You are looking at me, sir, as though you didn't recognize me. It's me, your faithful old friend, Tevye. "Look not at the pitcher but at its contents." Don't let my new coat fool you; it's. still the same shlimazl who's wearing it, the same as always. It's just that when a man puts on his Sabbath clothes, right away he begins to look like somebody―as though he were trying to pass for a rich man. But when you go forth among strangers you can't do otherwise, especially if you are setting out on a long journey like this, all the way to Palestine ....
You look at me as if you're thinking: How does it happen that a plain little man like Tevye, who spent all his life delivering milk and butter, should suddenly get a notion like this into his head―something that only a millionaire like Brodsky could allow himself in his old age? Believe me, Mr. Sholom Aleichem, "it is altogether questionable...." The Bible is right every time. Just move your suitcase over this way, if you will be so good, and I will sit down across from you and tell you the whole story. And then you'll know what the Lord can do. . . .
But first of all, before I go on, I must tell you that I have been a widower for some time. My Golde, may she rest in peace, is dead. She was a plain woman, without learning, without pretensions, but extremely pious. May she intercede for her children in the other world; they caused her enough suffering in this one, perhaps even brought on her untimely death. She couldn't bear it any longer, seeing them scatter and disappear the way they did, some one way, some another. "Heavens above!" she used to say. "What have I left to live for, all alone without kith or kin? Why, even a cow," she would say, "is lonesome when you wean her calf away from her."
That's the way she spoke, and she wept bitterly: I could see the poor woman wasting away, day by day, going out like a candle, right before my eyes. And I said to her with my heart full of pity, "Ah, Golde, my dear, there is a text in the Holy Book: 'Im k'vonim im k'vodim―W hether we're like children or like slaves,' which means that you can live just as well with children as without them. We have," I told her, "a great Lord and a good Lord and a mighty Lord, but just the same I'd like to be blessed for every time He puts one of His tricks over on us."
But she was, may she forgive me for saying this, only a female. So she says to me, "It's a sin to speak this way, you mustn't sin, Tevye." "There you go," said I. "Did I speak any evil? Did I do anything contrary to the Lord's will? All I meant was that if He went ahead and did such a fine job of creating this world of His so that children are not children, and parents are no better than mud under one's feet, no doubt He knew what He was doing."
But she didn't understand me. Her mind was wandering. "I am dying, Tevye," she said. "And who will cook your supper?" She barely whispered the words and the look in her eyes was enough to melt a stone. But Tevye is not a weakling; so 1 answered her with a quip and a quotation and a homily. "Golde," I said to her, "you have been faithful to me these many years, you won't make a fool of me in my old age." I looked at her and became frightened. "What's the matter with you, Golde?" "Nothing," she whispered, barely able to speak. Then I saw that the game was lost. I jumped into my wagon and went off to town and came back with a doctor, the best doctor I could find. When I come home, what do I see? My Golde is laid out on the ground with a candle at her head, looking just like a little mound of earth that had been raked together and covered with a black cloth. I stand there and think to myself: "'Is that all that man is ―Is this the end of man?' Oh, Lord, the things you have done to your Tevye. What will I do now in my old age, forsaken and alone?" And I threw myself on the ground.
But what good is shouting and weeping? Listen to me and I will tell you something. When a person sees death in front of him he becomes a cynic. He can't help thinking, "What are we and what is our life?― What is this world altogether with its wheels that turn, its trains that run wildly in all directions, with all its tumult and confusion, noise and bustle?" And even the rich men with all their possessions and their wealth―in the end they come to nothing too.
Well, I hired a kaddish for her, for my wife Golde, and paid him for the whole year in advance. What else could I do if God had denied us sons to pray for us when we were dead, and given us only daughters, nothing but daughters one after another? I don't know if everybody else has as much trouble with his daughters, or if I'm the only shlimazl, but I've had no luck with any of my daughters. As far as the girls themselves are concerned, I have nothing to complain about. And as for luck-that's in God's hands. I wish I had half the happiness my girls wish me to have. If anything, they are too loyal, too faithful-and too much of even the best is superfluous. Take my youngest, for instance-Beilke we call her. Do you have any idea of the kind of girl she is? You have known me long enough to know that 1 am not the kind of father who will praise his children just for the sake of talking. But since I've mentioned Beilke I'll have to tell you this much: Since God first began making Beilkes, He never created another like this Beilke of mine. I won't even talk about her looks. Tevye's daughters are all famous for their great beauty, but this one, this Beilke, puts all the others in the shade. But beauty alone is nothing. When you speak of Beilke, you really have to use the words of the Proverbs regarding "a woman of valor." Charms are deceitful. I am speaking of character now. She is pure goodness all the through. She had always been devoted to me, but since Golde died. I became the apple of her eye. She wouldn't let a speck of dust fall; on me. I said to myself, as we sayan the High Holy Days: "The Lord: precedes anger with mercy.―God always sends a remedy for the disease." Only sometimes it's hard to tell which is worse, the remedy or the disease.
