The Fighter Page 2

“Stop! Stop!” a tenant of the courtyard screams. “This is the son of the vodka seller. He isn’t even Jewish!”

  She runs to the police station. When she comes back with the cops, the child is dead already. The Poles didn’t know what to make of his strange face. Otherwise, they have a kind of sixth sense that lets them recognize Jews. In their caricatures, they depict Jews with a big crooked nose, prominent black eyes, black frizzy hair—what they call the Oriental type. Me, I have red hair and blue eyes. Nevertheless, they know I’m Jewish. When I believed that Jewish meant “poor,” I thought that they beat kids who walked barefoot, like my brothers and me. Then, before she sent me to school, my mother bought an old pair of shoes from a peddler for me. This didn’t prevent the Poles from attacking me.

  The Jews often sell clothes. Either secondhand clothes as peddlers, or new ones as tailors. My brother Anschel, after leaving school at ten like Schmiel, is now a tailor’s apprentice. My sister, Pola, helps my mother sew.

  Anschel worries all day long: where can he find some food? earn a little more money?

  “Come here, Moshe. I’ll take your measurements.”

  “Take my measurements? Why would you do that?”

  “I’ll cut a first-rate suit for you.”

  “Are you kidding? Where will you find cloth?”

  “We’ll buy a secondhand coat. I’ll remove the most threadbare parts, then I’ll cut a jacket in what’s left. Since you’re small, we won’t need much. Then we’ll go to Uncle Prezman.…”

  “If we come at dinnertime, he may give us some food!”

  “I won’t refuse if he does, but I have another goal. When he sees your beautiful jacket, he’ll order the same one for his son. He probably has an old coat or two somewhere. Then he’ll talk to his friends, who’ll order jackets next. We’ll become rich!”

  We buy the coat. I unstitch it carefully. Anschel cuts pieces for the jacket in the better-looking parts, just like he said he would. He has been an apprentice for three years. He is quite skillful.

  I look like a little English lord in my superb new jacket. We go to Uncle Prezman, full of pride and hope. We’re hardly out of the courtyard when we see two Poles at the other end of the street. Anschel doesn’t like that.

  “They’re much taller than us. Let’s bolt!”

  “Come on, look, they’re also wearing new clean suits. They won’t fight.”

  Deep inside me, I hope that they won’t take me for a Jew, since I don’t seem poor anymore. Just when we pass them, one of them punches me in the stomach. When I fight, I can resist a blow to the stomach, but I was so far from expecting a fight that I fall backward, breathless. Anschel knows what to do: he runs away like a rabbit. The two Poles begin to really hit me. Anschel is out of danger. He turns around, he wavers. Will he let two bullies knock his brother down right in front of him? And what about the suit, the new magnificent suit?

  Yeah, he comes back to save his brother and his suit. The Poles see a taller fellow coming at them. They face him and get ready. They let me go. They think I’ve had enough and will flee. My good Anschel doesn’t know how to fight. The Poles throw him to the ground within two seconds. Me, I have a little hook in my pocket, a kind of broken and sharpened key, a fine weapon. When I hold the key’s buckle in my fist, the tip that appears between my fingers is almost invisible. One Pole pins my brother down with his knee. I lurch at him so fast that he can barely turn around and see what’s happening. I give him a blow that rips his cheek in two as if it were paper. He screams with pain, falls to the ground, gets up and runs away. The second Pole shouts as loud but runs slower, because I opened his thigh with my key.

  We give up our visit to Uncle Prezman and go home in awful shape. Anschel looks at me with wonder.

  “Gosh, Moshe, you really taught them a lesson! One punch each. You’re really strong. You’ll have to show me how you do it.”

  “‘Tis easy. I use my faithful assistant.”

  I show him my sharp key.

  “Hey, man, you’re crazy. This thing is dangerous. You could hurt someone.”

  “Of course. That’s what it’s for. I bet the bastards painted me a new face. Is my nose awfully bloody?”

  “Well, there is blood.…”

  “I feel like my eye is swelling up. Bah, in a few days I’ll be like new. Fixing the suit will be harder.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll stitch it back for you.”

