“Where is her son?”
“He’s not here either.”
“Then who asked me to come?”
“I did,” says a round tub of a man with a stringy beard and a fat gold watch chain on his stomach.
“And just who are you?” I ask.
“I’m the widow’s brother, Ahronchik’s uncle,” he says. “I was cabled to come from Yekaterinoslav, and I’ve just arrived.”
“In that case,” I say, sitting down in a chair, “welcome to Boiberik.”
“Have a seat,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say, “but I already have one. So how’s the Constantution in your parts?”
He didn’t answer that. He just settled himself into a rocking chair with his hands still in his pants pockets and his stomach sticking out beneath his watch chain and said without wasting any words, “I’m told they call you Tevye.”
“They do indeed,” I said. “And when they call me to the Torah in the synagogue, it’s even Reb Tevye the son of Shneyur Zalman.”
“Well, then, Reb Tevye,” he says to me, “listen here. Why beat around the bush? Let’s get right down to business, as they say …”
“And why not?” I say. “There’s a time for everything, as King Solomon once said — and if it’s business time, it’s time for business. And a businessman is what I happen to be …”
“I can see you are,” he says, “and that’s why I’ll get down to brass tacks with you. I want you to tell me perfectly honestly, just what is this going to cost us?”
“I can tell you perfectly honestly,” I say, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Reb Tevye!” he says to me again, his hands still in his pockets. “I’m asking you in plain language. How much is this affair going to cost us?”
“Well, now,” I say, “that all depends on what sort of affair you have in mind. If you’re thinking of the fancy wedding that folks like you are accustomed to, I’m afraid it’s a bit beyond my budget.”
“Either you’re playing dumb,” he says to me, giving me the once-over, “or else you really are dumb. Only, how dumb can you be to have set my nephew up in the first place by pretending to invite him over for blintzes in order to introduce him to a young beauty who may or may not be your real daughter … I won’t go into that now … and who got him to fall for her and maybe even — it’s easy to see how she could — fell for him? Of course, I don’t mean to imply it wasn’t kosher … she may be a perfectly respectable girl, for all I know … I really don’t want to go into that. But how could you have allowed yourself to forget who you are and who we are? Where does a sensible Jew like yourself get off thinking that a dairyman, a common cheesemonger, can marry into a family like ours?… He’s given her his word, you say? Then he’ll just have to take it back again! It’s no tragedy, believe me. Of course, it has to cost something … there’s breach of promise and all that … and I assure you, we’re prepared to be reasonable. A young woman’s honor is not the same as a young man’s, even if she isn’t your real daughter … but I would definitely prefer not to go into that …”
Good God, I thought, what does the man want from me? He didn’t stop chewing my ear off. I shouldn’t imagine for a minute that making a scandal by claiming his nephew was engaged to my daughter would get me anywhere … If I thought I could bilk his sister, I had another guess coming … Although with a bit of good will on my part, she was certainly good for a few rubles, for a charitable gesture, so to speak … I was, after all, a fellow human being, they would be glad to lend a helping hand …
And would you like to know what my answer to all that was? My answer, the shame of which I’ll never live down to my dying day, was nothing! My tongue clove to my mouth, as the Bible says — the cat had got it but good. I simply rose from my chair, went to the door — and exit Tevye. I ran from there as fast as I could, as though from a fire or a prison, while the man’s words kept buzzing in my ears: perfectly honestly … who may or may not be your real daughter … bilk a widow … a charitable gesture, so to speak … I went over to my wagon, laid my head on it, and — but promise not to laugh at me! — I cried and cried until I had no tears left. Then I climbed aboard, whipped my poor devil of a horse to within an inch of his life, and asked God an old question about an old, old story: what did poor Job ever do to You, dear Lord, to make You hound him day and night? Couldn’t You find any other Jews to pick on?
Well, I came home and found that gang of mine merrily eating supper. Only Shprintze was missing. “Where’s Shprintze?” I asked.
“What happened in Boiberik?” they all wanted to know. “What did they want there?”
“Where’s Shprintze?” I asked again.
“What happened in Boiberik?” they said again.
“What happened in Boiberik?” I said. “What should have happened there? Everything is quiet, thank God, there isn’t a sign of a pogrom yet …”
Just then Shprintze walked in. She glanced at me and sat quietly-down at the table as if none of this concerned her in the least. You couldn’t tell a thing from looking at her, but that silence of hers was too much, there was something unnatural about it … And in the days that followed I didn’t like it one bit, either, the way she went through the motions of things without seeming to have a will of her own. If she was told to sit, she sat; if she was told to eat, she ate; if she was told to go, she went; if she was told to come back, back she came. It made my heart ache to see her. I was burning up inside without knowing at whom … ah, dear God, I thought, Master of the Universe, whose sins are You punishing me for?
Well, would you like to hear the end? It’s one that I wouldn’t curse my worst enemy with, that I wouldn’t curse anyone with, because there’s no curse in the whole Bible like a curse on your own child. For all I know, in fact, someone may have put one on me … You say you don’t believe in such things? Then maybe you’ll explain to me why it happened. Go ahead, I’m listening …
But what good will all the philosophy do us? You may as well hear the end of it. One evening I was driving home from Boiberik in my usual grand mood: the shame, the humiliation of it all, to say nothing of my feelings for my daughter!.. (Whatever happened, you ask, to the widow and her son? Just go try finding them! They skipped town without so much as an adieu. I’m embarrassed to tell you, but they even stuck me with an unpaid dairy bill. It wasn’t that that riled me, though — no doubt they simply forgot; it was their not having bothered to let me know. Why, to think of their picking up and leaving like that without even saying goodbye!) … What she, my daughter, went through, no one knew but me, because I was her father and a father knows in his heart. Don’t imagine, though, that she ever said a word to me about it. Do you think she complained? Do you think she cried even once? If you do, you don’t know Tevye’s daughters! She just flickered out like a candle, without a word of protest, keeping it all to herself except for a sigh now and then — but such a sigh, I tell you, as could break a heart of iron …
In short, I was driving home with my horse, thinking about the whole miserable business and asking God all kinds of questions that He kindly let me answer for myself. My problem wasn’t God, though — with Him I had somehow made my peace. My problem was men. Why did they have to be so bad when they could just as well have been good? Why did they have to ruin their own and other people’s lives instead of being happy with what they had? Could God have created them on purpose to make them miserable? But what good could that possibly do Him …?
Just then I drove into our village and saw a crowd of people down by the dam on the river, men, women, and lots of children. What could have happened? There wasn’t any sign of a fire — it must be a drowning, I thought. Someone went for a swim in the river and didn’t come out. You never know where the Angel of Death will make a date with you …