Pinye said that Ella’s Island wasn’t America. It was the border between America and the world. Baloney, Elye said. They were starting to fight when Brokheh stepped in. The two of them, she said, knew as much about it as they knew what happened in the grave. The whole argument wasn’t worth a plugged penny.
You’ll excuse me for getting sidetracked. I was telling you about Moyshe and Pesye’s apartment. I’ll get back to it and their boys, the whole gang.
You can bet that Moyshe and Pesye never dreamed of so many bedrumz, let alone a deininkrum. That’s a word we can’t figure out. A bedrum, fine, it has a bed in it — but what’s a deinink? Why not call it the eedinkrum?
Moyshe the bookbinder hears us discussing it and says: “Why lose sleep over it? Who cares as long as we’ve got a fine place, thank God, and my boys all have work, and we’re making a living in America?”
I look at him and think: God Almighty! How a man can change! Back home you never heard him say a word. It was always Pesye, Pesye, Pesye. All Moyshe ever did was make glue and paste books. Now he’s grown a head taller. What making a living doesn’t do for a man! All his children are bringing home money too. I’ll tell you what each does and how much he earns. I hate to admit it, but my mother is jealous that Pesye has so many boys.
Pesye’s oldest boy used to be Log. In America he’s Sem. Why Sem? Search me. All I know is, he’s earning well. He’s got a dzhahb with a peyprbahks fektri. If that’s Chinese to you, I’ll set you straight.
A peyprbahks fektri is a place where they make cartons. Don’t think it’s such a big dzhahb. Log doesn’t make the cartons. He just brings them to the kahstemehz. That’s called a dehlivri boi. Log takes a bondl of cartons under each arm, ten dozen to a bondl, and runs through the strit dodging kahz. The trick is to keep the cartons from getting crushed. Log makes a dahleh-and-a-half a week and is hoping for a reyz. That means more money. He says he can make as much as three dahlehz. His bawss tells him that if he sticks around he’ll teach him to be a carton maker. “Be a gud boi and you’ll be awreit,” he tells him. In Jewish you would say, “If you’re nice, I’ll let you eat in my sukkeh.”
Moyshe and Pesye’s second son, Velvel Tomcat, now goes by the name of Villi. He’s a dehlivri boi too and works for a grawsri staw. That’s a place that sells food and other stuff. Tomcat’s dzhahb is harder than Log’s. He gets up at an hour when even God is still asleep and arranges and packs all the awdehz. An awdeh is a bondl brought to a kahstemeh with rolls, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, milk, and krim. Sometimes Tomcat carries the awdeh all the way to the tahpflaw, which is the apartment under the roof. He has to be quick. There’s no time to catch his breath, because he’s expected back in the staw to sweep and clean. By noon he’s finished and free for the day. He doesn’t make a whole lot, just fifteen cents a day, except for Fridays. Fridays he gets a kvawdeh plus a hallah to take home.
Log and Tomcat are the two oldest in the gang. Their younger brothers can’t work mornings because of skul. That’s American for heder. It’s free and so are the books. You better go or else.
Pinye went crazy when he heard that. Back in Russia, he says, they don’t allow Jews to go to school and here they don’t allow them not to! If you miss skul you’re arrested by a trunt ahfiseh. “Those Russkies should be buried alive just for that,” Pinye says.
Skul being only half a day, you can work the other half. All Pesye’s boys do. Ratface works in a drahgstaw. That’s an apothecary’s. He washes bottles and goes to the pawstuffis for stemps. In America you can buy stemps in a drahgstaw. Ratface makes a dahleh-and-a-kvawdeh a week.
“That doesn’t grow on trees,” Moyshe the bookbinder says, pocketing Ratface’s pay.
Faytl Petelulu is now Filip. After skul he sells the Jewish noospeypehz. He runs up and down Ist Brawdvey — that’s a street — shouting: “Ekstreh! Ekstreh!” Every peypeh has a name. Petelulu makes fifty cents and more a day. It goes to the family. Everyone makes a living and Moyshe pays all the bills.
Even my friend Bumpy is earning money. He just isn’t Bumpy any more. He’s Herry and he goes to skul too. Afternoons he minds a stend on Rivinktn Strit that belongs to a woman from Kasrilevke. He helps her sell rice, barley, millet, peas, beans, nuts, raisins, almonds, figs, dates, carob pods, and pickles. It’s not a whole lot of work.
Mostly he guards against pilfering. You get a kahstemeh buying barley, you have to make sure she doesn’t help herself to a handful of raisins or pop a date in her mouth. Bumpy helps himself too. He told me how he once pinched so many raisins that he had a stomach ache for three whole days. His pay comes from carrying bags for the kahstemehz. Some of them give him a pehni or two. Once he even made a nikl — that’s five pehnehz in one shot. He can clear a dahleh a week. Back in Kasrilevke the only money he ever saw was on Purim, when the children tricked-or-treated. But Purim came once a year. Bumpy earns money every day.
“Columbus, you should be sculpted in gold!” Pinye says. Once he saw Bumpy at his stend as he was walking down Rivinktn Strit, bought three cents’ worth of carob pods, and gave him a pehni tipp. A tipp is extra money from a kahstemeh.
Moyshe the bookbinder keeps busy, too. He’s not binding books any more. In America, he says, it costs a fortune to rent a staw, buy equipment, and find kahstemehz. And he’s too old to work as a hiyud hend. He took some advice he was given (that’s one thing Jews have a lot of) and opened a book stend on Essiks Strit. He’s making a living from it.
Pinye likes that idea so much he’s thinking of copying it. A man, he says, should deal in what he likes. Pinye takes to books like a fish to water. Once he sticks that long nose of his in one of them, you can’t tear him loose from it.
Yoyneh the bagel maker has also left his old line of work — and for the same reason. You have to be a millionaire to open a bakery. Besides, he says, you have to join the yunye and he’s too old. Yoyneh is afraid he’d get his skull cracked in a streik if he worked for a non-yunye man. (In America there are streiks every day.) In the end he listened to some advice too. The advice was to make something else. Such as what? Such as knishes! Homemade knishes filled with cheese and sauerkraut.
Believe it or not, Yoyneh is doing not badly. Not badly at all. His knishes have a reputation all over the Loaweh Ist Seid. If you walk down Essiks Strit and see a window that says homemade knishes sold here in big Jewish letters, you’ll know it’s him. And if you see another sign across the street that says homemade knishes sold here, you’ll know it’s the competition. Don’t give it your biznis. Buy your knishes from Yoyneh. You’ll know it’s him because he’s mean. And if you don’t, you’ll recognize Riveleh. She has a double chin like Pesye and a coral necklace. You’ll recognize Brokheh too by her big feet. The little girl with the braids and freckles is her sister Alte. We once were engaged. I’ll tell you about Alte some other time.
WE LOOK FOR A DZHAHB
We can’t complain. We’re welcome guests at Pesye and Moyshe’s. Life is pretty good there. We all have a swell time, especially on Sundays when the gang is off. That’s when we live it up. We all get together, my friend Mendl too, and go to the theater.
It’s called the moofink pikshehz. It costs a nikl and you can’t believe the things you see. If I were the Tsar’s son I’d go to the moofink pikshehz every day and never leave. So would Mendl. Bumpy, too — I mean Herry.
Not my brother Elye. Elye thought the moofink pikshehz were silly. He said they were for children. “If they’re for children,” I said, “I’d like to know what Pinye and Taybl are doing there. And how about Brokheh?” But Elye has an answer for everything. A woman, he said, has a child’s brains and Pinye likes to be annoying.