Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

by Sholem Aleichem

  “Listen, Menachem Mendl, I have an idea. Why don’t you come spend a day with us in the village? It will be a chance to rest your weary bones. You’ll be a most welcome guest. In fact, the old lady will be tickled pink to have you.”

  Well, it didn’t take much to convince him, and the two of us set out for my place. There was some to-do when we got there. A guest! A genuine third cousin! That may not seem like much, but kinfolk are best folk, as they say. What a carnival! How are things in Kasrilevke? How is Uncle Boruch Hirsh? How is Aunt Leah Dvossi? How is Uncle Yosl Menashe? How is Aunt Dobrish? What are all the children doing? Who’s died? Who’s been married? Who’s divorced? Who’s sick or expecting? “Golde,” I said at last, “what’s a wedding more or a circumcision less to you when we have nothing to put in our mouths? Koyl dikhfin yeysey veyitzrokh—it’s no fun dancing on an empty stomach. If there’s a bit of borscht around, that will do nicely, and if there isn’t, no matter—we’ll start right in on the knishes, or the kreplach, or the knaidlach, or the varnishkes, or the pirogen, or the blintzes. You needn’t limit yourself to one course, but be quick.”

  In a word, we washed our hands and sat down to a fine meal. “Have some more, Menachem Mendl,” I said when I was done. “It’s all vanity anyway, if you don’t mind my quoting King David. It’s a false and foolish world, and if you want to be healthy and enjoy it, as my Grandma Nechomeh used to say—oh, she was a smart one, all right, sharp as a whistle!—then you must never forget to lick the pot clean.” My poor devil of a guest was so hungry that his hands shook. He didn’t stop praising my wife’s cooking and swearing up and down that he couldn’t remember when he had last eaten such delicious dairy food, such wonderful knishes and tasty varnishkes. “Don’t be silly, Menachem Mendl,” I said. “You should try her pudding or her poppy cake—then you would know what heaven on earth is really like.”

  After the meal we chatted a bit as people do. I told him about my business and he told me about his; I talked about everything under the sun and he talked about Yehupetz and Odessa, where he had been, as they say, through thick and thin, now on top of the world and now in the pits, one day a prince, and the next a pauper, and then a prince again, and once more without a shirt on his back. Never in my life had I heard of such weird, complicated transactions: stocks and shares, and selling long and short, and options and poptions, and the Devil only knows what else. And for the craziest sums too, ten and twenty thousand rubles, as though money were water! “To tell you the truth, Menachem Mendl,” I said, “you must have a marvelous head on your shoulders to figure all that out. There’s one thing I don’t get, though: if I know your wife as I think I do, how does she let you run around loose like this without coming after you on a broomstick?”

  “Ah, Reb Tevye,” he says with a sigh, “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. She runs hot and cold, she does, mostly freezing. If I were to read you some of the letters she writes me, you’d see what a saint I am. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s a wife for, if not to put a man in his place? Believe me, I have a worse problem than her, and that’s my mother-in-law. I don’t have to describe her to you—you know her well enough yourself.”

  “What you’re trying to tell me,” I say, “is that she’s just like it says in the Bible, akudim nekudim uvrudim. Or to put it in plain language, like an abcess on a blister on a boil.”

  “Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. And if you think the boil and the blister are bad, wait until you hear about the abcess.”

  In a word, we stayed up gabbing half the night. By then I was dizzy from all his wild stories about the thousands of rubles he had juggled as though he were Brodsky. All night long my head was in a whirl: Yehupetz … gold imperials … Brodsky … Menachem Mendl and his mother-in-law … It wasn’t until the next morning, though, that he finally got to the point. What was the point? It was, said Menachem Mendl, that since money was so scarce in Yehupetz that you couldn’t even give away your goods, “You, Reb Tevye, have a chance not only to make a nice killing but also to help save my life, I mean literally to raise me from the dead!”

  “And you,” I said to him, “are talking like a child. Are you really so foolish as to believe that I’m sitting on Yehupetz’s millions? I only wish the two of us could earn in a year a tenth of what I’d need to be half as rich as Brodsky.”

