But, nothing daunted, the people of Antomir would go about their business as usual and my heart would sink with a sense of my helplessness.
I was restless. I coveted diversion, company, and I saw a good deal of Naphtali. As for his Free Thought, it soon, after we had two mild quarrels over it, began to bore me. It appeared that the huge tomes of the Talmud were not the only books he read these days. He spent much time, clandestinely, on little books written in the holy tongue on any but holy topics. They were taken up with such things as modern science, poetry, fiction, and, above all, criticism of our faith. He made some attempts to lure me into an interest in these books, but without avail. The only thing connected with them that appealed to me were the anecdotes that Naphtali would tell me, in his laconic way, concerning their authors. I scarcely ever listened to these stories without invoking imprecations upon the infidels, but I enjoyed them all the same. They were mostly concerned with their apostasy, but there were many that were not. Some of these, or rather the fact that I had first heard them from Naphtali, in my youth, were destined to have a peculiar bearing on an important event in my life, on something that occurred many years later, when I was already a prosperous merchant in New York. They were about Doctor Rachaeles, a famous Hebrew writer who practised medicine in Odessa, and his son-in-law, a poet named Abraham Tevkin. Doctor Rachaeles's daughter was a celebrated beauty and the poet's courtship of her had been in the form of a long series of passionate letters addressed, not to his lady-love, but to her father. This love-story made a strong impression on me. The figures of the beautiful girl and of the enamoured young poet, as I pictured them, were vivid in my mind.
"Did he write of his love in those letters?" I demanded, shyly
"He did not write of onions, did he?" Naphtali retorted. After a little I asked: "But how could she read those letters? She certainly does not read holy tongue?"
"Go ask her."
"You're a funny fellow. Did Tevkin get the girl?"
"He did, and they have been married for many years. Why, did you wonder if you mightn't have a chance?"
"You're impossible, Naphtali."
He smiled.