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

You couldn’t ask for nicer people! And as I wasn’t about to be outdone, I rolled up my sleeves and sat down to write and have been writ-ing ever since. This is the third day I’m at it and I’m still going strong. And since I’m busy with my writing, 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 the children and your parents,

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. Please let me know whether you’ve received an advance from the board. I asked it to send you some money. What’s a few smackers to it? It can deduct them from my pay.

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, your lovely letters are making me spit blood. Money from boards I’ll be sent! Are you working for a newspaper or a lumber yard? You can put a match to your board and all its money! I need it like last year’s snow. To quote my mother: “Spare me your sting and you can keep your honey.”

Believe me, your board will turn to sawdust before I see an advance from it. An advanced case of heartburn I’ll get! If it’s my fate to have a scribbler for a husband, why must you scribble in Yehupetz? Isn’t there enough ink in Kasrilevke? There’s something fishy going on here. Bite into the apple, says my mother, and you’ll find the worm.

No, my dear husband, stop making excuses! Pack up your littleture and come home, because I can’t bear the children’s sorrow any longer. All they ever ask is, when will papa be here? On Passover I tell them Sukkes and on Sukkes I tell them Passover. And Moyshe-Hirshele misses you most of all. As smart as a whip he is — a lot smarter than his father, that’s for sure. I wish you all the best.

Your truly faithful wife,

Sheyne-Sheyndl

What do you say about my Nekhameh-Breindl? She’s now on her second divorce. No one knows why. Her husband showed me in secret an arm full of black-and-blue marks. He’s willing, he says, to let her keep the dowry and the wedding jewelry — anything to get rid of such a curse. My mother says an ounce of luck is worth a pound of gold, but luck in men is the one thing we lack.

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, I’ve already gone through two bottles of ink and am now on my third. Describing a city like Yehupetz is no mean task. I decided to begin with my boarding house, and first of all with my landlady. Why with her? On account of her husband. He was a soldier, and he’s been dead for thirteen years, and she was his second wife. She married him, she says, for the right to live in Yehupetz and she wouldn’t wish such a life on her worst enemies. She was, she says, twenty years younger than him and as pretty as a picture. All the men, Jews and Christians, were wild about her …and now she’s reduced to bringing Menakhem-Mendl a bowl of borscht or meat with horseradish each time he snaps his fingers. She has a son and daughter to support, too, both in high school, neither of whom lifts a finger to help. They sit and wait for her to serve them. She brings them coffee in bed every morning, and they expect to find lunch on the table when they come home from school whether there’s food in the house or not. And you should hear the racket they make if it isn’t waiting for them! But that’s the sort of children they are. One morning the daughter, the high-school girl, woke up and hollered for some soap. She actually ran half-naked with her neck showing into the dining room where we boarders were having breakfast and shouted at her mother in Russian: “What kind of flophouse is this?” Naturally, we gave her a scolding. Did she mean to tell us, we asked, that she was taught to behave that way in high school? “You should be grateful,” I said, “that your mother slaves for you. She even shines your shoes while you sleep!” Those were my very words. I was about to give her another piece of my mind when her brother butts in and says: “Mind your own business!” The nerve of him opening his trap at me! I was so annoyed that I wrote it up for the papers, the poor woman and her darling children and the whole scene. I hope he learns his lesson when it’s published! Well, it’s a big world. You can bet there are plenty of other widows being driven to distraction by their children. Do you see now, my dear wife, what I’m paid to do? And 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 your parents and the children, God bless them, each and every single one.

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. An editorial board is not a piece of wood. It’s a group of people that gets together to put out a newspaper. The board sends writers to different cities. It needs material and we’re paid to produce it. We send it in and it’s printed. I hope that makes the newspaper business clear.

Yours, etc.

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

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

Second, I read your letter and couldn’t believe my eyes. A bad dream, that’s all I can say. A grand subject you’ve found to make a rhubarb from — a widow and her blasted bawdy house! Believe me, if I were you I would have minced no words with that young man and sent that naked hussy to peel potatoes in the kitchen instead of writing them both up in the papers. But I have a husband, it seems, who gets paid to be a stump preacher. My mother says it takes all kinds to make a world, but if you ask me, before sticking your nose into other people’s pots you might take an interest in your own. Are you your children’s father or not? You should hear Moyshe-Hirshele say his ABC’s — all your widows aren’t fit to carry his schoolbag! As soon as I’m up to it I’ll have a photograph made of him and the others, so that you can see what you’ve traded for your rotten boards and bawds. I wish you only the best.

Your truly faithful wife,

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, I’ve finished the landlady and am now writing up the lodgers. In other words, I’m describing the sad cases in my boarding house. If I do say so myself, it’s going well. Each boarder is a sorrier story than the next, but the one we call “Touch o’ Gold” takes the cake. All the ink and paper in the world aren’t enough for him. He comes from Zhvanitz, married a woman from Ladizhin and another from Soroke, and moved to Yekaterinoslav, where he started his first business. He was in gold — that is, some shady characters relieved him of his money in return for sacks of yellow sand. Well, you can’t just go and throw yourself in the river, so he took his walking stick and went to the Odessa Exchange, where he put together some deals, made a few rubles, and advertised for a partner. Sure enough, a fellow turned up, someone in iron — that is, the two of them bought land near Krivorog that was sitting on iron ore. Right off they were offered a few thousand rubles to lease the mining rights, but Touch o’ Gold turned it down: it was, he said, either half a million for the whole property or nothing. Well, nothing it was and Touch o’ Gold decided to try coal. He found a German engineer — I mean, a Jew who spoke some German — and rented a mine with him. The price was good, too, but the first shaft they dug, don’t ask me where it came from, they had a flood on their hands. Two pumps were brought to get rid of the water, but the harder they pumped, the more it kept coming. So Touch o’ Gold said to heck with the German and found a Jew in the egg business — stuffed eggs, not fresh ones, because the yolks had been used for something else, I don’t remember what. As luck would have it, the egg machine broke and the Jew took off and left Touch o’ Gold with a mountain of rotten eggs. After a while they began to stink and Touch o’ Gold received a summons. So one dark night he climbed out the window, leaving the eggs behind in Yekaterinoslav, and opened a cigarette paper factory in Kremenchug with the money he still had. It so happened that his new partner loved chess. He loved it so much, Touch o’ Gold says, that he played it all day and all night, without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Once the two of them discovered at the end of a long game that all their cartons of cigarette paper were empty. Where had the paper gone? It was anyone’s guess. Meanwhile Touch o’ Gold heard of a small-town pharmacist who was selling out his stock. He went and bought it for a pittance and stood to make a killing. How was he supposed to know it included a crate of gunpowder? Well, there was all this gunpowder traveling by train when it took a notion to blow up along with the car and the conductor, who barely came out of it alive. How’s that for the golden touch! He says he could kill the fish in a river just by looking at it. The man has a comeback for everything! He’s a little fellow, a real live wire with burning eyes, a hat pushed back on his head, hands in his pockets, and a mind that’s always working on something new. He never runs out of ideas. That’s because he’s made up his mind to become a millionaire. If he doesn’t, he’ll light out for America. Once he’s there, he says, things will work out. In fact, he wants me to join him. He says people like me keep their heads above water. But I would be crazy to push my luck by giving up a good literary career! And as I’m 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 your parents and all the children.