The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Minna Litsky always swore that she would never go back to Russia, not even after the success of the second revolution, when everyone cheered the fact that at last the Romanovs had been overthrown, and when some people actually did go back. Never would Minna consider anything of the sort for herself or her family. In fact, after that long journey across the face of Europe—first to Vienna, then north to Hamburg, then to London, and finally across the ocean to New York, with border guards to be bribed at each frontier—Minna Litsky appeared to have lost all taste for travel, and seldom ventured farther than the limits of her own block on Norfolk Street. She was frightened of the streetcars, and certainly would not ride—when it came, with great fanfare—the subway. (“Ride in a hole in the earth?” she would say. “Never. There are dead spirits down there.”) And yet, in its special place, she kept the key to the alte heim. It was something that Essie could never understand.

  There were a few other things she had learned about the Old Country as she was growing up. Once, with tears streaming down his cheeks, her father had told her of how, as a young man, he had been forced to watch as his younger sister was disemboweled on the street by a band of Cossack soldiers. (Later, she learned that this same girl had been repeatedly raped before the soldiers cut her stomach out.) Her father had also told her about a good and pious rabbi in the little town who had been captured by the soldiers and kept prisoner in a dungeon under the church. Then, tired of this sport, the soldiers had led him out, stripped him naked, and strung him up by his feet in the shape of a cross in the public square. He hung there for a month before the Jews were given permission to cut his body down and bury him.

  Once, when Essie was in the third or fourth grade, and when the Christmas holidays were approaching, Essie’s teacher had read her class an editorial that had been printed a year or so earlier in the New York Sun, and which had since become quite famous. It began, “Virginia, your little friends are wrong …” And it ended, “No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

  Essie had admired the words, and her teacher had suggested that she might want to memorize Mr. Church’s editorial as a homework project, and recite it later to the class.

  That night, when she told her father about it, he looked very sad. “Your teacher is wrong,” he said. “Do not misunderstand me. Your teacher is right to want you to memorize something, but your teacher is a Yankee woman and she does not understand many things. It is wrong to ask a Jewish child to memorize those lines. She does not understand that Christmas is not a happy time for Jews. At Christmastime, in Russia, the soldiers would be given their leaves and their spending money, and then they would get drunk. After enough vodka, they would decide to come into the Jewish quarter, and they would set fire to the houses, hurt the women, kill the men, even the little children, saying, ‘You killed our Christ. Now we will kill you.’ No, a Jew does not want to honor Christmas. Ask your teacher if you can memorize something else—one of Mr. Shakespeare’s speeches, no?”

  And so she had memorized Der shtrom fun menshenz maysim bayt zikh imer / nemstu dem rikhtigen, firt er tsu glik.…

  Details of the old life in that other country came out like that—in bits and pieces, almost as if by accident. Essie learned, for instance, that her mother’s father had been a man of position and responsibility and respect in Volna. The family had kept a goat and—a matter of some status—a horse. Minna’s father had been in the drayage business, and it was for this that the horse was used. Sam Litsky’s father had been a blacksmith, and it had seemed a perfect match—the blacksmith’s son, and the daughter of the man who owned a horse. Into the marriage, Minna had brought a dowry—two feather beds, a lace tablecloth, a pair of candlesticks, a menorah, a silver thimble, a darning egg of painted china, and a hairbrush with a silver back and handle. All these things she had carried with her, along with her wedding canopy and the key to the alte heim, when she came to America.

