Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

“Why, hello there, Reb Tevye!” I heard someone say behind me. “What’s new with a Jew?”

I turned around to look — I could have sworn that the fellow was familiar. “Hello there, yourself,” I said. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“From somewhere?” he answers. “From Kasrilevke! I’m an acquaintance of yours. In fact, I’m actually your second cousin once removed. Your wife Golde is my third cousin on her father’s side.”

“Say there,” I say. “You aren’t by any chance Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s son-in-law, are you?”

“You guessed it,” he says. “I’m Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s son-in-law. And my wife, Shayne Shayndl, is Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s daughter. Do you know me now?”

“Do I?” I say. “Your mother-in-law’s grandmother, Soreh Yente, and my wife’s aunt, Frume Zlote, were, I believe, real first cousins — which makes you Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s middle son-in-law indeed. The only trouble is that I’ve forgotten your name. It’s slipped right out of my mind. What exactly did you say it was?”

“My name,” he says, “is Menachem Mendl. Boruch Hirsh and Leah Dvossi’s Menachem Mendl, that’s how I’m known in Kasrilevke.”

“In that case, my dear Menachem Mendl,” I say to him, “you deserve a better hello than the one I gave you! Tell me, how are you? How are your mother-in-law and your father-in-law? How is everyone’s health? How is business?”

“Eh,” he says. “As far as health goes, we’re all still alive, God be praised. But business is nothing to speak of.”

“It’s sure to pick up,” I say, glancing at his clothes. They were patched in several places and his boots, the poor devil, were a safety hazard. “Leave it to God,” I said. “Things always look up in the end. It’s written in the Bible, hakoyl hevel —money never follows a straight line. One day you’re up, the next you’re down. The main thing is to keep breathing. And to have faith. A Jew has to hope. So what if things couldn’t be worse? That’s why there are Jews in the world! You know what they say: a soldier had better like the smell of gunpowder … Not that that has anything to do with it — why, all of life is but a dream … Tell me, though, my good fellow: what are you doing here, right smack in the middle of Yehupetz?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he says. “I’ve been here, let me see, it’s been nearly a year and a half now.”

“Is that so?” I say. “Do you mean to tell me that you live here?”

“Sshhh!” he says to me, looking all around. “Not so loud. You’re right, I do live here, but that’s strictly between the two of us.”

I stood staring at him as though at a madman. “If you’re hiding from the law,” I said to him, “are you sure that the main street of Yehupetz is the place for it?”

“Ask me no questions, Reb Tevye,” he says. “That’s how it is. I can see that you don’t know very much about our legal system here. If you’ll just let me explain it to you, you’ll understand in a jiffy how a man can live here and not live here at one and the same time …” With which he launched into such a brief explanation, that is, such a long song and dance, about what he had been through trying to get a permit to live in Yehupetz that I said:

“Listen, Menachem Mendl, I have an idea. Why don’t you come spend a day with us in the village? It will be a chance to rest your weary bones. You’ll be a most welcome guest. In fact, the old lady will be tickled pink to have you.”

Well, it didn’t take much to convince him, and the two of us set out for my place. There was some to-do when we got there. A guest! A genuine third cousin! That may not seem like much, but kinfolk are best folk, as they say. What a carnival! How are things in Kasrilevke? How is Uncle Boruch Hirsh? How is Aunt Leah Dvossi? How is Uncle Yosl Menashe? How is Aunt Dobrish? What are all the children doing? Who’s died? Who’s been married? Who’s divorced? Who’s sick or expecting? “Golde,” I said at last, “what’s a wedding more or a circumcision less to you when we have nothing to put in our mouths? Koyl dikhfin yeysey veyitzrokh— it’s no fun dancing on an empty stomach. If there’s a bit of borscht around, that will do nicely, and if there isn’t, no matter — we’ll start right in on the knishes, or the kreplach, or the knaidlach, or the varnishkes, or the pirogen, or the blintzes. You needn’t limit yourself to one course, but be quick.”

In a word, we washed our hands and sat down to a fine meal. “Have some more, Menachem Mendl,” I said when I was done. “It’s all vanity anyway, if you don’t mind my quoting King David. It’s a false and foolish world, and if you want to be healthy and enjoy it, as my Grandma Nechomeh used to say — oh, she was a smart one, all right, sharp as a whistle! — then you must never forget to lick the pot clean.” My poor devil of a guest was so hungry that his hands shook. He didn’t stop praising my wife’s cooking and swearing up and down that he couldn’t remember when he had last eaten such delicious dairy food, such wonderful knishes and tasty varnishkes. “Don’t be silly, Menachem Mendl,” I said. “You should try her pudding or her poppy cake — then you would know what heaven on earth is really like.”

After the meal we chatted a bit as people do. I told him about my business and he told me about his; I talked about everything under the sun and he talked about Yehupetz and Odessa, where he had been, as they say, through thick and thin, now on top of the world and now in the pits, one day a prince, and the next a pauper, and then a prince again, and once more without a shirt on his back. Never in my life had I heard of such weird, complicated transactions: stocks and shares, and selling long and short, and options and poptions, and the Devil only knows what else. And for the craziest sums too, ten and twenty thousand rubles, as though money were water! “To tell you the truth, Menachem Mendl,” I said, “you must have a marvelous head on your shoulders to figure all that out. There’s one thing I don’t get, though: if I know your wife as I think I do, how does she let you run around loose like this without coming after you on a broomstick?”

“Ah, Reb Tevye,” he says with a sigh, “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. She runs hot and cold, she does, mostly freezing. If I were to read you some of the letters she writes me, you’d see what a saint I am. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s a wife for, if not to put a man in his place? Believe me, I have a worse problem than her, and that’s my mother-in-law. I don’t have to describe her to you — you know her well enough yourself.”

“What you’re trying to tell me,” I say, “is that she’s just like it says in the Bible, akudim nekudim uvrudim . Or to put it in plain language, like an abcess on a blister on a boil.”

“Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. And if you think the boil and the blister are bad, wait until you hear about the abcess.”

In a word, we stayed up gabbing half the night. By then I was dizzy from all his wild stories about the thousands of rubles he had juggled as though he were Brodsky. All night long my head was in a whirl: Yehupetz … gold imperials … Brodsky … Menachem Mendl and his mother-in-law … It wasn’t until the next morning, though, that he finally got to the point. What was the point? It was, said Menachem Mendl, that since money was so scarce in Yehupetz that you couldn’t even give away your goods, “You, Reb Tevye, have a chance not only to make a nice killing but also to help save my life, I mean literally to raise me from the dead!”

“And you,” I said to him, “are talking like a child. Are you really so foolish as to believe that I’m sitting on Yehupetz’s millions? I only wish the two of us could earn in a year a tenth of what I’d need to be half as rich as Brodsky.”