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

  I suppose you think that made an impression on Mendl. A lot you know him! He’s not the type to be fazed. That’s what I like about him. Today, when I think of him and all that happened and was still to happen in America, it seems like one of God’s miracles. But America is a place for the underdog. It lets the little man rise to the top. It all but brings the dead back to life.

  Let’s get back to the ferry.

  A ferry is a boat on which you put everything—bundles, bags, even a horse and wagon. While all of us were answering each other’s questions, Mendl and I went to have a look around. Although it took my mother a while to notice that we were missing, she made up for it when she did. She must have thought we had fallen overboard.

  They found us at the top of the stairs to the upper deck, staring at a monster statue of a woman who looked like a wet nurse. There wasn’t much time to look her over, because we could already hear my mother’s screams and see Elye approaching. He was mad as hell. We would have been in bad trouble if Brokheh hadn’t gasped just then in a strange voice, “Oy, Mama, I don’t feel so good,” and run to the railing. You might have thought we were back on the Prince Albert. But leave it to the tailor from Heysen! (The man never left us for a minute.) Right away he starts lecturing Brokheh, “You should be ashamed of yourself, a big, strong woman like you! Can’t you tell a river from an ocean?”

  Brokheh said she didn’t know it was a river. It looked like an ocean to her. Pinye told her you could tell by the smell. Only an ocean, he said, smelled of fish. “Who says?” asked the tailor from Heysen. “I wasn’t talking to you,” Pinye said. “I’m not going to argue with a fabric filcher.”

  That brought in Moyshe the bookbinder. Moyshe had news for Pinye. We were in America now, not Russia. In America a tailor was as good as the biggest swank—maybe better. In America the tailors had a yunye. A yunye was a workers’ guild. It just wasn’t like a Russian guild at all.

  “We bagel makers have a yunye too,” said Yoyneh. “Our yunye is as big as the tailors’.”

  “How can you even compare the two?” Moyshe asked. In no time they were having a grand fight about which yunye was bigger. We were all pretty sick of yunyes by the time Pinye shouted:

  “We’re almost in New York!”

  We all looked at the city, which was getting bigger and bigger. Wow, what a place! What monster houses! They were the sizes of churches, every one. And the windows, thousands of them! If only I had pencil and paper.

  Ka-boom ka-boom! Wham-bangety-bang-bang! Bang! Ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling! Hey hey hoo ha hey! Dddddrrrrrrrrrr! Whooooosh! Chakka-chakkachakkachakka-chakka! And ka-boom bangety-bang again! Plus the squeals of a trussed pig: oink-oink-oink-oink-oink!

  Those were the sounds of our first minute in New York. Nothing, it now seemed, could have been more peaceful than a storm at sea. The real shock was dry land in America. A mob scene, a madhouse!

  My mother panicked. Like a hysterical hen, she pecked and clucked and spread her wings over her chicks. “Motl!” she screamed, flapping her arms. “Mendl! Elye! Brokheh! Taybl! Where are you? This way! Over here!”

  “For God’s sake, Mama,” Brokheh said. “What are you screaming for?” And Elye added: “They’ll send us back on the first boat to Europe if you don’t stop making such a fuss!”

  “I’d like to see the day!” Pinye said, sticking his hands in his pockets and jamming his hat down sideways. “Every last Russky will croak before I do! Have you forgotten that God made America for poor, oppressed people like us?”

  We were in the middle of a huge crowd. In another minute Pinye would have ended up on his back like in London. As it was, he got an elbow in the ribs. It gave him such a jolt that his cap went flying and was carried away by the wind. We spent so much time chasing it that we missed the stritkah. That’s what they call a tram in New York. But we didn’t have to wait long for another. We piled into it with our bundles, filling the empty seats, and off we went to the city.

  “Thank God we’re rid of that leech of a tailor!” Pinye said.

  “Don’t be so quick to celebrate,” Elye said. “With God’s help you’ll yet run into him in the streets of New York.”

  THE STRITS OF NEW YORK

  The ride through New York was pretty awful. The worst part was changing from the stritkah to the eleveydeh. That’s a stritkah that runs on a long, narrow bridge above the ground. It flies like a bullet. You’re sure you’re going to die.

