Read Online Max by Howard Fast - Free Book Online Page A

around in and out of the candy store, they drifted over to South Street and the river and the docks and the fishing boats, but always in a group. They were Jewish kids, and when they moved they had to be wary of Irish territory and Italian territory and in particular of the cops, who would beat up on them just for the sake of beating up on them.
    This was Freida’s escape, her land of romance, her relief from the closeness and stink of the flat on Henry Street, her reward, as she felt it, for enduring life. By her lights, there was no other escape. Yet there were moments, when they all went over to the East River and sneaked out to the end of a wharf and sat there and saw the stars in the sky and the shimmering reflected city lights on the water and the river-boats passing by, when Freida tasted a moment of another reality. But it never lasted.
    Long after this, recalling her first date with Max Britsky, Sally told an interviewer, ‘It was the manner of the man. He had a grand manner, if you can think of an eighteen-year-old kid whose world was confined to the ghetto of the Lower East Side as having a grand manner. Not manners. I don’t mean manners –] he had no manners; he was crude – I mean the manner, the bearing. Max never felt inferior. Perhaps that was his secret. Where did we go? Who can remember! I think it was an Italian restaurant …’
    It was Mama Maria’s restaurant, over on Elizabeth Street, which was on the edge of the newly burgeoning Italian ghetto. Dinner was thirty cents, table d’hôte, and included antipasto, pasta, a main dish of veal or chicken, dessert, and coffee. The bottle of red wine which Max grandly ordered was twenty-five cents.
    The price was of no consequence; it was the gesture and manner that counted. This was a new and different and intriguing Max Britsky, and in the light of the candle that stood in the center of the checked red and white tablecloth, he was quite handsome, his lean face with its pointed chin and hawklike nose and bright blue eyes reminding Sally of illustrations she had seen of buccaneers and Spanish conquistadors. That image combined with his intensity and confidence gave her a feeling of excitement she had never experienced with any other man. It was exciting and frightening all at once. The small, skinny, and very young man had turned into a person of power and persuasion, and she, on the other hand, responded to this as a very different Miss Levine.
    She had abandoned the white blouse and the drab skirt of the schoolteacher and now she wore a pretty blue dress of crêpe de Chine, and while no makeup was noticeable on her face, Max suspected that there was a flush of rouge across her cheeks. She thought the little Italian restaurant was ‘delightful’ and the food ‘quite delicious.’ ‘But I don’t have so many dates with young men, Mr Britsky,’ she added, her open honesty very charming, ‘that I would dare pose as a connoisseur. Perhaps someday, when you have achieved your Mount Olympus, you’ll let me see some of those places like Delmonico’s and the Albemarle and the Brunswick.’
    Max was sensitive enough to realise that she was doing her best to impress him. Though he was uncertain of the precise meaning of connoisseur and totally blank concerning her reference to Mount Olympus, he nevertheless felt that he was sitting opposite a very innocent and unsophisticated young woman. It gave him the courage to insist that she call him Max.
    â€˜No more of this Mr Britsky,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re Sally and I’m Max. And don’t think this is a line I pull with every girl, because the truth is you’re the first girl I ever had this kind of a date with.’
    She stared at her plate for a long moment, and then asked him what he meant by this kind of a date.
    â€˜Well …’ His voice trailed off. He decided that you didn’t tell Sally Levine what