Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

by Sholem Aleichem

  “Menachem Mendl?” they say to me. “We know no endl Menachem Mendls. Which one are you looking for?”

  “You mean what’s his last name?” I say. “It’s Menachem Mendl. Back home in Kasrilevke he’s called after his mother-in-law, that is, Leah Dvossi’s Menachem Mendl. In fact, his father-in-law—and a fine old man he is—is called Leah Dvossi’s Boruch Hirsh. Why, Leah Dvossi is so well known in Kasrilevke that she herself is called Leah Dvossi’s Boruch Hirsh’s Leah Dvossi. Do you know who I’m talking about now?”

  “We follow you perfectly,” they say. “But that still isn’t enough. What’s his line? What does he deal in, this Menachem Mendl of yours?”

  “What’s his line?” I say. “His line is gold imperials, and now and then poptions. And telegrams to St. Petersburg and Warsaw.”

  “Is that so?” they say, holding their sides. “If it’s the Menachem Mendl who’ll sell you a bird in the bush at half price that you’re looking for, you’ll find him over there with all the other bushmen, on the other side of the street.”

  One is never too old to learn, I thought, but bushmen? Still, I crossed to the opposite sidewalk, where I found myself among such a mob of Jews that I could hardly move. They were packed together as at a fairgrounds, running around like crazy and climbing all over each other. What bedlam! Everyone was shouting and waving his hands at once. “Up a quarter!… Give me ten!… Word of honor!… Put it there!… Cash on the barrelhead!… Scratch that!… You double-dealer!… You four-flusher!… I’ll bash your head in!… You should spit in his eye!… He’ll lose his shirt!… What a chiseler!… You’re a bankrupt!… You’re a bootlicker!… So’s your old man!…” They looked about to come to blows. Vayivrakh Ya’akoyv, I told myself: you better scram while you can, Tevye, my friend. If only you had listened to what the Bible says, you would never have believed in False Profits. So this is where the gold imperials grow on trees? This is the business you invested in? A black day it was that you became a businessman!

  In a word, I had moved on a bit and come to a big display window full of pants when whose reflection did I see in it but Mr. Moneybags’ himself! My heart sank to my stomach. I thought I would die! We should only live to meet our worst enemies crawling down the street like Menachem Mendl. You should have seen his coat! And his shoes! And the face on him—why, a corpse in the grave looks better. Nu, Tevye, I thought, ka’asher ovadeti ovadeti—you’re up the creek this time for sure. You can kiss every cent you ever had goodbye. Loy dubim veloy ya’ar—the principal’s gone with the profit and all that’s left you is troubles!

  He too must have been stunned to see me, because we just went on standing there without a word, staring at each other like two roosters, as if to say, you know and I know that it’s all over with the two of us; there’s nothing for it now but to take a tin cup and start going from door to door with it …

  “Reb Tevye,” he said in such a whisper that I could hardly hear him. “Reb Tevye! With luck like mine it’s better not to be born. I’d rather hang than have to live like this …”

  He couldn’t get out another word. “There’s no doubt, Menachem Mendl,” I said, “that you deserve as much. You should be taken right now and given such a whipping in the middle of Yehupetz, in front of everyone, that you’d soon be paying a call on your Grandmother Tsaytl in the next world. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve taken a house full of people, live, feeling human beings who never did you an ounce of harm, and slit their throats without a knife! How in the world am I supposed to show my face now to my wife and kids? Perhaps you can tell me that, you thief, you, you swindler, you murderer!”

  “It’s the truth,” he says, flattening himself against the wall. “So help me God, every word of what you say is true!”

  “Hell itself,” I say, “hell itself, you cretin, is too good for you!”

