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

So I poured my heart out to my daughter. But she is, after all, female, and she asked, “Where can we go on such short notice? Where can we find a city to live in?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I said. “When God came to our great-great-grandfather Abraham and told him, Get thee gone from thence, you must leave your native land —did Abraham ask him, ‘Where to?’ God said, to the land of Arad. We will go wherever our eyes take us, wherever all Jews go! What will be for all the children of Israel will be for us.

“And what makes you think you are better than your sister Beilke? It isn’t beneath her dignity to be with her Podhotsur in America, scraping out a living, so it shouldn’t be beneath yours either. Let us thank God, blessed be He,” I said, “that we have the means with which to set out. We still have some money from before, and a little from selling the cows, and some will come from the house. It all adds up, and may it be for the best! And even if we had, God forbid, nothing,” I said, “we are still better off than Mendel Beiliss!”

In short, I convinced her not to be obstinate. When the constable brings a decree telling you to leave, I explained, you can’t be piggish; you must go. Then I went into the village to sell my house.

I went straight to Ivan Poperilo the mayor, a fat goy who I knew was dying to buy my house. I didn’t give him any explanations — a Jew is smarter than a goy. “You should know, Ivan, my friend, I am leaving,” I told him.

He asked me why.

I said, “I am moving to the city. I want to be among Jews. I am no longer a young man, and I might die at any time.”

Ivan said, “So why can’t you die here? Who is stopping you?”

I thanked him warmly. “Better you should die here,” I said. “You’re more deserving, and I will go die among my own. Buy my house and my garden from me. I wouldn‘t sell it to anyone but you.”

“How much are you asking for your house?”

“How much are you offering?”

Back and forth, up a coin, down a coin, we haggled until we reached a price and shook hands on it. I took a nice down payment so he wouldn’t change his mind. A Jew is smarter than a goy. And that was how I sold my house and all my belongings in one day, dirt cheap, but still making a bit of a profit. I went off to hire a wagon to cart off the remainder of my poor household goods. But just listen to something that can only happen to Tevye. I won’t keep you long, but listen carefully and I’ll tell it to you, as you say, in three words.

I came home to find, not a house, but a wreck, the poor walls bare, as if they were shedding tears for all that was happening to them! On the floor were piles, bundles everywhere! On the hearth the cat perched, sorrowful as a poor orphan. My heart almost broke, and tears sprang to my eyes. Had I not been embarrassed before my daughter, I would have had a good cry! Here was where I had grown up, here I had struggled all my life, and suddenly— Lech l’cho —get thee gone! Say what you will, it’s a terrible loss!

But Tevye is not a woman. I straightened up, put on a cheerful face, and called out, “Come here, Tzeitl. Where are you?” She stepped out of the other room, her eyes red and her nose puffy. Aha, I thought, she’d been bawling again, like a woman on Yom Kippur! These women, do you hear, as soon as something happens, they weep! Tears are cheap to them! “You silly,” I said to her, “why are you crying again? Aren’t you being foolish? Just think of the difference between you and Mendel Beiliss.”

She didn’t want to hear that. “Papa, you don’t know why I’m crying,” she said.

“I know very well,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I know? You’re crying because you’re sad to leave your home. You were born here and grew up here, and so you are sad. Believe me,” I said, “if I weren’t Tevye, if I were somebody else, I would kiss these bare walls and these empty shelves. I would get down on my knees on the earth. I will miss every little thing the same as you. Even the cat,” I said, “is sitting on the hearth like an orphan. It’s a dumb animal, and yet I have pity on her. She will remain alone without someone to care for her, a forsaken creature.”

“There is, I must tell you,” she said, “a greater sorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are leaving someone behind who will be as alone as a bare stone.”

What did she mean? “What are you babbling about? Which person? What stone?”

“Papa, I am not talking about our leaving. I am talking about our Chava.”

When she uttered that name, I swear to you, it was as if hot boiling water had been poured over me or a block of wood had hit me on the head! I fell upon Tzeitl in a rage. “Why do you suddenly bring up Chava? I told you how many times that Chava for me is no longer alive!”

Do you think that frightened her? Not one bit! Tevye’s daughters have great strength in them!

“Papa,” she said, “stop being so angry, and remember what you yourself said so many times. It is written that a human being must have pity for another like a father for a child.”

Do you hear those words? I became even more enraged and lit into her, as she deserved. “You are speaking to me of pity? Where was her pity when I was stretched out like a dog before the priest, cursed be his name, kissed his feet, while she was in the next room and heard every word? And where was her pity when her mother, may she rest in peace, was lying right here on the ground covered in black? Where was she then? And the nights I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “And the heartache that gnaws at me to this very day when I remember what she did to me and for whom she forsook us? Where is her pity for me?” My heart was breaking, and I could no longer speak.

But Tevye’s daughter found an answer. “You yourself, Papa,” she said, “have said that a person who is sorry for what he has done, even God must forgive.”

“Sorry?” I said. “It’s too late! The branch once torn from the tree must wither! The leaf that has fallen to the ground must shrivel. Do not say any more to me about it— thus far and no more! ”

When she realized that words were of no use, that she could not win Tevye over with words, she threw her arms around me and began kissing my hands. “Papa, may I suffer, may I die right here on the spot if you cast her off again as you did there in the woods when she ran back to you and you turned your horse away and sped off!”

“Why are you tormenting me? Why are you torturing me like this? What do you want of me?”

But she would not let go — she gripped me by the hands and pleaded her case. “May evil come to me, may I perish if you do not forgive her,” she said. “Because she is your daughter, just as I am!”

“What do you want of me?” I said. “She is no longer my daughter! She died long ago!”

“No, she didn’t die, and she is your daughter again as always. Because from the first minute she found out we were being sent away, she decided they would send all of us, she too along with us. Wherever we go — so Chava herself said — she will go. Our exile is her exile. Here is the proof,” she said. “Here is her bundle on the floor.” My daughter Tzeitl said this to me in one breath, the way we recite the ten sons of Haman in the Megillah, not letting me get in a word, and pointed to a bundle wrapped in a red shawl. Then she flung open the door to the other room and called out, “Chava!”

And what can I tell you, dear friend? Just as you describe in your books, Chava appeared from the other room — healthy, tall, and lovely as she always was, unchanged except for her face, which wore a worried look, her eyes sad. Holding her head high with pride, she remained standing, and she looked at me as I did at her. Then she stretched out her arms to me and could only utter one word, one word only, softly: