“There’s not much left for me to tell. One day I caved in, I couldn’t take it any longer. I sold the business, which was already in ruins, for a song, took my last few rubles, and went to join her in Poland. Once I settled down there, I began to look around a bit to get the lay of the land — it wasn’t easy, but I managed to put myself back on my feet and even to strike up a partnership with a respectable Jew, a fine fellow from Warsaw who was president of the synagogue. How was I supposed to know that he would turn out to be a purse snatcher, a swindler, a racketeer, who would leave me holding the bag? I don’t have to tell you that I was at the end of my rope … Well, strangely enough, who do I see as I’m walking home one day but my son, all red in the face and without the dingus on his cap. ‘Hey, Moyshele,’ I say, ‘where’s the dingus?’
“ ‘What dingus?’ he says to me.
“ ‘Your school button,’ I say.
“ ‘What school button?’ he says.
“ ‘The button on your cap,’ I say. ‘Just a while ago you bought a new cap with a new button.’
“ ‘I threw it away,’ he says, turning even redder.
“ ‘What do you mean, you threw it away?’ I ask.
“ ‘I’m free!’ he says.
“ ‘What do you mean, you’re free?’ I ask.
“ ‘We’re all free!’ he says.
“ ‘All right,’ I say, ‘so you’re all free. What does that mean?’
“ ‘It means no more school,’ he says.
“ ‘And what does no more school mean?’ I ask.
“ ‘It means,’ he says, ‘that we all voted to walk out.’
“ ‘What do you mean, you all voted to walk out?’ I say. ‘Who asked you to vote? Walk out where? Do you mean to tell me I’ve ruined myself just for you to start a revolution? God help us all! I only hope they don’t pin it on us Jews, because we’re always the first to take the rap.’
“Well, I gave it to him but good, as only a father can. I just should have known that the wife, God bless her and keep her from me, would come running with a mouthful of her own. I had better, she said, brush the cobwebs off of me — I had better wise up, she said — I had better realize, she said, that the old days were gone forever. In the new world that was coming, she said, we would all be free and equal. No more cats, no more mice, no more whips, no more horses, no more dogs, no more lice, no more slaves, no more bosses …
“ ‘My, my, my,’ I said to her, ‘fancy you reciting poetry. Modern times, modern rhymes, eh? I suppose you’d like to open their cages and set the chickens free too. No more pens, no more hens, just imagine!’
“Well, you’d have thought from the way she blew her stack at me that I had poured boiling water on her. There was nothing to do but hear her out to the bitter end. The only trouble was that there was no end. ‘You know something?’ I said. ‘That’s enough. If you’ll just stop, I’ll agree to anything you say. It’s my fault, I’m to blame for everything, it’s all because of me—but won’t you please be q-u-i-e-t!’
“It just went in one ear and out the other, though. Nothing doing! She had to know why, and how could I, and who said, and by what right, and since when, and did it ever, and on and on and on and on and on …
“I ask you, whose idea were wives in the first place?”
(1902)
THE AUTOMATIC EXEMPTION
“Where am I coming from?” said the tall, thin, heavily bearded Jew with the felt hat on his head. He had just finished his morning prayers and was putting away his tefillin and his prayer shawl. “Where am I coming from? It’s just my luck to be coming from the army, that’s where I’m coming from! The young man stretched out on that seat over there is my son. We stopped in Yehupetz on our way home to see a lawyer and a doctor — to get an opinion, that’s what we stopped for. A fine lot I needed the army in my life! This is the fourth time he’s been before the draft board and he isn’t done with it yet. And the boy is an only son, he has an automatic, a guaranteed, a one-hundred-percent lifetime exemption … but why are you looking at me like that? Did I say something wrong? Wait, just wait till you hear the whole story.
“A lot of ancient history, that’s what you’re going to hear. You see, I come from Mezritch, though I grew up in Mazapevke, but Vorotolivke is where I’m still registered. That is, I grew up in Mazapevke, but I lived in Vorotolivke, though Mezritch is where I’m from now. Not that my name and address make a difference; my son’s name, though — now that’s something else again, that has everything to do with it. I’ll say it does! It’s Itsik, his name — that’s short for Avrom-Yitzchok, though he really goes by Alter, which is what his mother, God bless her, took to calling him for good luck, being an only child and all that. That is, he wasn’t always an only child, because there was another boy a year or so younger, Eisik is what his name was. We had a tragedy with him when he was little, though — I mean with Eisik, not with Itsik. One day when we left him alone in the house (it happened in Vorotolivke, because we hadn’t moved to Mezritch, and it couldn’t have been in Mazapevke), he knocked over a boiling samovar and burned, he actually burned himself to death! That’s when we began to call him Alter — Itsik, I mean, not Eisik — that is, bless his soul, Avrom-Yitzchok …
“You must be wondering what it wants, the army, what it wants with an only son. But that’s just it! Maybe you think he’s such a fine specimen, God forbid, that they decided to take him anyway? Don’t you believe it: why, you wouldn’t sell him a penny of life insurance, he’s so sick that he looks like a ghost! That is, sick may not be the right word for him; he’s not really sick, he just isn’t very healthy either. It’s a crime to wake him now, because he’s sleeping, but you’ll see when he gets up what a bag of bones he is. He’s all arms and legs, as thin as a stick, a dried fig has more color than he does … and the height of the boy: good grief, he’s a regular beanpole! That’s because he takes after his mother, God bless her. What I mean is, his mother is tall and thin too, she’s what you might call the refined type … But I ask you: with a spindleshanks of a son who has an automatic exemption, I should have to worry about the army?
“A lot it helped, though, that exemption, when the boy got his call-up. What exemption? It didn’t even exist! Why not? Because there happened to be a small problem — namely, that when my son Eisik was burned to death by the samovar, his name was never struck from the register. Well, I ran to that dunce of a government rabbi that we have and let him know just what I thought of him. ‘You grave robber! You body snatcher! How could you have done this to me? Why didn’t you make out a death certificate for my Eisik?’
“ ‘Who’s Eisik?’ the dumb clunk asks.
“ ‘What?’ I say. ‘You don’t even know who Eisik is? My son Eisik, who knocked over the samovar.’
“ ‘What samovar?’ he asks.
“ ‘Wake up and die right!’ I say. ‘Welcome to Mezritch! Do you call that block of wood of yours a head? You could put it to better use as a nutcracker! Who around here doesn’t know that my Eisik was burned to death by a samovar? I’ll be blamed if I know what we need you for in this town. When a live Jew has a problem, he finds a real rabbi to go to — I’d think the least you could do is keep track of the dead. Why are we paying the taxes for your salary?’