Books: The Rise of David Levinsky

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My pay-envelope for the first week contained thirty-two 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. Thirty-two
dollars! Why, that meant sixty-four 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 suspcnded 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 savings-bank, I had to carry what I
deemed a great sum on my person (in a money-belt 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 self-confidence 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 me-the
danger of the street crowds seizing that magic wad from me.

The image of the college building loomed as a bride-elect of mine.
But that, somehow, did not seem to have anything to do with my
money-belt, as though I expected to go to college without
encroaching upon my savings--a case of eating the cake and
having it

The cloak-makers 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 Adler's
ethical-culture 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 cloak-making at once. I dreamed of enlisting the interest of a
certain Maecenas, a German-American 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 swift-flowing life of American Ghettos. But
the ambition to be the wife of a doctor, lawyer, or dentist is too
strong in some of our working-girls to be quenched by the dangers
involved

One of the young women I had in mind was Gussie, the
cloak-finisher 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 washed-out 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?"

"Wouldn't 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 carnage
and I should have to start a breach-of-promise case against 'Dr.
Levinsky.' You'll 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. Gussie's
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 cloak-maker 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, two-story frame structure, the smallest
and oldest-looking on the block. Its ground floor was used as a
tailoring shop by the landlord himself, a white-headed 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 chatter-box, her great topic of conversation
being her son Meyer, upon whom she doted, and his
American-born wife, whose name she scarcely ever uttered
without a malediction. She told me how she, Meyer's mother, her
sister, and a niece had turned out their pockets and pawned their
jewelry to help Meyer start in business as a clothing-manufacturer

"He's now worth a hundred thousand dollars--may no evil eye hit
him," she said. "He's 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 meat-ball 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 Meyer's 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 side-whiskers, 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 don't want to look like a man-dog," he explained, gaily, to his
mother, who was unpleasantly surprised by the change.

"Man-dog 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.
It's 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

"What's 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 doesn't care for money at all."

"Doesn't 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 Ridley's," [note] he jested, but he was manifestly
beginning to resent my attitude and to take our passage at arms
rather seriously

"Not even at Ridley's. You can't get brains there, can you?"

"Well, I never learned to write, but I have a learned fellow in my
office.

He's 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 that's in a man's head. And now let's take
charity--the stuff that's in a man's heart.

I don't care what you say, but of what use is a good heart unless he
has some jinglers [note] to go with it? You can't 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 can't
talk, and he can't.

'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 it's nice to be educated," he said. "A man without
writing is just like a deaf mute. What's the difference? The man
who can't write has speech in his mouth, but he is dumb with his
fingers, while the deaf mute he can't talk with his mouth, but he
can do so with his fingers. Both should be pitied. I do like
education. Of course I do. Don't 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, 'That's it!'"

When he heard of my ambition to give lessons he said: "I tell you
what. I'll be your first pupil. I mean it." he added, seriously.

My heart gave a leap. "Very well. I'll try my best," I replied

"Mind you, I don't want to be a philosopher. I just want you to fix
me up in reading, writing, and figuring a little bit. That's all. You
don't think it's 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 don't want my kids to know their pa is learning like a little boy,
don't 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
ink-stained 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 horse-driver, 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
twenty-five cents an hour, he smiled

"I'll 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 absent-minded and
then, suddenly pushing the school-book from him, said: "Too
late! Too late! Those black little dots won't 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
college-entrance 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 sha'n't starve," I said to myself.
"And, if I don't get enough to eat, hunger is nothing new to me."

The very firmness of my purpose was a source of encouragement
and joy

[note: Ridley's]: A well-known 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. Bald-headed as a
melon and with a tendency to corpulence, he had the back of a
man of forty-five and the front of a man of twenty-five.

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? Can't 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 doesn't 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. Manheimer's 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 forty-five
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 Chaikin's
passivity and for the annoyance and the burning ill-will 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.

thought of Meyer Nodelman's humble beginnings and of the three
hundred-odd dollars I had in my savings-bank 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 forty-five 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 insignificant-looking man of thirty-two, with almost a
cadaverous face and a very prominent Adam's apple. He was not a
prepossessing man by any means, but his bluish eyes had a
charming look, of boy-like dreaminess, and his smile was even
more child-like 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 tenement-houses in the
neighborhood of East 110th Street and Central Park, then the new
quarter of the more prosperous Russian Jews.

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