Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (20 page)

Day after day, Mordkhe-Mendl went out to work on landowners’ estates, measuring fields, felling trees, but no significant income ever accrued to the little hut by the side of the main road to town.

One day Mordkhe-Mendl got an idea, a veritable brainstorm. He realized that there wasn’t a single glassworks in the whole city. How could a town with so many Jews, and even more Gentiles, get by without a glassworks? He, Mordkhe-Mendl, would set up such an establishment, and export its wares to all corners of the earth. It would make money hand over fist. He’d make a fortune.

Once again Mordkhe-Mendl made the rounds of the landowners, this time, looking for partners to invest in the enterprise. Day and night he made calculations, while the little hut froze in the grip of a stiff, biting cold. The dirt-smeared children in their rags and tatters fought to secure warmer places by the stove. Everyone in the house lived in the hope that, if not today, then tomorrow, the glassworks would be set up and the stove would then give off enough heat to warm all.

Finally, the day arrived when Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, together with two landowners, went to a notary to draw up the necessary papers.

Meanwhile, they laid in a store of timber and construction of the factory began. The glassworks, by some miracle, sprung up, with a soot-spewing chimney pointing skyward, with roofs, fences, and furnaces.

The entire town turned out to gape at the wonder of it all. They stretched their necks, ran their hands along the walls, clucked their tongues, “N-n-a! Can you believe it?”

But Mordkhe-Mendl never became a partner in the glassworks. Someone had led him astray, someone else had lied to him, and he was left high and dry.

Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl then went to lawyers, to judges, to secretaries, to officials of all kinds. He taught himself all the paragraphs and particulars of the pertaining laws, until he knew them by heart. He could prove, as clear as the nose on your face, that he was swindled, and he was certain he would win in a court of law. But he never got beyond the paragraphs and the particulars. The glassworks did indeed send its wares to all corners of the earth, but without Mordkhe-Mendl as a partner.

However, his thick, black beard didn’t turn gray because of this misfortune. On the contrary, it seemed to get blacker and silkier. His large, lively eyes, like the froth on a head of beer, continued to effervesce, and his mouth, with its two rows of white teeth, took on an even more determined look.

Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl didn’t give up. So what! One can get along fine without a glassworks in town. But a city like this must have a distillery. And who said that you can get rich only from glassware? What about whiskey? He had already picked out the site. There was even a commission set up for the purpose and official approval was obtained. All that now remained was to begin construction.

“Khane, my dear wife,” Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl trilled to her one summer morning at our house, “get ready to live in a palace. Money will flow in through the doors and windows. We’ll get drunk like the Gentiles. Don’t you worry, Mordkhe-Mendl is still alive and kicking.”

He ran around the house like the wind, his coat unbuttoned, its flaps flying, the peak of his cap turned up, waving his arms about.

“Who is this Bentsien, this so-called secretary of the community?” he scoffed. “What is Bentsien to me, anyway?”

Mother watched the frenzied Mordkhe-Mendl with a broad smile on her face. She believed in him. Hadn’t she predicted that her brother-in-law would one day shake up all of Poland? Now her prophecy was about to come true. Aunt Khane’s thin cheeks turned red, flushed with pride in her handsome, silver-tongued husband.

Only Father sat by in total silence, looking down at the table. His brother-in-law’s extravagant boasting made no impression on him. He’d heard it all before, not for the first time, nor the last. But for Mordkhe-Mendl to belittle Bentsien, the Jewish community’s respected secretary, this was too much for Father. He slowly raised his face from the table, lifted his eyebrows, and, in a quiet, mocking tone, said, “Shame on you! Look who’s talking about Bentsien!”

“Leyzer!” Mordkhe-Mendl stopped short in the middle of the room. “You can go and pickle your Bentsien in vinegar, even if he is the secretary of the community. As for my business dealings, you know as much about them as a cow does about Scripture. All you know about is hay. So go on, go smell your hay.”

“At least my hay smells good,” Father answered back, “but your business deals stink to high heaven.”

He looked over at Mother, with a triumphant smile on his face, to see if she approved of his retort. But Mother wasn’t pleased at all. In fact, nobody was. Nonetheless, Father wasn’t completely wrong. Mordkhe-Mendl may, indeed, have meant to shake up all of Poland, and his intentions may have been good, but people in town were already saying that his wheelings and dealings were likely to land him in jail.

