not yet finished her meal and I was watching for her to appear Presently she did toying with Miss Siegels hand
Feeling better now I asked stepping up to meet them I hope you enjoyed your dinner
Oh we were so hungry I dont think we knew what we were eating Miss Tevkin returned politely
Going to take the air on the veranda
Why—no We are going out for a walk she answered in a tone that said as clearly as words that my company was not wanted And nodding with exaggerated amiability they passed out
The blood rushed to my face as though she had slapped it I stood petrified
Its all because of Mrs Kalchs tongue confound her I thought
Tomorrow I shall be in Tannersville and this trifling incident will be forgotten But at this I became aware that I did not care to go to Tannersville and that the prospect of seeing Fanny had lost its attraction for me I went back to the counter and attempted to resume my conversation with the clerk but he was a handsome fellow which was one of his chief qualifications for the place and so I soon found myself in the midst of a bevy of girls and married women However they all seemed to know that I was a desirable match and they gradually transferred their attentions to me the girls in their own interests and the older matrons in those of their marriageable daughters Their crude amenities sickened me One middleaged woman tried to monopolize me by a confidential talk concerning the social inferiority of the Catskills
The food is good here she said in English Theres no kick comin on that score But my daughter says with her dresses she could go to any hotel in Atlantic City and shes right too I dont care what you say
I fled as soon as I could I went to look for a seat on the spacious veranda I said to myself that Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel must have had an appointment with some one else and that I had no cause for feeling slighted by them
I felt reassured but I was lonely I was yearning for some congenial company and blamed fate for having allowed Miss Tevkin to make another engagement—if she had
The veranda was crowded and almost as noisy as the diningroom had been
There was a hubbub of broken English the gibberish being mostly spoken with selfconfidence and ease Indeed many of these people had some difficulty in speaking their native tongue Bad English replete with literal translations from untranslatable Yiddish idioms had become their natural speech The younger parents however more susceptible of the influence of their children spoke purer English
It was a dark night but the sky was full of stars full of golden mystery
The mountains rose black vast disquieting A tumultuous choir of invisible katydids was reciting an interminable poem on an unpoetic subject that had something to do with Miss Tevkin The air was even richer in aroma than it had been in the morning but its breath seemed to be part of the uncanny stridulation of the katydids The windows of the dancingpavilion beyond the level part of the lawn gleamed like so many sheets of yellow fire Presently its door flew open sending a slanting shaft of light over the grass
I found a chair on the veranda but I was restless and the chatter of two women in front of me grated on my nerves I wondered where Miss Tevkin and her companion were at this minute I was saying to myself that I would never come near them again that I was going to see Fanny but I did not cease wondering where they were The two women in front of me were discussing the relative virtues and faults of little boys and little girls They agreed that a boy was a big loafer and a great source of trouble and that a little girl was more obedient and clinging It appeared that one of these two mothers had a boy and two girls and that contrary to her own wish he was her great pet although he was not the baby
I am just crazy for him she said plaintively
She boasted of his baseball record whereupon she used the slang of the game with so much authority that it became entertaining but by a curious association of ideas she turned the conversation to the subject of a family who owed the hotelkeeper their last summers board and who had been accepted this time in the hope that they would pay their old debt as well as their new bills
Two men to the right of me were complaining of the unions and the walking delegates of traveling salesmen of buyers Then they took up the subject of charity whereupon one of them enlarged on scientific philanthropy apparently for the sheer lust of hearing himself use the term
I recalled that one of the things I was booked to do in Tannersville was to attend a charity meeting of East Side business men of which Kaplan was one of the organizers Two subscriptions were to be started—one for a home for aged immigrants and one for the victims of the antiJewish riots in Russia—and I was expected to contribute sums large enough to do credit to my prospective fatherinlaw
The multitudinous jabber was suddenly interrupted by the sound of scampering feet accompanied by merry shrieks A young girl burst from the vestibule door closely followed by three young men She was about eighteen years old well fed of a ravishing strawberriesandcream complexion her lowcut evening gown leaving her plump arms and a good deal of her bust exposed One of the rockingchairs on the porch impeding her way she was seized by her pursuers apparently a willing victim and held prisoner Two of her captors gripped her bare arms while the third clutched her by the neck Thus they stood the men stroking and kneading her luscious flesh and she beaming and giggling rapturously Then one of the men gathered her to him with one arm pressing his cheek against hers
Shes my wife he jested We are married Let go boys
Ill sue you for alimony then piped the girl
Finally they released her and the next minute I saw them walking across the lawn in the direction of the dancingpavilion
The man who had talked scientific philanthropy spat in disgust
Shame he said Decent young people wouldnt behave like that in Russia would they
Indeed they wouldnt his interlocutor assented vehemently
People over there havent yet forgotten what decency is
Oh well it was only a joke said a woman
A nice joke that retorted the man who had dwelt on scientific charity
What would you have Would you want Americanborn young people to be a lot of greenhorns This is not Russia They are Americans and they are young so they want to have some fun They are just as respectable as the boys and the girls in the old country Only there is some life to them Thats all
Young people were moving along the flagged walk or crossing the lawn from various directions all converging toward the pavilion They walked singly in twos in threes and in larger groups some trudging along leisurely others proceeding at a hurried pace Some came from our hotel others from other places the strangers mostly in flocks I watched them as they sauntered or scurried along as they receded through the thickening gloom as they emerged from it into the slanting shaft of light that fell from the pavilion and as they vanished in its blazing doorway I gazed at the spectacle until it fascinated me as something weird The pavilion with its brightly illuminated windows was an immense magic lamp and the young people flocking to it so many huge moths of a supernatural species As I saw them disappear in the glare of the doorway I pictured them as being burned up I was tempted to join the unearthly procession and to be burned like the others Then discarding the image I visioned men and women of ordinary flesh and blood dancing and I was seized with a desire to see the sexes in mutual embrace But I exhorted myself that I was soon to be a married man and that it was as well to keep out of temptations way
Presently I saw Miss Tevkin crossing the lawn headed for the pavilion She was one of a bevy of girls and men I watched her get nearer and nearer to that shaft of light When she was finally swallowed up by the pavilion the lawn disappeared from my consciousness My thoughts were in the dancehall and a few minutes later I was there in the flesh
It was a vast room and it was crowded It was some time before I located Miss Tevkin The chaotic throng of dancers was a welter of color and outline so superb I thought that it seemed as though every face and figure in it were the consummation of youthful beauty However as I contemplated the individual couples in quest of the girl who filled my thoughts I met with disillusion after disillusion Then after recovering from a sense of watching a parade of uncomeliness I began to discover figures or faces or both that were decidedly charming while here and there I came upon a young woman of singular beauty The number of goodlooking women or women with expressive faces was remarkably large in fact As I scanned the crowd for the third time it seemed to me that the homely women looked cleverer than the pretty ones Many of the girls or matrons were dressed far more daringly than they would have been a year or two before Almost all of them were powdered and painted Prosperity was rapidly breaking the chains of American Puritanism rapidly Frenchifying the country and the East Side was quick to fall into line
The band was again playing with might and main The vehement little conductor was again exerting every nerve and muscle His bow which was also his baton was pouring vim and sex mystery into the dancers As I looked at him it seemed to me as though the music the thunderous clatter of feet and the hum of voices all came from the fiery rhythm of his arm
Finally I discovered Miss Tevkin She was dancing with a sallowfaced homely scholarlylooking fellow The rhythmic motion of her tall stately frame as it floated and swayed through the dazzling light brought a sob to my throat
When the waltz was over and her cavalier was taking her to a seat I caught her eye I nodded and smiled to her She returned the greeting but immediately averted her face Again I felt as if she had slapped my cheek
Was I repugnant to her I thought of my victory over the acrimonious photographer at the railroad station Had I not won her favor there And it came over me that even on that occasion she had shown me but scant cordiality Was it all because of Auntie Yettas idiotic jest She beckoned to Miss Siegel who was on the other side of the hall and presently she was joined by her and by some other young people
She danced indefatigably now with this man now with that but always of the same set I watched her Sometimes as she waltzed she talked and laughed brokenly exchanging jokes with her partner or with some other dancing couple Sometimes she looked solemnly absorbed as though dancing were a sacred function I wondered whether she was interested in any one of these fellows in particular I could see that it gave her special pleasure to waltz with that sallowfaced man but he was the best dancer in her group and so homely that I discarded the theory of her caring for him otherwise than as a waltzing partner as absurd Nor did she seem to be particularly interested in anybody else on the floor As I scrutinized the men of her set I said to myself They seem to be schoolteachers or writers or beginning physicians perhaps They probably make less than onethird of what I pay Bender Yet they freely talk and joke with her while I cannot even get near her
Miss Lazar half naked had been dancing with various partners most of all with a freckled lad of sixteen or seventeen who looked as though he were panting to kiss her She and I had exchanged smiles and pleasantry but in her seminudity she was far less prepossessing than she had been in the afternoon and I had an uncontrollable desire to announce it to her or to hurt her in some other way Finally seeing a vacant seat by my side she abruptly broke away from the freckled youth and took it
Youll have to excuse me Ben she said Im tired
Ben looked the picture of despair
Dont cry Ben Go out and take a walk or dance with some other girl
Is this your catch after many days of fishing I asked
Nope Im angling for bigger fish Hes just Ben a college boy He has fallen in love with me this evening When I dance with somebody else he gets awful jealous She laughed
Hes a manlylooking boy for all his freckles
He is But how would you like a little girl to fall in love with you I made no answer
Why dont you dance she asked
Not in my line Why
Oh I never cared to learn it I answered impatiently
Come Ill show you how Its very simple
Too old for that kind of thing Too old How old are you
Thats an indiscreet question Would you tell me your age
Indeed I would Why not she said with sportive defiance Only you wouldnt believe me
Why wouldnt I Do you look much older
Oh you cruel thing Im just twentythree years and four months today
There she said with embarrassed gaiety
A sort of birthday isnt it I congratulate you
Thank you
Youre welcome
A pause
So you wont tell me how old you are will you she resumed
What do you want to know it for Are you in the lifeinsurance business
Another pause
Look at that girl over there she said trying to make conversation
Shes showing off her slender figure She thinks she looks awful
American
You do have a sharp tongue
But you remember what Mrs Kalch said A sharp tongue but a kind heart
The band struck up a twostep
Ben was coming over to her his freckled face the image of supplication She shut her eyes and shook her head and the boy stopped short his jaw dropping as he did so
Dont be hard on the poor boy I pleaded
Thats none of your business I want you to dance with me Come on Ill teach you
I shut my eyes and shook my head precisely as she had done to
Ben
She burst into a laugh Aint you tired of being a wallflower
I love it
Do you really Or maybe you want to watch somebody
I want to watch everybody I replied coloring the least bit When you were dancing I watched you and I thought—well I wont tell you what I thought
A splash of color overspread her face
Go ahead Speak out she said with a sick smile
I took pity on her Im joking of course But I do like to watch people when they dance I said earnestly They do it in so many different ways dont you know I proceeded to point out couple after couple commenting upon their peculiar manner and the special expression of their faces One man was seemingly about to hurl his partner at somebody Another man was eying other women over the shoulder of the one with whom he danced apparently his wife One woman was clinging to her partner with all her might while her halfshut eyes and halfopened mouth seemed to say My isnt it sweet
Miss Lazar greeted my observations with bursts of merry approval Encouraged by this and full of mischief and malice I made her watch a man with tapering white sidewhiskers and watery eyes who was staring at the bare bust of a fat woman
You had better look out for his watery eyes will soon be on you
Miss Lazar lowered her head and burst into a confused giggle
Youre a holy terror she declared
I was tempted to take her out into the night and hug and kiss her and tell her that she was a nuisance but the fear of a breachofpromise suit held me in leash
I rose to go As I picked my way through the crowd I watched Miss
Tevkin who sat between Miss Siegel and one of their cavaliers
Our eyes met but she hastened to look away
She has certainly made up her mind to shun me I thought wretchedly She knows I am worth about a million and yet she does not want to have anything to do with me Must be a Socialist The idea of a typewriter girl cutting me Pooh I could get a prettier girl than she and one welleducated too if I only cared for that kind of thing in a wife Let her stick to her beggarly crowd
It all seemed so ridiculous I was baffled perplexed full of contempt and misery at once Perhaps she is engaged after all I comforted myself feeling that there was anything but comfort in the reflection
I was burning to have an explanation with her to remove any bad impression I might have made upon her
An asphalt walk in front of the pavilion and the adjoining section of the lawn were astir with boarders A tall woman of thirty of excellent figure and all but naked passed along like a flame the men frankly gloating over her flesh
Wait a moment Whats your hurry a young stallion shouted running after her hungrily
In another spot on the lawn I saw a young man in evening dress chaffing a bareshouldered girl who looked no more than fifteen
What Sweet sixteen and not yet kissed he said to her aloud Go on I dont believe it Anyhow Id like to be the fellow whos going to get you
Would you Ill tell your wife about it the little girl replied with the good humor of a woman of forty
Never mind my wife But how about the fellow who is going to marry you
Id like to see him myself I hope he aint going to be some boob
The air was redolent of grass flowers ozone and sex All this was flavored with Miss Tevkins antipathy for me
CHAPTER V
THE next morning I awoke utterly out of sorts That I was going to take the first train for Tannersville seemed to be a matter of course and yet I knew that I was not going to take that train nor any other that day I dressed myself and went out for a walk up the road some distance beyond the grove
The sun was out but it had rained all night and the sandy road was damp solid and smooth like baked clay It was half an hour before breakfasttime when I returned to my cottage across the road from the hotel
As I was about to take a chair on the tiny porch I perceived the sunlit figure of Miss Tevkin in the distance She wore a large sailor hat and I thought it greatly enhanced the effect of her tall figure She was making her way over a shaky little bridge Then reaching the road she turned into it I remained standing like one transfixed The distance gave her new fascination Every little while she would pause to look up through something that glittered in the sunshine apparently an operaglass I had never heard that operaglasses were used for observing birds but this was evidently what she was doing at this moment and the proceeding quickened my sense not only of her intellectual refinement but also of her social distinction
Presently she turned into a byway passed the grove and was lost to view
I seated myself my eye on the spot where I had seen her disappear Somebody greeted me from the hotel lawn I returned the salutation mechanically and went on gazing at that spot I knew that I was making a fool of myself but I could not help it My willpower was gone as it might from the effect of some drug
When she reappeared at last and I saw her coming back I crossed over to the hotel veranda so as to be near her when she should arrive I found several of the boarders there including the lawyer the photographer and a jewelry merchant of my acquaintance We all watched her coming At one moment as she leveled her operaglass at a bird the lawyer said Studying birds Shes a great girl for studying She is
Studying nothing the photographer jeered Its simply becoming to her
Its effective dont you know
The lawyer smiled sagely as if what Mendelson said was precisely what he himself had meant to intimate
I was inclined to think that Mendelson was right but this did not detract from the force that drew me to Miss Tevkin
When she reached the veranda the lawyer gallantly offered her a chair but she declined it pleasantly and went indoors Her high heels had left deep dearcut imprints in a small patch of damp sandy ground near the veranda
This physical trace of her person fascinated me It was a trace of stern hostility yet I could not keep my eye away from it I gazed and gazed at those footprints of hers till I seemed to be growing stupid and dizzy Am I losing my head I said to myself Am I obsessed Why I saw her yesterday for the first time and I have scarcely spoken to her What the devil is the matter with me
After breakfast we returned to the veranda The jewelrydealer and the lawyer bored me unmercifully Finally I was saved from them by the arrival of the Sunday papers but my reading was soon disturbed by the intrusions of a mother and her marriageable daughter There was no escape I had to lay down my paper and let them torture me There was a striking family resemblance between the two yet the daughter was as homely as the mother was pretty She isnt as prepossessing as her ma of course the older woman seemed to be saying to me but shes charming all the same isnt she
Miss Lazar was watching me at a respectful distance Mrs Kalch was deep in a game of pinochle in a small groundfloor room that gave out on the veranda The window was open and I could hear Mrs Kalchs voice She seemed to have been losing The little room by the way was used both as a synagogue and a gamblingroom In the mornings before breakfast it was filled with old men in prayingshawls and phylacteries while the rest of the day until late at night it was in the possession of cardplayers
I wanted to wire Bender to send a message to Fanny in my name stating that I had been unavoidably detained in the city but I lacked the energy to do so I had not even the energy to extricate myself from the attentions of the pretty mother of the homely girl
That charity meeting bothered me more than anything else One was apt to impute my absence to meanness I pictured Kaplans disappointment and I felt like going to Tannersville for his sake if for no other reason The next best thing would have been to have Bender wire my contribution to each of the two funds But I did not stir
The hotelkeeper came out to remind me of my train
Thank you I said with a smile But the weather is too confoundedly good Im too lazy to leave your place Rivesman You must have ordered this weather on purpose to detain me
I was hoping of course that my presence in this hotel would be unknown to the Kaplans for some time at least Soon however something happened which made it inevitable that they should hear of it that very evening
On Sundays the Jewish summer hotels are usually visited by committees of various philanthropic institutions who go from place to place making speeches and collecting donations One such committee appeared in the diningroom of the Rigi Kulm at the dinnerhour which on Sundays was between 1 and 3 It represented a day nursery an establishment where the children of the East Side poor are taken care of while their mothers are at work and it consisted of two men one of whom was an eloquent young rabbi
As the ecclesiastic took his stand near the piano and began his appeal my heart sank within me I had once met him at Kaplans house where he was a frequent visitor and had given him a check It goes without saying that I had to give him a contribution now and to talk to him At this I learned to my consternation that he was going to Tannersville that very afternoon
Shall I convey your regards he asked
Very kind of you I answered and I added in an undertone out of
Mrs
Kalchs hearing Please tell Mr Kaplan Im here on an important matter and that I have been detained longer than I expected
When he had gone over to the next table I said to myself I dont care
Come what may
In the evening as the crowd swarmed out of the diningroom it was greeted by a gorgeous sunset Everybody appreciated its beauty but Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel went into ecstasies over it with something of the specialist in their exclamations As for me it was the first rich sunset I had seen since I crossed the ocean and then I had scarcely known what it was The play of color and light in the sky was a revelation to me The edge of the sun a vivid red was peeping out of a gray patch of cloud that looked like a sack the sack hanging with its mouth downward and the red disk slowly emerging from it Spread directly underneath was a pool of molten gold into which the sun was seemingly about to drop As the disk continued to glide out of the bag it gradually grew into a huge fiery ball of magnificent crimson suffusing the valley with divine light At the moment when it was just going to plunge into the golden pool the pool vanished The crimson ball kept sinking until it was buried in a region of darkness When the last fiery speck of it disappeared the sky broke into an evensong of color so solemn so pensive that my wretched mood interpreted it as a visible dirge for the dead sun Rose lapsed into purple purple merged into blue the blue bordering on a field of hammered gold that was changing shape and hue all of which was eloquent of sadness It seemed as though the heavens were in an ecstasy of grief and everybody about me were about to break into tears
some of the old women gasped How nice Isnt it lovely said several girls
Isnt that glorious said Miss Tevkin Its one of the most exquisite sunsets I have seen in a long time And she referred to certain effects apparently in the work of a wellknown landscape painter which I did not understand
I discovered a note of consciousness in her rapture something like a patronizing approval of the sky by one who looked at it with a professional eye Nevertheless I felt that my poor soul was cringing before her
An epigram occurred to me something about the discrepancy between the spiritual quality of the sunset and the aftersupper satisfaction of the onlookers I essayed to express it but was so embarrassed that I made a muddle of my English Miss Tevkin took no notice of the remark
The sunset was transformed into a thousand lumps of pearl here and there edged with flame In some places the pearl thinned away dissolving into the color of the sky while the outline of the lump remained—a map of glowing tracery on a ground of the subtlest blue Drifts of gold were gleaming blazing going out A vast heap of silver caught fire The outlined map disappeared its place being taken by a raised one with continents islands mountains and seas of ravishing azure
What was the power behind this sublime spectacle Where did it come from What did it all mean I visioned a chorus of angels My heart was full of God full of that stately girl full of misery
If I only got a chance to have a decent talk with her I said to myself again and again
CHAPTER VI
IT was Monday afternoon The weekend boarders and many others had left and I was still idling my precious time away on the big veranda listening to the gossip of women who bored me and trying to keep track of a girl who shunned me My establishment in New York was feverishly busy and my presence was urgently needed there It was more than probable that Bender had wired to Tannersville to call me home The situation was extremely awkward
Moreover I was beginning to feel uneasy about certain payments that required my personal attendance
It was a quiet pleasant afternoon The boarders were scattered over the various parts of the hotel and its surroundings Twentyfour of them forming two coach parties had gone to see some celebrated Catskill views one to the Old Mountain House and the other to East Windham Some were in the village Miss Tevkin wearing her immense straw hat and with her operaglass in her hand was looking at birds in the vicinity of the hotel
Thus rambling about leisurely she sauntered over to the main road near the grove A few minutes later she turned into the same path where I had watched her disappear on the morning of the day before And once more I saw her vanish there
I went out for a walk in the opposite direction Soon however I turned back strolling with studied aimiessness toward that spot
What was my purpose At first I did not know but by little and little as I moved along an idea took shape in my brain If I met her alone I might force her to listen to me and let her see the stuff I was made of I lacked courage however While I was priming myself for the coup I wished that it would be postponed I dawdled There were swarms of strange insects on the road creatures I had never seen before At first I thought they were grasshoppers but they were gray and had wings Every now and then I would pause to watch them leap or were they flying and drop to the ground again becoming part of the dusty road I followed them with genuine interest yet all the time I kept working on the speech that I was going to deliver to Miss Tevkin
I was lingering at a spot a few yards from the grove on the opposite side of the main road when suddenly twilight fell over half of the valley I raised my eyes Behold an inky cloud was crawling over the mountains growing in size as it advanced A flash of lightning snapped across the heavens It was as though the sky screened a world of dazzling glory into which a glimpse had now been offered by a momentary crack in the screen The flash was followed by a devout peal of thunder as if a giant whose abode was in those dark clouds broke into a murmur of glorification at sight of the splendors above the sky The trees shuddered awestricken I went under cover A farmer was chasing a cow As my eyes turned toward the grove they fell on Miss Tevkin who was standing at the farther end of it under its leafy roof facing the main road My heart beat fast I dared not stir
A shower broke loose a great torrential downpour It came in sheets with an impetuous though genial clatter It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an hours time it would reach the tops of the trees I thought of Noahs flood I could almost see his dove winging her way over the waters The storm had been in progress but seven or eight minutes when it came to an end The sky broke into a smile again as if it had all been a joke
Miss Tevkin left the shelter of the trees and set out in the direction of the hotel I do not know whether she was aware of my proximity
It was clearing beautifully when a new cloud gathered This time a great stern force violent vengeful came into play A lash of fire smote the firmament with frantic suddenness shattering it into a myriad of blinding sparks yet leaving it uninjured There was a pause and then came a ferocious crash The universe was falling to pieces Then somebody seemed to be tearing an inner heaven of metal as one tears a sheet of linen This released a torrent that descended with the roar of Niagara as though the metal vault that had just been rent asunder had been its prison Miss Tevkin ran back to cover The torrent slackened settling down to a steady rain spirited zealous amicable again
In a turmoil of agitation I crossed over to her Instead however of beginning at the beginning of my wellprepared little speech I blurted out something else
You cant run away from me now I said with timid flippancy
Please leave me alone she besought turning away
I was literally stunned Instead of trying to say what I had in my mind and to force her to listen I slunk away in the rain like a beaten dog
The shock seemed to have a sobering effect on me I suddenly realized the imbecility of the part I had been playing even the humor of it The first thing I did upon reaching the hotel was to ask the clerk about the next train—not to Tannersville but direct to New York Going to see Fanny was out of the question now
There was a late train connecting with a Hudson River boat and I took it
CHAPTER VII
WHEN I got home and my business reasserted its multitudinous demands on my attention the Catskill incident seemed to be fading into the character of a passing summerresort episode but I was mistaken the pang it left in my heart persisted
A fortnight after my return to the city I forced myself to take a trip to Tannersville Fanny came to meet me at the train As we kissed it was borne in upon me that I was irretrievably estranged from her I tried to play my part with poor success
Are you worried Dave Whats the matter with you Fanny demanded again and again
Her Whats the matter with you jarred on me
I offered her sundry excuses but I did not even take pains to make them ring true
Finally she had a cry and I kissed her tears away While doing so I worked myself into a mild fit of love but my lips had scarcely released hers when it was again clear to me that she was not going to be my wife
Our engagement was broken shortly after the family came back to the city
That burden lifted it seemed as though the memory of my unfortunate acquaintance with Miss Tevkin had suddenly grown in clarity and painful acuteness
Our rush season had passed but we were busy preparing for our removal to new quarters on Fifth Avenue near Twentythird Street That locality had already become the center of the cloakandsuit trade being built up with new skyscrapers full of uptodate cloakfactories dressfactories and ladieswaistfactories The sight of the celebrated Avenue swarming with Jewish mechanics out for their lunch hour or going home after a days work was already a daily spectacle
The new aspect of that section of the proud thoroughfare marked the advent of the Russian Jew as the head of one of the largest industries in the United States Also it meant that as master of that industry he had made good for in his hands it had increased a hundredfold garments that had formerly reached only the few having been placed within the reach of the masses Foreigners ourselves and mostly unable to speak English we had Americanized the system of providing clothes for the American woman of moderate or humble means The ingenuity and unyielding tenacity of our managers foremen and operatives had introduced a thousand and one devices for making by machine garments that used to be considered possible only as the product of handwork This—added to a vastly increased division of labor the invention at our instance of all sorts of machinery for the manufacture of trimmings and the enormous scale upon which production was carried on by us—had the effect of cheapening the better class of garments prodigiously We had done away with prohibitive prices and greatly improved the popular taste Indeed the Russian Jew had made the average American girl a tailormade girl
When I learned the trade a cloak made of the cheapest satinette cost eighteen dollars Today nobody would wear it One can now buy a whole suit made of allwool material and silklined for fifteen dollars
What I have said of cloaks and suits applies also to skirts and dresses the production of which is a branch of our trade It was the Russian Jew who had introduced the factorymade gown constantly perfecting it and reducing the cost of its production The readymade silk dress which the American woman of small means now buys for a few dollars is of the very latest style and as tasteful in its lines color scheme and trimming as a highclass designer can make it A tendollar gown is copied from a hundreddollar model
Whereupon our gifted dressdesigners are indefatigably at work on the problem of providing a good fit for almost any figure with as little alteration as possible and the results achieved in this direction are truly phenomenal Nor is it mere apish copying We make it our business to know how the American woman wants to look what sort of lines she would like her figure to have Many a time when I saw a welldressed American woman in the street I followed her for blocks scanning the makeup of her cloak jacket or suit I never wearied of studying the trend of the American womans taste The subject had become a veritable idée fixé with me
The average American woman is the bestdressed average woman in the world and the Russian Jew has had a good deal to do with making her one
My Fifth Avenue establishment occupied four vast floors the rent being thirtyeight thousand dollars a year The office floor which was elaborately furnished had an immense waitingroom with gold letters on doors of dull glass bearing the legends General Offices Showrooms Private Offices Salesmen Please show samples of merchandise between 9 and 12 AM and Information The Private Office door led to a secluded little kingdom with the inscription David Levinsky on one of its several doors another door leading from my private office to the showrooms
I employed a large staff of trained bookkeepers stenographers clerks and cloak models These models were all American girls of AngloSaxon origin since a young woman of other stock is not likely to be built on American lines—with the exception of Scandinavian and Irish girls who have the American figure But the figure alone was not enough I thought In selecting my modelgirls I preferred a goodlooking face and good manners and if possible good grammar Experience had taught me that refinement in a model was helpful in making a sale even in the case of the least refined of customers Indeed often it is even more effectual than a tempting complexion
My new place was the talk of the trade Friends came to look it over I received numerous letters of congratulation from mill men bankers retail merchants buyers private friends My range of acquaintance was very wide
In hundreds of American cities and towns there were business people with whom my firm was in correspondence or whom I knew personally who called me Dave and whom I called Jim Jack or Ned So many of these people having received my circular describing my new place sent their felicitations Some of these letters were inspired by genuine admiration for my enterprise and energy All of them had genuine admiration for my success Success Success Success It was the almighty goddess of the hour Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy splendors Newspapers magazines and public speeches were full of her glory and he who found favor in her eyes found favor in the eyes of man
Nodelman scarcely ever left my place during the first three days He would show visitors over the four floors with a charming pride like that of a mother Among the things he exhibited was the stubbook of my first check account a photograph of the rickety house where I had had my first shop and letters of congratulation from some wellknown financiers Bender with a big shining bald disk on his head slender and spruce as ever was fussing around with the gruff air of an unappreciated genius while Loeb also baldheaded but fat and beaming was telling everybody about the scraps he and I used to have on the road when he was a star drummer and I a struggling beginner
One of the men who came to congratulate me at my magnificent new place on Fifth Avenue was the kindly American commission merchant who had been the first to grant me credit when I was badly in need of it As I took him over my immense factory splendid showrooms and offices we recalled the days when it took a man of special generosity to treat a beginning manufacturer of my type as he had treated me That was the time when woolenmills would even refuse to bother with a check of a Russian Jew he had to bring cash
In the rôle of manufacturer he was regarded as a joke By hard work perseverance thrift and ingenuity however we had completely changed all that By the time I moved to the avenue our beginners could get any amount of credit The American merchants dealing in raw material had gradually realized our energy ability and responsibility—realized that we were a good risk while we on our part had assimilated the ways of the advanced American business man
Another man who came to see my new establishment was Eaton the Philadelphia buyer who had given me my first lesson in table manners He had a small but wellestablished business of his own now and it was with my financial aid that he had founded it Our friendship had never flagged Sometimes I go to spend a day or two in his cozy little house in North Philadelphia where I feel as much at home as I do in Benders or Nodelmans house
I assigned one of my office men to the special duty of looking up and inviting Mr Even the kindly old man who had bought me my first American suit of clothes and paid for my first American bath He came back with the report that Mr Even had been dead for over four years The news was a genuine shock to me It was as though it had come from my birthplace and concerned the death of a halfforgotten relative It stirred a swarm of memories but of course impressions and moods of this kind do not last long I received requests for donations from all sorts of East Side institutions and I responded liberally Mindels the handsome doctor made me contribute twentyfive hundred dollars to a prospective hospital in which he expected to be one of the leading spirits
There was dining and wining I was being toasted complimented blessed
One of these dinners was given in my honor by my office employees salesmen designers and foremen Bender who presided told in an elaborate and highflown oration of his experiences as my schoolteacher of our walks after school hours and of our chance meeting a few years later
Loeb made a roughandready speech the gist of which was a joke on the bottle of milk which I had spilled while in the employ of Manheimer Brothers and which had led to my becoming a manufacturer His concluding words were Theres at least one saying that has come true I mean the saying Theres no use crying over spilled milk Mr Levinsky you certainly have no reason to cry over the milk you spilled at Manheimers have you
I had heard the witticism from him more than once before So had some of the other men present Nevertheless he now delivered it with gusto and it was received with a hearty roar of merriment in which his own laughter was the loudest
Among the people who came to rejoice in my success were some whose appearance was an amusing surprise to me One of these was Octavius the violinist who had had nothing but contempt for me in the days when to go twentyfour hours without food was a usual experience with me He had scarcely changed He entered my office with bohemian selfimportance
Glad to see you Levinsky I was glad to hear of your rise in the world he said somewhat pompously I cant complain either though However our fields are so different
The implication was that while I had succeeded as a prosaic pitiable cloakmanufacturer he had conquered the world by the magic of his violin and compositions He never referred to olden times Instead he boasted of his successes present and future The upshot of the interview was that I sent a check to the treasurer of the free conservatory of which Octavius was one of the founders
I was elated and happy but there was a fly in the ointment of my happiness
The question Who are you living for reverberated through the four vast floors of my factory and the image of Miss Tevkin visited me again and again marring my festive mood My sense of triumph often clashed with a feeling of selfpity and yearning The rebuff I had received at her hands in the afternoon of that storm lay like a mosquito in my soul
BOOK XIII
AT HER FATHERS HOUSE
CHAPTER I
I MADE it my business to visit a wellknown Hebrew bookstore on Canal Street I asked for Tevkins works It appeared that before he emigrated to America he had published three small volumes of verse and prose that they had once aroused much interest but that they were now practically out of print I tried two other stores with the same result I was referred to the Astor Library whose Hebrew department was becoming one of the richest in the world Sitting down in a public library to read a book seemed to be an undignified proceeding for a manufacturer to engage in but my curiosity was beyond considerations of this sort Whenever I thought of Miss Tevkin I beheld the image of those three books—the only things related to her with which I was able to come in contact
Finally on a Saturday afternoon I found myself at one of the green tables of Astor Library I was reading poetry written in the holy tongue a language I had not used for more than eighteen years
Two of Tevkins three little volumes were made up of poetry while the third consisted of brief essays prose poems meditations and epigrams I came across a meditation entitled My Children and took it up eagerly It contained but three sentences My children love me yet my heart is hungry They are mine yet they are strangers I am homesick for them even when I clasp them to my bosom
The next meditation on the same page had the word Poetry for its headline
The children of Israel have been pent up in cities it ran The stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to them But then there is more beauty in a heaven visioned by a congregation of worshipers than in the bluest heaven sung by the minstrel of landscapes They are not worshipers They are poets It is not God they are speaking to It is a sublime image It is not their Creator It is their poetic creation
Several of the poems were dedicated to Doctor Rachaeles and of these one of two stanzas seemed to contain a timid allusion to Tevkins love for his daughter Here it is in prosaic English Saith Koheleth the son of David All the rivers run into the sea yet the sea is not full Ah the rivers are flowing and flowing yet they are full as ever And my lips are speaking and speaking yet my heart is full as ever
Behold The brook is murmuring and murmuring but I know not of what My heart is yearning and yearning and I know not of what I cherish the murmur of the brook I cherish the pang of my lonely heart
The following lines which were also dedicated to Doctor Rachaeles and which were entitled Night betray a similar mood perhaps without distinctly referring to the poets yearnings
Hush the night is speaking Each twinkle of a star is a word from the world beyond It is the language of men who were once here but are no more
A thousand generations of departed souls are speaking to us in words of twinkling stars I seem to be one of them I hear my own ghost whispering to me Alas it says Alas
The three volumes were full of Biblical quaintness and my estrangement from the language only added to the bizarre effect of its terse grammatical construction I read a number of the poems and several of the things in the prose volume His Hebrew is truly marvelous and much of the strength and charm of his message is bound up in it As I read his poetry or prose I seemed to be listening to Jeremiah or Isaiah The rhythm of his lines is not the only thing that is lost in my translation There is a prehistoric vigor and a mystic beauty to them which elude the English at my command To be sure every word I read in his three little volumes was tinged with the fact that the author was the father of the girl who had cast her spell over me
