The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  He didn’t rest on his laurels. Behind the high forehead framed by the short-clipped hair and the uptilted hatbrim, his brain didn’t cease churning, scheming, speculating. One day he came to the conclusion that the kerchiefs his firm turned out were too long and too wide and used up too much wool. Sure, they sold well and made a profit, but who said they had to be the size they were? Would it be a tragedy if they were a touch shorter and narrower? No dumb Russian peasant or marketwoman would catch on. What was an inch? Nothing to a customer, but to the manufacturer—a great deal.… With the pencil he always kept tucked behind his ear, he calculated swiftly.

  Each worker finished 3 kerchiefs per day, which came to 150 or so kerchiefs in all, more than 1,000 per week, and about 50,000 per year, counting days lost for holidays and such. By trimming just one inch from each kerchief, he could effect a most respectable saving over the year.

  The very next morning he ordered the weavers to drop an inch from the kerchiefs.

  “Hey, the boss wants we should circumcise off an inch,” Tevye the World Isn’t Lawless remarked with a wink.

  Simha Meir promptly cut him short. “I don’t want to hear such talk. The kerchiefs are too long and too wide. Do what you’re told, and don’t talk so much. No one has to know what goes on inside the factory.”

  The weavers did as they were told and stretched the kerchiefs out sufficiently to make up for the missing inch of material. No one caught on to the deception—not the customers or even the retail merchants—and it all went off as smooth as butter.

  Simha Meir began to scheme ways to achieve additional savings. He had a kerchief made of a blend of virgin wool and recycled yarn. Only an absolute expert could detect the difference between this and the pure wool product, and only after he had unraveled the kerchief between his fingers.

  Simha Meir instituted other innovations. He designed a kerchief that was wool at the borders but cotton in the center. To mask this discrepancy, he had the border handsomely decorated with colorful flowers by Tevye, who was adept at this type of work. The Russian women seized upon the item, and Simha Meir began to manufacture them in quantity. He even took on additional help to weave the flowered borders. The mongrel kerchiefs became the rage of Lodz, and soon other manufacturers pirated the design, but not before Simha Meir had reaped a handsome profit.

  At the same time he began to turn out an all-cotton kerchief, one that was very thin and flimsy, but so cheap as to be affordable by even the poorest woman. The workers were able to finish these kerchiefs at a rate of seven or eight per day. On the principle that the cheapest candy deserves the fanciest wrapper, Simha Meir arranged for the kerchiefs to emerge very colorful and patterned in loud designs.

  The cotton kerchiefs made an enormous hit, but Haim Alter began to grumble about his firm’s reputation’s being damaged by turning out such a shoddy product. He spoke of “integrity” “responsibility,” but Simha Meir quickly challenged such ridiculous pretensions. “If Father-in-law would be good enough to show me where it is written that weaving wool will bring greater rewards in paradise than weaving cotton, I’ll be grateful,” he said in singsong. “Besides, why bother your head about these things? I’ll take care of it already.”

  And he elbowed Haim Alter away from buyers with whom he had business to discuss.

  Haim Alter vowed to himself to reassert his authority. From time to time he burst into the factory, shouted, and threw his weight around, but no one took him seriously. Simha Meir was the only acknowledged boss here.

  Not that Haim Alter had any complaints against his son-in-law. Just as Samuel Leibush before him, Simha Meir shoved all kinds of papers in front of him, and he signed without even reading them. Nor did he ever refuse to give him whatever cash he demanded. The only difference was that unlike Samuel Leibush, Simha Meir marked down every ruble, every groschen. He didn’t share Haim Alter’s view that the less figuring, the greater gains.

  Samuel Leibush tried very subtly to instigate trouble. “Reb Haim,” he grumbled, “I don’t trust that runt. Best keep an eye on him.”

  But Haim Alter wouldn’t do anything to disturb his own equanimity. He much preferred to follow his regimen of banquets, naps, and other material comforts. Most of all, he was reluctant to let his darling Priveh go all alone to the spas, where the men literally devoured her with their eyes. He placed his trust in God, with whose help everything would turn out all right.

