Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  Makes my days last long:

  She won’t go back to her father.

  What do you say to that little song? You should see how Teibl pouts! (She has a habit of pouting.) My sister-in-law Bruche comes to her defense. She calls Pinni a fool. My mother calls him a shlimazel . They can’t stand it when he writes songs. My brother Elyahu, on the other hand, envies him. He says that in America writing rhymes and songs is a business. He says that in America Pinni will do well in that business. They’ll make him rich. In America there are a lot of Yiddish journals and newspapers. Pinni says that he knows he’ll do well in America. He feels that he was made for America and that America was made for him. He can’t wait till we’re on the ship sailing over the ocean. But in the meantime we’re still on dry land in Vienna.

  B .

  What are we doing in Vienna? Nothing. We’re strolling through the streets. What streets! What houses! You should see the shopwindow—mirrors, not windows! And the wares on display—toys, clothes, dishes, jewelry! We stop at the windows and try to guess how much things cost. We men do the figuring, and the women wish they owned half of the things in this city. Pinni laughs and says, “You’d do well to wish for a tenth. That’d be more than enough.”

  “What do you care if they wish for half? Do you begrudge them?” my brother Elyahu says and twists his beard. Since we began our journey to America, my brother Elyahu’s beard has grown quite a bit, but in a strange way, sort of like a broom. I’d love to draw it on paper. I once drew a picture of Pinni on paper and one of my sister-in-law Bruche with chalk on the table. Did I get a lecture for that! Bruche saw it and recognized herself as if in a mirror. She called my brother Elyahu over, and he really gave it to me! If not for my mother, he’d have made my life miserable. He always hits me when he sees me drawing. I’ve loved drawing since I was a child. At first I used to draw with a piece of black coal on the white walls, for which they hit me, and afterward with chalk on the door, for which they also hit me. Now I draw with a pencil on paper—and they still hit me.

  “Are you drawing figures again?”

  They don’t hit me as much for drawing as for sculpting. I have a habit of sculpting little pigs out of soft bread. When my brother Elyahu sees me do this, he slaps my fingers.

  Our friend Pinni sticks up for me. “What do you have against him? Let him sculpt, let him draw!” he says. “Maybe he’ll be a painter someday!”

  My brother Elyahu gets outraged. “What? A painter? A smearer? He’ll smear churches, whitewash roofs? Go around with paint-spattered hands like a coachman with axle grease? I’d much rather he sang in a chorus for a cantor. When we get to America, God willing, I’m going to place him with a cantor. He has an excellent soprano.”

  “Why not place him with a worker? In America everyone is a worker. In America everyone works,” our friend Pinni asks.

  My mother jumps all over him. “A worker? May my enemies not live to see Peysi’s son become a worker!” She’s about to start crying.

  Pinni defends himself. “What a strange woman you are! We learn in the Gemorah that the sage Rabbi Yochanan was a shoemaker. The sage Rabbi Yitzchak was a smithy. Do you need more examples? My uncle is a clockmaker, and my father is a mechanic!”

  Pinni thinks he’s made things better, but in truth he’s made them much worse. My mother doesn’t stop crying. “My husband was a pious man, a cantor. Did he have to leave this world while still young in order for his youngest son to be, God forbid, a shoemaker or a tailor—and in America to boot?”

  “You’re crying again? You’ve forgotten that in America you need healthy eyes!” my brother Elyahu says. My mother stops crying immediately.

  C.

  I don’t care what I become in America—just let me get there. (I’m so eager to get there!) I promise myself that in America I’ll learn how to do three things—swim, write, and smoke cigars. I can do all those things right now, but not as well as they can in America. I know I could be an expert swimmer, but at home we had nowhere to swim. In our pond it was impossible—if you lay down, you were right in the mud and your feet stuck out of the water.

  Some pond! In America, they say, there’s an ocean. There, if you lie down in the water on a tube, the water will carry you as far as the eye can see.

