Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

by Sholem Aleichem

  “You can imagine for yourself what a white-hot rage I was in. Just the thought of having taken in a strange girl as a poor, hungry orphan, of having done all I could to make her happy, only to have her go make an ass of my own brother’s son! I ranted, I raved, I had a fit, I damn near went berserk. On second thought, though, I said to myself, ‘What good does it do to lose your temper? Is stamping your feet going to help any? Why don’t you think of something constructive, some way to catch them in time?’ … My first move was to go to the police; I slipped them a modest retainer and informed them that a niece of mine who was living in my house had stolen some valuables and run off God knows where with my adopted son. Then I laid out some more money and sent telegrams left and right, to every town and village in the area. Sure enough, with God’s help they were caught. Where? In a little town not far from us. Bravo!

  “When the good news reached me that they had been nabbed, I went with the police to the town they were found in. I won’t bother to tell you how I felt on the way—worried isn’t the word for it! My greatest fear was, who knows, perhaps they already were married—in which case, as they say, the horse had been stolen before the barn door was locked … But God was with me: the wedding hadn’t taken place yet. It’s just that now there was a new problem: since I had told the police that I was robbed, the two of them were being held in jail. Jail—a bad business! I raised the rafters, I went about telling them that the real thief was my niece and that he, my adopted son, was innocent—but when I finally talked them into releasing my Paysi, what do you think he said? ‘If one of us is a thief, so is the other!’ Did you ever?! It was she, the little bitch, who put him up to it. What a tart!… I ask you, does it pay to be good? Who in his right mind would have pity on an orphan? Where’s the percentage in it? I tell you, it cost me a year of my life before I could free them both and take them back with me, because he wouldn’t budge unless she was let out too. And that’s not the half of it, either!

  “Naturally, I forbade her to set foot in our house again. I paid a cousin of ours, a country bumpkin named Moyshe-Meir, to put her up in his village, and my Paysi came back home to live with us. I gave him a talking to, I did. ‘For God’s sake,’ I said to him, ‘here I’ve taken you and adopted you as my own son, I’ve put aside a couple of thousand for your wedding gift—how could you spring such a scandal on me?’ ‘What scandal?’ he said. ‘She’s your niece, I’m your nephew—we’re cut from the exact same cloth.’ ‘But how,’ I asked, ‘can you even compare yourself to her? Your father was my brother, and a man of character too, while hers, may he forgive me, was nothing but a bum, a lousy card fiend!’ … Just then I glanced at my wife—she’s about to pass out again. Did she let out a squawk: I mustn’t dare say a bad word about her sister’s husband—the two of them were in the other world now, we should let them rest there in peace! Did you ever?! ‘That still, may he forgive me, doesn’t make him any less of a degenerate,’ I said. That did it: she went out like a light! What has the world come to when a man is such a stranger in his own home that he can’t open his mouth any more? And that’s not the half of it, either!

  “Well, I took my Paysi in hand and watched him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t pull any more stunts. And, with God’s help, he shaped up and even agreed to be engaged—not to any great world-beater, it’s true, but still, to a girl from a decent family, with a good reputation, with money for a dowry, with … with … with what a man like me had coming to him at last! I was in seventh heaven. All’s well that ends well, eh? Be patient, there’s still more.

  “One day I came home from the store to have a bite of lunch. I washed up, I sat down to eat, I said the Lord’s blessing, I looked up from the table—no Paysi! The first thought to cross my mind was that he’d bolted again. ‘Where’s Paysi?’ I asked my wife. ‘I have no idea,’ she says. As soon as I finished eating I ran back into town; I looked here, I looked there, I looked everywhere—he was gone without a trace. Right away I sent a message to our cousin Moyshe-Meir to ask what was doing with Rayzl. Back came a letter with the news that she’d left his house the day before, saying she was going to visit her mother’s grave in town. Was I fit to be tied! I took it all out on my wife again, because she was to blame for everything: the girl, after all, was her niece. And that’s not the half of it, either!

  “I ran to the police, I spent a fortune on telegrams, on search parties—not a clue, there wasn’t a sign of them. I ranted, I raved, I had a fit—it didn’t do a bit of good. Take my word for it, in the three weeks that followed I damn near went berserk! Suddenly a letter arrived: mazel tov, all was well; with God’s help they were married, there wasn’t a thing I could do. Did you ever?! Would I kindly call off my dogs, they wrote, all they asked was to be left alone; they had loved each other since childhood, and now, thank God, they had all their hearts desired. I tell you, I never!… How did they intend to make a living? We shouldn’t worry about them: he was preparing for his entrance exams in medicine, and she was studying to be a midwife. Did you ever?! Meanwhile, both were doing private tutoring and earning, with God’s help, up to fifteen rubles a month; the rent cost them six and a half, food was eight more, and as for the rest—God was great … I tell you, I never! Well, well, I thought, when you’re starving to death and come crawling to me on all fours, we’ll see who’s boss then! ‘I hope you see now,’ I said to my wife, ‘what a bad seed she is. From a bum like her father, from a card fiend like that, what else could you expect?’ … That wasn’t all I said, either—I was just waiting for a word of her back talk. ‘Since you like to faint whenever I mention your dear brother-in-law,’ I said, ‘how come you’re not doing it now?’ … Did you ever hear a stone talk? That’s how she answered me. ‘Do you think I don’t know,’ I said, ‘that you’re in cahoots with them, that you’re the brains behind this whole thing?’ … Not a peep out of her—as quiet as a mouse, she was. Well, what could she have said when she knew damn well I was right? She could see what a state I was in. What, besides being good, had I done to deserve all this? And that’s not the half of it, either!

  “I suppose you think that’s the end of the story. Wait, now comes the best part.

  “In short, a year went by. They wrote us now and then, but never a word about money. Suddenly they sent us good news—a son had been born and we were invited to the circumcision. ‘Congratulations,’ I said to my wife. ‘It’s an occasion to be proud of! No doubt they’ll name the boy after your dear brother-in-law.’ She didn’t answer me; she just turned white as a sheet, put on her coat, and stalked out of the house. She’ll be back soon enough, I thought; so I waited an hour, and then another, and another—it was already evening, it was the middle of the night, and still no wife in sight. A fine state of affairs it was turning out to be!… Wouldn’t you know it, she had gone off to them, and ever since then—it’s been nearly two years—she hasn’t been back and hasn’t given any sign of coming back. Have you ever heard anything like it? At first I waited for a letter from her, but when I saw none was coming, I sat down and wrote her myself. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ I asked. ‘Do you have any idea what the whole world is saying about us?’ Back came the answer that her place was with her children—did you ever?!—and that her little grandchild (whose name, by the way, was Hirshele, after my brother) meant more to her than ten whole worlds. In fact, you could search ten whole worlds, she wrote, and never find another child like him. And at the bottom she wished me health and happiness—without her. I tell you, I never!

  “Well, I wrote her again, and still another time, and let her know in plain language that she wasn’t going to get a penny out of me. Back came the answer that she didn’t need my money … did you ever?! In that case, I wrote, I was disinheriting her and cutting her off without a cent till hell froze over. Back came the answer that she couldn’t care less … I tell you, I never! Her life with the children, she wrote, lacked nothing, it should only always be as good, because Paysi was already in medical school and Rayzl
was working as a midwife; in fact, they were earning seventy rubles a month—did you ever?! If I wanted to cut her off, she wrote, I could do it whenever I wished, I could even will my money to the Church. I tell you, I never! And at the bottom she wrote that I was out of my mind. The whole world, she said, was making a laughingstock of me. ‘You would think it a tragedy,’ she wrote, ‘that your brother’s son has married my sister’s daughter. If you don’t like it, you old fool, you can lump it!’ Did you ever?! ‘Why, if you could only see little Hirshele,’ she wrote, ‘pointing to his grandfather’s picture on the wall and saying “gra’papa,” you’d give yourself a swift kick in the pants!’ I tell you, I never! That’s how she writes to me. And that isn’t the half of it, either!

