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

B.

Things are going well at the inn that the committee has arranged for us. What I mean is, it’s not that good, but it’s lively. You’re always meeting new emigrants. We sit together, we eat together, and we tell one another stories. Oh, what marvelous stories! Miracles and wonders — miracles about the pogroms, miracles about the conscription, and miracles about the border. Everyone tells a different story about agents. “Who was your agent at the border, a redhead or a brunette?” one asks. The other one answers, “Not a redhead or a brunette — just a plain thief!”

Naturally we tell them about our own miracle. They listen, shake their heads, and cluck. One tall emigrant with fierce eyes and cotton in his ears asks, “What did she look like, that woman? Was she pious and kosher, with a wig on her head?”

We tell him our woman was pious and kosher and wore a wig on her head. He leaps up and says to his wife, “Sarah! Do you hear that? It’s the same woman!”

“May she and all agents come down with the cholera, God in heaven!” His wife Sarah says, then tells us how the woman with the wig swindled them, robbed them from head to toe, and tried to sell them steamship tickets to America.

At these words a tailor, a handsome man with dark eyes and a pale face, jumps up. “Steamship tickets? Let me tell you a story about steamship tickets,” he says.

The dark-eyed, pale-faced tailor is about to tell his story when another emigrant, named Topolinski, stands up and says he has a better story about steamship tickets. This ticket company in his town was selling tickets from Libaveh to America. They cheated a young man of some sixty rubles and handed him a fake ticket with a red eagle printed on it. The young man arrived in Libaveh, intending to board the ship. He showed his fake ticket with the red eagle on it. “What’s this? Forget about it! It’s not a steamship ticket, it’s a good-luck card.”

C.

The steamship ticket stories begin to bore me. I like emigrants but I’d rather be with this boy my age, the son of emigrants whom I met when we were riding in the wagon. His name is Kopl, and he has a split lip he got from a fall. He was climbing on a ladder and fell onto a woodpile. He swears it didn’t hurt at all but that it bled a lot. It wasn’t enough that he split his lip — he was beaten by his father. The tall man with the fierce eyes and cotton in his ears is his father, and the woman named Sarah is his mother. They were very rich not too long ago, before the pogrom. I ask him what a pogrom is. The emigrants are always talking about them, but what they are I do not know.

Kopl says to me, “You don’t know what a pogrom is? Then you’re just a little baby! Nowadays pogroms happen everywhere. A pogrom starts from nothing, but once it starts, it lasts three days.”

“What is it?” I say. “A fair?”

“Some fair! They shatter windows! They smash furniture! They rip pillows! Feathers fly like snow!”

“What for?”

“What for?! Because! A pogrom isn’t just on houses. They destroy shops! They throw the merchandise out onto the streets, they break everything up, scatter everything, pour kerosene over it all, and set it on fire.”

“Go on! Really?”

“Do you think I’m making it up? Afterward, when there’s nothing left to wreck, they go from house to house with axes, iron rods, and sticks while the police follow behind. They sing and whistle and shout, ‘Hey, fellows, let’s beat up the Jews!’ And they beat and kill and murder, stab with knives.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean who? Jews!”

“Why?”

“What a question! It’s a pogrom!”

“And if it’s a pogrom — what of it?”

“Go away! You’re a little calf! I don’t want to talk to you!” Kopl pushes me away and thrusts his hands into his pockets, like a grown-up. I’m upset because Kopl is acting so superior, but I keep quiet. Just wait, big shot, someday you’ll have to come to me! I’m thinking, and let a few minutes pass. Then I approach Kopl again and strike up a conversation, not about pogroms but about other things. Does he speak German? I ask him.

“Who can’t speak German?” He laughs. “German is Yiddish, after all.”

“It is? If you know German, then tell me how you say horseradish in German.”

Kopl laughs even harder. He can barely get out a word. “What do you mean, how do you say horseradish ? Horseradish is horseradish!”

“That means you don’t know!”

“Then how do you say horseradish ?”

Actually I’ve forgotten how you say horseradish in German. I used to know, but I forget. I ask my brother Elyahu, “How do you say horseradish in German?” He says he’ll give me a lesson that’ll make my teeth rattle. My brother Elyahu is obviously angry. Whenever he has to take money out of his pocket, he gets angry. Our friend Pinni laughs at him. They bicker. I find a spot on the ground among the bundles where I lie down and sleep.

D.

In Cracow we get nowhere. We didn’t even get to the committee. The emigrants told us it was a waste of time to go to the committee — they’d just give us the runaround. First they write down your ages, and then they send a doctor to examine you. Then they tell you to wait. Then they tell you to come back. You come back, and they ask you why you came. You say they told you to come. Then they ask you why you want to go to America. “Where else should we go?” you ask. “Where is it written that you must go at all?” they say. You tell them about the pogroms, and they say, “It’s your own fault.”

They give you an example: “Just yesterday a young boy, one of you emigrants, stole a roll from the market.” You say, “Maybe he was hungry.” They say, “Just the other day a man and his wife, emigrants, got into an argument in the middle of the street and they had to call the police.” You say, “The wife was right. She recognized her husband, who had thrown her out of the house and wanted to run away to America. By accident she spotted him and caught him.

He wanted to tear himself away and flee, so she made a loud fuss.” They say, “Why do you emigrants mostly go around in rags?” You say, “We’re poor. Give us clothing, and we won’t go around in rags.” In short, they give lectures, but not a penny.

So the emigrants complain to us. They say we’re lucky that till now we haven’t been at the mercy of the committee. My mother says she wouldn’t have gone to them if not for the bedding. If we hadn’t been robbed at the border, she’d feel like a queen, she says. I remember her yellow silk kerchief, in which she truly looked like a queen. My mother says nothing pains her as much as the loss of the bedding.

“What will we do in America without bedding?” She wrings her hands and cries. My brother Elyahu hears her and shouts, “Again? You’re crying again? We’re getting close to America — you have to take care of your eyes!”

Are we really close to America? Not at all! We still have a long way to go! I don’t exactly know where we’re going. The emigrants talk about cities like Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, London, and Liver-pool. Everybody says they wish Hamburg would burn down this very day. Hamburg, they say, is a Sodom. Jews are driven into bathhouses to be cleaned up and are treated worse than prisoners. Monsters such as they have in Hamburg, you won’t find anywhere else. Meanwhile we’re getting ready to go to Vienna. There, they say, we’ll find a real committee!

Committee or no committee, all I know is we’re going to Vienna. Have you ever heard of it? Wait till we get to Vienna, and I’ll tell you everything that’s going on there.