The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  Although somewhat deafened by age, he was alert to every rustle, every comment. The assistant directors had to consult him about every batch of wool or cotton they brought back from England. The engineers had to submit to him every plan and innovation. The chemists didn’t dare choose a color without his approval. The designers couldn’t introduce a new flower or stripe into a pattern without his consent. The firm’s attorney couldn’t institute a lawsuit without first going over its every detail with him.

  He had to be told about everything from a million-ruble transaction to the pettiest incident in the mill, a worker’s cut finger or an accidental death.

  Partially deaf, obstinate, full of the peasant’s slyness and suspicion, he managed to run the mill almost single-handedly and brooked no interference. He came to work with the workers, and he stayed long after they went home.

  Because of his impaired hearing, he questioned every word he didn’t happen to catch. “What’s up, Albrecht?” he kept asking the plant director, an immense, sweating German under whose bulk chairs groaned in protest. “What’s that you’re babbling, you tub of lard?”

  Barely able to stand on his gross, distended legs, encased in enormous checked trousers, the director had to shout into his employer’s ear the gist of his most recent conversation with some subordinate.

  “Don’t shout!” Huntze admonished him. “I can hear fine!”

  Everyone in the sprawling mill, from the director down to the lowliest stockboy, lived in terror of the old man who shuffled about with a meerschaum pipe filled with the cheapest tobacco stuck between his lips. He would plant himself in someone’s chair, command him to light his pipe, and spit on the floor. He took inordinate pleasure in humiliating his employees, especially the educated among them.

  But as the years went by, he felt that his days were numbered and his power was slipping away from him. This caused him to exert his authority all the more forcefully and to grow progressively more pigheaded. No one dared disagree with him in the plant, but it was different at home.

  For years already, Huntze’s children had been voicing their growing displeasure with their father. True, he would leave them a huge inheritance, but with it came the disgrace of common blood, plebeian lineage, an undistinguished surname.

  His daughters, especially, yearned to rise in the world. Freckled, buck-toothed, pale, vapid, watery-eyed, chinless, they couldn’t be distinguished from the women who worked in their father’s plant. To compensate for these deficiencies, they wanted at least the benefit of an elegant surname.

  In Lodz the name Huntze evoked instant respect, but the Huntze children cared little what Lodz thought. They had nothing but scorn for the stinking, smoky pesthole where their father was still remembered from the days when he had arrived from Saxony in his little horse-drawn cart. The younger Huntzes spent most of their time abroad, where they purchased for themselves ancestral estates complete with retinues of lackeys. In the grand hotels and clubs where they congregated, the name Huntze sounded woefully out of place. The moment they came home to scrounge additional capital, they started in on their father. They didn’t like the way he conversed in Saxon Low German; they despised his meerschaums, his crew cut, his execrable table manners, his entire way of behavior that accentuated his, and their, common stock.

  Old Huntze wanted to marry his daughters to sons of wealthy Lodz manufacturers. He was prepared to pay out sizable dowries but he wanted a return on his investment. As a shrewd businesman he felt that money should flow to money.

  He was eager to bring into his family young men who knew manufacture and who could be trusted to run the plant after he was gone so that he could die with an easy mind, knowing that the business wouldn’t fall into strange hands. He also hoped to merge his firm with others through marriage and thus forge an empire that would rule Lodz and defend it against all interlopers.

  But his daughters wouldn’t hear of it. They’d sooner remain old maids. Being female, they could at least marry up and acquire names that sounded more genteel.

  The old man swore he’d go to hell before he laid out good money for titled sons-in-law who would contribute nothing to the family fortune. The daughters grew hysterical and threatened to go on the stage and completely disgrace the family, at which point Huntze’s elderly wife burst into tears and pacified her husband just as she had in the old days when he got drunk and threatened to make a scene.

  “I beg you, Heinzchen,” she pleaded, groveling at his feet like a peasant wife, “do as the girls ask.…”

  Ultimately the old man gave in, and both daughters married aristocrats. The elder, Elsa, snared her baron abroad. He was a surly, pompous snob with a title as long as himself—Baron Konrad Wolfgang von Heidel-Heidellau. Even longer than his name was the list of debts accumulated against him and his estate in East Prussia hard by the Russian border.

  On the very first day he arrived in Lodz, accompanied by his valet, his hound, and his hunting rifles, he turned up his long, lean patrician nose at the city he described as a “Polish-Jewish pigsty,” at the mill that stank of smoke and dye, and at his in-laws and their repulsive jargon.

  “I won’t remain in this garbage dump even a single day!” he announced with feeling.

  Old Huntze paid him out every groschen of the enormous dowry, upon which his tall, erect son-in-law made a curt bow, brushed this mother-in-law’s hand, and, along with his hound, valet, and wife, fled to his estate.

  He never added a greeting to his wife’s letters home, but when he had accumulated new debts, he addressed a letter on stationery bearing his crest to his father-in-law, demanding cash, and signed it with his long and aristocratic title.

  When Old Man Huntze finally put his foot down and refused to squander any more money on the wastrel, the baron badgered his wife until in desperation she packed a valise (naturally, with a crest, too), took along a liveried servant as befitted her station, and went home to wheedle the required sum out of her father.