  “It’s the truth, Reb Tevye,” he says. “So help me God, before I’ll go on living like this any longer, I’ll … I’ll …”

  And he hung his head. I stood there looking at the schlimazel pressed against the wall with his hat falling off, every sigh and groan of his breaking my heart. “Well,” I said, “come to think of it, there’s no sense in blaming you either. After all, it’s ridiculous to suppose you did it on purpose, because you were a partner just like me, the business was half yours. I put in the money, you put in the brains, and don’t we both wish we hadn’t! I’m sure you meant well, lekhayim veloy lamoves. If we blew a small fortune, that’s only because we weren’t meant to make a big one. How does the verse go? Al tis’haleyl beyoym mokhor—the more man plans, the harder God laughs. Take my dairy business, for example. You would think it was pretty solid—and yet just last autumn, it shouldn’t happen to you, a cow dropped dead on me for whose carcass I was lucky to get fifty kopecks, and right after her, a red heifer that I wouldn’t have sold for twenty rubles. Was there anything I could do about it? If it’s not in the cards, you can stand on your head and say the alphabet backwards—it doesn’t help a damn bit. I’m not even asking what you did with the money that I bled for. I know as much as I want to, that it went to buy birds in a bush, whole flocks of them, and that I’ll never get to see a single one. And whose fault is it? It’s my own, for having been taken in by a lot of hot air. Take it from me, the only way to make money is to work your bottom off. Which is where you, Tevye, deserve to get a swift kick! But what good does it do to cry about it? It’s just like it says in the Bible, vetso’akoh hane’aroh—you can scream till you burst, who says that anyone is listening? Wisdom and second thoughts are two things that always come too late. Tevye just wasn’t meant to be upper crust, that’s not how God wanted it. Hashem nosan vehashem lokakh, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—in which case, says Rashi, cheer up, my friend, and let’s go have a little shot of brandy!…”

  And that, Pan Sholem Aleichem, is how I blew all my money. But if you think I’ve been eating my heart out over it, you have another guess coming. You know the Bible’s opinion: li hakesef veli hazohov—money is a lot of baloney. What matters is the man who has it—I mean, what matters is for a man to be a man. Do you know what I still can’t get over, though? Losing my dream! If only you knew how badly, oh Lord, how really badly I wanted to be a rich Jew, if only for just a few days! But go be smarter than life. Doesn’t it say be’al korkhekho atoh khai—nobody asks if you want to be born or if you want your last pair of boots to be torn. “Instead of dreaming, Tevye,” God was trying to tell me, “you should have stuck to your cheese and butter.” Does that mean I’ve lost faith and stopped hoping for better times? Don’t you believe it! The more troubles, the more faith, the bigger the beggar, the greater his hopes. How can that be, you ask? But I’ve already gone on enough for one day, and I’d better be off and about my business. How does the verse go? Koyl ha’odom koyzev—there isn’t a man who hasn’t taken a beating sometime. Don’t forget to take care and be well!

  (1899)

  TODAY’S CHILDREN

  Say what you will about today’s children, Pan Sholem Aleichem, bonim gidalti veroymamti: first you have them, then you break your back for them, make every sacrifice, put yourself through the mill … and for what? So that maybe, you think, if you’ve managed to get ahead a bit in life, you can help them get somewhere too. I wouldn’t dream of having Brodsky for my in-law, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to settle for just anyone, because I’m not such a nobody myself; and since I don’t come, as my wife likes to put it, from a long line of fishmongers, I had hoped for some luck with my daughters. How was that? In the first place, because God gave them good looks, and a pretty face, the saying goes, is half a dowry. And secondly, because even if, with God’s help, I’m no longer the Tevye I once was, someone like me still rates a good match even in Yehupetz, don’t you think? The trouble is that the same merciful God who’s always practicing His miracles on me, first seeing how quick He can raise a man up and then how fast He can dump him back down, has let me know in no uncertain term
s, “Tevye, stop being so ridiculous as to think you can run the world!” … Well, wait till you hear how the world runs itself without me. And who, naturally, does it run right over first? Why, your schlimazel of a Tevye, of course!

  But why make a short story long? I’m sure you remember, though I would much prefer to forget, what happened with my cousin Menachem Mendl—how I wish I had never heard that name!—and with the fine business in gold imperials and poptions that we did in Yehupetz. It shouldn’t happen to my worst enemy! For a while I went about moaning and groaning that it was all over with me and my dairy, until the wife said to me, “Tevye, you’re a fool to carry on as though the world has come to an end. All you’re doing is eating your heart out. Why not just pretend we’ve been burgled, it could happen to anyone … If I were you, I’d go see Layzer Wolf the butcher in Anatevka. He keeps saying he needs to talk to you urgently.”

