Have I Got a Story for You

by Ezra Glinter

  But Pinnie didn’t rest and kept at it.

  Here he took his position at a grocery.

  And again, the same story: he sticks out his tongue, makes a “long nose,” makes the fig sign . . . and the grocer rages, tosses a radish at Pinnie, an onion, a potato, a beet. Pinnie gathers them all up and brings them home.

  In short, Pinnie made a big jump in our income: without him, it would have been very hard to come into our present luxuries!

  And Yente was happy. She said, “The whole time Pinnie wasn’t stealing, wasn’t playing tricks; people were throwing it at him. That is proper and fine and we shouldn’t get in his way.

  As long as he gets it in an honorable way!

  In conclusion, thanks to Pinnie our home is filled with the best of goods!

  And more: how Yente swells with pride over him! “May his bones be filled with good health,” she said. “It’s obvious: he’s growing into a businessman.”

  Rooms with Steam Heat

  (DECEMBER 25, 1913)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  MY YENTE WENT nuts and said, “Mendel, let’s move.”

  I asked, “Why?”

  She said, “Because the rooms are cold. You can freeze to death in them. The wind blows in from all directions and the windows shake and you need three tons of coal to get through the winter. Remember, Mendel, how cold it was last year? Even the fire in the stove froze.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I remember.”

  It was decided that we would go out and find rooms with steam heat.

  We went together, me and my Yente.

  We saw a “to let”: rooms with steam heat. Inquire by the landlord, Mr. Fayfl. 23

  We went in and asked, “Are you Mr. Fayfl?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is I who am Mr. Fayfl.”

  “How many rooms do you have?”

  “Four.”

  “Perhaps five?”

  “No, four.”

  “With steam?”

  “With steam.”

  “With real steam?”

  “With real steam.”

  “It can’t be,” my Yente said.

  The landlord grew angry. “Does that mean, you don’t believe me? When I say steam, it’s steam. With me there’s no monkey business!”

  “That’s that,” I said. “If you say it, then it’s said. A landlord isn’t going to go bluff.”

  “I’llbetcha,” he said. “Landlords don’t bluff.”

  I asked, “How much do the four rooms cost?”

  He said, “It depends on how many kids you have. Without kids, I reckon, twenty-two dollars. With one kid, twenty-three; and with two, twenty-four. A dollar a kid.”

  I said, “And in case I have almost six kids?”

  “What do you mean by ‘almost?’”

  “‘Almost’ means I already have five kids and the sixth is probably on the way.”

  “If so,” he said, “the rooms will cost you twenty-eight dollars. I wanted to say thirty dollars, but I want this deal to be simple.”

  In short, my Yente offered him seventeen dollars and with the offer came two remarks: first, these aren’t rooms, but holes; second, what, do you want us to work nonstop, you miser of a landlord?

  The landlord started to make a show that he was losing money on the rooms, that this house was driving him into the poorhouse.

  In short, we made a deal and a week later we moved in.

  The rooms made my Yente swell with pride. “Now,” she said, “we better keep our eyes open.”

  Her joy didn’t last long. With the first frost, my Jewess ran to the heater and started to turn the knob. But no steam came out. The flat was as cold as the North Pole. Me and Yente and the kids trembled from the cold; our teeth chattered and chattered.

  We went over to the landlord.

  “Well, Mr. Fayfl, where’s the steam? We’re dying of cold!”

  The landlord said to have patience. First, he hired a gentile, from Poland, to come and make the steam, but he didn’t show; second, the engine is broken; third, coal’s extremely expensive now—seven dollars a ton!

  Meanwhile, we’re sitting in “steam heat” rooms trembling from cold. One night we lay in bed with the comforter over our heads, blowing on our palms until morning. By the second night, my Yente and the kids went to sleep at her sister’s and I was left all alone in the cold, “steam heat” rooms.

  I would surely have frozen to death each night if I didn’t go to sleep in my overcoat, with my fur hat on my head and with Yente’s muff on my hands. In addition, I had to boil water, pour it into a rubber bag, and put it on my feet. When I got up in the morning, I shook pieces of ice from the rubber bag.

