“You will send us word immediately and as quickly as possible, don't forget!” Deborah sobbed aloud, spread her arms and embraced her son. For a long time they clasped each other. Then Shemariah pried himself loose, stepped up to his sister and kissed her with smacking lips on both cheeks. His father spread his hands over him in a blessing and hastily murmured something incomprehensible. Fearfully, Shemariah then approached the gawking Menuchim. For the first time it was necessary to embrace the sick child, and Shemariah felt as if it were not a brother he had to kiss, but a symbol that gives no answer. Everyone would have liked to say something more. But no one found a word. They knew that it was a farewell forever. In the best case, Shemariah would end up safe and sound abroad. In the worst case, he would be caught on the border, then executed or shot on the spot by the
border guards. What are people supposed to say to each other when they're parting for life? Shemariah shouldered the bundle and pushed open the door with his foot. He didn't look back. The moment he stepped over the threshold he tried to forget the house and his whole family. Behind his back there sounded once more a loud cry from Deborah. The door closed. Sensing that his mother had fallen unconscious, Shemariah approached his escort.
“Just beyond the marketplace,” said the man with the blue cap, “the horses are waiting for us.” As they passed Sameshkin's hut, Shemariah stopped. He cast a glance into the little garden, then into the open empty stable. His brother Jonas wasn't there. He left a melancholy thought for his lost brother, who had voluntarily sacrificed himself, as Shemariah still believed. He's coarse, but noble and brave, he thought. Then he walked on with steady steps at the stranger's side.
Just beyond the marketplace they met the horses, as the man had said. It took them no less than three days to reach the border, for they avoided the railroad. Along the way it turned out that Shemariah's escort knew the country well. He revealed it without Shemariah's asking. He pointed to distant church steeples and named the villages to which they belonged. He named the farms and the estates and the landowners. He often branched off the wide road and found his way on narrow paths in a short time. It was as if he wanted to quickly make Shemariah familiar with his homeland, before the young man departed to seek a new one. He sowed homesickness for life in Shemariah's heart.
An hour before midnight they reached the border tavern. It was a quiet night. The tavern stood in it as the only house, a house in the stillness of the night, silent, dark, with sealed windows behind which no life could be suspected. A million crickets chirped around it incessantly, the whispering choir of the night. Otherwise no voice disturbed them. Flat was the land, the starry horizon drew a perfect deep blue circle around it, broken only in the northeast by a bright streak, like a blue ring with a setting of silver. They smelled the distant dampness of the swamps that spread out in the west and the slow wind that carried it over. “A beautiful true summer night!” said Kapturak's messenger. And for the first time since they were together, he deigned to speak of his business: “On such quiet nights you can't always cross without difficulties. For our purposes rain is more useful.” He cast a little fear into Shemariah. Because the tavern before which they stood was silent and closed, Shemariah hadn't thought about its significance until his escort's words reminded him of his plan. “Let's go in!” he said like someone who no longer wants to postpone danger. “You don't need to hurry, we'll have to wait long enough!”
Nonetheless, he went to the window and knocked softly on the wooden shutter. The door opened and released a wide stream of yellow light over the nocturnal earth. They entered. Behind the counter, directly in the beam of a hanging lamp, the innkeeper stood and nodded at them, on the floor a few men were crouching and playing dice. At a table sat Kapturak with a man in a sergeant's uniform. No one looked up. The rattle of the dice and the tick of
the wall clock could be heard. Shemariah sat down. His escort ordered drinks. Shemariah drank schnapps, he grew hot, but calm. He felt secure as never before; he knew that he was experiencing one of the rare hours in which a man has no less a part in shaping his destiny than the great power that bestows it on him.
