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

  That doctor was …but none of us could say what he was. There was no point in hanging around Lemberg. Every new day, Elye said, only meant running up more bills. It made more sense to go to Cracow. Cracow was full of emigrants. Wasn’t that what we were too?

  WITH THE EMIGRANTS

  If you’re traveling to America, stick with the emigrants. It’s the best way to go. Come to a new city and you needn’t look for a place to stay, since there’s already one waiting for you. That’s because of the Committee. It’s the Committee that sees to such things.

  Our first night in Cracow we were put up in a room, unless you prefer to call it a stall or a closet. In the morning someone came from the Committee to take our names. My mother didn’t want to give them. She was afraid of the draft. I’m telling you! Everyone had a good laugh. Since when does the Austrian Kaiser work for the Russian army? Next we were taken to a dormitory. That’s a big room with lots of beds and emigrants. “It looks like our Kasrilevke almshouse,” said my mother. “Mother-in-law,” Brokheh said, “let’s get out of this town.”

  I’ve already told you that the women are like that. Nothing pleases them. They’re always finding fault. They didn’t care for Cracow from the start.

  Elye doesn’t like Cracow either. He says it isn’t Lemberg. Lemberg was full of Jews. Not that there aren’t plenty of them in Cracow too, but they’re a funny sort of Jew, half-Polacks who curl their mustaches and talk Proshepanye. That’s according to Elye. Pinye thinks otherwise. Cracow, he says, is more civilized.

  Pinye swears by something called civilization. I’d give a lot to know what that is.

  The Committee has put us up in a great place. I mean, it’s great for making friends. You keep meeting new emigrants. You sit with them, eat with them, and swap stories with them. Some of the stories are pretty hairy: one person escaped a pogrom by a hair, another beat the draft by a hair, another made it across the border by a hair. Everyone talks about their agent. “Who was yours?” you’re asked, “the dark one or the blond one?” “He wasn’t dark and he wasn’t blond,” comes the answer. “He was a bastard.”

  Usually we get to tell our story too, the whole blessed miracle: how we found some agents, and how we met the woman with the wig, and how she tried to swindle us, and how her Christian pals brought us to a forest, and how they asked for our money and said they’d cut our throats. It was a stroke of luck that Brokheh likes to faint and my mother began to scream. Then a shot rang out and the Christians took off and before we knew it we were on the other side.

  Everyone listens and nods and says, “Whew!” One emigrant, a tall, mean-looking fellow with cotton in his ears, asked us:

  “What did she look like, that woman with the wig? Religious and pious-like?”

  Told that she did, he turned to his wife and said: “Soreh! Did you hear that? It’s the same woman!”

  “She should catch the cholera! I wish to God they all did!”

  That’s what Soreh said, telling a fine tale of how the woman with the wig set them up, fleeced them of everything, and tried selling them fake tickets to America.

  Another emigrant sat up when he heard that. He was a tailor with dark eyes in a pale face and he said: “Fake tickets? Listen to this!”

  But before he could tell his story, a fellow named Topolinski said he had a better one. In his town, he said, was a bureau that sold tickets from Lubow to America. A young man was talked into buying one and laid out sixty rubles for a piece of paper stamped with a red eagle. He traveled to Lubow and tried boarding a ship—Just where do you think you’re going? Did someone say ticket? A colored candy wrapper!

  I’m getting tired of hearing about tickets. I like emigrants, but tickets are something else. I’d rather spend my time with a boy my age I met on the train to Cracow. His name is Kopl and he has a harelip. He got it from falling off a ladder. He swears it didn’t hurt, even though there was lots of blood. And as if splitting a lip wasn’t bad enough, he was also given a tanning from his father. If you haven’t already guessed, that’s the mean-looking man with the cotton in his ears. And Kopl’s mother is the woman called Soreh. His parents, he says, were once rich. They were rich until the pogrom.

  I asked Kopl about that. The emigrants are always talking about pogroms, but I could never figure out what one was. He said: “You don’t know what a pogrom is? What a dummy! They have them everywhere. Anyone can start one and they last for three days.”

  “But what are they? A kind of fair?”

