Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

I had already turned to go when the older woman with the silk kerchief stopped me and said, “One minute, Reb Tevye. There’s a special present I’d like to give you that you can come pick up in the morning. I have the strangest cow; it was once a wonderful beast, it gave twenty-four glasses of milk every day. Someone must have put a hex on it, though, because now you can’t milk it at all — that is, you can milk it all you want, you just can’t get any milk from it …”

“I wish you a long life,” I said, “and one you won’t wish was any shorter. We’ll not only milk your milk cow, we’ll milk it for milk. My wife, God bless her, is such a wizard around the house that she can bake a noodle pudding from thin air, make soup from a fingernail, whip up a Sabbath meal from an empty cupboard, and put hungry children to sleep with a box on the ear … Well, please don’t hold it against me if I’ve run on a little too long. And now good night to you all and be well,” I said, turning to go to the yard where my wagon was parked … good grief! With my luck one always has to expect a disaster, but this was an out-and-out misfortune. I looked this way, I looked that way— vehayeled eynenu: there wasn’t a horse in sight.

This time, Tevye, I thought, you’re really in a fix! And I remembered a charming story I once read in a book about a gang of goblins who played a prank on a Jew, a pious Hasid, by luring him to a castle outside of town where they wined and dined him and suddenly disappeared, leaving a naked woman behind them. The woman turned into a tigress, the tigress turned into a cat, and the cat turned into a rattlesnake … Between you and me, Tevye, I said to myself, how do you know they’re not pulling a fast one on you?

“What are you mumbling and grumbling about?” someone asked me.

“What am I mumbling about?” I said. “Believe me, it’s not for my health. In fact, I have a slight problem. My horse—”

“Your horse,” he says, “is in the stable. You only have to go there and look for it.”

I went to the stable and looked for him. I swear I’m not a Jew if the old fellow wasn’t standing there as proud as punch among the tycoon’s thoroughbreds, chewing away at his oats for all he was worth.

“I’m sorry to break up the party,” I said to him, “but it’s time to go home, old boy. Why make a hog of yourself? Before you know it, you’ll have taken one bite too many …”

In the end it was all I could do to wheedle him out of there and into his harness. Away home we flew on top of the world, singing Yom Kippur songs as tipsily as you please. You wouldn’t have recognized my nag; he ran like the wind without so much as a mention of the whip and looked like he’d been reupholstered. When we finally got home late at night, I joyously woke up my wife.

“Mazel tov, Golde,” I said to her. “I’ve got good news.”

“A black mazel tov yourself,” she says to me. “Tell me, my fine breadwinner, what’s the happy occasion? Has my goldfingers been to a wedding or a circumcision?”

“To something better than a wedding and a circumcision combined,” I say. “In a minute, my wife, I’m going to show you a treasure. But first go wake up the girls. Why shouldn’t they also enjoy some Yehupetz cuisine …”

“Either you’re delirious, or else you’re temporarily deranged, or else you’ve taken leave of your senses, or else you’re totally insane. All I can say is, you’re talking just like a madman, God help us!” says my wife. When it comes to her tongue, she’s a pretty average Jewish housewife.

“And you’re talking just like a woman!” I answered. “King Solomon wasn’t joking when he said that out of a thousand females you won’t find one with her head screwed on right. It’s a lucky thing that polygamy has gone out of fashion.” And with that I went to the wagon and began unpacking all the dishes I’d been given and setting them out on the table. When that gang of mine saw those rolls and smelled that meat, they fell on it like a pack of wolves. Their hands shook so that they could hardly get a grip on it. I stood there with tears in my eyes, listening to their jaws work away like a plague of starving locusts.

“So tell me,” says my woman when she’s done, “who’s been sharing their frugal repast with you, and since when do you have such good friends?”

“Don’t worry, Golde,” I say. “You’ll hear about it all in good time. First put the samovar on, so that we can sit down and drink a glass of tea in style. Generally speaking, you only live once, am I right? So it’s a good thing that we now have a cow of our own that gives twenty-four glasses of milk every day; in fact, I’m planning to go fetch her in the morning. And now, Golde,” I said to her, pulling out my wad of bills, “be a sport and guess how much I have here.”

You should have seen her turn pale as a ghost. She was so flabbergasted that she couldn’t say a word.

“God be with you, Golde, my darling,” I said. “You needn’t look so frightened. Are you worried that I stole it somewhere? Feh, you should be ashamed of yourself! How long haven’t you been married to me that you should think such thoughts of your Tevye? This is kosher money, you sillyhead, earned fair and square by my own wits and hard work. The fact is that I’ve just saved two people from great danger. If it weren’t for me, God only knows what would have become of them …”

In a word, I told her the whole story from beginning to end, the entire rigamarole. When I was through we counted all the money, then counted it again, then counted it once more to be sure. Whichever way we counted, it came to exactly thirty-seven rubles even.

My wife began to cry.

“What are you crying like a fool for?” I asked her.

“How can I help crying,” she says, “if the tears keep coming? When the heart is full it runs out at the eyes. God help me if something didn’t tell me that you were about to come with good news. You know, I can’t remember when I last saw my Grandma Tsaytl, may she rest in peace, in a dream — but just before you came, I dreamed that I saw a big milk can filled to the brim, and Grandma Tsaytl was carrying it underneath her apron to keep the Evil Eye from seeing it, and all the children were shouting, ‘Look, Mama, look …’ ”

“Don’t go smacking your lips before you’ve tasted the pudding, Golde, my darling,” I said to her. “I’m sure Grandma Tsaytl is enjoying her stay in Paradise, but that doesn’t make her an expert on what’s happening down here. Still, if God went through the trouble of getting us a milk cow, it stands to reason He’ll see to it that the milk cow will give milk … What I wanted to ask you, though, Golde my dear, is what should we do with all the money?”

“It’s funny you ask me that, Tevye,” she says, “because that’s just what I was going to ask you.”

“Well, if you were going to ask me anyway,” I say, “suppose I ask you. What do you think we should do with so much capital?”

We thought. And the harder we thought, the dizzier we became planning one business venture after another. What didn’t we deal in that night? First we bought a pair of horses and quickly sold them for a windfall; then with the profit we opened a grocery store in Boiberik, sold out all the stock, and opened a dry-goods store; after that we invested in some woodland, found a buyer for it, and came out a few more rubles ahead; next we bought up the tax concession for Anatevka, farmed it out again, and with the income started a bank …

“You’re completely out of your mind!” my wife suddenly shouted at me. “Do you want to throw away our hard-earned savings by lending money to good-for-nothings and end up with only your whip again?”