The Son From America
...e after evening prayers, he bring me some news he said “In Warsaw there were strikers who demanded that the czar abdicate. A heretic by the name of Dr. Herzl had come up with an idea that Jews should settle again in Palestine.” I listened and shook my head my face was yellowish and wrinkled like a cabbage leaf. There were bluish sacks under my eyes. I was half dead. My husband has to repeat each word he said to me I said the things that happens in the big cities. Here in Lentshin nothing happen except usual events a cow gave birth to a cow, a young people had a circumcision party stuff like that. Occasionally, some one dies. Lentshin have no cemetery so we have to take the corpse to Zakroczym. Lentshin had become a village with few young people. The young men went to Zakroczym, Nowy Dwor, Warsaw and some went to America like my son his letters were illegible, the Yiddish mixed with English. He sent pictures in which the men wear top hats and the women fancy dress like squiresses . My husband and I received some photographs. But our eyes were failing and neither of us has glasses we could barely make out the pictures. My son had sons and daughters with gentile names and grand-children who have married and have their own offspring. Their names so strange that we could never remember them A Talmud teacher who came to Lentshin said that “Americans walked with their heads down and their feet up” we could not understand that how was that possible ? But since the teacher said it must be truth I pondered for some time and said one can get accustomed to everything One Friday morning I was kneading the dough for the Sabbath loaves, the door opened and a noble man entered. He was so tall that he has to bend down and go through the door he was wearing a beaver hat a cloak bordered with fur. He was followed by chazkel, the coachman from Zakroczym who carried two leather valises with brass locks. In astonishment I raised my eyes. The noble man looked around and to the coach man in Yiddish “here is it” he took out a silver ruble and paid him the coachman tried to hand him change but he said “you can go now.” When the coachman closed the door the nobleman said “mother is me your son Samuel” As soon as I heard that my legs grew numb. My hands, to which pieces of dough where sticking, lost the power. My son hugged me and kissed my forehead and both cheeks. I began to cackle like a hen, “my son!” At the moment my husband came in from the woodshed, his arms pilled with logs he saw a noble man kissing me He dropped the wood and exclaimed “what is this.” My released me and embraced him “father” for a long time my husband couldn’t utter a word he wanted to recite holly words from the Yiddish Bible, but couldn’t remember a word the he asked “are you Samuel “ “Yes father I am “ “Well peace be with you” his father asked “why didn’t you let us know you are coming?” “didn’t you receive the ...