The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  Antwerp’s your true diamondland!

  Diamonds gleam on every hand!

  Everyone a millionaire!

  Not a poor man anywhere!

  Diamonds on such clearance sales

  They’re even in the garbage pails!

  Diamonds glitter! Diamonds flash!

  All that’s missing is …some cash.

  I can’t remember the rest.

  You would need the brains of a genius to remember all of Pinye’s poems. Elye scolds him. He says that if that poem about Antwerp reaches Ezrah, we’ll be thrown out the door. We’re counting on Ezrah to finance the next leg of our trip.

  We go there every day. It’s our second home. Fraulein Seitchik knows us all by name. She loves me like a son. She’s a sister to my mother. You can see why even Brokheh admits she has a Jewish soul. All the emigrants are in love with her. Best of all, she speaks Jewish. Everyone else in Antwerp talks a kind of German called Flemish. You couldn’t beat it out of them with a stick. Pinye can’t understand why, with so many Jews around, people don’t learn a Jewish language. But not even the beggars would agree to that. They’d rather die of hunger as long as it’s in Flemish.

  Brokheh has had it with Flemish. She’s itching to get to London. She just wishes someone would drop a diamond in the street before we leave. Just one little stone from a hole in someone’s pocket! Her eyes shine when she talks about it.

  It beats me why she’s so wild about diamonds. I’d trade all the diamonds in the world for a paint box and a brush. Not long ago I drew a ship with a pencil. I drew a gang of emigrants on it, each with his own face, and gave it as a present to Goldeleh. Goldeleh showed it to Fraulein Seitchik, who hung it on the wall for all to see. Elye saw it too and whacked me. “More doodles! Are you going to stop your doodling or not?” He hasn’t hit me so hard in ages. I told Goldeleh, who told Fraulein Seitchik, who came out of her office to bawl Elye out. She gave him a whole speech about my drawing. He listened and went home and hit me harder. He says he’ll beat every last doodle out of me.

  We made our last visit to Ezrah today. Don’t ask me what we did there. Elye got into an argument. Pinye talked with his hands. Brokheh butted in and my mother began to cry. The people at Ezrah tried talking to us, mostly in that German of theirs. There were three of them, all trying to see who spoke it better. May I hope to die if I knew what they were saying. My mind was already aboard ship—at sea, in London, in America. Suddenly Goldeleh comes running, all out of breath.

  “You’re going?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “To London.”

  “And from there?”

  “To America.”

  “And I’ll be left behind with my bad eyes! God knows if I’ll ever see my mama and papa again.”

  That’s what she said, Goldeleh, and burst into tears. It broke me up. I didn’t know how to comfort her. All I could think of was: “God Almighty! What do you have against this little girl? What did she ever do to you?” I took her hand and stroked it and said:

  “Don’t cry, Goldeleh. You’ll see. As soon as I make a living in America, I’ll send you calamine for your eyes. And I’ll send you a ticket too, half fare because you’re under ten, and you’ll come to America. Your mama and papa will be waiting for you at Ella’s Island. So will I. You’ll look for me and there I’ll be—look, I’ll be holding this pencil. That’s how you’ll recognize me, Motl. You’ll get off the ship and give your parents a hug, but you won’t go straight home with them. You’ll give them your things and come with me to see America. I’ll show you everything, because I’ll know it cold by then. Then I’ll bring you to your parents’ and we’ll have a bowl of hot soup.”

  Goldeleh didn’t want to hear any more. She threw her arms around me and kissed me. I kissed her too.

  Leave it to Brokheh! She’s always popping up where you least expect her. Just when I’m saying good-bye to Goldeleh, she has to put in an appearance. She didn’t say anything. She just went “A-haaaa!” in a voice ten feet deep. Then she wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips in this weird way and said “A-hemmm!” and went off to look for Elye. I don’t know what she told him. I only know that as soon as we left Ezrah, I got two slaps that made me see stars.

  “But why?” asked my mother. “What was that for?”

  “He knows what it’s for,” Elye answered and we went back to our hotel.

