The Rise of David Levinsky (61 page)

The announcement made something of a stir.

Mrs. Wolpert brought us tea. From the ensuing conversation I gleaned that these people, including Tevkin, were ardent Zionists of a certain type, and that they were 462 part of a group in which the poet was a ruling spirit. When I happened to drop a remark to the effect that Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, was a dead language, Wolpert exclaimed:

“Oh no! Not any longer, Mr. Levinsky. It has risen from the dead.”

The other two chimed in, each in his way, the burden of their argument being that Hebrew was the living tongue of the Zionist colonists in Palestine.

“The children of our colonists speak it as American children do English,” said Tevkin, exultingly. “They speak it as the sons and daughters of Jerusalem spoke it at the time of the prophets. We are no dreamers. We can tell the difference between a dream and a hard fact, can’t we?”—to the other two. “For centuries the tongue of our fathers spoke from the grave to us. Now, however, it has come to life again.”

He took me into his “office,” lighting the gas-jet in it. A few minutes later he shut the dining-room door, his face assuming an extremely grave mien.

“By the way, an idea has occurred to me,” he said. “But first I want you to know that I do not mean to profit by our spiritual friendship for purposes of a material nature. Do you believe me?”

“I certainly do. Go ahead, Mr. Tevkin.”

“What I want to say is a pure matter of business. Do you understand? If you don’t want to go into it, just say so, and we shall drop it.”

“Of course,” I answered.

We were unable to look each other in the face.

“There is a parcel of real estate in Brooklyn,” he resumed. “One could have it for a song.”

“But I don’t buy real estate,” I replied, my cheeks on fire.

He looked at the floor and, after a moment’s silence, he said:

“That’s all. Excuse me. I don’t want you to think I want to presume upon our acquaintance.”

“But I don’t. On the contrary, I wish it were in my line. I should be glad to—”

“That’s all,” he cut me short. “Let us say no more about it.” And he made an awkward effort to talk Zionism again.

T
HE real-estate “boom” which had seized upon the five Ghettos of Greater New York a few years before was still intoxicating a certain element of their population. Small tradesmen of the slums, and even working-men, were investing their savings in houses and lots. Jewish carpenters, house-painters, bricklayers, or instalment peddlers became builders of tenements or frame dwellings, real-estate speculators. Deals were being closed, and poor men were making thousands of dollars in less time than it took them to drink the glass of tea or the plate of sorrel soup over which the transaction took place. Women, too, were ardently dabbling in real estate, and one of them was Mrs. Chaikin, the wife of my talented designer.

Tevkin was not the first broker to offer me a “good thing” in real estate. Attempts in that direction had been made before and I had warded them all off.

Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted from my regular business to what I considered a gamble. “Unreal estate,” I would call it. My friend Nodelman was of the same opinion. “It’s a poker game traveling under a false passport,” was his way of putting it.

Once, as I sat in a Brooklyn street-car, I was accosted by a bewigged woman who occupied the next seat and whom I had never seen before.

“You speak Yiddish, don’t you?” she began, after scrutinizing me quite unceremoniously.

“I do. Why?”

“I just wanted to know.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, it is and it is not,” she said, with a shrewd, good-natured smile. “Since we are talking, I might as well ask you if you would not care to take a look at a couple of new houses in East New York.”

I did not interrupt her and she proceeded to describe the houses and the bargain they represented.

When she finally paused for my answer and I perpetrated a labored witticism about her “peddling real estate in street-cars” she flared up:

“Why not? Is it anything to be ashamed of or to hide? Did I steal those houses? I can assure you I paid good money for them. So why should I be afraid to speak about them? And when I say it is a bargain, I mean it. That, too, I can say aloud and to everybody in the world, because it is the truth, the holy truth. May I not live to see my children again if it is not. There!” After a pause she resumed: “Well?”

I made no reply.

“Will you come along and see the houses? It is not far from here.”

“I have no time.”

