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

Once when I’m visiting my brother, he catches me helping myself to an egg bagel. The bagel is fresh and warm, straight from the oven. The devil himself must have sent Yoneh the baker to catch me. You should have seen his furious face and his blazing eyes! From then on I never go back there. I will never again set foot in that place, even if I am paid in gold! That a man will grab you by the collar and throw you out the door with three swift kicks to your rear! I tell my mother what happened, and she runs right over there — she wants to give Yoneh what he richly deserves.

But my brother Elyahu doesn’t allow it. He agrees with Yoneh and complains to my mother that I have shamed him. Whenever I visit him, he says, I eat bagels. He’d rather give me a kopek and let me go somewhere else to buy a bagel. My mother tells him he doesn’t have a drop of compassion for me. He doesn’t care at all that I am an orphan. My brother Elyahu tells her that even orphans aren’t allowed to grab a bagel from someone else’s oven.

My mother warns him to speak a little more quietly. My brother Elyahu says he’ll shout to make sure everyone knows I’m a thief.

The word thief my mother can’t bear to hear. She turns all colors and warns my brother not to forget that there is a God in heaven. You don’t play with God. God will not be silent. He’s the Father of orphans. He’ll take an orphan’s part. He is a great God and can do anything. If God wishes, Yoneh the baker will not be worth one bagel! Thus she ends her speech to my brother Elyahu, takes me by the hand, and slams the door. We go home.

B.

Listen, it’s really true, you can’t play with God! Wait till you hear what happened to Yoneh the baker. I did tell you that Yoneh does not do the baking. Two swarthy men and three women from elsewhere do it for him. The women are shabby and scabby and wear sweaty red kerchiefs on their heads no matter how hot the weather is.

Strange things started happening. Customers complained that they were finding long threads, ribbons, cockroaches, and shards of glass in their rolls. One Gentile customer brought the baker a whole handful of black hair that he’d bitten into. This Christian frightened Yoneh the baker, especially when he threatened to call the police. They checked the bakers’ hair, trying to discover whose hair matched the hair found. The men blamed the women; the women blamed the men. The women pointed out that they all had blond hair. The men said, “Where did you ever see such long hair on a man?” The women quarreled among themselves, and some interesting things came to light: one had lost a garter in the challah, and another had kneaded a bandage from a cut finger into the dough. Another had used the challah dough as a pillow. The one accused solemnly swore it was a lie, then finally confessed that it had happened only once or twice, since she didn’t own a pillow.

The entire town was in turmoil. Poor Yoneh the baker had his hands full. Calling on God didn’t help. No one wanted to touch his baked goods! He might as well throw it to the dogs! Served him right!

C.

But Yoneh the baker is a clever man with a spine. He fired all the bakers, men and women alike, and hired other bakers. He asked the shuls to announce on Shabbes that he had hired new bakers, and from that time on he would personally ensure that everything was scrubbed and clean. He offered a ten-ruble reward to anyone who found as much as a single hair in his challah. From then on he began making money. The customers looked for hair in his baked goods but never found any. Even if they did find something and brought it to him, he chased them away. He said they had put it on the bread on purpose in order to get the ten-ruble reward. We know these tricks! Some clever fellow, this Yoneh the baker!

But God was intent on getting even with him and sent him a new disaster. One fine morning all the new bakers packed their gear and left. They would no longer bake for him for the same money. He had to raise their pay by a ruble a week, let them go home to sleep at night, and refrain from smacking them in the teeth — otherwise they weren’t returning. Yoneh the baker has this quirk: as soon as you do something he doesn’t like, he smacks you in the teeth.

Yoneh was furious. He’d been a boss for many years, and never had workers told him to stop smacking them. Raising their pay was out of the question — he could get ten others in their place. Workers weren’t so hard to find — there were plenty of people dying of hunger! He went off looking for new bakers. But no one wanted the job. What was going on? All the bakers had joined together, it seemed, and decided they wouldn’t work for him unless he took back the former bakers and agreed to their three demands: a ruble raise in pay, going home to sleep at night, and not smacking them in the teeth. Yoneh boiled, banged his fist on the table, and cursed his bad luck. It was really something to see. Oh, did I have my revenge! But that was nothing compared to what happened later.

D.

It’s a hot summer day. The watermelons and cantaloupes have just turned ripe. This is the best time of the year. Soon enough the dreary days will start. May God not punish me for these words, but I hate those dreary days. I like the happy days much better. And what can be happier than a market full of watermelons and cantaloupes? Wherever you turn, there they are. The cantaloupes are yellow and smell like citrons. The watermelons are as red as fire inside and have black seeds, and their sweetness is like honey. My mother doesn’t like watermelons. She says cantaloupes are a better buy. When she buys a cantaloupe, she has it for breakfast, lunch, and supper for two days, while a watermelon is a snack that fills your stomach with water. I think she’s mistaken. If I were a king, I’d eat watermelon with bread all year. It doesn’t matter that they have lots of seeds. If you give a good watermelon a hard shake, the seeds fall out, and then you can eat as much as you want!

But now I’ve gotten so caught up in watermelons, I’ve forgotten what I started to tell you. Oh yes, I was talking about my brother’s father-in-law Yoneh the bagel baker. He had quite a downfall. No one expected it. One night I’m sitting with my mother at the table eating supper — cantaloupe and bread. The door opens, and in comes my brother Elyahu with a Bible in his hand, my father’s Bible. His wife Bruche is dragging after him. In one hand she holds a feather boa with little tails, and in the other hand — a colander. You don’t know what a colander is? You strain noodles with it. My brother Elyahu looks as if he’s about to drop dead. My sister-in-law Bruche is red as a hellish fire.

“Mother-in-law, we’ve come to stay with you!” says my sister-in-law Bruche.

“Mama, we’ve barely escaped with our lives,” says my brother Elyahu.

Both sit down weeping, and my mother joins in. What happened? Was there a fire? Were you driven out?

That’s not it at all! My brother Elyahu’s father-in-law is cleaned out, bankrupt. The creditors came and took the house and everything in it, down to the last thread. They politely threw him out without a stitch, first making him clean up the house. What humiliation!

“Woe is me!” My mother wrings her hands. “What happened to his money? He used to be a wealthy man!”

My brother Elyahu tells her that, first of all, he wasn’t ever really that rich. And second — and here my sister-in-law Bruche breaks in and says her father was a rich man. If she had half his wealth right now, she’d be happy. Her wedding cost him a fortune! She loves to talk about her wedding. Whenever she comes visiting us, all you hear about is her wedding. A wedding like hers, she says, has never been seen anywhere. The baked goods at her wedding, the cakes and loaves and strudel and breads! And the preserves and meats at her wedding! And now she stands as you see her, with a feather boa and a kosher colander. The dowry her father promised — you can forget about it, it’s gone. My brother Elyahu lost his Shabbes clothes and prayer shawl, his bedding, and his fob watch too. He has nothing.