Page 72 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Wisoka Mazovieck

During those six months I received no support from home,
except for a silver twenty-five-kopek coin my mother sent me with a
cotton coat through a man of Pelcovizna who went to the market fair
held in Wisoka once every six months. On that day all the farmers
within a radius of many miles came to town to sell their products and
buy clothing, shoes, nails, and every other item carried in the shops.
They brought horses, cattle, chickens, pigs, and timber. All the Jewish
stores in town moved their wares out into the large cobbled town
square, and the farmers and their wives and children had a good time.
Some got drunk, some fought, and some lost their money to
pickpockets. The square was packed with horses and wagons, oxen
and cows, and amusements were provided for men who had waited
six months to do some living. It was the greatest day in Wisoka, as
well as in other towns. The man from Pelcovizna had come to this
affair to buy cattle, and my mother had sewn a quarter of a ruble into
the sleeve of a gingham coat. She mistrusted that cattle dealer with
even so small a sum of money.
Wisoka had not one bathtub in which one could wash himself, but
it did have a Russian bath with lots of steam. That village had no
boiler to generate steam, but, as in similar towns in that country, it
had a single large room with steps or benches on the walls reaching
up to the ceiling. In the center was a square box built of bricks and
filled with cobblestones, under which a wood fire burned. When
water was thrown from buckets onto the heated stones, steam filled
the room. They had small whisk brooms made of branches, which
one took up on the steps, dipped in cold water, and lightly whipped
oneself. In that hot steamy room it circulated the blood and made
one feel vigorous.
Another important feature of those baths was a row of
clotheslines close to the ceiling where the heat is intense. Poor people
hung up their underwear there, for the purpose of exterminating all
the vermin that had accumulated during a week’s wear. I was no
exception to this. The cooties kept company with me and the other
boys, and when Friday afternoon came and school broke up, I
sneaked into the steam bath—as I did not have the five kopeks
admission fee—swiped a broom, hung my apparel on the high line,
and whipped myself furiously. Like a dog that growls with joy when
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