Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (37 page)

There was a sound of stirring behind me, followed by a yawn or a groan and the hoarse, sleep-constricted voice of a woman calling:

“Avreml?… Avreml!…”

“Gitke, are you up? How did you sleep? Would you like a hot drink? There’s a station coming up soon. Where’s the thermos? Where did you put the tea and sugar?”

(1909)

THE SLOWPOKE EXPRESS

W
ould you like to know what the best train of all is? The best, the quietest, and the most restful? It’s the Slowpoke Express.

That’s what the Jews of Bohopoli call the narrow-gauge local that connects several towns in their district:
Bohopoli, Heysen, Teplik, Nemirov, Khashchevate, and a few other such blessed places that are far from the beaten track indeed.

According to the Bohopolians, who have a reputation for being jokesters, the Slowpoke Express is no ordinary train. In the first place, you needn’t ever worry about missing it: whenever you arrive at the station, it’s still there. Secondly, they say, where else can you find a train on which you never have to fight for a seat—on which, in fact, you can travel for miles all by yourself, stretched out at full length on a bench like a lord and sleeping as much as you please? And they happen to be right on both counts. I’ve been riding the Slowpoke Express for several weeks now, and I’m still practically in the same place. I tell you, it’s magic! Don’t think I’m complaining, either. Far from it. I couldn’t be more satisfied, because I’ve seen so many fine sights and heard so many fine tales that I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to jot them all down in my journal.

First, though, let me tell you how this railway came to be built. That’s a story in itself.

When word arrived from St. Petersburg that a line was going to be laid
(Witte was the minister in charge then), the Jews refused to believe it. What did Teplik, or Golte, or Heysen, need a railroad for? Hadn’t they gotten along famously without one until now? And the biggest sceptics were the Bohopolians, who received the news, as was their custom, with a spate of jokes. “Do you see this?” they said, holding up the palms of their hands. “We’ll have a railroad the day hair grows here.” After a while, however, when an engineer arrived with a team of surveyors, the Jews ate their words and the Bohopolians hid their hands in their pockets. (One good thing about the Bohopoli Jews is that they don’t take it to heart when they’re wrong. “Even a calendar,” they say, “sometimes has the wrong date on it.”) Soon the engineer was besieged
with documents, references, letters of recommendation, requests for favors—in short, with applications for jobs. A Jew, unfortunately, has to make a living, and it was common knowledge among the good burghers of Teplik, Bershed, Heysen, and Bohopoli that building a railroad was the way to get rich quick. Why, just look at
Poliakov in Moscow …

There wasn’t a Jewish businessman—not just those who dealt in lumber and stone, but wheat and grain merchants too—who didn’t try to go to work for the railroad. Overnight the whole district blossomed with contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors. “Our Poliakovs,” the Bohopolians called them, already busily calculating how they too might get their share of the loot.

In a word, the outbreak of railroad fever spared no one. Even in ordinary times it’s hard not to crave an easy ruble, and who can resist becoming a Poliakov quicker than it takes to say one’s bedtime prayers?

Indeed, so I was told, the competition among the contractors, the subcontractors, and the sub-subcontractors was so fierce that the contracts had to be raffled off. Whoever was smiled upon by fortune and the chief engineer received one, and whoever didn’t had to make do with what could be gleaned from those who did. They were sure to part with something, because the losers had a way of hinting that the road leading to St. Petersburg and the hearts of its officials was open to the general public too … To make a long story short, our Jews pawned their wives’ pearls and their Sabbath suits to go into the railroad business and ended up by losing every penny and warning their children and grandchildren never to go near a railroad again.

Nevertheless, the one thing had nothing to do with the other. Our Jews, the poor devils, may have been taken to the cleaner’s, but a train to travel on they had. And even though, as the reader now knows, the Bohopolians christened it the Slowpoke Express, they can’t stop singing its praises and telling its wonders to the world.

For example, they make much of the fact that since the Slowpoke is a slowpoke, there’s no danger of the accidents that occur on other lines. The slower the safer, they say—and the Slowpoke is as slow as can be, indeed, a little too slow for comfort. The wits of Bohopoli, who have a tendency to exaggerate, even claim that a
local resident once set out on the Slowpoke for his grandson’s circumcision in Khashchevate and arrived just in time for the bar mitzvah. And they tell another story about a young man from Nemirov and a young lady from Bershed who arranged to be introduced at a station midway between them; by the time they got there, however, the young lady was toothless and the young man was as gray as a rainy day, and so the match was called off …

If you ask me, though, I can do without the Bohopolian jokesters and their tall tales. When I myself state a fact, it’s either something that I’ve seen with my own eyes or that I’ve heard from a reliable source like a businessman.

