E.
My sister-in-law finds a different fault. What will we do with so many rooms? Why do we need five rooms? Our neighbor Fat Pessi suggests that we can rent the spare rooms, take in “boarders.” Bruche says, “That’s all we need, having to worry about strangers in our house.” Teibl echoes her every word like a parrot.
Pinni says to his wife, “Why don’t you try to say something on your own for a change, not repeat Bruche’s words?”
Bruche steps forward and cools him off: “Some people know everything about others but nothing about themselves.” And Teibl repeats this as well, word for word.
Pinni says to his wife, “What would you do if you were alone?” Bruche retorts, “Would you, should you — what a lot of questions!” And Teibl repeats her every word.
Pinni spits a “Tphoo!” and leaves.
F.
Do you think we’re the only ones who go to look at the business? Our in-laws and friends also come along with us. The first is our in-law Yoneh the baker. After a while his wife Rivele comes. They can’t leave the knishes alone and have to take turns wherever they go. Then comes Moishe the bookbinder, followed by Fat Pessi. But wait! Here I must interrupt myself and say in the local language, “Excuse me, I made a mistake.” It is Fat Pessi who comes first, followed by Moishe. After them come some good friends who pray with us in shul, some Kasrilevka Jews who understand business. The owner doesn’t receive them kindly. As a matter of fact, he practically throws them out. He says he never imagined such a large family! This hurts my mother’s feelings. She goes with Bruche to see him privately, and Bruche gives him a piece of her mind he will never forget! The businessman swears by God that he’s giving up the business only because he’s getting married, but now he regrets his decision. If a woman, he says, can open up her mouth like our Bruche, it’s not worth getting married. He says he’s better off remaining single.
G.
But he’s just saying that. He’s as eager to sell the business as we are to buy it, especially since we’ve almost sold our stand. I say “almost” because the greenhorn who came to take over our stand has forced a ten-dollar deposit on us. We’re already sorry we’ve taken his deposit, because now he hangs around us all day and won’t move a step away from our stand — a nudnik of a Jew, even more of a nudnik than my brother Elyahu! My brother is an angel compared to him. He makes such a pest of himself that we throw the deposit back in his face. But he refuses to take it back. He’s fallen in love with our stand. He’s sure we’ve become rich from it. “A greenhorn remains a greenhorn!” says our friend Pinni.
H.
What is a greenhorn? Ask me something easier! My friend Mike doesn’t really know either. We hear people saying “greenhorn,” so we say it too. I draw a picture of the man who’s buying the stand from us on the sidewalk. I draw him with a long horn on his forehead, in green chalk. (You should hear them laugh.) Everybody recognizes him and laughs, all except my brother Elyahu. He is not amused. Oh, he doesn’t hit me, but he does make me wipe off the green horn with a wet rag or else we could be fined. You can get fined for everything around here. Try spitting on the street, and a policeman will appear, grab you by the ear, and take you straight to the police station, where you’ll be fined five dollars. America is very strict!
I.
You must think that no one spits on the street in America and that it’s as clean and neat as Antwerp. You’re mistaken. They spit and clear their noses plenty here. America is a free country, except maybe on Fifth Avenue, where the millionaires live. Millionaires don’t spit. Only people who are badly off spit. The rich man is well off, so what does he have to spit about?
XVIII
WE MOVE
A.
In America it’s a custom to move. People pack up and relocate from one dwelling to another and from one business to another. Everyone has to move. If you don’t move of your own accord, they force you to move. If you don’t pay your rent, for instance, they come and throw you out, which means you are moved out. So don’t be surprised if they ask you, “When are you moving?” And if they ask you, you have to answer. For refusing to answer, my brother Elyahu receives a talking-to from a customer who gets matches from us. Every week he gets a little box of matches for free. Here you don’t have to pay for matches or even wait to get them. You can just go over and take them yourself.
B.
The customer I’m speaking of is a strange person. Who he is and what he is we don’t know. Where he lives and what his business is we also don’t know. He’s apparently not a rich man — you can tell by his shabby coat, which he never changes, his crumpled hat, and his patched shoes. But he’s a very punctual man. He comes by every day at the same time to the minute. He picks up the morning paper, scans the first and last pages, looks quickly at the center page, and puts the paper back. He’s never bought a single thing from us. He just takes a free box of matches from us every week and reads the paper every morning. This irritates my brother Elyahu. Once or twice would be all right, but not every day.
One day my brother Elyahu decides to say something. “It costs a penny.”
The customer goes on doing what he usually does, reading the first and last pages of the paper.
My brother raises his voice: “It costs a cent!”
The customer glances at the center page, folds the paper back up, and puts it back in the exact place where he found it.
C.
[At this point Motl the Cantor’s Son is cut short. “We Move” was the last chapter, the last lines that Sholem Aleichem wrote lying on his deathbed. He wrote the letter c, but after the c nothing follows except empty white pages. A few days later he left us. The nameless “customer” remains unknown, and all further sketches of the Jewish-American ghetto life that so stirred the imagination of our great writer remain locked away and sealed forever from Yiddish literature.]
Glossary
allrightnik—pompous boaster
ashrei—a psalm attributed to King David
bima—raised platform in a synagogue from which the Torah is read
bris—circumcision rite of eight-day-old baby boys
Bubbe, Bubbe’nyu—grandmother; affectionate term for a little old lady
Castle Garden—immigrant depot of nineteenth-century New York, in present-day Battery Park; predecessor of Ellis Island
cheder—religious elementary school where boys are taught Hebrew prayers and the Bible
dachnik—summer cottage dweller
Eretz Yisroel—Hebrew name for Israel
erev—the night before; eve
gehennam—hell, inferno
Gemorah—the part of the Talmud that comments on the Mishnah