Your husband,
Menakhem-Mendl
P.S. An editorial board is not a piece of wood. It’s a group of people that gets together to put out a newspaper. The board sends writers to different cities. It needs material and we’re paid to produce it. We send it in and it’s printed. I hope that makes the newspaper business clear.
Yours, etc.
To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!
First, thank God, we’re all well. I hope to hear no worse from you.
Second, I read your letter and couldn’t believe my eyes. A bad dream, that’s all I can say. A grand subject you’ve found to make a rhubarb from — a widow and her blasted bawdy house! Believe me, if I were you I would have minced no words with that young man and sent that naked hussy to peel potatoes in the kitchen instead of writing them both up in the papers. But I have a husband, it seems, who gets paid to be a stump preacher. My mother says it takes all kinds to make a world, but if you ask me, before sticking your nose into other people’s pots you might take an interest in your own. Are you your children’s father or not? You should hear Moyshe-Hirshele say his ABC’s — all your widows aren’t fit to carry his schoolbag! As soon as I’m up to it I’ll have a photograph made of him and the others, so that you can see what you’ve traded for your rotten boards and bawds. I wish you only the best.
Your truly faithful wife,
To my wise, esteemed, & virtuous wife Sheyne-Sheyndl, may you have a long life!
Firstly, rest assured that I am, praise God, in the best of health. God grant that we hear from each other only good and pleasing news, amen.
Secondly, I’ve finished the landlady and am now writing up the lodgers. In other words, I’m describing the sad cases in my boarding house. If I do say so myself, it’s going well. Each boarder is a sorrier story than the next, but the one we call “Touch o’ Gold” takes the cake. All the ink and paper in the world aren’t enough for him. He comes from Zhvanitz, married a woman from Ladizhin and another from Soroke, and moved to Yekaterinoslav, where he started his first business. He was in gold — that is, some shady characters relieved him of his money in return for sacks of yellow sand. Well, you can’t just go and throw yourself in the river, so he took his walking stick and went to the Odessa Exchange, where he put together some deals, made a few rubles, and advertised for a partner. Sure enough, a fellow turned up, someone in iron — that is, the two of them bought land near Krivorog that was sitting on iron ore. Right off they were offered a few thousand rubles to lease the mining rights, but Touch o’ Gold turned it down: it was, he said, either half a million for the whole property or nothing. Well, nothing it was and Touch o’ Gold decided to try coal. He found a German engineer — I mean, a Jew who spoke some German — and rented a mine with him. The price was good, too, but the first shaft they dug, don’t ask me where it came from, they had a flood on their hands. Two pumps were brought to get rid of the water, but the harder they pumped, the more it kept coming. So Touch o’ Gold said to heck with the German and found a Jew in the egg business — stuffed eggs, not fresh ones, because the yolks had been used for something else, I don’t remember what. As luck would have it, the egg machine broke and the Jew took off and left Touch o’ Gold with a mountain of rotten eggs. After a while they began to stink and Touch o’ Gold received a summons. So one dark night he climbed out the window, leaving the eggs behind in Yekaterinoslav, and opened a cigarette paper factory in Kremenchug with the money he still had. It so happened that his new partner loved chess. He loved it so much, Touch o’ Gold says, that he played it all day and all night, without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Once the two of them discovered at the end of a long game that all their cartons of cigarette paper were empty. Where had the paper gone? It was anyone’s guess. Meanwhile Touch o’ Gold heard of a small-town pharmacist who was selling out his stock. He went and bought it for a pittance and stood to make a killing. How was he supposed to know it included a crate of gunpowder? Well, there was all this gunpowder traveling by train when it took a notion to blow up along with the car and the conductor, who barely came out of it alive. How’s that for the golden touch! He says he could kill the fish in a river just by looking at it. The man has a comeback for everything! He’s a little fellow, a real live wire with burning eyes, a hat pushed back on his head, hands in his pockets, and a mind that’s always working on something new. He never runs out of ideas. That’s because he’s made up his mind to become a millionaire. If he doesn’t, he’ll light out for America. Once he’s there, he says, things will work out. In fact, he wants me to join him. He says people like me keep their heads above water. But I would be crazy to push my luck by giving up a good literary career! And as I’m busy and in a hurry, I’ll be brief. God willing, I’ll write more in my next letter. Meanwhile, may He grant you health and success. My fondest greetings to your parents and all the children.
Your husband,
Menakhem-Mendl
P.S. I don’t understand why I haven’t received a response from the editorial board to my first piece. I haven’t gotten any money either. By now I’ve sent off two more pieces. God willing, I’m sure to hear from them tomorrow or the day after.
Yours etc.
To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!
First, we’re all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you.
Second, dear husband, I beg you in God’s name to come home as soon as you get this letter, because my poor father is dangerously ill. The doctors consulted and found that he has, I dread to say, water in his stomach. The pain is unbearable. You can imagine the state that my mother, bless her, is in. She cares nothing for herself, all her thoughts are only of him. “If you had lived with someone in one room for thirty years, you’d feel that way too,” she says. And you sit in your lovely Yehupetz, describing cretins I wouldn’t mention with my father in one breath! As always, I wish you health and happiness.