King
The wedding had just ended and they began to prepare for a wedding dinner, when an unknown young man approached the Moldovan hijacker Ben Crick, nicknamed the King, and said that a new bailiff had arrived and a raid was being prepared for Benya. The king replies that he knows about both the bailiff and the raid that will begin tomorrow. She will be today, the young man says. Benya takes this news as a personal insult. He has a holiday, he marries his forty-year-old sister, Dvoir, and the lard are going to ruin his triumph! The young man says that the lard was feared, but the new bailiff said that where there is an emperor, there can be no king and that pride is dearer to him. The young man leaves, and three of Benin's friends leave with him, who return in an hour.
The wedding of the sister of the king of the raiders is a great celebration. Long tables burst with dishes and alien wines delivered by smugglers. The orchestra plays the carcass. Leva Katsap breaks a bottle of vodka on the head of her lover, Monya the Gunner shoots in the air. But the apogee comes when they begin to give gifts to the young. Drawn in raspberry vests, in red jackets, Moldavian aristocrats, with a careless movement of their hands, throw gold coins, rings, coral threads onto silver trays.
In the midst of the feast, anxiety encompasses guests who suddenly smell a burning, the edges of the sky begin to turn pink, and somewhere, a tongue of flame, narrow as a sword, shoots up into the sky. That unknown young man suddenly appears and, giggling, reports that the police station is on fire. He says that forty policemen came out of the station, but as soon as they retired fifteen steps, the station caught fire. Benny forbids guests to go watch the fire, but he himself goes with two comrades there. Around the site, city officials scurry around, throwing chests out of the windows, arrested people scatter in the guise. Firefighters cannot do anything, because there was no water in the adjacent crane. Passing by the bailiff, Benya gives him military honor and expresses his sympathy.
How it was done in Odessa
There are legends about the raider Ben Crick in Odessa. Old man Arie-Leib, sitting on the cemetery wall, tells one of these stories. At the very beginning of his criminal career, Benchik approached the one-eyed bindyuzhnik and raider Froim Grach and asked to be with him. When asked who he is and where he came from, Benya suggests trying it. On their advice, the hijackers decide to try Benny on Tartakovsky, which contains as much audacity and money as no Jew. At the same time, those gathered are blushing, because nine raids have already been made on the “one and a half Jew,” as Tartakovsky is called on Moldavanka. He was stolen twice for ransom and once buried with singers. The tenth raid was already considered a rude act, and therefore Benya came out, slamming the door.
Benya writes a letter to Tartakovsky asking him to put money under a barrel of rainwater. In a response message, Tartakovsky explains that he is sitting with his wheat without profit, and therefore there is nothing to take from him. The next day Benya came to him with four masked comrades and with revolvers. In the presence of the frightened clerk Muginshtein, the aunt son of Aunt Pesi, the raiders rob the cashier. At this time, a Jew, Savka Butsis, who was late for business and was drunk like a water carrier, breaks into the office. He stupidly waves his hands and accidentally shot from a revolver mortally wound the clerk Muginshtein. By order of Beni, the raiders flee from the office, and he swears to Savka Bucis that he will lie next to his victim. An hour after Muginshtein is taken to the hospital, Benya arrives there, calls the senior doctor and the nurse and, introducing himself, expresses the desire that the patient Joseph Muginshtein recover. Nevertheless, the wounded man dies at night. Then Tartakovsky makes noise all over Odessa. “Where does the police begin,” he yells, “and where does Benya end?” Benny in a red car drives up to Muginshtein’s house, where Aunt Pesya is struggling on the floor in desperation, and demands from her sitting here “one and a half Jew” for her a lump sum of ten thousand and pension to death. After the hassle, they converge on five thousand in cash and fifty rubles monthly.
The funeral of Muginshtein, Benya Crick, who was not yet called the King, is arranged in the first category. Odessa has not yet seen such a magnificent funeral. Sixty singers walk in front of the funeral procession, black plumes swinging on white horses. After the funeral service begins, a red car drives up, four raiders come out from it, led by Beney and bring a wreath of unseen roses, then they take a coffin on their shoulders and carry it. Benya gives a speech over the grave, and in conclusion asks everyone to lead to the grave of the late Savely Bucis. Amazed those present obediently follow him. He makes Cantor sing a full requiem over Savka. After its end, all in terror rush to run. Then the lisping Moyseyka sitting on the cemetery wall pronounces the word "king" for the first time.
