We meet a Jew with the longest earlocks I’ve ever seen. He wears a long, flea-bitten caftan and a green scarf around his neck and he is leading a goat. We stop him and the goat and greet him. The man regards us from head to toe. Pinni engages him in conversation, but the man speaks in a funny way—he pronounces broad ah’s. Are we far from the border? Pinni asks him. The man stares at him. “What border?” It turns out we’re already far beyond the Russian border.
“So why are we running like madmen?” Pinni says to us.
We are overcome with hysterical laughter. The women almost fall to the ground laughing. My mother raises her hands, cries, “I thank you, dearest God!” and bursts into tears.
XIV
WE’RE IN BROD!
A.
Do you know where we are? We’re in Brod, which means we’re getting closer to America. It’s a nice town, this Brod! It’s not a town like ours, with streets and people like ours. The Jews aren’t like our Jews, even though they are Jews and maybe more Jewish than we are. Their earlocks are much longer than ours, their caftans reach almost to the ground, and they wear odd caps, belts, shoes, and socks. The women all wear wigs. But the way they talk! They call it German. It’s nothing like our language. The words are the same as ours, but the pronunciation is different—the broad ah’s sound foreign. And when they speak, they sing. They sound like they’re always chanting the Psalms.
We’re soon able to catch on to their style. The first to do so is our friend Pinni. He speaks German from the day we arrive. It’s easier for him, because he learned German at home. My brother Elyahu says that even though he never learned German, he understands just as much as Pinni. I listen to them speaking German and pick it up quickly. In a foreign country you must know the language, says Pinni. His wife Teibl is already speaking half-German, half-Yiddish. My sister-in-law Bruche also wants to speak German, but she can’t—she’s too thick-headed! And my mother refuses even to hear about speaking German. She’ll keep speaking the way she spoke at home—she won’t change her tongue to please the Germans. She’s actually angry at them. She thought the Germans were honest people, but she found out they weren’t such great saints. Once she went to the market, and they cheated her on the weight. She had asked for a pound, and they gave her—she doesn’t even remember how much less.
My mother comes to the conclusion that some Germans are apparently thieves as well. My sister-in-law Bruche gets mad and waves her hands. “Thieves, you say, mother-in-law? One thief after another—one bigger than the next! You have to watch out for them more than at home! At least we’re sure that every goy is a thief.”
“Don’t be silly. At home goys know they’re thieves,” my mother says. She tells a story about Shimke, once our servant girl, while my father, of blessed memory, was still alive. This Shimke was a very fine servant girl but a bit of a thief. She told us! She didn’t like to be left alone in the house because she feared she might steal something.
B .
Everything is different with the Germans. Their money isn’t even the same as ours. They don’t have kopeks and rubles but groschens and shillings. Everything is sold for groschens. For one ruble you get a handful of groschens. My mother thinks it isn’t real money—she calls it buttons. My brother Elyahu says the coins melt like snow. Every day he sits down in a little corner, unstitches the secret pocket, takes out a ruble, and resews the pocket. The next day he does the same thing.
The days go by, and our bundles and our bedding still aren’t here. The woman who helped us steal across the border has apparently deceived us. The men who almost killed us in the woods were her own guards, and now we might well have lost our belongings. My mother wrings her hands and cries. “The bedding! The pillows! How can we go to America without bedding, without pillows?”
Pinni has a plan—he’s going by train to file a protest with the commander of the border post. He’ll find the woman with the wig and make hash of her. He’ll demand to know what happened.
But these are empty words! The commander of the border post will be of no help, nor will the protest. Teibl wouldn’t let him visit that woman even if she covered our house with gold. (That’s what she says.) Stealing across the border was enough for her. It was enough for all of us.
We tell everyone how we stole across the border, how we repacked our stuff, how the peasants led us and misled us and tried to murder us, and how luckily my sister-in-law Bruche has a habit of fainting and my mother screamed for help, and how the soldiers heard and began shooting, the peasants took off, and we were rescued.
That’s my mother’s story. My brother Elyahu tells his own version but with a different twist. Bruche interrupts and tells the very same story but also a bit differently. Teibl says Bruche doesn’t remember it accurately because she fainted, and Teibl wants to tell the story from the beginning, but Pinni cuts her off and says she doesn’t know anything. Let him retell the story from start to finish. Every day and to everyone, we tell the story of how we stole across the border. All who hear it shake their heads and go tsk tsk. They say we’re lucky and should say a prayer of thanks.
C .
On this side of the border things are much better for us than at home. We don’t so much as put our hands in cold water to wash. Either we stay at the inn, or we stroll around Brod. It’s a pretty city. I don‘t know what my sister-in-law Bruche has against this city. Every day she finds some fault with it. She just doesn’t like it. It’s muddy; it stinks worse than at home.
One night she woke up screaming that she was being attacked. We all jumped out of bed. “Who attacked you? Bandits?”
“What bandits? Bedbugs!”
