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

Mostly he guards against pilfering. You get a kahstemeh buying barley, you have to make sure she doesn’t help herself to a handful of raisins or pop a date in her mouth. Bumpy helps himself too. He told me how he once pinched so many raisins that he had a stomach ache for three whole days. His pay comes from carrying bags for the kahstemehz. Some of them give him a pehni or two. Once he even made a nikl — that’s five pehnehz in one shot. He can clear a dahleh a week. Back in Kasrilevke the only money he ever saw was on Purim, when the children tricked-or-treated. But Purim came once a year. Bumpy earns money every day.

“Columbus, you should be sculpted in gold!” Pinye says. Once he saw Bumpy at his stend as he was walking down Rivinktn Strit, bought three cents’ worth of carob pods, and gave him a pehni tipp. A tipp is extra money from a kahstemeh.

Moyshe the bookbinder keeps busy, too. He’s not binding books any more. In America, he says, it costs a fortune to rent a staw, buy equipment, and find kahstemehz. And he’s too old to work as a hiyud hend. He took some advice he was given (that’s one thing Jews have a lot of) and opened a book stend on Essiks Strit. He’s making a living from it.

Pinye likes that idea so much he’s thinking of copying it. A man, he says, should deal in what he likes. Pinye takes to books like a fish to water. Once he sticks that long nose of his in one of them, you can’t tear him loose from it.

Yoyneh the bagel maker has also left his old line of work — and for the same reason. You have to be a millionaire to open a bakery. Besides, he says, you have to join the yunye and he’s too old. Yoyneh is afraid he’d get his skull cracked in a streik if he worked for a non-yunye man. (In America there are streiks every day.) In the end he listened to some advice too. The advice was to make something else. Such as what? Such as knishes! Homemade knishes filled with cheese and sauerkraut.

Believe it or not, Yoyneh is doing not badly. Not badly at all. His knishes have a reputation all over the Loaweh Ist Seid. If you walk down Essiks Strit and see a window that says homemade knishes sold here in big Jewish letters, you’ll know it’s him. And if you see another sign across the street that says homemade knishes sold here, you’ll know it’s the competition. Don’t give it your biznis. Buy your knishes from Yoyneh. You’ll know it’s him because he’s mean. And if you don’t, you’ll recognize Riveleh. She has a double chin like Pesye and a coral necklace. You’ll recognize Brokheh too by her big feet. The little girl with the braids and freckles is her sister Alte. We once were engaged. I’ll tell you about Alte some other time.

We can’t complain. We’re welcome guests at Pesye and Moyshe’s. Life is pretty good there. We all have a swell time, especially on Sundays when the gang is off. That’s when we live it up. We all get together, my friend Mendl too, and go to the theater.

It’s called the moofink pikshehz. It costs a nikl and you can’t believe the things you see. If I were the Tsar’s son I’d go to the moofink pikshehz every day and never leave. So would Mendl. Bumpy, too — I mean Herry.

Not my brother Elye. Elye thought the moofink pikshehz were silly. He said they were for children. “If they’re for children,” I said, “I’d like to know what Pinye and Taybl are doing there. And how about Brokheh?” But Elye has an answer for everything. A woman, he said, has a child’s brains and Pinye likes to be annoying.

Elye went on like that until one Sunday he came with us. Now he wouldn’t miss a moofink piksheh for the world. We all go together, the grown-ups too, Moyshe, Pesye, Yoyneh, and even Riveleh. Everyone except my mother. How can she go to the theater, she says, when her husband is buried in the ground? Her enemies shouldn’t live to see the day!

Life is not bad at all. But how long can we go on being house guests? It’s time to look for a dzhahb. In America you have to make a living. That’s what Elye says. He goes around looking worried. Every day he drops by to talk things over with my mother. Brokheh joins them. So does Pinye. Pinye is full of plans and projects. None is worth a hill of beans. I mean they’re good plans, it’s just that Elye doesn’t like them. And if he does, Brokheh doesn’t.

For instance, Pinye had the idea that he, Elye, Brokheh, and Taybl should go to work in a shahp and be tailors. In America a tailor sews on a machine and is called an ahpereydeh. For a high-class dzhahb like an ahpereydeh’s, Brokheh said, she didn’t have to leave Kasrilevke. “I suppose selling knishes on Essiks Strit is higher,” said Elye. Did that make Brokheh mad! Who was Elye to be talking about knishes? It was time he realized that her father’s knishes were all that kept us from starvation.

I’d love Pinye just for the things he says. It’s a joy to sit back and listen once he gets going. Now he jumped from his seat, waved his arms, and cut loose. I remember every word:

“O you primitive people! Deep in your hearts you’re still living in exile, in the dreary land of the accursed Tsar! America is not a pigsty to wallow in like Russia! Every millionaire and every billionaire started out working long and hard here, if not in a shahp than in the strit. Ask Rahknfelleh! Ask Kahnegi! Ask Mawgn! Ask Vendehbilt! Where were they when they were young? Do you think they didn’t work the strit? Do you think they didn’t run around selling peypehz and polishing shoes for a nikl? Take the king of kahz, Mr. Fawd, and ask him if he wasn’t once a plain dreiveh! Take the greatest Americans, Vashinktn, Linkn, Rawzvelt — I suppose you think they all were born prehzident! Take Prehzident Vilsn! You’ll pardon my saying so, but he was once a lousy heder teacher.”

That was too much for Elye. He interrupted and said:

“Eh, Pinye, show some respect! You’re talking about a man who is second only to God. He’s king of America.”

Watch out for Pinye when he’s got up a full head of steam! He only laughed at my brother.

“Ha, that’s a good one! King of what? King of where? There are no kings in America. It’s a free country, a democracy!”

“Fine, so the king of America is called a prehzident,” Elye said. “So what?”

“So plenty! A king is no more a prehzident than a horse is a house. A king is a king and a prehzident is a prehzident. A king is born a king and a prehzident is elected. If we elect him, Vilsn will be prehzident for four more years. If we don’t, it’s back to the heder. For your information, I could be prehzident myself one day.”

“You? Prehzident?”

“Me! Prehzident!”

In all the years I’ve known Elye, I’ve never seen him laugh like that. Elye, as you know, is a worrier. He doesn’t laugh much, and when he does it’s with half a mouth. This time he laughed so hard that he scared my mother to death.

Not that it wasn’t funny. It was enough just to look at Pinye with his hands in the pockets of his pants that were too short, his shiny new American shoes that were too big, his tie that Taybl couldn’t get to sit straight, his American cap that kept falling off, and most of all, his nearsighted eyes and long, pointy nose that stared right into his mouth. Good God, this was the future prehzident of America? A superman couldn’t have kept a straight face.

Elye finished laughing, turned to my mother, and said: “All right, our future is taken care of. We’ll sew clothes in a shahp. And Pinye doesn’t have to worry because he’s going to be prehzident. But what about the boys?”

He meant me and Mendl. He couldn’t stand the thought of our doing nothing. It made him sore to see us playing bawl or tshekehz in the strit. Each time he reached for my ear, he had to remember that I wasn’t his size.