  But of course the people from my hometown were jealous: such a pauper and he lives in rooms with steam heat!

  Yente at the Metropolitan Opera

  (MARCH 21, 1914)

  Translated by Eitan Kensky

  ON MY WAY back from the shop I told Yente that Benny the Operator sold me two tickets to the Metropolitan Opera House.

  Yente asked me, “Mendel, what kind of house is that? A tenement house or a private house?”

  I said, “Yente, it’s a kind of theater, where the best singers in the world perform. That’s where a man named Caruso 24 sings—and he gets two thousand dollars a night!”

  “And so?” Yente said. “Are you going to give me two thousand dollars a night to sing? You should suffer two thousand blows!”

  I said, “Yente, shut your little mouth and quit cursing.”

  Yente said, “I’ll have you in the ground!”

  I said, “Yente, let’s eat our supper and go. Time isn’t standing still. You’ll have time to curse me when we’re on the streetcar or when we’re sitting at the opera.”

  Yente said, “I’m afraid, Mendel, I might forget.”

  I said, “I’ll remind you.”

  Yente said, “Get sick for a long time.”

  In short, we grabbed supper and Yente put on her stained skirt (she has a better one, but she didn’t want to use it), and the small black cap with the broken feather, and, on top, a red wool cardigan sweater with torn pockets and without buttons, and on top of her sweater, her worn velvet coat, and we went to the streetcar.

  Walking, I said, “Yente, now, if you want, you can curse me.”

  Yente said, “I’ll have you in the ground!”

  In the car, Yente tossed her head from side to side and seemed bored.

  I said, “Yente, let’s go outside, in the fresh air, you’ll feel better.”

  She said, “May misfortune befall you!”

  We made it to the opera full of such troubles.

  Sitting up top in the last gallery, Yente started to get lightheaded, and she cried out, “Mendel, why did you move us up here? We can head downstairs; it’s a lot better down there.”

  I said, “Yente, those seats are taken. Can’t you see, the theater is full!”

  Yente cast her gaze to and fro, considered the large crowd and said, “If God helped you have so many boarders, you’d make a nice living, huh?”

  Meanwhile, they’d started to play.

  At the beginning, Yente was impressed and kept her eyes on the stage. Then she asked me, “Mendel, why don’t they sing Yiddish songs here?”

  I shoved my elbow into Yente to get her to be quiet, hold her tongue.

  But Yente didn’t hear me and tossed a whole mountain of questions my way: “Mendel, why isn’t there anyone here peddling soda water, peanuts, apples, oranges or bananas?”

  “Yente,” I said. “Don’t twist my head with your stupid questions, let me listen!”

  But Yente kept asking, “Mendel, would you like to have five rooms like those, with steam heat? Mendel, how much do you think it costs to carpet such a big floor? Mendel, why are the actors all singing at the same time? Are they trying to be done sooner?”

  “Mendel, what are the women doing sitting over there with naked shoulders? It doesn’t embarrass them at all? Mendel
, why do they play so many violins, one is too few? Mendel, I feel a tug at my heart; can you get me a corned beef sandwich?”

  “Mendel!”

  The crowded started to laugh and shout and ordered her to shut her mouth, but Yente kept posing her questions.

  “Mendel, what a pain you are! Why are you just letting me talk on and on without answering me? Mendel, what’s this play called? Huh? Would it be too much of a bother for them to speak Yiddish? Mendel—”

  By then my nerves had gotten to me and I shouted at her, “Yente, quit pestering me with your questions! Be quiet and pay attention!”

  And Yente stayed still for a while and started to listen. When the first act ended, I noticed that Yente had fallen fast asleep. Her head was tilted back, her mouth was agape and she snored. People were staring at her and laughing. I enjoyed it and let her sleep. I decided not to wake her.

  The second act ended and they were in the midst of the third. The crowd was astounded by the chanteuse—and Yente slept like after a bath!

