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

  We would have left Vienna long ago if not for the Alliance. Who’s the Alliance? I can’t rightly tell you. All I know is that everyone talks about him. The emigrants are mad at him. They say he isn’t doing enough. The Alliance, they say, has no pity. They say he doesn’t like Jews. Elye and Pinye go see him every day. They come back sweating as though from a steam bath.

  “The Alliance should burn,” Elye says.

  “Like a candle!” says Pinye.

  “I’ll talk to the Alliance myself,” my mother says, taking me by the hand.

  We all went together: my mother and me and Elye and Pinye and Brokheh and Taybl. I pictured the Alliance with a beard, a long black coat, a big black belt, and a red nose. Why a red nose? But why does the Judge have mean, beady eyes, fat lips, a couple of teeth, and a riding crop? Do you think I’ve seen him? Still, whenever Elye says, “Go tell it to the Judge,” that’s how I imagine him.

  So off we went …and went …and went. Brokheh had a stitch in her side from all that walking. She wished the Alliance would break a leg. We barely made it. But what a house the Alliance lived in! Every Jew should only own one like it, even if it didn’t have a front yard. Vienna doesn’t go in for front yards. It goes in for weird huge windows and monster doors that are always locked. “They must be afraid we’ll walk off with the furniture,” Brokheh says. By now she’s down on Vienna, too.

  There’s nothing Brokheh hates more than ringing doorbells. Myself, they don’t bother me as long as someone answers. But the Alliance doesn’t open so quickly. You can ring till you croak, that’s how much of a hurry he’s in. And don’t think you’re the only one. Lots of other emigrants are waiting for him too.

  “Ring a little harder. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  That’s what they said, those emigrants, and laughed. They seemed in a pretty good mood. More and more kept arriving. Pretty soon there was a big crowd of men, women, and children. I like crowds. It would have been a swell scene if only the children had stopped bawling and their mothers had stopped screaming at them.

  Thank goodness the door was opened at last. Everyone charged through it so fast you could have been trampled to death. It’s a good thing a red-faced Jew with no hat or beard was there to toss us back out like rubber balls. One woman with a child was thrown so hard that she’d still be looking for her teeth if Elye and I hadn’t caught her. First, though, she did three somersaults in the air.

  It took a while to get into a room. That’s when the real party started. Lordy, lordy! Everyone was shouting all at once. Everyone made a rush for the desks. More hatless, beardless Jews were sitting behind them, laughing and smoking cigars. I couldn’t tell which was the Alliance. Neither could my mother. She asked:

  “Who here is the Alliance? I’ve lost everything. All my linens were stolen at the border. My children and I were nearly killed. And they were orphans already, the poor dears! You see, my husband died young, he was a cantor all his life …”

  That’s all she managed to say. Someone grabbed her and showed her the way out. I couldn’t understand a word he said. My mother screamed:

  “Stop speaking German! Speak Jewish and I’ll pour out my bitter heart! I want to see the Alliance.”

  “Mother-in-law! Let’s get out of here. If God brought us this far without the Alliance, He’ll bring us the rest of the way. He’s a merciful father.” That was Brokheh’s opinion.

  “You’re right, my child,” my mother answered. “Let’s go. God is a father and Vienna is just another town …”

  THE WONDERS OF ANTWERP

  Did you ever think there could be a city called Antwerp? Well, there is, and we’re heading for it. How come? Because Yoyneh the bagel maker is sailing from it to America. When Brokheh heard that her father would be in Antwerp, she did cartwheels to get us to go there too. First she doesn’t want to hear of the place because it makes her think of ants. Now she’s in love with it.

  Pinye says it’s time for us to part. He wants to go to London. That’s a place he has a yen to see. It’s almost America, London is. The people there speak English, have blond hair, and live in castles. It’s another world.

  “You can have your Englishmen and your blond castles. We’re sailing from Antwerp!”

  That’s Brokheh. Taybl turned the color of a red Indian. I’ve told you she blushes more than she talks. “What’s wrong?” Pinye asked. “I don’t like the English,” Taybl said. “What do you know about them?” Pinye asked. “You’ve never seen a single Englishman.” “And you?” Taybl said. “I suppose you have!”

