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

Some pond! In America, they say, there’s an ocean. There, if you lie down in the water on a tube, the water will carry you as far as the eye can see.

I can write too, though no one has taught me. I copy the letters from the prayer book. The letters I copy are hard to recognize. I don’t really write — I draw. I’d love to write fast, but I don’t know how. In America, they say, they write fast. Everything is done quickly, in a hurry. Americans have no time. That’s what I overheard the emigrants say. I know almost everything about America, even before I’ve been there. They ride under the ground, and they “make a living.” How they do it I don’t know, but I’ll soon find out. I learn very quickly. If I see a person just once, I can imitate him in every detail. I once imitated our friend Pinni, the way he walks with a hop, the way he peers with his nearsighted eyes, and the way he speaks as if slurping hot noodles. My sister-in-law Bruche was holding her sides and my mother was crying tears of laughter.

But my brother Elyahu hates it. He doesn’t let me do anything. He’s a strange one, my brother Elyahu! He loves me — and yet he hits me, he makes my life a living hell. When she sees it, my mother doesn’t let him hit me. She says, “Wait till you have your own children, and then you can hit them.”

Let a stranger lay a finger on me though, and my brother Elyahu will take his eyes out. Once an emigrant’s son “did a governor” on me. Do you know what that is? I’ll teach you. You wet your thumb with spit, and then you poke it hard into someone’s side, right between the ribs and the belly, and then they see stars. The boy who did a governor on me is about eleven with fat cheeks. But did he have a pair of paws — may they wither! He wanted to be friends with me and asked me my name. I said, “Motl.” He said, “Motl Kapotl, drubl drutl, Yosef Sutl, eretz kanotl.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “That means you are a sucker even though my name is also Motl. Maybe you’d like a governor?” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Come up a little closer and I’ll show you.” I did, and he showed me. I dropped to the ground. My mother saw it and started to scream. My brother Elyahu came running and gave Motl something to remember him by!

From that time on we were friends. Motl taught me, besides the governor, lots of things — for instance, ventriloquism. Do you know what that is? It’s impossible to explain — you have to be born to it. You keep your mouth shut, not moving any part of your face, and you throw your voice, bark like a dog, or grunt like a pig, so that everyone will look under the table to find the animal. I scared my family many times. As you know, my sister-in-law Bruche faints. Everybody rushed to look under the table and under the beds. I even bent down looking for the dog while continuing to bark. It was, I tell you, pure comedy! But when my brother Elyahu finally figured out it was coming from me, he really gave it to me! From that time on I quit the art of ventriloquism.

D.

We would have left Vienna long ago if not for the Alliance. What this Alliance is I cannot rightly say. I just hear people talking about it. Alliance! Alliance! All the emigrants are furious at the Alliance. They say it does nothing. It has no pity on people, and it hates Jews. Every day my brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni go to the Alliance and come back as if from a steam bath.

“May it burn up!” says Elyahu.

“May it burn like a candle!” says Pinni.

“I should go and have a talk with the Alliance.” My mother takes me by the hand, and we all go off to the Alliance: my mother and I, Elyahu and Pinni, Bruche and Teibl. I picture the Alliance with a beard, a long caftan, and a red nose. Why a red nose I don’t know.

We walk and walk! My sister-in-law Bruche says she hopes the Alliance has the same sticking pains in his right side as she has in her left. But if he did, he wouldn’t have stuck himself away who knows where at the other end of the city! With great difficulty we finally arrive. He lives in a house — may all Jews have a house like that. But it doesn’t have a courtyard. Vienna doesn’t believe in courtyards. Vienna loves enormous windows and huge doors, but they keep the doors locked. “Are they afraid someone will rob them?” my sister-in-law Bruche says. Aha, now she’s found fault with Vienna too! It irritates her that when you come to a house, you have to ring a doorbell first. Do I mind if you have to ring? So long as they open the door!

But the Alliance isn’t opening the door so quickly. You can ring as long as you please — he has time. We aren’t the only ones. There are mobs of emigrants waiting to see the Alliance. The emigrants watch us ringing the bell. “Ring some more — maybe they’ll open the door, maybe you’ll have better luck.” They laugh. They seem in good spirits. More men, women, and children keep arriving, crowding around the door. I love a crowd. If not for the children crying and the mothers scolding them and trying to shut them up, it’d be great.

Thank God, the door opens. The crowd lunges forward in a crush. Luckily someone appears at the door, hatless, red-faced, clean shaven, and pushes us, one by one, back onto the street. He pushes one woman with a child so hard that if not for me and my brother Elyahu, she’d be picking up her teeth. Still and all, she does three flips. After a long time all of us, one at a time, are allowed back into the house. And then the real picnic begins! Everyone wants to speak first and shoves toward the tables.

At the tables sit three hatless people with clean-shaven faces, laughing and smoking cigars. Which of them is the Alliance, I can’t tell. My mother doesn’t know either. She pleads, “Tell me, which one of you here is the Alliance? A terrible thing happened to me. They stole all my bedding at the border and almost murdered me and my children. Here they are, the poor orphans. My husband died young, he was a cantor all his life—”

That’s all she’s allowed to say. One of the men grabs her shawl and pushes her toward the door. He speaks a language hard to understand. My mother refuses to step aside until she’s satisfied. “Why are you talking to me in German?” she says. “Talk to me in our language, and I’ll pour out my bitter heart to you. But just tell me which one of you here is the Alliance?”

“Mother-in-law! Listen to me, let’s go,” says my sister-in-law Bruche. “God has taken us this far without the Alliance and without Vienna, and He’ll probably take us farther. God is a father.”

My mother replies, “You’re right, my child! Come, let us go! Vienna may be a city, but God is a father.”

A.

Have you ever heard of a city name like Antwerp? There is such a city, and that’s where we’re going. Why Antwerp? Because my brother Elyahu’s father-in-law Yoneh the baker is going to America through Antwerp. When my sister-in-law Bruche hears that her father is in Antwerp, she moves heaven and earth to have us go there too. Before, she wouldn’t hear of Antwerp — she didn’t like the name. Now she’s fallen in love with Antwerp!

Our friend Pinni says he’ll have to separate from us. He’d rather go from Vienna straight to London. Something is drawing him to London. London, he says, reminds him of America: Englishmen, blond hair, checkered pants. It’s a different world altogether! My sister-in-law Bruche replies, “Go with our blessing to your Englishmen with the checkered hair and blond pants, and we will go to America through Antwerp.”

Pinni’s wife Teibl gets all puffed up like a turkey. I told you that for any reason at all, she puffs up and stops talking. Pinni asks her, “Why are you angry?” She says she hates Englishmen. Pinni says to her, “Do you know any? Where have you ever seen an Englishman?” She says, “So, and you, where have you ever seen an Englishman?”