Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  I looked through the glass door again and saw a servant girl dusting. It must have been one of their chambermaids, I thought, because she had mischievous eyes. All chambermaids have mischievous eyes. I have visited many wealthy homes and know about chambermaids. I winked at her. “Open up, little kitten!”

  She obeyed, opened the door, and said, surprisingly in Yiddish, “Whom do you want to see?”

  “Does Podhotsur live here?” I said.

  “Whom do you want to see?” she said more loudly.

  I raised my voice. “If someone asks you a question, you should answer the first time. Does Podhotsur live here?”

  “Da,” she said.

  “Now you’re talking like one of us. Go tell your Madame Podhotsur that she has a guest. Her father Tevye has come to visit and has been waiting outside like a beggar at the door because that lummox with the silver buttons who isn’t worth your little fingernail didn’t consider him worthy of admission!”

  With a mischievous laugh, the girl slammed the door in my face. She ran upstairs, then came back down and let me in. It was a palace that my father’s fathers never dreamed of in their wildest dreams: silk and satin and gold and crystal. When you walked, you felt like you were stepping on nothing, because your muddy boots trod on expensive carpets as soft as snow. And the clocks, oh the clocks! On the walls, on the tables—no end of clocks! God Almighty! Why did a person need so many clocks? I wondered, walking on, my hands clasped behind me.

  In one room I saw several Tevyes coming toward me and going away from me. Tphoo! Mirrors on all four walls! Only a contractor like this Podhotsur could have afforded so many clocks and mirrors!

  Podhotsur was a stout man, round, with a bald head and a loud voice and a squeaky little laugh. I remembered the first time he came to me at home, with his big steeds. He spread himself out in a chair as if he owned it and met my Beilke, then called me over and whispered in my ear, but so loudly you could have heard him on the other side of Yehupetz. What did he whisper? That my daughter was pleasing to him and he wanted to marry her, one two three.

  Well, that my daughter was pleasing to him was understandable, but the one two three was like a dull knife in my heart. Where did I come into the picture, and where was Beilke in all of it? Oh, I felt like sticking him with a few good commentaries and interpretations so he would never forget me! But I reconsidered. Why am I thus?—why interfere when it’s something between children? A lot of good it did me with my older daughters when I gave them advice about their matches! I talked and I talked, I advised and advised, poured out the whole Torah—and who ended up the fool? Tevye!

  In short, as you say in your books, let’s put aside the hero and get to the heroine. When I visited them in Yehupetz, the fun began.

  “Sholem aleichem! Aleichem sholem! How is it going?” Podhotsur greeted me. “What’s the good news? Sit down!”

  “Thank you, I can stand.” And we made all the customary niceties.

  To ask Why is this day different from other days?—why did you send for me?—could not have been proper. Tevye is not a woman; he has patience. Then a servant wearing large white gloves announced that supper was ready. We rose and went into an oak-paneled room with an oak table, oak chairs, and an oak ceiling, everything trimmed and painted and lacquered and decorated. On the table, fit for a king, were tea and coffee and chocolate, butter pastries, good cognac, the best smoked fish, and platters of fruits and nuts. Embarrassed, I realized that my Beilke had never seen such a spread on her father’s table. They poured glass after glass of wine for toasts to me. I drank and looked over at Beilke. I’d lived to see the day when God helped the poor and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill. But my Beilke was not to be recognized. She looked something like Beilke, but not really. I compared the Beilke of long ago with the Beilke I was seeing now, and it gave me a terrible feeling of regret, as if I had made a big mistake, made a bad bargain, as if I had traded in my prize colt for a nag of a horse, not knowing what it would become.

  Ach, Beilke, Beilke, I thought. What has become of you? Do you remember how you used to sit at night under a smoky lamp and sew and sing a song? In the wink of an eye you could milk two cows, or roll up your sleeves and cook a plain dairy borscht, or taiglach with beans, or cheese dumplings, or poppyseed pockets, and say to me, “Papa, go wash up!” That was the best song I ever heard! Now she was sitting with her Podhotsur like a princess, with two servants waiting on the table, dishes clattering. And Beilke—did she speak so much as a word? He, Podhotsur, did the talking for both of them. His mouth never shut! As long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen a person who so loved to yammer a blue streak about who knew what, all the time laughing his funny little laugh. We say of a person like that: “he tells the joke, and he does the laughing.”

