Chana buys the bed-once-a-sofa and the cot. My mother won’t allow her to look too closely at them. “What you see is what you buy. There’s nothing to look for!”
But once Chana sets a price and makes a deposit, she goes over to the bed and the cot and lifts the bedding. Slowly she looks in all the hidden corners, then spits hard.
My mother is offended by the spitting and wants to give back the deposit, but my brother Elyahu steps in. “Once it’s sold, it’s final!”
We now lay out our bedding directly on the floor. I and my brother Elyahu stretch out like royalty, covering ourselves with one blanket (they sold his). It’s very pleasant for me to hear my older brother say that sleeping on the floor isn’t so bad after all.
I wait till he has recited his evening prayers and has fallen asleep, and then I begin rolling all over the floor. Thank God there is plenty of room to roll on the floor, as wide as a field, a real pleasure, a paradise!
E.
“What more can we do?” my mother says one morning to my brother Elyahu as she studies the four bare walls, her forehead wrinkled. I and my brother Elyahu, to help her out, study the walls with her. My brother Elyahu looks at me with concern and pity.
“Go outside!” he says to me sternly. “We have to talk about something.”
On one foot I hop outside and, naturally, right over to my neighbor’s little calf.
In recent days Meni has grown tall and handsome, his black muzzle attractive, his round eyes full of human understanding and intelligence. He is always looking to get something in his mouth and enjoys being scratched under his neck.
“Again? You’ve been playing around with the calf? You can’t tear yourself away from your dear friend?” says my brother Elyahu, this time without scolding. He then takes me by the hand and says we’re going to Hersh-Ber the cantor. There, he says, it will be good for me. First of all, he says, I’ll have something to eat. At home, he says, it isn’t good. Our father is sick. We’re doing all we can to save him.
My brother Elyahu unbuttons his coat and shows me his vest. “Here’s where I had a pocket watch, a gift from my future father-in-law. I sold it. If he knew, it’d be a black day! The world would turn upside down!”
I thank and praise God that his future father-in-law doesn’t know about the pocket watch and that the world doesn’t turn upside down. Oh my! May it never happen, because if it did, what would happen to Meni the neighbor’s little calf, a dumb helpless animal?
“Here we are!” says my brother Elyahu, who by the minute is growing ever more caring and friendly.
Hersh-Ber the cantor teaches singing. He himself doesn’t sing; he has no voice at all. That’s what I heard from my father. But he knows everything there is to know about singing. He has about fifteen little choristers and is an awful grump. He listens to me sing “Mogen Oves” for him with my own personal touch. He pats me on the head and says to my brother that I’m a soprano. My brother says I’m not just any soprano, but a soprano among sopranos! My brother Elyahu negotiates with him, pockets some money from Hersh-Ber, and tells me I’m going to stay with Reb Hersh-Ber the cantor and that I should obey him, and he adds, “Don’t be homesick!”
That’s easy for him to say! How can I not miss summertime, with the sun baking, the sky clear as crystal, the mud long dried out? Near our house lie wooden logs, not ours, but Yossi the rich man’s logs. He’s planning to build a house and has readied logs but has no place to put them, so he’s stacked them near our house. Long may he live, Yossi the rich man, because out of those logs I can build a fortress. Spiny plants and puffballs grow between the logs. The thorns are good for sticking, and the puffballs you can blow up and burst against your forehead.
I have it good. Meni our neighbor’s little calf also has it good. Meni and I are the only real masters here, so how can I not miss him?
F.
It is almost three weeks that I’ve been at Hersh-Ber the cantor’s, and I hardly sing at all. I have another job. I carry around his Dobtzi, who is a hunchback, barely two years old, but still, kayn eyn horeh, quite heavy, heavier than I am. I risk my health carrying her around. Dobtzi loves me. She hugs me with her thin little arms and latches on to me with her thin little fingers. She calls me Kiko. Why Kiko, I don’t know. Dobtzi loves me. She keeps me awake all night. “Kiko, ki!” means she wants me to rock her. Dobtzi loves me. When I eat, she tears the food from my mouth. “Kiko, pi!” means “Give it to me!” I long for home. The food here isn’t too good either. It’s a holiday—Succos evening. I want to go outdoors to see the sky opening up, but Dobtzi won’t let me. Dobtzi loves me. “Kiko, pi!” She wants me to rock her. I rock her and rock her and fall asleep.
