Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  Thus I bared my heart as the tears choked me like a bone stuck in my throat. But Tevye is no woman, Tevye controls himself! As you know, that’s easy to say, because, first of all, the shame! But how could I control myself when I was losing a living child, a precious gem of a child who was deeply embedded in my heart and her mother’s heart, almost more than the other children, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because she was sickly as a child and went through so much. We often sat up with her entire nights, several times snatching her from the jaws of death, reviving her as you would revive a crushed chick, because if God wills it, He brings the dead to life. As we say in the Hallel: I shall not die, but I will live—if you are not fated to die, you won’t die. Or maybe it was because she was such a good child, so devoted, who always loved us both. So the question was, how could she do this to us?

  It was, first of all, our bad luck. I don’t know about you, but I believe in Providence. And second of all, it was something evil, foreordained, do you hear? A kind of sorcery! You may laugh at me—and I am not so great a fool as to believe in elves, demons, ghosts, and other such nonsense. But I do believe in magic, you see, because what else would explain it if not magic? Just listen further, and you will say the same.

  When the holy books say, Regardless of thy will, thou livest, they know what they are talking about. A person does not take his own life. There is no affliction that does not in time heal, and no sorrow that is not forgotten. What can you do about it? Man is like the beasts that perish—a man must work, toil, slave, and suffer for a piece of bread.

  What else was there to do? We all went back to work, my wife and children to the milk jugs, I to the horse and wagon. The world goes on its accustomed course—the world does not stand still. I told everyone in the household that Chava was not to be remembered or mentioned—no more Chava! erased!—and that was it. I gathered up some dairy, fresh merchandise, and went off to my customers in Boiberik.

  When I arrived in Boiberik, my customers celebrated and rejoiced to see me. “How is our Reb Tevye? Why don’t we see you anymore?”

  “How should I be?” I said. “We renew our days as of old—the same shlimazel as before. One of my calves died.”

  “Why is it,” they said, “that all the miracles happen to you?” And the crowd, one after another, grilled me about what kind of calf had died, and how much it cost me. How many calves did I have left? They laughed and were cheerful as usual. Rich folks enjoy teasing a poor man, a shlimazel, after a meal, when they are in good spirits and the weather is fine and it is hot and green and they feel like snoozing. But Tevye can take a joke. I would rather die than let on what is going on in my heart!

  I finished up with my customers and started back for home with the empty milk jugs. While riding through the woods, I loosened the horse’s reins, to let him go slowly and enjoy nibbling grass. And I sank into my own thoughts, meditating on what you will—life and death, this world and the next, the meaning of life, and other such thoughts—in order to distract myself from her, my Chava. But just for spite, all I could think about was Chava.

  I pictured her as she was now, tall and pretty and fresh as a young pine, or even as she was as a small child, sickly and frail as a little chick in my hands, her little head lying on my shoulder. “What do you want, Chava’le? A piece of candy?” I’d ask. Forgetting for a moment what she had done, my heart was drawn to her, my soul yearned for her, longed for her. But then I remembered, and a rage ignited in my heart against her and against him and against the whole world and against myself because I could not forget for a minute. Why couldn’t I erase her, tear her from my heart? Didn’t she deserve it from me?

  So did Tevye really have to be a Jew among Jews? to slave all his days, with his nose to the grindstone, to raise children who would in an instant rip themselves from him, fall like an acorn from a tree, and be swept off by wind and smoke? Here grows a tree, an oak in the woods, I thought, and a man comes along with an ax, chops off a branch, and another branch, and another. What is the tree without the branches? I ask him. Why don’t you go and chop down the tree altogether, let there be an end to it? What good is an oak trunk standing naked and bare in the woods?!

  As I was pondering this question, I realized my horse had suddenly stopped. What was going on? I lifted my eyes and looked—Chava! She was the same Chava as before, not changed by a hair, even wearing the same clothes! My first impulse was to jump off the wagon, take her in my arms, and kiss her, but a thought held me back: Tevye, what are you, a woman? So I pulled on the reins—“Giddyap, shlimazel!”—and turned right. I looked, and Chava was also turning right, waving her hand as if to say: “Stop awhile, I have to tell you something.”

