The Rise of David Levinsky
by Abraham Cahan · English · Gutenberg #2803 · 952,621 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Rise of David Levinsky
Author: Abraham Cahan
Release date: September 1, 2001 [eBook #2803]
Most recently updated: April 4, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2803
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*
The Rise of David Levinsky
by
Abraham Cahan
Book I - Home and School
Book II - Enter Satan
Book III - I Lose My Mother
Book IV - Matilda
Book V - I Discover America
Book VI - A Greenhorn No Longer
Book VII - My Temple
Book VIII - The Destruction of My Temple
Book IX - Dora
Book X - On the Road
Book XI - Matrimony
Book XII - Miss Tevkin
Book XIII - At Her Father's House
Book XIV - Episodes of a Lonely Life
BOOK I
HOME AND SCHOOL
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
cloak-and-suit 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 middle-aged 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 one's 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 widow's 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
father's 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 father's
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
mother's rolling-pin 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, Passers-by 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
cheek-bones, 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 self-consciously.
But one day I suddenly wearied of it all and traded my entire
hoard of buttons for a pocket-knife and some trinkets.
"Don't you care for buttons any more?" mother inquired.
"I can't 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 (twenty-five 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 pot-cheese 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! You'll 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 tinker's shop to have our drinking-cup 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 room-mates 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
bookbinder's "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 side-whiskers. 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 bookbinder's 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 red-haired 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 single-room
apartments, similarly tenanted, opened into a pitch-dark 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
one-story houses. It was known as Abner's 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!" "Christ-killer!" 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 dare-devil
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 Abner's Court was that of the porter.
His children spoke fairly good Yiddish
One Saturday evening a pock-marked lad from the Sands, the son
of a chimney-sweep, meeting me in the street, set his dog at me.
As a result I came home with a fair-sized piece of my trousers
(knee-breeches were unknown to us) missing
"I'm going to kill him," my mother said, with something like a sob.
"I'm just going to kill him."
"Cool down," the retired soldier pleaded, without removing his
short-stemmed 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 soldier's wife seized her by an arm
"Where are you going? To the Sands? Are you crazy? If you start a
quarrel over there you'll never come back alive."
"I don't 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 soldier's 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 gathering-place 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 non-commissioned, by the number of stars or
bands on their shoulder-straps. 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 Abner's
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
Abner's Court as well as one of the conspicuous figures among
them. Compactly built, broad-shouldered, with a small, firm
mouth like my mother's, a well-formed 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
tongue-lashing 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, don't tell him! Take pity! Don't."
"I won't. Get out of here, you lump of stench."
"Oh, swear that you won't tell him! Do swear, dearie. Long life to
you.
Health to every little bone of yours."
"First you swear that you'll 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. Can't
you be decent? You ought to be knouted in the market-place. 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 won't 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 prayer-book 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
red-headed, broad-shouldered "finger worker," a specialist in
"short change," yardstick frauds, and other varieties of
market-place legerdemain. One woman, a cross between a beggar
and a dealer in second-hand 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 Abner's 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 next-door 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 half-groschen (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
"He's 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 Abner's
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 dark-blue 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 Abner's 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 half-naked women and soldiers
there, and that one of the women had beckoned me in and given
me some cake
"Why, you mustn't do that, Davie!" she said, aghast. "Don't you
ever go near that street again! Do you hear?"
"Why?"
"Because it is a bad street."
"Why is it bad?"
"Keep still and don't 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 mustn't 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 don't 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 half-holidays with us Jewish boys. One Friday
afternoon a wedding was celebrated in our courtyard. The
procession emerged from one of the rickety one-story 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 bride's 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
couple's 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 boy's name was Naphtali. He was a trim-looking fellow with
curly brown hair, somewhat near-sighted. 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, don't
you?"
Naphtali made no answer. After a little he said: "You must think it
is the bow that does the playing, don't you?"
