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

He says to her, “Before I turn to them, I’d rather die! I’d rather die this day!”

“Bite your tongue, idiot! What are you talking about?” my mother chastises him under her breath, clenching her teeth, raising her hands as if to slap him. But she soon softens and says to him, “What shall I do, my son? My heart is breaking for your father.

We must save him!”

“Sell something,” my brother Elyahu says, glancing at the glass cupboard.

My mother looks at the same cupboard, then wipes her eyes. “What shall I sell, my soul? There’s nothing left to sell. Shall I sell the bare cupboard?”

“Why not?” says my brother Elyahu.

“Murderer!” my mother answers, her eyes reddening. “Where did I get such a murderous child?”

My mother grows angry, has a good cry, wipes her eyes, and quickly apologizes. That’s also the way it was with the books, the silver-threaded collar of the prayer shawl, the two gilded little beakers, her silk dress, and all the other things we sold off one at a time, each to a different buyer.

The books were bought by Michl the book peddler, a Jew with a sparse little beard that he keeps on scratching. My poor brother Elyahu had to seek him out three times before he agreed to accompany him home. My mother was thrilled to see him and indicated with her finger that he speak quietly so my father wouldn’t hear.

Michl understood, looked up at the shelf, and scratched under his little beard. “Well, show me what you have there.”

With a nod my mother indicated that I should get up on the table and hand down the books. She didn’t have to repeat it. I leaped up with such zeal that I landed flat out on the table and received an extra warning from my brother Elyahu to stop jumping around like a monkey. He then got onto the table himself and handed Michl the books.

Michl leafed through them with one hand while scratching his beard with the other, calling our attention to defects. Here the binding wasn’t good, there the spine was gnawed. In one case he decided the book wasn’t even a book.

After he finished looking over all the books, examining all the bindings and all the spines, he scratched his beard. “If these were a set of Mishnahs, I’d probably buy them,” he said.

My mother looked as if she would pass out.

My brother Elyahu, quite otherwise, became red as fire. He turned on the book peddler. “Couldn’t you have said in the first place that you buy only Mishnahs! Why did you come here to waste our time and fool with us?”

“Be quiet!” my mother pleaded with him.

A hoarse voice came from the alcove where my father was lying: “Who’s there?”

“No one is here!” my mother answered and sent my brother to him while she dealt with Michl the book peddler, agreeing to sell him the books for very little. This I figured out because when my brother Elyahu came back from my father’s alcove and asked her, “How much?” she pushed him away and said, “It’s none of your business!” Michl quickly grabbed the books, stuffed them in a sack, and hurried off.

C.

Of all the household things we sold, nothing has given me as much pleasure as the glass cupboard.

True, when the silver-threaded collar on my father’s prayer shawl needed to be ripped apart, it was a bit of holiday for me. First of all, my mother negotiated with Yossi the goldsmith, a pale Jew with a red birthmark spread on his face. Three times he walked out, but he finally had his way. Then he sat down, crossed his legs facing the window with my father’s prayer shawl on his lap, pulled out a small knife with a yellow deer’s horn handle, and bent his middle finger. He ripped the collar apart so skillfully that if I could rip collars apart like that, I’d count myself lucky! But you should have seen my mother — she broke into tears. Even my brother Elyahu, engaged to be married, turned his head to the door, pretended to blow his nose, screwed up his face, and let out a weird sound from his throat. Then he wiped his eyes with the hem of his jacket.

“What’s going on there?” my father asked from his sickroom.

“Nothing!” my mother answered him, and wiped her red eyes. Her lower lip and face trembled so that one had to be stronger than iron not to burst out laughing.

But what did that have to do with the glass cupboard?

First of all, what can they mean when they say they’ll take it away? How will they be able to remove it? I always thought our glass cupboard was part of the wall. Second, where will my mother keep the bread and the challah and the dishes and the tin spoons and forks? (We once had two silver spoons and a fork but my mother sold them long ago.) Where will we keep the Passover matzos? This is what I’m thinking while Nachman the carpenter stands before us measuring the cupboard with the big red thumbnail of his stained hand. He insists that the cupboard won’t make it through the door. To prove it, he extends his arms: here’s the width of the cupboard, and here’s the door. Try and get it to fit through!

“How did it get in?” asks my brother Elyahu.

“Go ask it!” Nachman answers angrily. “Do I know how it got in? They carried it in, and it got in!”

At one moment I’m afraid for the cupboard — that is, I think it’s going to stay with us. But Nachman the carpenter soon returns with his two big sons, also carpenters. First comes Nachman, then both sons, and behind them — me. They grab hold of our cupboard. Their father gives the orders: “Kopl, to the side! Mendl, right! Kopl, take it easy! Mendl, stop!” I help them by hopping from one foot to the other. My mother and brother Elyahu don’t want to help. They stand there staring at the now-bare wall, covered with spiderwebs, and cry. That’s all they do — cry! Suddenly — crash! Just as they get to the door, the glass smashes, and the carpenter and his sons begin arguing, each blaming the other:

“You move like a lead bird!” “Bear feet!” “The devil take him!”

“Break your head, may an evil spirit take you!”

“What’s going on there?” a hoarse voice is heard from the sickroom.

“Nothing!” my mother answers and wipes her eyes.

D.

But it’s my brother Elyahu’s bed and my little cot that give me the greatest pleasure. My brother Elyahu’s bed was once a sofa for sitting on, but when he got engaged to be married, he began sleeping on the sofa next to me on the cot, so the sofa became a bed. In the good years when my father was healthy and chanted the musaf prayers in the butchers’ small synagogue with four choristers, the sofa had springs, but no more. The springs were now mine. I did all kinds of tricks with them: I bruised my hands, I almost poked out an eye, and once I wrapped them around my neck and came close to strangling myself, until my brother Elyahu tossed the springs into the attic and took away the ladder.

Chana buys the bed-once-a-sofa and the cot. My mother won’t allow her to look too closely at them. “What you see is what you buy. There’s nothing to look for!”

But once Chana sets a price and makes a deposit, she goes over to the bed and the cot and lifts the bedding. Slowly she looks in all the hidden corners, then spits hard.

My mother is offended by the spitting and wants to give back the deposit, but my brother Elyahu steps in. “Once it’s sold, it’s final!”

We now lay out our bedding directly on the floor. I and my brother Elyahu stretch out like royalty, covering ourselves with one blanket (they sold his). It’s very pleasant for me to hear my older brother say that sleeping on the floor isn’t so bad after all.

I wait till he has recited his evening prayers and has fallen asleep, and then I begin rolling all over the floor. Thank God there is plenty of room to roll on the floor, as wide as a field, a real pleasure, a paradise!