Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  To make a long story short—why should I carry on?—I developed a yearning, and it was no laughing matter. Who could tell? I asked myself. Maybe he was a heaven-sent messenger. I was hearing that ordinary people get lucky in Yehupetz, so why should I have been worse than they? He didn’t strike me as a liar, making up tall tales out of his head. And what if things did turn around as he had said, and Tevye could become a bit of a mensch in his old age? How long could a person struggle and slave day after day, again and again the horse and wagon, again cheese and butter? It’s time, Tevye, I said to myself, for you to rest, to become a respectable man among respectable men, to step into the synagogue once in a while and look into a Jewish book. Why should I not? Was I afraid that it wouldn’t work out, that the bread would fall butter side down? I could argue the other way around.

  I asked my old lady, “What do you say? How do you like his plan, Golde?”

  “What can I say about it? I know Menachem-Mendl isn’t someone who would cheat you,” she said. “He isn’t, God forbid, from a family of tailors or shoemakers! He has a fine father, and his grandfather was very brilliant, studied Torah day and night, even when he went blind. And Grandma Tzeitl, may she rest in peace, was also not a common sort.”

  “What has all this got to do with the business we’re talking about? What do your Grandma Tzeitl, who baked lekach, and your grandfather have to do with it?” A woman remains a woman. Not for nothing did King Solomon travel all over the world without finding a single woman with a brain in her head.

  And so it was decided that we would become partners. I would put up the money, and Menachem-Mendl the brains, and whatever God granted us we would share fifty-fifty. “Believe me, Reb Tevye,” he said, “with God’s help you will do well with me, really well, and I will make lots of money for you.”

  “Amen, the same to you,” I said. “From your mouth into God’s ear. But I must ask you, how does that cat get across the river? I am here, you are there. Money,” I said, “is a very delicate material, you understand. Don’t be offended—I’m not trying to criticize you, God forbid. It’s simply, as Abraham our Father said, They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. It’s better to be warned than to weep.”

  “Ach!” he said to me. “Maybe you think we should put it down in writing? With great pleasure!”

  “Wait,” I said, “let’s look at it another way. What difference will that make? If you want to ruin me, what good will a piece of paper do? It’s not the piece of paper that pays, it’s the person, and if I am already hanging by one foot, I might as well hang by both.”

  “You can believe me, Reb Tevye,” he said. “I swear to you, let God punish me if I cheat you. I will honestly share everything with you, right down the middle—for me a hundred, for you a hundred, for me two hundred, for you two hundred, for me three hundred, for you three hundred, for me four hundred, for you four hundred, for me a thousand, for you a thousand.”

  To make a long story short, I took out my few rubles and counted them over three times with trembling hands. I called over my wife as a witness and once more made it clear to Menachem-Mendl that this was money I sweated blood for. I gave it to him, sewed it into his bosom pocket so no one could steal it, and arranged with him that no later than a week from Saturday he would write me a letter with every detail. We parted like the best of friends and kissed affectionately, as is usual between relatives. Standing by myself after he left, lively thoughts and daydreams raced through my head, such sweet dreams that I wanted them never to end, to go on forever. I imagined we lived right in the middle of town in a mansion covered with a tin roof, with stables and rooms and pantries full of good things. My wife Golde, a regular lady, keys in hand, goes from room to room, in charge of the household. She’s not to be recognized, I tell you. She has a different face, the face of a rich man’s wife, with a double chin and pearls around her neck. She’s all puffed up and curses the servants. My children are all wearing their Shabbes clothes, no longer needing to do chores. The courtyard is packed with chickens, geese, and ducks. Indoors it is well lit, a fire burns in the stove, supper is cooking, and the samovar is boiling as if possessed! At the head of the table sits the head of the household, Tevye himself, in a frock coat and yarmulke. Around him sit the most prominent Jews in town, flattering him: Pardon me, Reb Tevye, no offense, Reb Tevye—“Ay,” I say out loud, “so this is what money can do for you!”

  “What are you talking about?” my Golde asks.

