KASRILEVKE IN NEW YORK
Before I tell you about other ways of making a living in America, I’d better tell you about our friends and acquaintances in New York, because it’s thanks to them we’ve risen in the world. Touch wood, we have plenty of them!
All Kasrilevke has moved to America. After we left, folks say, it was one disaster after another. First there was a bad pogrom, then a fire — the whole town burned to the ground. We found out about it from my mother. Leave it to my mother to be the first to hear of any calamity. She heard the news in synagogue. Kasrilevke, you should know, even has its own synagogue in America.
We hadn’t been in New York a week when my mother asked about a place to pray. New York has lots of synagogues. There’s one on every strit. That first Saturday she went with Pesye.
Pesye’s synagogue turned out to be our own. I mean the people were all from Kasrilevke. They call it the Kasrilevke Synagogue Association, or the Kasrilevke shul for short. We know everyone who prays there. Would you like to guess who that is? Eighteen brains wouldn’t be enough for you.
First of all, there’s the cantor — I mean Hirsh-Ber, the man in whose choir I sang. You may remember my carrying around his lame daughter Dobtshe. She died back in Russia, in the pogrom, and Hirsh-Ber came to America with his wife and children to make a living.
He isn’t just a cantor here. He’s a circumciser and a titsheh too. A titsheh titshiz children. Mostly he pinches them when no one is looking. That’s because in America he isn’t allowed to hit them. They say Hirsh-Ber is doing well. He’s changed a whole lot. Well, maybe not all that much, but he dresses differently. If he had worn a hat in Kasrilevke like the one he wears here, he’d have had the whole town running after him. His jacket is shorter too. And he’s cut off his earlocks. He hasn’t touched his big beard, though. He’s the only one who hasn’t.
Your American hates a beard more than a Jew hates a pig. Once some Christian boys — loahfehz, they call them — stopped Hirsh-Ber in the strit and tried shaving his beard off. It was his good luck that some Jews came along and rescued him from the loahfehz. Since then he tucks his beard into his overcoat whenever he walks in the strit.
Bereh the shoemaker is here too. That’s the man whose rats Elye tried getting rid of. I’ve told you he likes to spin yarns. No one else would dream of the things he makes up. In fact, he’s one lying Jew. In America that’s called a blahfeh.
Bereh is the same Bereh as always. If a third of what he said about his shoes were correct, he’d be pretty well off. He says he’s the biggest shoemaker in America. The whole country, he says, wears his boots. The prehzident himself has ordered a pair — he swears it with such oaths that you’d have to believe him even if he wasn’t a Jew. My brother Elye says it’s as true as his story of the cat-eating rats. In short, he’s blahfink. In Jewish you would say, “He’s rattling the teapot.”
I like “rattling the teapot” a lot better. I like it so much that I drew it. I mean I drew Bereh the shoemaker shaking a big teapot in the air. Everyone died laughing. Even Elye gave it half a smile. He doesn’t whack me for doodling any more. He just grumbles and says, “If you have nothing to do, I suppose you may as well do it.”
Who else should I tell you about? Rich Yosi is in America too. Once we all dreamed of having a fraction of his money. Now he doesn’t have it himself. How’s that? The pogrom did him in. I don’t mean he was hurt or anything, but he did lose everything he had. His furniture was smashed, his linens were torn, and all the goods were stolen from his store. He and his family escaped by hiding for three days in the cellar and nearly starving to death. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that his debtors went bankrupt. That made him go bankrupt himself. Who would have imagined Rich Yosi running away from his creditors? He cleared out in the middle of the night — for America.
Do you remember Yosi’s bug-eyed son Henekh, the one who laughed at me for going to America? Now he walks the strits of New York. He looks the other way when he sees me. It’s beneath him to talk to me even now. Wasn’t Haman the proud one too! My friend Mendl says he’ll make him black-eyed Henekh. Mendl doesn’t like swellheads.
And to take the cake, Menashe the doctor is here with the Doct’ress! You know all about their garden with its peaches, cherries, apples, and pears. Well, it went up in smoke. The whole place burned to a crisp. You wouldn’t recognize the two of them. They’re old and gray. Menashe wheels a pushcart with apples and oranges and the Doct’ress peddles tea. “It could break your heart,” my mother says, all teary-eyed.
“It couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman,” says Elye.
I agree. The Doct’ress got what she deserved. They don’t come any meaner. She wouldn’t have given a rotten apple to a beggar! She thinks I’ve forgotten catching it from her in the attic. Not till the day I die.
All the time we were roaming around Europe, the pogromchiks were robbing and torching our Kasrilevke Jews. The half house we sold to Zilye the tailor was burned too. Now Zilye is in New York. He’s still a tailor, but in Russia he was his own bawss while in America he works for someone else. Sometimes he’s an assistant presseh and sometime he’s an ahpereydeh. He takes home, so he says, seven or eight dollars a week. That’s not enough for a living but you can triple it because his three daughters work making shoits.
I asked Elye why it’s called a shoit. Elye said that’s one English word he can’t explain. “Why just one?” said Pinye. “I suppose you can explain all the others.” “As a matter of fact, I can,” Elye said. “Then suppose you explain butsheh,” said Pinye. “It comes from butsherink a cow,” Elye said. Next Pinye asked why a tailor was called an ahpereydeh. “He’s called an ahpereydeh,” Elye said, “because …because …because get off my back! Since when do I have to explain every word in America to you?”
“Shhh, stop shouting! What good are you to anyone? Come here, little man,” Pinye said to me. “If there’s anything you want to know, don’t ask your brother. He’s no wiser than you are.”
Brokheh stuck up for Elye. “A corpse,” she said, “knows more than both of you together.”
But I’ve gotten off the subject. That was who we know in America. All of Kasrilevke is here, except for Pinye’s family. They say it’s on its way too.
Pinye’s father Hirsh-Leyb the engineer and his uncle Shneyur the watchmaker have written that they would have left for America long ago if only they had money for the tickets. They’ve asked Pinye to lend it to them. We’re saving our pehnehz. As soon as they add up to a dahleh, we’ll make a down payment on the tickets. God willing, they’ll pay us back. They should do well here. Hirsh-Leyb writes that he’s invented a new stove. It hardly needs any wood. In fact, it needs none at all. How is that? It’s Hirsh-Leyb’s secret. And Shneyur has thought up a new clock that America will go wild for. What sort of clock is it? I’ll tell you what he wrote Pinye.
At first glance you might think it was just an ordinary clock. So what’s so special about it? Well, look at the dial and you’ll see a moon with twelve stars. That’s by night. By day you’ll see the sun — and that’s not the half of it. When the clock strikes twelve a door opens and out steps an officer with a sword and a marching band. The officer lifts his sword and the band plays a march and marches back through the door, which shuts behind it.
What’s your guess? Will Shneyur’s clock make a million in America? He’s been working on it for quite a few years. It was almost finished when the pogromchiks smashed it to pieces. But so what? He’ll make another. Let him get to America and he’ll be awreit.