Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  I cover myself up, but I can’t sleep. (I repeat the kaddish by heart.) I’m not going to cheder, I’m not studying, I’m not saying my prayers, I’m not singing. I’m finished with everything.

  I have it good—I am an orphan.

  B .

  Mazel tov! I know the whole kaddish by heart, as well as the special kaddish. In shul I stand on a bench and chant the kaddish masterfully like an expert. I have a good voice, a true soprano, inherited from my father. All the boys stand around me and envy me. Women weep. The men give me a kopek.

  Rich Yossi’s son, Cross-Eyed Henich, sticks his tongue out at me when it comes time for me to recite the special kaddish. He’s good at holding a spiteful grudge! He desperately wants me to start giggling. Just to spite him, I won’t giggle! Ahron the beadle notices him, takes him by the ear, and leads him out the door. Serves him right! Since I’m saying kaddish morning and night, I no longer go to Hersh-Ber the cantor’s and don’t have to carry Dobtzi around. I’m free!

  I spend all day at the pond, or I catch fish, or I swim. I learned how to catch fish by myself. If you want, I’ll teach you too. You take off your shirt and tie a knot in your sleeves and go into the water slowly up to your neck. (You have to go for a long, long time.) If you feel your shirt getting heavy, it’s a sign that it’s full. Get out as soon as you can, shake out all the grass and mud, and look carefully at what’s left. Caught in the grass you sometimes find little frogs. Throw them back into the water—take pity on a living creature. In the thick mud you can often find a leech. Leeches are worth money. For ten leeches you can get three and a half groschens. Don’t bother looking for fish. Once there were fish, but now they’re gone. I don’t bother with fish. I’m satisfied to catch leeches. But this summer there wasn’t a single leech!

  How my brother Elyahu found out I was fishing I don’t know. He almost tore off my ear on account of my wet shirt and pants!

  Luckily Fat Pessi, our neighbor, saw it. Your own mother wouldn’t protect you as well. “Is that the way to treat an orphan?”

  My brother Elyahu is ashamed and lets go of my ear. Everyone sticks up for me. I have it good—I am an orphan.

  C .

  Our neighbor Fat Pessi has fallen in love with me. She’s trying to convince my mother to let me stay with her.

  “Why should that bother you?” she argues. “I have twelve to feed at the table, so he’ll be a thirteenth.”

  My mother agrees reluctantly, but my brother Elyahu has his own opinion. “Who’ll watch over him, make sure he says kaddish?”

  “I’ll watch over him and make sure he says kaddish. Nu, is there anything else you need to ask me about?”

  Pessi is not a rich woman. Her husband is a bookbinder named Moishe. He has a reputation as a master of his trade. But that isn’t enough. You have to have luck as well. That’s what Pessi says to my mother.

  My mother agrees. My mother says to be unlucky also takes some luck. She uses me as an example. Here I am an orphan, and everyone wants to look after me. Some are volunteering to keep me for good, but may her enemies never live to see the day when she gives me away for good! That’s what my mother says, and cries.

  She discusses it with my brother Elyahu. “What do you think? Should he stay with Pessi for the time being?”

  My brother Elyahu is already a grown-up, or she wouldn’t be asking his opinion. He strokes his bare, not-yet-bearded face as if he already had a beard and speaks like an adult. “Whatever you say, so long as he doesn’t get into trouble.”

  And so I’ll stay with our neighbor for the time being, but on condition I don’t get into trouble. To them, whatever you do is called getting into trouble! Tying a piece of paper onto the cat’s tail so she’ll run in circles, to them is getting into trouble. Running a stick across the priest’s grating in the courtyard to attract all the dogs, to them is getting into trouble. Pulling out the stopper of Leibke the water-carrier’s barrel so half the water runs out, to them is getting into trouble.

  “You’re lucky you’re an orphan,” Leibke the water-carrier says to me, “or else I’d break your bones! You better believe me!”

  I really believe him. I know he won’t touch me now because I am an orphan.

  I have it good—I am an orphan.

  D .

