CHAPTER VII
MY growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at once, as it were. It happened at a moment which is distinctly fixed in my mind. At least I distinctly remember the moment when I became conscious of it
It was on an afternoon, four days after the Margolises had taken possession of the new place. The family was fully established in it, while I had just moved in. I had seen my room, furniture and all, several times before, but I had never seen it absolutely ready for my occupancy as I did now. It was by far the brightest, airiest, best-furnished, and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself. Everything in it, from the wall-paper to the little wash-stand, was invitingly new. I can still smell its grateful odor of freshness. When I was left to myself in it for the first time and I shut its door the room appealed to me as a compartment in the nest of a family of which I was a member. My lonely soul had a sense of home and domestic comfort that all but overpowered me. The sight of the new quilt and of the fresh white pillow, coupled with the knowledge that it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for me, sent a glow of delight through my heart
Dora's name was whispering itself in my mind. I paused at the window, an enchanted man
A few minutes later, when I re-entered the living-room, where she was counting some freshly ironed napkins, her face seemed to have acquired a new meaning. I felt that a great change had come in my attitude toward her
"Well, is everything all right?" she inquired
"First rate," I answered, in a voice that sounded unnatural to myself
Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor. The children were gamboling from room to room, testing the faucets, the dumb-waiter
"Get avey from there!" Dora shouted. "You'll hurt yourself. Max, tell Lucy not to touch the dumb-vaiter, vill you?"
"Children! Children! What's a madder vitch you?" he called out from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory snarl. Presently he came into the living-room. "Well, are you satisfied with your new palace?" he addressed me in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern "improvements," at the abundance of light, and at my new rank of "real boarder."
It is one of the old and deep-rooted customs of the Ghetto towns of Europe for a young couple to live with the parents of the bride for a year or two after the wedding. So Max gaily dubbed me his "boarding son-in-law
"Try to behave, boarding son-in-law," he bantered me. "If you don't your mother-in-law will starve you."
The pleasantry grated on me
Dora's ambition to learn to read and spell English was a passion, and the little girl played a more important part in the efforts she made in this direction than Dora was willing to admit. Lucy would tell her the meaning of new words as she had heard it at school, but it often happened that the official definition she quoted was incomprehensible to both. This was apt to irritate Dora or even lead to a disagreeable scene
If I happened to be around I would explain things to her, but she seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of salt. She bowed before my intellectual status in a general way, but since she had good reason to doubt the quality of my English enunciation, she doubted my Yiddish interpretations as well. Indeed, she doubted everything that did not bear the indorsement of Lucy's school. Whatever came from that sacred source was "real Yankee"; everything else was "greenhorn." If she failed to grasp some of the things that Lucy brought back from school, she would blame it on the child.
"Oh, you didn't understand what your teacher said," she would scold her.
"You must have twisted it all up, you stupid."
One afternoon, when business was slow and there did not seem to be anything to preclude my staying at home and breathing the air that Dora breathed, I witnessed a painful scene between them. It was soon after Lucy returned from school. Her mother wanted her to go over her last reading-lesson with her, and the child would not do so, pleading a desire to call on Beckie
"Stay where you are and open your reader," Dora commanded
Lucy obeyed, whimperingly. "Read!" "I want to go to Beckie."
"Read, I say." And she slapped her hand
"Don't," I remonstrated. "Let the poor child go enjoy herself." But it only spoiled matters
"Read!" she went on, with grim composure, hitting her on the shoulder
"I don't want to! I want to go down-stairs," Lucy sobbed, defiantly
"Read!" And once more she hit her.
My heart went out to the child, but I dared not intercede again
Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded, sobbingly
I left the room in disgust. The scene preyed upon my mind all that afternoon. I remained in my room until supper-time. Then I found Dora taciturn and downcast and I noticed that she treated Lucy with exceptional, though undemonstrative, tenderness
"Must have given her a licking," Max explained to me, with a wink
I kept my counsel
She beat her quite often, sometimes violently, each scene of this kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her part. Her devotion to her children was above that of the average mother. Lucy had been going to school for over two years, yet she missed her every morning as though she were away to another city; and when the little girl came back, Dora's face would brighten, as if a flood of new sunshine had burst into the house.
On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and daughter over the result of a spelling-match between them which I had umpired and which Lucy had won. Dora took her defeat so hard that she was dejected all that evening
I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy she was jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the school education she was receiving, but also of her American birth
She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the "real American syle," and the realization of her helplessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair. She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of table manners, and whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise, and make Lucy practise, with amusing pomp and circumstance.
"Don't reach out for the herring, Lucy!" she would say, sternly.
"How many times must I tell you about it? What do you say?"
"Pass me the herring, mamma, please." "Not 'mamma.'"
"Pass me the herring, mother, please."
The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a lady-like gesture
"Thank you, ma'am," says Lucy
"There is another way," Dora might add in a case of this kind. "Instead of saying, 'Pass me the herring or the butter,' you can say—What is it, Lucy?"
"May I trouble you for the herring, mother?"
I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and she did. Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly, or with a burst of merriment, or with a scandalized air, as if she had caught me in the act of committing a felony. This was her revenge for my general intellectual superiority, which she could not help admitting and envying
"You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you," Max would say to me.
Sometimes, when I mispronounced an English word with which she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English phrase in my Talmudic singsong, she would mock me gloatingly. On one such occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by pointing out that she had said "nice" where "nicely" was in order
"What do you mean?" she asked, perplexedly
My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth. It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school, at least, as you did. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will be educated for both of us, for herself and for her poor mamma. If my mother had understood as much as I do it would have been different." She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resumed: "But I can't complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of a woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not America. No, I can't complain of my parents. My father was a poor man, but ask Max or some of our fellow-townspeople and they will tell you what a fine name he had."
She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman of her class, but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her. Moreover, the tireless assiduity and precision which she brought to her housework and, above all, the grim passion of her intellectual struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that inspired me with something like reverence.
Living in that atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me
Attempting a lark with her, as I had done with Mrs. Dienstog and
Mrs.
Levinsky, my first two landladies in New York, was out of the question.
Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not prevent my eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious complexion, her clear, honest voice, and all else that made me feel both happy and forlorn in her company. Nor would she, aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the barrier of decorum.
These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which I should have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade. When away from the magnetic force of her presence I would attend to business with unabated intensity.
Her image visited my brain often, but it did not disturb me. Rather, it was the image of some customer or creditor or of some new style of jacket or cloak that would interfere with my peace of mind. My brain was full of prices, bills, notes, checks, fabrics, color effects, "lines." Not infrequently, while walking in the street or sitting in a street-car, I would catch myself describing some of those garment lines in the air.
And yet, through all these preoccupations I seemed to be constantly aware that something unusual had happened to me, giving a novel tinge to my being; that I was a changed man