Page 88 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

A job in Warsaw
envelope containing an extra five rubles to bribe him into issuing the
attachment right away. The judge signed the papers and I left.
I was around sixteen years of age then, and very much of a village
boy—not knowing the language and being afraid of people. It was
my father’s hope to make a man out of me. The main clerk in the
collection agency was a private teacher who spared me some time for
lessons in the Russian language. He came to work at five in the
morning because we had to reach the courts as they were convened.
In the early morning and evening he worked on court papers in the
office, and during the day gave private lessons in Polish, Russian, and
Hebrew. I was just a rustic and it was hard for me in the beginning,
but that clerk taught me enough Russian to speak to the court
officials. If I had stuck to it, I would have learned a lot and probably
would have turned out to be a different man than I am today
Everything was all right except the bedding. After supper we went
to sleep at nine o’clock. I had slept on straw and on bare floors, but
never on a sheepskin coat. The sheep were not as we see them here,
but Russian or Caucasian sheep. A long coat with long hair was my
mattress, spread out on six Vienna chairs. Fleas had lived in that
heavy old fur coat and bred families for years and years. They
hobnobbed with me the whole night. There is no wisdom like
experience; I had experience with lice, but they are far below fleas in
intelligence. Fleas outclass lice in a hundred ways. The latter are slow,
hesitant, dozing, and dreamy. The vivacious flea is suave, lively,
acrobatic, like the best circus performer—some have even been
taught to act on stage. A sting here, a blood test there, and in a
minute she is here and there. Catching a flea is like catching a
rainbow. The flea never parades on your coat or takes a nip at your
flesh while you are in company or doing business. She waits for an
opportunity; when one is warm and sleeping in a dark room, she will
have her own way: drill a hole in the softest part of the body, take a
good drink of warm blood, and hop off into the bedding to rest and
digest her meal before venturing out for another foraging. You look
in the morning at the feeding spot and see a puncture, like a doctor’s
needle, surrounded by a red patch as big as a dime.
After a few nights of skirmishing, the fleas brought up their
reserves and attacked me on all sides. To sleep on a fur coat with its

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