expected to sketch.
I will never forget the way Levitsky trailed us, watching from afar as if he expected Sim to steal me away.
Sim was very solicitous of my needs, wanting me to participate in the croquet, the archery, the lunches, teas, and suppers. But feeling sure I would make an utter fool of myself among these swells, nobs, and brownstoners—what did I know of archery from Sukovoly or even Odessa?—I pretended such sport would interfere with my work and that I preferred only to sketch. I meticulously laid out my pencils, inks, and pastels, and I disappeared into the creamy drawing paper.
Impressed as I was by the purple hilltops, the deep-blue lakes, the sloping lawns like the dark-green velvety suede of my boots, I was even more impressed by the women, who seemed a breed apart from any I had ever known. Their slimness could hardly be due only to corseting! One among these took a particular interest in me.
"Meet Miss Lucretia Weathersby," said Sim, leading over to my easel a thin, almost pinched lady with what appeared to be a pair of pigeons taking flight from her huge white straw hat, whose gossamer streamers lifted in the wind and fluttered. Miss Lucretia had eyes hard as crows' beaks and little crinkles at the cruel corners of her mouth.
"Show us your temptress of the tenements, Sim!" she said with a bitter laugh. Then she minced over to be presented to me where I stood next to my easel under its spot of silken-parasoled shade.
She put out her bony hand. I clasped it and found it cold. She appraised me like a pawnbroker appraising a stolen watch.
"Ah, Sim," she said, not even deigning to address me, "you did not say your little Hebrew protégée was also a juicy morsel!"
Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead, and my cheeks prickled with heat. I hated her on sight and might have shown it had not Levitsky stridden forward to be introduced.
"Madame," he said, "let the lady sketch your likeness in that becoming hat!" And fetching a wicker chair from a nearby gazebo, he placed it on the emerald grass for Lucretia.
She arranged her shroud-white skirts and crossed her bony ankles, then pierced me with her birdlike gaze.
I thought for a moment of drawing her as the bird of prey she seemed. Then I remembered myself and made a likeness, but a flattering likeness in which all the sharpness I saw in her was softened. Sim stood behind me, watching, while Levitsky clowned for Lucretia. He was obnoxiously playing the stage Jew—with gestures stolen from Tomashevsky—and she ate it up!
"You people are sooo talented," I heard her say. And Levitsky played on her goyishe sensibilities like a ham Shylock. She would give him her pound of flesh—if only she had any! Sim, meanwhile, hovered over me. That was the day he pressed his Yiddish translation of Mrs. Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" into my hand. I hid it promptly in a pocket of my borrowed finery.
By the end of the afternoon, I had sketched several of the ladies, and they were all oohing and aahing over their little pastel sketches. Some began to bargain with Levitsky for me to paint proper full-length portraits of them. Yet for all that I had flattered Lucretia, she still eyed me warily. She knew me for her rival, and I surely knew her for my enemy.
I think of Lucretia as I saw her then (now that she is long dead) and she seems like such a black-and-white villainess. But remember, I viewed her not only through my own eyes but through the eyes of Sim, who had confused her somewhat with his own imperious mother. Sim was bound to Lucretia by manacles forged in childhood, and the crueler she was to him, the more bound to her he felt. Pain binds more securely than pleasure.
I have been asked to tell you everything I remember—perhaps because it is presumed that my great age gives me wisdom of some sort, or perhaps because I am now so old that my recollections are museum pieces. The young need to believe that the old know something.
I will never forget the way Levitsky trailed us, watching from afar as if he expected Sim to steal me away.
Sim was very solicitous of my needs, wanting me to participate in the croquet, the archery, the lunches, teas, and suppers. But feeling sure I would make an utter fool of myself among these swells, nobs, and brownstoners—what did I know of archery from Sukovoly or even Odessa?—I pretended such sport would interfere with my work and that I preferred only to sketch. I meticulously laid out my pencils, inks, and pastels, and I disappeared into the creamy drawing paper.
Impressed as I was by the purple hilltops, the deep-blue lakes, the sloping lawns like the dark-green velvety suede of my boots, I was even more impressed by the women, who seemed a breed apart from any I had ever known. Their slimness could hardly be due only to corseting! One among these took a particular interest in me.
"Meet Miss Lucretia Weathersby," said Sim, leading over to my easel a thin, almost pinched lady with what appeared to be a pair of pigeons taking flight from her huge white straw hat, whose gossamer streamers lifted in the wind and fluttered. Miss Lucretia had eyes hard as crows' beaks and little crinkles at the cruel corners of her mouth.
"Show us your temptress of the tenements, Sim!" she said with a bitter laugh. Then she minced over to be presented to me where I stood next to my easel under its spot of silken-parasoled shade.
She put out her bony hand. I clasped it and found it cold. She appraised me like a pawnbroker appraising a stolen watch.
"Ah, Sim," she said, not even deigning to address me, "you did not say your little Hebrew protégée was also a juicy morsel!"
Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead, and my cheeks prickled with heat. I hated her on sight and might have shown it had not Levitsky stridden forward to be introduced.
"Madame," he said, "let the lady sketch your likeness in that becoming hat!" And fetching a wicker chair from a nearby gazebo, he placed it on the emerald grass for Lucretia.
She arranged her shroud-white skirts and crossed her bony ankles, then pierced me with her birdlike gaze.
I thought for a moment of drawing her as the bird of prey she seemed. Then I remembered myself and made a likeness, but a flattering likeness in which all the sharpness I saw in her was softened. Sim stood behind me, watching, while Levitsky clowned for Lucretia. He was obnoxiously playing the stage Jew—with gestures stolen from Tomashevsky—and she ate it up!
"You people are sooo talented," I heard her say. And Levitsky played on her goyishe sensibilities like a ham Shylock. She would give him her pound of flesh—if only she had any! Sim, meanwhile, hovered over me. That was the day he pressed his Yiddish translation of Mrs. Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" into my hand. I hid it promptly in a pocket of my borrowed finery.
By the end of the afternoon, I had sketched several of the ladies, and they were all oohing and aahing over their little pastel sketches. Some began to bargain with Levitsky for me to paint proper full-length portraits of them. Yet for all that I had flattered Lucretia, she still eyed me warily. She knew me for her rival, and I surely knew her for my enemy.
I think of Lucretia as I saw her then (now that she is long dead) and she seems like such a black-and-white villainess. But remember, I viewed her not only through my own eyes but through the eyes of Sim, who had confused her somewhat with his own imperious mother. Sim was bound to Lucretia by manacles forged in childhood, and the crueler she was to him, the more bound to her he felt. Pain binds more securely than pleasure.
I have been asked to tell you everything I remember—perhaps because it is presumed that my great age gives me wisdom of some sort, or perhaps because I am now so old that my recollections are museum pieces. The young need to believe that the old know something.
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