She took up some details tending to show that by buying those two frame buildings of hers and selling them again I was sure to “clear” a profit of ten thousand dollars.

I made no reply.

“Well? Will you come along?”

“Leave me alone, please.”

“Ah, you are angry, aren’t you?” she said, sneeringly. “Is it because you haven’t any money?”

 

The awkward scene that had attended Tevkin’s attempt to get me interested in his parcel haunted me. I craved to see him again and to let him sell me something. To be sure, my chief motive was a desire to cultivate his friendship, to increase my chances of being invited to his house. The risk of buying some city lots in Brooklyn seemed to be a trifling price to pay for the prospect of coming into closer relations with him. Besides, the “parcel” seemed to be a sure investment. But I was also eager to do something for him for his own sake. And so I made an appointment with him by telephone and called at his wretched little office again.

“Where is the parcel you mentioned the other day?” I began. “Where is it located?”

“Never mind that,” he said, hotly. “There shall be no business between you and me. Nothing but pure 465 spiritual friendship. I made a foolish mistake last time. I hate myself for it. If you were a smaller man financially I should not mind it, perhaps. As it is, it would simply mean that you help me out. It would mean charity.”

I laughed and argued and insisted, and he succumbed.

We made an appointment to meet at Malbin’s, a large restaurant on Grand Street that was known as the “Real Estate Exchange” of the Ghetto. There I was introduced to a plain-looking man who proved to be the then owner of the parcel, and closed a contract for a deed.

Encouraged by this transaction, Tevkin rapidly developed some far-reaching real-estate projects in which he apparently expected me to be the central figure. One afternoon as we sat over glasses of tea at Malbin’s he said:

“If you want to drink a glass of real Russian tea, come up some evening. We shall all be very glad to see you.”

I felt the color mounting to my face as I said, “I don’t think your daughter would like it.”

“My daughter?” he asked, in amazement. “But I have three daughters.”

“The one that spent some time at the Rigi Kulm in the Catskills last summer.”

“Anna?” he asked, with still greater surprise, as it were.

“I don’t know her first name, but I suppose that’s the one.”

“If she was at the Rigi Kulm, it’s Anna.”

“Well, I had the pleasure of meeting her there, but I am afraid I was somewhat of a
persona non grata
with her,” I said, in a partial attempt to make a joke of it.

He dropped his glance, leveled it at me once more, and dropped it again.

“Why, what was the matter?” he inquired, in great embarrassment.

“Nothing was the matter. A case of dislike at first sight, I suppose.”

“Still—”

“You’d better ask her, Mr. Tevkin.”

He made no reply, nor did he repeat his invitation. He was manifestly on pins and needles to get away, without having the courage to do so.

“So that’s what you wanted to meet me for?” he muttered, looking at the wall.

“Well, I’ll tell you frankly how it was, Mr. Tevkin,” I said, and began with a partial lie calculated to bribe him: “ I became interested in her because I heard that she was your daughter, and afterward, when I had returned to the city, I made it my business to go to the library and to read your works. My enthusiasm for your writings is genuine, however, I assure you, Mr. Tevkin. And when I went to that café it was for the purpose of making your acquaintance, as much for your own sake as for hers. There, I have told you the whole story.”

There was mixed satisfaction and perplexity in his look.

 

The next morning my mail included a letter from him. It was penned in Hebrew. It read like a chapter of the Old Testament. He pointed out, with exquisite tact, that it was merely as a would-be courtier that I had failed to find favor in his daughter’s eyes—something that is purely a matter of taste and chance. He then went on to intimate that if the unfortunate little situation rendered it at all inconvenient for me to visit his house he did not see why he and I could not continue our friendly relations.

“If I have found as much grace in thine eyes as thou hast found in mine,” he wrote, “it would pain me to forfeit thy friendship. Let the unpleasant incident be forgotten, then. I have a very important business proposition to make, but should it fail to arouse thine interest, why, then, let all business, too, be eliminated, and let our bond be one of unalloyed friendship. I have been hungry for a fellow-spirit for years and in thee I have found one at last. Shall I be estranged from thee for external causes?”

