The Fighter (2 page)

Some robbers wait for the end of market day. Having sold all his vegetables, the peasant is going back to his village. He has bought cigarettes, candles, and other goods that the villagers have ordered. The robber jumps onto his cart noiselessly, rustles around in the bags to feel what they
contain, then throws cigarette packs and candles to his accomplices. There is a saying in Yiddish: “The robber is so skilful that he would steal the crack of your whip.”

As soon as my legs are strong enough, my brother Anschel finds work for me.

“You know all the thieves, Moshe. I'll introduce you to a peasant who'll give you a job as a guard.”

“If I see a thief, I give him a headbutt!”

“You'd better not. You pull the peasant's jacket and show him the thief, that's all.”

The peasant's eyes widen when he sees his new guard. I am five years old, but I am very small.

“This runt will protect my goods?”

“That's the whole point. The robbers won't notice him. They won't be very cautious, so he'll be able to spot them easily.”

As I perform my task quite well, the peasant gives me three potatoes. A real treasure!

Resourceful Anschel has found an unlimited stock of food:

“The owner of the stables wants me to feed the horses. I told him you would help me. We can eat as much as we want.”

“Horse food?”

“Potatoes. We grind potatoes and mix them with oats.”

We can even put potatoes into our pockets and bring them home. The owner of the stables doesn't care. We cost
much less than regular workers. I'm glad I'm using a spade and turning the grinder's crank. Since my legs are weak, I want to strengthen my arms. I have decided to become very strong. I lift up stones, I climb trees, I carry crates for the peasants.

Even when we gain weight, we still suffer from skin rashes because we don't get enough vitamins. That's one way you can know whether someone is poor: we poor people scratch ourselves all the time.

My mother wants to send me to public school. It's free, which is quite convenient. I'd learn to speak Polish. This might be useful later on. The principal warns her: “I can't guarantee his safety. You'd better send him to one of your own schools.”

So I'm a pupil in the Jewish school. They don't ask us for tuition. How could my mother pay?

In the public school, the other kids would beat me to a pulp during recess. Here there is no danger—as long as I stay inside the walls. After school, I do have to walk home. The Polish schoolboys attack us on the way. With my crooked legs, I can't flee like the others. I try to catch a Pole by his lapels to give him a good butt. I'm much too small. My head comes to the level of his belly! Thanks to my small size, they take pity and don't hit me too hard.

I find a large bag that used to hold potatoes. I ask my
mother for small pieces of cloth to fill it up. I call it a punching ball. I hang it from the doorframe between our room and the kitchen. I hit it for hours every day. My brothers and my sister laugh at me. You won't laugh anymore when I'm champion of the world!

By and by, I grow up and the shape of my legs improves. When I'm seven, my uncle Prezman decides it's time I go to the synagogue with him. He replaces my father, who should have taken care of my religious education. My uncle picks a very solemn day: Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. The synagogue is right in our courtyard. It is just the first floor of one of the houses. It looks like a big store. It smells of cold tobacco and onions. It is full of smoke in winter, like the other houses, because they heat it with brown coal, which is cheaper. We must spend the whole day in this holy place, praying and fasting.

“Uncle Prezman?”

“Yes, Moshe.”

“The other years, I used to eat on the day of Yom Kippur.”

“You shouldn't have. At least this year you won't.”

“Why, Uncle Prezman?”

“Moshe, you're spending the day inside the synagogue. This is the last place where you could eat something today.”

“Hey, I think that I fast enough on other days!”

I get out of the synagogue and vow never to enter it again.

I fast so much that I faint in class. The school principal gives me bread and sweetened milk to get me back on my feet.

Despite hunger, I become very strong. When we practice wrestling, none of my schoolmates can beat me. Outside, when Poles attack us, I give them a taste of my headbutts and knee kicks. I also know a secret trick. I grab my opponent by his jacket lapels; I bend my knee and raise my foot to his stomach; I roll on my back, taking him down with me, then I let his jacket go and straighten my leg, throwing him back behind me. He usually stays on the ground for at least ten minutes. What's for sure is that he won't ever feel like bothering me again.

I still don't understand why the Poles hate the Jews. They shout, “Filthy Jews! Go back to your own land!” My land is Poland. My brother Schmiel, who is quite a scholar, says they mean to send us back to Palestine, where Jews lived two thousand years ago.

Their religious faith feeds their hate. If we want to remain alive, we'd better stay home when they march in the streets on a Sunday or a Catholic holiday. One Sunday, the son of the vodka seller walks out of the courtyard just as a religious procession is marching by. He is a poor simple-minded boy.

“Hey, you, are you Jewish?” some fellows who come at the tail of the procession ask him.

Instead of answering, he grins foolishly. The Poles think he is laughing at them. They start beating him up.

“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 to 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!”