The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  At the canopy, when the rabbi of the underworld synagogue piously recited the blessing in a nasal, epicene voice, the unionists couldn’t contain themselves and burst out laughing. Uncle Zachariah’s bull-like neck flushed a deep crimson. “Don’t laugh at a rabbi, you scum!” he growled. “I won’t stand for it!”

  “Shut your yaps, Electricity!” his cohorts chimed in.

  The tough young shoemakers thrust out their chests. “We’d like to see who’ll shut us up,” they challenged.

  Fists clenched on both sides. In the midst of his blessing, the rabbi thrust himself between both factions. “Well, now, it’s a wedding, after all … it’s a disgrace to fight on such an occasion.…”

  Another quarrel erupted during the distribution of the wedding presents. The guests from the bride’s side were free with their money and gave gifts of three, five, even ten rubles. The crippled beadle of the underworld synagogue, a former pickpocket, very ceremoniously stacked the banknotes on the table. The unionists from the groom’s side gave half rubles and a rare whole ruble. The toughs started to heckle the workers.

  “Hey, unionist, dole something out already!” they jeered at those groping in their meager purses.

  “Hey there, ’Lectricity, no slugs now.…”

  The workers wouldn’t take this lying down. “We’ve got to work for our money,” they said, “not like some others we know.…”

  The toughs bristled at the insinuation. “Who you trying to needle?” they growled.

  “If the shoe fits, wear it,” the workers countered.

  Just then a mug of beer hurled from the bride’s side caught a tanner full in the face. Blood and beer spurted together from the youth’s face onto the white paper dickey he had bought specially for the occasion.

  His comrades let go with several mugs at the bride’s side. Within seconds, the tablecloths, glasses, plates, and wedding gifts lay smashed all over the floor. The men shucked their jackets and grabbed chairs, candlesticks, knives—whatever could be used for a weapon. The women shrieked and shouted. The workers suffered a total rout—they were badly outnumbered.

  The next day all the cobblers, saddlemakers, harnessmakers, and tanners walked off their jobs, to be joined by the organized draymen and butchers. With clubs in hand and knives in pockets, they descended upon Prevet Street and wreaked systematic havoc upon the brothels. They hurled beds and bedding through windows, slashed the whores’ dresses, smashed the pianos, and tore the suggestive pictures off the walls.

  “Go to work!” they shouted. “No more whorehouses and easy money!”

  The girls screamed hysterically, and there was uproar in the street. Uncle Zachariah’s wife tore the black, wavy wig from her head.

  “Zachariah, save the girls!” she shrieked. “They’re destroying our livelihood!”

  But Zachariah was afraid to resist—there were too many of the workers. He ran for his cohorts, but by the time they arrived the workers had wrecked every brothel on the street. Feathers and down filled the air like snowflakes. Glass crunched beneath feet. The toughs, accompanied by the boss teamsters, advanced with knives drawn, but the workers formed a solid wall, and their cobblers’ knives sliced flesh as easily as leather. This time it was the toughs who were routed and humiliated.

  News of the unionists’ victory carried through the city. The toughs were now too intimidated to come near the labor exchanges. A fear fell over the city’s employers. Even the police were afraid to stand up to the unionists, the conquerors of Feiffer Lane. No one dared say a word when the unionists came to speak at a synagogue or to walk the workers off the job precisely at 7:00 P.M. No one haggled when their representatives came to demand a donation for their soup kitchens. Even the restaurateurs served a free lunch when a union representative brought in an unemployed worker to be fed. Manufacturers refused to show themselves in their carriages. They quietly went abroad, leaving their businesses in the hands of their managers until the troubles subsided.

  From the Far Eastern fronts came even worse tidings. The slant-eyed heathens were clobbering the God-fearing Russians on land and at sea. The blind beggars who sang in the courtyards made veiled reference in their ditties to the Russian defeats. Cossacks spilled into every corner of the city.

