Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (12 page)

“Thieves? That’s a good one! What other cheery thoughts do you have, light of my life?” I asked—though to myself I thought, who knows what a man can meet up with when he’s traveling? “Why is it that you always have to imagine the worst?”

“Because,” she says, “it runs in his family. His mother, may she speak no ill of us in heaven, passed away not long ago in her prime, and his three sisters are all dead too. One died as a girl; one was married but caught a cold in the bathhouse and never recovered from it; and one went crazy after her first confinement and wasted away into nothing …”

“May the dead live in Paradise, Golde,” I said, “because that’s where we’ll join them some day. A man, I tell you, is no different from a carpenter; that is, a carpenter lives till he dies, and so does a man.”

In a word, we decided that I should pay a call on Menachem Mendl. By now I had a bit of merchandise, some Grade A cheese, cream, and butter, so I harnessed the horse to the wagon and
vayisu misukoys
—off to Yehupetz I went. I hardly need tell you that
I was in a black and bitter mood, and as I drove through the forest my fears got the better of me. No doubt, I thought, when I ask for my man in Yehupetz I’ll be told, “Menachem Mendl? There’s someone who’s made it to the top. He lives in a big house and rides about in droshkies—you’ll never recognize him!” Still, I’ll pluck up my nerve and go straight to his house. “Hey, there, uncle,” says the doorman, sticking an elbow in my ribs, “just where do you think you’re going? It’s by appointment only here, in case you didn’t know.”

“But I’m a relative of his,” I say. “He’s my second cousin once removed on my wife’s side.”

“Congratulations,” says the doorman. “Pleased to meet you. I’m afraid, though, that you’ll have to cool your heels all the same. I promise you your health won’t suffer from it.”

I realize that I have to cross his palm. How does the verse go?
Oylim veyordim
—if you want to travel, you better grease the wheels. At once I’m shown in to Menachem Mendl.

“A good morning to you, Reb Menachem Mendl,” I say to him.

A good what to who?
Eyn oymer ve’eyn dvorim
—he doesn’t know me from Adam! “What do you want?” he says to me.

I feel weak all over. “But how can it be, Pani,” I say, “that you don’t even know your own cousin? It’s me, Tevye!”

“Eh?” he says. “Tevye? The name rings a bell.”

“Oh, it does, does it?” I say. “I suppose my wife’s blintzes, and knishes, and knaidlach, and varnishkes all happen to ring a bell too …?”

He doesn’t answer me, though, because now I imagine the opposite: as soon as he catches sight of me, he greets me like a long-lost friend. “What a guest! What a guest! Sit down, Reb Tevye, and tell me how you are. And how is your wife? I’ve been looking all over for you, we have some accounts to settle.” And with that he dumps a bushel of gold imperials out on the table. “This,” he says, “is your share of the profit. The principal has been reinvested. Whatever we make we’ll keep on sharing, half and half, fifty-fifty, a hundred for me, a hundred for you, two hundred for me, two hundred for you, three hundred for me, three hundred for you, four hundred for me, four hundred for you …”

He was still talking when I dozed off, so that I didn’t see my old dobbin stray from the path and run the wagon into a tree. It gave
me such a jolt in the pants that I saw stars. Just look how everything turns out for the best, I told myself. You can consider yourself lucky that the axle didn’t break …

Well, I arrived in Yehupetz, had my goods snatched up in no time as usual, and began to look for my fine friend. One, two, three hours went by in roaming the streets of the town—
vehayeled eynenu
, there’s neither hide nor hair of him. Finally I stopped some people and asked, “Excuse me, but do you by any chance know of a Jew around here whose given name is Menachem Mendl?”

“Menachem Mendl?” they say to me. “We know no endl Menachem Mendls. Which one are you looking for?”

“You mean what’s his last name?” I say. “It’s Menachem Mendl. Back home in Kasrilevke he’s called after his mother-in-law, that is, Leah Dvossi’s Menachem Mendl. In fact, his father-in-law—and a fine old man he is—is called Leah Dvossi’s Boruch Hirsh. Why, Leah Dvossi is so well known in Kasrilevke that she herself is called Leah Dvossi’s Boruch Hirsh’s Leah Dvossi. Do you know who I’m talking about now?”

“We follow you perfectly,” they say. “But that still isn’t enough. What’s his line? What does he deal in, this Menachem Mendl of yours?”

“What’s his line?” I say. “His line is gold imperials, and now and then poptions. And telegrams to St. Petersburg and Warsaw.”

“Is that so?” they say, holding their sides. “If it’s the Menachem Mendl who’ll sell you a bird in the bush at half price that you’re looking for, you’ll find him over there with all the other bushmen, on the other side of the street.”

One is never too old to learn, I thought, but
bushmen?
Still, I crossed to the opposite sidewalk, where I found myself among such a mob of Jews that I could hardly move. They were packed together as at a fairgrounds, running around like crazy and climbing all over each other. What bedlam! Everyone was shouting and waving his hands at once. “Up a quarter!… Give me ten!… Word of honor!… Put it there!… Cash on the barrelhead!… Scratch that!… You double-dealer!… You four-flusher!… I’ll bash your head in!… You should spit in his eye!… He’ll lose his shirt!… What a chiseler!… You’re a bankrupt!… You’re a bootlicker!… So’s your old man!…” They looked about to come to blows.
Vayivrakh Ya’akoyv
, I told myself: you better scram while
you can, Tevye, my friend. If only you had listened to what the Bible says, you would never have believed in False Profits. So this is where the gold imperials grow on trees? This is the business you invested in? A black day it was that you became a businessman!

In a word, I had moved on a bit and come to a big display window full of pants when whose reflection did I see in it but Mr. Moneybags’ himself! My heart sank to my stomach. I thought I would die! We should only live to meet our worst enemies crawling down the street like Menachem Mendl. You should have seen his coat! And his shoes! And the face on him—why, a corpse in the grave looks better. Nu, Tevye, I thought,
ka’asher ovadeti ovadeti
—you’re up the creek this time for sure. You can kiss every cent you ever had goodbye.
Loy dubim veloy ya’ar
—the principal’s gone with the profit and all that’s left you is troubles!

He too must have been stunned to see me, because we just went on standing there without a word, staring at each other like two roosters, as if to say, you know and I know that it’s all over with the two of us; there’s nothing for it now but to take a tin cup and start going from door to door with it …

“Reb Tevye,” he said in such a whisper that I could hardly hear him. “Reb Tevye! With luck like mine it’s better not to be born. I’d rather hang than have to live like this …”

He couldn’t get out another word. “There’s no doubt, Menachem Mendl,” I said, “that you deserve as much. You should be taken right now and given such a whipping in the middle of Yehupetz, in front of everyone, that you’d soon be paying a call on your Grandmother Tsaytl in the next world. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve taken a house full of people, live, feeling human beings who never did you an ounce of harm, and slit their throats without a knife! How in the world am I supposed to show my face now to my wife and kids? Perhaps you can tell me that, you thief, you, you swindler, you murderer!”

“It’s the truth,” he says, flattening himself against the wall. “So help me God, every word of what you say is true!”

“Hell itself,” I say, “hell itself, you cretin, is too good for you!”

“It’s the truth, Reb Tevye,” he says. “So help me God, before I’ll go on living like this any longer, I’ll … I’ll …”

And he hung his head. I stood there looking at the schlimazel pressed against the wall with his hat falling off, every sigh and groan of his breaking my heart. “Well,” I said, “come to think of
it, there’s no sense in blaming you either. After all, it’s ridiculous to suppose you did it on purpose, because you were a partner just like me, the business was half yours. I put in the money, you put in the brains, and don’t we both wish we hadn’t! I’m sure you meant well,
lekhayim veloy lamoves
. If we blew a small fortune, that’s only because we weren’t meant to make a big one. How does the verse go?
Al tis’haleyl beyoym mokhor
—the more man plans, the harder God laughs. Take my dairy business, for example. You would think it was pretty solid—and yet just last autumn, it shouldn’t happen to you, a cow dropped dead on me for whose carcass I was lucky to get fifty kopecks, and right after her, a red heifer that I wouldn’t have sold for twenty rubles. Was there anything I could do about it? If it’s not in the cards, you can stand on your head and say the alphabet backwards—it doesn’t help a damn bit. I’m not even asking what you did with the money that I bled for. I know as much as I want to, that it went to buy birds in a bush, whole flocks of them, and that I’ll never get to see a single one. And whose fault is it? It’s my own, for having been taken in by a lot of hot air. Take it from me, the only way to make money is to work your bottom off. Which is where you, Tevye, deserve to get a swift kick!
But what good does it do to cry about it? It’s just like it says in the Bible,
vetso’akoh hane’aroh
—you can scream till you burst, who says that anyone is listening? Wisdom and second thoughts are two things that always come too late. Tevye just wasn’t meant to be upper crust, that’s not how God wanted it.
Hashem nosan vehashem lokakh
,
the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—in which case, says Rashi, cheer up, my friend, and let’s go have a little shot of brandy!…”

And that, Pan Sholem Aleichem, is how I blew all my money. But if you think I’ve been eating my heart out over it, you have another guess coming. You know the Bible’s opinion:
li hakesef veli hazohov
—money is a lot of baloney. What matters is the man who has it—I mean, what matters is for a man to be a man. Do you know what I still can’t get over, though? Losing my dream! If only you knew how badly, oh Lord, how really badly I wanted to be a rich Jew, if only for just a few days! But go be smarter than life. Doesn’t it say
be’al korkhekho atoh khai
—nobody asks if you want to be born or if you want your last pair of boots to be torn. “Instead of dreaming, Tevye,” God was trying to tell me, “you should have
stuck to your cheese and butter.” Does that mean I’ve lost faith and stopped hoping for better times? Don’t you believe it! The more troubles, the more faith, the bigger the beggar, the greater his hopes. How can that be, you ask? But I’ve already gone on enough for one day, and I’d better be off and about my business. How does the verse go?
Koyl ha’odom koyzev
—there isn’t a man who hasn’t taken a beating sometime. Don’t forget to take care and be well!

(1899)

TODAY’S CHILDREN

S
ay what you will about today’s children, Pan Sholem Aleichem,
bonim gidalti veroymamti:
first you have them, then you break your back for them, make every sacrifice, put yourself through the mill … and for what? So that maybe, you think, if you’ve managed to get ahead a bit in life, you can help them get somewhere too. I wouldn’t dream of having Brodsky for my in-law, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to settle for just anyone, because I’m not such a nobody myself; and since I don’t come, as my wife likes to put it, from a long line of fishmongers, I had hoped for some luck with my daughters. How was that? In the first place, because God gave them good looks, and a pretty face, the saying goes, is half a dowry. And secondly, because even if, with God’s help, I’m no longer the Tevye I once was, someone like me still rates a good match even in Yehupetz, don’t you think? The trouble is that the same merciful God who’s always practicing His miracles on me, first seeing how quick He can raise a man up and then how fast He can dump him back down, has let me know in no uncertain terms, “Tevye, stop being so ridiculous as to think you can run the world!” … Well, wait till you hear how the world runs itself without me. And who, naturally, does it run right over first? Why, your schlimazel of a Tevye, of course!