Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  The man cuts us off in the middle and suggests we choose one from among us to be our spokesman. After debating which one, we pick Bruche. Why Bruche? Because neither my brother Elyahu nor Pinni can stand to see the other speak without interrupting him. My mother speaks well but a bit too much, which is to say, once she starts talking, she’s soon telling the whole story about her husband and how he got sick and so on and so forth. No one wants to hear her out to the end. Bruche will make it short and sweet.

  After Bruche’s brief account of Mendl’s situation, the representative gets down to work. He runs off to meet with different people, and after much trouble he brings my friend back to us.

  D .

  The representative takes hold of Mendl’s ear and gives him a stern lecture. “Remember, young man, we’re responsible for you, so make sure you behave yourself,” he says. “For two years you’ll be under our supervision. We’ll keep an eye on you. If you don’t behave as you’re supposed to, we’ll send you right back to where you came from!” Then he writes down his name and all of ours, the names of our friends and relatives and their addresses. And then we’re free to go wherever we wish and to do whatever we please.

  You must think Mendl is affected by this. Not one bit. My friend Mendl is the kind of person whom nothing surprises, and that’s why I like him. Later, when I would think about my friend Mendl, about what he was and what later became of him, it really seems like God’s miracle. Only in a country like America can the lowly become great, the humble elevated, and even the dead brought to life. I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still at the ferry.

  E .

  A ferry is a kind of boat on which you can put a horse and wagon and all your belongings and still cross the water. It’s long and wide enough for my friend Mendl and me to hold hands and to walk the length and breadth of it. My mother is occupied with our friends and family. They’re all chattering away, asking one another what’s new. Then she realizes I and Mendl aren’t there. She makes a fuss and assumes we’ve fallen into the water and drowned. The truth is we saw steps and have climbed to the upper deck—where we see an enormously huge iron statue of a woman. She looks like a giant mother. We’ve barely taken in this statue when we hear my mother’s screams, and my brother Elyahu is before us. He’s mad at us for frightening everyone. We don’t deny it. He would certainly have made us pay dearly for this, but just then my sister-in-law Bruche lets out an odd shriek, “Oy, mother-in-law, I’m sick!” and she goes into the same condition as on the ocean. Long live the Heissen tailor, who refuses to leave our side! He confronts Bruche and lectures her: “A grown woman like you should know the difference between an ocean and a little harbor. Feh, shame on you!”

  Bruche protests. She doesn’t know it’s a harbor. She thought we were on the ocean again. Is that such a sin? Pinni says he can tell the difference between an ocean and a harbor simply by the smell. An ocean smells of fish, but in a harbor there are no fish. The Heissen tailor asks, “What makes you so sure?” Pinni answers that he wasn’t speaking to him and on principle hates arguing with tailors.

  Moishe the bookbinder gets into it. He reproaches Pinni, saying he is now in America, not in Russia. America is a land of tailors. Here in America a tailor is as important as a landowner is at home, if not more so. In America tailors have a yoonyeh, which is almost like our tailors’ guild.

  “We bakers have our own yoonyeh,” Yoneh the baker puts in. “Our bakers’ yoonyeh is probably as big as the tailors’ yoonyeh.”

  “At least say, ‘Forgive the comparison’!” Moishe the bookbinder interrupts him. A ruckus follows about which yoonyeh is bigger.

  “In a few minutes we’ll be in Neveyork,” says Pinni to my brother Elyahu, in order to change the subject from yoonyehs, which is getting on all our nerves.

  The city rises in front of our eyes, getting larger as we approach it. Ach! What a city! Ach! What tall buildings! They are cathedrals, not buildings! And windows! A thousand windows! If only I had a pencil and paper!

  F.

  Trrrach-tarrrerach—tach-tach-tach! Tach! Dzin-dzin-dzin-glin-glon! Hoo-hooooo! Fee-yoo! Ay-ay-ay-ay! And again—trachtarrrarach! Then comes the hoarse screech of a captured pig: Wheee! Wheee! Wheee! These are the sounds that greet us when we land in New York. As long as we were on water, we were calm, but the moment we are standing with both feet on American soil, we are overcome by panic.

