Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (21 page)

In short, I began coming around to that widow from Yekaterinoslav twice a week, every Monday and Thursday like clockwork, without her having to order in advance. It got so that I was practically one of the household; I poked around in it a bit, saw how things were done there, and even gave a bit of advice. The first time I did that, I got a good chewing out from the servant: who did I think I was, sticking my nose into other people’s business? The second time I was listened to, and the third time the widow actually asked my opinion about something, having seen by now who Tevye was. The long and short of it was that one day she approached me with her greatest problem: Ahronchik! Although he was, she said, over twenty years old, all he cared about was horses, fishing, and bicycles, apart from which nothing mattered to him. He didn’t have the slightest interest in business or making money, or even in managing the handsome estate he had inherited from his father, which was worth a good million rubles. His one pleasure was to spend it, and liberally at that.

“Tell me,” I said, “where is the young man now? If you let me have a few words with him, I might talk to him a bit, set him straight with a verse from the Bible, maybe even with a midrash …”

“If I know my son,” she laughed, “a horse will get you further than a midrash.”

We were still talking about him when—speaking of the Devil!—in walks Ahronchik himself, a tall, handsome, ruddy-faced young man with a broad sash around his waist, a pocket watch tucked into it, and sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

“Where have you been?” asks his mother.

“Out fishing in the skiff,” he says.

“Can’t you think of anything better to do?” I say. “Why, back in Yekaterinoslav they’re Constantutioning the pants off of you, and all you can do is catch fish?”

I glanced at my widow—she turned as red as a beet and every other color of the rainbow. She must have been sure that her son would grab me by the collar and give me the heave-ho in a hurry. Which just goes to show how wrong she was. There’s no way to scare Tevye. When I have something to say, I say it.

Well, when the young fellow heard that, he stepped back a bit, put his hands behind his back, looked me up and down from head to foot, let out a funny sort of whistle, and suddenly began to laugh so hard that the two of us were afraid he had gone mad before our eyes. Shall I tell you something, though? From then on he and I were the best of friends. And I must say that the better I knew him, the better I liked him, even if he was a bit of a windbag, the worst sort of spendthrift, and a little thick between the ears. For instance, let him pass a beggar in the street, and he’d stick a hand into his pocket and fork up a fistful of change without even bothering to count it! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Once I saw him take a brand-new jacket off his back and give it away to a perfect stranger—I ask you, how dumb can you get …? I felt good and sorry for his mother, believe me. She kept asking me what she should do and begging me to take him in hand. Well, I didn’t say no to that. Why refuse her a favor when it didn’t cost me a red cent? So from time to time I sat down with him and told him a story, fed him a parable, slipped him a verse from the Bible, even let him have a midrash or two, as only Tevye can do. I swear, he actually liked it and wanted to know if I talked like that at home. “I’d sure like to visit you there, Reb Tevye,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “anyone wanting to visit Tevye only has to get to Tevye’s village. Between your horses and your bicycles you can certainly make it, and in a pinch you’re a big enough boy to use your own legs. Just cut through the forest and you’re there.”

“When is a good time to come?” he says.

“You can find me at home any Sabbath or holiday,” I say. “But wait, I have an idea! The Friday after next is
Shavuos. If you’d like to take a walk over to my place then, my wife will serve you such blintzes fit for princes as
lo blintzu avoyseynu bemitsrayim!
”

“Just what does that mean?” he asks. “I’m not too strong on chapter-and-verse, you know.”

“I certainly do,” I say. “But if you’d had the schooling I did, you’d know enough to be the rabbi’s wife.”

He laughed at that and said, “All right, then, you’ve got yourself a guest. On the first day of Shavuos, Reb Tevye, I’ll be over with three friends of mine for blintzes—and they better be hot!”

“Hotter than hellfire,” I promised. “Why, they’ll be jumping right out of the frying pan at you!”

Well, as soon as I came home that day I whistled up my wife and said to her, “Golde, we’re having guests for Shavuos!”

“Mazel tov,” she says. “Who are they?”

“I’ll tell you everything in good time,” I say. “Just make sure you have enough eggs, because butter and cheese, thank God, are no problem. You’ll be making blintzes for four extra mouths—but such mouths, you should know, that understand as much about eating as they don’t understand about the Bible.”

“I might have guessed it,” she says. “You’ve been to Hunger-land again and found some new slob of a Hungarian.”

“Golde,” I said, “you’re nothing but a big cow yourself. First of all, even if we did treat some poor hungry devil to blintzes on Shavuos, what harm would it do? And second of all, you may as well know, my most Esteemed, Honored, and Beloved Wife, that one of our guests will be the widow’s son, that Ahronchik I’ve been telling you about.”

“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?” she says.

What money doesn’t do to some people! Even my Golde becomes a different woman as soon as she gets a whiff of it. But that’s the world we live in—what can you or I do about it? As it says in the prayer book,
kesef vezohov ma’asey yedey odom—
money can dig a man’s grave faster than a shovel.

In short, Shavuos time came around. I don’t have to tell you how green and bright and warm and beautiful our village is then! Your richest Jew in town should only have such a blue sky above him, such a green forest all around, such a good smell of pine trees, such a carpet of grass that the cows smile at you when they chew it as if to say, “Just keep us rolling in clover and we’ll keep you swimming in milk …” No, say what you will, I wouldn’t swap places with you in town if you promised me the best job in the world. Can you also promise me such a sky there?
Hashomayim
shomayim ladoynai
—why, in the village the sky is God’s own! You can crane your neck in town till it breaks, what do you manage to see? Walls, roofs, chimneys, but never a single tree! And if by some miracle one grows there, you have to tend it like a sick child …

In a word, our guests couldn’t get over our village when they came to visit on Shavuos. They arrived riding horses, all four of them—and I do mean horses! Why, the nag that Ahronchik alone was sitting on was such a thoroughbred that you couldn’t have bought it for three hundred rubles.

“Welcome, my friends,” I said to them. “I see no one bothered to tell you that
a Jew doesn’t ride on Shavuos. Well, we won’t let that spoil the holiday. Tevye’s no saint himself, and if you’re whipped for it in the world to come, it won’t be any skin off my back … Golde! Put up the blintzes and have the girls carry out the table and put it on the grass—our house isn’t such a museum piece that we have to show it off to visitors … Shprintze! Teibl! Beilke! Where are you all? Let’s get cracking …”

I stood there giving orders and pretty soon out of the house came the table, benches, a tablecloth, plates, spoons, forks, and saltshakers, and right on the heels of it all, my Golde with the blintzes—and such piping-hot, mouth-watering, straight-from-the-frying-pan, sweeter-than-manna-tasting blintzes they were that our guests couldn’t stop eating or praising them …

“What are you standing there for?” I said to my Golde. “Don’t you know that since Shavuos has two days, everything else about it has to be doubled too? Bring some more blintzes and we’ll have a second round!”

Well, in a shake of a lamb’s tail my Golde filled the platter with more blintzes and my Shprintze brought them to the table. Just then I glanced at Ahronchik, and what do I see? He’s staring at my Shprintze, his eyes are glued to her so hard he can’t pull them away. What did he suppose he was looking at? “Eat up,” I said to him. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Why, what does it look like I’m doing?” he says.

“It looks like you’re looking at my Shprintze,” I say.

Everyone burst out laughing at that, my Shprintze too. We were all so gay, so happy, enjoying such a fine Shavuos … how was I supposed to know it would end in such a nightmare, in such a tragedy, in such a horror story, in such a punishment from God
that it’s left me a wreck of a man? I’ll tell you what, though. We men are fools. If we had any brains to speak of, we’d realize that things are the way they were meant to be, because if they were meant to be different, they wouldn’t be the way they are … Doesn’t it say in the Book of Psalms,
hashleykh al hashem
—trust no one but God? Just leave it to Him: He’ll see to it that the worms are eating you like fresh bagels, and you’ll thank Him for it too. And now listen to what can happen in this world of ours—and listen carefully, because you haven’t heard anything yet.

Vayehi erev vayehi voyker
—one evening when I came home from Boiberik, bushed from the heat and from running between dachas all day long, I spied a familiar horse tied to the gate by the house. In fact, I could have sworn it was Ahronchik’s thoroughbred that I had priced at three hundred rubles! I went over to it, slapped it on the rear with one hand while scratching its head with the other, and said, “Well now, old fellow, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” To which it bobbed its chin quite handsomely and gave me a clever look as if to say, “Why ask me, when I happen to have a master?”

Well, I went inside, collared my wife, and said to her, “Golde, my dearest, what is Ahronchik doing here?”

“How am I supposed to know?” she answers me. “I thought he was one of your crowd.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He went for a walk in the forest with the girls,” my Golde tells me.

“What on earth made him do a thing like that?” I wondered out loud, and asked her for something to eat. When I had had my fill, I sat there thinking, Tevye, why are you so nervous? Since when is a visitor dropping by any reason to be so on edge? If anything … but I never finished the thought, because just then I looked outside and saw the bonnie young lad with my girls, who were carrying wild flowers they had picked. Teibl and Beilke were walking in front, and Shprintze was bringing up the rear with Ahronchik.

“A good evening!” I said to him.

“And to you, too,” he replied. He stood there a little awkwardly with a blade of grass in his mouth, stroking his horse’s mane; then he said, “Reb Tevye, I have an offer to make you. Let’s you and I swap horses.”

“Don’t you have anyone better to make fun of?” I asked him.

“But I mean it,” he says.

“Do you now?” I say. “Do you have any idea what this horse of yours is worth?”

“What would you price him at?” he asks.

“He’s worth three hundred rubles if a cent,” I say, “and maybe even a little bit more.”

Well, Ahronchik laughed, told me his horse had cost over three times that amount, and said, “How about it, then? Is it a deal?”

I tell you, I didn’t like it one bit: what kind of business was it to trade such a horse for my gluepot? And so I told him to keep his offer for another day and joked that I hoped he hadn’t come just for that, since I hated to see him waste his time …

“As a matter of fact,” he says to me, as serious as can be, “I came to see you about something else. If it’s not too much to ask of you, perhaps the two of us could take a little walk.”

He’s got walking on the brain today, I thought, but I agreed to go for a stroll in the forest with him. The sun had set long ago; the woods were getting dark; frogs croaked from the river; and the smell of so many green, growing things was like heaven itself. Ahronchik and I walked side by side without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped short, let out a cough, and said, “Reb Tevye! What would you say if I told you I’m in love with your Shprintze and want to marry her?”

“What would I say?” I said. “I’d tell them to move over and make room for one more in the loony bin.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he says, staring at me.

“It means,” I say, “exactly what it sounds like.”

“But I don’t get it,” he says.

“That,” I say, “just goes to show that you’re even less of a genius than I thought. You know, there’s a verse in the Bible that says,
‘The wise man has eyes in his head.’ That means you can talk to him with a wink, while the fool must be talked to with a stick.”

“I’m speaking in plain language,” he says, beginning to get sore, “and all I’m hearing from you is jokes from the Bible.”

“Well,” I said, “every cantor sings the best he can and every preacher toots his own horn. If you’d like to know how well you’re tooting yours, I suggest you have a talk with your mother. She’ll set you straight in a jiffy.”

“Do you take me,” he says, “for a little boy who has to get permission from his mother?”

“Of course I do,” I say. “And your mother’s sure to tell you you’re a dunce. And she’ll be right.”

“She will be?” he says.

“Of course she will be,” I say. “What kind of husband will you make my Shprintze? What kind of wife will my Shprintze make you? And most of all, what kind of in-law will I make your mother?”

“If that’s what you’re thinking, Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’re making a big mistake. I’m not an eighteen-year-old, and I’m not looking for in-laws for my mother. I know who you are, I know who your daughter is, and I like what I see. That’s what I want and that’s what I’m going to—”

“Excuse me for interrupting,” I say, “but there’s one thing I still have to ask you. I can see there’s no problem on the groom’s side, but have you bothered to clear this with the bride’s side?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

“I’m talking about my daughter Shprintze,” I say. “Have you talked this over with her? And if so, what does she say?”

Well, he gave me an insulted look but said with a smile, “What kind of a question is that? Of course I’ve talked it over with her—and not just once, either. I’m here every day.”