The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son Read online

  That’s why I had to sell the barley beer quickly—to make the ice last for the next jug. I walked as fast as I could. I mean, I chanted and ran, followed by a flock of little parrots. I didn’t pay those children any mind. I just wanted to empty my jug and refill it.

  I can’t tell you how much I made that first day. All I know is that Elye, Brokheh, and my mother couldn’t do enough for me. For supper I was given a slice of honeydew with my watermelon, plus two whole bucket plums. And I’m not even talking about the barley beer. We drank barley beer like water. Before I went to bed my mother sat me down and asked me if my feet hurt. Elye laughed. He said a big boy like me wasn’t bothered by sore feet.

  “Sure,” I said. “If it was up to you, I’d be on them selling barley beer all night.”

  They all laughed at my sass. My mother had tears in her eyes. That’s nothing new. Mothers are made to cry. Or do I just imagine mine isn’t the only one?

  Knock wood, we’re going great guns. One day is hotter than the next. What scorchers! Everyone is dying of the heat. The children are dropping like flies. A glass of barley beer is a lifesaver. Honest to God, I’m making ten rounds a day. My brother Elye shut one eye and looked into the barrel with the other and said we were running low. That gave him the idea of adding water. He didn’t know I thought of it first.

  I may as well admit it’s a dodge I hit on. You see, every day I drop in on our neighbor Pesye and give her a glass of our brew. Her husband Moyshe gets two glasses for being such a good fellow, and each of their children gets a glass too. Why not let them know we make a good product? Uncle Borukh also gets a drink; after all, the poor man is blind. And then there are all my friends and acquaintances—you can’t expect me to charge them. That’s a lot of free barley beer. I make up for each glass I give away by adding two glasses of water.

  We all do the same. If Elye has a drink of barley beer, he adds water right away. That’s common business sense. Why lose a kopeck? Brokheh is no different. Each time she downs a few glasses of Elye’s barley beer (it’s shocking to see how she likes the stuff), she waters the jug. Even my mother, who won’t take a glass unless she’s offered it, makes up for it at once. There’s never a drop less that way.

  We’re raking it in. My mother has already paid off a few debts and taken some things out of hock. We have a table and a bench next to the bed, and meat, fish, and white bread on the Sabbath. God willing, I’ve been promised a pair of new boots for the New Year. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.

  Go be a prophet and guess that our barley beer will end in the slops bucket! Worse yet, I have a police record. Listen to this.

  One day I dropped in with my jug on Pesye. Her whole family was there and dying for barley beer and I drank a glass or two myself. That left me twelve or thirteen glasses short, so I went home to fill up. Only instead of taking water from the water barrel, it seems that I took it from the washtub, twenty glasses’ worth. Then I headed back for the street, singing a new song I’d made up:

  Jews, have a taste

  Of Paradise:

  Cold barley beer

  With lots of ice!

  Along comes a Jew, hands me a kopeck, and asks for a glass of barley beer. He swallows it in one gulp, makes a face, and says:

  “Young man! What kind of drink is this?”

  Let him ask! Two more customers are already behind him, waiting their turn. One takes a big sip, the other a small one. Both spit it out, pay me, and walk off. Someone else complains that the barley beer tastes of soap. Another hands me back the glass and says:

  “What is this stuff?”

  “A drink,” I say.

  “A drink? You mean a stink!”

  The next person to taste my barley beer throws it in my face. By now I’m surrounded by a crowd of men, women, and children, all waving their hands and talking a mile a minute. A Russian cop sees the fuss and comes over to check it out. Sure enough, someone rats on me. The cop looks at the barley beer and wants to try some. I give him a glass and he chokes on it.

  “Where did you get this swill?” he asks.

  “From a book,” I say. “My brother made it. He’s the manufacturer.”

  “Who’s your brother?”

  “Elye.”

  “Elye who?”

  “Don’t daber about your akhi, you little fool,” a Jew says to me in a

  Yiddish mixed with Hebrew to keep the cop from understanding.

  There’s a hullabaloo. More people push into the crowd. The cop grabs my arm and wants to book me and my barley beer. The commotion grows louder. “An orphan! A poor orphan!” people shout.

  Something tells me I’m in bad trouble. I look around the circle. “Jews, have pity!” I cry.

  Someone tries slipping the cop a coin. He won’t take it. An old man sidles up and says to me:

  “Motl! Take your yad from the yovon’s and pick up your ragloyim and make a pleyte.”

  That’s just what I did. I wrenched my arm free, took to my heels, and made a beeline for home. I arrived there more dead than alive.

  “Where’s the jug?” Elye asks.

  “At the stationhouse,” I say and fall sobbing into my mother’s arms.

  WE FLOOD THE WORLD WITH INK

  What a dope I am! Just because I sold a batch of not-so-great barley beer I was sure I’d lose my head. False alarm! “Why make a fuss?” Pesye said to calm my mother. “As if Yente doesn’t mix candle wax in the goose fat she sells or Gedalia the butcher didn’t feed the town non-kosher meat for a whole year!”

  You should have seen my mother. She takes everything to heart. That’s what I like about Elye. He doesn’t let a barrel of barley beer get him down. As long as he has his book he’s not worried. I mean One Ruble Gets You a Hundred. He took a look at it and decided to make ink.

  You can’t go wrong with ink, Elye says. Everyone uses it. The world’s getting smarter all the time. Who isn’t learning to write nowadays? He even went and asked Yidl the scribe how much he spent on ink. A fortune, Yidl said. Yidl must have sixty girls in his writing classes. The boys don’t go to him. That’s because he paddles them with a ruler. He doesn’t do that to the girls. Who ever heard of paddling a girl?

  I wouldn’t mind being a girl myself. I wouldn’t have to say the kaddish for my father. I’m tired of it. It’s always the same old thing. I wouldn’t have to go to school, either. I haven’t told you that I’m back in school half time. You could put what I learn on the edge of a knife, but I make up for it by getting whacked. You think it’s the rabbi who does it? It so happens to be his wife. What’s it to her if I feed her cat? You should see the poor thing. It’s always hungry. It’s always crying like a person. The sight of it’s enough to break your heart. But that’s what the rabbi’s wife doesn’t have. What does she want from that poor cat? Let it get within a mile of some food and she screams loud enough to send it running to kingdom come. Not long ago it disappeared for days on end. I thought it was dead. But it was only having kittens.

  Let’s get back to Elye’s ink.

  My brother Elye says the world has changed. Once, when you wanted to make ink, you had to buy gall-apples, slice them, cook them forever, throw in some vitriol, and add sugar for shine. A production! Nowadays, Elye says, ink’s a pleasure. “All it takes,” he says, “is a bottle of glycerin and some powder you buy at the apothecary’s. You mix them with water, bring it to a boil, and you have ink.” That’s what he says, Elye.

  He went to the apothecary and came back with a bunch of powder and a bottle of glycerin. Then he shut himself up in my mother’s room. Don’t ask me what he did there. It’s supposed to be a big secret. Everything’s a big secret with Elye. He can’t ask my mother for a mixing bowl without his voice dropping to a whisper. All I know is that he mixed the powder with the glycerin in a big new pot that he bought, stuck it in the oven, and whispered to mother to put the chain on the door. No one knew what he was up to. My mother stared at that oven as if it was about to explode.

&nbs
p; Next Elye rolled the barley beer barrel into the house and told us to take the pot from the oven, pour its contents into the barrel, and add more water. “Stop!” he said when the barrel was half full. He checked with his book and whispered that he needed a pen and paper. “Proper stationery,” he told my mother. He dipped the pen in the barrel, wrote something on the paper, and finished it off with a flourish. Then he showed it to my mother and Brokheh. They took one look and said:

  “It writes!”

  Elye put us back to work pouring water. After a while he raised his hand and said “Stop!” again. He dipped the pen in the barrel, wrote something else, and showed that to my mother and Brokheh too. They looked and said:

  “It writes!”

  We kept it up until the barrel was full. There wasn’t room for another drop of water. Elye raised his hand, said “Stop!” one last time, and we all sat down to eat.

