“There’s not much left for me to tell. One day I caved in, I couldn’t take it any longer. I sold the business, which was already in ruins, for a song, took my last few rubles, and went to join her in Poland. Once I settled down there, I began to look around a bit to get the lay of the land—it wasn’t easy, but I managed to put myself back on my feet and even to strike up a partnership with a respectable Jew, a fine fellow from Warsaw who was president of the synagogue. How was I supposed to know that he would turn out to be a purse snatcher, a swindler, a racketeer, who would leave me holding the bag? I don’t have to tell you that I was at the end of my rope … Well, strangely enough, who do I see as I’m walking home one day but my son, all red in the face and without the dingus on his cap. ‘Hey, Moyshele,’ I say, ‘where’s the dingus?’
“ ‘What dingus?’ he says to me.
“ ‘Your school button,’ I say.
“ ‘What school button?’ he says.
“ ‘The button on your cap,’ I say. ‘Just a while ago you bought a new cap with a new button.’
“ ‘I threw it away,’ he says, turning even redder.
“ ‘What do you mean, you threw it away?’ I ask.
“ ‘I’m free!’ he says.
“ ‘What do you mean, you’re free?’ I ask.
“ ‘We’re all free!’ he says.
“ ‘All right,’ I say, ‘so you’re all free. What does that mean?’
“ ‘It means no more school,’ he says.
“ ‘And what does no more school mean?’ I ask.
“ ‘It means,’ he says, ‘that we all voted to walk out.’
“ ‘What do you mean, you all voted to walk out?’ I say. ‘Who asked you to vote? Walk out where? Do you mean to tell me I’ve ruined myself just for you to start a revolution? God help us all! I only hope they don’t pin it on us Jews, because we’re always the first to take the rap.’
“Well, I gave it to him but good, as only a father can. I just should have known that the wife, God bless her and keep her from me, would come running with a mouthful of her own. I had better, she said, brush the cobwebs off of me—I had better wise up, she said—I had better realize, she said, that the old days were gone forever. In the new world that was coming, she said, we would all be free and equal. No more cats, no more mice, no more whips, no more horses, no more dogs, no more lice, no more slaves, no more bosses …
“ ‘My, my, my,’ I said to her, ‘fancy you reciting poetry. Modern times, modern rhymes, eh? I suppose you’d like to open their cages and set the chickens free too. No more pens, no more hens, just imagine!’
“Well, you’d have thought from the way she blew her stack at me that I had poured boiling water on her. There was nothing to do but hear her out to the bitter end. The only trouble was that there was no end. ‘You know something?’ I said. ‘That’s enough. If you’ll just stop, I’ll agree to anything you say. It’s my fault, I’m to blame for everything, it’s all because of me—but won’t you please be q-u-i-e-t!’
“It just went in one ear and out the other, though. Nothing doing! She had to know why, and how could I, and who said, and by what right, and since when, and did it ever, and on and on and on and on and on …
“I ask you, whose idea were wives in the first place?”
(1902)
THE AUTOMATIC EXEMPTION
“Where am I coming from?” said the tall, thin, heavily bearded Jew with the felt hat on his head. He had just finished his morning prayers and was putting away his tefillin and his prayer shawl. “Where am I coming from? It’s just my luck to be coming from the army, that’s where I’m coming from! The young man stretched out on that seat over there is my son. We stopped in Yehupetz on our way home to see a lawyer and a doctor—to get an opinion, that’s what we stopped for. A fine lot I needed the army in my life! This is the fourth time he’s been before the draft board and he isn’t done with it yet. And the boy is an only son, he has an automatic, a guaranteed, a one-hundred-percent lifetime exemption … but why are you looking at me like that? Did I say something wrong? Wait, just wait till you hear the whole story.
“A lot of ancient history, that’s what you’re going to hear. You see, I come from Mezritch, though I grew up in Mazapevke, but Vorotolivke is where I’m still registered. That is, I grew up in Mazapevke, but I lived in Vorotolivke, though Mezritch is where I’m from now. Not that my name and address make a difference; my son’s name, though—now that’s something else again, that has everything to do with it. I’ll say it does! It’s Itsik, his name—that’s short for Avrom-Yitzchok, though he really goes by Alter, which is what his mother, God bless her, took to calling him for good luck, being an only child and all that. That is, he wasn’t always an only child, because there was another boy a year or so younger, Eisik is what his name was. We had a tragedy with him when he was little, though—I mean with Eisik, not with Itsik. One day when we left him alone in the house (it happened in Vorotolivke, because we hadn’t moved to Mezritch, and it couldn’t have been in Mazapevke), he knocked over a boiling samovar and burned, he actually burned himself to death! That’s when we began to call him Alter—Itsik, I mean, not Eisik—that is, bless his soul, Avrom-Yitzchok …
“You must be wondering what it wants, the army, what it wants with an only son. But that’s just it! Maybe you think he’s such a fine specimen, God forbid, that they decided to take him anyway? Don’t you believe it: why, you wouldn’t sell him a penny of life insurance, he’s so sick that he looks like a ghost! That is, sick may not be the right word for him; he’s not really sick, he just isn’t very healthy either. It’s a crime to wake him now, because he’s sleeping, but you’ll see when he gets up what a bag of bones he is. He’s all arms and legs, as thin as a stick, a dried fig has more color than he does … and the height of the boy: good grief, he’s a regular beanpole! That’s because he takes after his mother, God bless her. What I mean is, his mother is tall and thin too, she’s what you might call the refined type … But I ask you: with a spindleshanks of a son who has an automatic exemption, I should have to worry about the army?
“A lot it helped, though, that exemption, when the boy got his call-up. What exemption? It didn’t even exist! Why not? Because there happened to be a small problem—namely, that when my son Eisik was burned to death by the samovar, his name was never struck from the register. Well, I ran to that dunce of a government rabbi that we have and let him know just what I thought of him. ‘You grave robber! You body snatcher! How could you have done this to me? Why didn’t you make out a death certificate for my Eisik?’
“ ‘Who’s Eisik?’ the dumb clunk asks.
“ ‘What?’ I say. ‘You don’t even know who Eisik is? My son Eisik, who knocked over the samovar.’
“ ‘What samovar?’ he asks.
“ ‘Wake up and die right!’ I say. ‘Welcome to Mezritch! Do you call that block of wood of yours a head? You could put it to better use as a nutcracker! Who around here doesn’t know that my Eisik was burned to death by a samovar? I’ll be blamed if I know what we need you for in this town. When a live Jew has a problem, he finds a real rabbi to go to—I’d think the least you could do is keep track of the dead. Why are we paying the taxes for your salary?’
“Do you know what finally dawned on me, though? It dawned on me that I was wasting my breath on our right reverend, because what happened with the samovar wasn’t in Mezritch at all, it was back in Vorotolivke. The things that slip a person’s mind!
“But that’s all a lot of ancient history. By the time I was through running to Vorotolivke and getting all the necessary papers, they had taken away my Avrom-Yitzchok’s—I mean my Itsik’s—that is, my Alter’s—exemption. They wouldn’t even give him a deferment. Not even a deferment? Now we were in for it! I nearly tore my hair out: an only, a one-hundred-percent draft-proof son, eligible for induction! Well, go cry over spilled milk …
“Leave it to God to come through in the pinch, though. When it’s time for the draw,
my Alter—I mean my Itsik—picks the highest number there is: six hundred and ninety-nine. You should have seen that draft board go wild. The chairman even slapped him on the back and said, ‘Bravo, Itsko, molodyets!’ I was the envy of the whole town. Six hundred ninety-nine—it was the winning ticket, that’s what it was. Everybody wanted to shake my hand. Congratulations, mazel tov! You’d have thought I’d won a million in the sweepstakes …
“I don’t have to tell you about our Jews, though. When it’s time for the physical, the disqualifications come faster than you can count. Suddenly every boy in town’s a hopeless invalid. There wasn’t one who didn’t claim to be a cripple …
“Well, that’s all a lot of ancient history. They ran through all the numbers until they reached six ninety-nine and my poor Itsik—I mean my poor Alter—had to pick himself up and go off to the induction center like any butcher or baker’s son. My wife was a nervous wreck, my daughter-in-law almost fainted. How, why, who ever heard of an only son with an automatic, a guaranteed exemption being taken for a physical—and without even hope of a deferment? The boy himself wouldn’t let on that he was worried—’If other Jews can be soldiers,’ he said, ‘so can this one’—but I was sure that he was shaking in his boots. Wouldn’t you have been?