Father
The story of Beni Crick's marriage is as follows. His daughter Basia, a gigantic woman with huge sides and cheeks of brick color, comes to the Moldovan bindyuzhnik and hijacker Froim Grach. After the death of his wife, who died from childbirth, Froim gave the new-born mother-in-law, who lives in Tulchin, and since then she has not seen her daughter for twenty years. Her unexpected appearance confuses and puzzles him. The daughter immediately takes on the improvement of the dad’s house. The large and figured Basia is not overlooked by young people from Moldavanka, such as the son of the grocer Solomonchik Kaplun and the son of the smuggler Moni the Gunner. Basia, a simple provincial girl, dreams of love and marriage. This is noticed by the old Jew Golubchik, who is engaged in matchmaking, and shares his observation with Froim Grach, who dismisses the insightful Golubchik and is not right.
From the day Basia saw Kaplun, she spends all evenings behind the gates. She sits on a bench and sews a dowry. Pregnant women are sitting next to her, waiting for their husbands, and before her eyes is the abundant life of the Moldavian woman - "a life full of sucking babies, drying rags and wedding nights, full of suburban chic and soldier's indefatigability." Then Basa becomes aware that the daughter of the dregsman cannot count on a worthy party, and she ceases to call her father his father, and calls him only a "red thief."
This continues until Basya sewed six nightgowns and six pairs of lace-up panties. Then she burst into tears and through her tears said to the one-eyed Froim Grach: “Each girl has her own interest in life, and only one I live as a night watchman in a strange warehouse. Either do something with me, dad, or I am doing the end of my life ... ”This impresses Grach: having dressed solemnly, he goes to the grocer Kaplun. He knows that his son, Solomonchik, is not averse to connecting with Baska, but he also knows that his wife, Madame Kaplun, does not want Froim Grach, just as a person does not want death. For several generations they have been grocers in their family, and Kapluny do not want to break traditions. The frustrated, offended Rook goes home and, without saying anything to the dressed up daughter, goes to bed.
Waking up, Froim goes to the hostess of the inn Lyubke Kazak and asks her for advice and help. He says that the grocers were very fat, and he, Froim Grach, was left alone and he had no help. Lyubka Cossack advises him to turn to Ben Crick, who is single and whom Froim had already tried on Tartakovsky. She leads the old man to the second floor, where there are women for visitors. She finds Benya Creek at Katyusha and tells him everything she knows about Bass and the affairs of the one-eyed Rook. “I'll think about it,” Benya answers. Until late at night, Froim Grach sits in the corridor near the door of the room, from which Katyusha groans and laughs, and patiently awaits Beni's decision. Finally Froim knocks on the door. Together they go out and agree on a dowry. They agree on the fact that Benya should take from Kaplun, the guilty of insulting family pride, two thousand. So the fate of the arrogant Kaplun and the fate of the girl Basi is decided.
Lyubka Cossack
The house of Lyubka Schneis, nicknamed Lyubka Cossack, stands on Moldavanka. It houses a wine cellar, an inn, an oatmeal and a dovecote. In the house, besides Lyubka, there is a guard and owner of the dovecote Evzel, a cook and pimp Pesya Mindl and manager Tsudechkis, with whom many stories are connected. Here is one of them - about how Tsudechkis acted as manager at the Lyubka's inn. Once he mocked up a thresher to a certain landowner and in the evening led him to celebrate the purchase at Lyubka. The next morning it turned out that the overnight landowner had escaped without paying. The watchman Evzel demands money from Tsudechkis, and when he refuses, he locks him in Lyubka’s room before the hostess arrives.
From the window of the room Tsudechkis observes how Lubkin is suffering from a nursing baby who is not accustomed to a nipple and who requires mother’s milk, while his mother, according to Pesy Mindl, who is looking after the child, “jumps over her quarries, drinks tea with Jews in the tavern„ Bear “buys contraband in the harbor and thinks of his son as last year’s snow ...”. The old man picks up a crying baby, walks around the room and, swaying like a tzaddik in prayer, sings an endless song until the boy falls asleep.
In the evening he returns from the city of Lyubka Kazak. Tsudechkis scolds her for trying to capture everything for herself, and leaves her own child without milk. When drunk sailors from the Plutarch ship, from whom Lyubka sells goods, leave drunk, she rises to her room, where she is met with accusations by Tsudechkis. He puts a small comb to Lyubkina’s chest, to which the child reaches, and he cries, pricked. The old man palms him with a nipple and thus wean the child from the mother's breast. Grateful Lyubka releases Tsudechkis, and in a week he becomes her manager.
