“So, Reb Tevye,” he said, “why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Do you want me to shout?” I said, as if considering the matter further. “This is, Reb Lazer-Wolf, you understand me, a delicate question that has to be considered from all sides. It’s not a laughing matter. My first child!”
“It’s really the other way around,” he said. “It’s important because she’s your first child. Afterward,” he said, “God willing, you’ll be able to marry off your second daughter too, and later, in good time, the third, do you understand?”
“Amen!” said I. “Marrying them off is no trick if the One Above sends each one her intended.”
“No,” he said, “that’s not what I mean, Reb Tevye. I mean something altogether different. I mean that for your Tzeitl, you no longer need a dowry, thank God. Her wedding dress and everything a girl needs, I will take on myself. And you,” he said, “will also find a little something in your purse.”
“Feh,” I said, “you’re talking, please forgive me, as if you were in your butcher shop! What do you mean, in my purse? Feh! My Tzeitl is not for sale, God forbid! Feh feh!”
“If it’s feh, it’s feh,” he said to me. “That’s not really what I meant. I meant it quite otherwise. But if you say feh, let it be feh! If you’re satisfied, I’m satisfied. The most important thing,” he said, “is it should be soon. I mean right away. As they say: ‘A house needs a mistress.’ Do you understand?”
“All right,” I said, “I have no objections. But I have to talk it over with my wife. In these matters she has her say. It’s no small matter. As Rashi says: Rachel weepeth for her children—a mother is not a pot lid. And Tzeitl herself,” I said, “has to be asked. As it is said: All the relatives came to the wedding and they left the bridegroom at home.”
“Nonsense,” he said, “why do you need to ask? You tell her, Reb Tevye. You go home and tell her this is the way it is and put up the wedding canopy. One word from you, and it’s done!”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t say that, Reb Lazer-Wolf. The girl is not, God forbid, a widow impatient for a match.”
“You’re right,” he said, “a girl is a girl, not a widow, and that’s why you must talk to her soon, about dresses, about the trousseau and her wardrobe. And in the meantime,” he said, “Reb Tevye, let’s drink a l’chayim, ha, no?”
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Why not? Isn’t peace always better than arguing? As it is said: ‘A man is a man, but brandy is brandy.’ There’s a saying in the Gemorah. .” And I gave him a string of Gemorah quotes, one after another, on and on, from the Song of Songs and “Chad Gadyo.”
We drank the bitter drop, as God commanded. The snub-nosed maid brought out the samovar, and we drank glasses of punch, enjoyed ourselves, wished each other well, and chatted about the match many times over.
“Do you know, Reb Lazer-Wolf,” I said, “what a jewel of a girl she is?”
“I know,” he said, “believe me, I know. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have spoken!”
We continued our conversation. I shouted out, “A jewel, a diamond! You must take good care of her, not act like the butcher you are.”
“Don’t be afraid, Reb Tevye,” he said. “What she will eat by me during the week will be more than she ate by you on a holiday.”
“So,” I said, “what she eats is also your affair? The rich man,” I said, “doesn’t eat gold coins, and the poor man doesn’t eat stones. You’re a crude person, and you cannot appreciate her talents, her challah-baking, her fish, Reb Lazer-Wolf, her gefilte fish! It is a privilege to eat it.”
“Reb Tevye, you are, pardon me, really old-fashioned. You don’t know people, Reb Tevye, and you don’t know me!”
“On one side of a scale, put gold. On the other, Tzeitl. Do you hear, Reb Lazer-Wolf, even if you had thousands,” I said, “you still aren’t worth the sole of her foot!”
“Believe me, Reb Tevye, you are a big fool, even though you’re older than I am!”
We carried on this way for quite a while, louder and louder and getting tipsier and tipsier. When I arrived home, it was late, and my legs felt like lead. My wife, may she be well, saw I was drunk and gave me a proper welcome.
“Sha, don’t be angry, Golde!” I said to her cheerily, and I actually felt like dancing. “Don’t yell at me, my soul. We have a mazel tov coming!”
“Mazel tov? A mazel tov for selling that poor milk cow to Lazer-Wolf?”
“Worse than that!” I said.
“You traded her for another?” she said. “You tricked that poor Lazer-Wolf? A pity on him.”
“Even worse!” I said.
“Enough! Speak!” she said. “Look how I have to pry out every word!”
“Mazel tov to you, Golde,” I said again. “Mazel tov to both of us. Our Tzeitl is a bride!”
“Now I know you’re really in your cups,” she said. “You’re talking out of your head! You must have had quite a few glassfuls.”
“I did have a few with Lazer-Wolf, and some punch,” I said, “but I still have all my wits about me. I want you to know, my darling Golde, that our Tzeitl has been blessed with good fortune and is engaged to marry no one else but Lazer-Wolf!” And I told her the whole story from beginning to end, how and what and when and about everything we talked about, not leaving out a word.
“Do you want to hear something, Tevye?” my wife said to me. “May God be with me wherever I go, but my heart told me that when Lazer-Wolf called for you, it was not for nothing. But what could he want? I was afraid to think of it. Maybe, God forbid, it would come to nothing. Thank you, dear God,” she said, “thank you, dearest, benevolent Father. May she have good luck, may it be all for the best. May she grow old with him in honor and respect, not like his first wife, Frume-Sarah, may I not suffer her fate. She did not have too happy a life with him. She was, please forgive me, an embittered woman, couldn’t get along with anyone, not at all like our Tzeitl, may God grant her many years. Thank you, thank you, dear God! Nu, Tevye,” she said. “What did I tell you, you dummy? Does a person have to worry? If it’s meant to be,” she said, “it will come right to your doorstep.”
“For sure,” I said, “there’s a particular passage about that—”
“Don’t bother me now with passages,” she said. “We have to start getting ready for the wedding. First of all, we have to make out a list for Lazer-Wolf of what Tzeitl needs to have for the wedding, starting with linens. She doesn’t have enough underthings, or even so much as a pair of stockings. And,” she said, “dresses — a silk one for the wedding ceremony and a woolen one for winter, another for summer, and housedresses, and petticoats, and cloaks. I want her to have two of them: one cape with a cat-fur hood for weekdays, and another good one with ruffles for Shabbes. And she needs little boots with straps and buttons, a corset, gloves, handkerchiefs, a parasol, and all the things a girl has to have nowadays.”