D.
Good news! We’ve heard about our things. The woman who helped us steal across the border has been put in prison. Our friend Pinni gloats — it serves her right, he says.
My mother says, “But what about my things?” Pinni says, “Nu, and what about my things?” Now that she’s in prison, the woman can’t ever return our lost belongings. What shall we do? We must travel on. Do we have a choice? My brother Elyahu goes around in a daze while my mother tries to comfort him. She tells him, “What would we have done, silly, if they had taken the money we made selling the house and murdered us besides?” Our friend Pinni agrees with her. He says that a Jew must always have faith—“It’s all for the best.” Bruche puts in a little jab — not for nothing, she says, did she name him Old Woman.
We’re getting ready to leave. We ask people how to get to America. People listen to us and make suggestions. Everyone has a different idea. One person says, “By way of Paris”; another, “By way of London.” A third insists it’s closer by way of Antwerp. They get us so confused that we don’t know which way to go. My mother is afraid of Paris — it’s too noisy. Bruche doesn’t like Antwerp — somehow the name sounds funny to her; she’s never heard anything like it. And so it will be London. Pinni says London is the best choice. He’s read many times in his geography book that London is an up-to-date city. Moses Montefiore comes from there, and Rothschild, he says, is also from London.
“Rothschild is from Paris!” says my brother Elyahu.
That’s the way they carry on. Whatever one says, the other one contradicts it. If one says day, the other says night. That’s not to say they actually fight over it — they bicker. They can bicker for an hour straight, and they stop only when they’re separated.
E.
Please excuse me for wandering off talking about the silly Germans and their crazy language. I forgot we’re going to America. Not straight to America, that is, but for now to London — and not straight to London but to Lemberg, where they say there’s a committee for emigrants. Maybe the committee will be able to help us. Are we worse off than other emigrants? Maybe — after all, we lost all our bundles and bedding. My mother is already thinking about what to tell them and how she should cry over it.
My brother Elyahu begs her, “Just don’t cry! You have to think about your eyes! Without eyes they won’t let you into America!”
He goes to pay the innkeeper. In a few minutes he comes back out looking stunned. What’s wrong? The innkeeper’s bill shocks him! “He charged us for everything! Six candles for the Shabbes blessings — six kreuzers! For havdalah blessing — four kreuzers! What havdalah? He, the innkeeper, said the havdalah while we listened, and now he’s charging us four kreuzers! I ask him, ‘How come four?’ He says, ‘If you want it to be five, let it be five.’ And now he’s charging us something called a commission. What kind of disease is that? And he’s charging us for accompanying us when we went shopping for clothing.”
Bruche springs up and claps her hands. “Mother-in-law, what did I tell you? Aren’t the Germans worse than the night robbers in the forest? Our Russian hooligans are saints compared to them! Are we in Brod? No, we’re in Sodom!”
Being compared with Russian hooligans doesn’t offend the innkeeper as much as her comparing Brod to Sodom. He gets furious! He says the Russian hooligans were right to make pogroms on us. In fact, what they did wasn’t enough. If he were the Russian czar, he’d decree that all of us be slaughtered, every one of us!
I think I already told you that our friend Pinni is a hotheaded person. He can keep quiet for a long time, but if someone says the wrong word, that person’s life is in danger! Now Pinni jumps up, stretches himself out to his full height, goes straight over to the innkeeper, and shouts right into his face, “Stupid German! A curse on your ancestors!”
The words “stupid German” cost our friend Pinni dearly — the innkeeper presents him with two strong slaps that make sparks fly. But it has its effect. All of Brod comes running, and things get quite lively. I love it when things get lively.
That day we flee to Lemberg.
XV
CRACOW AND LEMBERG
A.
Lemberg, you must know, is not at all like Brod. First of all, it’s clean, spacious, and attractive. It takes your breath away! True, it has some streets like Brod’s, where in summer you have to wear high galoshes and hold your nose. Then again, there’s a garden in the center of the city where you can stroll if you don’t mind the goats. It’s free for anyone. On Shabbes Jews wearing tall fur hats walk openly on the streets, and no one says a word.
My mother says the difference between Brod and Lemberg is like day and night. My brother Elyahu says he’s sorry that Brod is closer to the border than Lemberg. It should have been the other way around. Our friend Pinni explains that Lemberg is better than Brod because it is located farther from the border and closer to America.
“How do you figure? Where is Lemberg, and where is America?” Pinni remarks that when it comes to cities, my brother Elyahu would do well to learn from him, because he’s studied geography.
My brother Elyahu retorts, “If you’ve studied geography, then tell me, where is the committee?”
“Which committee?”
“The Emigrant Committee!”
“Smart aleck! What does a committee have to do with geography?”
“If you know so much about geography, you should know everything,” says my brother Elyahu, and we try to find out about the Emigrant Committee. Whoever we ask doesn’t know — a strange city.
“They know but they won’t tell us!” states my sister-in-law Bruche. Nothing ever pleases her. She finds fault with Lemberg too: the streets are too broad. That’s like complaining the bride is too beautiful. Teibl has another gripe about Lemberg. Back home, whenever we ate something sour, we’d say, “It’s so sour you can see as far as Cracow and Lemberg.” Or if someone was slapped hard, we’d say, “He saw Cracow and Lemberg.”
In short, these women are like that. Nothing ever satisfies them!
B.
Finally we find the committee. It’s in a tall building with a red roof. First we have to wait outside for quite a while. Then they open the doors, and we’re sent upstairs, where we find a lot of people — mostly our Russians, who are called emigrants. Almost all of them are hungry and are carrying nursing babies. Those who don’t have nursing babies are hungry too. They’re told to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow they will tell them to come back the next day. My mother gets to know many women. Every one of them has a different tragic story. Comparing her troubles with theirs, she says, it turns out she is lucky! Many of them are fleeing from pogroms. Their stories are horrors! They’re all going to America, but none of them have any means. Many of them have been sent back. Some are given work. A few are sent to Cracow, where, they say, the real committee is. What about the committee here? No one seems to know. They tell them to come back tomorrow, and they come. Where is the committee? The committee is right here. Who is the committee? They haven’t any idea!