Evergreen Page 3

  “There was a girl who came from home with me—Hannah Vogel, your mother knew her. She married a fellow she met on the boat. He didn’t have a cent when he came, but he was smart. Somehow he made a connection and moved to Chicago. Opened a haberdashery there. I hear he owns a chain of stores now—” Ruth’s voice brightened. “My Solly’s got very friendly with the factory manager. You never know, changes are always being made; he might decide to open his own place and take Solly in with him.”

  Anna thought of Solly in the corner, bent over his machine. A thin man with the timid pointed face of a mouse. Poor hopeful Ruth. Poor tired Solly. They would never get out of here.

  People who had come from Europe twenty years before them still lived on these streets. The old men were thin, with dark, beautiful eyes; they seemed more fragile, somehow, than the old men Anna remembered from home, leading their wagons of secondhand clothes, chickens, hats, fish and eyeglasses. Their old wives were fat, potato-shaped and potato-colored, their hanging white flesh untouched by the sun.

  Where were the pink dresses, the freedom and the music?

  Still, there were many marvels. The streets were almost as bright at night as by day, not like home where you stumbled down the road holding the lantern high. In a vacant store down the street there was a machine, a nickelodeon, where you could look in and see a picture that moved: Indians attacking a train, a beautiful woman named Irene Castle and a tall man swooping and gliding in a dance.

  Anna walked, taking no particular direction, just walking and looking. Under the Second Avenue elevated the women sat at the horseradish machines, weeping their smarting tears. She avoided the tramps who slept over the baker’s ovens in the yard. She went past the synagogues in the tenements on Bayard Street. She walked five, ten blocks and more, until the people on the streets looked different and spoke in languages that she did not understand. On Italian streets the children swarmed more quickly than on Hester Street. A man sold pink and yellow sweet ices from a little cart. An organ grinder wearing a bandana and earrings made melancholy music in the bright morning; on his shoulder sat an eager, tiny monkey in a red jacket. She watched; she listened to the melody of Italian speech. It was like singing.

  Then the Irish streets. The saloons with harps and shamrocks on the signs above the doors. The beautiful women in their ragged dresses and the curving sweetness on their faces.

  And Mott Street, where the strange-eyed peddlers sold watermelon seed and sugar cane. Through half-open cellar doors you saw Chinese men playing fan-tan. Their pigtails came below their knees. You never saw Chinese women or children. Why was that? How could that be?

  Worlds. Every few blocks another world. From what strange places had all these different people come? Villages in China, in Ireland—how different could they be from home? Had these people felt fears like ours? Are they perhaps like me after all?

  4

  Her name was Miss Mary Thorne. Thin and precise in her dark serge skirt and starched shirtwaist, she stood at the front of the classroom with the map of the United States on one side and the portraits of Washington and Lincoln on the other. She looks like them, her face is American, Anna thought. Americans are always tall and slender, with long faces.

  Evening school was held in a room that must have housed ten-year-olds by day. One’s knees didn’t fit under the desks; one had to sit twisted sideways. The ceiling bulb glared harshly and the heat from the sizzling radiators made people yawn. They shifted restlessly. But Anna hardly moved. She watched. She listened. Miss Mary Thorne was pouring knowledge like a good drink out of a pitcher.

  Toward the end of the winter she was called to the desk after class. “You’ve done amazingly well, Anna. It’s hard to believe you never studied English before. I’m going to promote you to my intermediate group.”

  “Thank you, miss,” Anna said. Proud and embarrassed, she stood looking at Miss Thorne, not knowing quite how to leave the room with grace.

  The teacher looked back at her. People were often intimidated by Miss Thorne: she had a stern face most of the time, but not now. Her eyes, magnified behind the unrimmed glasses that clung to the bridge of her nose, were soft.

  “Do you think about what you want to do with your life, Anna? I ask because it seems to me you are different from so many others. I see so many.… Every so often someone sits in this classroom who is different from the rest.”

  “I don’t know what there is for me to do,” Anna said slowly. “I suppose what I really want is just to know things. I feel that I don’t know anything, and I want to know everything.”

  Miss Thorne smiled. “Everything? That’s a large order.”

  “Of course, I didn’t mean that. But you see, the way it is, sometimes I feel there is a screen between me and the world. I want to pull it away to see more clearly. I don’t know anything about the past, or the way the world is now, except for these few streets and the village that I came from.”

  “Did you study anything there in the village?”

  “There was a woman teacher who came to the houses for the girls. We learned numbers and writing and reading. In Yiddish.”

  “Not Hebrew? Oh no, that’s only for the boys, isn’t it?”

  “The sacred language.”

  “Yes, only for the boys.”

  “Well, it’s not like that here, as you know. A girl can study whatever the boys do.”

  “I know. That’s a good thing.”

