Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (44 page)

“Well, comes January, the whole merry-go-round begins again. Between this, that, and the other thing, we’re told that there’s going to be a big meeting of the director, the inspector, and all the teachers, after which there will be an official announcement of who’s accepted and who’s not. When the day arrived there wasn’t a sign of the wife in the house; no hot meal on the table, no samovar, no tea, no nothing. Where was she? In the high school, of course. Or rather, not in it but in front of it, standing out in the cold by herself from early morning. The weather turned freezing, it began to snow, you couldn’t see past the tip of your nose—and there she was, still waiting for the meeting to be over. A scene from the opera! ‘For God’s sake,’ I wanted to tell her, ‘you know as well as I do that the man not only gave his word, he actually pocketed …’ Do you follow me? Just try talking to a woman, though! She waited an hour. She waited two. She waited three. She waited four. All the students had already gone home and she was still standing there. At last, when you’d have thought she couldn’t wait a minute longer,
a door of the building opened and out stepped one of the teachers. She collared him at once and asked him if he knew what the meeting had decided. Indeed he did, he said: eighty-five new students were accepted—eighty-three Christians and two Jews. Who were the Jews? One was named Shepselsohn and one was named Katz. Well, as soon as the wife heard Katz she was off like a shot for home with the grand news. ‘Mazel tov! Thank You, thank You, dear God! Oh, thank You! They took him! They took him!…’ I tell you, she had tears in her eyes. I was pleased as punch myself, of course, but I wasn’t about to dance in the streets; that’s a woman’s way, not a man’s. ‘You don’t look any too thrilled by it,’ says the wife to me. ‘Just what makes you say that?’ I ask. ‘Why, you’re as cold as a fish!’ she says. ‘If only you knew how overjoyed your son was, you wouldn’t be sitting there like that; you’d already have gone to buy him his uniform, his cap, and his schoolbag, and you’d be planning a party in his honor.’ ‘What kind of a party?’ I ask. ‘What is this, his bar mitzvah? His engagement?’ I said it calmly enough, because I’m a man, not a woman, but it made her so mad that she stopped talking to me altogether—and a wife who won’t talk is a thousand times worse than a nag, since a nag at least has a human voice, while a deaf mute … try talking to the wall! To make a long story short, what do you think happened? She had her way again. Oh, when she wants it, she gets it …

“Anyway, we had a party to which all our friends came, and the boy was decked out in a fancy uniform with silver buttons and a cap with a dingus on the top. I tell you, he could have passed for the chief of staff! But it really was a lifesaver for the poor little fellow, he looked like a different person. Why, his face was bright as sunshine! We all drank to his health and someone said to me:

“ ‘He should only finish high school, and nail that sheepskin to the wall, and go right on for the next one!’

“ ‘Well, now,’ I said, ‘that’s very kind of you, but don’t think his future depends on it. Let him stick it out for a couple of years, and then, with God’s help, we’ll marry him off and the rest will take care of itself …’

“The wife just gave me a pitying smile when she heard that. ‘Would someone please tell him,’ she said to the guests, ‘that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s way behind the times.’

“ ’Would someone tell her,” I answered, ‘that the times aren’t worth catching up with.’

“ ‘Would someone tell him,’ she said, ‘that he’s nothing but an old f——!’

“That brought the house down. ‘Me oh my, Reb Aharon,’ they said, ‘you’ve got a Cossack there, not a wife!’ Meanwhile the wine kept flowing and we all got so mellow that we started to dance. But I mean dance! The wife, my boy, and I were put in the middle of a circle and everyone cut the rug up around us until, before we knew it, it was dawn …

“That same morning we brought him to the school. We arrived so early that the doors were still locked and there wasn’t a stray dog in sight. At last, thank God, the doors opened and we came in from the cold and revived. Pretty soon the place was full of youngsters, all with their schoolbags on their backs. There was enough talking and laughing and shouting and hallooing for a country fair. In the middle of it all I’m approached by a man with gold buttons—a teacher, it turns out, with a sheet of paper in his hand. Can he help me? Well, I pointed to my boy and said I had come to enroll him in the rabbi’s schoo—I mean in junior high school. ‘What year is he in?’ he asks me. ‘The third,’ I say. ‘He’s just been accepted.’ ‘And what’s his name?’ ‘It’s Katz,’ I say. ‘Moshe Katz, though we all call him Moshke.’ ‘Moshke Katz?’ says the teacher. ‘There’s no Moshke Katz in the Third Form. There is a Katz on the list, but his first name is Mordukh, not Moshke …’

“ ‘Well, it’s a mistake,’ I say. ‘It’s Moshke, not Mordukh.’

“ ‘It’s Mordukh,’ he says to me, waving the list in my face.

“ ‘It’s Moshke!’

“ ‘It’s Mordukh!’

“Well, we Moshked and Mordukhed each other back and forth until the sad truth finally dawned on me; there had been a little error. Do you get the picture? The goy had mixed up the names; he had taken a Katz, all right, it just didn’t happen to be mine. There were, it appeared, more ways to skin a Katz than one …

“What can I tell you? It would have broken your heart to see my boy’s face when he was told to take that dingus off his cap. No stood-up bride ever cried half so hard. He couldn’t stop for the life of him. ‘I hope you see what you’ve done now,’ I said to the wife. ‘Didn’t I tell you they’d crucify the boy? I pray to God he gets over it soon, because if not he’ll get an ulcer for sure.’

“ ‘You can save the ulcers for your enemies,’ she says. ‘That child is going to high school! If he doesn’t get in this year, he’ll get
in next; if he’s not accepted here, he will be somewhere else. We’ll stop trying over my dead body!’

“How’s that for a quick comeback? And who do you think had his way in the end, me or her? Let’s not kid ourselves: when she wants it, she gets it …

“Anyway, why drag it out? I went to the ends of the earth with that boy—there wasn’t a town with a high school that we didn’t try. And there wasn’t a town with a high school where he didn’t take the exams, and where he didn’t pass the exams, and where he didn’t pass them with flying colors—and where he wasn’t rejected. How come? Because of those crazy quotas. Believe me, I started to wonder if I wasn’t crazy too. What are you running from town to town for like an idiot? I asked myself. Who the Devil needs it? Supposing he does get in somewhere in the end—so what? Say what you will, though, no one likes to throw in the sponge. And I had become so mule-headed about it that it was an act of sheer mercy on God’s part to find me a commercial high school in Poland where they took a Jew for every Christian—that is, where the quota was fifty percent. There was just one little catch: the Jew had to bring his own Christian with him—and only if your Christian passed the exams and you were ready to treat him to tuition did you stand a fighting chance … In other words, instead of one millstone around my neck, there were two. Do you follow me? As if it weren’t enough to knock my brains out for my own boy, I now had someone else’s to worry about, because if Ivan doesn’t pass, Yankl can pack his bags too. In fact, that’s practically what happened. By the time I found the right Christian, a tailor’s boy named Kholyava, I was green in the gills—and when the chips were down, wouldn’t you know that he went and flunked flat on his face! And in ‘Christian Religion,’ of all things! Don’t think my own son didn’t have to take him in hand and coach him for the makeup. What, you ask, does my son know about Christianity? But with a head you won’t find in all of Russia, what’s there to wonder at?…

“Well, with God’s help we made it to the great day: both of them were accepted. Home free at last, eh? Except that when I come to pay the registration fee, my goy doesn’t show! What seems to be the problem? The damn Russian would rather croak than see his son with so many Jews. What does he need my commercial high school for, he says, when a Christian boy like his own can get in
anywhere he pleases? Go tell him he’s mistaken! ‘How can I help change your mind for you, Pani Kholyava?’ I ask him. ‘You can’t,’ he says. So I sat him down and had a little talk with him about all men being brothers, etcetera—I even took him to a tavern for a drink or two, which turned out to be nine or ten—I tell you, I managed to get a few gray hairs before I finally heard from the school that young Kholyava was enrolled there. Thank God, I thought, at last it’s over and done with!

