Have I Got a Story for You

by Ezra Glinter

  It was a regular museum!

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked Yente, walking over to the bed.

  “Too much running around today,” she said. “Too much agitation. It gave me a headache . . . I didn’t cook any supper. Mendel, can you get some powder for my head? There’s a nickel on the bookshelf. Oy, my head!”

  For dinner I ate Yente’s delicacy: fever!

  THE NEXT MORNING I found out that a Hebrew tutor had started the circle on Pitkin Avenue. He was on the way to synagogue for the early minyan 10 when he suddenly felt the need to scratch his beard . . . So he raised his beard to the sky. A bunch of Jews noticed a pious Jew staring at the heavens, and they started looking too. Little by little a circle of Jews and Jewesses formed—my Yente among them too!

  Yente Describes a Strike

  (AUGUST 16, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  Dear Mendel,

  We have a regular show here: All the male boarders departed and, in total, only one young man got off the train. Khone’s his name. The world is his oyster! For a whole week, it was nothing but married women here. Khone is the only man on the whole farm.

  He lacks for nothing.

  All the women run after him like roosters chasing after a brood hen, or like you—may misfortune choke you—run after the agune 11 of Lewis Street.

  All the women smile at him—at Khone, that is. They sit on his lap, go with him to pick blackberries, let him wrap his arms around them, let themselves be caressed, fondled . . .

  In short, the whole week he, Khone, was the lone male among all the wives. Of course he went around with his head held high, putting on airs, proud as Count Pototsky. 12

  But then Sunday came around: boy was he—Khone, that is—buried alive!

  A real orphan.

  Because, at that moment, each wifey, each Jewess, had her husband. They didn’t speak a word to Khone; they didn’t even look at him, like they didn’t even know him.

  He was lonely as a stone.

  Poor Khone!

  But, for that reason, last Monday, when all the men left again on the “husband train,” and when the women came back from the station, and they started up flirting with Khone—again—Khone declared he was going on strike.

  “I don’t want to know you anymore!” He shouted severely. “I don’t want to kiss you, caress you, wrap my arm around you, let you sit on my lap, go pick any blackberries with you or tell you any stories! If I’m good enough for you during the week, then I’m a man on Sunday too!”

  In the end, the strike lasted from early Monday to dinner on Tuesday, and it was Khone who won.

  The first one who gave in was a cute, black-eyed brunette, twenty-two or twenty-three.

  She went up to Khone, took him by the chin and said, “Mister Khone, be a mentsch 13. . . don’t be angry . . .”

  So Khone started to smile, caressed the girl’s right cheek, and she saddled into his lap.

  When the other women noticed the brunette sitting on Khone’s lap—and that he was holding her, just like a “good brother”—they held a meeting near the stables, and it was decided to accede to all of Khone’s demands.

  And just like that, the strike came to an end.

  Yente and Mendel Look for Rooms

  (SEPTEMBER 20, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  SO MY LANDLORD dropped in to visit my mother-in-law and said that me and Yente had to move out.

  My Yente asked the landlord, “What, for example, do you mean by ‘move out’?”

  The landlord said, “By me, ‘move out’ means ‘a change of climate.’”

  My Yente asked, “And what, for example, do you mean by, ‘a change of climate’?”

  The landlord said, “What I mean by ‘a change of climate’ is very simple: you should search for another apartment, in a different house, on another street, and, if possible, in another city.”

  My Yente asked him. “What’s the deal? Doesn’t my mother pay you rent?”

  The landlord said, “That’s not what I mean. I mean, that—please, forgive me—you have too many children, wild children, who dance and jump and scream and fight and rip out the wallpaper and unscrew nails and remove faucets from the bathtub and handles from the door. Your Pinnie turns the house to rubble all by himself. I don’t want to have it and dat’s all.”

  Yente said, “Four children, you call that a lot? Look, my great-grandfather had sixteen, and my grandfather fourteen, and my father twelve.”

  “That may be the case,” the landlord said. “But your grandfather and your father didn’t live in my house.”