"What else does it?" I asked, perplexed
"It's 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
class-room was at the same time the bedroom, living-room, and
kitchen of the teacher's family. His wife and children were always
around. These cheder teachers were usually a haggard-looking 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 self-pity 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 teacher's 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 mother's 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 copy-book.
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 ink-thief 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 every-day experience
with me
Overworked, underfed, and goaded by the tongue-lashings of their
wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of
ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling,
pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," 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 well-to-do family, the teacher's anger
was almost sure to be vented on me. If I happened to be somewhat
absent-minded (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 boy's hair we would call him
"wig-maker" or "brush-maker"; if he preferred to slap or
"calcimine" the culprit's 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
pupil's 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, well-fed 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, isn't it?"
"No."
"Don't lie, Davie. It is that assassin, the cholera take him! Tell me
the truth. Don't be afraid."
"A boy did it."
"What is his name?"
"I don't 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 half-naked and, pointing at the
discoloration on my arm, she said, with ominous composure:
"Look! Whose work is it?"
"Mine," Shmerl answered, without removing his long-stemmed
pipe from his wide mouth. He was no coward
"And you are proud of it, are you?" "If you don't 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
boy's 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 husband's 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 Sarah-Leah, was the heroine of my
first romance.
Sarah-Leah had the misfortune to bear a striking resemblance to a
sister of her father's, 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 Sarah-Leah! She was the outcast of the
family just as I was the outcast of her father's school.
She was about eleven years old and I was somewhat younger. The
similarity of our fates and of our self-pity 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, Sarah-Leah 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 lover's 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 father's 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 Sarah-Leah
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
room-mates 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 don't behave I'll cut you to pieces," he would say. "I'll just
cut you to tiny bits and put you into my pipe and you'll go up in
smoke." Or, "I'll give you such a thrashing that you won't be able
to sit down, stand up, or lie down. The only thing you'll 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 I'll kill you," I said
"If you lay a finger on me," he retorted, "the teacher will kick you
out.
Your mother doesn't 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
ring-shaped rolls or apples with me
Often when a boy ate something that was beyond my mother's
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 mother's 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, out-of-town 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 school-teachers
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 writing-materials 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 Preacher's
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 old-fashioned 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 story-telling
It is at once a fountain of religious inspiration and a
"brain-sharpener." "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 child's play as compared to the Talmud
In the Preacher's Synagogue, then, I spent seven years of my
youthful life.
For hours and hours together I would sit at a gaunt reading-desk,
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, child-like
little face flanked by a pair of thick, heavy, dark-brown side-locks
that seemed to weigh him down
His wife kept a trimming-store 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 single-room 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 one's 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 snuff-box, 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 snuff-box.
It was of tortoise shell, with a lozenge-shaped 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 well-known
synagogue chanter.
One afternoon he sang something to me, with his snuff-box 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, it's so beautiful, so
sweet!"
Reb Sender's 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 child-like 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 don't 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, simple-hearted man, with the mind of an
infant, was one of the most quick-witted, nimble-minded 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 snuff-box 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, don't be double-faced; 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 love-lorn. 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 twenty-two 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 match-maker, don't 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 middle-aged 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 Sender's nerves, but he bore him absolutely no ill-will.
Nor did he ever utter a word of condemnation concerning a
certain other scholar, an inveterate tale-bearer and gossip-monger,
though a good-natured 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
Sender's, was more inclined to chat than to study. Now and again
he would break in upon my friend's 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 dinner-pot. 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 Sender's wife at
the synagogue. They did not take to each other.
On one occasion my mother found Reb Sender's daughter at the
house of prayer. Having her father's 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
Sender's wife is up to some scheme about you. She wants you to
marry that monkey of hers. That's 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 don't 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
room-mates. 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
mother's boastful warning to me. She grinned. After a little, as I
was crossing the room, she sang out with a giggle: "Bridegroom!"
"I'll 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
fifteen-year-old Esther in place of the five-year-old 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 middle-aged 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 near-sighted 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 girl-like
squeamishness. As for me, it only added to my admiration of him.
His conscience seemed to be as clean as his finger-nails. He wrote
a beautiful hand, he could draw and carve, and he was a good
singer. His interpretations were as clear-cut 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 near-sighted 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
Preacher's 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 Preacher's
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 self-consciousness 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 happy-go-lucky. 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 red-headed
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
father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor 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 won't catch me again, scoundrel you," I would assure him
with sneers and leers. Or, "Get away from me, heartless
mischief-maker you! You're 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 snuff-box 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 tongue-tied, don't 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 ill-feeling 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, don't 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."
"'S-sh! Don't 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."
"'S-sh!" 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 one's eyes off the girls who came to the Preacher's
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 one's own wife without incurring universal
condemnation. There was a dancing-school 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
silver-plated 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 one's 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
sharp-eyed 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 reading-desk from nine in the morning
to bedtime every day, and an all-night 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 Preacher's 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 Sender's 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 son-in-law
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,
fair-complexioned, and well-groomed, with a suggestion of
self-satisfaction and aloofness in the very sinuosity of his figure.
His velvet skull-cap, which was always pushed back on his head,
exposed to view a forelock of golden hair. His long-skirted,
well-fitting 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 well-fed 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 well-to-do parents were stupid. Brains did not
seem to be in their line. That this young man, who was so well
supplied with this world's 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 Sender's 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 don't like about it is your envy of the Pole," he said,
gravely.
"Don't 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 well-fed 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 full-grown 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."
"Isn't 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
"You're a pampered idiot."
"You're green with envy."
"I'll 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. "That's
all right!" I thought to myself. "I'll have that silk-stocking 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 school-boys were celebrating the downfall of
Haman, and they were doing it in the same war-like fashion in
which American boys celebrate their forefathers' defiance of
George III. The synagogues roared with the booming of
fire-crackers, the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim
rattles. It was four weeks to the great eight-day 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 rolling-pin 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 dark-brown 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 Horse-market. 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 long-skirted coat and side-locks 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 Abner's 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.
"I'm going to kill him. I am just going to kill him," she said, in
measured accents which still ring in my ears
The bookbinder's 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 don't even know who did it," urged the
soldier
"I'll find out!" she answered
The bookbinder's 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
anti-Jewish atrocities of 1881 and 1882 were fresh in one's 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 self-defense 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
"'S-sh! 's-sh! 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 old-fashioned class, each of which wanted to
provide me with excellent board. But then Reb Sender's wife, in a
fit of compassion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the
moment, claimed the sole right to feed me
"I'll take his mother's 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 man's Talmud
education. And so I selected a pew in the Preacher's Synagogue
for my bed. I was better off than some others who lived in houses
of God, for I had some of my mother's 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 mother's
grave.
"Mamma! Mamma!" I shrieked, throwing myself upon the mound
in a wild paroxysm of grief
The dinners which Reb Sender's 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 well-to-do 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 self-pity 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 husband's 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 Sender's 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 reading-desk, 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 near-sighted 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
"Don't 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 Abner's Court and let my heart be racked
by the sight of what had once been our home, mother's 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 can't 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 son-in-law, a poet
named Abraham Tevkin. Doctor Rachaeles's daughter was a
celebrated beauty and the poet's courtship of her had been in the
form of a long series of passionate letters addressed, not to his
lady-love, but to her father. This love-story 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."
"You're a funny fellow. Did Tevkin get the girl?"
"He did, and they have been married for many years. Why, did you
wonder if you mightn't have a chance?"
"You're impossible, Naphtali."
He smiled.
CHAPTER II
ONE afternoon Naphtali called on me at the
Preacher's 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 well-born. 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 dark-brown hue, threaded with silver,
and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps that seemed to
be symbolic of her harum-scarum 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 old-fashioned 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 Horse-market" 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
"It's terrible! It's 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
mother's death her house had been agog with a trouble of its own.