  “What do you say, does a man need nerves of steel or doesn’t he? Do you think it doesn’t stick in my craw to come home to an empty house with only the four walls to talk to? It makes a man wonder; I ask you, who am I living for? Why has this happened to me? For what do I deserve an old age like this? For being good? For being such a big soft touch?… You’ll have to excuse me, but when I begin to talk about it I get such a lump in my throat that I can’t go on anymore …

  “Oy, it doesn’t pay to be good. Do you hear me? It doesn’t pay!”

  (1903)

  BURNED OUT

  “May God not punish me for saying this,” I heard a Jew behind me tell some passengers, “but our Jews, our Jews, do you hear me, are an amo pezizo. Do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means they’re safe to eat a noodle pudding with, to sit next to in the synagogue, and to be buried beside in the graveyard—but as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “You’d like to know what I have against Jews and why I’m running them down? But if you’d been through with them what I have and had done to you what I’ve had, you’d be running amuck in the streets!… Well, forget it; I’m not one to go around bearing grudges. With me it’s a principle to let the other man have his way, oylom keminhogoy, as it says. What does that mean in plain Yiddish? It means that I’ll leave it to God to settle accounts with them—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “Listen to this. I wouldn’t wish it on you, but I happen to come from a nice little town by the name of Boheslav, one of those places of which it’s said, sow a bushel and you’ll reap a peck. In fact, if there’s anyone you really want to punish, don’t send him to Siberia, that’s nothing; send him to us in Boheslav, and make him a storekeeper, and give him enough credit to run up a nice debt, and see to it he has a fire that burns him out of house and home, and have all the Jews in town go around saying that he personally gave the match a scratch, because he wanted … but you can guess for yourselves what a Boheslav Jew is capable of thinking, and of saying, and even of writing to the right places—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “You can guess for yourselves who you’re looking at, too—at a man whose rotten luck it is to have been a three-time loser. Three strikes is what I have against me: in the first place, I’m a Jew; in the second place, I’m a Jew from Boheslav; and in the third place, I’m a burned-out Jew from Boheslav—and burned out to a fine crisp too, a whole-offering to the Lord, just as it says in the Bible! It happened this year. The whole place went up in smoke like a straw roof. I came out of it bekharbi uvekashti—that means in plain Yiddish, with nothing but the shirt on my back. And the fact of the matter is that I wasn’t even there when it happened. Where was I? Not far away, in Tarashche, at my niece’s engagement party. It was a first-rate party too, with a banquet, with fine guests—none of your Boheslav trash. You can guess for yourselves that we drank a good barrel and a half of vodka, not to mention the beer and the wine. In short, the time went by kidibo’ey—that’s swimmingly to you, in plain Yiddish. All of a sudden I was handed a telegram. It was in Russian and it said, ‘Wife sick, children sick, mother-in-law sick, you come quick.’ I don’t have to tell you that I picked up my feet and cleared out of there in a hurry. I come home—surprise, surprise! The store is gone, the stock is gone, the house is gone, and everything in it is gone, down to the last pair of socks. Begapoy yovoy uvegapoy yeytsey—do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means that some go from rags to riches and I go from rags to rags … The poor wife stood there crying; the children just stared at her, they didn’t have a place to lay their heads. It was a lucky thing it was all insured, and well-insured too—only that, you can guess for yourselves, is what smelled fishy. It wouldn’t have looked so bad in itself; but the worst part was that it wasn’t the first time, I’d already had a fire before—and also at night, and also when I wasn’t at home. Then, though, everything went smoothly. The inspector came, made a list of the burned rubble, gave an appraisal, haggled with me fair and square, a ruble more, a ruble less, until we reached an agreement—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “That was the first time. God save all Jews from the inspector they sent me this time, though: a mean bastard if ever there was one! And to make matters worse, an honest one too, there was no way I could slip him a bribe. Doesn’t that beat all? The man’s incorruptible, go do something about it! He poked and picked and puttered around, he kept asking me to explain to him how the whole thing had happened, and what exactly was burned, and where everything was, and why there wasn’t a trace left of anything, but not an iota …

  “ ‘But that’s just my point!’ I said to him. ‘I’ve been totaled. If you want to know why, don’t ask me, ask God.’

