Inventing Memory by Erica Jong Read Free Book Online Page B

quicker and better I drew, the more possessive Levitsky became.
    And I learned to manage him: to mix sugar and tongue-lashing, to wheedle and seduce, to tease and taunt until I got what I wanted. All my aim in those days was to earn enough to bring my family over from the land of pogroms . To this end I saved my money at a Jewish bank. (It went bust in the depression of 1907—another story for another rainy night.)
    We made a funny family—Levitsky and I and the few other catalog artists who worked with us in Levitsky's tenement on Rivington.
    We had drawing tables and high stools, and sometimes the corsets and shirts and blouses and jackets would be stuffed or hung on tailors' dummies.
    Since our place was on the ground floor and since we always had food and drink aplenty, homeless urchins who lived everywhere and nowhere—street Arabs, they were called—used to flock into the studio to beg for scraps. I took to one of these urchins and fed him behind Levitsky's back. The child's name was, he said, Tyke, and he sold newspapers and swept streets; he may also have been a pickpocket. Who knows where he slept? Those homeless boys slept in alleys behind Irish bars or on the steps of wine cellars or anywhere they could till the snow came and froze them out. What they did then, God only knows. But even though Tyke was half black, he looked to me like my lost boy, so I was always glad to see him.
    One day, I gave him a little sketch I had made of myself and asked him to bring it to Sim Coppley's house and slide it into the mailbox. I had not put my address or name on it. I meant only to whet Sim's appetite. But apparently Sim caught the boy and bribed him with chocolates until he confessed to my whereabouts.
    The very next day, who should come strolling through the doors of our street-level studio but Sim Coppley himself!
    He fell to his knees before the stool where I was drawing. "'Thine eyes are as doves,'" he said, quoting the Song of Songs.
    "Thy kopf is dumm! " I said, quoting myself, though my heart thudded in my chest.
    It was my good fortune that Levitsky was out delivering drawings when Coppley arrived. "You must never come here again!" I said. "My boss will fire me."
    "You don't need a boss, you need a husband," Coppley said.
    "A husband is a boss!" I said, flaunting my—or Levitsky's—anarchist ideas. "A husband is a form of white slavery!" (I had begun attending radical lectures at the Educational Alliance, and this is the sort of thing I'd picked up. Only six months in America, and I was already a low-rent Emma Goldman!)
    "If you were my wife, Sophia, I would give you everything you needed and freedom too."
    "Freedom cannot be given !" I said. "If you think you can give it to me, it shows you don't know what freedom is . Besides, I am almost a stranger to you!"
    "We have crossed an ocean together," said Sim, dazed with desire. And then, seeing a bowl of fruit on the table, he sighed: "'Comfort me with apples! I am faint with love.'" (Later he would woo me by translat ing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" into Yiddish: " Vifiel hob ich dir leib? Loz mir tzelen: / Ich leib dir azoi tief und breit und hoich / Vie mein neshomeh ken dirgreichen, ven / Zie sucht dem lebens tachlis und die shchineh ." Oh, he believed that poetry and psalm would cover a multitude of sins!)
    Just then Levitsky strolled in, smoking his stinkiest cigar.
    "Pfui," I said. Coppley, for all his delirium, had the presence of mind to say: "I greatly admire this lady's work, and I would like to propose a business deal to you."
    The word "business" always riveted Levitsky. Business was his religion. I went on coolly drawing a corset as if it would contain Sim's rash tongue. Levitsky and Coppley retreated to a corner to bargain. I heard them haggling in raised voices. Finally they shook hands.
    Coppley then came up to my drawing stool and said, "I shall look forward to welcoming you in the country, madame."
    And