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

D.

We are, kayn eyn horeh, on a lucky streak. Each day is hotter than the one before. They are scorchers! People are passing out from the heat, children are dropping like flies. If not for that glass of kvass, they would burn up. I’m returning with the jug, without exaggeration, ten times a day! My brother Elyahu squints into the jug with one eye and says it’s almost empty. Then he hits on an idea and pours in a few more pails of water. I had this idea even before he did. I must confess to you that I did some mischief a few times.

Almost every day I drop into our neighbor Pessi’s and let her sample a glass of our very own drink. I give her husband Moishe the bookbinder two glasses. He’s a fine fellow. Each child also gets a glass. Let them all know what a good drink we make! The uncle gets a glassful — a pity on him, he’s blind! All my friends get some kvass, free of charge, without paying a kopek! But in order to make up for the loss, I add water. For each glass of kvass I give away free, I add two glasses of water. We do the same at home. After my brother Elyahu drinks a glass of kvass, he immediately pours in water. He’s right — it’s a shame to waste even a kopek. My sister-in-law Bruche drinks a few glasses (she’s crazy about my brother Elyahu’s kvass!) and replaces them with water. If my mother feels like a glass of kvass (she has to be asked — she won’t take any herself!) — fill it up with water!

Anyhow, not a drop is wasted, and we’re taking in good money, kayn eyn horeh . My mother pays bills and redeems some necessary items from the pawnshop, like bedding. A table and a bench appear in the house. For Shabbes we have fish, meat, and white challah. They promise me that, God willing, for the holidays I’ll have a new pair of shoes. I’m sure no one in the world can be as happy as I am!

E.

Be a prophet and know that a tragedy will befall us, and that our drink will become unfit to drink, good only to be poured onto the slop pile. I’m lucky not to have been dragged off to the police station. Listen to this story!

One day I wander over to our neighbor with my jug of kvass. Everyone starts drinking it, I among them. I figure I’m down twelve or thirteen glasses and go to the place for water. But instead of finding the water barrel, I apparently go to the tub where the laundry is washed. I pour fifteen or twenty glasses of soapy water into my jug and go merrily on my way down the street singing a new song that I myself made up:

A man stops me and pays a kopek for a glass of kvass. He downs the glassful and screws up his face. “Little boy! What kind of drink is this?”

I pay him no heed. Two more people are waiting to be served. One sips half a glass, the other a third of a glass. They pay, spit out the drink, and walk away. Another brings the glass to his lips and tastes it. He says it smells like soap and tastes salty. Another looks at the glass and returns it to me. “What is this?”

“It’s a drink, that’s what it is,” I say.

“A drink?” he exclaims. “That’s a stink, not a drink!”

Someone else tastes the drink and splashes it right in my face. In a minute a whole circle of men, women, and children surround me, all yammering, gesticulating, fuming. A Russian policeman comes by and, seeing the angry crowd, asks what is going on. They tell him. He peers into my jug and asks for a sample. I pour him a glass of kvass. He drinks it down and spits it out, becoming enraged.

“Where did you get this slop?” he demands.

“It’s from a book,” I say to him, “my brother’s business. My brother made it himself.”

“Who is your brother?” he asks me.

“My brother Elyahu.”

“Who is this Elyahu?”

“Speak not, foolish youth, concerning thy brother!” Several Jews speak in a mixture of Hebrew and English designed to baffle the policeman’s understanding. The crowd becomes unruly, noisy, about to riot. New people arrive on the scene. The Russian policeman takes me by the hand and is about to haul me and my drink right over to the station. The shouting becomes louder—“An orphan! A poor orphan!” I hear from all sides. I’m in a tight spot. I look at the crowd surrounding me. “Jews, have pity!” I exclaim.

They try to bribe the policeman, but he refuses. An old Jew with shifty eyes cries out to me in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, “Motl! Pull thy hand away from the Russian policeman and take to thy heels as fast as thou canst!”

I tear away and run full speed home.

Half-dead, I burst into my house.

“Where’s the jug?” my brother Elyahu asks.

“At the police station!” I answer, and run into my mother’s arms, in tears.

A.

Oh, am I a fool! Because I’ve sold soapy, spoiled kvass, I thought surely the police would behead me! But in the end nothing happened. My fears were groundless. “Didn’t Yente sell tallow for goose fat? And didn’t Gedalye the butcher feed the whole town for an entire year with unkosher meat?” That’s how our neighbor Pessi consoles my mother. My mother! She takes everything to heart. That’s why I love my brother Elyahu. He doesn’t think worse of himself because we were burned by the kvass. As long as he has the book, he’s happy, the book he bought for a ruble, called From One Ruble — A Hundred! He sits and learns it by heart. By now he knows almost all the recipes, how to make ink, how to make shoe wax, and how to get rid of mice, cockroaches, and other vermin.

Now he decides to make ink. Ink, he says, is a good product. Everyone has to write. He asks Yudl the writing teacher how much he spent on ink. “A fortune!” he says.

Yudl teaches writing to about sixty girls. Boys don’t study with him. They’re afraid of him. He spanks them or strikes them over their hands with a ruler. You can’t hit girls, and you certainly can’t spank them. I wish I was born a girl. I wouldn’t have to pray every day. I’m sick of it — every day the same thing. And I wouldn’t have to go to Hebrew school. Now I go there half a day. What I learn, you can put on the head of a pin, but of slaps there are more than enough. You think the slaps come from the rebbe ? No, they come from his wife, the rebbetzin . What business is it of hers that I feed the cat? You should see her cat — God’s pity on it! She’s always hungry. She mews quietly to herself, whining like a human being, forgive the comparison. It can tear your heart out! They have not one drop of pity. If she so much as goes over to sniff someone, they scream at her, “Scat!” and she scurries off in a shot. They don’t let her get away with anything. Once she was lost for a few days. I thought she was dead for sure. But it turned out she had had kittens. But I must return to my brother Elyahu’s ink.

B.

My brother Elyahu says the world isn’t what it used to be. Once upon a time, to make ink you had to buy black walnuts, chop them up, cook them on the fire for who knew how long, and then pour in some copper water; and to make the ink shiny, you had to add sugar — a big fuss! Today, he says, it’s as easy as pie! You buy special powders and a bottle of glycerin at the apothecary, mix them with water, boil it on the fire — presto! Ink. So says my brother Elyahu.

He goes off to the apothecary and brings back a bag of the special powders and a large bottle of glycerin. Then he locks himself up in my mother’s room and does something — what, I don’t know. It’s a secret. With him everything is a secret. When he needs the pestle from the mortar, he calls my mother over and whispers, “Mama! The pestle from the mortar!” He mixes the powders and the glycerin in a very large pot, a new one he bought. He shoves the pot into the oven and whispers to my mother to lock the door.