  “Nothing,” I reply. “My mind’s just wandered—thoughts, dreams—forget about it. Tell me, Golde my love, do you know what your relative Menachem-Mendl does for a living?”

  “May all my nightmares fall on my enemies’ heads! Do you mean to tell me you sat up all day and night with him talking and talking, and you are asking me what he does for a living? You two just made a deal,” she said, “didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “we made a deal, but what we made I don’t really understand, even if you took my head off! There’s nothing about it I can grab hold of. But that has nothing to do with it. Don’t worry, my wife, my heart tells me it’s all right. God willing, I imagine we will make money, and a lot of it. Say amen and go cook supper!”

  In short, a week passed, and two and three—no letter from my partner! I was going out of my mind, walking around in a daze, not knowing what to think. He couldn’t have just forgotten to write, I thought. He knew very well that we were waiting to hear from him. Then I began to wonder what I could do to him if he were to skim off the cream and tell me we hadn’t earned anything. Would I call him a liar? I told myself it couldn’t be, it wasn’t possible. I’d treated the man like one of my own, been ready to take on his troubles. How could he play a trick like that on me?! And then I thought, The profit be damned. Deliverance will come from the Lord. May God at least keep the principal intact! A cold chill ran through my body. Old fool! I said to myself. You made your bed, now lie in it, you ass! How much better it would have been to buy a pair of horses for my hundred rubles, the kind my ancestors never had, and to trade the wagon in for a carriage with springs.

  “Tevye, why don’t you think of something?” my wife said.

  “What do you mean?” My head was splitting from thinking, and she was asking me to think!

  “Something must have happened to him on the way home,” she said. “Maybe thieves attacked him and robbed him blind. Or maybe he fell sick, God forbid, or may my mouth not say it, he may be dead.”

  “What will you think of next, my dear soul?” I said. “Robbers!” Still, you could never tell what might happen to a man while traveling. “Why do you always think the worst?” I asked Golde.

  “He has that kind of family. His mother,” she said, “may she protect us before God, died not long ago, still young. He had three sisters, may our fate be different from theirs. One died young, another did marry but caught a cold in the bath and died, and the third went out of her mind after her first childbirth, struggled and struggled and finally died.”

  “You live and you die. We will all die,” I said to Golde. “A carpenter lives, and in the end he still dies. And how is any man different from a carpenter?”

  And so it was decided that I would go to Yehupetz. In the meantime the dairy business had grown a bit. We had a nice little shop in which we sold cheese, butter, and sour cream, first-class merchandise. My wife harnessed the horse and wagon, and as Rashi says: And so they journeyed forth. On to Yehupetz! As I was riding along, melancholy and downcast, as you might imagine, with a bitter heart, alone in the woods, all kinds of fears and thoughts beset me. It would be a fine thing, I thought, if, once I got there and asked about my man, I was told, “Menachem-Mendl? Oh ho, he’s really made it big, has the world by the tail, owns his own house, rides in a carriage. He’s not to be recognized!”

  In my imagination I pulled myself together and then courageously took myself straight to his house. A servant would receive me rudely at the door with an elbow in the ribs. “Don’t push yourself in t
hat way, Uncle,” he’d snarl. “Around here you don’t push.” “But I’m a relative,” I’d say. “Menachem-Mendl is my wife’s second cousin once removed.” “Congratulations!” he’d say. “Happy to make your acquaintance, but you still must wait here at the door. It won’t do you any harm.” He was hinting to have his palm greased. Well, grease the wheel, and you’ll ride. I was taken up to see my cousin right away.

  “Good morning to you, Reb Menachem-Mendl!” I said in my imagination. But he made no speech or utterance. He did not recognize me! “What do you want?” I imagined him asking me. I almost fainted. “What is this, Pani,” I’d say. “You don’t know your own relative? I’m Tevye!” “Ah?” he’d say. “Tevye? That’s a familiar name.” “Familiar?” I’d say. “Maybe my wife’s blintzes are familiar! Do you remember her knishes, her knaidlach, her blintzes?”

