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

by Sholem Aleichem

  Nekstdawrikeh inshurinks isn’t really for your next-door neighbor. It’s a way of earning a few hundred dahlehz from the inshurinks kahmpeni if he dies. And your nekstdawrikeh does the same: if you die first, the money is his. You both pay the kahmpeni a kvawdeh a week. The kahmpeni comes to get it. I mean the kehlehkteh does. That’s Pinye. He kehlehks your kvawdehz and keeps half for his kehmishn.

  That’s kehlehktink. Taking out inshurinks for the first time is called reitink ah pahlisee. If Pinye is the eydzhent who reits it, he earns fifteen-to-one. That means that if the primyim is a kvawdeh a week, he gets fifteen kvawdehz from the kahmpeni in one shot. You can figure out for yourself what two or three pahliseez a day add up to. That’s a heap of kvawdehz. It’s like coming into an inheritance.

  “God help us,” Brokheh says to Pinye. “You’re flooding the house with money!” You should see Taybl blush as she watches Pinye shake the nikelz and kvawdehz from his pockets.

  “So, what did you think?” Pinye answers, making separate piles of the kvawdehz and the nikelz. “That Kahnegi, Vendehbilt, and Rahknfelleh were born millionaires?”

  If I had a fresh sheet of paper, I’d take some charcoal and sketch. This is what I’d put in my picture:

  A table. At the head of it sits my mother, her arms crossed on her chest. To one side of her is Brokheh—big and tall, with monster feet. To the other side is Taybl—a skinny little quarter of a chicken. Both are at work, one sewing and one knitting. My brother Elye sits at the table’s end, a grown man with a beard. In one hand he’s holding ah bahntsh kahdz and in the other some dahleh bilz. They’re what he kehlehkted today.

  Pinye is hunched across from him, smooth-shaven, a real American. He’s emptying his pockets of kvawdehz and nikelz. Being nearsighted, he brings every kvawdeh and nikl to his nose. Two piles rise high on the table, one of kvawdehz and one of nikelz. Pinye goes on counting. He reaches into his pockets for more coins. You can see that his pockets are still bulging. They look ready to burst.

  Nothing lasts forever. And no one is ever satisfied. We’re tired of going from door to door for kvawdehz and nikelz. Better your own slice of bread than the next man’s loaf. That’s what Brokheh says.

  The first to sour on kehlehktink was Elye. He was fed up with the biznis. I mean it wasn’t the biznis, it was the kahstemehz. Some stopped paying. “You can take your firnitsheh back,” they told him. “We need it like a hole in the head.” Others were full of complaints. Why did the bed squeak? Why did they see two faces in the mirror? Why didn’t the chest of drawers open and close? How come the stool weighed a ton and was hard as nails to sit on?

  Some kahstemehz disappeared. They had moved to another epahtment and go find them. Even worse were the ones who wanted to keep up the payments. They liked the firnitsheh, they just didn’t have the money. The man of the house was sick. Or out of work. Or on streik. What was Elye to do? Nobody wants to lose a kahstemeh. And so he paid for them out of his own pahkit. There was no end to it. You can imagine what it was like.

  You think Pinye likes his dzhahb any better? Think again! It’s easier to cross the Red Sea, he says, than to land a kahstemeh. You talk to some idiot for three days and three nights, you explain what inshurinks is all about, you finally get him to fill out an eplikayshn—and the next day he’s changed his mind or been ridzhekted. That means some lowdown doctor wrote the truth. He saw the fellow naked and didn’t like what he saw.

  The biggest disaster for an inshurinks eydzhent is a leps. A pahlisee lepsiz when a kahstemeh stops paying. Now it’s the eydzhent’s turn to pay the kahmpeni fifteen times the primyim. If not for all the lepsiz, Pinye says, he’d be a rich man. And it’s just his luck that several kahstemehz have lepst together. You would think they planned it that way.

  “They can all go to hell, the kahstemehz and the inshurinks and the lepsiz and the kahmpeni!” Pinye says. It’s time he and Elye struck out on their own. They’ve each managed to save a few dahlehz. That’s enough to start a biznis.

  It’s official. We’re going into biznis!

  WE GO INTO BIZNIS

  Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it in the noospeypehz, even if it’s bird’s milk. Work? It’s in the peypehz. Workers? They’re there, too. A husband or a wife? Also. A biznis? Try the peypehz again. That’s what we did for days until we came across the following ed-vehteizmint:

  Sigahz–Stayshenree–Kendee–

  Sawdehvawdeh Stend For Sale.

