Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  You must think, Pani Sholem Aleichem, that I am just saying this off the top of my head. Or that I want to show off for you, to boast of my great knowledge and learning. Don’t be offended, but only someone who doesn’t know Tevye would say that. Tevye does not speak without thinking about it first, and he was never a vain braggart. Tevye likes to talk about something he has seen with his own eyes or has experienced himself. Sit down right here for a little while, and you’ll hear a good story, about how sometimes it can come in handy if someone isn’t an ignoramus and has some notion of the higher things and knows when and where and how to apply a portion from our old Book of Psalms.

  To make a long story short, if I’m not mistaken, it was a long time ago, right in the heat of Ivanchik’s revolutions and constitutions. The hooligans were set loose on Jewish cities and villages and given a free hand. They destroyed Jewish property and goods, as it says in the Siddur: they shattered windows and tore bedding. I remember once telling you that I was not surprised by such things. I do not scare easily. If it happens, it happens. If it is fated, an edict from heaven, then how can I be an exception among Jews? As we say in the chapter, Each Jew hath his share. But then again, if it’s simply an epidemic, a kind of blight, God pity us all, a passing windstorm, you can’t take it personally! The windstorm will subside, the sky will clear, and it will be a new day for us.

  And that’s how it was, as I once told you, when the village council informed me of the good news that they had come to do to me what they were doing to all of Israel—to administer the good deed of “driving out the Jews.” At first I reviled them soundly, complained, and demanded answers, as only Tevye can: “I ask you, how and why and when? Give me an explanation for suddenly swooping down and attacking a person in the middle of the day and tearing the feathers out of his pillows?”

  Well, you can complain all you like, but all my words were useless. The hooligans were stubborn and insisted they had, for appearances’ sake, to follow orders from the police in case an officer blew in, a plague on him. And if he saw they had let a Jew pass as an equal with no sign of a pogrom, how would it look to the police? That’s why, they said, the council decreed that something had to be done to me! They must!

  I thought it over and finally said, “Listen to what I have to say. Let the council so decree, but that’s beside the point. Is there not something higher than the council? But you know there is something higher than the council.”

  “Tell us, what can be higher?”

  I said, “God. I don’t mean our God or your God. I mean our God and God of our Fathers, the God of us all, who has created me and you and your whole council. That’s who I mean. And you must ask Him if He has commanded you to do me injury. It could be,” I said, “that He does command it, but then again, it could also be that He doesn’t want it at all. Ay, how can we know? Let us throw lots,” I said. “Here is a Book of God’s Psalms. Do you know what the Psalms are? We call it Psalms and you call it Psalter. The holy Psalter,” I said, “will be the judge between us. It will decide whether or not you must punish me.”

  They exchanged disbelieving smiles. Ivan Poperilo the mayor stepped out from among them and said me, “Exactly how will the holy Psalter make a judgment?”

  “If you give me, Ivan’u, your hand on it that the council will obey what the Book of Psalms says, I will show you how.”

  Ivan put out his hand to me. “Agreed.”

  “If that is so,” I said, “it’s done. Now I will flip through the pages of the Book of Psalms, and as soon as my eyes catch the first word, I will say to you, ‘Be so kind and pious as to repeat it.’ And if any one of you can repeat it after me, it will be a sign that God commands that you do with Tevye what you will. And if not, that will be a sign that God says no. Are you agreed?”

  Ivan the mayor and the council exchanged looks and said to me, “All right.”

  I opened the Book of Psalms for them, and my eyes somehow caught the word vachalaklokos. “There you have it,” I said. “Can you repeat the word vachalaklokos?”

  They looked at one another and at me and asked me to say the word again.

  “That’s fine. I’ll even say it three times, if you wish: Vachalaklokos! Vachalaklokos! Vachalaklokos!”

  “No, Tevel, don’t say hal hal hal! Say it clearly with a beat, and slowly!”

  “I’ll do it!” I said. “I will say it clearly with a beat and slowly. Va-cha-lak-lo-kos! Satisfied?”

  The group thought it over and got down to work, each in his own way. One said, “Haidamaki,” another said, “Lomaki,” and a third actually came out with “Chaykolia.” What did he like about “Chaykolia”?

  I realized it was a story without an end. “You know what, children?” I said. “I see that the work is getting too hard for you. Obviously, vachalaklokos is not for you, so I will give you another word, also from our Book of Psalms: m’maamkim keraticha.”

  And the same business started all over again: one pronounced it “Lochanka kerosina,” a second pronounced it “Krivliaka buzina,” and a third simply spat out, “Forget it!”

  Apparently they realized that with Tevye they would not win. Ivan Poperilo called out to me, “This is the way it is. We have nothing personal against you, Tevel, nothing at all. True, you are a Jew and not a bad person, but one thing has nothing to do with the other. We must make a wreck of things here. The council has decided, and it’s over. We will,” he said, “at least break a few windows, and if you wish, you can knock out a few panes yourself. That will silence their mouths, to hell with them! If the police ride by, let them see you didn’t get off. Otherwise they will punish us on account of you. And now, Tevel,” he said, “put up the samovar and be so kind as to serve us some tea and naturally some brandy to go with it, and we’ll drink to your health because you are, after all, a smart Jew, one of God’s people.”

  That is what he said, those very words as I am telling you, may God help both of us!

  So now I ask you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you are a Jew who writes books. Don’t you agree with Tevye that we have a powerful God and that a person, so long as he lives, should never lose heart, and especially a Jew, and especially one who knows a Hebrew letter when he sees one? Above all, hear me, in the end it comes out, as we say in the daily prayer, worthy and good is he who can, that no matter how we keep from boasting about it, we must admit that we Jews are, after all, the best and the smartest people. As the Prophet says: Who can be compared to Israel? How can a goy compare himself to a Jew? A goy is a goy, and a Jew is a Jew, as you yourself say in your writings. You have to be born a Jew, blessed be the Jew. How lucky I was to be born a Jew and know the taste of exile and of always wandering, never sleeping where we spent the day. Since I learned the portion of Get Thee Gone—do you remember I once told you about that at great length?—I keep on going without a resting place where I can say, “Here, Tevye, you will remain.” Tevye doesn’t ask questions. They told him to leave; he left.

  Today we met Pani Sholem Aleichem, right here on the train. Tomorrow the train can carry us off to Yehupetz. Next year it can drop us off in Odessa, or America, unless the One Above looks around and says, “Do you know what, children? I think I’m going to send you the Messiah!” I hope He does, even if it’s out of spite, our old God in Heaven!

  In the meantime be well, go in good health, and give my regards to all our little Jews. Tell them not to worry: Our old God lives!

  MOTL THE CANTOR’S SON

  Writings of an Orphan Boy

  PART ONE

  Home in Kasrilevka

  Written in 1907.

  I

  TODAY’S A HOLIDAY—YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO CRY!

  A .

  I’ll bet you whatever you want that no one on earth is as happy with the warm sunny days after Passover as I, Peysi the cantor’s son Motl, and the neighbor’s calf Meni.

  Both of us feel the first rays of the warm sun on the first day after Passover, both of us breathe in the fragrance of the first green
blades of grass sprouting up from the newly thawed earth, and both of us crawl out of our dark, cramped corners to welcome the first sweet light of the warm spring morning. I, Peysi the cantor’s son Motl, emerge from a cold, damp cellar that reeks of sour-dough and medicines; and Meni, the neighbor’s calf, is let out of a worse-smelling spot—a tiny, dark, revolting, mud-covered stall with crooked, peeling walls through which the snow blows in wintertime and the rain whips in summertime.

