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

“Amen!” Reuben says with a little smile on his very sunburned face, peeling from the sun. “Just give me a guarantee against windstorms, worms, and caterpillars, and I’ll give you more than you want.”

Menashe’che gives him a strange look up and down and then says to him in her mannish voice, “Give me a guarantee that you’ll leave here and won’t slip and break a leg.”

“No one is safe from slipping and breaking a leg!” says Reuben, and looks at her with his kind, smiling eyes. “That can happen to a rich man even quicker than to a poor man because a rich man has the money to pay to look after himself whether he has a broken leg or not.”

“You’re a clever man!” Menashe’che answers him sarcastically. “But a person who wishes for another to break his leg deserves to have his tongue wither and not know why.”

“Why not?” Reuben says with the same little smile. “So long as it isn’t in a poor man’s mouth when it withers.”

H.

It’s a shame that Reuben the apple man didn’t inherit the garden. He would have made it much more pleasant than that witch did. You don’t know how much trouble she’s caused. Let one wormy apple fall, even a dried-out one, wrinkled like an old lady’s face, and she’ll bend down, pick it up, tuck it into her apron, and take it away. Where does she take them? Apparently to the roof, or maybe to the cellar, probably to the cellar, because I heard that last year a whole cellar of apples turned rotten. So isn’t it a good deed to pick an apple from her tree?

Yes, but how do you pick them? To sneak into her garden at night when everyone’s asleep and stuff your pockets full certainly makes the most sense. But what would the dog say about it? And this summer, as if for spite, the apples are growing one on top of the other. They plead — they’re desperate to be picked! What can you do? If only I had some spell, some magic word, to make the apples come to me! I think and think until I figure it out — not a spell and not a magic word but something else — a stick, a long stick with a bent nail at the end.

With that stick you can find the little stem of an apple and pull it toward you, and the apple is yours. You just have to make sure to hold the stick so the apple doesn’t fall to the ground. And if the apple does fall, it’s still not a tragedy — she’ll think the wind knocked it off. But you mustn’t touch the apple itself with the bent nail — that’d bruise it. I swear, I’ve never bruised an apple. Nor has an apple ever fallen. For me apples don’t fall. I know how to angle the stick when I pick apples. Most important, you can’t hurry. What’s your rush? Once you have an apple, you eat it slowly, then rest awhile and pick another. I promise you, no one will ever know!

Who could foresee that the witch would count the apples while they were still on the tree! Apparently she counts them during the day and when she wakes up the next morning, she realizes some are missing. Then she hides in the attic and watches, to catch the thief. That’s what I think happened. Otherwise how could she have found out I was lying on Mendl the slaughterer’s roof and picking apples with my stick? If she’d caught me without a witness, I could have squirmed out of it — after all, I’m an orphan, and she might have taken pity on me. But no, she decides to invite my mother, our neighbor Pessi, and Mendl the slaughterer’s wife to join her up in her attic. (What won’t a witch think of?) From the attic they look out the little window and see me at work with my stick.

“ Nu? What do you have to say about that rascal of yours? Now do you believe me?”

Those words come from the doctor’s wife — I recognize her mannish voice. I turn my head toward the attic and see all four women. I don’t throw away the stick and the apple — they fall by themselves. It’s a wonder I don’t fall as well. I can’t look anyone in the eye. If the dog hadn’t been lying in the garden, I would’ve killed myself out of shame.

Worst of all are my mother’s tears. She laments and sobs and cries, “ Vey iz mir! Woe is me! That I would live to see this! I thought my orphan was going to shul to say kaddish for his father, but he was lying on a roof, may thunder strike me, picking apples from someone else’s garden!”

And the witch stands over her and adds in her mannish voice, “He should be whipped, the little demon! Flogged till the blood runs! A boy must know that this is what happens to a th—”

My mother doesn’t allow her to utter the word thief . “He’s an orphan, a poor orphan,” she pleads with the doctor’s wife. She kisses her hands and begs her to forgive me, it’ll never happen again! She swears with many oaths that this is the last time, otherwise may she herself die, or may she bury me!

“Let him swear that he will never so much as look into my garden,” the doctor’s wife demands with her mannish voice, without a drop of compassion for an orphan.

“May my hands wither! May my eyes fall out!” I say, and go home with my mother. She lectures me through her tears until finally I break down in tears myself.

“All I ask is, what will become of you?” my mother cries, and tells my brother Elyahu the whole sad story. My brother Elyahu hears out the story and turns pale, it seems out of anger. My mother sees he is mad at me and is afraid he might beat me. She whispers something in his ear, saying he shouldn’t beat me because I’m an orphan.

“Who’s touching him?” says my brother Elyahu. “I’d just like to know what will become of him? What’s to become of him?!”

My brother Elyahu gnashes his teeth and rivets his eyes on me to make sure I see him while he’s demanding what will become of me. Do I know what will become of me? Maybe you know what will become of me?

A.

Mazel tov! Do you know why? My brother Elyahu is getting married!

My, oh my, what’s going on! The town’s in an uproar. The world is quaking! So says our neighbor Fat Pessi. She says it’ll be a grand wedding such as hasn’t been seen in our town for a long time!

Why all the fuss? Some of it’s out of pity, because my mother is a widow and the bridegroom is an orphan. And some of it’s out of respect for my father’s reputation. My father, may he rest in peace, left behind a good name! While he was alive no one ever spoke highly of Peysi the cantor, but ever since his death he is praised to the skies!

People tell my mother that the bride’s father can afford to pay for the expenses plus more. He mustn’t forget that he’s getting Peysi the cantor’s son for a son-in-law! When my brother Elyahu hears this, he becomes embarrassed and strokes his little beard like a grown man. He is grown up! Not too long ago his beard began to sprout. Surely that came from smoking. After our father died, he started to smoke. At first he gagged on the smoke and coughed. Now he can inhale and blow the smoke out through his nose. That’s quite a trick!

Do you think I can’t do that? The only problem is, I don’t have tobacco. So I smoke whatever I can get hold of — paper or straw. My brother Elyahu caught me at it and gave me what for! He may smoke, but I may not! But is it my fault that I’m not yet nine years old? I promised him, swore on the Bible, that I wouldn’t smoke anymore. How long do you think I kept my word?

I ask you, who doesn’t smoke nowadays?

B.

Soon the world will turn upside down. So says our neighbor Pessi. She came back from visiting the bride’s father in a rage. It’s an ugly story. The father had bought the bridegroom a fob watch as a gift. Then he found out the groom didn’t have it anymore. It was a genuine silver fob watch. What happened to it? Did my brother lose it playing cards, God forbid? No, he sold it and used the money for doctors and medicines to try to save my father’s life. So argues Pessi. But the bride’s father is a crude, unfeeling man. What do people’s fathers have to do with his fob watch? he objects. He is not obliged, he says, to support other people’s fathers with his fob watches. One measly fob watch suddenly became “fob watches,” and one poor father becomes “fathers”! Pessi says, what can you expect? From a pig’s tail you can’t make a fur hat! She means the bride’s father. He remains a crude, unfeeling person.