Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

by Sholem Aleichem

  “What are you standing there for?” I said to my Golde. “Don’t you know that since Shavuos has two days, everything else about it has to be doubled too? Bring some more blintzes and we’ll have a second round!”

  Well, in a shake of a lamb’s tail my Golde filled the platter with more blintzes and my Shprintze brought them to the table. Just then I glanced at Ahronchik, and what do I see? He’s staring at my Shprintze, his eyes are glued to her so hard he can’t pull them away. What did he suppose he was looking at? “Eat up,” I said to him. “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “Why, what does it look like I’m doing?” he says.

  “It looks like you’re looking at my Shprintze,” I say.

  Everyone burst out laughing at that, my Shprintze too. We were all so gay, so happy, enjoying such a fine Shavuos … how was I supposed to know it would end in such a nightmare, in such a tragedy, in such a horror story, in such a punishment from God that it’s left me a wreck of a man? I’ll tell you what, though. We men are fools. If we had any brains to speak of, we’d realize that things are the way they were meant to be, because if they were meant to be different, they wouldn’t be the way they are … Doesn’t it say in the Book of Psalms, hashleykh al hashem—trust no one but God? Just leave it to Him: He’ll see to it that the worms are eating you like fresh bagels, and you’ll thank Him for it too. And now listen to what can happen in this world of ours—and listen carefully, because you haven’t heard anything yet.

  Vayehi erev vayehi voyker—one evening when I came home from Boiberik, bushed from the heat and from running between dachas all day long, I spied a familiar horse tied to the gate by the house. In fact, I could have sworn it was Ahronchik’s thoroughbred that I had priced at three hundred rubles! I went over to it, slapped it on the rear with one hand while scratching its head with the other, and said, “Well now, old fellow, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” To which it bobbed its chin quite handsomely and gave me a clever look as if to say, “Why ask me, when I happen to have a master?”

  Well, I went inside, collared my wife, and said to her, “Golde, my dearest, what is Ahronchik doing here?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” she answers me. “I thought he was one of your crowd.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “He went for a walk in the forest with the girls,” my Golde tells me.

  “What on earth made him do a thing like that?” I wondered out loud, and asked her for something to eat. When I had had my fill, I sat there thinking, Tevye, why are you so nervous? Since when is a visitor dropping by any reason to be so on edge? If anything … but I never finished the thought, because just then I looked outside and saw the bonnie young lad with my girls, who were carrying wild flowers they had picked. Teibl and Beilke were walking in front, and Shprintze was bringing up the rear with Ahronchik.

  “A good evening!” I said to him.

  “And to you, too,” he replied. He stood there a little awkwardly with a blade of grass in his mouth, stroking his horse’s mane; then he said, “Reb Tevye, I have an offer to make you. Let’s you and I swap horses.”

  “Don’t you have anyone better to make fun of?” I asked him.

  “But I mean it,” he says.

  “Do you now?” I say. “Do you have any idea what this horse of yours is worth?”

  “What would you price him at?” he asks.

  “He’s worth three hundred rubles if a cent,” I say, “and maybe even a little bit more.”

  Well, Ahronchik laughed, told me his horse had cost over three times that amount, and said, “How about it, then? Is it a deal?”

  I tell you, I didn’t like it one bit: what kind of business was it to trade such a horse for my gluepot? And so I told him to keep his offer for another day and joked that I hoped he hadn’t come just for that, since I hated to see him waste his time …

  “As a matter of fact,” he says to me, as serious as can be, “I came to see you about something else. If it’s not too much to ask of you, perhaps the two of us could take a little walk.”

  He’s got walking on the brain today, I thought, but I agreed to go for a stroll in the forest with him. The sun had set long ago; the woods were getting dark; frogs croaked from the river; and the smell of so many green, growing things was like heaven itself. Ahronchik and I walked side by side without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped short, let out a cough, and said, “Reb Tevye! What would you say if I told you I’m in love with your Shprintze and want to marry her?”