But then the thought that she had grown up in the house of the man who had written these lines intensified the glow of her nimbus
As I returned the books to the official in charge of the Hebrew department I lingered to draw him into conversation He was a wellknown member of the East Side Bohème I had heard of him as a man who spoke several languages and was amazingly well read—a walking library of knowledge not only of books but also of men and things Accordingly I hoped to extract from him some information about Tevkin He was a portly man with a round youthful face and a baby smile He smiled far more than he spoke He answered my questions either by some laconic phrase or by leaving me for a minute and then returning with some book pamphlet or newspaperclipping in which he pointed out a passage that was supposed to contain a reply to my query I had quite a long talk with him Now and then we were interrupted by some one asking for or returning a book but each time he was released he readily gave me his attention again
Speaking of Tevkin I inquired Why doesnt he write some more of those things For an answer he withdrew and soon came back with several issues of The Pen a Hebrew weekly published in New York in which he showed me an article by Tevkin
Have you read it I asked
He nodded and smiled
Is it good
It isnt bad he answered with a smile
Not as good as the things in those three volumes
He smiled
This kind of thing doesnt pay does it How does he make a living
I dont know I understand he has several grown children
So they support the family
I suppose so I am not sure though
Cant a Hebrew writer make a living in New York
He shook his head and smiled
The dailies of the Ghetto the newspapers that can afford to pay are published not in the language of Isaiah and Job but in Yiddish the German dialect spoken by the Jewish masses of today I asked the librarian whether Tevkin wrote for those papers and he brought me several clippings containing some of Tevkins Yiddish contributions It appeared however that the articles he wrote in his living mothertongue lacked the spirit and the charm that distinguished his style when he used the language of the prophets Altogether Tevkin seemed to be accounted one of the hasbeens of the Ghetto
One of the bits of information I squeezed out of the librarian was that Tevkin was a passionate frequenter of Yampolskys café a wellknown gatheringplace of the East Side Bohème
I had heard a good deal about the resort I knew that many or most of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists or some other kind of ists After my experience at the Cooper Institute meeting Yampolskys café seemed to be the last place in the world for me to visit But I was drawn to it as a butterfly is to a flame and finally the temptation got the better of me
CHAPTER II
THE café was a spacious room of six corners and a lopsided general appearance
It was about 4 oclock of an afternoon I sat at the end of one of the tables a glass of Russian tea before me There were two other customers at that table both poorly clad and as it seemed to me illfed Two tables in a narrow and dingier part of the room were occupied by disheveled chessplayers and three or four lookerson Altogether there were about fifteen people in the place Some of the conversations were carried on aloud A man with curly dark hair who was eating soup at the table directly in front of me was satirizing somebody between spoonfuls relishing his acrimony as if it were spice to his soup A feminine voice back of me was trying to prove to somebody that she did much more for her sister than her sister did for her I was wretchedly ill at ease at first I loathed myself for being here I felt like one who had strayed into a disreputable den In addition I was in dread of being recognized The man who sat by my side had the hair and the complexion of a gipsy He looked exhausted and morose
Presently he had a fried steak served him It was heavily laden with onions
As he fell to cutting and eating it hungrily the odor of the fried onions and the sound of his lips sickened me The steak put him in good humor He became sociable and turned out to be a gay though a venomous fellow His small talk raised my spirits too Nor did anybody in the café seem to know who I was or to take any notice of me I took a humorous view of the situation and had the gipsyfaced man tell me who was who
Shall I begin with this great man he asked facetiously pointing his fork at himself I am the worldrenowned translator and feuilleton writer whose writings have greatly increased the circulation of the Yiddish Tribune
Under the guise of playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of selfappreciation He then named all the other notables present—a poet a cartoonist a budding playwright a distinguished Russian revolutionist an editor and another newspaper man—maligning and deriding some of them and grudgingly praising the others Much of what he said was lost upon me for although he knew that I was a rank outsider he used a jargon of nicknames catchphrases and allusions that was apparently peculiar to the East Side Bohème He was part of that little world and he was unable to put himself in the place of one who was not I subsequently had occasion to read one of his articles and I found it full of the same jargon The public did not understand him but he either did not know it or did not care
As he did not point out Tevkin to me I concluded that the Hebrew poet was not at the café
Do you know Tevkin I inquired
There he is he answered directing my glance to a grayhaired cleanshaven commonplacelooking man of medium stature who stood in the chess corner watching one of the games Do you know him
No but I have heard of him You did not include him in your list of notables did you
Oh well he was a notable once upon a time Our rule is Let the dead past bury its dead
I felt sorry for poor Tevkin Turning halfway around in my seat I took to eying the Hebrew poet I felt disappointed That this prosaiclooking old man should have written the lines that I had read at the Astor Library seemed inconceivable The fact however that he was the father of the tall stately beautiful girl whose image was ever before me ennobled his face
I stepped over to him and said You are Mr Tevkin arent you
Allow me to introduce myself Levinsky
He bowed grasping my hand evidently loath to take his eyes off the chessplayers
I read some of your poems the other day I added
My poems he asked coloring
Yes I had heard of them and as I happened to be at the Astor Library I asked for your three volumes I read several things in each of them I liked them tremendously
He blushed again It seems an age since they were written he said in confusion Those were different days
We sat down at a secluded table To propitiate the proprietor and the waiter I ordered hot cheesecakes I offered to order something for Tevkin but he declined and he ordered a glass of tea with the tacit understanding that he was to pay for it himself
Why dont you give us some more poems like those
He produced his business card saying This is the kind of poetry that goes in America
The card described him as a general business agent and realestate broker This meant that he earned or tried to earn an income by acting as broker for people who wanted to sell or buy sodaandcigarette stands newsstands laundries grocerystores delicatessenstores butcher shops cigarstores bookstores and what not from a peddiers pushcart to a parcel of real estate or an interest in a small factory Scores of stores and stands change hands in the Ghetto every day the purchaser being usually a workman who has saved up some money with an eye to business
Does it pay I ventured to ask
I am not in it merely for the fun of it am I he returned somewhat resentfully Business is business and poetry is poetry I hate to confound the two One must make a living Thank God I know how to look things in the face I am no dreamer It is sweet to earn your livelihood
Of course it is Still dreaming is no crime either
Ah thats another kind of dreaming Do you write
Oh no I said with a laugh I am just a prosaic business man And by way of showing that I was not I veered the conversation back to his poetry
I sought to impress him with a sense of my deep and critical appreciation of what I had read in his three volumes I spoke enthusiastically of most of it but took exception to the basic idea in a poem on Job and Solomon
Its fine as poetry I said Some lines in it are perfectly beautiful
But the parallel is not convincing
Why not he said bristling up
We locked horns He was pugnacious bitter but ineffectual He quoted Hebrew he spoke partly in Yiddish and partly in English he repeatedly used the words subjective and objective he dwelt on Jobs obvious tragedy and Solomons inner sadness but he was a poor talker and apparently displeased with his own argument
Oh I dont make myself clear he said in despair
But you do I reassured him I understand you perfectly
No you dont Youre only saying it to please me But then what matters it whether a business agent has a correct conception of Solomons psychology or not he said bitterly Seriously Mr Levinsky I am often out of sorts with myself for hanging around this café This is the gatheringplace of talent not of business agents
Why Why I tried to console him I am sure you have more talent than all of them put together Do you think anybody in this café could write verse or prose like yours
He looked down his features hardening into a frown Anyhow I cannot afford the time While I loiter here I am liable to miss a customer I must give myself entirely to my business entirely entirely—every bit of myself I must forget I ever did any scribbling You are taking it too hard Mr Tevkin One can attend to business and yet find time for writing
All at once he brightened up bashfully and took to reciting a
Hebrew poem
Here is the essence of it Since the destruction of the Temple instrumental music has been forbidden in the synagogues The Children of Israel are in mourning They are in exile and in mourning Silent is their harp So is mine I am in exile I am in a strange land My harp is silent Is it your poem I asked
He nodded bashfully
When did you compose it
A few weeks ago
Has it been printed He shook his head
Why
I could have it printed in a Hebrew weekly we publish here but—well I did not care to
You mean The Pen
Yes Do you see it sometimes
I did once I am going to subscribe for it Anyhow the poem belies itself It shows that your harp has not fallen silent
He smiled flushed with satisfaction like a shy schoolboy and proceeded to recite another Hebrew poem Most songbirds do not sing in captivity I was once a songbird but America is my cage It is not my home My song is gone
This poem too gives itself the lie I declared But the idea of
America being likened to a prison
It is of my soul I speak he said resentfully Russia did not imprison it did it Russia is a better country than America anyhow even if she is oppressed by a czar Its a freer country too—for the spirit at least
There is more poetry there more music more feeling even if our people do suffer appalling persecution The Russian people are really a warmhearted people Besides one enjoys life in Russia better than here Oh a thousand times better There is too much materialism here too much hurry and too much prose and—yes too much machinery Its all very well to make shoes or bread by machinery but alas the things of the spirit too seem to be machinemade in America If my younger children were not so attached to this country and did not love it so and if I could make a living in Russia now I should be ready to go back at once
Comfort ye comfort ye my people saith your God I quoted gaily
Its all a matter of mood Poets are men of moods And again I quoted Attend unto me O my friend and give ear unto me O my comrade I took up the cudgels for America
He listened gloomily leaving my arguments unanswered By way of broaching the subject of his daughter I steered my talk to a point that gave me a chance to refer to his little meditation My Children How well you do remember my poor little volumes he said greatly flattered Yes My children love me They are not children but angels
And yet—God save me from having to be supported by them They bring in a considerable sum at the end of the week and they hate to see me work or worry But oh how sweet it is to earn ones own living Thank God I do earn my share and my wifes My children are bitterly opposed to it They beg me to stay home but I say No children mine As long as your father can earn his bread his bread he will earn Thats why my humdrum occupation is so sweet to me At this he lowered his eyes and said with the embarrassed simper which seemed to accompany every remark of his that implied selfappreciation I wrote something on this subject the other day just a line or two There are instances when the jewel of poetry glints out of the prose of trade
The fact that his children contributed to the maintenance of the family nest was evidently a sore spot in his heart
His face sensitive and mobile in the extreme was like a cinematographic film It recorded the subtlest change in his mood The notion of its being a commonplace face seemed to me absurd now It was a different image almost every minute and my mental portrait of it was as unlike my first impression of it as a motion picture is unlike any of its component photographs
I parted from him without referring to his daughter but I felt that I had won his heart and it seemed to be a matter of days when he would invite me to his house
The next time I saw him on an afternoon at Yampolskys café again there was an elusive deference in his demeanor He seemed to me more reserved and ill at ease than he had been on the previous occasion Finally he said I had no idea you were David Levinsky the cloakmanufacturer
My vanity was so flattered that I was unable to restrain my face from betraying it I answered with a beaming smile I told you I was in the cloak business didnt I
I dont think you did Anyhow I did not know what kind of a cloakfactory yours was he said
What kind do you mean I laughed
Well I am glad to know you are so successful There was somebody who recognized you last time you were here Your secret leaked out
Secret Well what difference does it all make To possess a talent like yours is a far greater success than to own a factory even if mine were the largest in the world
He waved his hand deprecatingly
Our conversation was disturbed by a quarrel between two men at a nearby table I was at a loss to make out what it was all about Tevkin attempted to enlighten me but I listened to him only partly being interested in the darts of the two belligerents All I could gather was that they were storywriters of two opposing schools I felt however that their hostility was based upon professional jealousy rather than upon a divergence of artistic ideals
Finally one of them paid his check and departed Tevkin told me more about them He spoke of the one who stayed in the café with admiration Hes a real artist some of his stories are perfect gems he said Hes a good fellow too Only he thinks too much of himself But then perhaps this is an inevitable part of talent the shadow that is inseparable from the light of genius
Perhaps its the engine that sets it in motion gives it incentive
Perhaps I wish I had some of it I reflected that he did seem to have some of it At all events he did not seem to begrudge others their success He spoke of the other people in the café with singular goodwill and even enthusiasm in fact
Some of the people present I had seen on my previous visit Of the others Tevkin pointed out a man to me who knew six languages well and had a working acquaintance with several more another who had published an excellent Hebrew translation of some of the English poets and a third whose son a young violinist had taken Europe by storm
An intellectuallooking Gentile made his entry He shook hands with one of the men I had seen on the former occasion and seated himself by his side
Either a journalist in search of material Tevkin explained to me in answer to a question or simply a man of literary tastes who is drawn to the atmosphere of this place
The café rose in my estimation
I learned from Tevkin that many of Yampolskys patrons were poor workingmen and that some of these were poets writers of stories or thinkers but that the café was also frequented by some professional and business men At this he directed my attention to a Talmudfaced man whom he described as a liquordealer who would be a celebrated writer if he were not worth half a million The last piece of information was a most agreeable surprise to me It made me feel safe in the place I regarded the liquordealer with some contempt however Pshaw half a million Hes probably worth a good deal less
Anyhow I could buy and sell him At the same time I said to myself Hes welltodo and yet he chums around with people in whom intellectual Gentiles take an interest I envied him I felt cheap
I felt still cheaper when I heard that the literary liquordealer generously contributed to the maintenance of The Pen the Hebrew weekly with which Tevkin was connected and that he the liquordealer wrote for that publication
It appeared that Tevkin had an office which was a short distance from the bohemian café I asked to see it and he yielded reluctantly
You can take it for granted that your office is a more imposing one than mine he jested
Ah but there was a time when all my office amounted to was an old desk So there will be a time when yours will occupy a splendid building on Wall Street
Thats far more than I aspire to All I want is to make a modest living so that my daughters should not have to go to work They dont work in a shop of course One is a stenographer in a fine office and the other a schoolteacher But what difference does it make
His office proved to be the hall bedroom of an apartment occupied by the family of a cantor named Wolpert We first entered the diningroom a door connecting it with Tevkins office being wide open It was late and the gaslight was burning Seated at a large oval table covered with a white oilcloth was Wolpert and two other men all the three of them with full beards and with the stamp of intellectual life on their faces
There are some queer people in the world who will still read my poetry Tevkin said to them by way of introducing me Here is one of them Mr
Levinsky David Levinsky the cloakmanufacturer
The announcement made something of a stir
Mrs Wolpert brought us tea From the ensuing conversation I gleaned that these people including Tevkin were ardent Zionists of a certain type and that they were part of a group in which the poet was a ruling spirit When I happened to drop a remark to the effect that Hebrew the language of the Old Testament was a dead language Wolpert exclaimed Oh no Not any longer Mr Levinsky It has risen from the dead
The other two chimed in each in his way the burden of their argument being that Hebrew was the living tongue of the Zionist colonists in Palestine
The children of our colonists speak it as American children do English said Tevkin exultingly They speak it as the sons and daughters of Jerusalem spoke it at the time of the prophets We are no dreamers We can tell the difference between a dream and a hard fact cant we—to the other two For centuries the tongue of our fathers spoke from the grave to us Now however it has come to life again
He took me into his office lighting the gasjet in it A few minutes later he shut the diningroom door his face assuming an extremely grave mien
By the way an idea has occurred to me he said But first I want you to know that I do not mean to profit by our spiritual friendship for purposes of a material nature Do you believe me
I certainly do Go ahead Mr Tevkin
What I want to say is a pure matter of business Do you understand If you dont want to go into it just say so and we shall drop it
Of course I answered
We were unable to look each other in the face
There is a parcel of real estate in Brooklyn he resumed One could have it for a song
But I dont buy real estate I replied my cheeks on fire He looked at the floor and after a moments silence he said Thats all Excuse me I dont want you to think I want to presume upon our acquaintance
But I dont On the contrary I wish it were in my line I should be glad to—
Thats all he cut me short Let us say no more about it And he made an awkward effort to talk Zionism again
CHAPTER III
THE realestate boom which had seized upon the five Ghettos of Greater New York a few years before was still intoxicating a certain element of their population Small tradesmen of the slums and even workingmen were investing their savings in houses and lots Jewish carpenters housepainters bricklayers or instalment peddlers became builders of tenements or frame dwellings realestate speculators Deals were being closed and poor men were making thousands of dollars in less time than it took them to drink the glass of tea or the plate of sorrel soup over which the transaction took place Women too were ardently dabbling in real estate and one of them was Mrs Chaikin the wife of my talented designer
Tevkin was not the first broker to offer me a good thing in real estate
Attempts in that direction had been made before and I had warded them all off
Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted from my regular business to what I considered a gamble Unreal estate I would call it My friend Nodelman was of the same opinion Its a poker game traveling under a false passport was his way of putting it
Once as I sat in a Brooklyn streetcar I was accosted by a bewigged woman who occupied the next seat and whom I had never seen before
You speak Yiddish dont you she began after scrutinizing me quite unceremoniously
I do Why
I just wanted to know
Is that all
Well it is and it is not she said with a shrewd goodnatured smile
Since we are talking I might as well ask you if you would not care to take a look at a couple of new houses in East New York
I did not interrupt her and she proceeded to describe the houses and the bargain they represented
When she finally paused for my answer and I perpetrated a labored witticism about her peddling real estate in streetcars she flared up Why not Is it anything to be ashamed of or to hide Did I steal those houses I can assure you I paid good money for them So why should I be afraid to speak about them And when I say it is a bargain I mean it That too I can say aloud and to everybody in the world because it is the truth the holy truth May I not live to see my children again if it is not
There After a pause she resumed Well
I made no reply
Will you come along and see the houses It is not far from here
I have no time
She took up some details tending to show that by buying those two frame buildings of hers and selling them again I was sure to clear a profit of ten thousand dollars