For instance, how could I have foreseen that on my account Beilke would go and sell herself for money and send her old father in his declining years to Palestine? Of course that's only a way of speaking. She is as much to blame for this as you are. It was all his fault her chosen one. I don't want to wish him ill, may an armory collapse on him. And yet if we look at this more closely, if we dig beneath the surface, we might find out that I am to blame as much as anyone, as it says in the Gamorah: "Man is obligated..." But imagine my telling you what the Gamorah says.
But I don't want to bore you with too long a tale. One year passed then another. My Beilke grew up and became a presentable young woman. Tevye kept on with his horse and wagon, delivering his milk and butter as usual, to Boiberik in the summer, to Yehupetz in the winter―may a deluge overtake that town, as it did Sodom. can't bear to look at that place any more, and not so much the place as the people in it, and not so much the people as one man, Ephraim the Shadchan, the matchmaker, may the devil take him and his father both. Let me tell you what a man, a shadchan, can do.
"And it came to pass," that one time, in the middle of September, I arrived in Yehupetz with my little load. I looked up-and behold. "Haman approacheth...." There goes Ephraim the Shadchan. I think I've told you about him before. He is like a burr; once he attaches himself to you, you can't get rid of him. But when you see him you have to stop―that's the power he has in him.
"Whoa, there, my sage!" I called out to my little horse. "Hold on a minute and I'll give you something to chew on." And I stop to greet the shadchan and start a conversation with him. "How are things going in your profession?" With a deep sigh he answers, "It's tough, very tough." "In what way?" I ask.
"There's nothing doing."
"Nothing at all?"
"Not a thing."
"What's the matter?"
"The matter is," says he, "that people don't marry off their children
at home any more."
"Where do they marry them off?"
"Out of town, out of the country in fact."
"Then what can a man like me do," I say, "who has never been away from home and whose grandmother's grandmother has never been away either?"
He offers me a pinch of snuff. "For you, Reb Tevye," he says, "I have a piece of merchandise right here on the spot."
"For instance?"
"A widow without children, and with a hundred and fifty rubles besides. She used to be a cook in the very best families."
I give him a look. "Reb Ephraim, for whom is this match intended?"
"For whom do you suppose? For you."
"Of all the crazy fantastic ideas anybody ever had, you've dreamed up the worst." And I whipped my horse and was ready to start off. But Ephraim stopped me. "Don't be offended, Reb Tevye, I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Tell me, whom did you have in mind?"
"Whom should I have in mind? My youngest daughter, of course."
At this he sprang back and slapped his forehead. "Wait!" he cried. "It's a good thing you mentioned it! God bless you and preserve you, Reb Tevye."
"The same to you," I said. "Amen. May you live until the Messiah comes. But what makes you so joyful all of a sudden?"
"It's wonderful! It's excellent! In fact, it's so good, it couldn't possibly be any better."
"What's so wonderful?" I ask him.
"I have just the thing for your daughter. A plum, a prize, the pick of the lot. He's a winner, a goldspinner, a rich man, a millionaire. He is a contractor and his name is Padhatzur."
"Hmm. Padhatzur? It sounds familiar, like a name in the Bible." "What Bible? What's the Bible got to do with it? He is a contractor, this Padhatzur, he builds houses and factories and bridges. He was in Japan during the war and made a fortune. He rides in a carriage drawn by fiery steeds, he has a lackey at the door, a bathtub right in his own house, furniture from Paris, and a diamond ring on his finger. He's not such an old man either and he's never been married. He is a bachelor, a first-class article. And he's looking for a pretty girl; it makes no difference who she is or whether she has a stitch to her back, as long as she is good-looking."
"Whoa, there! You are going too fast. If you don't stop to graze your horses we'll land in Hotzenplotz. Besides, if I'm not mistaken you once tried to arrange a match for this same man with my older daughter, Hodel."
When he heard this, the shadchan began laughing so hard I was afraid the man would get a stroke. "Oh-ho, now you're talking about something that happened when my grandmother was delivered of her firstborn. That one went bankrupt before the war and ran off to America."
"'When you speak of a holy man, bless him...' Maybe this one will run off too."
He was outraged at this. "How can you say such a thing, Reb Tevye? The other fellow was a fraud, a charlatan, a spendthrift. This one is a contractor, with business connections, with an office, with clerks, everything."