  We wash the suit, Anschel mends it, then we go to Uncle Prezman. He doesn’t order jackets for his children. He allows us to eat yesterday’s leftovers in the kitchen.

  The Poles are not my only enemies. One of the Jewish carters, Fat Yatché, has taken a dislike to me. They should call him Enormous Yatché. What with their thieving and bootlegging and trafficking, the carters do not suffer from hunger! They even eat meat several times a week. Fat Yatché hates all children, including his own. He lives with his wife, his daughter, and his son in a small house near the tavern. He’s the only carter who doesn’t sleep in the stables. He is so rich that he buys his water. We see the water carrier enter Yatché’s house every morning, his two buckets hanging from a pole balanced on his shoulder. Yatché’s son, who is already as fat, stupid, and brutal as his father, is always looking for a fight. You want it? You’ll get it! My pals and me, we get together and drive some respect into his thick skull. Fat Yatché won’t let anybody but himself whack his son. He would like to thrash all the boys in the courtyard, but he can’t do that on account of their fathers. Thus, having no father to protect me, I’m the sole butt of his anger. I could write a song:

  When Fat Yatché passes me,

  on Sunday he gives me a blow,

  on Monday a slap,

  on Tuesday a slug,

  on Wednesday a cuff,

  on Thursday a chop,

  on Friday a kick,

  on Saturday a wallop.

  Me, I’m bent on revenge. While Yatché is getting drunk in the tavern, I sneak behind his house and get his she-goat. I push her into the cesspool. The courtyard kids laugh themselves hoarse:

  “Fat Yatché, Fat Yatché, your she-goat is taking a shit bath!”

  Fat Yatché comes running. He fishes his she-goat out just before she drowns. She doesn’t look good, not to mention the smell. Without taking time to ask anyone, he rushes into our building and climbs the stairs. Even if he doesn’t suspect me, he may assume I’ve seen everything from my window. He’d enjoy torturing me until I inform against the offender. My mother knows that.

  “Go to bed, Moshe. Quick!”

  Fat Yatché is already knocking on the door and coming into the room.

  “Where is that good-for-nothing son of yours? I have some questions to ask him about my she-goat.”

  “He is ill. See, he’s been lying in this bed for two days. He has fever.”

  I don’t need to pretend. I shiver for real and big drops of sweat run down my face.

  Fat Yatché lives real close to the tavern, but he can barely walk home when he’s really drunk. One winter evening, he slips on a sheet of ice and breaks his skull. He falls into a coma and dies five days later. Now, no one watches over his son. When his father used to hit me, the big dummy would add a few smacks of his own just because he felt safe. Well, things have changed, fatso! I pass him in the courtyard. Just out of habit, he hits me in the ribs. I raise my guard and shout, so that the whole courtyard can hear me:

  “You want to fight, big barrel of piss? Well, let’s fight.”

  A crowd gathers around us. Yatché’s son draws his knife. He is two years older than me and a head taller, but I’m not afraid. I don’t even need my little piece of steel. I’ll fight empty-handed, fair and square. I move forward suddenly.… He lowers his right hand to stab me in the stomach. I didn’t plan to impale myself on his knife: my move was a trick! I only wanted him to bring his hand within my range. I move back and kick it hard. The shoes my mother bought from the peddler are heavy hobnailed boots. My kicks hurt like hell! His knife falls t
o the ground. Before he can pick it up, I grab the lapels of his jacket. The crowd cheers me:

  “Come on, Moshe!”

  “Kill him!”

  “Show him what you can do!”

  I show him some of my tricks: headbutt to the nose, knee kick to the groin, elbow poke into the eye. I explain the new rules.

  “You’d better stay away from me. And don’t come near my brothers, either!”

  Fat Yatché’s widow looks like an elephant. They call her Mama Hinde, that is Mama Gazelle, for fun. She is furious when she sees her son come home covered with blood. How can she accept this? Doesn’t she belong to the courtyard’s best circles? We hear her heavy step on our staircase. My mother opens the door.

  “Is your son, the murderer, here? I’ll kill him!”

  My mother doesn’t dare answer, she’s so scared of Mama Hinde. I go to the kitchen and get the ax we use to cut wood for the stove. I come back into our room, ax in hand.

