“Who’s the speaker?” asks one tailor of another.
“A greenhorn!” the other one answers.
“What does he want here?”
“Why is he bothering us like this?”
“What’s he blabbering about?”
“Sharop!” one person calls out and others soon join in: “Sharop!”
E.
Sharop is not a nice word. It means “Stop talking,” but our friend Pinni isn’t afraid of words. When Pinni starts speechifying it’s like a water barrel from which the cork is missing. You can cover the hole with your hand or stuff a rag in it — nothing will work until the water runs out till the last drop, so don’t even bother. Pinni has to have his say to the end, unless you drag him off the stage. This time they actually do have to remove him forcibly. Two young pressers’ apprentices take him by the arms and drag him off. But that doesn’t prevent him from continuing his speech on our way home, and when we come home, he goes on talking to my mother, Bruche, and Teibl. My friend Mendl and I are also in the audience. I feel Pinni is right in his grievances, but try to tell that to women.
When Pinni is finally finished, Bruche speaks up with her usual kind of remark: “What difference does it make to a turkey whether you slaughter it for the Purim feast or for the Passover seder?”
Do you have any idea what she means?
F.
In the meantime one day follows another. The strike is still on. The workers are steel and iron. Meetings take place every day, always in a new place. The manufacturers, I hear, are also steadfast. They won’t give in, but they’ll have to give in. That’s what everyone is saying. There’s nothing the workers won’t achieve. This is America! We’re down to our last resort, and if that doesn’t work, it’s the end! That’s what our people say. What’s the last resort? We’ll assemble all the strikers from all over New York and march through the streets. Thousands and thousands of tailors will march with flags through the entire city. I and my friend Mendl really like that plan. We’ll march at the head of the parade. But try to talk to a woman like Bruche, who says that to her it looks like children playing at soldiers. She says, “Don’t waste your shoe leather.” You should have seen our Pinni’s face and heard what he said about that!
G.
We are deeply into the strike. My friend Mendl and I are readying ourselves for the Fourth of July the way Americans do. The Fourth of July is a big holiday in America. They shoot firecrackers in the streets, and sometimes, they say, a person is killed. It’s a great holiday, that Fourth of July. It’s the day the Unites States freed itself from its enemies.
Mendl and I are already dressed in our holiday clothes when our celebration is spoiled by a setback. On Canal Street someone is killed. Pinni brings us the news. He was on the spot and saw the murder. He says the man deserved to die. He was a “gangster.” My mother asks, “What’s a gangster? A thief?”
“Worse than a thief!” Pinni says. My mother asks, “A bandit?” Pinni says, “Worse than a bandit.” My mother says, “What can be worse than a bandit?” Pinni explains, “A gangster is worse than a bandit because a bandit is only a bandit, while a gangster is a hired bandit, hired to beat up the strikers. One of them attacked a girl who was striking and was about to hit her. She screamed and people ran to rescue her, and there was a fight.” That was all we could get out of Pinni. He paced up and down with his long legs, sparks flying, in a fit of rage. He tore his hair and spouted words and names:
“Ai-ai, Columbus! Ai-ai, Washington! Ai-ai, Lincoln!”
When he finishes, Pinni gets up and flees!
H.
In the meantime this is what happens to Mendl and me. My mother swears on her health and on her life that she won’t let us out on the street for all the money in the world — not any of us! Because, she says, if it’s gone so far that people are being killed on the street, it’s the end of the world! She throws us all into such a panic that Teibl bursts into tears like a small child. God knows where her Pinni is now. My mother forgets about us and begins comforting poor Teibl. We have a powerful God and nothing will happen to her Pinni. With God’s help he’ll return safely. And he’ll be a husband to his wife and a father to his children who will, with God’s help, one day be born. Until now Teibl has had no child, but she’s seeing a doctor and hoping she’ll someday have children.
“May you have many children!” says my mother.
“Amen, may it be so!” I say, and catch a slap from my brother Elyahu for putting in my two cents where they don’t belong.
I.
Praised be God — Pinni returns, and he returns happily and with good news: the gangster who they thought was killed is still alive and will live, although he’ll remain a cripple for life. They beat him up, gouged out an eye, and broke an arm. “Serves him right — let him not be a gangster!”
But my mother feels sorry for him. “Let him be what he is,” she says. “There’s a God in Heaven, let him settle things with Him. Why does he deserve to have an arm broken and an eye gouged out? Why are his wife and poor children to blame that they should have a crippled father?”
J.
The strike lingers on, and we’re without work. My brother Elyahu is beside himself. My mother tries to console him. She says that God, who brought us to America, will surely not forsake us. Our in-law Yoneh and our good friend Fat Pessi and her husband Moishe and all our friends come every day to comfort us with kind words. They say the sky has not yet fallen. Where is it written that we must make a living only as tailors? You can make a living in America without being a tailor. How? Let me tell you how we made a living in America.
XI
KASRILEVKA IN NEW YORK
A.
Thanks to our Kasrilevka family and friends, we have slowly worked ourselves up and begun to make a living. Kasrilevka has moved to America. After our departure from our old home, a frightful pogrom was followed by a fire. The whole town went up in flames! They tell us there was a rush to leave, an exodus. Who do you think brought us the news? My mother. Wherever there is bad news, my mother is the first to find out. How? From her synagogue, the Kasrilevka shul. There is one in New York.
B.
During our first week here, my mother began asking around about a shul where she could pray on Shabbes. In New York, thank God, there is a shul on almost every street. Our neighbor Pessi took us that first Shabbes to a shul where the Jews from our city all pray. It is called the Kasrilevka shul. There we find many old acquaintances from our town. Guess who we saw. If you had eighteen heads, you couldn’t guess. First of all our cantor, our Hersh-Ber the cantor with the long beard, the one for whom I was once a chorister, if you remember, and carried his crippled little daughter Dobtzi around. The child died back home during the pogrom. Now Hersh-Ber and his wife and older children are here in America and making a living. He is a cantor and a mohel and a teacher too. He pinches his students when no one is looking because in America you aren’t allowed to hit a child. He’s doing very well, but he’s changed completely. In truth he’s the same as he once was, but he dresses differently. If he were to wear the same hat at home as he wears here, they’d run after him and make fun. His coat is now shortened and his sidelocks cut, but he hasn’t touched his beard, even though some people bother him about the beard. Here in America they hate a beard more than a pious Jew hates pork. Once a gang of mischievous boys — here they call them loafers—got hold of him in the street and wanted to cut off his beard. Luckily Jews passing by rescued him from their hands. From that time on, whenever he goes out on the street, he hides his beard in his overcoat.