  “What kind of fair? Some fair! It’s breaking windows. Smashing furniture. Ripping pillows. The feathers fly like snowflakes.”

  “But why?”

  “Why yourself! Because, that’s why. And they don’t just wreck houses. They smash shops and loot and rob and shoot and throw it all in the street and douse it with kerosene and set it on fire.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’ll bet you think I’m making it up! And when there’s nothing left to rob, they go from house to house with axes and clubs and iron pokers, singing and whooping. The police go with them and they shout, ‘Kill the kikes, boys!’ If they catch you, they beat you up and cut your throat and fill you with holes …”

  “Why me?”

  “What do you mean, why you? Because you’re a Jew.”

  “But how come?”

  “How come yourself! It’s a pogrom.”

  “So what if it is?”

  “Get out of here, you dunce! It’s hopeless talking to you.”

  That’s what he said, Kopl, turning away and sticking his hands in his pockets like a grown-up. It made me sore to see him act so high-and-mighty. I didn’t say anything, though. I just thought, “Wait and see, you big shot, you’ll need me yet,” and I let a few minutes go by. Then I went back to him and started a conversation. I asked him if he knew German. He just laughed at that. “Who doesn’t know German? It’s the same as Jewish.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, if you know it so well, suppose you tell me how you say horseradish.”

  He laughed so hard he nearly choked.

  “What do you mean, how do you say horseradish? Horseradish is horseradish!”

  “That shows how much you know.” “So how do you say it?” I’d be darned if I could think of it myself, so I went and asked Elye.

  “Horseradish?” he says. “How would you like some right in your puss?”

  Elye must have been in a bad mood. He gets that way when he has to take money from his secret pocket. Pinye laughed at him. Then they began to fight. I looked for a place on the floor between our bundles and went to sleep.

  Nothing has come of our stay in Cracow. We haven’t even seen the Committee. The emigrants have told us it’s a waste of time. As soon as you get there, they say, the runaround begins. First, they write down how old you are. Then they send you to the doctor for an examination. Then they tell you to come back. When you do, they ask, “What are you here for?” “We were told to come,” you say, “so we came.” That gets you a scolding for wanting to go to America. “Where are we supposed to go?” you ask. “In what holy book is it written,” they answer, “that you have to go anywhere?” You tell them a little story about a pogrom. “It’s your own fault,” they say. “Look at how one of your young Russians stole a roll in the park the other day.” “Maybe he was hungry,” you say. “And what about your Russian who attacked his wife in the street yesterday?” they ask. “The police had to be called.” “She’s not to blame,” you say. “She happened to spot her husband, who had run away from home. She caught him and made a scene when he tried getting away.” “But why do all your Russians dress in rags?” they ask. “That’s all they can afford,” you say. “Give them better clothes and they won’t wear rags.” All they give you is another lecture.

  That’s what the emigrants tell us. We’re fortunate, they say, not to have needed any favors until now. My mother says we wouldn’t need one now either if not for our linens. She’d be as happy as the Kaiser’s wife if not for them. Wha
t will we do in America without them?

  That’s what she says, my mother, wringing her hands and crying. My brother Elye yells:

  “Already? Crying again? It seems you’ve forgotten that we’ll soon be in America and you have to take care of your eyes!”

  If you think that means we’re getting close, think again. We have a whole lot of traveling still ahead of us. Don’t ask me where, but I knew the names of some of the places from the emigrants: Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, London, Liverpool …

  Hamburg’s a town they’d like to see go up in flames. It’s worse than Sodom, they say. As soon as you arrive, you’re made to take a bath. Being arrested would be more fun. You won’t find scoundrels like Hamburg’s anywhere. That’s what all the emigrants say, so we’ve decided to head for Vienna. In Vienna, we’ve heard, there’s a Committee that acts like one.

  Committee or not, we’re going to Vienna. Ever hear of the place? Be patient and I’ll tell you all about it.

  GOD IS A FATHER AND VIENNA IS A TOWN

  “Vienna—what a town!”

  That’s my brother Elye. Pinye goes him one better:

  “A town? A city to beat all!”