  The long and short of it is that we’re all sailing to America from Antwerp. We can sail from Hotzeplotz for all I care, as long as we get there. Pinye and I want to reach America the most. We’re sure we’ll make it to the top there.

  Pinye is peeved at Elye. “We keep traveling and getting nowhere,” he says. “Who’s holding you back?” Elye answers. “You’re a free agent—go where you want!” “How,” Pinye asks, “can I go where I want when your mother has to make the acquaintance of every Committee in the world?” “If you’re so smart,” my mother says to Pinye, “suppose you tell me what we’ll do in America without linens.” Pinye has no answer to that. He’s decided to stick with us.

  The truth is he can’t stand to leave us. Brokheh and Taybl can’t live without each other. Not that they don’t fight and call each other names. They’re at each other’s throats all the time. If not for my mother, they would have stopped being friends long ago. But they always make up in the end. Brokheh can flare up like a match—she says so herself. Catch her on a bad day and you’ll get egg all over your face. A minute later she’s all sweetness and light. You’d never guess she was just tearing your hair out.

  Brokheh and I have been feuding since the wedding. She knows I don’t like her. What annoys her the most is my making fun of her. I can’t look at her without her thinking that I’m laughing. I’ve told you I like to draw. Well, not long ago I drew a huge foot with chalk, a real monster. Leave it to Brokheh to decide it’s hers! How come? Because no one else, she says, has such big feet. She wears size thirteen galoshes, that’s a fact. She ratted to Elye and he yelled:

  “More doodling, eh? Up to your old tricks again!”

  I swear, even a foot by him is a doodle! He can drive you crazy, Elye can. But it’s true that the drawing bug is getting worse. I go around with a crayon I got from the boy who gave me the governor. I’ve told you about him. His name is Motl too. He’s Big Motl and I’m Little Motl. I swapped for it by drawing his portrait on the train to Antwerp, fat cheeks and all. I made him promise not to show it to anyone, because I didn’t want Elye laying into me. So naturally Big Motl goes and waves it in Elye’s face.

  “This looks like my brother’s work! Just wait till I get my hands on the little doodler!”

  That’s what Elye said, running off to look for me. He didn’t find me because I was hiding behind my mother, doubled up with laughter. A mother is the world’s best hiding place.

  Thank God we’re in Antwerp! We barely made it in one piece, but here we are. What can I tell you? It’s some city! I don’t mean it compares to Vienna. Vienna is in another class. It’s a lot bigger and prettier. There are more people there too. But is Antwerp ever spick-and-span! It’s no wonder, either, what with how they wash the streets and scrub the sidewalks and clean the houses. I swear, I’ve even seen them soaping down the walls! I don’t mean everywhere. It’s not as bad in the emigrants’ hotels. In fact it’s a pretty swell scene there, the kind of damp, dirty, smoky, crowded place that I like.

  Yoyneh the bagel maker hasn’t arrived yet. Neither have Pesye and her gang. They’re still roaming around Germany. “A hellhole,” the emigrants call Germany. They tell one horror story after another. Our stolen linen is chicken feed compared to what some people have lost there.

  In Antwerp we’ve met a woman from Mezhbezh. She’s alone with her two children because her husband is already in America. She was on the road for a year,
traveling all over and fighting with every Committee on the way. And now that she’s made it with her last ounce of strength, she isn’t being allowed aboard ship.

  Bad eyes? Not at all! Her eyes are fine. She’s just a little touched in the head. I mean she’s perfectly normal except for the things she says now and then that could make you die laughing. Ask her, for instance, “Where is your husband?” and you’ll get the answer, “In America.” “And what is he doing there?” “He’s the emperor.” “But how can a Jew be an emperor?” “In America,” says the woman from Mezhbezh, “all things are possible.” You get the idea. And she has another strange notion too. She won’t eat and doesn’t want us to. We mustn’t touch the dairy products, she says, because in Antwerp they all have meat in them. “What about the meat?” asked my mother. “You call that meat?” says the woman. “Why, you can eat it with dairy!” We all roared except for my mother. She never laughs when she can cry. “Shame on you,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Well, well, it’s about time! You haven’t cried for a whole day! How will they ever send us back to Russia if you don’t cry your eyes out?”

