The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  “Lodz, Lodz,” the old man muttered angrily. He held a low opinion of that upstart community, which he still remembered as a tiny village.

  “And who is his rabbi, this Abraham Hersh’s?” he wanted to know.

  “The Alexander. When the Warka was still living, he went there.”

  “Alexander … Warka.…” The old man grimaced.

  As a true follower of the Ger Rabbi he was contemptuous of all other rabbis, but he had no option.

  When Asriel Cohen found out what was wanted of him, he became enraged. He had already selected a mate for the girl, and the match was as good as arranged. It was a much better match, one befitting the honor of the Eisen family. Nor could he stand the fact that some snit of a girl dared circumvent his authority, for when it came to matchmaking, only he, Asriel, had the say. And he promptly began to malign, manipulate, and obstruct, to demonstrate his power. But Kalman himself ordered him to desist.

  “Asriel,” he said to him in a quavering voice, “this time, we must give in. You’ll earn your fee in any case.”

  But since it wasn’t fitting that the first overture should issue from Kalman Eisen’s house, Asriel was dispatched to Lodz. There he met with his worst enemy, Samuel Zanvil, and he dropped a hint about the match which wouldn’t be acceptable to Reb Kalman under any circumstances but which it couldn’t hurt to discuss. With God’s help, there’d be no reason to have a rabbi settle the matter of fees should anything come of it. But in the meantime, mum was the word.

  Samuel Zanvil promptly grew suspicious as to the reason his foremost enemy and defamer had suddenly grown as sweet as honey to him—and he divined that the other side was eager for the match. Smelling a juicy fee, he immediately ran to Abraham Hersh and finally revealed that the other side had made the overture.

  Abraham Hersh summoned Jacob Bunem and measured him from head to toe. He knew the matter wasn’t as simple as it appeared; he guessed that his son wasn’t Kalman Eisen’s choice, but the girl’s, and that somehow Jacob Bunem wasn’t as innocent as he tried to appear.

  “Tell me,” he said sternly, “what kind of monkey business has there been between you and Kalman Eisen’s granddaughter?”

  Jacob Bunem blushed. “I saw her only once at Simha Meir’s wedding.”

  Abraham Hersh sighed. “You can go,” he dismissed him.

  It was the second time he had been disappointed by a son. The Warka Rabbi’s prediction was apparently coming true. But he couldn’t honestly say that he opposed the match. After all, Reb Kalman Eisen’s grandchild! And although he needn’t have considered for even a second, he didn’t say yes immediately but indicated calmly that he was amenable to further discussion.

  The articles of engagement were drawn up without fanfare since Kalman Eisen was reluctant to publicize his disgrace, even though the match was already being talked about with astonishment all over Warsaw. Still, when the wedding was made, it turned out as elaborate as any Eisen family affair. The ceremony was held in Warsaw following the Shevuot holiday. The Rabbi of Ger himself performed the rites. The dowry presented to the bridegroom was huge, in the many thousands. The bride also had a large inheritance from her late mother, bank accounts, and apartment houses. The couple received an additional fortune in wedding presents.

  Simha Meir, along with Dinele, his in-laws, and his parents’ whole family, traveled to Warsaw for the affair. Simha Meir bought an expensive present for his brother. Intuition told him that since Jacob Bunem had become part of an influential family, it would be beneficial to stay on good terms with him, but this accommodation did nothing to quell Simha Meir’s envy.

  That which he, Simha Meir, achieved with will, energy, and intrigue fell into his brother’s lap with no effort at all simply because some silly girl had grown infatuated with his looks.

  Simha Meir felt deeply wronged. What did his 10,000 rubles mean now against Jacob Bunem’s fortune? Zero, chaff, dust scattered by the wind. And the envy gnawed away at his guts until he couldn’t eat or sleep. He skipped meals and calculated frantically on every available surface. He compared his brother’s worth with his own, and the disparity pierced like a bone in his craw.

