Yekl
A Tale of the New York Ghetto
By A. Cahan
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
I.--JAKE AND YEKL
II.--THE NEW YORK GHETTO
III.--IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST
IV.--THE MEETING
V.--A PATERFAMILIAS
VI.--CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES
VII.--MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ÉTAT
VIII.--A HOUSETOP IDYL
IX.--THE PARTING
X.--A DEFEATED VICTOR
YEKL.
CHAPTER I.
JAKE AND YEKL.
The operatives of the cloak-shop in which Jake was employed had been
idle all the morning. It was after twelve o'clock and the "boss" had
not yet returned from Broadway, whither he had betaken himself two
or three hours before in quest of work. The little sweltering
assemblage--for it was an oppressive day in midsummer--beguiled their
suspense variously. A rabbinical-looking man of thirty, who sat with
the back of his chair tilted against his sewing machine, was intent
upon an English newspaper. Every little while he would remove it from
his eyes--showing a dyspeptic face fringed with a thin growth of dark
beard--to consult the cumbrous dictionary on his knees. Two young lads,
one seated on the frame of the next machine and the other standing,
were boasting to one another of their respective intimacies with the
leading actors of the Jewish stage. The board of a third machine, in a
corner of the same wall, supported an open copy of a socialist magazine
in Yiddish, over which a cadaverous young man absorbedly swayed to and
fro droning in the Talmudical intonation. A middle-aged operative, with
huge red side whiskers, who was perched on the presser's table in the
corner opposite, was mending his own coat. While the thick-set presser
and all the three women of the shop, occupying the three machines
ranged against an adjoining wall, formed an attentive audience to an
impromptu lecture upon the comparative merits of Boston and New York by
Jake.
He had been speaking for some time. He stood in the middle of the
overcrowded stuffy room with his long but well-shaped legs wide apart,
his bulky round head aslant, and one of his bared mighty arms akimbo.
He spoke in Boston Yiddish, that is to say, in Yiddish more copiously
spiced with mutilated English than is the language of the metropolitan
Ghetto in which our story lies. He had a deep and rather harsh voice,
and his r's could do credit to the thickest Irish brogue.
"When I was in Boston," he went on, with a contemptuous mien intended
for the American metropolis, "I knew a _feller_,[1] so he was a
_preticly_ friend of John Shullivan's. He is a Christian, that feller
is, and yet the two of us lived like brothers. May I be unable to move
from this spot if we did not. How, then, would you have it? Like here,
in New York, where the Jews are a _lot_ of _greenhornsh_ and can not
speak a word of English? Over there every Jew speaks English like a
stream."
[1] English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the characters
of this narrative are given in Italics.
"_Say_, Dzake," the presser broke in, "John Sullivan is _tzampion_ no
longer, is he?"
"Oh, no! Not always is it holiday!" Jake responded, with what he
considered a Yankee jerk of his head. "Why, don't you know? Jimmie
Corbett _leaked_ him, and Jimmie _leaked_ Cholly Meetchel, too. _You
can betch you' bootsh!_ Johnnie could not leak Chollie, _becaush_ he is
a big _bluffer_, Chollie is," he pursued, his clean-shaven florid face
beaming with enthusiasm for his subject, and with pride in the
diminutive proper nouns he flaunted. "But Jimmie _pundished_ him. _Oh,
didn't he knock him out off shight!_ He came near making a meat ball of
him"--with a chuckle. "He _tzettled_ him in three _roynds_. I knew a
feller who had seen the fight."
"What is a _rawnd_, Dzake?" the presser inquired.
Jake's answer to the question carried him into a minute exposition of
"right-handers," "left-handers," "sending to sleep," "first blood," and
other commodities of the fistic business. He must have treated the
subject rather too scientifically, however, for his female listeners
obviously paid more attention to what he did in the course of the
boxing match, which he had now and then, by way of illustration, with
the thick air of the room, than to the verbal part of his lecture. Nay,
even the performances of his brawny arms and magnificent form did not
charm them as much as he thought they did. For a display of manly
force, when connected--even though in a purely imaginary way--with acts
of violence, has little attraction for a "daughter of the Ghetto." Much
more interest did those arms and form command on their own merits. Nor
was his chubby high-colored face neglected. True, there was a
suggestion of the bulldog in its make up; but this effect was lost upon
the feminine portion of Jake's audience, for his features, illuminated
by a pair of eager eyes of a hazel hue, and shaded by a thick crop of
dark hair, were, after all, rather pleasing than otherwise. Strongly
Semitic naturally, they became still more so each time they were
brightened up by his good-natured boyish smile. Indeed, Jake's very
nose, which was fleshy and pear-shaped and decidedly not Jewish
(although not decidedly anything else), seemed to join the Mosaic
faith, and even his shaven upper lip looked penitent, as soon as that
smile of his made its appearance.
"Nice fun that!" observed the side-whiskered man, who had stopped
sewing to follow Jake's exhibition. "Fighting--like drunken moujiks in
Russia!"
"Tarrarra-boom-de-ay!" was Jake's merry retort; and for an exclamation
mark he puffed up his cheeks into a balloon, and exploded it by a
"_pawnch_" of his formidable fist.
"Look, I beg you, look at his dog's tricks!" the other said in disgust.
"Horse's head that you are!" Jake rejoined good-humoredly. "Do you mean
to tell me that a moujik understands how to _fight_? A disease he does!
He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his voice and
gesticulation to the idea of clumsiness], _an' dot'sh ull_! What does
he _care_ where his paw will land, so he strikes. _But_ here one must
observe _rulesh_ [rules]."
At this point Meester Bernstein--for so the rabbinical-looking man was
usually addressed by his shopmates--looked up from his dictionary.
"Can't you see?" he interposed, with an air of assumed gravity as he
turned to Jake's opponent, "America is an educated country, so they
won't even break bones without grammar. They tear each other's sides
according to 'right and left,'[2] you know." This was a thrust at
Jake's right-handers and left-handers, which had interfered with
Bernstein's reading. "Nevertheless," the latter proceeded, when the
outburst of laughter which greeted his witticism had subsided, "I do
think that a burly Russian peasant would, without a bit of grammar,
crunch the bones of Corbett himself; and he would not _charge_ him a
cent for it, either."
[2] A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter
_s_, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left
position of a mark over it.
"_Is dot sho?_" Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. "_I betch you_ he
would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a hog before he had time
to turn around."
"_But_ they might kill each other in that way, _ain't it_, Jake?" asked
a comely, milk-faced blonde whose name was Fanny. She was celebrated
for her lengthy tirades, mostly in a plaintive, nagging strain, and
delivered in her quiet, piping voice, and had accordingly been dubbed
"The Preacher."
"Oh, that will happen but very seldom," Jake returned rather glumly.
The theatrical pair broke off their boasting match to join in the
debate, which soon included all except the socialist; the former two,
together with the two girls and the presser, espousing the American
cause, while Malke the widow and "De Viskes" sided with Bernstein.
"Let it be as you say," said the leader of the minority, withdrawing
from the contest to resume his newspaper. "My grandma's last care it is
who can fight best."
"Nice pleasure, _anyhull_," remarked the widow. "_Never min'_, we shall
see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to
_support_."
Jake colored. "What does a _chicken_ know about these things?" he said
irascibly.
Bernstein again could not help intervening. "And you, Jake, can not do
without 'these things,' can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to
live without them."
"Don't you like it? I do," Jake declared tartly. "Once I live in
America," he pursued, on the defensive, "I want to know that I live in
America. _Dot'sh a' kin' a man I am!_ One must not be a _greenhorn_.
Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The
way it is in Russia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of
a Christian?"
"Are there no other Christians than _fighters_ in America?" Bernstein
objected with an amused smile. "Why don't you look for the educated
ones?"
"Do you mean to say the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_? Better than you,
_anyhoy_," Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his Semitic smile.
"Here you read the papers, and yet _I'll betch you_ you don't know that
Corbett _findished college_."
"I never read about fighters," Bernstein replied with a bored gesture,
and turned to his paper.
"Then say that you don't know, and _dot'sh ull_!"
Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now
anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly
shopmate and in his own.
"_Alla right_, let it be as you say; the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_.
No, not a bit!" he said ironically, continuing to address himself to
Bernstein. "But what will you say to _baseball_? All _college boys_ and
_tony peoplesh_ play it," he concluded triumphantly. Bernstein remained
silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. "Ah, you don't answer,
_shee_?" said Jake, feeling put out.
The awkward pause which followed was relieved by one of the playgoers
who wanted to know whether it was true that to pitch a ball required
more skill than to catch one.
"_Sure!_ You must know how to _peetch_," Jake rejoined with the cloud
lingering on his brow, as he lukewarmly delivered an imaginary ball.
"And I, for my part, don't see what wisdom there is to it," said the
presser with a shrug. "I think I could throw, too."
"He can do everything!" laughingly remarked a girl named Pessé.
"How hard can you hit?" Jake demanded sarcastically, somewhat warming
up to the subject.
"As hard as you at any time."
"_I betch you a dullar to you' ten shent_ you can not," Jake answered,
and at the same moment he fished out a handful of coin from his
trousers pocket and challengingly presented it close to his
interlocutor's nose.
"There he goes!--betting!" the presser exclaimed, drawing slightly
back. "For my part, your _pitzers_ and _catzers_ may all lie in the
earth. A nice entertainment, indeed! Just like little children--playing
ball! And yet people say America is a _smart_ country. I don't see it."
"_'F caush_ you don't, _becaush_ you are a bedraggled _greenhorn_,
afraid to budge out of Heshter Shtreet." As Jake thus vented his bad
humour on his adversary, he cast a glance at Bernstein, as if anxious
to attract his attention and to re-engage him in the discussion.
"Look at the Yankee!" the presser shot back.
"More of a one than you, _anyhoy_."
"He thinks that _shaving_ one's mustache makes a Yankee!"
Jake turned white with rage.
"_'Pon my vord_, I'll ride into his mug and give such a _shaving_ and
planing to his pig's snout that he will have to pick up his teeth."
"That's all you are good for."
"Better don't answer him, Jake," said Fanny, intimately.
"Oh, I came near forgetting that he has somebody to take his part!"
snapped the presser.
The girl's milky face became a fiery red, and she retorted in
vituperative Yiddish from that vocabulary which is the undivided
possession of her sex. The presser jerked out an innuendo still more
far-reaching than his first. Jake, with bloodshot eyes, leaped at the
offender, and catching him by the front of his waistcoat, was aiming
one of those bearlike blows which but a short while ago he had decried
in the moujik, when Bernstein sprang to his side and tore him away,
Pessé placing herself between the two enemies.
"Don't get excited," Bernstein coaxed him.
"Better don't soil your hands," Fanny added.
After a slight pause Bernstein could not forbear a remark which he had
stubbornly repressed while Jake was challenging him to a debate on the
education of baseball players: "Look here, Jake; since fighters and
baseball men are all educated, then why don't you try to become so?
Instead of _spending_ your money on fights, dancing, and things like
that, would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher?"
Jake flew into a fresh passion. "_Never min'_ what I do with my money,"
he said; "I don't steal it from you, do I? Rejoice that you keep
tormenting your books. Much does he know! Learning, learning, and
learning, and still he can not speak English. I don't learn and yet I
speak quicker than you!"
A deep blush of wounded vanity mounted to Bernstein's sallow cheek.
"_Ull right, ull right!_" he cut the conversation short, and took up
the newspaper.
Another nervous silence fell upon the group. Jake felt wretched. He
uttered an English oath, which in his heart he directed against himself
as much as against his sedate companion, and fell to frowning upon the
leg of a machine.
"Vill you go by Joe to-night?" asked Fanny in English, speaking in an
undertone. Joe was a dancing master. She was sure Jake intended to call
at his "academy" that evening, and she put the question only in order
to help him out of his sour mood.
"No," said Jake, morosely.
"Vy, to-day is Vensday."
"And without you I don't know it!" he snarled in Yiddish.
The finisher girl blushed deeply and refrained from any response.
"He does look like a _regely_ Yankee, doesn't he?" Pessé whispered to
her after a little.
"Go and ask him!"
"Go and hang yourself together with him! Such a nasty preacher! Did you
ever hear--one dares not say a word to the noblewoman!"
At this juncture the boss, a dwarfish little Jew, with a vivid pair of
eyes and a shaggy black beard, darted into the chamber.
"It is _no used_!" he said with a gesture of despair. "There is not a
stitch of work, if only for a cure. Look, look how they have lowered
their noses!" he then added with a triumphant grin. "_Vell_, I shall
not be teasing you, 'Pity living things!' The expressman is _darn
stess_. I would not go till I saw him _start_, and then I caught a car.
No other _boss_ could get a single jacket even if he fell upon his
knees. _Vell_, do you appreciate it at least? Not much, ay?"
The presser rushed out of the room and presently came back laden with
bundles of cut cloth which he threw down on the table. A wild scramble
ensued. The presser looked on indifferently. The three finisher women,
who had awaited the advent of the bundles as eagerly as the men, now
calmly put on their hats. They knew that their part of the work
wouldn't come before three o'clock, and so, overjoyed by the certainty
of employment for at least another day or two, they departed till that
hour.
"Look at the rush they are making! Just like the locusts of Egypt!" the
boss cried half sternly and half with self-complacent humour, as he
shielded the treasure with both his arms from all except "De Viskes"
and Jake--the two being what is called in sweat-shop parlance,
"_chance-mentshen_," i.e., favorites. "Don't be snatching and catching
like that," the boss went on. "You may burn your fingers. Go to your
machines, I say! The soup will be served in separate plates. Never
fear, it won't get cold."
The hands at last desisted gingerly, Jake and the whiskered operator
carrying off two of the largest bundles. The others went to their
machines empty-handed and remained seated, their hungry glances riveted
to the booty, until they, too, were provided.
The little boss distributed the bundles with dignified deliberation. In
point of fact, he was no less impatient to have the work started than
any of his employees. But in him the feeling was overridden by a kind
of malicious pleasure which he took in their eagerness and in the
demonstration of his power over the men, some of whom he knew to have
enjoyed a more comfortable past than himself. The machines of Jake and
"De Viskes" led off in a duet, which presently became a trio, and in
another few minutes the floor was fairly dancing to the ear-piercing
discords of the whole frantic sextet.
In the excitement of the scene called forth by the appearance of the
bundles, Jake's gloomy mood had melted away. Nevertheless, while his
machine was delivering its first shrill staccatos, his heart recited a
vow: "As soon as I get my pay I shall call on the installment man and
give him a deposit for a ticket." The prospective ticket was to be for
a passage across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York. And as the
notion of it passed through Jake's mind it evoked there the image of a
dark-eyed young woman with a babe in her lap. However, as the sewing
machine throbbed and writhed under Jake's lusty kicks, it seemed to be
swiftly carrying him away from the apparition which had the effect of
receding, as a wayside object does from the passenger of a flying
train, until it lost itself in a misty distance, other visions emerging
in its place.
It was some three years before the opening of this story that Jake had
last beheld that very image in the flesh. But then at that period of
his life he had not even suspected the existence of a name like Jake,
being known to himself and to all Povodye--a town in northwestern
Russia--as Yekl or Yekelé.
It was not as a deserter from military service that he had shaken off
the dust of that town where he had passed the first twenty-two years of
his life. As the only son of aged parents he had been exempt from the
duty of bearing arms. Jake may have forgotten it, but his mother still
frequently recurs to the day when he came rushing home, panting for
breath, with the "red certificate" assuring his immunity in his hand.
She nearly fainted for happiness. And when, stroking his dishevelled
sidelocks with her bony hand and feasting her eye on his chubby face,
she whispered, "My recovered child! God be blessed for his mercy!"
there was a joyous tear in his eye as well as in hers. Well does she
remember how she gently spat on his forehead three times to avert the
effect of a possible evil eye on her "flourishing tree of a boy," and
how his father standing by made merry over what he called her crazy
womanish tricks, and said she had better fetch some brandy in honour of
the glad event.
But if Yekl was averse to wearing a soldier's uniform on his own person
he was none the less fond of seeing it on others. His ruling passion,
even after he had become a husband and a father, was to watch the
soldiers drilling on the square in front of the whitewashed barracks
near which stood his father's smithy. From a cheder[3] boy he showed a
knack at placing himself on terms of familiarity with the Jewish
members of the local regiment, whose uniforms struck terror into the
hearts of his schoolmates. He would often play truant to attend a
military parade; no lad in town knew so many Russian words or was as
well versed in army terminology as Yekelé "Beril the blacksmith's;" and
after he had left cheder, while working his father's bellows, Yekl
would vary synagogue airs with martial song.
[3] A school where Jewish children are instructed in the Old
Testament or the Talmud.
Three years had passed since Yekl had for the last time set his eyes on
the whitewashed barracks and on his father's rickety smithy, which, for
reasons indirectly connected with the Government's redoubled
discrimination against the sons of Israel, had become inadequate to
support two families; three years since that beautiful summer morning
when he had mounted the spacious _kibitka_ which was to carry him to
the frontier-bound train; since, hurried by the driver, he had leaned
out of the wagon to kiss his half-year old son good-bye amid the
heart-rending lamentations of his wife, the tremulous "Go in good
health!" of his father, and the startled screams of the neighbours who
rushed to the relief of his fainting mother. The broken Russian learned
among the Povodye soldiers he had exchanged for English of a
corresponding quality, and the bellows for a sewing machine--a change
of weapons in the battle of life which had been brought about both by
Yekl's tender religious feelings and robust legs. He had been shocked
by the very notion of seeking employment at his old trade in a city
where it is in the hands of Christians, and consequently involves a
violation of the Mosaic Sabbath. On the other hand, his legs had been
thought by his early American advisers eminently fitted for the
treadle. Unlike New York, the Jewish sweat-shops of Boston keep in
line, as a rule, with the Christian factories in observing Sunday as
the only day of rest. There is, however, even in Boston a lingering
minority of bosses--more particularly in the "pants"-making branch--who
abide by the Sabbath of their fathers. Accordingly, it was under one of
these that Yekl had first been initiated into the sweat-shop world.
Subsequently Jake, following numerous examples, had given up "pants"
for the more remunerative cloaks, and having rapidly attained skill in
his new trade he had moved to New York, the centre of the cloak-making
industry.
Soon after his arrival in Boston his religious scruples had followed in
the wake of his former first name; and if he was still free from work
on Saturdays he found many another way of "desecrating the Sabbath."
Three years had intervened since he had first set foot on American
soil, and the thought of ever having been a Yekl would bring to Jake's
lips a smile of patronizing commiseration for his former self. As to
his Russian family name, which was Podkovnik, Jake's friends had such
rare use for it that by mere negligence it had been left intact.