  It’s time to pack. What a scene! I like to watch people pack. My brother Elye is a whiz at it. As soon as there’s packing to do, he pulls off his coat and gives orders. “Hand me the dirty laundry! …Mama, the teapot! …That hat, Brokheh, quick! …Pinye, those galoshes! You’re blind as a bat, they’re right under your nose! …Motl, what are you standing like a dummy for? Pitch in! All he can do is doodle, doodle, doodle!”

  That’s me! I jump up and grab all I can and throw it at him. Elye yells that I’ll catch it. My mother sticks up for me: “What do you want from the child?” Brokheh objects to my being called a child. My mother remembers I’m an orphan and starts to cry. Elye shouts:

  “Go ahead, cry, cry your eyes out!”

  So long, Antwerp!

  LONDON, YOU SHOULD BURN!

  In all my life I’ve never seen a carnival like the one in London. I mean, it isn’t in London. It’s London that’s the carnival. The clamor, the yammer, the hooting, the tooting, the people—like ants! Where are they all coming from and going to? They must be hungry or running to catch a train. Why else would they knock you down and step all over you?

  I’m talking about Pinye. Pinye, you’ll recall, doesn’t see so well. That’s why he goes around with his head in the sky and his feet dragging after him. He looks like an absentminded angel. His mind is always somewhere else.

  Pinye’s introduction to London came in the railroad station. We had barely crawled out of the train when disaster struck. He was first on the platform, one pant leg hiked up, one sock falling down, his necktie jerked to one side—in short, the usual Pinye. I had just never seen him so excited. He was on fire as though with a fever. The weirdest words came tumbling out of him: “London! England! Disraeli! Buckle! History! Civilization …!” You couldn’t get him to calm down.

  Two minutes later our friend Pinye was on the ground, being walked on as though he were a plank. It’s a good thing Taybl looked for him and screamed: “Pinye, where are you?” Elye leaped into the crowd and pulled him out, as pale and crumpled as an old hat.

  That was for starters. Act Two came later that day, in a neighborhood with the Jewish name of Vaytshepl. That’s a place where you can buy fish and meat and prayer books and apples and barley beer and sugar cakes and herring and prayer shawls and lemons and wool and eggs and bottles and pots and noodles and brooms and whistles and pepper and rope, just like back home. It has everything. It even has your Kasrilevke mud. It smells the same too, only worse.

  It did our hearts good to see Vaytshepl. It did Pinye too much good. “Why, it’s Berdichev!” he shouted. “Children, I swear, we’re not in London at all, we’re in Berdichev!” The next thing I know he’s been given such a Berdichev that I thought it was the hospital for sure. Since then Taybl doesn’t let him take a step in London without her.

  Vaytshepl made me think: good God, if this is London, what is America like? But as far as Brokheh is concerned, London can go up in flames. She hated it the minute she laid eyes on it. “You call this a city?” she says. “It’s hell on earth! It should have burned to the ground a year ago.”

  Elye tries pointing out London’s good sides. It does as much good as chicken soup does a dead man. Brokheh pours fire and brimstone on the place. She has fire on the brain, Brokheh does. Taybl backs her up. My mother says, “Dear God, have mercy and make London our last stopover!”

  The three of us, Elye, Pinye, and me, think the world of London. We like the hustle and the bustle. What’s it to us if the town is always cooking? Let it boil!
Our problem is that we have nothing to do here. We can’t find a Committee. Either no one knows of one or no one wants to tell us. This person has no time, that one is busy. Everyone is in a hurry.

  The reason we need a Committee is simple. We have nothing left to get to America with. Elye is broke. The proceeds from our house have gone up in smoke. Pinye laughs and says to Elye, “Your secret pocket has lost its secret.”

  That gets Elye mad. Elye doesn’t like wisecracks. He’s a brooder, Elye is. He and Pinye are opposites. Pinye calls him “Mr. Family Conscience.” What I like about Pinye is that he’s always in a grand mood. The good thing about the English, he says, is that they don’t speak German. The bad thing is that they speak something worse. Brokheh would trade three Englishmen for one German. Who ever heard of a country, she says, that has money called “aypens,” “toppens,” and “troppens?”