Whereupon he went into raptures over a prospective real-estate company of which he wanted me to be a leading shareholder. Companies or “combines” of this sort were then being formed on the East Side by the score and some of them were said to be reaping fabulous profits.

My Hebrew, which had never been perfect (for the Talmud is chiefly in Chaldaic and Aramaic), was by now quite out of gear. So my answer was framed partly in Yiddish, but mostly in English, the English being tacitly intended for his daughter, although he understood the language perfectly. I said, in substance, that I was going to be as frank as he was, that I did not propose to invest 467 more money in real estate, and that I asked to be allowed to call on his daughter. The following passage was entirely in English:

“I have made a misleading impression on Miss Tevkin. I have done myself a great injustice and I beg for a chance to repair the damage. In business I am said to know how to show my goods to their best advantage. Unfortunately, this instinct seems often to desert me in private life. There I am apt to put my least attractive wares in the show-window, to expose some unlovable trait of my character, while whatever good there may be in me eludes the eye of a superficial acquaintance.

“Please assure your daughter that it is not to force my attentions upon her that I am asking for an interview. All I want is to try to convince her that her image of me is, spiritually speaking, not a good likeness.”

Two days passed. In the morning of the third I received a telephone-call from Tevkin, asking to meet me. Impelled by a desire to impress him with my importance, I invited him to my place of business. When he came I designedly kept him in my waiting-room for some minutes before I received him. When he was finally admitted to my private office he faced me with studied indifference. He said he had only a minute’s time, yet he stayed nearly an hour. He asked me to come to his house. He spoke guardedly, giving vague answers to my questions. The best I could make of his explanation was that his daughter had been prejudiced against me by the fact that everybody at the Rigi Kulm had looked upon me as a great matrimonial “catch.”

“My children have extremely modern ideas,” he said. “Topsy-turvy ones.” His face brightened, and he added: “The old rule is, ‘Poverty is no disgrace.’ Their rule is, ‘Wealth is a disgrace.’ ” And he flushed and burst into a little laugh of approbation at his own epigram.

“I suppose your daughter regarded me as a parvenu, an upstart, an ignoramus,” I remarked.

“No, not at all. She says she heard you say some clever things.”

“Did she?”

“Still, your letter was a surprise to her. She had not thought you capable of writing such things.”

What really had occurred between father and daughter concerning my desire to call I never learned.

Tevkin’s house was apparently full of Socialism. Indeed, so was the house of almost every intellectual family among our immigrants. I hated and dreaded that world as much as ever and I dreaded Miss Tevkin more than ever, but, moth-like, I was drawn to the flame with greater and greater force. I went to the Tevkins’ with the feeling of one going to his doom.

T
HE family occupied a large, old, private house in the Harlem section of Fifth Avenue, a locality swarming with our people. I called at 8 in the evening. It was in the latter part of March, nearly eight months after my unfortunate experience in the Catskills. I was received in the hall by Tevkin. He took me into a spacious parlor whose walls were lined with old book-cases and book-stands. There I found Anna and two of the other children of the numerous family. She wore a blouse of green velvet and a black four-in-hand tie. She welcomed me with a cordial handshake and a gay smile, as though all that had transpired between us had been a childish misunderstanding, but she was ill at ease. As for me, I was literally panic-stricken. It was at this moment, when I came face to face with her for the first time in the eight months following that Catskill incident, that I became aware of being definitely in love with her.

The book-cases and book-stands were full to bursting. There was a piano in the room and two tables littered with books, prints, and photographs. The space between book-cases and over the piano was hung with etchings, crayons, pen-and-ink drawings, and photographs. The other two of Tevkin’s children present were a chubby girl of twelve, named Gracie, and a young man of twenty-eight, two or three years older than Anna, named Sasha. Sasha had a half-interest in an evening preparatory school in which he taught mathematics, being now confined to the house by a slight indisposition.