I made no reply
Well Will you come along
Leave me alone please
Ah you are angry arent you she said sneeringly Is it because you havent any money
The awkward scene that had attended Tevkins attempt to get me interested in his parcel haunted me I craved to see him again and to let him sell me something To be sure my chief motive was a desire to cultivate his friendship to increase my chances of being invited to his house The risk of buying some city lots in Brooklyn seemed to be a trifling price to pay for the prospect of coming into closer relations with him Besides the parcel seemed to be a sure investment But I was also eager to do something for him for his own sake And so I made an appointment with him by telephone and called at his wretched little office again
Where is the parcel you mentioned the other day I began
Where is it located
Never mind that he said hotly There shall be no business between you and me Nothing but pure spiritual friendship I made a foolish mistake last time I hate myself for it If you were a smaller man financially I should not mind it perhaps As it is it would simply mean that you help me out
It would mean charity
I laughed and argued and insisted and he succumbed We made an appointment to meet at Malbins a large restaurant on Grand Street that was known as the Real Estate Exchange of the Ghetto There I was introduced to a plainlooking man who proved to be the then owner of the parcel and closed a contract for a deed
Encouraged by this transaction Tevkin rapidly developed some farreaching realestate projects in which he apparently expected me to be the central figure One afternoon as we sat over glasses of tea at Malbins he said If you want to drink a glass of real Russian tea come up some evening We shall all be very glad to see you
I felt the color mounting to my face as I said I dont think your daughter would like it
My daughter he asked in amazement But I have three daughters
The one that spent some time at the Rigi Kulm in the Catskills last summer
Anna he asked with still greater surprise as it were
I dont know her first name but I suppose thats the one
If she was at the Rigi Kulm its Anna
Well I had the pleasure of meeting her there but I am afraid I was somewhat of a persona non grata with her I said in a partial attempt to make a joke of it
He dropped his glance leveled it at me once more and dropped it again
Why what was the matter he inquired in great embarrassment
Nothing was the matter A case of dislike at first sight I suppose
Still—
Youd better ask her Mr Tevkin He made no reply nor did he repeat his invitation He was manifestly on pins and needles to get away without having the courage to do so
So thats what you wanted to meet me for he muttered looking at the wall
Well Ill tell you frankly how it was Mr Tevkin I said and began with a partial lie calculated to bribe him I became interested in her because I heard that she was your daughter and afterward when I had returned to the city I made it my business to go to the library and to read your works My enthusiasm for your writings is genuine however I assure you Mr Tevkin
And when I went to that café it was for the purpose of making your acquaintance as much for your own sake as for hers There I have told you the whole story
There was mixed satisfaction and perplexity in his look
The next morning my mail included a letter from him It was penned in Hebrew It read like a chapter of the Old Testament He pointed out with exquisite tact that it was merely as a wouldbe courtier that I had failed to find favor in his daughters eyes—something that is purely a matter of taste and chance He then went on to intimate that if the unfortunate little situation rendered it at all inconvenient for me to visit his house he did not see why he and I could not continue our friendly relations
If I have found as much grace in thine eyes as thou hast found in mine he wrote it would pain me to forfeit thy friendship Let the unpleasant incident be forgotten then I have a very important business proposition to make but should it fail to arouse thine interest why then let all business too be eliminated and let our bond be one of unalloyed friendship I have been hungry for a fellowspirit for years and in thee I have found one at last Shall I be estranged from thee for external causes
Whereupon he went into raptures over a prospective realestate company of which he wanted me to be a leading shareholder Companies or combines of this sort were then being formed on the East Side by the score and some of them were said to be reaping fabulous profits
My Hebrew which had never been perfect for the Talmud is chiefly in Chaldaic and Aramaic was by now quite out of gear So my answer was framed partly in Yiddish but mostly in English the English being tacitly intended for his daughter although he understood the language perfectly I said in substance that I was going to be as frank as he was that I did not propose to invest more money in real estate and that I asked to be allowed to call on his daughter The following passage was entirely in English I have made a misleading impression on Miss Tevkin I have done myself a great injustice and I beg for a chance to repair the damage In business I am said to know how to show my goods to their best advantage Unfortunately this instinct seems often to desert me in private life There I am apt to put my least attractive wares in the showwindow to expose some unlovable trait of my character while whatever good there may be in me eludes the eye of a superficial acquaintance
Please assure your daughter that it is not to force my attentions upon her that I am asking for an interview All I want is to try to convince her that her image of me is spiritually speaking not a good likeness
Two days passed In the morning of the third I received a telephonecall from Tevkin asking to meet me Impelled by a desire to impress him with my importance I invited him to my place of business When he came I designedly kept him in my waitingroom for some minutes before I received him When he was finally admitted to my private office he faced me with studied indifference He said he had only a minutes time yet he stayed nearly an hour He asked me to come to his house He spoke guardedly giving vague answers to my questions The best I could make of his explanation was that his daughter had been prejudiced against me by the fact that everybody at the Rigi Kulm had looked upon me as a great matrimonial catch
Mv children have extremely modern ideas he said Topsyturvy ones His face brightened and he added The old rule is Poverty is no disgrace Their rule is Wealth is a disgrace And he flushed and burst into a little laugh of approbation at his own epigram
I suppose your daughter regarded me as a parvenu an upstart an ignoramus I remarked
No not at all She says she heard you say some clever things
Did she
Still your letter was a surprise to her She had not thought you capable of writing such things
What really had occurred between father and daughter concerning my desire to call I never learned
Tevkins house was apparently full of Socialism Indeed so was the house of almost every intellectual family among our immigrants I hated and dreaded that world as much as ever and I dreaded Miss Tevkin more than ever but mothlike I was drawn to the flame with greater and greater force I went to the Tevkins with the feeling of one going to his doom
CHAPTER IV
THE family occupied a large old private house in the Harlem section of Fifth Avenue a locality swarming with our people I called at 8 in the evening It was in the latter part of March nearly eight months after my unfortunate experience in the Catskills I was received in the hall by Tevkin He took me into a spacious parlor whose walls were lined with old bookcases and bookstands There I found Anna and two of the other children of the numerous family She wore a blouse of green velvet and a black fourinhand tie She welcomed me with a cordial handshake and a gay smile as though all that had transpired between us had been a childish misunderstanding but she was ill at ease As for me I was literally panicstricken It was at this moment when I came face to face with her for the first time in the eight months following that Catskill incident that I became aware of being definitely in love with her
The bookcases and bookstands were full to bursting There was a piano in the room and two tables littered with books prints and photographs The space between bookcases and over the piano was hung with etchings crayons penandink drawings and photographs The other two of Tevkins children present were a chubby girl of twelve named Gracie and a young man of twentyeight two or three years older than Anna named Sasha Sasha had a halfinterest in an evening preparatory school in which he taught mathematics being now confined to the house by a slight indisposition
Mrs Tevkin made her appearance—a handsome old woman of striking presence tall almost majestic with a mass of white hair with the beautiful features of the girl who was the cause of my being there I thought of Naphtali I had a desire to discover his address and to write him about my meeting with the hero and heroine of the romance of which he had told me a few months before I left Antomir I go to their house She is still beautiful I pictured myself saying to him Her demeanor and the very intonation of her speech seemed to proclaim the fact that she was the daughter of that illustrious physician of Odessa It did not take me long to discover however that under the surface of her good breeding and refinement was a woman of scant intellect
Seeing me look at the bookcases she said These are not all the books we have There are some in the other rooms too Plenty of them Its quite a job for an American servantgirl to dust them
Anna smiled goodhumoredly
The next utterance of Mrs Tevkins was to the effect that one had to put up with crowded quarters in America—a hint at the better days which the family had seen in Russia
Annas younger sister Elsie a schoolteacher came in She had quicker movements and a sharper look than the stenographer and she bore strong resemblance to her father Anna was the prettier of the two We went down into the diningroom where we found Russian tea cake and preserves
Presently we were joined by George an insurancecollector who was between Anna and Sasha and Emil an artist employed on a Sunday paper who was between Anna and Elsie Emil was a handsome fellow with a picturesque face which betrayed his vocation The crayons and the penandink drawings that I had seen in the library were his work He had a pale high forehead and a thick upright grove of very soft brown hair which I pictured as billowing in a breeze like a field of rye Just the kind of son for a poet to have I thought
There was another son Moissey He was married and I did not see him that evening His mother was continually referring to him
I can see that you miss him I said
I should say so Anna broke in Hes her pet
Dont mind what she says Mr Levinsky her mother exhorted me She just loves to tease me
Mother is right Elsie interposed Moissey is not her pet lf somebody is its I isnt it ma
Anna smiled goodnaturedly
Gracie is my pet Mrs Tevkin rejoined
Gracie and Moissey both Tevkin amended Moissey is her firstborn dont you know But the great point is that he has been married only three months and she has not yet got used to having him live somewhere else She feels as if somebody had snatched him from her When a day passes without her seeing him she is uneasy
Not at all Mrs Tevkin demurred I am thinking of him just now because—because—well because we have all been introduced to Mr Levinsky except him
If two or three of the family were missing it wouldnt be so marked Tevkin supported her chivalrously But only one is missing only one That somehow makes you think of him I feel the same way
As he spoke it seemed to me that in his home atmosphere he bore himself with more selfconfidence and repose than at the café or at his office His hospitality had made him ill at ease at first but that had worn off
You can depend on father to find some defense for mother remarked the picturesque Emil
At her husbands suggestion and after some urging the hostess led the way back to the parlor or library where she was to play us something As we were passing out of the diningroom and up the stairs Tevkin seized the opportunity to say to me We live on the communistic principle as you see Each of us except Mrs
Tevkin and the little one contributes his earnings or part of them to the general treasury my wife acting as treasurer and manager Still in the near future I hope to be able to turn the commune into a family of the good old type My affairs are making headway thank God I shant need my childrens contributions much longer
Mrs Tevkin played some classical pieces She had a pleasing tone and apparently felt at home at the keyboard but it was to my eye rather than to my ear that her playing appealed A whitehaired Jewish woman at a piano was something which in Antomir had been associated in my mind with the life of the highest aristocracy exclusively But then Mrs Tevkins father had been a physician and Jewish physicians belonged in the conception of my childhood and youth to the highest social level Another mark of her noble birth according to my Antomir ideas was the fact that she often addressed her husband and her older children not in Yiddish or English but in Russian Compared to her Matildas mother was a plebeian
The only other person in the family who played the piano with facility and confidence was Emil
I had never been in a house of this kind in my life I was fascinated beyond expression
Annas constraint soon wore off and she treated me with charming hospitality So did Elsie There was absolutely no difference in their manner toward me Elsie gave me the attention which a girl usually accords to a close friend of her fathers and this was also the sort of attention I received from her older sister It was as if the Catskill episode had never taken place and she were now seeing me for the first time
I met Moissey and his wife at my next visit He was a man of thirtytwo or more tall wiry nervous with large protruding dark eyes He was a dentist by profession and a Russian social democrat by religion as his father introduced him to me
Karl Marx is his god and Pleenanoff the Russian socialist leader is his Moses the old man added
Moisseys wife looked strikingly Semitic She seemed to have just stepped out of the Old Testament She had been only about a year in the country and the only language she could speak was Russian which she enunciated without a trace of a Jewish accent or intonation She scarcely understood Yiddish
All this was uncannily at variance with her Biblical face It seemed incredable that her speech and outward appearance should belong to the same person To add to the discrepancy she was smoking cigarette after cigarette a performance certainly not in keeping with ones notion of a Jewish woman of the old type
The oldest two sons Moissey and Sasha spoke English with a Russian accent from which the English of all the other children was absolutely free Mrs
Tevkins Russian sounded more Russian than her husbands Emil
Elsie and Gracie did not speak Russian at all
Barring Mrs Tevkin each adult in the family worshiped at the shrine of some ism Anna professed Israel Zangwills modified Zionism or Territorialism This however was merely a platonic interest with her It took up little or none of her time Her real passion was Minority a struggling little magazine of modernistic literature and thought It was published by a group of radicals of which she was a member Elsie on the other hand who was a socialist was an ardent member of the Socialist party and of the Socialist Press Club Politically the two sisters were supposed to be irreconcilable opponents yet Anna often worked in the interests of Elsies party Indeed the more I knew them the clearer it became to me that the older sister was under the influence of the younger
The two girls and their brothers had many visitors—socialist and anarchist writers poets critics artists These were of both sexes and some of them were Gentiles Two of the most frequent callers were Miss Siegel and the sallowfaced homely man who had danced with Anna at the Rigi Kulm pavilion
He was an instructor in an art school From his talks with Emil and Anna I learned of a whole world whose existence I had never even suspected—the world of East Side art students of the gifted boys among them some of whom had gone to study in Paris of their struggles prospects jealousies I was introduced to several of these people but I never came into sympathetic touch with them I was ever conscious never my real self in their midst
Perhaps it was because they did not like me perhaps it was because I failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key note to their mental attitude However that may have been I always felt wretched in their company and my attempts at saying something out of the common usually missed fire
Was Anna interested in any of the young men who came to the house I was inclined to think that she was not but I was not sure
Among Elsies closest friends or comrades was an American millionaire—a member of one of the bestknown families in New York—and his wife who was a Jewess of whom I had read in the papers I never saw them at the Tevkins but I knew that they occasionally called on the schoolteacher and that she saw a good deal of them at their house and at various meetings a fact the discovery of which produced a disheartening impression on me It was as though the sole advantage I enjoyed over Anna—the possession of money—suddenly had been wiped out
I sometimes wondered whether at the bottom of her heart Elsie did not feel elated by her close relations with that couple That she herself was a stranger to all money interests there could be no doubt however And this was true of Anna and the other children Elsie and Moissey were the strongest individualities in the family Theirs were truly religious natures and socialism was their religion in the purest sense of the term
Elsie scarcely had any other great interest in life Her socialism amused me but her devotion to it inspired me with reverence As for Moissey good literature as the term is understood in Russia was nearly as much of a passion with him as Marxian socialism His fervent talks of what he considered good fiction and his ferocious assaults upon what he termed candy stories were very impressive though I did not always understand what he was talking about Sometimes he would pick a quarrel with Anna over Minority and her literary hobbies generally Once he brought her to tears by his attacks I could not see why people should quarrel over mere stories I thought Moissey crazy but I must confess that his views on literature were not without influence upon my tastes I did not do much reading in these days so I may not have become aware of it at once But at a later period when I did do much reading Moisseys opinions came back to me and I seemed to find myself in accord with them
To return to my visits at the Tevkins I told myself again and again that their world was not mine that there was no hope for me and that there was nothing for it but to discontinue my calls but I had not the strength to do so I never went away from this house otherwise than dejected and forlorn
Tevkin was charming in the fervent yet tactful hospitality with which he endeavored to assuage the bitterness of my visits He seemed to say I see everything my dear friend and my heart goes out to you but how can I help you
His wife tried to be diplomatic
American young people imagine they own the earth she once said to me with a knowing glint in her beautiful eyes Some day theyll find out their mistake
The hot months set in The family nominally moved to Rockaway Beach for the season and my visits were suspended Nominally because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the Harlem house more often than in their summer home Elsie was wrapped up in the socialist campaign which kept her busy every night from the middle of July to Election Day She practically had no vacation Anna made arrangements to spend her brief vacation with some of her literary friends who had a camp in Maine but while she was in the city she came home to her mother and Gracie almost every evening As for her father whom I saw several times during that summer he often sat up far into the night in Malbins or some other restaurant talking parcels He had become so absorbed in his realestate speculations that he was rarely seen at Yampolskys café these days One evening when he was dining with me at the private hotel in which I lived and we were discussing his ventures he said Do you know my friend I have made more than twelve thousand dollars
He tried to say it in a matteroffact businesslike way but his face melted into an expression of joy before he finished the sentence
I tell it to you because I know that you are a real friend and that you will be sincerely glad to hear it he went on
I certainly am Im awfully glad I rejoined fervently
I expect to make more No more chipping in by the children Anna shall give up her typewriting and Elsie her teaching Yes things are coming my way at last
Still if I were you I should go slow The realestate market is an uncertain thing after all
Of course it is he answered mechanically
Since I bought that Brooklyn parcel and refused to go into further realestate operations he had never approached me with business schemes again There was not the slightest alloy of selfinterest in his friendship and he was careful not to have it appear that there was He never initiated me into the details of his speculations lest I should offer him a loan He was quite squeamish about it
One day I offered him a hundreddollar check for The Pen the Hebrew weekly with which he was connected and upon which I knew him to spend more than he could afford
I dont want it he said reddening and shaking his head
Why I asked also reddening
I was sorely hurt and he noticed it
I know that you do it wholeheartedly he hastened to explain but I dont want to feel that you do it for my sake
But I dont do it for your sake I just want to help the paper Cant I— He interrupted me with assurances of his regard for me and for my motives and accepted the check
Was he dreaming of Anna ultimately agreeing to marry me—and my money He certainly considered me a most desirable match But I felt sure that he was fond of me on my personal account and that he would have liked to have me for his soninlaw even if my income had not exceeded three or four thousand dollars a year He did not share the radical views of his children He was much nearer to my point of view than they
CHAPTER V
IT was December There was an air of prosperity in Tevkins house but the girls would not give up their jobs I was a frequent caller again I was burning to take Anna Elsie and their parents to the theater but was afraid the two girls would spurn the invitation