  At home on Norfolk Street, at times, they spoke in Yiddish, but on the street they were careful not to. The important thing was to become a good American, and good Americans did not speak Yiddish. And as Essie’s parents’ mastery of the new language improved, more and more of their conversations were in English, even at home, for the good practice it provided. “Say it in American,” Essie’s mother would remonstrate, whenever her father lapsed into the old tongue. On the ground floor of the Norfolk Street house, Essie’s mother kept a shop where she sold newspapers, pencils, school supplies, and candy. It was not at all a mark of shame in the neighborhood to have a mother who earned the living for her family, and a father who had no livelihood at all and who busied himself with prayer and holy texts. On the contrary, it was a mark of distinction and pride. Minna Litsky was regarded as a berrieh, a good and efficient woman who lifted the cares of trade from her husband’s shoulders in order that he could devote his life to higher pursuits. Essie grew up thinking that she was fortunate to have such a set of parents. When she was three, her mother had presented her with a baby brother. From her earliest memories, one of Essie’s principal responsibilities was caring for little Abe while her mother worked in the store downstairs. Later, when Essie was old enough to go to school, Mama would keep little Abe downstairs in the store with her. On her way home from school, Essie would collect little Abe at the store, and take him up to the fifth floor of the building where they lived. She had never wanted for a doll. It seemed that she had always had little Abe to dress, and feed, and play with.

  Essie knew that the building where they lived was called a tenement, and that the apartment was something called a railroad flat. Years later, encountering descriptions of the Lower East Side, Essie would read about the squalid conditions that existed there—mounds of garbage in the halls and entryways, foul stenches everywhere, rats and cockroaches and other vermin, buildings stinking of poverty and disease. But Essie could never recall anything like that at all at 54 Norfolk Street. They had two rooms, and a toilet on the floor below which they shared with only one other family. And there was gaslight—though Essie’s mother never really trusted the gas jets, and always kept a window in each room open a crack, even in the coldest weather, lest the treacherous gas escape and poison them all in their sleep. All these were counted as luxuries, and the Litskys were considered fortunate. They knew that they lived better than other people, and their good fortune flowed from Minna Litsky, who had been able to scrape together enough money from taking in sewing to open her little shop.

  Behind the building, to be sure, there ran an alley, and there was often garbage there—though periodically it got hauled away—and the children were warned not to go into the alley because rats had indeed been seen there. But none of the garbage came from the Litsky household. As a berrieh, Minna Litsky knew how to dispose of her garbage, and it was deposited nightly, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper, in the containers on the street.

  The smells of the house on Norfolk Street that Essie would always remember were pleasant ones—the smell of warm milk being heated on the stove for Little Abe’s bottle, the smell of soaps and polishes—in addition to everything else, Minna was a fanatic housecleaner—and then there was Mama’s own, special smell which she brought home with her from the store, the smell of candy. There was the bright, sharp smell that would fill the kitchen when her mother scattered a few cloves on a white-hot skillet and let them dance about. This was not done to sweeten the air, but to ward off evil spirits, and whether this was simply a tradition in her mother’s family, or an ancient Jewish rule, Essie never knew.

  This, then, was how Essie would always remember her early childhood—the mixture of her father’s spirituality and her mother’s benevolent witchcraft.

  Even more fixed in memory are the noises. Having grown up with noise, Essie takes it in her stride. There is the noise of the pushcart vendors from the street: the knife- and scissors-sharpener�
�s cry, the cry of the bread-man with his thick loaves of Russian rye, the chicken-soup man with his steaming vats, the old-clothes man. They hawk their wares at the tops of their voices, shouting. Buy me! Ask my price! Lady, you need this! Buy! Cheap! Buy! And they continue to try to outshout one another when they pause from their labors at the end of the day in the coffee houses. What do they shout about? Socialism! Revolution! Jobs! Working conditions! The masses! The bosses! High rents! The landlords! Strike! Too many people coming! Organize! All these shouts Essie hears from her fifth-floor window.

  The day begins with the familiar thunk as the baled bundle of Tageblatts is tossed from the delivery truck onto the sidewalk in front of Minna Litsky’s store, and Essie watches as her mother rushes out—one has to be fast, or the papers will be stolen—and snatches up the bundle by its balings and carries it inside. Inside, she quickly snips the baling cords with a penknife and counts her newspapers—she has occasionally been short-shipped.

