by Ezra Glinter
“A House on the Hill,” published in the Forward on March 4, 1962, sees Molodowsky taking a look back from her American vantage point to the small-town Jewish life of her youth.
A House on the Hill
(MARCH 4, 1962)
Translated by Kathryn Hellerstein
ARKE WAS THE only male in the narrow market where fish were sold. The other fish sellers, all women, made fun of him: he might as well have been wearing a dress. He lived on the hill, there where all the poor people lived, and he would have remained a poor man to the end of his days if his three grown daughters, Golde, Gitele, and Gishe, had not pushed him aside and begun to work at earning a living themselves. Gitele threw out the old braided baskets and bought a large white basin for tench. The little fishes, the gudgeons and the crucian carp, she left completely out of her business. Let “them” deal with those, she said about the other vendor-women, and set out pike, carp and tench on her table in the market.
Gitele wore high, shiny galoshes and on her head a bonnet with a dangling pendant, as if she were the nobleman’s granddaughter and not Arke’s daughter at the fish market.
On Thursdays, she herself traveled to the lake to bring the fish, and everyone in town knew that Gitele’s fish were fresh from the water. All the wealthy housewives in the city flocked to her as customers, and she even supplied fish to Adamke’s tavern, where the gentile noblemen went to drink beer.
Behind her back, the women vendors in the market heaped abuse on Gitele. “On Thursday, may she break her arms and legs.” But to her face they praised her and said that she had made her father, that shlimazel, 82 into a respectable person.
Arke began to go to the synagogue to study with all the well-to-do men, and they even started calling him Reb 83 Areh. Although they all still lived on the hill, his family rose to genteel standing. No one was surprised anymore when, on the Sabbath, Gitele and both her sisters would stroll down Church Street in straw hats, like the pharmacist’s daughter, and Reb Areh donated a whole ruble as a contribution to provide the poor with Passover necessities.
But Areh’s wife, Feyge-Tsipe, prayed to the Lord that no one, God forbid, should give her daughters the evil eye, and on the Sabbath, when her daughters would gaze into the tiny mirror that stood on the corner table and put on their straw hats before taking a walk, Feyge-Tsipe pleaded with them: “You don’t need those straw hats! Why do you need to show off in the city? Why do I need people to be envious of me? Mendel the Miller’s daughter walks here without a hat, and your father is still not Mendel the Miller, who has a house in the middle of the market.”
The table had already grown too small for their business, and so they rented a wooden stall. In the market it was said that they’d hit the jackpot. The daughters wanted to leave the squalid hill, and Gitele proposed to pay installments on a house that was for sale in the market. Areh nodded his head and said, “Nu, when you come up in the world, God forbid, you don’t sink again. Why not?”
But Feyge-Tsipe pointed at the ceiling with her hand and said, “This roof has been lucky for me. My daughters were born here, and they grew up here, and thanks be to God, now we’re the equals of respectable people. I’m not going to leave here. People will be jealous of us if we puff ourselves up and move to a house in the market. And in a city, when the tongues start wagging, God protect us from what can happen.”
When she saw that Shimen the broker was coming to speak with Areh about the house in the market, she grabbed the doorframe and shouted: “I’m not leaving here! They’ll have to drag me out!”
Shimen the broker was intimidated by such talk and fled. Areh ran after him and replied: “Nu, so now you see what kind of a woman she is, my Feyge-Tsipe, she’s attached herself to the house.”
Returning, Areh tried to persuade Feyge-Tsipe. “For the sake of making matches for our daughters, you need to do this. What kind of a matchmaker will come to you up here on the hill? And what better kinds of bridegrooms will be brought to you down there!”
But Feyge-Tsipe held her own. “If a good match is meant to be, it will come here too.”
All the neighbors on the hill knew the story and rejoiced. “Feyge-Tsipe doesn’t want to leave the hill. Never mind that the hill is not really the social scene.”
And everyone wished Feyge-Tsipe all the best.
