Yekl | Page 2

were brightened up by his good-natured boyish smile. Indeed, Jake's very nose, which was fleshy and pear-shaped and decidedly not Jewish (although not decidedly anything else), seemed to join the Mosaic faith, and even his shaven upper lip looked penitent, as soon as that smile of his made its appearance.
"Nice fun that!" observed the side-whiskered man, who had stopped sewing to follow Jake's exhibition. "Fighting--like drunken moujiks in Russia!"
"Tarrarra-boom-de-ay!" was Jake's merry retort; and for an exclamation mark he puffed up his cheeks into a balloon, and exploded it by a "pawnch " of his formidable fist.
"Look, I beg you, look at his dog's tricks!" the other said in disgust.
"Horse's head that you are!" Jake rejoined good-humoredly. "Do you mean to tell me that a moujik understands how to fight? A disease he does! He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his voice and gesticulation to the idea of clumsiness], an' dot'sh ull! What does he care where his paw will land, so he strikes. But here one must observe rulesh [rules]." At this point Meester Bernstein--for so the rabbinical-looking man was usually addressed by his shopmates--looked up from his dictionary.
"Can't you see?" he interposed, with an air of assumed gravity as he turned to Jake's opponent, "America is an educated country, so they won't even break bones without grammar. They tear each other's sides according to 'right and left,' [note] you know." This was a thrust at Jake's right-handers and left handers, which had interfered with Bernstein's reading. "Nevertheless," the latter proceeded, when the outburst of laughter which greeted his witticism had subsided, "I do think that a burly Russian peasant would, without a bit of grammar, crunch the bones of Corbett himself; and he would not charge him a cent for it, either."
[note] A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter s, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left position of a mark over it.
"Is dot sho?" Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. "I betch you he would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a hog before he had time to turn around."
"But they might kill each other in that way, ain't it, Jake?" asked a comely, milk-faced blonde whose name was Fanny. She was celebrated for her lengthy tirades, mostly in a plaintive, nagging strain, and delivered in her quiet, piping voice, and had accordingly been dubbed "The Preacher."
"Oh, that will happen but very seldom," Jake returned rather glumly.
The theatrical pair broke off their boasting match to join in the debate, which soon included all except the socialist; the former two, together with the two girls and the presser, espousing the American cause, while Malke the widow and "De Viskes" sided with Bernstein.
"Let it be as you say," said the leader of the minority, withdrawing from the contest to resume his newspaper. "My grandma's last care it is who can fight best."
"Nice pleasure, anyhull," remarked the widow. "Never min', we shall see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to support."
Jake colored. "What does a chicken know about these things?" he said irascibly.
Bernstein again could not help intervening. "And you, Jake, can not do without 'these things,' can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to live without them."
"Don't you like it? I do," Jake declared tartly. "Once I live in America," he pursued, on the defensive, "I want to know that I live in America. Dot'sh a' kin' a man I am! One must not be a greenhorn. Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The way it is in Russia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of a Christian?"
"Are there no other Christians than fighters in America?" Bernstein objected with an amused smile. "Why don't you look for the educated ones?"
"Do you mean to say the fighters are not ejecate? Better than you, anyhoy," Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his Semitic smile. "Here you read the papers, and yet I'll betch you you don't know that Corbett findished college."
"I never read about fighters," Bernstein replied with a bored gesture, and turned to his paper.
"Then say that you don't know, and dot'sh ull!"
Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly shopmate and in his own.
"Alla right, let it be as you say; the fighters are not ejecate. No, not a bit?" he said ironically, continuing to address himself to Bernstein. "But what will you say to baseball? All college boys and tony peoplesh play it," he concluded triumphantly. Bernstein remained silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. "Ah, you don't answer, shee?" said Jake, feeling put out.
The awkward pause which