  “Go away, Mama Hinde! Old witch! If you ever come here again, I’ll split your head open, and then I’ll take care of your son!”

  My mother can’t stand violence. She weeps.

  “Oh, ma’m, go away quickly… I’ve never seen him in such a state. He’d really kill you!”

  Mama Hinde goes down to the courtyard.

  “The son of Myriam the Seamstress tried to crack my head. He’s a crazy demon!” she shouts around.

  My mother takes me into her arms and compliments me.

  “With a protector like you, nobody will ever bother us anymore. But you really scared me with your ax.”

  Chapter 3

  Only a revolution…

  In 1926, soon after my eleventh birthday (if I was born in 1915), I leave school. My brothers call me lucky, because I stayed there for one more year than they did. Me, lucky? I become a cabinetmaker’s apprentice in Warsaw, but I don’t learn anything, except how to saw logs twelve hours a day. Good for my arms! To go home to Praga, I must walk across the Vistula. In winter, it is so cold that they have to install small coal stoves every fifty feet on the long bridge. I glide on the ice like a skater from one stove to the next. I have to rub my ears all the time, otherwise they’ll freeze in spite of my woolen cap. I often see blue corpses in the middle of the bridge.

  When the weather improves, I stop along the way to write slogans on the walls: Down with fascism! Freedom! Let’s say no to anti-Semitism! My brother Schmiel explained it to me: only a communist revolution can put an end to the plight of the Jews.

  “Communism means equality for all human beings. In fact, in the Communist Party, Poles and Jews fight together.”

  “In Russia, there was a revolution?”

  “Yes. In 1917.”

  “So now they let the Jews alone?”

  “Of course!”

  As I am too young to become a communist militant, I join a group of “pioneers” or young communists. I find it rather strange that nearly all the pioneers are Jewish. When my brothers and I put up posters in the middle of the night, the people who attack us call us stinking Jews without even seeing our faces.

  This same year 1926, Marshal Pilsudski leads a military coup, becomes a dictator, and bans the Communist Party. I demonstrate against the ban with thousands of other people. Horse-riding policemen charge at us, kill seven workers with their swords, wound hundreds. I succeed in running away, but I see the gleam of the swords for weeks in my nightmares. My brother Anschel is not so lucky. The police catch him writing slogans on a wall. He spends several months in jail.

  My uncle Hersch Wisniak, my father’s brother, used to dream of revolution, too. He took part in the series of riots that shook the Russian empire in 1905. Then he fled abroad before the police could catch him and deport him to Siberia. At first he lived in Germany, then he settled in Paris, and now he has a small leather business there. My mother writes a long letter to him:

  My dear Hersch,

  I write to you in order to give you news of your nephews and niece. My last-born, Moshe, just left school to become an apprentice with a cabinetmaker. He likes to fight, but doesn’t get into real trouble. His brother Anschel is a tailor’s apprentice. He already knows how to cut a full suit. Pola, your niece, helps me with my stitching and sewing. She doesn’t have a boyfriend yet.

  I want to tell you about Schmiel, my firstborn. As you know, he is a leatherworker, just like you. He works for my cousin Layb. He has been cutting and stitching leather for a long time. He has even designed several ladies’ handbags. I think he could help you in Paris. Here, I fear for him, because he’ll soon reach the age for military service. You remember that the Russians didn’t take Jews into their army. Now the Poles take Jews, but then the other soldiers bother them and beat them. He is a very serious boy. I’m sure that you’ll be satisfied with him if you let him come to Paris.

  Uncle Hersch’s business is quite successful, so he needs new workers. Thus, he sends a French visa for his nephew. My mother, my sister, and me, we go to the railway station with Schmiel in January 1927. Anschel can’t come with us, since he’s still in jail. My mother imagines all kinds of mishaps.

  “Paris is a very big city. There must be anti-Semites everywhere. Be careful!”

  “Of course, Mama. Don’t worry.”

  “How will you find your uncle? If you got lost in the streets of Paris, oy, it would be awful.…”

  “Don’t you remember? He wrote he’d come to the station.”

  “Yes, I remember now. You’ll recognize him easily—he looks like your poor father. Take care not to catch a cold!”

