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

“Bruche! What did you say? God be with you!” My mother wrings her hands.

“Don’t waste your time talking to a fool,” my brother Elyahu says to my mother, pacing around the room, twisting his beard. He has quite a full beard now. It grows like crazy. He twists it, and it grows in a weird way. Of all places, it grows thickest on his throat. His face is smooth, but his throat is hairy. You’ve never seen such a beard!

At any other time my sister-in-law Bruche would have ruined his day for calling her a fool, but this time she ignores it because he is earning money. Whenever my brother Elyahu is earning money, he becomes a big shot in her eyes. She also values me more because I help him earn money. Usually she calls me shlepper or shlimazel or “poor excuse of a kid.” Now she is more endearing — she calls me Mottele.

“Mottele! Hand me my shoes.”

“Mottele! Draw some water for me.”

“Mottele! Take out the garbage.”

If you earn money, they talk differently to you.

E.

The trouble with my brother Elyahu is that he overdoes things. When he made kvass, he made a barrelful. Ink — a thousand bottles. A powder for mice — a full sack. Our neighbor’s husband Moishe the bookbinder told him, “Why do you need so much powder?” I don’t think my brother Elyahu appreciated this problem.

Well, they should have locked the sack up in a closet. . but no. One day they all go off and leave me alone with it. Is it my fault that I ride the sack as if it were a horse? Be a prophet, and know that the sack would burst and all this yellow stuff would come pouring out! It’s the powder that my brother Elyahu uses to drive the mice away! It has such a sharp smell, you could faint from it! I bend down and try to sweep up what spilled, but I’m seized by a fit of sneezing. If I’d inhaled a whole box of snuff, I wouldn’t sneeze as hard. I sneeze and sneeze till I finally run outside, hoping to stop sneezing.

Guess what happens. Along comes my mother, who sees me sneezing. “What’s the matter?” she asks me. All I can do is sneeze and then sneeze some more! And still more!

“God help me, where did you get such a cold?” She wrings her hands. I can’t stop sneezing and just point toward the house. She goes in but soon runs back out, sneezing even worse than I am. Along comes my brother Elyahu and sees us both sneezing. “What’s the matter?” My mother points toward the house.

He goes in and then comes bounding out, shouting, “Who did th— katchoo! katchoo! ”

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my brother Elyahu so angry. He comes at me with both hands. It’s just lucky he’s sneezing or else I’d really get it.

My sister-in-law Bruche comes along and finds all three of us holding our sides sneezing. “What’s going on here? Why all this sneezing?”

What can we tell her? Can we so much as utter a word? We point toward the house. She goes in and runs right out again, red as fire, and assails my brother Elyahu: “What did I tell— katchoo! katchoo! katchoo! ”

Along comes our neighbor Fat Pessi. She speaks to us, but none of us can answer her with so much as a word. We point toward the house. She too goes in and comes running out again. “What have you— katchoo! katchoo! katchoo! ” She waves her hands in the air.

Along comes her husband Moishe the bookbinder. He looks at us and laughs. “What’s all this sneezing about?”

“Just go in there— katchoo! katchoo! katchoo! ” We point toward the house.

The bookbinder goes into our house and runs out, laughing. “I know what it is! I smelled it! It’s shemer — katchoo! katchoo! ” He grabs his sides and sneezes. With each sneeze he lifts himself up on his tiptoes.

Within half an hour all our neighbors and their neighbors and their uncles and aunts and third cousins and friends — the whole neighborhood, from one end to the next, is in a sneezing fit!

Why is my brother Elyahu so frightened? Apparently he’s afraid they’ll be angry at him for the sneezing. He takes me by the hand, and, still sneezing, we run down the hill to his friend Pinni.

It takes a good hour and a half before we can even speak like human beings again. My brother Elyahu tells his friend Pinni the whole story. His friend Pinni listens thoughtfully, like a doctor listening to a patient. When my brother Elyahu finishes, his friend Pinni says to him, “Give me that book.”

My brother Elyahu takes the book out of his chest pocket and hands it to his friend Pinni.

His friend Pinni reads the title, From One Ruble — A Hundred! Remedies Made from Ordinary Ingredients. With Your Own Hands, Make a Hundred Rubles a Month and More.

He takes the book and tosses it into the stove, right onto the fire. My brother Elyahu lunges with both hands toward the fire. His friend Pinni holds him back: “Slow down!”

After a few minutes my brother Elyahu’s book about making a hundred rubles a month and more is a pile of ashes. One unburned page remains, on which you can barely make out the word sh-e-me-r-i-t-z-i.

A.

Do you remember, I once told you I’d tell you about my brother Elyahu’s friend Pinni? He’s always full of good ideas. But first I have to tell you about his grandfather, father, and uncle. Then I’ll tell you about Pinni. Don’t worry — I’ll make it short. I’ll start with his grandfather.

Have you ever heard of Reb Hessi the glazier? That’s Pinni’s grandfather. He’s a glazier, a mirror-maker, and a painter who can also make tobacco. He’s quit his windows, mirrors, and painting, but he still makes tobacco and sells it. As long as a man lives, he says, he has to work and not depend on anyone. He’s a tall, thin man with red eyes and a big, scary nose, bent like a ram’s horn. I guess it got that way because he sniffs tobacco. He’s maybe a hundred years old and still in his right mind. Probably he’s smarter than his two sons, Hersh-Leib the mechanic and Shneur the watchmaker. Hersh-Leib the mechanic is as tall and thin as Reb Hessi. He’s got a large, straight nose, maybe because he doesn’t sniff tobacco. Maybe one day he’ll take it up like his father.

Hersh-Leib makes and fixes ovens. Everyone says he’s brilliant. If he’d learned a real trade, he says, he would now be one in a million. There’s nothing on earth he can’t figure out. He says so himself. He can figure anything out with one glance. He learned all about ovens on his own. When he saw Ivan Pitchkur making ovens, he laughed out loud. The goy didn’t understand a thing about ovens, he said. Hersh-Leib once dismantled an oven and built a new one from the same tiles. But you could choke from the way it smoked. So he dismantled it and rebuilt it. After doing it several times, he became a master at making ovens. He invented an oven that has to be refueled only once in eight days. If he can only find the right tiles, he’s convinced it’ll work. Once he finds real Kachlioveh tiles, he’ll build you an oven that has to be seen to be believed! An oven is more complicated than a clock — he says so in order to spite his brother Shneur the watchmaker.

His brother Shneur is younger and taller than he and also has a long nose. He was supposed to be a rabbi, or a ritual slaughterer, or a teacher — that’s what a head he had for learning! But he preferred to be a clockmaker. Here’s how he got interested in clock-making.

When Shneur was still a kid in cheder, he asked smart questions. For example, when you turn a lock to the right, it opens, and when you turn it to the left, it locks — why? How does a clock work? Why does it chime when the small hand meets the twelve? A cuckoo clock almost drove him out of his mind. On the hour a little door opened and out came a bird chirping cuckoo! The bird looked absolutely alive. Even the cat was fooled. Whenever the bird came out with a cuckoo, the cat would arch its back, ready to catch it. Shneur promised himself that he would find that cuckoo bird’s secret. Once when no one was at home, he took the clock down from the wall, unscrewed all the screws, and took out its insides. His father beat him severely for it. To this day, he says, his body has the scars. But he succeeded in finding out what made the bird go cuckoo, and today he is a clockmaker.