  After dinner we filled the bottles. Elye had brought home bottles from all over the world. There were big bottles and little bottles and beer bottles and wine bottles and vodka bottles and plain ordinary bottles. He had also bought some used corks on the cheap and a new funnel and a tin dipper. He whispered to us to put the chain on the door and the four of us set to work.

  We hit on a pretty good system. Brokheh rinsed the bottles and handed them to me, I stuck the funnel in them, and Elye ladled out the ink. We had a grand time getting ink all over our hands and faces. By the time we were through, Elye and I were as black as two devils.

  I can’t remember when my mother last laughed so hard. I’m not even talking about Brokheh. Brokheh nearly split her sides. Elye doesn’t like being laughed at. He wanted to know what was so funny. That just made Brokheh laugh harder. She was having a fit a minute. I swear, I thought she would croak. My mother begged us to stop and wash up.

  But Elye didn’t want to call it quits. Washing up was not on his mind. Bottles were. We had run out of them. He whispered to Brokheh to buy more. Brokheh looked at him and burst out laughing. Elye didn’t like that one bit. He whispered to my mother and she went to get more bottles while we refilled the barrel. Not all at once. After each bucket of water Elye raised his hand and said, “Stop!” Then he dipped the pen in the barrel, wrote a few words, and said:

  “It writes!”

  After a while my mother came back with a new bunch of bottles. We filled them until there were none left.

  “How long do we keep this madness up?” Brokheh asked.

  My mother muttered something against the Evil Eye.

  Elye lost his temper and shouted:

  “I asked for a wife and got a cow. God pity you!”

  Don’t ask me how much ink we have. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a thousand bottles. The problem is what to do with them.

  Elye has tried everything. Selling a bottle at a time, it seems, is no way to get rich. That’s what Elye said when Moyshe dropped by one day. Moyshe was so alarmed by all those bottles that he jumped a foot in the air. He and Elye had the strangest conversation. Here it is, word for word:

  Elye: What’s the matter?

  Moyshe: What’s in those bottles?

  Elye: What do you think? Wine!

  Moyshe: Some wine! It’s ink.

  Elye: If you knew it’s ink, why ask?

  Moyshe: What are you going to do with all that ink?

  Elye: Drink it.

  Moyshe: Be serious. Are you going to sell it by the bottle?

  Elye: What do you take me for, a lunatic? I’ll sell ten, twenty, fifty bottles at a time. You know wholesell?

  Moyshe: Of course I know wholesell. Who will you wholesell?

  Elye: Who? The rabbi.

  My brother Elye went to a big wholeseller. The wholeseller asked to see our ink. But when Elye brought him a bottle, he didn’t want to look at it. It didn’t have a label, he said. A bottle, he said, needed a label with a pretty picture. “I make ink, not pictures,” Elye said. “Then make yourself scarce,” said the wholeseller.

  Next Elye went to see Yidl the scribe. Yidl said a word that wasn’t nice. He had enough ink to last him the whole summer. “How many bottles did you buy?” Elye asked. “Bottles?” Yidl said. “I bought one. When it runs out I’ll buy another.”

  Are we ever in a business! Leave it to a scribbler like Yidl. First he spends a fortune on ink, now a bottle lasts him forever.

  My brother Elye is going out of his mind. What will he do with all that ink? It doesn’t look like wholeselling will work. He’s decided to retell. I wish someone would tell me what that means.

  I’ll bet you do too.

  My brother Elye bought a large sheet of paper. He wrote in big letters:

  Ink Sold Here

  Wholesale and RETAIL

  Good and CHEAP

  The words “retail” and “cheap” took up most of the sheet. Elye poured himself a drink of water and hung the sign on our door. Through the window I saw people stop to read it. Elye watched them and cracked his knuckles. That’s something he does when he’s nervous. After a while he said, “You know what? Go outside and hang around to see what they’re saying.”

  I was out of the house like a shot. Half an hour later I was back. Elye whispered: “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What are they saying?”

  “What is who saying?”

  “The people in the street.”

