Finally all the bottles are filled. No more bottles! Where to get more? He calls my sister-in-law Bruche off to the side, gives her money, and whispers to her to buy more bottles. She hears him out, looks him in the face, and bursts out laughing. He gets angry and calls my mother over and tells her the same thing. My mother goes off to buy bottles.
We continue pouring water into the jug, not all at once, you understand, but a little at a time. After each pailful of water, he raises his hand and says to himself, “Enough!” Then he dips the pen into the jug and writes on the white sheet of paper and says, “It writes!”
He does this several times till my mother comes back with a new supply of bottles. We get back to our original task of pouring ink into the bottles, till we again run out of bottles.
“How long can this go on?” says my sister-in-law Bruche.
“Kayn eyn horeh, why stop a good thing?” says my mother.
My brother Elyahu shoots an angry look at Bruche, as if to say, You are my wife, but you are also a dunce, may God have pity on you!
D.
How much ink we make, I cannot tell you. I’m afraid it’s a thousand bottles! But what good is it if there’s no place to sell the ink? My brother Elyahu looks everywhere. Selling the ink retail, bottle by bottle, one at a time, doesn’t make sense. That’s what my brother Elyahu says to my neighbor’s husband Moishe the bookbinder. Moishe comes into our house and sees all those bottles — and springs back in fright. My brother Elyahu sees it, and a strange conversation follows between the two. I’ll relate it to you word for word:
ELYAHU: What scared you so?
BOOKBINDER: What’s in those bottles?
ELYAHU: What could it be — wine?
BOOKBINDER: Wine? That’s ink!
ELYAHU: Why ask then?
BOOKBINDER: What are you going to do with so much ink?
ELYAHU: Drink it!
BOOKBINDER: No, stop joking. You’re going to sell it retail?
ELYAHU: What am I, crazy? If I sell it, I’ll sell it ten, twenty, fifty bottles at a time. That’s called wholesale. Do you know what wholesale means?
BOOKBINDER: I know what wholesale means. To whom are you going to sell it?
ELYAHU: To whom? To the rabbi!
And my brother Elyahu goes off to the stores. When he comes to this big wholesaler, the wholesaler examines a bottle. But another wholesaler won’t even test the bottle in my brother Elyahu’s hand because it doesn’t have a label. “On the bottle,” he says, “there has to be a nice label with a design.”
My brother Elyahu says to him, “I don’t make designs. I make ink.”
The other one answers, “Suit yourself.”
Then my brother Elyahu hurries off to Yudel the writing teacher, who says something very nasty to him. He’s already bought a summer’s supply of ink.
My brother Elyahu asks him, “How many bottles of ink did you buy?”
Yudel the writing teacher says, “Bottles? I bought one bottle of ink. It will last and last, and when I run out, I’ll buy another bottle.”
How do you like that! Only a scribbler can think like that. First he says he’s spent a fortune on ink, and then he buys a bottle that will last forever. My poor brother Elyahu is beside himself. He doesn’t know what to do with so much ink. Originally he said he wouldn’t sell any ink retail, only wholesale. Now he thinks better of it. He will begin, he says, to sell it wholesale and retail. I would like to know what wholesale means.
This is what wholesale means. Just listen.
E.
My brother Elyahu brings back a large sheet of paper. He sits down and prints on it in large block letters:
INK SOLD WHOLESALE HERE
RETAIL—GOOD AND CHEAP
The words wholesale and retail are written so large, they take up almost the whole sheet. When the lettering dries, he attaches the paper on the outside of our door. I see through the window that many passersby stop to look.
My brother Elyahu also looks out the window and cracks his knuckles. That’s a sign that he’s upset. He says to me, “Just stand by the door and listen to what they’re saying.”
I stand by the door for half an hour and then come back into the house. My brother Elyahu asks me quietly, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did they say?”
“Who?”
“The people who passed by.”
“They said it was nicely printed.”
“And nothing more?”
“Nothing more.”
My brother Elyahu sighs. Why was he sighing?
My mother has the same question. “Why are you sighing, silly? Wait a little. Did you expect in one day to sell out all the merchandise?”
“At least one sale!” says my brother Elyahu, his voice choking.
“You’re a great fool, I tell you. Just wait, my child, and you will, God willing, make a sale.”
My mother sets the table. We wash and sit down to eat. The four of us squeeze together into one tight space. Because of all the bottles, it’s terribly crowded in the house. We make the blessing over the bread — when a strange man arrives. I know him. His name is Kopl. His father is a ladies’ tailor. He’s betrothed to be married.
“Do you sell single bottles of ink here?”
“Yes, what do you want?”
“I want some ink.”
“How much ink do you need?”
“Give me a kopek’s worth.”
My brother Elyahu is really upset. If my mother hadn’t been there, he would have slapped this betrothed Kopl a few times and then thrown him out of the house. But he controls himself and pours out a kopek’s worth of ink. Less than a quarter of an hour later, a young girl comes in. I don’t know her. She picks her nose and says to my mother, “Do you make ink here?”
“Yes, what would you like?”
“My sister wants to know if you can lend her a little ink. She has to write a letter to her future husband in America.”
“Who is your sister?”
“Basya the seamstress.”
“Ah? Look how she’s grown up! Kayn eyn horeh! I didn’t recognize you. Do you have an inkwell?”
“Where would we get an inkwell? My sister wants to know if you have a pen, and as soon as she finishes writing the letter to America, she’ll give you back the ink and the pen.”
My brother Elyahu has vanished from the table. He is in my mother’s room. pacing quietly, head down, biting his nails.
F.
“Why did you make so much ink? It looks like you want to supply the whole world with ink in case there’s a shortage.”
That’s what our neighbor’s husband Moishe the bookbinder says. What a strange man that bookbinder is! He has a habit of rubbing salt in your wounds. Usually he’s a tolerable fellow, just a bit of a pest — he likes to get under your skin.