Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  The word thief my mother can’t bear to hear. She turns all colors and warns my brother not to forget that there is a God in heaven. You don’t play with God. God will not be silent. He’s the Father of orphans. He’ll take an orphan’s part. He is a great God and can do anything. If God wishes, Yoneh the baker will not be worth one bagel! Thus she ends her speech to my brother Elyahu, takes me by the hand, and slams the door. We go home.

  B.

  Listen, it’s really true, you can’t play with God! Wait till you hear what happened to Yoneh the baker. I did tell you that Yoneh does not do the baking. Two swarthy men and three women from elsewhere do it for him. The women are shabby and scabby and wear sweaty red kerchiefs on their heads no matter how hot the weather is.

  Strange things started happening. Customers complained that they were finding long threads, ribbons, cockroaches, and shards of glass in their rolls. One Gentile customer brought the baker a whole handful of black hair that he’d bitten into. This Christian frightened Yoneh the baker, especially when he threatened to call the police. They checked the bakers’ hair, trying to discover whose hair matched the hair found. The men blamed the women; the women blamed the men. The women pointed out that they all had blond hair. The men said, “Where did you ever see such long hair on a man?” The women quarreled among themselves, and some interesting things came to light: one had lost a garter in the challah, and another had kneaded a bandage from a cut finger into the dough. Another had used the challah dough as a pillow. The one accused solemnly swore it was a lie, then finally confessed that it had happened only once or twice, since she didn’t own a pillow.

  The entire town was in turmoil. Poor Yoneh the baker had his hands full. Calling on God didn’t help. No one wanted to touch his baked goods! He might as well throw it to the dogs! Served him right!

  C .

  But Yoneh the baker is a clever man with a spine. He fired all the bakers, men and women alike, and hired other bakers. He asked the shuls to announce on Shabbes that he had hired new bakers, and from that time on he would personally ensure that everything was scrubbed and clean. He offered a ten-ruble reward to anyone who found as much as a single hair in his challah. From then on he began making money. The customers looked for hair in his baked goods but never found any. Even if they did find something and brought it to him, he chased them away. He said they had put it on the bread on purpose in order to get the ten-ruble reward. We know these tricks! Some clever fellow, this Yoneh the baker!

  But God was intent on getting even with him and sent him a new disaster. One fine morning all the new bakers packed their gear and left. They would no longer bake for him for the same money. He had to raise their pay by a ruble a week, let them go home to sleep at night, and refrain from smacking them in the teeth—otherwise they weren’t returning. Yoneh the baker has this quirk: as soon as you do something he doesn’t like, he smacks you in the teeth.

  Yoneh was furious. He’d been a boss for many years, and never had workers told him to stop smacking them. Raising their pay was out of the question—he could get ten others in their place. Workers weren’t so hard to find—there were plenty of people dying of hunger! He went off looking for new bakers. But no one wanted the job. What was going on? All the bakers had joined together, it seemed, and decided they wouldn’t work for him unless he took back the former bakers and agreed to their three demands: a ruble raise in pay, going home to sleep at night, and not smacking them in the teeth. Yoneh boiled, banged his fist on the table, and cursed his bad luck. It was really something to see. Oh, did I have my revenge! But that was nothing compared to what happened later.

  D.

  It’s a hot summer day. The watermelons and cantaloupes have just turned ripe. This is the best time of the year. Soon enough the dreary days will start. May God not punish me for these words, but I hate those dreary days. I like the happy days much better. And what can be happier than a market full of watermelons and cantaloupes? Wherever you turn, there they are. The cantaloupes are yellow and smell like citrons. The watermelons are as red as fire inside and have black seeds, and their sweetness is like honey. My mother doesn’t like watermelons. She says cantaloupes are a better buy. When she buys a cantaloupe, she has it for breakfast, lunch, and supper for two days, while a watermelon is a snack that fills your stomach with water. I think she’s mistaken. If I were a king, I’d eat watermelon with bread all year. It doesn’t matter that they have lots of seeds. If you give a good watermelon a hard shake, the seeds fall out, and then you can eat as much as you want!

