We’re soon able to catch on to their style. The first to do so is our friend Pinni. He speaks German from the day we arrive. It’s easier for him, because he learned German at home. My brother Elyahu says that even though he never learned German, he understands just as much as Pinni. I listen to them speaking German and pick it up quickly. In a foreign country you must know the language, says Pinni. His wife Teibl is already speaking half-German, half-Yiddish. My sister-in-law Bruche also wants to speak German, but she can’t — she’s too thick-headed! And my mother refuses even to hear about speaking German. She’ll keep speaking the way she spoke at home — she won’t change her tongue to please the Germans. She’s actually angry at them. She thought the Germans were honest people, but she found out they weren’t such great saints. Once she went to the market, and they cheated her on the weight. She had asked for a pound, and they gave her — she doesn’t even remember how much less.
My mother comes to the conclusion that some Germans are apparently thieves as well. My sister-in-law Bruche gets mad and waves her hands. “Thieves, you say, mother-in-law? One thief after another — one bigger than the next! You have to watch out for them more than at home! At least we’re sure that every goy is a thief.”
“Don’t be silly. At home goys know they’re thieves,” my mother says. She tells a story about Shimke, once our servant girl, while my father, of blessed memory, was still alive. This Shimke was a very fine servant girl but a bit of a thief. She told us! She didn’t like to be left alone in the house because she feared she might steal something.
B.
Everything is different with the Germans. Their money isn’t even the same as ours. They don’t have kopeks and rubles but groschens and shillings. Everything is sold for groschens. For one ruble you get a handful of groschens. My mother thinks it isn’t real money — she calls it buttons. My brother Elyahu says the coins melt like snow. Every day he sits down in a little corner, unstitches the secret pocket, takes out a ruble, and resews the pocket. The next day he does the same thing.
The days go by, and our bundles and our bedding still aren’t here. The woman who helped us steal across the border has apparently deceived us. The men who almost killed us in the woods were her own guards, and now we might well have lost our belongings. My mother wrings her hands and cries. “The bedding! The pillows! How can we go to America without bedding, without pillows?”
Pinni has a plan — he’s going by train to file a protest with the commander of the border post. He’ll find the woman with the wig and make hash of her. He’ll demand to know what happened.
But these are empty words! The commander of the border post will be of no help, nor will the protest. Teibl wouldn’t let him visit that woman even if she covered our house with gold. (That’s what she says.) Stealing across the border was enough for her. It was enough for all of us.
We tell everyone how we stole across the border, how we repacked our stuff, how the peasants led us and misled us and tried to murder us, and how luckily my sister-in-law Bruche has a habit of fainting and my mother screamed for help, and how the soldiers heard and began shooting, the peasants took off, and we were rescued.
That’s my mother’s story. My brother Elyahu tells his own version but with a different twist. Bruche interrupts and tells the very same story but also a bit differently. Teibl says Bruche doesn’t remember it accurately because she fainted, and Teibl wants to tell the story from the beginning, but Pinni cuts her off and says she doesn’t know anything. Let him retell the story from start to finish. Every day and to everyone, we tell the story of how we stole across the border. All who hear it shake their heads and go tsk tsk. They say we’re lucky and should say a prayer of thanks.
C.
On this side of the border things are much better for us than at home. We don’t so much as put our hands in cold water to wash. Either we stay at the inn, or we stroll around Brod. It’s a pretty city. I don‘t know what my sister-in-law Bruche has against this city. Every day she finds some fault with it. She just doesn’t like it. It’s muddy; it stinks worse than at home.
One night she woke up screaming that she was being attacked. We all jumped out of bed. “Who attacked you? Bandits?”
“What bandits? Bedbugs!”
In the morning we tell the innkeeper, but he doesn’t understand. When Pinni explains in German, the innkeeper insists he never heard of bedbugs. In their German country they don’t see them. We probably brought them with us from home, he says. Oh, does Bruche boil over! She hates that man worse than an apostate, she says. I don’t know why. He seems like a fine person to me. When he speaks and smiles, his mouth goes a little to one side. And he loves to give us advice about where to go, from whom to buy things, and from whom not. He comes along when we go shopping.
Mostly we buy clothing. Gradually we’ve started to dress a bit better. Our friend Pinni says it isn’t nice to look like tramps. In a new city, he says, you should go out looking respectable, especially here, where things are dirt cheap. We all know this already. First he bought himself a cap, the kind they wear in Germany, and a short coat that just reaches to his knees, and a new necktie. To look at Pinni in his German outfit, you have to be stronger than iron not to break out laughing. He is tall, skinny, and nearsighted, and he hops when he walks. And then there’s his big nose. My mother says he has a clown’s face. My brother Elyahu says he looks like an organ grinder. Pinni says he doesn’t know whether it’s better to look like an organ grinder or a tramp. He means us.
My brother Elyahu claims that if he wanted, he could deck himself out like a German too. It takes no great talent to throw your money away. But we have to save it, he says, for America. Pinni says that in America we won’t need money — we ourselves will be like money in the bank! Pinni carries on so long that my brother Elyahu finally buys himself a cap and a coat, and a cap and a coat for me too. The three of us go walking down the streets talking German. I’m positive that people think we’re Germans. The problem is that walking behind us are the women — my mother, Bruche, and Teibl — they don’t let us out of their sight. My mother is afraid I’ll wander among the Germans and get lost and the others will follow me like sheep. So we walk closely together, a clump of six attracting everyone’s attention. What are they looking at?
The Germans are the greatest fools in the world, says my brother Elyahu. Whatever you tell them, they believe absolutely — except when it comes to money. Money is more important to them than it is to us. A kreuzer is holy to them. For a crown they’ll sell their father, and for a gulden — God Himself!
So says Bruche, and Teibl agrees. All three women, as I’ve told you, are not terribly pleased with the Germans. I don’t know why. I kind of like them. If we weren’t going to America, I’d stay here forever and ever. Where else do you have such houses? And such good people — they’ll sell you anything! Even the cows aren’t the same as ours. The people probably aren’t any smarter than we are, but they look more respectable. Everything here looks different.
But if you ask the women, they’ll say it’s better at home. They don’t like a thing, even our inn, least of all the innkeeper. “They’re skinning us alive,” Bruche says. “They ask to be paid for a glass of warm water. They won’t give you a free pinch of salt. If we don’t leave here soon, we’ll have to go begging from house to house.” What my sister-in-law Bruche can say! Why does she call my brother Elyahu an old woman? And why does she call our friend Pinni the worst good-for-nothing? Teibl might have given her what for, but as my mother says, Teibl doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She never talks back to Bruche — none of us do. Me neither. And she really has it in for me. She calls me Leftovers or Fat Cheek Motl. I’ve gotten pudgy, she says, and have developed fat cheeks. I don’t care one bit, but my mother won’t tolerate her talking that way about my cheeks. My mother starts to cry. My brother Elyahu hates it when she cries. He says she is ruining her eyes, and with bad eyes they don’t let you into America.