The Rise of David Levinsky Part 21

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 baby-kissing, of Cuff-b.u.t.ton Leary's 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 Cuff-b.u.t.ton Leary's 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 don't care who he is. He helps a lot of people out of trouble, but he can't help everybody, can he? That's 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.

"It's a lie. It's 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! Ha-ha, ha-ha! Well, is that all the evidence you have got against Mr. Leary? I suppose that's the kind of evidence you have about the buying of votes, too. I am afraid you don't 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 cla.s.s

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 s.h.i.+pboard. I read the English version of it before Bender until I p.r.o.nounced 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

"It's 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.

Levinsky's 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 d.i.c.kens proved to be the ruin of my push-cart 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 book-writing. To all of which should be added my self-congratulations upon being able to read English of this sort, a state of mind which I was too apt to mistake for my raptures over d.i.c.kens. It seemed to me that people who were born to speak this language were of a superior race

I was literally intoxicated, and, drunkard-like, 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 push-cart 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 one-fourth 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 d.i.c.kens. 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 n.i.g.g.ardly that I dared not take a decent-looking pickle for my lunch.

I left him at the end of the second week, obtaining employment in a prosperous fish-store 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. Levinsky's 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 a.s.sistant in a Hebrew school where the American-born boys mocked my English and challenged me to have an "American fight" with them, till--on the third day--I administered a sound un-American thras.h.i.+ng to one of them and lost my job

Maximum Max got the proprietor of one of the dance-halls in which he did his instalment business to let me sleep in his bas.e.m.e.nt 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 d.i.c.kens (I was still burrowing my way through Dombey and Son) while the "affairs"

of the hall--weddings, banquets, b.a.l.l.s, ma.s.s 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 partner's 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 embarra.s.sed satisfaction.

I knew that it was a s.e.x smile. Another woman danced with grave mien, and I knew that it was the gravity of s.e.x

To watch dancing couples became a pa.s.sion with me. One evening, as I stood watching the waltzing members of a wedding party, a married sister of the bride's shouted to me in Yiddish: "What are you doing here? Get out. You're a kill-joy."

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 "hang-out" for myself.

The following month or two const.i.tute the most wretched period of my life in America. I slept in the cheapest lodging-houses on the Bowery and not infrequently in some express-wagon. 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. It's 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 half-dollars, 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 market-place. 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 pa.s.sers-by; the way a man would take stock of a pa.s.sing woman to ascertain whether she was of the approachable cla.s.s; the timidity of some of the men and the matter-of-fact 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 fainting-spell 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 matter-of-fact voice, "I'm dead broke to-day. I'll 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, I'll see you some other time," I said, with an air of bravado

She ran after me. "Wait a moment. What's your hurry?"