  “Yes. Well.” Miss Thorne stood up and went briskly to a shelf of books behind the desk. “The secret to it all is reading, Anna. Nothing else. I’ll tell you something: if you read and read and read you don’t even have to go to school, you can educate yourself! Only don’t tell anybody I said so! First, you must read the newspaper every day, the Times or the Herald. Don’t read the Journal, it’s cheap and sensational. Then I’m going to make up a list of books for you, long enough to take years to get through. You’ll be reading it long after I don’t see you anymore. Now, tonight I’m going to start you with this, you must learn about your new country from the beginning. It’s a book about Indians, a wonderful poem called Hiawatha, by one of our best poets, Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When you have finished it, bring it back and tell me what you thought about it. And then I will give you another.”

  Over the fireplace there was a round mirror in a gilded frame. Everything looked queer in it: she could see herself holding the flowered teacup on the embroidered napkin, see the little table with the teapot and the cake plate and Miss Thorne on the other side of the table. All of these were squat, condensed and flattened out. Even Miss Thorne looked wide and flat.

  “That’s a bull’s-eye mirror,” Miss Thorne said, following Anna’s gaze. “I don’t see much point in having it myself. But then, it’s not my house.”

  “Not?”

  “No, my nephew’s. He and his wife have only the one child and it’s a large house, so when I came down from Boston they invited me to live here with them and it has been very nice for me indeed.”

  “And were you a teacher when you lived in Boston?” Anna asked shyly.

  “Yes, I’ve been a teacher ever since I left school myself. I came to New York to be the assistant headmistress at a private school for girls. That’s what I do all day, you see. Then at night I teach English to newcorners like you.”

  “And what do you teach the girls in the daytime, since they already know how to speak English?”

  “I teach them Latin and ancient Greek.”

  “Oh. But why—excuse me, I ask too many questions.”

  “Not at all. How will you find out if you don’t ask? Tell me what you wanted to know.”

  “Well, I want to know what Latin is. And ancient Greek.”

  “A long time ago, two thousand years ago and more, there were powerful countries in Europe where those languages were spoken. The languages aren’t spoken anymore; we say they’re ‘dead,’ but the laws, the ideas those people left to us, are very much alive. And it’s also true that
the languages are the great-great-grandparents of English. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Anna nodded. “I understand. Those girls in your school are so fortunate, learning all these things, I think.”

  “I wish they all thought so. Or had your eagerness, Anna. That’s why I like to teach in your school, at night. Because so many of you want to learn—I feel I’m doing something really important.”

  Now that she had been invited here to tea Anna felt bolder. It was different from the classroom, with the elevated platform where the teacher sat above everybody else.

  “Do people speak differently, is that why you speak differently, because you’re from Boston?”

  “What do you mean, differently?”

  “I notice that some words are different. The way you say ‘park,’ for instance? That’s not the way some other Americans say it.”

  “Extraordinary, your ear! Yes, it’s true, we have a different accent there. In the South, in the Midwest, there are all sorts of accents.”

  “I see. And will you answer something else, please?”

  “If I can.”

  “Please, I’ve never had tea in a cup like this. What must I do with the spoon after I’ve stirred the tea?”

  “You just lay the spoon on the saucer, Anna.”

  “That was probably a foolish question. I might have figured it out for myself. Except that I should like to do things right, the American way.”

  “It wasn’t a foolish question. Only, let me tell you something. Wherever you go, and I hope you’ll go far, don’t ever be nervous about manners. Manners are mostly common sense, being tidy about things and considerate of other people. I don’t think you’ll have the slightest trouble about either of those, Anna.”

  “Then, may I have another piece of cake, please? It’s very good cake.”

  “Of course. And when you’ve finished I want to give you the list of reading that I’ve made out for you. I finally got around to it. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to come today, because we can talk better than at school.”

  The list was pages long, written in a neat script that looked like Miss Thorne herself. Anna scanned it.

  Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables

  Hardy: The Return of the Native

  Dickens: David Copperfield, Bleak House

  Thackeray: Vanity Fair

  Henry James: The Bostonians, Washington Square

  “Washington Square? That’s where we are now, the same?” Anna cried.

  “The very same. Henry James lived not far from here before he went to live in England. My family, my father’s people, knew him well. My mother’s family came from Boston.”

  “Really American,” Anna murmured.

  “No more than you. We just arrived sooner. You can be as American as anyone, never think otherwise. That’s what this country is all about, Anna.”

  Anna said, suddenly troubled, “I only wish, I wish I had more time to read all these books. It takes me so long.”

  “You’ll find the time. You can get a lot done just on Sundays alone.”

  “Sundays I work.” And as Miss Thorne looked puzzled, she explained, “I took the afternoon off today because you invited me and I was so honored, I wanted so much to come. But I’m really supposed to be working.”

  “I see. Sewing, where you live at home.”

  Anna nodded.

  “Tell me, then, is there any place where you can read by yourself? I suppose not.”

  “Alone? Oh, no! Only on the front stoop when the weather is warm, and it’s noisy enough there. But in cold weather, there’s no place. It’s so hard even to write to my brothers. With everybody talking I can’t think of what I want to say.”

  “A pity, a pity. And so many empty rooms in this house alone. If only one could do what one wants to do. One thing, though: my niece is about your size, and I’m going to ask her whether she has a good warm coat to give away. It would be better—shall we say, more American?—than your shawl. Also, I have duplicate copies of a few of the books on this list and I’m going to give them to you to keep, so you can start to build a library of your own. I’ll get the things to you, since it’s hard for you to take time to come here.”