Particularly, the distillery. The time for the signing of the papers was coming closer. The night before the momentous event, Mordkhe-Mendl celebrated with a tumbler of brandy and a plateful of goose gizzards. The children for once weren’t squabbling over positions at the stove. Aunt Khane didn’t sleep a wink all night.

Then, without warning, the landowner who was Mordkhe-Mendl’s partner, up until then the picture of health, lay down to sleep and never got up.

If not for that unfortunate circumstance, Mordkhe-Mendl might now be living in his palace, driving around in his own carriage, drawn by two horses. Bentsien, the secretary of the Jewish community, wouldn’t be turning up his nose at him, nor Father mocking him. But God willed otherwise. Mordkhe-Mendl was summoned to the police and subjected to an investigation concerning the sudden death of Pan Dombrowski.

Mordkhe-Mendl continued to live in his tumbledown hut by the side of the road, where the wind howled on all sides and the rain seeped in through the cracks in the shingled roof. Carts rumbled by on their way to distant towns, to markets and fairs. Aunt Khane, surrounded by roaring winds and open fields, spent her black nights praying to the Almighty to come to the aid of her Mordkhe-Mendl, her clever and ingenious husband, her handsome reciter of the benediction over the wine.

Mordkhe-Mendl no longer went around boasting and bragging. After the collapse of the distillery enterprise, his black, silken beard started to turn gray. His restless, sparkling eyes took on a dull, beaten look. Nevertheless, he didn’t give up and still had hopes of becoming somebody rich and important. After all, he was Mordkhe-Mendl! Maybe Aunt Khane’s prayers on those black nights would actually come to pass.

Mordkhe-Mendl was now possessed by a new madness, to become an estate-owner. This was a man who all his life had lived in a ramshackle wooden hovel, who ate nothing but grits and black bread, who hadn’t had a new suit of clothes made since his wedding—this man was now dreaming of purchasing an estate! And not just any estate, but the Wyszufka estate, which happened to be for sale.

One early summer morning, Aunt Khane was sitting on the edge of Mother’s bed. A blue shaft of sunlight fell on her blond, bedraggled wig. In a hushed, barely audible voice, she confided to Mother that Fleischer, the German, was about to purchase the Wyszufka estate and take in Mordkhe-Mendl as a partner.

“Well, you know yourself,” she said, “that Mordkhe-Mendl has no money to invest. But where is it written that you need only money to buy an estate? Fleischer, that German, will provide the capital and Mordkhe-Mendl will provide the brains.”

Aunt Khane breathed this information into Mother’s half-asleep face, more softly than the buzzing of a fly. Father, standing by the window in phylacteries and prayer shawl, despite his deafness, still managed to overhear. He turned his head and looked at his sister with such a mocking smile that it set the blood rushing to her face.

Mother lay in bed, her round face beaming with pleasure. She had lately become prettier. She had regained the soft, rich lady’s double chin that she had brought back with her from Warsaw and, in addition, she had newly acquired some haughty wrinkles in the corners of her nose. When she wore her black blouse, with the white trim on the sleeves and the white jabot at her throat, and then lifted her head a bit to take someone’s measure, then she could easily have been entrusted with presiding over an estate herself.

No wonder that she now listened raptly to what Aunt Khane was whispering to her. She had noticed Aunt Khane turning red when Father gave her his mocking smile. Knitting her forehead, Mother spoke up loudly, with no less mockery.

“Pay no attention to him, Khane. All he’ll ever have, that brother of yours, is that silly smile. He thinks one can’t do any better in this world than dealing in hay. And I’m telling you that, with God’s help, before very long, you’re going to be the mistress of an estate.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Aunt Khane sighed softly.

Meanwhile, the days and the weeks weren’t standing still. The deal was about to be consummated, and then the bottom fell out. The owner of the estate, a landowner’s widow, was demanding an exorbitant price. Fleischer was beginning to have regrets, though this time Mordkhe-Mendl was determined to safeguard his own interests.

He dashed about, barely ate, barely slept, spent long days trying to arrange a mortgage. Well, that might be negotiated, but who could guarantee that the present venture wouldn’t, God forbid, end up like the glassworks and the distillery?