  I can write too, though no one has taught me. I copy the letters from the prayer book. The letters I copy are hard to recognize. I don’t really write—I draw. I’d love to write fast, but I don’t know how. In America, they say, they write fast. Everything is done quickly, in a hurry. Americans have no time. That’s what I overheard the emigrants say. I know almost everything about America, even before I’ve been there. They ride under the ground, and they “make a living.” How they do it I don’t know, but I’ll soon find out. I learn very quickly. If I see a person just once, I can imitate him in every detail. I once imitated our friend Pinni, the way he walks with a hop, the way he peers with his nearsighted eyes, and the way he speaks as if slurping hot noodles. My sister-in-law Bruche was holding her sides and my mother was crying tears of laughter.

  But my brother Elyahu hates it. He doesn’t let me do anything. He’s a strange one, my brother Elyahu! He loves me—and yet he hits me, he makes my life a living hell. When she sees it, my mother doesn’t let him hit me. She says, “Wait till you have your own children, and then you can hit them.”

  Let a stranger lay a finger on me though, and my brother Elyahu will take his eyes out. Once an emigrant’s son “did a governor” on me. Do you know what that is? I’ll teach you. You wet your thumb with spit, and then you poke it hard into someone’s side, right between the ribs and the belly, and then they see stars. The boy who did a governor on me is about eleven with fat cheeks. But did he have a pair of paws—may they wither! He wanted to be friends with me and asked me my name. I said, “Motl.” He said, “Motl Kapotl, drubl drutl, Yosef Sutl, eretz kanotl.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “That means you are a sucker even though my name is also Motl. Maybe you’d like a governor?” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Come up a little closer and I’ll show you.” I did, and he showed me. I dropped to the ground. My mother saw it and started to scream. My brother Elyahu came running and gave Motl something to remember him by!

  From that time on we were friends. Motl taught me, besides the governor, lots of things—for instance, ventriloquism. Do you know what that is? It’s impossible to explain—you have to be born to it. You keep your mouth shut, not moving any part of your face, and you throw your voice, bark like a dog, or grunt like a pig, so that everyone will look under the table to find the animal. I scared my family many times. As you know, my sister-in-law Bruche faints. Everybody rushed to look under the table and under the beds. I even bent down looking for the dog while continuing to bark. It was, I tell you, pure comedy! But when my brother Elyahu finally figured out it was coming from me, he really gave it to me! From that time on I quit the art of ventriloquism.

  D .

  We would have left Vienna long ago if not for the Alliance. What this Alliance is I cannot rightly say. I just hear people talking about it. Alliance! Alliance! All the emigrants are furious at the Alliance. They say it does nothing. It has no pity on people, and it hates Jews. Every day my brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni go to the Alliance and come back as if from a steam bath.

  “May it burn up!” says Elyahu.

  “May it burn like a candle!” says Pinni.

  “I should go and have a talk with the Alliance.” My mother takes me by the hand, and we all go off to the Alliance: my mother and I, Elyahu and Pinni, Bruche and Teibl. I picture the Alliance with a beard, a long caftan, and a red nose. Why a red nose I don’t know.

  We walk and walk! My sister-in-law Bruche says she hopes the Alliance has the same sticking pains in his right side as she has in her left. But if he did, he wouldn’t have stuck himself away who knows where at the other end of the city! With great difficulty we finally arrive. He lives in a house—may all Jews have a house like th
at. But it doesn’t have a courtyard. Vienna doesn’t believe in courtyards. Vienna loves enormous windows and huge doors, but they keep the doors locked. “Are they afraid someone will rob them?” my sister-in-law Bruche says. Aha, now she’s found fault with Vienna too! It irritates her that when you come to a house, you have to ring a doorbell first. Do I mind if you have to ring? So long as they open the door!

  But the Alliance isn’t opening the door so quickly. You can ring as long as you please—he has time. We aren’t the only ones. There are mobs of emigrants waiting to see the Alliance. The emigrants watch us ringing the bell. “Ring some more—maybe they’ll open the door, maybe you’ll have better luck.” They laugh. They seem in good spirits. More men, women, and children keep arriving, crowding around the door. I love a crowd. If not for the children crying and the mothers scolding them and trying to shut them up, it’d be great.