  Anna put the shawl around her shoulders and they went out into the hall. On the other side a door was ajar; a room was filled with books from ceiling to floor; a little boy was practicing at a huge dark piano.

  “You don’t mind the offer of the coat, Anna?”

  “Mind? Oh, no, I’m glad, I want a coat!”

  “Someday you’ll be one of the people who gives, I’m sure you will.”

  “I shall be happy to give if that day ever comes, Miss Thorne.”

  “It will. And when it does I hope we shall still know each other. Then I’ll remind you of what I said.”

  I don’t believe we shall know each other, almost surely not. But just as surely, I will remember Miss Mary Thorne. Yes, I will, always.

  5

  “You must be Anna,” the young man said.

  He stood above her as she sat reading on the steps: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks—

  Unwillingly she returned to the street, stilled on the Sabbath afternoon, the old men in their long black coats walking on quiet feet, and now this new voice prodding softly.

  “May I?”

  “Of course. Sit.” She moved over, observing him without seeming to. Medium, he was. Medium height and age; medium brown suit, eyes and hair; medium features in a neatly fashioned face.

  “I’m Joseph. Joseph Friedman, Solly’s cousin.”

  The American, so called because he had been born in New York. The house painter from uptown. And of course Ruth had arranged this. The same as Aunt Rosa! They can’t rest until they’ve got a man for you. He can be ugly, stupid, anything, as long as he’s a man. Not that this one is ugly, but I wanted to read and I’m not thinking about men right now anyway.

  “Ruth asked me to come down here to meet you. To tell you the truth, I almost didn’t come. They’ve tried to hitch me up to every girl who ever got off a boat; I was getting tired of it. But I can tell straight away I’m glad I came this time.”

  Anna stared at him, weighing his astonishing words. But there was no conceit in his face, only the direct and simple return of her look.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I knew nothing about it. Ruth shouldn’t have—”

  “Please! I know you had nothing to do with it. Shall we take a walk?”

  “All right,” she said.

  He pulled her arm through his. He had clean hands, clean fingernails, a fresh collar. She respected that, at any rate. It is no easy thing to be clean when you are poor, in spite of what people say.

  They began to see each other every Saturday. In the afternoon heat they walked the shady side of the street. They could walk for two or three blocks without speaking. Joseph was a quiet man, Anna saw, except when a mood came on him and then one could hardly stop him. Still, he was interesting, he had a vivid way of describing things.

  “Here’s Ludlow Street, there’s the house where I was born. We lived here while my father had the tailor shop. After his sight failed—he couldn’t even see the needle anymore—we moved where we are now, my mother and I. Or where my mother is now, I should say. Two rooms behind the grocery store. What a life! Open six days a week until midnight. Bread, pickles, crackers and soda. My mother made salad in back of the store. Such a little woman, such a patient smile. When I remember being a child, I remember that smile. And what the hell was there to smile about? It didn’t make any sense.”

  “Perhaps she was happy about her children, in spite of everything else.”

  “Child. Just me. They were both over forty when I was born.”

  “And your father? What was he like?”

  “My father had high blood pressure. Everything upset him. He was probably already worn out by the time they got to America. But why don’t you stop me? Here I am, che
wing your ear off!”

  “I like to hear about people. Tell me more.”

  “There isn’t any more to tell. You live here. You know what it’s like to live on these streets, just walking around, because there’s no place to be comfortable inside. We were poor, and that’s the whole story.”

  “Even poorer than we were in Poland, I should think.”

  “Well, I don’t know how poor you were, but I can remember making supper sometimes out of bread and pickles—before we had our own store, that is. Not all the time, of course, but often enough.”

  “Still, I think,” Anna said thoughtfully, “it hasn’t hurt you. I think you’re a very optimistic person after all.”

  “I am. Because I have faith, you see.”

  “Faith in yourself?”

  “Yes, that too. But what I meant was faith in God.”

  “Are you so religious?”

  He nodded seriously. “Yes, yes, I believe. I believe there is a reason for everything that happens, even though we don’t see it. And I believe we must accept everything that happens, whether good or bad, on trust. And that we, we as individuals, must do our best, do what God intended. I don’t give a damn for all the philosophy you hear them spouting in the coffee houses where the loafers sit around and solve the world’s problems. They were all solved years ago on Mt. Sinai. That’s what I believe.”

  “Then why is there still so much trouble in the world?”

  “Very simple. Because people don’t do what’s right. Very simple. You’re not an atheist, Anna, I hope?”

  “Oh, no, of course I’m not! I just don’t know much about religion. I don’t really understand it.”

  “Well, naturally, women don’t have to. But I can tell what you are all the same. Honest and kind and good. And very smart. I admire you for educating yourself with all these books.”

  “You don’t read, ever?”

  “I don’t have time. I’m up before five, and when you’ve been craning your head back on a scaffold with a paintbrush all day you’re too tired at night to improve yourself. Although, to be truthful, I never was a student. Except in arithmetic. I had a good head for figures. At one time I even thought I might become an accountant.”