  “So what do you want?” Yente became incensed. “Am I, on account of your three rooms—with their cockroaches and bedbugs—to murder my children? You won’t live to see it! My children are precious to me; I have no use for your three dark little holes!”

  The landlord started to seethe, but Yente and my mother-in-law drowned him in curses.

  The next morning, the landlord sent us an eviction notice.

  From that we gathered that he was a beast who didn’t understand jokes; that no upstanding person could do business with him. So I said to Yente, “Yente, let’s go look for rooms.”

  Yente said, “awlright,” and she called all the kids to come in from the street, wiped their noses, gave each of them a piece of bread with salt, and marched them back downstairs. “Go!” she said, and I died a little.

  “Now that I’ve looked after the children,” Yente said to me, “we can go.”

  First we marched to Osborn Street. We found a yellow notice on a door and we asked a guy who ran a coal cellar there, “How many rooms and how much money and are they in back or in front?”

  The coal-Jew said, “No rooms. All the rooms are occupied.”

  So I said, “But there’s a yellow notice on the door.”

  The coal-Jew said, “The notice was put there by the ‘board of hel’ because two kids on the stoop suffer from diphtheria.”

  I took Yente by the elbow and we kept moving.

  On Belmont Avenue near Paul Street we found three rooms: only one window, no sink, and on the fourth floor. We inquired by the butcher.

  The butcher said, “Twenty dollars with kids and eighteen dollars without kids.”

  Yente spat on the butcher and dragged me off.

  On Sixth Street we found three rooms with two windows, on the fifth floor. The toilet was in the yard and the wash lines were on the roof. We inquired by the landlord in his rear dwelling.

  The landlord asked what kind of landsman 14 I was.

  I said, “A Polish one.”

  He said, “It pains me greatly, but I do not accept any Poles because Poles are not fine people.”

  I said, “Much better people than you Litvaks!” 15

  He said, “There is no people finer than Litvaks.”

  I said, “I wouldn’t do business with a Litvak even if you paid me a fortune!”

  Words were exchanged and then he kicked us out.

  We kept going. We found five rooms on Watkins Street.

  “What country do you come from?” asked the next landlord, a Jew with a yarmulke.

  Of course by then I was afraid to say that I was Polish. I said, “I am a Litvak.”

  “You’re a Litvak?” he asked in a Polish Yiddish. “I don’t accept you Litvaks because your heads are always looking to make sales!”

  I said, “Litvaks are better than Poles!”

  He said, “No people finer than Poles exists.”

  I said, “You! I wouldn’t do business with a Pole if I was offered ten dollars for the trouble!”

  He said, “You can leave.”

  Yente gave me a jab. “Come, Mendel. May he burn down with his house.”

  In short, we shlepped around all day. After a lot of sorrow, after a lot of angst, we found three rooms, a bath, and a letterbox, but small as a nest. There was barely room to put the kids down. There was no room for me and Yente. According to Yente’s
math, I am going to have to sleep with Pinnie in the bathtub.

  How Pinnie Celebrated Election Day

  (NOVEMBER 8, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  VOTING DAY: the second I opened my eyes, crawled out of bed, grabbed a shave, showered, dressed in my Sabbath best and inhaled a cigarette, I ran out of the house to give my vote.

  The second the drunk politicians saw me, they made eyes at me. They told me rumors. But I was steadfast and answered, “Mendel’s vote is not for sale!”

  On my way home, I met Yente on the street, wandering, moaning, holding her sides. I asked, “Yente, what’s going on? Why are you moaning? Why are you holding your sides?”

  She said, “That bed you gave me—I have just that kind of bed for you—like a grave! You call that a mattress—a sack with stones is what it is! Oy, my sides!”

  “Is the mattress missing something?” I asked.

  “What’s it missing, you ask? Here’s what you should miss: years of your life! It’s missing being a little softer, a little newer, a little fuller.”

  “In this world,” I said, “there are many bad mattresses. Look, Jonah the bookbinder has a mattress that’s completely empty. All the straw fell out a long time ago and now he sleeps on the sack alone.”

