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

Worst of all, some pay weekly until they can no longer pay. Why? The breadwinner is sick, or there is no work, or a strike breaks out. You don’t want to lose a customer. What can you do? So my brother Elyahu lays out money from his own pocket during that time. You can see that it’s one problem after another!

J.

Do you think our friend Pinni is happy with his job? Not at all. Until you catch a customer, he says, it’s like crossing the Red Sea. You have to talk to them for three days and nights. You try to explain to the moron what insurance means, and you finally get him to sign an “application.” But on the second day he changes his mind, or the doctor “rejects” him, which means he’s turned down on account of bad health, or the doctor didn’t like how he looked naked. But the worst thing by far for insurance agents is a “lapse”—a customer stops paying. Then they deduct from the agent’s commission fifteen times as much as the cost of the customer’s premium. If not for the lapses, Pinni says he’d have covered the house with gold! It’s his bad luck that several customers have stopped paying at the same time, as if they’d decided on it together.

“Let them burn, those customers, with the insurance, with the agents, with the lapses, and with the companies!” says Pinni. He’d rather go into his own business with my brother Elyahu. With God’s help, they’ve saved a few dollars. They can start their own business.

And so we decide to go into our own business.

A.

Whatever your heart desires, you can find in the newspapers. Are you looking for work? You’ll find it in the papers. Are you looking for workers? You’ll find them in the papers. Are you looking for a bride or a bridegroom? You’ll find them in the papers. Are you looking for a business? You’ll find it in the papers. We’re looking for a business, and so we look for one in the papers every day. We are stopped by this advertisement:

CIGARS — STATIONERY — CANDY — SODA STAND FOR SALE Opposite a school, selling because of family trouble. Guaranteed good business. COME QUICKLY!

B.

My brother’s wife Bruche strongly opposes the business. In the first place, she argues, how do we know what they say in the ad is the truth? In the second place, why should we creep into a sick bed with a healthy head? If there’s family trouble, why do we have to get into the middle? Do you think these are the only faults Bruche finds? To a hundred other business possibilities, she is able to find for each its special fault. My brother Elyahu keeps waving her off, but she won’t be deterred. He shouldn’t be so self-assured, she says. Just because he’s shaved off three-quarters of his beard doesn’t give him the right to put on airs. To this my brother Elyahu replies, “Why did your father shave his whole beard off?”

Our friend Pinni enters the argument: “Do you know what? I’ll bet you two to one that if you find among two million Americans half a dozen people with beards, you can call me a liar!”

“What an example!” says my mother. “That’s like saying ducks go barefoot. Better to talk of other things.”

My mother hates it when you speak of beards. It’s enough for her that she has lived to see Peysi the cantor’s son shorten his beard.

C.

The business we go into has many good features. First, my brother Elyahu, as you may remember, is a master of “manufacturing” all kinds of drinks, which comes in handy if you have in mind manufacturing soda water and selling a tall glassful for a cent — with syrup, two cents. The syrup we also make ourselves. Another plus is that we have the cheapest candy — a fistful for a cent, and we can suck the candies ourselves. When I say “we,” I mean me and my friends Mendl and Pinni. The three of us help out at the stand and sneak a nosh when no one is looking. When Bruche is nearby, we can’t nosh, and out of spite she is at the stand almost all day, helping with the business. We all help out, even Teibl and my mother. When a customer approaches our stand, he might be taken aback to see such a large family of businesspeople. But that’s to our benefit. Most customers like to shop where it looks crowded.

D.

The best time for our business is summer, during the hot days. Summer in New York is a true hell. People cool off all day with ice cream, which we sell as sandwiches made up of ice cream between two wafers. Each one costs us a penny. We make a 50 percent profit on it, but that’s not where our earnings mainly come from. The main profit lies somewhere else, in a cold drink called cider. This is a sweet and sour kvass with foam, and it tickles your tongue. Those who have tasted champagne say it tastes like real champagne. And though cider is an American drink, who do you suppose manufactures it? My brother Elyahu. What can my brother Elyahu not do? Never mind that Pinni belittles him.

Several times our friend Pinni has held forth and claimed that my brother Elyahu’s champagne has only one advantage — it’s cold. Otherwise it isn’t worth anything. It has no sweetness at all! My brother comes back with, “If the champagne is no good, how come you guzzle it all day?”

Pinni replies, “What do you care if I guzzle? How much can a person guzzle? If I guzzled from early morning till night, I don’t know if I would guzzle a nickel’s worth.” Bruche interrupts and says that a nickel doesn’t just walk into your pocket. Teibl defends her husband and says Pinni is an equal partner in the business with my brother Elyahu, and a partner may, you’d think, allow himself to waste a nickel once in a while. Luckily my mother is nearby. She says that were you to shower her with gold, she wouldn’t so much as touch this American drink, which looks disgusting and is repulsive to drink! We laugh and for the moment the squabbling ends.

E.

Later, toward the end of summer, when the watermelons are ripe, our business does even better. We cut the melons into many slices and sell them for a penny a slice. If God helps out with a delicious melon, we really make out well. If a few slices remain on the stand, we have a good supper, because you can’t keep cut melon for another day or it will turn. I and Mendl and Pinni pray to God to have more watermelon slices left over.

F.

These items have a limited season. After the summer, it’s no more champagne, no more watermelon! But cigarettes have no particular season and are sold all year round. We do a very good business with them. There are all kinds of cigarettes. Some cost a penny apiece, some cost two for a cent. Cigarettes are also something you can sneak and smoke in secret. Then something awful happened. I once sneaked a cigarette, and we were smoking it, Mendl and I — he a puff, I a puff. It would have gone smoothly, but Bruche sniffed out that we were smoking. She told my brother Elyahu, who taught me a lesson about cigarettes I’ll never forget! It wasn’t so much the cigarette that bothered him as the fact that it was Shabbes. That Peysi the cantor’s son would smoke on Shabbes — reason enough to kill him! Even my mother went along with him for something like that. The dog deserves the stick. From that time on we don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. I can’t even stand the smell.

G.

In addition to cigarettes, we also sell Yiddish newspapers and magazines. We don’t do a great business with them, but our friend Pinni has something to read. He doesn’t leave a single newspaper unread. Once he sticks his nose in, it’s hard to tear him away. He’s drawn to the papers, he says, like a magnet. He’s even tempted to write something for the papers himself. He’s already been to East Broadway several times where the papers are printed. What he does there, he doesn’t say. I’m afraid he takes some of his songs along, because when they deliver the stacks of papers, our friend Pinni leaps up and grabs one before anyone else. He leafs through and searches through every page. His hands actually tremble. Then he jumps up and runs off to East Broadway. My brother Elyahu asks him what he has to do on East Broadway. Pinni tells him he’s looking for a business. Elyahu asks him, “Aren’t we doing business?” Pinni answers, “You call this a business? A family of seven people living from one little stand? Some business!” My brother Elyahu is puzzled. “How do you get seven people out of five?” Pinni counts on his fingers. He and his Teibl are two. My brother Elyahu and his Bruche are four. My mother is five. And the two kids make seven. By kids, he means Mendl and me.