Israel (3 page)

He, of course, would not act that way. When he was rich, he would not pretend to be something he was not. He would loudly proclaim his thanks to God. The rabbi would shake his hand for donating the funds to make a proper Hebrew school in the cellar of the synagogue. His shaving and going without a hat would be waved away as the trifling offenses they were. Abe considered himself a realist; he knew that in America, as in Russia, money in a man's pocket excused him from much obligation and condemnation.

A harsh, cutting wind along East Broadway brought tears to his eyes and blew away his reveries. Here he joined the press of other weary, hunched, coughing men who trudged like slaves through the predawn twilight toward their sweatshop jobs.

I am growing old, Abe thought, just like Joseph said. Two years of scrimping and saving and I am still far from my goal.

Abe passed a synagogue and briefly thought about stopping in that evening; the shul was a good place to find out if anybody had a room to rent. He decided against it. He went to shul only on the High Holy Days. Abe's bargain with God specified that he would use the time that might have been spent in shul working and studying to better himself. Then when he was rich, he would make it up to the Lord.

It was a covenant communicated more in thought than in words. Still, it allowed Abe to sleep with a clear conscience. Better to keep the deal by staying away from the shul altogether than to insult God by going there for a reason other than prayer.

Should I have agreed to court Leah? Abe wondered. Perhaps he was being too stubborn in defying them—and losing for himself such a nice room.

Abe paused at a newspaper stand, a collection of milk
crates with the periodicals held down by bricks, and bought the one Yiddish newspaper he allowed himself. He preferred to read the English papers to strengthen his grasp of the language, but every day Abe picked up a copy of the
Vorwärts
, the
Forward
. He did not pause to scan its front page but tucked the paper into his overcoat and hurried on across East Broadway onto Attorney Street.

His thoughts returned to Leah, Sadie's eighteen-year-old sister. She was a sweet girl, not at all like Sadie. Leah was slight of build and very docile and quiet. But maybe they were all like that before marriage. Abe mused. Who knew? He considered himself a moral man; he did not run with the tarts to be had at the red-lantern houses on Rivington Street. He knew very little about women and was by turns proud and wistful over that fact, depending on his mood. One thing he knew: a wife could help in the store—
if he ever got the store, that is
.

He reached Delancey Street, where the awnings of the dark locked shops drooped like sleepy eyelids and the pushcarts chained to the lamp posts awaited their peddler owners. The wind carried the aroma of
challah
bread baking for the Sabbath, then the breeze changed direction and the odor of spoiled fish discarded in an alley assaulted Abe.

Of course with a wife eventually came children. The appearance of the first-born a year after the marriage was an inevitability, else tongues in the neighborhood would start to wag. When Abe envisioned his offspring he saw a strapping boy as bright as the noon sun, a boy to make a father proud, a young man properly appreciative of the thriving business his father would one day hand over to him. Abe conceded the possibility of daughters. That was all right, for girls could bring much joy to a father, but it was the sons who counted.

Abe's musings about his children always began when they'd reached adolescence. He was aware that infancy
and childhood were stages in a person's life, and he could be patient for his children to pass through these stages as long as they didn't dawdle. But let their mother play with them.

Frivolity was not in Abe's nature. He lived for the day when he could present his son with all that he had accomplished and see the light of admiration in his boy's eyes. If there were daughters, they too could smile, for their father's success would assure them of good matrimonial matches.

By now all along Delancey the horse-drawn ash carts had appeared to haul away the previous day's rubbish. As Abe walked toward Allen Street he carefully perused each storefront, thinking about how he would rearrange this window display of fabric or that one with its racks of suits for men and boys. Every morning on his way to work he lovingly inspected the closed shops on Delancey, Orchard and Hester Streets and coveted the better ones. It inspired him to do a good day's work. To see why he was slaving away his last precious youth made the thought of the long day ahead endurable.

Another year, perhaps, and it could be yours, he told himself. Something good will happen, you will see. You are working hard, and so God will see to it.

