Have I Got a Story for You

by Ezra Glinter

  She would have flown to the other side of the world. Her shame was even greater than her husband’s. She felt like someone who is tricked by a peddler who sells her a golden ring that is really made of brass.

  Her anger at her husband was just as great as her disappointment over the brass ring, perhaps even greater.

  Shneur wasn’t lacking in character, and she felt joy in her heart when he started getting ready to leave. They came to America. As is usually the case, Zadobnik spent his first couple of years in America losing the few thousand dollars he had brought with him from the old country. Russian money is unlucky here. It has an odor of shame—not too much, but enough for the American business world to be unable to stand even the slightest whiff of it.

  When Shneur lost his final rubles in America, along with the very last remnant of his dignity, he suffered for a year. The audacity of having tried to turn himself into someone! He stole; he borrowed from fellow countrymen and tore himself apart until he managed to open up a small store. What kind of store it was is difficult to say. He had some dry goods, some stationery, and even some Yiddish books. But Shneur used all of his abilities and all of his acumen to turn himself into a success. He was no longer a greenhorn. “Oh, if I only had the sense back then that I have now,” he would say, shaking his head when he thought about the first few years he spent in America.

  So what did he learn in those first three years? Why did he have to first pay several thousand dollars in “tuition”?

  At first Shneur found himself constantly wondering. For instance, in the old country if he saw a well-dressed man who often went to the theater, lived in a nice apartment, had servants and could appreciate a good glass of wine, that was usually a sign that he was a gentleman, an educated person, or at the very least someone who aspired to refinement. Here though, he encountered men everywhere who were dressed and lived like Russian aristocrats, but who spoke with the most obscene language imaginable and acted like horse thieves. Their friends were pimps and many of them ran brothels themselves. When elections were held in the old country and people selected an alderman, you can be sure that he was among the finest citizens in the city. Here the aldermen, the legislators, were the lowest saloonkeepers; drunks and thugs wearing nice caps.

  Shneur Zadobnik looked, shrugged his shoulders and felt his heart yearn for home.

  In Russia a doctor is an educated, refined man. Here in the Jewish neighborhood most doctors were wild ignoramuses with the practices of a barber and the brazenness of the kidnappers who used to steal Jewish children to fill czarist army quotas.

  In Russia a licensed attorney is a man who has graduated from a university and is well read. Here Zadobnik saw a whole gang of men with diamond rings on their fingers and chewing tobacco in their mouths. This gang of lawyers loitered in various criminal courts and in the neighborhood’s two civil courts. They were old friends of the judges, and whenever a refined Russian lawyer worked in these courts, he found himself in a wretched situation and was rendered utterly useless.

  Zadobnik looked around and wondered what kind of backward world he found himself in, and his heart was seized by longing.

  He saw that people who owned houses of ill repute and saloons were the neighborhood elite, and the Jewish neighborhood was for Shneur all of America. (It is, in any case, the largest Jewish city in the world.) He saw that pimps were actually politicians and that these politicians were the closest friends of other politicians who were the best friends of more powerful politicians who were even more powerful than the mayor.

  Shneur was bewildered. “Where the hell have I ended up?” he said to himself, heartbroken. A feeling of loneliness descended upon him.

  He went to the synagogue seeking comfort in piety. But even that made him cry out in woe, for even the synagogue he found was part of a backward world and even there he was completely out of his element. He saw thugs and escaped thieves standing beside the Torah scroll holding pointers. In some synagogues pimps received the finest aliyahs 6 thanks to their work prostituting girls. Landlords of tenements packed full with whorehouses shared verses of scripture about divine revelation while true religious scholars suffered from want. Gangsters and parasites became well-fed reverends in fancy caps. Shneur saw with his own eyes how a storekeeper gave money to a band of tramps so that they would cheer for him as he left the synagogue, and when someone asked him how he wasn’t ashamed of himself, he answered, “Why does it bother you? It’s an advertisement. This isn’t Russia.”

  Shneur looked around and wondered. His heart was bitter and his ears rang with those words: “Why does it bother you? This isn’t Russia.” And his soul yearned and yearned.

  He saw what kind of creatures Americans are. Before someone in Russia could turn around, here in America a huge business with a forty-story building and thousands of miles of train track would have been built. Which, ultimately, is a sign that Russia itself is a greenhorn.

  He would stop and watch how five boys would carry more goods in five minutes than ten big men in the old country could have carried in an hour. The logic of it was simple: the box would be slid over a board that was angled downwards, dragged forward with a hook and placed into a wheelbarrow. The load would practically carry itself. If you needed to empty a wagon full of coal, you could just turn the wagon on its wheels, bend it over, and the coals pour right out into the basement all by themselves. It seemed so simple and yet no common sense was applied to such tasks in the old country. He wondered at it, and in his ears roared a voice louder and louder: “This is not Russia. One must be practical.” In the old country the refined spirit would have told him, “It’s not appropriate.” Here there was no one to tell him such a thing; here everything and everyone murmured like a choir: “Nothing at all is shameful. You mustn’t be a greenhorn.”

  Another acquaintance of his lived next door to a couple of prostitutes. When Shneur asked why he didn’t move out, he answered: “I too once thought like you. But how do I know that it will be any better in another house? And why should what’s going on next door bother me? In America there is a rule, ‘Mind your own business.’”

  When Shneur had a good look at what was going on around him, he would think to himself: “How did I end up here? May America with her masochistic ways and her pimps be cursed! What do I have to do with this?” In his loneliness the city with its forty-story buildings and its trains and its tricks, with its hustle and bustle and fashions, looked like some kind of fake flowers, like something counterfeit. A three-story house back in the old country had more good taste and substance to it than all of these towers that were constructed overnight. With houses in the old country people had time to get used to them and to learn to love and trust them. Here everything coalesced like drying spit: by the time you got used to something it had already been torn down and something new had taken its place. In the old country everyone loved the place where he was raised, but here nothing stays the same: if you don’t see a street for several months you won’t recognize it. They just tear everything apart and hammer it back together. Nothing is holy. Children have nothing to become attached to, nothing for their heart to yearn for.

  Shneur’s heart yearned for its former home. Tears would well up in his eyes.

  Need breaks steel, as they say. Zadobnik learned to be practical. He studied the philosophy of “mind your own business.” He saw that Russia is a greenhorn; he stopped yearning and assimilated. And just as a stone spins faster the further it rolls down a hill, so too did Shneur Zadobnik fall faster and faster into the morass.

  A fellow countryman, for instance, asked him to repay a debt. He laughed at him and denied owing anything. The former refined spirit tried to speak to him with its weakened voice, saying, “That’s not right, Shneur.” But Shneur rejected the spirit, saying, “This isn’t Russia.”

  And so it went, further and further downhill. The dry-goods store became a wholesale grocery; the wholesale grocery became a saloon. Shneur became famous and befriended Jewish bums.
To have a saloon you must be “all right” with politicians and so he became close with the politicians.

  As you already know, his second wife was a pretty woman. Well, he began to sense that the politicians and bums were going to his bar to see her. The weak, half-dead spirit used its last bit of strength to whisper, “Is this right, Shneur?”

  Shneur answered: “Are they doing anything to her? This isn’t Russia. In America you must not be proud. There is no Shneur Zadobnik here. In America everyone is equal.”

  He became a powerful figure in fraternal lodges, campaigned in elections for Tammany Hall, and did favors at the Essex Street Courthouse. The guests at his home were politicians and doctors who worked in brothels. His saloon was always full. He soon bought a property that was full of hookers. He sold a brothel and bought two more until he became one of the famous bail bondsmen for prostitutes and their johns.

  By this time he had grown fatter and his character declined along with his obese body.

