Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

by Sholem Aleichem

  “He looked at me, that young man did, with those earnest brown eyes of his and said as calmly as you please, ‘What does one thing have to do with the other? A good deed is a good deed, but stealing is my profession.’

  “ ‘Young man,’ I said to him, just exactly who are you?”

  “ ‘Who am I?’ he said. ‘I’m a Jewish thief with a house full of children and the worst luck you ever saw. Not that I’ve chosen a hard line of work—I’m just a total bungler. Don’t think I’m complaining. Stealing, thank God, is no problem. The problem is getting caught. That’s where I never have luck.’

  “Only when I was already on the train did it occur to me what an ass I had been. For a pittance I could have bought that thief his freedom. Why should I have been his Waterloo? Let someone else have it on his hands …

  “Could I interest you in some reasonably priced diamond earrings? Here, let me show them to you. Stones like these you’ve never even seen in a dream—they’re something extra-special, let me tell you …”

  (1910)

  FATED FOR MISFORTUNE

  Taking his time as if weighing each word, a cultivated, rather worried-looking Jew with a broad, pale, wrinkled forehead, a good black Sabbath frock coat, and a hat with a wide silk ribbon around it told the following story about himself:

  “If you’re fated for misfortune, there’s no place you can run to. You can try eighteen different ways to escape it—none of them will do any good. Take me, for example: I’m a quiet, peaceable Jew who minds his own business, never makes a fuss, and hates being in the public eye. I’ll do anything to avoid being made president of the synagogue, or the godfather at a circumcision, or the guest of honor at a wedding, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “Well, just listen to what happened anyway. One day a Jew died in our town. We called him ‘Menashe-Goy,’ because he was, God forgive me, a simple soul. He couldn’t read or write, he didn’t know a Hebrew letter from the sign of the Cross, he was barely able to recite a few prayers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “In short, he was a real Simple Simon, but a decent fellow and honest to the core; his word of honor was sacred to him, and the next man’s money—sacrosanct. Was he ever stingy with his own, though! He would rather have given up his eyeteeth than a penny. He spent his whole life accumulating more and more, and he was still going strong when suddenly he upped and died. Well, dead is dead—and since that’s what Menashe now was, I was approached with the suggestion that, as he had left behind no small amount of money, plus some outstanding loans, plus some other assets, plus some property, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and as there was no one to manage it all—she, his widow, being only a woman and his children being too small (there were five of them, four boys and a girl)—I should agree to be their fiduciary, that is, their guardian. Of course, I wouldn’t hear of it. Their fi-who-ciary? What did I need it for?… But that only made them pester me more. ‘How,’ I was asked, ‘can you possibly refuse when you’re the only one in town who can be trusted,’ etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. ‘Don’t you realize what a crime it is to let such wealth go unmanaged? What will the poor children, the four little boys and the girl, have left when they grow up? What are you so afraid of? Be the fi-who-ciary, and let the widow, their mother, be the fi-who-ciary-ess!’ I did my best to beg off: what did they want from my life? What kind of fi-who-ciary would I make when I didn’t even know how to spell it? That just added fuel to the fire, though. How could I, and what kind of person was I, and where was my sense of duty, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “Well, in the end I had to give in: I became a fi-who-ciary, that is, the children’s legal guardian, together with her, the widow. And since a fi-who-ciary is what God had made me, the first thing I did was try to determine just what the poor orphans were worth. I went about locating every asset, store, house, horse, cow, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and converting it all into cash … which was easier said than done, mind you, because Menashe, may he rest in peace, was one well-fixed miser of a Jew! However much people had guessed he was worth, they hadn’t guessed enough by half—and to make matters worse, he hadn’t put down a single thing in writing, because he was, God forgive me, an illiterate. New loans he had made kept turning up all the time. Wherever you looked, you found someone else who owed him money. And of course, you understand, I had to walk around with it all in my head and get every penny that I could for it—what other choice did I have? And I had to do it all by myself too, because she, my fi-who-ciary-ess, was a cow of a housewife who didn’t know left from right—a perfectly nice cow, it so happened, but a cow all the same. She couldn’t have told a good IOU from a bad one if her life depended on it, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “Well, I put together ruble after ruble until there was quite a pile. And having gone to no small trouble to put it together, I next had to think of investing it, because if the family used it to live off, what would become of it? Children, it so happens, need clothing and shoes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, to say nothing of having to eat—and once you start eating up your capital, you eat your way through it in no time. And then what? A responsible person, you understand, had to put the money to work. And so I began to look around for somewhere to put it. Should I open a store for the family? But who was going to run it when my fi-who-ciary-ess, it so happened, was a cow, and the children were only children?