“Who asked you to talk?” She was right.
Another day passed, and I came home and asked, “Has Ahronchik been here?” No, he hadn’t. Another day passed. “Has the young man been here?” No, he hadn’t. To go to the widow for an explanation wasn’t proper. I didn’t want her to think Tevye was pushing for the match. To her this all had to be as a lily among thorns—like a fifth wheel on a wagon, though I didn’t understand why. Was it because I didn’t have a million? I would have an in-law who was a millionairess, but whom would she have as an in-law? An impoverished Jew, a pauper, a Tevye the dairyman! Who, then, had more to be proud of, I or she? To tell the honest truth, I was beginning to want this match, not so much for its own sake as for the triumph of it. To hell with those Yehupetzer rich folks! Let them know who Tevye was! Till now, all you ever heard was Brodsky and again Brodsky, as if no one else existed!
That was what I was thinking as I drove home from Boiberik. Then my wife greeted me with excitement. “A messenger was just here from Boiberik, from the widow, asking you to go right back there, even if it is night! She says you should turn around and hurry back — you are badly needed there!”
“What’s the rush? Don’t they have time?” I took a quick look at my Shprintze, who didn’t say a word, but her eyes spoke — oy, did they speak! No one understood her heart better than I. I had been afraid that nothing would come of his proposal. I spoke my mind to her, told her that he was thus and so, but I was wasting my breath. And my Shprintze was wasting away like a candle.
I rigged up my horse and wagon again and left just before nightfall for Boiberik, wondering what they could want to talk to me about that was so urgent. An engagement? A betrothal? He could have come to me. After all, I was the father of the bride! Then I laughed. Unless the end of the world or the Messiah had come, whoever heard of a rich man going to the poor man? These young folks, the ne’er-do-wells, wanted me to believe that there would soon come a time when the rich man and the poor man would be equals — what was yours would be mine, and what was mine would be yours — anything goes! It’s a clever world we live in, but it has such fools in it!
I arrived in Boiberik, went directly to the widow’s dacha, and tied up my horse. Where was she? No widow at home. Where was the young man? No young man either. Who then had sent for me?
“I sent for you!” said a stout, solidly built Jew with a sparse little beard and a heavy gold chain across his belly.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am the widow’s brother and Ahronchik’s uncle. I was summoned from Katerineslav by telegram and I just arrived,” he said.
“If that is so, here’s a big welcome to you,” I said and sat down.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Thank you, I’m already sitting. How is the constitutzia going for you?”
He didn’t reply but made himself comfortable in a rocking chair. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stuck out the gold chain and his belly and said, “I understand you are Tevye?”
“Yes. When I am called to bless the Torah, they say, ‘Arise, Reb Tevye, son of Shneur Zalman.’ ”
“Listen, Reb Tevye, to what I tell you,” he said. “Why should we waste words? Let’s get right down to business.”
“Fine,” I said. “King Solomon always used to say, For everything there is a time—when it’s time to talk business, it’s business. I am a businessman.”
“It’s plain,” he said, “that you are a businessman, and that’s why I want to talk to you in a businesslike way. Tell me frankly how much it will cost us all told. Be frank about it!”
“Since you ask me to be frank about it,” I said, “I can only say that I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Reb Tevye!” His hands were still in his pockets. “I am asking you how much the wedding will cost us all told.”
“That depends on what kind of wedding you are thinking about,” I said. “If you want a fancy wedding, as befits you, I am not capable of paying for it.”
He glared at me. “Either you are playing dumb or you are an oaf, although you don’t look like one. If you were an oaf, you wouldn’t have dragged my nephew into this mess, inviting him for Shevuos blintzes and tempting him with a pretty girl. I won’t get into whether she is really your daughter. He fell in love with her, and she with him. It’s possible she is a very special child and means well, I won’t get into that. But you mustn’t forget who you are and who we are. You are a man of learning, so how can you even consider that Tevye the dairyman, who delivers cheese and butter to us, could be our in-law? Ay, they gave each other their word, you say? They will take it back! No great tragedy will come of it. If it costs something for her to release him from his promise, that’s fine — we have nothing against that. A girl is not a boy, whether a daughter or not,” he said. “I won’t get into that.”
God in heaven! I wondered. What did this man want? He kept on talking, saying that I shouldn’t even think of making a scandal, of spreading it around that his nephew had made a match with Tevye the dairyman’s daughter, and that I should get it out of my head that his sister was a person whom you could take for a lot of money. If I didn’t make trouble, then I could get a few rubles from her, you know, as charity. They were, after all, decent people; sometimes you had to help someone out.
Well, do you want to know what I answered him? Woe unto me, I said nothing! May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. I was speechless! I got up, turned to the door, and was gone! I fled as if from a fire, from a prison! My head was buzzing, lights flickered in front of my eyes, and that man’s words echoed in my ears: “talk business,” “whether really your daughter,” “take for a lot of money,” “charity.” I walked over to my horse and wagon, laid my face against it, and — you won’t laugh at me? — burst into tears. I cried and cried! When I had cried myself out, I got up on the driver’s seat and laid into my poor horse with as much as he could take. Only then did I ask a question of God, as Job had once asked. What, dear God, did You see in old Job that You never let up on him for even a moment? Aren’t there any other Jews in the world?
I arrived home and found my family, kayn eyn horeh, cheerful. They were eating supper. Shprintze was missing.
“Where is Shprintze?” I asked.
“What happened?” they asked. “Why did they call you there?”
“Where is Shprintze?”
“What happened there?”
“Nothing,” I said. “What should happen? It’s quiet, thank God. There are no pogroms.”
Then Shprintze came in, looked into my eyes, and sat down at the table as if nothing were going on, as if we weren’t talking about her. Her face betrayed nothing, but her stillness was now too much, not natural. I did not like the way she was sitting deep in thought or the way she complied with everything she was told to do. If you told her to sit, she sat. If you told her to eat, she ate. If you told her to go, she went. And if you called her name, she startled. My heart ached for her, and a rage was burning in me, against whom I did not know. O Thou Lord of the Universe, God in heaven! Why do you punish me so? For whose sins?
To make a long story short — do you want to know the end? I would not wish that end on my worst enemy, on anyone, because the curse of children is the worst curse found in the biblical book of curses! How do I know that someone didn’t curse me with children? You don’t believe in these things? How then to explain it? Let’s hear what you have to say. But why should I speculate? Better to hear the ending I have to tell.