The Rise of David Levinsky

Abraham Cahan

• Editorial: Dover Publications
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486146355
• Categoría: Literature
• Categoría: North American Literary Collections

Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as `the most important of all immigrant novels,` The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction of rising to the top of the business world, where he discovers the high price of assimilation. Author Abraham Cahan founded and edited the Jewish Daily Forward, the world's most widely read Yiddish paper, and his direct experience contributes mightily to the authenticity of this monumental work.

BOOK IX

DORA

CHAPTER I

“HOW ABOUT it?” Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously.

“About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use playing the fool and trying to make a fool of me.”

The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon. The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, and the pressing-table looked desolate. She spoke in an undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of her husband’s relations with me should leak out and reach his employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, but now, that our undertaking had apparently collapsed, she was particularly uneasy about it.

“I don’t believe that store in the West has failed at all. In fact, I know it has not. Somebody told me all about it.”

This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as she could not read it herself, she only sneered. I reasoned with her, I pleaded, I swore; but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you,” she finally said, shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion. “Do I believe a dog when it barks? Neither do I believe you. I curse the day when I first met you. It was the black year that brought you to us.” She fell to wringing her hands and moaning: “Woe is me! Woe is me!”

Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs.

In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself. I thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self-made man and one who had begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself, he seemed to be just the man I needed. A thought glimmered through my mind, “And who knows but he may come to my rescue?”

I was going to call at his warehouse, but upon second thought I realized that the seat of his cold self-interest would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere of his mother’s home for the purpose.

The next time I saw him at his mother’s I took him up to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him. I told him the whole story, almost without embellishments, omitting nothing but Chaikin’s name.

“Is it all true?” he interrupted me at one point.

I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered to prove it all to his satisfaction.

“You don’t need to prove it to me,” he replied. “What do I care?” Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he blurted out: “Look here, young fellow! If you think I am going to lend you money you are only wasting time, for I am not.”

“And why not?” I asked, boldly, with studied dignity.

“Why not! You better tell me why yes,” he chuckled. “You have a lot of spunk. That you certainly have, and you ought to make a good business man, but I won’t loan you money, for all that.”

“Weren’t you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? You have made a success of it, and now it would only be right that you should help another fellow get up in the world. You won’t lose a cent by it, either. I take an oath on it.”

“You can’t have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?”

“Why did that commission merchant take a chance? If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had never seen before, you should not hesitate, either.”

“Well, there is no use talking about it,” was his final decision.

The following day I received a letter from him, inviting me to his office.

His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway. Arrived there, I had to pass several men, all in their shirt-sleeves, who were attacking mountains of cloth with long, narrow knives. One of these directed me to a remote window, in front of which I presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tape-measure around his neck.

Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a seat, a good half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, yet he looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before. It was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made another man of him.

Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and silently led me into his little private office, a narrow strip of partitioned-off space at the other end of the loft.

When we were seated and the partition door was shut he said, with grave mien, “Well,” and fell silent again.

I gazed at him patiently.

“Well,” he repeated, “I have thought it over.” And again he paused. At last he burst out: “I do want to help you, young fellow. You didn’t expect it, did you? I do want to help you. And do you know why? Because otherwise you won’t pay that Gentile and I don’t want a good-hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot. That’s number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer Nodelman is a hog, you don’t know Meyer Nodelman. Number three: I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. I said to myself, said I: ‘An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right. He ought to be given a lift, for most educated people are damn fools.’ Well, I’ll tell you what I am willing to do for you. I’ll get you the goods for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for sixty. What do you think of that? Now is Nodelman a hog or is he not? But that’s as far as I am willing to go. I can only get you the goods for that Third Avenue order. See? But that won’t be enough to help you out of your scrape, not enough for you to pay that good Gentile on time.”

He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an additional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an ultimatum: he would not furnish me the goods until I had produced that amount.

“Look here, young fellow,” he added; “since you were smart enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out, it ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an interest in you. Do you remember what I told you about those credit faces? I think you have got one.”

“I have an honest heart, too,” I said, with a smile.

“Your heart I can’t get into, so I don’t know. See? Maybe there is a rogue hiding there and maybe there isn’t. But your face and your talk certainly are all right. They ought to be able to get you some more cash. And if they don’t, then they don’t deserve that I should help you out, either. See?” He chuckled in appreciation of his own syllogism.

“It’s a nice piece of Talmud reasoning,” I complimented him, with an enthusiastic laugh. “But, seriously, Mr. Nodelman, I shall pay you every cent. You run absolutely no risk.”

I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation unconditionally. I tried to convince him that I should contrive to do without the additional cash. But he was obdurate, and at last I took my leave.

“Wait a moment! What’s your hurry? Are you afraid you’ll be a couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? There is something I want to ask you.”

“What is it, Mr. Nodelman?”

“How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?” he asked, archly.

“Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for books, too,” I answered.

I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony of despair at once. On the whole, however, my spirits were greatly buoyed up. Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence, I decided to try a similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis, better known to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some money.

I had seen very little of him in the past two years, having stumbled upon him in the street but two or three times. But upon each of these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs with genuine interest. He was fond of me. I had no doubt about it. And he was so good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated my new venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to have any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad to hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and I was determined to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how.

As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to overwhelm him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at any rate.

After some seeking and inquiring, I found him in a Bowery furniture-store, one of the several places from which he supplied his instalment customers. It was about 10 o’clock in the morning.