  That something tore at my insides and tugged at my heart. I was about to jump off the wagon, but I restrained myself and pulled the horse to the left. My daughter also moved to the left and looked at me wildly, her face ashen. What was I to do? Continue on, or stop? And before I realized it, she was holding the horse by the bridle. “Papa!” she cried. “I will die if you move from this spot! I beg you, hear me out, Papa, Papa!”

  So, I thought, you want to force me. No, my darling! If that’s so, it’s a sign you don’t know your father. I whipped the horse for all he was worth, and he obeyed. But as he sprang forward, he turned his head back, his ears flattened. “Giddyap!” I said to him. “Judge not the vessel but its contents!—don’t look, my clever boy, where you aren’t supposed to.” And you must know how much I wanted to turn and look back at the spot where she was standing.

  But no, Tevye is not a woman. Tevye knows how to conduct himself before Satan the Tempter.

  In a word—I won’t go on at length, why waste your time?—I may indeed suffer the punishments of the damned after death, but I have surely atoned for my sins already. If you want to have a taste of gehennam and know the rest of the agonies of those roasted and boiled in the holy books, ask me, and I will tell you all about them! All along the way I imagined she was running after the wagon, shouting, “Listen to me, Papa, Papa!” For a moment I wondered what would be so bad if I stopped for a while and listened to what she had to say. Maybe she had something to tell me that I needed to know. Maybe, who knew, she’d changed her mind and wanted to turn back. Maybe he’d rejected her and she was asking me to help her get out of gehennam. Maybe and maybe and many more maybes flew through my mind, and I still imagined her as a small child. I was reminded of the verse As a father pitieth his children—to a father there is no such thing as a bad child. And I blamed myself and said I was not deserving of pity—not worth the ground that bore me!

  What are you getting so worked up about, you stubborn madman? I reproached myself. Why are you carrying on? Go, you brute, turn the wagon around and make it up with her! She is your child, not anyone else’s! And all sorts of strange thoughts came to my mind: What did it mean to be a Jew, and what did it mean to be a non-Jew? And why did God create Jews and non-Jews, and why were they so set apart from one another, unable to get along, as if one had been created by God and the other not? To my regret, not being as learned as others in books and religious texts, I could not find an answer to these questions.

  To drive away my thoughts, I began to chant the evening prayer, the ashrei: Blessed are they who dwell in Thy house, and they shall continue to praise Thee. And I was chanting the mincha out loud and singing as God had commanded. But praying and chanting were of no use when my heart was singing another tune: “Cha-va! Cha-va! Cha-va!” And the louder I chanted the ashrei, the louder I sang “Chava,” and the more I wanted to forget her, the clearer she stood before my eyes. Over and over I imagined her voice calling to me: “Hear me out, Papa, Papa!” I covered my ears so as not to hear her and shut my eyes so as not to see her as I recited the Eighteen Benedictions. I couldn’t hear my own praying until I beat my breast and I chanted, For we have sinned, ashamnu, but I didn’t know how I had sinned. All I knew was that my life was in turmoil, and I was in turmoil.

  I told no one of my se
eing Chava, and I spoke to no one of her, and I asked no one about her, although I knew quite well where she was and where he was and what they were doing. But they could croak before I’d let anyone know. My enemies would never live to see me complain. That’s the kind of person Tevye is!

  Are all men like that, or am I the only crazy one? For instance, it sometimes happens—you won’t laugh at me? I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me—it sometimes happens that I put on my Shabbes caftan and go to the railway station, planning to get on a train to them, where I know they live. I go up to the ticket window and ask for a ticket. He asks, “Where to?” I tell him, “To Yehupetz.” He says, “There’s no such place.” I say, “That’s not my fault,” and I turn around and go home. I take off the Shabbes caftan and get back to work, to the little dairy and the horse and wagon. As it is written, Man goeth forth unto his work and unto his labor—the tailor to the shears and the cobbler to the last.