  I’ve told you we’re looking for a Committee. Finding a Committee in London is like finding a needle in a haystack. But there’s a great God above. One day we’re out walking in Vaytshepl. I mean one evening. That is, it was daytime. The point is, there’s no daylight in London. It’s evening all day long. Anyhow, along comes a Jew with a short jacket, a fine hat, and eyes on the lookout for something.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you’re all Jews!”

  That’s what he says, the man with the fine hat. Pinye answers: “You bet! They don’t come any more Jewish than we do.”

  “How would you like to do a good deed?” says the Jew.

  “Such as what?” Pinye asks.

  “I have an anniversary of a death today and can’t get to synagogue to say the kaddish. I need nine Jews to pray with me. Is this young man bar mitzvah?”

  He meant me! I liked being called a young man and taken for thirteen.

  We followed the Jew up some steps to a dark room full of ragged children and smelling of fried fish. No one else was there. That still left us seven Jews short. The man offered us a seat and ran back down. He came and went a few times until he had rounded up ten men.

  Meanwhile I talked to the children and watched the fish fry on the stove. The English call it fishink tships. A tship is a boat for catching fish. It’s not a bad dish, fishink tships. One thing is for sure: it’s a lot better than Brokheh says it is. The truth is that I wouldn’t have minded a piece of it. I’ll bet Brokheh wouldn’t have, either. We had hardly eaten all day. Lately, our only food has been herring and radishes. They sell swell black radishes in Vaytshepl. But the Jew didn’t have the brains to invite us for dinner. Maybe he didn’t think we were hungry. At the end of the prayer he thanked us and said we could go.

  Elye didn’t want to give up. He kept looking at the fishink tships with his mouth watering while asking the Jew if he knew of a Committee. The Jew kept one hand on the door knob and talked with the other. There was a Committee all right, he said. He just couldn’t say a good word about it. That is, it wasn’t really a Committee. Or rather, it wasn’t one Committee. It was several. The London Committees didn’t hand out cash so fast. Whoever wanted help had to bring papers and documents proving they were emigrants for America. That was because a lot of Jews in London were just pretending to be emigrants. And once you brought all the documents, you were given a ticket back to Russia. The London Committees weren’t big on America.

  That made my brother Elye sore. You already know he has a temper. It doesn’t take much to set Pinye off either. He began to shout:

  “But that’s impossible!! How can they send us back to Russia? This is the land of the megneh kahteh.”

  Don’t ask me what that is. The man let us out the door and said: “You can talk all you want. Here’s the address of a Committee. You’ll see for yourselves.”

  The smell of fishink tships followed us down the stairs. Although we were all thinking about food, no one mentioned it but Brokheh. Did she let loose with a mouthful! She hoped to God, she said, that the people upstairs would choke to death on their stinking fish that you could smell a mile away.

  That didn’t go down well with my mother. “What do you have against that poor family?” she asked. “They’re fine folk. Look at the hole they live in—and they still remember to say the prayers for the dead.”

  “Mother-in-law!” answered Brokheh. “They should roast in hell with their prayers and their fishink tships! If you kidnap strangers on the street, the least you can do is offer their child a piece of fishink!”

  She meant me. One minute I’m a bar-mitzvah boy and the next I’m a child again. Happy times are here if Brokheh is taking my side!

  The six of us went off to the Committee. The Jew’s parting advice was to take a tram. The problem with London trams is that they don’t like to stop. You can flag them down till you’re blue in the face, they just fly right past you. It doesn’t help to run after them either, because you’ll never catch them. Luckily an Englishman saw us waving at them and took us to a place where he told us to wait.

  Sure enough, we didn’t have to wait long. In a minute a tram pulled up and we climbed aboard, Elye and Pinye and my mother and Brokheh and Taybl and me. Along comes a conductor selling tickets. “Skolke vif l?” asks Pinye. “Aypens,” says the conductor. Pinye gives him aypens. “Not aypens! Aypens!” the conductor says, getting sore. Although Pinye just laughs, Elye loses his temper. “Aypens or not aypens!” he shouts. “Which do you want?” The conductor yanks a cord to stop the tram and chucks us into the street like a madman. You might think we had tried robbing his change belt. How were we supposed to know that eight pence wasn’t ha’-pence?

  “Well? Does London deserve to burn or not?”

  That’s Brokheh. We went the rest of the way on foot.