  My sister pulls my brother’s sleeve:

  “Schmiel, Schmiel, promise you’ll write to me.… You must describe very precisely what ladies wear in Paris. Then I can create dresses according to the latest Paris fashion!”

  “I’ll write to you all. I’ll earn lots of money and I’ll send for you.”

  Chapter 4

  My mother becomes the courtyard’s queen

  My dear Mama, my dear Pola, my dear Anschel (if you’re out of jail), my dear Moshe,

  I hope your health is as good as mine. The trip took a long time. I spent two nights on the train but didn’t sleep much. I wondered what my new life would be like. We crossed Germany and Belgium. The north of France is gray and dreary. When I stepped out of the train, several well-dressed gentlemen addressed me in Yiddish. They wanted me to work in their leather business. They all promised me good wages. I saw Uncle Hersch standing nearby. I recognized him right away, like Mama said I would. I told the gentlemen I already had a boss. Uncle Hersch explained to me why this welcoming party waited for the Warsaw train every day: so many Jewish leatherworkers have settled in Paris that France is now exporting ladies’ handbags everywhere. Demand is booming. They can’t make enough of them. Anschel (if you’re out of jail) and Moshe, you must definitely learn how to cut and stitch leather. Then you can come here.

  Paris is a wonderful city: Would you believe that nobody attacks Jews in the streets? People don’t even seem to guess I’m Jewish. Uncle Hersch did advise me to take a French name, so as not to tempt them. So now my name is Jacques. He is Henri.

  My dear Pola, I live in a poor neighborhood. I work so hard that I haven’t had time to visit the smarter parts of town. So I can’t tell you what the elegant Paris ladies wear.

  Mama, I gave a little memento to Baruch Seligman, a leatherworker who is traveling to Warsaw. He should bring it to you quite soon.

  Your Jacques

  The two last words are written from left to right, in French, which seems very refined to us. To write Yiddish, we use Hebrew letters and read them from right to left. As we don’t know how to pronounce this strange name (Yakuhess?), we’ll keep on saying Schmiel! The Paris memento that Baruch Seligman brings us is a twenty-dollar banknote.

  When he comes out of jail, Anschel refuses to follow his elder brother’s advice.

  “I’m a tailor. I cut beautiful pieces of woolen cloth. It is a job that requires skill and
good taste. I won’t become a cobbler or whatever just because ladies’ handbags sell well.”

  “Leatherworker is not the same thing as cobbler.”

  “Listen, Mama, I don’t want to go to Paris. Do you think all Jews should leave Poland? The Poles say we do not belong in this country. This would confirm their slander. I must stay here to help the party start the revolution, since Schmiel quit his post.”

  In any case, I stop sawing boards at the cabinetmaker’s. Wearing my nice suit, I go to Cousin Layb, the leatherworker. To make sure he takes me as an apprentice, I agree to work without being paid. Schmiel sends us dollars from France, so we have enough money for food.

  I’m the new guy, so my cousin’s employees would like me to be their errand boy and servant. “Moshe, go get me a piece of bread! Bring me some water!” The other apprentices have to obey them if they want to earn their wages. Me, I expect no salary, so I’m free. I know plenty of curses, I have strong fists, I don’t let them boss me around. I learn how to cut leather with a special gouge that I must constantly sharpen on a stone. I can soon stick and curl, then “hemstitch” a piece of leather. I make small pieces: purses and wallets. By and by, my fingers become good judges of leather quality. Cousin Layb says I’m quite skillful. He shows me how to rivet leather to the metal clasp of a ladies’ bag. This is delicate work. A good riveter earns four times as much as a regular worker.

  I create a new style of wallet with paper and cardboard. I show it to a designer. He laughs at me:

  “You’re just an apprentice. Come see me in ten years!”

  …

  Does Anschel want to go back to jail? He spends his nights putting up posters on the walls. How long can it last? One night, the police turn up while he’s at it. Luckily, he is clever—and learned a trick or two during the months he spent behind bars. He throws his bucket of glue and his posters over the wall, then begins to kiss the girl he’s working with as if they were lovers. The cops don’t know what to think. They take him to the police station. They lack any incriminating evidence. They let him go, but they warn him: