The Rise of David Levinsky (42 page)

My shop had lost all meaning to me. I vaguely longed to flee from myself.

There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity, with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the “marriage broker.” But even my worrying seemed to be done automatically.

Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin, who now gave all his time to his newly established factory, I filled the gap with all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances. An employee of one of the big shops, a tailor, stole designs for me. These were used in my shop by a psalm-muttering old tailor with a greenish-white beard full of snuff, who would have become a Chaikin if he had been twenty years younger. Later I hired the services of a newly graduated cloak-designer who would drop in of an afternoon. Officially the old man was my foreman, but in reality he acted as a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my sample-makers, as well as foreman.

I was forming new connections, obtaining orders from new sources. Things were coming my way in spite of myself, as it were. There was so much work and bustle that it became next to impossible to manage it all single-handed. The need of a bookkeeper, at least, was felt more keenly every day. But I simply lacked the initiative to get one.

While I was thus cudgeling my brains, hovering about my shop, meeting people, signing checks, reading or writing letters, that dull pain would keep nibbling, nibbling, nibbling at me. At times, during some of those violent onslaughts I would seek the partial privacy of my second-hand desk for the express purpose of abandoning myself to the tortures of my helpless love. There is pleasure in this kind of pain. It was as though I were two men at once, one being in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled with the joy of loving, all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding.

One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an impulsive, “Hello, Levinsky!”

It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. I had not seen him for more than three years, during which time he had developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, though his apple face had lost none of its roseate freshness. He looked spruce as ever, his clothes spick and span, his “four-in-hand” tastefully tied, his collar and cuffs immaculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a worn and wistful look in them.

“Quite an American, I declare,” he exclaimed, with patronizing admiration and pride, as who should say, “My work has borne fruit, hasn’t it?”

“Well, how is the world treating you?” he questioned me, after having looked me over more carefully. “You seem to be doing well.”

When he heard that I was “trying to manufacture cloaks and suits” he surveyed me once again, with novel interest.

“Are you really? That’s good. Glad to hear you’re getting on in the world.”

“Do you remember the two books you gave me—
Dombey and Son
and the little dictionary?”

I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented me on my English.

He wanted to know more about my business, and I sketched for him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now making. My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as, “my growing credit,” “my check,” “in my desk,” “dinner with a buyer from Ohio,” all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. He congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again. Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil.

He still taught evening school during the winter months. When I asked about his work at the custom-house, which had been his chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how “the new Republican broom swept clean,” and how he had lost his job because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the Republicans with “offensive partisanship,” a Cleveland phrase then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he proceeded to describe certain injustices (of which he apparently considered himself a victim) within the fold of his own party. His immediate ambition was to obtain a “permanent appointment” as teacher of a public day school.

He was a singular surprise to me. Formerly I had looked up to him as infinitely my superior, whereas now he struck me as being piteously beneath me.

“Can’t you think of something better?” I said, with mild contempt. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I exclaimed: “I have a scheme for you, Mr. Bender! Suppose you try to sell cloaks? There’s lots of money in it.”

The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to spend a week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting orders for me, at first in the city and then on the road.

Our interview lasted a little over an hour, but that hour produced a world of difference in our relations. He had met me with a patronizing, “Hello, Levinsky.” When we parted there was a note of gratitude and of something like obsequiousness in his voice.

O
N a Friday afternoon, during the first week of Bender’s connection with my establishment, as he and I were crossing a side-street on our way from luncheon, I ran into the loosely built, bulky figure of Max Margolis. Max and I paused with a start, both embarrassed. I greeted him complaisantly.

“And how are you?” he said, looking at the lower part of my face.

I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of trivialities we were about to part, when Max detained me.

“Wait. What’s your hurry?” he said. “There is something I want to speak to you about. In fact, it was to your shop I was going.”

His manner disturbed me. “Were you? Come on, then,” I said.

“Hold on. What’s your hurry? We might as well talk here.”

Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away, leaving us to ourselves.

“What is it?” I repeated, with studied indifference.

“Well, I should like to have a plain, frank talk with you, Levinsky,” he answered. “There is something that is bothering my mind. I never thought I should speak to you about it, but at last I decided to see you and have it out. I was going to call on you and to ask you to go out with me, because you have no private office.”

There was a nervous, under-dog kind of air about him. His damp lips revolted me.

“But what is it? What are all these preliminaries for? Come to the point and be done with it. What is it?” Then I asked, with well-simulated indignation, “Your wife has not persuaded you that I have cheated her out of some money, has she?”

“Why, no. Not at all,” he answered, looking at the pavement. “It isn’t that at all. The thing is driving me mad.”

“But what is it?” I shouted, in a rage.

“ ‘S-sh!” he said, nervously. “If you are going to be excited like that it’s no use speaking at all. Perhaps you are doing it on purpose to get out of it.”

“Get out of what? What on earth are you prating about?” I demanded, with a fine display of perplexity and sarcasm.

We were attracting attention. Bystanders were eying us. An old woman, leading a boy by the hand, even paused to watch us, and then her example was followed by some others.