A guest comes to me—Meni the neighbor’s little calf is looking at me with knowing eyes and says, Come! We run downhill to the pond. Not wasting any time, I roll up my trouser legs, and plop! I’m in the pond. I swim, and Meni swims after me. The other side is lovely. There’s no cantor here, no Dobtzi, no sick father. I wake up—it’s just a dream. Run away! Run away! Run away! Where to? Home, naturally.
But Hersh-Ber is already up before me. He has a huge tuning fork that he bangs on his teeth and then places near his ear. He tells me to dress quickly and go with him to shul. Today for musaf they will sing a special piece. In shul I see my brother Elyahu. What’s he doing here? He usually prays in the butchers’ shul, where my father is the cantor! What does this mean?
My brother Elyahu is saying something to Hersh-Ber the cantor, who is not pleased and says, “Remember, for God’s sake, bring him back right after we eat!”
“Come!” my brother Elyahu says to me. “You’ll see Papa!” We go home together. He walks, and I skip. I run, I fly.
“Take it easy! Why are you in such a hurry?” He holds on to me. It looks like he wants to talk to me.
“Do you know that Papa is sick, very, very sick? Only God knows what will happen to him. We must save him, but we don’t have the medicine. No one wants to help. Mama won’t let him go to the poorhouse under any circumstances! She’d rather die herself. She says that before letting him to go to the poorhouse . . . Sha, here comes Mama.”
G.
My mother comes toward us with outstretched arms and embraces me, and I feel her tears on my cheeks. My brother Elyahu goes to my sick father, and my mother and I remain standing outside. We are surrounded by our neighbor’s wife Fat Pessi and her daughter Mindl, her daughter-in-law Perl, and two other women.
“Do you have a guest for Shevuos? God love you and your guest!” they say.
My mother lowers her swollen eyes. “A guest?” she says to the women. “Just a child, come to find out how his sick father is doing. Just a child . . .”
While Pessi is shaking her head, my mother whispers in her ear, “What a town this is! No one cares enough about what’s going on. Twenty-three years of his life he gave singing in the pulpit, sacrificed his health. I want to save him, but I don’t have with what. Everything, praised be God, is sold down to the last little pillow. We’ve placed the child with a cantor, all for his sake.”
So my mother laments to Pessi. I look all around me.
“Who are you looking for?” my mother says to me.
“What does a child look for? Probably the little calf,” Pessi our neighbor says with strained friendliness. “Eh, little boy! No more little calf! I had to sell it to the butcher. Did I have any choice? It’s enough that we have to feed one dumb animal—we can’t manage two!”
Now the calf has become a dumb animal to her? A strange woman, this Pessi. She pokes her nose into everything. She wants to know if we’re having a dairy supper.
“Why do you need to know that?” asks my mother.
“Just like this!” says Pessi. She lifts her shawl and pushes a bowl of sour cream at my mother.
My mother pushes it back. “God be with you, Pessi! Why are you doing this? What are we, God forbid? You know the way I am.”
“On the contrary,” Pessi protests, “it’s b
ecause I do know you. The cow, kayn eyn horeh, has been giving lots of milk lately. We have cheese and butter. I’ll lend you some. God willing, you’ll repay me.”
And Pessi the neighbor talks a long time to my mother while my heart aches for the logs, the little calf—oh, the little calf! If I weren’t embarrassed, I’d burst out crying.
“If Papa asks you anything, you should say, ‘Thank God!’ ” says my mother.
My brother Elyahu explains further. “You’re not to complain. Don’t tell any stories. Just say ‘Thank God.’ Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
And my brother Elyahu leads me into the sickroom. The table is covered with bottles, pillboxes, and cupping bottles. It smells of medicines. The window is shut. In honor of Shevuos they’ve decorated the room with green sprigs, and above his bed they’ve hung a Star of David made of flowers, my brother Elyahu’s handiwork. The floor is covered with fragrant grass.
My father sees me and beckons me to him with a long, thin finger. My brother Elyahu gives me a shove from behind. I go to my father. I can barely recognize him. His face is like clay. His gray hair shines, and the hairs stand on end as if they were someone else’s that had just been stuck in. His black eyes are sunk deep into his head as if they belonged to someone else and had been screwed in. His teeth look as if someone else’s had been put in his mouth. His neck is so scrawny, it can barely hold the weight of his head. It’s a good thing he can’t sit. His lips are moving oddly like a person swimming: “mpfu!” He lays a hot hand of bony fingers on my face and smiles a twisted, crooked smile like that of a corpse.
At this point my mother comes into the room, followed by the doctor, the cheerful swarthy doctor with the large mustache. He greets me like an old friend, honoring me with a flick to the belly. Then he says cheerfully to my father, “You have a guest for Shevuos? God love you and your guest!”
“Thank you!” says my mother, and nods to the doctor to attend to the patient and write out a prescription for him.
The swarthy doctor throws open the window and scolds my brother Elyahu for keeping it shut. “I’ve told you a thousand times that a window wants to be open!”
My brother Elyahu nods toward my mother, indicating that she’s the guilty one: she won’t allow the window to be opened for fear my father might catch cold, God forbid. My mother nods to the doctor to get on with the examination and to write out a prescription for him.
The swarthy doctor takes out a large gold fob watch. My brother Elyahu looks with wide eyes at the doctor’s fob watch. The doctor notices this. “Do you want to know what time it is? It’s four minutes before ten-thirty. What does your watch say?”
“My watch has stopped,” my brother Elyahu answers, and turns very red from the tip of his nose to the back of his ears.
My mother can’t stand still. She’s anxious to have the patient examined and a prescription written. But the doctor has time. He questions my mother about minor things: When is my brother’s wedding? And what does Hersh-Ber the cantor have to say about my voice? I must have a good voice. A voice, he says, is inherited. My mother is bursting!
Suddenly the doctor turns his chair to my sick father and takes his hot, dry hand in his. “Nu, cantor, how are the prayers for this Shevuos?”
“Thank God!” my father answers him with the smile of a corpse.
“For instance, have you coughed less? Have you slept well?” The doctor bends over very close to him.
“No!” my father answers, barely able to catch his breath. “On the contrary . . . I’m coughing . . . and I’m not sleeping . . . but thank God . . . it’s Shevuos . . . such a day . . . we received the Torah . . . today we have a guest . . . a guest for Shevuos.”
Everyone looks at the “guest,” and the “guest” looks down at the ground, and his mind is outdoors somewhere by the logs, by the thorns that stick, by the puffballs that pop open, by the neighbor’s clever little calf who has suddenly become a “dumb animal,” by the pond that rushes downhill, or way up in the higher, wider, deeper blue skullcap that is called the sky.
H .
The little bit of dairy dish that our neighbor Fat Pessi lent us actually comes in very handy. I and my brother Elyahu make a feast of it. We dip fresh challah in the cold sour cream, and it isn’t bad at all.
“Only one problem—there’s too little of it,” comments my brother Elyahu, who on this day is in very high spirits, so much so that he gives me permission not to go back so soon to Hersh-Ber the cantor and to stay and play some more at home.
“You’re our Shevuos guest,” he tells me, and lets me play outside on the logs, on the condition that I not climb on them too long and, God forbid, rip my only pair of pants.
Ha ha ha! I shouldn’t rip my only pair of pants? Too bad there’s no one to laugh along, as I’m a Jew! You should see those pants! Better not talk about pants! Better to talk of Rich Yossi’s logs. Ay, logs, logs! Rich Yossi believes the logs are his logs. Not at all! They’re my logs! I built myself a palace out of them and a vineyard. I’m the prince. The prince walks around freely and openly in his own vineyard, tears off a puffball, bangs it on his forehead, tears off another one and bangs it on his forehead, and everyone envies me. Even Rich Yossi’s son, Cross-Eyed Henich, begrudges me my good luck. He passes me by in his shiny new clothes and points to my pants. Laughing, he squints his crossed eye and says to me, “Make sure you don’t lose something. . . .”
“You’d better go away nicely,” I say to him, “or else I’ll tell my brother Elyahu!”
All the boys have respect for my brother Elyahu. Cross-Eyed Henich backs off, and I’m again alone, again the prince in my own vineyard. It’s just too bad that Meni our neighbor’s calf isn’t here! He’s no longer a calf, but now a dumb animal, as our neighbor Pessi says. What does that mean? And why did they sell him to the butcher? Could it be to slaughter him? Was he born only to be slaughtered? Anyway, why is a calf born, and why is a person born?
Suddenly from the house I hear a strange scream and loud crying. It’s my mother’s voice. I raise my eyes. People are running in and out of the house, men and women, this one out, that one in. I lie on a log belly down. I’m fine! But hush! Here comes Rich Yossi. Rich Yossi is a trustee of the butchers’ shul, where my father has been the cantor for twenty-three years. Yossi himself was once a butcher. Today he deals in oxen and hides and is rich, very rich!
Yossi waves his hands and scolds my mother, complaining, “In God’s name! Why didn’t anyone tell me that Peysi the cantor was so sick?”
“Should I shout it?” my mother defends herself through her tears. “The whole town saw how I was struggling, how I tried to save him, and he himself begged to be saved.”
My mother can no longer speak. She wrings her hands, and her head falls back in a faint.
My brother Elyahu catches her. “Mama! Why do you need to defend yourself? Mama! Don’t forget, Mama, it’s yontiff, it’s Shevuos, you aren’t allowed to cry, Mama!”
Rich Yossi keeps firing away at my mother. “What are you telling me—the whole town! Who is the town? You should have told me! In the name of God, me! I take care of everything—the burial society, beadles, shrouds, I take care of everything! And if you need something for the orphans, you should come to me! Don’t be ashamed!”
Rich Yossi’s words hardly calm my mother. She keeps on keening and fainting in my brother Elyahu’s arms.
And my brother Elyahu, who himself is crying, doesn’t stop reminding her that today is yontiff. “Mama, today is Shevuos, Mama! Mama, you aren’t allowed to cry, Mama!”
And suddenly it’s all clear to me. And I feel a pain in my heart, a tug at my soul, and I feel like crying, but I don’t know for whom. I feel pity for my mother. I can’t bear how she’s crying and fainting and falling into my brother’s arms.
I leave my palace and my vineyard, and I walk up behind her, and I say in the same words as my brother Elyahu as tears pour from my eyes, “Mama! Today is yontiff, Mama, today is Shevuos, Mama! M
ama, you’re not allowed to cry, Mama!”
II
I HAVE IT GOOD, I’M AN ORPHAN!
A.
Never do I remember being as special as I am now. Why am I so special? My father Peysi the cantor, as you know, died on the first day of Shevuos, and I was left an orphan.
After the first day of Shevuos we began saying kaddish—I and my brother Elyahu. It was he who taught me how to say kaddish.
My brother Elyahu is a devoted brother, but he’s not a good teacher. He gets angry, and he gets into squabbles with me. But finally he opens up a prayer book and sits down to teach me.
Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’may rabo . . . He says the prayer through once and wants me to know it by heart. When I can’t say it, he repeats it again and again, from beginning to end, and tells me that now I should be able to say it myself. I try, but it doesn’t come out right. I get through part of it, but then I get tangled up. He jabs me with his elbow and says my head is obviously somewhere outside, or somewhere with the little calf. He isn’t lazy and repeats it with me again. I barely make it halfway through, leyla u’v’layla min kol birchoso u’shiraso tush b’choso, and not another syllable will come! He grabs me by the ear and says my father should rise from the dead and see what kind of son he has!
“Then I wouldn’t have to say kaddish,” I say to my brother Elyahu, and receive a smart slap from his left hand on my right cheek.
My mother hears it and gives him a good scolding, telling him not to hit me, because I’m an orphan. “God be with you! What are you doing? Whom are you hitting? Have you forgotten the child is an orphan?!”
I sleep with my mother in my father’s bed, the only piece of furniture in the house. She lets me have most of the blanket.
“Cover yourself up,” she says to me, “and fall asleep, my precious orphan. We have no food to give you.”
Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son Page 21