  Thank God, the door opens. The crowd lunges forward in a crush. Luckily someone appears at the door, hatless, red-faced, clean shaven, and pushes us, one by one, back onto the street. He pushes one woman with a child so hard that if not for me and my brother Elyahu, she’d be picking up her teeth. Still and all, she does three flips. After a long time all of us, one at a time, are allowed back into the house. And then the real picnic begins! Everyone wants to speak first and shoves toward the tables.

  At the tables sit three hatless people with clean-shaven faces, laughing and smoking cigars. Which of them is the Alliance, I can’t tell. My mother doesn’t know either. She pleads, “Tell me, which one of you here is the Alliance? A terrible thing happened to me. They stole all my bedding at the border and almost murdered me and my children. Here they are, the poor orphans. My husband died young, he was a cantor all his life—”

  That’s all she’s allowed to say. One of the men grabs her shawl and pushes her toward the door. He speaks a language hard to understand. My mother refuses to step aside until she’s satisfied. “Why are you talking to me in German?” she says. “Talk to me in our language, and I’ll pour out my bitter heart to you. But just tell me which one of you here is the Alliance?”

  “Mother-in-law! Listen to me, let’s go,” says my sister-in-law Bruche. “God has taken us this far without the Alliance and without Vienna, and He’ll probably take us farther. God is a father.”

  My mother replies, “You’re right, my child! Come, let us go! Vienna may be a city, but God is a father.”

  XVIII

  WONDERS OF ANTWERP

  A .

  Have you ever heard of a city name like Antwerp? There is such a city, and that’s where we’re going. Why Antwerp? Because my brother Elyahu’s father-in-law Yoneh the baker is going to America through Antwerp. When my sister-in-law Bruche hears that her father is in Antwerp, she moves heaven and earth to have us go there too. Before, she wouldn’t hear of Antwerp—she didn’t like the name. Now she’s fallen in love with Antwerp!

  Our friend Pinni says he’ll have to separate from us. He’d rather go from Vienna straight to London. Something is drawing him to London. London, he says, reminds him of America: Englishmen, blond hair, checkered pants. It’s a different world altogether! My sister-in-law Bruche replies, “Go with our blessing to your Englishmen with the checkered hair and blond pants, and we will go to America through Antwerp.”

  Pinni’s wife Teibl gets all puffed up like a turkey. I told you that for any reason at all, she puffs up and stops talking. Pinni asks her, “Why are you angry?” She says she hates Englishmen. Pinni says to her, “Do you know any? Where have you ever seen an Englishman?” She says, “So, and you, where have you ever seen an Englishman?”

  So we are all going to America through Antwerp after all. I don’t care if we go through Hotzenplotz, so long as we get to America. Pinni and I are more eager to get there than the others. We know it’ll be wonderful there. Pinni complains to my brother Elyahu, “We are going and going—and not getting anywhere.” Elyahu responds, “Nu, who’s holding you back? Go! Run! Fly!” Pinni says, “How can I fly when your mother wants to meet with every committee in the world?”

  When my mother hears this, she says to Pinni, “If you’re so smart, tell me how to get to America without bedding?” Pinni is speechless, and he and Elyahu make up.

  Our friend Pinni just can’t separate from us. The women can’t live without one another either. Oh, they squabble a lot, they needle one another and almost come to blows, but they soon make up. If not for my mother, my sister-in-law Bruche and Pinni’s wife Teibl wouldn’t be friends. They have flare-ups every day, usually my sister-in-law’s doing. She admits she’s a tinderbox. When a bad mood hits her, she’ll throw mud at anyone. But then in a moment she gets so soft, you can use her as a compress.

  Bruche has been sparring with me ever since the wedding. She knows I don’t like her, but she thinks I laugh at her. She only imagines it. But if I so much as look at her, she imagines I’m laughing at her. I told you I like to draw and that my brother Elyahu hits me for it. Once I drew a foot, an enormous foot. I drew it with chalk on the ground. You should have seen the fuss people made! Bruche claimed it was her foot. Why would I draw her foot? She’s touchy about her feet because no one else has such big ones! She wears size thirteen galoshes. You should see those galoshes!

