Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to New York in 1935, when he began writing in Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward. He is the author of many novels and stories and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature. Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.
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‘When I was about forty-two or forty-three I was really rich. Once the money starts to flow, you can’t stop it. I bought houses and lots and made huge profits. I bought stocks and they rose overnight. Taxes were nothing in those days. I owned a limousine and wrote checks for all kinds of charities. Now women swarmed around me like bees around honey. I got more love in a week than I could make use of in a year. But I am not a man who fools himself. I knew what they wanted was my money, not me. As they kissed me and tried to make me believe I was the great lover, they talked about what they would get out of it: trips to Florida, to Europe; mink coats; diamonds. It was all bluff. You lie in bed with them and they don’t let you forget that what you really are is a sugar daddy. I wished I could meet a woman who did not know about my money or an heiress so rich that in comparison I would seem poor. But where and when? I began to think that true love was not for me. How do they say in Poland? Sausage is not for dogs.
‘Suddenly a miracle happened. I acquired an old house on Blake Avenue in Brownsville. Today Brownsville is full of Negroes and Puerto Ricans; then it was the land of Israel. You couldn’t find a Gentile to save your life. I wanted to put up a new building, but first I had to get rid of the tenants. Often these things went easily, but this time some them balked. I didn’t believe in going to court; I preferred to settle with them myself. I had a free Sunday and decided to go and see what could be done. My car happened to be in the garage, so I took the subway. After all, I wasn’t born a Rockefeller.
‘At the house I knocked on a door, but in Brownsville they didn’t know the meaning of that. I pushed the latch, the door opened, and I saw a room that looked exactly like one in the old country. If I hadn’t known that I was in Brownsville, I would have thought that I was in a Konskowola: whitewashed walls, a board floor, a broken-down sofa with the stuffing sticking out. Even the smells were from Konskowola—fried onions, chicory, moldy bread. On the sofa sat a girl as beautiful as Queen Esther. One difference. Esther was supposed to be greenish and this girl was white, with blue eyes and golden hair—a beauty. She was dressed like a greenhorn who had just arrived: a long skirt and shoes with buttons. And what was she doing? Reading a story book: Sheindele with Blue Lips. I had read it years before on the other side. I thought I was dreaming and I pinched myself, but it was no dream.
‘I wanted to tell her that I was the landlord and had come to make move out. But some power stopped me. I began to play a role as if I were an actor in the theater. She asked me who I was and I said I was a salesman of sewing machines. I could get one for her cheap. She said, ‘What do I need a sewing machine for? When I want to sew something, I use my own ten fingers.’ She spoke a familiar Yiddish.
‘I could sit with you until tomorrow and not tell half of it, but I will make it short. She had been in this country only two years. Her father had been a Talmud teacher in Poland. He was brought to this land of gold by an uncle. Three days after the father and daughter left Ellis Island, the uncle died. Her father became a beadle for some little rabbi here. I asked her how old she was and she said twenty-six. ‘How does it happen,’ I asked her, ‘that such a beautiful girl is unmarried?’ She answered, ‘They offered me many matches but I refused to marry through a matchmaker. I have to be in love.’ What she said was not silly; she was like a child and her talk was also like that of a little girl. She was not retarted—just naïve. She had lived for twenty-four years in a tiny village in the hinterland—Wysoka. Her mother died when she was still young. Each word she uttered was the pure truth. She could as much lie as I could be the wife of a rabbi. I asked her name and she said, ‘Channah Basha.’ Why drag it out? I fell in love with her—head over heels. I couldn’t tear myself from her. I was afraid she would make me go, but she asked, ‘Aren’t you hungry? ‘Yes, I am hungry,’ I said and I thought, For you! She said, ‘I cooked burned-flour grits and I have full pot of it.’ I hadn’t heard the words ‘burned-flour grits’ for goodness knows how long and, believe me, no aria sung by an opera singer could have sounded sweeter.
‘Soon we were seated at a broken-down table, eating the burned-flour grits like an old couple. I told her that I too read storybooks. I could see that she had a whole pile of them, all brought over from the old country: The Story of the Three Brothers, The Tale of Two Butchers, The Adventures of the Pious Reb Zadock and the Twelve Robbers. She asked me, ‘Do you earn living by selling sewing machines?’ I said, ‘I manage to scratch together a few dollars.’ She asked, ‘Do you have a wife and children?’ I told her about my wife and poured out my bitter heart to her. Channah Basha listened and she grew pale. ‘Why do you hold on to such a shrew?’ I said, ‘Here in America when you divorce a wife you have to pay alimony. If not you go to jail. The alimony amounts to more than a man earns. This is the justice in the land of Columbus.’ She said, ‘God waits long but He punishes severely. She will soon come to a bad end.’ She cursed my wife. She said, ‘How do you live if she takes away your last bite?’ I said, ‘I still have enough for a piece of bread.’ She said, ‘Come to me. I often cook more than I need for my father and myself. I am always alone because my father comes home late, and with you it will be cozy.’ It was the first time that someone showed compassion for me and wanted to give instead of take. We ate the grits with fresh bread from the bakery and we washed it down with watery tea while we babbled about the Three Brothers of whom the first took upon himself the good deed of ransoming innocent prisoners, the second of helping poor orphans to marry, and third of honoring the Sabbath. Then I told here a story about a young man who found a golden hair and traveled all over the world in search of the woman from whose head it had fallen. He found her on the island of Madagascar and she was the queen herself. Channah Basha listened eagerly to every word.
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I love this story. This hilarious portrait of everyday Main Street characters rings as true today as it did when it was first published back then. The basics are the same and how little things change.
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