Well, what shall I tell you―the matchmaker became so excited that he pulled me off the wagon and grabbed me by the lapels, and shook me so hard that a policeman came up and wanted to send us both the police station. It was lucky that I remembered what the passage says: "You may take interest from a stranger. ―You have to know how to deal with policemen."
Well, why should I drag this out? Padhatzur became engaged my daughter Beilke. "The days were not long." It was quite a while before they were married. Why do I say it was quite a while? Because Beilke was no more eager to marry him than she was to lie down and die. The more he showered her with gifts, with gold watches and rings and diamonds, the more distasteful he became to her. I am not a child when it comes to such matters. I could tell from the look on her face and from her eyes red with weeping how she felt. So one day I decided to speak to her about it. I said to her as if I had just this minute thought of it, "I am afraid, Beilke, that this groom of yours is as dear and sweet to you as he is to me."
She flared up at this. "Who told you?"
"If not," I said, "why do you cry nights?" "Have I been crying?"
"No, you haven't been crying, you've just been bawling. Do you think if you hide your head in your pillow you can keep your tears from me? Do you think that your father is a little child, or that he is in his dotage and doesn't understand that you are doing it on his account? That you want to provide for him in his old age, so he will have a place to lay his head and won't have to go begging from house to house? If that's what you have in mind, then you are a big fool. We have an all-powerful God, and Tevye is not one of those loafers who will fold his hands and live on the bread of charity. 'Money is worthless,' as the Bible says. If you want proof, look at your sister Hodel, who is practically a pauper; but look at what she writes from the ends of the earth, how happy she is with her Feferl." Well, do you know what she said to this? Try and make a guess.
"Don't compare me to Hodel," she said. "Hodel grew up in a time when the whole world rocked on its foundations, when it was ready at any moment to turn upside down. In those days people were concerned about the world and forgot about themselves. Now that the world is back to where it was, people think about themselves and forget about the world.""That's how she answered, and how was I to know what she meant?
Well. You know what Tevye's daughters are like. But you should have seen my Beilke at her wedding. A princess, no less. All I could do was stand and gaze at her, and I thought to myself, "Is this Beilke, a daughter of Tevye? Where did she learn to stand like this, to walk like this, to hold her head like this, and to wear her clothes so that she looked as though she'd been poured into them?"
But I wasn't allowed to gaze at her very long, for that same day at about half past six in the evening the young couple arose and departed. ―They went off, the Lord knows where, to Nitaly somewhere, as is the custom with the rich nowadays, and they didn't come back until around Hannukah, And when they came back I got a message from them to be sure to come to see them in Yehupetz at once, without fail.
What could it mean? If they just wanted me to come, they would simply have asked me to come. But why be sure to come and without fail? Something must be up. But the question was, what? All sorts of thoughts, both good and bad, crowded through my head. Could the couple have had a fight already and be ready for a divorce? I called myself a fool at once. Why did I always expect the worst? "Maybe they are lonesome for you and want to see you? Or maybe Beilke wants her father close to her? Or perhaps Padhatzur wants to give you a job, take you into the business with him, make you the manager of his enterprises?" Whatever it is, I had to go. And I got into my wagon, and "went forth to Heron." On to Yehupetz!
As I rode along, my imagination carried me away. I dreamed that I had given up the farm, sold my cows, my horse and wagon and everything else, and had moved into town. I had become first a foreman for my son-in-law, then a paymaster, then a factotum, the general manager of all his enterprises, and finally a partner in his business, share and share alike, and rode along with him behind the prancing steeds, one dun-colored and the other chestnut. And I couldn't help marveling, "W hat is this and what is it all for?" How does it happen that a quiet, unassuming man like me should have suddenly become so great? And what do I need all this excitement and confusion for, all the hurry and flurry, day and night, night and day? How do you say it? "To seat them with the mighty―hobnobbing with all the millionaires?" Leave me be, I beg of you. All I want is peace and quiet in my old age, enough leisure so that I can look into a learned tome now and then, read a chapter of the Psalms. A person has to think once in a while of the next world too. How does King Solomon put it? Man is a fool―he forgets that no matter how long he lives he has to die sometime.