  Along with the three of us, another person sat at the table: a man with red cheeks whom I didn’t know, but he certainly was a good eater. While Podhotsur was talking and laughing, this man packed away food, as it is written in the chapters: He ate for three. As we ate, Podhotsur talked about boring things in which I had no interest whatsoever: estates, construction contracts, government ministries, specifications, Japan. Actually Japan interested me, because during the war, as you know, horses became very scarce. They had searched me out and confiscated my horse. They took his measurements, rode him back and forth, and then sent him back. I could have told them they’d be wasting their time. As it is said in Proverbs, A righteous man knows the soul of his beast—Tevye’s horse is not made for war. But pardon me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, I’m mixing up two things and might confuse you. As you say, let’s get to the point.

  We ate and drank up very nicely as God commanded, and when we got up from the table, Podhotsur took me by the arm and led me into an office fit for a king, with guns and swords on the walls and miniature cannons on the table.

  He sat me down on a divan as soft as butter. Removing from a gold humidor two fat aromatic cigars, he lit one for himself and one for me. Then he sat down opposite me, stretched out his legs, and said, “Do you know why I sent for you?”

  Aha! I thought. He probably wanted to talk to me about business. But I played dumb. “Am I my brother’s keeper? How should I know?”

  “I really wanted to talk to you about yourself,” he said.

  A job offer, I thought. “So long as it’s something good, whatever it is, let’s hear,” I said.

  Podhotsur removed the cigar from his teeth and began a whole lecture. “You are no fool,” he said, “and won’t be insulted by what I will say frankly. You must know I deal in big businesses, and when you deal in big businesses as I do . . .”

  Yes, I thought, he meant me. I interrupted him. “Just as it says in the Gemorah in the Shabbes chapter, Many possessions, many worries. Do you know the meaning of that Gemorah?”

  “I will tell you the absolute truth,” he said. “I have never studied the Gemorah and don’t even know what it looks like.” He laughed.

  Can you imagine? One would think that if God had so punished him and made him an ignoramus, he would at least be ashamed and not boast about it. But I just said, “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  “What I have to say,” he said, “is this. When it comes to my businesses and my reputation and my public position, it doesn’t look good when they call you Tevye the dairyman. You must know,” he said, “that I am a close friend of the governor of the province, and sometimes a Brodsky comes calling at my house, a Polyakov, and maybe even a Rothschild, do you see?”

  I looked at his shiny bald head. He might be a close friend of the governor, I thought, and a Rothschild might come to his house, but he talked like an ignoramus.

  “What can you do if Rothschild insists on coming?” I said with a little resentment.

  Do you think he got that dig? Not a chance!

  “I want you to get rid of your dairy business and take up something else,” he said.

  “All right, what do you have in mind?”

  “Whatever y
ou want,” he said. “There are plenty of businesses in the world. I’ll help you out with money, as much as you need, so long as you quit being Tevye the dairyman. Maybe you could leave one two three for America, huh?” He shoved the cigar between his teeth and looked me right in the eye, his bald head shining.

  Nu, what do you say to such a coarse fellow? At first I thought, Why are you sitting here, Tevye, like a block of wood? Get up, kiss the mezuzah, slam the door behind you, and leave without a goodbye! That’s how enraged I was by his comments! The nerve of that contractor! Who did he think he was, telling me to throw away an honest, respectable livelihood and go to America? Because Rothschild might visit him, Tevye the dairyman had to go who knows where?

  I had already been upset because of my Beilke, but now my blood was boiling like a kettle. May I have as many blessings, I thought, as Hodl had it better than Beilke! True, Hodl doesn’t have a house like this, with such finery, but still and all she has a husband, a Fefferl, who is a mensch, hardworking, relying only on himself, while all of humanity is his concern. And in addition, he has a head on his shoulders, not a noodle-pot of a bald pate. Fefferl can talk, and what he says is pure gold! If you mention a biblical quote to him, he gives you three interpretations. Just wait, my contractor, I thought, and I’ll give you a quote that will knock you over!

