I can’t tell you how much I made that first day. All I know is that Elye, Brokheh, and my mother couldn’t do enough for me. For supper I was given a slice of honeydew with my watermelon, plus two whole bucket plums. And I’m not even talking about the barley beer. We drank barley beer like water. Before I went to bed my mother sat me down and asked me if my feet hurt. Elye laughed. He said a big boy like me wasn’t bothered by sore feet.
“Sure,” I said. “If it was up to you, I’d be on them selling barley beer all night.”
They all laughed at my sass. My mother had tears in her eyes. That’s nothing new. Mothers are made to cry. Or do I just imagine mine isn’t the only one?
Knock wood, we’re going great guns. One day is hotter than the next. What scorchers! Everyone is dying of the heat. The children are dropping like flies. A glass of barley beer is a lifesaver. Honest to God, I’m making ten rounds a day. My brother Elye shut one eye and looked into the barrel with the other and said we were running low. That gave him the idea of adding water. He didn’t know I thought of it first.
I may as well admit it’s a dodge I hit on. You see, every day I drop in on our neighbor Pesye and give her a glass of our brew. Her husband Moyshe gets two glasses for being such a good fellow, and each of their children gets a glass too. Why not let them know we make a good product? Uncle Borukh also gets a drink; after all, the poor man is blind. And then there are all my friends and acquaintances — you can’t expect me to charge them. That’s a lot of free barley beer. I make up for each glass I give away by adding two glasses of water.
We all do the same. If Elye has a drink of barley beer, he adds water right away. That’s common business sense. Why lose a kopeck? Brokheh is no different. Each time she downs a few glasses of Elye’s barley beer (it’s shocking to see how she likes the stuff), she waters the jug. Even my mother, who won’t take a glass unless she’s offered it, makes up for it at once. There’s never a drop less that way.
We’re raking it in. My mother has already paid off a few debts and taken some things out of hock. We have a table and a bench next to the bed, and meat, fish, and white bread on the Sabbath. God willing, I’ve been promised a pair of new boots for the New Year. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.
Go be a prophet and guess that our barley beer will end in the slops bucket! Worse yet, I have a police record. Listen to this.
One day I dropped in with my jug on Pesye. Her whole family was there and dying for barley beer and I drank a glass or two myself. That left me twelve or thirteen glasses short, so I went home to fill up. Only instead of taking water from the water barrel, it seems that I took it from the washtub, twenty glasses’ worth. Then I headed back for the street, singing a new song I’d made up:
Jews, have a taste
Of Paradise:
Cold barley beer
With lots of ice!
Along comes a Jew, hands me a kopeck, and asks for a glass of barley beer. He swallows it in one gulp, makes a face, and says:
“Young man! What kind of drink is this?”
Let him ask! Two more customers are already behind him, waiting their turn. One takes a big sip, the other a small one. Both spit it out, pay me, and walk off. Someone else complains that the barley beer tastes of soap. Another hands me back the glass and says:
“What is this stuff?”
“A drink,” I say.
“A drink? You mean a stink!”
The next person to taste my barley beer throws it in my face. By now I’m surrounded by a crowd of men, women, and children, all waving their hands and talking a mile a minute. A Russian cop sees the fuss and comes over to check it out. Sure enough, someone rats on me. The cop looks at the barley beer and wants to try some. I give him a glass and he chokes on it.
“Where did you get this swill?” he asks.
“From a book,” I say. “My brother made it. He’s the manufacturer.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“Elye.”
“Elye who?”
“Don’t daber about your akhi, you little fool,” a Jew says to me in a
Yiddish mixed with Hebrew to keep the cop from understanding.
There’s a hullabaloo. More people push into the crowd. The cop grabs my arm and wants to book me and my barley beer. The commotion grows louder. “An orphan! A poor orphan!” people shout.
Something tells me I’m in bad trouble. I look around the circle. “Jews, have pity!” I cry.
Someone tries slipping the cop a coin. He won’t take it. An old man sidles up and says to me:
“Motl! Take your yad from the yovon’s and pick up your ragloyim and make a pleyte.”
That’s just what I did. I wrenched my arm free, took to my heels, and made a beeline for home. I arrived there more dead than alive.
“Where’s the jug?” Elye asks.
“At the stationhouse,” I say and fall sobbing into my mother’s arms.
WE FLOOD THE WORLD WITH INK
What a dope I am! Just because I sold a batch of not-so-great barley beer I was sure I’d lose my head. False alarm! “Why make a fuss?” Pesye said to calm my mother. “As if Yente doesn’t mix candle wax in the goose fat she sells or Gedalia the butcher didn’t feed the town non-kosher meat for a whole year!”
You should have seen my mother. She takes everything to heart. That’s what I like about Elye. He doesn’t let a barrel of barley beer get him down. As long as he has his book he’s not worried. I mean One Ruble Gets You a Hundred. He took a look at it and decided to make ink.
You can’t go wrong with ink, Elye says. Everyone uses it. The world’s getting smarter all the time. Who isn’t learning to write nowadays? He even went and asked Yidl the scribe how much he spent on ink. A fortune, Yidl said. Yidl must have sixty girls in his writing classes. The boys don’t go to him. That’s because he paddles them with a ruler. He doesn’t do that to the girls. Who ever heard of paddling a girl?
I wouldn’t mind being a girl myself. I wouldn’t have to say the kaddish for my father. I’m tired of it. It’s always the same old thing. I wouldn’t have to go to school, either. I haven’t told you that I’m back in school half time. You could put what I learn on the edge of a knife, but I make up for it by getting whacked. You think it’s the rabbi who does it? It so happens to be his wife. What’s it to her if I feed her cat? You should see the poor thing. It’s always hungry. It’s always crying like a person. The sight of it’s enough to break your heart. But that’s what the rabbi’s wife doesn’t have. What does she want from that poor cat? Let it get within a mile of some food and she screams loud enough to send it running to kingdom come. Not long ago it disappeared for days on end. I thought it was dead. But it was only having kittens.
Let’s get back to Elye’s ink.
My brother Elye says the world has changed. Once, when you wanted to make ink, you had to buy gall-apples, slice them, cook them forever, throw in some vitriol, and add sugar for shine. A production! Nowadays, Elye says, ink’s a pleasure. “All it takes,” he says, “is a bottle of glycerin and some powder you buy at the apothecary’s. You mix them with water, bring it to a boil, and you have ink.” That’s what he says, Elye.
He went to the apothecary and came back with a bunch of powder and a bottle of glycerin. Then he shut himself up in my mother’s room. Don’t ask me what he did there. It’s supposed to be a big secret. Everything’s a big secret with Elye. He can’t ask my mother for a mixing bowl without his voice dropping to a whisper. All I know is that he mixed the powder with the glycerin in a big new pot that he bought, stuck it in the oven, and whispered to mother to put the chain on the door. No one knew what he was up to. My mother stared at that oven as if it was about to explode.