The truth is he can’t stand to leave us. Brokheh and Taybl can’t live without each other. Not that they don’t fight and call each other names. They’re at each other’s throats all the time. If not for my mother, they would have stopped being friends long ago. But they always make up in the end. Brokheh can flare up like a match — she says so herself. Catch her on a bad day and you’ll get egg all over your face. A minute later she’s all sweetness and light. You’d never guess she was just tearing your hair out.
Brokheh and I have been feuding since the wedding. She knows I don’t like her. What annoys her the most is my making fun of her. I can’t look at her without her thinking that I’m laughing. I’ve told you I like to draw. Well, not long ago I drew a huge foot with chalk, a real monster. Leave it to Brokheh to decide it’s hers! How come? Because no one else, she says, has such big feet. She wears size thirteen galoshes, that’s a fact. She ratted to Elye and he yelled:
“More doodling, eh? Up to your old tricks again!”
I swear, even a foot by him is a doodle! He can drive you crazy, Elye can. But it’s true that the drawing bug is getting worse. I go around with a crayon I got from the boy who gave me the governor. I’ve told you about him. His name is Motl too. He’s Big Motl and I’m Little Motl. I swapped for it by drawing his portrait on the train to Antwerp, fat cheeks and all. I made him promise not to show it to anyone, because I didn’t want Elye laying into me. So naturally Big Motl goes and waves it in Elye’s face.
“This looks like my brother’s work! Just wait till I get my hands on the little doodler!”
That’s what Elye said, running off to look for me. He didn’t find me because I was hiding behind my mother, doubled up with laughter. A mother is the world’s best hiding place.
Thank God we’re in Antwerp! We barely made it in one piece, but here we are. What can I tell you? It’s some city! I don’t mean it compares to Vienna. Vienna is in another class. It’s a lot bigger and prettier. There are more people there too. But is Antwerp ever spick-and-span! It’s no wonder, either, what with how they wash the streets and scrub the sidewalks and clean the houses. I swear, I’ve even seen them soaping down the walls! I don’t mean everywhere. It’s not as bad in the emigrants’ hotels. In fact it’s a pretty swell scene there, the kind of damp, dirty, smoky, crowded place that I like.
Yoyneh the bagel maker hasn’t arrived yet. Neither have Pesye and her gang. They’re still roaming around Germany. “A hellhole,” the emigrants call Germany. They tell one horror story after another. Our stolen linen is chicken feed compared to what some people have lost there.
In Antwerp we’ve met a woman from Mezhbezh. She’s alone with her two children because her husband is already in America. She was on the road for a year, traveling all over and fighting with every Committee on the way. And now that she’s made it with her last ounce of strength, she isn’t being allowed aboard ship.
Bad eyes? Not at all! Her eyes are fine. She’s just a little touched in the head. I mean she’s perfectly normal except for the things she says now and then that could make you die laughing. Ask her, for instance, “Where is your husband?” and you’ll get the answer, “In America.” “And what is he doing there?” “He’s the emperor.” “But how can a Jew be an emperor?” “In America,” says the woman from Mezhbezh, “all things are possible.” You get the idea. And she has another strange notion too. She won’t eat and doesn’t want us to. We mustn’t touch the dairy products, she says, because in Antwerp they all have meat in them. “What about the meat?” asked my mother. “You call that meat?” says the woman. “Why, you can eat it with dairy!” We all roared except for my mother. She never laughs when she can cry. “Shame on you,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Well, well, it’s about time! You haven’t cried for a whole day! How will they ever send us back to Russia if you don’t cry your eyes out?”
That’s my brother Elye. My mother’s eyes were dry in a minute. She feels sorrier for that woman’s children than she does for the woman herself. Don’t ask me why. As far as I can see, they’re having a grand time. They laugh as hard as we do at the crazy things their mother says. By now I know them pretty well. They say she doesn’t want to go back to Russia. She wants to join their father the emperor. (Ha-ha-ha!) The officials try tricking her into thinking she can get there by train. (Ha-ha-ha!) They keep telling her the train back to Russia is the Antwerp-America express. (Ha-ha-ha!)
The things I’ve seen in Antwerp are not to be described. Every day new people turn up here. They’re mostly poor or crippled or have eye problems. “Trachoma,” it’s called. Whatever it is, America doesn’t want it. You can have a thousand diseases, be deaf, dumb, and lame — it’s all right if you don’t have trachoma.
Where does it come from? You either get it from too much crying or catch it from someone else. You can even catch it from a stranger. I heard that from a girl named Goldeleh. I may as well tell you her story.
I met Goldeleh at Ezrah. Since you don’t know what that is either, I’ll start with it.
Ezrah is an organization for emigrants. We went looking for it as soon as we hit Antwerp. It’s like the Alliance in Vienna. The difference is that they don’t toss you out the door. You come when you want and sit where you want and talk as much as you want. Whatever you say is written down in a book. The young woman who writes it is named Fraulein Seitchik and she’s nice. She even asked me my name and gave me a candy. I’ll tell you about her some other time. Now I’ll get back to Goldeleh.
She comes from Kutno, Goldeleh does. She arrived in Antwerp a year ago with her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. It was Sukkes time and they couldn’t have had a finer holiday. Not that they were living it up. They stayed in the same miserable quarters as everyone. But they had tickets to America and new clothes fit for a king. Each of them had two new shifts and a pair of new shoes.
Now Goldeleh is down to one shift and no shoes. She’d be going barefoot, she says, if not for Fraulein Seitchik. Fraulein Seitchik gave her the shoes from her own feet, a perfectly good pair. Goldeleh showed them to me. They’re pretty swell shoes, even if they are kind of big onher.
To make a long story short, Sukkes came and went and it was time to board ship. First, though, they went to see the doctor. The doctor looked them over and said they were all in good health and could go to America. Except for Goldeleh. Goldeleh had trachoma.
It took a while for that to sink in. At first the family didn’t grasp that Goldeleh would have to stay behind in Antwerp while the rest of them went to America. Then they were hysterical. Goldeleh’s mother passed out three times. Her father wanted to stay in Antwerp. But it wasn’t possible, since they couldn’t get a refund on their tickets. In the end they sailed for America and left Goldeleh to get over her trachoma.
Since then a year has passed and she hasn’t gotten over anything. Fraulein Seitchik says it’s because she cries so much. Goldeleh says that’s not the reason. The reason is the calamine. The doctor smears her eyes with the same calamine he gives everyone. If only she had her own calamine, Goldeleh says, her eyes would be fine by now.
“What about your parents?” I ask.
“They’re in America. They’re making a living. I get mail from them. Every month they send me a letter. Hey, can you read? Read them to me!”
She takes a pack of letters from her blouse and asks me to read them out loud. I tell her I’d like to but can only read prayer book print. Goldeleh laughs and says I’m no better than a girl. To tell you the truth, she’s right. I’d give anything to learn to read real writing. Big Motl reads like nobody’s business. He reads Goldeleh all her letters. I’m jealous of that, even though they’re all the same: