Before leaving the quarantine station the boys traded in their money for American dollars. Right before his eyes, Yitzhak saw his fortune dwindle by half; it seemed two rubles were only worth, more or less, one dollar. Here he had thought he had come to America—di goldeneh medina, the golden land—to make his fortune, and here he was already impoverished! He saw Hans staring at his American dollars in a state of bewilderment too! He too had handed over many more marks. Then they looked at each other in their mutual state of shock before they started to laugh at themselves and at each other. Well, they’d have to start all over and make a new fortune!
They stepped out into the light of the day, and that too was a shock after the dark of the cavernous building they had just left. Yitzhak blinked, then looked around. There was a fence with a crowd of people standing behind it and there was an air of expectancy emanating from this crowd. Yitzhak realized that these were the friends and relatives of those immigrants who were being met, and then as these fortunates passed through the gate to the “outside,” there was a great embracing, a pounding of backs, exuberant kissing, shouts of joy and recognition.
Suddenly, Yitzhak was filled with a tremendous sense of loss, a feeling of envy that stuck in his throat and made him want to cry. And when had he cried? Never. Not even when he had ridden away from Slobodka forever, even as the tears coursed down his mother’s cheeks.
He wondered where these friends and relatives had come from. How had they known to be here on this particular day of release? Who had summoned them? How had they been reached? If only his Uncle Yacob, whom he had never known, could have stepped out from that crowd of welcomers to pound him on the back, to embrace him, to ask a multitude of questions all at once about Dorie, Yacob’s own daughter, about Yitzhak’s parents, about all those loved ones at home ... Yitzhak wondered if he would have recognized his Uncle Yacob, or Yacob him. Most probably. They were both Markoffs and everyone said all the Markoff men looked alike. Of course Markoff was no longer his name and he no longer had his beard. But then Yitzhak reassured himself: he still looked like a Markoff even without the beard. He was determined to find his Uncle Yacob even if it took him all day and the next.
He turned to Hans. “Well, what do we do next?”
“We’ll wait for Otto and the others to come back. They’ve gone to find out how to get to New York, the real New York.”
They waited and waited until it became clear that Otto and the others were not coming back; revenge, most likely, on Otto’s part, and a joke on the part of the others. They’d been left to fend for themselves without a word of English between them. For a moment or two they looked at each other bewildered, but then they broke out into laughter again. They were young; they were strong; and so far anyway, they had each other. Besides, they—the officials—wouldn’t allow them to hang around without any notion as to where to go or what to do. Would they? Even if there wasn’t an official interpreter, they must have some kind of provisions made for cases like theirs. They must!
Hans spotted an official at the gate. He was looking at the pieces of paper others were thrusting at him and then gesturing, pointing. Hans dug his own piece of paper out of his pocket with his uncle’s name and address and showed it to the uniformed gentleman who glanced at it quickly and uttered a few words, one or two of which were in German. At the same time he pointed—”Ferryboat. “
“Ferryboat,” Hans said to Yitzhak. “Ferryboat,” Yitzhak repeated to Hans. It was their very first English word!
They passed through the last gate that separated them from the new world! Finally, they were really in America! They looked at each other, grinning widely, and then they started to run. They just ran without even knowing where they were running. When they slowed down to catch their breath, they looked around for the ferryboat that would take them to the real New York where Hans would find his train to Milwaukee, and Yitzhak—his Uncle Yacob.
When they stepped off the ferryboat and walked a few blocks east, it was truly another world, as different from Staten Island as the new land was from the old. There were hundreds of people, maybe thousands, scurrying about, and great blasts of noise. There were vehicles pulled by horses which were called streetcars, and the streets were one great marketplace with vendors hawking their merchandise in loud bellows amidst organ-grinders, men playing accordions and fiddles with their hats outstretched, and boys playing a game of “one o’cat,” which involved a ball and a bat. And the buildings—ten, twenty stories into the sky, one next to the other with only a dark alley between.
The two boys were overwhelmed and confused. Hans sighted a policeman and wanted to ask him where his train station could be found but Yitzhak wouldn’t allow him to do this. Never ask a policeman anything. In Slobodka, the general rule had been to stay as far away as possible from anyone in a uniform. Although his mother had always said that the authorities in America were on the side of the people, Yitzhak wasn’t sure this was true. After all, his Mother had never been to America. It was just possible she was wrong.
Besides, all around him were literally hundreds of Jews he could speak to, ask questions of. One thing about Jews was that one could always distinguish them from the others while Hans might have trouble telling a German from a Pole, a Russian or even an Englishman. Yitzhak assured Hans that when the time came for him to go he himself would ask a Jew about the train that would take him to his uncle. In the meantime, he would try to find out where it was that his own uncle, Yacob, was located.
He went up to those Jews with long beards and broadbrimmed hats, one after the other, inquiring if they knew one Yacob Markoff. They gazed at him in amazement. Who was this greenhorn who looked like a goy and spoke Yiddish with a Litvak accent sprinkled heavily with German besides? When Yitzhak introduced himself with the name he was barely acquainted with himself—Wilhelm von Marx, they looked at him as if he were crazy and tried to move away from him, muttering “... meshuge ...” Those who answered him at all told him they had never heard of a Yacob Markoff. Someone knew a Markoff in a place called Brooklyn, which had just become part of New York City, but his first name was Morris. Another knew an Israel Markoff who lived over on Division Street, wherever that was, but no one knew of a Yacob Markoff or where he could be found. Then it dawned on Yitzhak that if they had given him a new name, an American name, then it was quite possible they had also given his Uncle Yacob a new name too when he had arrived in the country.
