Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (48 page)

“What do you say, does a man need nerves of steel or doesn’t he? Do you think it doesn’t stick in my craw to come home to an
empty house with only the four walls to talk to? It makes a man wonder; I ask you, who am I living for? Why has this happened to me? For what do I deserve an old age like this? For being good? For being such a big soft touch?… You’ll have to excuse me, but when I begin to talk about it I get such a lump in my throat that I can’t go on anymore …

“Oy, it doesn’t pay to be good. Do you hear me? It doesn’t pay!”

(1903)

BURNED OUT

“M
ay God not punish me for saying this,” I heard a Jew behind me tell some passengers, “but our Jews, our Jews, do you hear me, are an
amo pezizo
. Do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means they’re safe to eat a noodle pudding with, to sit next to in the synagogue, and to be buried beside in the graveyard—but as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“You’d like to know what I have against Jews and why I’m running them down? But if you’d been through with them what I have and had done to you what I’ve had, you’d be running amuck in the streets!… Well, forget it; I’m not one to go around bearing grudges. With me it’s a principle to let the other man have his way,
oylom keminhogoy
, as it says. What does that mean in plain Yiddish? It means that I’ll leave it to God to settle accounts with them—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“Listen to this. I wouldn’t wish it on you, but I happen to come from a nice little town by the name of Boheslav, one of those places of which it’s said, sow a bushel and you’ll reap a peck. In fact, if there’s anyone you really want to punish, don’t send him to Siberia, that’s nothing; send him to us in Boheslav, and make him a storekeeper, and give him enough credit to run up a nice debt, and see to it he has a fire that burns him out of house and home, and have all the Jews in town go around saying that he personally gave the match a scratch, because he wanted … but you can guess
for yourselves what a Boheslav Jew is capable of thinking, and of saying, and even of writing to the right places—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“You can guess for yourselves who you’re looking at, too—at a man whose rotten luck it is to have been a three-time loser. Three strikes is what I have against me: in the first place, I’m a Jew; in the second place, I’m a Jew from Boheslav; and in the third place, I’m a burned-out Jew from Boheslav—and burned out to a fine crisp too, a whole-offering to the Lord, just as it says in the Bible! It happened this year. The whole place went up in smoke like a straw roof. I came out of it
bekharbi uvekashti
—that means in plain Yiddish, with nothing but the shirt on my back. And the fact of the matter is that I wasn’t even there when it happened. Where was I? Not far away, in Tarashche, at my niece’s engagement party. It was a first-rate party too, with a banquet, with fine guests—none of your Boheslav trash. You can guess for yourselves that we drank a good barrel and a half of vodka, not to mention the beer and the wine. In short, the time went by
kidibo’ey
—that’s swimmingly to you, in plain Yiddish. All of a sudden I was handed a telegram. It was in Russian and it said,
‘Wife sick, children sick, mother-in-law sick, you come quick
.’ I don’t have to tell you that I picked up my feet and cleared out of there in a hurry. I come home—surprise, surprise! The store is gone, the stock is gone, the house is gone, and everything in it is gone, down to the last pair of socks.
Begapoy yovoy uvegapoy yeytsey—
do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means that some go from rags to riches and I go from rags to rags … The poor wife stood there crying; the children just stared at her, they didn’t have a place to lay their heads. It was a lucky thing it was all insured, and well-insured too—only that, you can guess for yourselves, is what smelled fishy. It wouldn’t have looked so bad in itself; but the worst part was that it wasn’t the first time, I’d already had a fire before—and also at night, and also when I wasn’t at home. Then, though, everything went smoothly. The inspector came, made a list of the burned rubble, gave an appraisal, haggled with me fair and square, a ruble more, a ruble less, until we reached an agreement—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“That was the first time. God save all Jews from the inspector they sent me this time, though: a mean bastard if ever there was one! And to make matters worse, an honest one too, there was no way I could slip him a bribe. Doesn’t that beat all? The man’s
incorruptible, go do something about it! He poked and picked and puttered around, he kept asking me to explain to him how the whole thing had happened, and what exactly was burned, and where everything was, and why there wasn’t a trace left of anything, but not an iota …

“ ‘But that’s just my point!’ I said to him. ‘I’ve been totaled. If you want to know why, don’t ask me, ask God.’

“ ‘I don’t like the looks of it,’ he said. ‘Don’t think that getting us to pay up will be easy.’

“That’s one smart sleuth for you, eh? He thought he’d play the big bad wolf with me. And ditto the police detective who came to see me next. He kept trying to trip me up, he was sure he’d got his hands on a first-grader. ‘So tell me, Moshke,’ he says, ‘how come things have such a way of burning down with you?’

“ ‘How come?’ I say. ‘Because they catch fire.’

“ ‘Then suppose you explain to me,’ he says, ‘how come you took out insurance just two weeks before it happened?’

“ ‘When should I have taken it out, Officer,’ I say, ‘two weeks after it happened?’

“ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘how come you weren’t at home?’

“ ‘And if I had been,’ I say, ‘you’d be happier?’

“ ‘But how come,’ he asks, ‘you received a telegram telling you that your family was sick?’

“ ‘Because,’ I say, ‘they wanted me to come quick.’

“ ‘Then how come they didn’t tell you the truth?’ he asks.

“ ‘Because they didn’t want to scare me,’ I say.

“ ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ve had enough of this! I want you to know that I’m running you in.’

“ ‘But what for?’ I say. ‘What did I ever do to you? You’re taking a perfectly innocent man and ruining his good name! Does it make you feel good to cut a man’s throat in cold blood? Well, if that’s what you want, I can’t stop you. Just remember, though, that there’s a God above Who sees everything.’

“Did he blow his top at that! ‘Just who do you think you’re talking to about God, you little so-and-so?’ he said. That didn’t scare me, though—not when they had nothing on me, because I was clean as the driven snow. How does the saying go?
Al tehi boz lekhoyl bosor:
in plain Yiddish that means that you don’t smell of garlic when you haven’t eaten it—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“In fact, everything would have been just fine if it weren’t for Boheslav. Do you think a Boheslav Jew can stand to see another Jew come by money? That’s when the poison pen letters began to circulate. Some sent them by mail and some brought them down to the insurance company in person, but everyone said it was me who gave the match a scratch … how’s that for sheer finkery? They said I had purposely left home that night so that … doesn’t that beat all for low-downness? They even claimed I never had the stock I put in for and that my account books were faked—they tried to pin such a bum rap on me that it would have made a Haman blush—they … they … but as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“That didn’t scare me, though, not when they had nothing on me, because I was as clean as the driven snow. After all, to say it was me who gave the match a scratch was ridiculous. Any child understands that if you do such a thing you don’t dirty your hands yourself, not when three rubles will get you a good angel to do the job for you … isn’t that how it’s done where you come from? And as for the rumor that I purposely left home that night because of it, nothing could be further from the truth, because I was at my sister’s party. I have an only sister in Tarashche, she was marrying off her middle daughter—are you telling me I shouldn’t have gone? What kind of a brother would that make me? I ask you: suppose you had an only sister whose daughter was getting engaged—would you have stood her up and stayed home? Of course not! It’s not as if I had any way of knowing it was the night my house would burn down. It’s a lucky thing I happened to be insured. And the reason I was is that lately, fires have been breaking out all over. Every summer each little town has too many of them for comfort. It’s one fire after another; if it’s not Mir, it’s Bobroisk, if it’s not Bobroisk, it’s Rechitsa, if it’s not Rechitsa, it’s Bialystok—the whole world is going up in flames!… So I thought to myself,
koyl yisro’el khaveyrim
—do you know what that means in plain Yiddish? It means that if Jews are burning out everywhere, who’s to say it can’t happen to me! Why be a booby and trust in miracles to save a store that can be insured? And if I was already taking out insurance, why not the maximum? You know what they say: if you have to eat pork, you may as well eat it till you burst. The company wouldn’t lose its shirt or even grow a
cent poorer because of my monthly payments—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“And so I toddled off to my agent and I said to him, ‘Listen here, Zaynvel, it’s like this: the whole world is burning out, why take chances? I want you to insure my store.’