It was with thoughts like these running through my head that I arrived in Yehupetz and came to the house of Padhatzur. What's the good of boasting? Shall I describe to you his " abundance of wealth"? His house and grounds? I have never had the honor of visiting Brodsky's house, but I can hardly believe that it could be more splendid than my son-in-law's. You might gather what sort of place it was from the fact that the man who stood guard at the door, a fellow resplendent in a uniform with huge silver buttons, wouldn't let me in under any consideration. What kind of business was this? The door was of glass and I could see the lackey standing there brushing clothes, may his name and memory be blotted out. I wink at him, I signal to him in sign language, show him with my hands that he should let me in because the master's wife is my own flesh and blood, my daughter. But he doesn't seem to understand me at all, the pigheaded lout, and motions to me also in sign language to go to the devil, to get out of there.
What do you think of that? I have to have special influence to get to my own daughter. "Woe unto your gray hairs," I told myself. "So this is what you have come to." I looked through the glass door again and saw a girl moving about. A chambermaid, I decided, noticing her shifty eyes. All chambermaids have shifty eyes. I am at home in rich houses and I know what the maids who work there are like.
I wink at her. "Open up, little kitty." She obeys me, opens the door and says to me in Yiddish, "Whom do you want?" And I say, "Does Padhatzur live here?" And she says, louder this time, "Whom do you want?" And I say still louder, "Answer my question first. 'Does Padhatzur live here?'" "Yes," she says. "If so," I tell her, "we can talk the same language. Tell Madame Padhatzur that she has a visitor. Her father Tevye has come to see her and has been standing outside for quite some time like a beggar at the door, for he did not have the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of this barbarian with the silver buttons whom I wouldn't exchange for your littlest finger."
After she heard me out, the girl laughed impudently, slammed the door in my face, ran into the house and up the stairs, then ran down again, opened the door and led me into a palace the like of which my father and grandfather had never seen, even in a dream. Silk and velvet and gold and crystal, and as you walked across the room you couldn't hear your own step, for your sinner's feet were sinking into the softest carpets, as soft as newly fallen snow. And clocks. Clocks everywhere. Clocks on the walls, clocks on the tables. Clocks all over the place. Dear Lord, what more can you have in store? What does a person need that many clocks for? And I keep going, with my hands clasped behind my back. I look up-several Tevyes at once are cutting across toward me from all directions. One Tevye comes this way, another Tevye that way; one is coming toward me, another away from me. How do you like that? On all sides-mirrors. Only a bird like him, that contractor of mine, could afford to surround himself with all those mirrors and clocks.
And he appeared in my mind's eyes the way he had looked the first day he came to my house―a round, fat little man with a loud voice and a sniggering laugh. He arrived in a carriage drawn by fiery steeds and proceeded to make himself at home as though he were in his own father's vineyard. He saw my Beilke, talked to her, and then called me off to one side and whispered a secret into my ear―so loud you could have heard it on the other side of Yehupetz. What was the secret? Only this―that my daughter had found favor in his eyes, and one-two-three he wanted to get married. As for my daughter's finding favor in his eyes, that was easy enough to understand, but when it came to the other part, the one-two-three-that was "like a double edged sword to me"―it sank like a dull knife into my heart.
What did he mean―one-two-three and get married? Where did I come into the picture? And what about Beilke? Oh, how I longed to drum some texts into his ears, and to give him a proverb or two to remember me by. But thinking it over, I decided: "Why should I come between these young people? A lot you accomplished, Tevye, when you tried to arrange the marriages' of your older daughters. You talked and you talked. You poured out all your wisdom and learning. And who was made a fool of in the end? Tevye, of course."
Now let us forsake the hero, as they say in books, and follow the fortunes of the heroine. I had done what they asked me to do, I had come to Yehupetz. They greeted me effusively: "Shalom Aleichem." "Aleichem shalom." "How are you?" "And how are things with you?" "Please be seated." "Thank you, I am quite comfortable." And so on, with the usual courtesies. I was wondering whether I should speak up and ask why they had sent for me― "Today of all days"―but it didn't seem proper. Tevye is not a woman, he can wait.
Meanwhile, a man-servant with huge white gloves appeared and announced that supper was on the table, and the three of us got up and went into a room that was entirely furnished in oak. The table was of oak, the chairs of oak, the walls panelled in oak and the ceiling of oak, and all of it was elaborately carved and painted and curlicued and bedizened. A kingly feast was set on the table. There was coffee and tea and hot chocolate, all sorts of pastries and the best of cognacs, appetizers and other good things, as well as every kind of fruit. I am ashamed to admit it, but I am afraid that in her father's house, Beilke had never seen such delicacies.
Well, they poured me a glass, and then another glass and I drank their health. I looked over at my Beilke and thought to myself, "You have really done well by yourself, my daughter. As they say in Hallel: 'Who raiseth up the poor out of the dust ...' When God has been kind to a poor man, 'and lifteth up the needy out of the dunghill,' you can't recognize him any longer." She is the same Beilke as before and yet not the same. And I thought of the Beilke that used to be and compared her to this one and my heart ached. It was as though I had made a bad bargain―let us say I had exchanged my hardworking little horse for a strange colt that might turn out to be a real horse or nothing but a dummy.
"Ah Beilke," I thought, 'look at what's become of you. Remember how once you used to sit at night by a smoking lamp, sewing and singing to yourself? Or how you could milk two cows in the blink of an eye. Or roll up your sleeves and cook a good old-fashioned borsht, or a dish of beans or dumplings with cheese, or bake a batch of poppyseed cakes. 'Father,' you would call, 'wash up, supper is ready.' And that was the finest song of all to my ears."
And now she sits there with her Padhatzur, like a queen, and two men run back and forth waiting on the table with a great clatter of dishes. And she? Does she utter a single word? But let me tell you, her Padhatzur isn't silent. He talks enough for two. His mouth doesn't shut for a moment. In all my life I had never seen a man who could jabber so endlessly and say so little, interspersing all his talk with that sniggering laugh of his. We have a saying for this: "He makes up his own jokes and laughs-at them himself."
Besides us three, there was another guest at the table―a fellow with bulging red cheeks. I don't know who or what he was, but he seemed to be a glutton of no mean proportions. All the time Padhatzur was talking and laughing, he went on stuffing himself. As it is written: "Three who have eaten―he ate enough for three." This one guzzled and the other one talked, such foolish empty talk―I couldn't understand a word of it. It was all about contracts, government pronouncements, banks, money, Japan.
The only thing that interested me was his mention of Japan, for I too had had dealings with that country. During the war, as you know, horses "commanded the highest prices―they went looking for them with a candle." Well, they finally found me too, and took my horse with them. My little horse was measured with a yardstick, put through his paces, driven back and forth, and in the end he was given a white card―an honorable discharge. I could have told them all along that their trouble was for nothing. "The righteous man knoweth the soul of his animal." No horse of Tevye's will ever go to war. But forgive me, Mr. Shalom Aleichem, for straying away from my subject. Let's get back to the story.
Well, we had eaten and drunk our fill, as the Lord had bade us do, and when we got up from the table, Padhatzur took my arm and led .me into an office that was ornately furnished, with guns and swords hanging on the walls, and miniature cannon on the table. He sat me down on a sort of divan that was as soft as butter, and took out of a gold box two long, fat, aromatic cigars, lit one for himself and one for me. He then sat down opposite me, stretched out his legs and said, "Do you know why I have sent for you?"
"Aha," I thought, "Now he is getting down to business." But I played dumb and said, "'Am I my brother's keeper?' ―How should I know?"
So he said, "I wanted to talk to you, and it's you yourself I want to talk about."
"If it's good news," I replied, "go ahead, let's hear it."
He took the cigar out from between his teeth, and began a long lecture. "You are a man of sense, I believe, not a fool, and you will forgive me for speaking frankly with you. You must know already that I am doing business on a very big scale, and when a man does business on such a tremendous scale..."
"Now he is getting there," I thought to myself, and interrupted him in the middle of his speech. "As the Gamorah says in the Sabbath portion: 'The more business the more worries ...' Do you happen to be familiar with that passage in the Gamorah?"
He answered me quite frankly. "I will tell you the honest truth, I have never studied the Gamorah and I wouldn't recognize it if I saw it." And he laughed that irritating laugh of his. What do you think of a man like that? It seems to me that if God has chastised you by making you illiterate, at least keep it under your hat instead of boasting about it. But all I said was, "I gathered that you had no knowledge of these things, but let me hear what you have to say further."
"Further I want to tell you, that it isn't fitting, considering the scale of my enterprises, and the repute in which my name is held, as well as my station in life, that you should be known as T evye the Dairyman. I'll have you know that I am personally acquainted with the Governor, and that it is very likely that one of these days Brodsky 'might come to my house or Poliakov or maybe even Rothschild, whomever the devil sends."
. He finished speaking, and I sat there and looked at his shiny bald spot and thought to myself, "It may be true that you are personally acquainted with the Governor, and that Rothschild might even come to your house some day, but just the same you talk like a common cur." And I said, not without a touch of resentment in my voice, "Well, and what shall we do about it, if Rothschild does happen to drop in on you?"
Do you suppose that he understood the dig? Not a bit of it. As we say: "There was neither bear nor woods."
"I would like you to give up the dairy business," he said, "and go into something else."
"And what," said I, "would you suggest that I go into?"
"Anything you like. Aren't there enough different kinds of business in the world? I'll help you with money, you can have whatever you need, as long as you quit being Tevye the Dairyman. Or, look here, do you know what? Maybe you'd like to pick yourself up one-two-three and go to America?"