  Thirty-Nine

  THE HUNTZE PLANT GROUND TO A HALT. The workers had walked off the job again. The factory director, Max Ashkenazi, didn’t leave the grounds. He was afraid to show himself in the streets. Melchior made up the bed for him in the late Albrecht’s huge office and stood guard ouside his door all night with a loaded revolver.

  Max slept fitfully in the huge bed where Albrecht had been so lavishly pleasured by the young spinners.

  Every minute the plant stood idle was like a thrust into Ashkenazi’s heart. According to his contract with the quartermaster general, he had a huge shipment of military goods to deliver by a specified date. If this contract were violated, the factory would be severely indemnified, and he personally would be out a fortune. He had kept the plant running at full capacity, two shifts around the clock. Everything had been carefully planned and arranged. The factory had been running like a fine-tuned watch. Suddenly it had all come to a stop.

  One detail Director Ashkenazi hadn’t taken into account was the workers. He had planned everything down to the last screw and bolt, but he hadn’t considered the human factor. And why should he have? Ever since he was little, he had known that there was never a shortage of hands in Lodz; there were always more than were needed. He also knew that hands needed work, all the work they could get. But suddenly the world turned upside down. One day, as he sat in his office, overburdened as usual with work, Melchior came in to announce that a delegation of workers from the factory wanted to speak with him.

  Max looked up in amazement. “A delegation? I have no time for that now. Tell them to come back some other time.”

  Melchior went out to pass the director’s answer on to the workers. He assumed that they would now withdraw, as they always did in such cases, but they didn’t budge. “Tell the director that we, too, don’t have the time and that if he doesn’t see us this minute, we’ll close down the factory,” their spokesman said.

  When Melchior reported the workers’ response to Max Ashkenazi, he plucked his wisp of a beard again and again. His soft easy chair grew suddenly hard as stone. He adjusted his tie, which as usual was twisted to one side, brushed the ashes off his lapel, leaned back in his chair, and lit a large aromatic cigar. He assumed his sternest expression, then scribbled some meaningless words on a scrap of paper to show the workers that he indeed was busy.

  They came in with their caps in hand, but exuding an air of complete confidence and assurance. Some even neglected to wipe their muddied shoes first.

  Max Ashkenazi greeted them with an insolent puff of smoke. “Well?” he asked.

  “We represent all the workers of the factory,” the spokesman said. He proceeded to read a list of demands from a sheet of paper.

  Max had the impulse to seize the paper, crumple it, and throw it to the ground just as he had that Saturday night when the workers had presented their demands in his father-in-law’s factory, but he restrained himself. These were not Jews, but gentiles and prone to violence. They hadn’t hesitated to shove Albrecht into a barrow and wheel him around with a broom in hand. Life to them wasn’t worth a groschen, not their own or that of others, so he tugged at the ends of his vest as if it were too short for him and listened.

  The demands were outrageous. They actually insisted on an eight-hour day—three shifts instead of two! Forgetting his resolve to remain cool and contemptuous, Max sprang from his chair.

  “How long ago was it you worked sixteen hours a day?” he shouted. “And now twelve is already too much, too?”

  “We can work twelve hours,” the spokesman said, “but for the extra four hours we want overtime pay.”

  “Out of the question!” Ashkenazi snapped.

  “ ‘For night work, time and a half,’ ” th
e delegate read from the paper.

  “Nonsense,” Ashkenazi said with a wave of the hand.

  “ ‘A twenty-five percent increase in base pay,’ ” the man continued.

  “Is that all?” Ashkenazi asked in a sarcastic tone.

  “For now, yes,” the spokesman replied passively.

  Max Ashkenazi plucked at the tip of his beard. “I assume that even though you are only workers, you are able to add and subtract?” he asked.

  The men didn’t know what he was leading up to, and they merely waited in silence.

  Max quickly scribbled a set of figures. “If I were to give in to even half your demands, the factory would have to operate at a loss, and that’s something no factory can afford to do.”

