From Merrily We Go A-Wrong: My Philosophical Laundryman

by Yosel Cutler

translation by Mordecai Martin

Translator’s Note:

In seventh grade, my eldest sister’s Hebrew school teacher eyed the assembled miscreants before him, with a steely and cruel gaze that my sister feared, years before she too became a teacher and learned the horrors of the job. “There are two types of kids,” he said. “Wise guys . . . and those with wise guy potential.” This remark has passed into family legend, and we have often debated whether new acquaintances are truly class clown material, or simply have the potential to act out. 

Yosel Cutler, a protege of the great Yiddish satirist Moyshe Nadir, cartoonist for Der Groyser Kundes and the Morgn Freiheit, co-founder of Modicut, the first Yiddish puppet theater in the United States, certainly realized his wise guy potential. His electric and eclectic collection of humor stories and poems and cartoons, Muntergang, whose punning title I render here as Merrily We Go A-Wrong skewered the powerful alongside old-world rabbis, petite-bourgeoisie bosses of the Lower East Side, diamond merchants, and the Yiddish press and literary scenes. Even as he turned to Communism in the early 30s—as evidenced by Muntergang’s Yiddish orthography following the Stalinist reforms, so that holy words were spelled phonetically instead of in their usual Hebrew forms—Cutler maintained a zaniness and silliness in his work, proving Karl the sixth Marx Brother after Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Gummo.

My door opened and who should come in? My Laundryman from last year, a welcome guest. “Hello, comrade Laundryman!” I say, “How are you, what are you doing here?”

“Don’t ask.” he answers. “It’s exactly like asking a convict how he’s enjoying the good weather.^[1] So how are you, Mister Cutler? Where were you all summer?”

“Me?” I say, “I sweetened the summer by spending it on a green mountain with sweet air, and I wrote a small book on the most trivial things in the world. What did you do here with such a precious summer? Such a summer with such sweet, fresh sunny days, with new green life, with all the cool soft breezes that a Laundryman needs to revive his exhausted health!”

“Me?” The Laundryman says, “I pressed away the entire summer at the same ironing board on which I press all the hot moments of my middle age. For you, it might have been good, talking about green little breezes. By me, it’s pressing, ‘nuff said. A hot piece of bread with sweat, a hard piece of bread with death. With the smell of dirty laundry, with a hot tub of soapy water, with a crushed finger. Without green hills, without sweet air, without sun! Sunshine, shmunshine! That’s the story: Press and eat. No press? No eat! And tell me, I ask you, does your wife honk at you?”

I answer “It could be that she honks somewhere! For the time being I don’t know who my wife is yet!”

“Good for you, Mister Cutler, you don’t know who your wife is. But I do know.^[2] She honks at me, with our fourth little one on the way. She already can’t tie up laundry bundles anymore.”

“So,” I say, “You need to get an assistant to help you out!”

“Oy, I have” he says, “I’ve given “steady” employment to a mooch. He won’t leave me alone for all the money in the world! Call that a worker? I call that a mooch. But he’s my cashier! It’s OK for you, Mister Cutler. You’re an artist.”

“You think,” I say, “being an artist is all fun and games? It’s not so easy. I started catching spankings for art even before I could stand on my little feet.^[3] Beginning with drawing little people as soon as I stopped nursing! When my mother wanted to wean me, she would spread tar on the nipple of her breast. I would stain my mouth with it, crawl up onto the bed, and kiss out black little people on the white pillows. Here comes spanking number 1! When I got older, I drew a priest on my teacher’s high holiday machzor. Spanking number 2!

“I got a flaming spanking from a pious Jew, in the beis midrash. See, there was a small nail stuck on the Eastern Wall, on which this Jew hung his hat. I pulled out the nail and drew a nail in the same place with paint. I hid under a lectern and waited for him. Here he comes, he slowly ties on his prayer sash, takes off his hat and adjusts his yarmulke, and as always, without even looking, he hangs his hat on the “nail.” His hat fell. He is amazed, he thinks, probably I missed the nail. He picks up his hat and puts it precisely on the “nail”, very carefully, lets it go . . . Aha! His hat plops on the floor. He feels with his hand; it’s smooth. Here comes spanking number 3!^[4]

“It was my good luck, I was able to grab onto his beard; Although he had a very dignified, short beard. So the saying goes: When you’re drowning, you grab at the tiniest hair.”

“I’d bet,” said my Laundryman, “that such a nail is worth a good few bucks in America!”

I tell him that it wasn’t just the nail that stood on my path to Art. “About fifteen years ago, a priest hired me to draw that Jesus fella in his library. I mixed a little gold paint in a bowl to make the halo behind this Jesus kid’s head. A cat comes by, I smeared some on his little nose.^[5] I did not catch a beating for this. I was no longer a child, and did not need a beating, I only needed a job. Well, they fired me from the job. That’s Art for you!”

“That’s your own fault,” says the Laundryman.

I explain to him, “I don’t know who would be able to prevent himself from giving a little jerk while holding a paintbrush, when in comes a cat, and stands itself under his nose.^[6] But it’s not so bad to struggle with art. One gets a good grip on it, and then you’re on your way. However, when you’re fighting with Hunger, you stake your life. I’ve had days so hungry that I took a little piece of chalk and sketched a hot-dog on my tabletop, taking a bite of bread and erasing a bite of hot-dog with my hand. Bite, erase, bite, erase. The chalk-dog made me so sick I didn’t have the strength to shoo a fly from my nose.”^[7]

“But now,” the Laundryman says, “you’ve already had a good bite of this Art crisis, and you’ve worked your way up to a book! Very nice, very nice. When I was single, I also used to write a bit.

“I used to only seek the truth. I would knock on the door of my heart and say ‘HEY! Truth! What, are you sleeping?’ I wanted to trick my heart into letting out at least a crumb of naked truth. But the truth was so veiled by its own nakedness that it was impossible to recognize it without its hat. Here, I’ll tell you what it’s like. Some kids were bathing in a stream in Chelm. Two philosophers stood and looked on. One asked the other, ‘Who’s bathing here, are they boys or girls?’ and the other one said, ‘How can anyone tell? They’re not wearing any clothes!’^[8]

“The modern false world is a poor expert in naked nakedness, and therefore, indeed, Justice goes around like yesteryear. Here, I’ll tell you what it’s like: This policeman brought two folks before the Judge, a gangster and a shlimazel. The shlimazel held up his hand to his cheek and complained that the Gangster had slapped his cheek with his hand. The Gangster held up his hand and complained that the shlimazel had hit his hand with his cheek. The Judge scolded the shlimazel: ‘Stop sticking your cheek on people’s hands!’^[9]

“With the truth, it’s as easy to lie as with a real beard and peyos, (not a glued one). Spinoza, or my grandpa, it would seem, once said that a blind man walks as easily inside a mine as a sighted one. And I’ll tell you what, Mister Cutler: The philosopher who sought out truth in the daylight with a lantern was also a real chump.^[10]

“With every pauper scattering truth under his foot, both by day and by night, with not a single pauper missing, so what’s the search? A rich man has no use for truth, since he has “true” gold and diamonds. So you see, Mister Cutler, if a pauper is also a liar, he really has nothing. It’s like the old story: He has no diamonds, he has no money either, and if he doesn’t even have his word, so then what does he have?
“The poorman is doomed to choke on bitter truths. But bitter and dark will become the rich man, when the ‘poor’ truth grips him by the throat and looks him right between the eyes!”

He took a deep breath. I had a breath to insert a word:

“Comrade Laundryman, you sound like an absolute revolutionary!”
“Like the bear!” answers the Laundryman quickly, “You think, as the bear lies around he learns to dance? No, the bear “trainer” shoves him on top of a hot surface, he has to dance! With me, it’s the same. You think that such a Jew as me, with a wife and children, with a shlimazel Laundry, has a revolution in mind? Only when I’m pushed onto the hotplate! My heels aren’t granite! And even though I’m alone, (without employees), I’m a bit of a boss, a petty bourgeois, nonetheless, I want a revolution? I want a revolution.”

He hitched up his pants, and I pitched in a word:

“You know,” I say, “A revolution is only for the workers, and not for the employers. Karl Marx says, “Truly, in a revolution the workers have nothing to lose but their chains”

The Laundryman answered quick: “Both the worker and the employer have nothing more to lose than their chains.”

“You won’t survive the revolution!” I say.^[11] “They also won’t survive!” He says, “You don’t understand. I want to tell you: Both will lose their chains. The worker, the chains with the lock on his hands, the employer, the chain with the watch on his belly.^[12] There’s no little gold watch on my chain, Mister Cutler! I need revolution exactly as much as you! Give her to me today, I’ll welcome her as the prettiest guest. This Depression is getting under my skin, and I see that damn Blue Bird of the National Recovery Act everywhere. And unemployment won’t let up! I read in the newspaper a pretty cartoon. Really, I think it was you yourself!

“What’s the joke,” I ask.

He answers, “The cartoon with the lady, who asked her neighbor, an unemployed man, to go to the ten cent store and buy her a belt to hold up her skirt. The unemployed man responded, “Give me the dime, I’ll hold your skirt steady.”^[13] You think that’s a joke! To me, that’s a tragedy. But the best joke would have been you paying me the four cents for the wash, because my wife is waiting for me with lunch and I need it myself. “

“Unfortunately,” I say, “I will barter for the bill for the white washing this month.”

“What good is bartering?” he says, “One should bargain and break our enemies. Give me cash!”

“I have no money, beloved laundryman, I can only sing you a song!”

“Nu, so be it.” he says, “I won’t make a living from it, but it’s better than nothing.”

No wreath or garland of flowers/
Or bonnet with fine decoration/
Can satisfy today’s modern woman/
She finds that gift an equivocation

It’s no good even to swear/
that you will love her in all dedication/
No, the lady wooed today/
Must have a love declaration.

For example:
Your teeth are clear white/
As a white sheep flock/
Marching so hungry/
All round the block

Your lips–
So clever and young/
Are red as communist slogans/
On which lies never hung.^[14]

The Laundryman was engrossed and dazed. He opened his eyes wide, as if from a sweet dream and rascally murmured, “Nu, give me the new dirty wash. It’s all right for you, Mister Cutler. You have nothing, you pay nothing. But my landlord is another sort of person. Just to compare: When a person falls from the tenth floor, for example, it doesn’t bother him, this landlord, if only the knock wakes him up in time to demand rent! It doesn’t bother him if it murders you. But I’ve already talked too long again! My wife will be furious with me! Goodbye Mister Cutler!”

As he walked from the house, I remembered I had a dollar in cash. “Comrade Laundryman,” I yelled after him, “take your money!” “Later,” he answered, “I don’t have time to take it now!”

Yosel Cutler was a Yiddish satirist, cartoonist, puppeteer and poet. Born in Ukraine, he moved to New York at 15 with a brother to work as a house and sign painter. After meeting the writer and playwright Moyshe Nadir, Cutler's literary career took off, especially after meeting fellow cartoonist Zuni Maud. Together they formed Modicut, a radical leftist puppet theater that toured the Yiddish world before a difference of opinion came between Maud and Cutler. Attempting to take his half of the act west to Hollywood, Cutler died in a car crash near Denver in 1935. 10,000 people attended his funeral march.

Mordecai Martin is a 5th generation Jewish New Yorker, a translator of Yiddish and Hebrew poetry and prose, and a writer. He lives in Mexico City with his wife, child and cat. His translation work and original writing has appeared in Asymptote Journal, ANMLY, Honey Literary, Timber Journal, the tiny magazine, and Catapult, among other publications. He holds an MFA from Randolph College and can be found online at MordecaiMartin.net.