  Yente said, “So, go and take up the cause with Jonah! I want you to buy a new mattress and dat’s all.”

  “Yente, have patience. Wait until the kids grow, start working, bring home some paydays. When there’s money, we’ll go and buy a new bed and a new mattress. Pinnie will grow to be a real mentsch. He’ll help us out, of course.”

  Yente said, “May you be punished, not Pinnie. Pinnie will be a musician,” and her eyes lit up like lanterns.

  I said, “Awlright, he’ll give lessons and help us out.”

  Yente said, “Of course, in the meantime, we’ll need to have a mattress.”

  I said, “And where, in the meantime, are we supposed to get money?”

  Yente said, “I have a plan. Let’s not pay the butcher and the milkman this week, or buy shoes for Fayvl—then we’ll have money for a mattress.”

  I said, “Fine.”

  In short, Yente and I went off to the furniture store to pick out a fine mattress. Yente asked the price and the storekeeper said, nine dollars. Then Yente bid a dollar-and-a-quarter, then a dollar-and-a-half, and for three-and-a-half dollars she bought it. The storekeeper swore on his wife and his mother-in-law that he was losing money, a dollar out of pocket! But he had just that day settled his bills, and he could use the pretty penny.

  I paid the storekeeper the money and told him to bring me the mattress around sunset: first we needed to steam-clean the beds with kerosene.

  The storekeeper brought the mattress around five that night, put it down on the stairs, and left.

  In the meantime, Pinnie, in honor of election day, decided to light a bonfire in the street and he needed something flammable. He saw a mattress lying in the stairwell—didn’t ask anyone and didn’t give it a second thought—grabbed the mattress, and immediately set it on fire.

  In only a few minutes, our new mattress was engulfed by flames and Favyl, Isaac, Pinnie and their friends ran around it like poisoned mice and gathered up pieces of wood, papers, burlap, old chairs, baby carriages, and tossed them all onto our new, burning mattress, and the fire grew bigger and more festive, and Pinnie stood there and blew his big, tin trumpet and watched the crackling fire and burned up with pride.

  And his cheeks were illuminated, as if by the Divine Presence, and his little heart was filled with inspiration, which he released through his tin trumpet; and the fire continued to rage, and his cheeks continued to gleam, and his inspiration trumpeted louder and louder!

  Yente and Mendel and Mendel Beilis

  (NOVEMBER 12, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  YENTE FLED FROM the street, flustered, seething, hooting and hollering.

  “Mendel! Mendel! Take a listen to what’s going on outside! Hear them shouting, ‘Extra! Extra!’ Every street, it’s a commotion, ‘Extra!’ I’llbetcha a ship sunk again, 16 or a new Triangle Fire 17—oh the horror! Mendel, why are you just standing there with one foot in the grave? Run outside and bring up a paper! You know how much I love to hear who’s been murdered, burned alive, run over, or poisoned! Read something!”

  I said, “Yente, I would read, but the kids aren’t going to let me.”

  Yente said, “I’ll drive the kids out into the street and then we’re set.”

  I said, “Awlright, kick them out!”

  So Yente went and kicked out the kids and told them not to live long enough to come back upstairs.

  Freed from the kids, I ran down and bought a paper and read:

  “Kiev, Monday—Mendel Beilis 18 is free! The jury of twelve nobles reached the verdict that the martyr Mendel Beilis is not guilty.”

  Yente shook her head and said, “So what, you think that people will free you? You were a shlimazel 19 and you’ll die a shlimazel. You’ll see, when it comes time to free, they’ll free that other Mendel, not you! No one will free you! Everything needs luck. If God ordains you to be a Mendel, then you better be a Kiev Mendel, not a Brownsville Mendel. May the Brownsville Mendels catch fire—they’re good for nothing! Woe to the Yentes who fall into the arms of Brownsville Mendels!”

  And she took a shot at my head with a couple of spicy curses.

  I availed myself of the opportunity and continued reading.

  “Local workers are opening a Mendel Beilis fund. It is thought that the fund will bring in a million dollars.”

  “What’s that?” Yente said. “Will people collect millions on your behalf? Blows to the ribs—that’s what people will collect for you, not millions! If you were a Mendel like that Mendel, things would be much better for me. My name wouldn’t be so besmirched around the world.”

  I heard Yente like Haman hears noisemakers. 20 I kept reading.

  “Kiev, Monday. As the jury rendered its verdict, Mendel Beilis ‘not guilty,’ the Jewish martyr turned pale and tears began to stream from his eyes.”

  Here Yente sighed and said in a sad voice. “Do you hear, Mendel. It’s good that you weren’t accused of anything . . . You have some luck, too, Mendel. Because according to what you tell me, not even the Russian ‘sympathizers’ are good people. Would they have made a fuss—over which Mendel? A Mendel is a Mendel! If a Berel fell into their hands, he would be in trouble! But tell me, Mendel, who is this Mendel Beilis who’s got the whole world cooking? Wherever I go and wherever I’m standing, it’s all Mendel Beilis. In the grocery—Mendel Beilis; at the butcher—Mendel Beilis; everywhere, Beilis.”

  I said, “Beilis is a simple Jew. A husband. A father of five children. A quiet man who was accused of slaughtering a goyish 21 child and using his blood for Passover.”

  Yente asked, “Who were the accusers?”

  I said, “The Black Hundreds, 22 hooligans, anti-Semites.”

  Yente said, “May a single blow knock them all down!”

  I said, “Amen.”

  Yente said, “Amen and Amen.”

  Pinnie Grows to Be a Businessman

  (DECEMBER 13, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  PINNIE THAT LITTLE bastard!

  Recently, Pinnie grabbed an old sack, slung it over his shoulder, and ran down into the street.

  The frost was then raging, what terror!

  A few hours later, he came back with a sack full of coal.

  Yente asked him, “Where did you get that?”

  Pinnie answered, “From the Italian.”

  “From which Italian?” Yente asked.

  “The one with the coal cellar, on the second corner,” answered Pinnie.

  “Did you steal it?”

  “No,” answered Pinnie.

  It was decided that I should watch him.

  Meanwhile, Pinnie emptied the coals, flung the bag over his shoulder, grabbed a piece of bread and half a
n onion and ran down into the street.

  Yente said to me, “Mendel, follow Pinnie and see where he goes. He should walk like you—on crutches! See where he comes into these coals. If he’s stealing them, he’ll ache for years. I’ll shatter one of his ribs, chop off one of his sides, twist his arms off, make him into a cripple!”

  I watched as he neared the coal cellar, took his position opposite the entrance, stuck his nose out at the Italian and shouted at him “Macaroni!” “Guinea!” “Monkey!” and ran off.

  The Italian turned red and threw coals at him. Pinnie went and collected the coals, put them in his sack, and walked some more.

  I followed him.

  I saw him stop at a second coal cellar, where a Jew with a filthy face and a thin beard was sitting on the steps, eyeing a customer.

  Pinnie started to taunt him. First he stuck out his tongue, then he took a stone and started to hack at the iron bars on the basement windows.

  The man shouted, “Bastard, get out of here!”

  Pinnie didn’t hear him and kept banging.

  The man shouted, raising his voice, “Bastard, get out of here or I’ll rip your arms out!”

  Pinnie pretended not to hear and banged louder.

  Then the man became really angry and he snatched a big lump of coal and he threw it at Pinnie. Pinnie caught the coal and put it in his sack and then he started taunting the man again. The man threw coal after coal and Pinnie collected them all and put them in his sack.

  And this is how he went, from one coal cellar to the next, until he gathered a sackful of coal. Then he came home and poured them out and went back to it.

  It looked as if Pinnie would keep us in coal all winter. And not only coal; also in fruit and groceries.

  See, he would go over to a fruit stand and start to needle the stand-keeper. The stand-keeper would start to get angry and throw at Pinnie whatever he had near him: a rotten apple, a pear, a banana, an orange. Pinnie collected them and brought them home and Yente cut them up and cooked them.