One time my father came home from shul, called me and my brother Elyahu to him, and put a hand in his back pocket where he keeps his handkerchief. “Children!” he said. “Do you want some peaches? I’ve brought you two peaches.”
And he removed from his back pocket two pieces of round, aromatic yellow fruit. My brother Elyahu rushed to eat it—he made a quick, loud blessing—“Blessed be the fruit of the vine”—and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth. But I played with it first, savoring its aroma, admiring its beauty, and then ate it bit by bit with bread. Peaches go well with bread. I’ve never tasted another peach, but the taste of that first one I cannot forget!
Now standing before me is an entire tree bursting with peaches, and I’m spread out on Mendl the slaughterer’s roof, looking and looking, and one peach after another falls to the ground. One is yellow, almost red, and has split open, exposing its round pit. What will the doctor’s wife do with so many peaches? She’ll probably gather them up and make them into preserves, which she’ll stick away behind the furnace until wintertime, when she’ll move them to the cellar, where they’ll remain so long they turn to sugar and get covered with mold.
After the peaches come the plums, but not all at once. There are two sorts of plums in Menashe the doctor’s garden. One tree grows a kind of round, sweet, hard black plum. The other grows ordinary plums they call bucket plums, because they are sold by the bucket. They have a thin skin and are slippery and sticky and watery to the taste. But still they’re not as bad as you would think. I just wish they’d give me some. But Menashe’che the doctor’s wife isn’t one of those giving people. She’d rather make plum compote for winter. When will she ever eat so much plum compote?
G .
When cherries, peaches, and plums are finished, the apple season is here. Apples, you must know, aren’t pears. Bergamot pears may be the best fruit in the world, but if they aren’t exactly ripe, you can’t manage anything with them. You might as well chew wood! Apples can be green, the seeds may be white, but they already taste like apples. You dig your teeth into a green apple, and your mouth turns sour. And you know, I wouldn’t give you half of a green apple for two ripe ones. You have to wait a long time for them to ripen, but you can eat green ones right away, right after the tree blossoms.
It just depends on what size you want. The longer an apple grows, the bigger it gets—like with a person, pardon the comparison. But a big apple doesn’t have to be good. Sometimes a small apple is better than the biggest apple. Take the Eretz Yisroel apples—they have a winey taste but are delicious. Or take sour or pickled apples. This summer they’re so plentiful, they’ll have to be moved by the wagonload. I heard that right from Menashe’che the doctor’s wife’s mouth. She told it to Reuben the apple man when the apples were just beginning to blossom. Reuben the apple man came to look at the garden. He wanted to buy her apples and pears while they were still on the tree. When it comes to apples and pears, Reuben is an expert. All he has to do is take one look at a tree, and he can tell you how much money it’ll bring in. He’s never wrong, unless it happens that there’s a big windstorm and the apples fall before they’re ripe, or worms and caterpillars infest them. These are things no one can predict. A wind is God’s doing, and so are caterpillars. For the life of me, I can’t understand why God needs caterpillars, unless it’s to take the bread from Reuben the apple man’s mouth. Reuben says he doesn’t ask more from a tree than a little bread. He has, he says, a wife and children and needs bread for them. Menashe’che wants not only bread but bread with meat, and she wishes him luck with the trees he’s selected. They’re trees? They are gold, not trees.
“You know I’m no enemy of yours, God forbid,” Menashe’che says to him. “What I wish for you, may it happen to me.”
“Amen!” Reuben says with a little smile on his very sunburned face, peeling from the sun. “Just give me a guarantee against windstorms, worms, and caterpillars, and I’ll give you more than you want.”
Menashe’che gives him a strange look up and down and then says to him in her mannish voice, “Give me a guarantee that you’ll leave here and won’t slip and break a leg.”
“No one is safe from slipping and breaking a leg!” says Reuben, and looks at her with his kind, smiling eyes. “That can happen to a rich man even quicker than to a poor man because a rich man has the money to pay to look after himself whether he has a broken leg or not.”
“You’re a clever man!” Menashe’che answers him sarcastically. “But a person who wishes for another to break his leg deserves to have his tongue wither and not know why.”
“Why not?” Reuben says with the same little smile. “So long as it isn’t in a poor man’s mouth when it withers.”
H .
It’s a shame that Reuben the apple man didn’t inherit the garden. He would have made it much more pleasant than that witch did. You don’t know how much trouble she’s caused. Let one wormy apple fall, even a dried-out one, wrinkled like an old lady’s face, and she’ll bend down, pick it up, tuck it into her apron, and take it away. Where does she take them? Apparently to the roof, or maybe to the cellar, probably to the cellar, because I heard that last year a whole cellar of apples turned rotten. So isn’t it a good deed to pick an apple from her tree?
Yes, but how do you pick them? To sneak into her garden at night when everyone’s asleep and stuff your pockets full certainly makes the most sense. But what would the dog say about it? And this summer, as if for spite, the apples are growing one on top of the other. They plead—they’re desperate to be picked! What can you do? If only I had some spell, some magic word, to make the apples come to me! I think and think until I figure it out—not a spell and not a magic word but something else—a stick, a long stick with a bent nail at the end.
With that stick you can find the little stem of an apple and pull it toward you, and the apple is yours. You just have to make sure to hold the stick so the apple doesn’t fall to the ground. And if the apple does fall, it’s still not a tragedy—she’ll think the wind knocked it off. But you mustn’t touch the apple itself with the bent nail—that’d bruise it. I swear, I’ve never bruised an apple. Nor has an apple ever fallen. For me apples don’t fall. I know how to angle the stick when I pick apples. Most important, you can’t hurry. What’s your rush? Once you have an apple, you eat it slowly, then rest awhile and pick another. I promise you, no one will ever know!
Who could foresee that the witch would count the apples while they were still on the tree! Apparently she counts them during the day and when she wakes up the next morning, she realizes some are missing. Then she hides in the attic and watches, to catch the thief. That’s what I think happened. Otherwise how could she have found out I was lying on Mendl the slaughterer’s roof and picking apples with my stick? If she’d caught me without a witness, I could have squirmed out of it—after all, I’m an orphan, and she might have taken pity on me. But no, she decides to invite my mother, our neighbor Pessi, and Mendl the slaughterer’s wife to join her up in her attic. (What won’t a witch think of?) From the attic they look out the little window and see me at work with my stick.
“Nu? What do you have to say about that rascal of yours? Now do you believe me?”
Those words come from the doctor’s wife—I recognize her mannish voice. I turn my head toward the attic and see all four women. I don’t throw away the stick and the apple—they fall by themselves. It’s a wonder I don’t fall as well. I can’t look anyone in the eye. If the dog hadn’t been lying in the garden, I would’ve killed myself out of shame.
Worst of all are my mother’s tears. She laments and sobs and cries, “Vey iz mir! Woe is me! That I would live to see this! I thought my orphan was going to shul to say kaddish for his father, but he was lying on a roof, may thunder strike me, picking apples from someone else’s garden!”
And the witch stands over her and adds in her mannish voice, “He should be whipped, the little demon! Flogged till the blood runs! A boy must know that this is
what happens to a th—”
My mother doesn’t allow her to utter the word thief. “He’s an orphan, a poor orphan,” she pleads with the doctor’s wife. She kisses her hands and begs her to forgive me, it’ll never happen again! She swears with many oaths that this is the last time, otherwise may she herself die, or may she bury me!
“Let him swear that he will never so much as look into my garden,” the doctor’s wife demands with her mannish voice, without a drop of compassion for an orphan.
“May my hands wither! May my eyes fall out!” I say, and go home with my mother. She lectures me through her tears until finally I break down in tears myself.
“All I ask is, what will become of you?” my mother cries, and tells my brother Elyahu the whole sad story. My brother Elyahu hears out the story and turns pale, it seems out of anger. My mother sees he is mad at me and is afraid he might beat me. She whispers something in his ear, saying he shouldn’t beat me because I’m an orphan.
“Who’s touching him?” says my brother Elyahu. “I’d just like to know what will become of him? What’s to become of him?!”
My brother Elyahu gnashes his teeth and rivets his eyes on me to make sure I see him while he’s demanding what will become of me. Do I know what will become of me? Maybe you know what will become of me?
IV
MY BROTHER ELYAHU GETS MARRIED
A .
Mazel tov! Do you know why? My brother Elyahu is getting married!
My, oh my, what’s going on! The town’s in an uproar. The world is quaking! So says our neighbor Fat Pessi. She says it’ll be a grand wedding such as hasn’t been seen in our town for a long time!
Why all the fuss? Some of it’s out of pity, because my mother is a widow and the bridegroom is an orphan. And some of it’s out of respect for my father’s reputation. My father, may he rest in peace, left behind a good name! While he was alive no one ever spoke highly of Peysi the cantor, but ever since his death he is praised to the skies!
People tell my mother that the bride’s father can afford to pay for the expenses plus more. He mustn’t forget that he’s getting Peysi the cantor’s son for a son-in-law! When my brother Elyahu hears this, he becomes embarrassed and strokes his little beard like a grown man. He is grown up! Not too long ago his beard began to sprout. Surely that came from smoking. After our father died, he started to smoke. At first he gagged on the smoke and coughed. Now he can inhale and blow the smoke out through his nose. That’s quite a trick!
Do you think I can’t do that? The only problem is, I don’t have tobacco. So I smoke whatever I can get hold of—paper or straw. My brother Elyahu caught me at it and gave me what for! He may smoke, but I may not! But is it my fault that I’m not yet nine years old? I promised him, swore on the Bible, that I wouldn’t smoke anymore. How long do you think I kept my word?
I ask you, who doesn’t smoke nowadays?
B.
Soon the world will turn upside down. So says our neighbor Pessi. She came back from visiting the bride’s father in a rage. It’s an ugly story. The father had bought the bridegroom a fob watch as a gift. Then he found out the groom didn’t have it anymore. It was a genuine silver fob watch. What happened to it? Did my brother lose it playing cards, God forbid? No, he sold it and used the money for doctors and medicines to try to save my father’s life. So argues Pessi. But the bride’s father is a crude, unfeeling man. What do people’s fathers have to do with his fob watch? he objects. He is not obliged, he says, to support other people’s fathers with his fob watches. One measly fob watch suddenly became “fob watches,” and one poor father becomes “fathers”! Pessi says, what can you expect? From a pig’s tail you can’t make a fur hat! She means the bride’s father. He remains a crude, unfeeling person.
By trade he is a baker and is called Yoneh the baker. “You might as well lie in the earth and bake your bagels,” Pessi says to him, probably joking, or maybe she really means it. I don’t understand how you can lie in the earth and bake bagels. Who will buy them?
Our future in-law is a rich man. Pessi claims he’s really wealthy! She says to his face that even if she had half of what he had, she wouldn’t make a match with any of his children. She hates a greedy pig. He’d better be quiet—if someone falls into her trap, watch out! He’s willing to forget the fob watch as long as she shuts up. But Pessi says she isn’t willing to shut up. She wants him to buy the groom a new fob watch. It’s not right for a groom to go under the wedding canopy without a fob watch. Yoneh the baker argues back: what business does Pessi have with the groom? She says it’s her business because the groom is Peysi the cantor’s son, and he, Yoneh the baker, is both a rich man and a greedy pig. This hurts his feelings. He slams the door and shouts, “Go to hell!” She retorts, “You’re in better shape than I to go where it’s hot—you’re a baker!”
My mother is worried that Yoneh might break off the match. Pessi tells her to sleep peacefully—you don’t break off a match with an orphan. Who do you think won out? We did! Yoneh bought the groom a new fob watch, also silver, but even better than the first one. He even brought it over himself. If only I had such a fob watch! What would I do? First I’d remove the insides to figure out how it works. And then? And then—I know what would happen.
My mother congratulates the bride’s father and wishes he live long enough to buy her son a gold watch. The bride’s father congratulates her as well, wishes that she live to see her youngest marry. He means me. I’m willing to get married this very day as long as I get a fob watch.
My mother caresses me and says that a lot of water will flow before then, but in the meantime her eyes become moist. Why does so much water have to flow before I get married? Why does she have to cry about it? Crying is for her a habit, I think, something she has to do every day. For her crying is like your daily praying, or eating. When the tailor delivers the groom’s clothes, ordered by his future father-in-law, she has to cry. When Pessi bakes a honey cake for the wedding, she has to cry. Tomorrow is the time for the wedding ceremony—again crying! I do not understand where people get so many tears from!
C .
It turns out to be a magnificent day—like in paradise! It’s the middle of the month of Elul, springtime, and the weather is actually springlike. The sun isn’t hot enough to sweat, but it still makes you want to swim. It warms and caresses and kisses like a mother. The sky is decked out for Shabbes.
The whole town is happy that my brother Elyahu is getting married. Early in the morning a fair is being set up in the town square. Fairs are something I can’t miss—I’m crazy about fairs. People run around like mice, sweat, shout, and yank the goyim by their shirt-tails, eager to earn money—it’s a real show! But the goyim have plenty of time; they stroll around slowly, push their caps back, and look, touch, and scratch themselves, haggling for bargains. Peasant women wear strange shawls and wide-open blouses, exposing their breasts. Into these open blouses they stick bits of merchandise when no one is looking. Jews know this trick and look out for it. If they see it, they make sure to shake out the pilfered goods, which leads to a scene. Sometimes a peasant woman buys a candle in church and hides it in her shawl. Young folks, with nothing else to do, want to have some fun—they sneak up behind her and light the candle. Everyone points at the peasant woman and laughs. She doesn’t know why the Jews are laughing and reviles them with deadly curses. This makes them laugh even more. Sometimes this leads to a fight between peasants and Jews. I tell you—you don’t need a theater!
Best of all is the konneh. Do you know what that is? It’s the horse market, where they buy and sell horses. Here you can see all kinds of horses, along with gypsies, Jews, peasants, and gentry. The noise is not to be described—you can go deaf. The gypsies curse, the Jews clap their hands together, the rich folks crack their whips, and the horses run back and forth at top speed. I love to watch the horses running, especially the colts! I would give my life for a colt! I love everything small: puppies, kittens. You know, I even like small cuc
umbers, young little potatoes, onions, garlic. I like everything small—except piglets. I hate even small-size grown-up pigs.
Let me return to the horses. They run. The colts run after them. I run after the colts. We all run. At running I’m a whiz. I’ve got very light feet, and I go barefoot. I wear a light shirt, a pair of short trousers, and a cotton arbe kanfes, an undergarment with four corner tassels that no Jew can be without. When I run downhill, the tassels loosen in the wind, and I imagine I have wings and am flying.
“Motl! God be with you! Stop a minute!” shouts Pessi’s husband Moishe the bookbinder. He’s heading home from the fair with a pack of paper. I am afraid he’ll tattle on me to my mother, and then my brother Elyahu will yell at me. I stop running and walk slowly to my neighbor’s husband with lowered eyes.
He puts down the pack of paper, wipes the sweat with the hem of his shirt, and gives me a sermon. “How is a young orphan boy not ashamed to be hanging around gypsies and running wild with all the horses? Especially on this day! Your brother’s wedding ceremony is starting very soon, do you know that? Go home!”
D .
“Where have you been? God help you!” My mother claps her hands together and looks over my torn pants, my bloodied feet, and my flaming, flushed face. Long live Moishe the bookbinder—he didn’t breathe a word to her! My mother washes me off and puts a pair of new pants and a little cap on me for the wedding. The pants are made of some I-don’t-know-what fabric. When you take them off, they stand up on their own, and when you walk, they screech—strange pants!
“If you tear these pants, it’ll be the end of the world!” my mother says, and I agree. But these pants can’t be torn unless you break them. The little cap is great, with a shiny black visor. If it stops shining, you spit on it, and it gets shiny again. My mother glows with pride and tears roll down her wrinkled cheeks. She’s eager for me to be a success at the wedding. She says to the groom, “Elyahu! What do you think? He won’t put me to shame, will he? He’s dressed, kayn eyn horeh, like a prince.”
Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son Page 23