In the morning we tell the innkeeper, but he doesn’t understand. When Pinni explains in German, the innkeeper insists he never heard of bedbugs. In their German country they don’t see them. We probably brought them with us from home, he says. Oh, does Bruche boil over! She hates that man worse than an apostate, she says. I don’t know why. He seems like a fine person to me. When he speaks and smiles, his mouth goes a little to one side. And he loves to give us advice about where to go, from whom to buy things, and from whom not. He comes along when we go shopping.
Mostly we buy clothing. Gradually we’ve started to dress a bit better. Our friend Pinni says it isn’t nice to look like tramps. In a new city, he says, you should go out looking respectable, especially here, where things are dirt cheap. We all know this already. First he bought himself a cap, the kind they wear in Germany, and a short coat that just reaches to his knees, and a new necktie. To look at Pinni in his German outfit, you have to be stronger than iron not to break out laughing. He is tall, skinny, and nearsighted, and he hops when he walks. And then there’s his big nose. My mother says he has a clown’s face. My brother Elyahu says he looks like an organ grinder. Pinni says he doesn’t know whether it’s better to look like an organ grinder or a tramp. He means us.
My brother Elyahu claims that if he wanted, he could deck himself out like a German too. It takes no great talent to throw your money away. But we have to save it, he says, for America. Pinni says that in America we won’t need money—we ourselves will be like money in the bank! Pinni carries on so long that my brother Elyahu finally buys himself a cap and a coat, and a cap and a coat for me too. The three of us go walking down the streets talking German. I’m positive that people think we’re Germans. The problem is that walking behind us are the women—my mother, Bruche, and Teibl—they don’t let us out of their sight. My mother is afraid I’ll wander among the Germans and get lost and the others will follow me like sheep. So we walk closely together, a clump of six attracting everyone’s attention. What are they looking at?
The Germans are the greatest fools in the world, says my brother Elyahu. Whatever you tell them, they believe absolutely—except when it comes to money. Money is more important to them than it is to us. A kreuzer is holy to them. For a crown they’ll sell their father, and for a gulden—God Himself!
So says Bruche, and Teibl a
grees. All three women, as I’ve told you, are not terribly pleased with the Germans. I don’t know why. I kind of like them. If we weren’t going to America, I’d stay here forever and ever. Where else do you have such houses? And such good people—they’ll sell you anything! Even the cows aren’t the same as ours. The people probably aren’t any smarter than we are, but they look more respectable. Everything here looks different.
But if you ask the women, they’ll say it’s better at home. They don’t like a thing, even our inn, least of all the innkeeper. “They’re skinning us alive,” Bruche says. “They ask to be paid for a glass of warm water. They won’t give you a free pinch of salt. If we don’t leave here soon, we’ll have to go begging from house to house.” What my sister-in-law Bruche can say! Why does she call my brother Elyahu an old woman? And why does she call our friend Pinni the worst good-for-nothing? Teibl might have given her what for, but as my mother says, Teibl doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She never talks back to Bruche—none of us do. Me neither. And she really has it in for me. She calls me Leftovers or Fat Cheek Motl. I’ve gotten pudgy, she says, and have developed fat cheeks. I don’t care one bit, but my mother won’t tolerate her talking that way about my cheeks. My mother starts to cry. My brother Elyahu hates it when she cries. He says she is ruining her eyes, and with bad eyes they don’t let you into America.
D.
Good news! We’ve heard about our things. The woman who helped us steal across the border has been put in prison. Our friend Pinni gloats—it serves her right, he says.
My mother says, “But what about my things?” Pinni says, “Nu, and what about my things?” Now that she’s in prison, the woman can’t ever return our lost belongings. What shall we do? We must travel on. Do we have a choice? My brother Elyahu goes around in a daze while my mother tries to comfort him. She tells him, “What would we have done, silly, if they had taken the money we made selling the house and murdered us besides?” Our friend Pinni agrees with her. He says that a Jew must always have faith—“It’s all for the best.” Bruche puts in a little jab—not for nothing, she says, did she name him Old Woman.
We’re getting ready to leave. We ask people how to get to America. People listen to us and make suggestions. Everyone has a different idea. One person says, “By way of Paris”; another, “By way of London.” A third insists it’s closer by way of Antwerp. They get us so confused that we don’t know which way to go. My mother is afraid of Paris—it’s too noisy. Bruche doesn’t like Antwerp—somehow the name sounds funny to her; she’s never heard anything like it. And so it will be London. Pinni says London is the best choice. He’s read many times in his geography book that London is an up-to-date city. Moses Montefiore comes from there, and Rothschild, he says, is also from London.
“Rothschild is from Paris!” says my brother Elyahu.
That’s the way they carry on. Whatever one says, the other one contradicts it. If one says day, the other says night. That’s not to say they actually fight over it—they bicker. They can bicker for an hour straight, and they stop only when they’re separated.
E .
Please excuse me for wandering off talking about the silly Germans and their crazy language. I forgot we’re going to America. Not straight to America, that is, but for now to London—and not straight to London but to Lemberg, where they say there’s a committee for emigrants. Maybe the committee will be able to help us. Are we worse off than other emigrants? Maybe—after all, we lost all our bundles and bedding. My mother is already thinking about what to tell them and how she should cry over it.
