Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

And so at the crack of dawn, before it was light out, I harnessed my horse and wagon and set out for Boiberik. I arrived at the marketplace — oho! (is there any place in the world where a Jew can keep a secret?) — everyone knows all about it and is congratulating me from all sides.

“Mazel tov, Reb Tevye,” they say. “When will the wedding be?”

“Mazel tov to you too,” I say. “But I’m afraid it’s a case of the son growing up before the father has been born.”

“There’s no use trying to pull our leg, Reb Tevye,” they say. “You’ll have to stand us all drinks, you lucky devil. Why, the man is a gold mine!”

“When the gold gives out,” I say, “a mine’s just a hole in the ground. Which is no reason, of course, to be piggish with one’s friends. As soon as I’ve finished my route, the food and drinks are on me. We’ll live it up and to hell with it! Tsoholoh vesomeykhoh , my friends — if beggars can’t be choosers, they may as well be boozers.”

In a word, I finished my rounds in a jiffy as usual and went off to drink a toast with my dear brothers. We wished each other the happiness we all deserved and I started out for home, a bit tipsy and as merry as a lark. I rode through the forest, the summer sun shining down, the trees casting their shadows on either side of the path, a good smell of pine needles all around — this is the life, I thought! I even let go of my horse’s reins and stretched out like a count in a carriage. “Run along without me,” I told the old boy, “it’s time you knew the way yourself”—and with that I threw back my head and broke into a little tune. I had such a holiday feeling in my heart that I even began to sing melodies from the prayer book. There I sat, staring up at the sky and thinking of the words of the hallel prayer. Hashomayim shomayim ladoynai —the heavens belong to God … veha’orets nosan livney odom —but the earth He’s given to us, the human race, so that we can bury each other six feet deep in it and fight for the honor of crying by the grave … Loy hameysim yehallelu yoh —the dead don’t praise God, and why should they?… Ve’anakhnu nevoreykh yoh— yet we poor folk who are still barely alive can’t thank Him enough if He does us a single favor … Ohavti ki yishma —of course I love Him; wouldn’t you if He had cupped a hand to His ear just to listen to your prayers?… Ofafuni khevley moves —there I was, a poor wretch surrounded by worries: one day a cow dies on me out of the blue, the next it’s my luck to run into a schlimazel of a cousin, a Mr. Menachem Mendl of Yehupetz, who walks off with my last cent … Ani omarti bekhofzi —why, I thought the sky had fallen in … Koyl ha’odom koyzev —and that I couldn’t trust a living soul anymore … So what does God do? Oydkho ki anisoni —He taps Layzer Wolf on the shoulder and tells him to marry my Tsaytl, all expenses paid … Which is why I thank You, dear Lord, for having looked down on Your Tevye and decided to lend him a hand. At last I’ll have some pleasure from my children! When I’ll come to visit my Tsaytl in her new home, God willing, I’ll find a grand lady with everything a person could ask for, closets full of fine linen, cupboards full of jam and schmaltz, cages full of chickens, ducks, and geese …

Well, at that very moment my horse took a notion to practice his downhill gallop. Before I could even look around, I was flat on my back with all my jugs and milk cans, staring up at my wagon on top of me. It was all I could do to crawl out from under it, more dead than alive, and chew the idiot out. “You should sink to the bottom of the sea and be eaten by vultures! Who asked you, you moron, to prove you could be a racehorse? You almost did me in for good, you Satan, you!” I gave it to him for all he was worth — and the old fellow must have realized what a dirty trick he had played, because he stood there with his head bowed as though waiting to be milked. “The Devil take you and keep you!” I said a last time, righting and reloading the wagon. “Giddyap!” I cried — and we were off again. I knew it wasn’t a good omen, though. Suppose, I thought, something has gone wrong at home …

And so it had. I had traveled another mile or so and wasn’t far from our village when I saw the figure of a woman coming toward me. I drove a little nearer — it was Tsaytl! I don’t know why, but I felt a twinge when I saw her. I jumped to the ground and called, “Tsaytl, is that you? What are you doing here?”

Her only answer was to throw herself on me and sob.

“For the love of God, Daughter,” I said, “what are you crying for?”

“Oh, Papa,” she said, the tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, Papa.”

I had a black feeling. My heart sank. “Tsaytl,” I said, taking her in my arms to hug and kiss her, “what is it?”

“Oh, Papa,” she said, “oh, dearest, darling Papa, I don’t care if I have to live on bread and water, just have pity on me and my youth …”

She was crying so hard that she couldn’t say any more. God help us, I thought, for by now I had guessed what it was. The Devil himself had made me go to Boiberik that morning!

“But what is there to cry about, you silly?” I said, stroking her hair. “Why cry? You have no call to: if you say no, it’s no; we won’t marry you off with a shotgun. We meant well. We thought it was all for the best. But if your heart tells you not to, what more can we do? It simply wasn’t meant to be in the first place …”

“Oh, Papa,” she says, “oh, thank you, thank you so much!”—and she throws herself on me again, crying and kissing me until we’re both wet all over.

“Come,” I say, “enough is enough. Hakoyl hevel —even chicken soup with kreplach gets to be tiresome after a while. Into the wagon with you and home you go! Your mother must be good and worried.”

Once the two of us were aboard, I did my best to calm her. “Look, it’s like this,” I said. “Your mother and I meant no harm. God knows our only thought was of you. If it didn’t work out, God musn’t have wanted it to. You, Tsaytl, just weren’t meant to be a fine lady with a house full of grand things and two old parents who could finally enjoy themselves a bit after keeping their nose to the grindstone all their poor, luckless, miserable, penniless lives …”

“Oh, Papa,” she said, starting to cry again. “I’ll hire myself out, I’ll get down on my knees and scrub floors, I’ll shovel dirt if I have to …”

“But why are you still crying, you little ninny?” I said. “I was talking to God, not to you. I’m feeling so low that I have to have it out with someone — and considering all He’s done for me, it might as well be with Him. He’s supposed to be our merciful Father; well, He’s had such mercy on me that I hope I’ve seen the last of it — and He better not charge me extra for saying that. A lot of good it does to complain to God about God! I suppose, though, that that’s how it’s meant to be: He’s up in His heaven and I’m down below, with one foot already in the grave — which still leaves me the other to stand on while I tell the world about His justice … Only come to think of it, I really must be a big fool to carry on like this. What am I talking about? Where does a little worm like me crawling about on the earth get off telling God, who can blow me away to kingdom come with one puff of His breath, how to manage His affairs? If this is how He’s arranged them, who am I to say otherwise? Forty days before a child is a twinkle in its mother’s eyes, forty days beforehand, so it says in our holy books, an angel comes along and proclaims: ‘Tsaytl the daughter of Tevye to Berl the son of Shmerl’—and Layzer Wolf the butcher, if he doesn’t mind my saying so, can go look for his intended up another tree. I can promise him she won’t fly away … I only hope, Tsaytl, that God sends you a proper young man, the sooner the better, amen. And now pray for me that your mother doesn’t scream bloody murder, because something tells me that I’m in for it …”