  But now I’ve gotten so caught up in watermelons, I’ve forgotten what I started to tell you. Oh yes, I was talking about my brother’s father-in-law Yoneh the bagel baker. He had quite a downfall. No one expected it. One night I’m sitting with my mother at the table eating supper—cantaloupe and bread. The door opens, and in comes my brother Elyahu with a Bible in his hand, my father’s Bible. His wife Bruche is dragging after him. In one hand she holds a feather boa with little tails, and in the other hand—a colander. You don’t know what a colander is? You strain noodles with it. My brother Elyahu looks as if he’s about to drop dead. My sister-in-law Bruche is red as a hellish fire.

  “Mother-in-law, we’ve come to stay with you!” says my sister-in-law Bruche.

  “Mama, we’ve barely escaped with our lives,” says my brother Elyahu.

  Both sit down weeping, and my mother joins in. What happened? Was there a fire? Were you driven out?

  That’s not it at all! My brother Elyahu’s father-in-law is cleaned out, bankrupt. The creditors came and took the house and everything in it, down to the last thread. They politely threw him out without a stitch, first making him clean up the house. What humiliation!

  “Woe is me!” My mother wrings her hands. “What happened to his money? He used to be a wealthy man!”

  My brother Elyahu tells her that, first of all, he wasn’t ever really that rich. And second—and here my sister-in-law Bruche breaks in and says her father was a rich man. If she had half his wealth right now, she’d be happy. Her wedding cost him a fortune! She loves to talk about her wedding. Whenever she comes visiting us, all you hear about is her wedding. A wedding like hers, she says, has never been seen anywhere. The baked goods at her wedding, the cakes and loaves and strudel and breads! And the preserves and meats at her wedding! And now she stands as you see her, with a feather boa and a kosher colander. The dowry her father promised—you can forget about it, it’s gone. My brother Elyahu lost his Shabbes clothes and prayer shawl, his bedding, and his fob watch too. He has nothing.

  My mother falls apart. What a disaster! Who could have known? Everyone envied her this match! Some people must have cast an evil eye on her, or maybe she brought the baker down with her own curses. Whatever it was, she says, she will be punished more than anyone. Wasn’t she the one who yearned for a gold mine for her son?

  “The gold has disappeared, but the hole in the ground remains. Stay with me for now, my children, until God takes pity.” She gives her daughter-in-law her bed, the only piece of furniture in our house.

  VII

  MY BROTHER ELYAHU’S DRINK

  A .

  “From One Ruble—A Hundred! You can earn a hundred rubles a month or more. All you have to do is read our book, costing a mere ruble plus postage. Hurry, buy! Stop everything and take advantage of this great opportunity, or you’ll miss out!”

  That’s what my brother Elyahu read somewhere in a newspaper soon after his father-in-law went broke and from a rich man overnight became a pauper. As was the custom, my brother had been promised three years’ room and board, but he was hardly there three quarters of a year when misfortune struck.

  I’m very busy making money. I’m hawking a drink that my brother Elyahu makes with his own hands. He learned how to make it from the book costing only one ruble, from which you can earn a hundred rubles a month or more. As soon as my brother Elyahu read about that book, he sent off his last ruble by mail and told our mother h
er worries were over.

  “Mama! Thank God, we are in luck! We don’t have to worry about money anymore. We’ll have money up to here.” He indicates his neck.

  “From what?” asks my mother. “Did you get a job?”

  “Better than a job.” My brother Elyahu’s eyes are aglow, in great excitement. She only has to wait a few days until the book arrives, he tells her.

  “What book?”

  “What a book!” my brother Elyahu exclaims, and asks her if she would be satisfied with a hundred rubles a month. Laughing, my mother tells him she’d be satisfied with a hundred rubles a year, so long as it was a sure thing. He tells her her outlook is too cheap, and off he goes to the post office, where he asks if his book has arrived. He does this every day. It’s been over a week since he’s sent the ruble, and still no book! In the meantime one has to live. “You can’t live on air,” says my mother. I don’t understand what living on air has to do with it.

  B .

  Hooray, the book has arrived! No sooner do we unpack it than my brother Elyahu sits down to read it. Oh my, what doesn’t he find in that book! So many ways to earn money! A recipe for making the best inks—it could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for making good black shoe wax—it too could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for driving out mice, cockroaches, and other vermin—it could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for making kvass and other cheap drinks—it could earn you a hundred rubles a month or more!

  My brother Elyahu stops at the last recipe. By making a drink, you can earn even more than a hundred rubles a month—that’s what it explicitly says in the book. And you don’t have to mess with ink or shoe wax or with mice or cockroaches. The question is only which drink to make. For liqueurs and brandy you need Rothschild’s fortune, and for lemonade and soda water you need some kind of gadget that costs who knows how much! So one drink remains: kvass! Kvass is cheap to make and is much in demand, especially in hot summers like this one. Boruch the kvass-maker, you must know, became a rich man. He makes bottled kvass, and it’s known everywhere. It shoots out of the bottles like a cannon. What makes it shoot out? No one knows—that’s Boruch’s secret. He adds something that makes it shoot out. Some say it’s raisins. Some say it’s hops. Come summer, he has more business than he can handle. That’s how much money he earns!

  The kvass my brother Elyahu concocts according to the recipe is not bottled kvass, and it doesn’t shoot out. Ours is a different kind of drink. How it’s made, I cannot tell you. My brother Elyahu doesn’t let anyone near while he’s making it. Only when he pours the water in are we allowed to look. But to do the serious part, he locks himself in my mother’s room. Not I, not my mother, not my sister-in-law Bruche—no one has the privilege of witnessing it. But if you promise you’ll keep it a secret, I’ll tell you what’s in that drink, because I’ve seen what he prepares beforehand—lemon peel, honey, and something they call cream of tartar, which is as sour as vinegar. The rest—water. Water is the main ingredient. The more water, the more kvass. The ingredients are all mixed together thoroughly with an ordinary stick—that’s what it says in the book—and the drink is ready. Then you pour it into a large jug and throw in a chunk of ice. Ice is the most important thing! Without ice it isn’t worth drinking. I once tasted a little kvass without ice, and I thought it was the end of my life!

  C.

  Once the first batch of kvass is ready, I’m the one to peddle it on the street. Who else but me? For my brother Elyahu, it wouldn’t be proper. After all, he’s a married man. My mother—certainly not. We’d never allow our mother to go with a jug through the marketplace crying, “Kvass! Kvass! People, kvass!” All agree it has to be my job. I think so too. I’m thrilled to hear the news. My brother Elyahu teaches me what to do. I have to hold the jug by a cord in one hand and the glass in the other hand. To get people to stop, I have to sing in a loud voice:

  People, come drink!

  A kopek a glass!

  Cold and sweet—

  Come quench your thirst!

  I’ve already told you that I have a nice soprano voice, inherited from my father, of blessed memory. I sing out loud and clear, turning the words inside out:

  A kvass of sweet glass!

  A person a kopek!

  Quenching and cold—

  Come sweeten your drink!

  I don’t know whether they like my singing so much or the drink is so good or the day is so hot, but I sell out the first jug in half an hour and come home with almost three-quarters of a ruble. My brother Elyahu gives the money to our mother and refills my jug. If I can run that circuit five or six times a day, he says, we’ll earn exactly one hundred rubles a month. Deduct, if you please, the four Sabbaths in the month, and you’ll see how much the drink costs us to make and what kind of a percentage we earn from it. The drink costs us very little—one can say, almost nothing. All the money goes for ice, so we have to sell the first jugful fast so we can use the block of ice for a second jug and a third and so on. I move fast with the drink, really run with it, while crowds of Jewish and Gentile boys tag after me. They mimic my singing, but I pay them no heed. My aim is to empty the jug as quickly as possible so I can run home for another one.