  “They say it’s a nice sign.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Elye sighed. My mother asked him what the matter was. “You’re being foolish,” she said. “Did you expect to sell out your whole stock in a day?”

  “All I want is one customer,” Elye answered with tears in his eyes.

  “Don’t be foolish. Wait, son. With God’s help you’ll have a customer.”

  My mother went to set the table. We washed and sat down to eat. The bottles took up so much room that the four of us had to squeeze together. We had just blessed the bread when a young man came flying through the door. A very odd young man he was, too. He’s someone I know. His name is Kopl and his father is a ladies’ tailor.

  “Is this where they sell ink?”

  “Yes. What can we do for you?”

  “I’d like some ink.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “A kopeck’s worth.”

  My brother Elye was fit to be tied. If not for my mother, he would have punched Kopl in the nose. But he controlled himself and poured out a kopeck’s worth of ink. Fifteen minutes later a girl walks in. Don’t ask me who she was. She asked my mother while picking at her nose: “Do you make ink?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “My sister wants to borrow some ink. She has to write a letter to her fiancé in America.”

  “Who is your sister?” asks my mother.

  “Basye the seamstress’ daughter.”

  “Eh?! My, how you’ve grown! I never would have recognized you. Have you brought an inkwell?”

  “Where would I get an inkwell? My sister wants to borrow a pen, too.

  She’ll return it.”

  My brother Elye is gone from the table. He’s in my mother’s room. He’s pacing back and forth there and whispering, biting his nails and staring at the floor.

  “What made you make so much ink? You must have thought you were supplying the whole world. Did you think there was an international ink shortage?”

  That’s Moyshe the bookbinder. He’s a strange Jew, Moyshe. He can’t resist rubbing it in. He’s not a bad type, but he can be an awful pain. There’s nothing he likes better than sinking his teeth in you. Did Elye give it to him! He should mind his own business, he said. Did he want to bind another selikhe in a Haggadah?

  That hit where it hurt. Once Moyshe was asked by a coachman to rebind an old Passover Haggadah. As luck would have it, he glued in a High Holy Day selikhe by mistake. When the coachman came to the selikhe in the middle of the Seder, his voice changed to a funeral dirge. The who
le table burst out laughing. The next day he showed up at Moyshe’s house ready to tear him limb from limb.

  “You bastard, what have you done? How could you stick a selikhe in my Haggadah? I’ll beat the living daylights out of you!”

  That was one swell Passover!

  Excuse me for getting sidetracked. I’ll return to our booming business in a jiffy.

  OUR INK BUSINESS COMES TO A SAD END

  Elye had a problem. What to do with all that ink?

  “Ink again?” asked my mother.

  “It’s not the ink.” Elye said. “The devil can take the ink! It’s the bottles. We’ve sunk capital in them. We have to get our money back.”

  He can make money from anything, Elye. There was nothing to do but pour the ink down the drain. The problem was where. It was embarrassing.

  “We have no choice,” Elye said. “We’ll do it at night. No one will see us in the dark.”

  We waited for it to get dark. Just out of spite, the moon came up bright as a lantern. (Have you ever noticed that when you need it it’s never there?) You would think someone had sent for it specially—that’s what Elye said as we carried out the bottles. He told me to spill them in different places to keep from making a lake, so I walked behind him and emptied each of them somewhere else. By the neighbor’s wall—splash! By the neighbor’s fence—splash! By the neighbor’s goats chewing their cud in the moonlight—splash!

  “That’ll do for tonight,” Elye said, and we went home.

  It was dark and quiet except for the crickets. Through the open door of our house we heard the cat purring by the oven. All the sleepyhead ever does is snooze and warm herself. Then we heard footsteps. A ghost!

  It was my mother. She never sleeps. She’s up at all hours, sighing, groaning, wringing her hands, talking to herself. Each night she gets a little off her chest. Who is she talking to? There’s a new sigh every minute.

  “Ah, God! Dear God!”

  I lay half asleep on my mattress, listening to the hubbub outside. The voices sounded familiar. Little by little I opened my eyes. It was broad daylight. The sun was shining through the window, calling to me. I tried remembering last night …of course! The ink!