Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

In a word, vayomos Moysheh —Motl passed on and left me with a pretty kettle of fish to fry. How could I even think of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when I had a house full of little pilgrims myself? You can’t just let your widowed daughter and all her orphans go hungry — although on the other hand, I was about as much use to them as a sack full of holes. I couldn’t bring Tsaytl’s husband back to life for her, or restore the children’s father from the dead; I was a mere mortal myself, and an old one at that, who wanted only to rest his weary bones and feel for once that he was a human being and not a donkey. I had had enough of this workaday, dog-eat-dog world; it was high time to start thinking of the next one. And besides, I had already held a clearance sale of everything I owned; my horse, as you know, was given his walking papers, and every one of my cows was sold too, except, that is, for two little calves, who needed their victuals if anything was to come of them … and now, all of a sudden, here I was running an orphanage in my old age, the father of a house full of children! And do you think that was all? Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions. The real music hasn’t begun yet, because it never rains in Tevye’s life but it pours, like that time a cow of mine died and another cow thought it such a grand notion that the next day she went and died too … Well, that’s how God chose to make this world of His, and that’s how it always will be. Why spit into the wind?

In short, I told you how my youngest daughter Beilke struck it rich by landing that fat cat of a Podhotzur who made a pile as a war contractor. He heard of her from Efrayim the Matchmaker, damn his soul, fell for her head over heels, and went down so hard on his knees to ask me for her hand that he nearly split his shins. And he took her without a penny’s dowry, and rained pearls and diamonds on her too — you’d normally call that a stroke of good luck, wouldn’t you? Well, all that luck, let me tell you, went right down the drain in the end — and what a drain it was, God save us all from such a filthy mess! When He decides to give the wheel of fortune a spin so that the butter side is down, it’s like reciting the hallel prayer: you can’t say mekimi , “He who raiseth the lowly,” without adding mi’ofor dal , “from the dirt”—and bang, that’s just where you find yourself, right smack on your bottom again! Oh, God likes to play games with us, He does. He’s got a favorite He plays with Tevye called Oylim Veyordim , which means in plain language Upsy-Daisy — now you’re up, and now you’re pushing daisies … which is exactly what happened to that contractor. Perhaps you remember my telling you about his seventeen servants and his little mansion with its mirrors, clocks, and toys. La-di-da! You may also remember my asking my Beilke — begging her, in fact — to make sure he bought the house outright and registered it in her name. Well, she listened to me the way a dead man listens in the grave. What does a father know about such things? Nothing times nothing, of course! And do you know what happened in the end? Exactly what you’d wish on your worst enemy! He not only went so broke that he had to sell every last clock and mirror, even the pearls and diamonds he bought my Beilke, he had to run for dear life from his creditors too, and light out for never-never land — I mean for America, where else do all the hard-luck cases go? And don’t think they had it easy there, either. They ran out of what little money was left, and when the larder was empty they had to go to work — and I do mean work, the worst sort of slave labor, just like we Jews did in Egypt, both him and her! Lately, she writes, things are looking up, thank God; they’re both making socks in a sweatshop and doing well; which means in American that they’re breaking their backs to keep the wolf from the door … although the lucky thing is, she writes, that there are only two of them, they haven’t any little mouths to feed. What doesn’t go by the name of luck these days! I ask you, doesn’t his great-aunt’s grand-uncle deserve to break a leg?… No, I don’t mean that Podhotzur, I mean Efrayim the Matchmaker, for palming off such a match on me and getting us all into this pickle! Would it have been such a tragedy if my Beilke had married a workingman like my Tsaytl or a tutor like my Hodl? Not that they’re sitting on top of the world themselves … one is a widow and the other is in Outer Nowhere … but these things come from God, a man can’t do anything about them. Would you like to know something? The most sensible one of us all was my Golde. She saw what was coming and decided to clear out of this ridiculous world in time, because she knew it was a thousand times better to be breakfasted on by the worms than to go through what her Tevye has gone through with his daughters. Well, you know what our rabbis said: be’al korkhekho atoh khai —no one asks you if you want to live or not, and neither would you, if only you minded your own business …

I can see I’ve digressed, though. Nakhzor le’inyoneynu harishon , then — let’s leave the prince on his horse, as you writers like to say, and see what the princess is up to. Where were we? Yes, in the chapter of Lekh-Lekho. But before we get to Lekh-Lekho, suppose we have a look, if you don’t mind, at the story of the Amalekites in the Book of Exodus. I know that the way things are done in this world, and the way they always have been, Genesis comes before Exodus, but in this case the Amalekites came first. And I suggest you listen to the lesson they taught me, because it may come in useful some day.

In short, let’s go back to the days after the Japanese war, when the Constantution was in the headlines and we Jews were having a fine old time of it, first in the big cities and then in the smaller towns to which the pogroms spread. They never reached my own village, though, and they never could have. Would you like to know why not? For the simple reason that I was the only Jew among Christians and on good terms with every one of them. Why, Uncle Tevel was king of the roost there, a friend in need and indeed! Did someone want advice? “Let’s go ask Tevel.” A remedy for baldness? “Tevel’s sure to know.” A little loan to tide him over? Try Tevel again. Why be afraid of a silly thing like a pogrom when my Christian neighbors had promised me over and over that I had nothing to worry about — they simply wouldn’t allow it. And in the end they didn’t. Listen to a crazy story.

One day when I came home from Boiberik — I was in my heyday then, selling cheese, cream, butter, and such stuff — I unharnessed my horse, gave him some hay and oats, and was about to wash up and have a bite myself when what do I see in my front yard but a big mob of peasants. The whole village was there from top to bottom, from Ivan Paparilo the elder to Trokhim the shepherd, all with an odd holiday air. For a second my heart skipped a beat, because I knew there was no holiday in sight. They’ve come to give you a Bible lesson, I thought, and “Then came Amalek and fought with Israel” is their text … only then I thought again: shame on you, Tevye! They may be Christians and you may be a Jew, but you’ve lived your whole life peacefully among them without a hair of your head being harmed. And so I stepped outside and acted my friendliest. “Welcome!” I said to them. “What brings you here, dear neighbors? What’s the good word? What’s new in the world?”

“We’ve come to you, Tevel,” says Ivan Paparilo, stepping forward and getting right down to it, “because we want to have a pogrom.”

How’s that for an opener? There’s nothing like breaking it gently!

Well, I don’t have to tell you what I felt like. Don’t think I let them see it, though. Far from it: Tevye was no crybaby. “Congratulations!” I said to them in my cheeriest voice. “What’s taken you so long, though, my children? Everywhere else the pogroms are already over.”