Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  G .

  Among our Kasrilevka rich was one Moishe-Noyach, who besides owning his own house with a courtyard and garden was simply rolling in money. Proof of this was that in summertime he used to walk around in his underwear, and over his underwear he wore a bathrobe. A poor man would never dare to be seen in his underwear. But people know immediately that he must be rich because he didn’t care who saw him. Everyone knew he had inherited from his mother three shops in the best spot in the market, and he always had a milk cow. The three shops brought in more than enough money for him to live on. His wife Nechama-Mirl (she was called Dechama-Birl, because she always had a stuffed nose) was able to draw out of the milk cow enough profit to meet all the household expenses. But so as not to bring down her luck with the milk cow, Dechama-Birl liked to complain that her “cow had lost her bilk and wouldn’t let herself be bilked.” She wasn’t fooling anyone in Kasrilevka. Everyone knew it was a lie. The cow never stopped giving milk. So just imagine all the ooh-has when a Jew like Moishe-Noyach ran off to America, naked and barefoot as the day his mother had him. Of course people pitied him. What could Moishe-Noyach do in America? He wouldn’t work in a shop, nor would his children. So the Kasrilevka synagogue congregation decided to make him the sexton of the Kasrilevka shul.

  H .

  In America a sexton is a job not to be sneezed at. In America a sexton lives better than a Kasrilevka houseowner. From yahrtzeits alone you can become very rich. Yahrtzeits are a big thing here. All year round no one has time to pray. “Time is money” is what they say. But when someone has a yahrtzeit, he drops all his business and runs to shul. And from shul he runs off to a Yiddish restaurant and orders a kosher meal because he has yahrtzeit. And because he has yahrtzeit, he tips the sexton generously. And how about a bar mitzvah? That’s when the sexton really cleans up. In our old home, when a boy turned thirteen, you put a tefillin on him and he had to pray every day. Here in America a bar mitzvah is a holiday. They dress the boy in a prayer shawl. They call him up to the bima like a bridegroom to read the Torah. He screeches out the haftorah like a young rooster. Then he lifts his hands and mumbles some sort of sermon he’s memorized, naturally in English, heaven forbid Yiddish. The rabbi, whose clean-shaven face makes him look like a Polish priest, then lays his wide-sleeved hands on the boy’s head and blesses him.

  I.

  In short, Moishe-Noyach has a good job. His only problem is that he has to go around to all the people who promised him money for yahrtzeits and bar mitzvahs to collect his money, as well as dues from the members of the congregation and money for his salary. Nu, how does it look for a man who was not long ago rich to go collecting? His wife pours out her bitter heart to my mother. She says, “You can bedieve me, every tibe by husbad has to do tollecting bodey, it’s like he’s beeting the Adgel of Death.” I’m afraid none of you will be able to understand what she’s saying because of her stuffed nose, so I’ll translate: “You can believe me, every time my husband goes collecting money, it’s like he’s meeting the Angel of Death.” My mother suggests that her Moishe-Noyach hire my brother Elyahu as a collector. It would help him out, and my brother would earn a living. You can understand that Moishe-Noyach jumped at this plan eagerly.

  My brother Elyahu resisted it at first, but our friend Pinni was there to give him a little push in his usual way: “I don’t understand your feeling that this is beneath you. How are you better than Carnegie, Rockefeller, or Vanderbilt? Now go do it!”

  That Pinni, when he wants to, he really knows how!

  J.

  Who would have predicted that a small collecting job for a synagogue sexton would in time develop into a much bigger job, in fact two jobs? In one job my brother Elyahu collects for a furniture business, and in the other job our friend Pinni collects for an insurance company. I can see by your expressions that you don’t begin to understand what furniture or insurance means. Wait a bit, and I’ll explain everything.

  XIV

  WE ARE COLLECTING

  A.

  The great thing about America is that everything is brought right to the house. You can buy anything and pay for it gradually. For one dollar a week you can furnish your home like a count.

  B .

  Nobody buys anything for cash except someone like the millionaire Jacob Schiff. My brother Elyahu says he’s the wealthiest man in America. But our friend Pinni says that’s not true. He says Carnegie is much richer, and Vanderbilt—certainly! And Rockefeller—most certainly! Elyahu argues that he’s absolutely wrong. Maybe those men are wealthier in land and estates, but as for money, not a chance! Schiff is richer than all of them. Pinni goes off on one of his tears, insisting that my brother Elyahu doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What Rockefeller gives away to charities alone every year, Schiff doesn’t even own. Now my brother Elyahu is riled up and says Pinni is an anti-Semite, because even if it were true that Rockefeller is richer than Schiff, he should say Schiff is richer because Rockefeller is a Gentile and Schiff is a Jew.

  Pinni explodes. “And if Schiff were a Jew three times over, is that a reason for me to lie? You forget too often, Elyahu, we are in America, and America hates bluffing!”

  My sister-in-law Bruche weighs in with a comment that ends the argument: “May our enemies have as many boils in one spot, and may we have as many good years, as there are lies spoken every day in New York alone, never mind Brooklyn, Brownsville, and the Bronx!”

  C .

  If you can buy furniture for one dollar a week, you need people to collect the dollars. The collectors, as they’re called, go from house to house collecting them. Each collector has his own “route” of houses he visits every week. His work begins by knocking on your door. Then he enters and says, “Good morning!” Then he says, “Very nice day.” He takes your dollar, hands you a receipt, and says, “Goodbye.” That’s all there is to it. It isn’t even necessary for him to take off his hat. It isn’t customary here. You can go into the richest home wearing a hat, with galoshes on your shoes, smoking a cigarette, whistling a tune, or chewing gum, and no one will say anything. It’s America.

  D .

  My brother Elyahu is very satisfied with his job. It’s much better than standing around and selling sausages, and besides, he’s earning much more. Sometimes he makes eight dollars a week, sometimes ten, and sometimes twelve. It all depends on the weather. In good weather you can go on foot. In bad weather you have to go by trolley, which costs a nickel. But my brother Elyahu doesn’t spend too many nickels. He is by nature a thrifty person, unlike Pinni, who has a more open hand. Pinni rarely goes on foot—he says he has to ride because he’s nearsighted, and it’s easier to get run over, not because he is nearsighted but because he’s absent-minded. He gets carried away, in addition to which he can’t manage without looking into a book or a newspaper. And sometimes he scribbles. As he walks, he thinks and he hears nothing that’s being said to him. Sometimes he takes out a pencil or a pen and begins writing. He can easily fill ten pages of paper on both sides. What he writes, and what he does with this writing, no one knows, not even his wife Teibl.

  When my brother Elyahu asks him what he’s written, he says, “When we get older, we’ll know.”

  We’re now quite a bit older, and we still don’t know.

  E .

  Still and all, Pinni makes a living, and quite a good one! He’s a collector too, not for furniture but for life insurance. Here everyone has life insurance, young and old, women and children, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grand-fathers. They pay for it with a nickel to a dollar a week. The higher your insurance, the more you must pay. In some homes all the members of the family, from the oldest to the great-grandchildren, have life insurance. And if some of them aren’t insured yet, the collector has to make sure the uninsured buy insurance. How this is done, I do not know. I only know that my brother Elyahu refuses to do that kind of job. He prefers to collect for furniture. Why? Because to collect for furniture, you only need to s
ay “Good morning” and “Goodbye.” For insurance collecting you have to talk and convince and explain and repeat yourself. At that our friend Pinni is a whiz. He could convince a wall and make the dead talk.

  F.

  To our friend Pinni it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are. Whatever you say, he gets his spiel in. Are you insured? Then he’ll talk to you about insurance. Are you not yet insured? Then you must certainly talk about insurance with him. And once he starts talking, you’ll never get out of his clutches. He’ll insure you, your wife, your child, your grandfather, your father-in-law, your cousin, and even your next-door neighbor. And if your next-door neighbor dies before you, then the company will give you a nice few hundred dollars. The next-door neighbor also insures you, so if you die, God forbid, before him, he’ll get a few hundred dollars from the company. The next-door neighbor also buys insurance for himself, as you do for yourself. You both pay the company a quarter a week. You don’t have to go to the company. The company will find you through its collector. For collecting your quarters, Pinni makes a 15 percent commission.

  G .

  If Pinni persuades you to write a new policy, as the agent he gets fifteen times as much as the weekly payment. If you pay a quarter for your premium, the agent of the company gets fifteen quarters in one shot! Please figure out how much that is. Imagine, if our friend Pinni is lucky enough to write two or three or more policies in a day and all at a quarter a policy—that adds up to a fortune!

  “Oh, my God! You’ll be filling the house with gold!” says Bruche, and Teibl blushes, looking on, as her Pinni pulls out quarters and nickels from one pocket after another.

  “What do you think?” Pinni makes separate piles of quarters and nickels. “Do you think Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller were born with their millions?”

  H .

  Now, where can I find a sheet of white paper? If I had a stick of charcoal, I’d draw this picture. A table. My mother is sitting at the head, her hands folded. On one side of her stands Bruche, tall and slim, with big feet. On the other side is Teibl, small as a quarter of a chicken. Both of the younger women work, one sewing, the other knitting. At the other end of the table stands my brother Elyahu, a man with a full beard holding a bunch of receipts in one hand and a pack of paper dollars in the other. This is what he has collected during the day. At one side of the table, standing bent over, is our friend Pinni, clean shaven, a real American. He draws out quarters and nickels from both his pockets, and since he is nearsighted, he brings each quarter and nickel close to his nose. On the table stand two high piles, one of quarters and one of nickels. Pinni isn’t finished yet. He has more. This you can see by his pants pockets, which are still bulging.

  I .

  Nothing lasts forever, and a person is never happy with what he has. We become sick and tired of going around collecting other people’s dollars and quarters and nickels. It’s better to have your own little rolls than someone else’s big loaves of bread. This is what Bruche says. First my brother Elyahu lost his enthusiasm for collecting. The business got to him, and not so much the business as the customers. Some customers stopped paying. They said, “Take back your furniture—we don’t need it.” Others complained that the bed squeaked, or that the mirror showed a double image, or that the dresser drawers wouldn’t open or shut, or that the chairs were too heavy and when you sat down on them it was like sitting on nails! Others decided to move away to another street—and go find them!

  Worst of all, some pay weekly until they can no longer pay. Why? The breadwinner is sick, or there is no work, or a strike breaks out. You don’t want to lose a customer. What can you do? So my brother Elyahu lays out money from his own pocket during that time. You can see that it’s one problem after another!

  J.

  Do you think our friend Pinni is happy with his job? Not at all. Until you catch a customer, he says, it’s like crossing the Red Sea. You have to talk to them for three days and nights. You try to explain to the moron what insurance means, and you finally get him to sign an “application.” But on the second day he changes his mind, or the doctor “rejects” him, which means he’s turned down on account of bad health, or the doctor didn’t like how he looked naked. But the worst thing by far for insurance agents is a “lapse”—a customer stops paying. Then they deduct from the agent’s commission fifteen times as much as the cost of the customer’s premium. If not for the lapses, Pinni says he’d have covered the house with gold! It’s his bad luck that several customers have stopped paying at the same time, as if they’d decided on it together.

  “Let them burn, those customers, with the insurance, with the agents, with the lapses, and with the companies!” says Pinni. He’d rather go into his own business with my brother Elyahu. With God’s help, they’ve saved a few dollars. They can start their own business.

  And so we decide to go into our own business.

  XV

  WE GO INTO BUSINESS

  A .

  Whatever your heart desires, you can find in the newspapers. Are you looking for work? You’ll find it in the papers. Are you looking for workers? You’ll find them in the papers. Are you looking for a bride or a bridegroom? You’ll find them in the papers. Are you looking for a business? You’ll find it in the papers. We’re looking for a business, and so we look for one in the papers every day. We are stopped by this advertisement:

  CIGARS—STATIONERY—CANDY—SODA STAND FOR SALE Opposite a school, selling because of family trouble. Guaranteed good business. COME QUICKLY!

  B .

  My brother’s wife Bruche strongly opposes the business. In the first place, she argues, how do we know what they say in the ad is the truth? In the second place, why should we creep into a sick bed with a healthy head? If there’s family trouble, why do we have to get into the middle? Do you think these are the only faults Bruche finds? To a hundred other business possibilities, she is able to find for each its special fault. My brother Elyahu keeps waving her off, but she won’t be deterred. He shouldn’t be so self-assured, she says. Just because he’s shaved off three-quarters of his beard doesn’t give him the right to put on airs. To this my brother Elyahu replies, “Why did your father shave his whole beard off?”

  Our friend Pinni enters the argument: “Do you know what? I’ll bet you two to one that if you find among two million Americans half a dozen people with beards, you can call me a liar!”

  “What an example!” says my mother. “That’s like saying ducks go barefoot. Better to talk of other things.”

  My mother hates it when you speak of beards. It’s enough for her that she has lived to see Peysi the cantor’s son shorten his beard.

  C.

  The business we go into has many good features. First, my brother Elyahu, as you may remember, is a master of “manufacturing” all kinds of drinks, which comes in handy if you have in mind manufacturing soda water and selling a tall glassful for a cent—with syrup, two cents. The syrup we also make ourselves. Another plus is that we have the cheapest candy—a fistful for a cent, and we can suck the candies ourselves. When I say “we,” I mean me and my friends Mendl and Pinni. The three of us help out at the stand and sneak a nosh when no one is looking. When Bruche is nearby, we can’t nosh, and out of spite she is at the stand almost all day, helping with the business. We all help out, even Teibl and my mother. When a customer approaches our stand, he might be taken aback to see such a large family of businesspeople. But that’s to our benefit. Most customers like to shop where it looks crowded.

  D .

  The best time for our business is summer, during the hot days. Summer in New York is a true hell. People cool off all day with ice cream, which we sell as sandwiches made up of ice cream between two wafers. Each one costs us a penny. We make a 50 percent profit on it, but that’s not where our earnings mainly come from. The main profit lies somewhere else, in a cold drink called cider. This is a sweet and sour kvass with foam, and it tickles your tongue. Those who have tasted champagne say
it tastes like real champagne. And though cider is an American drink, who do you suppose manufactures it? My brother Elyahu. What can my brother Elyahu not do? Never mind that Pinni belittles him.

  Several times our friend Pinni has held forth and claimed that my brother Elyahu’s champagne has only one advantage—it’s cold. Otherwise it isn’t worth anything. It has no sweetness at all! My brother comes back with, “If the champagne is no good, how come you guzzle it all day?”

  Pinni replies, “What do you care if I guzzle? How much can a person guzzle? If I guzzled from early morning till night, I don’t know if I would guzzle a nickel’s worth.” Bruche interrupts and says that a nickel doesn’t just walk into your pocket. Teibl defends her husband and says Pinni is an equal partner in the business with my brother Elyahu, and a partner may, you’d think, allow himself to waste a nickel once in a while. Luckily my mother is nearby. She says that were you to shower her with gold, she wouldn’t so much as touch this American drink, which looks disgusting and is repulsive to drink! We laugh and for the moment the squabbling ends.

  E .