  “What can be so urgent?” I asked. “If he’s got it into his head that I’m going to sell him our brown cow, he can take a stick and beat it out again.”

  “What’s so precious about our brown cow?” says my wife. “All the rivers of milk and mountains of butter we get from her?”

  “No, it isn’t that,” I say. “It’s just a sin to hand over a poor innocent beast to be slaughtered. Why, it says in our holy Bible—”

  “For goodness’ sake, Tevye,” she says, “that’s enough! The whole world knows what a professor of Bible you are. Listen to a simple woman like me and go see Layzer Wolf. Every Thursday when I send our Tsaytl to his butcher shop for meat, it’s the same thing again: would she please tell her father to come at once, he has something important to say to him …”

  Well, sometimes you have to do what you’re told, even if it’s by your own wife; I let myself be talked into going to see Layzer Wolf in Anatevka, which is a couple of miles away. When I got there, he was out.

  “Where’s Layzer Wolf?” I asked the pug-nosed woman who was busy doing the housework.

  “He’s at the slaughterhouse,” she says. “He’s been there all morning slaughtering an ox, but he should be back soon.”

  While I waited for him I wandered about the house, taking in the furnishings. I only wish I had half as much! There was a cupboard full of copper that you couldn’t have bought for two hundred and fifty rubles; not just one samovar but two; and a brass tray, and another tray from Warsaw, and a set of cups with gilt edges, and a pair of silver candlesticks, and a cast-iron menorah, and all kinds of other things, more bric-a-brac than you could count. God in heaven, I thought, I should only live to see my daughters own such things! Some people have all the breaks. Not only is Layzer Wolf rich, with a grand total of two children, both married, he even has the luck to be a widower …

  Well, before long the door opened and in came Layzer Wolf himself, fit to be tied at the slaughterer for having been so unkind as to declare unkosher an ox the size of an oak tree because of a tiny scar on its lung no bigger than a hairpin. A black hole should open up in the earth and swallow him alive!… “Am I glad to see you, Reb Tevye!” he says. “It’s easier to raise the dead. What’s new with a Jew?”

  “What should be new?” I say. “The harder I work, the less I have to show for it. It’s like it says in the Bible: loy mi’uktsokh veloy miduvshokh. I not only have no money, I also lack health, wealth, and happiness.”

  “It’s a sin to be ungrateful, Reb Tevye,” he says. “Compared to what you once were, and let’s hope won’t be again, you’re not doing half bad these days.”

  “It’s the other half that worries me,” I say. “But I have nothing to complain about, thank God. Askakurdo dimaskanto dikarnaso difarsmakhto, as the Talmud puts it …” And I thought: may your nose stick to your backside, you meat hacker, you, if there’s such a line of Talmud in the world …

  “You’re always quoting something,” Layzer Wolf says. “I envy you, Reb Tevye, for being able to read the small print. But what good does all that book learning do you? Let’s talk about something more practical. Have a seat, Reb Tevye.” And before I can have one, he bellows, “How about some tea!”

  Out of nowhere, as if she had been hiding beneath the floorboards, the pug-nosed woman appears, snatches a samovar like the wind snatching a leaf, and disappears into the kitchen.

  “Now that we’re alone with only four eyes between the two of us,” says Layzer Wolf to me, “you and I can talk business. It’s like this: I’ve been wanting to speak to you for quite a while, Reb Tevye. I even asked your daughter several times to have you come see me. You see, lately I’ve had my eye on—”

  “I know you have,” I said. “But it won’t do you any good. It’s out of the question, Layzer Wolf, simply out of the question.”

  “But why?” he asks, giving me an astonished look.

  “Because there’s no hurry,” I say. “She’s still young. The river won’t catch fire if we wait a little longer.”

  “But why wait,” he says, “if you have an offer for her now?”

  “In the first place,” I say, “I just told you. And in the second place, it’s a matter of compassion. I simply don’t have the heart.”

  “Just listen to him talk about her!” says Layzer Wolf with a laugh. “A person might think you had no others. I should imagine, Reb Tevye, that you have more than enough of them, touch wood.”

