In short, I gave them such a hearty greeting that the two of them were left speechless, loy bashomayim veloy ba’orets, neither here nor there, embarrassed and blushing all over. For a moment they just stood there, staring down at the ground. Then they looked up at me, so that now we were staring at each other.
“Well,” I said, half in anger, half in jest, “you’re looking at me as though you hadn’t seen me in a donkey’s years. I can assure you that I’m the same Tevye as always, not a hair more or less of me.”
“Papa,” says my daughter Hodl to me, blushing even brighter. “You can wish us a mazel tov.”
“I can?” I say. “Then mazel tov, you should live to be one hundred and twenty! Only what might I be congratulating you for? Have you found a buried treasure in the forest or been rescued from some great danger?”
“You can wish us a mazel tov,” says Peppercorn, “because we’re engaged to be married.”
“You’re engaged to be what?” I say. “What are you talking about?”
“To be married,” he says. “Isn’t that a custom you’re familiar with? It means that I’ll be her husband and she’ll be my wife.”
That’s just what he said to me, Peppercorn did, looking me straight in the eye. So I looked him straight back and said, “Excuse me, but when was the engagement party? It’s rather odd that you forgot to invite me to it, because if she’ll be your wife, I just might be your father-in-law.” I may have seemed to be making a joke of it, but the worms were eating my heart. Say what you will, though, Tevye is no woman; Tevye hears it out to the end. “I’m afraid I still don’t get it,” I said. “Whoever heard of a match without a matchmaker, without even a betrothal?”
“What do we need a matchmaker for?” says Peppercorn. “We’re as good as married already.”
“Oh, you are?” I say. “Will wonders never cease! And why have you kept it such a secret until now?”
“What was there to shout about?” he says. “We wouldn’t have told you now either, but seeing as we’re about to be parted, we decided to make it official.”
That was already too much for me. Bo’u mayim ad nefesh, as it says: I felt cut to the quick. That he should tell me they were as good as married already — somehow I could still put up with that, how does the verse go? Ohavti es adoyni, es ishti: he loves her, she loves him, it’s been known to happen before. But make it official? What kind of Chinese was that?
Well, even my young man must have seen how befuddled I was, because he turned to me and said: “You see, it’s like this, Reb Tevye. I’m about to leave these parts.”
“When?”
“Any day now.”
“And just where,” I asked, “are you off to?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he says. “It’s confidential.”
Would you believe it? Confidentiaclass="underline" put that in your pipe and smoke it! Along comes a black little ragamuffin of a Peppercorn and informs me all in one breath that he’s my son-in-law, and that he’s making it official, and that he’s going away, and that where is confidential! It made my gorge rise. “Look here,” I said to him, “I understand that a secret is a secret — in fact, you’re one big secret to me … But just tell me one thing, brother: you pride yourself on your honesty, you’re so full of humanity that it’s coming out of your ears — how can you marry a daughter of mine and run out on her the same day? You call that honest? You call that human? I suppose I should count myself lucky that you haven’t robbed me and burned my house too.”
“Papa!” says Hodl to me. “You don’t know how happy it makes us to finally tell you the truth. It’s such a load off our minds. Come, let me give you a kiss.” And before I know it she grabs me from one side, he grabs me from the other, and we all begin to kiss so hard that pretty soon they’re kissing each other. A scene from the theater, I tell you! “Don’t you think that’s enough for a while?” I finally managed to say. “It’s time we had a practical talk.”
“About what?” they ask.
“Oh,” I say, “about dowries, trousseaus, wedding costs, everything from soup to nuts …”
“But we don’t want any soup or nuts,” they say.
“What do you want, then?” I ask.
“An official wedding,” they say. Did you ever hear of such a thing in your life?
Well, I don’t want to bore you. All my arguments did as much good as last winter’s snow. We had an official wedding. Take my word, it wasn’t the wedding that Tevye deserved, but what doesn’t pass for a wedding these days? A funeral would have been jollier. And to make matters worse, I have a wife, as you know, who can be a royal pain. Day in and day out she kept after me: how could I ever permit such a higgledy-piggledy, such a slapdash affair? Go try explaining to a woman that time is of the essence! There was nothing for it but to smooth things over with a tiny little fib about a childless old aunt of Peppercorn’s in Yehupetz, oodles of money, a huge inheritance that would be his one bright day in the middle of the night — anything to take the heat off me …
That same day, a few hours after the splendid wedding, I harnessed my horse to the wagon and the three of us, myself, my daughter, and my heir-in-law, piled into it and drove to Boiberik. As I sat there stealing a glance at them, I thought, how clever it is of God to run His world according to the latest fashions! And the weird types He puts in it! Why, right next to me was a freshly married couple, still wet behind the ears, so to speak, one of them setting out for the Devil knows where and the other not shedding a tear for him, not even one for the record — but Tevye was no woman, Tevye would wait and see … At the station were a few youngsters, born-and-bred Kasrilevkites to judge by the state of their boots, who had come to say goodbye. One, wearing his shirt down over his pants and looking more like a Russian than a Jew, stood whispering with my wanderbird. I do believe, Tevye, I told myself, that you’ve married into a gang of horse thieves, or purse snatchers, or housebreakers, or at the very least, highway murderers …
On the way back from Boiberik I couldn’t restrain myself any longer, and I told my Hodl what I thought of them. She laughed and tried explaining to me that they were the best, the finest, the most honorable young people in the world, and that they lived their whole lives for others, never giving a fig for their own skins. “For example,” she says, “that one with the shirt hanging out: he comes from a rich home in Yehupetz — but not only won’t he take a penny from his parents, he refuses even to talk to them.”
“Is that a fact?” I say. “I do declare, honorable is hardly the word! Why, with that shirt and long hair, all he needs is a half-empty bottle of vodka to look the perfect gentleman.”
Did she get it? Not my Hodl! Eyn Esther magedes—see no evil, hear no evil. Each time I took a dig at her Peppercorn’s friends, back she came at me with capital, the working class, pie in the sky. “What do I care about your working class,” I said, “if it’s such a military secret? There’s an old saying, you know, that if you scratch a secret, you’ll find a thief. Tell me the truth, now: where is Peppercorn going and why is he going there?”