“ ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ I ask.
“ ‘What I mean,’ she says, ‘is that it’s me who does all the thinking around here. Even when it comes to finding a high school for our son, I have to supply the brainpower.’
“ ‘Where does it say,’ I ask, ‘that our son has to go to high school? If he wants to be a scholar, who’s keeping him from being one at home?’
“ ‘I’ve told you a thousand times,’ she says, ‘that you can’t make me fly in the face of the whole world. And in today’s world, children go to high school.’
“ ‘If you ask my opinion,’ I say, ‘today’s world is crazy.’
“ ‘And you, I suppose,’ she says, ‘are the only sane one in it! A fine world it would be if everyone went by your opinions.’
“ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘they’re the only opinions I have.’
“ ‘All my enemies and friends’ enemies,’ she says, ‘should only have as much in their pockets as you have in your head!’
“ ‘It’s a black day in a man’s life,’ I say, ‘when a woman has to tell him how to run it!’
“ ‘And it’s a black day in a woman’s life,’ she says, ‘when she’s married to such a man!’
“Go argue with your own wife! Whatever you talk about, she’ll answer you off the wall; say one word to her, and she’ll come back at you with ten; try not saying anything, and she’ll begin to cry, or better yet, throw such a fit that you’ll wish you were never born. In short, when the dust had settled, she had her way. Between you and me, why pretend? When she wants it, she gets it …
“Anyway, what can I tell you? A high school it was! And that meant, first of all, starting him in junior high school. You wouldn’t imagine that junior high school was such a big deal, would you? And especially not, I thought, with a whiz kid like mine who ran rings around them all in the rabbi’s schoolroom. Why, you could search all of Russia for another child like him! Granted, I’m his father; but the head on that boy’s shoulders is something else … Why drag it out, though? He applied for the entrance exams, and he took the entrance exams, and he failed the entrance exams. What was the problem? The problem was that he scored only a two in arithmetic. Your child, I was told, has an insufficient mathematical background. I ask you, doesn’t that take the cake? You won’t find a head like his in all of Russia, and they’re talking about mathematical backgrounds! But failed is failed. I don’t have to tell you how down in the dumps I was; if he had to take the exams already, I would just as soon he had passed. But being a mere male of the species, I thought to myself: well, we did what we could — he isn’t the first Jew who won’t go to high school and he won’t be the last … A lot it helped to tell that to the wife, though. There was no getting it out of her head; the boy was going to high school if it killed her!
“ ‘Tell me,’ I said to her, ‘I only want you to be happy, but what do you need all this for? To keep the boy out of the army? But he’s an only son, he already has an exemption. To help him make a living? For that he needs high school like a hole in the head. What’s so terrible if he has to work in the store with me, or buy and sell like other Jews? And if, God forbid, it’s his bad luck to end up a rich businessman or a banker, we’ll manage to live with that too.’
“That was the approach I took with her. Did you ever try talking to a wall? ‘All right,’ she says, ‘it’s just as well. He can skip the first year of junior high school.’ ‘What does that mean?’ I say. ‘It means,’ she says, ‘that he’ll go straight into the second year.’ Well, the second year of junior high school is the second year of junior high school — but with a head you can search all of Russia for, who was I to worry if he hadn’t gotten into the first year? Listen to what happened, though: when the chips were down, the boy pulled a two again. Not in mathematics; this time the bad news was something else. His spelling left a bit to be desired. That is, he knew how to spell, he just sometimes left out a few letters. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even leave them out, he just put them in the wrong places. I was crushed: how would the boy ever go with me to the fair in Poltava or Lodz if his spelling wasn’t letter-perfect? But if you think the wife didn’t turn the world upside down, you have another guess coming. Off she ran to the director to convince him that the boy really could do it; just give him a chance to take the exams over again! I’m afraid she made about as much of an impression as last winter’s snow. The boy had gotten a two and something else called a two-minus — go sue!
“Well, the wife made some scene. How could they refuse to retest him? ‘Look,’ I said to her, ‘that’s the way it is. What do you want me to do, kill myself? He’s not the first Jew and he won’t be the last …’ That just made her so mad, though, that she gave me a royal tongue-lashing as only a woman can. To tell you the truth, I didn’t hold it against her. And my heart went out to the little fellow too, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Why, you’d think the sky had fallen in; everyone would be going around in blue blazers with silver buttons except him! ‘Stop being a little fool,’ I said to him. ‘Come to your senses! Was anyone ever born with a written guarantee that he’d get into high school? Someone has to stay home to mind the store, doesn’t he? Open admission is only in the army …’
“That ticked the wife off but good; she really laid into me this time. ‘I suppose that’s your idea of being comforting,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you save your words of wisdom for yourself? You’d be a lot kinder if you went and got him another tutor, a real Russian who can teach him Russian grammar.’
“Did you ever hear anything like it? The boy needed two whole private tutors; one tutor and one Hebrew teacher wasn’t enough for him! But when the dust had settled, she had her way again. When she wants it, she gets it …
“Anyway, what can I tell you? We took a new grammar tutor — and not some measly Jew either, God forbid, but an honest-to-goodness goy. The first-year grammar exam, you should know, is tougher than nails. It’s no picnic, your Russian grammar; you have to mind your p’s and q’s. Just don’t ask me what kind of goy God sent us, though, because I’m ashamed to have to say. The damned anti-Semite took a year off my life! He made fun of us to our faces, he practically spat in them. For instance, when he had to pick a word for my son to practice ‘to eat’ on, all he could think of was ‘garlic’: ‘I eat garlic, you eat garlic, we eat garlic …’ He should only eat garlic in hell! If it hadn’t been for the wife, I would have grabbed him by the seat of his pants and thrown him and his Russian grammar through the window. That’s not how she saw it, though. Why take it personally? It was worth it, she said, just to get those p’s and q’s straight. Imagine, the boy had to go through that torture all winter — in fact, it was nearly summer before he was led to the slaughter again. This time, instead of two twos, he chalked up a four and a five. Glory be! Mazel tov, he’d done it! Or had he? Please to be patient, we wouldn’t know until August whether he’d gotten in or not. Why couldn’t we be told sooner? Go ask! Well, he wasn’t the first or last Jew who had to wait …