  During the last act, a tall, beautiful singer in a white satin dress bedecked with pearls performed. She sang like a bird in the forest at the break of day. And a kind of whistle sound trailed her.

  At that moment, the theater was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Everyone sat there enchanted, with bated breath, listening to her throat imitate the whistle, and the whistle imitate the singer . . .

  And just at that moment, Yente began to dream a horrible nightmare. She shuddered and started to shout in her sleep, “Mendel, what a pain you are! Mendel, Pinnie is standing on the roof! He’s going to fall and die, Mendel! Mendel!”

  Then a terrifying uproar broke out! People shouted from every direction: “Throw her out! Throw her out!” And soon a special policeman came and ordered us to go. Or, to be precise, he kicked us out.

  On the way home, Yente couldn’t stop wondering why rich people were so smitten with the opera.

  9 Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831–1896), German-Jewish philanthropist and founder of the Jewish Colonization Association.

  10 Prayer quorum.

  11 A “chained woman” who cannot remarry because her husband has disappeared or refuses to grant her a religious divorce.

  12 A mythical eighteenth-century Polish nobleman who converted to Judaism and was subsequently burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church.

  13 Literally, “person.”

  14 That is, what part of Europe he originated from.

  15 Jews of Lithuanian origin.

  16 A reference to the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912.

  17 The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, many of them Jewish women.

  18 Menachem Mendel Beilis (1874–1934) was a Russian Jew from Kiev who was accused of ritually murdering a Christian child. He was acquitted at trial in 1913.

  19 An inept or bungling person.

  20 When the book of Esther is read on the holiday of Purim, it is traditional to try and drown out the name of the villain, Haman, with noisemakers.

  21 Non-Jewish.

  22 An anti-Semitic, ultranationalist movement in Russia in the early twentieth century.

  23 A play on the Yiddish name Fayvl and the word fayfn, to whistle.

  24 Opera singer Enrico Caruso (1873–1921).

  Roshelle Weprinsky

  1895–1981

  ROSHELLE WEPRINSKY WAS a novelist and poet associated with Di yunge (The Young Ones), a group of like-minded New York Yiddish poets and writers in the early twentieth century.

  Born in the town of Ivankiv, in what is now Ukraine, Weprinsky attended a religious elementary school and later a Russian-Jewish high school in Kiev. In 1906 she immigrated to the United States, where she attended night school and began writing poetry. Her first pieces, influenced by “sweatshop poets” such as Morris Rosenfeld, were published in a variety of Yiddish periodicals, including the Forward. She published several volumes of poetry in her lifetime, starting in the 1920s and continuing until the 1970s.

  For much of her life Weprinsky was the partner of poet Mani Leib, who was also a contributor to the Forward and a member of Di yunge. Weprinsky described the group in her 1971 novel Ven di hent kraytsn zikh (With Arms Crossed) and in a volume of correspondence with Mani Leib, which was published in 1980.

  In the two stories included here, which appeared in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Weprinsky makes use of a lyrical prose style to evoke the difficulties of adjusting to an adopted homeland, even decades after arrival.

  Annie

  (AUGUST 6, 1939)

  Translated by Myra Mniewski

  IN THE SHOP where Annie worked, there were other middle-aged women just like her. Hardship had brought them back to their places at the machine. But Annie hadn’t yet noticed them. She was confused and felt lost in this new place, not yet accustomed to the noise. She was like a worm exposed to the bright light of day after being flushed to the surface by a rainstorm, and she squirmed in the unfamiliar light of the shop. She felt the world’s eye focused on her like a magnifying glass, examining her from all angles, exposing her fraudulent and worn-out self. So she bent closer to her machine, as if wanting to merge with it.

  That’s how it was at the beginning. And even later, when Annie had already grown accustomed to the peculiar din and noticed the other women around her, the sight of whom actually brought her a bit of comfort, she was still not able to form an intimacy with the shop. It remained strange and unfamiliar to her, as if she had never been there before. But her hands remembered the work. As if from a distant dream her fingers naturally curved towards the fabric. It was remarkable how things happened on their own, without her, as if she wasn’t even there. The cogs clacked, the wheels roared, the foreman yelled over it all, but she heard nothing. It was as if she was in her own home tending to all her little interests, her husband and her children.

  Yes, her husband—how pale he’d become lately. A strange pity overtook her. How ashamed he must feel about her going back to work and him staying home, doing nothing, unable to find something to do. His gaze was downcast whenever he talked to her. And the sound of his voice changed—it became thinner and milder. When he addresses her by her name, Annie, the tenderness in his voice practically chokes her. Her old feelings surge up for a second and her eyes twinkle for a bit. She forgets about her burden for a minute. And when they are alone, just the two of them, it’s as if he wants to win her favor with caresses, in order to compensate for the other things he’s not giving her. Annie feels shame for allowing those moments to subsume her. She doesn’t want to think about it anymore, so instead she conjures up her children and occupies her mind with them.

  “Come Reyzele, it’s time to shampoo your hair! She’s pretty good for a fifteen-year-old girl whose mother can’t look after her so closely. I’m busy—you can see for yourself, you might try helping out in the house a little. Yes, like that.”

  And then immediately her thirteen-year-old, Ayzikl, appears before her. His hands and feet have grown large recently and his voice has become so deep that she hardly recognizes him. And as usual, whenever he comes to mind, she is overtaken with worry over the soles of his shoes. Every three weeks they need to be resoled because of all the ball playing he does! And his appetite—there should be no evil eye! “Here my son, have a piece of bread with butter.” And sha. What is she going to make for supper today? She’ll have to stop at the butcher’s on her way home. And at the grocer’s and the green market. How she would love to make something special for her little one today, her ten-year-old, Perele, may God bless her! What an angel she is! Oh how she would love to buy her a wool dress with her next pay, one with pleats like everyone is wearing now.

  Annie’s fingers are suddenly aware of the warmth of the material she is in the middle of sewing. Her fingers begin patting it, as if it actually was the dress her Perele was going to wear.

  The shop around her is roaring, in tumult. But the hubbub she hears is not hers;
it’s a foreign sound. In the evening the elevator takes her and the other workers down and pours them out into the throng. The closer she gets to her house, the closer she is to reality.

  And even though, in the mornings, when Annie gets up, and her bones hurt as if someone had banged on them, she is nevertheless eager to go to work. The small pay that she now receives has inspired many needs and desires. She has more contact with the rich city now. She passes display windows loaded with marvelous things. Her eyes see, and her womanly heart fills with desire.

  “May the season stretch out a little bit more,” Annie says to herself. “Then maybe, maybe, maybe . . .” and she pictures all the beautiful things she would buy for her children.

  But the work was cut off abruptly, out of the blue. One morning when Annie arrived at work, the shop was strangely quiet. The workers who had arrived before her stood there with their hands hanging by their sides, like the wheels of a stopped mill. Not a thing was in motion. The silence in the shop hung like unwritten handwriting: SLACK.

  The foreman, indifferent, addressed everyone as if individually: There’s nothing to do. Whoever wants to, come back at noon. Something might come in for an hour or two.

  The workers stirred themselves and quietly shuffled out.

  Annie gazed at the older seamstresses intensely. Their faces looked half-softened from years of being housewives and half-hardened from the shop. But everyone’s hands hung down dejected and heavy.

  Annie remained standing downstairs in the street. She squinted against the brightness of the day. Her clothes looked worn-out. She thought about where to spend the few hours until noon, because after all, a couple hours of work might come in then; it was hard for her to go home. Her desires had been dealt a sharp blow.

  Dejected, she proceeded with slow steps in her worn-out shoes until she wandered over to the corner of Fifth Avenue, where she found herself face-to-face with a richly decorated store window. Stopping in front of it, her eyes widened. And even though she wasn’t in a position to buy anything, she nevertheless allowed herself to enter through the opulent glass doors that didn’t stop revolving until she was inside.