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

“If Papa asks you anything, you should say, ‘Thank God!’ ” says my mother.

My brother Elyahu explains further. “You’re not to complain. Don’t tell any stories. Just say ‘Thank God.’ Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

And my brother Elyahu leads me into the sickroom. The table is covered with bottles, pillboxes, and cupping bottles. It smells of medicines. The window is shut. In honor of Shevuos they’ve decorated the room with green sprigs, and above his bed they’ve hung a Star of David made of flowers, my brother Elyahu’s handiwork. The floor is covered with fragrant grass.

My father sees me and beckons me to him with a long, thin finger. My brother Elyahu gives me a shove from behind. I go to my father. I can barely recognize him. His face is like clay. His gray hair shines, and the hairs stand on end as if they were someone else’s that had just been stuck in. His black eyes are sunk deep into his head as if they belonged to someone else and had been screwed in. His teeth look as if someone else’s had been put in his mouth. His neck is so scrawny, it can barely hold the weight of his head. It’s a good thing he can’t sit. His lips are moving oddly like a person swimming: “mpfu!” He lays a hot hand of bony fingers on my face and smiles a twisted, crooked smile like that of a corpse.

At this point my mother comes into the room, followed by the doctor, the cheerful swarthy doctor with the large mustache. He greets me like an old friend, honoring me with a flick to the belly. Then he says cheerfully to my father, “You have a guest for Shevuos? God love you and your guest!”

“Thank you!” says my mother, and nods to the doctor to attend to the patient and write out a prescription for him.

The swarthy doctor throws open the window and scolds my brother Elyahu for keeping it shut. “I’ve told you a thousand times that a window wants to be open!”

My brother Elyahu nods toward my mother, indicating that she’s the guilty one: she won’t allow the window to be opened for fear my father might catch cold, God forbid. My mother nods to the doctor to get on with the examination and to write out a prescription for him.

The swarthy doctor takes out a large gold fob watch. My brother Elyahu looks with wide eyes at the doctor’s fob watch. The doctor notices this. “Do you want to know what time it is? It’s four minutes before ten-thirty. What does your watch say?”

“My watch has stopped,” my brother Elyahu answers, and turns very red from the tip of his nose to the back of his ears.

My mother can’t stand still. She’s anxious to have the patient examined and a prescription written. But the doctor has time. He questions my mother about minor things: When is my brother’s wedding? And what does Hersh-Ber the cantor have to say about my voice? I must have a good voice. A voice, he says, is inherited. My mother is bursting!

Suddenly the doctor turns his chair to my sick father and takes his hot, dry hand in his. “ Nu, cantor, how are the prayers for this Shevuos?”

“Thank God!” my father answers him with the smile of a corpse.

“For instance, have you coughed less? Have you slept well?” The doctor bends over very close to him.

“No!” my father answers, barely able to catch his breath. “On the contrary. . I’m coughing. . and I’m not sleeping. . but thank God. . it’s Shevuos. . such a day. . we received the Torah. . today we have a guest. . a guest for Shevuos.”

Everyone looks at the “guest,” and the “guest” looks down at the ground, and his mind is outdoors somewhere by the logs, by the thorns that stick, by the puffballs that pop open, by the neighbor’s clever little calf who has suddenly become a “dumb animal,” by the pond that rushes downhill, or way up in the higher, wider, deeper blue skullcap that is called the sky.

H.

The little bit of dairy dish that our neighbor Fat Pessi lent us actually comes in very handy. I and my brother Elyahu make a feast of it. We dip fresh challah in the cold sour cream, and it isn’t bad at all.

“Only one problem — there’s too little of it,” comments my brother Elyahu, who on this day is in very high spirits, so much so that he gives me permission not to go back so soon to Hersh-Ber the cantor and to stay and play some more at home.

“You’re our Shevuos guest,” he tells me, and lets me play outside on the logs, on the condition that I not climb on them too long and, God forbid, rip my only pair of pants.

Ha ha ha! I shouldn’t rip my only pair of pants? Too bad there’s no one to laugh along, as I’m a Jew! You should see those pants! Better not talk about pants! Better to talk of Rich Yossi’s logs. Ay, logs, logs! Rich Yossi believes the logs are his logs. Not at all! They’re my logs! I built myself a palace out of them and a vineyard. I’m the prince. The prince walks around freely and openly in his own vineyard, tears off a puffball, bangs it on his forehead, tears off another one and bangs it on his forehead, and everyone envies me. Even Rich Yossi’s son, Cross-Eyed Henich, begrudges me my good luck. He passes me by in his shiny new clothes and points to my pants. Laughing, he squints his crossed eye and says to me, “Make sure you don’t lose something. . ”

“You’d better go away nicely,” I say to him, “or else I’ll tell my brother Elyahu!”

All the boys have respect for my brother Elyahu. Cross-Eyed Henich backs off, and I’m again alone, again the prince in my own vineyard. It’s just too bad that Meni our neighbor’s calf isn’t here! He’s no longer a calf, but now a dumb animal, as our neighbor Pessi says. What does that mean? And why did they sell him to the butcher? Could it be to slaughter him? Was he born only to be slaughtered? Anyway, why is a calf born, and why is a person born?

Suddenly from the house I hear a strange scream and loud crying. It’s my mother’s voice. I raise my eyes. People are running in and out of the house, men and women, this one out, that one in. I lie on a log belly down. I’m fine! But hush! Here comes Rich Yossi. Rich Yossi is a trustee of the butchers’ shul, where my father has been the cantor for twenty-three years. Yossi himself was once a butcher. Today he deals in oxen and hides and is rich, very rich!

Yossi waves his hands and scolds my mother, complaining, “In God’s name! Why didn’t anyone tell me that Peysi the cantor was so sick?”

“Should I shout it?” my mother defends herself through her tears. “The whole town saw how I was struggling, how I tried to save him, and he himself begged to be saved.”

My mother can no longer speak. She wrings her hands, and her head falls back in a faint.

My brother Elyahu catches her. “Mama! Why do you need to defend yourself? Mama! Don’t forget, Mama, it’s yontiff, it’s Shevuos, you aren’t allowed to cry, Mama!”

Rich Yossi keeps firing away at my mother. “What are you telling me — the whole town! Who is the town? You should have told me ! In the name of God, me! I take care of everything — the burial society, beadles, shrouds, I take care of everything! And if you need something for the orphans, you should come to me! Don’t be ashamed!”

Rich Yossi’s words hardly calm my mother. She keeps on keening and fainting in my brother Elyahu’s arms.

And my brother Elyahu, who himself is crying, doesn’t stop reminding her that today is yontiff. “Mama, today is Shevuos, Mama! Mama, you aren’t allowed to cry, Mama!”

And suddenly it’s all clear to me. And I feel a pain in my heart, a tug at my soul, and I feel like crying, but I don’t know for whom. I feel pity for my mother. I can’t bear how she’s crying and fainting and falling into my brother’s arms.