Well, at that very moment my horse took a notion to practice his downhill gallop. Before I could even look around, I was flat on my back with all my jugs and milk cans, staring up at my wagon on top of me. It was all I could do to crawl out from under it, more dead than alive, and chew the idiot out. “You should sink to the bottom of the sea and be eaten by vultures! Who asked you, you moron, to prove you could be a racehorse? You almost did me in for good, you Satan, you!” I gave it to him for all he was worth — and the old fellow must have realized what a dirty trick he had played, because he stood there with his head bowed as though waiting to be milked. “The Devil take you and keep you!” I said a last time, righting and reloading the wagon. “Giddyap!” I cried — and we were off again. I knew it wasn’t a good omen, though. Suppose, I thought, something has gone wrong at home …
And so it had. I had traveled another mile or so and wasn’t far from our village when I saw the figure of a woman coming toward me. I drove a little nearer — it was Tsaytl! I don’t know why, but I felt a twinge when I saw her. I jumped to the ground and called, “Tsaytl, is that you? What are you doing here?”
Her only answer was to throw herself on me and sob.
“For the love of God, Daughter,” I said, “what are you crying for?”
“Oh, Papa,” she said, the tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, Papa.”
I had a black feeling. My heart sank. “Tsaytl,” I said, taking her in my arms to hug and kiss her, “what is it?”
“Oh, Papa,” she said, “oh, dearest, darling Papa, I don’t care if I have to live on bread and water, just have pity on me and my youth …”
She was crying so hard that she couldn’t say any more. God help us, I thought, for by now I had guessed what it was. The Devil himself had made me go to Boiberik that morning!
“But what is there to cry about, you silly?” I said, stroking her hair. “Why cry? You have no call to: if you say no, it’s no; we won’t marry you off with a shotgun. We meant well. We thought it was all for the best. But if your heart tells you not to, what more can we do? It simply wasn’t meant to be in the first place …”
“Oh, Papa,” she says, “oh, thank you, thank you so much!”—and she throws herself on me again, crying and kissing me until we’re both wet all over.
“Come,” I say, “enough is enough. Hakoyl hevel—even chicken soup with kreplach gets to be tiresome after a while. Into the wagon with you and home you go! Your mother must be good and worried.”
Once the two of us were aboard, I did my best to calm her. “Look, it’s like this,” I said. “Your mother and I meant no harm. God knows our only thought was of you. If it didn’t work out, God musn’t have wanted it to. You, Tsaytl, just weren’t meant to be a fine lady with a house full of grand things and two old parents who could finally enjoy themselves a bit after keeping their nose to the grindstone all their poor, luckless, miserable, penniless lives …”
“Oh, Papa,” she said, starting to cry again. “I’ll hire myself out, I’ll get down on my knees and scrub floors, I’ll shovel dirt if I have to …”
“But why are you still crying, you little ninny?” I said. “I was talking to God, not to you. I’m feeling so low that I have to have it out with someone — and considering all He’s done for me, it might as well be with Him. He’s supposed to be our merciful Father; well, He’s had such mercy on me that I hope I’ve seen the last of it — and He better not charge me extra for saying that. A lot of good it does to complain to God about God! I suppose, though, that that’s how it’s meant to be: He’s up in His heaven and I’m down below, with one foot already in the grave — which still leaves me the other to stand on while I tell the world about His justice … Only come to think of it, I really must be a big fool to carry on like this. What am I talking about? Where does a little worm like me crawling about on the earth get off telling God, who can blow me away to kingdom come with one puff of His breath, how to manage His affairs? If this is how He’s arranged them, who am I to say otherwise? Forty days before a child is a twinkle in its mother’s eyes, forty days beforehand, so it says in our holy books, an angel comes along and proclaims: ‘Tsaytl the daughter of Tevye to Berl the son of Shmerl’—and Layzer Wolf the butcher, if he doesn’t mind my saying so, can go look for his intended up another tree. I can promise him she won’t fly away … I only hope, Tsaytl, that God sends you a proper young man, the sooner the better, amen. And now pray for me that your mother doesn’t scream bloody murder, because something tells me that I’m in for it …”
In short, as soon as we got home I unhitched the horse and sat down outside to have myself a think what fairy tale to tell the wife — anything to keep me out of trouble. It was evening and the sun was going down; from far away came the croaking of the frogs; my fettered horse stood nibbling grass; the cows, back from pasture, were waiting with their feedbags to be milked; all around me the greenery gave off a smell like Paradise. And as I sat there thinking about things, it struck me how cleverly the good Lord had made His world, so that every creature, from man to beast, could earn its keep. Only there were no free lunches! You want to eat, Mrs. Cow? Then let’s have some milk, help a poor Jew support his wife and kids! You want some grass, Mr. Horse? Then please be so kind as to trot over to Boiberik with these milk cans! And you too, Mr. Man, you want some bread for your belly? Then off your butt and milk the cows, carry the cans, churn the butter, make the cheese, harness the horse, go early each morning to the dachas in Boiberik, scrape and bow to the rich Jews there, smile at them, fawn on them, make them feel special, be sure they’re satisfied — and whatever you do, don’t step on anyone’s toes … Except that here we come to one of the Four Questions: ma nishtanoh—where does it say in the Bible that Tevye has to work his bottom off and be up at the crack of dawn every day when even God is still snoozing away in bed? Where does it say that the rich Jews of Yehupetz must have fresh cheese and butter each morning for the rolls they eat with their coffee? Where does it say that I have to be dead on my feet to deserve a plate of grits and some soup that’s more water than barley, while they, the same Jews, can stretch and yawn without lifting a finger and be served with roast duck, juicy knishes, varnishkes, and blintzes? Am I less of a Jew than they are? When will justice be done, so that Tevye too can spend a summer vacation in a dacha in Boiberik!.. Who, though, you ask, would bring him his cheese and butter? Who would milk the cows? Why, the Yehupetz tycoons, of course!.. But I have to admit that was such a weird thought that it made me laugh out loud. How does the proverb go? If God were to listen to what each fool has to say, He would have to create a new world every day …
“Good evening, Reb Tevye!” I heard someone greet me.
I turned around and saw a familiar face, Motl Komzoyl, a tailor boy from Anatevka.
“Well, well, well, look who’s here!” I said. “If I sat here long enough, I bet even the Messiah would turn up. Have a seat on God’s earth, Motl. What brought you here of all places?”