“ ‘You don’t say,’ he says, giving me a weird grin.

“ ‘How come you’re smiling at me like a freshly laid-out corpse?’ I ask him.

“ ‘Because I’m feeling so good and so bad,’ he says.

“ ‘If you’re feeling so good, how come you’re feeling so bad?’ I ask him.

“ ‘I’m feeling so bad,’ he says, ‘because I insured you before. And I’m feeling so good because I’m not doing it again.’

“ ‘How come?’ I ask.

“ ‘Because,’ he says, ‘you already bamboozled me once.’

“ ‘When did I bamboozle you?’ I ask.

“ ‘When you burned out the last time,’ he says with the same grin.

“ ‘You might at least say you’re sorry it happened, you young jerk!’ I say.

“ ‘Am I sorry it happened!’ he says—and he laughs right in my face.

“Doesn’t that beat all for sheer crust? You can guess for yourselves that I went somewhere else. Who did he think he was scaring?
Hamibli eyn kvorim bemitsrayim
—in plain Yiddish that means that there’s more than one insurance company in Russia. Good lord, there are as many agents around as fleas on a dog! And so I found a young fellow who had just landed his first job and was looking for business. You can guess for yourselves that he was happy to insure me, and for a good ten thousand at that—and why not? Don’t I look like a man who might have ten thousand smackers’ worth of goods in his store?
Tovar voborotye
, as the goyim say—that’s easy come, easy go in plain Yiddish … Now they’re all saying, those Boheslav Jews, that I never carried that much stock in the first place. Who do they think they’re scaring? Let them talk, let them squawk, let them just try to prove it—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…

“It was a lucky thing that at the time, when I took out the policy, no one in Boheslav knew a thing about it, so that it went
through without a hitch. It was only after the accident, when I was burned out a second time, that our brother Jews began running to the agents. What company was I insured with? And when was the policy taken out? And how much was it for?… And when they discovered that it was for ten thousand rubles, the fur began to fly. Great God Almighty!
Ten
thousand rubles? Our Moyshe-Mordechai is going to get away with
ten
whole thousand rubles?… A black plague take them all! What was it to them if I got my ten thousand? Was it any skin off their noses if some cash came my way? Suppose the opposite had happened and the fire had left me flat broke—would they have given me a refund?… But no, you don’t fool around with Boheslav! In Boheslav they run a clean town! It’s a town of such great saints, Boheslav is, that you better not try any funny stuff!… As if they couldn’t see with their own eyes what a tragedy I had had—why, we barely escaped with our lives, not to mention the damage!… And supposing it wasn’t as great as all that, so what? You’d think they would sooner break every bone than see me get paid for any of it … Although even supposing I get it all, the full ten thousand, I ask you: what of it, what? Why should anyone lose any sleep over it? The man burned? Let him burn! If you don’t like it, you can go and burn too! Put yourselves in his shoes and you would see what this means to him. Did it ever occur to you that he might have children at home? That he might have a daughter to marry off, an absolute pearl of a child who’s everything a father can ask for? That he might have to watch her become an old maid, because he can’t afford to pay a matchmaker? That he might also have a son, a boy with a brain that’s one in a million, who’s wasting away because there’s no money to send him to school? That he might literally be killing himself, bleeding himself white—and for who? For his own family!… But no one even thinks of that! Everyone looks at me crosswise and says,
ulai yerakheym
—shall I tell you what that means in plain Yiddish? It means that maybe, God forbid, I may end up with something in the bank. That’s what they’re afraid of—and as for the rest, to hell with them all and forget it!…