Still, without a miracle, Abe knew, it would more likely be another two years before he had enough money saved, and that was if the work remained steady and he managed to find the strength to continue working a seven-day double shift.

If only Leah's parents were not poor, Abe thought, but a man in his circumstances could not expect a girl with a dowry. If Leah's father were rich his last daughter would have been married long ago, and Sadie, for that matter, would have made a far better match than Joseph. At the very least their father could have bought doctors for his
daughters by promising the price of a medical education in exchange for marriage.

No, Abe could not hope to find a girl with money. He was too old and if the truth be known too homely to attract the notice of a wealthy girl. Even the plain ones could pick and choose a man if their fathers had money.

Leah was not plain. She had big brown eyes, high cheekbones and a shy way of laughing, the memory of which often came back to distract Abe late at night, while he was trying to study his English.

It did not occur to Abe to think he might be fond of Leah. Abe could not be comfortable with the thought of conjugal love. If he gave in to feelings, how could he survive the misery ahead?

To Abe the world was God's emporium, all transactions retail. God stood behind the counter and on the shelves were all the goods a man on earth could hope to earn. Everything had a price, and hard work, faith and sacrifice were the currency God demanded. Not marrying was part of the price Abe had to pay.

Abe hurried up Allen Street to the factory loft behind the Greek and Arab clubs and restaurants, which were quiet now but would spring to gaudy, exotic life come evening. Tonight when Abe left work there would be wild Oriental music coming from these forbidden places, and in the upstairs windows would appear glimpses of gyrating belly dancers, half-naked savage women who had an exciting and disturbing effect on Abe.

But that would be tonight, and tonight was many hours of piecework away. The minimum he was allowed to work was twelve hours; the most he'd ever put in at one stretch was eighteen. Tonight he would turn his head away from Allen Street's distractions for God to see that he was not interested.

It is a different bargain I wish to conclude with God, Abe thought as he climbed the nine steep flights of stairs
to the loft. Here the heat of the many steam pressing machines made it seem like summer. Abe at once stripped off his overcoat, suit jacket and white shirt. Over by the toilets were rows of lockers where the men could store their clothes. For the rest of the day Abe and the other men would work in sleeveless undershirts.

The walls were dull green. The windows had been painted black to shield the place from the notice of the factory licensing inspectors. The tin ceiling was crisscrossed with steam and water pipes and laced with electrical wiring from which dangled bare bulbs. The loft's sagging scrap-littered wooden floor was divided into cutting, sewing and pressing areas. Puffy-eyed boys wearing knickers, their small, thin bodies still stiff with sleep, carted the cloth, linings and finished garments from area to area and finally to the freight elevator. Downstairs horses and trucks would take the merchandise uptown.

A year ago the ILGWU, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, had found the loft and organized it. The ILGWU employed special trackers who did nothing but hunt down the sweatshops infesting New York. There was talk among the workers of a general strike to be called that summer. All of them, including Abe, were fatalistic about it, but they hoped the strike wouldn't happen. There were stronger union shops than the one on Allen Street, the ones that employed workers of only one nationality. Here on Allen Street, where mostly Jews and Italians worked together, basic mistrust was born of different languages, different customs, even different foods. The Jews rolled their eyes at the Italians' wine and pork. The Italians and Poles wrinkled their noses at the Jews' herring.

There was some communication between the different ethnic groups; Allen Street was not entirely a Tower of Babel. For that the workers could thank Abe Herodetzky.

*     *     *

The day of the breakthrough started, as usual, at six in the morning. By nine, Abe, working his presser, enveloped in a cloud of moist steam that kept him slick with sweat, found his thoughts wandering. He could easily do his job without concentrating on it. Perhaps the heat made him silly, but on that day it came to him that he and his fellow workers were lost in a maze. It was only the swearing, shouting foreman who could see the way out.

