Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  D.

  The oldest boy, the one we called Barrel at home, is called Sam here. Why Sam? I don’t know. I only know he’s already making money. He is working at a paper box factory. Don’t think it’s such a hard job. He doesn’t make the boxes himself. He delivers them. He takes a bundle of ten dozen boxes in each hand and runs through the narrow streets between the cars and the trolleys. He has to be careful the boxes don’t get crushed. For this he makes two and a half dollars a week and hopes to get a raise. Maybe in time he’ll make three dollars a week. That’s for now. Later on, his boss tells him, he’ll teach him the business of making boxes. He says to him, “Just be a good boy, and you’ll be all right.”

  E.

  The second boy, who was once called Velvl the Tomcat, is now called Willy. He is also a delivery boy and works for a grocery store, which is a much harder job. He has to get up very early, when God Himself is still asleep. First he has to sort out and fill all the orders, and then he delivers the bundles to the customers. The bundles consist of rolls, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, milk, and sour cream. He has to climb with them up more than two hundred stairs to the top floor, and quickly, so he can get back to the store in time to sweep the floor, clean up, and do other work until noon. Then he’s free. He doesn’t make much money, only fifteen cents a day, except Friday, when he makes a whole quarter plus a challah for Shabbes.

  F.

  What I just told you about applies only to the older boys. They don’t let the younger ones work here mornings, because in America the young children must go to school, or they’re in trouble. And school is free, even the books. When our friend Pinni hears this, he’s astounded. At home they didn’t even allow Jewish children into the schools, but here in America they drag you in by force, or else you’ll be punished and fined. “For that reason alone,” says Pinni, “the czar should bury himself alive out of shame!”

  But since they go to school only half a day, children can do something else in the afternoon to earn a few dollars. And that’s what Pessi’s younger children do. The one we used to call Stork works at a pharmacy, which they call a drugstore. He washes bottles and goes to the post office for stamps that are sold at the pharmacy. For half a day he makes a dollar and a quarter a week. “That comes in handy too,” says Moishe, and takes the money.

  G .

  Feitl Stutterer, now called Philip, also goes to school half a day. The other half he peddles gazettes, here called papers. He runs up and down East Broadway, crying, “Papers! Papers!” then the name of each paper. From that he makes forty or fifty cents a day and sometimes more. Of course that also goes into his father’s pot. They all earn money, and the father takes care of them all.

  H .

  Even my friend Hershl earns money, the one with the birthmark on his forehead who we called Vashti. Here he isn’t called Hershl or Vashti but Harry, and he’s going to school. The other half of each day after school he spends at a pushcart on Rivington Street. It belongs to a woman from our hometown who sells rice, barley, beans, chickpeas, nuts, raisins, lentils, almonds, figs, olives, carob, and sour pickles. There isn’t much work for Vashti, or Harry, to do. He just has to keep an eye on people to see they don’t filch anything, because a woman who comes up to ask the price of something might pop a raisin or an almond or an olive into her mouth. But he himself will often sample the sweets. Vashti has no secrets from me. He admitted that he once snacked on so many raisins, he had a bellyache for three days afterward. He doesn’t get paid for his work aside from tips, a cent or two, sometimes a nickel, for helping customers carry their packages. That can add up to a dollar a week. At home Vashti never laid eyes on a kopek even in his dreams, except for distributing shalach-mones, Purim sweets. But Purim comes only once a year. Here Purim comes every day, and every day he earns money.

  “Columbus! You are worth your weight in gold!” exclaims our friend Pinni when he walks down Rivington Street and sees Vashti at his pushcart. He buys three cents’ worth of carobs and gives one cent to Vashti as a tip.

  I .

  As for Moishe, he is not sitting idle. He isn’t binding books as he did at home because here in America, he says, you need to have connections and a lot of money to rent a store and buy machinery. And in his older years, he can’t work again as an assistant to someone else. Somebody gave him advice—among Jews you’ll find plenty: put up a book stand on Essex Street and make a living that way. This has such appeal to our friend Pinni that he says he would love a business like that. He says it appeals to him because you’re influenced by what you work with. Pinni loves books as a fish loves water. When he gets hold of a book and sticks the tip of his nose into it, you can’t tear him away.

  J .

  Even our in-law Yoneh the baker doesn’t take up his old trade of baking. Why not? It’s the same story. In order to open a bakery here, you need to have Rothschild’s fortune. And besides that, you need to belong to the yoonyeh, and he’s too old for that. He’s afraid of working for someone who doesn’t belong to a yoonyeh in case there’s a strike, which happens in America every day, and for which he might get his head split open. It looks bad. What can he do? He also receives advice that instead of baking bread and challah he should make knishes, homemade knishes, dairy knishes with cheese, or parve knishes with cabbage. What can I say? Our in-law isn’t doing badly at all, not at all! His knishes have a reputation all over the East Side. If you go down Essex Street, you’ll see a sign in a window written in large Yiddish letters—HOMEMADE KNISHES SOLD HERE—and you’ll know that’s our in-law, my brother Elyahu’s father-in-law, Yoneh the baker. And if you see on the same street, right across the way, another Yiddish sign with the same large letters—HOMEMADE KNISHES SOLD HERE—you’ll know it isn’t our in-law Yoneh the baker. He now has a competitor, so don’t go there. Better go to our in-law, to my brother Elyahu’s father-in-law. You’ll know who he is as soon as you come in. Our in-law has an angry face. If you don’t recognize him, you’ll recognize his wife Rivele. She has a double chin and wears coral beads. You’ll certainly know my sister-in-law Bruche. She has big feet. Her little sister, a pimply faced girl with a pigtail, is there too. Her name is Alteh, and they once talked about her being a match for me. But we’ll talk about her another time.

  VIII

  WE LOOK FOR JOBS

  A.

  We can’t complain. We are very welcome guests at our neighbors Fat Pessi and Moishe’s home. It isn’t bad at all for us, and it’s lively enough. And on Sunday, the day the gang isn’t working, it’s really lively. We gather together, all the young folk and my friend Mendl, and we go to the theater—I mean, the moving pictures. It costs a nickel apiece, and you see wonders to make your head spin! If I were the son of a king or Jacob Schiff’s grandson, I’d sit all day and all night at the moving pictures. I’d never leave. My friend Mendl feels the same way. So does Vashti, who is now called Harry.

  But if you talk to my brother Elyahu, he will tell you it’s all a bunch of nonsense. It’s a big nothing, he says, made for children. You may ask, if it’s for children, then why does our friend Pinni run there all the time, and his wife Teibl, and my sister-in-law Bruche? My brother has an explanation for everything. The women, he says, have as much sense as children, and Pinni runs there all the time just to spite him. He rails against the moving pictures, until one Sunday he decides to come along with us and see for himself. From that time on, he never misses a Sunday at the moving pictures. We all go, young and old, big and small, even Pessi and Moishe and our in-laws—all of us. Only my mother doesn’t go. Her husband, she says, is lying in the ground, so how can she go to the movies? Her enemies will never live to see the day!

  B .

  It isn’t bad at all at our neighbors’, but it isn’t a solution to be a guest. You have to do something with yourself, to “get a job.” In America everyone has to make a living. So says my brother Elyahu. He goes around looking more worried than anyone. Every day he comes back from his father-in-law Yoneh the baker’s an
d sits down with my mother to talk about the future. Bruche sits with them, as does our friend Pinni. Pinni has endless plans and projects, but they are worthless. They aren’t really that bad, but my brother Elyahu doesn’t like them. And if my brother Elyahu likes them, Bruche doesn’t. For example, Pinni had the idea that the men and their wives become tailors in a sewing machine shop. Here they’re called operators. But Bruche feels it wasn’t worth leaving their home and risking their lives crossing the ocean to become tailors in their later years. My brother Elyahu says he doesn’t know which is better, selling knishes on Essex Street or working at a sewing machine. Bruche is insulted that my brother Elyahu looks down on selling knishes. She lets him know that if not for her father’s knishes on Essex Street, they’d all be starving.

  C .

  I love our friend Pinni for the way he talks. When he gets excited, it’s a pleasure to hear him. Having heard out everyone’s arguments, he jumps up, waves his hands, and delivers a passionate speech. I remember every word he says:

  Oh, miserable, ignorant people that you are! You still have deeply rooted inside yourselves the Jewish exile from that darkest land of the czar, may his name be obliterated and forgotten! But America is not a land of swines! All the millionaires and the millionairesses in America worked long and hard when they were young, some in shops and some on the street. Just ask Rockefeller, Carnegie, Rothschild, Morgan, or Vanderbilt what they once were. Didn’t they sweep the streets? Didn’t they hawk papers? Didn’t they shine people’s shoes for a nickel? Take, for example, the king of the automobiles, Mr. Ford, and ask him if he wasn’t once a chauffeur or a taxi driver. Or take the really great people—

  Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt—were they born great people, presidents? Even our President Wilson, may he forgive me, wasn’t he just a teacher?”

  D.

  This my brother Elyahu can no longer take. He cuts Pinni short. “Eh, Pinni, now you’re really blaspheming! You forget that Wilson is now our king.”

  But Pinni is a terror when he gets excited. He bursts out laughing. “Ha ha! King? What kind of king? There is no king in America! It’s a free country, a democracy!”

  “So he’s not king, he’s president, what’s the difference?” my brother Elyahu protests.

  But Pinni cuts him off. “There’s a big difference! There’s as much difference between a king and a president as there is between Cain and Abel! A king is a king and a president is a president! A king inherits his title from his father, and a president is elected. If we wish Wilson to be president for another four years, we will elect him again. If we don’t, he goes back to being a teacher. And do you know that in a few years I can also be a president?”

  “You? A president?”

  “I—a president!”

  E .

  As long as I’ve known my brother, I have never seen him laugh so hard. As you know, my brother Elyahu is, in general, a worried, gloomy man who rarely laughs, and even when he does laugh, it’s not wholeheartedly. This time he is caught up in such a fit of laughter that my mother becomes frightened for him.

  But there really is something to laugh about. All you have to do is see our friend Pinni, how he thrusts his hands into the pockets of his too-short pants that barely reach the top of his new American shoes, how Teibl is forever trying unsuccessfully to straighten his too-short necktie, how his small American cap refuses to stay in one place, and especially how his pointy nose seems always to be peering down into his mouth as his nearsighted eyes squint at you.

  God help us! This will one day become a president? Try not to laugh!

  F.

  When my brother Elyahu finishes laughing, he says to my mother, “Well, Pinni has taken care of us. We’ll work in the shop and sew dresses on the sewing machine. And Pinni certainly has his future assured. He will, God willing, become a president. But what about our children?”

  He means me and my friend Mendl. He can’t bear to see us idle. He’s furious that we spend our days in the street playing ball and checkers. Do you remember when he grabbed me by the ear and was threatened with a fist under the nose by a burly fellow who told him that in America you can only “fight” with someone who is your equal?

  “You should worry more about yourself than the children!” says Moishe the bookbinder. With that he informs us that although we are indeed very welcome guests, it’s high time we did something to earn our own piece of bread.

  G .

  Do you think we enjoy being dependent on others’ generosity? My mother helps Pessi in the kitchen. She bakes and cooks and washes and dusts. Teibl makes the beds and sweeps the rooms. Pinni helps Moishe with his book stand. Truth be told, he’s not of much help, because when Pinni sees a book, there’s no tearing him away. When he sticks his nose into a book, well, it’s good day! But that in itself wouldn’t matter. He has a habit of scribbling. God sent him a fountain pen from which the ink keeps coming out forever. Paper is cheap here, cheaper than borscht, so he sits and scribbles.

  “Are you learning how to write?” my brother Elyahu asks him, but Pinni doesn’t answer. He gathers up his writings and hides them deep in his jacket side pockets, which makes him look swollen.

  H .

  My friend Mendl and I aren’t sitting around idle either. Until we get a job, we help the gang out as much as possible. I help the older boy Sam carry the paper boxes, and my friend Mendl hangs around Willy in the grocery store and sometimes around Phillip, who hawks Yiddish papers. For our work we don’t get paid at all, except that on Sundays they pay for our moving pictures. When we leave the moving pictures, they treat us to ice cream, which you eat between two chocolate cookies, or else you drink soda water with it. Afterward we take a walk or a stroll in the park, of which there are many in New York, and everywhere they let you in free. What a country this America is! Wherever I want to go, I go, and whatever I want to do, I do.

  I .

  If I have time, I drop in at my old friend Vashti, now Harry, but his boss at the stand is not happy. She notices that Vashti sometimes sneaks a piece of carob my way and sometimes a few raisins and almonds. “My stand cannot afford two noshers,” she says, so I don’t visit Vashti anymore. I wait till he comes home at night, and he always brings something in his pocket for me to nibble. When Bruche sees me chewing, she tattles on me to my brother Elyahu. He asks me what I’m chewing, and I say, “Chung-gum,” what everyone in America chews. Bruche says it turns her stomach to see all this chewing. My brother Elyahu tells her to pretend they’re cows chewing their cud. Pinni can’t abide my brother Elyahu comparing Americans to cows and says, “You’re comparing the best, the greatest, the cleanest and smartest people in the world, with cows?! I want you to tell me just one thing—where would we be if, God forbid, Columbus had not discovered America?”

  “Somebody else would have discovered it!” my brother Elyahu replies very simply, without giving it a thought.

  J .

  Praised be God, I can tell you the news—we have a job. We won’t have to be idle any longer. We won’t have to eat other people’s bread. We are working in a shop. That is to say, not Mendl or I—they can’t hire us, we’re too young. So far my brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni are working. I will now tell you what their jobs are.

  IX

  WE WORK IN A SHOP

  A .

  How you work in a shop I can’t say exactly because I myself don’t know. They don’t allow me to work there because I’m not yet bar mitzvahed. I only know what I hear from my brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni. Every evening when they come home from the shop, exhausted and hungry, they relate wondrous tales. We sit down to eat supper. Bruche hates this word as a pious Jew hates pig. My sister-in-law can’t abide the word window either. She also hates the word stockings. And what do you say to the word dishes? She prefers the Yiddish words for all of these. The same goes for spoon, steak, and fork.

  B .

  My brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni work in two different shops: my brother as an op
erator, really a tailor, and Pinni as a presser. An operator doesn’t need to sew by hand. He sews on a machine. But you have to know how to do that too. The machine doesn’t sew by itself. How did my brother Elyahu learn to do it when his father’s father and all his ancestors were never tailors and never saw a sewing machine in their lives?

  My mother says we come from a pure line of cantors, rabbis, and sextons. That’s of no help. But this is America, and in America there’s nothing a person cannot learn to do. For example, how do you become a rabbi? To be a rabbi you’ve certainly got to be smart. You have to know how to answer questions. And yet there are rabbis in America (here they’re called reverends) who back home were butchers. My brother Elyahu made the acquaintance of a mohel, a circumciser, a reverend who officiates at brises. At home he was a ladies’ tailor!

  Elyahu asked him, “How did that happen?”

  He answered, “Only in America!”

  C.

  How did my brother Elyahu learn to use a sewing machine? How did the ladies’ tailor become a mohel? Poor Elyahu worked very hard. They gave him scraps of material to practice with on the machine. He went over the material back and forth, and it was considered “all right.” The next morning he was already sewing. You can imagine how awful the sewing was. But it was acceptable.