Do you think he took this lying down? “May the rich not live to see the day when I compare myself to them! Let them all go to hell!”
“You seem all worked up about the rich folks. Have they divided up your father’s inheritance among themselves?”
“You should know,” he said, “that you and I and all of us have a large share in their inheritance.”
“Let your enemies talk like that,” I said. “I see only one thing, that you are not a hopeless young man and that you know how to use your tongue. If,” I said, “you have time, why don’t you come to my house tonight, and we’ll talk some more and, while we’re at it, have a little supper?”
You can be sure I did not have to repeat the invitation. He arrived exactly at the moment the borscht was on the table and the cheese knishes were baking in the oven. “You have perfect timing. Everything is all set for you,” I said. “You can wash your hands or not, it’s up to you. I am not God’s watchman and will not be punished in the next world for your sins.” As I talked with this young fellow, for some reason I felt drawn to him. Maybe it’s because I like a person with whom I can talk, with whom I can discuss a biblical commentary, have a philosophical argument, speculate about life, on this, on that, and who knows what else. That’s the kind of person Tevye is.
From that time on, my young friend began coming to my house almost every day. After he was finished with his tutoring job, he would come for a rest and a visit. You can imagine how little he earned from that tutoring when you realize that the richest man in town would pay him eighteen kopeks an hour for teaching his sons while also helping him read telegrams, write addresses, and even run errands. And why not? As the passage goes: With all thy heart and with all thy soul—if you eat bread, you have to pay for it. Luckily he ate at my house, and in exchange he tutored my daughters. As it is said: An eye for an eye—a slap for a slap. He became like a member of our family. The children would bring him a glass of milk, and my wife made sure he had a shirt on his back and a pair of mended socks. We started calling him Fefferl, the Yiddish version of the Russian Perchik, and it is safe to say we all loved him as one of our own because he was by nature a fine person, simple, outgoing, a down-to-earth man, and generous, what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.
But there was one thing I did not like about him: he kept disappearing. He would suddenly get up and leave, and as it is written in Genesis: The child is not there—Fefferl was gone! “Where have you been, my dear fly-by-night?” I would ask when he came the next day. But he was as mute as a fish. I don’t know about you, but I hate a person with secrets. I like a person who talks to you and tells you things. But he did have this virtue: once he started talking, it was a passionate, unstoppable stream, like fire and water. What a tongue — not to be stopped! He spoke out against God, against the Messiah, and against injustice, conjuring up wild schemes, all upside down, all crazy. For instance, a rich man, according to his backward reasoning, was less worthy than a poor man, who to him was a jewel. A man who was a worker was beyond estimation because he worked.
“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but will that get you any money?”
He became angry and tried to convince me that money was the root of all evil. “Money,” he said, “is the source of the world’s falsehood, and everything not done in the world out of a sense of justice.” He gave me a thousand examples and illustrations that made no sense to me at all.
“Then according to your crazy way of thinking,” I said, “it is unjust to milk my cow, and for my horse to pull my wagon?” That’s how I would confront him after every foolish statement, and I challenged his every opinion, as only Tevye can! But my Fefferl could also argue, and did he argue! I wish that he didn’t argue so well. If he has something to say, he speaks up!
One evening we were sitting in front of my house talking about philosophy. Fefferl said to me, “Do you know, Reb Tevye, that you have very capable daughters?”
“Is that so?” I said. “Thank you for that news. They have whom to take after.”
“One of them,” he went on, “the eldest, is really very bright, very mature.”
“I know that without your telling me,” I said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” My heart swelled with pride, for what father, I ask you, does not love it when someone praises his children? How was I to have been a prophet and known that from that praise would spring a passionate love affair? May God protect me! You must hear this.
In short, and there was evening and there was morning, as it says in Genesis — it was between day and night when I was making my rounds of the Boiberik dachas with my wagon when someone stopped me. I looked and saw Ephraim the matchmaker. Ephraim, you must know, is a matchmaker like all matchmakers and makes matches. When Ephraim saw me in Boiberik, he stopped me and said, “If you please, Reb Tevye, I have to ask you something.”
“Of course, as long as it’s a good question.” I stopped the horse.
“You have,” he said, “Reb Tevye, a daughter!”
“I have,” I said, “seven, may they be well.”
“I know,” he said, “you have seven. I also have seven.”
“So together,” I said, “we have fourteen.”
“Let’s not joke,” he said. “This is what I want to talk to you about. As you know, Reb Tevye, I am a matchmaker, and I have a bridegroom for you, but a groom without compare, the cream of the crop!”
“Really?” I said. “What do you mean by the cream of the crop? If he’s a tailor or a cobbler or a teacher, he can stay where he is. Enlargement and deliverance shall arise for the Jews—I will find my equal in another place, as the midrash says.”
“Ah, Reb Tevye,” he said, “you’re starting in again with your midrash? To talk to you, one has to be well prepared! You scatter the midrash everywhere. Better listen,” he said, “to what a match Ephraim the matchmaker has to offer you. Just listen and be quiet.”
Ephraim proceeded to rattle off all the virtues of this groom. Quite impressive, he comes from the best of families, not just anybodies, and that is most important to me, because I myself am also not just anybody. In my family there are all kinds, as they say: ‘streaked, speckled, and spotted’—we have ordinary people, laborers, and property owners. In addition this groom is a learned man who understands what’s in the small print in the commentaries, and that’s not a trivial thing for me. I hate a coarse young man more than I hate pork. To me an ignorant person is a thousand times worse than a hoodlum. You can go without a hat and even walk upside down, if you like, but as long as you know what Rashi is about, you are a man after my own heart. That’s the kind of Jew Tevye is. It turns out the young man is also rich, stuffed with money, and drives a carriage with two spirited horses that leave a cloud of dust behind them! All right, I thought, that wasn’t his worst fault. Better a rich man than a poor one. As it is said: “God Himself must hate a poor man, because if God loved a poor man, the poor man wouldn’t be poor.”
“Well then, what more do you have to say?” I asked.
“I must tell you, he wants me to arrange a match, he’s dying for it,” he said. “He’s so eager — not for you but for your daughter Hodl. He wants a pretty girl.”
“Is that so?” I said. “Let him keep dying. Who is this treasure of yours? A bachelor? A widower? Is he divorced? What’s wrong with him?”