  Before leaving the old country he had worked hard to make himself look young, and had groomed himself like a young man on account of his young wife. Now he wore diamond rings, bright-red neckties and shaved off nearly his entire beard. His face was adorned with remnants of beer and worthless company. It had become a rougher sort of face: meaty, red and somewhat sandy. In the old country he had also worn a tall hat, but his American stovepipe leaned to one side. His hands were usually in his pockets and he had even learned to spit like a true Tammany man. “What the hell!” he would often thunder, exactly like the alderman from his district.

  If it ever occurred to him to consider his company, his feelings would answer for him: “Well, what’s wrong? They’re all doctors, lawyers and important people, the cream of the crop, not just random folks.”

  Morality is proportional. Even upstanding people have different morals in different generations, and morality also varies among different classes in the same generation. Rich men and prostitutes have their own moral codes. The number of hookers and johns in the Jewish quarter is so high that it is a world unto itself. The creatures who live in this world are surrounded by so many of their own class that they are simply estranged from the opinions and feelings of upstanding citizens. They have their own sense of morality, and they think about our sense of morality as something foreign. They have their own life; their own shame, and their own honor. And it is within this sort of life that some Americanized people like Zadobnik live.

  Everything he touches turns to gold, and he is blessed in all of his endeavors. But what a difference there is between his American luck and his luck in the old country!

  I once encountered him at the funeral of a fellow countryman. There were others from the old country there too. The sad moment had awoken Shneur from the hoo-ha of his American joys. The faces of the people who were abashed before him in the old country; the ringing music of the charity box; the cries of the orphans along with the noise of the funeral—it all reminded him of years gone by. He thought about the former Shneur Zadobnik without looking at his present with rose-tinted glasses. Walking with me behind the casket and speaking quietly it became clear that he saw things differently.

  “You think that I don’t understand,” he said with a crestfallen tone. “I know perfectly well what kind of opinion you have of me, and you’re right too! It would be a good thing of course if I could return home and become the old Shneur Zadobnik. But it’s too late. God probably knows what he’s doing.”

  A heavy sigh interrupted his words. In that moment a pure fire glowed in his heart. He yearned for his past. His ugly present disgusted him.

  It truly touched me and I pitied him. I found myself feeling affection for him.

  Several hours later he was back to being a Tammany man. The pure fire had been extinguished. The ringing of the charity box had been forgotten. And not a trace remained of the old Shneur Zadobnik.

  IF SHNEUR HAD become boorish in America, there are others who have become more refined. It depends what circumstances a man finds himself in. Motke the Hatmaker was just the opposite of Shneur. In the old country he was on the lowest level. Motke the Hatmaker was his name for special occasions. Usually he was simply known as “Motke the Madman.” He wasn’t really a madman, however. He simply loved fooling people with all sorts of crazy acts that would drive everyone nuts. There are people who enjoy being spat upon so long as they get someone’s attention. Motke was one of those people. Not long before his departure for America he worked in a hotel, bringing girls for the guests. It seemed that he had been born for such a trade: he was a natural broker, a lackey, a parasite from head to toe! Kissing the heel of the man who walked all over him was his tastiest delicacy. Making himself into a mountain of ash was the greatest sport.

  I remember an incident I once saw. He had sold a peasant a hat and ripped him off when giving him change. Fifteen minutes later the peasant returned enraged. Motke pretended to be mute and gestured wildly, cursing with his hands and pretending to be afraid. The other hatmakers smiled as the peasant stood there confused, wondering if this was really the same man. Perhaps he had made a mistake. He continued trying to get through to him, but Motke bent down as though he wanted to tear a stone out of the pavement and knock the peasant over the head with it. One of the other hatters advised the peasant not to mess with Motke because mutes are dangerous people. The poor peasant became afraid and went home empty-handed.