But of this presently
She handed me a three-ruble 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 empty-handed.
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 well-filled
stomach. "And work I will. I'll 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 anti-Semitic 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 mob's 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
well-established historical fact that the anti-Jewish 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, twenty-two
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 wild-fire, 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 Shiphrah's 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 don't 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."
"I'll 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
"You're 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 didn't you let me know at once? Come
on, David!"
"Where to?" I inquired, timidly.
"None of your business. Come on. I'm 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. Don't 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 old-fashioned, ridiculous young creature like a Talmud student
would have been out of the question
I followed her with fast-beating 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
Matilda's 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 boarding-school in Germany (in
accordance with a custom that had been in existence among people
of her father's 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.
Don't 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
beadle's forgiveness. Had insulted him for nothing. But he's a
dummy, all the same.
Come on, David."
Arrived at her house, she introduced me to her old servant, in the
kitchen
"He'll 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 Horse-market."
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 sitting-room, so crowded with new
furniture that it had the appearance of a furniture-store. 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 bric-à-brac-stands was due to
Shiphrah's 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 sitting-room, 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 side-glance 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 mother's side
She was small, but well made, and her movements were brisk,
firm, elastic
"Come on, mother, there's 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. Don't 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 fair-complexioned youth of eighteen or nineteen came
in, apparently attracted by his mother's 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 side-locks to the edge of my
long-skirted 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 sitting-room was used as a
breakfast-room 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
sitting-room 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 eighteen-year-old
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 o'clock in the afternoon I was alone in the
drawing-room. 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! Don't you know it is bad manners for a gentleman to
stand with his back to ladies?"
I faced about, all flushed and scared
"That's better," she said, gaily. "Never mind staring at the floor.
Give us a look, will you? Don't act as a shy bridegroom."
I made no answer. The room seemed to be in a whirl
"Why don't you speak?" Matilda insisted, concealing her quizzical
purpose under a well-acted air of gravity
Her two friends roared, and, spurred on by their merriment, she
continued to make game of me.
"Won't 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 terror-stricken
"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 won't be as cruel as all that. I tell you what, though. I'll
hide your side-locks 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! We're making headway,
aren't we?"
At this point her mother's 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 side-locks behind my
ears. As we were alone I had more courage
"If you don't stop I'll 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
"'S-sh! don't yell," she said, startled. "Can't you take a joke?"
"A nice joke, that."
"Very well, I won't do it again. I didn't know you were a
touch-me-not." After a pause she resumed, in grave, friendly
accents: "Come, don't 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! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Why, mother says you
are remarkably bright. Isn't it a pity that you should throw it all
away? Why don't you try to study Russian, geography, history?
Why don't 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 mother's
helter-skelter 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 can't hear it! I can't 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. "It's 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 far-away 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: "That's 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 side-locks, she added: "I do wish you would
cut off those horrid things of yours. You won't 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
side-locks were out of place there
She proceeded to put my side-locks 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
hand-glass 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 wouldn't be a
bad-looking 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 don't?" 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 you'll dress like a Gentile and even shave. Then you
won't look so ridiculous. Good clothes would make another man
of you." At this she looked me over in a business-like 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 brother's Sunday uniform
"It's rather too small for you, but it's becoming all the same," she
said, enthusiastically. "If mamma came in now she would not
know you. But then there would be a nice how-do-you-do if she
did." She gave a titter which rolled through my very heart. "Well,
Mr. Gymnasist, [note] are you really in love with me?"
"Don't make fun of me, pray," I implored her. "It hurts, you know."
"Very well, I sha'n't. But you haven't 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. "That's 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 else's words."
"Then you don't love me."
"Yes, I do. But I hate to be made fun of. Don't! Please don't!" 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, good-naturedly.