“Have faith!” Mother spoke encouragingly to her sister-in-law. “My heart tells me that this time Mordkhe-Mendl won’t go away empty-handed.”

Mordkhe-Mendl himself was hardly to be seen. He didn’t sleep at home. He was constantly on the move, riding trains, knocking at the fancy doors of landowners, too busy even to go to the baths in preparation for the Sabbath.

One morning he fell into our house, famished, exhausted from lack of sleep, his beard a tangle. Mother at once set a place for him at the table. She plunked down a whole loaf of bread, ran out to buy fresh butter and cheese, and made a potful of coffee. While he was eating, Mother placed both elbows on the table, propped her face on her hands, and looked eagerly into his brown, weather-beaten face.

“How are things going, Mordkhe-Mendl?” she asked, a warm smile in her eyes.

“They’re going.” He sipped his coffee. “All I need is a bit of God’s mercy.”

“Just take it easy.” Mother spoke to him as she would to her own husband. “Just don’t lose your temper.”

“It’s got nothing to do with temper. There’s something else going on here, unfortunately. That German, that Fleischer, is the thief of all thieves. They say that Jews are swindlers, but I’m telling you, that German is a greater swindler than all the Jews put together. You know, of course, I don’t have any money, not a cent, only my initiative and my ideas. That crook Fleischer wants to tie me hand and foot and bury me so deep that I’ll never be resurrected. He wants me only as a steward, a servant. He’ll be the sole owner of the estate and intends, for example …”

Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl set down his half-drunk cup of coffee and, warming to his subject, explained to Mother, in no uncertain terms, how that German, Fleischer, looking to deceive him, to lead him down the garden path, wanted to finish him off.

Mother looked into his fierce eyes. She stared at him, utterly bewildered and with a helpless smile on her pretty lips. Did she understand all that Mordkhe-Mendl was telling her? Perhaps. But to me it seemed that all she took in was his frenzied state of mind, his wild gesturings, the fiery look in his eyes, and, most of all, the beautiful picture that he painted of the Polish gentlewoman’s estate.

And then, one weekday afternoon, quite out of the blue, the whole town began to buzz with the news—Mordkhe-Mendl had purchased the Wyszufka estate.

“Mordkhe-Mendl?” they wrinkled their noses. “Who’s this Mordkhe-Mendl?”

“Don’t you know? He’s Leyzer’s brother-in-law.”

“Who’s Leyzer?”

“The hay-dealer.”

“And his brother-in-law has bought the Wyszufka estate?”

“Yes, his brother-in-law.”

“A pox on all my enemies! But he’s a pauper!”

“Well, there you have it.”

One neighbor passed the news on to another. The word spread from mouth to mouth, from house to house, from husband to wife, from Jew to Gentile.

Mother came running from Aunt Miriam’s and, all out of breath, called out, “Leyzer! Have you heard?”

But Father wasn’t home yet. Today, of all days, he was late. Mother ran to the neighbors, looking for someone who might tell her that it was really true. Yes, everyone had heard about it, but no one had been there to see it in person.

Mother was about to head out for the road leading to the hut with the earthen floor, where Mordkhe-Mendl himself could tell her. She had to know immediately, this very minute! But then she thought better of it.

“No,” she said resentfully. “They should have come to me first with the good news.”

Father finally came home, looking unlike his usual self. His beard was still covered with dust from the hay, his hat was askew, and he had a bewildered look, as if he himself had purchased the Wyszufka estate and not Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl.

“Leyzer, have you heard the news?”

“Is it true?”

“What do you mean is it true? The whole town is talking.”

Yes, he’d also heard the news, at the
besmedresh
, where he’d gone for the evening service, but no one there was praying. The place was buzzing like a beehive. People went out of their way to congratulate him, to wish him
mazel tov
. Who would have guessed?

“What did I keep telling you, Leyzer?” Mother’s whole body swayed back and forth.

“You told me … but who could have known?”

“Mordkhe-Mendl is pretty smart, no?”

“Yes-smart, no-smart, but to buy an estate you need money …”

“Don’t you worry about that. He has the money. Do you think he’s like you … today hay, tomorrow hay …”

“Nu, maybe you want me to buy you an estate, too?”

“What do you mean, that an estate isn’t for the likes of me?”

“If that’s what you want,” Father shrugged his shoulder, “we can also buy an estate.”