Vaytshepl made me think: good God, if this is London, what is America like? But as far as Brokheh is concerned, London can go up in flames. She hated it the minute she laid eyes on it. “You call this a city?” she says. “It’s hell on earth! It should have burned to the ground a year ago.”
Elye tries pointing out London’s good sides. It does as much good as chicken soup does a dead man. Brokheh pours fire and brimstone on the place. She has fire on the brain, Brokheh does. Taybl backs her up. My mother says, “Dear God, have mercy and make London our last stopover!”
The three of us, Elye, Pinye, and me, think the world of London. We like the hustle and the bustle. What’s it to us if the town is always cooking? Let it boil! Our problem is that we have nothing to do here. We can’t find a Committee. Either no one knows of one or no one wants to tell us. This person has no time, that one is busy. Everyone is in a hurry.
The reason we need a Committee is simple. We have nothing left to get to America with. Elye is broke. The proceeds from our house have gone up in smoke. Pinye laughs and says to Elye, “Your secret pocket has lost its secret.”
That gets Elye mad. Elye doesn’t like wisecracks. He’s a brooder, Elye is. He and Pinye are opposites. Pinye calls him “Mr. Family Conscience.” What I like about Pinye is that he’s always in a grand mood. The good thing about the English, he says, is that they don’t speak German. The bad thing is that they speak something worse. Brokheh would trade three Englishmen for one German. Who ever heard of a country, she says, that has money called “aypens,” “toppens,” and “troppens?”
I’ve told you we’re looking for a Committee. Finding a Committee in London is like finding a needle in a haystack. But there’s a great God above. One day we’re out walking in Vaytshepl. I mean one evening. That is, it was daytime. The point is, there’s no daylight in London. It’s evening all day long. Anyhow, along comes a Jew with a short jacket, a fine hat, and eyes on the lookout for something.
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re all Jews!”
That’s what he says, the man with the fine hat. Pinye answers: “You bet! They don’t come any more Jewish than we do.”
“How would you like to do a good deed?” says the Jew.
“Such as what?” Pinye asks.
“I have an anniversary of a death today and can’t get to synagogue to say the kaddish. I need nine Jews to pray with me. Is this young man bar mitzvah?”
He meant me! I liked being called a young man and taken for thirteen.
We followed the Jew up some steps to a dark room full of ragged children and smelling of fried fish. No one else was there. That still left us seven Jews short. The man offered us a seat and ran back down. He came and went a few times until he had rounded up ten men.
Meanwhile I talked to the children and watched the fish fry on the stove. The English call it fishink tships. A tship is a boat for catching fish. It’s not a bad dish, fishink tships. One thing is for sure: it’s a lot better than Brokheh says it is. The truth is that I wouldn’t have minded a piece of it. I’ll bet Brokheh wouldn’t have, either. We had hardly eaten all day. Lately, our only food has been herring and radishes. They sell swell black radishes in Vaytshepl. But the Jew didn’t have the brains to invite us for dinner. Maybe he didn’t think we were hungry. At the end of the prayer he thanked us and said we could go.
Elye didn’t want to give up. He kept looking at the fishink tships with his mouth watering while asking the Jew if he knew of a Committee. The Jew kept one hand on the door knob and talked with the other. There was a Committee all right, he said. He just couldn’t say a good word about it. That is, it wasn’t really a Committee. Or rather, it wasn’t one Committee. It was several. The London Committees didn’t hand out cash so fast. Whoever wanted help had to bring papers and documents proving they were emigrants for America. That was because a lot of Jews in London were just pretending to be emigrants. And once you brought all the documents, you were given a ticket back to Russia. The London Committees weren’t big on America.
That made my brother Elye sore. You already know he has a temper. It doesn’t take much to set Pinye off either. He began to shout:
“But that’s impossible!! How can they send us back to Russia? This is the land of the megneh kahteh.”
Don’t ask me what that is. The man let us out the door and said: “You can talk all you want. Here’s the address of a Committee. You’ll see for yourselves.”
The smell of fishink tships followed us down the stairs. Although we were all thinking about food, no one mentioned it but Brokheh. Did she let loose with a mouthful! She hoped to God, she said, that the people upstairs would choke to death on their stinking fish that you could smell a mile away.
That didn’t go down well with my mother. “What do you have against that poor family?” she asked. “They’re fine folk. Look at the hole they live in — and they still remember to say the prayers for the dead.”
“Mother-in-law!” answered Brokheh. “They should roast in hell with their prayers and their fishink tships! If you kidnap strangers on the street, the least you can do is offer their child a piece of fishink!”
She meant me. One minute I’m a bar-mitzvah boy and the next I’m a child again. Happy times are here if Brokheh is taking my side!
The six of us went off to the Committee. The Jew’s parting advice was to take a tram. The problem with London trams is that they don’t like to stop. You can flag them down till you’re blue in the face, they just fly right past you. It doesn’t help to run after them either, because you’ll never catch them. Luckily an Englishman saw us waving at them and took us to a place where he told us to wait.
Sure enough, we didn’t have to wait long. In a minute a tram pulled up and we climbed aboard, Elye and Pinye and my mother and Brokheh and Taybl and me. Along comes a conductor selling tickets. “Skolke vif l?” asks Pinye. “Aypens,” says the conductor. Pinye gives him aypens. “Not aypens! Aypens!” the conductor says, getting sore. Although Pinye just laughs, Elye loses his temper. “Aypens or not aypens!” he shouts. “Which do you want?” The conductor yanks a cord to stop the tram and chucks us into the street like a madman. You might think we had tried robbing his change belt. How were we supposed to know that eight pence wasn’t ha’-pence?
“Well? Does London deserve to burn or not?”
That’s Brokheh. We went the rest of the way on foot.
The London Committee was the same jolly scene as every other Committee we had been to. The same emigrants filled the same courtyard like rubbish and the same men smoked the same cigars and said, “Next!” The only difference was that the other Committees spoke German and had whiskers and this committee spoke English and was clean-shaven. The women had big teeth, wore hairpieces with curls, and were so ugly they made you want to puke — and there they sat, mocking us with their eyes and pointing at us with their fingers and fidgeting at having to deal with us.
Back in the street two girls stopped Elye and told him to go to a bahbeh shahp. We didn’t know that meant he should get a haircut. What weird people! They go around full of grease stains from the smelly fishink tships they eat in the street and don’t like hair! There are plenty of drunks lying in the gutters here, too. That’s something you never saw back home. England would be a fine country, Brokheh says, if only someone would put a torch to it.
“What good would that do?”
That’s Elye. Did he get it from Brokheh! She’s something when she lets rip. Either she isn’t talking to you or else you have to stop your ears and run for your life. I quote:
“How dare you stick up for this God-accursed, gray-skied, bare-cheeked, twirly-curled, greasy-stained, beer-breathed, beggarly city of old maids and fishink tships and charming Vaytsheplakh and thieving conductors and Jews who pray for the dead and don’t give you the time of day? Fire is too good for it!”