  Our neighbor Pessi, you should pardon me, told a big lie. She said twelve were eating at her table, but according to my count, I’m the fourteenth. It appears she forgot to include among the eaters Boruch the blind uncle. And maybe she didn’t include him because he’s so old and has no teeth. I won’t argue. He can’t chew, but he can swallow like a goose, and he grabs. Everybody grabs. The way they grab is out of the ordinary. I grab too. They hit me. They kick me under the table, and more than all of them, Vashti hits me. Vashti is a terror. His name is Hershl, but since he has a birthmark on his forehead, he is called Vashti. I haven’t the faintest idea why. They all have nicknames like Barrel, Tomcat, Buffalo, Stork, Stutterer, Give-Me-More, and Smear-with-Butter.

  You can be sure every nickname has a reason. Pinni is called Barrel because he is fat and round like a barrel. Velvl is dark-skinned, so he is called Tomcat. Chaim looks like a buffalo, so he is called Buffalo. Mendl has a pointy nose, so he is called Stork. Feitl is named Stutterer because he can’t speak right. Berl is a big nosher. If you give him a piece of bread with chicken fat, he says, “Give me more.” Zorach got a bad name, Smear-with-Butter, for something that’s not his fault. His mother may be to blame because she neglected to wash his greasy hair during childhood. Then again, maybe she isn’t to blame at all. I’m not going to argue, let alone fight over it!

  In short, it’s a household in which everyone has a nickname. Even the cat, just a dumb animal, surely innocent, is called Feige-Leah the Beadle’s Wife. Do you know why? It’s because she’s fat like Feige-Leah, Nachman the beadle’s wife. Can you imagine how many slaps they caught for naming a cat after a person? It did no good. Once you give someone a nickname, it sticks!

  E.

  They gave me a nickname too. Try and guess: Lips (Motl-with-the-Lips). It seems they don’t like my lips. They say I make noise with them when I eat. I would very much like to see anyone eat and not make noise with his lips! I’m not among those oversensitive people who hate to be criticized, but I really hate this nickname! I don’t understand why. But because I hate it, they taunt me with it all the time. You’ve never seen such nasty creatures! At first I was called Motl-with-the-Lips, then it was shortened to With-the-Lips, and later it became The Lips, and finally Lips.

  “Lips! Where have you been?”

  “Lips! Wipe your nose!”

  It infuriates me, really hurts my feelings and makes me cry. Their father Moishe the bookbinder once saw me crying and asked me, “Why are you crying?”

  I told him, “Why shouldn’t I cry when my name is Motl and they call me Lips!”

  “Who?”

  “Vashti.”

  He turned to punish Vashti, but Vashti said, “It’s not me, it’s Barrel.”

  He went to punish Barrel, and Barrel said, “It’s not me, it’s Tomcat.”

  So it went from one to the other—a tale without end! Moishe the bookbinder thought it over, laid them down one at a time, and spanked them all with the cover of a prayer book.

  “Good-for-nothings!” he said to them. “I’ll teach you to tease an orphan!”

  That’s the way it goes! Everyone stands up for me. Everyone, everyone takes my part.

  I have it good—I am an orphan.

  III

  WHAT’S TO BECOME OF ME?

  A.

  Guess where paradise is. You can’t in a million years. Do you know why? Because it is in a different place for everyone. My mother says that paradise is where my father is. That’s where you’ll find all the poor worthy souls who suffered on earth. Because they didn’t have a good life on earth, they deserve a place in paradise. That is as clear as day. And my father is the best evidence. Where else could he be if not in pa
radise? Didn’t he suffer enough on this earth? So says my mother, wiping her eyes as she usually does when she speaks of my father.

  But if you ask my friends, they’ll tell you that paradise is found somewhere on a mountain of pure crystal, as high as the sky, where boys do whatever they please. They don’t go to school, but all day they bathe in milk and eat honey by the fistful. Are you ready for this one? Along comes this Jew and says that true paradise is in the bathhouse on Fridays. I heard it myself from our neighbor’s husband Moishe the bookbinder, so you can believe me. Is there an end to these stories?

  If you ask me, I’d say that paradise is Menashe the doctor’s garden. As long as you’ve lived, you’ve never seen a garden like that. It is the most beautiful garden, not only on our street, not only in our town, but in the whole world. There isn’t another garden like it—there never was and never will be! Everyone will tell you that.

  What do you want me to describe first—Menashe the doctor and his wife, or shall I first describe paradise, I mean their garden? Let me tell you first about Menashe and his wife. The owners should get the first introduction.

  B .

  Winter and summer Menashe the doctor wears a high collar, copying the swarthy doctor who visited my father. Menashe has one eye smaller than the other, and his mouth seems to twist to the side, not a little but quite a lot. As he tells it, a draft caused it. I can’t understand how a whole mouth can get twisted to the side by a draft. How many drafts, big and little, have I lived through in my life! My whole head would by now be twisted around to my back. I figure it’s really out of habit; it’s how you get used to holding your mouth. Take my friend Berl, who blinks his eyes. Another friend, Velvl, sounds as if he’s slurping noodles and soup when he talks. Everything is a habit. Even though his mouth is twisted to the side, still and all Menashe does better than any other doctor. First of all, he isn’t full of himself like other doctors. When you call him, he comes running immediately all sweated up.

  And second of all, it isn’t his way to write prescriptions. He makes the medicines himself. Once I had a sticking pain, a chill, and the shivers, and my mother ran right over and brought home Menashe the doctor. He examined me and told her with his twisted mouth, “You don’t need to worry. It’s nothing at all. The little scamp caught a cold in his lung.”

  And with these words he took out of his pocket a blue bottle and poured white powder into six pieces of paper. One powder he told me to take right away. I turned and twisted all around—my heart told me it would be bitter as death. And it was. I was right! There’s nothing more bitter. Have you ever tasted the fresh bark from a young tree? That’s how his powder tasted. Just remember—if it’s a powder, it has to be bitter. My thrashing around didn’t help me one bit. I swallowed the powder and thought I was going to die. He told my mother to give me the other five powders every two hours. He really thought he had found a willing taker of bitter medicine! When my mother turned around for a minute to tell my brother Elyahu I was sick, I poured all five powders into the trash and later replaced them all with flour.

  My mother had quite a job ahead of her. Every two hours she had to run to our neighbor to look at the clock. After each powder I took, she remarked that I was getting better. By the sixth powder I was healthy.

  “Now that’s what I call a doctor!” she said, but still she didn’t let me go to cheder—she kept me home all day, and fed me sweet tea and white rolls.

  My mother boasted to everybody, as usual wiping her eyes, “Menashe is a better doctor than all the others, may God grant him health and many years! He has medicines that turn the dead into living people.”

  C .

  Menashe the doctor’s wife is known by her husband’s name: “Menashe’che the doctor’s.” She’s a witch. That’s what everybody says. Do you know why? It’s because she’s mean. She has a face like a man’s, the voice of a man, and wears men’s boots. When she speaks, you have the feeling she’s angry. She has quite a reputation in town. As long as she’s lived here, no needy person has ever received so much as a piece of bread from her. Her house is full of good things—you can find preserves made a year ago, three years ago, and even ten years ago.

  Why does she need so many preserves? If you ask her, she doesn’t know herself. That’s the way she is. Don’t even think about it, you won’t change her. Once summer comes, she just has to keep cooking up preserves. She doesn’t know why. If you think she cooks on coals, you’re wrong. She can cook on thorns, cones, and dried leaves. She raises so much smoke on the whole street that you could choke. If you ever come to us in summertime and you smell something like tar, don’t be afraid. It isn’t a fire, but Menashe’che the doctor’s wife’s preserves made from her own garden, which I promised to tell you about.

  D .

  What fruits can you not find in that garden? There are apples and pears and grapes and plums and sour cherries and Spanish cherries and gooseberries and blackberries and peaches and raspberries and morellos and currants and more. Is there anything else you need? From Menashe’che the doctor’s you can even buy grapes for the erev Rosh Hashanah blessing. True, when you taste the grapes, your mouth puckers—that’s how sour they are! But she still gets good money for them. She knows how to turn anything into money, even sunflowers. God save you if you ask her to pull up a sunflower—she won’t do it! She’d rather pull a tooth from her mouth than pull a little sunflower from her garden. And never mind an apple, a pear, a sour cherry, or a plum—you’re not sure of your life! I am as familiar with this garden as a Jew is with the ashrei prayer. I know where every tree is located and what grows on it and if this is a good or not so good year. How do I know? Don’t worry, I’ve never been in the garden. How could I, when it’s is surrounded by a high fence covered with scary spikes? (Are you ready for this?) There’s also a dog in the garden. Not a dog, but a wolf! He’s tied up on a long leash, this dog of dogs, and whenever someone passes by, or the dog even imagines someone is passing by, he yanks at the rope, jumping and barking with all his might, as if the devil himself has gotten into him!

  You might wonder if I’m making all this up. But listen, and I’ll tell you how I found all this out.

  E .

  Do you know Mendl the slaughterer? If you don’t, you certainly don’t know his house either. It’s right next to Menashe the doctor’s house, and it looks right into his garden. If you sit on Mendl the slaughterer’s roof, you can see everything that’s going on in Menashe’s garden. The trick is, how do you climb up onto Mendl’s roof? For me, it’s no trick. Do you know why? It’s because Mendl’s house is next to ours, and it’s a lot lower than our house. If you climb up to our attic (I do it without a ladder; someday maybe I’ll tell you how) and stick your foot out of its small window and then let the rest of you follow, you are on Mendl’s roof! There you lie down whichever way you like, faceup or face-down. In any case you must lie down, or else you can be seen. (“What are you doing on Mendl’s roof?”) I always choose a time before nightfall, between the mincha and maariv prayers, when I am supposed to go to shul to say kaddish. At that time it’s neither day nor night—the best time. From there I can look down into the garden, and I swear to you it really is more beautiful than the Garden of Eden!

  When summer begins and trees deck themselves out in little white feathery blossoms, little green gooseberries soon appear on short spiky twigs, you hope, if not today, then tomorrow. That is the first fruit you want to taste. Some people wait till the gooseberries turn red. That’s dumb! I know for sure that it’s when they’re green that they’re the most tasty and delicious. But aren’t they sour? you’ll ask. Do they make your mouth pucker? Well, what if they do? Sour things refresh your heart, and for puckering there’s a remedy—salt. You put salt on your lips and keep your mouth open for half an hour, and then you can go on eating green gooseberries. After gooseberries come the currants, red with little black mouths and yellow seeds. There are dozens and dozens on every twig. If you draw one twig between your lips,
you get a mouthful of currants, winelike and fragrant, a delight! When they turn ripe, my mother buys a quart of currants for a groschen and I eat them with bread.

  In Menashe’s garden there are two rows of small bushes growing close to the ground, covered with currants, glowing and shimmering in the sun. You long for just one little twig, just to pull off one currant with two fingers and pop it into your mouth! Will you believe me—when I speak of green gooseberries and red currants, my mouth begins to pucker! So let’s talk about cherries. Cherries don’t stay green for long. They turn ripe very quickly. I swear to you that once, while lying on Mendl’s roof in the morning, I noticed several cherries that were green as grass. By afternoon the sun had reddened their little cheeks and by evening they were red as fire! My mother used to bring me cherries. But how many? Five on a twig. What can you do with five cherries? You play with them until you don’t know what became of them.

  F.

  But Menashe’s garden has as many cherries as the sky has stars. You can understand, I’m so eager to count how many cherries grow on one little branch. I tried, but I couldn’t count them! Cherries usually cling tight to the branch—they rarely fall to the ground, and then only when they’re overripe or black as plums. Peaches, on the other hand, fall off as soon as they get ripe and yellow. Ach, peaches! Peaches! I love them more than any other fruit. In my entire life I’ve eaten only one peach, and I can still taste it. That was a few years ago, when I wasn’t yet five. My father was still alive, and we still owned everything in the house: the glass cupboard, the couch, the books, and all the bedding.