  All around are the sounds of people—people everywhere—thousands upon thousands of people. And they keep coming. The year 1901 is declared the “worst” in terms of immigrants—a record—but still more come in 1902. In 1903, the record is broken again, with 90,000 given as the figure of new arrivals in New York Harbor. There has been a series of terrible pogroms in Kishinev, and in 1904 still another record is set. Where will they all go? Some of them will stay in the Litskys’ flat because, as Minna Litsky says, the Litskys are more fortunate than others, with their two rooms. Some are relatives, near and distant, and others are merely landsmen, from Volna or the outlying districts. “They must stay somewhere,” Minna Litsky says, as she takes these people in—for a few days, or weeks, until they can find places of their own, and Essie has grown accustomed to sharing her bed with some small cousin who speaks not a word of English and who cries in her sleep. It is these people’s good fortune that the Litskys are so fortunate.

  And the children. Essie’s school, already overcrowded, goes into split sessions, and then the sessions split again and there are morning, afternoon, and evening classes. And some of the children are not even children. An eighteen-year-old boy may be in the first grade, because he must begin by learning the English alphabet. Meanwhile, the greedy landlords, even the Jewish ones, grow greedier, and the more crowded the tenements become the higher climb the rents, and the slower is the landlord to make repairs.

  From Uptown, the New York Herald speaks of “unspeakable conditions” in the ghetto, and berates the mayor and City Hall. The Tageblatt berates the Tribune, and Essie’s father berates the Tageblatt, slapping the newspaper with the back of his hand as though it were an unruly child. Most of the stories the Tageblatt prints, he says, are lies. If the Tageblatt can find a single point of controversy, it will leap upon it and turn it into a headline. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! the Tageblatt’s headline screams. “Headlines, headlines!” her father shouts, slapping the paper, adding to the din. A boatload of Russian immigrants has been diverted to Galveston. “Texas!” her father bellows. “What’s there for them there? Think of it!”

  With so much crowding in the streets, one must choose one’s route with care when one ventures out. One section of Delancey Street, for instance, is given over to street toughs and gamblers who run poker and crap games on the sidewalks and the stoops of houses. Here, too, there are Jewish pimps and prostitutes, young girls who sell their bodies for a dollar or two, and fulfill their contracts stretched out on a row of garbage cans in a back alley. In a way, it is horrible to think of Jewish girls doing things like this, and yet, in another, secret way, it is exciting. On Delancey Street, an interesting alliance has been formed between the Jews and the Italians, and a whole new industry has been invented. It is called Protection. Once a week, two tough-looking men come to Minna Litsky’s store for their two dollars’ protection money. One pays it, because one has seen what has happened to shopkeepers who refuse. Minna is philosophical. “They have to earn a living, too,” she says, and figures her protection money into her overhead, part of the cost of doing business, reminding Essie that Delancey Street is to be avoided at all costs.

  The Irish are the enemy. The Micks—big, thick-headed, tough, and mean—prey on the Jewish children, calling them Christ-killers, and when little Abe is old enough to go to school, Essie must take him on a circuitous route to avoid the blocks which the Micks patrol. Even so, a group of Micks may be encountered unexpectedly, looking for victims. When this happens, Essie puts her arm tightly around her brother’s shoulder because even the wicked Micks have their scruples. It’s the Jewish boys they’re after. They will not bother Jewish girls. Minna Litsky talks of moving to the Bronx, but only in a worried, uncertain way. She dislikes, you see, the thought of travel.

  From Uptown come Do-Gooders—rich women in stone marten scarves, little animals with glass eyes and their jaws clasped fiercely to each others’ tails—women like Mrs. Oliver Hazzard Perry Belmont, and Mr. J. P. Morgan’s sister. Their pictures are in the Tageblatt, which disapproves of them. They are suspected of being Christian missionaries. The Do-Gooders come down to the East Side and pass out cookies and doughnuts and apples to the children on the street. But even the hungriest children who accept these gifts are afraid to eat them because they are probably not kosher. It is humiliating to be on the receiving end of the Do-Gooders’ well-meaning charity, and yet their presence is begrudgingly accepted since it must be admitted that the Do-Gooders do some good. They put on lectures, they help the teachers in the schools, they care for the sick.