  Escaping into God’s bright, open world, Meni and I are filled with joy and gratitude to Nature. I, Peysi the cantor’s son, raise both arms, open my mouth wide, and draw in as much fresh warm air as I can. I imagine I am growing bigger and float up, up into the deep, deep blue skullcap of sky toward where the wispy, smoky clouds hover, where the white birds dip and swoop, appear and disappear, with a shriek and a twitter, and of itself from my full breast a song bursts forth more beautiful than any my father sings at the pulpit during holidays, a song without words, without notes, without any motif, a kind of nature-song of falling waters, racing waves—my own Song of Songs, a godly rapture, a heavenly inspiration: Oh! Oh! Papa! Oh! Oh! Father! Oh! Oh! Forever living G-o-d!

  That’s how I, Peysi the cantor’s son, express my joy on that first spring day. It’s quite different from the way Meni the neighbor’s calf expresses himself.

  Meni the neighbor’s calf first pokes his black, moist muzzle into the garbage heap, paws at the ground with his foreleg three times, raises his tail, then leaps up on all fours and lets out a flat meh! That meh sounds so comical to me that I have to laugh and imitate it with the same tone as Meni. Meni apparently likes this, because he soon repeats it with the same tone and the same leap. Naturally, I imitate the tone and leap again, exactly like Meni. This happens several times: the calf leaps, I leap, the calf gives a meh, I give a meh. Who knows how long this game would have gone on had my older brother Elyahu not delivered a sharp rap to the back of my neck with the flat of his hand?

  “Is that the way to behave, a boy of almost nine years wasting his time dancing with a calf! Into the house with you, you good-for-nothing! Papa’s going to give it to you!”

  B .

  Not a chance! My father isn’t going to give me anything! My father is sick. He hasn’t chanted the prayers in the pulpit since Simchas Torah. He coughs all night. The doctor comes for a visit, a swarthy, stout man with black sideburns and merry eyes—a cheerful doctor. He calls me Pupik as he flicks my belly button with his fingers. He always tells my mother not to stuff me with potatoes and to feed the patient only bouillon and milk. My mother listens to him, and when he leaves, she hides her face in her apron and her shoulders shake. Then she wipes her eyes and calls my brother Elyahu aside, where they whisper earnestly. What they talk about I don’t know, but I imagine they’re quarreling. My mother is sending him off somewhere, and he doesn’t want to go.

  He says to her, “Before I turn to them, I’d rather die! I’d rather die this day!”

  “Bite your tongue, idiot! What are you talking about?” my mother chastises him under her breath, clenching her teeth, raising her hands as if to slap him. But she soon softens and says to him, “What shall I do, my son? My heart is breaking for your father.

  We must save him!”

  “Sell something,” my brother Elyahu says, glancing at the glass cupboard.

  My mother looks at the same cupboard, then wipes her eyes. “What shall I sell, my soul? There’s nothing left to sell. Shall I sell the bare cupboard?”

  “Why not?” says my brother Elyahu.

  “Murderer!” my mother answers, her eyes reddening. “Where did I get such a murderous child?”

  My mother grows angry, has a good cry, wipes her eyes, and quickly apologizes. That’s also the way it was with the books, the silver-threaded collar of the prayer shawl, the two gilded little beakers, her silk dress, and all the other things we sold off one at a time, each to a different buyer.

  The books were bought by Michl the book peddler, a Jew with a sparse little beard that he keeps on scratching. My poor brother Elyahu had to seek him out three times before he agreed to accompany him home. My mother was thrilled to see him and indicated with her finger that he speak quietly so my father wouldn’t hear.

  Michl understood, looked up at the shelf, and scratched under his little beard. “Well, show me what you have there.”

  With a nod my mother indicated that I should get up on the table and hand down the books. She didn’t have to repeat it. I leaped up with such zeal that I landed flat out on the table and received an extra warning from my brother Elyahu to stop jumping around like a monkey. He then got onto the table himself and handed Michl the books.

  Michl leafed through them with one hand while scratching his beard with the other, calling our attention to defects. Here the binding wasn’t good, there the spine was gnawed. In one case he decided the book wasn’t even a book.

  After he finished looking over all the books, examining all the bindings and all the spines, he scratched his beard. “If these were a set of Mishnahs, I’d probably buy them,” he said.

  My mother looked as if she would pass out.

  My brother Elyahu, quite otherwise, became red as fire. He turned on the book peddler. “Couldn’t you have said in the first place that you buy only Mishnahs! Why did you come here to waste our time and fool with us?”

  “Be quiet!” my mother pleaded with him.

  A hoarse voice came from the alcove where my father was lying: “Who’s there?”

  “No one is here!” my mother answered and sent my brother to him while she dealt with Michl the book peddler, agreeing to sell him the books for very little. This I figured out because when my brother Elyahu came back from my father’s alcove and asked her, “How much?” she pushed him away and said, “It’s none of your business!” Michl quickly grabbed the books, stuffed them in a sack, and hurried off.

  C.

  Of all the household things we sold, nothing has given me as much pleasure as the glass cupboard.

  True, when the silver-threaded collar on my father’s prayer shawl needed to be ripped apart, it was a bit of holiday for me. First of all, my mother negotiated with Yossi the goldsmith, a pale Jew with a red birthmark spread on his face. Three times he walked out, but he finally had his way. Then he sat down, crossed his legs facing the window with my father’s prayer shawl on his lap, pulled out a small knife with a yellow deer’s horn handle, and bent his middle finger. He ripped the collar apart so skillfully that if I could rip collars apart like that, I’d count myself lucky! But you should have seen my mother—she broke into tears. Even my brother Elyahu, engaged to be married, turned his head to the door, pretended to blow his nose, screwed up his face, and let out a weird sound from his throat. Then he wiped his eyes with the hem of his jacket.

  “What’s going on there?” my father asked from his sickroom.

  “Nothing!” my mother answered him, and wiped her red eyes. Her lower lip and face trembled so that one had to be stronger than iron not to burst out laughing.

  But what did that have to do with the glass cupboard?

  First of all, what can they mean when they say they’ll take it away? How will they be able to remove it? I always thought our glass cupboard was part of the wall. Second, where will my mother keep the bread and the challah and the dishes and the tin spoons and forks? (We once had two silver spoons and a fork but my mother sold them long ago.) Where will we keep the Passover matzos? This is what I’m thinking while Nachman the carpenter stands before us measuring the cupboard with the big red thumbnail of his stained hand. He insists that the cupboard won’t make it through the door. To prove it, he extends his arms: here’s the width of the cupboard, and here’s the door. Try and get it to fit through!

  “How did it get in?” asks my brother Elyahu.

  “Go ask it!” Nachman answers angrily. “Do I know how it got in? They carried it in, and it got in!”

  At one moment I’m afraid for the cupboard—that
is, I think it’s going to stay with us. But Nachman the carpenter soon returns with his two big sons, also carpenters. First comes Nachman, then both sons, and behind them—me. They grab hold of our cupboard. Their father gives the orders: “Kopl, to the side! Mendl, right! Kopl, take it easy! Mendl, stop!” I help them by hopping from one foot to the other. My mother and brother Elyahu don’t want to help. They stand there staring at the now-bare wall, covered with spiderwebs, and cry. That’s all they do—cry! Suddenly—crash! Just as they get to the door, the glass smashes, and the carpenter and his sons begin arguing, each blaming the other:

  “You move like a lead bird!” “Bear feet!” “The devil take him!”

  “Break your head, may an evil spirit take you!”

  “What’s going on there?” a hoarse voice is heard from the sickroom.

  “Nothing!” my mother answers and wipes her eyes.

  D .

  But it’s my brother Elyahu’s bed and my little cot that give me the greatest pleasure. My brother Elyahu’s bed was once a sofa for sitting on, but when he got engaged to be married, he began sleeping on the sofa next to me on the cot, so the sofa became a bed. In the good years when my father was healthy and chanted the musaf prayers in the butchers’ small synagogue with four choristers, the sofa had springs, but no more. The springs were now mine. I did all kinds of tricks with them: I bruised my hands, I almost poked out an eye, and once I wrapped them around my neck and came close to strangling myself, until my brother Elyahu tossed the springs into the attic and took away the ladder.