  “Of course,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that. But what makes you think I have such big sums in mind? Let me have a hundred rubles and in a couple of days I’ll turn them into two hundred for you, into three hundred, into six hundred, into seven. In fact, I’ll make it an even thousand.”

  “That may very well be,” I said. “All things are possible. But do you know when they are? When there’s a hundred in the first place. When there isn’t, it’s begapoy yovoy uvegapoy yeytsey. Do you know what Rashi has to say about that? That if you invest a fever, you’ll get consumption for your profit.”

  “Come, come,” he says to me. “A hundred rubles, Reb Tevye, you’re sure to find. With your business, your reputation, touch wood …”

  “What’s my reputation got to do with it?” I ask. “A reputation is a wonderful thing to have, but would you like to know something? It’s all I do have, because Brodsky has all the rest. If you must know exactly, it may be that I could squeeze together somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly more or less a hundred rubles, but I can also think of a hundred different ways to make them disappear again, the first of which is marrying off my eldest daughter …”

  “But that’s just it!” he says. “Listen to me! When will you have another opportunity, Reb Tevye, to invest a hundred rubles and wind up, God willing, with enough money to marry off every one of your daughters and still have plenty to spare?” And for the next three hours he’s off on another serenade about how he can turn one ruble into three and three into ten. “The first thing you do,” he says, “is take your hundred and buy ten whatchumacallits with it.” (That wasn’t his word, I just don’t remember what he called them.) “You wait a few days for them to go up, and then you send off a telegram with an order to sell and buy twice as much. Then you wait a few more days and send a telegram again. Before you know it, your hundred’s worth two, your two hundred four, your four hundred eight, and your eight a thousand and six. It’s the damnedest thing! Why, I know people who just the other day were shop clerks in Yehupetz without a pair of shoes on their feet; today they live in mansions with walls to keep out beggars and travel to the baths in Germany whenever their wives get a stomachache. They ride around town in rubber-wheeled droshkies—why, they don’t even know you anymore!”

  Well, so as not to make a short story long, he gave me such an itch to be rich that it wasn’t any laughing matter. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I told myself. Maybe he’s really meant to be your good angel. What makes you think you’re any worse than those shop clerks in Yehupetz who are living on easy street? He’s certainly not lying, because he could never make up such fairy tales in a million years … It just may be, I thought, that Tevye’s lucky number has come up at last and he’s finally going to be somebody in his old age. How long does a man have to go on working himself to the bone—day and night, horse and wagon, cheese and butter, over and over again? It’s high time, Tevye, for you to relax a bit, to drop in on a synagogue and read a book now and then like any respectable Jew. What are you so afraid of? That nothing will come of it? That you’ll be fleeced like a lamb? That your bread, as they say, will fall with the butter side down? But what’s to keep it from falling with the butter side up? “Golde,” I asked the old lady, “what do you think? How does our cousin’s plan strike you?”

  “What should I think?” she said. “I know that Menachem Mendl isn’t some fly-by-night who’s out to put one over on you. He doesn’t come from a family of fishmongers. His father was a fine Jew, and his grandfather was such a crackerjack that he kept right on studying Torah even after he went blind. Even his Grandmother Tsaytl, may she rest in
peace, was no ordinary woman …”

  “I’m talking Purim costumes and you’re talking Hanukkah candles!” I said. “What do his Grandmother Tsaytl and her honey cakes have to do with it? Next you’ll be telling me about her saint of a grandfather who died with a bottle in his arms! Once a woman, always a woman, I tell you. It’s no coincidence that King Solomon traveled the whole world and couldn’t find a single female with all her marbles in her head!”

  In a word, we decided to go halves: I would invest the money and Menachem Mendl the brains, and we would split what God gave us down the middle. “Believe me, Reb Tevye,” he said to me, “I’ll be fair and square with you. With God’s help, you’ll soon be in clover.”

  “Amen,” I said, “the same to you. May your mouth be up against His ears. There’s one thing that still isn’t clear to me, though: how do we get the cat across the river? I’m here, you’re there, and money, as you know, is a highly perishable substance. Don’t take offense, I’m not trying to outfox you, God forbid. It’s just that Father Abraham knew what he was talking about when he said, hazoyrim bedimoh berinoh yiktsoyru—better twice warned than once burned.”

