Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (25 page)

This is where I come in, I thought—and so I said, interrupting him, “That’s exactly what the Talmud means by
marbeh nekhosim marbeh da’ogoh!
I suppose you’re familiar with the passage?”

You couldn’t say he wasn’t honest. “To tell you the truth,” he says with that little whinnying laugh, “I never studied a page of Talmud in my life. I wouldn’t know what a Talmud looked like if you showed me one.”

Do you see who I was up against now? You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if God had punished him by making him an ignoramus, he would at least keep his trap shut about it!

“Well,” I said, “I thought as much. You didn’t look like much of a Talmudist to me. But why not finish what you were saying?”

“What I was saying,” he says, “is that with a business like mine, a reputation like mine, a public position like mine, I can’t afford to have a cheesemonger for a father-in-law. The governor of the province is a personal friend of mine, and I’m perfectly capable of having a Brodsky, even a Rothschild, as my guest …”

I swear, I’m not making up a word of it! I sat there staring at that shiny bald head of his and thinking, you may very well be palsy-walsy with the governor and have Rothschild over for tea,
but you still talk just like a guttersnipe! “Look here,” I said, trying not to sound too annoyed, “I can’t help it, can I, if Rothschild insists on dropping in on you!” Do you think he got it, though?
Loy dubim veloy ya’ar
—it just sailed right by him.

“I would like,” he says, “for you to leave the dairy line and engage in something else.”

“And what exactly do you suggest that I engage in?” I asked.

“In anything you like,” he says. “Do you think the world is short of things to do? I’ll help you out with money, as much as you need, if you just agree to give up your cheesemongering. Come to think of it, I have an even better idea: how would you like to go pronto to America?”

And he sticks his cigar between his teeth again and gives me a shiny-headed look.

Well, you tell me: how does one answer a young whippersnapper like that? At first I thought, why go on sitting here like a golem, Tevye? Pick yourself up, walk through the door, shut it behind you, and
holakh le’oylomoy
—goodbye and good riddance! That’s how hot under the collar he made me. The nerve of that contractor! Who did he think he was, telling me to give up a perfectly good living and go to America? Just because Rothschild was about to ring his doorbell, did that mean Tevye had to be sent packing to the other side of the globe? My blood began to boil; I was getting angrier by the minute, and now I was good and mad at my Beilke, too. How can you sit there like the Queen of Sheba surrounded by a thousand clocks and mirrors, I thought, when your father Tevye is being dragged over hot coals to the whipping post? May I hope to die if your sister Hodl isn’t better off than you are! What’s true is true: she may not live in a castle full of gewgaws, but at least that Peppercorn of hers is a human being—in fact, too much of one, because he never thinks of himself, only of others. And the head on that boy’s shoulders … it’s not a shiny pot of wet noodles like some people’s … and the tongue on him … why, he’s solid gold! Try polishing him off with a quotation and three more come flying back at you! Just you wait, you Putzhoddur, you, I’ll let you have such a verse from the Bible that you’ll see fireworks before your eyes …

And having thought it all over I turned to him and said, “Look here, I don’t hold it against you that you think the Talmud is mumbo-jumbo. When a Jew sits in Yehupetz expecting Rothschild
any minute, he can afford to keep the Talmud in his attic. Still, even you can surely understand a simple line of Scripture such as every Russian peasant boy knows. I’m referring, of course, to
what Onkelos has to say in his Targum about what the Bible has to say in the Book of Genesis about Laban the Aramean:
miznavto dekhazirto loy makhtmen shtreimilto …”

“I’m afraid,” he says, looking at me sideways like a rooster, “that that’s a bit over my head. What does it mean?”

“It means,” I say, “that you can’t make a fur hat out of a pig’s tail.”

“And what,” he asks, “am I supposed to understand by that?”

“You’re supposed to understand,” I say, “that I’m not being shipped off to America.”

Well, he laughed that whinnying laugh of his and said to me, “All right. If America is out, how about Palestine? Isn’t that where all the old Jews like you go to die?”