  The London Committee was the same jolly scene as every other Committee we had been to. The same emigrants filled the same courtyard like rubbish and the same men smoked the same cigars and said, “Next!” The only difference was that the other Committees spoke German and had whiskers and this committee spoke English and was clean-shaven. The women had big teeth, wore hairpieces with curls, and were so ugly they made you want to puke—and there they sat, mocking us with their eyes and pointing at us with their fingers and fidgeting at having to deal with us.

  Back in the street two girls stopped Elye and told him to go to a bahbeh shahp. We didn’t know that meant he should get a haircut. What weird people! They go around full of grease stains from the smelly fishink tships they eat in the street and don’t like hair! There are plenty of drunks lying in the gutters here, too. That’s something you never saw back home. England would be a fine country, Brokheh says, if only someone would put a torch to it.

  “What good would that do?”

  That’s Elye. Did he get it from Brokheh! She’s something when she lets rip. Either she isn’t talking to you or else you have to stop your ears and run for your life. I quote:

  “How dare you stick up for this God-accursed, gray-skied, bare-cheeked, twirly-curled, greasy-stained, beer-breathed, beggarly city of old maids and fishink tships and charming Vaytsheplakh and thieving conductors and Jews who pray for the dead and don’t give you the time of day? Fire is too good for it!”

  That’s what she said, Brokheh did, all in one breath, praying with her hands clasped together:

  “London, I wish you would burn!” God Almighty! When will we get to America?

  Part Two

  CONGRATULATIONS! WE’RE IN AMERICA!

  Congratulations, we’re in America!

  That’s what they tell us, anyway. No one has seen America yet because we’re still on Ella’s Island. Why did they name it for Ella? “Because Ella had no fella,” Pinye says. Pinye can’t resist a rhyme.

  Pinye is peeved at Ella’s Island for keeping us poor immigrants here while the rich ones go ashore. That’s something you would expect from a thieving Russky, he says, not from a free country like America. In America rich and poor are supposed to be equal. Pinye starts spouting words: “Columbus …Shakespeare …Buckle …Civilization …” He’
s decided to write a poem sending America to the devil but he doesn’t have pencil or paper.

  Elye says that if Pinye doesn’t like America, he can turn around and go home. I’ve told you they never agree. “Mr. Summer and Mr. Winter,” Brokheh calls them. Elye doesn’t take that sitting down. “Fat cow” and “Nanny goat” are two of his names for Brokheh. (Some of the others aren’t fit for print.) My mother tells Brokheh that whoever doesn’t want to get scratched should stay out of a fight between tomcats.

  What are we doing on Ella’s Island? We’re waiting for our friends and acquaintances to get us out. We’ve been in and out of so many places since leaving London and boarding ship that we know all the questions by heart. “What are your names, please?” “Where are you going?” “Whom do you know in America?”

  We give the same answers each time. Once there was a Jew named Peysi the cantor. Peysi died and left a widow: that’s my mother. My mother has a son: that’s Elye. Elye has a wife: that’s Brokheh. He also has a friend: that’s Pinye. Pinye has a wife: that’s Taybl. And there’s me, Motl, and my friend Mendl. Brokheh calls him Teeny because he’s already in his teens.

  Whom do we know in America? Why, half the country and just about every Jew! To begin with, there are our neighbors Moyshe the bookbinder, Fat Pesye, and their gang. We list their full names for the immigration officials: “There’s Pinye-Log, and Velvel-Tomcat, and Mendl-Ratface, and Hayyim-Ox, and Faytl-Petelulu, and Berl-Give-Me-More, and Zerakh-Butternose, and Hirshl-Bumpy. Bumpy is called Bumpy because—”

  The immigration officials stop us. “All right, we’ve had enough children. Let’s have some adults.”

  We give them some adults. “There’s Yoyneh the bagel maker, a mean Jew if ever there was one. That’s one. There’s Yoyneh’s wife, Riveleh-Chemise. That’s two. The chemise was stolen at the border …”

  My mother hears “border,” remembers her linens, and begins to cry. Elye scolds her. My mother tells him she’s in America. Now that she needn’t worry about her eyes, she’ll cry all she wants.