  You think that’s all? Wait, I’m not through. You crawl out of the eleveydeh and walk down some stairs to a cellar and get into another stritkah called a tsobvey. The tsobvey rushes through the cellar until you feel faint. Elye says tsobvey is short for tsobveydeh and calls the eleveydeh an elevey. Brokheh swears she’s never taking either again. She’d rather walk than ride through the clouds or the earth like a lunatic. “Spare me your ups and you can have your downs,” she says.

  She’s a weird one, my sister-in-law. If I had my druthers, I’d ride the eleveydeh and the tsobvey all day long. So would my friend Mendl.

  You would think that having been around the world, in Lemberg, Cracow, Vienna, Antwerp, and London, we would know what a tram ride was like. For sheer torture, though, there’s nothing like suffocating in a crowded New York tsobvey. You stand shoulder to shoulder, hanging on to a strap to keep from falling, and two new passengers get on for every passenger who gets off. You hang there until you’re stiff because each seat has plenty of takers—and if you do find an empty one, you end up sitting with a big black goy on either side of you, Negroes with monster lips and huge white teeth who chew their cud like cows. It took me a while to find out that that’s called tshooinkahm. It’s a kind of candy made of rubber. You have to keep chewing because you’re not allowed to swallow it and you’re not allowed to spit it out. Small boys, old men, and cripples make a living selling it.

  I must have told you about our friend Pinye’s sweet tooth. Well, he got hold of some tshooinkahm, swallowed a whole pack, and had such conniptions that he nearly died. The doctors had to pump out his stomach.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s return to our first ride in New York.

  Everyone kept talking while we rode the eleveydeh and the tsobvey. But talking is not the right word. There was so much noise, such a racket, such a rattle of wheels and shrieking of rails and clanking of cars, that you couldn’t hear your own voice. You had to shout as if speaking to a deaf man. In no time we all were hoarse. My mother kept begging:

  “Pesye, my sweet …Pesye, my darling …dear, dear Pesye …let’s talk later!”

  For a moment we fell silent and then we shouted our lungs out again. We were only human, after all, good friends and neighbors who hadn’t seen each other in ages. How could we keep quiet? There was so much, so much to talk about!

  After shouting about this and that, we got around to discussing where to go and whose house to put up at. It took some arguing to decide that Pinye, Taybl, my mother, and I would stay with Pesye, and Elye and Brokheh would go to Yoyneh and Riveleh’s. Pesye wanted Mendl to come with her too. Nothing doing, Riveleh said: Pesye had enough mouths to feed. Pesye didn’t like that one bit. A mouth, she said, never has too many teeth and a mother can’t have too big a family.

  “You know what? Let’s ask the dinner guest in person.”

  So said Moyshe the bookbinder and asked Mendl which he preferred: his and Pesye’s place or Yoyneh the bagel maker’s. Mendl said he would stick with me. I wouldn’t have expected any less.

  “The next steyshn is our stahp,” Yoyneh announced.

  It had to be explained to us that a tsobvey has steyshns and that your stahp is the steyshn you get off at.

  “In-law! When did you learn to talk the language?” my mother asked Yoyneh. Riveleh answered:

  “I promise you, in-law, you’ll be talking it in a week too. Because if you go out into the strit and ask for a meat store, you won’t get the time of day.”

  “What should I ask for, then?” asked
my mother.

  “You have to ask for a butsheh shahp,” Pesye said.

  “A plague take them all!” exclaimed Brokheh. “I don’t care if they burst. When I want meat, I’ll ask for it. Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat!”

  All of a sudden it was Yoyneh’s stahp. He grabbed Riveleh, Elye, and Brokheh and rushed from the car. My mother rose to walk her son and daughter-in-law to the door. Pinye got up to say good-bye to Elye and arrange their next meeting. Before he knew it, Yoyneh’s family was on the platform and the conductor was shutting the doors. The tsobvey gave a lurch. Pinye was still trying to figure it out when his feet slid out from under him. A second later he was lying in a Negro woman’s lap. The woman flung him off with both hands and he went sprawling while the cap flew from his head. The tsobvey car burst into laughter. Mendl and I laughed too. Did we catch it from my mother and Taybl. Go have a face of stone like Brokheh!