… Should I lend it out at interest? But supposing the borrower went bankrupt—who would be held accountable? The fi-who-ciary!… Until finally I decided, what more solid business could there be to sink it in than my own? What safer borrower was there than me, eh?… Credit, God be praised, I had everywhere, at every fair in the country, while as for my reputation—it should only be as good all my life! Wasn’t it the best solution by far to put the money into my own store? What better way to guard its value than to keep turning over the stock with it, eh?… And if you buy with cash, you should know, you’re in a different league entirely, because it commands a good premium. Hard cash, you understand, is a rare commodity these days; everyone pays with paper, with notes, a signature here, a signature there, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “Well, I put the money into my business and it wasn’t such a poor idea, because things didn’t go badly, they didn’t go badly at all. My gross, you understand, grew very nicely, since a well-stocked store draws a different type of customer. It’s the bait that makes them bite, as any fisherman will tell you. There was just one little problem: my expenses! They were now double what they used to be, because I was supporting two whole households … My own family, knock wood, was nothing new; but she, the widow, kept needing things too, as did all five of her children, four boys and a girl who weren’t even mine. That was no joking matter! There were clothes to buy, and shoes to buy, and a school for the boys, and a private tutor for the girl, to say nothing of a family outing here and a snack for the kids there, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—there simply was no way of avoiding it. What would everyone have said? A fine fi-who-ciary he is, taking all the money for himself and not sparing the poor orphans even a kopeck for candy!… There I was, you understand, slaving away, beating my brains out, on the road all the time buying merchandise, with a ledger full of debts and bad news—and no one could have cared less. She, the widow, never once lent a hand; all she wanted was her half of the income … But after all, you say, it was her money I was using? In the first place, though, her money was tied up in stock; in the second place, I wasn’t just using it, I was planning to pay her good interest; and however you look at it, it wasn’t worth the bother of having it on my mind day and night, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—if you don’t believe me, go be a fi-who-ciary yourself! Try making it your business how somebody else’s children are doing in school, and whether they are where they should be, and if they aren’t where they shouldn’t be, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—who did they all think I was, their governess? It’s all you can do these days to look after your own kids, especially if you’ve been blessed with a bad egg.
Menashe, may God forgive me, was a simpleton of a Jew, but the very soul of honor; his children, though—Lord have mercy! One was worse than the other … The two older ones, at least, were halfway manageable; the first, who was deaf and a real sad sack, I managed to apprentice to a trade, and the second, though a total idiot, was at least quiet and kept out of people’s hair … The third, on the other hand, was gifted enough as a child, but fell in with a bad crowd when he grew older and turned into such a scoundrel himself that it was best to give him a wide berth. He bothered and badgered and blustered and bedeviled and etcetera-ed me so that I finally gave him a few rubles and packed him off to America, which had been his great dream since he was little; good riddance was all I could say!… As for the girl, I married her off with nearly a thousand rubles’ dowry, bought her a trousseau, stood her to a fine wedding with a band, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—I gave her everything a bride could desire, almost as if I were her own father … and what, what other choice did I have, would someone please tell me that? They had no father of their own, she, their mother, was a cow—who was there, if not me, to break his neck for them?… ‘You’re a damn fool!’ my wife kept saying to me. ‘As if you had nothing better to do than sacrifice yourself for someone else’s children! Just wait and see, they’ll thank you like a ton of bricks for being such a fi-who-ciary.’ That’s what she said, and she couldn’t have been more right: a ton of bricks is what I feel I’ve been hit with—why, every brick weighs a ton! Just wait till you hear what I’ve been through. Believe me, I must be made of iron if I can still sit here and tell you about it …