  Across from a Skul. On Account of

  Family Trahbelz. Gehrehntid Gud

  Biznis. Hahry!

  Leave it to Brokheh to think of everything that could go wrong. For one thing, she said, how did we know the edvehteizmint was telling the truth? And besides, why crawl into bed with a bunch of family trahbelz? It was probably some husband and his wife. Why get involved in a divorce case?

  Maybe you think it was only this edvehteizmint that Brokheh didn’t like. Believe me, there were a hundred of them. She found something wrong with each. She was against whatever Elye was for. Just because he had gone and shaved off three-quarters of his beard, she said, he shouldn’t think he was such a big shot. “So what if I did?” Elye said. “Your father shaved off all four!”

  That brought Pinye into it. “You know what?” he said. “I’ll give you odds that out of one hundred million Americans, you won’t find half a dozen with beards. Call me a blahfeh if I’m wrong.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” my mother asked. “If ducks go barefoot, that means I can’t wear shoes? Let’s change the subject.”

  It was bad enough, she said, that Peysi the cantor’s son had wiped the beard off his face. To think her enemies had lived to see the day! Why make it worse by talking about it?

  Our new sawdehvawdeh stend had several strong points. One was that Elye was an experienced soft drink manufacturer. Since he made the sirip himself, we could afford to sell a big glass of plain sawdehvawdeh for a pehni and a glass with a flavor for two. And we bought the cheapest kehndeez and could sell them for a pehni a handful.

  They were so cheap we ate them ourselves. I mean Mendl, Pinye, and me. All three of us worked at the stend and took kehndee when no one was looking—that is, when Brokheh wasn’t there. The trouble was that she was there all the time, helping out with the biznis. Everyone helped, my mother and Taybl too. You might think so many biznismen serving a kahstemeh all at once would frighten him to death, but it worked out pretty well. Kahstemehz like a crowded establishment.

  The best time for our biznis was summer. A hot summer day in New York is worse than a furnace in hell. Everyone wants to cool off with an eiskrim. For a pehni we sold a senvitsh with two chocolate crackers and eiskrim in between. Half of that was our profit. It wasn’t our biggest item, though. The real moneymaker in a sawdehvawdeh stend is a drink called seideh. It’s sweet and sour and has bubbles that tickle your tongue. All the experts say it tastes like champagne. Even though it’s an American drink, Elye knows how to make it.

  There’s nothing Elye can’t make. Don’t let Pinye tell you otherwise. He keeps teasing Elye that the only good thing about his seideh is that it’s cold. Apart from that, Pinye says, it’s for the birds. “If it’s for the birds,” Elye says, “how come you drink it all day?” “What’s it to you what I drink?” Pinye answers. “How much can one person drink? If I drank it from morning to night, it still wouldn’t come to a nikl’s worth.”

  That’s when Brokheh butts in. A nikl, she says, is money too. So of course Taybl has to stick up for her husband. Pinye, she says, is a full partner in the biznis and can be allowed a nikl’s worth of seideh. It’s a good thing my mother was there and said: “Why, I wouldn’t touch that seideh if you paid me! It looks like bread kvass and tastes like death!”

  We all laughed so hard that we stopped quarreling.

  Biznis was even better when the vawdehmehln season began. We cut the mehlehnz into slices and sold them for a pehni a slice. If the mehln was a good one, we made a nice p
rofit and had enough left over for supper. You have to finish a vawdehmehln the day you open it because the next morning it’s nothing but red frizz. Mendl, Pinye, and I prayed every day that the kahstemehz would leave some for us.

  Some items have a sizn. As soon as summer was over, the seideh and vawdehmehln disappeared. Others sell all year round, like sigahs and sigehrehts. We kept up a good biznis in them.

  There are all kinds of sigehrehts. Some are one for a pehni and some are two. Mendl, Pinye, and I sometimes cop a few toofehz. Who has to know?

  In America it’s called smawkink. Once I was smawkink a toofeh with Mendl, a puff for him and a puff for me. It would have been fine if God hadn’t created Brokheh. She smelled the smoke and ratted to Elye, who gave me a smawkink I’d rather forget. It wasn’t so much the smawkink that upset him as its being Saturday. It seems that if Peysi the cantor’s son is caught smawkink on the Sabbath, you’re allowed to beat him to death. Even my mother agreed that this time the dog deserved the stick. That’s why I gave up smawkink. I can’t even stand the smell any more.