  That’s my brother Elye. My mother’s eyes were dry in a minute. She feels sorrier for that woman’s children than she does for the woman herself. Don’t ask me why. As far as I can see, they’re having a grand time. They laugh as hard as we do at the crazy things their mother says. By now I know them pretty well. They say she doesn’t want to go back to Russia. She wants to join their father the emperor. (Ha-ha-ha!) The officials try tricking her into thinking she can get there by train. (Ha-ha-ha!) They keep telling her the train back to Russia is the Antwerp-America express. (Ha-ha-ha!)

  The things I’ve seen in Antwerp are not to be described. Every day new people turn up here. They’re mostly poor or crippled or have eye problems. “Trachoma,” it’s called. Whatever it is, America doesn’t want it. You can have a thousand diseases, be deaf, dumb, and lame—it’s all right if you don’t have trachoma.

  Where does it come from? You either get it from too much crying or catch it from someone else. You can even catch it from a stranger. I heard that from a girl named Goldeleh. I may as well tell you her story.

  I met Goldeleh at Ezrah. Since you don’t know what that is either, I’ll start with it.

  Ezrah is an organization for emigrants. We went looking for it as soon as we hit Antwerp. It’s like the Alliance in Vienna. The difference is that they don’t toss you out the door. You come when you want and sit where you want and talk as much as you want. Whatever you say is written down in a book. The young woman who writes it is named Fraulein Seitchik and she’s nice. She even asked me my name and gave me a candy. I’ll tell you about her some other time. Now I’ll get back to Goldeleh.

  She comes from Kutno, Goldeleh does. She arrived in Antwerp a year ago with her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. It was Sukkes time and they couldn’t have had a finer holiday. Not that they were living it up. They stayed in the same miserable quarters as everyone. But they had tickets to America and new clothes fit for a king. Each of them had two new shifts and a pair of new shoes.

  Now Goldeleh is down to one shift and no shoes. She’d be going barefoot, she says, if not for Fraulein Seitchik. Fraulein Seitchik gave her the shoes from her own feet, a perfectly good pair. Goldeleh showed them to me. They’re pretty swell shoes, even if they are kind of big onher.

  To make a long story short, Sukkes came and went and it was time to board ship. First, though, they went to see the doctor. The doctor looked them over and said they were all in good health and could go to America. Except for Goldeleh. Goldeleh had trachoma.

  It took a while for that to sink in. At first the family didn’t grasp that Goldeleh would have to stay behind in Antwerp while the rest of them went to America. Then they were hysterical. Goldeleh’s mother passed out three times. Her father wanted to stay in Antwerp. But it wasn’t possible, since they couldn’t get a refund on their tickets. In the end they sailed for America and left Goldeleh to get over her trachoma.

  Since then a year has passed and she hasn’t gotten over anything. Fraulein Seitchik says it’s because she cries so much. Goldeleh says that’s not the reason. The reason is the calamine. The doctor smears her eyes with the same calamine he gives everyone. If only she had her own calamine, Goldeleh says, her eyes would be fine by now.

  “What about your parents?” I ask.

  “They’re in America. They’re making a living. I get mail from them. Every month they send me a letter. Hey, can you read? Read them to me!”

  She takes a pack of letters from her blouse and asks me to read them out loud. I tell her I’d like to but can only read prayer book print. Goldeleh laughs and says I’m no better than a girl. To tell you the truth, she’s right. I’d give anything to learn to read real writing. Big Motl reads like nobody’s business. He reads Goldeleh all her letters. I’m jealous of that, even though they’re all the same:

  “Dear, darling Goldeleh, we hope you are well!

  “When we think of you here in America, our little girl who has been parted from us and lives in misery among strangers, we can’t swallow our food. Day and night we weep for the bright little star that our eyes long to see …”

  Excetra. Big Motl reads and Goldeleh cries and dries her tears. Fraulein Seitchik scolds us for making her cry. She tells Goldeleh she’s ruining what’s left of her eyes. Goldeleh laughs while the tears run down her cheeks and says:

  “It’s the doctor and his calamine. They’re worse for my eyes than crying.”