  The first to lose her composure is my mother. She looks exactly like a mother hen fearing for her chicks, spreading her wings and clucking in distress. She opens her arms wide and shouts, “Motl! Mendl! Elyahu! Bruche! Pinni! Teibl! Where are you? Come here!”

  “God be with you, mother-in-law! Why are you shouting?” says Bruche, and my brother Elyahu adds, “Your screaming and yelling will get us chased out of America!”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Pinni shoves both hands into his pockets and pushes his cap back on his head. “May the czar suffer as long as it will take for them to get rid of us! Do you forget that America was created by God in order to protect and shelter all those who are driven and persecuted, pushed around and humiliated, from every corner of the earth?”

  The crush of people is enormous. Our friend Pinni has almost the same mishap he had when arriving in London—he’s stretched out on the street, soon to be trampled and stepped on. But this time he escapes with a mere blow to the side, strong enough to knock his cap off, which is caught up by the wind and deposited a distance off. This wastes several minutes and makes us miss the trolley car. But we don’t have to wait too long. Another one soon comes along, and we climb up with our bundles and grab all the empty seats. We’re off to the city.

  “Thank God we’re rid of that pain in the neck, the Heissen tailor!” our Pinni rejoices.

  My brother Elyahu says, “Wait, don’t be so sure! If we’re worthy of God, we’ll live long enough to meet up with him more than once in New York.”

  VI

  ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK A.

  The ride into the city of New York is dreadful. The ride itself isn’t so bad, but transferring from one trolley to another is difficult. As soon as you sit down—aha! you’re flying like eagles through the air over a long, narrow bridge, afraid for your life. They call it the elevated here. Do you think that’s it? Just wait a bit. You get yourself out of the elevated, and you have to switch over to another car. You reach it by going down steps, as if into a cellar, where you ride under the ground so fast that your eyes pop out of your head. They call this the subway. Why is one car called elevated and the other subway?

  My sister-in-law Bruche says America would be much better if they didn’t fly around so much. She swears she’ll never ride either the elevated or the subway, no matter what. She’d rather walk than fly like crazy through the clouds, or run under the ground. I, on the contrary, would be happy to ride around on the elevated and the subway all day and night, and so would my friend Mendl.

  B .

  It seems we’ve already been everywhere. We’ve seen enough of the shoving, pressing, and suffocating in this gehennam such as we’ve never experienced anywhere! We’re packed in body against body, one passenger out, two in. No place to sit—you must stand. You’ve got to hold on to what they call a strap, otherwise you’ll fall. You get twisted around. If God helps, a seat becomes empty—and many passengers dive for it. With great difficulty you find a spot. You’re sitting between two Gentiles, both black, a man and a woman with huge, fat lips, enormous white teeth, and white nails, who are chewing on something like cows chewing their cud. Only later do I find out that it’s is called chewing gum. It’s a kind of candy made of rubber. You keep it in your mouth and chew it. You mustn’t swallow it. Young boys, old people, and cripples make a living selling it. Our friend Pinni, as you know, has a sweet tooth. He got hold of a package of chewing gum and slowly swallowed the whole thing. It clogged up his stomach, almost poisoning him. Doctors had to pump his stomach through his throat to save his life. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s go back to our first entry into the city of New York.

  C.

  For the entire ride on the elevated and in the subway, the men and women keep talking. I say talking, but that’s not altogether correct. Who can talk on the elevated or on the subway when the noise and din and the screeching of the wheels make you deaf? You can’t hear your own voice. You have to yell as if you’re speaking to someone hard of hearing. We get hoarse screaming. My mother several times begs Pessi, “Pessi’nyu, dear soul, my heart, my love, leave it for later!”

  We quiet down for a minute but soon start screaming again at the top of our lungs. We are, after all, lively people, good friends, and former neighbors. How can you hold back and not say what’s in your heart? We haven’t seen each other for so long, and there is so much to say, so much!

  D.

  Having talked and screamed our lungs out over small matters, we finally come to the most important matter of all: where to stay. After many arguments and negotiations we decide that my mother and I, our friend Pinni, and his Teibl will stay with our neighbor Fat Pessi. My brother Elyahu and his wife Bruche will stay with their in-laws Yoneh and Rivele. And what about Mendl? Pessi says she’ll take Mendl. Rivele says no. At Pessi’s, she says, there are a good number of hefty eaters, which hurts Pessi’s feelings. She says just as there’s no such thing as having too many teeth, so a mother can never have too many children.

  “Quiet down! Let’s ask the boy himself!” says Moishe the bookbinder. So they ask Mendl, “Where would you rather go—to him or the baker?” Mendl answers that he wants to go wherever his friend Motl goes. That’s exactly what I thought Mendl should say.

  E .

  “In one more station we’ll stop!” cries Yoneh, using new American words. We don’t know what station and stop mean. He explains.

  “In-law! When did you start speaking the local language?” my mother asks.

  Rivele answers for her husband. “I promise you that in a week you’ll begin talking the local language. Let’s say you go out on the street and ask, ‘Where is the kotzev?’ You can say kotzev from today till the day after tomorrow, and no one will answer you.”

  My mother asks, “How then shall I say it?”

  Fat Pessi breaks in, “You must say ‘the butcher.’ ”

  “A plague on them!” Bruche interrupts. “Even if they burst, I’ll say kotzev, kotzev, and still kotzev!”

  F.

  Suddenly we stop. Our in-law Yoneh grabs Rivele, my brother Elyahu, and Bruche and pushes them toward the exit. My mother stands up and wants to say goodbye to her children. Pinni stands up as well to say goodbye to my brother Elyahu and wants to arrange with him where and when to meet again. But before they know it, Yoneh, his wife, my brother Elyahu, and Bruche are on the other side of the door, which the conductor has closed shut. The train begins moving, and Pinni, distracted and bewildered, is thrown off balance. He lands on a Negro woman’s lap. She pushes him off with both hands so hard, he flies over to the seat across from her, and his cap flies off toward the door. As if that isn’t enough, all the people in the train laugh. I and my friend Mendl join in and are scolded by my mother and Teibl for laughing. How can a person not laugh?!

  G .

  Everything must come to an end, and so must our train ride into New York. We’re on the street. If I didn’t know we were in America, I’d surely think we were in Brod or in Lemberg—the same Jews, the same women, the same hustle and bustle, the same dirt as there, except the din and tumult are worse, as are the noise and hurrying. The buildings are taller, much taller. A six-story building is nothing. Some buildings are twelve, twenty, thirty, forty, or more stories high, but more about that later.

  In the meantime we’re on the street with our belongings and still have a way to walk. Leading the walk is Moishe with his short legs, followed by Fat Pessi, her legs barely carrying her because she is so fat and heavy. Walking behind are Pinni and his Teibl. To watch Pinni walk, you lose your belly from laughter. When he walks, he prances with a skip and a hop on his long, skinny legs that get tangled. One trouser leg is rolled up, the other is down. His cap is pushed to the side, his tie is askew—he’s a strange figure, begging to be drawn on paper. I and my friend Mendl walk behind, stopping at almost every shopwindow. We’re pleased to see the signs printed in Yiddish letters and all kinds of Jewish things displayed: prayer books, small prayer shawls, yarmulkes, mezuzahs, matzos. Imagine—smack at the beginning of winter, matzos! It’s obviously a Jewish city. But we aren’t permitted to lag behind. My mother calls us, “Come on, hurry up!” And we must go.

  H.