  I don’t know how much I made that first day. I only know that my brother Elyahu, my sister-in-law Bruche, and my mother really praise me. For supper I’m served a piece each of cantaloupe and watermelon and two prunes and, of course, kvass. We all drink kvass like water. Before I go to sleep on my place on the floor, my mother asks me if my legs ache. My brother Elyahu laughs at her and says I’m the kind of boy whom nothing ever bothers.

  “Absolutely!” I say. “If you need proof, I’ll go out right now with the jug in the middle of the night.”

  All three laugh at my cleverness. But in my mother’s eyes I see tears welling. Well, that’s an old story—a mother has to cry! Do all mothers cry as much as my mother does?

  D .

  We are, kayn eyn horeh, on a lucky streak. Each day is hotter than the one before. They are scorchers! People are passing out from the heat, children are dropping like flies. If not for that glass of kvass, they would burn up. I’m returning with the jug, without exaggeration, ten times a day! My brother Elyahu squints into the jug with one eye and says it’s almost empty. Then he hits on an idea and pours in a few more pails of water. I had this idea even before he did. I must confess to you that I did some mischief a few times.

  Almost every day I drop into our neighbor Pessi’s and let her sample a glass of our very own drink. I give her husband Moishe the bookbinder two glasses. He’s a fine fellow. Each child also gets a glass. Let them all know what a good drink we make! The uncle gets a glassful—a pity on him, he’s blind! All my friends get some kvass, free of charge, without paying a kopek! But in order to make up for the loss, I add water. For each glass of kvass I give away free, I add two glasses of water. We do the same at home. After my brother Elyahu drinks a glass of kvass, he immediately pours in water. He’s right—it’s a shame to waste even a kopek. My sister-in-law Bruche drinks a few glasses (she’s crazy about my brother Elyahu’s kvass!) and replaces them with water. If my mother feels like a glass of kvass (she has to be asked—she won’t take any herself!)—fill it up with water!

  Anyhow, not a drop is wasted, and we’re taking in good money, kayn eyn horeh. My mother pays bills and redeems some necessary items from the pawnshop, like bedding. A table and a bench appear in the house. For Shabbes we have fish, meat, and white challah. They promise me that, God willing, for the holidays I’ll have a new pair of shoes. I’m sure no one in the world can be as happy as I am!

  E .

  Be a prophet and know that a tragedy will befall us, and that our drink will become unfit to drink, good only to be poured onto the slop pile. I’m lucky not to have been dragged off to the police station. Listen to this story!

  One day I wander over to our neighbor with my jug of kvass. Everyone starts drinking it, I among them. I figure I’
m down twelve or thirteen glasses and go to the place for water. But instead of finding the water barrel, I apparently go to the tub where the laundry is washed. I pour fifteen or twenty glasses of soapy water into my jug and go merrily on my way down the street singing a new song that I myself made up:

  People, a drink!

  Like nothing you’ve ever tasted!

  Only a kopek,

  Your money won’t be wasted!

  A man stops me and pays a kopek for a glass of kvass. He downs the glassful and screws up his face. “Little boy! What kind of drink is this?”

  I pay him no heed. Two more people are waiting to be served. One sips half a glass, the other a third of a glass. They pay, spit out the drink, and walk away. Another brings the glass to his lips and tastes it. He says it smells like soap and tastes salty. Another looks at the glass and returns it to me. “What is this?”

  “It’s a drink, that’s what it is,” I say.

  “A drink?” he exclaims. “That’s a stink, not a drink!”

  Someone else tastes the drink and splashes it right in my face. In a minute a whole circle of men, women, and children surround me, all yammering, gesticulating, fuming. A Russian policeman comes by and, seeing the angry crowd, asks what is going on. They tell him. He peers into my jug and asks for a sample. I pour him a glass of kvass. He drinks it down and spits it out, becoming enraged.

  “Where did you get this slop?” he demands.

  “It’s from a book,” I say to him, “my brother’s business. My brother made it himself.”