  It’s time to say good-bye to her. I promise we’ll meet again tomorrow.

  “God willing,” Goldeleh says, looking like a pious old woman.

  Big Motl and I go for a walk in Antwerp.

  Big Motl and I have another friend. His name is Mendl. He’s stuck in Antwerp too. Not on account of his eyes, though.

  Mendl lost his family in Germany. On the train crossing Germany, he says, there was nothing to eat but salt herring. He was burning with thirst and got off at a station to look for water and the train pulled out and left him without a ticket or a kopeck to his name. Since he didn’t speak the language, he pretended to be deaf and dumb. He wandered from one end of Germany to the other until he ran into a party of emigrants who felt sorry for him and took him to Antwerp. There he turned to the people from Ezrah. They’ve written America to try finding his parents.

  Now Mendl is waiting for an answer and a ticket. I mean a half-fare one, since he’s not a grown-up. Actually, he’s more of one than he lets on. He’s already thirteen, though he never had a bar mitzvah. He doesn’t even own a prayer shawl or tefillin. How could a boy his age not have his own tefillin, one of the emigrants wanted to know. “I’d rather have a pair of boots,” Mendl said. That got him a dirty look. “You little brat!” the emigrant told him. “After all that’s been done for you, where do you get the cheek?” He made such a fuss that everyone chipped in and bought Mendl tefillin.

  Antwerp has everything. It even has a Turkish synagogue. Don’t think that means Turks pray in it. It’s prayed in by Jews. They just do it in Turkish. Everything is so upside down you can’t understand a word. Mendl took us there. He, me, and Big Motl are thick as thieves. We roam the streets together. This is the first place we’ve been to where my mother isn’t afraid to let me go off by myself. Antwerp is different, she says. The people here are human beings, not Germans. And everyone speaks Jewish.

  That’s because there are so many emigrants. What would we do without them? It’s like living in your own home. Soon we’ll even have guests. Next week, if all goes well, Yoyneh the bagel maker will arrive with his household. And Pesye and her gang are due any day now, too. Things are looking up. God willing, I’ll tell you all about it.

  THE GANG’S ALL HERE

  You’ve already met Pesye’s gang. The youngest, Bumpy, is my age. He’s nine, going on ten.

  I like Bumpy. The best thing about him is that he’s no crybaby. You can clobber him
all you want—he takes it like a sponge. He’s bullet proof! Once he tore a prayer book that Moyshe was binding. Moyshe took his cutting board and whaled into Bumpy so hard that he laid him up in bed for two whole days. It was touch-and-go if Bumpy would pull through. He wouldn’t even eat, that’s how bad it was. Pesye gave him up for dead. Moyshe was beside himself. No more Bumpy!

  No more Bumpy, my eye! Don’t think that on the third day he didn’t jump out of bed and eat like a horse. They’re big eaters, Pesye’s gang. “The hungry horde,” she calls them.

  Pesye’s a great lady. She’s just a little on the fat side. In fact, she has three chins. I once drew all three on some paper. Bumpy snatched it and showed it to her. Did she laugh! Elye found out and gave me one of his lickings. It’s a good thing Pesye was around. “Don’t make a big deal of it,” she said to Elye. “Boys will be boys.” That’s Pesye! I love her.

  I don’t love all her hugging and kissing, though. She was all over me from the minute she arrived in Antwerp. Pesye hugs everyone, especially my mother. You would have thought it was my father come back to life, the way my mother cried when she saw Pesye. She kept it up until Elye warned her that she’d never make it past the doctor.

  Everyone in Antwerp has to see the doctor. The first question you’re asked is either, “Have you been to the doctor yet?” or, “Well, what did the doctor say?” If you don’t go by yourself, you’re sent by Ezrah. Our first time there my mother began telling her whole story—how her husband was a cantor, and how he caught cold and fell ill, all the way to our stolen linen. How could we go to America without it?

  Fraulein Seitchik wrote it all down. My mother was just warming up when someone asked: