Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (22 page)

Did you ever hear the likes of it? He’s there every day and I know nothing about it! Tevye, you two-footed animal, I told myself, you deserve to eat hay with your cows! If that’s how you let yourself be led about by the nose, you’ll be bought and sold like the donkey you are!… I didn’t say anything to Ahronchik as we walked back, though. He said goodbye to the girls, jumped on his horse, and
holakh Moyshe-Mordekhai
—away to Boiberik he went …

And now, as you writers like to say in your books, let’s leave the young prince on his horse and get back to the princess in her castle, that is, to my Shprintze. “Tell me, Daughter,” I said to her, “there’s something I want to ask you: how could you and Ahronchik have discussed such a matter without even letting me know?”

Did you ever hear a tree talk? That’s how my Shprintze answered me. She just blushed, stared down at her feet like a newlywed, and didn’t open her mouth. Mum’s the word!… Well, I thought, if you won’t talk to me now, you’ll do it later. Tevye is no woman; Tevye can wait. But I kept an eye out, looking for a chance to be alone with her again, and as soon as I found it one
day outside the house, I said to her, “Shprintze, I want you to tell me: do you think you really know him, this Ahronchik?” “Of course I do,” she says.

“And do you know that he’s a penny whistle?” I say.

“What’s a penny whistle?” she asks.

“A penny whistle,” I say, “is something hollow that makes a lot of noise.”

“That isn’t so,” she says to me. “Arnold is a fine person.”

“Arnold?” I say. “Since when is that phony called Arnold?”

“Arnold,” she says, “is not a phony. Arnold has a heart of gold. It’s not his fault if he grew up in a house full of vile people who only think of money all the time.”

“Well, well, well,” I said. “Look who’s the philosopher now! I suppose you think that having money is a sin too …”

In a word, I could see that they both were too far gone to be talked out of it. I know my girls. Didn’t I once tell you that when Tevye’s daughters, God help us, fall for someone, they fall with everything they have? And so I told myself, you fool, you, why must you always think you know best? Why can’t you admit the whole thing may be providential? Why isn’t it possible that quiet little Shprintze is meant to be your salvation, your reward for all your hardship and your heartache, so that at last you can enjoy yourself in your old age and live like a human being for once? Suppose your daughter is fated to be a millionairess—is that really so terrible? Is it such a blow to your dignity? Does it say anywhere in the Bible that Tevye must always be a beggar who spends his whole life hauling cheese and butter to keep the rich Jews of Yehupetz from dying of hunger? Who’s to say that God hasn’t fingered you to do a little good in His world before you die—to give a bit of money to charity, to take someone needy under your wing, even to sit down with educated Jews and study some Torah …

I swear, those were only some of the sweet thoughts that ran through my head. You know what it says in the morning prayer:
raboys makhshovoys belev ish
—or as they say in Russian, a fool can get rich just by thinking … And so I stepped into the house and took my wife aside for a little talk. “Just suppose,” I said to her, “that our Shprintze should become a millionairess?”

“What’s a millionairess?” asks my Golde.

“A millionairess,” I say, “is a millionaire’s wife.”

“And what’s a millionaire?” she asks.

“A millionaire,” I say, “is a man who’s worth a million.”

“And how much is a million?” she asks.

“Look,” I say, “if you’re such a cow that you don’t know what a million is, it’s a waste of time talking to you.”

“So who asked you to talk to me?” she says. I couldn’t argue with that.

In a word, another day went by in Boiberik and I came home again. “Was Ahronchik here?” No, he wasn’t … Another day. “Was he here today?” No, he wasn’t … Though I could have found some excuse to drop in on the widow, I wasn’t keen on it: I didn’t want her to think that Tevye was fishing for a match with her—and one that she needed
keshoyshanoh beyn hakhoykhim
, like a wagon needs a fifth wheel … (Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of me, mind you, because if I wasn’t a millionaire myself, I would at least have an in-law who was, while the only in-law she’d have would be a poor beggar of a dairyman; I ask you, then, whose connections would be better, mine or hers?) … To tell you the honest truth, though, if I wanted that match at all, it was less for the match’s sake than for the feeling of satisfaction it would give me. “The Devil take you all!” I’d be able to say to all the rich Jews of Yehupetz. “Until now it’s been nothing but Brodsky, Brodsky, Brodsky, but now you see who Tevye really is …”

So I thought, driving home from Boiberik. As soon as I walked in the door, my Golde met me with a bombshell. “A messenger, a Russian, was just here from Boiberik, from the widow! She begs you to come for God’s sake as quickly as you can, even if it’s the middle of the night! Harness the horse and go, it must be something important.”

“Where’s the fire?” I asked. “Can’t it wait until morning?” Just then, though, I glanced at my Shprintze—and while she didn’t say a word, her eyes said it all, everything! No one knew that child’s heart the way I did—which was why I had sounded off to her about Ahronchik, because I was afraid that nothing would come of it. (Not that I couldn’t have saved my breath, since for the past three days my Shprintze had been wasting away like a candle!) … And so I harnessed the horse again and set out that same evening for Boiberik. What can be so urgent, I wondered as I drove there. If they want to shake hands on it and have a proper betrothal, it’s
they who should come to me, because I’m the bride’s father … only that was such a preposterous thought that it made me laugh out loud: who ever heard of a rich man going to a poor one for a betrothal? Did I think that the world had already come to an end, as that scamp of a Peppercorn said it would, and that the tycoon and the beggar were now equals,
sheli shelkho
and
shelkho sheli
—you take what’s mine, I take what’s yours, and the Devil take the hindmost? People were born with brains in this world and yet, oh, my goodness—what jackasses there were in it!…

I was still trying to figure it all out when I arrived in Boiberik, drove straight to the widow’s dacha, and parked my horse in front of it.

“Where is the widow?” I asked at the door.

“The widow’s not here.”

“Where is her son?”

“He’s not here either.”

“Then who asked me to come?”

“I did,” says a round tub of a man with a stringy beard and a fat gold watch chain on his stomach.

“And just who are you?” I ask.

“I’m the widow’s brother, Ahronchik’s uncle,” he says. “I was cabled to come from Yekaterinoslav, and I’ve just arrived.”

“In that case,” I say, sitting down in a chair, “welcome to Boiberik.”

“Have a seat,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say, “but I already have one. So how’s the Constantution in your parts?”

He didn’t answer that. He just settled himself into a rocking chair with his hands still in his pants pockets and his stomach sticking out beneath his watch chain and said without wasting any words, “I’m told they call you Tevye.”

“They do indeed,” I said. “And when they call me to the Torah in the synagogue, it’s even Reb Tevye the son of Shneyur Zalman.”

“Well, then, Reb Tevye,” he says to me, “listen here. Why beat around the bush? Let’s get right down to business, as they say …”

“And why not?” I say.
“There’s a time for everything, as King Solomon once said—and if it’s business time, it’s time for business. And a businessman is what I happen to be …”

“I can see you are,” he says, “and that’s why I’ll get down to brass tacks with you. I want you to tell me perfectly honestly, just what is this going to cost us?”

“I can tell you perfectly honestly,” I say, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Reb Tevye!” he says to me again, his hands still in his pockets. “I’m asking you in plain language. How much is this affair going to cost us?”

“Well, now,” I say, “that all depends on what sort of affair you have in mind. If you’re thinking of the fancy wedding that folks like you are accustomed to, I’m afraid it’s a bit beyond my budget.”

“Either you’re playing dumb,” he says to me, giving me the once-over, “or else you really are dumb. Only, how dumb can you be to have set my nephew up in the first place by pretending to invite him over for blintzes in order to introduce him to a young beauty who may or may not be your real daughter … I won’t go into that now … and who got him to fall for her and maybe even—it’s easy to see how she could—fell for him? Of course, I don’t mean to imply it wasn’t kosher … she may be a perfectly respectable girl, for all I know … I really don’t want to go into that. But how could you have allowed yourself to forget who you are and who we are? Where does a sensible Jew like yourself get off thinking that a dairyman, a common cheesemonger, can marry into a family like ours?… He’s given her his word, you say? Then he’ll just have to take it back again! It’s no tragedy, believe me. Of course, it has to cost something … there’s breach of promise and all that … and I assure you, we’re prepared to be reasonable. A young woman’s honor is not the same as a young man’s, even if she isn’t your real daughter … but I would definitely prefer not to go into that …”

Good God, I thought, what does the man want from me? He didn’t stop chewing my ear off. I shouldn’t imagine for a minute that making a scandal by claiming his nephew was engaged to my daughter would get me anywhere … If I thought I could bilk his sister, I had another guess coming … Although with a bit of good will on my part, she was certainly good for a few rubles, for a charitable gesture, so to speak … I was, after all, a fellow human being, they would be glad to lend a helping hand …

And would you like to know what my answer to all that was? My
answer, the shame of which I’ll never live down to my dying day, was nothing!
My tongue clove to my mouth, as the Bible says—the cat had got it but good. I simply rose from my chair, went to the door—and exit Tevye. I ran from there as fast as I could, as though from a fire or a prison, while the man’s words kept buzzing in my ears:
perfectly honestly … who may or may not be your real daughter … bilk a widow
 … 
a charitable gesture, so to speak
 … I went over to my wagon, laid my head on it, and—but promise not to laugh at me!—I cried and cried until I had no tears left. Then I climbed aboard, whipped my poor devil of a horse to within an inch of his life, and asked God an old question about an old, old story: what did poor Job ever do to You, dear Lord, to make You hound him day and night? Couldn’t You find any other Jews to pick on?

Well, I came home and found that gang of mine merrily eating supper. Only Shprintze was missing. “Where’s Shprintze?” I asked.

“What happened in Boiberik?” they all wanted to know. “What did they want there?”

“Where’s Shprintze?” I asked again.

“What happened in Boiberik?” they said again.

“What happened in Boiberik?” I said. “What should have happened there? Everything is quiet, thank God, there isn’t a sign of a pogrom yet …”

Just then Shprintze walked in. She glanced at me and sat quietly-down at the table as if none of this concerned her in the least. You couldn’t tell a thing from looking at her, but that silence of hers was too much, there was something unnatural about it … And in the days that followed I didn’t like it one bit, either, the way she went through the motions of things without seeming to have a will of her own. If she was told to sit, she sat; if she was told to eat, she ate; if she was told to go, she went; if she was told to come back, back she came. It made my heart ache to see her. I was burning up inside without knowing at whom … ah, dear God, I thought, Master of the Universe, whose sins are You punishing me for?

Well, would you like to hear the end? It’s one that I wouldn’t curse my worst enemy with, that I wouldn’t curse anyone with, because there’s no curse in the whole Bible like a curse on your own child. For all I know, in fact, someone may have put one on me … You say you don’t believe in such things? Then maybe you’ll explain to me why it happened. Go ahead, I’m listening …

But what good will all the philosophy do us? You may as well hear the end of it. One evening I was driving home from Boiberik in my usual grand mood: the shame, the humiliation of it all, to say nothing of my feelings for my daughter!… (Whatever happened, you ask, to the widow and her son? Just go try finding them! They skipped town without so much as an adieu. I’m embarrassed to tell you, but they even stuck me with an unpaid dairy bill. It wasn’t that that riled me, though—no doubt they simply forgot; it was their not having bothered to let me know. Why, to think of their picking up and leaving like that without even saying goodbye!) … What she, my daughter, went through, no one knew but me, because I was her father and a father knows in his heart. Don’t imagine, though, that she ever said a word to me about it. Do you think she complained? Do you think she cried even once? If you do, you don’t know Tevye’s daughters! She just flickered out like a candle, without a word of protest, keeping it all to herself except for a sigh now and then—but such a sigh, I tell you, as could break a heart of iron …

In short, I was driving home with my horse, thinking about the whole miserable business and asking God all kinds of questions that He kindly let me answer for myself. My problem wasn’t God, though—with Him I had somehow made my peace. My problem was men. Why did they have to be so bad when they could just as well have been good? Why did they have to ruin their own and other people’s lives instead of being happy with what they had? Could God have created them on purpose to make them miserable? But what good could that possibly do Him …?

Just then I drove into our village and saw a crowd of people down by the dam on the river, men, women, and lots of children. What could have happened? There wasn’t any sign of a fire—it must be a drowning, I thought. Someone went for a swim in the river and didn’t come out. You never know where the Angel of Death will make a date with you …