  “We have our own needs to think of,” the spokesman said. “The factory’s profits and losses aren’t our concern.”

  Max flicked his cigar so violently that the ashes sprayed the lapels of his expensive English suit. “On the contrary, the factory’s profits and losses are very much your concern. You’re just as much part of this factory as I am. If it closes down, we all stand to lose.”

  “That’s up to you,” the men said.

  “It’s one thing to shut down a factory. It’s quite another to get it running again,” Max said with a rusty smile. “Times are hard. Thousands of people are out of work. They would consider it a blessing to get your jobs. I didn’t close down our factory like the other manufacturers did. I searched out orders so that you could keep on working. Is this the way you want to repay me?”

  “The director wasn’t thinking of us, but of himself,” the spokesman said. “If the director won’t meet our demands, we strike.”

  Max tried another tack. “I’m only an employee here, just as you are. As you well know, the Barons Huntze are the owners of the factory. They’re abroad right now. Only they can make such a major decision. The moment they’re back, I’ll present your demands to them. In the meantime, let’s get back to work.”

  He was stalling for time. He couldn’t afford to have the factory stand idle for even an hour at this time. But the workers wouldn’t grant him the reprieve.

  “We’ll give you an extra few days to contact the barons,” the spokesman said after conferring briefly with the others. “But that’s all. We want your answer by then.”

  During his few days of grace Ashkenazi tried every ploy he knew to avert a strike. First, he turned to the method that had served him so well in the past. He no longer sent for Lippe Halfon but invited the police chief himself for lunch. He made it a point to relay the fact that the factory was engaged in war production in behalf of the brave lads at the front. By shutting down the mill, the workers would be hampering a patriotic effort. The authorities were obliged to exercise all the power at their command to prevent this. If they sent Cossacks to teach the traitors a lesson, things would return to normal.

  The police chief licked his whiskers after the lavish meal but shook his head. He wasn’t about to confront the workers at this time. He had enough troubles besides this. His men were frightened. Each day another policeman was shot. Nor would the governor become involved either. Times were no longer the same. The only thing left for him, Ashkenazi, was to deal with the workers in his own way.

  Max tried other ploys. He called in each of the delegates separately and let each one know that if he would abandon the group and consider his own interests, he would be handsomely rewarded. But they wouldn’t go along. Some took it as an affront; some became alarmed.

  Max then ordered his foremen to recruit unemployed men and women in the streets to replace the regular workers and thus break the strike, but people were too afraid to scab. Many of them sided with the workers.

  When all other means had been exhausted, Ashkenazi used his trump card. He shut down the factory himself in an effort to starve the workers into coming back. He knew that this would cut deeply into his production schedule, but he felt certain that such a bold move would assure him ultimate victory.

  After locking the factory securely, Max barricaded himself inside and waited for the workers to capitulate. He was too clever to show himself outside the factory gates, while thousands of his men milled through the streets roused to a fever pitch by the agitators, and he had his meals brought in from home.

  No one was allowed inside the factory. Melchior sat at the front door with a loaded revolver. Out of sheer boredom, Max even began to read the trashy novels his predecessor had been so fond of. He couldn’t sleep through the long, languid night without the roar of the machinery to lull him.

  But the workers didn’t come crawling back, as he had expected.

  For Nissan, these were days of furious activity. He collected funds for the strike, made speeches, wrote proclamations. This wasn’t anything like that pathetic first effort years ago in Balut. This was a full-fledged strike involving thousands of true proletarians against a giant capitalistic enterprise. This was a struggle deserving his, Nissan’s, most intense effort.

  The time for which he had been waiting so long had finally come. The spark of discontent had leaped across the walls of the huge factories, and Nissan worked day and night to keep it glowing until it erupted into the blazing flame of revolution.

  In his secret hideaway within the factory walls, Max Ashkenazi seethed when he heard that Jewish agitators from Balut were keeping his workers off their jobs. What right had they to mix into matters that didn’t concern them? They didn’t work for him now, nor would they ever. So why did they tear out their guts in behalf of gentile workers who despised them?