  “What would I say?” I said. “I’d tell them to move over and make room for one more in the loony bin.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he says, staring at me.

  “It means,” I say, “exactly what it sounds like.”

  “But I don’t get it,” he says.

  “That,” I say, “just goes to show that you’re even less of a genius than I thought. You know, there’s a verse in the Bible that says, ‘The wise man has eyes in his head.’ That means you can talk to him with a wink, while the fool must be talked to with a stick.”

  “I’m speaking in plain language,” he says, beginning to get sore, “and all I’m hearing from you is jokes from the Bible.”

  “Well,” I said, “every cantor sings the best he can and every preacher toots his own horn. If you’d like to know how well you’re tooting yours, I suggest you have a talk with your mother. She’ll set you straight in a jiffy.”

  “Do you take me,” he says, “for a little boy who has to get permission from his mother?”

  “Of course I do,” I say. “And your mother’s sure to tell you you’re a dunce. And she’ll be right.”

  “She will be?” he says.

  “Of course she will be,” I say. “What kind of husband will you make my Shprintze? What kind of wife will my Shprintze make you? And most of all, what kind of in-law will I make your mother?”

  “If that’s what you’re thinking, Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’re making a big mistake. I’m not an eighteen-year-old, and I’m not looking for in-laws for my mother. I know who you are, I know who your daughter is, and I like what I see. That’s what I want and that’s what I’m going to—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” I say, “but there’s one thing I still have to ask you. I can see there’s no problem on the groom’s side, but have you bothered to clear this with the bride’s side?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

  “I’m talking about my daughter Shprintze,” I say. “Have you talked this over with her? And if so, what does she say?”

  Well, he gave me an insulted look but said with a smile, “What kind of a question is that? Of course I’ve talked it over with her—and not just once, either. I’m here every day.”

  Did you ever hear the likes of it? He’s there every day and I know nothing about it! Tevye, you two-footed animal, I told myself, you deserve to eat hay with your cows! If that’s how you let yourself be led about by the nose, you’ll be bought and sold like the donkey you are!… I didn’t say anything to Ahronchik as we walked back, though. He said goodbye to the girls, jumped on his horse, and holakh Moyshe-Mordekhai—away to Boiberik he went …

  And now, as you writers like to say in your books, let’s leave the young prince on his horse and get back to the princess in her castle, that is, to my Shprintze. “Tell me, Daughter,” I said to her, “there’s something I want to ask you: how could you and Ahronchik have discussed such a matter without even letting me know?”

  Did you ever hear a tree talk? That’s how my Shprintze answered me. She just blushed, stared down at her feet like a newlywed, and didn’t open her mouth. Mum’s the word!… Well, I thought, if you won’t talk to me now, you’ll do it later. Tevye is no woman; Tevye can wait. But I kept an eye out, looking for a chance to be alone with her again, and as soon as I found it one day outside the house, I said to her, “Shprintze, I want you to tell me: do you think you really know him, this Ahronchik?” �
��Of course I do,” she says.

  “And do you know that he’s a penny whistle?” I say.

  “What’s a penny whistle?” she asks.

  “A penny whistle,” I say, “is something hollow that makes a lot of noise.”

  “That isn’t so,” she says to me. “Arnold is a fine person.”

  “Arnold?” I say. “Since when is that phony called Arnold?”

  “Arnold,” she says, “is not a phony. Arnold has a heart of gold. It’s not his fault if he grew up in a house full of vile people who only think of money all the time.”

