Sholem Aleichem - The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son

And so, my dear wife, please talk to old Azriel and Moyshe the redhead, since they pal around with Russian gentry. Find out how many beets we can count on and what they’ll cost and write me back at once, because it’s urgent. We can make a tidy sum from this, a good 10 or 15,000. But being busy and in a hurry, I’ll be brief. God willing, I’ll write more in my next letter. Meanwhile, may he grant you health and success. Give my fondest greetings to everyone.

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. I asked my new partner who his investor is and was told it was a Jew from Radomishl. He’s all fired up to make the deal because the Radomishl Jews are big on sugar mills. He’s even willing to buy an old windmill, he says, as long as it has a chimney that works. I pray to God it’s as good as it sounds and we’ll make some money from it, even though there are quite a few partners — it’s beginning to look like close to a dozen. But I hope this is the real thing at last. You know I put no stock in get-rich-quick schemes.

To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!

First, we’re all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you.

Second, I must have read your song-and-dance a dozen times and I still don’t know what you want. Is there room in Kasrilevke? There’s enough room in our new cemetery alone to bury half of Yehupetz. And what is this river you talk about? I hope you and your partners have more luck than we have water in our river. By Passover time we’re drinking tadpoles and in summer it’s as grassy as a lawn. Let your Yehupetz bluebeards take a sip of it in the month of Tammuz and they’ll need their liver pills indeed.

No, Mendl, let their livers rot in Yehupetz and we’ll get along without their sugar mills here. “Passover cleaning,” my mother says, “comes and goes, but the house remains the same house.” Get all that claptrap out of your head. You’ll sell as many mills as you’ve sold forests, country property, Yehupetz real estate, and sugar. I promise you that your partners will clean you out before you know it, because you were born a sucker and a sucker you’ll always be. I wish you all the best,

Your truly faithful wife,

Sheyne-Sheyndl

One more thing, Mendl. What’s this we hear about registering in Yehupetz to go to the Land of Israel? A forty-kopeck subscription, we’re told, will get you there. What’s the lowdown? Here in Kasrilevke it’s all anyone talks about. The young folk sit up discussing it all night at Yosl Moyshe-Yosi’s. In short, things are going from bad to worse. But if you want peace and quiet, my mother says, you should look for it in the grave …

To my wise, esteemed, & virtuous wife Sheyne-Sheyndl, may you have a long life!

Firstly, rest assured that I am, praise God, in the best of health. God grant that we hear from each other only good and pleasing news, amen.

Secondly, sugar mills are in a slump. It’s sellers only. Money is so dear and sugar is so cheap that you can’t give the stuff away. The business is kaput. The millers are fighting to stay alive. The investors are gone, the agents are out of work, and so am I.

I suppose you think I’m in a bad way. Never fear, my dear wife. God’s in His heaven and Yehupetz is still around, too. You can trust me to land on my feet. In fact, I have reason to believe that I’m about to hit the jackpot, since my latest line promises a return of 100,000 to one. I’m talking ten million rubles, maybe more — the sky is the limit! That’s because gold, they say, will soon hit record highs. Well, then, I ask you: what about silver? What about iron? What about copper, tin, quicksilver? I’m not even talking coal and precious stones. There are tracts of land sitting on fortunes — why, you can pick up a gold mine, I’m told, for as little as three-million-five. They’re practically free! They’re just a bit far away. They’re beyond the Uropal Mountains and it takes three weeks to reach them because there aren’t any trains.

Whom can I interest in such a proposition? Brodsky, of course! The problem is getting to see him. To begin with, he has a doorman with gold buttons who looks you up and down: let him see a frayed coat and you’ll never cross the threshold. And if you’re lucky enough to get past the doorman, you can cool your heels on the stairs for hours, hoping to be let into Brodsky’s office, only to see him fly by like the wind to his carriage just as your turn is next. Go do something about it! It’s only polite to come back and try again the next day …and the next day the same thing happens. You have to hand it to him: he’s a busy man!

You can see that getting to Brodsky isn’t easy. I haven’t given up, though. One crack at him and I have it made. But being busy and in a hurry, I’ll be brief. God willing, I’ll write more in my next letter. Meanwhile, may He grant you health and success. My fondest greetings to everyone and to the children,

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. Your question concerning the Land of Israel no doubt refers to the Zionites. They’re most serious people, though not well thought of on the Yehupetz Exchange. I’ve gone to a few of their meetings to see what it’s all about, but everything was in Russian — and lots of it. You would think it would be no skin off their backs to talk to Jews in a Jewish language! My friends on the Exchange just laugh when I mention them: “What? The Cyanides? Dr. Herzl? You call that a business too?”

To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!

First, we’re all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you.

Second, my sister Gitl is now a widow with seven orphans. My brother-in-law — may my life be as long as his was short! — has died of the toothache. Of course, his health wasn’t too good before that. I hope never to cough up blood the way he did. Still, we thought he’d hang on. Who could guess he’d have a tooth pulled by Shmelke the healer and lie down the next morning and die? It’s as my mother says: “Tomorrow is another day — but whose?”

And now poor Gitl is left by herself. Her grief is not to be described. If it had been the other way around, God forbid, and she had died and left Zalman-Meir a widower, I don’t suppose he would have wasted any tears on her. No, he would have waited a month and sent to Berdichev for a stepmother. All you men are the same — you’re not fit to fasten your wives’ apron strings. If you were, would a father of children go chasing pots of gold at the end of a rainbow? A millionaire he thinks he’ll be! His lordship is doing so well that he’s even made it to Brodsky’s front door! I’m afraid that’s as far as you’ll get. I swear, you’ll wear out your boots just standing there! Do you think Brodsky has nothing better to do than fly away with his millions to some blasted place beyond the Uropal Mountains just because Menakhem-Mendl has heard that gold and quicksilver are lying on the ground there? It’s the old story of the deaf man hearing the dumb man tell of the blind man seeing the cripple run …

I can already see your next letter informing me that your latest bonanza has fizzled out too. Not that you won’t dream up something even crazier and write that, since the cow jumped over the roof and laid an egg, you’re opening a hatchery. If only you’d get it into your head that you have a wife at home, provided she survives all this, and little children who await you like the Messiah, you wouldn’t be running from door to door with your lunatic notions that are sickening to think of. You haven’t learned a thing from your Yehupetz. I’d put a torch to it!