  “Oh,” he says to me, “you mean we should put it down in writing. With the greatest of pleasure.”

  “Not at all,” I say. “What good would that do? If you want to ruin me, a piece of paper won’t stop you. Lav akhboroh ganvo—it’s not the signature that counts, it’s the man that signs. If I’m going to hang by one foot, I may as well hang by two.”

  “Leave it to me, Reb Tevye,” he says. “I swear by all that’s holy—may God strike me down if I try any monkey business! I wouldn’t even dream of such a thing. This is strictly an aboveboard operation. God willing, we’ll split the take between us, half and half, fifty-fifty, a hundred for me, a hundred for you, two hundred for me, two hundred for you, three hundred for me, three hundred for you, four hundred for me, four hundred for you, a thousand for me, a thousand for you …”

  In a word, I took out my money, counted it three times with a trembling hand, called my wife to be a witness, explained to him once more how I had sweated blood for it, and handed it over to him, making sure to sew it into his breast pocket so that no one could steal it on the way. Then I made him promise to write me every detail by the end of the following week and said goodbye to him like the best of friends, even kissing him on the cheek as cousins do.

  Once he was gone and we were alone again, I began having such wonderful thoughts and sweet dreams that I could have wished they’d go on forever. I imagined ourselves living in the middle of town, in a huge house with a real tin roof, and lots of wings, and all kinds of rooms and alcoves and pantries filled with good things, and my wife Golde, a regular lady now, walking from room to room with a key ring in her hand—why, she looked so different, so high-and-mighty with her pearls and double chin, that I hardly recognized her! And the airs she put on, and the way she swore at the servants! My kids waltzed around in their Sabbath best without lifting a finger, while geese, chickens, and ducks cackled in the yard. The house was all lit up; a fire glowed in the fireplace; supper was cooking on the stove, and the kettle whistled like a horse thief. Only, who’s that sitting in a house frock and skullcap at the dining table, surrounded by the most prominent Jews in Yehupetz, all begging for his attention? Why, I do believe it’s Tevye! “Begging your pardon, Reb Tevye …” “No offense meant, Reb Tevye …” “That would be most kind of you, Reb Tevye …”

  “Damn it all!” I said, snapping out of it. “The Devil take every last ruble on earth!”

  “Who are you sending to the Devil?” asked my Golde.

  “No one,” I said. “I was just thinking—dreaming—of pie in the sky … Tell me, Golde, my darling, you wouldn’t happen to know by any chance what this cousin of yours, Menachem Mendl, does for a living, would you?”

  “May all my bad dreams come true for my enemies!” says my wife. “What? Do you mean to tell me that after talking and talking with that fellow all day and all night, I should tell you what he does for a living? God help me if I understood a thing about it, but I thought you two became partners.”

  “So we did,” I said. “It’s just that you can have my head on a platter if I have the foggiest notion what it is that we’re partners in. I simply can’t make heads or tails of it. Not that that’s any reason for alarm, my dear. Something tells me not to worry. I do believe, God willing, that we’re going to be in the gravy—and now say amen and make supper!”

  In short, a week went by, and then another, and then another—and not a peep from my partner! I was beside myself, I went about like a chicken without its head, not knowing what to think. It can’t be, I thought, that he simply forgot to write; he knows perfectly well that we’re waiting to hear from him. And suppose he’s skimmed all the cream for himself and claims we haven’t earned a kopeck’s profit, what can I do about it—call him a monkey’s uncle?… Only I don’t believe it, I told myself, it simply isn’t possible. Here I’ve gone and treated him like one of the family, the good luck that I’ve wished him should only be mine—how could he go and play such a trick on me?… Just then, though, I had an even worse thought: the principal! The Devil take the profit, Menachem Mendl could have it, revakh vehatsoloh ya’amoyd layehudim—but God protect my principal from him! You old fool, I said to myself, you sewed your whole fortune into his jacket with your own two hands! Why, with the same hundred rubles you could have bought yourself a team of horses such as no Jew ever horsed around with before, and traded in your old cart for a new droshky with springs in the bargain!