  “Well, well, well,” I said. “Look who’s the philosopher now! I suppose you think that having money is a sin too …”

  In a word, I could see that they both were too far gone to be talked out of it. I know my girls. Didn’t I once tell you that when Tevye’s daughters, God help us, fall for someone, they fall with everything they have? And so I told myself, you fool, you, why must you always think you know best? Why can’t you admit the whole thing may be providential? Why isn’t it possible that quiet little Shprintze is meant to be your salvation, your reward for all your hardship and your heartache, so that at last you can enjoy yourself in your old age and live like a human being for once? Suppose your daughter is fated to be a millionairess—is that really so terrible? Is it such a blow to your dignity? Does it say anywhere in the Bible that Tevye must always be a beggar who spends his whole life hauling cheese and butter to keep the rich Jews of Yehupetz from dying of hunger? Who’s to say that God hasn’t fingered you to do a little good in His world before you die—to give a bit of money to charity, to take someone needy under your wing, even to sit down with educated Jews and study some Torah …

  I swear, those were only some of the sweet thoughts that ran through my head. You know what it says in the morning prayer: raboys makhshovoys belev ish—or as they say in Russian, a fool can get rich just by thinking … And so I stepped into the house and took my wife aside for a little talk. “Just suppose,” I said to her, “that our Shprintze should become a millionairess?”

  “What’s a millionairess?” asks my Golde.

  “A millionairess,” I say, “is a millionaire’s wife.”

  “And what’s a millionaire?” she asks.

  “A millionaire,” I say, “is a man who’s worth a million.”

  “And how much is a million?” she asks.

  “Look,” I say, “if you’re such a cow that you don’t know what a million is, it’s a waste of time talking to you.”

  “So who asked you to talk to me?” she says. I couldn’t argue with that.

  In a word, another day went by in Boiberik and I came home again. “Was Ahronchik here?” No, he wasn’t … Another day. “Was he here today?” No, he wasn’t … Though I could have found some excuse to drop in on the widow, I wasn’t keen on it: I didn’t want her to think that Tevye was fishing for a match with her—and one that she needed keshoyshanoh beyn hakhoykhim, like a wagon needs a fifth wheel … (Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of me, mind you, because if I wasn’t a millionaire myself, I would at least have an in-law who was, while the only in-law she’d have would be a poor beggar of a dairyman; I ask you, then, whose connections would be better, mine or hers?) … To tell you the honest truth, though, if I wanted that match at all, it was less for the match’s sake than for the feeling of satisfaction it would give me. “The Devil take you all!” I’d be able to say to all the rich Jews of Yehupetz. “Until now it’s been nothing but Brodsky, Brodsky, Brodsky, but now you see who Tevye really is …”

  So I thought, driving home from Boiberik. As soon as I walked in the door, my Golde met me with a bombshell. “A messenger, a Russian, was just here from Boiberik, from the widow! She begs you to come for God’s sake as quickly as you can, even if it’s the middle of the night! Harness the horse and go, it must be something important.”

  “Where’s the fire?” I asked. “Can’t it wait until morning?” Just then, though, I glanced at my Shprintze—and while she didn’t say a word, her eyes said it all, everything! No one knew that child’s heart the way I did—which was why I had sounded off to her about Ahronchik, because I was afraid that nothing would come of it. (Not that I couldn’t have saved my breath, since for the past three days my Shprintze had been wasting away like a candle!) … And so I harnessed the horse again and set out that same evening for Boiberik. What can be so urgent, I wondered as I drove there. If they want to shake hands on it and have a proper betrothal, it’s they who should come to me, because I’m the bride’s father … only that was such a preposterous thought that it made me laugh out loud: who ever heard of a rich man going to a poor one for a betrothal? Did I think that the world had already come to an end, as that scamp of a Peppercorn said it would, and that the tycoon and the beggar were now equals, sheli shelkho and shelkho sheli—you take what’s mine, I take what’s yours, and the Devil take the hindmost? People were born with brains in this world and yet, oh, my goodness—what jackasses there were in it!…

  I was still trying to figure it all out when I arrived in Boiberik, drove straight to the widow’s dacha, and parked my horse in front of it.

  “Where is the widow?” I asked at the door.

  “The widow’s not here.”

  “Where is her son?”

  “He’s not here either.”

  “Then who asked me to come?”