One day I was agreeably surprised by Elsie asking me to buy some tickets for a socialist ball They were fifty cents apiece
How many do you want me to take I asked
As many as you can afford she answered roguishly
Will you sell me twentyfive dollars worth
Oh that would be lovely she said in high glee
When I handed her the money I was on the brink of asking if it might not be rejected as tainted but suppressed the pleasantry
For me to attend a socialist ball would have meant to face a crowd of union men It was out of the question But the twentyfive dollars somehow brought me nearer to Elsie and that meant to Anna also I began to feel more at home in their company Elsie was as dear as a sister to me I went so far as to venture to invite them and their parents to the opera and my invitation was accepted I was still merely a friend of fathers something like an uncle but I saw a ray of hope now
Suppose a commonplace business man like myself offered you a check for Minority I once said to Anna
A check for Minority she echoed with joyful surprise Well it would be accepted with thanks of course but you would first have to withdraw the libel the commonplace business man Another condition is that you must promise to read the magazine As I was making out the check I told her that I had read some issues of it and that I solemnly swore to read it regularly now That I had found it an unqualified bore I omitted to announce Shortly after that opera night Tevkin provided a box at one of the Jewish theaters for a play by Jacob Gordin
I was quite chummy with the girls They would jokingly call me
Mr
Capitalist and despite their fathers protests bleed me for all sorts of contributions One of these came near embroiling me with Moissey It was for a revolutionary leader a Jew who had recently escaped from a Siberian prison in a barrel of cabbage and whose arrival in New York by way of Japan and San Francisco had been the great sensation of the year among the socialists of the East Side The newcomer was the founder of a party of terrorists and had organized a plot which had resulted in the killing of an uncle of the Czar and of a prime minister Now Moissey in his rabid uncompromising way sympathized with another party of Russian revolutionists with one that was bitterly opposed to the theories and methods of the terrorists So when he learned that Anna was collecting funds for the man who had been smuggled out of jail in a barrel and that I had given her a check for him he flared up and called her busybody
You had better mind your own affairs Moissey she retorted coloring
She essayed to defend her position contending that the methods of the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable but inevitable
The question is not whether it is justifiable but whether there is any sense to it Moissey replied sneeringly Revolutions are not made by plotting or bombthrowing They must take the form of an uprising by the masses
As if the Russian terrorists did not have the masses back of them
The peasantry and the educated classes are with them
How do you know they are Moissey asked with a goodnatured but patronizing smile
He spoke of the Russian working class as the great element that was destined to work out the political and economic salvation of the country and at this he tactlessly dwelt on the Russian tradeunions on what he termed their revolutionary strikes and upon the aid Russian capitalists gave the Government in its crusade upon the struggle for liberty
I felt quite awkward I wondered whether he was not saying these things designedly to punish me for the check I had given Anna for the terrorists
He had always seemed to hold aloof from me as if he were opposed to the visits of the moneybag that I was at his fathers house At this minute I felt as though his eyes said The idea of this fleecer of labor contributing to the struggle for liberty
I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners and to assail tradeunionism but I restrained myself of course
Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social question or literature subjects upon which they assured me that I held naïve views But all my efforts to get Anna into a more intimate conversation failed For all our familiarity it seemed as if we held our conversations through a thick windowpane Nevertheless in a very vague way and for no particular reason that I was aware of I thought that I sensed encouragement
Tevkin never again approached me with his realestate ventures but the very air of his house these days was full of such ventures I met other realestate men at his home Their talk was tempting my enormous income notwithstanding Huge fortunes seemed to be growing like mushrooms all over the five Ghettos of New York and Brooklyn I saw men who three years ago had not been worth a cent and who were now buying and selling blocks of property How much they were actually worth was a question which in the excitement of the boom did not seem to matter It is never a rare incident among our people for a man with a nebulous fortune of a few hundred dollars to plunge into a commercial undertaking involving many thousands but during that period this was an everyday affair At first I treated it like something that was going on in another country But I had a good deal of uninvested money and my resistance was slackening
At last I succumbed
One of the men I met at Tevkins was Volodsky the oldtime street peddler the man of the beautiful teeth whose pushcart had adjoined mine in those gloomy days when I tried to sell goods in the streets and who had told me of the dowermoney which his sister had lent him for his journey to America
I had not seen him since then—an interval of over twenty years—and we recognized each other with some difficulty
The realestate boom had found him eking out a wretched livelihood by selling goods on the instalment plan Most of his business had been in the Italian quarter and he had learned to speak Italian far more fluently than he had English A short time before I stumbled upon him at the Tevkins he had built an enormous block of high brick apartmenthouses in Harlem He had gone into the undertaking with only five thousand dollars of his own and before the houses were half completed he had sold them all pocketing an enormous profit When we were peddlers together he had been considered a failure and a fool He now struck me as a clever fellow full of dash
Nor did Volodsky represent the only metamorphosis of this kind that I came across It was as though there were something in the atmosphere which turned paupers into capitalists and inane milksops into men of brains and pluck
Volodsky succeeded in luring me into a network of speculations
Tevkin had an interest in some of these operations and as they were mostly concerned with property in Harlem or in the Bronx his house became my realestate headquarters There were two classes of callers at his home now the socialists and the literary men or artists who visited Tevkins children and the realestate crowd who came to see Tevkin himself It came to be tacitly understood that the library was to be left to the former while the diningroom in the basement was used as Tevkins office Being a friend of the family I had the freedom of both
Youre making a big mistake Levinsky Nodelman once said to me with a gesture of deep concern What is biting you Arent you making money fast enough Mark my word if you try to swallow too fast youll choke Any doctor will tell you that
I urged him to join me but he would not hear of it Instead he exhorted me to sell out my holdings and give all my attention to my cloak business
Take pity on your hardearned pennies Levinsky he would say Else youll wake up some day like the fellow who has dreamed he has found a treasure Hes holding on to the treasure tight and when he opens his eyes he finds its nothing but a handful of wind Ill tell you what Levinsky he began on one occasion You ought to see some of those magician fellows
What for I asked
Did you ever see them at their game Theyll put an egg into a hat say One two three and pull out a chicken And then they say One two three again and theres neither a chicken nor an egg Thats the way all this realestate racket will end Mark my word Levinsky
Bender nagged and pleaded with me without letup If I had had the remotest doubt of his devotion to me it would have been dispelled now I was at my great mahogany desk every morning as usual but I seldom stayed more than two hours and even during those two hours my mind was divided between cloaks and real estate or between cloaks and Anna Bender was practically in full charge of the business Instead however of welcoming the power it gave him he made unrelenting efforts to restore things to their former state He was constantly haranguing me on the risks I was incurring beseeching me to drop my new ventures and threatening to leave me unless I did so Once as he was thus expostulating with me he broke down
I appeal to you as your friend as your oldtime teacher he said and burst into tears
If it had not been for him I should have neglected my cloak business beyond repair He handled me as a gamblers wife does her husband He would seek me out in front of some unfinished building at Tevkins or at some boom café and make me sign some checks consult me on something or other or wheedle me into accompanying him to my factory for an hour or two But the next day he would have to go hunting for me again
I had invested considerable money in my new affairs and releasing it at short notice would not have been an easy matter But the great point was that I was literally intoxicated by my new interests and the fact that they were intimately associated with the atmosphere of Annas home had much—perhaps everything—to do with it
I loved her to insanity She was the supreme desire of my being I knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie for example but that seemed to be a point in her favor rather than against her She is a good girl I would muse mild kindly girlish As for her radical notions they really dont matter much I could easily knock them out of her I should be happy with her Oh how happy And in spite of the fact that I thought her weak the sight of her would fill me with awe
Ones first love is said to be the most passionate love of which one is capable I do not think it is I think my feeling for Anna was stronger deeper more tender and more overpowering than either of my previous two infatuations But then of course there is no way of measuring and comparing things of this kind Anna was the first virgin I had ever loved
Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling Oh I must have her or Ill fall to pieces I would say to myself yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic
My gambling mania was really the aberration of a lovemaddened brain How could Bender or Nodelman understand it I found myself in the midst of other lunatics of men who had simply been knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains My money had come slowly and through work and worry Theirs had dropped from the sky So they could scarcely believe their senses that it was not all a dream They were hysterical with gleeful amazement they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real
One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him a few hundred dollars more
One man in this party who was said to be worth threequarters of a million had only recently worked as a common bricklayer He is fixed in my memory by his struggles to live up to his new position more especially by the efforts he would make to break himself of certain habits of speech He always seemed to be on his guard lest some coarse word or phrase should escape him and when a foul expression eluded his vigilance he would give a start as if he had broken something There was often a wistful look in his eye as if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of living were not merely a cruel practical joke Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago We had many an expensive meal together and often as he ate he would say Oh its all nonsense Mr Levinsky All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wifes cabbage soup
Once he said Do you really like champagne I dont You may say I am a common ignorant fellow but to me it doesnt come up to the bread cider mother used to make Honest And he gave a chuckle
I knew a man who bought a thousanddollar fur coat and a fulldress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief He always had one in his pocket but he would handle it gingerly as if he had not the heart to soil it and then he would carefully fold it again The effect money had on this man was of quite another nature than it was in the case of the bricklayer
It had made him boisterously arrogant blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors and brazenly foulmouthed It was as though he was shouting I dont have to fear or respect anybody now I have got a lot of money I can do as I damn please More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth A realestate speculator once hinted to me in a fit of drunken confidence that his wife hitherto a good woman and a simple home body had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her One fellow who was naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice of exaggerating his profits and expenditures There was an abundance of sidesplitting comedy in the things I saw about me but there was no dearth of pathos either One day as I entered a certain highclass restaurant on Broadway I saw at one of the tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me but whom I was at first unable to locate Presently I recognized him Three or four years before he had peddled apples among the employees of my cloakshop He had then been literally in tatters That was why I was now slow to connect his former image with his present surroundings I had heard of his windfall He had had a job as watchman at houses in process of construction While there he had noticed things overheard conversations put two and two together and finally made fifty thousand dollars in a few months as a realestate broker
We were furtively eying each other Finally our eyes met He greeted me with a respectful nod and then his face broke into a goodhumored smile He moved over to my table and told me his story in detail He spoke in brief pithy sentences revealing a remarkable understanding of the world In conclusion he said with a sigh But what is the good of it all The Upper One has blessed me with one hand but He has punished me with the other
It appeared that his wife had died in Austria just when she was about to come to join him and he was preparing to surprise her with what to her would have been a palatial apartment
For six years I tried to bring her over but could not manage it he said simply I barely made enough to feed one mouth When good luck came at last she died She was a good woman but I never gave her a days happiness For eighteen years she shared my poverty And now that there is something better to share she is gone
CHAPTER VI
ONE of the many Jewish immigrants who were drawn into the whirl of realestate speculation was Max Margolis Doras husband I had heard his name in connection with some deals and one afternoon in February we found ourselves side by side in a crowd of other boomers The scene was the corner of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street two blocks from Tevkins residence a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddishspeaking realestate speculators in those days It was a gesticulating jabbering whispering excited throng resembling the crowd of curbbrokers on Broad Street Hence the nickname The Curb by which that corner was getting to be known
I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on the back
Hello Levinsky Hello
Margolis
His face had the florid hue of worn nervous middle age I heard you were buying Is it true Well how goes it great man
How have you been
Cant kick Of course compared to a big fellow like David
Levinsky I am a fly
I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the quieter side of the Avenue
Glad to see you upon my word he said Well let bygones by bygones
Its about time we forgot it all
There is nothing to forget
Honest
Honest Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your brain
Why no Not at all May I not live till tomorrow if it does You are not angry at me are you Come now say that you are not
I smiled and shrugged my shoulders
Well shake hands then
We did and he offered to sell me a parcel As I did not care for it he went on to talk of the realestate market in general There was a restaurant on that side of the block—The Curb Café we used to call it—so we went in ordered something and he continued to talk He was plainly striving to sound me in the hope of hanging on to some of my deals Of a sudden he said Say you must think Im still jealous May I not live till tomorrow if I am And to prove that he was not he added Come Levinsky come up to the house and lets be friends again as we used to be I have always wished you well He gave me his address Will you come
Some day
You arent still angry at Dora are you
Why no But then she may be still angry at me I said indifferently
Nonsense Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call on small people like us Come forget that you are a great capitalist and let us all spend an evening together as we used to Was he ready to suppress his jealousy for the prospect of getting under my financial wing The answer to this question came to me through a most unexpected channel
The next morning when I came to my Fifth Avenue office it was some eighty blocks—about four miles—downtown from The Curb section of Fifth Avenue I found Dora waiting for me I recognized her the moment I entered the waitingroom on my office floor Her hair was almost white and she had grown rather fleshy but her face had not changed She wore a large becoming hat and was quite neatly dressed generally
The blood surged to my face Her presence was a bewildering surprise to me
There were three other people in the room and I had to be on my guard
How are you I said rushing over to her
She stood up and we shook hands I took her into my private office through my private corridor
Dora Well well I murmured in a delirium of embarrassment
I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to call at the house she said gravely looking me full in the face It would be awful if you did He is out of his mind He is—
Wait a minute Dora I interrupted her Therell be plenty of time to talk of that First tell me something about yourself How have you been How are the children She was like an old song that had once held me under its sway but which now appealed to me as a memory only I was conscious of my consuming passion for Anna Dora interested and annoyed me at once
I treated her as a dear old friend She however persisted in wearing a mask of politeness as if she had come strictly on business and there had never been any other relations between us
Everybody is all right thank you she answered
Is Lucy married
Oh she has a beautiful little girl of two years But I do want to tell you about Margolis The man is simply crazy and I want to warn you not to take him seriously Above all dont let him take you up to the house Not for anything in the world Thats what brings me here this morning
Why Whats the trouble
Oh it would take too long to tell she answered And it isnt important either The main thing is that you should not let him get into business relations with you or into any other kind of relations for that matter
Her English was a striking improvement upon what it had been sixteen years before As we continued to talk it became evident to me that she was a wellread wellinformed woman I made some efforts to break her reserve but they failed Nor indeed was I overanxious to have them succeed She did speak of her husbands jealousy however though she dropped her glance and slurred over the word as she did so and from what she said as well as by reading between the lines of her statement I gathered a fairly clear picture of the situation Echoes of Maxs old jealousy would still make themselves felt in his domestic life A clash an irritation would sometimes bring my name to his lips He still sometimes tortured her with questions concerning our relations
I never answer these questions of his she said her eyes on my office rug Not a word I just let him talk But sometimes I feel like putting an end to my life she concluded with a smile
I listened with expressions of surprise and sympathy and with a feeling of compunction A thought was sluggishly trailing through my mind Does she still care for me
Margolis had built up some sort of auction business but his realestate mania had ruined it and eaten up all he had except three thousand dollars which Dora had contrived to save from the wreck With this she had bought a cigarandstationery store on Washington Heights by means of which she now supported the family He spent his days and evenings hanging around realestate haunts as a penniless drunkard does around liquorshops He was always importuning Dora for a couple of hundred dollars for a sure thing This was often the cause of an altercation Quarrels had in fact never been such a frequent occurrence in the house as they had been since he lost his money in real estate and one of his favorite thrusts in the course of these brawls was to allude to me
If Levinsky asked you for money you would not refuse him would you he would taunt her
Now that he had met me at The Curb he had taken it into his head that his jealousy had worn off long since and that he had the best of feelings for me His heart was set upon regaining my friendship He had spoken to her of our meeting as a predestined thing that was to result in my letting him in on some of my deals Dora however felt sure that a renewal of our acquaintance would only rekindle the worst forms of his jealousy and make life impossible to her She dreaded to imagine it
We spoke of Lucy again It was so stirring to think of her as a mother Dora told me that Lucys husband was in the jewelry business and quite welltodo
She rose to go I escorted her continuing to question her about Lucy Dannie her husband It would have been natural for me to take her out by way of my private little corridor but I preferred to pilot her through my luxurious showrooms We found two customers there to whom some of my office men and a designer were showing our line I greeted the customers and turning to Dora again I asked her to finish an interrupted remark We paused by one of the windows What she was saying about Lucy was beginning to puzzle me She did not seem to be pleased with her daughters marriage
She has three servants and a machine she said with a peculiar smile
She wanted it and she got what she wanted