  SOMETHING MUST HAPPEN! the Tageblatt’s headline declaims. The Jews have been shipped to Texas, but Texas doesn’t want them—as Sam Litsky could have told the authorities all along, he says, slapping at the aberrant daily. (If her father hates the Tageblatt so much, Essie wonders, why does he insist on having the first copy of the paper that comes off the pile?) There must be International Talks. In Washington, D.C., Congressmen are rattling their legislative swords and calling for quotas. President Theodore Roosevelt has declared, “We should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in anarchistic principles, but also all persons who are of a low moral tendency or of unsavory reputation.”

  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” the Statue of Liberty implores, beseeches, from New York Harbor, holding high her lamp above the golden door.

  In 1904, there are rent strikes all over the city, some of them quite violent. Strikers are clubbed and knocked about. One, knocked over the head by a policeman’s billy, dies in the hospital. Now there is talk of a children’s strike—surely the strike-breakers would restrain themselves and not harm innocent children. Essie is thirteen, and there is much talk at home of whether or not Essie should be allowed to march with the strikers, most of whom are young girls in their early teens. At issue is the situation at the Cohen paper-box factory on the Bowery, where the girls were being paid three dollars for every thousand cigarette boxes they turned out, and where a wage cut of ten percent has just been announced. The Tageblatt is raising a special fund to help the strikers. Seven hundred dollars is raised by the United Hebrew Trades, there are benefit concerts, and the Do-Gooders from Uptown, led by such social workers as Jane Addams, have offered their full support.

  Minna Litsky is opposed to the idea of having Essie march with the demonstrators, but Sam, who has decided that he is a Socialist, is for it. And so Essie marches, with her father keeping close by, in case of trouble. There is none, but in the end it is hard to see what the strike has accomplished. The Cohen paper-box factory remains inflexible. But Essie Litsky’s picture is in the paper.

  And so, though the Lower East Side keeps growing, changing, there is much that remains the same. Within the community flourish beggars, thieves, plunderers, heroes, clowns, noisemakers, rapscallions, miracle workers, saviors, Samaritans and sinners, goldbricks, warriors, saints and bloodsuckers, ruffians, reformers, rebels and backsliders, cutthroats and comedians and revolutionaries, all held to
gether by some common glue—America.

  Now the Tageblatt is inveighing against Victrolas. The newfangled machines, played at full volume from open windows of the tenements, simply add to the din and chaos of East Side living. Victrolas! Think of it!

  Nothing is permanent, except the fact that life goes on.

  It is a world in which one grows up quickly.

  In 1907, when Essie was sixteen, she realized that her school days were coming to an end. Ten years of schooling was enough for a Jewish girl—in fact, it was more than most had, her mother pointed out, reminding her again of her good fortune. Most girls were at work by age fourteen, and the time had come for Essie to begin to make some financial contribution to the household. If nothing else, she could help Minna in the store. The time was also approaching when Essie should begin thinking about finding a husband. Minna herself had been fifteen when she was married, and seventeen when Essie was born. These matters, however, would be left in the hands of Essie’s father, who would find her a match in the customary way.

  At P.H.S. Eleven, knowing that this was her last year, Essie was not studying very hard, nor was her mind really on the complicated business of what lay ahead for her. Most of the courses she was taking—Home Economics, Civics, Botany—were designed to teach a Jewish girl to be a practical housekeeper, to cook and to sew and to press flowers under glass, and she found them too easy to get high marks in. But that was the year she had discovered books—not the books that were the texts for her courses, but the books on the shelves of the branch of the Public Library on East Broadway near Chatham Square. All that was needed was her name and address on a little card, and all these books were hers to take home for free. There were newspapers and magazines at the library, too—magazines on art and travel and science and history—and all at once she found herself lifted up, transported, out of the constricted and quarrelsome little world of the Tageblatt, into the Casbah of Marakesh and onto the landscape of the moon.