The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son
Page 35
Having run an edvehteizink kempeyn for Elye’s Passover wine all over the Loaweh Ist Seid, Pinye went to my brother and said:
“Look here, Elye. I’ve edvehteized your wine as the world’s best. Don’t let me down. Let’s not have a wine like that drink you made in Russia. In America wine is wine, not barley beer!”
Elye was too offended to answer. He didn’t have to because Brokheh did it for him. Did she let Pinye have it!
“You’d think America was a country of snobs and ‘ristocrats who did nothing but drink wine and bathe in honey! Believe me, I wish I had a pehni for every quart of bread, kvass, and pickle brine that’s drunk in this country every day! Why, I’ve seen with my own eyes an awreitnitshke on Grend Strit asking for a bucket of kvass and ten dozen sour apples. Believe me, they’re better than all your ahrehndzhiz and grepfruhts that no one knows how to slice or eat …”
I’m only giving you the gist of what she said, because she’s hard to stop once she gets going. Pinye knows that as well as I do. He put on his hat and walked off. That’s the only way to deal with Brokheh. I do the same.
Kendee–Seegah–Steshenree Staw
with Five Rumz. Gud Biznis,
Best Neighborhood.
A Bahgn! Singilmehn, Quick Sale.
That’s what it said in the noospeypeh. When you’re single and have no family to support, you don’t haggle over the price. It looked like the biznis for us. In fact, it seemed tailor-made. We went to have a look.
The men went first. That’s Pinye, Elye, Maik, and myself. Since we liked what we saw, the women went too—that’s Brokheh, Taybl, and my mother. They didn’t like what they saw at all. Each found something wrong with it. My mother thought it was too far from her synagogue. Of course there was a synagogue next door, but it wasn’t the Kasrilevke shul.
“I suppose,” Elye said, “that the Kasrilevke shul prays to a different God.”
“It’s the same God,” said my mother. “It’s just not the same Jews.”
She’s used to the Jews from Kasrilevke. She says they have their own way of praying. She can’t imagine listening to any cantor but Hirsh-Ber.
That was my mother’s objection. Brokheh had one of her own. What were we going to do with so many rumz? Who needed five of them?
Our neighbor Pesye had a suggestion. Why didn’t we rent the rumz out? In America that’s called taking in bawdehz. A bawdeh pays to live in your house and eat his meals with you.
“That’s all we need!” Brokheh said. “A bunch of bawdehz at our table!”
“That’s all we need!” Taybl repeated. “A bunch of bawdehz!”
“Maybe for once,” Pinye said to her, “you’ll say something original instead of parroting whatever Brokheh says!”
“It’s easy to criticize!” said Brokheh, turning on Pinye.
“It’s easy to criticize!” Taybl agreed.
“What will you do if Brokheh ever leaves you?” Pinye asked.
“What she does is her own business,” Brokheh said.
Taybl said, “What I do is my own business.”
“Foo!” Pinye spat and walked off.
Don’t think we were the only ones to have a look at that biznis. Our in-laws, friends, and acquaintances went too. The first to go was Yoyneh the bagel maker. After him went Riveleh. They went separately so as not to leave their knishes.
Moyshe the bookbinder was next, followed by Fat Pesye …baht ekskyooz mee, eiv meyd ah misteyk. Fat Pesye went before Moyshe. He was followed by some friends from the Kasrilevke shul who know a thing or two about biznis.
The singilmehn wasn’t nice to them. In fact, he drove them all away. He had never seen such a large family in his life, he said. My mother was so upset that she went back with Brokheh to talk to him. Brokheh gave him an earful. That made the singilmehn swear to God he’d changed his mind. He had wanted to sell his biznis, he said, in order to get married, but if a woman could have a mouth like Brokheh’s, marriage was not a good idea. Better to stay a singilmehn and keep the biznis.
That’s just talk. The singilmehn wants to sell his biznis as badly as we want to buy it. We’ve almost sold our stend. I say almost because the grinhawn has already given us an advance. That’s called a dehpahzit. We’re beginning to feel sorry we took it because he hangs around our stend all day long. You can see he doesn’t want to leave it.
He’s a worse pest than my brother Elye. Elye is pure gold next to him. He gets on our nerves so badly that we’ve thrown his dehpahzit back at him. But he doesn’t want to take it. He’s fallen in love with our stend. He’s sure we’re making a mint from it.
“A grinhawn is always a grinhawn!”
That’s Pinye’s opinion.
What exactly is a grinhawn? I wish you’d asked me something easier.
My friend Meik doesn’t know either. It’s a word everyone uses, so we do too. Just for fun I took some chalk and drew a picture on the sidewalk of the Jew who’s buying our stand. I put a big green horn on his forehead. You should have heard everyone laugh! They all recognized our grinhawn.
The only person not to laugh was Elye. He didn’t whack me. He just made me wet a rag and erase the grinhawn. Otherwise we’d have to pay a fine.
You pay fines here for everything. Try spitting in the strit and a pleesmin comes along and hauls you off to the steyshn. They make you pay five dahlehz there. It’s a real strict place, America.
I suppose you think that because of that no one spits in the strit and New York is as clean as Antwerp. You’re wrong. People spit and hawk up phlegm like all get-out. America is a free country. Maybe it’s different on Fif Tevenyoo. I don’t mean all of it. I mean the strits where the rich people live. A man spits when he’s feeling bad. The rich have it good, so why spit?
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature
978-1-4804-4083-8
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