  Then I imagined that the very opposite happened. I would go in, and he’d greet me with a broad “Sholem aleichem.” A guest! A guest! “Sit, Reb Tevye,” he’d say. “How are you, how is your wife? I’ve been expecting you. I want to settle accounts with you.” And he’d fill my hat with money. “This,” he’d say, “is the earnings, and the principal remains the same. Whatever we earn, we will divide in half, fifty-fifty, half for me, half for you. For me a hundred, for you a hundred, for me two hundred, for you two hundred, for me three hundred, for you three hundred, for me four hundred, for you four hundred.”

  I dozed off as my imaginary relative was speaking and didn’t notice that my horse had wandered off the path and somehow hooked the wagon onto a tree branch. Seeing stars, I felt as if I had been kicked from behind. Everything turns out for the best, I said to myself. Thank God an axle didn’t break.

  Well, I arrived in Yehupetz and, as usual, quickly sold my dairy products. Then I began to look for my man. I looked around for an hour and two and then three—the man was not to be found! I stopped people along the way and asked them if they had seen or heard of Menachem-Mendl. “If,” they said, “his name is Menachem-Mendl, that’s not enough. There are lots of Menachem-Mendls around here. What’s his last name?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” I said. “At home in Kasrilevka he’s known by his mother-in-law’s name, Menachem-Mendl Leah-Dvossi’s. What more do you need? His father-in-law, an elderly Jew, also goes by her name—Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s, and even she, Leah-Dvossi, is called Leah-Dvossi Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s. Now do you understand?”

  “We understand,” they said, “but that’s still not enough. What is his business? What does he deal in, your Menachem-Mendl?”

  “What does he deal in? He deals in gold imperials,” I said, “and options, and he sends off telegrams to Saint Petersburg, to Warsaw.”

  “Oh?” They began to laugh, then laughed louder and louder. “You mean the crook Menachem-Mendl! Why don’t you just go across the street? There you’ll find brokers running around like rabbits, and yours is probably one of them.” The longer you lived, the more you learned, I thought. Rabbits—what were they talking about?

  I crossed the street. Everywhere were Jews, kayn eyn horeh, like at a fair. It was crowded, impossible to push through. People were tearing around like madmen, this one here, that one there, one on top of the other—it was chaos. They were talking, screaming, waving their hands in the air: “Shares, stocks . . . he gave me his word . . . I need a down payment . . . a fee . . . you’re an idiot . . . I’ll bash your head in . . . spit in his face . . . what a speculator . . . chiseler . . . your father’s father!” They almost came to blows. And Jacob fled. I thought I should run before they turned on me! But God is a Father, I am His servant, Yehupetz is a city, and Menachem-Mendl made money! Right here was where people got lucky with gold imperials. Was this what they meant by “doing business”? Woe unto me, Tevye, and my business, God help me.

  To make a long story short, I stopped at a large shopwindow displaying trousers and saw in the reflection my so-called benefactor, Menachem-Mendl. My heart hurt when I saw him, so sorry did I feel for him! If ever I had an enemy, and if ever you had an enemy, may we hope to see them in the same state as Menachem-Mendl. His coat, his boots, were in terrible shape. And his face—God in heaven, a healthier face would have been delivered to the grave. So, if I died, that would be the end of me, I could kiss the few groschens goodbye. As they say: “Neither hide nor hair of them”—no merchandise, no money, only troubles.

  For his part, Menachem-Mendl seemed abashed to see me, and we both stood as if frozen, unable to speak, just looking into each other’s eyes like two roosters, as if to say, We’re both miserable and cleaned out. We might as well take tin cups and go from house to house!

  “Reb Tevye,” he said to me quietly, barely audibly, tears choking him, “Reb Tevye! Without luck, a man shouldn’t have been born! Rather than living like this, it is better to hang.” More he could not say.

