Page 83 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Idling in Pelcovizna
remaining the whole day without food catching a few smelt or perch;
sometimes we stayed until dark when fishing was poor. Our bait was
flies and earthworms. Flies were plentiful in a house which never saw
or knew what a screen on a window looked like, which had garbage
thrown in front of it, which had no sanitary conditions. Sometimes
we got hold of a piece of Swiss cheese and fished for whitefish, but
they were scarce in those waters. Once we caught a whitefish
weighing a pound and a half or so, and our joy and excitement was
beyond description.
It was very boring standing in the water, hungry and with wet feet,
waiting and watching for the end of the pole to quiver and then jerk
when the little victim struggled to get off the pin. Then we would
quickly pull back the line, looking on the sand for the perch, a little
disk glimmering like silver. But often it would be lost halfway out in
the water. So we would climb around on the sandy palisades,
searching for the round holes made by swallows to lay their eggs and
nest their young. The banks of the Vistula where we lived were not
very high, only ten or fifteen feet above the water. In the spring the
swallows came and bored holes in the reddish sandy soil the size of
their own bodies to the length of a man’s arm. We used to try to
reach into the nest, not for any purpose whatever, just to see the size
and color of the eggs. I do not remember if we ever did get any eggs.
My arm was not long enough and the hole was smaller than a child’s
hand; the swallow is a very small bird.
My mother was a pious woman, but also very smart and
humorous. She was also brave when in a fight with the Polacks or
among the family. Once, when a man grabbed my father by the
throat in a quarrel, my mother ran out from the house, grabbed a
rock and hit the man on the head, knocking him down. I also
remember her taking a piece of wood and defending us against a
drunken soldier. But she was not a strong woman; having had seven
children she could not be very strong, yet she had courage, did
housework and also a little butchering. Twice a week she marketed
meat to the retail trade, which seemed to develop into a fair business.
Unfortunately, Fate decreed against her. She was cutting a piece of
meat for a customer, and stuck the point of the boning knife into her
wrist. It was not a serious cut, and the custom in that country, where

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