Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son

“What, did you think I’d let myself be pushed around by a woman? I should live by your female reasoning?”

And with such conversations the night passed for us. At last came the first crow of the rooster. I got up, said my prayers, took my whip, and went directly to the priest’s house. A woman is truly a woman, but where else could I go? Should I bury myself alive?

To make a long story short, his dogs welcomed me with a fine good morning by preparing to ruin my caftan and taste my Jewish calves to see if they were good enough for their dogs’ teeth. Luckily I had brought along my whip and gave them to understand the quote Not a dog shall bark —a dog should have something to bark about. Hearing their barking and my shouting, the priest and his wife ran out, shooed off the happy throng, and invited me into the house. They received me as a guest and offered tea. I said the samovar wasn’t necessary, I had something to say to him, between the two of us. The priest understood and signaled to his wife to kindly shut the door behind her. I came to the point without any fanfare, asking him, first of all, if he believed in God. Then I asked him whether he knew how it felt to separate a father from a beloved child. Also I asked him what in his opinion was right and what was wrong, and what he would think of a person who stole into someone’s house and wrecked it.

Naturally he was confused by all my questions. “Tevel, you are an intelligent person — why do you ask so many questions at a time and expect me to answer them all at once? Be patient, and I will answer them all, the first one first and the last one last.”

“No,” I said to him, “you will never answer them, little father. Do you know why? Because I already know all your answers. Just tell me this: is there any hope I will get my child back?”

He sat up. “What do you mean, back? Nothing bad, God forbid, will happen to your daughter. On the contrary!”

“I know, I know you want to make her happy! I am not speaking of that,” I said. “I want to know where my child is and if I can see her.”

“Everything yes,” he said, “but not that.”

“At least you are being frank,” I said, “speaking the truth as it really is! Farewell, and may God repay you in equal measure and twice as much!”

I came home and found my Golde curled up like a black ball of yarn in bed, having no more tears to shed. “Get up, my wife. Take off your shoes and let us sit shiva, as God commanded. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away —we are neither the first nor the last. Let us imagine,” I said, “that we never had a Chava, or let us imagine that, like Hodl, she left for the ends of the earth, and who knows if we shall ever see her again. God is compassionate and good and knows what He is doing! ”

Thus I bared my heart as the tears choked me like a bone stuck in my throat. But Tevye is no woman, Tevye controls himself! As you know, that’s easy to say, because, first of all, the shame! But how could I control myself when I was losing a living child, a precious gem of a child who was deeply embedded in my heart and her mother’s heart, almost more than the other children, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because she was sickly as a child and went through so much. We often sat up with her entire nights, several times snatching her from the jaws of death, reviving her as you would revive a crushed chick, because if God wills it, He brings the dead to life. As we say in the Hallel: I shall not die, but I will live —if you are not fated to die, you won’t die. Or maybe it was because she was such a good child, so devoted, who always loved us both. So the question was, how could she do this to us?

It was, first of all, our bad luck. I don’t know about you, but I believe in Providence. And second of all, it was something evil, foreordained, do you hear? A kind of sorcery! You may laugh at me — and I am not so great a fool as to believe in elves, demons, ghosts, and other such nonsense. But I do believe in magic, you see, because what else would explain it if not magic? Just listen further, and you will say the same.

When the holy books say, Regardless of thy will, thou livest, they know what they are talking about. A person does not take his own life. There is no affliction that does not in time heal, and no sorrow that is not forgotten. What can you do about it? Man is like the beasts that perish —a man must work, toil, slave, and suffer for a piece of bread.

What else was there to do? We all went back to work, my wife and children to the milk jugs, I to the horse and wagon. The world goes on its accustomed course —the world does not stand still. I told everyone in the household that Chava was not to be remembered or mentioned — no more Chava! erased! — and that was it. I gathered up some dairy, fresh merchandise, and went off to my customers in Boiberik.

When I arrived in Boiberik, my customers celebrated and rejoiced to see me. “How is our Reb Tevye? Why don’t we see you anymore?”

“How should I be?” I said. “ We renew our days as of old —the same shlimazel as before. One of my calves died.”

“Why is it,” they said, “that all the miracles happen to you?” And the crowd, one after another, grilled me about what kind of calf had died, and how much it cost me. How many calves did I have left? They laughed and were cheerful as usual. Rich folks enjoy teasing a poor man, a shlimazel, after a meal, when they are in good spirits and the weather is fine and it is hot and green and they feel like snoozing. But Tevye can take a joke. I would rather die than let on what is going on in my heart!

I finished up with my customers and started back for home with the empty milk jugs. While riding through the woods, I loosened the horse’s reins, to let him go slowly and enjoy nibbling grass. And I sank into my own thoughts, meditating on what you will — life and death, this world and the next, the meaning of life, and other such thoughts — in order to distract myself from her, my Chava. But just for spite, all I could think about was Chava.

I pictured her as she was now, tall and pretty and fresh as a young pine, or even as she was as a small child, sickly and frail as a little chick in my hands, her little head lying on my shoulder. “What do you want, Chava’le? A piece of candy?” I’d ask. Forgetting for a moment what she had done, my heart was drawn to her, my soul yearned for her, longed for her. But then I remembered, and a rage ignited in my heart against her and against him and against the whole world and against myself because I could not forget for a minute. Why couldn’t I erase her, tear her from my heart? Didn’t she deserve it from me?

So did Tevye really have to be a Jew among Jews? to slave all his days, with his nose to the grindstone, to raise children who would in an instant rip themselves from him, fall like an acorn from a tree, and be swept off by wind and smoke? Here grows a tree, an oak in the woods, I thought, and a man comes along with an ax, chops off a branch, and another branch, and another. What is the tree without the branches? I ask him. Why don’t you go and chop down the tree altogether, let there be an end to it? What good is an oak trunk standing naked and bare in the woods?!

As I was pondering this question, I realized my horse had suddenly stopped. What was going on? I lifted my eyes and looked — Chava! She was the same Chava as before, not changed by a hair, even wearing the same clothes! My first impulse was to jump off the wagon, take her in my arms, and kiss her, but a thought held me back: Tevye, what are you, a woman? So I pulled on the reins—“Giddyap, shlimazel !”—and turned right. I looked, and Chava was also turning right, waving her hand as if to say: “Stop awhile, I have to tell you something.”