“Leave it to God to come through again, though. My Alter—that is, my Itsik—was stripped to his bare bottom, begging your pardon, and brought in to the doctor, who measured him, weighed him, pinched him, poked him, and told him to go home. ‘You’ll never make a soldier out of a mutt like this,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t have what it takes. Why, he has barely thirty inches in the chest.’ (Thank God it takes what he has, I thought, not to have what it takes!) Back comes my Itsik—I mean my Alter—with a white card in his hand … hallelujah, it’s mazel tov again. The whole family got together, broke out a bottle, and drank a toast to the boy’s health. The Lord be praised, we could finally forget about the army …
“You know our Jews, though. Don’t think one of them didn’t find a Russian to complain that I had bribed the doctor! Would you believe that before two months had gone by there was a letter in the mailbox telling my Alter—that is, my Itsik—to report for another physical? How’s that for good news? Happy days are here again! My wife was a nervous wreck, my daughter-in-law almost fainted. How, why, who ever heard of an only son with a guaranteed, a one-hundred-percent exemption having to go for two physicals?
“That’s all a lot of ancient history, though. The fact of the matter was that a personal invitation from the governor was not something you turned down just like that. As soon as we came to the capital, I began to run around like mad. I went looking for people I knew, for someone to put in a good word; I climbed on my soapbox each time I mentioned my delicate, my one-and-only son … and do you know what it was good for in the end? It was good for a few good laughs, that’s what! And the boy himself? Frankly, I’d seen better-looking corpses—although, to listen to him, the trouble wasn’t the army at all. For the army, he said, he didn’t care a fiddlestick; if he had to go, he would go. So what was getting him down? The situation at home—that is, the female hysterics … I tell you, there we were at the governor’s and I didn’t know if I was coming or going. You know what, I thought: life is one big lottery, that’s what!
“But leave it to God to come through a third time! My Itsik—I mean my Alter—is brought in to the governor as naked, begging your pardon, as the day he was born, and this time a whole committee is there to perform the laying on of hands. They measure him, they weigh him, they pinch him, they poke him, and do you know what conclusion they come to? That he doesn’t have what it takes. (Thank God it took what he had not to have it!) At first one of them thought otherwise. ‘He passes!’ he said. ‘He fails!’ said the doctor. Passes, fails, passes, fails—it went on like that for a while until the governor himself got up from his chair, went over to have a good look, and said, ‘Passes? The hell he does!…’ ‘Mazel tov.’ I cabled home at once, ‘goods declared definitely damaged …’
“Listen to this, though. I happen to have a cousin with the same name as mine who lives in Mezritch too. He’s a rich Jew who deals in cattle, that’s who he is, and, if I may say so, a bit of a bastard on the side. Not that that’s such an unusual combination—but wouldn’t it be my luck that the telegram I sent was delivered to him by mistake, and just when he was all on edge waiting to hear about a big shipment of oxen he had sent! You can imagine what it did to his blood pressure to be handed a cable that said, ‘Mazel tov, goods declared damaged’—why, when I got back to Mezritch I thought he would eat me alive! Do you know what it’s like to be in Dutch with a rich bastard of a cattle dealer? As if it wasn’t enough for him to walk off with my telegram, he had to blame me for sending it yet …
“But let me get back to the time in Vorotolivke when my Itsik—I mean my Alter—was still a small boy. One fine day it was decided to have a census in town. The census takers went from house to house and wrote down who lived there, and how many children they had, and whether they were boys or girls, and what were their names—and when my wife, God bless her, was asked about our Itsik, she went and said that he was Alter. Well, there are no two ways about it: if you’re a census taker and you’re told ‘Alter,’ what do you write down? You write down ‘Alter.’
“And so a year after my Itsik was excused from the army, we got another letter in the mail: would my son Alter kindly report to the draft board in Vorotolivke. In my worst dreams I should never have such a nightmare! Would you believe it? A new Jew is born: welcome to the world, Reb Alter!
“Well, that’s all a lot of ancient history. My boy Itsik—I mean Alter—had to go see the draft board again. My wife was a nervous wreck, my daughter-in-law almost fainted. How, why, who ever heard of an only son with an automatic, a guaranteed, a one-hundred-percent exemption having to appear three times before a draft board? A lot of good it did to explain that to anyone, though—I might as well have been talking Turkish. I had to run to our local community council and beat my breast before they would agree to have ten Jews sign an affidavit swearing that my Itsik was my Avrom-Yitzchok, and that my Avrom-Yitzchok was my Alter, and that my Alter, my Itsik, and my Avrom-Yitzchok were all one and the same boy.
“Affidavit in hand, I went to Vorotolivke. I arrive there—Well, well, well, look who’s here! What’s new, Reb Yosl? To what do we owe the pleasure? That’s all I needed, for them to know what I was there for! The less Jews know about your business, the better. ‘Nothing special,’ I said. ‘I just wanted a word with your squire.’ ‘What about?’ they ask. ‘About some grain, that’s what,’ I say. ‘I bought a consignment from him and paid him for it in advance. The grain never came, my money is gone—the dish ran away with the spoon …’ What I actually did, though, was go to the town hall, where I gave the affidavit to a clerk. He took one look at it, the clerk, and hit the ceiling. ‘Stupaytye!’ he says—in other words, I can go to hell, me and all my dirty Jew tricks. ‘If you scheming sheenies think you can dodge the draft,’ he says, ‘by turning Avrom into Yitzchok, and Yitzchok into Itsik, and Itsik into Alter, it’s time you realized that sort of hanky-panky doesn’t cut any ice around here!’ … Aha, I thought, hearing him say ‘hanky-panky,’ he’s out to line his own pocket—and I took out a coin, slipped it into his hand, and said to him in a whisper, ‘For your trouble, Your Worship.’ ‘What’s this,’ he roars at me, ‘bribery?’—and don’t think every clerk in that building didn’t come on the double to show me the way out in a hurry! It was just my luck to run into someone with principles … although to tell you the truth, that’s only in a manner of speaking. One is never at a loss among Jews; it didn’t take me long to find one whose money that clerk was less finicky about. The only trouble was that it did as much good as chicken soup does a dead man—when all was said and done, there I still was, stuck with a son named Alter. And since Alter is what his name was, would he kindly report to the draft board in Vorotolivke … What a mess!
“B
elieve me, I must be made of iron to have lived through all that. And yet looking back, what was a fool like me so afraid of? The boy could have been called up a hundred times, he still didn’t have what it took. (Thank God, I thought, that it took what he had not to have it!) In fact, he had already been turned down twice … though on the other hand, I couldn’t help thinking: here I am in a strange town, and one with principles yet—who knows what’s liable to happen …
“Leave it to God to come through another time, though! My Alter—I mean my Itsik—drew a new number, went for a new physical, and managed to fail this one too. Now, with God’s help, we had three white cards …
“Well, the boy returned to Mezritch—what a welcome! We threw a big party, the whole town was invited, and we danced and whooped it up all night long. What could anyone do to me now? I wouldn’t have changed places with a king!
Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories Page 33