Our first night in Cracow we were put up in a room, unless you prefer to call it a stall or a closet. In the morning someone came from the Committee to take our names. My mother didn’t want to give them. She was afraid of the draft. I’m telling you! Everyone had a good laugh. Since when does the Austrian Kaiser work for the Russian army? Next we were taken to a dormitory. That’s a big room with lots of beds and emigrants. “It looks like our Kasrilevke almshouse,” said my mother. “Mother-in-law,” Brokheh said, “let’s get out of this town.”
I’ve already told you that the women are like that. Nothing pleases them. They’re always finding fault. They didn’t care for Cracow from the start.
Elye doesn’t like Cracow either. He says it isn’t Lemberg. Lemberg was full of Jews. Not that there aren’t plenty of them in Cracow too, but they’re a funny sort of Jew, half-Polacks who curl their mustaches and talk Proshepanye. That’s according to Elye. Pinye thinks otherwise. Cracow, he says, is more civilized.
Pinye swears by something called civilization. I’d give a lot to know what that is.
The Committee has put us up in a great place. I mean, it’s great for making friends. You keep meeting new emigrants. You sit with them, eat with them, and swap stories with them. Some of the stories are pretty hairy: one person escaped a pogrom by a hair, another beat the draft by a hair, another made it across the border by a hair. Everyone talks about their agent. “Who was yours?” you’re asked, “the dark one or the blond one?” “He wasn’t dark and he wasn’t blond,” comes the answer. “He was a bastard.”
Usually we get to tell our story too, the whole blessed miracle: how we found some agents, and how we met the woman with the wig, and how she tried to swindle us, and how her Christian pals brought us to a forest, and how they asked for our money and said they’d cut our throats. It was a stroke of luck that Brokheh likes to faint and my mother began to scream. Then a shot rang out and the Christians took off and before we knew it we were on the other side.
Everyone listens and nods and says, “Whew!” One emigrant, a tall, mean-looking fellow with cotton in his ears, asked us:
“What did she look like, that woman with the wig? Religious and pious-like?”
Told that she did, he turned to his wife and said: “Soreh! Did you hear that? It’s the same woman!”
“She should catch the cholera! I wish to God they all did!”
That’s what Soreh said, telling a fine tale of how the woman with the wig set them up, fleeced them of everything, and tried selling them fake tickets to America.
Another emigrant sat up when he heard that. He was a tailor with dark eyes in a pale face and he said: “Fake tickets? Listen to this!”
But before he could tell his story, a fellow named Topolinski said he had a better one. In his town, he said, was a bureau that sold tickets from Lubow to America. A young man was talked into buying one and laid out sixty rubles for a piece of paper stamped with a red eagle. He traveled to Lubow and tried boarding a ship—Just where do you think you’re going? Did someone say ticket? A colored candy wrapper!
I’m getting tired of hearing about tickets. I like emigrants, but tickets are something else. I’d rather spend my time with a boy my age I met on the train to Cracow. His name is Kopl and he has a harelip. He got it from falling off a ladder. He swears it didn’t hurt, even though there was lots of blood. And as if splitting a lip wasn’t bad enough, he was also given a tanning from his father. If you haven’t already guessed, that’s the mean-looking man with the cotton in his ears. And Kopl’s mother is the woman called Soreh. His parents, he says, were once rich. They were rich until the pogrom.
I asked Kopl about that. The emigrants are always talking about pogroms, but I could never figure out what one was. He said: “You don’t know what a pogrom is? What a dummy! They have them everywhere. Anyone can start one and they last for three days.”
“But what are they? A kind of fair?”
“What kind of fair? Some fair! It’s breaking windows. Smashing furniture. Ripping pillows. The feathers fly like snowflakes.”
“But why?”
“Why yourself! Because, that’s why. And they don’t just wreck houses. They smash shops and loot and rob and shoot and throw it all in the street and douse it with kerosene and set it on fire.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’ll bet you think I’m making it up! And when there’s nothing left to rob, they go from house to house with axes and clubs and iron pokers, singing and whooping. The police go with them and they shout, ‘Kill the kikes, boys!’ If they catch you, they beat you up and cut your throat and fill you with holes …”
“Why me?”
“What do you mean, why you? Because you’re a Jew.”
“But how come?”
“How come yourself! It’s a pogrom.”
“So what if it is?”
“Get out of here, you dunce! It’s hopeless talking to you.”
That’s what he said, Kopl, turning away and sticking his hands in his pockets like a grown-up. It made me sore to see him act so high-and-mighty. I didn’t say anything, though. I just thought, “Wait and see, you big shot, you’ll need me yet,” and I let a few minutes go by. Then I went back to him and started a conversation. I asked him if he knew German. He just laughed at that. “Who doesn’t know German? It’s the same as Jewish.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, if you know it so well, suppose you tell me how you say horseradish.”
He laughed so hard he nearly choked.
“What do you mean, how do you say horseradish? Horseradish is horseradish!”
“That shows how much you know.” “So how do you say it?” I’d be darned if I could think of it myself, so I went and asked Elye.
“Horseradish?” he says. “How would you like some right in your puss?”
Elye must have been in a bad mood. He gets that way when he has to take money from his secret pocket. Pinye laughed at him. Then they began to fight. I looked for a place on the floor between our bundles and went to sleep.
Nothing has come of our stay in Cracow. We haven’t even seen the Committee. The emigrants have told us it’s a waste of time. As soon as you get there, they say, the runaround begins. First, they write down how old you are. Then they send you to the doctor for an examination. Then they tell you to come back. When you do, they ask, “What are you here for?” “We were told to come,” you say, “so we came.” That gets you a scolding for wanting to go to America. “Where are we supposed to go?” you ask. “In what holy book is it written,” they answer, “that you have to go anywhere?” You tell them a little story about a pogrom. “It’s your own fault,” they say. “Look at how one of your young Russians stole a roll in the park the other day.” “Maybe he was hungry,” you say. “And what about your Russian who attacked his wife in the street yesterday?” they ask. “The police had to be called.” “She’s not to blame,” you say. “She happened to spot her husband, who had run away from home. She caught him and made a scene when he tried getting away.” “But why do all your Russians dress in rags?” they ask. “That’s all they can afford,” you say. “Give them better clothes and they won’t wear rags.” All they give you is another lecture.
That’s what the emigrants tell us. We’re fortunate, they say, not to have needed any favors until now. My mother says we wouldn’t need one now either if not for our linens. She’d be as happy as the Kaiser’s wife if not for them. What will we do in America without them?