  Even the women, who never like anything, have to admit Vienna is a city. My mother has taken out her silk scarf in its honor. Brokheh wears her Sabbath dress with her black lace shawl and long earrings. With her freckled face she looks like a ginger cat.

  You’ve never seen a ginger cat dressed in black? Well, I have. Our neighbor Pesye’s boys used to dress their cat up. You may remember her—Feyge-Leah the Beadle’s Wife, her name was. Once they put a black skullcap on her. They tied it to her head with two bands, attached a dust rag to her tail, and let her loose. The skullcap was so big it slipped over her eyes and the dust rag drove her crazy. Feyge-Leah ran around like mad, bouncing off the walls and smashing things. Did those boys catch it!

  Bumpy caught it the worst. That’s Hirshl. He’s one crazy kid, Hirshl is. You may as well whip a wall. I miss him the most. Maybe we’ll meet up in America. We’ve heard that Pesye, Moyshe, and the whole gang are going there too. First they laugh at us, then they follow us.

  Everyone is going to America. That’s what Yoyneh the bagel maker writes. He’s also on his way. In fact, he’s already at the border. It’s not the same border we ran. Ours has a bad reputation. They steal your linens there. They steal them in other places too, but they don’t hold you up at knifepoint. True, we’ve heard of borders where you’re stripped naked and robbed of everything. You aren’t killed, though. That only almost happened to us. Except that we would have died of fright first. It was our luck someone fired a gun. I must have told you about that. We can hardly remember it any more.

  Not that our women aren’t still telling the world about the miracle that happened at the border. But Elye and Pinye never let them finish. They think they can tell it better. Pinye wants to write it up for the papers. He’s even begun a poem about it. I’ve told you he writes poems. This one goes:

  The town of Radzivil’s the size of a yawn

  With a border that has to be run before dawn—

  And while you are running it thieves run away

  With all that you have and leave you to say:

  “Thank God that it didn’t turn out to be worse!

  We might have ended our lives in a hearse

  With a slit in our throats and a slash in our purse!”

  Pinye says that’s just the first stanza. It will improve as it goes along. He has a poem about Brody too. And about Lemberg and Cracow, all in rhyme. He’s the very devil for rhymes, Pinye is. He’s even written some about Taybl. I know them by heart:

  My beautiful Taybl

  is charming and able,

  a wife from a fable,

  God love her!

  She’d be perfect if only

  she’d leave me alone

  and go home to her father and mother!

  How’s that for poetry? You should see Taybl blush when she hears it. Taybl blushes all the time. Brokheh sticks up for her and calls Pinye “the monster.” My mother calls him “the shlimazel.” They can’t stand his being a poet.

  With Elye it’s the opposite. Elye is jealous of Pinye. He says that rhymes and songs go over big in America. Pinye has only to shmaltz them up a bit and he’ll make a fortune. There are even magazines and newspapers that will publish them in Jewish.

  Pinye agrees he’ll be a success. He feels he’s made for America and America for him. That’s why he can’t wait to sail the ocean. Meanwhile, we’re stranded in Vienna.

  What are we doing in Vienna? Nothing. We walk the streets a lot. What streets! And the houses! And the shop windows! They shine like mirrors. And the things that are in them! Toys. Clothes. Kitchenware. Jewelry. We stop in front of each, guessing what everything costs. The women wish they had half of it. Pinye laughs and says: “I’d settle for ten percent.”

  “What’s wrong with half? Don’t be stingy!” So says Elye, stroking his beard. Elye’s beard has grown by leaps and bounds on the way to America. It looks more like a broom now. I’d love to sketch it.

  I once drew Pinye’s portrait on some paper. And I drew Brokheh with a piece of chalk on a table. Did I get a licking! Brokheh said it was the spit and image of her. She hollered for Elye and he whacked me. He would have murdered me long ago if not for my mother. I get whacked each time he catches me drawing.

  I’ve liked to draw since I was little. At first I drew on the walls with coal. I got whacked for that, too. Then I drew on the doors with chalk and got whacked again. Now I draw with pencil and paper. Elye says: “What’s this, more of your doodles?”