  The younger daughter found a less forbidding spouse. He was a young Baltic officer with a hussar mustache and a very elegant name, too—Baron Otto von Taube. He served in the Imperial Guard in Petersburg, where, after the wedding he gathered a group of his high-living friends around him to carouse and gamble, constantly demanding money to pay off debts, under the threat that he, as an officer and gentleman, would otherwise have to resign his commission and put a bullet in his brain.

  Thus, it evolved that the two daughters spent more time in Lodz now that they were married than they had when single. They flaunted their newly acquired titles shamelessly and cadged money from their father to maintain their husbands’ insatiable profligacy.

  As if this weren’t enough, all three of Huntze’s sons ganged up against their father and demanded nothing less but that he acquire his own barony.

  Just as a former Piotrkow governor had for a considerable bribe arranged for an Order of St. Anne for Huntze, the present governor dropped a hint that for a consideration, Petersburg might be persuaded to settle the title of Baron upon the old man. He had earned such an honor for his outstanding contributions to the commercial development of the land and for helping establish the weaving industry in Poland. However, this would require numerous trips to the capital, along with additional expenditures associated with establishing the proper contacts and connections.

  The Huntze brothers were enthralled. Just like their sisters, they despised everything about Lodz. Their father had sent them to Germany to study business administration, modern weaving techniques, and chemistry, but their flaxen, florid heads couldn’t absorb numbers, machinery, or chemical elements. Instead, they were drawn to horses, hounds, cards, and women. Their father’s money got them into the best places, but the advantage of their father’s money was outweighed by the drawback of his plebeian name, which shamed them in the rarefied company they were keeping. And since they couldn’t marry titles, they were damned to bear their disgrace until death. They, therefore, launched a concerted campaign ag
ainst their father and would not give him a moment’s peace until he agreed to purchase a barony.

  On the one side, their father’s age presented an obstacle. Their needs were enormous, what with their private stables, gambling losses, their mistresses, and the sums they had to force upon impoverished aristocrats in order to retain their friendship.

  But the old man refused to meet their debts and instructed his cashier not to issue so much as a groschen to his sons without his personal signature. This didn’t always help since the sons constantly threatened suicide unless their debts of honor were paid, but it did represent a nuisance to them since it always took a considerable amount of shouting and table pounding before their demands were met. The brothers, therefore, looked wistfully ahead to the time when their father croaked and they became the masters of their own destiny.

  “The old shithead intends to live forever,” they said with indignation, watching him flourish from day to day.

  On the other side, their father’s advancing age alarmed them. If they were ever to inherit his title, they needed him alive long enough to become a baron, for it would be most difficult to acquire this title on their own. Besides, even if they did manage it, the title would go to only one brother, not to all three.

  The best and easiest solution would be to inherit the ready-made title from the old man along with his millions. The plans had already been laid. All that remained was the transfer of a sum of money to the governor. But the old man obstinately refused to turn over so much as a groschen.

  “I shit on this!” he growled in his earthy fashion. “I wouldn’t give a plug pfennig for it!”

  Besides the sheer waste of money, he felt offended by his children’s contempt for the name Huntze, which was held in high esteem not only in Lodz but even in such far-off places as Russia, Germany, and England. He had invested enough sweat, toil, and effort to make the name widely known and respected, but for all his wealth he had remained the same common worker he had always been, one who instinctively despised aristocrats and the educated. He went out of his way to be rude to his managerial help and to keep them hopping, and they—the trained engineers, chemists and managers—cringed before him like whipped curs. He was equally rude to the Polish counts and princes who came to him for favors. He wouldn’t speak a word of Polish to them, only Low German out of sheer spite.

  To him, the name Huntze was handsome and distinguished enough all by itself. And it enraged him that his sons sought to adorn it with a title. The sons knew full well that if they missed this opportunity, they would be stuck with their burden forever. You never could tell about old fogeys like their father. One moment they were full of life, and the next—they were no more. And they intensified their campaign for what they believed was rightfully theirs.

  Old man Huntze fought back like a tiger. “After I die, you can do whatever you like, but so long as I live, I’ll be the boss. Me, Heinz Huntze!”

  His temper drove him to odd behavior. He came to dinner in his shirt sleeves. He chewed his bones with loud relish just as in the old days. He spit on the costly rugs, used the most vulgar expressions, even went to the tavern in the evenings for a beer.

  The elderly weavers grew so petrified when he joined them at their tables that they couldn’t even respond to his prosit! and he had no choice but to leave his beer and go back to the palace, where there was no peace for him either.

  His elderly wife wandered in a daze through magnificent halls hung with elaborate draperies and antlered deer heads. That which her children hesitated to tell their father they heaped upon her head without restraint. She, a simple peasant woman awed by her affluence, unable to cope with the staff of servants, lost in the presence of strangers whose words she didn’t understand, terrified of the airs put on by her own sons and daughters, longed for the days when she had sat at her spinning wheel, when she had cooked huge pots of food for her husband and his assistants, when she had gossiped with neighbors about homemaking, children, and other familiar subjects.