All in all, it was quite possible that Yacob Markoff as such no longer existed and that he, Yitzhak, who also no longer existed under that name, was on a hopeless quest. Once he had accepted the futility of looking for his uncle, Yitzhak discovered that he was hungry, and he and Hans decided to get something to eat. And what a choice they had with carts all about them laden with goodies of all sorts, and saloons (called taverns at home) and restaurants in abundance. It was a veritable feast of gustatory delights. All they had to do was make their choice. First they had a sausage piled high with sauerkraut and slathered with mustard—a touch of the familiar—and then they went into one of the small shops and had coffee and cakes sprinkled with nuts and sugar. Then, sighting a saloon displaying a sign with a stein of beer with a big five on it, they quickly ducked inside to have a draught to wash it all down. They paid their five cents and discovered a lunch, free with the cost of the beer! There were hard-boiled eggs, slabs of various cold meats slapped between thick slices of bread and great hunks of cheese. They gorged themselves; Yitzhak alone devoured six hardboiled eggs, until the bartender threw them dirty looks. Then, chortling, they ran outside and spotted two young boys coming out of a place called an “Ice-cream Parlor.” The boys were licking with obvious relish at something white and creamy. It looked irresistible and they dashed inside to buy some of whatever it was for themselves. Coming out of the parlor with their own paper cones and tasting of the substance which was icy cold and melted on the tongue in a pool of delicious sweetness, they stopped walking and stood in one place until they finished off their cones in a state of bliss. All around them the hordes, intent on their pursuit of daily life in the city, streamed past them, jostling, pushing, completely disregarding their existence.
They alternately walked and ran without a thought to where they were headed, stopping frequently for a taste of this or that, washing it down with a foamy brew. They looked into the store windows full of incredible things, watched women hanging up their wash in funny little cages outside their windows, goggled in astonishment at the “El,” a contraption that seemed something like a cross between a train and a caravan of wagons attached one to another, and which ran with an astonishing amount of noise high up, higher than the rooftops, almost as if it were a train in the sky. An amazing place, this America!
“Do you think possibly that’s the train that goes to Milwaukee? Like that? High in the sky?” Hans asked Yitzhak.
Yitzhak shrugged. Anything was possible in America, it seemed. “Don’t worry,” he assured Hans. “When the time comes, we’ll find out.” In the meantime, he was reluctant to give up Hans’s companionship ... his only friend in this strange land. He already knew that this New York City was going to be a lonely place without him.
Even when night fell the streets were still filled with life, another characteristic of the city that amazed Yitzhak. Even the children still screamed and laughed and played their games. Vendors still proclaimed the virtues of their goods and couples walked hand in hand, arm in arm, while the heat of the day quivered in the humid air about them. America was a land of street people, Yitzhak concluded, unlike at home where people were happy to be home, safe, behind their own doors at night and if the men went out at all, they headed directly for the local tavern or inn.
He and Hans had walked all day without having any idea as to where they were. But they were tired. When they came to a park with benches, an oasis of green in the treeless city, they were glad to sit down and wonder where they would spend the night. Observing men dressed very much like themselves sprawled out on the benches, asleep, they decided to do the same, catch a few winks where they could. So they shared the bench since it was the only one unoccupied, their heads on opposite ends.
Yitzhak didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he awoke to a rapping on the soles of his boots. He opened his eyes to see a policeman standing over him, with a club in hand. Quickly alert, Yitzhak was prepared to defend himself, to do whatever was necessary not to fall victim to the dreaded uniform’s club.
As he warily sat up, the officer spoke and his tone, while not exactly friendly, wasn’t harsh either. The words he spoke were English, but with a musical lilt to them. (Later, Yitzhak would learn that it was an Irishman’s brogue.) Then when Yitzhak muttered a few Yiddish words under his breath, the policeman answered with a few Yiddish words of his own; Yitzhak was not surprised—even the Russian policemen and the Cossacks knew some Yiddish.
Yitzhak understood that the policeman wanted Hans and him to come along, that he was going to provide them with a place to sleep indoors. At first Hans protested, but reluctantly he agreed to go along at Yitzhak’s urging. Once at the police station, they were led to a large cell where men slept on a dirty concrete floor without even the thinnest of straw mattresses. The policeman pointed to a space on the floor that was unoccupied, then closed the cell door and locked it. When they heard the lock click in place, the friends glanced at each other in dismay. Had Yitzhak misunderstood? Was it possible they had come to this new land to find freedom and instead had found a country where they jailed you for such an innocent act as sleeping on a bench? And for how long? Yitzhak cursed himself for a fool. Better he should have resisted, then fled.
But in the morning, very early, the cell door was unlocked and the men were given hot but very bad coffee in tin cups with rolls that were only slightly stale, and shown the front door. They were free to leave after all! One way or another, no matter how crude the accommodations, the fact was that they had been shown an act of kindness in a strange country, in a city full of strangers.
Still, when Hans asked Yitzhak if he wanted to come along with him to Milwaukee to work in the brewery too, Yitzhak did not hesitate a second. “Come,” he said. “Let’s find out where this railroad station is.”