  Our stend also sells peypehz, Jewish dailies and magazines. We don’t make much on them but it gives Pinye something to read. Once his nose is in a peypeh, that’s it. Noospeypehz affect him like magnets, he says. He’d like to write for the peypehz himself. He’s even been up to Ist Brawdvey, where they’re printed. He won’t tell us what he did there. I sure hope he didn’t bring them his poems.

  I’ll bet he did, though, because whenever a new batch of peypehz arrives, Pinye grabs them and goes through them with a fine tooth comb. His hands actually shake. After a while he jumps up and rushes off to Ist Brawdvey. “What’s on Ist Brawdvey?” Elye asks. “Biznis,” Pinye tells him. “I thought our biznis was here,” Elye says. “You call this a biznis?” Pinye says. “Seven people eating their way through one stend—some biznis!” “Where do you get seven?” Elye asks. Pinye counts them on his fingers. He and Taybl are two. Elye and Brokheh are four. My mother is five. And the two little men—that’s me and Mendl—make seven.

  That upset my mother. Mendl and me, she said, make our living fair and square. We deliver the peypehz to our kahstemehz before the stend opens in the morning and help out after skul. (I’ve forgotten to tell you we go to skul now.) She gave it to Pinye, my mother did.

  Half of what she says is in American by now. She just gets everything backwards. Instead of cooking a tshikn in the kitshn, she cooks the kitshn in a tshikn. But she laughs at herself along with everyone. “Abi ir veyst az bei mir a tshikn iz a kitshn un a kitshn iz a tshikn, vahts deh difrins?” she asks.

  You tell me. What language is that?

  HALLAW, HOMEBOY!

  Early one morning my friend Mendl and I were delivering the peypehz to our kahstemehz when there was a clap on my back and someone said:

  “Hallaw, homeboy!”

  I turn around—it’s Big Motl, the same boy who hung around with us in Cracow, Lemberg, Vienna, and Antwerp. I’ve told you how he taught me to give a governor and be a ventriloquist. He left for America before us and was already doing awreit in New York while we were still pounding the streets of Vaytshepl. That is, he found a dzhahb at a klinnehz.

  “What kind of a dzhahb is that?” I asked as we walked.

  Big Motl explained that a klinnehz cleaned clothes. You took a pair of creased pants, stuck them into a machine built like a flat oven, shut the lid, pulled a lever—and out came the pants as good as new.

  “And what’s your dzhahb?” Big Motl asked.

  “Dehlivehrink noospeypehz,” I said. “We bring them to our kahstemehz before skul. And after skul we voik in the biznis. We have a kawneh stend and make a living.”

  “Hey!” said Big Motl. “You speak pretty good English. How much do you two biznismen make?”

  “About a dahleh a week,” I say. “Sometimes a dahleh-and-akvawdeh.”

  “Dats awl?” boasts Big Motl. “I make three dahlehz a week. So what’s this dzhentlminz neym?”

  I said it was Mendl. Motl laughed and said, “Yuck!” “So what should it be?” I asked. Motl thought and said that Mendl should call himself Meik. That sounded a lot better. “What do you go by?” I asked. “Meks,” says Motl. “Since I’m a Motl too,” I say, “I guess I should also be Meks.” “Yaw Meks awredi,” he says. When he left us he said: “Si yuh suhn, Meks! Si yuh, Meik!”

  We agreed to meet on Sunday and go to the moofink pikshehz. We swapped addresses and went our separate ways.

  After Sunday dinneh Meik and I went to the moofink pikshehz to see Tshahli Tsheplin. Elye and Pinye came too. Tshahli Tsheplin was all Pinye could talk about: what a stah he was, and how much money he made, and how he was even a Jew. But Pinye and Elye never agree. Tshahli Tsheplin, Elye said, was not such a big deal. “I suppose you think anyone can make a thousand dahlehz a week,” Pinye said. “How do you know what Tshahli Tsheplin makes?” asked Elye. “Have you counted his money?” Pinye said he read it in the peypehz. “And how do you know he’s a Jew?” asked Elye. That, Pinye said, was in the peypehz too. “And how do the peypehz know?” Elye asked. “I suppose they were at his circumcision.” “The peypehz,” Pinye said, “know everything. How else would we know that Tshahli Tsheplin’s a deaf mute, and can’t read or write, and has a drunk for a father, and was a circus clown?” “Suppose it’s all a big fat lie?” asked Elye, cool as a cucumber. That got Pinye sore. “For a Jew yourself,” he said, “you’re one big pain in the neck.” Pinye’s right. Elye may be my brother, but he sure is a pain.