For instance, I have it on good faith from a merchant in Heysen that several years ago, at
Hoshana Rabbah time, the Slowpoke was indeed involved in an accident, a veritable catastrophe that sowed panic up and down the line and set the whole district by the ears. The incident was caused by a Jew and—of all people—a Russian priest. I intend to relate it to you in the next story exactly as it was told me by the merchant. I like to pass on items that I’ve heard from others. You’ll see for yourselves when you read it that it’s the gospel truth, because a merchant from Heysen could never make up such a thing.

(1909)

THE MIRACLE OF HOSHANA RABBAH

“T
he Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah—that’s what we called the great train accident that took place toward the end of Sukkos. The whole thing happened, don’t you know, right in Heysen. That is, not in Heysen itself but a few stops away, in a place called Sobolivke.”

With these words a businessman from Heysen, a most companionable fellow, began his jovial account of the catastrophe that befell the narrow-gauge train called the Slowpoke Express, which I described in the last chapter. And since we were on the Slowpoke ourselves—where, being the only passengers in our car, we
had all the time and space in the world—he sprawled out as comfortably as if he were in his own living room and gave his narrative talents free rein, turning each polished phrase carefully and grinning with pleasure at his own story while stroking his ample belly with one hand.

“So this is already your second week on our Slowpoke! I suppose you must have noticed, then, that it has a temperament of its own and that once it pulls into a station, it sometimes forgets to pull out. According to the schedule, of course, it mustn’t stay a minute longer than it’s supposed to. In Zatkevitz, for instance, that’s an hour and fifty-eight minutes, and in Sobolivke, which is the place I was telling you about, it’s exactly an hour and thirty-two. Bless its sweet little soul, though, if it doesn’t stop for over two hours in each, and sometimes for over three! It all depends how long it takes to tank up. Do you know how the Slowpoke’s crew tanks up? The locomotive is uncoupled and everyone—the motorman, the conductors, and the stokers—goes off with the Stationmaster, the policeman, and the telegraph operator to see how many bottles of beer he can drink.

“And what do the passengers do while the crew is tanking up? That’s something you’ve seen for yourself too: they go stir-crazy, they begin to climb the walls. Some of them just sit there and yawn, some curl up in a corner and grab forty winks, and some walk up and down the platform with their hands behind their backs, humming a little tune.

“Well, it just happened to happen during tank-up time in Sobolivke. One Hoshana Rabbah morning, a Jew was standing by the unhooked locomotive with his hands behind his back—and not even a passenger, don’t you know, but a local citizen who had come to have a look-see. How else does a well-off Jew in Sobolivke pass the time on Hoshana Rabbah? He’s already
waved his palm branch and said his prayers in the synagogue, gone home, and eaten an early dinner.
It’s only half a holiday, but the next day is a whole one, and there’s really nothing much for him to do. What’s left but to take his walking stick and go off to meet the train at the station?

“ ‘Meeting the train,’ you have to understand, is a local institution. When the train is due in, a Jew moseys down to the station to have a look at it. Just what does he hope to see that’s so exciting—another Jew like himself from Teplik? Or a Jewess from Obodivke?
Or a priest from Golovonyevsk? Jewish pleasures! But it was the custom to go, so go this Jew did. And in those days, don’t you know, the railroad was new; we weren’t used to the Slowpoke yet and we were all still curious about it. Take it this way or that, or any way you like, there by the unhooked locomotive with his walking stick stood a Jew from Sobolivke one Hoshana Rabbah morning, half a holiday it was and half a workday, having himself a look-see.

“Well might you ask: and what of it? Whose business was it if a Jew from Sobolivke stood looking at a locomotive or not? Let him look till the cows come home! It just happened to happen, however, that among the passengers that day was a Russian priest from Golovonyevsk, which is, don’t you know, a small town not far from Heysen. And having nothing to do either, he too was walking up and down the same platform with his hands behind his back until he reached the same locomotive. ‘Hey, Yudko!’ he said to the Jew. ‘What are you looking at?’

“ ‘Since when am I Yudko to you?’ the Jew retorted angrily. ‘My name isn’t Yudko. It’s Berko.’

“ ‘Let it be Berko,’ said the priest. ‘Tell me, Berko, what are you looking at?’

“ ‘I’m looking,’ said the Jew without taking his eye off the locomotive, ‘at one of God’s wonders. It’s amazing how a ridiculous little thing like turning one throttle this way and another throttle that way can make such a huge engine go.’