Why I said perplexed
Everything is all right she answered with another smile
We spoke in an undertone so that nobody could overhear us The fact however that we were no longer alone had the effect of relieving our constraint Dora unbent somewhat A certain note of intimacy that had been lacking in our talk while we were by ourselves stole into it now that we were in the presence of other people
In the course of our loveaffair she had often spoken to me of her determination not to let Lucy repeat her mistake not to let her marry otherwise than a man she loved We were both thinking of it at this minute and it seemed to be tacitly understood between us that we were
At last I ventured to ask Whats the trouble Dora Tell me all about it
It interests me very much
I dont know whether theres anything to tell she answered coloring slightly She says she cares for her husband and they really get along very well He certainly worships her Why shouldnt he She is so beautiful—a regular flower—and he is old enough to be her father
You dont say I ejaculated with genuine distress
She is satisfied
Are you
As if it mattered whether I was or not I had other ideas about her happiness but I am only a mother and was not even born in this country So what does my opinion amount to I begged her not to break my heart but she would have her automobile
Perhaps she does love him
She shook her head ruefully She was quite frank about it She called it being practical She thought my ideas werent American that I was a dreamer
She talked that way ever since she was eighteen in fact I dont care if I marry a man with white hair provided he can make a nice living for me she used to say I thought it would drive me mad And the girls she went with had the same ideas When they got together it would be This girl married a fellow whos worth a hundred thousand and That girl goes with a fellow whos worth half a million If thats what they learn at college whats the use going to college
Its prosperity ideas I suggested Its a temporary craze
I dont care what it is A girl should be a girl She ought to think of love of real happiness Her glance seemed to be the least bit unsteady But I aint practical dont you know Exactly what my mother—peace upon her this in Hebrew—used to say She too did not think it was necessary to be in love with the man you marry But then she did not go to college not even to school Of what good is education then
It was evident that she spoke from an overflowing heart and that she could speak for hours on the subject But she cut herself short and took another tack
You must not think her husband is a kike though she said He is no fool and he writes a pretty good English letter And he is a very nice man
She started to go
Tell me some more about Dannie I said on our way to the elevator
Hes going to college Always first or second in his class And one of the best men on the football team too She smiled the first radiant smile I had seen on her that morning
Hes all right she continued And in Yiddish He is my only consolation And again in English If it wasnt for him life wouldnt be worth living Goodby she said as we paused in front of the elevator door Dont forget what I told you She was ill at ease again
The elevator came down from the upper floors We shook hands and she entered it It sank out of sight I stood still for a second and then returned to my private office with a sense of relief and sadness My heart was full of love for Anna
CHAPTER VII
IN a vague timid way I had been planning to propose to Anna all along My meeting with Dora gave these plans shape Her unexpected visit revived in my mind the whole history of my acquaintance with her I said to myself It was through tenacity and persistence that I won her It was persistence too that gave me success in business Anna is a meek goodnatured girl
She has far less backbone than Dora I can win her and I will It seemed so convincing It was like a discovery It aroused the fighting blood in my veins I was throbbing with love and determination I was priming myself for a formal proposal I expected to take her by storm I was only waiting for an opportunity In case she said no I was prepared for a long and vigorous campaign I wont give her up She shall be mine whether she wants it or not I said to myself again and again These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all kinds of circumstances—while I was pushing my way through a crowded streetcar while I was listening to some of Benders scoldings while I was parleying with some realestate man over a piece of property They often made me so absentminded that I would pace the floor of my hotel room for instance with one foot socked and the other bare and then distressedly search for the other sock which was in my hand One morning as I sat at my mahogany desk in my office with the telephone receiver to my ear waiting to be connected with a banker I said to myself Women like a man with a strong will My very persistence will fascinate her And this too seemed like a discovery to me The banker answered my call It was an important matter yet all the while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna would be mine
At last I thought I saw my opportunity It was an evening in April
According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night when Israels liberation from the bondage of Egypt is commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the greatest event in the domestic life of our people
Two years before when I was engaged to Fanny I deeply regretted not being able to spend the great evening at her fathers table This time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins They were not a religious family by any means Tevkin had been a freethinker since his early manhood and his wife the daughter of the Jewish Ingersoll had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive atheism And so religious faith never had been known in their house Of late years however—that is since Tevkin had espoused the cause of Zionism or nationalism—he had insisted on the Passover feast every year He contended that to him it was not a religious ceremony but merely a national custom but about this his children were beginning to have their doubts It seemed to them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his free thought They suspected that he was getting timid about it fearful of the hereafter As a rule they saw only the humorous side of the change that was apparently coming over him but sometimes they would awaken to the pathos of it
As we all sat in the library waiting to be called to the great feast he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense of the prospective ceremony
You neednt take his atheism seriously Mr Levinsky said Anna the sound of my name on her lips sending a thrill of delight through me Way down at the bottom of his heart father is getting to be really religious Im afraid And as though taking pity on him she crossed over to where he sat and nestled up to him in a manner that put a choking sensation into my throat and filled me with an impulse to embrace them both
At last the signal was given and we filed down into the diningroom A long table flanked by two rows of chairs with a sofa instead of the usual armchair at its head was set with bottles of wine bottles of mead wineglasses and little piles of matzos thin flat cakes of unleavened bread The sofa was cushioned with two huge Russian pillows inclosed in fresh white cases for the master of the house to lean on in commemoration of the freedom and ease which came to the Children of Israel upon their deliverance from Egypt Placed on three covered matzos within easy reach of the master were a shank bone an egg some horseradish salt water and a mush made of nuts and wine These were symbols the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal lamb and the egg of the other sacrifices brought during the festival in ancient times while the horseradish and the salt water represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for Pharaoh and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made brick for him A small book lay in front of each seat That was the Story of the Deliverance in the ancient Hebrew text accompanied by an English translation
Moissey the uncompromising atheist and Internationalist was demonstratively absent much to the distress of his mother and resentment of his father His Biblicallooking wife was at the table So were Elsie and Emil They were as uncompromising in their atheism as Moissey but they had consented to attend the quaint supper to please their parents As to Anna Sasha and George each of them had his or her socialism diluted with some species of nationalism so they were here as a matter of principle their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries But even they and even Tevkin himself treated it all partly as a joke In the case of the poet however it was quite obvious that his levity was pretended For all his jesting and frivolity he looked nervous I could almost see the memories of his childhood days which the scene evoked in his mind I could feel the solemnity that swelled his heart It appeared that this time he had decided to add to the ceremony certain features which he had foregone on the previous few Passover festivals he had observed He was now bent upon having a Passover feast service precisely like the one he had seen his father conduct not omitting even the white shroud which his father had worn on the occasion As a consequence several of these details were a novel sight to his children A white shroud lay ready for him on his sofa and as he slipped it on with smiles and blushes there was an outburst of mirth
Oh daddy Anna shouted
Father looks like a Catholic priest said Emil
Dont say that Emil I rebuked him
Fun was made of the big white pillows upon which Tevkin leaned kinglike and of the piece of unleavened bread which he hid under them for Gracie to steal
As he raised the first of the Four Cups of wine he said solemnly with an effort of shaking off all pretense of flippancy Well let us raise our glasses Let us drink the First Cup
We all did so and he added This is the Fourth of July of our unhappy people After the glasses were drained and refilled he said Scenes like this bind us to the Jews of the whole world and not only to those living but to the past generations as well This is no time for speaking of the Christian religion but as I look at this wine an idea strikes me which I cannot help submitting The Christians drink wine imagining that it is the blood of Jesus Well the wine we are drinking tonight reminds me of the martyr blood of our massacred brethren of all ages
Anna gave me a merry wink I felt myself one of the family I was in the seventh heaven She seemed to be particularly attentive to me this evening
I shall speak to her tonight I decided I shant wait another day And the fact that she was a nationalist and not an unqualified socialist like Elsie for instance seemed to me a new source of encouragement I was in a quiver of blissful excitement
The Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest son but Emil the Internationalist could not be expected to take an active part in the ceremony so Sasha the Zionist took his place Sasha however did not read Hebrew and old Tevkin had to be content with having the Four Questions read in English the general answer to them being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew It reminded me of an operatic performance in which the part of Faust for instance is sung in French while that of Margarita is performed in some other language We went on with the Story of the Deliverance Tevkin made frequent pauses to explain and comment upon the text often with a burst of oratory Mrs Tevkin and some of the children were obviously bored
Gracie pleaded hunger
Finally the end of the first part of the story was reached and supper was served It was a typical Passover supper with matzo balls and it was an excellent repast Everybody was talkative and gay I addressed some remarks to Anna and she received them all cordially
By way of attesting her recognition of Passover as a national holiday she was in festive array wearing her newest dress a garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old rose with a crêpe collar of gray It mellowed the glow of her healthful pink complexion She was the most beautiful creature at the table excluding neither her picturesque younger brother nor her majestic old mother She shone She flooded my soul with ecstasy
Tevkins religion was Judaism Zionism Mine was Anna The second half of the story is usually read with less pomp and circumstance than the first many a passage in it being often skipped altogether So Tevkin dismissed us all remaining alone at the table to chant the three final ballads which he had characterized to his children as charming bits of folklore
When Mrs Tevkin the children and myself were mounting the stairs leading up from the diningroom I was by Annas side my nerves as taut as those of a soldier waiting for the command to charge I charged sooner than I expected
Sasha asked the Four Questions I found myself saying There is one question which I should like to ask of you Miss Tevkin
I said it so simply and at a moment so little suited to a proposal of marriage that the trend of my words was lost upon her
Something about Jewish nationalism she asked
About that and about something else
We were passing through the hallway now When we entered the library I took her into a corner and before we were seated I said Well my question has really nothing to do with nationalism Its quite another thing I want to ask of you Dont refuse me Marry me Make me happy
She listened like one stunned
I am terribly in love with you I added
Oh she then exclaimed Her delicate pink skin became a fiery red She looked down and shook her head with confused stiffness
I see youre taken aback Take a seat get your bearings I said lightly pulling up a chair that stood near by and say Yes
Why thats impossible she said with an awkward smile without seating herself I need not tell you that I have long since changed my mind about you—
I am no more repellent am I I jested
No Not at all she returned with another smile But what you say is quite another thing I am very sorry indeed She made to move away from me but I checked her
That does not discourage me I said Ill just go on loving you and waiting for a favorable answer You are still unjust to me You dont know me well enough Anyhow I cant give you up I wont give you up Thats it I thought I am speaking like a man of firm purpose I am resolved to win you
Oh thats entirely out of the question she said with a gesture of impatience and finality And bursting into tears of childlike indignation she added Father assured me you would never hint at such a thing—never
If you mean to persist then—
The sentence was left eloquently unfinished She turned away walked over to her mother and took a seat by her side like a little girl mutely seeking her mammas protection
The room seemed to be in a whirl I felt the cold perspiration break out on my forehead I was conscious of Mrs Tevkins and Elsies glances I was sick at heart Annas bitter resentment was a black surprise to me I had a crushing sense of final defeat
BOOK XIV
EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE
CHAPTER I
IT was a severe blow It caused me indescribable suffering It would not have been unnatural to attribute my fiasco to my age Had I been ten years younger Annas attitude toward me might have been different But this point of view I loathed to accept Instead I put the blame on Annas environment
I was in the enemys country there I would muse The atmosphere around her was against me I hated the socialists with a novel venom Finally I pulled myself together Then it was that I discovered the real condition of my affairs I had gone into those speculations far deeper than I could afford There were indications that made me seriously uneasy Things were even worse than Bender imagined Ruin stared me in the face I was panicstricken One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch with me in a private diningroom of a wellknown hotel He was dignifiedly steelgray and he had the appearance of a college professor or successful physician rather than of a business man He liked me I had long been one of his most important customers and I had always sought to build up a good record with him For example other cloakmanufacturers would exact allowances for merchandise that proved to have some imperfection I never do so It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things In the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss of material and if it cannot I will sustain the small loss rather than incur the mills disfavor In the long run it pays And so this cloth merchant was well disposed toward me He had done me some favors before He addressed me as Dave There was a note of condescension as well as of admiration in this Dave of his It implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer singularly successful and reliable but that I was his inferior all the same—a Jew a social pariah At the bottom of my heart I considered myself his superior finding an amusing discrepancy between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual interests but he was a Gentile and an American and a much wealthier man than I so I looked up to him To make my appeal as effective as possible I initiated him into the human side of my troubles I told him of my unfortunate courtship as well as of the realestate ventures into which it had led me
He was interested and moved and as he had confidence in me he granted my request at once
Its all right Dave he said slapping my back a queer look in his eye
You can always count on me Only throw that girl out of your mind
I grasped his hand silently I wanted to say something but the words stuck in my throat He helped me out of my difficulties and I devoted myself to the cloak business with fresh energy The agonies of my love for Anna were more persistent than those I had suffered after I moved out of Doras house
But somehow instead of interfering with my business activities these agonies stimulated them I was like the victim of a toothache who seeks relief in hard work I toiled day and night entering into the minutest detail of the business and performing duties that were ordinarily left to some inferior employee
Business was good Things went humming Bender who now had an interest in my factory was happy
Some time later the same woolen man who had come to my assistance did me another good turn one that brought me a rich harvest of profits A certain weave was in great vogue that season the demand far exceeding the output and it so happened that the mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few that produced that fabric So he let me have a much larger supply of it than any other cloakmanufacturer in the country was able to obtain My business then took a great leap while my overhead expenses remained the same My net profits exceeded two hundred thousand dollars that year
One afternoon in the summer of the same year as I walked along Broadway in the vicinity of Canal Street my attention was attracted by a shabby whitehaired feeblelooking old peddler with a wide sneering mouth who seemed disquietingly familiar and in whom I gradually recognized one of my Antomir teachers—one of those who used to punish me for the sins of their other pupils The past suddenly sprang into life with detailed colorful vividness The black pit of poverty in which I had been raised my misery at school where I had been treated as an outcast and a scapegoat because my mother could not afford even the few pennies that were charged for my tuition the joy of my childish existence in spite of that gloom and martyrdom—all this rose from the dead before me
The poor old peddler I now saw trying to cross Broadway was Shmerl the Pincher the man with whom my mother had a pinching and hairpulling duel after she found the marks of his cruelty on my young body He had been one of the most heartless of my tormentors yet it was so thrillingly sweet to see him in New York In my schooldays I would dream of becoming a rich and influential man and wreaking vengeance upon my brutal teachers more especially upon Shmerl the Pincher and the Cossack the man whose little daughter SarahLeah had been the heroine of my first romance I now rushed after Shmerl greatly excited one of the feelings in my heart being a keen desire to help him
A tangle of wagons and trolleycars caused me some delay I stood gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way I had known him as a young man although to my childish eye he had looked old—a strong fellow probably of twentyeight with jetblack sidewhiskers and beard with bright black eyes and alert movements At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have been about sixty but he looked much older
As I was thus waiting impatiently for the cars to start so that I could cross the street and greet him a cold practical voice whispered to me Why court trouble Leave him alone
My exaltation was gone The spell was broken
The block was presently relieved but I did not stir Instead of crossing the street and accosting the old man I stood still following him with my eyes until he vanished from view Then I resumed my walk up Broadway As I trudged along a feeling of compunction took hold of me By way of defending myself before my conscience I tried to think of the unmerited beatings he used to give me But it was of no avail The idea of avenging myself on this decrepit tattered old peddler for what he had done more than thirty years before made me feel small Poor devil I must help him I said to myself
I was conscious of a desire to go back and to try to overtake him but I did not The desire was a meandering sluggish sort of feeling The spell was broken irretrievably
CHAPTER II
THE following winter chance brought me together with Matilda On this occasion our meeting was of a pleasanter nature than the one which had taken place at Cooper Institute It was in a Jewish theater She and another woman accompanied by four men one of whom was Matildas husband were occupying a box adjoining one in which were the Chaikins and myself and from which it was separated by a low partition The performance was given for the benefit of a society in which Mrs Chaikin was an active member and it was she who had made me pay for the box and solemnly promise to attend the performance Not that I maintained a snobbish attitude toward the Jewish stage I went to see Yiddish plays quite often in fact but these were all of the better class our stage has made considerable headway whereas the one that had been selected by Mrs Chaikins society was of the historicalopera variety a hodgepodge of tearwringing vaudeville and laughtercompelling high tragedy I should have bought ten boxes of Mrs