Shortly after the clock had struck midnight, a shot rang out, hard and sharp, with a slowly dwindling echo. Kapturak and the sergeant rose. It was the arranged sign with which the guard indicated that the border officer's nightly patrol was over. The sergeant disappeared. Kapturak urged the people to set off. All rose sluggishly, shouldered bundles and suitcases, the door opened, they trickled out singly into the night and started on the way to the border. They tried to sing, someone forbade them, it was Kapturak's voice. They didn't know if it came from the front rows, from the middle, from the back. Thus they walked silently through the thick chirping of the crickets and the deep blue of the night. After half an hour Kapturak's voice commanded them: “Lie down!” They dropped onto the dewy ground, lay motionlessly, pressed their pounding hearts against the wet earth, their hearts' farewell to their homeland. Then they were ordered to stand up. They came to a shallow wide ditch, a light flashed to their left, it was the light of the guard hut. They crossed the ditch. Dutifully, but without aiming, the guard fired his rifle behind them.
“We're out!” cried a voice.
At that moment the sky brightened in the east. The men looked
back to their homeland, over which the night still seemed to lie, and turned again toward the day and the foreign.
One began to sing, all joined in, singing they began to march. Only Shemariah did not sing along. He thought about his immediate future (he possessed two rubles); about the morning at home. In two hours at home his father would rise, murmur a prayer, clear his throat, gargle, go to the bowl and splash water. His mother would blow into the samovar. Menuchim would babble something into the morning, Miriam would comb white down feathers from her black hair. All this Shemariah saw more clearly than he had ever seen it when he was still at home and himself a part of the domestic morning. He scarcely heard the singing of the others, only his feet took up the rhythm and marched along.
An hour later he glimpsed the first foreign town, the blue smoke from the first diligent chimneys, a man with a yellow armband who received the arrivals. A tower clock struck six.
The Singers' wall clock also struck six. Mendel rose, gargled, cleared his throat, murmured a prayer, Deborah already stood at the stove and blew into the samovar, Menuchim babbled from his corner something incomprehensible, Miriam combed her hair in front of the murky mirror. Then Deborah slurped the hot tea, still standing at the stove. “Where is Shemariah now?” she said suddenly. All had been thinking of him.
“God will help him!” said Mendel Singer. And thus dawned the day.
And thus dawned the days that followed, empty days, miserable days. A house without children, thought Deborah. I bore them all, I suckled them all, a wind has blown them away. She looked around for Miriam, she rarely found her daughter at home. Menuchim alone remained with his mother. He always stretched out his arms when she passed his corner. And when she kissed him, he sought her breast like an infant. Reproachfully she thought of the blessing that was so slow in its fulfillment, and she doubted whether she would live to see Menuchim's health.
The house was silent when the singsong of the studying boys ceased. It was silent and dark. It was winter again. They saved petroleum. They lay down early to sleep. They sank thankfully into the kind night. From time to time Jonas sent a greeting. He served in Pskov, enjoyed his usual good health and had no difficulties with his superiors.
Thus the years passed.
On a late summer afternoon a stranger entered the house of Mendel Singer. Door and window stood open. The flies clung still, black and sated to the hot sunlit walls, and the singsong of the pupils streamed from the open house into the white street. Suddenly they noticed the strange man in the doorframe and fell silent.
Deborah rose from her stool. From the other side of the street Miriam hurried over, holding the wobbling Menuchim firmly by the hand. Mendel Singer stood before the stranger and scrutinized him. He was an extraordinary man. He wore a mighty black high-crowned hat, wide light-colored flapping pants, sturdy yellow boots, and like a flag a bright red tie fluttered over his deep green shirt. Without moving, he said something, apparently a greeting, in an incomprehensible language. It sounded as if he were speaking with a cherry in his mouth. Green stems were sticking out of his coat pockets, anyhow. His smooth, very long upper lip rose slowly like a curtain and revealed a strong, yellow set of teeth reminiscent of horses. The children laughed, and even Mendel Singer smiled. The stranger pulled out a letter folded lengthwise and read the address and name of the Singers in his peculiar fashion, so that everyone laughed again. “America!” the man then said, and handed Mendel Singer the letter. A happy suspicion arose in Mendel and lit up his face. “Shemariah,” he said. With a motion of his hand he sent off his pupils as one waves away flies. They ran out. The stranger sat down. Deborah set tea, sweets and soda on the table. Mendel opened the letter. Deborah and Miriam sat down too. And Singer began to read aloud the following:
Dear Father, dear Mother, precious Miriam and good Menuchim!
