“If that’s what you’re thinking, Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’re making a big mistake. I’m not an eighteen-year-old, and I’m not looking for in-laws for my mother. I know who you are, I know who your daughter is, and I like what I see. That’s what I want and that’s what I’m going to—”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” I say, “but there’s one thing I still have to ask you. I can see there’s no problem on the groom’s side, but have you bothered to clear this with the bride’s side?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“I’m talking about my daughter Shprintze,” I say. “Have you talked this over with her? And if so, what does she say?”
Well, he gave me an insulted look but said with a smile, “What kind of a question is that? Of course I’ve talked it over with her — and not just once, either. I’m here every day.”
Did you ever hear the likes of it? He’s there every day and I know nothing about it! Tevye, you two-footed animal, I told myself, you deserve to eat hay with your cows! If that’s how you let yourself be led about by the nose, you’ll be bought and sold like the donkey you are!.. I didn’t say anything to Ahronchik as we walked back, though. He said goodbye to the girls, jumped on his horse, and holakh Moyshe-Mordekhai—away to Boiberik he went …
And now, as you writers like to say in your books, let’s leave the young prince on his horse and get back to the princess in her castle, that is, to my Shprintze. “Tell me, Daughter,” I said to her, “there’s something I want to ask you: how could you and Ahronchik have discussed such a matter without even letting me know?”
Did you ever hear a tree talk? That’s how my Shprintze answered me. She just blushed, stared down at her feet like a newlywed, and didn’t open her mouth. Mum’s the word!.. Well, I thought, if you won’t talk to me now, you’ll do it later. Tevye is no woman; Tevye can wait. But I kept an eye out, looking for a chance to be alone with her again, and as soon as I found it one day outside the house, I said to her, “Shprintze, I want you to tell me: do you think you really know him, this Ahronchik?” “Of course I do,” she says.
“And do you know that he’s a penny whistle?” I say.
“What’s a penny whistle?” she asks.
“A penny whistle,” I say, “is something hollow that makes a lot of noise.”
“That isn’t so,” she says to me. “Arnold is a fine person.”
“Arnold?” I say. “Since when is that phony called Arnold?”
“Arnold,” she says, “is not a phony. Arnold has a heart of gold. It’s not his fault if he grew up in a house full of vile people who only think of money all the time.”
“Well, well, well,” I said. “Look who’s the philosopher now! I suppose you think that having money is a sin too …”
In a word, I could see that they both were too far gone to be talked out of it. I know my girls. Didn’t I once tell you that when Tevye’s daughters, God help us, fall for someone, they fall with everything they have? And so I told myself, you fool, you, why must you always think you know best? Why can’t you admit the whole thing may be providential? Why isn’t it possible that quiet little Shprintze is meant to be your salvation, your reward for all your hardship and your heartache, so that at last you can enjoy yourself in your old age and live like a human being for once? Suppose your daughter is fated to be a millionairess — is that really so terrible? Is it such a blow to your dignity? Does it say anywhere in the Bible that Tevye must always be a beggar who spends his whole life hauling cheese and butter to keep the rich Jews of Yehupetz from dying of hunger? Who’s to say that God hasn’t fingered you to do a little good in His world before you die — to give a bit of money to charity, to take someone needy under your wing, even to sit down with educated Jews and study some Torah …
I swear, those were only some of the sweet thoughts that ran through my head. You know what it says in the morning prayer: raboys makhshovoys belev ish—or as they say in Russian, a fool can get rich just by thinking … And so I stepped into the house and took my wife aside for a little talk. “Just suppose,” I said to her, “that our Shprintze should become a millionairess?”
“What’s a millionairess?” asks my Golde.
“A millionairess,” I say, “is a millionaire’s wife.”
“And what’s a millionaire?” she asks.
“A millionaire,” I say, “is a man who’s worth a million.”
“And how much is a million?” she asks.
“Look,” I say, “if you’re such a cow that you don’t know what a million is, it’s a waste of time talking to you.”
“So who asked you to talk to me?” she says. I couldn’t argue with that.
In a word, another day went by in Boiberik and I came home again. “Was Ahronchik here?” No, he wasn’t … Another day. “Was he here today?” No, he wasn’t … Though I could have found some excuse to drop in on the widow, I wasn’t keen on it: I didn’t want her to think that Tevye was fishing for a match with her — and one that she needed keshoyshanoh beyn hakhoykhim, like a wagon needs a fifth wheel … (Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of me, mind you, because if I wasn’t a millionaire myself, I would at least have an in-law who was, while the only in-law she’d have would be a poor beggar of a dairyman; I ask you, then, whose connections would be better, mine or hers?) … To tell you the honest truth, though, if I wanted that match at all, it was less for the match’s sake than for the feeling of satisfaction it would give me. “The Devil take you all!” I’d be able to say to all the rich Jews of Yehupetz. “Until now it’s been nothing but Brodsky, Brodsky, Brodsky, but now you see who Tevye really is …”
So I thought, driving home from Boiberik. As soon as I walked in the door, my Golde met me with a bombshell. “A messenger, a Russian, was just here from Boiberik, from the widow! She begs you to come for God’s sake as quickly as you can, even if it’s the middle of the night! Harness the horse and go, it must be something important.”
“Where’s the fire?” I asked. “Can’t it wait until morning?” Just then, though, I glanced at my Shprintze — and while she didn’t say a word, her eyes said it all, everything! No one knew that child’s heart the way I did — which was why I had sounded off to her about Ahronchik, because I was afraid that nothing would come of it. (Not that I couldn’t have saved my breath, since for the past three days my Shprintze had been wasting away like a candle!) … And so I harnessed the horse again and set out that same evening for Boiberik. What can be so urgent, I wondered as I drove there. If they want to shake hands on it and have a proper betrothal, it’s they who should come to me, because I’m the bride’s father … only that was such a preposterous thought that it made me laugh out loud: who ever heard of a rich man going to a poor one for a betrothal? Did I think that the world had already come to an end, as that scamp of a Peppercorn said it would, and that the tycoon and the beggar were now equals, sheli shelkho and shelkho sheli—you take what’s mine, I take what’s yours, and the Devil take the hindmost? People were born with brains in this world and yet, oh, my goodness — what jackasses there were in it!..
I was still trying to figure it all out when I arrived in Boiberik, drove straight to the widow’s dacha, and parked my horse in front of it.
“Where is the widow?” I asked at the door.
“The widow’s not here.”