“Secondly, I am telling you that my sun is beginning to shine in America. I am becoming a person—a business man.
“I have for myself a stand in the most crowded part of America, where people are as thick as flies and every day is like market-day by a fair. My business is from bananas and apples. The day begins with my pushcart full of fruit, and the day never ends before I count up at least $2.00 profit—that means four rubles. Stand before your eyes … I … Gedalyeh Mindel, four rubles a day, twenty-four rubles a week!”
“Gedalyeh Mindel, the water-carrier, twenty-four roubles a week …” The words leaped like fire in the air.
We gazed at his wife, Masheh Mindel—a dried-out bone of a woman.
“Masheh Mindel, with a husband in America—Masheh Mindel, the wife of a man earning twenty-four rubles a week!”
We looked at her with new reverence. Already she was a being from another world. The dead, sunken eyes became alive with light. The worry for bread that had tightened the skin of her cheek-bones was gone. The sudden surge of happiness filled out her features, flushing her face as with wine.
The two starved children clinging to her skirts, dazed with excitement, only dimly realized their good fortune by the envious glances of the others.
“Thirdly, I come to tell you,” the letter went on, “white bread and meat I eat every day just like the millionaires.
“Fourthly, I have to tell you that I am no more Gedalyeh Mindel—Mister Mindel they call me in America.