“There is something I want to consult you about, Max,” I said. “Something awfully important to me. You’re the only man I know who could advise me and in whom I can confide,” I added, with an implication of great intimacy and affection. “It’s a business scheme, Max. I have a chance to make lots of money.”

The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the labyrinthine store, a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture.

“What is that? A business scheme?” he asked, in a preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. “You are dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, aren’t you?”

As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scrutinized my suit once again. I quailed. I now felt that to have come in such a screamingly new suit was a fatal mistake. I cursed myself for an idiot of a smart Aleck. But he spoke to me with his usual cordiality and my spirits rose again. However, he seemed to be busy, and so I asked him to set an hour when he could see me at leisure. We made an appointment for 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I was to meet him at the same furniture-store; but upon second thought, and with another glance at my new clothes, he said, jovially:

“Why, you are rigged out like a regular monarch! It is quite an honor to invite you to the house. Come up, will you? And, as I won’t have to go out to meet you, you can make it 2 o’clock, or half past.”

CHAPTER II

Max occupied the top floor of an old private house on Henry Street, a small “railroad” apartment of two large, bright rooms—a living-room and a kitchen—with two small, dark bedrooms between them. The ceiling was low and the air somewhat tainted with the odor of mold and dampness. I found Max in the general living-room, which was also a dining-room, a fat boy of three on his lap and a slender, pale girl of eight on a chair close by. His wife, a slender young woman with a fine white complexion and serious black eyes, was clearing away the lunch things.

“Mrs. Margolis, Mr. Levinsky,” he introduced us. “Plainly speaking, this is my wifey and this is a friend of mine.”

As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called after her, “Dvorah! Dora! make some tea, will you?”

She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment. “It’s a good thing you are telling me that,” she said. “Otherwise I shouldn’t know what I have got to do, should I?”

When she had disappeared he explained to me that he variously addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of her name.

“We are plain Yiddish folk,” he generalized, good-humoredly.

A few minutes later, as Mrs. Margolis placed a glass of Russian tea before me, he drew her to him and pinched her white cheek.

“What do you think of my wifey, Levinsky?”

She smiled—a grave, deprecating smile—and took to pottering about the house.

“And what do you think of these little customers?” he went on. “Lucy, examine mamma in spelling. Quick! Dora, be a good girl, sit down and let Levinsky see how educated you are.” (“Educated” he said in English, with the accent on the “a.”)

“What do you want?” his wife protested, softly. “Mr. Levinsky wants to see you on business, and here you are bothering him with all sorts of nonsense.”

“Never mind his business. It won’t run away. Sit down, I say. It won’t take long.”

She yielded. Casting bashful side-glances at nobody in particular, she seated herself opposite Lucy.

“Well?” she said, with a little laugh.

I thought her eyes looked too serious, almost angry. “Insane people have eyes of this kind,” I said to myself. I also made a mental note of her clear, fresh, delicate complexion. Otherwise she did not interest me in the least, and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her out of the room.

“How do you spell ‘great’?” the little girl demanded.

“G-r-e-a-t—great,” her mother answered, with a smile.

“Book?”

“B-o-o-k—book. Oh, give me some harder words.”

“Laughter.”

“L-a-u-g-h-t-e-r—laughter.”

“Is that correct?” Margolis turned to me, all beaming. “I wish I could do as much. And nobody has taught her, either. She has learned it all by herself. Little Lucy is the only teacher she ever had. But she will soon be ahead of her. Won’t she, Lucy?”

“I’m afraid I am ahead of her already,” Mrs. Margolis said, gaily, yet flushed with excitement.

“You are not!” Lucy protested, with a good-natured pout.

“Shut up, bad girl you,” her mother retorted, again with a bashful side-glance.

“Is that the way you talk to your mamma?” Max intervened. “I’ll tell your teacher.”

I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get down to the object of my visit.

Finally he said, brusquely: “Well, we have had enough of that. Leave us alone, Dora. Go to the parlor and take the kids along.”

She obeyed.

When he heard of my venture he was interested. He often interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admiration for my subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole. With all his boisterousness, however, there was an air of caution about him, as if he scented danger. When I finally said that all depended upon my raising four hundred dollars his face clouded.

“I see, I see,” he murmured, with sudden estrangement. “I see. I see.”

“Don’t lose courage,” I said to myself. “Nodelman was exactly like that at first. Go right ahead.”

I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring colors and gave Max to understand that if “somebody” advanced me the four hundred dollars he would be sure to get it back in thirty days plus any interest he might name.

“It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on account of such a thing,” I concluded.

There was a moment of very awkward silence. It was broken by Max.

“It’s really too bad. What are you going to do about it?” he said. “Where can you get such a ‘somebody’?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I came to consult you. I thought you might suggest some way. It would be a pity if I had to give it all up on account of four hundred dollars.”

“Indeed it would. It would be terrible. Still, four hundred dollars is not four hundred cents. I wish I were a rich man. I should lend it to you at once. You know I should.”

“I should pay you every cent of it, Max.”

“You say it as if I had money. You know I have not.”

What I did know was that he had, and he knew that I did.

He took to analyzing the situation and offering me advice. Why not go to that kindly Gentile, the commission merchant, make a clean breast of it, and obtain an extension of time? Why not apply to some money-lender? Why not make a vigorous appeal to Nodelman? He seemed to be an obliging fellow, so if I pressed him a little harder he might give me the cash as well as the goods.

I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap, and he apparently read my thoughts.

Presently he said, with genuine ardor: “I tell you what, Levinsky. Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking? From what you have told me, she ought not to be a hard nut ...