  I said to him, “Well, that the Gemorah is for you a secret, I forgive you. For a Jew living in Yehupetz named Podhotsur, a contractor, the Gemorah might just as well lie in the attic. But some quotes can be understood even by an ordinary Gentile. I’m sure you know what the Targum Unkles says about Laban the Aramite?” And I threw him a quotation in mixed Hebrew and Russian.

  Looking like a surprised rooster, he said, “What does that mean?” “It means that from a pig’s tail you cannot make a rabbi’s fur hat.”

  “What is your point?”

  “My point has to do with your telling me to go to America.”

  He laughed that silly laugh. “If not to America, maybe go to Eretz Yisroel. All old Jews go to Eretz Yisroel.”

  I felt as if an iron spike had been driven into my brain. Sha! Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe it was an idea. Considering the kind of pleasure I’d had from children, I thought, Eretz Yisroel might be better. Idiot! Why was I staying around here, and for whom? My Golde, may she rest in peace, was already in the ground, and I was halfway there. How long could I keep struggling?

  Besides, Pani Sholem Aleichem, I’ve always been drawn to Eretz Yisroel. I’ve longed to be at the Wailing Wall and at the tomb of the Patriarchs, at Mother Rachel’s Tomb, and to see the River Jordan, Mount Sinai, the Dead Sea, the cities of Pithom and Ramses, and other such places with my own eyes. My imagination carried me away to the blessed land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey.

  Podhotsur cut me off in the middle of my reverie. “Well? Why do you need to think so long? Make it one two three!”

  “To you,” I said, “everything is one two three. But for me it’s a big decision, because to pick up and go to Eretz Yisroel I’d need to have the means.”

  He snickered, stood up, and went over to a table. Withdrawing a metal box, he counted out one bill after another—just imagine, a fine sum. I wasted no time, gathered up the bills—oh, the power of money—and stuck them deep in my pocket.

  I wanted to share at least a couple of commentaries and quotes with him, but he wasn’t about to hear them. “This will be more than enough to get there, and when you arrive and need more money, write a letter, and one two three we will send you money. And about your leaving, I won’t need to remind you again because you are an honorable and honest man.” Then Podhotsur laughed that laugh that made me sick to my stomach.

  Maybe I should throw the money back in his face, I thought. You didn’t buy Tevye with money, and with Tevye you didn’t talk of honesty and being honorable. But before I could open my mouth, he rang for Beilke.

  “My dear, do you know what?” he said to her. “Your father is abandoning us. He is selling everything he owns and is leaving one two three for Eretz Yisroel.”

  As Pharaoh said to Joseph, I dreamed a dream but I did not understand it. This was a nightmare, I thought. I looked at my Beilke. Do you think her face showed any feeling? She stood like a post, not a drop of blood in her face, looked from him to me and back, and said not a word! I was also silent. Both of us were silent, as it is written in the Psalms: May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth—speech had failed us.

  My head was spinning, my temples were pounding, and I felt I was suffocating. Was it the smoke from that fine cigar Podhotsur had given me? But he was smoking one too, and talking, his mouth never shutting, though his eyelids kept lowering as if he could not wait to take a nap.

  “You must go,” he said to me, “from here to Odessa by the express, and then by sea to Jaffa. Now is the best time to go by sea, because later on the winds and hurricanes and the snows begin, and then . . .” His tongue stumbled, as if he were overcome by the desire to sleep, but then he forged ahead. “And when you are ready for the journey, you must let us know, and we will both ride out to the station with you and see you off, because who knows when we will see each other again?” He gave a big yawn, stood, and said to Beilke, “My dearest, sit here a bit while I go lie down for a nap.”

  That was the best thing he could have said, as I am a Jew! Now at least I could let out my bitter heart! I thought. I longed to talk to my Beilke, to tell her everything that had happened that morning. Suddenly she fell into my arms and began to weep. But what weeping you can only imagine! My daughters, poor things, are all like that. First they act mature and in control, and then when something bad happens, they weep like willow trees. Take my daughter Hodl. Just before she left for Siberia to join her Fefferl, she wept bitter tears. But how can I compare them?

  I will tell you the honest truth. As you know, I am not a person of tears. I really cried only once, when my Golde, may she rest in peace, was lying on the earth, and I also had a good cry when Hodl went off to her Fefferl and I remained on the station platform like a great fool, all alone with my horse. And a few other times I welled up with tears, but I don’t remember if I ever cried. But Beilke and her tears moved me so deeply that I couldn’t hold back. I didn’t have the heart to criticize her. With me it isn’t necessary to say a lot. My name is Tevye. I understood her tears right away. They were not ordinary tears. You understand, they were tears brought on by the sin I have sinned before you—the sin of not listening to your father. And instead of blaming her, as I could easily have done, and baring my soul about her Podhotsur, I comforted her by telling her one biblical story after another, as only Tevye can do.

  Beilke heard me out. “No, Papa, you can’t stop my tears with stories. That’s not why I’m crying—I have no complaints about anyone. It’s because you are going away on account of me and I cannot help you. That’s why I am so despondent.”

  “You’re talking like a child,” I said. “You forget that we still have a great God and that your father is still in his right mind. Your father,” I said, “has a plan to go to Eretz Yisroel and come back, like in the commentaries: They journeyed and they camped—they didn’t know if they were coming or going.” That was the way I talked, but I was thinking, Tevye, you’re lying! You’re going to Eretz Yisroel, and that will be the last of you—no more Tevye!

  As if she had read my thoughts, she said to me, “No, Papa, that’s how you comfort a small child. You give it a toy, you put a plaything in its hand, and you tell it a pretty story about a little white goat. If you do want a story,” she said, “I will tell you one, not you me. But the story I will tell is more sorrowful than pretty.”

  Tevye’s daughters don’t mince words. She laid out for me a tale, a story worthy of A Thousand and One Nights, about how her Podhotsur became rich after being a nobody. He grew from the lowest of the low and with his own ability reached the highest levels and now wanted to invite to his house people like Brodsky. He was handing ou
t charity, throwing thousands around. But money wasn’t enough—you still needed a pedigree, power, influence, and status. Podhotsur was doing everything possible to show he was somebody. He bragged that he came from the famous Podhotsurs, his father was also a famous contractor. But “he knew very well that he was a street musician,” Beilke said. “Now he tells everyone his wife’s father is a millionaire.”

  “Who does he mean?” I said. “Me?” Maybe I was once fated to have millions, I thought, but that was as close as I’d ever get to having them.

  “Do you know, Papa,” she said to me, “my face burns whenever he introduces me to his friends and tells them about my father and my uncles and the whole family—things that never were and could never be. I must listen to it all and be silent because he is, about those things, very capricious.”

  “To you,” I said, “it’s being capricious, but to us it’s simply lying or bragging.”

  “No, Papa,” she said, “you don’t know him. He isn’t as bad as you think. He is just a person who is one way one minute and another the next. He has a good heart and an open hand. If you make a sad face and catch him in a good mood, he’ll give you his soul. And especially for my benefit, the sky can be the limit! Do you think,” she said, “I have no influence on him? Just recently, to rescue Hodl and her husband, he promised me he would spend many thousands, on the condition they went straight to Japan.”

  “Why Japan?” I said. “Why not India or Mesopotamia, or to the Queen of Sheba?”

  “Because he has businesses in Japan,” she said. “He has businesses all over the world. What it costs him in telegrams alone, we could live on for half a year. But what good does it do me when I cannot be myself?”

  “As it is written in the chapters, If I am not for myself, who will be for me?—I am not me and you are not you.” My heart was breaking to see my poor child miserable, although as they say, ‘in riches and in honor.’ “Your sister Hodl wouldn’t have done that.”