  “I did,” says a round tub of a man with a stringy beard and a fat gold watch chain on his stomach.

  “And just who are you?” I ask.

  “I’m the widow’s brother, Ahronchik’s uncle,” he says. “I was cabled to come from Yekaterinoslav, and I’ve just arrived.”

  “In that case,” I say, sitting down in a chair, “welcome to Boiberik.”

  “Have a seat,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I say, “but I already have one. So how’s the Constantution in your parts?”

  He didn’t answer that. He just settled himself into a rocking chair with his hands still in his pants pockets and his stomach sticking out beneath his watch chain and said without wasting any words, “I’m told they call you Tevye.”

  “They do indeed,” I said. “And when they call me to the Torah in the synagogue, it’s even Reb Tevye the son of Shneyur Zalman.”

  “Well, then, Reb Tevye,” he says to me, “listen here. Why beat around the bush? Let’s get right down to business, as they say …”

  “And why not?” I say. “There’s a time for everything, as King Solomon once said—and if it’s business time, it’s time for business. And a businessman is what I happen to be …”

  “I can see you are,” he says, “and that’s why I’ll get down to brass tacks with you. I want you to tell me perfectly honestly, just what is this going to cost us?”

  “I can tell you perfectly honestly,” I say, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Reb Tevye!” he says to me again, his hands still in his pockets. “I’m asking you in plain language. How much is this affair going to cost us?”

  “Well, now,” I say, “that all depends on what sort of affair you have in mind. If you’re thinking of the fancy wedding that folks like you are accustomed to, I’m afraid it’s a bit beyond my budget.”

  “Either you’re playing dumb,” he says to me, giving me the once-over, “or else you really are dumb. Only, how dumb can you be to have set my nephew up in the first place by pretending to invite him over for blintzes in order to introduce him to a young beauty who may or may not be your real daughter … I won’t go into that now … and who got him to fall for her and maybe even—it’s easy to see how she could—fell for him? Of course, I don’t mean to imply it wasn’t kosher … she may be a perfectly respectable girl, for all I know … I really don’t want to go into that. But how could you have allowed yourself to forget who you are and who we are? Where does a sensible Jew like yourself get off thinking that a dairyman, a common cheesemonger, can marry into a family like ours
?… He’s given her his word, you say? Then he’ll just have to take it back again! It’s no tragedy, believe me. Of course, it has to cost something … there’s breach of promise and all that … and I assure you, we’re prepared to be reasonable. A young woman’s honor is not the same as a young man’s, even if she isn’t your real daughter … but I would definitely prefer not to go into that …”

  Good God, I thought, what does the man want from me? He didn’t stop chewing my ear off. I shouldn’t imagine for a minute that making a scandal by claiming his nephew was engaged to my daughter would get me anywhere … If I thought I could bilk his sister, I had another guess coming … Although with a bit of good will on my part, she was certainly good for a few rubles, for a charitable gesture, so to speak … I was, after all, a fellow human being, they would be glad to lend a helping hand …

  And would you like to know what my answer to all that was? My answer, the shame of which I’ll never live down to my dying day, was nothing! My tongue clove to my mouth, as the Bible says—the cat had got it but good. I simply rose from my chair, went to the door—and exit Tevye. I ran from there as fast as I could, as though from a fire or a prison, while the man’s words kept buzzing in my ears: perfectly honestly … who may or may not be your real daughter … bilk a widow … a charitable gesture, so to speak … I went over to my wagon, laid my head on it, and—but promise not to laugh at me!—I cried and cried until I had no tears left. Then I climbed aboard, whipped my poor devil of a horse to within an inch of his life, and asked God an old question about an old, old story: what did poor Job ever do to You, dear Lord, to make You hound him day and night? Couldn’t You find any other Jews to pick on?

  Well, I came home and found that gang of mine merrily eating supper. Only Shprintze was missing. “Where’s Shprintze?” I asked.