  Most of his rage was directed against that rabbi’s whelp, who was responsible for all his troubles. Hadn’t the years of prison and exile taught him anything? The only thing gentiles required was the chance to work. They were strong, and they cared little whether they worked a few hours more or less. All they wanted was the few rubles so that they could get drunk on Saturdays. All those other notions stemmed from Jews. Being physically inferior, they couldn’t put in a day’s work themselves, and all they were good for was to turn the gentiles’ heads with talk of socialism, solidarity, and other such twaddle. They would keep it up until they aroused the savage blood of the gentiles, and the result would be the same as usual—Jewish blood being shed.

  Max bit his lips out of rage and frustration. Had the times been less touchy, he would have taught those Jewish troublemakers a lesson. It was considered a good deed to punish Jews who turned gentiles against their own brothers.

  But his hands were tied. Even the police were afraid to buck the rebels. And what would it lead to? How much provocation would the gentiles require to shoot or stab him, Ashkenazi, whom Nissan and his gang constantly denounced as a bloodsucker and an exploiter?

  True, he was safe in his hideout for now, but how long could this go on? Every minute the factory stood idle cost him a fortune. There were millions waiting to be made and here he was, stuck away like some mouse in a hole.…

  One sleepless night, as Max Ashkenazi’s brain seethed with thousands of ideas and notions, it suddenly struck him that it might be beneficial to have Nissan in for a private discussion. True, he was an infidel and worse than any gentile; still, it wouldn’t hurt to talk. He, Max, had always held great faith in his powers of persuasion. Not that Nissan was a fool. Far from it. They had already locked horns years back in his father’s schoolroom and again that Saturday night in Balut. Nissan couldn’t possibly know that Max had had anything to do with his first arrest. Besides, that was already ancient history. He had been exiled again after that, and he had undoubtedly forgotten all about the earlier incident.

  In the event that Nissan still nursed a grudge against him, Max would prove to him that he was completely innocent. It had all been the doing of the police. In fact, he, Max, had pleaded in Nissan’s behalf, even though it had been to no avail. If only Nissan agreed to talk things over with him, he would realize that Max was right. Max had been blessed with the power to reason with people, to speak stra
ight from the heart.

  He sat down and wrote a letter to his former classmate. In the erudite Hebrew employed by one scholar to another, replete with apt parables and quotes from the Gemara, he requested Nissan’s presence at the factory in order to discuss a matter of the gravest importance. He added that it wasn’t out of any self-pride or haughtiness that he invited the other to come to him, but merely as a matter of expediency since he, Max, found it impolitic to show himself outside the factory these days.

  He signed the letter with a number of additional flourishes, read it over with satisfaction, and dispatched it with a trusted messenger, whom he admonished to deliver it into the right hands.

  For several hours the committee debated how to respond to the message from the enemy camp. Ignore it? Refuse it? Accept it?

  Tevye was against accepting—he suspected some sort of trick. There might be police waiting there to nab Nissan. But Nissan was of another opinion. Ashkenazi wouldn’t be so stupid as to pull such a crude stunt at this time. He was too pragmatic for that. It might prove worthwhile to hear what he had to say. It never hurt to learn all one could about the enemy. But to allay any suspicion, he, Nissan, wouldn’t go there alone.

  One evening, accompanied by two companions, he made his way to the factory. The gate opened, then slammed shut heavily, just as it had in the prisons he had known so well. Max Ashkenazi was waiting at his office door. When he saw three people instead of one, he grew momentarily disappointed—he preferred one-to-one confrontations. But he quickly recovered and assumed a friendly, hospitable expression. He shook the hands of all three visitors and said in an affable German, “I’m very delighted to see you gentlemen. Do please sit down.”

  He decided to begin in a scholarly tone. He gazed searchingly at Nissan. “Recognized you at once. There’s no mistaking the face of a scholar.”