The Rise of David Levinsky (10 page)

The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life. Attending divine service is not obligatory for her, and those of the sex who wish to do so are allowed to follow the devotions not in the synagogue proper, but through little windows or peepholes in the wall of an adjoining room. In the eye of the spiritual law that governed my life women were intended for two purposes only: for the continuation of the human species and to serve as an instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the stronger sex to sin. Marriage was simply a duty imposed by the Bible. Love? So far as it meant attraction between two persons of the opposite sex who were not man and wife, there was no such word in my native tongue. One loved one’s wife, mother, daughter, or sister. To be “in love” with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was something unseemly, something which only Gentiles or “modern” Jews might indulge in.

But at present all this merely deepened the bewitching mystery of the forbidden sex in my young blood. And Satan, wide awake and sharp-eyed as ever, was not slow to perceive the change that had come over me and made the most of it.

There was no such thing as athletics or outdoor sports in my world. The only physical exercise known to us was to be swinging like a pendulum in front of your reading-desk from nine in the morning to bedtime every day, and an all-night vigil every Thursday in addition. Even a most innocent frolic among the boys was suppressed as an offense to good Judaism.

All of which tended to deepen the mystery of girlhood and to increase the chances of Satan.

I must explain that although women could not attend divine service except through a peephole, they were free to visit the house of worship on all sorts of other errands. So some of them would come with food for the scholars, others with candles for the chandeliers, while still others wanted letters read or written. One of the several rabbis of the town was in the habit of spending his evenings reading Talmud in the Preacher’s Synagogue, so housewives of the neighborhood, or their daughters, would bring some spoon, pot, or chicken to have them passed upon according to the dietary laws of Moses and the Talmud.

I would scrutinize the faces and figures of these girls, I would draw comparisons, make guesses as to whether they were engaged to be married (I did not have to speculate upon whether they were already married, because a young matron who would visit our synagogue was sure to have her hair covered with a wig). It became one of my pastimes to make forecasts as to the looks of the next young woman to call at the synagogue, whether she would be pretty or homely, tall or short, fair or dark, plump or spare. I was interested in their eyes, but, somehow, I was still more interested in their mouths. Some mouths would set my blood on fire. I would invent all sorts of romantic episodes with myself as the hero. I would portray my engagement to some of the pretty girls I had seen, our wedding, and, above all, our married life. The worst of it was that these images often visited my brain while I was reading the holy book. Satan would choose such moments of all others because in this manner he would involve me in two great sins at once; for in addition to the wickedness of indulging in salacious thoughts there was the offense of desecrating the holy book by them.

Reb Sender’s daughter was about to be married to a tradesman of Talmudic education. I did not care for her in the least, yet her approaching wedding aroused a lively interest in me.

Red Esther had gone out to service. She came home but seldom, and when she did we scarcely ever talked to each other. The coarse brightness of her complexion and the harsh femininity of her laughter repelled me.

“I do hate her,” I once said to myself, as I heard that laugh of hers.

“And yet you would not mind kissing her, would you, now?” a voice retorted.

I had to own that I would not, and then I cudgeled my brains over the amazing discrepancy of the thing. Kissing meant being fond of one. I enjoyed kissing my mother, for instance. Now, I certainly was not fond of Esther. I was sure that I hated her. Why, then, was I impelled to kiss her? How could I hate and be fond of her at once? I went on reasoning it out, Talmud fashion, till I arrived at the conclusion that there were two kinds of kisses: the kiss of affection and the kiss of Satan. I submitted it, as a discovery, to some of the other young Talmudists, but they scouted it as a truism. A majority of us were modest of speech and conduct. But there were some who were not.

W
HEN I was a little over eighteen the number of steady readers at the Old Synagogue was increased by the advent of a youth from the Polish provinces. His appearance produced something of a sensation, for, in addition to being the son of a rich merchant and the prospective son-in-law of a celebrated rabbi, he was the possessor of a truly phenomenal memory. He was well versed in the entire Talmud, and could recite by heart about five hundred leaves, or one thousand pages, of it. He was generally called the Pole. He was tall and supple, fair-complexioned, and well-groomed, with a suggestion of self-satisfaction and aloofness in the very sinuosity of his figure. His velvet skull-cap, which was always pushed back on his head, exposed to view a forelock of golden hair. His long-skirted, well-fitting coat was of the richest broad-cloth I had ever seen. He wore a watch and chain that were said to be worth a small fortune. I hated him. He was repugnant to me for his Polish accent, for his good clothes, for his well-fed face, for his haughty manner, for the servile attention that was showered on him, and, above all, for his extraordinary memory. I had always been under the impression that the boys of well-to-do parents were stupid. Brains did not seem to be in their line. That this young man, who was so well supplied with this world’s goods, should possess a wonderful mind as well jarred on me as an injustice to us poor boys.

I would seek comfort in the reflection that “the essence of scholarship lay in profundity and acumen rather than in the ability to rattle off pages like so many psalms.” Yet those “five hundred leaves” of his gave me no peace. Five hundred! The figure haunted me. Finally I set myself the task of memonzmg five hundred leaves. It was a gigantic undertaking, although my memory was rather above the average. I worked with unflagging assiduity for weeks and weeks. Nobody was to know of my purpose until it had been achieved. I worked so hard and was so absorbed in my task that my interest in girls lost much of its usual acuteness. At times I had a sense of my own holiness. When I walked through the streets, on my way to or from the synagogue, I kept reciting some of the pages I had mastered. While in bed for the night, I whispered myself to sleep reciting Talmud. When I ate, some bit of Talmud was apt to be running through my mind. If there was a hitch, and I could not go on, my heart would sink within me. I would stop eating and make an effort to recall the passage.

It was inevitable that the new character of my studies should sooner or later attract Reb Sender’s attention. My secret hung like a veil between us. He was jealous of it. Ultimately he questioned me, beseechingly, and I was forced to make a clean breast of it.

Reb Sender beamed. The veil was withdrawn. Presently his face fell again.

“What I don’t like about it is your envy of the Pole,” he said, gravely. “Don’t take it ill, my son, but I am afraid you are envious and begrudging. Fight it, Davie. Give up studying by heart. It is not with a pure motive you are doing it. Your studies are poisoned with hatred and malice. Do you want to gladden my heart, Davie?”

“I do. I will. What do you mean?”

“Just step up to the Pole and beg his pardon for the evil thoughts you have harbored about him.”

A minute later I stood in front of my hated rival, thrilling with the ecstasy of penitence.

“I have sinned against you. Forgive me,” I said, with downcast eyes.

The Pole was puzzled.

“I envied you,” I explained. “I could not bear to hear everybody speak of the five hundred leaves you know by heart. So I wanted to show you that I could learn by heart just as much, if not more.”

A suggestion of a sneer flitted across his well-fed face. It stung me as if it were some loathsome insect. His golden forelock exasperated me.

“And I could do it. too,” I snapped. “I have learned more than fifty leaves already. It is not so much of a trick as I thought it was.”

“ Is it not?” the Pole said, with a full-grown sneer.

“You need not be so stuck up, anyhow,” I shot back, and turned away.

Before I had reached Reb Sender, who had been watching us, I rushed back to the Pole.

“I just want to say this,” I began, in a towering rage. “With all your boasted memory you would be glad to change brains with me.”

His shoulders shook with soundless mirth.

“Laugh away. But let Reb Sender examine both of us. Let him select a passage and see who of us can delve deeper into it, you or I? Memory alone is nothing.”

“Isn’t it? Then why are you green with envy of me?” And once more he burst into a laugh, with a graceful jerk of his head which set my blood on fire.

“You’re a pampered idiot.”

“You’re green with envy.”

“I’ll break every bone in you.”

We flew at each other, but Reb Sender and two other scholars tore us apart.

“Shame!” the Talmudists cried, shrugging their shoulders in disgust.

“Just like Gentiles,” some one commented.

“It is an outrage to have the holy place desecrated in this manner.”