Chaikin if she had only let me stay away from the performance but her heart was set upon showing me off to the other members of the organization and I had to come
It was on a Monday evening As I entered the box my eyes met Matildas and contrary to my will I bowed to her To my surprise she acknowledged my salutation heartily
The curtain rose Men in velvet tunics and plumed hats were saying something but I was more conscious of Matildas proximity and of her cordial recognition of my nod than of what was going on on the stage
Presently a young man and a girl entered our box and occupied two of our vacant chairs Mrs Chaikin thought they had been invited by me and when she discovered that they had not there was a suppressed row she calling upon them to leave the box and they nonchalantly refusing to stir from their seats pleading that they meant to stay only as long as there was no one else to occupy them Our box was beginning to attract attention There were angry outcries of Ssh Shut up Matilda looked at me sympathetically and we exchanged smiles Finally an usher came into our box and the two intruders were ejected
When the curtain had dropped on the first act Matilda invited me into her box When I entered it she introduced me to her husband and her other companions as a fellowtownsman of hers
Seen at close range her husband looked much younger than she but it did not take me long to discover that he was wrapped up in her His beard was smaller and more neatly trimmed than it had looked at the Cooper Institute meeting but it still ill became him He had an unsophisticated smile which I thought suggestive of a man playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy between his weak face and his reputation for pluck
An intermission in a Jewish theater is almost as long as an act During the first few minutes of our chat Matilda never alluded to Antomir nor to what had happened between us at Cooper Institute She made merry over the advertisements on the curtain and over the story of the play explaining that the box had been forced on one of her companions and that they had all come to see what historic opera was like She commented upon the musicians who were playing a Jewish melody and on some of the scenes that were being enacted in the big auditorium The crowd was buzzing and smiling goodhumoredly with a general air of familylike sociability some eating apple or candy The faces of some of the men were much in need of a shave
Most of the women were in shirtwaists Altogether the audience reminded one of a crowd at a picnic A boy tottering under the weight of a basket laden with candy and fruit was singing his wares A pretty young woman stood in the center aisle near the second row of seats her head thrown back her eyes fixed on the first balcony her plump body swaying and swaggering to the music One man seated in a box across the theater from us was trying to speak to somebody in the box above ours We could not hear what he said but his mimicry was eloquent enough Holding out a box of candy he was facetiously offering to shoot some of its contents into the mouth of the person he was addressing One woman in an orchestra seat near our box was discussing the play with a woman in front of her She could be heard all over the theater She was in ecstasies over the prima donna
I tell you she can kill a person with her singing she said admiringly
She tugs me by the heart and makes it melt I never felt so heartbroken in my life May she live long
This was the first opportunity I had had to take a good look at Matilda since she had come to New York for our first meeting had been so brief and so embarrassing to me that I had come away from it without a clear impression of her appearance
At first I found it difficult to look her in the face The passionate kisses I had given her twentythree years before seemed to be staring me out of countenance She however was perfectly unconstrained and smiled and laughed with contagious exuberance As we chatted I now and again grew absentminded indulging in a mental comparison between the woman who was talking to me and the one who had made me embrace her and so cruelly trifled with my passion shortly before she raised the money for my journey to America The change that the years had wrought in her appearance was striking and yet it was the same Matilda Her brown eyes were still sparkingly full of life and her mouth retained the sensuous expression of her youth This and her abrupt gestures gave her provocative charm
Nevertheless she left me calm It was an indescribable pleasure to be with her but my love for her was as dead as were the days when I lodged in a synagogue She never alluded to those days To listen to her one would have thought that we had been seeing a great deal of each other all along and that small talk was the most natural kind of conversation for us to carry on
All at once and quite irrelevantly she said I am awfully glad to see you again I did not treat you properly that time—at the meeting I mean
Afterward I was very sorry
Were you I asked flippantly
I wanted to write you to ask you to come to see me but—well you know how it is Tell me something about yourself At this minute the twentythree years seem like twentythree weeks But this is no time to talk about it
One wants hours not a minute or two I know of course that you are a rich man Are you a happy man But no dont answer now The curtain will soon rise Go back to your box and come in again after the next act Will you
She ordered me about as she had done during my stay at her mothers house which offended and pleased me at once During the whole of the second act I looked at the stage without seeing or hearing anything The time when I fell in love with Matilda sprang into life again It really seemed as though the twentythree years were twentythree weeks My mothers death her funeral Abners Court the uniformed old furrier with the sidewhiskers his wife with her crutches Naphtali with his curly hair and nearsighted eyes Reb Sender his wife the bully of the old synagogue Matildas mother and her old servant—all the human figures and things that filled the eventful last two years of my life at home loomed up with striking vividness before me
Matildas affable greeting and her intimate brief talk were a surprise to me Did I appeal to her as the fellow who had once kissed her Had she always remembered me with a gleam of romantic interest Did I stir her merely as she stirred me—as a living fragment of her past Or was she trying to cultivate me in the professional interests of her husband who was practising medicine in Harlem When the curtain had fallen again Matilda made her husband change seats with me I was to stay by her side through the rest of the performance The partition between the two boxes being only waisthigh the two parties were practically joined into one and everybody was satisfied—everybody except Mrs Chaikin
I suppose our company isnt good enough for Mr Levinsky she said aloud
When the performance was over we all went to Lorbers—the most pretentious restaurant on the East Side Matilda and I were mostly left to ourselves We talked of our native town and of her pious mother who had died a few years before but we carefully avoided the few weeks which I had spent in her mothers house when Matilda had encouraged my embraces In answer to my questions she told me something of her own and her husbands revolutionary exploits She spoke boastfully and yet reluctantly of these things as if it were a sacrilege to discuss them with a man who was after all a moneybag
My impression was that they lived very modestly and that they were more interested in their socialist affairs than in their income My theory that she wanted her husband to profit by her acquaintance with me seemed to be exploded She reminded me of Elsie and her wholehearted devotion to socialism We mostly spoke in Yiddish and our Antomir enunciation was like a bond of kinship between us and yet I felt that she spoke to me in the patronizing didactical way which one adopts with a foreigner as though the world to which she belonged was one whose interests were beyond my comprehension
She inquired about my early struggles and subsequent successes I told her of the studies I had pursued before I went into business of the English classics I had read and of my acquaintance with Spencer
Do you remember what you told me about becoming an educated man I said eagerly Your words were always ringing in my ears It was owing to them that I studied for admission to college I was crazy to be a college man but fate ordained otherwise To this day I regret it
In dwelling on my successes I felt that I was too effusive and emphatic but I went on bragging in spite of myself I tried to correct the impression I was making on her by boasting of the sums I had given to charity but this made me feel smaller than ever However my talk did not seem to arouse any criticism in her mind She listened to me as she might to the tale of a child
Referring to my unmarried state she said with unfeigned sympathy This is really no life You ought to get married And she added gaily If you ever marry you mustnt neglect to invite me to the wedding
I certainly wont you may be sure of that I said
You must come to see me Ill call you up on the telephone some day and well arrange it
I shall be very glad indeed
I departed in a queer state of mind Her present identity failed to touch a romantic chord in my heart She was simply a memory like Dora But as a memory she had rekindled some of the old yearning in me I was still in love with Anna but at this moment I was in love both with her and with the Matilda of twentythree years before But this intense feeling for Matilda as a monument of my past self did not last two days
The invitation she had promised to telephone never came
I came across a man whom I used to see at the Tevkins and one of the things he told me was that Anna had recently married a highschool teacher
CHAPTER III
THE real estate boom collapsed The cause of the catastrophe lay in the nature or rather in the unnaturalness of the getrichquick epidemic
Its immediate cause however was a series of rent strikes inspired and engineered by the Jewish socialists through their Yiddish daily One of the many artificialities of the situation had been a progressive inflation of rent values Houses had been continually changing hands being bought not as a permanent investment but for speculation whereupon each successive purchaser would raise rents as a means of increasing the market price of his temporary property And so the socialists had organized a crusade that filled the municipal courts with dispossess cases and turned the boom into a panic
Hundreds of people who had become rich overnight now became worse than penniless overnight The Ghetto was full of dethroned kings for a day only It seemed as if it all really had been a dream
One of the men whose quickly made little fortune burst like a bubble was poor Tevkin I wondered how his children took the socialist rent strikes
Nor did I escape uninjured when the crisis broke loose I still had a considerable sum in real estate all my efforts to extricate it having proved futile My holdings were rapidly depreciating In hundreds of cases similar to mine equities were wiped out through the speculators inability to pay interest on mortgages or even taxes To be sure things did not come to such a pass in my case but then some of the city lots or improved property in which I was interested had been hit so hard as to be no longer worth the mortgages on them
Volodsky lost almost everything except his courage and speculative spirit
Oh it will come back he once said to me speaking of the boom
When I urged that it had been an unnatural growth he retorted that it was the collapse of the boom which was unnatural He was scheming some sort of syndicate again
It requires no money to make a lot of money he said All it does require is brains and some good luck
Nevertheless he coveted some of my money for his new scheme He did not succeed with me but he found other angels He was now quite in his element in the American atmosphere of breathless enterprise and breakneck speed When the violence of the crisis had quieted down building operations were resumed on a more natural basis Men like Volodsky with hosts of carpenters bricklayers plumbers—all Russian or Galician Jews—continued to build up the Bronx Washington Heights and several sections of Brooklyn
Vast areas of meadowland and rock were turned by them as by a magic wand into densely populated avenues and streets of brick and mortar Under the spell of their activity cities larger than Odessa sprang up within the confines of Greater New York in the course of three or four years
Mrs Chaikin came out of her speculations more than safe She and her husband who is still in my employ own half a dozen tenementhouses One day on the first of the month I met her in the street with a large handbag and a dignified mien She was out collecting rent
CHAPTER IV
IT was the spring of 1910 The twentyfifth anniversary of my coming to America was drawing near The day of an immigrants arrival in his new home is like a birthday to him Indeed it is more apt to claim his attention and to warm his heart than his real birthday Some of our immigrants do not even know their birthday But they all know the day when they came to America It is Landing Day with red capital letters This at any rate is the case with me The day upon which I was born often passes without my being aware of it
The day when I landed in Hoboken on the other hand never arrives without my being fully conscious of the place it occupies in the calendar of my life Is it because I do not remember myself coming into the world while I do remember my arrival in America However that may be the advent of that day invariably puts me in a sentimental mood which I never experience on the day of my birth
It was 1910 then and the twentyfifth anniversary of my coming was near at hand Thoughts of the past filled me with mixed joy and sadness I was overcome with a desire to celebrate the day But with whom Usually this is done by ship brothers as EastSiders call fellowimmigrants who arrive here on the same boat It came back to me that I had such a ship brother and that it was Gitelson Poor Gitelson He was still working at his trade
I had not seen him for years but I had heard of him from time to time and I knew that he was employed by a ladies tailor at custom work somewhere in Brooklyn The customtailoring shop he had once started for himself had proved a failure Also I knew how to reach a brotherinlaw of his The upshot was that I made an appointment with Gitelson for him to be at my office on the great day at 12 oclock I did so without specifying the object of the meeting but I expected that he would know
Finally the day arrived It was a few minutes to 12 I was alone in my private office all in a fidget as if the meeting I was expecting were a lovetryst Reminiscences and reflections were flitting incoherently through my mind Some of the events of the day which I was about to celebrate loomed up like a ship seen in the distance My eye swept the expensive furniture of my office I thought of the way my career had begun I thought of the Friday evening when I met Gitelson on Grand Street he an American dandy and I in tatters The fact that it was upon his advice and with his ten dollars that I had become a cloakmaker stood out as large as life before me A great feeling of gratitude welled up in me of gratitude and of pity for my tattered self of those days Dear kind Gitelson Poor fellow He was still working with his needle I was seized with a desire to do something for him
I had never paid him those ten dollars So I was going to do so with substantial interest now I shall spend a few hundred dollars on him—nay a few thousand I said to myself I shall buy him a small business Let him end his days in comfort Let him know that his ship brother is like a real brother to him
It was twenty minutes after 12 and I was still waiting for the telephone to announce him My suspense became insupportable Is he going to disappoint me the idiot I wondered Presently the telephone trilled I seized the receiver
Mr Gitelson wishes to see Mr Levinsky came the familiar pipe of my switchboard girl He says he has an appointment—
Let him come in at once I flashed
Two minutes later he was in my room His forelock was still the only bunch of gray hair on his head but his face was pitifully wizened He was quite neatly dressed as trained tailors will be even when they are poor and at some distance I might have failed to perceive any change in him At close range however his appearance broke my heart
Do you know what sort of a day this is I asked after shaking his hand warmly
I should think I did he answered sheepishly Twentyfive years ago at this time—
He was at a loss for words
Yes its twentyfive years Gitelson I rejoined I was going to indulge in reminiscences to compare memories with him but changed my mind I would rather not speak of our Landing Day until we were seated at a diningtable and after we had drunk its toast in champagne
Come let us have lunch together I said simply
I took him to the WaldorfAstoria where a table had been reserved for us in a snug corner
Gitelson was extremely bashful and his embarrassment infected me He was apparently at a loss to know what to do with the various glasses knives forks It was evident that he had never sat at such a table before The French waiter who was silently officious seemed to be inwardly laughing at both of us At the bottom of my heart I cow before waiters to this day
Their white shirtfronts reticence and pompous bows make me feel as if they saw through me and ridiculed my ways They make me feel as if my expensive clothes and ways ill became me
Here is good health Gitelson I said in plain old Yiddish as we touched glasses Let us drink to the day when we arrived in Castle Garden
There was something forced studied in the way I uttered these words I was disgusted with my own voice Gitelson only simpered He drained his glass and the champagne to which he was not accustomed made him tipsy at once I tried to talk of our ship of the cap he had lost of his timidity when we had found ourselves in Castle Garden of the policeman whom I asked to direct us But Gitelson only nodded and grinned and tittered I realized that I had made a mistake—that I should have taken him to a more modest restaurant But then the chasm between him and me seemed to be too wide for us to celebrate as ship brothers in any place
By the way Gitelson I owe you something I said producing a tendollar bill It was with your ten dollars that I learned to be a cloakoperator and entered the cloak trade Do you remember I was going to add something about my desire to help him in some substantial way but he interrupted me
Sure I do he said with inebriate shamefacedness as he received the money and shoved it into the inside pocket of his vest It has brought you good luck hasnt it And how about the interest He he he Youve kept it over twentythree years The interest must be quite a little He he he
Of course Ill pay you the interest and more too You shall get a check
Oh I was only joking
But I am not joking Youre going to get a check all right
He revolted me
I made out a check for two hundred dollars tore it and made out one for five hundred
He flushed scanned the figure giggled hesitated and finally folded the check and pushed it into his inner vest pocket thanking me with drunken ardor
Some time later I was returning to my office my heart heavy with selfdisgust and sadness In the evening I went home to the loneliness of my beautiful hotel lodgings My heart was still heavy with distaste and sadness
CHAPTER V
GUSSIE the finishergirl to whom I had once made love with a view to marrying her for her money worked in the vicinity of my factory and I met her from time to time on the Avenue We kept up our familiar tone of former days We would pause exchange some banter and go our several ways She was over fifty now She looked haggard and dried up and her hair was copiously shot with gray
One afternoon she told me she had changed her shop naming her new employer
Is it a good place to work in I inquired
Oh its as good or as bad as any other place she replied with a gay smile
Mine is good I jested
Thats what they all say
Come to work for me and see for yourself
Will I get good wages
Yes
How much
Any price you name
Look at him she said as though addressing a third person Look at the new millionaire
It might have been all yours But you did not think I was good enough for you You can keep it all to yourself and welcome
Well will you come to work
You cant do without me can you He cant get finishergirls the poor fellow Well how much will you pay me
We agreed upon the price but on taking leave she said I was joking
What do you mean Dont you want to work for me Gussie
She shook her head
Why
I dont want you to think I begrudge you your millions Well be better friends at a distance Goodby
Youre a funny girl Gussie Goodby
A short time after this conversation I had trouble with the Cloakmakers Union of which Gussie was one of the oldest and most loyal members
The cause of the conflict was an operator named Blitt a native of Antomir who had been working in my shop for some months He was a spare little fellow with a nose so compressed at the nostrils that it looked as though it was inhaling some sharp pleasant odor It gave his face a droll appearance but his eyes dark and large were very attractive I had known him as a small boy in my birthplace where he belonged to a much better family than I
When Blitt was invited to join the Levinsky Antomir Society of my employees he refused It turned out that he was one of the active spirits of the union and also an ardent member of the Socialist party His foreman had not the courage to discharge him because of my wellknown predilection for natives of Antomir so he reported him to me as a dangerous fellow
He isnt going to blow up the building is he I said lightly
But he may do other mischief Hes one of the leaders of the union
Let him lead
The next time I looked at Blitt I felt uncomfortable His refusal to join my Antomir organization hurt me and his activities in the union and at socialist gatherings kindled my rancor His compressed nose revolted me now
I wanted to get rid of him
Not that I had remained inflexible in my views regarding the distribution of wealth in the world Some of the bestknown people in the country were openly taking the ground that the poor man was not getting a square deal To sympathize with organized labor was no longer bad form some society women even doing picket duty for Jewish factorygirls out on strike
Socialism which used to be declared utterly unAmerican had come to be almost a vogue American colleges were leavened with it while American magazines were building up stupendous circulations by exposing the corruption of the mighty Public opinion had during the past two decades undergone a striking change in this respect I had watched that change and I could not but be influenced by it For all my theorizing about the survival of the fittest and the dying off of the weaklings I could not help feeling that in an abstract way the socialists were not altogether wrong