It was a Friday. This was between Yom Kippur and Sukes, 84 when Berezovski traveled up to the market in his open carriage, pulled to a stop near Gitele’s wooden stall and wanted to buy a tench. Berezovski was a rich Jew who lived on a large farm near the city, maintained other fields and dealt in lumber. And whenever he used to travel to the city, everyone would make money: dry-goods merchants and tailors, cobblers and butchers. The women fish sellers looked at this customer from a distance and were envious: “Nu, what then? To whom will Berezovski travel for fish? To Gitele with her shiny galoshes. One rich man is drawn to another.”
Berezovski was a man with an open hand and never haggled with anyone. When he sensed that the price was being raised a bit, he used to say, “In Berditshev it’s more expensive.”
Why he said “In Berditshev” no one ever knew. But that was his saying. Gitele had already placed the tench on a piece of paper when Berezovski’s son approached the table, grabbed the tench and took a look under the gills.
Gitele became enraged. She grabbed the tench from his hand, threw it back into the white basin and exclaimed: “Get out of here! No one looks under the gills of my tench.”
Father and son stood stock still as if in shock. The young man wiped the fingers of his hand with his handkerchief, as if he wanted to wipe away the shame, and the older Berezovski became suddenly disturbed—this was the first time in his life that someone hadn’t want to sell him a piece of merchandise.
“What kind of a business is this?” he said, and stared at Gitele, astonished and curious.
Gitlele stood, her hands on her cheeks. The pendant on her head rocked back and forth and she answered him provocatively: “This kind of business is what it is!” Her lips pressed together angrily, and she looked like an empress who does not want to sign a treaty.
Her older sister, Golde, interjected. “Nu, nu, Gitele, what kind of a game are you playing?”
But Gitele grew more stubborn, jiggled the pendant back and forth and, with an angry little smile, said: “No one looks under the gills of my tench.” And as if she were seized from within by spitefulness, she refused to sell them the fish. Even the tench in the bowl seemed angry.
Old Berezovski murmured: “In Berditshev, you can actually get fish.” And both men, Berezovski and his son, returned to their carriage empty-handed, as if they’d lost a large bet.
Old Berezovski went first and did not look back, but his son stopped, turned his head around and saw Gitele still standing there with her hands on her cheeks, watching them. He gave her a smile and wagged his finger at her. His smile touched Gitele to the quick, and she looked after them until they drove away in their carriage.
Even before the girls came home from the fish market, Feyge-Tsipe already knew the whole story with the Berezovskis, that Gitele hadn’t sold them the tench. All the fish sellers had gossiped about it, and they had brought this news up the hill.
Feyge-Tsipe paced through the house, agitated. She met her daughters with a shake of the head. “You’re driving me crazy! Gitele, the genius! She wouldn’t sell a tench to Berezovski! All the gentiles at the lake work for him in the forests and the fields. They cut down the trees for him, they transport the lumber for him! All he has to do is say a word, and you’ll be minding a dried-up fish stall, you won’t even have a tench tail to sell!”
Feye-Tsipe’s face darkened, as if a calamity were advancing upon her. The older sister, Golde, cried: “I told her! What kind of a game is this? But when Gitele is stubborn . . .” And Golde wiped her eyes with the hem of her dress.
When Areh came home from prayers, he found all three girls quiet, as if they’d been slapped. They hadn’t even washed
their hair, as they did every Friday before blessing the Sabbath candles.
Feyge-Tsipe told him the tale of the tench and voiced all the bitterness in her heart. “A house in the market they want! Turned into aristocrats! Fine folks! To Berezovski they wouldn’t sell a tench! Who knows what will come of this . . .”
The sorrow of all the poor people of the hill fell upon Feyge-Tsipe and spread across the whole house.
Areh paced back and forth near the set table, and before he began to make Kiddush, 85 he cheered up and shouted to his wife: “What are you moaning about here? Berezovski is a Jew. He won’t be in a hurry to betray Gitele to the gentiles! To ruin a Jewish woman!”
Gitele took her time and answered her mother, “Nu, why get all worked up about the fish? I will open a shop selling dairy products, and on Passover, I will apply for a license to bake matzo!” She remembered the young Berezovski’s smiling eyes and, in the middle of everything, burst out laughing.
“The girl is crazy,” Feyge-Tsipe said, and, fortified by her husband’s words and her daughter’s confidence, proceeded to set out the Friday evening dinner on the Sabbath table. They ate in silence. After the meal ended, the little flames of the Sabbath candles began to leap and then to go out, and the darkness threw sadness across the table.
On Thursday, as usual, Gitele traveled to the lake to buy the biggest tench, pike, and carp. She had hidden her fear from her sisters that her mother might have been right and that she would return home with an empty wagon. Into her mind came the image of the poorest family on the hill, Henye the feather-plucker, who came all the time to borrow the two groschen she needed to buy Sabbath candles. Gitele sat in the wagon, engrossed in her thoughts, and was silent. Petrukhe, the gentile who drove with her every Thursday for the fish, asked her a question:
“What’s with you, Gitele, are you sick? You don’t seem like yourself.”
“No, Petrukhe. I just had a dream. A dream . . . that I had fallen into a pit.” At that very moment, Gitele dreamed up a dream for Petrukhe.
“Yeah, yeah,” the gentile said. “A bad dream will bring life to an end.”
Her wagon full of fish, Gitele returned to the fish market on Friday before dawn, and all her fears had vanished. With her shiny galoshes and her bonnet with the pendant dangling on top, she stood as usual near the white bowls and looked like a noblewoman among the neighboring fish sellers. She didn’t notice with her eyes, yet she sensed that Berezovski’s carriage was approaching. This time, the young Berezovski came alone, without his father. Gitele’s heart pounded. She didn’t know whether it was with joy or fear. Just as on the other day, he wagged his finger at her. He approached her stand. He stood there quietly, didn’t say a word and smiled. Gitele was fire red. She summoned all her strength and took a look at him.
“Nu,” he said. “Will you sell me a tench?” His eyes sparkled gleefully, and Gitele lost all of her strength. Even the pendant on her head didn’t stir from its place. Without saying a word, she selected the prettiest fish from the bowl, weighed it, wrapped it in paper, and handed it to him. The young Berezovski followed all of her movements with his gaze. He said to her, almost complaining: “No one’s looking under the gills of your tench, but how much does it cost?”
“A sleepless night,” she answered him simply, as if she were giving him a price, and she called to her sister, “Golde, go make the change.” And she fled behind the stall, where the barrels stood.
Through the cracks in the stall Gitele watched as the young Berezovski stood for a while near the carriage; then he quickly jumped up, pulled at the reins and drove away.
Fairly often he drove his carriage to Gitele’s stall, and the women merchants in the narrow market murmured: “This is fishy—they’re testing their luck.” But her mother used to say when her daughters would mention young Berezovski, “I hate what’s too good to be true.”
A pain smacked Feyge-Tsipe in the temples when, surprisingly, young Berezovski did not come to see Gitele at the stall in the fish market, but at their house on the hill. Gitele, who was cutting “wide noodles” at the table, raised the knife up high, as if to take a photograph. The young man approached her and said, “Put down the knife! In your hands, it could ruin a man!
Gitele put away the knife, and they both laughed. This was the happiest laughter that was ever heard on the hill. When the young man left, Feyge-Tsipe walked around with a damp handkerchief on her temples and complained: “I am afraid of what’s too good to be true.”
For the residents on the hill, it was like a dream, or a miraculous tale, when Gitele became the bride of young Berezovski. The wedding was held in a big city. And on the hill, it was told that Gitele went to the wedding canopy in golden slippers that the bridegroom bought her as a gift.
But even Gitele’s golden union could not budge Feyge-Tsipe out from under her roof. And she did not want to ascend to a house in the marketplace.
“Here,” she said, “I bore my daughters, here I raised them. Here luck shone on us. Why should I leave my house on the hill?”
82 An inept or bungling person.
83 Yiddish for “Mr.”
84 The Feast of Tabernacles.
85 The ceremonial blessing on wine made on the Sabbath and holidays.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
1902–1991
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER is perhaps the best-known Yiddish writer in history, thanks to the widespread publication of his work in English and his 1978 win of the Nobel Prize for Literature. But Singer’s affiliation with the Forward went back decades before that.
Born in the village of Leoncin, near Warsaw, he was encouraged in his literary ambitions by his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, and decided at a young age to become a writer. For ten years he was employed as a proofreader for the Warsaw literary journal Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages), while also working on his own writing and translation projects.
While still in Warsaw, Singer began sending contributions to the New York-based Forward and, after immigrating to the United States in 1935, became a staff writer for the newspaper. Over the following decades he contributed hundreds of pieces, including serialized novels and short stories, book reviews and literary essays, and many columns of news reports and commentary. For his literary work, Singer used the name Isaac Bashevis, which derived from his mother’s first name, Batsheva, while his other writings appeared under the pseudonyms Yitzkhok Varshavski and D. Segal.
Although Singer translated much of his own work into English with the help of younger collaborators, many of his articles and stories never appeared anywhere but in the pages of the newspaper.
“The Hotel” (not to be confused with another story titled “The Hotel,” which appeared in the 1988 collection The Death of Methuselah and Other Stories), appeared in two instalments, on January 15 and 21, 1972. The story is Singer’s rendition of the “King Incognito” trope common to many works of world literature and folklore. Here, Singer provides a winking, postmodern acknowledgment of his predecessors while also exploiting the theme to its fullest.
The Hotel
(JANUARY 15–21, 1972)
Translated by Ezra Glinter
SUCCESS CAN BE a blessing or a blight, Reb 86 Meyer Marshinover used to say. It all depends on what you do with it. When you start telling yourself “My strength and the power of my hand created this wealth for me,” 87 you’re just one step from slipping up.
The story happened to us in our town. We had one hotel and it belonged to a Pan 88 Pavlovski. There was a railway junction, where many merchants and noblemen used to arrive, but Pavlovski didn’t allow for any competition. I can see him now: a short little gentile with curled whiskers; a dark-complexioned man who considered himself a big shot.
The hotel had three stories and it was always full. A few times the Jews tried to build another hotel, but Pan Pavlovski always managed to bring their plans to naught. He would send an informant to the governor. He would collude with the city authorities and with the police su
perintendant. He was buddy-buddy with all of the bureaucrats, and no doubt bribed them all. Since he had no competitors, there were always more guests than rooms, and he made out like a bandit.
There was a Jew in town named Reb Berish Srotzker. He was a Kozhnitzer Hasid 89 and had a bit of an inn where simple Jews used to stay: a preacher, a matchmaker, sometimes in-laws in town for a wedding, Hasidim. Pavlovski didn’t let Jews in, aside from rich ones. He had become so wealthy that he had bought an estate from a nobleman. He was a partner in the water mill. He set up a brewery and had hundreds of acres planted with hops to use for making beer. He had two daughters and he sent them to study in the big cities. He would drive around by himself in a coach, like a count. He lent money for mortgages and half of the houses in town were signed over to him. Talk about success!
Usually, when noblemen came to town, they would first send a letter: Reserve a room for so and so, the son of so and so, who will be arriving on such and such a day. Pavlovski could read Russian and Polish well, and he had people who helped him. A few times a year a lot of visitors would come, and there wouldn’t be enough room. Pavlovski knew who was important, and who was not. For the bigwigs everything was prepared, but a poor gentleman without money would be sent to spend the night at Berish Srotzker’s place. There everyone slept in one big room, like in a poorhouse. It would happen that a gentile wouldn’t want to go along, and would start screaming and cursing, but Pan Pavlovski, though a small man, had a pair of strong hands and knew how to land a blow. He also used to carry around a revolver. In short, he was a power to be reckoned with.