  “Well, of all the children Menashe left behind, there was one, the youngest, a boy called Danielchik, who really took the cake; he was the wrath of God in person. From the time he was a tot, he was a terror. At the age of five he thought nothing of beaning his mother with a boot—and on a Sabbath morning before prayers, of all times!—while ripping off her shawl in the presence of strangers was second nature to him. I tell you, she must have had the skin of an elephant to put up with him! Day in and day out we had our hands full with Danielchik. Whenever I dropped by, I found her, the widow, sitting and sobbing her heart out: what ever had she done to deserve such a child? Why couldn’t he have rotted away in the womb instead of having to be born? The things that Danielchik did to her defied all description. He stole whatever he could get his hands on: her jewelry, her rings, her earrings, her pearl necklace, her silk kerchief, her lamps, her kitchen knives, an old pair of eyeglasses, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—everything was fair game; he swiped it all and sold it to buy candy, or nuts, or watermelons, or expensive tobacco for himself and his friends. You can imagine the sort of friends they were! Thieves, drunks, hoodlums—the Devil only knows where he found them. He gave away everything he owned to them: his new boots, his best cap, the shirt off his back … ‘Danielchik,’ you’d ask him, ‘what’s wrong with you? How can you just go and give away a brand-new pair of boots?’ ‘Screw them!’ he would say. ‘Have a heart, the poor guy was going barefoot …’ A big-hearted little fellow, no? And I’m not even talking about money; every cent he got hold of, he simply passed on to that gang of his. ‘Danielchik, for God’s sake, what are you doing?’ ‘Screw it! The guy’s human too, he’s got to eat just like you do …’ Quite the little philanthropist, eh? There was nothing halfway about him, he was a one-hundred-percent pure freak of nature! Don’t think he was stupid, though, or some kind of ugly duckling. Far from it; he was a clever, handsome, healthy, high-spirited boy, a talented singer and dancer—he just happened to be a thoroughbred hell-pup … What didn’t we try with him? We tried the carrot—and the stick: we locked him in his room for three days and three nights, we thrashed him with a cat-o’-nine-tails, we even broke a good bamboo cane over him that I had paid three whole rubles for … it was all spitting into the wind! I tried apprenticing him to every kind of tradesman, making a watchmaker, a goldsmith, a carpenter, a musician, an ironsmith, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, out of him—not a chance! You could cut him in two with a carving knife before he’d do a stitch of work. ‘But what will you be when you grow up, Danielchik?’ you’d ask. ‘A free bird,’ he would say with a laugh. ‘A free bird? A jailbird is more like it!’ ‘Screw it!’ he would say—and before you could open your mouth again, he was gone.

  “Well, we washed our hands of him and let him grow up as he pleased—which meant, you can imagine, as a perfect black sheep. Not that he continued stealing; in any case, there was hardly anything left to steal. It was rather the way he carried on in general, the fine company he kept and all his monkeyshines, plus the getup he went around in: a red blouse hanging down over his pants, high boots up to his knees, hair as long as a priest’s, chin as smooth as a goy’s—quite the young gentleman he was!… He never had the cheek to come see me himself, though. Whenever he wanted something from me, he put her, his mother, up to it—and she, the widow, was such a cow that she actually went right on loving him, her precious darling couldn’t do wrong! Until one day when I came to my store, my fair-haired boy was waiting there for me.

  “ ‘Well, well, a guest!’ I said. ‘Welcome, Danielchik. What’s the good word?’

  “ ‘The good word,’ he said, ‘is that I’m getting married.’

  “ ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’

  “ ‘Osna,’ he said.

  “ ‘What Osna?’

  “ ‘Our Osna, who worked in our house.’

  “ ‘Holy God!’ I said. ‘You’re marrying a housemaid?’

  “ ‘Screw that!’ he said. ‘Don’t you think a housemaid’s human too?’