  “I can use every one I have,” I say. “Whoever envies me should know what it costs just to feed them.”

  “Envy?” says Layzer Wolf. “Who’s talking envy? On the contrary, it’s just because they’re such a fine bunch that I … do you get me? Have you ever thought for a minute, Reb Tevye, of all I can do for you?”

  “Of course I have,” I say. “And I’ve gotten a headache each time I did. Judging by all you’ve done for me in the past, you might even give me free ice in the middle of the winter.”

  “Oh, come,” he says, sweet as sugar. “Why harp on the past? We weren’t in-laws then.”

  “In-laws?” I say. “What kind of in-laws?”

  “Why, how many kinds are there?” he says.

  “Excuse me, Reb Layzer Wolf,” I say, “but do you have any idea what we’re talking about?”

  “I should say I do, Reb Tevye,” he says. “But perhaps you’d like to tell me.”

  “With pleasure,” I say. “We’re talking about my brown cow that you want me to sell you.”

  “Hee hee hee,” he says, chortling. “Your brown cow, no less, that’s a good one … ho ho ho!”

  “But what do you think we were talking about, Reb Layzer Wolf?” I say. “Why not let me in on the joke?”

  “Why, about your daughter!” he says. “We’ve been talking all along about your Tsaytl! You know I’m a widower, Reb Tevye—it shouldn’t happen to you. Well, I’ve made up my mind; why try my luck again far from home, where I’ll have to deal with all sorts of spooks, flukes, and matchmakers? Here we are, the two of us, both from the same place, I know you and you know me—to say nothing of the party in question, who I’ve taken quite a fancy to. I see her every Thursday in my butcher shop and we’ve even exchanged a few words; she’s on the quiet side, I must say, but not bad, not bad at all! And as for me, touch wood, you can see for yourself: I’m comfortably off, I have a couple of shops, I even own my own house. I don’t mean to boast, but it has some nice furnishings too, and there are hides stored away in the attic, and a bit of cash in a chest. Reb Tevye, why haggle like gypsies about it? Come, let’s shake hands and be done with it, do you get me?”

  In short, I sat there listening and couldn’t say a word, the whole thing bowled me over so. For a minute I thought: Layzer Wolf … Tsaytl … why, he’s old enough to be her father … But it didn’t take me long to think again. My God, I told myself, what a godsend! She’ll be sitting pretty with him, on top of the world! So what if he’s a tightwad? These upside-down days, that’s actually considered a virtue. Odom koroyv le’atsmoy—charity begins at home … It’s true the man is a trifle common—but since when can everyo
ne be a scholar? There are plenty of rich Jews, fine people, in Anatevka, Mazapevka, and even in Yehupetz, who wouldn’t know a Hebrew letter if one fell on them; that still doesn’t keep them from being thought highly of—I should only be as respected as they are! How does the verse go? Im eyn kemakh eyn Toyroh—it’s all very well to know the Bible by heart, but you still can’t serve it for dinner …

  “Nu, Reb Tevye,” says Layzer Wolf. “Why don’t you say something?”

  “What’s there to shout about?” I say, playing hard to get. “One doesn’t decide such things on the spur of the moment. It’s no laughing matter, marrying off your eldest daughter.”

  “That’s just it!” he says. “She’s your eldest. Once she’s my wife, God willing, marrying off your second and your third and your fourth will be no problem, do you get me?”

  “Amen,” I say. “It’s easy as pie to marry off a daughter. God simply has to find her the right man.”

  “But that isn’t what I meant, Reb Tevye,” he says. “I meant that you not only needn’t put up a penny’s dowry for your Tsaytl, or buy her the things a girl needs for her wedding, because I’ll take care of all that myself—you can also trust me to beef up your wallet while I’m at it …”

  “Hold on there!” I said. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but you’re talking just like in a butcher shop. What’s this about beef in my wallet? You should be ashamed of yourself! My Tsaytl, God forbid, is not up for sale to the highest bidder.”

  “Ashamed?” he says. “And here I thought I was only being nice! I’ll tell you what, though: for you, I’ll even be ashamed. Far be it from me to object to your saving me money. Let’s just be quick about it, the sooner the better! I want a woman in my house, do you get me?”