  All things come to an end. We arrived at our stahp and climbed down to the strit. If I hadn’t known we were in America, I would have guessed we were in Lemberg or Brody. The Jews were the same, their wives were the same, the noise was the same, and even the garbage was the same. Everything was just louder and more confusing. The buildings were taller, too, a whole lot. Six stories is a joke in New York. There are buildings that are twelve. And twenty. And thirty. And forty. And even more.

  We stood there in the strit with all our bundles. We had to go on foot the rest of the way. The Americans call that vawkink. We vawked. Moyshe vawked ahead on his short legs and Pesye vawked after him, so fat and heavy she could barely keep up. Pinye and Taybl vawked behind Pesye. Pinye’s vawkink is a scream. He dances more than he vawks, his long, thin legs getting in his way, one pants leg rolled up, the other falling down, his cap perched sideways and his tie pointing east-by-northeast. A weird-looking fellow! He’s just begging for someone to draw him.

  Mendl and I vawked farthest back, stopping at every shop window. It gave us a good feeling to see that the magazines were all in Jewish and that there were all sorts of other Jewish things: siddurs, and tallis kotons, and yarmulkas, and mezuzahs, and matsos. Matsos in the middle of winter, months before Passover—talk about a Jewish town! But we couldn’t stop for long because my mother kept shouting: “Follow me!” We followed her.

  Anyone who’s never seen a New York strit has missed something grand. What don’t you find there? Jews peddle their wares. Women sit and talk. Babies sleep in little wagons called kerredshiz. Every kerredsh looks alike. The babies drink milk from tiny bottles. The children play. There are thousands of games: button games, hoop games, ball games, curb games, rawlehskeyt games. A rawlehskeyt is a shoe on four wheels. You put it on and roll away.

  The noise the children make is deafening. The strit belongs to them. No one would dare tell them to leave it. In fact, America is a land made for children. That’s what I love about it. Just try laying a hand on a child! My brother Elye learned that the hard way. He was taught a lesson he’ll never forget. Here’s what happened.

  One day Mendl and I were playing tshekehz in the strit. Tshekehz is a game you play by shooting little round pieces of wood. Along comes my brother Elye in the middle of the game, grabs my ear, and gets set to whack me like in the good old days.

  But before Elye can haul off and hit me, up pops this tall kid. He pushes me out of the way, rolls up his sleeves, and says something to Elye in American. Since Elye doesn’t understand much American, the kid spells it out with a punch in the nose. Pretty soon there’s a circle around us. Elye tries explaining in Jewish that it’s his job as my brother to teach me good manners. The circle answers back that America doesn’t work that way. In America you pick on someone your own size, brother or no brother.

  I ask you: how can you not love such a place?

  I’ve been talking so much that I’ve forgotten to tell you that we’ve reached Pesye and Moyshe’s house. I walk through the door and look around—not one of the old gang is there. There’s no sign of Bumpy or anyone. Where are they all? Just wait until you hear.

  THE GANG AT WORK

  The gang was at work, every one of them! But before I tell you what each of them does, let me tell you how a Jewish bookbinder lives in America.

  First, the apartment. Back home in Kasrilevke, Fat Pesye would have been afraid to live so high. You climb what must be a hundred stairs until you come to a mansion with a bunch of what Americans call rumz. There are big rumz and little rumz, each with beds and mattresses and curtains on every window. There’s a kitshn too, which is where the cooking is done. Instead of an oven there’s an iron plate with holes; you turn a knob and fire shoots up as if by magic. And there’s water from the walls, all the hot and cold water you could want. You turn a faucet and out it comes.

  Later that day Elye and Brokheh came to see how we were doing. Pinye took them to the kitshn, showed them the faucets, and gave them one of his speeches:

  “Well, Elye, what do you say about Columbus now? Show me the Russky who’s worth his little finger! All they have back in Russia is vodka and pogroms. They deserve to croak, every one of them.”

  Elye didn’t let him get away with that. “You may be big on Columbus now,” he answered Pinye, “but you sang a different song on Ella’s Island.”

  Pinye said that Ella’s Island wasn’t America. It was the border between America and the world. Baloney, Elye said. They were starting to fight when Brokheh stepped in. The two of them, she said, knew as much about it as they knew what happened in the grave. The whole argument wasn’t worth a plugged penny.

