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

The emigrants don’t want to hear that he is only one person. They can’t stay here any longer. They’ve already spent whatever they had. They must be given tickets to America or be sent back home. The doctor claims that all he can do is send them to Cracow if that’s what they want. There’s another committee there. Maybe that committee will be able to help them. The emigrants say that in the meantime they haven’t enough to get them through the day. The doctor takes out his purse and hands them a coin. The emigrants look at the coin and leave.

New emigrants arrive. They say they are dying of hunger.

“What do you want of me?” the poor doctor pleads.

“We want to eat!” say the emigrants.

“They’ve brought me something to eat. You eat it.” The doctor with the kind, smiling eyes points to the lunch they’ve brought him: coffee and white rolls. He really means it — he gives them his lunch. What can he do, one person alone? The emigrants thank him. They say they aren’t asking for themselves but for their poor children.

“ Nu, bring the children here!” The doctor winks to us with his kind, smiling eyes. “What do you want?” he asks us.

C.

My mother tells him our story from the beginning, how she had a husband, a cantor, who was sick all his life. He died and left her a widow with two children, an older one and another barely an infant (she meant me). She married off the older one, who fell into a gold mine. The gold ran out, but the hole remained. His father-in-law went bankrupt, and her son will be conscripted.

“Mama, why are you rattling on like that?” My brother Elyahu starts to tell the same story but in his own way. “Conscription or no conscription — we’re going, you see, to America. These other people are coming with us.” He points to the rest of us. “We had to cross the border. Well, we did get to the border, you see, but without passports, because we’re both eligible for conscription—”

“Allow me!” Our friend Pinni shoves my brother Elyahu aside and tells the same story but in a slightly different way. Though Elyahu is my brother, I must admit that Pinni speaks a lot better. He doesn’t keep saying “you see,” like my brother Elyahu. And he knows Russian very well. Many of the words he uses are beautiful Russian words! Many of them I do not understand, but they are beautiful.

Our friend Pinni begins with many elegant Russian words: “I shall briefly outline the entire situation so that you will be able to formulate an opinion. We are going to America, not so much to avoid conscription as for the sake of independence and civilization, because we are stifled at home, not only by lack of progress but even by lack of air, as Turgenev says. The Jewish problems and pogroms, the constitution and so on, arose, as Buckle says in his History of Civilization . .”

Our friend Pinni is only just warming up, but the doctor interrupts him, takes a sip of coffee, and says with a smile, “Tell me what you want.”

My brother Elyahu steps forward and says to Pinni, “Why don’t you ever get to the point?”

Our friend Pinni’s feelings are really hurt — he moves off to the side, gets tangled up in his own feet, and says resentfully, “Do you talk better? Go on, you talk!”

And my brother Elyahu goes up to the table and tells the story.

D.

“We got to the border, you see, and started negotiating with the agents, but as you know, they’re big bastards. They fought over us, scrambling, denouncing, playing tricks, you see, until a woman, a proper lady, honest, pious, and kosher, took us in hand. She set a price, you see, and undertook to move us all, first us and then our belongings. She provided us with two peasants as guards, you see.”

“So soon? Look how quick he got to the peasants,” my sister-in-law shoots out. She pushes my brother Elyahu aside and tells the story in a different way: how the woman told us to walk and walk till we saw a hill. There we were to turn left and walk and walk till we came to another hill. After a right turn we would reach a tavern. One of us should go in and find two peasants drinking brandy and say the word chaimove to them. They would know what we meant and would take us through the woods. Luckily I have a habit of fainting.

The doctor says, “My dear women, I also have a habit of fainting. Tell me, what do you want?”

My mother steps forward, and she and the doctor have the following conversation:

MAMA: I’ll tell you in a few words. They stole our things.

DOCTOR: What things?

MAMA: The bedding — two feather quilts, four large pillows, and four more large pillows and three more small pillows.

DOCTOR: That’s all?

MAMA: And three blankets, two old ones, one new, some clothing and a silk head scarf and. .

DOCTOR: I’m not asking about that. Nothing else bad happened to you?

MAMA: What more do you want?

DOCTOR: I mean, what else do you need?

MAMA: Bedding.

DOCTOR: Is that all?

MAMA: Isn’t that enough?

DOCTOR: Do you have tickets? Do you have money?

MAMA: I can’t complain, but we have steamship and train tickets.

DOCTOR: You should thank God! I envy you. Let’s change places. Don’t think I’m making a joke. I’m saying this seriously. Take my breakfast, take my emigrants, take my committee, and give me your tickets, and I will go to America this day. What can I accomplish here, one person with so many poor people?

We don’t know what to think! But we all agree not to waste any more time. “Too bad, a waste of expenses,” my brother Elyahu says. “Let’s better go to Cracow. Lots of emigrants are going to Cracow, so let’s imagine we’re also emigrants.”

“Since we’ve already seen Lemberg, we should also see Cracow,” agrees our friend Pinni.

“That way we’ll get to see both — Cracow and Lemberg,” says his wife Teibl.

Goodbye! We’re going to Cracow.

A.

If you ever go to America, be sure you travel only with emigrants. Things will be easier. When you come to a city, you don’t need to look for an inn because a room has been reserved for you. That’s what a committee is created for. A committee sees to it that everything is ready for you.

When we arrive that first night in Cracow, we are herded into a large place called a dormitory. There we wait till morning, when someone comes from the committee and writes down all our names. My mother has misgivings about giving our names. She’s afraid it might have something to do with conscription. Who can tell? The emigrants make fun of her. What do Polish Jews have to do with Russian conscription? Then they bring us to a large hall in a big inn filled with many cots and many more emigrants. “It looks like our poorhouse,” my mother declares. And my sister-in-law Bruche says, “Mother-in-law, we’d better travel on.”

I once told you that the women never like anything, and find fault with everything. They take a dislike to Cracow from the first. Even my brother Elyahu is unhappy with Cracow. He says Cracow is not Lemberg. At least in Lemberg there are Jews, but in Cracow there are no Jews. Actually, there are Jews, but they’re very strange Jews, he says. “They’re half-breeds — half Jews and half Poles. They twist their mustaches and put on airs!” But our friend Pinni contradicts him. He says that there’s more “civilization” here. I’d like to know what this “civilization” is that our friend Pinni likes so much.