Well, vayehi hayoym—once upon a time not very long ago, I brought some produce to a new customer, a wealthy young widow from Yekaterinoslav who had come to Boiberik for the summer with her son, a fellow named Ahronchik. Needless to say, her first acquaintance in all of Boiberik was me. “You’ve been recommended,” she says, “as being the best dairyman around.” “And why shouldn’t I have been?” I answer. “It’s no coincidence that King Solomon said a good reputation is louder than a trumpet. If you have a minute to spare, I even have a nice little midrash …” But she didn’t, because she was, she told me, a widow, and such things were not her cup of tea. In fact, she wouldn’t know what to do with a midrash if I were to put one on her plate; all she wanted was good cheese and fresh butter. Just try having a serious talk with a woman …
In short, I began coming around to that widow from Yekaterinoslav twice a week, every Monday and Thursday like clockwork, without her having to order in advance. It got so that I was practically one of the household; I poked around in it a bit, saw how things were done there, and even gave a bit of advice. The first time I did that, I got a good chewing out from the servant: who did I think I was, sticking my nose into other people’s business? The second time I was listened to, and the third time the widow actually asked my opinion about something, having seen by now who Tevye was. The long and short of it was that one day she approached me with her greatest problem: Ahronchik! Although he was, she said, over twenty years old, all he cared about was horses, fishing, and bicycles, apart from which nothing mattered to him. He didn’t have the slightest interest in business or making money, or even in managing the handsome estate he had inherited from his father, which was worth a good million rubles. His one pleasure was to spend it, and liberally at that.
“Tell me,” I said, “where is the young man now? If you let me have a few words with him, I might talk to him a bit, set him straight with a verse from the Bible, maybe even with a midrash …”
“If I know my son,” she laughed, “a horse will get you further than a midrash.”
We were still talking about him when — speaking of the Devil! — in walks Ahronchik himself, a tall, handsome, ruddy-faced young man with a broad sash around his waist, a pocket watch tucked into it, and sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
“Where have you been?” asks his mother.
“Out fishing in the skiff,” he says.
“Can’t you think of anything better to do?” I say. “Why, back in Yekaterinoslav they’re Constantutioning the pants off of you, and all you can do is catch fish?”
I glanced at my widow — she turned as red as a beet and every other color of the rainbow. She must have been sure that her son would grab me by the collar and give me the heave-ho in a hurry. Which just goes to show how wrong she was. There’s no way to scare Tevye. When I have something to say, I say it.
Well, when the young fellow heard that, he stepped back a bit, put his hands behind his back, looked me up and down from head to foot, let out a funny sort of whistle, and suddenly began to laugh so hard that the two of us were afraid he had gone mad before our eyes. Shall I tell you something, though? From then on he and I were the best of friends. And I must say that the better I knew him, the better I liked him, even if he was a bit of a windbag, the worst sort of spendthrift, and a little thick between the ears. For instance, let him pass a beggar in the street, and he’d stick a hand into his pocket and fork up a fistful of change without even bothering to count it! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Once I saw him take a brand-new jacket off his back and give it away to a perfect stranger — I ask you, how dumb can you get …? I felt good and sorry for his mother, believe me. She kept asking me what she should do and begging me to take him in hand. Well, I didn’t say no to that. Why refuse her a favor when it didn’t cost me a red cent? So from time to time I sat down with him and told him a story, fed him a parable, slipped him a verse from the Bible, even let him have a midrash or two, as only Tevye can do. I swear, he actually liked it and wanted to know if I talked like that at home. “I’d sure like to visit you there, Reb Tevye,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “anyone wanting to visit Tevye only has to get to Tevye’s village. Between your horses and your bicycles you can certainly make it, and in a pinch you’re a big enough boy to use your own legs. Just cut through the forest and you’re there.”
“When is a good time to come?” he says.
“You can find me at home any Sabbath or holiday,” I say. “But wait, I have an idea! The Friday after next is Shavuos. If you’d like to take a walk over to my place then, my wife will serve you such blintzes fit for princes as lo blintzu avoyseynu bemitsrayim!”
“Just what does that mean?” he asks. “I’m not too strong on chapter-and-verse, you know.”
“I certainly do,” I say. “But if you’d had the schooling I did, you’d know enough to be the rabbi’s wife.”
He laughed at that and said, “All right, then, you’ve got yourself a guest. On the first day of Shavuos, Reb Tevye, I’ll be over with three friends of mine for blintzes — and they better be hot!”
“Hotter than hellfire,” I promised. “Why, they’ll be jumping right out of the frying pan at you!”
Well, as soon as I came home that day I whistled up my wife and said to her, “Golde, we’re having guests for Shavuos!”
“Mazel tov,” she says. “Who are they?”
“I’ll tell you everything in good time,” I say. “Just make sure you have enough eggs, because butter and cheese, thank God, are no problem. You’ll be making blintzes for four extra mouths — but such mouths, you should know, that understand as much about eating as they don’t understand about the Bible.”
“I might have guessed it,” she says. “You’ve been to Hunger-land again and found some new slob of a Hungarian.”
“Golde,” I said, “you’re nothing but a big cow yourself. First of all, even if we did treat some poor hungry devil to blintzes on Shavuos, what harm would it do? And second of all, you may as well know, my most Esteemed, Honored, and Beloved Wife, that one of our guests will be the widow’s son, that Ahronchik I’ve been telling you about.”
“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?” she says.
What money doesn’t do to some people! Even my Golde becomes a different woman as soon as she gets a whiff of it. But that’s the world we live in — what can you or I do about it? As it says in the prayer book, kesef vezohov ma’asey yedey odom—money can dig a man’s grave faster than a shovel.