My brother Elyahu begs her, “Just don’t cry! You have to think about your eyes! Without eyes they won’t let you into America!”
He goes to pay the innkeeper. In a few minutes he comes back out looking stunned. What’s wrong? The innkeeper’s bill shocks him! “He charged us for everything! Six candles for the Shabbes blessings—six kreuzers! For havdalah blessing—four kreuzers! What havdalah? He, the innkeeper, said the havdalah while we listened, and now he’s charging us four kreuzers! I ask him, ‘How come four?’ He says, ‘If you want it to be five, let it be five.’ And now he’s charging us something called a commission. What kind of disease is that? And he’s charging us for accompanying us when we went shopping for clothing.”
Bruche springs up and claps her hands. “Mother-in-law, what did I tell you? Aren’t the Germans worse than the night robbers in the forest? Our Russian hooligans are saints compared to them! Are we in Brod? No, we’re in Sodom!”
Being compared with Russian hooligans doesn’t offend the innkeeper as much as her comparing Brod to Sodom. He gets furious! He says the Russian hooligans were right to make pogroms on us. In fact, what they did wasn’t enough. If he were the Russian czar, he’d decree that all of us be slaughtered, every one of us!
I think I already told you that our friend Pinni is a hotheaded person. He can keep quiet for a long time, but if someone says the wrong word, that person’s life is in danger! Now Pinni jumps up, stretches himself out to his full height, goes straight over to the innkeeper, and shouts right into his face, “Stupid German! A curse on your ancestors!”
The words “stupid German” cost our friend Pinni dearly—the innkeeper presents him with two strong slaps that make sparks fly. But it has its effect. All of Brod comes running, and things get quite lively. I love it when things get lively.
That day we flee to Lemberg.
XV
CRACOW AND LEMBERG
A .
Lemberg, you must know, is not at all like Brod. First of all, it’s clean, spacious, and attractive. It takes your breath away! True, it has some streets like Brod’s, where in summer you have to wear high galoshes and hold your nose. Then again, there’s a garden in the center of the city where you can stroll if you don’t mind the goats. It’s free for anyone. On Shabbes Jews wearing tall fur hats walk openly on the streets, and no one says a word.
My mother says the difference between Brod and Lemberg is like day and night. My brother Elyahu says he’s sorry that Brod is closer to the border than Lemberg. It should have been the other way around. Our friend Pinni explains that Lemberg is better than Brod because it is located farther from the border and closer to America.
“How do you figure? Where is Lemberg, and where is America?” Pinni remarks that when it comes to cities, my brother Elyahu would do well to learn from him, because he’s studied geography.
My brother Elyahu retorts, “If you’ve studied geography, then tell me, where is the committee?”
“Which committee?”
“The Emigrant Committee!”
“Smart aleck! What does a committee have to do with geography?”
“If you know so much about geography, you should know everything,” says my brother Elyahu, and we try to find out about the Emigrant Committee. Whoever we ask doesn’t know—a strange city.
“They know but they won’t tell us!” states my sister-in-law Bruche. Nothing ever pleases her. She finds fault with Lemberg too: the streets are too broad. That’s like complaining the bride is too beautiful. Teibl has another gripe about Lemberg. Back home, whenever we ate something sour, we’d say, “It’s so sour you can see as far as Cracow and Lemberg.” Or if someone was slapped hard, we’d say, “He saw Cracow and Lemberg.”
In short, these women are like that. Nothing ever satisfies them!
B .
Finally we find the committee. It’s in a tall building with a red roof. First we have to wait outside for quite a while. Then they open the doors, and we’re sent upstairs, where we find a lot of people—mostly our Russians, who are called emigrants. Almost all of them are hungry and are carrying nursing babies. Those who don’t have nursing babies are hungry too. They’re told to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow they will tell them to come back the next day. My mother gets to know many women. Every one of them has a different tragic story. Comparing her troubles with theirs, she says, it turns out she is lucky! Many of them are fleeing fr
om pogroms. Their stories are horrors! They’re all going to America, but none of them have any means. Many of them have been sent back. Some are given work. A few are sent to Cracow, where, they say, the real committee is. What about the committee here? No one seems to know. They tell them to come back tomorrow, and they come. Where is the committee? The committee is right here. Who is the committee? They haven’t any idea!
A tall man with a pockmarked face and kind, smiling eyes comes in.
“That’s a member of the committee. He’s a doctor.”
The doctor sits down on a chair. One emigrant after another approaches him and appeals to him about something, gesticulating anxiously. The doctor hears them out and answers that he is only one person. There is nothing he can do to help. We have, he says, a committee of thirty-odd people, but he is the only one who comes. What can I, only one person, do? he says.
The emigrants don’t want to hear that he is only one person. They can’t stay here any longer. They’ve already spent whatever they had. They must be given tickets to America or be sent back home. The doctor claims that all he can do is send them to Cracow if that’s what they want. There’s another committee there. Maybe that committee will be able to help them. The emigrants say that in the meantime they haven’t enough to get them through the day. The doctor takes out his purse and hands them a coin. The emigrants look at the coin and leave.
New emigrants arrive. They say they are dying of hunger.
Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son Page 30