Abe was on the verge of letting the thought drift out of his mind when on impulse he confided it in halting English to the Italian who worked the presser next to his. For months Abe and this Italian had worked side by side, but they had never done more than nod silently. After overcoming his initial surprise the Italian, a short, barrel-chested man with a big belly and tousled black curls as shiny as patent leather, smiled at Abe. Then he said something, but it was lost to Abe against the clattering din of the machines all around them.

That was all for two weeks, until one day at lunch-time the Italian left his usual place on the Italian side to approach Abe, who was sitting by himself, reading his copy of the
Forward
. The Italian asked him why he never brought food and Abe explained that he was saving his money, even to the extent of skipping lunch.

The Italian looked skeptical, but as he stared at Abe, he evidently realized it was the truth.

“My name is Stefano de Fazio,” he said in rhythmic, plodding English. “My wife, she gives me too much to eat.” He patted his ample stomach. “In here I got plenty chicken, bread and wine.” He presented a crumpled, oil-stained paper sack to Abe. “You take some, yes?”

Abe did not find it easy to believe this was happening. He just stared as the Italian sat down beside him.

Stefano de Fazio misunderstood Abe's hesitation. “Hey, I know you a Jew,” he commiserated, clapping Abe on the shoulder. He wagged his finger at the paper
sack. “Just chicken, bread and wine. No pork.” With that he reached into the parcel and produced a quart milk bottle half-filled with red wine. It had a wad of paper stuffed into its mouth where the cork was supposed to be.

Wine from an Italian Abe was not about to drink, especially not from a bottle that had been who-knew-where. He did have the presence of mind, however, to know that something momentous was taking place. It was something very American, and that was what decided him.

“My name's Abe Herodetzky. Pleased to meet you.” He'd smiled, doing his best to make the Italian think he was a Broadway sport. He held out his hand and Stefano shook it.

Next Abe made the ultimate gesture. He ate the chicken, wolfed it down without chewing. Stefano thought Abe was eating that way because he was famished, but Abe feared he'd get nauseated if he allowed himself to taste Italian poultry.

They began to talk a little each day, always careful to stay away from matters of religion and custom. They discussed not their differences, but what they had in common: tenement life and the sweatshop.

Eventually the other workers followed their lead. So it was that a few months later, when the union discovered them, the Allen Street workers knew enough about each other grudgingly to accept the union's gospel.

Today, as the hour when most of the men quit work for lunch approached, Abe paused to add up his tally. It had been a productive morning. Abe decided that he would reward himself with a few extra minutes with his newspaper. In a sweatshop there was no set time for eating. Each worker could take as little or as much time as he wished as long as he completed his quota for the day. A man could eat when he wanted or work right through, but it always seemed
that as soon as one man took out his food, so did the rest.

One by one the loft's machines grew quiet. Abe settled himself into a corner with his paper and his tin can of drinking water. He sipped the water to quiet his rumbling stomach. He'd grown used to sharing Stefano's lunch, but today the Italian was busy talking to his fellow countrymen.

Just as well, Abe thought. Lately Stefano had been making him a little nervous. The man was full of crazy union talk. Stefano was the shop's union representative and he took his position very seriously. Late at night clandestine union meetings were being held by ILGWU organizers, and Stefano attended them all and reported to the men of Allen Street. The latest report made it sound as if support for a strike was building.

This was especially ominous to Abe. What he feared most was a repetition of last year's strike. On September 27, 1909, the union shut down the Triangle Waist Factory on nearby Greene Street. The owners called in the police to break up the picket lines and a battle ensued. The result was a lengthy general sympathy strike that spread as far as Philadelphia.

Abe could not find within himself the courage to confront the stony-faced, club-wielding police with a picket sign, but he stayed out of work. The temptation to scab at twice the normal rate was awful, but he resisted. It was agony to sit idle and be forced to dip into his precious savings.

Last payday Stefano had collected two dollars from each man, “for a strike fund, just in case.” Abe paid and fervently prayed that it would turn out to be money he would never again see. Let the union keep it. Just let things stay calm; let the work remain steady.