  “Father-in-law can go away with an easy mind,” Simha Meir assured Haim Alter. “Why stay here in all this smoke and noise? I’ll take care of everything already.”

  At the end of the year, when Simha Meir made the annual audit, it turned out that the factory had done quite well indeed. The new cotton kerchiefs, the savings on wool, the accurate bookkeeping, the time spent in the noisy cafés, getting the orders off on time and supervising the help closely had all paid off handsomely. Besides, Simha Meir had pulled off some nice little deals on the side that he didn’t enter in the firm’s books. He had bought several lots of cotton on credit and had disposed of them, sight unseen, at a nice profit. Since these were personal deals and the risk had been entirely his own, he felt that the profits belonged to him alone. Besides, his father-in-law had drawn far more than his share of profits for the year.

  With relish, Simha Meir scribbled figures everywhere—on tablecloths, on swatches of goods, on walls and doors. He had every reason to be pleased. The year’s efforts had been most lucrative. Still, he was discontented. He couldn’t stop brooding about Jacob Bunem, who, just as in the courtyard years ago, had again scored a tremendous personal victory over his elder brother, and Simha Meir’s guts churned with envy. He couldn’t sleep nights on account of Jacob Bunem’s incredible stroke of luck.

  Seventeen

  SHORTLY AFTER SIMHA MEIR’S WEDDING, the matchmaker Samuel Zanvil came proposing a spectacular match, one that left Abraham Hersh Ashkenazi temporarily and untypically dumbfounded.

  “With whom do you propose to match my son?” he asked in disbelief. “With a granddaughter of Reb Kalman Eisen?”

  “Yes, yes. Kalman Eisen’s granddaughter,” Samuel Zanvil said, drawing out every word and gazing triumphantly at the father. “Just as I’ve told you.” He even neglected to add the honorary title “Reb” to the great man’s name.

  To heighten the effect, he grew emboldened and boasted of his gall in arranging the match, which wasn’t exactly the truth. “I went there,” he bragged, “and said, ‘Look here, Kalman, I want to join your family with that of Abraham Hersh Ashkenazi of Lodz—’ ”

  Abraham Hersh could listen to no more of the matchmaker’s self-approbation, and he interrupted. “Said this, said that, the main thing is—was it at your instigation that this happened or were you told to arrange the match?”

  “Told, told to—” Samuel Zanvil repeated crabbily, furious that his word had been doubted. “The bride’s side asked for it.…”

  “Hard to understand,” Abraham Hersh observed, reaching for a hefty pinch of snuff with which to clear his head.

  Even though Kalman Eisen lived in Warsaw, there wasn’t a Jew in Poland who hadn’t heard of him. He was known to be worth millions. Besides, he was a man of such monumental ego that people trembled in his presence. He was also a follower of the Ger Rabbi—and therefore an opponent of the Alexander Rabbi—and Abraham Hersh couldn’t understand the reason for the proposal. Kalman Eisen’s household had put out the feeler. And for whom—Jacob Bunem? He might have understood had it been Simha Meir, the prodigy, but Jacob Bunem? …

  The only one who knew the secret was Jacob Bunem himself.

  At his brother’s wedding, actually right by the wedding canopy out in the courtyard, a thin, sallow girl, whose white gown made her appear even leaner and more sallow, struck up a conversation with him. “Maybe you’d move a bit, sir,” she drawled. “I’d like to see the ceremony, too, but you seem to be blocking the whole yard.”

  He moved aside, but she persisted. “Maybe you wouldn’t min
d raising me up a trifle?” she asked, laughing to her girlfriends. “And don’t shake that candle so, you’ll drip wax all over my dress.”

  He blushed, only making her laugh harder.

  “Are you afraid I’m going to bite you?” she asked. “I don’t bite.”

  He replied earnestly, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  The girl giggled at his bashfulness. “You don’t seem as pious and fanatical as you’re trying to make out,” she observed, moving closer and pressing against him in the crush. Without quite knowing how it happened, they suddenly found themselves holding hands.

  “Why did you let your brother marry first?” she asked. “You’re bigger.”

  “He’s older,” Jacob Bunem replied.

  “Oh? And do you want a bride, too?”