  She never got accustomed to the fancy carriages, the lackeys, the salons, and the gentlemen who kissed her hand. This made her think only of the times she herself had kissed the hand of the doctor to whom she took the children when they were ill.

  She liked it best when she was alone with her husband. He then filled his pipe, threw off his jacket, and chatted with her in a Saxon Low German while she darned a stocking. But this happened seldom now. He was always busy. And the children shunned her, unless it was to nag her into getting something they wanted out of their father, whom they called “the old shithead.”

  She would blush, take offense, and feel like telling them what a shocking thing this was, a sin before God, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid of them, as a peasant woman fears the imperious squire.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she would lament, wringing her hands. “I’ll talk to your father about it. Only don’t call him names.…”

  Now the sons gave her no rest, and out of desperation, she pleaded with her husband on her knees to give them whatever they wanted. The fact that this would entail her becoming a baroness was as inconceivable to her as if she had been told that she would become the Holy Virgin.

  “Heinzl,” she pleaded, “do it for your old wife’s sake.”

  Huntze was touched, but he wouldn’t yield. “Everything they want ready-made!” he raged. “Everything I’ve worked for all my life. Let them go after things on their own, the lazy bums.… I’ve done enough for them.”

  When conditions at home grew intolerable, Huntze tried to seek the advice of others, but they dared not tell him a thing. They held their tongues and agreed with everything Huntze said. He spat in disgust and went to consult his sales representative.

  As was his custom, Abraham Hersh listened without interruption. When Huntze finished, he asked, “What will this cost, Herr Huntze?”

  “A fortune.… tons.…”

  “And what will you get out of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then what’s the point of it?” Ashkenazi asked in bewilderment.

  Huntze came home more determined than ever. “Not another word about it! The subject is closed!” he said, and slammed the table.

  The war went on.

  Twenty-Two

  QUITE THE OPPOSITE OPINION to that of his father was held by Abraham Hersh’s son, the manufacturer of women’s kerchiefs, regarding the barony. Although Simha Meir rarely entered his father’s house these days, he was cognizant of everything that went on there and at his father’s place of business on Piotrkow Street. He got his information partly from his father’s clerks, from Goldlust the bookkeeper, and from his sisters, whom he often invited to his own home for the specific purpose of pumping them about their father’s affairs.

  Simha Meir’s sisters were like strangers to him. He had never needed them before, so he had avoided them, but now they could prove useful, for even though he had his own business, he always kept an eye open for better things. He knew if his father had had a good or poor season; he knew which of his out-of-town buyers were reliable and which risky; he knew which of the Huntze goods moved and which didn’t; he even knew the exact total of his father’s estate. As in everything else he did, he had an ulterior motive in all this. Ever since childhood he had fantasized about taking his father’s place as sales representative of the Huntze mill, and all of his father’s efforts to keep him out of the office had merely firmed this resolve.

  True, he was doing well enough on his own. Besides his kerchiefs, he occasionally turned a handsome profit trading in cotton and wool. With his quick perception and keen mind he had grasped all the intricacies of trade and knew the right time to buy and the right time to sell. At the same time he was sober enough not to be reckless, not to put all his eggs in one basket, and always to leave himself a way out.

  He was the complete man of Lodz, familiar with its every ruse and wile, attuned to its ebbs, flows, and rhythms. No, he couldn’t complain. His investment of 10,000 ruble
s had already doubled many times over. He never for a moment regretted having disobeyed his father by abandoning the scholar’s desk for the life of commerce. He already boasted a name among the merchants and small manufacturers of Lodz, but this was scarcely enough for Simha Meir.

  He had never believed in manual production. He knew that the city’s future lay in steam. The handlooms were only a bridge to further accomplishments, a scaffolding upon which to build and expand. Once the structure itself was finished, the scaffolding could be discarded.

  True, he could have switched over to steam now and ended up with a small factory that he could gradually expand, but he had never been one for slow advancement. He wanted to take a giant step forward, one that would take the city by storm. But so far he lacked the resources for such a move. He knew from the holy volumes that the tiniest moth was stronger than the largest garment once it penetrated the closet—that a tiny spark could burn down the biggest house if only it found a chink through which to enter.

  He set his sights high, this young man of Lodz. His darting eyes never gazed lower than the tallest chimneys, and looming above all were the stacks of the Huntze mill. For now, its gates were barred to him, but there was a chink through which he could inveigle his way inside. And that chink was his father’s position as the firm’s sales representative.

  With greedy eyes Simha Meir gazed at the Huntze warehouse, jammed from ceiling to wall with costly fabrics. He deduced that his father ran it too conservatively and that newer, more daring methods were called for. But his father was solidly entrenched. Old Huntze was completely satisfied with his representative, who was as cautious and prudent as he himself.

  Simha Meir grasped what the full potential of the position would be in the hands of a younger, more vigorous and imaginative man. Were he, Simha Meir, allowed free rein, he would show the world what could be accomplished there. He would move goods as no one believed possible. But his father didn’t want him around now, any more than he had when Simha Meir had been a boy.