That’s what she says, my mother, wringing her hands and crying. My brother Elye yells:
“Already? Crying again? It seems you’ve forgotten that we’ll soon be in America and you have to take care of your eyes!”
If you think that means we’re getting close, think again. We have a whole lot of traveling still ahead of us. Don’t ask me where, but I knew the names of some of the places from the emigrants: Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, London, Liverpool …
Hamburg’s a town they’d like to see go up in flames. It’s worse than Sodom, they say. As soon as you arrive, you’re made to take a bath. Being arrested would be more fun. You won’t find scoundrels like Hamburg’s anywhere. That’s what all the emigrants say, so we’ve decided to head for Vienna. In Vienna, we’ve heard, there’s a Committee that acts like one.
Committee or not, we’re going to Vienna. Ever hear of the place? Be patient and I’ll tell you all about it.
GOD IS A FATHER AND VIENNA IS A TOWN
“Vienna — what a town!”
That’s my brother Elye. Pinye goes him one better:
“A town? A city to beat all!”
Even the women, who never like anything, have to admit Vienna is a city. My mother has taken out her silk scarf in its honor. Brokheh wears her Sabbath dress with her black lace shawl and long earrings. With her freckled face she looks like a ginger cat.
You’ve never seen a ginger cat dressed in black? Well, I have. Our neighbor Pesye’s boys used to dress their cat up. You may remember her — Feyge-Leah the Beadle’s Wife, her name was. Once they put a black skullcap on her. They tied it to her head with two bands, attached a dust rag to her tail, and let her loose. The skullcap was so big it slipped over her eyes and the dust rag drove her crazy. Feyge-Leah ran around like mad, bouncing off the walls and smashing things. Did those boys catch it!
Bumpy caught it the worst. That’s Hirshl. He’s one crazy kid, Hirshl is. You may as well whip a wall. I miss him the most. Maybe we’ll meet up in America. We’ve heard that Pesye, Moyshe, and the whole gang are going there too. First they laugh at us, then they follow us.
Everyone is going to America. That’s what Yoyneh the bagel maker writes. He’s also on his way. In fact, he’s already at the border. It’s not the same border we ran. Ours has a bad reputation. They steal your linens there. They steal them in other places too, but they don’t hold you up at knifepoint. True, we’ve heard of borders where you’re stripped naked and robbed of everything. You aren’t killed, though. That only almost happened to us. Except that we would have died of fright first. It was our luck someone fired a gun. I must have told you about that. We can hardly remember it any more.
Not that our women aren’t still telling the world about the miracle that happened at the border. But Elye and Pinye never let them finish. They think they can tell it better. Pinye wants to write it up for the papers. He’s even begun a poem about it. I’ve told you he writes poems. This one goes:
The town of Radzivil’s the size of a yawn
With a border that has to be run before dawn—
And while you are running it thieves run away
With all that you have and leave you to say:
“Thank God that it didn’t turn out to be worse!
We might have ended our lives in a hearse
With a slit in our throats and a slash in our purse!”
Pinye says that’s just the first stanza. It will improve as it goes along. He has a poem about Brody too. And about Lemberg and Cracow, all in rhyme. He’s the very devil for rhymes, Pinye is. He’s even written some about Taybl. I know them by heart:
My beautiful Taybl
is charming and able,
a wife from a fable,
God love her!
She’d be perfect if only
she’d leave me alone
and go home to her father and mother!
How’s that for poetry? You should see Taybl blush when she hears it. Taybl blushes all the time. Brokheh sticks up for her and calls Pinye “the monster.” My mother calls him “the shlimazel.” They can’t stand his being a poet.
With Elye it’s the opposite. Elye is jealous of Pinye. He says that rhymes and songs go over big in America. Pinye has only to shmaltz them up a bit and he’ll make a fortune. There are even magazines and newspapers that will publish them in Jewish.
Pinye agrees he’ll be a success. He feels he’s made for America and America for him. That’s why he can’t wait to sail the ocean. Meanwhile, we’re stranded in Vienna.
What are we doing in Vienna? Nothing. We walk the streets a lot. What streets! And the houses! And the shop windows! They shine like mirrors. And the things that are in them! Toys. Clothes. Kitchenware. Jewelry. We stop in front of each, guessing what everything costs. The women wish they had half of it. Pinye laughs and says: “I’d settle for ten percent.”
“What’s wrong with half? Don’t be stingy!” So says Elye, stroking his beard. Elye’s beard has grown by leaps and bounds on the way to America. It looks more like a broom now. I’d love to sketch it.
I once drew Pinye’s portrait on some paper. And I drew Brokheh with a piece of chalk on a table. Did I get a licking! Brokheh said it was the spit and image of her. She hollered for Elye and he whacked me. He would have murdered me long ago if not for my mother. I get whacked each time he catches me drawing.
I’ve liked to draw since I was little. At first I drew on the walls with coal. I got whacked for that, too. Then I drew on the doors with chalk and got whacked again. Now I draw with pencil and paper. Elye says: “What’s this, more of your doodles?”
I get whacked even harder for sculpting. I like to make little pigs out of bread. Elye lets me have it when he sees them. Pinye comes to the rescue and says: “What do you want from him? Let him sculpt! Let him draw! He may grow up to be an artist.”
Elye lets Pinye have it too.
“An artist? You mean a paint smearer? You want him to decorate churches? To doodle on walls? To go around with stained hands like a greasy coachman? He’s better off singing for a cantor. God willing, I’ll apprentice him as soon as we get to America. He’s a soprano.”
“Why not teach him a trade?” Pinye says. “Americans work with their hands.”
That’s all my mother needs to hear.
“What? A common tradesman? Over my dead body will that happen to Peysi the cantor’s boy!”
She starts to cry. Pinye defends himself:
“A strange woman you are! Doesn’t it say in the Talmud that Rabbi Yohanan was a shoemaker? And that Rabbi Yitzchak was a smith? You don’t even have to go that far. My own uncle is a watchmaker and my father is a mechanic!”
That only made it worse. My mother couldn’t stop sobbing.
“I suppose that’s what my husband spent his life being such a good Jew for, a cantor! I suppose that’s why he died young — for his little boy to be a tailor or a shoemaker! And in America yet!”
“There you go again! Have you forgotten that in America you’ll need your eyes?”
That’s Elye. After a while my mother quiets down.
I don’t care what I’ll be in America. I just want to get there. I’m dying to see the place. I’ve made up my mind to learn three things there: swimming, writing, and cigar smoking. I mean I can do all three already. But I’ll do them better in America.
Even if I had been the world’s greatest swimmer, I still wouldn’t have had anywhere to swim. There’s no way you can swim in our river. Lie down in it with your belly in the mud and your feet stick up in the air. Some river! America, they say, has an ocean. If you fall asleep floating in it, the devil knows where you’ll wake up.