  Whoever has not seen a New York street has missed a wonderful sight. What can you not find on the street? Men are doing all kinds of business. Women sit and chat. Children in look-alike carriages are napping. The babies suck milk from little bottles right on the street. Older children play games with buttons, small wheels, balls, wagons, sleds, and skates. Skates are contraptions with four wheels tied to the feet, and you roll on them. You can go deaf from the racket the children raise on the street. The street belongs to the children. No one would dare chase them off. In general, America is a country created for children’s sake. And that’s why I love it. Just let someone lay a finger on a child!

  My brother Elyahu learned a lesson he’ll never forget. Here’s what happened. One time Mendl and I were on the street playing checkers, a game with round wooden buttons that you shoot at each other. My brother Elyahu came over while we were playing and, as was his old habit, grabbed me by the ear. He was about to give me a few good slaps when a sturdy fellow appeared out of nowhere, ran up to my brother, and tore me out of his hands. Then he rolled up his sleeves and said something in English to my brother Elyahu. But as my brother Elyahu didn’t understand English, the sturdy fellow stuck his fist right under his nose. Soon a small crowd of people gathered around. My brother tried to explain in Yiddish that he was my brother and he had the right to teach me respect. But the onlookers said this was not the way things go in America, whether you are a brother or not. You may not hit someone smaller than you.

  Nu, how can you not love this country!

  I .

  Look how I got busy talking—I forgot that we’ve arrived where we’re supposed to stay, at Fat Pessi and her husband Moishe’s. When we go into her house, we don’t find any of the gang. I look all around for my old friend Vashti. No Vashti, nobody. Where are they all? Wait till you hear.

  VII

  THE GANG AT WORK

  A .

  The gang is at work. But before I tell you what kind of work they’re doing, I have to describe to you how a bookbinder manages to live in America.

  First of all, the apartment. Back home Fat Pessi would have been afraid to climb up so high. You have to go up and up, maybe a hundred stairs, until you reach a magnificent apartment with countless big and small rooms. In each room there are beds and blankets, with curtains on the windows. One room is called a kitchen. It doesn’t have a brick oven, only an iron range with holes on which to cook. The water comes out of the wall, hot and cold water—as much as you want! You just turn the faucet, and out it pours.

  B .

  Later on, when my brother Elyahu and his wife Bruche come by to see how we are faring, our friend Pinni takes him by the hand and leads him into the kitchen. He shows him the two faucets for the water and begins his usual speech. “What do you have to say, Elyahu, about Columbus? What Russian is worth his little fingernail! Except for guzzling vodka and making pogroms, he doesn’t know his left hand from his right.”

  My brother Elyahu is not going to let him get away with it. “So now you’re all for Columbus. What were you saying a while back on Ellis Island?”

  Pinni says that Ellis Island doesn’t belong to America. Ellis Island lies on the border between America and the rest of the world.

  My brother says Pinni doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and they start quarreling. Bruche makes peace between them. She says they’re both ignoram
uses and their quarreling isn’t worth a worn-out groschen.

  But I started to tell you about Moishe the bookbinder’s apartment and went off in another direction. Don’t worry. I’ll get back to our Fat Pessi and her gang of children.

  C.

  Surely never in their lives did our Moishe and our Fat Pessi dream of living in such luxury, in such an apartment with so many rooms. They have a room for everything. For sleeping there is a bedroom. For eating there is a separate room called a dining room. Why a dining room? My brother Elyahu and Pinni cannot figure it out. All right, a bedroom, because beds are there. But a dining room? What does dining mean? Why not eating room?

  Moishe interrupts: “Why do you need to rack your brains for nothing? So long as I’m head of this family in New York, thanks be to God, and my children are all working, with God’s help, and we are making a living here in America—”

  I look at this Moishe the bookbinder and think, God Almighty! How a person can change! At home we never heard him say a word. Everywhere and always it was Pessi. He only knew how to make pulp and to bind books. And here he’s grown a foot taller. It’s no wonder. The man has no worries! All the children are working and bringing home money. I’ll tell you all their names, what their work is, and how much each one is earning. My mother is jealous of our neighbor Pessi because God blessed her with so many children.