The Rise of David Levinsky (14 page)

“ ‘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 my 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.

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

T
WO 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.