  Aha, you are laughing at me? What did I tell you? I even know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, That Tevye is really a big imbecile!

  And as we say on Shabbes, it’s time to call it a day. Be well and strong and write me letters. But for God’s sake, don’t forget what I asked of you. I mean, don’t make a book out of this, and if it should happen that you do, write like it’s someone else, not me. Forget about me. As it says in the Bible: And he was forgotten—no more Tevye the dairyman!

  SHPRINTZE

  WRITTEN IN 1907.

  I owe you a big, hearty sholem aleichem, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you and your children! It’s been a good long time since we’ve seen each other! My, my, how much water has flowed under the bridge since then, how many troubles both of us and all of Israel have endured in these years—a Kishinev, a constitutzia, more pogroms, more sorrows and disasters—ach, Father of the Universe, God in Heaven! I am simply amazed, forgive me for saying so, but you haven’t changed so much as a hair, kayn eyn horeh, kayn eyn horeh! But look at me: Behold! I am like unto a man of seventy—and I am not yet sixty and see how white Tevye has become! There’s a saying about the heartaches one has from children, and who has had as many heartaches from children as I have? A new catastrophe befell me with my daughter Shprintze, and it outdoes all the other troubles I’ve told you about. But look at me! I am still alive as if nothing had happened. As it is written: Against thy own will, thou livest—even though you fall apart and this song comes to your lips: what worth is life, what worth the world, without luck, without money?

  In short, how does the verse go: The Holy One, Blessed be He, wishes to bestow favor—God wanted to do something for His Jews, and so a misfortune befell us, a disaster, a constitutzia! Ay, a constitutzia ! Suddenly our rich people panicked and stampeded out of Yehupetz, heading abroad, supposedly to the spas to take the waters, to the mineral baths to calm their nerves—pure nonsense. As soon as they fled Yehupetz, Boiberik, with its fresh air, its pine woods, and its dachas, was in deep trouble. As we say in the morning prayers: Blessed be He who hath mercy upon the earth. What happened to Boiberik? Our mighty God sees to it that His poor people have to struggle on this earth, and so we had quite a summer—ay ay ay! People poured into Boiberik in droves from Odessa, from Rostov, Katerineslav, Mohliv, and Kishenev—thousands of rich folks! Apparently the constitutzia came down harder on them than on us in Yehupetz. That’s why they kept running here. Why were those rich folks running here? Why were our rich folks running there? It has become a custom among us, blessed be His name, that when there is a rumor of a pogrom, Jews run from one city to another, as it says in the verse: And they journeyed and they encamped and they encamped and they journeyed—which means: you come to me, and I’ll go to you.

  Meanwhile Boiberik became terribly crowded, packed with men, women, and children. And since children like to eat and they need milk, where do you get milk if not from Tevye? I can tell you, Tevye became all the rage. Wherever you went it was Reb Tevye and again Tevye! Reb Tevye, come here! No, Reb Tevye, come to me! If God wills it, who am I to say no?

  And it came to pass—here’s what happened. It was just before Shevuos, and I was delivering dairy to one of my customers, a wealthy young widow from Katerineslav who had arrived in Boiberik for the summer with her son Ahronchik. Naturally I was the first person she became acquainted with in Boiberik.

  “You were recommended,” the widow said, “for having the best dairy.”

  “How can it be otherwise?” I said to her. “Not for nothing did King Solomon say that a good name is heard like a shofar everywhere, and if you want,” I said, “I will tell you what the commentaries have to say about it.” But she interrupted me and told me she was a widow and was not learned in those matters, didn’t know one commentary from another. The most important thing was for the butter to be fresh and the cheese tasty. Nu, can you talk to a woman?