  “ ‘God help your poor mother,’ I said. ‘Have you come to invite me to the wedding?’

  “ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about clothes. We sat down together, Osna and me, and drew up a list of what we need: for me, one flannel winter suit, one sailcloth summer suit, a dozen undershirts, and half-a-dozen shirts; and for Osna, some calico for a summer dress, a woolen winter dress, a few yards of gingham for house frocks, a fur muff, two shawls, half-a-dozen handkerchiefs,’ etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …

  “ ‘And is that all?’ I asked when he was done, doing my best not to smile.

  “ ‘That’s all,’ he said.

  “Well, I couldn’t hold it in any longer; all of a sudden I burst out laughing so hard that I nearly fell off my seat. My employees took one look at me and began to laugh too. We laughed until the walls shook. And when I had laughed so much that I couldn’t laugh any more, I said to my fine young Romeo:

  “ ‘Danielchik, sweetheart, just tell me one thing: is it because you and me are such partners in the store that you think you can hand me a list like this?’

  “ ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell you exactly what my share of your store is. But if you take my father’s money and divide it five ways, there should be enough to cover the clothes with plenty to spare for after the wedding …’

  “Well, what can I tell you? Hearing him say that was like being shot in the heart, or having a fire lit under me, or God only knows what. I saw stars in front of my eyes! Do you get me? As if it wasn’t enough that I had spent all those years of my life supporting a widow and five children, and attending to all their needs, and marrying them all off, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—now along comes this little upstart and thinks he can lecture me about shares he has in my store …

  “ ‘What did I tell you?’ said my wife. ‘Didn’t I say they would thank you like a ton of bricks?’

  “Well, you may as well know that I gave him everything he asked for. Why argue with a snotnose like that? It was beneath my dignity. Let him take his money and go hang—all I wanted was to get rid of the little pest … Do you think I did, though? Then you better think some more. A month after the wedding he came to see me again, did my clean-cut young friend, to demand the sum of two hundred twenty-three rubles.

  “ ‘Just how did you arrive at two hundred twenty-three rubles?’ I
asked him.

  “ ‘That’s what they’re asking,’ he says to me without batting an eyelash, ‘for the beer hall and the billiard parlor.’

  “ ‘What beer hall? What billiard parlor?’

  “ ‘I’m going into business,’ he says. ‘I’ve bought a beer hall with a billiard parlor. Osna will run the bar and I’ll keep an eye on the billiard tables. We can make a good living from it.’

  “ ‘And a very respectable one too,’ I told my young provider. ‘A beer hall with a billiard parlor—I must say it’s just your style.’

  “ ‘Screw that!’ he says, ‘I don’t want to be a sponge, that’s all. I don’t mind eating dry bread once a day, just as long as it’s mine …’

  “Introducing Danielchik the philosopher! Isn’t that a scream? ‘Congratulations!’ I said. ‘You can sell beer and play billiards all you want. What does it have to do with me, though?’

  “ ‘It has to do with you,’ he says, ‘because of the two hundred twenty-three rubles you’re giving me.’

  “ ‘What do you mean, I’m giving you?’ I say. ‘Just where am I supposed to take them from?’

  “ ‘From my father’s money,’ he says without a blush.

  “Would you believe it? At first I had a powerful urge to grab him by the neck and throw him right to the Devil!… On second thought, though, I said to myself: for heaven’s sake, who are you rolling in the mud with? Let him have the money and the deuce take him! ‘Tell me, Danielchik,’ I said to him, ‘do you happen to have any idea how much your father left you?’

  “ ‘No,’ he says. ‘What do I need to know for? In a year from now, when I turn twenty-one, you and I will go over the books. In the meantime, let me have my money and I’ll go.’

  “That made me see more stars. Would you like to know why? It wasn’t because I was afraid of anyone, since what was there to be afraid of? Hadn’t I spent more than enough on them already? I tell you, it was no trifle to have supported a widow and her five children all those years, to have attended to their every need, to have married off each one of them, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—and now here was this little crumb wanting to go over my books!