"You must not forget that you are not a gymnasist, that to kiss a
woman is a sin, a great sin. You'll be beaten with rods of iron in
the world to come. Well, good-by," 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 sitting-room. One night, when I was asleep on that great
sofa, I was suddenly aroused by the touch of a hand
"'S-sh," I heard Matilda's whisper. "I want to talk to you. I can't
sleep, anyhow. I don't 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 pitch-dark. 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
bride-to-be, 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
"You're a devil," she whispered, slapping me on both cheeks, "a
devil with side-locks." And she broke into a suppressed laugh
"I'll study as hard as I can," I assured her, with boyish exultation.
"You'll see what I can do. The Gentile books are child's 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
"'S-sh!" 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. Don't lose heart, my boy."
I ran over to Naphtali's 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 somebody's, anybody's 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
pent-up sobs. I was writhing inwardly, praying for Matilda's
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 don't think I want it now," I said. "I don't 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 I'll miss you. I sha'n't 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. "That's
the main thing. Good-by. You have my best wishes. Good-by."
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 mother's 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 Preacher's
Synagogue, the retired old soldier with the formidable
side-whiskers, 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 one's 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 ten-ruble bill and a package. "There
is a boiled chicken in it, and some other things, provided you
won't neglect your Talmud in America."
A minute later she drew her purse from her skirt pocket, produced
a five-ruble 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 heart-lashing 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 America-bound 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 prayer-book, 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 prayer-book. 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 far-flung 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 immigrant's arrival in his new home is like a second birth to
him.
Imagine a new-born 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 prayer-book, 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 fellow-passengers was a young Yiddish-speaking tailor
named Gitelson. He was about twenty-four 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, prayer-book 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, well-fed feline stood in a corner, eying the crowd of
new-comers. 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 evil-looking
men, representatives of boarding-houses 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
"He's not better than a Cossack, either," was my verdict
At this moment a voice hailed us in Yiddish. Facing about, we
beheld a middle-aged 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
smooth-shaven face and broad-shouldered, stocky figure.
He was literally aglow with diamonds and self-satisfaction. 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
"You're a tailor, aren't you?" he questioned him
My steerage companion nodded. "I'm a ladies' tailor, but I have
worked on men's clothing, too," he said
"A ladies' tailor?" the well-dressed stranger echoed, with
ill-concealed delight. "Very well; come along. I have work for
you."
That he should have been able to read Gitelson's 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 fellow-passenger
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
fellow-passenger were absorbed in a conversation full of sartorial
technicalities which were Greek to me, but which brought a gleam
of joy into Gitelson's 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 that's no business in America," he declared. "Any
relatives here?" "Well, don't worry. You will be all right. If a
fellow isn't lazy nor a fool he has no reason to be sorry he came to
America. It'll 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 well-dressed, trim-looking 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 high-born
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 Post-Office, 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
isn't far from here." With which he slipped a silver quarter into my
hand and made Gitelson bid me good-by
The two then boarded a big red horse-car
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 half-hour that followed is one of the worst
I experienced in all the thirty-odd years of my life in this country
The big, round nostrils of the contractor and the gray forelock of
my young steerage-fellow haunted my brain as hideous symbols of
treachery.
With twenty-nine 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 Yiddish-speaking
immigrants. The sign-boards 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
self-confidence 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 poorest-looking 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 passers-by 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 mother-tongue 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 English-speaking 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 passers-by 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 self-complacent 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 three-cent 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 grocery-store to let me wash my hands and eat my meal in
her place. She looked old-fashioned enough, yet when she heard
my request she said, with a laugh: "You're a green one, I see."
"Suppose I am," I resented. "Do the yellow ones or black ones all
eat without washing? Can't 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 grocery-woman 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 non-payment of rent. A mother and her two little
boys were watching their pile of furniture and other household
goods on the sidewalk while the passers-by 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 week-days people in America had no time to say their prayers
at home, much less to visit a house of worship
"It isn't 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 night's 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 night's rest! Alas! America has turned me into
a mound of ashes."
"You were well off in Russia, weren't 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 topsy-turvy 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 red-handed, 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 can't 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 venerable-looking
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, aren't 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 son-in-law 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, don't
you know."
