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

A.

“Vienna is a real city!” proclaims my brother Elyahu, and our friend Pinni chimes in, “And what a city! A city among cities!”

Even the women, who never like anything, allow that Vienna is a city. In honor of Vienna my mother dresses up in her holiday silk kerchief. My sister-in-law Bruche decks herself out as if for a wedding. She puts on her Shabbes dress, fancy wig, and long dangling earrings. When you add in her red-freckled face, she looks like a ginger cat in a black shawl.

Have you ever seen a ginger cat in a black shawl? I have. Our neighbor Pessi’s children love to play theater and dress the cat up in different costumes. The cat, as I once mentioned, has a funny nickname: Feige-Leah the Beadle’s Wife. They once dressed her up in a skullcap that they tied under her chin and then let her run loose. To add a touch of beauty, they attached a feather duster on her tail. The skullcap was too big and fell over her eyes, and she couldn’t tolerate the feather duster. Feige-Leah the Beadle’s Wife went crazy, scrambling up the walls and doing terrible damage to the neighbors’ property. Oh my, did those children get punished!

And worst of all, Vashti — that is, Hershl with the birthmark on his forehead. What a strange boy that Vashti is! No matter how much he’s beaten, it’s like beating a wall. I miss him more than anyone! Maybe we’ll see him in America. We’ve heard that our neighbor Pessi and her husband Moishe the bookbinder and their whole gang are leaving for America. At first she put us down for going to such a far-off place, and now she herself is going there.

Everyone is going to America. This is what our in-law Yoneh the baker writes us. He’s also going to America. He’s already at the border — not the border we stole across, but another border. Our border isn’t safe. At our border they rob you of your bedding. At other borders they also take your bedding, but they don’t attack you with sharp knives in the woods as they did us. Emigrants tell us that at some borders they strip you bare and rob you of everything. But they don’t beat you. They didn’t beat us either, but they wanted to. We almost died of fright. Luckily someone fired that shot.

I already told you how we stole across the border, but we’ve long forgotten it. We hate to remember things like that. True, the women still to this day talk about the miracles we experienced then, but the men interrupt and don’t let them finish the story. They tell it much better. Our friend Pinni says he’s got to write an article for the newspapers. He even wrote a song about it. I think I once told you that Pinni writes songs. The song about the border starts like this:

That’s just the beginning, says Pinni. It gets even better! He wrote a piece about Brod too, he says, and about Cracow and Lemberg, and everything in rhyme. Pinni is a master of rhyme. He rhymes everything. He also wrote a song about his wife Teibl. I know it by heart:

What do you say to that little song? You should see how Teibl pouts! (She has a habit of pouting.) My sister-in-law Bruche comes to her defense. She calls Pinni a fool. My mother calls him a shlimazel . They can’t stand it when he writes songs. My brother Elyahu, on the other hand, envies him. He says that in America writing rhymes and songs is a business. He says that in America Pinni will do well in that business. They’ll make him rich. In America there are a lot of Yiddish journals and newspapers. Pinni says that he knows he’ll do well in America. He feels that he was made for America and that America was made for him. He can’t wait till we’re on the ship sailing over the ocean. But in the meantime we’re still on dry land in Vienna.

B.

What are we doing in Vienna? Nothing. We’re strolling through the streets. What streets! What houses! You should see the shopwindow — mirrors, not windows! And the wares on display — toys, clothes, dishes, jewelry! We stop at the windows and try to guess how much things cost. We men do the figuring, and the women wish they owned half of the things in this city. Pinni laughs and says, “You’d do well to wish for a tenth. That’d be more than enough.”

“What do you care if they wish for half? Do you begrudge them?” my brother Elyahu says and twists his beard. Since we began our journey to America, my brother Elyahu’s beard has grown quite a bit, but in a strange way, sort of like a broom. I’d love to draw it on paper. I once drew a picture of Pinni on paper and one of my sister-in-law Bruche with chalk on the table. Did I get a lecture for that! Bruche saw it and recognized herself as if in a mirror. She called my brother Elyahu over, and he really gave it to me! If not for my mother, he’d have made my life miserable. He always hits me when he sees me drawing. I’ve loved drawing since I was a child. At first I used to draw with a piece of black coal on the white walls, for which they hit me, and afterward with chalk on the door, for which they also hit me. Now I draw with a pencil on paper — and they still hit me.

“Are you drawing figures again?”

They don’t hit me as much for drawing as for sculpting. I have a habit of sculpting little pigs out of soft bread. When my brother Elyahu sees me do this, he slaps my fingers.

Our friend Pinni sticks up for me. “What do you have against him? Let him sculpt, let him draw!” he says. “Maybe he’ll be a painter someday!”

My brother Elyahu gets outraged. “What? A painter? A smearer? He’ll smear churches, whitewash roofs? Go around with paint-spattered hands like a coachman with axle grease? I’d much rather he sang in a chorus for a cantor. When we get to America, God willing, I’m going to place him with a cantor. He has an excellent soprano.”

“Why not place him with a worker? In America everyone is a worker. In America everyone works,” our friend Pinni asks.

My mother jumps all over him. “A worker? May my enemies not live to see Peysi’s son become a worker!” She’s about to start crying.

Pinni defends himself. “What a strange woman you are! We learn in the Gemorah that the sage Rabbi Yochanan was a shoemaker. The sage Rabbi Yitzchak was a smithy. Do you need more examples? My uncle is a clockmaker, and my father is a mechanic!”

Pinni thinks he’s made things better, but in truth he’s made them much worse. My mother doesn’t stop crying. “My husband was a pious man, a cantor. Did he have to leave this world while still young in order for his youngest son to be, God forbid, a shoemaker or a tailor — and in America to boot?”

“You’re crying again? You’ve forgotten that in America you need healthy eyes!” my brother Elyahu says. My mother stops crying immediately.

C.

I don’t care what I become in America — just let me get there. (I’m so eager to get there!) I promise myself that in America I’ll learn how to do three things — swim, write, and smoke cigars. I can do all those things right now, but not as well as they can in America. I know I could be an expert swimmer, but at home we had nowhere to swim. In our pond it was impossible — if you lay down, you were right in the mud and your feet stuck out of the water.