That upset my mother. Mendl and me, she said, make our living fair and square. We deliver the peypehz to our kahstemehz before the stend opens in the morning and help out after skul. (I’ve forgotten to tell you we go to skul now.) She gave it to Pinye, my mother did.
Half of what she says is in American by now. She just gets everything backwards. Instead of cooking a tshikn in the kitshn, she cooks the kitshn in a tshikn. But she laughs at herself along with everyone. “Abi ir veyst az bei mir a tshikn iz a kitshn un a kitshn iz a tshikn, vahts deh difrins?” she asks.
You tell me. What language is that?
HALLAW, HOMEBOY!
Early one morning my friend Mendl and I were delivering the peypehz to our kahstemehz when there was a clap on my back and someone said:
“Hallaw, homeboy!”
I turn around — it’s Big Motl, the same boy who hung around with us in Cracow, Lemberg, Vienna, and Antwerp. I’ve told you how he taught me to give a governor and be a ventriloquist. He left for America before us and was already doing awreit in New York while we were still pounding the streets of Vaytshepl. That is, he found a dzhahb at a klinnehz.
“What kind of a dzhahb is that?” I asked as we walked.
Big Motl explained that a klinnehz cleaned clothes. You took a pair of creased pants, stuck them into a machine built like a flat oven, shut the lid, pulled a lever — and out came the pants as good as new.
“And what’s your dzhahb?” Big Motl asked.
“Dehlivehrink noospeypehz,” I said. “We bring them to our kahstemehz before skul. And after skul we voik in the biznis. We have a kawneh stend and make a living.”
“Hey!” said Big Motl. “You speak pretty good English. How much do you two biznismen make?”
“About a dahleh a week,” I say. “Sometimes a dahleh-and-akvawdeh.”
“Dats awl?” boasts Big Motl. “I make three dahlehz a week. So what’s this dzhentlminz neym?”
I said it was Mendl. Motl laughed and said, “Yuck!” “So what should it be?” I asked. Motl thought and said that Mendl should call himself Meik. That sounded a lot better. “What do you go by?” I asked. “Meks,” says Motl. “Since I’m a Motl too,” I say, “I guess I should also be Meks.” “Yaw Meks awredi,” he says. When he left us he said: “Si yuh suhn, Meks! Si yuh, Meik!”
We agreed to meet on Sunday and go to the moofink pikshehz. We swapped addresses and went our separate ways.
After Sunday dinneh Meik and I went to the moofink pikshehz to see Tshahli Tsheplin. Elye and Pinye came too. Tshahli Tsheplin was all Pinye could talk about: what a stah he was, and how much money he made, and how he was even a Jew. But Pinye and Elye never agree. Tshahli Tsheplin, Elye said, was not such a big deal. “I suppose you think anyone can make a thousand dahlehz a week,” Pinye said. “How do you know what Tshahli Tsheplin makes?” asked Elye. “Have you counted his money?” Pinye said he read it in the peypehz. “And how do you know he’s a Jew?” asked Elye. That, Pinye said, was in the peypehz too. “And how do the peypehz know?” Elye asked. “I suppose they were at his circumcision.” “The peypehz,” Pinye said, “know everything. How else would we know that Tshahli Tsheplin’s a deaf mute, and can’t read or write, and has a drunk for a father, and was a circus clown?” “Suppose it’s all a big fat lie?” asked Elye, cool as a cucumber. That got Pinye sore. “For a Jew yourself,” he said, “you’re one big pain in the neck.” Pinye’s right. Elye may be my brother, but he sure is a pain.
We had just arrived at the tikkit vindeh when we heard someone say:
“Hah duh yuh doo, Meks? Hah duh yuh doo, Meik?”
It was Big Motl. I mean Big Meks.
“Don’t buy any tikkits,” Big Meks said. “I’m trittink today.”
He slipped half a dahleh through the vindeh and asked the tikkit girl for three tikkits in the belkehni.
“Who’s this character?” Elye wanted to know.
I told him. Elye looked Big Meks up and down and asked why he didn’t introduce himself. “I suppose you’re too much of an American to speak Jewish,” he said.
Big Meks didn’t answer. But from the entrance came a voice that said:
“Joik!”
We all turned to look. There was no one there. Pinye and Elye scanned the lahbi. They looked at the ceiling and stared at each other. Who could it be? Big Meks took me and Mendl by the hand and the three of us went ahpstaihz. On the way he told us it was ventriloquism. He even did it for us again. Mendl and I laughed so hard that we were rolling in the aisles even before Tshahli Tsheplin’s act began.
I swear, you’ve never in your life seen a number like Big Meks! The greatest actor in the world is Tshahli Tsheplin and Meks does him down to the last detail. As soon as we left the theater he clapped on a little black mustache, turned out his feet, and started to waddle with his rear sticking out. You couldn’t have told him and Tshahli apart. Mendl — I mean Meik — went so wild that he gave Big Meks a kiss. Everyone outside the theater pointed and said, “There goes the second Tshahli Tsheplin.”
Even a grouch like Elye split his sides. Not for long, though. He stopped laughing pretty quick. How come? Because all of a sudden a voice said from a cellar:
“Joik!”
We all stared down into the cellar, trying to see who was there. Big Meks did too. Just then the voice called from overhead:
“Joik!”
Elye straightened up and stared at the rooftops. We all did. So did Big Meks. I tell you, it beat all! Only Meik and I knew where the voice was coming from. When we couldn’t hold it in any longer, we burst out laughing.
Elye was sore as hell. If we hadn’t been in the strit, he would have boxed our ears but good. But being smack in the middle of New York, he made do with a few juicy curses. When he had bawled Meik and me out, he pointed to Big Meks and said:
“Why don’t you learn from your friend? He’s your age and look how he behaves himself.”
“Joik!” said a voice behind Elye.
Elye spun around. So did Pinye and the others. Big Meks looked startled. Meik and I stood there howling.
“In America,” Pinye said, “even the sidewalks talk. I’d like to know who they’re calling joik.”
“Look in the mirror,” Elye said.
Was he surprised when a muffled voice said from below the ground:
“You’re dead wrong, Misteh Elye! The joik is you!”
That was Elye’s last visit to the moofink pikshehz. He doesn’t even want to hear about Tshahli Tsheplin any more.
THE BIZNIS GROWS
In America no one stands still. You have to get ahead and grow bigger and better. Since we didn’t do enough biznis at our stend for seven people, we decided to move on to a staw. I’ve told you that in America you only have to look in the peypehz. There’s nothing you won’t find there.
A going staw isn’t cheap. You pay more for the name than for the merchandise. Even our stend, which barely cleared ten dahlehz a week, was worth money because of its name. We sold it to a grinhawn. He didn’t bother to check how much we made from it. It was enough for him to see seven people busy making a living. He was sure we had a good biznis.
We sold our stend with all its trimmings, the sawdeh fuhntin and the shawkays included. The one thing we kept for ourselves was Elye’s recipes for sirips and seideh. All the money in the world couldn’t get him to part with them. Let everyone make his own product, he said.