  More than ever he spent sleepless nights, scheming how to squeeze even more profits out of the factory. He knew that there was no future in handlooms. They were only a stepping-stone. His destiny lay in steam. He knew that all his little ploys with the kerchiefs were but a drop in the bucket. Lodz was a city of sharpsters, ready to knock off any new idea or innovation. As soon as he made a move, others quickly followed and flooded the market, forcing down the prices. He would be constantly pressed to come up with new ideas if he wanted a jump on the others. But in the meantime, he had to find ways to effect new savings.

  He decided to stop using brokers and jobbers and deal directly with the retail merchants. This would eliminate commissions. He visited several small towns near Lodz and found subcontractors who would make up his kerchiefs at lower cost per unit than the factory.

  His next innovation was to drop his workers’ wages a half ruble per week. This would save more than 1,000 rubles a year, not counting the amount he could earn by lending it out at interest.

  In his fanciest handwriting he drew up a notice announcing the wage drop and had Samuel Leibush post it on the factory wall.

  The workers wailed and pleaded. Their wives came to grovel at Simha Meir’s feet, but he wasn’t moved. “Whoever wants can quit any time he pleases,” he said, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rising up on tiptoe. “I’d just as soon convert to steam anyway.”

  Eighteen

  INSIDE THE WEAVER’S SYNAGOGUE, Love of Friends, squeezed in among the squat shacks, lumberyards, and coalyards of Balut, it was hot and tense. The weavers had long since finished their Sabbath prayers and had spat from every angle in derision at the heathens who worshiped dumb idols that couldn’t respond to man’s prayers. The married workers had already tucked their cheap prayer shawls away inside their prayer shawl bags; the bachelors had stuck their prayer books in the pockets of their Sabbath swallowtail gabardines.

  Still, no one rushed home to the Sabbath meal, but they milled around the reader’s lectern, where Tevye the World Isn’t Lawless rapped his hand against the worn velvet cloth covering the pulpit. “Silence, men!” he cried. “Let a person speak!”

  This time it wasn’t matters of religious nature that concerned Tevye, but a secular matter—Simha Meir’s evil decree to sever a half ruble from the workers’ salaries.

  “Let us have silence already!” the assembled men in their green faded gabardines cried. “Let’s hear what the man has to say!”

  But it was no simple matter to quell the noise and excitement that buzzed like a beehive when the keeper comes to remove the wax and honey.

  The pale, gaunt men seethed with outrage and indignation. Life had been hard enough as it was. Their tiny salaries didn’t even begin to cover their weekly expenses, and there was the additional burden of supplying their own candles for the factory. The later they worked, the more candles they needed.

  In addition, there were weeks, even months when there was no work and therefore no pay. On what were their families supposed to live then? So it was a steady diet of grits with potatoes and barely fried not in fat but in oil, which left one with a hollow stomach and heartburn.

  Meat? Only the cheapest tripe, legs, or lungs and livers even on the Sabbaths. Fresh fish? Maybe in summers when the fish was plentiful and sold cheaply since it couldn’t be kept for long. But usually a piece of herring would have to do, with a bit of onion or some so-called Balut scratch borscht—beet soup as thin as water. Nor was raisin wine always available except for a drop reserved for the blessing over the Sabbath loaves. Neither were there there enough candles to light for each member of the household, of whom there were always more than enough.

  The free community schools for the workers’ children were packed and detestable. The sons of the more affluent citizens, who attended private
schools, mocked their less privileged contemporaries. The teachers, who were underpaid and were invariably owed money by the community, took out their frustration on their pupils and beat and cursed them mercilessly. On Fridays they sent them begging from door to door to raise their fees.

  But even though the weavers’ children came home bruised and battered and despite the frightful conditions, there weren’t enough of these schools to accommodate all the Balut youngsters, and those left out had to be turned over to private tutors, whose fees had to be subtracted from the families’ already strained budgets.

  Just as scarce was hospital space in the Aid to the Ill Society building for sick members of the community, of whom there were always more than enough. The area’s rickety, bloated, bowlegged, malnourished children dropped like flies from lack of proper food and fresh air; the women suffered from excessive childbearing; the men ruined their lungs with the eternal dust and stinking fumes from old rags used for waste or recycled yarn.

  The men of the Aid to the Ill Society had no inkling of medical knowledge except that during times of epidemic they rubbed the bellies of the sick with alcohol.

  To buy medicines you had to go to the Christian pharmacy where you couldn’t haggle, and what was even worse, you had to doff your cap before the picture of the Holy Virgin illuminated by the red lamp. Nor would Sender the leech come down by even a groschen though he had but two remedies—cupping glasses and an enema—for every complaint for which he charged a whole gulden.

  The price of potatoes and vegetables kept rising, for as the city grew, so did the inflation.

  Fathers took sons out of school before they had even been confirmed and put them out as apprentices in order to eliminate another mouth at the table. Mothers sent their daughters into domestic service, where they were made to lug buckets of water from wells and carry strangers’ children in their own scrawny, childish arms. It was impossible to feed everyone, but new mouths kept constantly appearing as God blessed the wombs of Balut’s women.

  The housewives worked miracles trying to feed their families. Dresses and shirts were darned and patched until they fell apart. Landlords kept pressing for the rent. Few of the weavers owned their own houses; most rented a room or two, and the first few guldens of the salary were always set aside for the rent. The coins were collected in a prayer book and bound in a kerchief, so that the landlord would be sure to get his rent on the first. Not even in times of greatest need, was this prayer book tapped. And now there would be a half ruble less weekly!

  The women howled, cursed, slammed down the chipped black iron pots, and refused to cook. “Cook yourself on what you bring me!” they shrieked at their breadwinners.

  The elderly weavers—broken, defeated men, inured to every indignity—kept their silence, but the younger men seethed with indignation. Most enraged of all was Tevye the World Isn’t Lawless. Lately he grumbled more than ever and sang his little ditty of unknown origin. But while before the men had been afraid of the song, from every second or third loom now could be heard the sound of its lyrics. At first, it was only a hum, but soon the bolder among them began to sing louder and more clearly, drowning out the convoluted cantorial chants of their more docile coworkers.

  Samuel Leibush wagged a threatening finger. “Sing! Sing!” he muttered. “Just let Simha Meir catch you, and you’ll be singing from the other side of your mouth.”

  But they didn’t stop.

  No matter what time it was, Tevye no longer went home to his wife and family but dashed from house to house, agitating, inciting, conspiring, sowing the seeds of dissatisfaction, feeding the flames of unrest.

  His embittered wife—a big, prematurely aged woman with children clinging to her apron from every side and perpetually nursing the latest arrival at her drooping, blackened breast—spewed a stream of curses on her husband up and down the streets of Balut.

  “Tevye!” she bellowed. “Tevye, may you yourself grow as dried and withered as your dinner waiting for you! … May your soul blow away like the breath I waste trying to keep your bit of slop warm for you!”

  She dragged her whole brood as she went, pregnant belly jutting, in search of her husband, and they all helped her call his name. But Tevye ignored them as he ran from house to house with all thought of food, drink, and sleep suspended, and he talked, agitated, and incited until he had roused the householders to fever pitch.

  “Solidarity!” he cried. “Only with solidarity will we overcome the exploiters!”

  It wasn’t easy to win over the workers. Weary, shattered cowed by the bosses’ authority and their own uselessness in light of the coming era of steam; saddled with large families; indifferent toward everything but a little peace and quiet and a filling meal, they remained largely unmoved.

  “How can you fight fate?” they countered. “It’s God’s will, after all.”

  Each was concerned only with his own piece of bread. Each dreamed of the time when he himself would become an employer with a few looms of his own. Bachelors hoped for a dowry that would allow them to become bosses. Others consoled themselves with the fact that they weren’t seasonal workers, on whom they, the full-time workers, vented their own rage and frustration. The seasonal workers, in turn, bullied and tormented the apprentices. The prevailing attitude was: “I’ve suffered; now it’s your turn.…”

  The only one who supported and understood Tevye was Nissan the depraved, the rabbi’s son. Himself a seasonal worker who toiled all day and studied all night, he was intelligent enough to gain a broad overview of the Balut worker’s existence. Although his initial intention was to become independent enough to pursue an education, he had been so totally drawn into the routine of work that he was now just another weaver of Balut.

