Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories Read online

  “The story,” they say, “can wait. We’d rather you showed us the way to Boiberik first.”

  “The way to Boiberik?” I say. “You’re standing on it right now. This is the way to Boiberik whether you want to go to Boiberik or not.”

  “But if this is the way to Boiberik,” they say, “why didn’t you say it was the way to Boiberik before?”

  “I didn’t say it was the way to Boiberik,” I say, “because you didn’t ask me if it was the way to Boiberik.”

  “Well,” they say, “if it is the way to Boiberik, would you possibly happen to know by any chance just how long a way to Boiberik it is?”

  “To Boiberik,” I say, “it’s not a long way at all. Only a few miles. About two or three. Maybe four. Unless it’s five.”

  “Five miles?” screamed both women at once, wringing their hands and all but bursting into tears. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying? Only five miles!”

  “Well,” I said, “what would you like me to do about it? If it were up to me, I’d make it a little shorter. But there are worse fates than yours, let me tell you. How would you like to be stuck in a wagon creeping up a muddy hill with the Sabbath only an hour away? The rain whips straight in your face, your hands are numb, your heart is too weak to beat another stroke, and suddenly … bang! Your front axle’s gone and snapped.”

  “You’re talking like a half-wit,” said one of the two women. “I swear, you’re off your trolley. What are you telling us fairy tales from the Arabian Nights for? We haven’t the strength to take another step. Except for a cup of coffee with a butter roll for breakfast, we haven’t had a bite of food all day—and you expect us to stand here listening to your stories?”

  “That,” I said, “is a different story. How does the saying go? It’s no fun dancing on an empty stomach. And you don’t have to tell me what hunger tastes like; that’s something I happen to know. Why, it’s not at all unlikely that I haven’t seen a cup of coffee and a butter roll for over a year …” The words weren’t out of my mouth when I saw a cup of hot coffee with cream and a fresh butter roll right before my eyes, not to mention what else was on the table. You dummy, I said to myself, a person might think you were raised on coffee and rolls! I suppose plain bread and herring would make you sick? But just to spite me, my imagination kept insisting on coffee and rolls. I could smell the coffee, I could taste the roll on my tongue—my God, how fresh, how delicious it was …

  “Do you know what, Reb Tevye?” the two women said to me. “We’ve got a brilliant idea. As long as we’re standing here chitting, why don’t we hop into your wagon and give you a chance to take us back to Boiberik yourself? How about it?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “but you’re spitting into the wind. You’re going to Boiberik and I’m coming from Boiberik. How do you suppose I can go both ways at once?”

  “That’s easy,” they say. “We’re surprised you haven’t thought of it already. If you were a scholar, you’d have realized right away: you simply turn your wagon around and head back in the other direction … Don’t get so nervous, Reb Tevye. We should only have to suffer the rest of our lives as much as getting us home safely, God willing, will cost you.”

  My God, I thought, they’re talking Chinese; I can’t make head or tail of it. And for the second time that evening I thought of ghosts, witches, things that go bump in the night. You dunce, I told myself, what are you standing there for like a tree stump? Jump back into your wagon, give the horse a crack of your whip, and get away while the getting is good! Well, don’t ask me what got into me, but when I opened my mouth again I said, “Hop aboard!”

  They didn’t have to be asked twice. I climbed in after them, gave my cap a tug, let the horse have the whip, and one, two, three—we’re off! Did I say off? Off to no place fast! My horse is stuck to the ground, a cannon shot wouldn’t budge him. Well, I said to myself, that’s what you get for stopping in the middle of nowhere to gab with a pair of females. It’s just your luck that you couldn’t think of anything better to do.

  Just picture it if you can: the woods all around, the eerie stillness, night coming on—and here I am with these two apparitions pretending to be women … My blood began to whistle like a teakettle. I remembered a story I once had heard about a coachman who was driving by himself through the woods when he spied a sack of oats lying on the path. Well, a sack of oats is a sack of oats, so down from the wagon he jumps, shoulders the sack, barely manages to heave it into his wagon without breaking his back, and drives off as happy as you please. A mile or two later he turns around to look at his sack … did someone say sack? What sack? Instead of a sack there’s a billy goat with a beard. He reaches out to touch it and it sticks out a tongue a yard long at him, laughs like a hyena, and vanishes into thin air …

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” the two women asked me.