  Jacob Bunem was too embarrassed to answer.

  The girl squeezed his hand. “Would you like me for a bride?” she asked, laughing slyly.

  Jacob Bunem flushed all over.

  “You’re quite the cavalier,” she observed. “But you’d appeal to me more if you shed that Hasidic attire and put on European clothes. Do you think I’m pretty?”

  He didn’t answer. He was too shy. Besides, there were people all around, and he was afraid that someone would notice how close he was standing to a girl. But she wouldn’t let go of him, and she paid no attention to the others.

  “You must tell me if I appeal to you,” she insisted.

  “Yes,” he said, even though it wasn’t so.

  “My name is Pearl, Pearl Eisen of Warsaw,” she said with pride. “One might even consider us kinfolk since I’m related to the bride on my mother’s side. I came here specially for the wedding from Warsaw.”

  As the crowd began breaking up, the girl squeezed his hand for the last time and drifted away.

  Jacob Bunem didn’t see her again, but he recalled the incident. She was the first girl to hold his hand, to speak to him in such fashion. He hadn’t thought any more about her, but she thought about him a great deal. The towering, dark-eyed youth, from whose glance fire seemed to emanate, had aroused every desire within her virginal, sickly being. And she began urging her family to send a matchmaker to the youth’s father.

  When she first proposed this to her own father, he blanched. “Perele, don’t even utter such words!” he pleaded in alarm, and stopped up her mouth with his hand. “All we need is for your grandfather to hear!”

  The grandfather, Reb Kalman, a man in his late seventies, ruled the household with an iron hand. Boys and graybeards alike withered before his steely glance.

  He was a millionaire many times over. It was said that he himself didn’t know just how much he was worth, and this was true. He owned buildings by the hundreds, one whole block of houses in Warsaw being called Kalman Eisen Street. He also owned many tracts of timber and conducted huge business transactions with the authorities. He provided ties, poles, and other lumber for all the railroad tracks and telegraph lines built by the government. But he conducted all his business in old-fashioned style—the same as when he had first married and owned a small lumberyard on Warsaw’s Iron Street. He didn’t believe in boards of directors or in accountants. Just as he had built his business with his own two hands, so did he run it by himself, scorning the new methods and the gentiles with all their ledgers and account books.

  He hated innovation. He had his own way of doing things, from which he didn’t deviate by even a hair.

  So long as he lived, he wouldn’t let his sons near the business even though they were already middle-aged men themselves. He kept them all domiciled within his great court, apportioned a large apartment to each, and covered all their and their families’ expenses. But he wouldn’t let them do anything on their own. They generally had no say in the house, nor did they dare arrange matches for their children, leaving all that to him, their father, who also provided room and board for the young couples. Each time there was a marriage in the family, Kalman Eisen had a new story or addition built onto the house, which now extended for two blocks.

  Nor did his sons and sons-in-law preside over their own tables on Sabbaths and holidays, but they had to sit at the patriarch’s table along with their children and grandchildren. This table ran the entire length of the enormous dining room and was filled by a throng of relatives, besides the usual quota of impoverished Sabbath guests, saintly Jews, and tutors of the household’s children. Male and female servants served the large crowd.

  Each person sat with a prayer book in hand, positioned according to his age and status. At the head of the table on an elevated throne sat the tall, distinguished, white-bearded Kalman Eisen himself, and ruled his roost. No one dared touch a finger to knife or fork until the old man picked up his; no one dared utter a word until he spoke first. He addressed his sons, gray-bearded men, as if they were boys.

  He was held in the same awe by all the Jews in Warsaw, including the richest and most scholarly. He rode in a carriage drawn by a team of white horses. When he traveled to spas in the summers, an army of servants, including a personal ritual slaughterer, attended him. And although he was pious and a good Hasid, he wore a stiff collar and a hat of his own design, a kind of silk kepi with a glistening lacquered visor of the type worn by gentiles. Because of his near-royal status, he was beyond censure, and he did exactly as he pleased. It was rumored in Warsaw that he used silver cuspidors and that when he went out for a stroll, he was accompanied by a servant carrying such a silver spittoon.

