Leah the Fishmonger

All along the street, on both sides, on the lowest floor of the houses there are a multitude of stores, large and small. The majority of them are pressed into holes so narrow as to allow passage for only one person, and in crevices in the walls, where a person cannot even enter save for the palm of his hand. Many of them have only one wall: a few panels fastened onto the outside of one of the walls, or in a courtyard’s entranceway, into which a “store” is crowded. Over the doors of the stores, even those with four walls, no signs are posted, and in their place, in the entrance of the store, stands a table or bench where the wares are laid out for display, in many cases hanging by pegs on the door or outside on the lintel, or resting by the side of the street. These wares obstruct the way, so that passersby have to stick to their path in the middle of the street. For the most part, there rest on the sides of the street in front of the stores—some of them on benches—bags of flour, barley flakes, oats, jams, rice, millet, potatoes, sweet relish [liftan], bread, challahs made of fine flour, butter, cheese, salt, herring, pickled cucumbers, tar, wax, coal, plaster, shovels, wooden kitchenware, pots, pitchers, ropes, buckets, old clothes, head and neck-kerchiefs, and the like. In order to relieve the customers of the bother, so that they might know all the good things squirreled away in the shops, without any toil or trouble, there are living signs, speaking signs, in the persons of male and female shopkeepers or their assistants. By the look of their faces and their outfits—on which the residue of all the merchandise in their shops are visible—they would give the passersby a reliable notion of what is to be found there. They announce, in a loud voice, everything to be found in their shops, calling to the passersby to come in and buy.

In the street and in the courtyards, on all possible sides, especially in the synagogue and yeshiva courtyards, the passersby would see innumerable shops, portable shops without ceilings or walls, without doors or windows, open on all sides, standing on the sides of the street, on the cobblestones, or carted and carried by hand from place to place; composed of baskets and boxes, tables and benches, troughs and barrels, pots and bowls and handfuls filled with all kinds of foodstuffs, as well as clothing and various objects. These shops fill the whole length and breadth of the street. They also have their living and speaking “signs”: the female shopkeepers, for the number of men operating these shops is very small in the Jewish street, insignificant in comparison with the women. The women are old and young, mostly ugly and filthy, their heads wrapped in old kerchiefs, clad in rags—tattered dresses from whose holes would peek here and there a piece of old fluff, dirty undergarments, or a patch of flesh, mostly the elbow, the heart, and the legs—and old, torn shoes from which the tips of their toes are visible. They, too, strained every effort to ease the burden of the passersby—mostly female, who usually buy their wares in this street, so that they would easily know what is found in their stores—by announcing loudly everything they have, stressfully crowding the street, so that a man could not pass through, except by great exertion, without his clothes being soiled with flour, straw, feathers, fluff, and the like. Even worse and more bitter is the fate of any woman passing through, for she is beset on all sides by the shopkeepers and basket hawkers, each pulling her toward them and deafening her ears with their calls and demands, their oaths and curses.

“My dear lady! Madam!” shouts the voice of one of the shopkeepers, calling to one of the women passing through the market, basket in hand, “what do you want to buy? Fine bread white as snow!”

“Over here madam. Over here! Her bread is coarse with bran! My bread will melt in your mouth like cake!” calls a second shopkeeper.

“She lies, madam! Look at this bread; there is none like it in the whole city!”

“Don’t listen to that floozy, madam! Her bread is flat and tasteless,” and while speaking, she steps out of the shop and grabs her cloak, drawing her into her store.

“Let me go! I don’t want to buy any bread,” cries the woman.

“Look at this bread, madam, fit for the finest tables in the city!”

“But I don’t want any bread now!”

“Madam! Madam! Come here! Sesame cakes! Fluted cakes! Challahs made with the finest flour! Challah for Shabbat! Light as feathers! Shining like the sun!”

“Here, here, madam! White flour! Fine flour! All kinds of flour! Seven pennies for a pound! Eight, nine, ten!” comes the voice of one of the girls, who was covered in flour from head to toe, speaking rapidly and approaching the woman.

“But let me pass through! See here, girl, you have spilled flour all over my clothes! Go!”

“Ladies, ladies! God bless you! Come to me!—What would you like to buy? Flaked barley! Rice! Millet! For Shabbat!”

“Come to me, ladies! She is too expensive!”

“Liar! Liar! Very cheap! Cheap! Practically giving it away!”

“What do you want for a cup of barley?”

“What do I want? A great bargain, fourteen pennies for two cups of coarse barley.”

“No! I will only pay six and a half pennies a cup.”

“No, madam! I myself paid that much! Let God grant me to bring my daughter to the huppah, as I speak the truth.”

“Ladies, ladies! Turnips and honey.”

“Goose schmaltz! Gribenes!¹ Fresh off the skillet!”

“Come to me, ladies! Hers are rotten! Poison! Enough to kill you.”

“Potatoes as big as pumpkins!”

“Baked potatoes! Fit for a king! Yeshiva boys, come to me! Three potatoes a penny!”

“If you give me four for a penny, I’ll buy!”

“Nissele! Don’t you owe me two pennies for the potatoes you bought from me on credit last week? And why are you buying from someone else?”

“Because yours are rotten!”

“Mine? Rotten? My potatoes are rotten!? What else are you going to say? Did you hear him? Everyone knows that there are none like mine in the whole Jewish street, and he says they are rotten! Glutton! May your guts rot! Give me the two pennies you owe me! This minute!”

“I’ll pay you another time.”

“Another time? Maybe you won’t live till then! Lowlife! Shameless! I will report to Reb Yekl, your supervisor! I will tell him about today too!”

“Please, Gnendl! Don’t be mad at me! Please don’t say anything to Reb Yekl! I will buy from you!”

“Okay, if you do, I will have pity on you, dear boy! How many pennies worth do you want to buy? Tell me, my dear! My soul!”

“Beans! Beans! Tender beans! Dried beans! Hot beans!”

“Come to me! To me! All the finest people of the city buy my beans, may God bless me with ‘mazl tov’—Her beans are full of maggots!”

“Let worms eat you, hussy!”

“A plague in your belly!”

“Your belly should distend!”

“Stuffed blinis, ladies, hot blintzes!² Ladies! Get ’em hot! Blintzes for sale!”

“Come here! Come to me! Blintzes! Ladies! Three! Three! Three! For two pennies!”