He rattled on, betraying his envy of the venerable-looking 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 daughter's 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 interlocutor's characterization of him
"Perhaps you will ask me how his son-in-law 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 Even's 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 son-in-law."
A few minutes later he told me admiringly how Even often
"loaned" him a half-dollar 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 snuff-box in his left hand, and fell
to scrutinizing me. He had the appearance of a well-paid 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 mercy's 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
God-fearing 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 mother's 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 anti-Jewish riots, the killing
of my mother by a Gentile mob had attracted considerable
attention. I was thrilled to find myself in the lime-light of
world-wide 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,
well-fed 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 son-in-law
was the owner of the tenement-house in which the restaurant was
located, as well as of several other buildings. They also told me of
the landlord's wife, of her devotion to her father, and of the latter's
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 won't look green," or, "That will
make you look American." At one point he added, "Not that you
are a bad-looking 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 hair-cut and a bath," he said to the proprietor. "Cut off
his side-locks 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
"Don't 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 looking-glass. "Quite an American, isn't he?"
he said to the barber, beamingly. "And a good-looking fellow,
too."
When I took a look at the mirror I was bewildered. I scarcely
recognized myself
I was mentally parading my "modern" make-up 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 hair-cut 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 tenement-house and
introduced me to a tall, bewhiskered, morose-looking, elderly man
and a smiling woman of thirty-five, explaining that he had paid
them in advance for a month's 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 five-dollar
bill, and some silver, in addition. "And now you must shift for
yourself. That's 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. Don't 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 dry-goods and to take
up peddling. Then, wishing me good luck, he left
My landlady, who had listened to Mr. Even's 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 bed-prayer. 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 grocery-store
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 billiard-ball, continually bustling about,
chattering and smiling or laughing. She was a good-natured, 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 son-in-law 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 one's "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
landlady's 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 collar-buttons 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. I'll 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 truck-driver,
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, good-natured 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 side-locks. 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, florid-faced huckster
shouting at the top of his husky voice: "Strawberri-i-ies,
strawberri-i-ies, 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
strawberry-peddler 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,
trade-union 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 Saturday-morning 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 truck-driver, and largely with
his help, I soon changed the character of my business. I rented a
push-cart and tried to sell remnants of dress-goods, linen, and
oil-cloth. 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 push-cart with cheap hosiery collars,
brushes, hand-mirrors, note-books, shoe-laces, 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
passers-by 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, hideous-looking 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 push-cart 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. It'll be all right.
Don't 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,
commonplace-looking 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
push-cart 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
heart-to-heart 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 truck-driver's 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
doctor's 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
Preacher's Synagogue. My former self was addressing me across
the sea in this strange, uninviting, big town where I was
compelled to peddle shoe-black or oil-cloth and to compete with a
yelling idiot. I would picture my mother gazing at me as I stood at
my push-cart. 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 push-cart 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
don't be a fool. It will make you ever so much better-looking. 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. "That's 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 ruddy-faced 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
down-covered 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 chess-player 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
story-telling, but these mostly made (or pretended to make) a joke
of it. The man who had changed Max's 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, large-boned 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 dance-halls, to whom he sold clothing, dress-goods,
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
dance-halls. 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 good-looking
chap all around, for that matter. A fellow like you ought to make a
hit with women. Why don't 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 don't 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. Levinsky's 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, broad-shouldered figure and for her turkey
laugh, but she was a full-blooded, healthy female, after all. So, as
I looked at her bustling between the table and the stove, Max's
rule came back to me. I could almost hear his voice, "Every
woman can be won, absolutely every one. Mrs. Levinsky's 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 half-naked, 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 kerosene-stove 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 well-known 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 side-glance at me
"Have I no ears? Don't 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?"
"Aren't you interested to know something more about it?" "I
dreamed of telling you that you are a good-looking lady," I
pursued, with fast-beating heart
"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, 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
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