The minute he said that, I felt it drive home like a nail. Hold on there, Tevye, I told myself. Maybe that’s not such a weird idea. There just may be something in it. With all the pleasure you’ve been getting from your children, why not try your luck elsewhere? You’re a jackass if you think you have anyone or anything to keep you here. Your poor Golde is six feet under, and between you and me, so are you; how long do you intend to go on drudging?… And by the way, Pan Sholem Aleichem, you should know that I always had a hankering to be in the Holy Land. I would have given anything to see the
Wailing Wall,
Rachel’s Tomb, the
Cave of the Patriarchs, the River Jordan, Mount Sinai, the Red Sea, the Ten Plagues, and all the rest of it with my own eyes. In fact, I was so carried away thinking of that blessed land of Canaan where the milk and honey flow that I had all but forgotten where I was when Podhotzur brought me back to it by saying, “Well, how about it? Why not decide pronto.”

“I can see,” I said, “that everything is pronto with you. Make haste while the sun shines, eh? Still, if you ask me, there’s a small problem here, because one can’t get to Palestine on an empty pocket …”

Well, he gave his little whinny again, rose from his seat, went to his desk, opened a drawer, took out a billfold, and counted out a very tidy sum. I must say I was no slouch myself: I took that wad of bills—the things one doesn’t do for money!—stuck it deep in
my pocket, and began to set the record straight with a midrash that interested him about as much as a cat’s miaow. “That,” he said without even letting me finish, “should get you to Palestine with plenty to spare. If you need more once you’re there, just write and I’ll send it to you pronto. And I trust I needn’t remind you to catch the first train you can, because you’re an honest, responsible fellow.”

That’s what he said to me, Mr. Hodputzer, whinnying so hard that I felt it right in the gut. Why don’t you crack him on the snout with this wad of his, I thought, and tell him, begging your pardon, to stick it up his honest, responsible you-know-what, because Tevye is not for sale! Before I could open my mouth, though, he rang for Beilke and said to her, “Guess what, my sweet! Your father is leaving us. He’s selling everything he owns and setting out for Palestine.”

I tell you, it was like a bad dream! I looked at my Beilke, waiting for her to say something, to bat an eyelash at least. But she just stood there stock-still, not a drop of blood in her cheeks, glancing back and forth from her husband to me without so much as a word. I stared at her without saying one either, so that there we both were with our tongues stuck to the roofs of our mouths. My head was spinning, pounding away as though I had been breathing coal gas. What can be wrong with me, I wondered; if it’s the cigar I smoked, he’s been smoking one himself, and talking nonstop in the bargain, though his eyelids keep drooping as if he were itching to snooze. “You take the express train to Odessa,” he says to me, “and from there a ship sails to Jaffa. The best time to go is right now, because later there are winds … and snow, and … and storms … and … and …” He was so sleepy he could barely get the words out, but he didn’t stop jabbering for a second. “Just don’t forget to notify us when you’re ready to leave … We’ll come to say goodbye at the station … Who knows when we’ll meet again …” And he yawns in my face, gets up from his chair, and says to my Beilke, “And now, my sweet, you spend some time with your father while I go lie down for a while …”

I swear, I thought, that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said; now at last I can get it all off my chest. And I turned to my Beilke to let out what had been building up in me all day—but before I could even begin, she threw her arms around me and started to cry. Did I say cry? My daughters, bless them, are all the same; for a while
they manage to put on a brave face, but sooner or later every one of them gushes like a geyser. Take my second oldest, Hodl, for example; at the very last minute, just as she’s setting out for Siberia with her Peppercorn, she breaks down and bawls like a baby! Only there’s really no comparison, because when it comes to crying, Hodl can’t hold a candle to Beilke.

I’ll tell you the honest truth: I myself am no weeping willow. The last good cry I remember having, in fact, was when I found my poor Golde dead on the floor, and before that, when my Hodl left me standing in the station, all alone like a fool with my horse. There may have been a few other times when my eyes were a wee bit wet, but that’s all; on the whole, it’s not like me to blubber. But Beilke’s tears threw me so that I couldn’t hold my own in any longer, let alone say a cross word to her. I’m not a man who needs things spelled out for me: my name is Tevye. And I knew why she was crying: it was for
kheyt shekhotosi lefonekho
, for the sin of not listening to a father—so that instead of letting her have what she deserved and giving that Hodderputz hell, I tried cheering her up with some story or other, as only Tevye can do. She listened to me, did my Beilke, and said, “No, Papa, that’s not why I’m crying. I’m not blaming myself or anyone. It just breaks my heart to know that you’re going away because of me, and that there’s not a thing I can do about it.”

“There, there,” I told her. “You’re talking like a little girl. Have you forgotten that God is still in His heaven and your father is still a young man? Why, it’s child’s play for me to travel to Palestine and back again, just like it says in the Bible:
vayisu vayakhanu
—and the Children of Israel knew not if they were coming or going …”

Yet the words were no sooner out of my mouth than I thought, Tevye, that’s a big fat lie! You’re off to the Land of Israel for good—it’s bye-bye Tevye forever … She must have read my mind, too, for she said to me, “Please, Papa. It’s no use trying to comfort me as you would a child with some fairy tale that ends happily ever after—although if you like fairy tales, I can tell you one myself. I’m warning you, though, Papa, that this fairy tale is a sad one.”

That’s just what she said, my Beilke; Tevye’s daughters don’t mince words. And with that she began to tell me a story, a case history, a tale from the Arabian Nights, about how her Podhotzur
was a self-made man who had pulled himself up from the bottom rung by his own bootstraps and now only wanted to hobnob with all the Brodskys of the world … Money, she said, was no object to him; he gave it away by the barrelful; only money, it seemed, was not enough, one needed a pedigree too—and Podhotzur was determined to prove that he wasn’t just some rich upstart but the last of a long line of famous Podhotzurs and the son of a wealthy contractor himself. “And that,” says my Beilke, “is though he knows that I know that his father was a fiddler at weddings. Worse yet, he goes about telling everyone that his father-in-law is a millionaire too …”

“Who, me?” I say. “Well, I always thought that someday I would get to be one.”

“I can’t tell you how I blush, Papa,” she says, “when he introduces me to his friends with the most outrageous lies about my distinguished father, and all my uncles, and my whole family—and I have to sit there and put up with it, because he’s eccentric that way.”

“By you,” I say, “he’s eccentric. By me he’s a charlatan and a fraud.”

“But he’s not, Papa,” says my Beilke. “You don’t know him. He’s not such a bad man as you think. He’s just unpredictable. He has a big heart and he’s generous. If you catch him in the right mood, it’s enough to make a long face for him to give you the shirt off his back. And I’m not even talking about myself—for me the sky’s the limit! You mustn’t think I have no influence with him. Why, not long ago I made him promise to do all he could to free Hodl and her husband from Siberia. He swore to me that money wouldn’t stand in his way. His one condition was that they go to Japan when Peppercorn gets out.”

“Why to Japan?” I asked. “Why not to India, or to Mesopotamia, or to Timbuktu?”

“Because,” she says, “he has businesses there. He has businesses everywhere. He spends more on telegrams in a single day than it would cost us to live on for a year. But what good does all that do me if I can’t be myself?”

“The rabbis,” I said, “put that very well.
Im eyn ani li mi li
—if you can’t be yourself, don’t expect me to be.”

And I tried to make a joke of it with a quote thrown in here and there, though my heart bled for my daughter to see what unhappiness
money had bought her. “Your sister Hodl,” I said, “would never have gotten into such a—”

“I already told you, Papa,” said my Beilke, interrupting me, “not to compare me to Hodl. Hodl lived in the Age of Hodl and Beilke lives in the Age of Beilke. The distance between the two is as great as from here to Japan.”

I ask you, is that Japanese or not?

Well, I see you’re getting off at the next station, Pani. Just give me two more minutes. I left my lucky youngest daughter’s house with a bellyful of her sorrows, a shattered, a devastated man; flung my cigar, which had only given me a headache, on the ground; and yelled at it, “You should go straight to hell, you and your father and all your uncles!”

“Whose uncles did you say, Reb Tevye?” I heard a voice ask behind me. I turned around—why, it’s Efrayim the Matchmaker, the Devil take him and keep him!

“Well, well, a fellow Jew!” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Visiting my daughter,” I say.

“And how is she?” he asks.

“How should she be?” I say. “Not everyone has luck like hers.”

“I can see you’re happy with my merchandise,” he says.

“Happy,” I say, “is not the word. You should only be as happy yourself.”

“Thank you for your kind wishes,” he says. “Perhaps you’d like to add a small remittance to them.”