  We had just arrived at the tikkit vindeh when we heard someone say:

  “Hah duh yuh doo, Meks? Hah duh yuh doo, Meik?”

  It was Big Motl. I mean Big Meks.

  “Don’t buy any tikkits,” Big Meks said. “I’m trittink today.”

  He slipped half a dahleh through the vindeh and asked the tikkit girl for three tikkits in the belkehni.

  “Who’s this character?” Elye wanted to know.

  I told him. Elye looked Big Meks up and down and asked why he didn’t introduce himself. “I suppose you’re too much of an American to speak Jewish,” he said.

  Big Meks didn’t answer. But from the entrance came a voice that said:

  “Joik!”

  We all turned to look. There was no one there. Pinye and Elye scanned the lahbi. They looked at the ceiling and stared at each other. Who could it be? Big Meks took me and Mendl by the hand and the three of us went ahpstaihz. On the way he told us it was ventriloquism. He even did it for us again. Mendl and I laughed so hard that we were rolling in the aisles even before Tshahli Tsheplin’s act began.

  I swear, you’ve never in your life seen a number like Big Meks! The greatest actor in the world is Tshahli Tsheplin and Meks does him down to the last detail. As soon as we left the theater he clapped on a little black mustache, turned out his feet, and started to waddle with his rear sticking out. You couldn’t have told him and Tshahli apart. Mendl—I mean Meik—went so wild that he gave Big Meks a kiss. Everyone outside the theater pointed and said, “There goes the second Tshahli Tsheplin.”

  Even a grouch like Elye split his sides. Not for long, though. He stopped laughing pretty quick. How come? Because all of a sudden a voice said from a cellar:

  “Joik!”

  We all stared down into the cellar, trying to see who was there. Big Meks did too. Just then the voice called from overhead:

  “Joik!”

  Elye straightened up and stared at the rooftops. We all did. So did Big Meks. I tell you, it beat all! Only Meik and I knew where the voice was coming from. When we couldn’t hold it in any longer, we burst out laughing.

  Elye was sore as hell. If we hadn’t been in the strit, he would have boxed our ears but good. But being smack in the middle of New York, he made do with a few juicy curses. When he had bawled Meik and me out, he pointed to Big Meks and said:

  “Why don’t you learn from your friend? He’s your age and look how he behaves himself.”

  “Joik!” said a vo
ice behind Elye.

  Elye spun around. So did Pinye and the others. Big Meks looked startled. Meik and I stood there howling.

  “In America,” Pinye said, “even the sidewalks talk. I’d like to know who they’re calling joik.”

  “Look in the mirror,” Elye said.

  Was he surprised when a muffled voice said from below the ground:

  “You’re dead wrong, Misteh Elye! The joik is you!”

  That was Elye’s last visit to the moofink pikshehz. He doesn’t even want to hear about Tshahli Tsheplin any more.

  THE BIZNIS GROWS

  In America no one stands still. You have to get ahead and grow bigger and better. Since we didn’t do enough biznis at our stend for seven people, we decided to move on to a staw. I’ve told you that in America you only have to look in the peypehz. There’s nothing you won’t find there.

  A going staw isn’t cheap. You pay more for the name than for the merchandise. Even our stend, which barely cleared ten dahlehz a week, was worth money because of its name. We sold it to a grinhawn. He didn’t bother to check how much we made from it. It was enough for him to see seven people busy making a living. He was sure we had a good biznis.

  We sold our stend with all its trimmings, the sawdeh fuhntin and the shawkays included. The one thing we kept for ourselves was Elye’s recipes for sirips and seideh. All the money in the world couldn’t get him to part with them. Let everyone make his own product, he said.

  Take Elye’s Passover wine. It already has a reputation, even though this is only his first try. All our friends and acquaintances in the Kasrilevke shul have told us they’ll drink it next Passover. Pinye has edvehteized it all over New York. He’s let everyone know that even the prehzident intends to serve it at his Seder in the Veit Howss.

  Pinye is a fiend at edvehteizink. He says it’s what America is all about. Every manufacturer edvehteizes his product. Every working-man edvehteizes his work. The whole world may know I make a drink that tastes like vinegar, but if I say it’s sweet as sugar it will sell. You don’t think what I do is worth a dahleh? I say it’s worth a million—and now pay up! That’s America. It’s a free country.