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

H.

My mother is resentful. She sticks up for me and my friend Mendl. She says we earn our keep honestly. Early in the morning, before the stand opens, we deliver the morning papers to our customers. Then we go to school. (Yes, we’re going to school.) And after school we help “attend to the business.” My mother uses those very words. She is now speaking more than half in English. She knows chicken and kitchen, but gets them mixed up. She says, “I’m going into the chicken to salt the kitchen.” We laugh at her, and she laughs too.

A.

One early morning Mendl and I are running around delivering the morning newspapers to our customers when suddenly someone claps me on the back and calls out, “Hello, old pal!”

I turn around and see — Motl, Big Motl! It’s the same Motl who dragged around with us in Cracow, Lemberg, Vienna, and Antwerp. If you remember, he taught me how to do a governor in my side and was a ventriloquist. He left with the emigrant gang much earlier than we. While we were still trying to find our way in London Whitechapel, he was doing all right in America. He already had a job in a cleaning store, which he still has. I ask him, “What kind of job is it?” He explains as we walk that it’s a kind of cleaning factory where they clean and press clothing. “How do they do it?” I ask.

“They put a pair of washed, creased pants into a sort of machine between two ironing boards. In a separate little oven the boards are heated up. A person pulls down the boards — you have a pair of pressed pants!”

B.

“And what are your jobs?” Big Motl asks of me and Mendl.

“We deliver newspapers,” I say. “We bring papers to customers before we go to school. And when we come home from school, we help with the business. We have a stand on a street corner, and we’re making a living.”

“Oho!” says Big Motl. “Your English is pretty good. How much do you make a week, two businessmen like yourselves?”

“On average,” I say, “we can take in about a dollar a week and sometimes a dollar and a quarter.”

“Is that all?” says Big Motl scornfully. “I make three dollars a week. What’s the name of this gentleman?” He points to my friend. I tell him his name is Mendl. Motl laughs and says Mendl is a stupid name. What kind of a name is Mendl? “What else should his name be?” I ask. He thinks awhile and says he’d do better to be called Mike, not Mendl. Mike is a much nicer name.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Max,” he says.

“If that’s so, I should be called Max too. My name is also Motl.”

He says, “Sure, you’re called Max,” and he leaves. “Goodbye, Max! Goodbye, Mike!”

We decide to meet at the movies the following Sunday. We exchange addresses and go our own ways.

C.

Sunday after dinner I and my friend Mike, who was not so long ago called Mendl, go to the movies to see the great movie star Charlie Chaplin. My brother Elyahu and our friend Pinni also come along. All the way to the movies they talk about Charlie Chaplin, what a great man he is, how much he gets paid, and the fact that he is a Jew. But these two can never agree on anything — what one says, the other one says the opposite. So my brother Elyahu says, “In what way is Charlie Chaplin so great?” Pinni answers that they don’t pay just anyone a thousand dollars a week. My brother Elyahu asks him how he knows that — did he count his money? Pinni says he read it in the papers. And how does he know Charlie Chaplin is a Jew? Pinni says that’s what they say in the papers. My brother Elyahu asks him further, “How do the papers know? Were they at his bris ?”

Pinni says, “The papers know everything. That’s how we know Charlie Chaplin is a mute from birth, and that he can’t write or read. And that his father was a drunkard. And that he himself was once a clown in a circus.”

My brother Elyahu hears him out and says coldly, “And maybe the whole story is a lie?” Pinni becomes enraged and says my brother is a nudnik . I agree with Pinni. Even though my brother Elyahu is my own flesh and blood, he’s an awful nudnik . What’s true is true.

D.

We have just approached the ticket office when we hear a voice: “How do you do, Max? How are you, Mike?”

It’s Big Motl, whose name is no longer Motl but Max.

“Don’t buy any tickets,” says Max. “I’m treating with tickets today,” which means he’s buying our tickets. He pulls a half dollar from his pocket and tosses it to the girl sitting at the little window and asks for three tickets in the gallery.

“Who is this shlimazel ?” my brother Elyahu asks us. We tell him who it is. My brother Elyahu looks him up and down and asks him why he doesn’t give us a sholem aleichem . “Have you become so important in America that it’s beneath you to speak a word of Yiddish?”

Motl, or Max, doesn’t answer him. But suddenly we hear a shout from near the theater door: “Idiot!”

We all turn our faces toward the door but don’t see anyone. We look at each other, surprised. My brother Elyahu moves toward the door, followed by Pinni — no one is there. They look up at the ceiling and search all the corners — not a soul. Who can it be?

Motl, now Max, takes me and Mike by the hands, and we all climb upstairs. There he tells us the secret that it was he, Max, who through ventriloquism yelled out “Idiot!” And he repeats it as we take our seats. We burst out laughing so hard, we can hardly sit still as we enjoy Charlie Chaplin’s pranks.

E.

Never in your life have you met such a character as Big Motl, or Max. You’d think there was no greater magician than Charlie Chaplin, but Max imitates him in every detail. Leaving the theater, Max pastes on a black mustache just like Charlie Chaplin’s. He pushes his hat back like Charlie Chaplin. He turns his feet out like Charlie Chaplin and imitates his walk exactly, wagging his behind and twirling his cane. My friend Mendl, or Mike, grabs him and hugs him. Everyone standing outside the theater points at him. “There goes the second Charlie Chaplin!” Even a serious person like my brother Elyahu is laughing.

But he doesn’t laugh long. In a moment his laughter is spoiled. Why? He suddenly hears a voice as if from under the ground, from the cellar: “I-di-ot!”

F.

Everybody bends down, looking into the cellar we’ve just passed. We all listen intently, as does Max, as if he has no idea what’s happening. Then we suddenly hear a voice, now above us, as if from the roof: “I-di-ot!!”

First my brother Elyahu and then all of us crane our necks toward the roof, as does Max, which is very funny. Mike and I know where the voices are coming from. We can’t restrain ourselves and burst out laughing.

G.

That really upsets my brother Elyahu. Had we not been in New York on the street, we’d certainly have received a few good slaps on both cheeks. My ears would have known about it. But since we’re on the street in the middle of New York, my brother Elyahu has to be satisfied with soundly cursing us out.

Then he tries to teach us a lesson. He points to Max. “Learn from him,” he says, rubbing it in. “Learn from your friend, a boy like you. Why isn’t he laughing like you are?”

“I-di-ot!” we hear again from behind my brother Elyahu’s back. My brother Elyahu spins around, and so does our friend Pinni. We all spin around, including Max. Mike and I almost fall down laughing.

H.

“In America the stones speak,” says Pinni. He’d love to know who’s calling out “Idiot.”