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

The emigrants protest that they’re at their wits’ end. The doctor takes out his wallet and hands them a coin. The emigrants pocket it and go away. New emigrants take their place. They tell the doctor they’re hungry.

“What can I do for you?” he asks.

“We want to eat,” they say.

“Here’s my breakfast,” he says. “Eat.”

He points to some rolls and a cup of coffee that have been brought him. Honestly, he says. Have his breakfast. What can a man do all by himself? The emigrants thank him. The food isn’t for them. It’s for their children.

“Next time bring them too,” says the doctor with a twinkle in his kind eyes. He turns to the next emigrant.

“What can I do for you?”

It’s my mother’s turn to tell the doctor her case history. How she had a husband. And how this husband was a cantor. And how the cantor fell ill. And how he grew worse until he died and left her a widow with two children, one grown up and one a little boy. (That’s me!) The older one was recently married. He was swimming in chicken fat. Then the fat ran out and left a hole. His father-in-law went bankrupt and he was nearing draft age, so we decided to go to America.

“Mama, what kind of sob story are you giving him?”

That’s my brother Elye. He starts again from the beginning:

“Draft, shmaft — the thing is, we’re going to America. I mean me, and my mother, and my wife, and my little brother” (that’s me!), “and that fellow over there” (he points to Pinye). “We had to run the border. I mean we couldn’t get an exit permit. The thing is, my friend and I were draft age …”

“Allow me!” Pinye says, shoving Elye aside and telling it his way. Even if Elye is my brother, I have to admit that Pinye tells it better. For one thing, he knows Russian. Does he use some swell words! This is how it went:

“If I were to present you with a short vozglyad of the entire polozhenye, you would have a totshke zrenye . We’re going to America less because of the voyenske povyonost than because of the samastoyatelnost . Here, you see, we’re extremely styesnitelni, not merely in terms of progres, but also regarding vozdukh, as Turgenev observed. And vovterikh, that’s especially so since the yevreiski vopros, not to mention the pogroms, the Constitution, and tomu podovne, as Buckle says in his History of Civilization …”

But I don’t do Pinye justice. That was only the beginning. He was just warming up when the doctor cut him short, took a sip of his coffee, and said with a smile: “Well, what can I do for you?”

That’s when Elye muscled in and said to Pinye: “How come you never stick to the point?”

That made Pinye pretty sore. He walked away, tripping over his own feet and saying crossly: “You think you talk better? So talk!”

Elye stepped up to the doctor and began the whole story again.

“The thing is, we came to the border. I mean we started negotiating with the agents. Those agents, let me tell you, are real bastards. Right away they give us the runaround. They double deal, they rat, they finagle. And then along comes this woman. I mean a decent, pious, one-hundred-percent type! So we bargain with her and arrive at a price for running us across the border. The thing is, we’re supposed to go first and our belongings will follow. She found two Christians to go with us …”

“Just listen to him! He’s already up to the Christians! What’s the big rush?”

That’s Brokheh jumping in to tell it her way. It’s the same story but a little different. The woman told us to walk to a hill. There we turned right and walked to another hill. Then we turned left and walked to a tavern. Pinye went inside and found two men drinking vodka. He gave them a password and they took us to a forest. It’s a lucky thing that she, Brokheh, has a habit of fainting …

“Shall I tell you something, my dear woman? I’m about to faint myself. Please get to the point and tell me what I can do for you.”

My mother steps back up to the doctor and says: “The point is that all our things were stolen.”

The doctor: “What things?”

My mother: “Our linen. Two bedspreads, four large pillows, and two more made from the babies.”

The doctor: “That’s all?”

My mother: “And three quilts, two old and one new. And some clothing and—”

The doctor: “That’s not what I meant. I meant, is that the worst that happened?”

My mother: “You’d like worse?”

The doctor: “But what is it that you need?”

My mother: “Linens.”

The doctor: “That’s all?”

My mother: “It’s not enough?”

The doctor: “You still have your tickets? Your money?”

My mother: “That much we have. Our ship and railroad tickets, both.”

The doctor: “Then you have a lot to be thankful for! I envy you. Let’s change places. Don’t think I’m joking. I’m perfectly serious. Take my breakfast, take my emigrants, take my Committee, give me your tickets — and I’m off to America today. What can I possibly accomplish here, all by myself with so many poor souls?”

That doctor was …but none of us could say what he was. There was no point in hanging around Lemberg. Every new day, Elye said, only meant running up more bills. It made more sense to go to Cracow. Cracow was full of emigrants. Wasn’t that what we were too?

If you’re traveling to America, stick with the emigrants. It’s the best way to go. Come to a new city and you needn’t look for a place to stay, since there’s already one waiting for you. That’s because of the Committee. It’s the Committee that sees to such things.

Our first night in Cracow we were put up in a room, unless you prefer to call it a stall or a closet. In the morning someone came from the Committee to take our names. My mother didn’t want to give them. She was afraid of the draft. I’m telling you! Everyone had a good laugh. Since when does the Austrian Kaiser work for the Russian army? Next we were taken to a dormitory. That’s a big room with lots of beds and emigrants. “It looks like our Kasrilevke almshouse,” said my mother. “Mother-in-law,” Brokheh said, “let’s get out of this town.”

I’ve already told you that the women are like that. Nothing pleases them. They’re always finding fault. They didn’t care for Cracow from the start.

Elye doesn’t like Cracow either. He says it isn’t Lemberg. Lemberg was full of Jews. Not that there aren’t plenty of them in Cracow too, but they’re a funny sort of Jew, half-Polacks who curl their mustaches and talk Proshepanye. That’s according to Elye. Pinye thinks otherwise. Cracow, he says, is more civilized.

Pinye swears by something called civilization. I’d give a lot to know what that is.

The Committee has put us up in a great place. I mean, it’s great for making friends. You keep meeting new emigrants. You sit with them, eat with them, and swap stories with them. Some of the stories are pretty hairy: one person escaped a pogrom by a hair, another beat the draft by a hair, another made it across the border by a hair. Everyone talks about their agent. “Who was yours?” you’re asked, “the dark one or the blond one?” “He wasn’t dark and he wasn’t blond,” comes the answer. “He was a bastard.”

Usually we get to tell our story too, the whole blessed miracle: how we found some agents, and how we met the woman with the wig, and how she tried to swindle us, and how her Christian pals brought us to a forest, and how they asked for our money and said they’d cut our throats. It was a stroke of luck that Brokheh likes to faint and my mother began to scream. Then a shot rang out and the Christians took off and before we knew it we were on the other side.