XXXV
Robert wondered what sort of home Levin would live in. Outside of Levin himself, in fact, his dealings with Jews had been extremely limited. He had met a few in his classes at Harvard, where they appeared perhaps a little more studious, more eager to acquire education, than the average students, but he had developed no friendships among them.
They took a west-side elevated and passed a district thick with stores and traffic. The rabbi’s home, however, was on the second floor of a three-story apartment building, facing a park, a rather peaceful retreat from the shopping district a few blocks away.
The home was like any of a dozen apartments Robert had seen in New York and Chicago—harmonious mahogany furniture, oriental rugs, good pictures, a baby grand piano, floor lamps. Except for a polished brass candelabra, with seven candle sticks, that stood on the table near the window, a hammered brass Russian samovar and a prominence of other hammered brass objects, there was nothing to set it off as distinctly Jewish. Oh yes, in the tall book shelves that rose from either side of the fireplace there were many old books with Hebrew letters stamped on them.
A rather plump schoolgirl, the doctor’s sister, had opened the door and ushered them through the reception hall into the living room.
“Oh, Mr. McCall, Jack’s expecting you,” she said. “Won’t you come in? Papa is just advising someone.”
She excused herself to summon her brother. Dr. Levin’s first name was Jacob, but his sister, Estelle, had given him the more American name of Jack.
Robert saw an elderly gentleman, with a black skull cap and long white beard, evidently the rabbi himself, talking animatedly with a little black-bearded fellow, who kept nodding his head. The taller man looked something like Jack, like Jack in a patriarchal beard and with little foreign mannerisms. They were talking in some foreign jargon.
“Nu, you send him to me and I will advise him as though he was my own son.”
The other man stopped nodding his head and began to shake it slowly from side to side.