The Rise of David Levinsky Part 18

"What has got into that fellow?" she asked of the kerosene-stove.

"He is a greenhorn no longer, as true as I am alive." "You won't deny you are good-looking, will you?"

"What is that to you?" And again addressing herself to the kerosene-stove: "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 gobble-like 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, st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.s. 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 well-connected suitors she had rejected

I felt that I had side-tracked 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 don't 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 l.u.s.t."

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 pa.s.sively 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 t.i.tter at Matilda's 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: "I'll see about it.

I must be going. Good-by!" At this I took her hand, ostensibly in farewell.

"Good-by," she said, coloring and trying to free herself

"Good-by," 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

"Don't," she said, shyly, turning away

"What's the matter?" I said, gaily.

She faced about again. "I'll 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 don't! Indeed you are the most respectable and the most sweet-looking 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 I'll break every bone in your body. May both my hands be paralyzed if I don't!"

"'S-sh," I implored. Which only added fuel to her rage

"'S-sh nothing! I'll 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 Max's 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 pa.s.sing along on some errand, she paused in front of my cart, accosting me pleasantly

"I'll 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 can't take a joke."

"I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. Levinsky. May my luck be as good as is my friends.h.i.+p for you. I certainly wish you no evil. May G.o.d give me all the things I wish you. I just want you to behave yourself. That's 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 embarra.s.sment. "I don't think they are soft at all. They would be if I did not have so much was.h.i.+ng 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 father's 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 good-natured 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. "Don't be foolish."

She shook her head