In short, Shavuos time came around. I don’t have to tell you how green and bright and warm and beautiful our village is then! Your richest Jew in town should only have such a blue sky above him, such a green forest all around, such a good smell of pine trees, such a carpet of grass that the cows smile at you when they chew it as if to say, “Just keep us rolling in clover and we’ll keep you swimming in milk …” No, say what you will, I wouldn’t swap places with you in town if you promised me the best job in the world. Can you also promise me such a sky there? Hashomayim shomayim ladoynai—why, in the village the sky is God’s own! You can crane your neck in town till it breaks, what do you manage to see? Walls, roofs, chimneys, but never a single tree! And if by some miracle one grows there, you have to tend it like a sick child …
In a word, our guests couldn’t get over our village when they came to visit on Shavuos. They arrived riding horses, all four of them — and I do mean horses! Why, the nag that Ahronchik alone was sitting on was such a thoroughbred that you couldn’t have bought it for three hundred rubles.
“Welcome, my friends,” I said to them. “I see no one bothered to tell you that a Jew doesn’t ride on Shavuos. Well, we won’t let that spoil the holiday. Tevye’s no saint himself, and if you’re whipped for it in the world to come, it won’t be any skin off my back … Golde! Put up the blintzes and have the girls carry out the table and put it on the grass — our house isn’t such a museum piece that we have to show it off to visitors … Shprintze! Teibl! Beilke! Where are you all? Let’s get cracking …”
I stood there giving orders and pretty soon out of the house came the table, benches, a tablecloth, plates, spoons, forks, and saltshakers, and right on the heels of it all, my Golde with the blintzes — and such piping-hot, mouth-watering, straight-from-the-frying-pan, sweeter-than-manna-tasting blintzes they were that our guests couldn’t stop eating or praising them …
“What are you standing there for?” I said to my Golde. “Don’t you know that since Shavuos has two days, everything else about it has to be doubled too? Bring some more blintzes and we’ll have a second round!”
Well, in a shake of a lamb’s tail my Golde filled the platter with more blintzes and my Shprintze brought them to the table. Just then I glanced at Ahronchik, and what do I see? He’s staring at my Shprintze, his eyes are glued to her so hard he can’t pull them away. What did he suppose he was looking at? “Eat up,” I said to him. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“Why, what does it look like I’m doing?” he says.
“It looks like you’re looking at my Shprintze,” I say.
Everyone burst out laughing at that, my Shprintze too. We were all so gay, so happy, enjoying such a fine Shavuos … how was I supposed to know it would end in such a nightmare, in such a tragedy, in such a horror story, in such a punishment from God that it’s left me a wreck of a man? I’ll tell you what, though. We men are fools. If we had any brains to speak of, we’d realize that things are the way they were meant to be, because if they were meant to be different, they wouldn’t be the way they are … Doesn’t it say in the Book of Psalms, hashleykh al hashem—trust no one but God? Just leave it to Him: He’ll see to it that the worms are eating you like fresh bagels, and you’ll thank Him for it too. And now listen to what can happen in this world of ours — and listen carefully, because you haven’t heard anything yet.
Vayehi erev vayehi voyker—one evening when I came home from Boiberik, bushed from the heat and from running between dachas all day long, I spied a familiar horse tied to the gate by the house. In fact, I could have sworn it was Ahronchik’s thoroughbred that I had priced at three hundred rubles! I went over to it, slapped it on the rear with one hand while scratching its head with the other, and said, “Well now, old fellow, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” To which it bobbed its chin quite handsomely and gave me a clever look as if to say, “Why ask me, when I happen to have a master?”
Well, I went inside, collared my wife, and said to her, “Golde, my dearest, what is Ahronchik doing here?”
“How am I supposed to know?” she answers me. “I thought he was one of your crowd.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He went for a walk in the forest with the girls,” my Golde tells me.
“What on earth made him do a thing like that?” I wondered out loud, and asked her for something to eat. When I had had my fill, I sat there thinking, Tevye, why are you so nervous? Since when is a visitor dropping by any reason to be so on edge? If anything … but I never finished the thought, because just then I looked outside and saw the bonnie young lad with my girls, who were carrying wild flowers they had picked. Teibl and Beilke were walking in front, and Shprintze was bringing up the rear with Ahronchik.
“A good evening!” I said to him.
“And to you, too,” he replied. He stood there a little awkwardly with a blade of grass in his mouth, stroking his horse’s mane; then he said, “Reb Tevye, I have an offer to make you. Let’s you and I swap horses.”
“Don’t you have anyone better to make fun of?” I asked him.
“But I mean it,” he says.
“Do you now?” I say. “Do you have any idea what this horse of yours is worth?”
“What would you price him at?” he asks.
“He’s worth three hundred rubles if a cent,” I say, “and maybe even a little bit more.”
Well, Ahronchik laughed, told me his horse had cost over three times that amount, and said, “How about it, then? Is it a deal?”
I tell you, I didn’t like it one bit: what kind of business was it to trade such a horse for my gluepot? And so I told him to keep his offer for another day and joked that I hoped he hadn’t come just for that, since I hated to see him waste his time …
“As a matter of fact,” he says to me, as serious as can be, “I came to see you about something else. If it’s not too much to ask of you, perhaps the two of us could take a little walk.”
He’s got walking on the brain today, I thought, but I agreed to go for a stroll in the forest with him. The sun had set long ago; the woods were getting dark; frogs croaked from the river; and the smell of so many green, growing things was like heaven itself. Ahronchik and I walked side by side without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped short, let out a cough, and said, “Reb Tevye! What would you say if I told you I’m in love with your Shprintze and want to marry her?”
“What would I say?” I said. “I’d tell them to move over and make room for one more in the loony bin.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he says, staring at me.
“It means,” I say, “exactly what it sounds like.”
“But I don’t get it,” he says.
“That,” I say, “just goes to show that you’re even less of a genius than I thought. You know, there’s a verse in the Bible that says, ‘The wise man has eyes in his head.’ That means you can talk to him with a wink, while the fool must be talked to with a stick.”
“I’m speaking in plain language,” he says, beginning to get sore, “and all I’m hearing from you is jokes from the Bible.”
“Well,” I said, “every cantor sings the best he can and every preacher toots his own horn. If you’d like to know how well you’re tooting yours, I suggest you have a talk with your mother. She’ll set you straight in a jiffy.”
“Do you take me,” he says, “for a little boy who has to get permission from his mother?”
“Of course I do,” I say. “And your mother’s sure to tell you you’re a dunce. And she’ll be right.”
“She will be?” he says.
“Of course she will be,” I say. “What kind of husband will you make my Shprintze? What kind of wife will my Shprintze make you? And most of all, what kind of in-law will I make your mother?”