Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

“Why, bless my soul if you don’t seem to have something against them,” I say. “I hope they haven’t gone and put a lien on your father’s estate.”

“It’s their estates,” he says, “that will be yours, and mine, and everyone’s some day.”

“You know what?” I say. “I’d leave that sort of talk to your worst enemies. I can see one thing, though — and that’s that with a tongue like yours, you’re in no danger of getting lost in the shuffle. If you’re free tonight, why don’t you drop over? We can chat a bit, and have some supper while we’re at it …”

You can be sure I didn’t have to repeat the invitation. My young man made sure to turn up at dinnertime sharp, just when the borscht was on the table and the knishes were sizzling in the pan. “You’ve timed it perfectly,” I said. “If you’d like to wash your hands and say the Lord’s blessing, go ahead, and if not — that’s fine with me too, I’m not God’s policeman. No one’s going to whip me in the next world for your sins in this one.”

Well, we ate and we talked — in fact, we talked on and on, because something about the little fellow appealed to me. I’m damned if I know what it was, but it did. You see, I’ve always liked a man I can have a Jewish word with; here a verse from the Bible, there a line from the Talmud, even a bit of philosophy or what-have-you; I can’t help being who I am … And from then on the boy began dropping in regularly. As soon as he finished the private lessons that he gave for a living each day, he would come to us to rest up and have something to eat. (Mind you, I wouldn’t wish such a living on anyone, because in the most generous of cases, I assure you, our local squires pay eighteen kopecks an hour to have their sons taught, for which they expect their letters to be addressed, their telegrams corrected, and their errands run in the bargain. And why not? Doesn’t it say bekhoyl levovkho uvekhoyl nafshekho —if you expect to eat, expect to pay the bill too!) The boy could count himself lucky to take his meals with us and tutor my girls in return for them. An eye for an eye, as it says — one good turn deserves another. Before we knew it, he had all but moved in with us; whenever he arrived, someone would run to bring him a glass of milk, and my wife made sure he always had a clean shirt and two whole socks, one for each of his feet. It was then that we started calling him Peppercorn. He really did seem like one of the family, because at bottom, you know, he was a decent sort, a simple, down-to-earth boy who would have shared all his worldly possessions with us, just as we shared ours with him, if only he had had any …

The one thing I didn’t like about him was his habit of disappearing now and then. Suddenly he would vanish— vehayeled eynenu , Peppercorn was nowhere to be found. “Where have you been, my wanderbird?” I would ask him when he came back. Peppercorn kept silent as a fish, though. I don’t know about you, but secretive people annoy me. Even God, when He created the world, did it out loud, or else how would we know all about it? But I will say this for Peppercorn: when he opened his mouth, it erupted like a volcano. You wouldn’t have believed the things that came out of it then, such wild, crazy ideas, everything backwards and upside down with its feet sticking up in the air. A rich Jew, for instance — that’s how warped his mind was! — wasn’t worth a row of beans to him, but a beggar was a big deal, and a workingman — why, a workingman was king, he was God’s gift to the world — the reason being, I gathered, that he worked.

“Still,” I would say, “when it comes to livelihoods, you can’t compare work to making money.”

That would get him so mad that he’d go all out to convince me that money was the root of all evil. All the monkey business in the world, he said, was due to it and nothing honest could ever come of it. And he would give me ten thousand proofs and demonstrations that stuck to me like a radish to a wall. “Stop talking like a madman,” I would say. “I suppose it’s dishonest of my cow to give milk and of my horse to pull my wagon for me?” I had some idiot question like that for every idiot statement that he made; trust Tevye not to let him get away with anything. If only Tevye hadn’t trusted Peppercorn!.. And he wasn’t embarrassed to speak his mind, either. One evening, for instance, as we were sitting on the front stoop of my house and philosophizing away, he says to me, “You know what, Reb Tevye? You have some wonderful daughters.”

“You don’t say!” I said. “Thanks for letting me know. They have a wonderful father to take after.”

“Especially your second eldest,” he says. “What a head she has! She’s perfection itself.”

“So what else is new?” I say. “The apple fell close to the tree.” Between you and me, though, my heart swelled with pleasure. Show me the father who doesn’t like to hear his kids praised! Was I a prophet that I should have known what a crazy love affair would come of it? Listen and I’ll tell you all about it.

In a word, vayehi erev vayehi voyker —one afternoon as I was making my rounds of the Boiberik dachas, someone hailed me in the street. I looked around to see who it was — why, it’s Efrayim the Matchmaker! Efrayim the Matchmaker, you should know, is a Jew who makes matches. “Begging your pardon, Reb Tevye,” he says, “but I’d like to have a word with you.”

“With pleasure,” I say, reining in my horse. “I hope it’s a good one.”

“Reb Tevye, you have a daughter,” he says.

“I have seven, God bless them,” I say.

“I know you do,” he says. “So do I.”

“In that case,” I say, “we have fourteen between the two of us.”

“All joking aside,” he says, “what I want to talk to you about is this: being as you know a matchmaker, I have a match for you — and not just any match either, but something really exclusive, extraprime and superfine!”

“Perhaps you can tell me,” I say, “what’s hiding under the label, because if it’s a tailor, a shoemaker, or a schoolteacher, he can save himself the trouble and so can I. Revakh vehatsoloh ya’amoyd layehudim mimokoym akher —thank you very kindly but I’ll look for a son-in-law elsewhere. It says in the Talmud that—”

“Good Lord, Reb Tevye,” he says, “are you starting in on the Talmud again? Before a body can talk with you, he has to spend a year boning up. The whole world is nothing but a page of Talmud to you. If I were you, I’d listen to the offer I’m about to make you, because it’s going to take your breath away.”

And with that he delivers himself of an after-dinner speech about the young man’s credentials. What can I tell you? Champagne and caviar! In the first place, he comes from the best of families, not from the hoi polloi — and that, I want you to know, is what matters most to me, because although we have all kinds in my family, akudim nekudim uvrudim —well-off folk, working folk, even some pretty common folk — I’m far from a nobody myself … Secondly, Efrayim tells me, his man can parse a verse with the best of them, he knows how to read the small print — and that’s no trifle with me either, because I’d sooner eat a buttered pig than sit down to a meal with an illiterate. A Jew who can’t read a Jewish book is a hundred times worse than a sinner. I don’t give a hoot if you go to synagogue or not; I don’t even care if you stand on your head and point your toes at the sky; as long as you can match me quote for quote and line for line, you’re a man after my own heart, that’s just the way Tevye is … And finally, says Efrayim, the fellow is rolling in money; why, he rides about in a droshky pulled by a pair of horses who leave a trail of smoke wherever they go — and that, I thought, is certainly no crime either. Any way you look at it, it’s an improvement on being poor. How does the Talmud put it? Yo’oh aniyuso leyisro’eyl , not even God likes a beggar. And the proof of it is that if He liked them, He wouldn’t make them beg …