The Rise of David Levinsky Part 77

The following lines, which were also dedicated to Doctor Rachaeles and which were ent.i.tled "Night," betray a similar mood, perhaps, without distinctly referring to the poet's yearnings

"Hush! the night is speaking. Each twinkle of a star is a word from the world beyond. It is the language of men who were once here, but are no more.

A thousand generations of departed souls are speaking to us in words of twinkling stars. I seem to be one of them. I hear my own ghost whispering to me: 'Alas!' it says, 'Alas!'"

The three volumes were full of Biblical quaintness, and my estrangement from the language only added to the bizarre effect of its terse grammatical construction. I read a number of the poems, and several of the things in the prose volume. His Hebrew is truly marvelous, and much of the strength and charm of his message is bound up in it. As I read his poetry or prose I seemed to be listening to Jeremiah or Isaiah. The rhythm of his lines is not the only thing that is lost in my translation. There is a prehistoric vigor and a mystic beauty to them which elude the English at my command. To be sure, every word I read in his three little volumes was tinged with the fact that the author was the father of the girl who had cast her spell over me.

But then the thought that she had grown up in the house of the man who had written these lines intensified the glow of her nimbus

As I returned the books to the official in charge of the Hebrew department I lingered to draw him into conversation. He was a well-known member of the East Side Boheme. I had heard of him as a man who spoke several languages and was amazingly well read--a walking library of knowledge, not only of books, but also of men and things. Accordingly, I hoped to extract from him some information about Tevkin. He was a portly man, with a round, youthful face and a baby smile. He smiled far more than he spoke.

He answered my questions either by some laconic phrase or by leaving me for a minute and then returning with some book, pamphlet, or newspaper-clipping in which he pointed out a pa.s.sage that was supposed to contain a reply to my query. I had quite a long talk with him. Now and then we were interrupted by some one asking for or returning a book, but each time he was released he readily gave me his attention again

Speaking of Tevkin, I inquired, "Why doesn't he write some more of those things?" For an answer he withdrew and soon came back with several issues of The Pen, a Hebrew weekly published in New York, in which he showed me an article by Tevkin

"Have you read it?" I asked

He nodded and smiled

"Is it good?"

"It isn't bad," he answered, with a smile

"Not as good as the things in those three volumes?"

He smiled

"This kind of thing doesn't pay, does it? How does he make a living?"

"I don't know. I understand he has several grown children."

"So they support the family?"

"I suppose so. I am not sure, though."

"Can't a Hebrew writer make a living in New York?"

He shook his head and smiled

The dailies of the Ghetto, the newspapers that can afford to pay, are published, not in the language of Isaiah and Job, but in Yiddish, the German dialect spoken by the Jewish ma.s.ses of to-day. I asked the librarian whether Tevkin wrote for those papers, and he brought me several clippings containing some of Tevkin's Yiddish contributions. It appeared, however, that the articles he wrote in his living mother-tongue lacked the spirit and the charm that distinguished his style when he used the language of the prophets. Altogether, Tevkin seemed to be accounted one of the "has-beens" of the Ghetto

One of the bits of information I squeezed out of the librarian was that Tevkin was a pa.s.sionate frequenter of Yampolsky's cafe, a well-known gathering-place of the East Side Boheme

I had heard a good deal about the resort. I knew that many or most of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists or some other kind of "ists." After my experience at the Cooper Inst.i.tute meeting, Yampolsky's cafe seemed to be the last place in the world for me to visit. But I was drawn to it as a b.u.t.terfly is to a flame, and finally the temptation got the better of me

CHAPTER II

THE cafe was a s.p.a.cious room of six corners and a lop-sided general appearance.

It was about 4 o'clock of an afternoon. I sat at the end of one of the tables, a gla.s.s of Russian tea before me. There were two other customers at that table, both poorly clad and, as it seemed to me, ill-fed. Two tables in a narrow and dingier part of the room were occupied by disheveled chess-players and three or four lookers-on.

