“ ‘Eh, a guest! Where have you been hiding, Danielchik? How’s your health? How’s business?’
“ ‘Screw my health!’ he said. ‘And since you ask, business isn’t so hot.’
“You don’t say! I thought to myself. Well, better luck next time! A little bird tells me, though, that I’m about to be hit for more cash. And out loud I said to him, ‘Why, what seems to be the matter? Aren’t you making any money?’
“ ‘What money? Who cares about money? Screw it!’ he said. ‘I’m through with the beer hall, I’m through with the billiard parlor, and I’m through with my wife. She ditched me, Osna. Screw her too! I’m going to America. My brother’s been wanting me to come.’
“Was it a weight off my mind to hear that! Suddenly I even found myself liking the boy. If I hadn’t been embarrassed, I would have hugged him on the spot… ‘America?’ I said. ‘A fine idea! America is the land of opportunity. People find happiness there, they find money. And if you have family there already, it’s even better … Did you come to say goodbye to me? That’s very decent of you. Don’t forget to drop us a line. After all, we’re practically next of kin … Daniel, do you need any money for the trip? I’ll be glad to help out a bit …’
“ ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘that’s what I’ve come about. You can let me have three hundred rubles. That’s what the ticket costs.’
“ ‘Three hundred rubles?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a bit steep? How about one hundred and fifty?’
“ ‘Why waste your time haggling?’ he said. ‘Don’t you think I know that if I asked you for four hundred you’d give me that too, and five and six also, for that matter? But screw it, I don’t need all that much. I just need three hundred for the passage.’
“I tell you, butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth! Three hundred lashes, I thought to myself, is what you deserve! If only I could be sure that this was really his grand exit and that I was seeing the last of him and of all his etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …
“Well, I counted him out those three hundred rubles and even bought a present for his brother — a whole pound of Russian tea, a carton of good cigarettes, and a few bottles of Jewish wine from Palestine. We gave him a food hamper too, with a duck my wife roasted, some rolls, some oranges, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and off we went to the train station to kiss him and our troubles goodbye. We hugged him like a son and, so help me, even cried — why, the boy had grown up on my knees, and a fine young lad he had turned out to be, why deny it? A little on the brash side perhaps, but with a heart of gold, I declare! True, I was a wee bit relieved that he had gone and left me with one headache less … but I was also a wee bit sorry: a young boy like that and little more than a vagabond — who knew where he might wind up and what might become of him? If only he would remember to write now and then … although perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t. Let him have a long life and a happy one! There was nothing I would have wished for my own child that I didn’t wish for him, believe me …
“Well, lo and behold — two years hadn’t passed since he left for America when one day the door opens and who should walk in but some stranger in a top hat, a handsome, ruddy, brawny, merry young fellow who grabs me in his arms and begins to cover me with kisses! ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he says to me. ‘Are you just pretending, or do you really not know who I am?’
“ ‘Well, I’ll be! It’s Danielchik!’ I said, trying to look glad, though I was boiling inside. Why the Devil, I thought, couldn’t you have been killed in America, or better yet, on the train we saw you off on, or best of all, drowned in the ocean? But out loud I just said, ‘When did you get here, Danielchik, and what brings you back?’
“ ‘I blew in this morning,’ he says. ‘What brings me? I’ve come to settle the accounts with you.’
“When I heard him say ‘the accounts,’ I thought I would rupture an artery. What accounts did that gangster think he was talking about? But I managed to pull myself together and say to him, ‘Why trouble yourself to come all the way from America for that? My goodness, if you wanted to pay me what you owe me, you could have mailed it to me from there …’
“ ‘What I owe you?’ he says with a grin. ‘Don’t you mean what you owe me?’
“ ‘What I owe you?’ I say. ‘What makes you think I owe you?’
“ ‘Me, and my brothers, and my sister, and all of us,’ he says. ‘I’ve come from America on behalf of the whole family. I want a full accounting of my father’s money. You can deduct whatever you laid out for us and give us the balance. We won’t go to court over a ruble more or less; screw that, we’ll work it out between us … How the heck are you? How are your children? I’ve brought each one of them a present …’
“I thought I would keel over, or else take a chair and bash his head in with it … but I got a grip on myself and invited him to come, God willing, on Saturday night to go over the books with me. Then I went to see some lawyers. How, I asked them, could I get him off my back? The Devil take them if I could get a straight answer! One said that since ten years had gone by, I could claim the statute of limitations; another said no, being a fi-who-ciary meant I had to give an accounting even after a hundred years …
“ ‘But how can I give an accounting,’ I said, ‘when I kept no books and have no receipts?’
“ ‘In that case,’ says the lawyer, ‘you’re in trouble.’
“ ‘I didn’t need you to tell me that,’ I say. ‘What I want to know is, how do I get out of it?’
“A blank, that’s all I drew from him. I must be made of iron, do you hear me, to have gone through all this! I ask you, what did I need such a miserable mess for, this whole etcetera, etcetera, etcetera? What in the world ever made me agree to be someone else’s fi-who-ciary? Don’t you think I would have been a thousand times better off coming down with pneumonia, or breaking a leg, or having some terrible accident? Anything, anything, but this fool fi-who-ciation of five children, of a widow, of a Danielchik, of no account books, of etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!..”
(1902)
GO CLIMB A TREE IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT
Across from me, by the window, sat a man with a smile on his face and the kind of eyes that try to crawl under your skin. I could see he was waiting for me to break the ice, but I preferred to keep to myself. After a while, though, it was simply too much for him to sit in silence with a fellow Jew. He laughed to himself abruptly, then turned to me and said:
“You’re wondering what made me laugh? I just happened to think of a joke that I played on Yehupetz, ha ha! You’d never guess it from looking at me, Moyshe-Nachman from Kennele, a Jew with a cough and with asthma, would you? Well, did I put one over on Yehupetz — but one that will give them something to remember me by! If you’ll just excuse me for a moment while I cough … ai, Purishkevitch should only have a cough like this … there! Now let me tell you what a Jew can do.
“One fine day I had to go to Yehupetz. Why does a Jew with a cough and with asthma have to go to Yehupetz? To see the doctor, of course. With my cough and my asthma, I don’t have to tell you, Yehupetz gets to see a lot of me, even if it’s not supposed to, since what business do I, Moyshe-Nachman from Kennele, have in Yehupetz without a pravozshitelestvo, that is, a residence permit?… But when you have a cough and asthma and you need to see the doctor — well, that’s life: where else but Yehupetz can you go? You get there in the morning, you slip away at night, and you’re in a panic all day long, because if you’re caught and served a prokhodnoyo, that is, an expulsion order, you’re right back where you started from. Still, that’s nothing compared to an etap; an etap, you should know, is a criminal arrest — why, I’d die of shame three times before I could live through one of those! After all, I am, as you can see, a pretty solid citizen, praise God. I own my own house, I can afford my own cow, and I have two daughters, one married and one engaged. What can I tell you? That’s life …