  “Tevye,” says my wife, “don’t just stand there doing nothing. Think!”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I asked. “I’m thinking so hard that my head is falling off, and all you can tell me is, think!”

  “Well,” she says, “something must have happened to him. Either he was stripped bare by thieves, or else he’s taken ill, or else, God forgive me, he’s gone and died on us.”

  “Thieves? That’s a good one! What other cheery thoughts do you have, light of my life?” I asked—though to myself I thought, who knows what a man can meet up with when he’s traveling? “Why is it that you always have to imagine the worst?”

  “Because,” she says, “it runs in his family. His mother, may she speak no ill of us in heaven, passed away not long ago in her prime, and his three sisters are all dead too. One died as a girl; one was married but caught a cold in the bathhouse and never recovered from it; and one went crazy after her first confinement and wasted away into nothing …”

  “May the dead live in Paradise, Golde,” I said, “because that’s where we’ll join them some day. A man, I tell you, is no different from a carpenter; that is, a carpenter lives till he dies, and so does a man.”

  In a word, we decided that I should pay a call on Menachem Mendl. By now I had a bit of merchandise, some Grade A cheese, cream, and butter, so I harnessed the horse to the wagon and vayisu misukoys—off to Yehupetz I went. I hardly need tell you that I was in a black and bitter mood, and as I drove through the forest my fears got the better of me. No doubt, I thought, when I ask for my man in Yehupetz I’ll be told, “Menachem Mendl? There’s someone who’s made it to the top. He lives in a big house and rides about in droshkies—you’ll never recognize him!” Still, I’ll pluck up my nerve and go straight to his house. “Hey, there, uncle,” says the doorman, sticking an elbow in my ribs, “just where do you think you’re going? It’s by appointment only here, in case you didn’t know.”

  “But I’m a relative of his,” I say. “He’s my second cousin once removed on my wife’s side.”

  “Congratulations,” says the doorman. “Pleased to meet you. I’m afraid, though, that you’ll have to cool your heels all the same. I promise you your health won’t suffer from it.”

  I realize that I have to cross his palm. How does the verse go? Oylim veyordim—if you want to travel, you better grease the wheels. At once I’m shown in to Menachem
Mendl.

  “A good morning to you, Reb Menachem Mendl,” I say to him.

  A good what to who? Eyn oymer ve’eyn dvorim—he doesn’t know me from Adam! “What do you want?” he says to me.

  I feel weak all over. “But how can it be, Pani,” I say, “that you don’t even know your own cousin? It’s me, Tevye!”

  “Eh?” he says. “Tevye? The name rings a bell.”

  “Oh, it does, does it?” I say. “I suppose my wife’s blintzes, and knishes, and knaidlach, and varnishkes all happen to ring a bell too …?”

  He doesn’t answer me, though, because now I imagine the opposite: as soon as he catches sight of me, he greets me like a long-lost friend. “What a guest! What a guest! Sit down, Reb Tevye, and tell me how you are. And how is your wife? I’ve been looking all over for you, we have some accounts to settle.” And with that he dumps a bushel of gold imperials out on the table. “This,” he says, “is your share of the profit. The principal has been reinvested. Whatever we make we’ll keep on sharing, half and half, fifty-fifty, a hundred for me, a hundred for you, two hundred for me, two hundred for you, three hundred for me, three hundred for you, four hundred for me, four hundred for you …”

  He was still talking when I dozed off, so that I didn’t see my old dobbin stray from the path and run the wagon into a tree. It gave me such a jolt in the pants that I saw stars. Just look how everything turns out for the best, I told myself. You can consider yourself lucky that the axle didn’t break …

  Well, I arrived in Yehupetz, had my goods snatched up in no time as usual, and began to look for my fine friend. One, two, three hours went by in roaming the streets of the town—vehayeled eynenu, there’s neither hide nor hair of him. Finally I stopped some people and asked, “Excuse me, but do you by any chance know of a Jew around here whose given name is Menachem Mendl?”