“Come on, for God’s sake!” he implored me. “All I want is a friendly talk with you. We might talk in your shop, but you have no private office.”

“Whether I have one or not is none of your business,” I retorted, with irrelevant resentment.

We walked on. He proposed to take me to one of the ball and meeting-room places in which he did business, and I acquiesced.

A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion of red plush covering one of the benches in a long, narrow meeting-hall. We were close to the window, in the full glare of daylight. A few feet off the room was in semi-darkness which, still farther off, lapsed into night. As the plush cushions stretched their lengths into the deepening gloom their live red died away. There was a touch of weirdness to the scene, adding to the oppressiveness of the interview.

“I want to ask you a plain question,” he began, in a strange voice. “And I want you to answer it frankly. I assure you I sha’n’t be angry. On the contrary, I shall be much obliged to you if you tell me the whole truth. Tell me what happened between you and Dora.”

I was about to burst into laughter, but I felt that it would not do. Before I knew how to act he added, with a sort of solemnity:

“She has confessed everything.”

“Confessed everything!” I exclaimed, with a feigned compound of hauteur, indignation, and amusement, playing for time.

“That’s what she did.”

A frenzy of hate took hold of me. I panted to be away from him, to be out of this room, semi-darkness, red cushions, and all, and let the future take care of itself. And so, jumping to my feet, I said, in a fury:

“You always were a liar and an idiot. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” With which I made for the door.

“Oh, don’t be excited. Don’t go yet, Levinsky dear, please,” he implored, hysterically, running after me. “I have the best of feelings for you. May the things that I wish you come to me. Levinsky! Dear friend! Darling!”

“What do you want of me?” I demanded, with quiet rancor, pausing at the door and half opening it, without moving on.

“If you tell me it isn’t true I’ll believe you, even if she did confess. I don’t know if she meant what she said. If only you were not excited! I want to tell you everything, everything.”

I laughed sardonically. My desire to escape the ordeal gave way to strange curiosity. He seemed to be aware of it, for he boldly shut the door. He begged me to take a seat again, and I did, a short distance from the door, where the gloom was almost thick enough to hide our faces from each other’s view.

“Why, you are simply crazy, Max!” I said. “You probably bothered the life out of her and she ‘confessed’ to put an end to it all. You might as well have made her confess to murder.”

“That’s what she says now. But I don’t know. When she confessed she confessed. I could see it was the truth.”

“You
are
crazy, Max! It is all nonsense. Ab-solutely.”

“Is it?” he demanded, straining to make out the expression of my face through the dusk. “Do assure me it is all untrue. Take pity, dear friend. Do take pity.”

“How can I assure you, seeing that you have taken that crazy notion into your head and don’t seem to be able to get rid of it? Come, throw that stuff out of your mind!” I scolded him, mentorially. “It’s enough to make one sick. Come to reason. Don’t be a fool. I am no saint, of course, but in this case you are absolutely mistaken. Why, Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman, a fellow would never dare have the slightest kind of fun with her. The idea!“—with a little laugh. ”You are a baby, Max. Upon my word, you are. Dora and I had some words over my bill and—well, she insulted me and I wouldn’t take it from her. That’s all there was to it. Why, look here, Max. With your knowledge of men and women, do you mean to say that something was going on under your very nose and you never noticed anything? Don’t you see how ridiculous it is?”

“Well, I believe you, Levinsky,” he said, lukewarmly. “Now that you assure me you don’t know anything about it, I believe you. I know you are not an enemy of mine. I have always considered you a true friend. You know I have. That’s why I am having this talk with you. I am feeling better already. But you have no idea what I have been through the last few weeks. She is so dear to me. I love her so.” His voice broke.

I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and sympathy.

“You are a child,” I said, taking him by the hand. As I did so every vestige of hostility faded out of me. My heart went out to him. “Come, Max, pull yourself together! Be a man!”

“I have always known you to be my friend. I believe all you say. I first began to think of this trouble a few days after you moved out. But at first I made no fuss about it. I thought she was not well. I came to see you a few times and you did not behave like a fellow who was guilty.”

I gave a silent little laugh.

He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused his first twinge of suspicion. He was revoltingly frank.

“ I spoke to her plainly,” he said. “‘What’s the matter with you, Dora?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you like me any more?’ And she got wild and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted, cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought I was going mad. Maybe she was just missing you. You were like one of the family, don’t you know. And, well, you are a good-looking fellow, Levinsky, and she is only a woman.”

“Nonsense!” I returned, the hot color mounting to my cheeks. “I am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind—”

“But she confessed,” he interrupted me. “ She said she was crazy for you and I could do as I pleased.”

“But you know she did not mean it. She said it just for spite, just to make you feel bad, because you were quarreling with her.”

He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora as answering:

“Yes, yes, yes! And if you don’t like it you can sue me for divorce.”

I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could.

“It’s all ridiculous nonsense, Max,” I said. “You made life miserable to her and she was ready to say anything. She may have been worried over something, and you imagined all sorts of things. Maybe it was something about her education that worried her. You know how ambitious she is to be educated, and how hard she takes these things.”