“What has got into you?” Reb Sender said to me as he led me back to my desk.

 

I resumed studying by heart with more energy than ever. “That’s all right!” I thought to myself. “I’ll have that silk-stocking of a fellow lick the dust of my shoes.” I now took special measures to guard my secret even from Reb Sender. One of these was to take a book home and to work there, staying away from synagogue as often as I could invent a plausible pretext. I was lying right and left. Satan chuckled in my face, but I did not care. I promised myself to settle my accounts with the Uppermost later on. The only thing that mattered now was to beat the Pole.

The sight of me learning the Word of God so diligently was a source of indescribable joy to my mother. She struggled to suppress her feeling, but from time to time a sigh would escape her, as though the rush of happiness was too much for her heart.

Alas! this happiness of hers was not to last much longer.

BOOK III

I LOSE MY MOTHER

I
T was Purim, the feast of Esther. Our school-boys were celebrating the downfall of Haman, and they were doing it in the same war-like fashion in which American boys celebrate their forefathers’ defiance of George III. The synagogues roared with the booming of fire-crackers, the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim rattles. It was four weeks to the great eight-day festival of Passover and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened bread. She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day, so that she often dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer exhaustion. But then she earned far more than usual. Including tips from customers (the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families whose flour he transformed into flat, round, tasteless Passover cakes, or “matzoths”) she saved up, during the period, a little over twenty rubles. With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for me and bought me a new cap. I remember that coat very well. It was of a dark-brown cotton stuff, neat at the waist and with absurdly long skirts, of course.

The Jewish Passover often concurs with the Christian Easter. This was the case in the year in question. One afternoon—it was the seventh day of our festival—I chanced to be crossing the Horse-market. As it was not market day, it was deserted save for groups of young Gentiles, civilians and soldiers, who were rolling brightly colored Easter eggs over the ground. My new long-skirted coat and side-locks provoked their mirth until one of them hit me a savage blow in the face, splitting my lower lip. Another rowdy snatched off my new cap—just because our people considered it a sin to go bareheaded. And, as I made my way, bleeding, with one hand to my lip and the other over my bare head, the company sent a shower of broken eggs and a chorus of jeers after me.

It was only a short distance from Abner’s Court. When I entered our basement and faced my mother, she stared at me for a moment, as though dumfounded, and then, slapping her hands together, she sobbed:

“Woe is me! Darkness is me! What has happened to you?”

When she had heard my story she stood silent awhile, looking aghast, and then left the house.

“I’m going to kill him. I am just going to kill him,” she said, in measured accents which still ring in my ears.

The bookbinder’s wife, the retired soldier, and I ran after her, imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy errand, but she took no heed of us.

“Foolish woman! You don’t even know who did it,” urged the soldier.

“I’ll find out!” she answered.

The bookbinder’s wife seized her by an arm, but she shook her off. I pleaded with her with tears in my eyes.

“Go back,” she said to me, trying to be gentle while her eyes were lit with an ominous look.

These were the last words I ever heard her utter.

Fifteen minutes later she was carried into our basement unconscious. Her face was bruised and swollen and the back of her head was broken. She died the same evening.

I have never been able to learn the ghastly details of her death. The police and an examining magistrate were said to be investigating the case, but nothing came of it.

There was no lack of excitement among the Jews of Antomir. The funeral was expected to draw a vast crowd. But the epidemic of anti-Jewish atrocities of 1881 and 1882 were fresh in one’s mind, so word was passed round “not to irritate the Gentiles.” The younger and “modern” element in town took exception to this timidity. They insisted upon a demonstrative funeral. They were organizing for self-defense in case the procession was interfered with, but the counsel of older people prevailed. As a consequence, the number of mourners following the hearse was even smaller than it would have been if my mother had died a natural death. And the few who did take part in the sad procession were unusually silent. A Jewish funeral without a chorus of sobbing women was inconceivable in Antomir. Indeed, a pious matron who happens to come across such a scene will join in the weeping, whether she had ever heard of the deceased or not. On this occasion, however, sobs were conspicuous by their absence.