The man cuts us off in the middle and suggests we choose one from among us to be our spokesman. After debating which one, we pick Bruche. Why Bruche? Because neither my brother Elyahu nor Pinni can stand to see the other speak without interrupting him. My mother speaks well but a bit too much, which is to say, once she starts talking, she’s soon telling the whole story about her husband and how he got sick and so on and so forth. No one wants to hear her out to the end. Bruche will make it short and sweet.
After Bruche’s brief account of Mendl’s situation, the representative gets down to work. He runs off to meet with different people, and after much trouble he brings my friend back to us.
D.
The representative takes hold of Mendl’s ear and gives him a stern lecture. “Remember, young man, we’re responsible for you, so make sure you behave yourself,” he says. “For two years you’ll be under our supervision. We’ll keep an eye on you. If you don’t behave as you’re supposed to, we’ll send you right back to where you came from!” Then he writes down his name and all of ours, the names of our friends and relatives and their addresses. And then we’re free to go wherever we wish and to do whatever we please.
You must think Mendl is affected by this. Not one bit. My friend Mendl is the kind of person whom nothing surprises, and that’s why I like him. Later, when I would think about my friend Mendl, about what he was and what later became of him, it really seems like God’s miracle. Only in a country like America can the lowly become great, the humble elevated, and even the dead brought to life. I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still at the ferry.
E.
A ferry is a kind of boat on which you can put a horse and wagon and all your belongings and still cross the water. It’s long and wide enough for my friend Mendl and me to hold hands and to walk the length and breadth of it. My mother is occupied with our friends and family. They’re all chattering away, asking one another what’s new. Then she realizes I and Mendl aren’t there. She makes a fuss and assumes we’ve fallen into the water and drowned. The truth is we saw steps and have climbed to the upper deck — where we see an enormously huge iron statue of a woman. She looks like a giant mother. We’ve barely taken in this statue when we hear my mother’s screams, and my brother Elyahu is before us. He’s mad at us for frightening everyone. We don’t deny it. He would certainly have made us pay dearly for this, but just then my sister-in-law Bruche lets out an odd shriek, “Oy, mother-in-law, I’m sick!” and she goes into the same condition as on the ocean. Long live the Heissen tailor, who refuses to leave our side! He confronts Bruche and lectures her: “A grown woman like you should know the difference between an ocean and a little harbor. Feh, shame on you!”
Bruche protests. She doesn’t know it’s a harbor. She thought we were on the ocean again. Is that such a sin? Pinni says he can tell the difference between an ocean and a harbor simply by the smell. An ocean smells of fish, but in a harbor there are no fish. The Heissen tailor asks, “What makes you so sure?” Pinni answers that he wasn’t speaking to him and on principle hates arguing with tailors.
Moishe the bookbinder gets into it. He reproaches Pinni, saying he is now in America, not in Russia. America is a land of tailors. Here in America a tailor is as important as a landowner is at home, if not more so. In America tailors have a yoonyeh, which is almost like our tailors’ guild.
“We bakers have our own yoonyeh,” Yoneh the baker puts in. “Our bakers’ yoonyeh is probably as big as the tailors’ yoonyeh.”
“At least say, ‘Forgive the comparison’!” Moishe the bookbinder interrupts him. A ruckus follows about which yoonyeh is bigger.
“In a few minutes we’ll be in Neveyork,” says Pinni to my brother Elyahu, in order to change the subject from yoonyehs, which is getting on all our nerves.
The city rises in front of our eyes, getting larger as we approach it. Ach! What a city! Ach! What tall buildings! They are cathedrals, not buildings! And windows! A thousand windows! If only I had a pencil and paper!
F.
Trrrach-tarrrerach — tach-tach-tach! Tach! Dzin-dzin-dzin-glin-glon! Hoo-hooooo! Fee-yoo! Ay-ay-ay-ay! And again—trachtarrrarach! Then comes the hoarse screech of a captured pig: Wheee! Wheee! Wheee! These are the sounds that greet us when we land in New York. As long as we were on water, we were calm, but the moment we are standing with both feet on American soil, we are overcome by panic.
The first to lose her composure is my mother. She looks exactly like a mother hen fearing for her chicks, spreading her wings and clucking in distress. She opens her arms wide and shouts, “Motl! Mendl! Elyahu! Bruche! Pinni! Teibl! Where are you? Come here!”
“God be with you, mother-in-law! Why are you shouting?” says Bruche, and my brother Elyahu adds, “Your screaming and yelling will get us chased out of America!”
“That’s ridiculous!” Pinni shoves both hands into his pockets and pushes his cap back on his head. “May the czar suffer as long as it will take for them to get rid of us! Do you forget that America was created by God in order to protect and shelter all those who are driven and persecuted, pushed around and humiliated, from every corner of the earth?”
The crush of people is enormous. Our friend Pinni has almost the same mishap he had when arriving in London — he’s stretched out on the street, soon to be trampled and stepped on. But this time he escapes with a mere blow to the side, strong enough to knock his cap off, which is caught up by the wind and deposited a distance off. This wastes several minutes and makes us miss the trolley car. But we don’t have to wait too long. Another one soon comes along, and we climb up with our bundles and grab all the empty seats. We’re off to the city.
“Thank God we’re rid of that pain in the neck, the Heissen tailor!” our Pinni rejoices.
My brother Elyahu says, “Wait, don’t be so sure! If we’re worthy of God, we’ll live long enough to meet up with him more than once in New York.”
VI
ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK
A.
The ride into the city of New York is dreadful. The ride itself isn’t so bad, but transferring from one trolley to another is difficult. As soon as you sit down — aha! you’re flying like eagles through the air over a long, narrow bridge, afraid for your life. They call it the elevated here. Do you think that’s it? Just wait a bit. You get yourself out of the elevated, and you have to switch over to another car. You reach it by going down steps, as if into a cellar, where you ride under the ground so fast that your eyes pop out of your head. They call this the subway. Why is one car called elevated and the other subway?
My sister-in-law Bruche says America would be much better if they didn’t fly around so much. She swears she’ll never ride either the elevated or the subway, no matter what. She’d rather walk than fly like crazy through the clouds, or run under the ground. I, on the contrary, would be happy to ride around on the elevated and the subway all day and night, and so would my friend Mendl.
B.
It seems we’ve already been everywhere. We’ve seen enough of the shoving, pressing, and suffocating in this gehennam such as we’ve never experienced anywhere! We’re packed in body against body, one passenger out, two in. No place to sit — you must stand. You’ve got to hold on to what they call a strap, otherwise you’ll fall. You get twisted around. If God helps, a seat becomes empty — and many passengers dive for it. With great difficulty you find a spot. You’re sitting between two Gentiles, both black, a man and a woman with huge, fat lips, enormous white teeth, and white nails, who are chewing on something like cows chewing their cud. Only later do I find out that it’s is called chewing gum. It’s a kind of candy made of rubber. You keep it in your mouth and chew it. You mustn’t swallow it. Young boys, old people, and cripples make a living selling it. Our friend Pinni, as you know, has a sweet tooth. He got hold of a package of chewing gum and slowly swallowed the whole thing. It clogged up his stomach, almost poisoning him. Doctors had to pump his stomach through his throat to save his life. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to our first entry into the city of New York.