Having delivered himself of this, he put the cigar back between his teeth, looked me straight in the eye, and his bald head glistened.
Well, what would you say to such a vulgar person?
At first impulse I thought, "What are you sitting there for like a graven image? Get up, kiss the mazuza, slam the door in his face, and ― 'he went to his eternal rest'―get out without as much as a good-bye." I was as stirred up as all that. The colossal nerve of this contractor. Telling me to give up an honest, respectable livelihood and go off to America. Just because it might come to pass that on some far-off day Rothschild might condescend to enter his house, Tevye the Dairyman had to run off to the ends of the earth.
I was (boiling inside and some of my anger was directed at her, at Beilke herself. How could she sit there like a queen among a hundred clocks and a thousand mirrors while her father Tevye was being tortured, was running the gauntlet? "May I have as many blessings," I thought to myself, "how much better your sister Hodel has made out than you. I grant you this, she doesn't have a house with so many fancy gew-gaws in it, but she has a husband who is a human being who can call his soul his own, even if his body is in prison. And besides that he has a head on his shoulders, has Feferl, and not a. pot with a shiny cover on it. And when he talks there is something to listen to. When you quote him a passage from the Bible he comes back at you with three more in exchange. Wait, my contractor, I will drum a quotation into your ears that will make your head swim."
And I addressed myself to him thus: "That the Gamorah is a closed book to you, I can easily understand. When a man lives in Yehupetz and his name is Padhatzur and his business is that of contractor, the Gamorah can very well hide itself in the attic as far as he is concerned. But even a peasant in wooden sandals can understand a simple text. You know what the Targum says about Laban the Arameian?" And I gave him a quotation in mixed Hebrew and Russian. When I finished he threw an angry look at me and said, "What does that mean?"
"It means this―that out of a pig's tail you cannot fashion a fur hat."
"And what, may I ask, are you referring to?"
"I am referring to the way you are packing me off to America."
At this he laughed that snickering laugh of his and said, "Well, if not America, then how would you like to go to Palestine? Old Jews are always eager to go to Palestine."
Something about his last words struck a chord in my heart. "Hold on, Tevye," I thought. "Maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all. Maybe this is the way out for you. Rather than to stay here and suffer such treatment at the hands of your children, Palestine would be better. What have you got to lose? Your Golde is dead anyway, and you are in such misery you might as well be buried six feet underground yourself. How much longer do you expect to pound this earth?" And I might as well confess, Mr. Shalom Aleichern, that I've been drawn for a long time toward the Holy Land. I would like to stand by the Wailing Wall, to see the tombs of the Patriarchs, Mother Rachel's grave, and I would like to look with my own eyes at the River Jordan, at Mt. Sinai and the Red Sea, at the great cities Pithom and Raamses. In my thoughts I am already in the Land of Canaan― "the land flowing with milk and honey"―when Padhatzur breaks in on me impatiently: "Why waste all this time thinking about it? Make it one-two-three and decide."
"With you, thank the Lord, a trip to Palestine is one-two-three like a simple text in the Bible. But for me it's a difficult passage to interpret. To pack up and go off to Palestine one has to have the means."
He laughs scornfully at this, gets up and goes over to a desk, opens a drawer, takes out a purse, and counts out some money―not a trifling sum, you understand―and hands it to me. I take the wad of paper he has handed to me―the power of money! ―and lower it into my pocket. I would like to treat him to a few learned quotations, a medresh or two, that would explain everything to him, but he won't listen to me.
"This will be enough for your trip," says he, "and more than enough. And when you arrive and find that you need more money, write me a letter, and I will send it to you―one-two-three. I hope I won't have to remind you again about going, for, after all, you are a man of honor, a man with a conscience."
And he laughed again that sniggering laugh of his that penetrated to my very soul. I was tempted to fling the money into his face and to let him know that you couldn't buy Tevye for money and that you didn't speak to Tevye of "honor" and "conscience." But before I had time to open my mouth, he rang the bell, called Beilke in, and said to her, "Do you know what, my love! Your father is leaving us, he is selling everything he owns and going one-two-three to Palestine."
"'I dreamed a dream but I do not understand it,' as Pharaoh said to Joseph. What sort of nightmare is this?" I think to myself, and I look over at Beilke. Do you think she as much as frowned? She stood there rooted to the ground, pale and without expression on her face, looking from one to the other of us, not uttering a word. I couldn't speak either, and so we both stood there looking at each other, as the Psalm says: "May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." We had both lost our powers of speech.
My head was whirling and my pulse beating as though I had been breathing in charcoal fumes. I wondered why I felt so dizzy. Could it be that expensive cigar he had given me? But he was still smoking his and talking away. His mouth didn't shut for a moment, though his eyelids were drooping as though he were ready to fall asleep.
"You have to go to Odessa by train first," he said. "And from Odessa by sea all the way to Jaffa, and the best time for a sea voyage is right now, for later on the winds and the snows and the hurricanes begin and then and then...." His words were getting jumbled, he was asleep on his feet, but he didn't stop jabbering. "And when you are ready to start let us know and we'll both come to see you off at the station, for when can we hope to see you again?" He finished at last, with a huge yawn, and said to Beilke, "Why don't you stay here awhile, my soul? I am going to lie down for a little bit."
"That's the best thing you have said so far," I thought to myself.
"Now I will have a chance to pour my heart out to her." I was ready to spill out all the wrath that had been accumulating in my breast all morning. But instead Beilke fell on my neck and started weeping. You should have heard her weep! My daughters are all alike in this respect. They can be very brave and manly up to a point-then all of a sudden, when it comes to something, they break down and weep like willow trees. Take my older girl Hodel. How she carried on at the last moment when she was telling me good-bye and went to join her Feferl in his exile. But how can I compare the two? This one isn't worthy of lighting the oven for the other. . . .
I will tell you the honest truth. I myself, as you well know, am not a man who is given to tears. I wept once in my life when my Golde lay stretched out on the ground with the candles at her head, and once when Hodel went off to join her husband and I was left standing alone at the station with my horse and wagon. There may have been one or two other occasions on which I weakened, I don't remember. I am not given to weeping. But Beilke's tears wrung my heart so that I couldn't hold myself in. I didn't have the heart to scold her. You don't have to explain things to me. I am Tevye. I understood her tears. She was weeping for "the sin I have sinned before thee" ―because she hadn't listened to her father. Instead of scolding her and voicing my anger against Padhatzur, I began to comfort her with this story and that proverb as only Tevye can do.
But she interrupted me, "No,' father, that isn't why I am crying.
It's only because you are leaving on my account and there is nothing I can do to stop it, that's what hurts me."
"You talk like a child," I told her. "Remember we have a merciful God and your father is still in possession of all his faculties. It's a small matter for him to take a trip to Palestine and back again. As it is written: 'They journeyed and they encamped―Tuda i nazad―I will go and I will return.'"
As though she had guessed my thoughts, she said, "No, father, that's the way you comfort a little child, you give it a toy or a doll and tell it a story about a little white goat. If you want a story, let me tell you one instead. But the story I will tell you is more sad than beautiful."
And she began telling me a long and curious tale, a story out of the thousand and one nights, all about Padhatzur, how he came up from obscure beginnings, worked himself up by his own wits to his present station in life, rose from the lowest to the highest rank. Now that he was rich he wanted the honor of entertaining important people in his home, and to that end he was pouring out thousands of rubles, handing out charity in all directions. But money, it seems, isn't everything. You have to· have family and background, as well. He was willing to go to any length to prove that he wasn't a nobody, he boasted that he was descended from the great Padhatzurs, that his father was a celebrated contractor too. "Though he knows," she said, "quite well, and he knows that I know, that his father was only a poor fiddler. And on top of that he keeps telling everyone that his wife's father is a millionaire."
"Whom does he mean? Me? Who knows, maybe I was destined at one time to be a millionaire. But I'll have to let this suffice me."
"If you only knew how I suffer when he introduces me to his friends and tells them what an important man my father is, and who my uncles were and the rest of my family. How I blush at the lies . he makes up. But I have to bear it all in silence for he is very eccentric in those matters."
"You call it being an 'eccentric.' To me he sounds like a plain liar or else a rascal."
"No, father, you don't understand him. He is not as evil as you think. He is a man whose moods change very frequently. He is really very kind-hearted and generous. If you happen to come to him when he is in one of his good moods he will give you anything you ask for. And nothing is too good for me. He would reach down and hand me the moon and the stars on a platter if I expressed a wish for them. Do you suppose I have no influence over him at all? Just recently I persuaded him to get Hodel and her husband out of exile. He promised to spend as much money as necessary on only one condition―that they go from there straight to Japan."
"Why to Japan?" I asked. "Why not to India, or to Persia to visit the Queen of Sheba?"
"Because he has business in Japan. He has business all over the world. What he spends on telegrams alone in one day would keep us all alive for a half year." Then her voice dropped. "But what good is all this to me? I am not myself any more."
"It is said," I quoted, 'If I am not for myself who will be for me?―I am not I and you are not you!'"
I tried to distract her with jokes and quotations and all the time my heart was torn into pieces to see my child pining away―how do we say it― "in riches and in honor."
"Your sister Hodel," I told her, "would have done differently."
"I've told you before not to compare me to Hodel. Hodel lived in Hodel's time and Beilke is living in Beilke's time. The distance between the two is as great as from here to Japan." Can you figure out the meaning of such crazy talk?
I see that you are in a hurry, but be patient for just a minute and there will be an end to all my stories. Well, after having supped well on the grief of my youngest child, I left the house "in mourning and with bowed head," completely crushed and beaten. I threw the vile cigar he had given me into the street and shouted, "To the devil with you."
"Whom are you cursing, Reb Tevye?" I heard a voice behind my back. I turned around and looked. It was he, Ephraim the Shadchan, may no good come to him.
"God bless you, And what are you doing here?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
"I've been visiting my children."
"And how are they getting along?"
"How should they be getting along? May you and I be as lucky."
"Then I see you are satisfied with my merchandise."
"Satisfied, did you say? May God bless you doubly and trebly for what you have done."
"Thank you for the blessings. Now if you could only add to them
something more substantial."
"Didn't you get your matchmaker's fee?"
"May your Padhatzur have no more than I got."
"What's the matter? Was the fee too small?"
"It isn't the size of the fee so much as the manner of giving it."
"What's the trouble then?"
"The trouble is," said he, "that there isn't a groschen of it left."
"Where did it disappear to?"
"I married off my daughter."
"Congratulations. Good luck to the couple and may you live to rejoice in their happiness."
"I am rejoicing in it right now. My son-in-law turned out to be a crook. He beat up my daughter, took the few guldens away and ran off to America."
"Why did you let him run off so far?"
"How could I stop him?"
"You could have sprinkled salt on his tail."
"I see you are feeling pretty chipper today, Reb Tevye."
"May you feel half as good as I feel."
"Is that so? And I thought you were fixed for life. If that's the case, here is a pinch of snuff."
I. got rid of the matchmaker with a pinch of snuff, and went on home. I began selling out my household goods. It wasn't easy, I can tell you, to get rid of all the things that had accumulated through the years. Every old pot, every broken kettle wrenched my heart. One thing reminded me of Golde, another of the children. But nothing hurt me so much as parting with my old horse. I felt as though I owed him something. Hadn't we labored together all these years, suffered and hungered together, known good luck and bad luck together? And here I was up and selling him to a stranger. I had to dispose of him to a water-carrier, for what do you get from a teamster? Nothing but
insults. Here is how the teamsters greeted me when I brought my horse to them.
"God be with you, Reb Tevye. Do you call this a horse?" "What is it, then, a chandelier?"
"If it isn't a chandelier then it's one of the thirty-six saints who hold up the world."
"What do you mean by that?"
"We mean an old creature thirty-six years old without any teeth, with a gray lip, that shivers and shakes like an old woman saying her prayers on a frosty night."
That's teamsters' talk for you. I could swear that my little horse understood every word, as it is written: "An ox knows his master.An animal knows when you are offering him for sale." I was sure he understood, for when I closed the deal with the water-carrier and wished him luck, my horse turned his patient face to me and gave me a look as though to say: "This is my portion for all my efforts. Is this how you reward me for my years of faithful service?"
I looked back at him for the last time as the water-carrier led him away and I was left standing all alone. I thought, "Almighty, how cleverly You have fashioned Your world. You have created Tevye and You have created his horse and to both You have given the same fate. A man can at least talk, he can complain out loud, he can unburden his soul to another, but a horse? He is nothing but a dumb beast, as it is said: 'The advantage of man over animal.'"
You wonder at the tears in my eyes, Mr. Sholom Aleichem. You are probably thinking that I am weeping for my horse. Why only for my horse? I am weeping for everybody and everything. For I shall miss everybody and everything. I shall miss my horse and the farm, and I shall miss the mayor and the police sergeant, the summer people of Boiberik, the rich people of Yehupetz, and I shall miss Ephraim the Matchmaker, may a plague take him, for when all is said and done, if you think the whole matter over, what is he but a poor man trying to make a living?
When God brings me safely to the place where I am going, I do not know what will finally become of me, but one thing is clear in my mind―that first of all I shall visit the grave of Mother Rachel. There I will offer a prayer for my children whom I shall probably never see again and at the same time I will keep in mind Ephraim the Matchmaker, as well as yourself and all of Israel. Let us shake hands on that, and go your way in good health and give my blessings to everyone and bid everyone a kind farewell for me. And may all go well with you.
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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