“Well, I came home that day to get a new shock. What was it this time? The wife had thought it over and decided that she couldn’t leave our precious one-and-only all by his lonesome in Poland. How could she ever look herself in the mirror if she did? ‘But what else can you do?’ I asked her. ‘What else can I do?’ she says. ‘Do I have to spell it out for you? I’m going with him.’ ‘But who’ll look after the house?’ I ask. ‘The house,’ she says, ‘is only a house …’ Just what was I supposed to say to that? And don’t think she didn’t pick up and go with him, leaving me all by myself! Imagine, a whole house with no one in it but me—it shouldn’t happen to my worst enemies. My life went to pieces; the business went to the dogs; everything went to hell around me while we sat and wrote each other letters: ‘my dear wife,’ ‘my dear husband’—oh, it was a first-rate correspondence! ‘For God’s sake,’ I wrote her, ‘how long can I go on like this? I’m only human. A house without a woman is no house …’ It did as much good as last winter’s snow, of course. In the end it was she who had her way again. When she wants it, she damn well gets it …

“There’s not much left for me to tell. One day I caved in, I couldn’t take it any longer. I sold the business, which was already in ruins, for a song, took my last few rubles, and went to join her in Poland. Once I settled down there, I began to look around a bit to get the lay of the land—it wasn’t easy, but I managed to put myself back on my feet and even to strike up a partnership with a respectable Jew, a fine fellow from Warsaw who was president of the synagogue. How was I supposed to know that he would turn out to be a purse snatcher, a swindler, a racketeer, who would leave me holding the bag? I don’t have to tell you that I was at the end of my rope … Well, strangely enough, who do I see as I’m walking home one day but my son, all red in the face and without the dingus on his cap. ‘Hey, Moyshele,’ I say, ‘where’s the dingus?’

“ ‘What dingus?’ he says to me.

“ ‘Your school button,’ I say.

“ ‘What school button?’ he says.

“ ‘The button on your cap,’ I say. ‘Just a while ago you bought a new cap with a new button.’

“ ‘I threw it away,’ he says, turning even redder.

“ ‘What do you mean, you threw it away?’ I ask.

“ ‘I’m free!’ he says.

“ ‘What do you mean, you’re free?’ I ask.

“ ‘We’re all free!’ he says.

“ ‘All right,’ I say, ‘so you’re all free. What does that mean?’

“ ‘It means no more school,’ he says.

“ ‘And what does no more school mean?’ I ask.

“ ‘It means,’ he says, ‘that we all voted to walk out.’

“ ‘What do you mean, you all voted to walk out?’ I say. ‘Who asked you to vote? Walk out where? Do you mean to tell me I’ve ruined myself just for you to start a revolution? God help us all! I only hope they don’t pin it on us Jews, because we’re always the first to take the rap.’

“Well, I gave it to him but good, as only a father can. I just should have known that the wife, God bless her and keep her from me, would come running with a mouthful of her own. I had better, she said, brush the cobwebs off of me—I had better wise up, she said—I had better realize, she said, that the old days were gone forever. In the new world that was coming, she said, we would all be free and equal. No more cats, no more mice, no more whips, no more horses, no more dogs, no more lice, no more slaves, no more bosses …

“ ‘My, my, my,’ I said to her, ‘fancy you reciting poetry. Modern times, modern rhymes, eh? I suppose you’d like to open their cages and set the chickens free too. No more pens, no more hens, just imagine!’

“Well, you’d have thought from the way she blew her stack at me that I had poured boiling water on her. There was nothing to do but hear her out to the bitter end. The only trouble was that there was no end. ‘You know something?’ I said. ‘That’s enough. If you’ll just stop, I’ll agree to anything you say. It’s my fault, I’m to blame for everything, it’s all because of me—
but won’t you please be q-u-i-e-t!’

“It just went in one ear and out the other, though. Nothing doing! She had to know why, and how could I, and who said, and
by what right, and since when, and did it ever, and on and on and on and on and on …

“I ask you, whose idea were wives in the first place?”

(1902)

THE AUTOMATIC EXEMPTION