  I get whacked even harder for sculpting. I like to make little pigs out of bread. Elye lets me have it when he sees them. Pinye comes to the rescue and says: “What do you want from him? Let him sculpt! Let him draw! He may grow up to be an artist.”

  Elye lets Pinye have it too.

  “An artist? You mean a paint smearer? You want him to decorate churches? To doodle on walls? To go around with stained hands like a greasy coachman? He’s better off singing for a cantor. God willing, I’ll apprentice him as soon as we get to America. He’s a soprano.”

  “Why not teach him a trade?” Pinye says. “Americans work with their hands.”

  That’s all my mother needs to hear.

  “What? A common tradesman? Over my dead body will that happen to Peysi the cantor’s boy!”

  She starts to cry. Pinye defends himself:

  “A strange woman you are! Doesn’t it say in the Talmud that Rabbi Yohanan was a shoemaker? And that Rabbi Yitzchak was a smith? You don’t even have to go that far. My own uncle is a watchmaker and my father is a mechanic!”

  That only made it worse. My mother couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “I suppose that’s what my husband spent his life being such a good Jew for, a cantor! I suppose that’s why he died young—for his little boy to be a tailor or a shoemaker! And in America yet!”

  “There you go again! Have you forgotten that in America you’ll need your eyes?”

  That’s Elye. After a while my mother quiets down.

  I don’t care what I’ll be in America. I just want to get there. I’m dying to see the place. I’ve made up my mind to learn three things there: swimming, writing, and cigar smoking. I mean I can do all three already. But I’ll do them better in America.

  Even if I had been the world’s greatest swimmer, I still wouldn’t have had anywhere to swim. There’s no way you can swim in our river. Lie down in it with your belly in the mud and your feet stick up in the air. Some river! America, they say, has an ocean. If you fall asleep floating in it, the devil knows where you’ll wake up.

  I can write, too, even though I never studied it. I can print all the letters in the prayer book. I make them look so real you can hardly tell the difference. It’s more like drawing than like writing. But I’d like to be able to write fast. That’s what they do in America. They do everything fast there, slam-bang.
Everyone is in a hurry. I’ve heard that from the emigrants we’ve traveled with.

  I know almost everything there is to know about America. People travel in trains beneath the ground and make a living. Just don’t ask me how they do it, because I have no idea. I’ll find out soon enough. I’m a quick learner. One look at anyone and I have him down pat.

  Once I did a take-off of Pinye. I did the little hip-hop he walks with, and the way he looks at things like a blind man, and how he talks a mile a minute and smacks his lips. Brokheh nearly split her sides. My mother laughed until she cried. Only Elye didn’t think it was funny. He doesn’t let me do anything, Elye. I can’t figure him out. He says he loves me and he would beat me to death if my mother gave him half the chance. She tells him:

  “If you want to be a child beater, have one of your own.”

  Let someone else lay a hand on me, though, and Elye will tear his eyes out.

  Once an emigrant gave me the “governor.” You don’t know what a “governor” is? You stick your thumb down a person’s throat and sock him so hard in the stomach that he’s ready for the Angel of Death.

  The boy who gave me the governor was ten years old. Did he have a pair of hands!

  I could have wished they’d dry up and fall off. He came up to me one day and asked me what my name was. “Motl,” I said. “Motl Piss-in-the-Bottle,” he says. “How come you’re calling me that?” I ask. “Because,” he says, “my name is Motl too and you’re a jerk. How would you like a governor?” “Why not?” I say. “Come a little closer then,” he says, “and I’ll give you one.” I came closer and he gave it to me. You should have seen me hit the ground. My mother began to scream. Along came Elye and beat the pants off him.

  After that we became friends. Besides the governor, I learned all kinds of other things from him. Ventriloquism, for example. You don’t know what that is? It isn’t something you can learn. You have to be born with it. You shut your mouth, stand perfectly still, and bark like a dog or oink like a pig. I scared my family but good with it. Everyone began looking for a dog beneath the beds and tables. I bent down to look, too, and kept on barking. I tell you, it was a scream! In the end my brother Elye caught on and gave me a hiding. Since then I’ve given up ventriloquism.