  “Surely,” I said to him, “for what you did, Mendl, you deserve to be laid out right in the center of Yehupetz and whipped so soundly you’d see Grandma Tzeitl from the Other World. Just think of what you’ve done. You took a household full of living souls, poor creatures, as innocent as lambs, and slit their throats without a knife! God in heaven,” I said, “how can I face my wife and children? Go on, tell me, you slaughterer, swindler, thief!”

  “True,” he said, leaning against a wall. “True, Reb Tevye, may God help me.”

  “Gehennam,” I said, “gehennam, you idiot, is too good for you, fool!”

  “True, Reb Tevye,” he said, “true, may God help me. Rather than living like this, Reb Tevye . . .” He lowered his head. The shlimazel hung his head down and leaned against the wall, his hat sliding down his head. I heard every sigh and groan. My heart went out to him.

  “If you think about it,” I said, “one can understand very well that maybe you aren’t entirely to blame. Let’s consider the whole thing from both sides. To say you did it on purpose would be foolish because we were equal partners, fifty-fifty. I put in the money, you put in the brains, God help me! Your intention certainly was, as it is said, for life and not for death—you meant it for the best. Ay, the roof fell in? Maybe it wasn’t destined to be; as they say, “Don’t rejoice today, because tomorrow . . .” Man proposes and God disposes.

  “Take me, for example,” I said. “You would think I have a stable business, it can’t fail. Yet a year ago this autumn, it shouldn’t happen to anyone, my cow, a great bargain at fifty, laid down and died, and right after her a lovely little red calf, I wouldn’t take twenty for her. You see, I couldn’t do a thing about it. If it doesn’t go,” I said, “forget it!

  “I don’t want to ask you what happened to my money. I know myself where you put my money, my hard-earned money, woe is me. It went into the grave, into those worthless stocks, never to be seen again. And who is to blame if not myself, who let you talk me into striking it rich, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, empty dreams? Money, my friend, one has to earn by the sweat of one’s brow. One must toil over it, slave over it.” I said, “I deserve a trouncing. But what good is my complaining? As it is written: So the maiden cried. Shout until you’re blue in the face! Wisdom and regret—always they come too late. It wasn’t fated that Tevye become rich. As the Russian Ivan says, “The Jew never had any money and never will.” Maybe,” I said, “that’s the way God wants it to be. He giveth and He taketh away, says Rashi. Come, my friend, let’s have a little brandy!”

  And that, Pani Sholem-Aleichem, is how the roof fell in, and with it all my dreams! Do you think I really took it to heart that I’d lost my money? May I know as much of evil! We know what it says in the Bible: The silver is mine and the gold is mine—money is worthless! The main thing is the person—that is, if he’s really a person. So what was rankling me? It was the dream that had vanished. I wanted, oh how I wanted, to be a rich man, if only for a little while! But what good did it do me? It is written: Regardless of thy will, thou livest—you live in spite of yourself, and in spite of yourself you wear ou
t your boots. “You, Tevye,” says God, “have to keep your mind on butter and cheese, not in dreams.” And what of hope and faith? On the contrary, the more troubles you have, the more faith you must have, and the poorer you are, the more hope you must have. Do you want any more proof?

  But I think I’ve gone on too long today. It’s time to go and tend to my business. As you’ll no doubt say, “All men are false.” Every man has his burden. Be well and have a good life!

  TODAY’S CHILDREN

  WRITTEN IN 1899.

  You were talking about today’s children. Here’s what Isaiah said: I have nourished and brought up children—you bring them into the world, they make your life miserable, you sacrifice yourself for them, you slave away night and day, and what comes of it? You’d think that by raising them on what little you have, things would work out one way or the other. I’m not trying to compare myself with Brodsky, of course, but I’m not ready to sell myself short either. I’m not just anybody, and as my dear wife says, we do manage, and we don’t come from tailors or cobblers. So I figured that with my daughters it would surely work out. Why? First of all, God blessed me with pretty daughters, and as you yourself have said, a pretty face is half the dowry. And second of all, with God’s help I am these days not the same Tevye as before. I can aspire to the best match even in Yehupetz. What do you say to that?