  “What am I waiting for?” I say. “You can see for yourselves what I’m waiting for. My horse is happy where he is. He’s not in a frisky mood.”

  “Then use your whip,” they say to me. “What do you think it’s

  “Thank you for your advice,” I say to them. “It’s very kind of you to offer it. The problem is that my four-legged friend is not afraid of such things. He’s as used to getting whipped as I’m used to getting gypped.” I tried to sound casual, but I was burning with a ninety-nine-year fever.

  Well, why bore you? I let that poor horse have it. I whipped him as long as I whipped him hard, until finally he picked up his heels and we began to move through the woods. And as we did a new thought occurred to me. Ah, Tevye, I said to myself, are you ever a numbskull! Once a beggar, always a beggar, that’s the story of your life. Just imagine: here God hands you an opportunity that comes a man’s way once in a hundred years, and you forget to clinch the deal in advance, so that you don’t even know what’s in it for you! Any way you look at it—as a favor or a duty, as a service or an obligation, as an act of human kindness or something even worse than that—it’s certainly no crime to make a little profit on the side. When a soup bone is stuck in somebody’s face, who doesn’t give it a lick? Stop your horse right now, you imbecile, and spell it out for them in capital letters: “Look, ladies, if it’s worth such-and-such to you to get home, it’s worth such-and-such to me to take you; if it isn’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to part ways.” On second thought, though, I thought again: Tevye, you’re an imbecile to call yourself an imbecile! Supposing they promised you the moon, what good would it do you? Don’t you know that you can skin the bear in the forest, but you can’t sell its hide there?

  “Why don’t you go a little faster?” the two women asked, poking me from behind.

  “What’s the matter?” I said, “are you in some sort of hurry? You should know that haste makes waste.” From the corner of my eye I stole a look at my passengers. They were women, all right, no doubt of it: one wearing a silk kerchief and the other a wig. They sat there looking at each other and whispering back and forth.

  “Is it still a long way off?” one of them asked me.

  “No longer off than we are from there,” I said. “Up ahead there’s an uphill and a downhill. After that there’s another uphill and a downhill. After that comes the real uphill and the downhill, and after that it’s straight as the crow flies to Boiberik …”

  “The man’s some kind of nut for sure!” whispered one of the women to the other.

  “I told you he was bad news,” says the second.

  “He’s all we needed,” says the first.

  “He’s crazy as a loon,” says the second.

  I certainly must be crazy, I thought, to let these two characters treat me like this. “Excuse me,” I said to them, “but where would you ladies like to be dumped?”

  “Dumped!” they say. “What kind of language is that? You can go dump yourself if you like!”

  “Oh, that’s just coachman’s talk,” I say. “In ordinary parlance we would say, ‘When we get to Boiberik safe and sound, with God
’s help, where do I drop mesdames off?’ ”

  “If that’s what it means,” they say, “you can drop us off at the green dacha by the pond at the far end of the woods. Do you know where it is?”

  “Do I know where it is?” I say. “Why, I know my way around Boiberik the way you do around your own home! I wish I had a thousand rubles for every log I’ve carried there. Just last summer, in fact, I brought a couple of loads of wood to the very dacha you’re talking about. There was a rich Jew from Yehupetz living there, a real millionaire. He must have been worth a hundred grand, if not twice that.”

  “He’s still living there,” said both women at once, whispering and laughing to each other.

  “Well,” I said, “seeing as the ride you’ve taken was no short haul, and as you may have some connection with him, would it be too much for me to request of you, if you don’t mind my asking, to put in a good word for me with him? Maybe he’s got an opening, a position of some sort. Really, anything would do … You never know how things will turn out. I know a young man named Yisro’eyl, for instance, who comes from a town not far from here. He’s a real nothing, believe me, a zero with a hole in it. So what happens to him? Somehow, don’t ask me how or why, he lands this swell job, and today he’s a big shot clearing twenty rubles a week, or maybe it’s forty, who knows … Some people have all the luck! Do you by any chance happen to know what happened to our slaughterer’s son-in-law, all because he picked himself up one fine day and went to Yehupetz? The first few years there, I admit, he really suffered; in fact, he damn near starved to death. Today, though, I only wish I were in his shoes and could send home the money he does. Of course, he’d like his wife and kids to join him, but he can’t get them a residence permit. I ask you, what kind of life is it for a man to live all alone like that? I swear, I wouldn’t wish it on a dog!… Well, bless my soul, will you look at what we have here: here’s your pond and there’s your green dacha!”

  And with that I swung my wagon right through the gate and drove like nobody’s business clear up to the porch of the house. Don’t ask me to describe the excitement when the people there saw us pull up. What a racket! Happy days!

  “Oy, Grandma!”

  “Oy, Mama!”

  “Oy, Auntie, Auntie!”

  “Thank God they’re back!”

  “Mazel tov!”

  “Good lord, where have you been?”

  “We’ve been out of our minds with worry all day long!”

  “We had search parties out looking for you everywhere!”

  “The things we thought happened to you, it’s too horrible for words: highwaymen or maybe a wolf! So tell us, what happened?”

  “What happened? What happened shouldn’t have happened to a soul. We lost our way in the woods and blundered about for miles. Suddenly, along comes a Jew. What, what kind of a Jew? A Jew, a schlimazel, with a wagon and a horse. Don’t think we had an easy time with him either, but here we are!”

  “Incredible! It sounds like a bad dream. How could you have gone out in the woods without a guide? What an adventure, what an adventure. Thank God you’re home safe!”

  In no time lamps were brought out, the table was set, and there began to appear on it hot samovars flowing with tea, bowls of sugar, jars of jam, plates full of pastry and all kinds of baked goods, followed by the fanciest dishes: soup brimming with fat, roast meats, a whole goose, the best wines and salad greens. I stood a ways off and thought, so this, God bless them, is how these Yehupetz tycoons eat and drink. Why, it’s enough to make the Devil jealous! I’d pawn my last pair of socks if it would help to make me a rich Jew like them … You can imagine what went through my mind. The crumbs that fell from that table alone would have been enough to feed my kids for a week, with enough left over for the Sabbath. Oh, my dear Lord, I thought: they say You’re a long-suffering God, a good God, a great God; they say You’re merciful and fair; perhaps You can explain to me, then, why it is that some folk have everything and others have nothing twice over? Why does one Jew get to eat butter rolls while another gets to eat dirt? A moment later, though, I said to myself, ach, what a fool you are, Tevye, I swear! Do you really think He needs your advice on how to run the world? If this is how things are, it’s how they were meant to be; the proof of it is that if they were meant to be different, they would be. It may seem to you that they ought to have been meant to be different … but it’s just for that you’re a Jew in this world! A Jew must have confidence and faith. He must believe, first, that there is a God, and second, that if there is, and if it’s all the same to Him, and if it isn’t putting Him to too much trouble, He can make things a little better for the likes of you …

  “Wait a minute,” I heard someone say. “What happened to the coachman? Has the schlimazel left already?”

  “God forbid!” I called out from where I was. “Do you mean to suggest that I’d simply walk off without so much as saying goodbye? Good evening, it’s a pleasure to meet you all! Enjoy your meal; I can’t imagine why you shouldn’t.”

  “Come in out of the dark,” says one of them to me, “and let’s have a look at you. Perhaps you’d like a little brandy?”

  “A little brandy?” I say. “Who can refuse a little brandy? God may be God, but brandy is brandy. Cheers!” And I emptied the glass in one gulp. “God should only help you to stay rich and happy,” I said, “because since Jews can’t help being Jews, someone else had better help them.”

  “What name do you go by?” asked the man of the house, a fine-looking Jew with a skullcap. “Where do you hail from? Where do you live now? What’s your work? Do you have a wife? Children? How many?”

  “How many children?” I say. “Forgive me for boasting, but if each child of mine were worth a million rubles, as my Golde tries convincing me they are, I’d be richer than anyone in Yehupetz. The only trouble is that poor isn’t rich and a mountain’s no ditch. How does it say in the prayer book? Hamavdil beyn koydesh lekhoyl—some make hay while others toil. There are people who have money and I have daughters. And you know what they say about that: better a house full of boarders than a house full of daughters! Only why complain when we have God for our Father? He looks after everyone—that is, He sits up there and looks at us slaving away down here … What’s my work? For lack of any better suggestions, I break my back dragging logs. As it says in the Talmud, bemokoym she’eyn ish, a herring too is a fish. Really, there’d be no problem if it weren’t for having to eat. Do you know what my grandmother used to say? What a shame it is we have mouths, because if we didn’t we’d never go hungry … But you’ll have to excuse me for carrying on like this. You can’t expect straight talk from a crooked brain—and especially not when I’ve gone and drunk brandy on an empty stomach.”

  “Bring the Jew something to eat!” ordered the man of the house, and right away the table was laid again with food I never dreamed existed: fish, and cold cuts, and roasts, and fowl, and more gizzards and chicken livers than you could count.

  “What will you have?” I was asked. “Come on, wash up and sit down.”

  “A sick man is asked,” I answered, “a healthy one is served. Still, thank you anyway … a little brandy, with pleasure … but to sit down and make a meal of it, when back home my wife and children, they should only be healthy and well … so you see, if you don’t mind, I’ll …”

  What can I tell you? They seemed to have gotten the hint, because before I knew it my wagon was being loaded with goodies: here some rolls, there some fish, a pot roast, a quarter of a chicken, tea, sugar, a cup of chicken fat, a jar of jam …

  “Here’s a gift to take home to your wife and children,” they said. “And now please tell us how much we owe you for your trouble.”

  “To tell you the truth,” I said, “who am I to tell you what you owe me? You pay me what you think it was worth. What’s a few kopecks more or less between us? I’ll still be the same Tevye when we’re done.”

  “No,” they say, “we want you to tell us, Reb Tevye. You need
n’t be afraid. We won’t chop your head off.”

  Now what? I asked myself. I was really in a pretty pickle. It would be a crime to ask for one ruble when they might agree to two. On the other hand, if I asked for two they might think I was mad. Two rubles for one little wagon ride?

  “Three rubles!” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Everyone began to laugh so hard that I could have crawled into a hole in the ground.

  “Please forgive me,” I said, “if I’ve said the wrong thing. Even a horse, which has four legs, stumbles now and then, so why not a man with one tongue …”

  The laughter grew even louder. I thought they’d all split their sides.

  “Stop laughing now, all of you!” ordered the man of the house. He pulled a large wallet from his pocket and out of it he fished—how much do you think? I swear you’ll never guess—a ten-ruble note, all red as fire, as I hope to die! And do you know what else he says to me? “This,” he says, “is from me. Now children, let’s see what each of you can dig out of your pockets.”

  What can I possibly tell you? Five- and three- and one-ruble notes flew onto the table. I was shaking so hard that I thought I was going to faint.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” says the man of the house to me. “Take your money from the table and have a good trip home.”

  “God reward you a hundred times over,” I said. “May He bring you good luck and happiness for the rest of your lives.” I couldn’t scoop up that money (who could even count it?) and stuff it into my pockets fast enough. “Good night,” I said. “You should all be happy and well—you, and your children, and their children after them, and all their friends and relations.”

  I had already turned to go when the older woman with the silk kerchief stopped me and said, “One minute, Reb Tevye. There’s a special present I’d like to give you that you can come pick up in the morning. I have the strangest cow; it was once a wonderful beast, it gave twenty-four glasses of milk every day. Someone must have put a hex on it, though, because now you can’t milk it at all—that is, you can milk it all you want, you just can’t get any milk from it …”