The case was different however when I considered it in connection with the concrete struggle of tradeunionism which among the Jewish immigrants was practically but another name for socialism against low wages or high rent
I must confess too that the defeat with which I had met at
Tevkins house had greatly intensified my hostility to socialists
As I have remarked in a previous chapter I ascribed my fiasco to
the socialist atmosphere that surrounded Anna I was embittered
The socialists were constantly harping on class struggle class antagonism class psychology I would dismiss it all as absurd but I did hate the tradeunions particularly those of the East Side Altogether there was too much socialism among the masses of the Ghetto I thought
Blitt now seemed to be the embodiment of this class antagonism
Ah he wont join my Antomir Society I would storm and fume and writhe inwardly Thats a tacit protest against the whole society as an organization of slaves It means that the society makes meek obedient servants of my employees and helps me fleece them As if they did not earn in my shop more than they would anywhere else As if they could all get steady work outside my place And what about the loans and all sorts of other favors they get from me If they worked for their own fathers they could not be treated better than they are treated here I felt outraged
I rebuked myself for making much ado about nothing Indeed this was a growing weakness with me Some trifle unworthy of consideration would get on my nerves and bother me like a grain of sand in the eye Was I getting old But no I felt in the prime of life full of vigor and more active and more alive to the passions than a youth
Whenever I chanced to be on the floor where Blitt worked I would avoid looking in his direction His presence irritated me How ridiculous I often thought One would imagine hes my conscience and thats why I want to get rid of him As a consequence I dared not send him away and as a consequence of this he irritated me more than ever
Finally one afternoon acting on the spur of the moment I called his foreman to me and told him to discharge him
A committee of the union called on me I refused to deal with them The upshot was a strike—not merely for the return of Blitt to my employment but also for higher wages and the recognition of the union The organization was not strong and only a small number of my men were members of it but when these went out all the others followed their contagious example the members of my Antomir Society not excepted
The police gave me ample protection and there were thousands of cloakmakers who remained outside the union so that I soon had all the hands I wanted but the conflict caused me all sorts of other mortifications For one thing it gave me no end of hostile publicity The socialist Yiddish daily which had an overwhelmingly wide circulation now printed reports of meetings at which I had been hissed and hooted I was accused of bribing corrupt politicians who were supposed to help me suppress the strike by means of police clubs I was charged with bringing disgrace upon the Jewish people
The thought of Tevkin reading these reports and of Anna hearing of them hurt me cruelly I could see Moissey reveling in the hisses with which my name was greeted And Elsie Did she take part in some of the demonstrations against me Were she and Anna collecting funds for my striking employees The reports in the American papers also were inclined to favor the strikers
Public opinion was against me What galled me worse than all perhaps was the sympathy shown for the strikers by some GermanJewish financiers and philanthropists men whose acquaintance it was the height of my ambition to cultivate All of which only served to pour oil into the flames of my hatred for the union
Bender implored me to settle the strike
The union doesnt amount to a row of pins he urged A week or two after we settle things will get back to their old state
Wheres your backbone Bender I exploded If you had your way those fellows would run the whole business You have no sense of dignity And yet you were born in America
I was always accompanied by a detective
One of the strikers was in my pay Every morning at a fixed hour he would call at a certain hotel where he reported the doings of the organization to Bender and myself One of the things I thus learned was that the union was hard up and constantly exacting loans from Gussie and several other members who had savingsbank accounts One day however when the secretary appealed to her for a further loan with which to pay fines for arrested pickets and assist some of the neediest strikers she flew into a passion What do you want of me murderers that you are she cried bursting into tears
Havent I done enough Have you no hearts
A minute or two later she yielded
Bleed me bleed me cruel people that you are she said pointing at her heart as she started toward her savings bank
I was moved When my spy had departed I paced the floor for some minutes
Then pausing I smilingly declared to Bender my determination to ask the union for a committee He was overjoyed and shook my hand solemnly
One of my bookkeepers was to communicate with the strike committee in the afternoon Two hours before the time set for their meeting I saw in one of the afternoon papers an interview with the president of the union His statements were so unjust to me I thought and so bitter that the fighting blood was again up in my veins
But the image of Gussie giving her hardearned money to help the strikers haunted me The next morning I went to Atlantic City for a few days letting Bender do as he pleased The strike was compromised the men obtaining a partial concession of their demands and Blitt waiving his claim to his former job
CHAPTER VI
MY business continued to grow My consumption of raw material reached gigantic dimensions so much so that at times when I liked a pattern I would buy up the entire output and sell some of it to smaller manufacturers at a profit
Gradually I abandoned the higher grades of goods developing my whole business along the lines of popular prices There are two cloakandsuit houses that make a specialty of costly garments These enjoy high reputations for taste and are the real arbiters of fashion in this country one of the two being known in the trade as Little Pans but the combined volume of business of both these firms is much smaller than mine
My deals with one mill alone—the largest in the country and the one whose head had come to my rescue when my affairs were on the brink of a precipice—now exceeded a million dollars at a single purchase to be delivered in seven months The mills often sell me at a figure considerably lower than the general market price They do so first because of the enormous quantities I buy and second because of the boost a fabric receives from the very fact of being handled by my house One day for instance I said to the president of a certain mill I like this cloth of yours I feel like making a big thing of it provided you can let me have an inside figure We came to terms and I gave him an advance order for nine thousand pieces When smaller manufacturers and departmentstore buyers heard that I had bought an immense quantity of that pattern its success was practically established As a consequence the mill was in a position to raise the price of the cloth to others so that it amply made up for the low figure at which it had sold the goods to me
Judged by the market price of the raw material my profit on a garment did not exceed fifty cents But I paid for the raw material seventyfive cents less than the market price so that my total profit was one dollar and twentyfive cents Still there have been instances when I lost seventyfive thousand dollars in one month because goods fell in price or because a certain style failed to move and I had to sell it below cost to get it out of the way To be sure cheaper goods are less likely to be affected by the caprices of style than higher grades which is one of several reasons why I prefer to produce garments of popular prices
I do not employ my entire capital in my cloak business half of it or more being invested in quick assets Should I need more ready cash than I have I could procure it at a lower rate than what those assets bring me I can get half a million dollars from two banks without rising from my desk—by merely calling those banks up on the telephone For this I pay say three and a half or four per cent for I am a desirable customer at the banks and as my quick assets bring me an average of five per cent I make at least one per cent on the money
Another way of making my money breed money is by early payments to the mills Not only can I do without their credit but I can afford to pay them six months in advance This gives me an anticipation allowance at the rate of six per cent per annum while money costs me at the banks three or four per cent per annum
All this is good sport
I own considerable stock in the very mills with which I do business which has a certain moral effect on their relations with my house For a similar purpose I am a shareholder in the large mailorder houses that buy cloaks and suits of me I hold shares of some department stores also but of late I have grown somewhat shy of this kind of investment the future of a department store being as uncertain as the future of the neighborhood in which it is located Mailorder houses on the other hand have the whole country before them and their overwhelming growth during past years was one of the conspicuous phenomena in the business life of the nation I love to watch their operations spread over the map and I love to watch the growth of American cities the shifting of their shopping centers the consequent vicissitudes the decline of some houses the rise of others American Jews of German origin are playing a foremost part in the retail business of the country large or small and our people Russian and Galician Jews also are making themselves felt in it being in many cases in partnership with Gentiles or with their own coreligionists of German descent The king of the great mailorder business a man with an annual income of many millions is the son of a Polish Jew He is one of the two richest Jews in America having built up his vast fortune in ten or fifteen years As I have said before I know hundreds if not thousands of merchants Jews and Gentiles throughout this country and Canada so I like to keep track of their careers
This too is good sport
Of course it is essential to study the business map in the interests of my own establishment but I find intellectual excitement in it as well and after all I am essentially an intellectual man I think
There are retailers in various sections of the country whom I have helped financially—former buyers for example who went into business on their own hook with my assistance This is good business for while these merchants must be left free to buy in the open market they naturally give my house precedence But here again I must say in fairness to myself that business interest is not the only motive that induces me to do them these favors
Indeed in some cases I do it without even expecting to get my money back
It gives me moral satisfaction for which money is no measure of value
CHAPTER VII
AM I happy There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a sense of my success and ease I become aware that thousands of things which had formerly been forbidden fruit to me are at my command now I distinctly recall that crushing sense of being debarred from everything and then I feel as though the whole world were mine One day I paused in front of an old East Side restaurant that I had often passed in my days of need and despair The feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek in its windows came back to me It gave me pangs of selfpity for my past and a thrilling sense of my present power The prices that had once been prohibitive seemed so wretchedly low now On another occasion I came across a Canal Street merchant of whom I used to buy goods for my pushcart I said to myself There was a time when I used to implore this man for ten dollars worth of goods when I regarded him as allpowerful and feared him Now he would be happy to shake hands with me
I recalled other people whom I used to fear and before whom I used to humiliate myself because of my poverty I thought of the time when I had already entered the cloak business but was struggling and squirming and constantly racking my brains for some way of raising a hundred dollars when I would cringe with a certain East Side banker and vainly beg him to extend a small note of mine and come away in a sickening state of despair
At this moment as these memories were filing by me I felt as though now there were nobody in the world who could inspire me with awe or render me a service
And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning for the very days when the doors of that restaurant were closed to me and when the Canal Street merchant was a magnate of commerce in my estimation Somehow encounters of this kind leave me dejected The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of emptiness and insignificance of my lack of anything like a great deep interest
I am lonely Amid the pandemonium of my six hundred sewingmachines and the jingle of gold which they pour into my lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude
I spend at least one evening a week at the Benders I am fond of their children and I feel pleasantly at home at their house I am a frequent caller at the Nodelmans and enjoy their hospitality even more than that of the Benders I go to the opera to the theaters and to concerts and never alone There are merry suppers and some orgies in which I take part but when I go home I suffer a gnawing aftermath of loneliness and desolation
I have a fine summer home with servants automobiles and horses I share it with the Bender family and we often have visitors from the city but no matter how large and gay the crowd may be the country makes me sad
I know bachelors who are thoroughly reconciled to their solitude and even enjoy it I am not
No I am not happy
In the city I occupy a luxurious suite of rooms in a highclass hotel and keep an excellent chauffeur and valet I give myself every comfort that money can buy But there is one thing which I crave and which money cannot buy—happiness
Many a pretty girl is setting her cap at me but I know that it is only my dollars they want to marry Nor do I care for any of them while the woman to whom my heart is calling—Anna—is married to another man
I dream of marrying some day I dread to think of dying a lonely man
Sometimes I have a spell of morbid amativeness and seem to be falling in love with woman after woman There are periods when I can scarcely pass a woman in the street without scanning her face and figure When I see the crowds returning from work in the cloakandwaist district I often pause to watch the groups of girls as they walk apart from the men Their keeping together as if they formed a separate world full of its own interests and secrets makes a peculiar appeal to me
Once in Florida I thought I was falling in love with a rich Jewish girl whose face had a bashful expression of a peculiar type There are different sorts of bashfulness This girl had the bashfulness of sin as I put it to myself She looked as if her mind harbored illicit thoughts which she was trying to conceal Her blushes seemed to be full of sex and her eyes full of secrets She was not a pretty girl at all but her guilty look disturbed me as long as we were stopping in the same place
But through all these ephemeral infatuations and interests I am in love with Anna
From time to time I decide to make a sensible marriage and study this woman or that as a possible candidate but so far nothing has come of it
There was one woman whom I might have married if she had not been a Gentile—one of the very few who lived in the family hotel in which I had my apartments At first I set her down for an adventuress seeking the acquaintance of rich Jews for some sinister purpose But I was mistaken She was a woman of high character Moreover she and her aged mother with whom she lived had settled in that hotel long before it came to be patronized by our people She was a widow of over forty with a good intellectual face well read in the better sense of the term and no fool Many of our people in the hotel danced attendance upon her because she was a Gentile woman but all of them were really fond of her The great point was that she seemed to have a sincere liking for our people This and the peculiar way her shoulders would shake when she laughed was in fact what first drew me to her We grew chummy and I spent many an hour in her company
In my soliloquies I often speculated and theorized on the question of proposing to her I saw clearly that it would be a mistake It was not the faith of my fathers that was in the way It was that medieval prejudice against our people which makes so many marriages between Jew and Gentile a failure It frightened me
One evening we sat chatting in the bright lobby of the hotel discussing human nature and she telling me something of the good novels she had read
After a brief pause I said I enjoy these talks immensely I dont think there is another person with whom I so love to talk of human beings
She bowed with a smile that shone of something more than mere appreciation of the compliment And then I uttered in the simplest possible accents Its really a pity that there is the chasm of race between us Otherwise I dont see why we couldnt be happy together
I was in an adventurous mood and ready even eager to marry her But her answer was a laugh as if she took it for a joke and though I seemed to sense intimacy and encouragement in that laugh it gave me pause I felt on the brink of a fatal blunder and I escaped before it was too late
But then I hastened to add real happiness in a case like this is perhaps not the rule but the exception That chasm continues to yawn throughout the couples married life I suppose
Thats an interesting point of view she said a noncommittal smile on her lips
She tactfully forbore to take up the discussion and I soon dropped the subject We remained friends
It was this woman who got me interested in good modern fiction The books she selected for me interested me greatly Then it was that the remarks I had heard from Moissey Tevkin came to my mind They were illuminating
Most of the people at my hotel are GermanAmerican Jews I know other Jews of this class I contribute to their charity institutions Though an atheist I belong to one of their synagogues Nor can I plead the special feeling which had partly accounted for my visits at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir while I was engaged to Kaplans daughter I am a member of that synagogue chiefly because it is a fashionable synagogue I often convict myself of currying favor with the German Jews But then GermanAmerican Jews curry favor with PortugueseAmerican Jews just as we all curry favor with Gentiles and as American Gentiles curry favor with the aristocracy of Europe
I often long for a hearttoheart talk with some of the people of my birthplace I have tried to revive my old friendships with some of them but they are mostly poor and my prosperity stands between us in many ways
Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness I say to myself There are cases when success is a tragedy
There are moments when I regret my whole career when my very success seems to be a mistake
I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest I was certainly brought up for one The day when that accident turned my mind from college to business seems to be the most unfortunate day in my life I think that I should be much happier as a scientist or writer perhaps I should then be in my natural element and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a stranger Thats the way I feel every time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College
The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains
Why then should I ascribe my triumph to special ability I should probably have made a much better college professor than a cloakmanufacturer and should probably be a happier man too I know people who have made much more money than I and whom I consider my inferiors in every respect
Many of our immigrants have distinguished themselves in science music or art and these I envy far more than I do a billionaire As an example of the successes achieved by Russian Jews in America in the last quarter of a century it is often pointed out that the man who has built the greatest skyscrapers in the country including the Woolworth Building is a Russian Jew who came here a penniless boy I cannot boast such distinction but then I have helped build up one of the great industries of the United States and this also is something to be proud of But I should readily change places with the Russian Jew a former Talmud student like myself who is the greatest physiologist in the New World or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American songwriters and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every Englishspeaking house in the world I love music to madness I yearn for the world of great singers violinists pianists Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country and I have met them but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a moneybag striving to play the Maæcenas I had a similar experience with a sculptor also one of our immigrants an East Side boy who had met with sensational success in Paris and London I had him make my bust His demeanor toward me was all that could have been desired We even cracked Yiddish jokes together and he hummed bits of synagogue music over his work but I never left his studio without feeling cheap and wretched
When I think of these things when I am in this sort of mood I pity myself for a victim of circumstances
At the height of my business success I feel that if I had my life to live over again I should never think of a business career
I dont seem to be able to get accustomed to my luxurious life I am always more or less conscious of my good clothes of the high quality of my office furniture of the power I wield over the men in my pay As I have said in another connection I still have a lurking fear of restaurant waiters
I can never forget the days of my misery I cannot escape from my old self
My past and my present do not comport well David the poor lad swinging over a Talmud volume at the Preachers Synagogue seems to have more in common with my inner identity than David Levinsky the wellknown cloakmanufacturer