Altogether there were about fifteen people in the place. Some of the conversations were carried on aloud. A man with curly dark hair who was eating soup at the table directly in front of me was satirizing somebody between spoonfuls, relishing his acrimony as if it were spice to his soup. A feminine voice back of me was trying to prove to somebody that she did much more for her sister than her sister did for her. I was wretchedly ill at ease at first. I loathed myself for being here. I felt like one who had strayed into a disreputable den. In addition, I was in dread of being recognized. The man who sat by my side had the hair and the complexion of a gipsy. He looked exhausted and morose.

Presently he had a fried steak served him. It was heavily laden with onions.

As he fell to cutting and eating it hungrily the odor of the fried onions and the sound of his lips sickened me. The steak put him in good humor. He became sociable and turned out to be a gay, though a venomous, fellow. His small talk raised my spirits, too.

Nor did anybody in the cafe seem to know who I was or to take any notice of me. I took a humorous view of the situation and had the gipsy-faced man tell me who was who

"Shall I begin with this great man?" he asked, facetiously, pointing his fork at himself. "I am the world-renowned translator and feuilleton writer whose writings have greatly increased the circulation of the Yiddish Tribune."

Under the guise of playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of self-appreciation. He then named all the "other notables present"--a poet, a cartoonist, a budding playwright, a distinguished Russian revolutionist, an editor, and another newspaper man--maligning and deriding some of them and grudgingly praising the others. Much of what he said was lost upon me, for, although he knew that I was a rank outsider, he used a jargon of nicknames, catch-phrases, and allusions that was apparently peculiar to the East Side Boheme. He was part of that little world, and he was unable to put himself in the place of one who was not. I subsequently had occasion to read one of his articles and I found it full of the same jargon. The public did not understand him, but he either did not know it or did not care

As he did not point out Tevkin to me, I concluded that the Hebrew poet was not at the cafe

"Do you know Tevkin?" I inquired.

"There he is," he answered, directing my glance to a gray-haired, clean-shaven, commonplace-looking man of medium stature who stood in the chess corner, watching one of the games. "Do you know him?"

"No, but I have heard of him. You did not include him in your list of notables, did you?"

"Oh, well, he was a notable once upon a time. Our rule is, 'Let the dead past bury it's dead.'"

I felt sorry for poor Tevkin. Turning half-way around in my seat, I took to eying the Hebrew poet. I felt disappointed. That this prosaic-looking old man should have written the lines that I had read at the Astor Library seemed inconceivable. The fact, however, that he was the father of the tall, stately, beautiful girl whose image was ever before me enn.o.bled his face

I stepped over to him and said: "You are Mr. Tevkin, aren't you?

Allow me to introduce myself. Levinsky."

He bowed, grasping my hand, evidently loath to take his eyes off the chess-players

"I read some of your poems the other day," I added

"My poems?" he asked, coloring

"Yes; I had heard of them, and as I happened to be at the Astor Library I asked for your three volumes. I read several things in each of them. I liked them tremendously."

He blushed again. "It seems an age since they were written," he said, in confusion. "Those were different days."

We sat down at a secluded table. To propitiate the proprietor and the waiter I ordered hot cheese-cakes. I offered to order something for Tevkin, but he declined, and he ordered a gla.s.s of tea, with the tacit understanding that he was to pay for it himself

"Why don't you give us some more poems like those?"

He produced his business card, saying, "This is the kind of poetry that goes in America."

The card described him as a "general business agent and real-estate broker." This meant that he earned, or tried to earn, an income by acting as broker for people who wanted to sell or buy soda-and-cigarette stands, news-stands, laundries, grocery-stores, delicatessen-stores, butcher shops, cigar-stores, book-stores, and what not, from a peddier's push-cart to a "parcel" of real estate or an interest in a small factory. Scores of stores and stands change hands in the Ghetto every day, the purchaser being usually a workman who has saved up some money with an eye to business

"Does it pay?" I ventured to ask.

"I am not in it merely for the fun of it, am I?" he returned, somewhat resentfully. "Business is business and poetry is poetry. I hate to confound the two. One must make a living. Thank G.o.d, I know how to look things in the face. I am no dreamer. It is sweet to earn your livelihood."