  From then on I came around to the Katerineslaver widow twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, like clockwork, and delivered her small order of dairy without ever asking whether or not she needed it. I became quite friendly with her and naturally looked around at the way she lived, peeked into the kitchen, and a few times said what I thought. The first time, of course, the maid gave me a scolding and told me to stop poking around in other people’s pots. The second time they listened to what I had to say, and the third time the widow asked for my opinion, because she realized who Tevye was. The long and the short of it was that she confided in me her problem, her pain, her sorrow—Ahronchik! This young man of twenty was interested only in horses, bicycles, and fishing, and beyond that he cared for nothing—not for business or for making money. His father had left him a fine inheritance, almost a million, but he didn’t bother to look after it! All he knew, she said, was to spend money with a free hand! “Where is the boy?” I asked. “Just let me at him. I’ll have a talk with him about morals, quote a few verses, and read him a midrash.”

  “You would do better to bring him a horse than a midrash!” she laughed.

  Just as we were talking about him, Ahronchik himself arrived, a slender, tall, healthy young man, full of energy, wearing a broad sash around his waist and a pocket watch stuck into his belt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  “Where have you been?” his mother asked.

  “I went sailing,” he said, “and caught fish.”

  “Fine work,” I said, “for a fellow like yourself. Back home your money is dwindling away, and you’re here catching fish!”

  My widow turned red as a beet. She surely expected her son to grab me by the collar with one strong arm and smite me as the Lord smote the Egyptians, with signs and symbols—that is, give me two smacks and toss me out like a broken potsherd. But no! Tevye is not frightened of such things! When I have something to say, I say it!

  Here’s what happened. When the boy heard my words, he stepped back, clasped his hands behind him, regarded me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, and let out a strange whistle. Suddenly he began laughing so hard that we were both afraid the poor boy had instantly gone mad. What else is there to say? From that moment on we became the best of friends! I must tell you I grew more and more fond of the fellow, even though he was a rake and a spendthrift, too free with money, and something of a fool. For instance, if he ran across a beggar, he would put his hand in his pocket and give away whatever he found there without counting it. Or he would take off a perfectly good new coat and give it to someone. Who did such things?

  It was hard on his mother. “What can I do?” she would lament to me, and beg me to have a talk with him. I agreed—why not? Would it cost me anything? I sat down to talk things over with him, threw in examples and some quotations, mixed in a midrash or two, and a few proverbs as only Tevye can.

  He seemed to enjoy listening to me and asked what my life was like at home. “I would love,” he said, “to come to you sometimes, Reb Tevye.”

  “If you want to come to Tevye,” I said to him, “you just come on over to my farm. You have enough horses and bicycles, and in a pinch
you could use your own two legs. It isn’t far, and it’s easy to cut through the woods.”

  “When are you at home?”

  “You can only find me at home,” I said, “Shabbes or on holidays. Listen, do you know what? God willing, a week from Friday is Shevuos. If you like,” I said, “walk over to us at the farm, and my wife will treat you to cheese blintzes the likes of which your blessed ancestors never partook of in Egypt.”

  “What’s this? You know I’m weak in biblical quotations.”

  “I know,” I said. “You are weak. If you had gone to cheder, as I did, you too would know what the rabbis know.”

  He laughed. “Good, you will have me as a guest! I will come to you, Reb Tevye, on the first day of Shevuos with a few friends for blintzes. But see to it they are hot!”

  “Fire and flame inside and out,” I said, “from the frying pan right into your mouth!”

  I arrived home. “Golde,” I called out. “We have guests for Shevuos!”

  “Mazel tov to you,” she said. “Who are they?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “You just prepare eggs. Cheese and butter, we have enough, praise God. You’ll make blintzes for four extra people.” I said, “They really know how to eat but don’t begin to know about Rashi.”

  “I knew it. You went and picked up a shlimazel from the land of the starving.”

  “You’re a silly fool, Golde!” I said. “What would be so terrible if we did feed a poor person some Shevuos blintzes? But you should know, my most esteemed, honored, and beloved wife, that one of our Shevuos guests is the widow’s son, the one they call Ahronchik. I told you about him.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s another story.”

  The power of millions! Even my Golde, when she sniffs out money, becomes another person. That’s the kind of world it is—what can you do? As it is written in the Hallel: Gold and silver, the work of man’s hands—wealth ruins a person.