Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (46 page)

“To make a long story short, why bother with a lot of ancient history? My Eisik was wanted by the draft board—it would make my life miserable until I produced him, that’s what it would do! At home the hysterics started all over again. Hysterics? The end of the world! In the first place, the mere mention of Eisik reopened my poor wife’s old wounds. ‘If only he could go to the army,’ she wept, ‘and not have to rot in the grave …’ And besides, she was scared to death that the draft board, God forbid, would reason the same as the rabbi—namely, that Itsik was Yitzchok, Yitzchok was Isaac, Isaac was Eisik, so Eisik was Itsik. Wouldn’t that be just dandy! The thought of it made her a nervous wreck, my daughter-in-law almost fainted. It was really no joke: an only son, with an automatic, a guaranteed, a one-hundred-percent lifetime exemption, three times before the draft board, three white cards to show for it—and he still wasn’t out of the woods …

“Well, I took myself in hand, that’s what I did, and went to Yehupetz to see a good lawyer. And I brought my son with me to see a professor of medicine who could tell us if he had what it took or not, though I knew very well that he didn’t. (That is, it took
what he had to have what it took not to have it!) With a legal and a medical opinion, I thought, I could finally sleep soundly at night … but do you know what I found out? I found out that those lawyers and doctors didn’t know which end was up. Whatever one said, another said the opposite; they couldn’t agree on a thing. It was enough to drive me out of my mind. Just listen to this.

“The first lawyer we saw was a real pinhead, though you would never have guessed it from the size of his noodle, which had a bald spot big enough to fry an egg on. He was so brainy, that man, that he couldn’t even understand who was Itsik, who was Alter, who was Avrom-Yitzchok, and who was Eisik. I had to keep telling him that the first three were one boy, and that it was Eisik who knocked over the samovar in Vorotolivke, where I lived before moving to Mezritch, after I left Mazapevke. At last, when I thought he had finally gotten it, he asked, Just tell me one thing, though: which of them is the eldest—Itsik, Alter, or Avrom-Yitzchok?’

“ ‘Try to concentrate,’ I said. ‘I’ve already told you fifteen times that Itsik, Avrom-Yitzchok, and Alter are all the same person, that’s who they are—that is, Itsik is really Avrom-Yitzchok, but his mother called him Alter for good luck. It was Eisik who knocked over the samovar in Vorotolivke, I mean before I moved to—’

“ ‘Just tell me when,’ he says, ‘that is, in what year, Avrom-Alter—I mean Yitzchok-Eisik—was first asked to report for the draft.’

“ ‘But you’re all bollixed up!’ I say. ‘You’re mixing kasha with borscht. I’ve never in my life met a Jew like you, with such a goy’s head on his shoulders. I’m telling you that Yitzchok, and Avrom-Yitzchok, and Itsik, and Alter are all the same person. The same, do you hear me? The same!’

“ ‘All right, all right,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to shout. What are you shouting for?’

“Would you believe it?
He
wants to know why
I’m
shouting …

“Well, I said to the Devil with him, that’s what I did, and I went to see another lawyer. This one turned out to be a real logic chopper—in fact, he chopped it a little too fine. He listened to my story, stroked his forehead, waggled his thumb, and began to explain to me that there was a statute on the books that said that the authorities in Mezritch had no right to call the boy up in the first place, although on the other hand, there was another statute
that said that since he was called up, the authorities in Vorotolivke could be requested to issue a waiver, which did not mean, however, that the authorities in Mezritch could not be required to waive the request, provided that in the meantime, of course, the authorities in Vorotolivke had not waived the right to have the waiver waived …

“In short, he kept waiving me such waivers that I waved goodbye to him and went to see a third lawyer, that’s where I went. Some meatball he was too, a young fellow fresh out of law school, still wet behind the ears, so to speak! Not that he wasn’t quite charming, with a voice as clear as a bell—the problem was that it didn’t stop ringing. He must have been taking voice lessons, because he kept listening to himself talk as if it were on doctor’s orders. In fact, he was having such a fine time making speeches that I had to interrupt him and say, ‘That’s all very well, and I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment, but what good does your yatata do me? I want some advice from you, that’s what I want, about keeping my son out of the army …’

“Well, that’s all a lot of ancient history. In the end I found an honest-to-god lawyer, a gentleman of the old school who knew exactly what the score was. He sat there listening with his eyes closed while I told him the whole story and when I was finished he said, ‘It that all? No more? Then go home and forget it, it’s all nonsense. The worst you can get is a three-hundred-ruble fine.’

“ ‘Eh?’ I say. ‘That’s the worst? If only I had known that’s all they can stick me with! And here I was worried sick for my son, it’s my son I was worried for.’

“ ‘What son?’ he asks.

“ ‘What do you mean, what son?’ I say. ‘My Alter—I mean my Itsik!’

“ ‘What had you so worried?’ he asks.

“ ‘What do you mean, what?’ I say. ‘What happens if he’s called up again, then what?’

“ ‘But he has a white card,’ he says.

“ ‘He has three of them!’ I say.

“ ‘Then what more do you want?’

“ ‘What more do I want? I don’t want anything,’ I say. ‘I’m just afraid that since they’re looking for Eisik, and there is no Eisik, and Alter—I mean Itsik—is registered as Avrom-Yitzchok, and Yitzchok, according to that dodo of a rabbi, is Isaac, and Isaac is Eisik,
they may try to claim that my Itsik—I mean my Avrom-Yitzchok—that is, my Alter—is really my Eisik!’

“ ‘Well, what if they do?’ he says. ‘So much the better. If Itsik is Eisik, you won’t even have to pay the fine. Didn’t you say he had a white card?’

“ ‘Three of them,’ I say. ‘But the white cards are Itsik’s, not Eisik’s.’

“ ‘But didn’t you just tell me,’ he says, ‘that Itsik
is
Eisik?’

“ ‘Who says that Itsik is Eisik?’

“ ‘You just told me he was!’

“ ‘
I
told you?’ I say. ‘How can I have told you such a thing when Itsik is Alter, and Eisik is who knocked over the samovar in Vorotolivke, that is, before I moved to Mezritch, I mean, after I left Mazapevke …’

“Well, that’s when he lost his temper and said,
‘Stupaytye, vi nodoyedlive yevrei!’
Did you get that? He called me a nuisance, that’s what he did. Would you believe it? Me, a nuisance?
Me?!!!
”

(1902)

IT DOESN’T PAY TO BE GOOD

“I
t doesn’t pay to be good,” said the quite proper Jew with the mole on his nose as he accepted the cigarette I offered him. “Do you hear me? It doesn’t pay. It was being too good, too much of a soft touch, that made me nourish a viper at home—in fact, two of them. Just listen to what I got myself into.

“God wanted to see how good I could be, so He sent me a pair of orphans, a boy and a girl. Because He punished me with no children, I took two of them into my house. I cared for them, I gave them nothing but the best, I made human beings of them both—and how did they thank me for it? With a knife in the back!

“First let me tell you about the girl. Where did I find a girl orphan? It happened like this. My wife had a younger sister named Perl who was, let me tell you, something special. It ran in the family—my wife is an attractive woman to this day. There
were men dying to have Perl and keep her in clover just for her looks alone. And that’s not the half of it, either!

“When my sister-in-law got married, we all thought she had hit the jackpot, that it was a stroke of good luck such as comes a woman’s way once in a blue moon. Her husband was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the only heir of a rich father, and of a rich grandfather, and even of a rich, childless uncle—there was money wherever you looked. What a windfall! And that wasn’t the half of it, either. There was only one little hitch, which was that he had the Devil in him. I don’t mean to say that he wasn’t a fine fellow: there was nothing stupid or crass about him, and he was as friendly, as likable, as good company as they come. So what was the matter? The boy was a bum! (May he forgive me for being truthful—he’s in the other world now.) What do I mean by a bum? I mean he had a passion for cards. Why, passion isn’t the word for it: cards were his be-all and end-all, he would have walked a hundred miles for a hand of them! At first it was just a round of sixty-six, or, once a month on a long winter night, a harmless game of challenge or klabberjass among friends … except that he began to play more and more—and with all kinds of riffraff, the worst loafers, drifters, and grifters. Take it from me, once a man starts with cards there’s no telling where he’ll end up. Who even thinks then of praying three times a day, or wearing a hat on his head, or observing the Sabbath laws, or anything else that smacks of being a Jew? And as if that wasn’t bad enough, my sister-in-law Perl was a strictly religious woman who couldn’t put up with her husband’s shenanigans. She took to bed for days on end, she cried such buckets over her fate that it actually made her ill. At first it was nothing serious, then it got worse and worse—until one day, I’m sorry to say, poor Perl passed away. And that’s not the half of it, either!

“Perl died and left behind a child, a little girl of six or seven. Her husband was off somewhere in Odessa, the Devil only knew where; he had sunk so low that he had gambled away every cent of the family fortune—a hopeless derelict, that’s all that remained of him. For a while he was even rumored to be in jail. After that he mooched around here and there until he died of God only knows what and was buried in a potter’s field. That’s the family history in a nutshell. And so the poor little orphan, Rayzl was her name, ended up with us. I took the child in, you see, because I had
none myself; God wouldn’t give me one of my own, so why not her? I only wanted to be good—the trouble is that being good gets you nowhere. In any other uncle’s house, an orphan girl like her would have grown up in the kitchen; she would have been put to work, made to serve tea, sent on all kinds of errands. I, though, treated her like my own child: I dressed her in clothes as good as my wife’s, I bought her the same shoes, I gave her the same food to eat. She even sat with us at the table like our own flesh and blood—why, flesh and blood isn’t the word for it. And that’s not the half of it, either!

“When Rayzl grew older, I sent her off to a scrivener to learn to read and write. There’s no denying that she was a good, a hardworking, a well-behaved girl … and beautiful too, a real stunner! I really did love her like a daughter. But children, you know, grow like toadstools; before I knew it, the time came to think of a match for her. And on top of all that, my little niece had blossomed: she was as tall, as lovely, as striking as a rose. My wife had begun to lay away a few things for her—clothes, linens, blankets, pillows—and I myself had every intention of putting up a few hundred rubles for a dowry. We even began to discuss possible husbands. Who could an orphan girl whose father, may he forgive me, was not exactly a savory character and whose stepfather was no Rothschild hope to marry? We had to look for someone suitable who would be able to support her. Only, where would we ever find him? A young man of independent means was setting our sights too high, while I myself didn’t want an ordinary working boy—after all, the girl was almost our own, she was my wife’s sister’s daughter. It was a godsend that we came across a salesman, a young fellow in his twenties, who brought home a few rubles, and had put away a few rubles, and was worth a few rubles in the bargain. Well, I had a little talk with him—yes, he was interested, and how! My niece was just his cup of tea. Next I went to have a talk with her—if you can call what I had with her a talk … why, talking to a tree stump would be easier! What seemed to be the problem? Nothing; she just didn’t want him—she didn’t need him—she would thank me to leave her alone. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘if not him, then who else? The
Baron de Hirsch’s grandson?’ If you’ve heard a tree stump talk, you’ll know what she answered me. She just gave me a silent stare. And that’s not the half of it, either!…