  He was feared most of all by his youngest son, Solly. No scholar, not particularly bright, the least physically prepossessing of all his brothers, he was terrified to catch his father’s eye. He never spoke up or ventured an opinion. “I’m no expert, after all,” he would say deprecating himself, and turn away to avoid contact.

  He was a widower, having lost his sickly wife and all his children except for Perele, who was as sickly, obstinate, and imperious as her late mother. Her father was afraid of her, too, and began twitching when she expressed her infatuation with the Lodz youth and her intention to send a matchmaker to his father.

  “Bite your tongue, I didn’t hear a word you’ve said!” he said to quell his own fear. “God forbid your grandfather should hear!”

  Matches were strictly Kalman’s province. The family matchmaker, Asriel Cohen—a man of acid tongue who could wreck a match if it suited his purpose, a vicious slanderer and gossip—arranged all the matches for the Eisen family.

  He knew all Poland. He was acquainted with everyone’s income, status, family ties. He could rattle off everyone’s genealogy going back to the first generation. He considered Kalman Eisen’s house his own, kept his eye on everyone, and as soon as it came time to marry off a grandchild, he arranged a consultation with Kalman.

  He was never wrong in his evaluations, and Kalman relied upon him. And if, occasionally, following a wedding, Kalman took a dislike to some son-in-law, he promptly told the wife to discard her husband, and a divorce was quickly arranged. The women may have cried, but they obeyed. A self-arranged match was, therefore, out of the question. Such a thing was unthinkable, and Solly Eisen trembled at the mere thought of proposing it to his father.

  But Perele was made of sterner stuff. Determined to get her way, she went straight to her grandmother, Tirza.

  Tirza, paralyzed, sick, and old, was the only one able to sway Kalman. They had made their fortune together. She had worked side by side with him, advised him. She was a shrewd woman, and even though she had been confined to bed for years, she kept herself apprised of everything that went on in the house, all the business and personal affairs, all the joys and sorrows.

  Lying in her wide four-poster bed, enveloped in tulle and lace, she reigned no less than her husband over the family. Each child and grandchild had to stop by to say good morning and kiss her hand. On every holiday, each family member had to come and pay his or her respects. All the male and female servants had to consult her about marketing, prices. She held the keys to all the
china closets and the silver. A quorum of men drawn from among the courtyard spongers assembled by her bed on every Sabbath and holiday so that she could recite her “Blessed be He’s” and add her “amens.”

  It was to Grandmother Tirza that Perele spoke as one woman to another.

  “Fallen in love, have you, you shiksa?” she asked, shaking all the laces and tulle about her aged head.

  Perele began to shower her with firm, ardent kisses. “Granny, dearest Granny, my treasure.…”

  The old woman summoned her strength to extend her paralyzed hand as she admonished her granddaughter. “Wouldn’t rely on your grandfather, eh?” She sighed. “Well, so be it. I’ll speak to him. But why are you so green? A bride should have cheeks like red apples, just like I had for my wedding.…”

  Perele was her favorite grandchild. She was the only one left of a whole brood and the daughter of Solly, the butt of everyone’s humor, but his mother’s favorite son for that very reason.

  When she summoned her husband to her side, asked him to sit down on the bed, and began discussing Perele, the old man grew enraged. “What’s this—love in my house? Like with musicians! I won’t hear of it!”

  His wife made him sit down again. “Kalman,” she warned, “you’re playing with fire. She is the only one left of a household of children, a poor orphan, more’s the pity.…”

  Kalman raged, but the old woman let a tear fall. “Kalman, let me live long enough to see the poor child married off. I’ve got a feeling I won’t be around for long.…”

  The old man grew so despondent that he began to blow his nose vigorously. “It’s probably fated this way in my old age,” he said as he stroked his wife’s wrinkled face with a calloused hand.

  He promptly sent for Asriel Cohen. “Tell me, Asriel,” he began. “You know a certain Abraham Hersh Ashkenazi of Lodz?”

  “What do you mean, do I know?” Asriel Cohen snorted. He commenced to enumerate the other’s lineage going back ten generations. He also threw in the genealogy of all of Abraham Hersh’s relatives, including their offspring, their mates and in-laws.