I don't address Jonas, because he is in the military. I also ask you not to send him this letter directly, because he might end up in adverse circumstances if he corresponds with a brother who is a
deserter. That's also why I have waited so long and not written to you by mail until I finally had the opportunity to send you this letter with my good friend Mac. He knows all of you from my stories, but he won't be able to speak a word with you, because not only is he an American, but his parents were born in America too, and he's not a Jew either. But he's better than ten Jews.And so I'll tell you everything, from the beginning until today: At first, when I crossed the border, I had nothing to eat, only two rubles in my pocket, but I thought, God will help. From a Trieste shipping company a man with an official cap came to the border to pick us up. We were twelve men, the other eleven all had money, they bought false papers and ship tickets, and the agent of the shipping company brought them to the train. I went along. I thought, it can't do any harm. I'll go along, in any case I'll see how it is when you journey to America. So I stay behind alone with the agent, and he's surprised that I'm not going too. âI don't have any kopecks,' I say to the agent. He asks whether I read and write. âA little bit,' I say, âbut maybe it's enough.' Well, to be brief, the man had a job for me: every day, when the deserters arrive, go to the border, pick them up and buy them everything and persuade them that in America milk and honey flow. Well: I begin to work and give fifty percent of my earnings to the agent, because I'm only a sub-agent. He wears a cap with a gold-embroidered firm, I have only an armband. After two months I tell him I need sixty percent, or else I'll quit the job. He gives sixty. To make a long story short, I meet a pretty girl at my lodging, her name is Vega, and now she's your daughter-in-law. Her
father gave me some money to start a business, but I can never forget how the eleven went to America, and how I alone stayed behind. So I take leave of Vega, I know all about ships, it's my trade after all â and so I go to America. And here I am, two months ago Vega came here, we got married and are very happy. Mac has the pictures in his pocket. At first I sewed buttons on pants, then I ironed pants, then I sewed linings in sleeves, and I almost would have become a tailor, like all Jews in America. But then I met Mac on an excursion to Long Island, right at Fort Lafayette. When you're here, I'll show you the place. From then on I began to work with him, all sorts of businesses. Until we took up insurance. I insure the Jews and he the Irish, I've even insured a few Christians. Mac will give you ten dollars from me, buy yourselves something with it, for the journey. Because soon I will send you ship tickets, with God's help.I embrace and kiss you all. Your son, Shemariah
(here my name is Sam)
After Mendel Singer had finished the letter, there was a ringing silence in the room, which seemed to mingle with the stillness of the late summer day and out of which all the members of the family thought they heard the voice of the emigrated son. Yes, Shemariah himself spoke, over there, worlds away in America, where at this hour it was perhaps night or morning. For a short while, all forgot Mac's presence. It was as if he had become invisible behind the distant Shemariah, like a mailman who delivers a letter, goes on and disappears. He himself, the American, had to remind them of his
presence. He rose and reached into his pants pocket like a magician about to perform a trick. He pulled out a wallet, took out of it ten dollars and photographs, one of Shemariah with his wife Vega on a bench surrounded by greenery and another of him alone in a swimsuit on a beach, one body and one face among a dozen strange bodies and faces, no longer a Shemariah but a Sam. The stranger handed the ten-dollar bill and the pictures to Deborah, after he had briefly scrutinized them all, as if to check the trustworthiness of each one. She crumpled the bill in one hand, with the other she laid the pictures on the table next to the letter. All this lasted a few minutes, in which they remained silent. Finally Mendel Singer placed his index finger on the photograph and said: “That is Shemariah!” “Shemariah!” repeated the others, and even Menuchim, who now already reached above the table, uttered a high whinny and cast one of his shy glances with peering cautiousness at the pictures.