The Rise of David Levinsky (38 page)

Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with her feelings for me than with her feelings for her child. Anyhow, what she said about her being interested in everything that Lucy had to say was true. And, whether she listened to the child’s prattle or not, it always seemed to me as though she absorbed every English word Lucy uttered and every American gesture she made. The American school-girl radiated a subtle influence, a spiritual ozone, which her mother breathed in greedily.

“My own life is lost, but she shall be educated”—these words dropped from her lips quite often. On one occasion they came from her with a modification that lent them unusual meaning. It was on a Friday evening. Max was out, as usual, and the children were asleep. “ My own life is lost, but Lucy shall be happy,” she said.

“Why?” I said, feelingly. “Why should you think yourself lost? I can’t bear it, Dora.”

She made no answer. I attempted to renew the conversation, but without avail. She answered in melancholy monosyllables and my voice had a constrained note.

At last I burst out, in our native tongue: “Why do you torture me, Dora? Why don’t you let me talk and pour my heart out?”

“‘S-sh! You mustn’t,” she said, peremptorily, also in Yiddish. “You’ll get me in trouble if you do. It ’ll be the ruin of me and of the children, too. You mustn’t.”

“But you say your life is lost,” I retorted, coming up close to the chair on which she sat. “Do you think it’s easy for me to hear it? Do you think my heart is made of iron?”

“‘S-sh! You know everything without my speaking,” she said, slowly rising and drawing back. “You know well enough that I am not happy. Can’t you rest until you have heard me say so again and again? Must you drink my blood? All right, then. Go ahead. Here. I am unhappy, I am unhappy, I am
unhappy.
Max is a good husband to me. I can’t complain. And we get along well, too. And I shall be true to him. May I choke right here, may darkness come upon me, if I ever cease to be a faithful wife to him. But you know that my heart has never been happy. Lucy will be happy and that will be my happiness, too. She shall go to college and be an educated American lady, and, if God lets me live, I shall see to it that she doesn’t marry unless she meets the choice of her heart. She must be happy. She must make up for her mother’s lost life, too. If my mother had understood things as I do, I, too, should have been happy. But she was an old-fashioned woman and she would have me marry in the old-fashioned way, as she herself had married: without laying her eyes on her ‘predestined one’ until the morning after the wedding.“ She laughed bitterly. ”Of course I did see Max before the wedding, but it made no difference. I obeyed my mother, peace upon her soul. I thought love-marriages were something which none but educated girls could dream of. My mother—peace upon her soul—told me to throw all fancies out of my mind, that I was a simple girl and must get married without fuss. And I did. In this country people have different notions. But I am already married and a mother. All I can do now is to see to it that Lucy shall be both educated and happy, and, well, I beg of you, I beg of you, I beg of you, Levinsky, never let me talk of these things again. They must be locked up in my heart and the key must be thrown into the river, Levinsky. It cannot be otherwise, Levinsky. Do you hear?”

T
HE situation could not last.

One morning about three weeks subsequent to the above conversation Max left town for a day. One of his debtors, a dancing-master, had disappeared without settling his account and Max had recently discovered that he was running a dance-hall and meeting-rooms in New Haven; so he went there to see what he could do toward collecting his bill. His absence for a whole day was nothing new, and yet the house seemed to have assumed a novel appearance that morning. When, after breakfast, Lucy ran out into the street I felt as though Dora and I were alone for the first time, and from her constraint I could see that she was experiencing a similar feeling. I hung around the house awkwardly. She was trying to keep herself busy. Finally I said:

“I think I’ll be going. Maybe there is some news about the lockout.”

I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat, but on my way thither, as I came abreast of her, I paused, and with amorous mien I drew her to me.

She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance, and when I kissed her she responded, our lips clinging together hungrily. It all seemed to have happened in a most natural way. When our lips parted at last her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes looked filmed.

“Dearest,” I whispered.

“I must go out,” she said, shrinking back, her embarrassed gaze on the floor. “ I have some marketing to do.”

“Don’t. Don’t go away from me, Dora. Please don’t,” I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. “ I love thee. I love thee, Dora,” I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar pronoun.

“You ought not to speak to me like that,” she said, 278 limply, with frank happiness in her voice. “It’s terrible. What has got into me?”

I strained her to me once again, and again we abandoned ourselves to a transport of kisses and hugs.

“Dost thou love me, Dora? Tell me. I want to hear it from thine own lips.”

She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with all her might. That was her answer to my question. Then, with a hurried parting kiss on my forehead, she said:

“Go. Attend to business, dearest.”

As I walked through the street I was all but shouting to myself: “Dora has kissed me! Dora dear is mine!” My heart was dancing with joy over my conquest of her, and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her. It was a blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved her.

I attended to my affairs (that is, to some of the affairs of the Manufacturers’ Organization) that day; but while thus engaged I was ever tremulously conscious of my happiness, ever in an uplifted state of mind. I was bubbling over with a desire to be good to somebody, to everybody—except, of course, the Cloak-makers’ Union. My membership in the Manufacturers’ Association flattered my vanity inordinately, and I always danced attendance upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an alacrity that was not mere servility.

I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my second love-affair, as if it were something to be proud of. My love for Matilda was remote as a piece of art, while my passion for Dora was a flaming reality. “Matilda only tortured me,” I said to myself, without malice. “She treated me as she would a dog, whereas Dora is an angel. I would jump into fire for her. Dora dear! Sweetheart mine!” I had not the patience to wait until evening. I ran in to see her in the middle of the day.

She flung herself at me and we embraced and kissed as if we had been separated for years. Then, holding me by both hands, she gave me a long look full of pensive bliss and clasped me to her bosom again. When she had calmed down she smoothed my hair, adjusted my necktie, told me she did not like it and offered to get me one more becoming.

“Do you love me? Do you really?” she asked, with deep earnestness.

“ I do, I do. Dora mine, I am crazy for you,” I replied. “Now I know what real love means.”

She sighed, and after a pause her grave, strained mien broke into a smile.

“So all you told me about Matilda was a lie, was it?” she said, roguishly. “There is no such person in the world, is there?”

“Don’t talk about her, pray. You don’t understand me. I never was happy before. Never in my life.”

“Never at all?” she questioned me, earnestly.

“Never, Dora dearest. Anyhow, let bygones be bygones. All I know is that I love you, that I am going crazy for you. Oh, I do love you.”

“And nobody else?”

“And nobody else.”

“And you are not lying?”

“Lying? Why should you talk like that, dearest?”

“Why, have you forgotten Matilda so soon?”

“Do you call that soon? It’s more than five years.”

“But you told me that you had been in love with her a considerable time after you came to this country. Will you forget me so soon, too?”

I squirmed, I writhed. “Don’t be tormenting me, dearest,” I implored, my voice quavering with impatience. “I love thee and nobody else.”

She fell into a muse. Then she said, with a far-away look in her eyes:

“ I don’t know where this will land me. It seems as if a great misfortune had befallen me. But I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. Come what may. I can’t help it. At last I know what it means to be happy. I have been dreaming of it all my life. Now I know what it is like, and I am willing to suffer for it. Yes, I am willing to suffer for you, Levinsky.” She spoke with profound, even-voiced earnestness, with peculiar solemnity, as though chanting a prayer. I was somewhat bored. Presently she paused, and, changing her tone, she asked. “Matilda talked to you of education. She wanted you to be an educated man, did she? Yes, but what did she do for you? She drank your blood, the leech, and when she got tired of it she dropped you. A woman like that ought to be torn to pieces. May every bit of the suffering she caused you come back to her a thousandfold. May her blood be shed as she shed yours.” Suddenly she checked herself and said: “But, no, I am not going to curse her. I don’t want you to think badly of her. Your love must be sacred, Levinsky. If you ever go back on me and love somebody else, don’t let her curse me. Don’t let anybody say a cross word about me.”

Max came home after midnight and I did not see him until the next evening. When we met at supper (Dora was out at that moment) I had to make an effort to meet his eye. But he did not seem to notice anything out of the usual, and my awkwardness soon wore off.

Nor, indeed, was there any change in my feelings toward him. I had expected that he would now be hateful to me. He was not. He was absolutely the same man as he had always been, except, perhaps, that I vaguely felt like a thief in his presence. Only I hated to think of Dora while I looked at him.

Presently Dora made her appearance. My embarrassment returned, more acute than ever. The consciousness of her confusion and, above all, the consciousness of the three of us being together, was insupportable. It was a terrible repast, though Max was absolutely unaware of anything unnatural in our demeanor. I retired to my room soon after supper.

I had a what-not half filled with books, so I drew a volume from it. I found it difficult to get my mind on it. My thoughts were circling round Dora and Max, round my precarious happiness, round the novelty of carrying on a romantic conspiracy with a married woman. Dora was so dear to me. I seemed to be vibrating with devotion to her. Regardless of the fact that she was somebody else’s wife and a mother of two children, my love impressed me as something sacred. I seemed to accept the general rule that a wife-stealer is a despicable creature, a thief, a vile, immoral wretch. But now, that I was not facing Max, that rule, somehow, did not apply to my relations with Dora. Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which excused my conduct on the theory that everybody was at the bottom of his heart likewise ready to set that rule at defiance and to make a mistress of his friend’s wife, provided it could be done with absolute secrecy and safety. Max in my place would certainly not have scrupled to act as I did. But then I hated to think of him in this connection. I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would a vicious fly. I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a moment’s compunction. I treated myself as a doting mother does a wayward son.

 

The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert Spencer’s
Sociology.
My interest in this author and in Darwin was of recent origin. It had been born of my hatred for the Cloak-makers’ Union, in fact. This is how I came to discover the existence of the two great names and to develop a passion for the ideas with which they are identified.

In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had often characterized them as so many good-for-nothings, jealous of those who had succeeded in business by their superior brains, industry, and efficiency. One day I found a long editorial in my newspaper, an answer to a letter from a socialist. The editorial derived its inspiration from the theory of the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest. Unlike many of the other editorials I had read, it breathed conviction. It was obviously a work of love. When the central idea of the argument came home to me I was in a turmoil of surprise and elation. “Why, that’s just what I have been saying all these days!” I exclaimed in my heart. “The able fellows succeed, and the misfits fail. Then the misfits begrudge those who accomplish things.” I almost felt as though Darwin and Spencer had plagiarized a discovery of mine. Then, as I visualized the Struggle for Existence, I recalled Meyer Nodelman’s parable of chickens fighting for food, and it seemed to me that, between the two of us, Nodelman and I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine. Later, however, when I dipped into
Social Statics,
I was overborne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense of my own futility, ignorance, and cheapness. I felt at the gates of a great world of knowledge whose existence I had not even suspected. I had to read the
Origin of Species
and . the
Descent of Man,
and then Spencer again. I sat up nights reading these books. Apart from the purely intellectual intoxication they gave me, they flattered my vanity as one of the “fittest.” It was as though all the wonders of learning, acumen, ingenuity, and assiduity displayed in these works had been intended, among other purposes, to establish my title as one of the victors of Existence.

A working-man, and every one else who was poor, was an object of contempt to me—a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one of the ruck.

I
T was August. In normal times this would have been the beginning of the great “winter season” in our trade. As it was, the deadlock continued. The stubbornness of the men, far from showing signs of wilting under the strain of so many weeks of enforced idleness and suffering, seemed to be gathering strength, while our own people, the manufacturers, were frankly weakening. The danger of having the great season pass without one being able to fill a single order overcame the fighting blood of the most pugnacious among them. One was confronted with the risk of losing one’s best customers. The trade threatened to pass from New York to Philadelphia and Chicago. If you called the attention of a manufacturer to the unyielding courage of the workmen, the reply invariably was, first, that it was all mere bravado; and, second, that, anyhow, the poor devils had nothing to lose, while the manufacturers had their investments to lose.