Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

And so “to make borey me’oyrey ho’eysh” became “to give the match a scratch”—not an ideal solution perhaps, but certainly a passable one. One does the best one can. Sometimes it’s a matter of luck.

I have been translating fiction for many years, but from Hebrew, not from Yiddish, and this volume is the first full-scale Yiddish translation I have attempted. I wish, therefore, to express my deepest thanks to the editor of this series, Ruth Wisse, both for trusting and encouraging me to undertake this translation and for going over it with a fine-tooth comb. She was the safety net above which I felt free to be as acrobatic as I liked, knowing I would always be caught if I fell. This book is hers too.

I also wish to thank Michael Stern of Washington, D.C., for kindly letting me use an unpublished paper tracing the sources of Tevye’s Hebrew quotations, thus sparing me much arduous spadework; and my sister, Miriam Halkin Och, of Haifa University Library, for her generous help in obtaining bibliographical materials.

HILLEL HALKIN

If you’re meant to strike it rich, Pan Sholem Aleichem, you may as well stay home with your slippers on, because good luck will find you there too. The more it blows the better it goes, as King David says in his Psalms — and believe me, neither brains nor brawn has anything to do with it. And vice versa: if it’s not in the cards you can run back and forth till you’re blue in the face, it will do as much good as last winter’s snow. How does the saying go? Flogging a dead horse won’t make it run any faster. A man slaves, works himself to the bone, is ready to lie down and die — it shouldn’t happen to the worst enemy of the Jews. Suddenly, don’t ask me how or why, it rains gold on him from all sides. In a word, revakh vehatsoloh ya’amoyd layehudim , just like it says in the Bible! That’s too long a verse to translate, but the general gist of it is that as long as a Jew lives and breathes in this world and hasn’t more than one leg in the grave, he musn’t lose faith. Take it from my own experience — that is, from how the good Lord helped set me up in my present line of business. After all, if I sell butter and cheese and such stuff, do you think that’s because my grandmother’s grandmother was a milkman? But if I’m going to tell you the whole story, it’s worth hearing from beginning to end. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll sit myself down here beside you and let my horse chew on some grass. He’s only human too, don’t you think, or why else would God have made him a horse?

Well, to make a long story short, it happened early one summer, around Shavuos time. But why should I lie to you? It might have been a week or two before Shavuos too, unless it was several weeks after. What I’m trying to tell you is that it took place exactly a dog’s age ago, nine or ten years to the day, if not a bit more or less. I was the same man then that I am now, only not at all like me; that is, I was Tevye then too, but not the Tevye you’re looking at. How does the saying go? It’s still the same lady, she’s just not so shady. Meaning that in those days — it should never happen to you! — I was such a miserable beggar that rags were too good for me. Believe me, I’m no millionaire today either. If from now until autumn the two of us earned a tenth of what it would take to make me half as rich as Brodsky, we wouldn’t be doing half badly. Still, compared to what I was then, I’ve become a real tycoon. I’ve got my own horse and wagon; I’ve got two cows that give milk, bless them, and a third cow waiting to calve; forgive me for boasting, but we’re swimming in cheese, cream, and butter. Not that we don’t work for it, mind you; you won’t find any slackers at my place. My wife milks the cows; the girls carry the cans and churn butter; and I, as you see, go to the market every morning and from there to all the summer dachas in Boiberik. I stop to chat with this person, with that one; there isn’t a rich Jew I don’t know there. When you talk with such people, you know, you begin to feel that you’re someone yourself and not such a one-armed tailor any more. And I’m not even talking about Sabbaths. On Sabbaths, I tell you, I’m king, I have all the time in the world. Why, I can even pick up a Jewish book then if I want: the Bible, Psalms, Rashi, Targum, Perek, you name it … I tell you, if you could only see me then, you’d say, “He’s really some fine fellow, that Tevye!”

To get to the point, though … where were we? Oh, yes: in those days, with God’s help, I was poor as a devil. No Jew should starve as I did! Not counting suppers, my wife and kids went hungry three times a day. I worked like a dog dragging logs by the wagonful from the forest to the train station for — I’m embarrassed even to tell you — half a ruble a day … and not even every day, either. You try feeding a house full of little mouths on that, to say nothing of a horse who’s moved in with you and can’t be put off with some verse from the Bible, because he expects to eat and no buts! So what does the good Lord do? I tell you, it’s not for nothing that they say He’s a zon umefarneys lakoyl , that He runs this world of His with more brains than you or I could. He sees me eating my heart out for a slice of bread and says, “Now, Tevye, are you really trying to tell me that the world has come to an end? Eh, what a damn fool you are! In no time I’m going to show you what God can do when He wants. About face, march!” As we say on Yom Kippur, mi yorum umi yishofeyl —leave it to Him to decide who goes on foot and who gets to ride. The main thing is confidence. A Jew must never, never give up hope. How does he go on hoping, you ask, when he’s already died a thousand deaths? But that’s the whole point of being a Jew in this world! What does it say in the prayer book? Atoh bekhartonu! We’re God’s chosen people; it’s no wonder the whole world envies us … You don’t know what I’m talking about? Why, I’m talking about myself, about the miracle God helped me to. Be patient and you’ll hear all about it.

Vayehi hayoym , as the Bible says: one fine summer day in the middle of the night, I’m driving home through the forest after having dumped my load of logs. I feel like my head is in the ground, there’s a black desert growing in my heart; it’s all my poor horse can do to drag his feet along behind him. “It serves you right, you schlimazel,” I say to him, “for belonging to someone like me! If you’re going to insist on being Tevye’s horse, it’s time you knew what it tastes like to fast the whole length of a summer’s day.” It was so quiet you could hear every crack of the whip whistle through the woods. The sun began to set; the day was done for. The shadows of the trees were as long as the exile of the Jews. And with the darkness a terrible feeling crept into my heart. All sorts of thoughts ran in and out of my head. The faces of long-dead people passed before me. And when I thought of coming home — God help me! The little house would be pitch-dark. My naked, barefoot kids would peek out to see if their schlemiel of a father hadn’t brought them some bread, maybe even a freshly baked roll. And my old lady would grumble like a good Jewish mother: “A lot he needed children — and seven of them at that! God punish me for saying so, but my mistake was not to have taken them all and thrown them into the river.” How do you think it made me feel to hear her say such things? A man is only flesh and blood, after all; you can’t fill a stomach with words. No, a stomach needs herring to fill it; herring won’t go down without tea; tea can’t be drunk without sugar; and sugar, my friend, costs a fortune. And my wife! “My guts,” says my wife, “can do without bread in the morning, but without a glass of tea I’m a stretcher case. That baby’s sucked the glue from my bones all night long!”