  “ ‘I don’t like the looks of it,’ he said. ‘Don’t think that getting us to pay up will be easy.’

  “That’s one smart sleuth for you, eh? He thought he’d play the big bad wolf with me. And ditto the police detective who came to see me next. He kept trying to trip me up, he was sure he’d got his hands on a first-grader. ‘So tell me, Moshke,’ he says, ‘how come things have such a way of burning down with you?’

  “ ‘How come?’ I say. ‘Because they catch fire.’

  “ ‘Then suppose you explain to me,’ he says, ‘how come you took out insurance just two weeks before it happened?’

  “ ‘When should I have taken it out, Officer,’ I say, ‘two weeks after it happened?’

  “ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘how come you weren’t at home?’

  “ ‘And if I had been,’ I say, ‘you’d be happier?’

  “ ‘But how come,’ he asks, ‘you received a telegram telling you that your family was sick?’

  “ ‘Because,’ I say, ‘they wanted me to come quick.’

  “ ‘Then how come they didn’t tell you the truth?’ he asks.

  “ ‘Because they didn’t want to scare me,’ I say.

  “ ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ve had enough of this! I want you to know that I’m running you in.’

  “ ‘But what for?’ I say. ‘What did I ever do to you? You’re taking a perfectly innocent man and ruining his good name! Does it make you feel good to cut a man’s throat in cold blood? Well, if that’s what you want, I can’t stop you. Just remember, though, that there’s a God above Who sees everything.’

  “Did he blow his top at that! ‘Just who do you think you’re talking to about God, you little so-and-so?’ he said. That didn’t scare me, though—not when they had nothing on me, because I was clean as the driven snow. How does the saying go? Al tehi boz lekhoyl bosor: in plain Yiddish that means that you don’t smell of garlic when you haven’t eaten it—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “In fact, everything would have been just fine if it weren’t for Boheslav. Do you think a Boheslav Jew can stand to see another Jew come by money? That’s when the poison pen letters began to circulate. Some sent them by mail and some brought them down to the insurance company in person, but everyone said it was me who gave the match a scratch … how’s that for sheer finkery? They said I had purposely left home that night so that … doesn’t that beat all for low-downness? They eve
n claimed I never had the stock I put in for and that my account books were faked—they tried to pin such a bum rap on me that it would have made a Haman blush—they … they … but as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

  “That didn’t scare me, though, not when they had nothing on me, because I was as clean as the driven snow. After all, to say it was me who gave the match a scratch was ridiculous. Any child understands that if you do such a thing you don’t dirty your hands yourself, not when three rubles will get you a good angel to do the job for you … isn’t that how it’s done where you come from? And as for the rumor that I purposely left home that night because of it, nothing could be further from the truth, because I was at my sister’s party. I have an only sister in Tarashche, she was marrying off her middle daughter—are you telling me I shouldn’t have gone? What kind of a brother would that make me? I ask you: suppose you had an only sister whose daughter was getting engaged—would you have stood her up and stayed home? Of course not! It’s not as if I had any way of knowing it was the night my house would burn down. It’s a lucky thing I happened to be insured. And the reason I was is that lately, fires have been breaking out all over. Every summer each little town has too many of them for comfort. It’s one fire after another; if it’s not Mir, it’s Bobroisk, if it’s not Bobroisk, it’s Rechitsa, if it’s not Rechitsa, it’s Bialystok—the whole world is going up in flames!… So I thought to myself, koyl yisro’el khaveyrim—do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means that if Jews are burning out everywhere, who’s to say it can’t happen to me! Why be a booby and trust in miracles to save a store that can be insured? And if I was already taking out insurance, why not the maximum? You know what they say: if you have to eat pork, you may as well eat it till you burst. The company wouldn’t lose its shirt or even grow a cent poorer because of my monthly payments—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…