  You’ll excuse me for getting sidetracked. I was telling you about Moyshe and Pesye’s apartment. I’ll get back to it and their boys, the whole gang.

  You can bet that Moyshe and Pesye never dreamed of so many bedrumz, let alone a deininkrum. That’s a word we can’t figure out. A bedrum, fine, it has a bed in it—but what’s a deinink? Why not call it the eedinkrum?

  Moyshe the bookbinder hears us discussing it and says: “Why lose sleep over it? Who cares as long as we’ve got a fine place, thank God, and my boys all have work, and we’re making a living in America?”

  I look at him and think: God Almighty! How a man can change! Back home you never heard him say a word. It was always Pesye, Pesye, Pesye. All Moyshe ever did was make glue and paste books. Now he’s grown a head taller. What making a living doesn’t do for a man! All his children are bringing home money too. I’ll tell you what each does and how much he earns. I hate to admit it, but my mother is jealous that Pesye has so many boys.

  Pesye’s oldest boy used to be Log. In America he’s Sem. Why Sem? Search me. All I know is, he’s earning well. He’s got a dzhahb with a peyprbahks fektri. If that’s Chinese to you, I’ll set you straight.

  A peyprbahks fektri is a place where they make cartons. Don’t think it’s such a big dzhahb. Log doesn’t make the cartons. He just brings them to the kahstemehz. That’s called a dehlivri boi. Log takes a bondl of cartons under each arm, ten dozen to a bondl, and runs through the strit dodging kahz. The trick is to keep the cartons from getting crushed. Log makes a dahleh-and-a-half a week and is hoping for a reyz. That means more money. He says he can make as much as three dahlehz. His bawss tells him that if he sticks around he’ll teach him to be a carton maker. “Be a gud boi and you’ll be awreit,” he tells him. In Jewish you would say, “If you’re nice, I’ll let you eat in my sukkeh.”

  Moyshe and Pesye’s second son, Velvel Tomcat, now goes by the name of Villi. He’s a dehlivri boi too and works for a grawsri staw. That’s a place that sells food and other stuff. Tomcat’s dzhahb is harder than Log’s. He gets up at an hour when even God is still asleep and arranges and packs all the awdehz. An awdeh is a bondl brought to a kahstemeh with rolls, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, milk, and krim. Sometimes Tomcat carries the awdeh all the way to the tahpflaw, which is the apartment under the roof. He has to be quick. There’s no time to catch his breath, because he’s expected back in the staw to sweep and clean. By noon he’s finish
ed and free for the day. He doesn’t make a whole lot, just fifteen cents a day, except for Fridays. Fridays he gets a kvawdeh plus a hallah to take home.

  Log and Tomcat are the two oldest in the gang. Their younger brothers can’t work mornings because of skul. That’s American for heder. It’s free and so are the books. You better go or else.

  Pinye went crazy when he heard that. Back in Russia, he says, they don’t allow Jews to go to school and here they don’t allow them not to! If you miss skul you’re arrested by a trunt ahfiseh. “Those Russkies should be buried alive just for that,” Pinye says.

  Skul being only half a day, you can work the other half. All Pesye’s boys do. Ratface works in a drahgstaw. That’s an apothecary’s. He washes bottles and goes to the pawstuffis for stemps. In America you can buy stemps in a drahgstaw. Ratface makes a dahleh-and-a-kvawdeh a week.

  “That doesn’t grow on trees,” Moyshe the bookbinder says, pocketing Ratface’s pay.

  Faytl Petelulu is now Filip. After skul he sells the Jewish noospeypehz. He runs up and down Ist Brawdvey—that’s a street—shouting: “Ekstreh! Ekstreh!” Every peypeh has a name. Petelulu makes fifty cents and more a day. It goes to the family. Everyone makes a living and Moyshe pays all the bills.

  Even my friend Bumpy is earning money. He just isn’t Bumpy any more. He’s Herry and he goes to skul too. Afternoons he minds a stend on Rivinktn Strit that belongs to a woman from Kasrilevke. He helps her sell rice, barley, millet, peas, beans, nuts, raisins, almonds, figs, dates, carob pods, and pickles. It’s not a whole lot of work.