  She tattled to my brother Elyahu, and he erupted as usual. “You’re drawing figures again? You’re up to your old tricks, drawing people again?”

  From one foot it becomes a whole person, and from one person—people! My family can drive you crazy! I must admit that I love to draw figures more and more. An emigrant’s son gave me a colored pencil, the same boy who showed me how to do a governor and to do ventriloquism. I already told you about him. His name is also Motl. They call him Big Motl and me Little Motl. We’ve become good friends in a special way. After he gave me the pencil on the train, I gave him a drawing I’d made of him. It looked just like him, down to the fat cheeks. I made him promise not to show it to anyone, because if my brother Elyahu found out, I’d never hear the end of it. Don’t you know he went straight to my brother and stuck the drawing in front of his face?

  “This has to be Motl’s work! Where is he, that figure-maker?” My brother went looking for me, but he couldn’t find me. I was hiding behind my mother, choking with laughter. There is no better place in the world to hide than behind my mother!

  B .

  Thank God we are now in Antwerp. We were bounced and jounced along the way and arrived all worn-out. But we made it! What can I say? This is quite a city! It doesn’t compare with Vienna, which is much bigger and maybe prettier and has more people. But Antwerp is as clean as can be. Why would that surprise anyone? They wash the streets, they polish the pavements, and they scrub the houses. I’ve seen for myself how they scrub them with soap—but not everywhere. For example, at the inns where all the emigrants stay, it’s the way it always was, which means they’re muddy and smoky, wet and slippery, crowded and noisy. In other words, they’re lively and exciting—excellent, just the way I like it. Our in-law Yoneh the baker hasn’t arrived yet, and neither has our neighbor Pessi and her gang. They’re still traveling, working their way through Germany. “Germany is Sodom!” say the emigrants, as they relate frightful stories. Our misfortune, with the bedding stolen at the border, is nothing compared to the misfortunes that the other emigrants tell us about.

  At the inn we get to know a woman from Mezhbizh who is traveling alone. She’s not a widow—her husband is already in America, and she’s on her way to meet him. For a full year she’s been dragging around with her two children. She’s been everywhere—there’s not a city she’s overlooked. She’s fought pitched battles with every committee, and finally, after much trouble, she wound up in Antwerp. She wants to board a ship, but they won’t let her. Do you think it’s because she has bad eyes? God forbid—they’re strong and healthy. But she is a little touched in the head. When you talk to her, she speaks like a normal person, but every now and then she says something you have to laugh at.
For example, you ask her where her husband is, and she’ll say, “In America.” “What’s he doing there?” She says, “He is the czar there.” So you say, “How can a Jew be a czar?” And she says in America it’s possible. What do you say to that?

  Another bug has gotten into her head: she won’t eat! She tells us not to eat either, not to touch any dairy, because the dairy is not kosher. My mother asks her, “And how about the meat?” and she says the meat here is neither meat nor dairy. We all break out laughing, except for my mother, who’d rather cry. “It’s shameful to laugh at her,” she says, and bursts into tears.

  “Again! You haven’t cried for a while! You want all of us to be sent back home on account of your eyes?” says my brother Elyahu, and in a split second my mother’s tears dry up.

  My mother pities the woman’s two poor children more than she pities the woman. I don’t know why. The children seem really happy! When their mother talks nonsense, they giggle. I get to know them pretty well. They tell me the committees want to send them home, but their mother won’t go. She wants to go to America, to their father—the czar (hee hee hee!). The committees trick her and tell her they’re sending her by train to America (hee hee hee!). They convince her that a train goes from here straight to America (hee hee hee!).

  C .

  The wonders of Antwerp are not to be described! Every day new people arrive, most of them with bad eyes. They call it trachoma. America doesn’t let in people with trachoma. You can have a thousand sicknesses, you can be crippled, mute, and who knows what else, and you can get in, but not if you have trachoma. How do you get trachoma? You just do. You have no idea where you got it from. That’s what a girl here in Antwerp told me.