  Motke would often entertain the other hatmakers with his impressions of the various madmen who lived in our city’s insane asylum, or other mute lunatics he encountered wandering around. He felt good when people laughed at his impersonations. Every day he would come up with a strange new routine: barking like a dog, oinking like a pig, knocking over various things that had not been tied down. People looked at him as if he were a hideous creature and he loved it. People considered him to be the lowest of the low and that was his pride and joy. I once witnessed another hatmaker eat half an apple and throw the rest into a disgusting puddle of sewage to see if Motke would retrieve it.

  “He’s not going to pick that up,” the other hatmakers yelled so as to encourage him.

  Motke smiled his vague smile.

  “He’s a coward, he doesn’t have the courage to eat that apple,” they yelled, driving him on.

  In the end, Motke picked up the apple from the puddle of sewage and gulped it down. The hatmakers laughed uproariously and he felt like the hero of the day.

  Once, when I had already been in America for quite a few years, I spent some time in a social organization in a small city in Pennsylvania. Among those I met there was Motke. I immediately noticed, however, that this was absolutely not the same Motke. He had a completely different manner of carrying himself, a totally different way of being. He greeted me very warmly and with a self-worth that did not match my previous conception of him. Wearing a strange smile he told me, without words, to forget about the old “Motke the Madman” and not to tell anyone about his old ways.

  He had a sister and she was married to a very nice man. Truly good people went to her house and their little world was full of a beautiful spirit.

  A greenhorn doesn’t have his own sense of self in the beginning. He is downtrodden, shocked and coy. He isn’t himself. During those first weeks when Motke didn’t have the courage to get up to his old tricks, he had been treated not like a worm, but like a person, and that humane spirit set the tone for his American life. Being Motke the Madman didn’t suit him here. I once thought that he had been born an ugly disgusting creature, but I was mistaken.

  In the old country his fellow hatmakers had treated him like an annoying creature, and he got used to acting that way. Here he was treated from the first minute with respect, and he slowly began to respect himself.

  He didn’t become rich here; his brother-in-law and their friends are also poor workers, peddlers and agents. But they are among the richest in their souls and Motke was raised into that spirit.

  At first I doubted whether t
he change would last. I thought that the old worm could still crawl out of him at any minute. But when I took a good look at Motke, I truly saw a new man. He conducted his life with true passion, as if he was trying to pay himself back for the years of self-debasement.

  He was endlessly fascinating to me. I visited that city two more times, and each time I compared the two Motkes—the old-country Motke and the American Motke—with the two Shneur Zadobniks. Motke became dear to me. And Shneur? I used to think that I hated him here. No, I don’t hate him, but my heart bleeds with pity.

  1 1877–1878.

  2 Genesis 19:26.

  3 Jewish Enlightenment.

  4 Proponent of the Jewish Enlightenment.

  5 A reference to the anti-Semitic May Laws of 1882, and the subsequent expulsion of Jews from Moscow in 1891.

  6 A formal invitation to read from the Torah during a prayer service.

  Morris Rosenfeld

  1862–1923

  MORRIS ROSENFELD WAS beloved to generations of Yiddish readers as the preeminent “sweatshop poet,” whose verses described the plight of working-class immigrants. As a prolific writer for the Forward in its early decades, he contributed not just poetry but also short stories, sketches, and belles-lettres.

  Born Moyshe Yakov Alter in Stare Boksze, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), Rosenfeld received a traditional religious education, which he continued in Warsaw, where he married and had three children. At age twenty he traveled to Amsterdam, where he worked as a diamond cutter, as well as to London and the United States, where he worked as a tailor.

  In 1886, Rosenfeld settled permanently in New York, finding work in the city’s garment industry. He also began writing poetry describing his own life and that of his fellow workers. His first poem was published in 1886, and his first collection appeared in 1888, followed by a second in 1890. In 1898, Harvard professor Leo Wiener translated and released a collection of Rosenfeld’s work under the title Songs from the Ghetto, which made him briefly famous. Although Rosenfeld achieved renown during his lifetime as the “poet laureate of labor,” he was rarely able to make a living from his writing and was forced to rely for much of his life on sweatshop work.