  His father had eventually forgiven him. He came to him without recriminations and groaned at the sight of his son. “Oy, Nissan, oy!” He sighed so piteously that Nissan’s guts turned to jelly.

  He couldn’t stand his father’s sighs. He would have preferred blows, abuse, reprimands. For all his contempt toward his father, he still loved him, and his sighs tore him to pieces.

  Of all the employers in Balut the worst were the subcontractors, petty bosses who operated home workshops where they contracted to do piecework for the factory owners. These petty tyrants bullied and exploited their journeymen viciously. They themselves were at the mercy of the manufacturers and their foremen, most of whom demanded kickbacks. If none were forthcoming, they either boycotted the offenders or were supercritical of the finished product and flatly rejected it.

  Another ploy was to issue to the subcontractor a bundle of inferior wool that split and tore when it was woven. Often the subcontractor had to wait by the foreman’s door like some beggar to pick up the raw material, and when he delivered the finished goods, he was paid with a promissory note that had to be cashed at a moneychanger’s, who naturally subtracted his commission.

  The subcontractors took all this frustration out on their workers. The bosses’ wives fed the workers army issue bread, which they bought from soldiers in the marketplace and which was so stale and inferior that it could be consumed only a little at a time. Each morning they set out a meager portion on each worker’s bench. But the workers didn’t practice restraint, and by evening they were ravenous.

  “Mistress, bread!” they whined shamefacedly. “Just a crust—I’m starving.”

  They got no bread, but curses. “Drop dead!” the women responded with feeling.

  The more agile among the workers managed to filch some bread from the pantry, but those less bold starved. A piece of meat was never seen; the chicory substituting for coffee was served with a mere lick of sugar. The work went on all through the night by the dim light of oil lamps and smoking wicks. The smoke from the stoves irritated the eyes; the boss’s children cried; the women cursed and bickered. When the red eyelids could no longer be held open, the men stretched out on the dirty floor with a piece of goods as a pillow and dozed off, freezing in the winter, steaming i
n the summer, eaten alive by fleas, flies, and bedbugs.

  Often the goods were wet and sandy because just as the foremen cheated them, so did the subcontractors cheat the foremen. They were issued the wool and cotton by weight and were supposed to return goods in equal weight. So in order to pilfer a little wool, they doused the goods down with water or weighted them down with sand. The wet goods penetrated the bodies of the sleeping workers; the sand rubbed their skins raw; the dye from the cheap materials ran so that they awoke looking like chimney sweeps.

  Besides, the men had to work in collusion with their bosses in swindling the factory owners. They stretched the thread so that it wove more loosely, yet covered the required quota of fabric, and in order that the manufacturer not catch on, only the ends were woven densely and smoothly.

  Everyone had to cooperate in this subterfuge on the threat of not receiving wages on Thursday. And when the finished goods were ready for delivery, the workers had to tote them on their shoulders across all Lodz since no subcontractor would think of wasting money on a droshky.

  Like true slaves, the subcontractors starved and degraded their own slaves—the seasonal workers. It happened that having worked a whole season, a worker didn’t receive his wages. The matter was submitted to arbitration by rabbis, but regardless of the findings, the money was never paid.

  “Here, drain my last drop of blood!” the subcontractor cried, baring his chest beneath the cotton vest. “I don’t have it.… I’m a pauper myself!”

  It was, therefore, very hard for Tevye to convince all the embittered, toil-worn men to stick together against the bosses.

  “Tevye!” people warned him. “Don’t get involved. You’ll be the first to be fired.”

  But Tevye didn’t take the advice. Weary from the day’s toil, rubbed raw by his wife’s abuse, his mind deadened by his children’s eternal crying, he didn’t cease his agitation. “Only solidarity!” he cried in a grating voice.