The Rise of David Levinsky (20 page)

Even the slight lisp in his “s” I accepted as part of the “real Yankee” utterance. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural, in view of the “th” sound, that stumbling-block of every foreigner, whom it must needs strike as a full-grown lisp. Bender spoke with a nasal twang which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to the over-dignified drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I had noticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans as well, so, altogether, English impressed me as the language of a people afflicted with defective organs of speech. Or else it would seem to me that the Americans had normal organs of speech, but that they made special efforts to distort the “t” into a “th” and the “v” into a “w.”

One of the things I discovered was the unsmiling smile. I often saw it on Bender and on other native Americans—on the principal of the school, for instance, who was an Anglo-Saxon. In Russia, among the people I knew, at least, one either smiled or not. Here I found a peculiar kind of smile that was not a smile. It would flash up into a lifeless flame and forthwith go out again, leaving the face cold and stiff. “They laugh with their teeth only,” I would say to myself. But, of course, I saw “real smiles,” too, on Americans, and I instinctively learned to discern the smile of mere politeness from the sort that came from one’s heart. Nevertheless, one evening, when we were reading in our school-book that “Kate had a smile for everybody,” and I saw that this was stated in praise of Kate, I had a disagreeable vision of a little girl going around the streets and grinning upon everybody she met.

I abhorred the teacher for his girlish looks and affectations, but his twang and “th” made me literally pant with hatred. At the same time I strained every nerve to imitate him in these very sounds. It was a hard struggle, and when I had overcome all difficulties at last, and my girlish-looking teacher complimented me enthusiastically upon my “thick” and “thin,” my aversion for him suddenly thawed out.

Two of my classmates were a grizzly, heavy-set man and his sixteen-year-old son, both trying to learn English after a long day’s work. On one occasion, when it was the boy’s turn to read and he said “bat” for “bath,” the teacher bellowed, imperiously:

“Stick out the tip of your tongue! This way.”

The boy tried, and failed.

“Oh, you have the brain of a horse!” his father said, impatiently, in Yiddish. “Let me try, Mr. Teacher.” And screwing up his bewhiskered old face, he yelled, “Bat-t-t!” and then he shot out half an inch of thick red tongue.

The teacher grinned, struggling with a more pronounced manifestation of his mirth.

“His tongue missed the train,” I jested, in Yiddish.

One of the other pupils translated it into English, whereupon Bender’s suppressed laughter broke loose, and I warmed to him still more.

 

 

Election Day was drawing near. The streets were alive with the banners, transparencies, window portraits of rival candidates, processions, fireworks, speeches. I heard scores of words from the political jargon of the country. I was continually asking questions, inquiring into the meaning of the things I saw or heard around me. Each day brought me new experiences, fresh impressions, keen sensations. An American day seemed to be far richer in substance than an Antomir year. I was in an everlasting flutter. I seemed to be panting for breath for the sheer speed with which I was rushing through life.

What was the meaning of all this noise and excitement?

Everybody I spoke to said it was “all humbug.” People were making jokes at the expense of all politicians, irrespective of parties. “One is as bad as the other,” I heard all around me. “They are all thieves.” Argentine Rachael’s conception of politics was clearly the conception of respectable people as well.

Rejoicing of the Law is one of our great autumn holidays. It is a day of picturesque merrymaking and ceremony, when the stringent rule barring women out of a synagogue is relaxed. On that day, which was a short time before Election Day, I saw an East Side judge, a Gentile, at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. He was very short, and the high hat he wore gave him droll dignity. He went around the house of worship kissing babies in their mothers’ arms and saying pleasant things to the worshipers. Every little while he would instinctively raise his hand to his high hat and then, reminding himself that one did not bare one’s head in a synagogue, he would feverishly drop his hand again.

This part of the scene was so utterly, so strikingly un-Russian that I watched it open-mouthed.

“A great friend of the Jewish people, isn’t he?” the worshiper who stood next to me remarked, archly.

“He is simply in love with us,” I chimed in, with a laugh, by way of showing off my understanding of things American. “It’s Jewish votes he is after.”

“Still, he’s not a bad fellow,” the man by my side remarked. “If you have a trial in his court he’ll decide it in your favor.”

“How is that?” I asked, perplexed. “And how about the other fellow? He can’t decide in favor of both, can he?”

“There is no ‘can’t’ in America,” the man by my side returned, with a sage smile.

I pondered the riddle until I saw light. “I know what you mean,” I said. “He does favors only to those who vote for his party.”

“You have hit it, upon my word! You’re certainly no longer a green one.”

“Voting alone may not be enough, though,” another worshiper interposed. “If you ever happen to have a case in his court, take a lawyer who is close to the judge. Understand?”

All such talks notwithstanding, the campaign, or the spectacular novelty of it, thrilled me.

Bender delivered a speech to our class, but all I could make of it was that it dealt with elections in general, and that it was something solemn and lofty, like a prayer or a psalm.

Election Day came round. I did not rest. I was continually snooping around, watching the politicians and their “customers,” as we called the voters. Traffic in votes was quite an open business in those days, and I saw a good deal of it, on a side-street in the vicinity of a certain polling-place, or even in front of the polling-place itself, under the very eyes of policemen. I saw the bargaining, the haggling between buyer and seller; I saw money passed from the one to the other; I saw a heeler put a ballot into the hand of a man whose vote he had just purchased (the present system of voting had not yet been introduced) and then march him into a polling-place to make sure that he deposited the ballot for which he had paid him. I saw a man beaten black and blue because he had cheated the party that had paid him for his vote. I saw Leary, blazing cuff-buttons and all. He was a broad-shouldered man with rather pleasing features. I saw him listening to a whispered report from one of the men whom I had seen buying votes.

There was no such thing as political life in the Russia of that period. The only political parties in existence there were the secret organizations of revolutionists, of people for whom government detectives were incessantly searching so that they might be hanged or sent to Siberia. As a consequence a great many of our immigrants landed in America absolutely ignorant of the meaning of citizenship, and the first practical instructors on the subject into whose hands they fell were men like Cuff-Button Leary or his political underlings. These taught them that a vote was something to be sold for two or three dollars, with the prospect of future favors into the bargain, and that a politician was a specialist in doing people favors. Favors, favors, favors! I heard the word so often, in connection with politics, that the two words became inseparable in my mind. A politician was a “master of favors,” as my native tongue would have it.

 

I attended school with religious devotion. This and the rapid progress I was making endeared me to Bender, and he gave me special attention. He taught me grammar, which I relished most keenly. The prospect of going to school in the evening would loom before me, during the hours of boredom or distress I spent at my cart, as a promise of divine pleasure.

Some English words inspired me with hatred, as though they were obnoxious living things. The disagreeable impression they produced on me was so strong that it made them easy to memorize, so that I welcomed them in spite of my aversion or, rather, because of it. The list of these words included “satisfaction,” “think,” and “because.”

At the end of the first month I knew infinitely more English than I did Russian.

One evening I asked Bender to tell me the “real difference” between “I wrote” and “I have written.” He had explained it to me once or twice before, but I was none the wiser for it.

“What do you mean by
‘real
difference’?” he demanded. “I have told you, haven’t I, that ‘I wrote’ is the perfect tense, while ’I have written’ is the imperfect tense.” This was in accordance with the grammatical terminology of those days.

“I know,” I replied in my wretched English, “but what is the difference between these two tenses? That’s just what bothers me.”

“Well,” he said, grandly, “the perfect refers to what was, while the imperfect means something that has been.”

“But when do you say ‘was’ and when do you say ’has been’? That’s just the question.”

“You’re a nuisance, Levinsky,” was his final retort.

I was tempted to say, “And you are a blockhead.” But I did not, of course. At the bottom of my heart I had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead.

The first thing he did the next evening was to take up the same subject with me, the rest of the class watching the two of us curiously. I could see that his performance of the previous night had been troubling him and that he was bent upon making a better showing. He spent the entire lesson of two hours with me exclusively, trying all sorts of elucidations and illustrations, all without avail. The trouble with him was that he pictured the working of a foreigner’s mind, with regard to English, as that of his own. It did not occur to him that people born to speak another language were guided by another language logic, so to say, and that in order to reach my understanding he would have to impart his ideas in terms of my own linguistic psychology. Still, one of his numerous examples gave me a glimmer of light and finally it all became clear to me. I expressed my joy so boisterously that it brought a roar of laughter from the other men.

He made a pet of me. I became the monitor of his class (that is, I would bring in and distribute the books), and he often had me escort him home, so as to talk to me as we walked. He was extremely companionable and loquacious. He had a passion for sharing with others whatever knowledge he had, or simply for hearing himself speak. Upon reaching the house in which he lived we would pause in front of the building for an hour or even more. Or else we would start on a ramble, usually through Grand Street to East River and back again through East Broadway. His favorite topics during these walks were civics, American history, and his own history.

“Dil-i-gence, perr-severance, tenacity!” he would drawl out, with nasal dignity. “Get these three words engraved on your mind, Levinsky. Diligence, perseverance, tenacity.”

And by way of illustration he would enlarge on how he had fought his way through City College, how he had won some prizes and beaten a rival in a race for the presidency of a literary society; how he had obtained his present two occupations—as custom-house clerk during the day and as school-teacher in the winter evenings—and how he was going to work himself up to something far more dignified and lucrative. He unbosomed himself to me of all his plans; he confided some of his intimate secrets in me, often dwelling on “my young lady,” who was a first cousin of his and to whom he had practically been engaged since boyhood.

All this, his boasts not excepted, were of incalculable profit to me. It introduced me to detail after detail of American life. It accelerated the process of “getting me out of my greenhornhood” in the better sense of the phrase.

Bender was an ardent patriot. He was sincerely proud of his country. He was firmly convinced that it was superior to any other country, absolutely in every respect. One evening, in the course of one of those rambles of ours, he took up the subject of political parties with me. He explained the respective principles of the Republicans and the Democrats. Being a Democrat himself, he eulogized his own organization and assailed its rival, but he did it strictly along the lines of principle and policy.

“The principles of a party are its soul,” he thundered, probably borrowing the phrase from some newspaper. And he proceeded to show that the Democratic soul was of superior quality.

He went into the question of State rights, of personal liberty, of “Jeffersonian ideals.” It was all an abstract formula, and I was so overwhelmed by the image of a great organization fighting for lofty ideals that the concrete question of political baby-kissing, of Cuff-Button Leary’s power, and of the scenes I had witnessed on Election Day escaped me at the moment. I merely felt that all I had heard about politics and political parties from Argentine Rachael and from other people was the product of untutored brains that looked at things from the special viewpoint of the gutter.

Presently, however, the screaming discrepancy between Cuff-Button Leary’s rule and “Jeffersonian ideals” did occur to me. I conveyed my thoughts to Bender as well as I could.

He flared up. “Nonsense,” he said, “Mr. Leary is the best man in the city. He is a friend of mine and I am proud of it. Ask him for any favor and he will do it for you if he has to get out of bed in the middle of the night. He spends a fortune on the poor. He has the biggest heart of any man in all New York, I don’t care who he is. He helps a lot of people out of trouble, but he can’t help everybody, can he? That’s why you hear so many bad things about him. He has a lot of enemies. But I love him just for the enemies he has made.”

“People say he collects bribes from disreputable women,” I ventured to urge.