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

My mother falls apart. What a disaster! Who could have known? Everyone envied her this match! Some people must have cast an evil eye on her, or maybe she brought the baker down with her own curses. Whatever it was, she says, she will be punished more than anyone. Wasn’t she the one who yearned for a gold mine for her son?

“The gold has disappeared, but the hole in the ground remains. Stay with me for now, my children, until God takes pity.” She gives her daughter-in-law her bed, the only piece of furniture in our house.

A.

“ From One Ruble — A Hundred! You can earn a hundred rubles a month or more. All you have to do is read our book, costing a mere ruble plus postage. Hurry, buy! Stop everything and take advantage of this great opportunity, or you’ll miss out!”

That’s what my brother Elyahu read somewhere in a newspaper soon after his father-in-law went broke and from a rich man overnight became a pauper. As was the custom, my brother had been promised three years’ room and board, but he was hardly there three quarters of a year when misfortune struck.

I’m very busy making money. I’m hawking a drink that my brother Elyahu makes with his own hands. He learned how to make it from the book costing only one ruble, from which you can earn a hundred rubles a month or more. As soon as my brother Elyahu read about that book, he sent off his last ruble by mail and told our mother her worries were over.

“Mama! Thank God, we are in luck! We don’t have to worry about money anymore. We’ll have money up to here.” He indicates his neck.

“From what?” asks my mother. “Did you get a job?”

“Better than a job.” My brother Elyahu’s eyes are aglow, in great excitement. She only has to wait a few days until the book arrives, he tells her.

“What book?”

“What a book!” my brother Elyahu exclaims, and asks her if she would be satisfied with a hundred rubles a month. Laughing, my mother tells him she’d be satisfied with a hundred rubles a year, so long as it was a sure thing. He tells her her outlook is too cheap, and off he goes to the post office, where he asks if his book has arrived. He does this every day. It’s been over a week since he’s sent the ruble, and still no book! In the meantime one has to live. “You can’t live on air,” says my mother. I don’t understand what living on air has to do with it.

B.

Hooray, the book has arrived! No sooner do we unpack it than my brother Elyahu sits down to read it. Oh my, what doesn’t he find in that book! So many ways to earn money! A recipe for making the best inks — it could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for making good black shoe wax — it too could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for driving out mice, cockroaches, and other vermin — it could earn you a hundred rubles a month. A recipe for making kvass and other cheap drinks — it could earn you a hundred rubles a month or more!

My brother Elyahu stops at the last recipe. By making a drink, you can earn even more than a hundred rubles a month — that’s what it explicitly says in the book. And you don’t have to mess with ink or shoe wax or with mice or cockroaches. The question is only which drink to make. For liqueurs and brandy you need Rothschild’s fortune, and for lemonade and soda water you need some kind of gadget that costs who knows how much! So one drink remains: kvass! Kvass is cheap to make and is much in demand, especially in hot summers like this one. Boruch the kvass-maker, you must know, became a rich man. He makes bottled kvass, and it’s known everywhere. It shoots out of the bottles like a cannon. What makes it shoot out? No one knows — that’s Boruch’s secret. He adds something that makes it shoot out. Some say it’s raisins. Some say it’s hops. Come summer, he has more business than he can handle. That’s how much money he earns!

The kvass my brother Elyahu concocts according to the recipe is not bottled kvass, and it doesn’t shoot out. Ours is a different kind of drink. How it’s made, I cannot tell you. My brother Elyahu doesn’t let anyone near while he’s making it. Only when he pours the water in are we allowed to look. But to do the serious part, he locks himself in my mother’s room. Not I, not my mother, not my sister-in-law Bruche — no one has the privilege of witnessing it. But if you promise you’ll keep it a secret, I’ll tell you what’s in that drink, because I’ve seen what he prepares beforehand — lemon peel, honey, and something they call cream of tartar, which is as sour as vinegar. The rest — water. Water is the main ingredient. The more water, the more kvass. The ingredients are all mixed together thoroughly with an ordinary stick — that’s what it says in the book — and the drink is ready. Then you pour it into a large jug and throw in a chunk of ice. Ice is the most important thing! Without ice it isn’t worth drinking. I once tasted a little kvass without ice, and I thought it was the end of my life!

C.

Once the first batch of kvass is ready, I’m the one to peddle it on the street. Who else but me? For my brother Elyahu, it wouldn’t be proper. After all, he’s a married man. My mother — certainly not. We’d never allow our mother to go with a jug through the marketplace crying, “Kvass! Kvass! People, kvass!” All agree it has to be my job. I think so too. I’m thrilled to hear the news. My brother Elyahu teaches me what to do. I have to hold the jug by a cord in one hand and the glass in the other hand. To get people to stop, I have to sing in a loud voice:

I’ve already told you that I have a nice soprano voice, inherited from my father, of blessed memory. I sing out loud and clear, turning the words inside out:

I don’t know whether they like my singing so much or the drink is so good or the day is so hot, but I sell out the first jug in half an hour and come home with almost three-quarters of a ruble. My brother Elyahu gives the money to our mother and refills my jug. If I can run that circuit five or six times a day, he says, we’ll earn exactly one hundred rubles a month. Deduct, if you please, the four Sabbaths in the month, and you’ll see how much the drink costs us to make and what kind of a percentage we earn from it. The drink costs us very little — one can say, almost nothing. All the money goes for ice, so we have to sell the first jugful fast so we can use the block of ice for a second jug and a third and so on. I move fast with the drink, really run with it, while crowds of Jewish and Gentile boys tag after me. They mimic my singing, but I pay them no heed. My aim is to empty the jug as quickly as possible so I can run home for another one.

I don’t know how much I made that first day. I only know that my brother Elyahu, my sister-in-law Bruche, and my mother really praise me. For supper I’m served a piece each of cantaloupe and watermelon and two prunes and, of course, kvass. We all drink kvass like water. Before I go to sleep on my place on the floor, my mother asks me if my legs ache. My brother Elyahu laughs at her and says I’m the kind of boy whom nothing ever bothers.

“Absolutely!” I say. “If you need proof, I’ll go out right now with the jug in the middle of the night.”

All three laugh at my cleverness. But in my mother’s eyes I see tears welling. Well, that’s an old story — a mother has to cry! Do all mothers cry as much as my mother does?