Books: The Rise of David Levinsky

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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, haven't 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? That's 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'? That's
just the question." "You're 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 foreigner's 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

"Dil-i-gence, perr-severance, 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
custom-house clerk during the day and as school-teacher 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 baby-kissing, of
Cuff-Button 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-Button 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 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

"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 Dickens proved to be the ruin of my push-cart
business and caused m.e 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
Dickens. 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 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 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
assistant 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 thrashing 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
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 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 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 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 constitute 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 passers-by; 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 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?"

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 finn, and I came away
in a state of the blackest wretchedness and self-disgust

I could never again bring myself to show my face at her house

A little music-store 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 music-teachers 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
make-up--certain interests, passions, emotions, visions-- which
placed them above the common herd. This was especially true of
a spare, haggard-looking violinist, boyish of figure and cat-like 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 phrase-maker. Indeed, it would have been
difficult to determine which afforded him more pleasure--his
self-laudations 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.

"They'll be so hot they'll 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 dance-hall 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 dandified-looking 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

"Don't you know me? Try to remember!"

It was Gitelson, my fellow-passenger 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 didn't 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 cloak-contractor who picked him
up near Castle Garden had turned out to be a skinflint and a
slave-driver. 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
dance-hall 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! That's 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.

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