“But what good does it do to argue? What good does it do to shout? It doesn’t make things any better, not when they couldn’t be worse. The business is gone, my daughter has no dowry, my son can’t go to school, and just staying alive, just staying alive, praise God, costs an arm and a leg. My life is sheer hell! Who can sleep at night? Who can even think of it?… Don’t imagine I’m worried, though. Why let them scare you when they have nothing on you, because you’re as clean as the driven snow?… Still, you’re only human, you can’t help wondering; there’s the investigation, and there’s the state prosecutor, and there are the Jews in Boheslav who will swear on the witness stand that they saw you with a candle in your attic late that night … No, you don’t fool around with Boheslav! Believe me, we have a Jew in town called Dovid-Hirsh — all of us together should only earn in a week what I’ve had to pay him to keep his mouth shut! And he’s a good fellow too, and from a good home; it’s all done with a smile, with a ‘please God’ and a ‘God willing’—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!..
“Now do you see what Boheslav is like? Am I right or not to be down on our Jews there? Just you wait until I get my money, I’ll show them a thing or two then! First of all, I’ll let the town have a contribution — I can’t tell you the exact sum, but it won’t be a cent less than our richest Jews give. I won’t take a back seat to any of them; when I’m called up to the Torah on the Sabbath and the sexton sings out loud and clear what I’ve given the synagogue, there’ll be some shocked faces, believe me! The Hospital and the Talmud Torah Funds go without saying: the first will get half-a-dozen new linen smocks, and the second a brand-new set of tallis kotons for the children … And then I’ll marry off my daughter. But what a wedding it will be! I suppose you think I’m planning an affair like everyone has these days? Eh, I can see you still don’t know me. Why, I’ll throw the wedding of the century — Boheslav won’t ever have seen the likes of it! I’ll put up a tent over the whole synagogue courtyard. The band will come all the way from Smila. There’ll be a table big enough for three hundred beggars with the very best food, and the fanciest rolls, and the most expensive liquor, and a five-spot for each … And as for the guests themselves — the whole town will be there, every last mother’s son of them, and at the table of honor I’ll sit the very bastards who would have liked to see me croak, and I’ll drink to their health, just see if I don’t, and we’ll dance, and we’ll dance, and we’ll dance!.. Jews, dance harder! Musicians, give it all you’ve got!.. That’s the sort of Jew I am! You don’t know me yet, but you will. Do you hear me? You don’t know me yet! When I celebrate, money is no object — it’s another quart of vodka and another quart of vodka and tomus nafshi im plishtim. Do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means drink till you burst, children, and then off you go — and to hell with you all and forget it!..”
(1903)
HARD LUCK
“You’re talking about thieves!” exclaimed a nattily dressed gentleman who was clutching an attaché case for dear life. (It was nighttime and there were three of us in the second-class waiting room at the station. While keeping an eye out for the mail train, which was an hour and a quarter late, we had struck up a conversation about crime.) “So it’s thieves you want to hear about? Then you’ve found yourselves the right man! Where else in the world do you have as many thefts as you do in my line of business? Diamonds aren’t small potatoes. They can do such things to a person that sometimes your own customer will try stealing one from under your nose. And especially if it’s a female. We never take our eyes off a woman we don’t know. It’s not so easy to steal from a diamond dealer. If I may say so myself, in all the years I’ve been one I’ve never lost a stone yet. Although once, as luck would have it, I had a close call. If you’d like, I’ll tell you about it.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly a diamond dealer. That is, I deal in diamonds, but I have nothing to do with the cutting; I just buy and sell, generally wholesale, and generally at trade fairs that I go to. Sometimes, though, when there are serious private clients, I take my display case, this one right here, and pay a special call on them.
“One time I happened to hear about a rich Jew in Yehupetz who was marrying off a daughter. That meant diamonds for sure. Not that, in case you’re wondering, there weren’t plenty of diamond dealers in Yehupetz already — in fact, too many of them — but what did that have to do with it? Lock me up in a room with a thousand dealers and one customer, and you’ll soon see who rings up the sale. Selling diamonds is an art. You have to know just what to show, and how to show it, and who to show it to. I don’t mean to boast, because publicity is the last thing I’m after, but ask anyone who knows the least thing about it and he’ll tell you that I’m in a class by myself. If someone else can sell you X amount of diamonds, I can sell you 3X. It’s an art and I’m an artist.
“Well, then, I took the train to Yehupetz. The merchandise I had with me fitted right into this little case, but believe me, the three of us together should only be worth as much as it was. I found myself a place and sat myself down with my case pressed tight against me; I needn’t tell you that I didn’t leave it for a second. Sleeping, of course, was out of the question. You don’t sleep when you’re traveling with merchandise. My heart gave a thump every time a new passenger entered the car. Could he be a thief? No one has it written on the tip of his nose.
“With God’s help, after a day and a night without food or sleep I arrived at the rich Yehupetz Jew’s house, took out my goods, and launched right into my sales pitch. I talked and talked until I was blue in the face — and, as luck would have it, got nothing but a headache for my pains.
“Far be it from me to complain about our rich Jews, but for my part they can all catch the cholera! A slow boil is all they ever give you. They look at each item, they turn it every which way, they ooh and they ah over it — but when it’s time to do business, one big goose egg is all you end up with. Well, what could I do about it? You make a sale, you lose a sale — the main thing is to keep hustling. Who knows what you might be missing out on elsewhere? Most probably nothing, but that’s no reason not to get there as fast as you can. So I hailed a cab and asked to be rushed to the station. Just then I heard someone shout, ‘Hey, mister! Hey, stop!’ I turned around to look — a young man was running after me with an attaché case in his hand that looked exactly like mine. ‘Here, you dropped this,’ he says.